The helicopter swooped low between two mountains to fly over a washed out riverbed. Four occupants dressed in military fatigues looked down at the passing scenery.

The pilot tapped the leg of the woman sitting next to him and pointed at the steep face of an upcoming mountain. Through her headset, she heard him say, "Hold on to your stomach, Sergeant Landon."

The helicopter swooped up and banked. One of the men in the back whooped and Sergeant Landon smiled. "Is that the best you've got, Danny?"

The pilot laughed. "The Phoenix has a few more tricks up her sleeve. Maybe later you and I can take a private tour of the grounds and I'll show you all her tricks."

"You wish."

Danny grinned at Sergeant Landon, unwilling to give up. "How about a weekend on the ocean when we get a little vay-cay time?"

"I didn't know you had a boat."

"Not just any boat. A 40-foot cruiser. Got her used and spiffed her up. New paint job. Better sleeping quarters." He waggled his eyebrows at her.

"Dream on, dreamer."

"Oh snap," barked a voice in the back. "Hell of a try, though."

"My loss," Danny laughed, and Sergeant Landon winked at him.

As they flew across a long plateau, Sergeant Landon watched for the first sign of the dome, the tip of the arc that looked like the top edge of a sparkling soap bubble sitting between two boulders. As the helicopter closed in, the boulders transformed into two mountains and the immense size of the dome became apparent.

Sergeant Landon recalled a conversation with the dome engineer when he gave her a tour on her first visit.

"I expected the glass to be transparent."

Minjun's face lit up. He enjoyed talking about constructing the dome. "It's a special kind of bulletproof glass. Constructed of short glass tubes, sunlight is concentrated onto solar arrays that intensify the waves as they pass through. The energy gets stored so it can be consumed by everything in the dome that requires electricity."

Robin didn't understand everything but nodded.

Shyly, and behind his hand, Minjun leaned in and confided, "Even for flushing the toilets."

Robin laughed.

"Once the light passes through the solar array tubes, it hits a layer of UV filters that tones it down to a more natural level for the crops inside."

"So they don't burn up?"

"Yes, yes! See the filtering on the glass? Running from the top of the dome to the bottom? The glass goes deep underground. It's thicker near the bottom so we are all more comfortable."

"And the vents?" She pointed up to the ceiling where a handful of windows were open.

"Oh, good question!" He was really enjoying his science lesson. "Vents at the top and bottom provide air circulation. Like the tall windows in classic Victorian houses in the south?"

Robin shook her head. She had no idea about windows in Victorian houses.

"Cooler air comes in the bottom of the pane, and pushes the hotter air up and out the upper vents."

"Huh. I didn't know that."

"The dome's vents open and close based on humidity and temperature indicators that run on the inside of the struts that hold the glass panes in place. The many vent locations are monitored individually and have very good precision in venting air as needed. As the sun moves across the sky, it heats different sectors of the dome and those sectors respond accordingly."

"You did all this?"

Again Minjun became shy. "Yes. I was asked to make the dome extremely energy efficient."

The helicopter dipped to set down on a landing pad between a security gate and a field of corn. A soldier stood waiting with his arms crossed and feet spread while a handful of people filed out of the dome and walked up to hover behind him. Sergeant Landon could see their excitement in their animated expressions and spirited pace as they made their way to the cement pad.

She smiled. Her trips to the dome were like playing Santa Claus. She could bring special requests approved by Central Security.

"How do they know we're coming?" she laughed. The pilot shrugged his shoulders and cut the motor.

Sergeant Landon stepped from the helicopter as the rotors spun down and hauled out a large duffle bag behind her. The soldier on the landing pad stepped up to join the pilot and soldiers from the back of the bird and unloaded boxes onto an empty pallet. As the blades made their final revolution, she walked to the group of people and greeted them while reaching into her bag.

First out of the bag was a box of powdered donuts which she handed to a man dressed in khaki shorts and a polo. He clutched them to his chest and gushed, "My favorite!"

"I remember. Hi, Marybeth. Will this work?" Robin asked as she handed a box to a robust woman with flushed cheeks. The sunlight sparkled in the streaks of gray that ran through her hair. "It's not easy finding radios with cassette players anymore. I can't believe you still have cassettes."

"This will work perfectly! No sense in getting fancy when technology just keeps keeping on. It will be nice to catch up with the new music by having an antenna again. That old one could only get one station in here before that old radio disappeared. I still have no idea where I left it."

"And here are the batteries. Hi, Jordan." Robin watched the girl's dark eyes follow the batteries as they were passed over her head. "Don't worry. I have your request as well."

She reached back into the pack and pulled out a box of black hair dye to hand to the petite girl. She frowned as she handed over the box. "You need to eat more, Jordan. You look like you've lost weight."

The girl shrugged and tucked the box under her arm. She turned back toward the younger boy waiting behind her, but not before Robin saw her steal a look at the soldiers unloading the helicopter.

Robin reached deep into her pack. She pulled out a medium-sized bag of seed and handed it to him. "For your bird, Jinho?"

"Serinus Canaria," Jinho said. He pushed his glasses up.

"Say it with me...cuh nare ee," Jordan said elbowing him. They turned together to walk back to the greenhouse. Robin followed them. "I still want to know why you get to have a pet in here."

"Canaries aren't pets. They're air control monitors."

Robin held back a pace eavesdropping on their conversation. She enjoyed watching Jinho's attempts to woo the older girl whose eyes kept wandering back to the soldiers at work behind her.

"Do I even want to know what that means?"

"They monitor the air. They're sensitive to changes in the oxygenation of the dome, so if the levels of carbon monoxide, methane, or carbon dioxide get too high for any reason, they're the early detectors. If a canary gets sick..." He drew his thumb across his throat.

"Morbid. Why not just use one of those carbon detector things you buy at the store? You don't have to feed those."

"Carbon monoxide detectors. The dome has those too, but they can fail. My canary won't fail." He paused to whistle at the bird. "And he can detect lots of different toxins."

"He'd be a lot happier if you just let him loose inside the dome to find his own food."

"Except for the fact that there's not really a lot of bugs or grains that he can eat. My father told me they release low levels of bifenthrin into the air inside the dome via the air purification system."

"What's that?"

"What's what?" He looked confused. "The purification system?"

"No, God no. Don't explain that to me again. No, the bi-something or other."

"Bifenthrin? Insecticide."

"Insecticide?" she squeaked. "They're spraying poison on us? Through the air purification system? Surely you see the irony in that."

"Who are you calling Shirley?" He dodged her elbow. "It's low doses. The whole point of making genetic modifications to the crops is to reduce the need for insecticides. Your dad studies how well the plants fend off pests. And that's how I rationalized my little Aurum."

Robin shook her head. She learned something from this boy every time she came to the dome. When she split away from the teenagers and walked toward the security offices, she caught the tail end of their conversation.

"And besides, it's against the rules to eat the food in the dome. We can't eat it, so why would you think the canary would be allowed to eat it?"

~~~ * Author Note * ~~~
There are only a handful of biomes around the world. I hope you will take a moment to learn more about them. I fear as humans that we have done so much damage to our planets that biomes will eventually become a necessity. I hope I'm wrong!

I chose to use a South Korean character as the biome developer after reading about a project in South Korea where biodomes were being designed to protect the country's endangered species. I thought it was an interesting idea for a company in the US to recruit a designer/developer from South Korea and have him build a functioning model that would represent a hidden research facility in the desert.