The first chapter of One Level Down, by Mary G. Thompson, is unnerving and fascinating; the second is chilling and horrifying, and I had to take a break from reading it for a couple of days; however, when I nerved myself to continue, I found the focused self-control and resilience of the protagonist inspiring, and I was rewarded with a very satisfying conclusion. This is a novella with a compelling character and some really interesting ideas, and I will definitely be looking for more from Thompson.
Thompson’s prior science fiction and fantasy novels have been written for middle grade and YA markets, but this is most definitely not a story that I would recommend for children. Ella, the protagonist-narrator (first person, present tense) is a 58-year-old person trapped for decades in a five-year-old’s body, and her life has been a horror. I can’t quite call Ella a woman the way the publisher’s promotional copy does, because her life has been severely restricted by her father, limiting her education and life experiences via programming, social pressure, example, and physical violence. So although she’s certainly seen some shocking things, she’s never really had the chance to grow up emotionally, let alone physically. And being allowed to grow isn’t even really her main focus; what she wants most is just to get away from her terrible father, who insists that she present herself as a happy little child all the time, or else.
The trapping and programming come into the story because Ella and her community are inhabitants of a virtual world. They had gone as settlers to a distant planet, but disease killed off a lot of the population, and the rest retreated into a simulated universe, where they don’t get sick or die of old age. The colony’s founder, owner, and programmer, Phil, takes solace in his perfect little daughter, and he won’t have it any other way. He keeps an iron group on his little community through deletion, which he has carried out more than once (with a cover story of people moving to a “Western Settlement”). However, every 60 years, a Technician comes by the planet to do maintenance on the system, and Ella is determined to make the most of this opportunity.
Luckily for Ella, she is observant and smart. She has figured out several truths that her father has tried to hide from her, and she has been forced to learn to be a good actress. Her plan of asking the Technician for help may not exactly work out the way she had hoped, but she has a backup plan, too.
However, this isn’t just the story of one little old girl resisting one sick, evil man; it’s also the story of the society that allows this to happen. The corporation that created and maintains the digital world for this settlement doesn’t seem to care what happens as long as the physical resource extraction continues. Most people in the community have reasonably happy day-to-day lives, as long as they don’t make waves. Their digital selves don’t get sick or get old; other children besides Ella grow normally. And the original settlers all had signed contracts granting control to Ella’s father, even though they didn’t understand everything that they were giving up at the time.
Naturally, this situation makes me think of Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (and various works in conversation with that story since then). No one can walk away from this community, though; the only way to reject this supposed paradise is for someone to question/resist Phil so much that he deletes them. And most of the inhabitants probably don’t think much about what’s happening to the little girl who never grows up, when she’s behind the closed doors of her father’s house. For instance, there’s a teacher who occasionally seems sympathetic, and even lends Ella extra books, but she mostly tries to get Ella to play along like a normal child, for the sake of the other children or for her own safety.
Besides Ella’s own situation, the worldbuilding here is interesting. Many people have left the overpopulated, degraded Earth to settle other planets, but many of these settlements haven’t worked out too well; therefore, many people have retreated to a myriad of virtual realities (as long as they have resources to trade for maintenance of those habitats). Rules of physics can be changed for those digital homes. Some people even question whether the original universe may itself be some kind of simulation. Ella has lots of questions about this, and the reader doesn’t get to find out many of the answers, but it’s all interesting to think about.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I found the resolution of One Level Down very satisfying; however, there are actually a couple of different resolutions. I don’t want to explain how things worked out in multiple ways, because that would be a spoiler, but I found the different endings and how they ended up combining to be refreshingly surprising. I was really happy with how Ella eventually stood up for herself, and talked back, both to her father and to the community who let him abuse her, and how she eventually found ways to grow after all.
There are some tough parts to get through in this novella, but it’s really worth it. I love it, and I highly recommend it, for anyone who won’t be too triggered by the abuse (which is mostly just referred to as having happened, not directly played out in scenes in the book). At the end, Ella and a couple of allies are planning to help a lot of other people in various other pocket universes. I love the thought of that.
One Level Down, by Mary G. Thompson, is being published on April 1 by Tachyon Press.
Content warnings: Harm to a child, arguable self-harm, murders/deletions of people, tyranny.
Comps: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, by Ursula K. LeGuin, etc.
Disclaimers: I received a free eARC of this novella for review from the publisher via NetGalley.
