Above ground

"This place Rome? It is but the tomb of mighty Rome." He showed Gerard . . . the gigantic vestiges of antiquity that peeped aboveground here and there.

Last spring, the periodical cicadas emerged across eastern North America. Their vast numbers and short above-ground life spans inspired awe and irritation in humans—and made for good meals for birds and small mammals.

Alice: I told you, he don't have no wife, not aboveground, anyhow.

More disturbing was that zines and underground culture didn't seem to be any sort of threat to this aboveground world.

And they argue that if aboveground activists continue to express public sympathy for their underground counterparts […]

But there is yet another interlocutor that precedes the underground culture of zines: the aboveground world of straight society.