Futuristic – The Word Worker

Conscious

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The wreckage from the treetops littered the moss, cracking under Pim’s feet. He placed his palm against the bark of the nearest trunk, feeling the thrum of distress from its heartwood. The storm had happened too early, whipping into the new growth forest before the development of deadwood.

Pim didn’t understand the complex algorithms that controlled the dome; nothing the colony teachers had done could make numbers stay in his head. He didn’t understand how bickering over formulas in a techlab could solve problems involving living things. He did know something had gone very wrong, something that tickled the edges of his senses, and the farther he went into the steaming woods the stronger his unease.

He hummed tunelessly, absently, a rhythm he could feel like breathing. Breathing. He held his own, mouth open, fingers twitching with realization. Slowly he sank to the moss, the overly green carpet that somehow prevented the usual forest undergrowth from taking hold. He sank his hands deep into its furry softness and closed his eyes. The thrum he had felt in the trees enveloped him, and he understood what the engineers had not.

The plans and algorithms weren’t wrong. None of the dome administration departments had failed their assignments. The planet simply had other ideas and none of them knew how to hear her. Their own voices were too loud. Only Pim, wordless and forgotten, had been quiet enough to listen. He stroked the mossy fur gently and hummed with the rhythm again. Tomorrow he would show them. Tomorrow.

The Turning Point

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Jax had always hated Cosmopolis with its plasfalt streets, adamantium tracks, and neon lighting. It was as if the city founders had built their idea of a city on bad sci-fi movies from the 20th century. Probably had, he thought with a grim tug at his sleeves. Back at the end of the 21st century, when the mission to settle Proxima business moon had launched, two generations would have been born and died on the ship carrying them across space. The generation that built their new home would have been raised on memories in an artificial world.

Now, of course, wormhole technology had linked systems much farther than Alpha Centauri into a “small universe.” With little distance and time between Earth and colony, the settlers of the last century or two showed little variance from modern Earth culture. Cosmopolis, however, remained apart, preserving their artificial world in a bubble of self-exaltation.

Jax sighed as he tugged on the sleeves of his bodysuit. It certainly wasn’t designed for comfort, but at least the dull coloring made him hard to spot in the dim street. Venturing out of one’s registered residence during curfew was risky, but his business could not be conducted under the suspicious eyes of Cosmopolitans.

“I see you made it,” a hard voice spoke behind him. “No, don’t turn,” it snapped as he jerked into motion. “You can hear what I have to say just as well with your back turned. If you are caught, or lying, you must have no information with which to give me away.” After a brief pause, the voice rasped even more harshly. “I know how to hack the AI. Cosmopolis will be ours within the month.”

The Relic

No one would ever have known it was there, in that tiny retreat from the bustle and concrete tucked in a cluster of apartments. No one remembered that before the garden, before the apartments, before the city, it was there. The city rose around it from apocalyptic waste, slowly but determinedly reclaiming the destruction.

Once walls had surrounded the artifact, high impenetrable walls guarded by marines armed and armored with the pinnacle of military technology. Then budgets and memories failed. First guards then walls disappeared, redirected to new pursuits and construction as civilization marched onward to cover the past. Still it remained, an unimposing but immoveable relic of forgotten death.

Eventually the city overtook it, and a developer born into Upper End luxury fancied it to be an old broken fountain. It became the centerpiece of nostalgia, a hodge-podge tribute to the geometric tranquility of the ancient English garden incongruous between siding and palmettos of The Southern Age as discovered by archaeologists. Birds and lovers alike twittered about its intricately molded layers and cooling sprays, pretending to know of times far before memory.

Until the day the topmost fountain ground to life and the birds flew away. Iron screamed against iron and gears long unused turned layer after layer, settling each within the other until all rested in the base with a click. And they came to repeat history, the hordes of destruction, pouring from the lock to scour the Earth clean for another beginning.

The Edge

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They called it The Edge. In reality it was a dam, the greatest feat of engineering ever achieved. The power of the great glacier harnessed, tamed, to do man’s bidding. To him it was more.

The wars of the twenty-third century had left scars upon the fertile equator and stripped the temperate plains to desert. With water rationed and food scarce, desperation had created The Edge to warm and distribute the ice of the polar climates. Longing for what was lost had diverted a mere fraction of arctic power to pockets of living memory.

Like this mountain stream, tumbling rocks over and over in its tiny rapids, only to filter through the moss into infinitesimal falls. Like many, he came often to walk the swinging bridge, artificially propped above waters that could have been waded, hung at the edge of empty air like so much possibility. Unlike many, he came to grieve.

He knew what others would not acknowledge. The Edge, the last great hope, was doomed. A century, maybe, could be wrung from the glacier, but no more. If the scars were not healed, and soon, The Edge of the future would be its end. And with the insulation of memory become recreation, there would be no healing.

The Leaving

FB_IMG_1590364184563 She had waited for this day for twelve years. Every time an Underage met his or her Milestone, she had followed them up the tracks as far as she was allowed, dreaming of her own Milestone. This morning, her twelfth Day, Da had woken her before Lights, a ready bag in hand.

She had dressed carefully in her brand new Topside clothes, her hands trembling with excitement. She had to blend in, but the clothes felt so strange she couldn’t quite move correctly. The long skirt hung around her ankles, and she kept tripping. Da told her to take shorter steps and move more slowly until she adjusted, and she tried.

The long pack was heavy and hit her thighs just behind her knees with every step. She was relieved to climb on Da’s Motor and let it hang behind the seat. She had to hike the skirt up as well to straddle the Motor, and she relished the freedom of movement, the last she would experience for several… months? Yes, that was the word. She was going to have to remember to talk like a Topsider. Starting with not saying Topsider, she thought with a grimace. Surface dwellers called themselves Citizens.

The Motor made the trip up the tracks much shorter than she remembered. Da was a good driver, but the crossties still made for quite a few jolts. She kept her jaws clenched tightly to keep from biting her tongue, and when they finally stopped at the Door she ran her tongue over her teeth to make sure they were all still there.

She and Da stood together, his hand on the lever that opened the Door. “Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded. This was how it was. No ceremony. Only one witness to confirm the Leaving. He pulled the Lever, and the steel panels slowly rolled back into the walls.

She had seen charcoals of Topside, even a few oils, but she was not prepared. The city stretched vast before her, its towers reflecting in the river like bridges of glass. Gleaming silver transports mirrored the colors of the sky as the sun tipped the horizon. It was her first sunrise, and for a moment she thought the whole scene burned until she remembered one particular oil.

Da pointed downriver. “There’s an old highway about a mile that way,” he told her. “Topsiders haven’t used it in decades, but it will get you across.” He squeezed her shoulder tightly, and she knew he was worried. Miners always worried about the Leaving. Sometimes they had reason.

“I’m ready, Da,” she assured him. “I can do it. I’ll be the perfect Citizen. You’ll see.”

He nodded, his eyes reddening. “Bring back everything you can,” he choked. “See you as a Miner.” He stepped away from her, ready to close the Door. She took a deep breath and stepped into the Topside.

The Elevator

FB_IMG_1589902792589 I stood on the boardwalk, gazing out at the elevator glowing faintly in the reflected light of the moon. The water was eerily still, barely a whisper in my consciousness. Pap, Mam, and I had been in line on the boardwalk since a week gone, since the day we were granted our tickets at the shore office. We’d been given a week’s rations in a wheeled cooler, issued uniforms in various shades of blue according to the strict set of guidelines posted on the wall of the office waiting hall. Mine was an ugly flat royal shade with large pockets and no distinguishing marks, the uniform of a pre-productive student. I hated it.

Pap and Mam sat on the the single duffel bag we had been given, that held the change of uniform provided, our passports and tickets, and the few personal items we had been allowed to bring. Their backs against the opposite rail, they huddled together, Mam’s head on his shoulder. She beckoned for me to join them, but I wasn’t ready for sleep yet. The elevator stood visible at the end of the boardwalk, just waiting, motionless for the first time since we had first seen it early that morning. Over and over I had watched it spin its way under the waves, carrying family after family to their new future.

I folded my arms on the railing and set my chin on them. Pap had talked for weeks and weeks about fair work, and new opportunities. Mam had been dreaming about a new house and neighbors. They hadn’t asked me what I thought. I remembered Ellie’s face when I told her we were leaving. And Boris, who had scowled and stomped away never to speak to me again. They were my best friends. We had done everything together since we were tots. Ellie and I had made pinkie promises just last year in third form to grow up and take care of each other. Boris and I had planned to join the Fieldball team together next year. Now I would never see them again. No one who went below ever came back.

That was the deal. Start over, that’s what they said. No ties to above. Personal items were heavily restricted, only useful items allowed. I was just glad that my fieldball was considered a useful item for a pre-productive. Mam had her art supplies; they barely qualified, and she had cried over leaving the portrait she had painted of Granda and Grana. No ties, not even to memories. Pap had a handful of books; they wouldn’t let him keep his Pap’s tools.

In the morning the elevator would descend empty and bring the welcomers up from below. Their white uniforms and slicked-back hair would shine in the early sunlight, like the surface of the waves. Only welcomers wore white; only welcomers ever returned to above. They would walk down the final stretch of boardwalk to unlock the gate, where they would stand and count the people jostling through. When the day’s limit was reached, they would close the gate, and those behind it would watch the space gradually widen behind the lucky ones who made it to the elevator.

In the morning we would be the first. In the morning we would see the sun, the surface of the ocean, the above, for the very last time. We would step onto the elevator with the shining welcomer and spin into the depths forever. So tonight, I stood at the railing and watched the moon. Tonight I said goodbye.

FB_IMG_1569933605615 Strange sounds disturbed the silence of her slumber. The rock trembled in rhythm with a thrumming roar. The air around her grew warm, and she stirred irritably, comfort destroyed.

The roaring finally ceased, and as the accompanying heat dissipated she relaxed and drifted back into slumber until new sounds startled her awake once again. Sharp taps grew in frequency and intensity, fevering her brain like water dripping from a stalactite. She shifted again and again, trying to block out the tapping, but it was joined by an unrhythmic metallic banging that jolted her consciousness intolerably.

The thrumming returned, but only briefly, as something sharp penetrated the wall and struck her hip. She jerked away from the painful intrusion, whirling to face the pinprick of light that appeared as the sharp tip was withdrawn. Other sounds reached her ears through the light, these maddeningly familiar. The shouts of men penetrated her memories, stirring her belly with hate and resentment.

She moved rapidly, fury giving strength to muscles long unused. Her head shattered the thin wall separating her from intruders. The pitch of the shouts rose satisfyingly, and she could see figures running toward a bright white archway at the far end of a carefully crafted tunnel. Her jaws parted in a feral grin; their fear could not save them. She heard their screams as liquid fire turned the walls of their tunnel to glass, smelled the satisfying scent of fresh meat as their cries gurgled into silence.

Her belly rumbled with a different need, and she salivated. The now steaming air stimulated her, and the urge to spread her wings drove her toward the white archway. She burst from darkness into light, her roar shattering glass, her wings darkening the sky. She would rule again.