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Today he heard nothing.
Toby sighed; a long journey home loomed before him. He entered the tunnel and flipped a light switch. Rows and rows of tunnels stretched before him, leading to thousands of living quarters, storage rooms, giant kitchens and recreational areas. Toby had explored these vast areas a few times when he was first allowed to enter the outer caverns alone, but found only the same rooms, sterile and white with no occupants to bring color and life. Now he avoided these hollow reminders filled with phantom spirits of the people who never came.
Toby crept past the lab where Gramble Colleen, the biologist, and Gramble Gregory, the physicist, worked. He peeked through a small window that topped the white door. Usually their tall, thin bodies were hunched over desks, checking slides of specimens through microscopes. Though not related, Gramble Gregory and Gramble Colleen looked like brother and sister with their angular faces and haloed tufts of white hair.