38. Chloe — Roundhay & Chill

My head still rang from James’ plea to share responsibilities, and Charlene’s surprisingly nihilistic lecture, when Reece beeped up on my screen. Logging everything first for later editing, I tapped his recording and got the closest message to a booty call I’d had in months.

“Girl, when you’re done doing whatever it is you’re doing, come meet me in the bunk stacks. Got fresh linen and gonna Roundhay and chill. Come see how the other ninety-nine percent live.”

I tapped a thumbs up and left Charlene with Nina to babysit the super kids. The stacks were less than a ten second trip down the TurboLift, so when the doors opened, I didn’t have time for a mental shift from cosmic bleakness to prepare myself for the eyesore everyone else had to sleep in. On the plus side, stepping out of that elevator helped me achieved a life ambition I’d set myself when I was just four years old. That’s when I’d wanted to be a bumblebee.

Somehow, the moping sumbitch upstairs had even managed that miracle. The bunk stacks were exactly what they said on the tin: stacks of bunks. Hexagonal doors curved around the ring’s outer hull, and when I kicked off into the tubular chamber, found they lined the central TurboLift and stairs column bas well. Human sized honeycombs ran the length of a tunnel. Their hexagon frames even glowed a gentle honey shade. James wasn’t even trying to hide his hive mind agenda.

“Reece lives in sixty-nine.” I hummed to myself. “Of course he lives in sixty-nine.”

The numbers before me read two-hundred & four, with two-hundred & fourteen above it on the right.

“I need to go down to sixty-nine. Go down…sixty-nine. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Reece. No, not for fuck’s sake. Dammit.”

Where the honeysuckle lights met were convenient knobs to grip. Once oriented, I flew through the hive just like that bumble I’d wanted to be, a little bee as free as could be. Swarms of kids buzzed between cells, flying and crawling in and out their narrow doors. Some had custom paint jobs and I stopped to take a snap of the more talented murals for my blog. The art ranged from recreations of classic pieces to manga and comic panels, movie posters to any number of superheroes and Pokemon. Finding Reece’s cell was easy. Both his door number and pseudo-renaissance art proudly showcased that fucking number.

Close up, the cells stood taller than me, the art heavy in detail. These kids were good. I knocked and Reece answered without a top on, then shoved a box of sanitary wipes into my hands and turned his spine on me.

“Hey, I can’t reach my middle back. Could you?”

I plucked a wipe from the box. “This is what you called me for?”

“Sure. Call it part of the experience. The authentic feel of the destitute or something… Oh, wow, I feel so refreshed. Thanks.”

I handed the used cloth and box back and followed him in. The room was a hostel capsule. Two storage spaces each side of a bed. What little belongings he had were compressed in rubber webbing, and when he hooked his knees under his duvet, it worked the same way to keep him from floating away.

“Everyone’s got this same cabin?” I said.

“Everyone but you. And Kinsley, I’m guessing.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

He patted the bed space next to him and plucked a laptop from a magnetized power dock on the opposite wall. A schematic of a helicopter floated on its top screen while potential redesigns had been sketched on a lower e-ink touchpad. He tapped an icon and they changed into a keyboard.

“Fancy.” I said.

“No moving parts, save for the hinge.” He said. “Less to go wrong.”

“I prefer physical keys.”

Reece typed on the e-ink keyboard. “Did some research. Found out both my bio parents were nurses.”

“That’s nice. Mine were ultraconservatives who stifled and restricted me to the point I ran away and became a junkie.”

“No kidding. How’d that work out for you?”

“I met real friends, fell in love and got a career in journalism.”

“Ah, so pretty good then.”

“You?”

He turned the screen at me. “Kim and Mike Alexander. Shortlisted for saving. They might even be alive somewhere on the ArkRing.”

“And are you going to look for them?”

“That and demand answers.”

He swiped their portfolio away and tapped an almost familiar amalgamation of logos. “So Roundhay and chill?”

“Roundhay?”

“Every video in the world. All the streaming and video services had to merge, given our situation.”

“Why’s it called Roundhay?”

Reece tapped away at the keyless board. “Let’s see. Named after the oldest surviving film on record, the Roundhay Garden Scene. Oh, it’s the clip that plays when you load the app.”

He loaded the app and three grainy, colorless seconds of men walking around women faded into the main menu.

“Wow.” I said. “Films were really short back then.”

He drew the blanket over us and I used his arm as a pillow. The blanket felt like the offspring of a sleeping bag and a seatbelt.

“Maybe I won’t look for my parents.” Reece said. “Everything we loved and knew and everywhere we’ve been, they’re all gone now. Maybe it’s time we started over.”

I closed my eyes. “Tabula rasa.”

“Huh?”

“Means clean slate.”

“Ah. I like. A clean slate. That’s what the Earth’s gonna be when we return. Even if it reforms from the same matter.l, it won’t be the same planet, even if they call it Earth.”

“Much like the second Ship of Theseus.”

“That another tombola racer?”

“It’s a philosophical question and historical reference. I might need to open a museum it you’re an example of what high intelligence passes for these days.”

“I thought I was just a talented grunt?”

I slapped his knee. “Reece, this entire ArkRing is nothing but talented grunts. When we colonize your new world, you’ll be so wrapped up in trying to make it work, none of you will remember the histories of the old one.”

“Except through selected histories, like Roundhay here. But maybe that’s for the best. Can’t hold the son responsible for the sins of the father if no-one remembers what the father did.”

“Huh. You sound a lot like James for someone who hates him.”

Reece rolled his eyes and repositioned my arm. In his coffin of a room, we watched the fuzzy image on his screen replay over and over. Neither one of us loaded up a movie or made any moves after that. Then a thought struck and I pulled out my tablet to message James.

“Got a proposal for your new calendar.” I said. “Call everything up to first landing year zero. We’ll give it a new dating system designation from now on. This is year Zero, Tabula Rasa. Screw everything that led us here and screw what you feel guilty about. Lead us onto your clean slate to start again.”

Then I turned the tablet off, turned to Reece, and let the elastic blanket lay me back. Reece yawned and stretched an arm out behind my neck. When it retracted, he pulled me into an intimate cuddle, one I gave him an amused smirk for, but I didn’t resist. We nestled in further.

Tabula Rasa.

More than pretty words, it was a time for new beginnings, to let go of the past. I didn’t want anything to ruin this moment or break this feeling, so naturally an alert interrupted us on Reece’s laptop with a priority message. For me. With a roll of the eyes, I tapped it and Charlene’s face popped up.

“This better be good.” I said.

“Chloe! There you are!” She said. “Where’d you go? James is waiting in the decompression chamber.”

“The where?”

“He says he’s sorry for being so dramatic earlier, but he didn’t actually show you what he was going to show you. You need to get to level twelve right now “

“For crying out loud, I just sat down!”

“Sorry, but it’s your job.”

I threw back the blanket with a snarl and then a shriek as the elastic snapped back without letting me vent with a livid act of frustration. I left Reece, protesting as vocally as he did, but dutifully buzzed back through the beehive to the TurboLift. Charlene met me on level twelve and ushered me into a canister of a room, similar to Reece’s dorm capsule.

“We’ve prepped a suit for you,” Charlene said, patting the storage straps. “So you can just go ahead and get changed when it’s time. You’ll be in Decompression for twenty hours so if you want to talk to someone, you’ll need to use the coms. I wish I could go for a spacewalk. Gawd, you’re so lucky!”

“Huh?” I said. “Spacewalk?”

“Don’t worry, I know you’re not trained. Here’s a list of instructions. Follow them to the letter or you might die. But try not to. I’ve really come to like you.”

She hit a lever and a cylindrical door hissed shut between us. I was left floating in utter blackness without bearings.

“Uh, are the lights in here?” I said.

My voice was swallowed by the chamber, not even the courtesy of an echo, but it must have triggered something because soft backlit panels flickered on to reveal the tight cylinder I was housed in. A ding from my tablet delivered my next set of instructions. Step one was to use the toilet.

The toilet in question was identical to the one in my quarters, located under a trapdoor beneath my mattress. I skimmed the rest of the to-do list and clarified I was in a decompression chamber awaiting my first spacewalk. Step two was to simply relax and try to get some sleep. I reread that last line again.

“Twenty hours. What the actual fuck?.”

I lay in the air wondering what to do for the next entire day. Then, when nothing occurred, I stuck my tablet to a magnetic charger and hit what little choice I had, regardless of Reece’s company.

Roundhay and chill.