40. Chloe — Decompressing

The human mind has great capacity for self-deception, capable of tripling twenty hours and reducing an already cramped space to the width of a sardine can. After working a solid week to catch up on all my blog work, and chatting to Reece and Nina online, I was depressed to discover my half a dozen days in confinement amounted to little more than the average length of a movie in real time.

I kept the clock up on my screen after that and surfed the ArkRing’s equivalent of the internet, discovered a group of animation students who’d banded to create eerily uncanny CGI endings to old shows that had cancelled on cliffhangers, uncovered a site dedicated to cataloguing every porno ever made, and then discovered all of Earth’s history had been preserved accurately, without airbrushing over pettiness or genocide or colonial war crimes. Seems patriotism took a nosedive now all the countries were kaput.

At around the three hour mark, Charlene called to convey newer news, conveying it more in expressive hands than through her mouth. I listened to what she had for me and grit my teeth before tearing into her with every foul mouthed single word diatribe I could splutter. It was the greatest event this side of the world’s end and I was out of it, stuck here in this fish tin.

“We got a communication broadcast from Earth,” she said. “And now we’re in talks with some techies in a bunker somewhere. There’s people still alive down there! Isn’t that amazing?”

“How in hell can anyone alive down there?”

“There’s about ten groups around the world. Seems our bunkers really did make the grade, although James hasn’t told them they likely won’t survive the very end of this Event. We only discovered them because they hijacked our drones, but they’re willing to share data so we still have eyes on the ground.”

“That two faced, rat bastard.” I said, and grabbed the tablet from the wall with both hands. “Can you send me the footage?”

“Sure. I already emailed it to your blog. Gotta warn you, though, it looks bizarre as hell down there. They’re all upside… y’know what? I won’t spoil it. James is talking to the engineers about them but he’ll want your input when he’s done.”

I tapped into my work account. “How are we even getting signals? There’s an entire frozen ocean and the void of space between us.”

Charlene sent me the screenshots. “Ninety percent of our drones worked as relays to the ten percent still active on the surface. Almost a sixth of them are actually struck in the ice shell.”

“Like a fireman’s relay from the ring to the ground? I just hope someone down there didn’t forgot to turn their phone back on after the magnetic fiasco.”

I spent the next hour filing through grainy, glitching footage of the Earth’s remains. For some reason it played the wrong way up, so I turned my tablet over and watched flybys of lava erupting through the crust and bodies cemented into the stonework of their homes, and the depths of the sea no longer hidden away as it crumbled into the air.

Then I paused. This wasn’t right. Rotating the screen back and tilting my head the opposing way until my eyes lined up with its original sight, the footage flicked to another feed and my suspicions were confirmed as a grimy trio of girls stood on the underside of the branches of a burnt out, semi petrified oak. The sky rolled like waves in a storm beneath them and the rest of their Cajun fried garden loomed overhead. My screen wasn’t upside-down. The world was.

“I have to get this out right now.” I said.

Charlene tutted and sent another link. “You’re too late, it’s already gone viral.”

I hit the link and got taken to a new app. “Amalgamated Social Network?”

“Yeah, they all banded together. I wasn’t too happy about that, but I guess in our particular situation, it’s more efficient to have them together instead of competing.”

“Wait, that’s my old face… my inst… twit… even those? They’ve amalgamated all my stuff!”

“Chances are they’ll separate again once the new planet is habitable.”

I tapped on Reece’s name. He’d already connected with me and a browse through his feed undressed a sentimental side I’d barely caught glimpses of beforehand.

Write the names of those friends who didn’t make it, family now gone, one last use of their inactive accounts so those of us who outlived them won’t ever forget.

Below was a list of over a thousand names, some accompanied by photos, art, links to books or more. Despite the ArkRing’s pervasive atheist mindset, the religions of the dead were acknowledged, too, and their names automatically collated into services for their faiths. I copied the memorial meme and wrote the first name that sprung to mind.

Holden

So much for Tabula Rasa. I killed the screen and went to bed, and after what remained of those twenty hours and several nightmares about my ears exploding later, was woken by a pounding on a door. I rubbed my eyes and sat up groggily, then snapped back into place as the elastic blanket returned me to its safety position. One day soon I was going to remember to unclip it before rising, but with the resulting adrenaline shock in lieu of coffee, I could piled on my wits and heard James’ voice over a tannoy I hadn’t known was there.

“Chloe?” He said. “Are you awake? I’m waiting for you out here.”

“Out where?” I said with a yawn.

“Outer space! Hurry up and get your suit on.”

“Outer? Oh, shit.” I was in a decompression chamber! “I was just getting dressed.”

It was gratifying to see the spacesuit met with realistic expectations. Given the organic, quasi-psychedelic interior of the ArkRing, no small part of me expected a skintight Barbarella piece paired with silver moon boots. The suit, however, was remarkably unremarkable, white and bulky and didn’t obscure my vision by lighting up the interior of my helmet Hollywood-style. After ten minutes wrestling into it, I clambered into an even smaller coffin of an airlock and waited for the last of the decompression cycle to finish. It may or may not have concluded with an oven timer ding. My ears popped too painfully to hear it.

When the outer hatch swung open, the space-suited hand of James Kinsley himself reached in to haul me out. Before I flew off, he clipped a cable to my waist and aimed my feet at what had once been either a fire escape or a dismantled rollercoaster. Once my feet touched a path, I looked up. There, a thousand times brighter and without a twinkle, stars dotted every direction. I tried to inhaled and found my lungs wanting. Twenty hours was nothing to pay for this. I was walking in space.

“Your boots are magnetic, Chloe.” James said, steadying me. “Walk like you’re back on Earth. And breathe. Breathe.”

I took a tentative step backwards, setting some personal space between us while he secured my tether to a central rail. The boots took a dislike to breaking contact with the grill and when I did lift my foot, no sense of attraction drew it back. James beckoned for me to follow and his ungainly lurching only served to highlight how unlike walking on our planet was compared to here.

On either side of the metal path, more spacesuits danced in their freedom from gravity. They locked rails together, installing what looked like parts of Space Mountain on the outer hull of the ArkRing. James patted a partially completed section and posed for a photograph. I obliged him.

“This is the Halo.” He said. “She’s going to be a magnetic runway for propelling spacecraft out of orbit without the need for fuel. Think of her as a railgun, one that can also safely catch them on their return.”

“Why’s she a she?” I said. “What’s with guys always naming their machines after girls? Why’s there never a tractor called Trevor or a sailboat named Carl?”

“Why don’t you ask our chief engineer? That’s the person who named her.”

He waved to an identical suit stomping up the iron path and tapped a set of controls on his forearm twice. The new suit gave him an okay sign and pressed theirs.

“Can you hear me?” a woman’s voice said. “Channel two, right?”

“Yes,” James said. “We hear you. Nancy, this is Chloe.”

“Oh, yeah, the reporter. Yeah, I read your blog.” She pointed at James. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

James nodded. “How about we get on with our tour. Maybe if you explain to Chloe what you’re doing, it could help change her mind.”

“Why? I don’t like you right now, either.”

“Oh, really?” I said, a smile tugging at my lips. “What did he do now?”

Nancy pointed to the Earth. “What we’re doing is rushing a system that should take a year to build. This isn’t an orbital elevator, it’s a hack job of one. A real one would have friction shielding, ozone inducers, the works. This piece of shit has none of that. We’ll be lucky to get more than single use out of it.”

“And if you do it right,” James said. “We’ll only need a single use.”

I filmed Nancy and her crew working on the ArkRing’s exterior. When I glanced down, the people inside were looking out, watching us, filming me filming them. Nancy gave us the space to work around her, but refused to answer any more questions, citing the need to concentrate on not floating away into the void. What I filmed them installing had to hold the world record of the largest roll of rope ever weaved. The rope itself had to be a half meter thick.

James stroked the cable. “What we have here is a miracle of science. This is a composite of various permutations of carbon. Once unraveled, its furthest end will skim along at approximately five miles above the world’s surface and provide the traction for a ring to surface ferry.”

I smirked inside my visor. The old man thought he was playing smart, but I was a veteran of a two year tongue clash with Holden Crayson. I didn’t bite, and translated what he’d said back to him.

“So it’s a really long elevator.”

James’ own visor remained unreadable, but he nodded after a while. “She’s an orbital elevator, Chloe. Designed to transport heavy goods and vehicles, not just personnel.”

“Okay, so it’s a really long freight elevator. What’s your angle, James? Why rush something as valuable as this?”

“I take it your heard the news last night? There are survivors down there.”

“And what? You’re going to invite them up? What about your precious screenings, keeping the bloodlines pure?”

He shook his head, or at least I interpreted the horizontal wobble of his suit’s upper torso that way.

“You need to stop that.” He said. “Hate me if you want, but don’t lie about my intentions. If you can’t remain objective, I’m sure one of the students can.”

“I am being objective. You might not have endorsed or taken part in the eugenics project, but you didn’t take in anyone who wasn’t already screened by it, either.”

He slapped the back of my helmet with a gloved cuff. “Spare me the pedantry against logistics. I regretted asking you to share the blame the second it left my mouth. I’m the man who left seven billion people to die. I’m not proud of that. Shame doesn’t cover what I feel, but neither am I going to hide from it.”

“You’re in charge of the ArkRing.” I said. “You could edit your history and the only ones who’d remember are the people grateful that you saved them.”

He waved his arms at the earth. “Our drones have been following a group of survivors in your hometown. They’ve been making their way across the city, block by block, despite what you saw. Yet one of their leaders seems to be a priest or a pastor of some kind.”

“And now you’re suddenly god-fearing?”

He chuckled through the radio. “You can’t change someone’s mind with a simple coincidence, Chloe, but you can admire how he’s rallying them to travel across the land despite the enormity of it’s difficulties.”

I crouched and stared at the earth. A faint, hot glow permeated the ice around it and flashes of lighting lit entire countries in stark churning blue.

“It’s not unfeasible most survivors would form some kind of coalition.” I said. “Especially if they’re familiar with each other and share similar beliefs.”

“In which case, superstitions will sprout again, no matter what we do to quell them. And if that’s the case, who’d want to be remembered as a savior, judging by what happened to saviors throughout history? Their messages of peace are twisted into words that start wars. I couldn’t bear being remembered as that kind of martyr.”

“So what kind could you be?”

Another chuckle. “If I’m going to be remembered in any spiritual sense, I think I’d rather be remembered akin to Santa Clause.”

I nodded in my suit. “Good choice. He was always my favorite superhero.”

The engineers floated around, slotting more of their machine into place while apprentice techies tightened its nuts and bolts and screws. They loaded the composite carbon fiber into the largest winch system I’d ever seen, an impressive feat, even in the weightlessness of space, yet despite the genius and pure mathematical skill behind its construction, it still didn’t resemble the futuristic technology of the Kinsley Foundation’s promo video. If anything, it looked exactly like what it was. Titanic, hastily constructed, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

“So,” I said, snapping a shot of the angled rod and line. “We’re going fishing. Fishing for survivors. From space.”