by s. Behr
I counted to ninety-nine, then the water shut off, and a warm light came on overhead, and a whirlwind blew around me, drying my skin and hair in only a minute. My feet felt a million times better now that they were dry. When the lights dimmed, the fox scampered over to me and fluffier than I could have imagined.
A drawer came out from the wall with a set of folded clothes. “Those should fit. I entered your measurements while you were being sanitized.” Hailey’s cheerful voice drifted over her shoulder.
“Thank you.” Numb from the assault of the water jets, I dressed quickly, and as soon as I fastened my new shoes, Hailey turned around and looked me over.
“Perfect fit! Just as I thought.”
The panel next to me changed from an opaque white to a mirror finish where I saw my reflection for the first time in days. I barely recognized myself behind the spider web of bruising and gashes across my face, but nothing looked serious or felt broken, and that was good enough for now. I ran my fingers through my shoulder-length brown hair that had somehow come untangled during the shower. It had dried into soft waves that I tucked behind my ears.
The white jumpsuit was made of soft and stretchy material that resembled Hailey’s. The pants and shirt moved with me and felt familiar, like the training suits we used in Neyr. The shoes, however, came as the biggest surprise. Fashion was alive and well across Amera; there was no shortage of trends and styles. However, living in a realm that dealt primarily with agriculture, it has often been more practical to wear tactical, rather than fashionable footwear. The shoes most commonly worn in Neyr had individual toes that allowed for grip and climbing, but were lightweight and watertight for long days outdoors. These shoes on my feet had cushioned soles that felt like I was standing on small pillows. Walking without falling was a challenge in the comfortable but destabilizing shoes.
Hailey appeared alongside the far wall, where a panel slid out. “Please place your hands here. We need to do a secondary level of decontamination.” The panel was smooth and black, similar to the one that had been on the exterior door. Noticing my concern, she added, “Don’t worry; it won’t take long.”
I didn’t like the way that sounded, but being so close to the entry to the Ark, I placed my hands on the cold glass. A warm light engulfed my hands. An entire minute passed before it turned off, then a sharp prick pierced each of my fingers, and I saw blood drip onto the glass.
“Thorns!” I gasped when my fingers, still recovering from the sting of being pierced, suddenly felt like they were on fire. I realized it was because they were. A red beam of light cauterized the small wounds, and before I could unleash an embarrassing slew of curses, a blue light flashed over my hands, and the pain vanished. My mouth hung open as I gaped at my fingers.
“Easy, breezy!” Hailey said in an annoyingly happy voice. “Now, the fox. Please place her on the pad.”
I bit my lip, suppressing what I thought of her breezy. I knew exactly what the fox would think. But I knew this was our only way in, so I picked up the fox and placed her on the panel. Another energy field surrounded her, and she howled. The moment it was over, she bounded into my arms, tucking her nose into my hair.
I held the kit tight as Hailey beamed, “Excellent, you are ready.”
A wall to my left slid open, revealing a corridor. “Welcome to the Ark.”
After five days in the Ark, I felt like I had moved to the moon. The materials of the walls, floors, and even the air felt synthetic and processed. It was nothing like Hattan.
“Her break is healing very well,” Hailey beamed.
When the image of the fox’s broken bones came up on the screen in the med bay, I was glad to see that the fracture looked nothing like it had the first time I entered this room. As I examined the x-ray, as Hailey had called it, the fox walked circles around my feet as normally as a fox could with a cast.
“Yip!” she snapped at me.
“Okay, I know. Breakfast.”
We made our way down to the corridor past the room I had chosen for us to stay in, which Hailey had adamantly disapproved of. ‘Those are quarters for a cook, not a princess,” she had argued.
I still had not told her why I was here, and as the days stretched on, the sterile environment of the Ark made Hattan seem like a dream. It was almost too easy to get lost in the stark white corridors, or the vaults of information behind every door I had been allowed into.
From the ocean floors to every state, country, and galaxy that had been known to the civilization that created this Ark, there was a vault dedicated to each and every one. But for every level One clearance door I could enter, there was a dozen more I could not.
Entering the commissary, I pulled four ration bars out of a cold drawer I had found on our first day, and just like every meal since, I opened the first two and gave them to the kit, then took a seat to settle into my own.
“Which vault will you visit today?” Hailey asked.
I groaned and closed my eyes, chewing the ration bar slowly, pretending that I was not being stared at by a lonely A.I. that had nothing better to do than follow me around all day and watch me sleep at night.
“Texas,” I answered.
“Oh, good choice!” Hailey began rambling on about everything I would find there, including the number of ships launched from NASA in search of a new planet. “I haven’t heard back from a single one.” She shook her head with a grim look.
When I finished my breakfast, I headed down the corridor to the best room in the entire Ark. “Greenhouse entry approved,” the com announced.
I took my hand off the pad and walked through the opening doors. Nearly three acres big, the level One greenhouse had been a pristine field of soil that used the same technology as the colonies to mimic the ultraviolet light and specific climates needed to grow whatever was planted in this room.
Right now, there was only one thing. My lavender apple tree.
Checking the leaves for any shock, I pulled several apples and a few new sprigs of flowers. Taking a deep breath, I still had no idea how this happened, but it smelled like home. Visiting the tree each day since Hailey and I had used an energy barrier to move it here, had brought a mix of emotions out of me, anguish, guilt, anger... But today I must have been in denial because the smell made me believe that somehow everything was going to be okay.
Before my emotions had a chance to swing, I left the greenhouse and went straight to another vault.
“That is the California vault. I thought you said you were going to learn about Texas today?” Hailey questioned, her projection walking alongside me.
“I changed my mind.” I opened the door to the vault, then began to close it as soon as I stepped inside. The fox scurried in just in time, and Hailey flickered into the room as I took my seat at the desk.
“I miss you,” I said to my inner voice for the third time today. He had been silent since I had fallen through the gate of the Ark, and I held my breath in a moment of hope, only for it to be once again dashed away with no reply.
“Coastline images,” I told the com interface, and the screen materialized showing me vivid oceans blue with waves crashing against white sands.
No longer the edge of a continent, California was now under water and made up most of the Southern Region of Portla, the Ocean realm to the west, and the new coastline was the border to the land realms of Phoenix and Ico.
The Portlans, like the other ocean dwellers from Maie and Orlea, lived and breathed under water. And over the last few centuries, they had discovered countless ruins and even some neighborhoods that were strangely intact. Like Neyr, they revived and repurposed the ancient structures, incorporating them into their biospheres.
Looking at the screen, I stared at a long wooden pier with a large circular structure at the end. As the image showed people sitting in cart-like seats going in circles up and around, I wondered what those people would have thought of New Santa Monica the biosphere that was home to more than forty thousand Portlan ocean dwellers, seco
nd in size and number only to their capital city Blue Mountain in the north.
Hailey for once listened as I described the new coastline, and what happened to the people of California. They were not the ocean dwellers. They were the opposite in almost every way. In the vault records, I found far more details about the joint effort of several major labs that began the evolution of the people who now reside in the Realm of Angels. The Angelians had evolved over the ice age and became something new. Their physiology was somewhere between human and pure energy. Preferring higher altitudes, they built their capital at the peak of Sunset Mountain that according to all accounts came into being when the San Andreas fault line shifted and fractured.
I sat and read all day, trying hard to think about anything except home. Night was on its way, and like every evening since I had come here, I told myself that in the morning I would head home. But so far every morning, I found another excuse to stay.
After I brushed my teeth and tucked the fox in bed, I pulled the covers back and sat on the edge of my mattress. Hailey’s projection took a seat just as she had every night by the door. The first few nights it was unnerving, but I had been too tired to care. Now, as she prattled on about all the vaults we could explore over the next few days, I snapped.
“Is it possible to have some privacy?” I asked, taking out my exasperation on the innocent pillow on my bed.
“Of course, Princess Violet, you are technically not alone while the fox is with you, but if you require solitude, I can hold her in a barrier in the hall if you wish.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” I glanced at the fox who had curled up, nose tucked in her tail. “I was wondering if you had to stay in this form, or if you had a place that you go when you’re not following me around.”
I winced when I saw the look on her face. I would have guessed I had hurt her feelings, and surprisingly, I felt guilty.
“Yes, of course. I assumed that you would prefer this medium of interaction. However, I am capable of monitoring the Ark without a projection.” She faded away.
“Ugh.” I winced my head dropping to my hands. Leave it to me to rub an A.I. who had waited more than ten thousand years to have someone to talk to the wrong way.
“Blooms, Hailey. I’m sorry, that came out wrong. It’s just that I’m not used to someone following me around all day.” It amazed me that I was truly worried about a computer’s feelings.
Hailey was so lifelike I often forgot that she was an A.I. She was funny at times, even if she didn’t mean to be and she had become the closest thing to a friend I had ever had besides Lily, my inner voice, and the fox.
“Goodnight Hailey,” I said, hoping I hadn’t upset her.
“Goodnight, Princess Violet.” Her disembodied voice sounded flat, adding to my guilt.
“Lights off.” I sighed and scrubbed my face as the room darkened.
Without Hailey in the corner, my mind wandered back home. I wondered what my new siblings would be like when they were born. What my mother was doing right now. Then, like a dam breaking, tears streamed down my cheeks. I turned over, burying my face in the thin pillow.
For nearly a week, I had only had time to react to situations life kept throwing at me. Here in the Ark, Hailey was a tremendous distraction. She talked so much that I had hardly time to think about anything. But now in the lonely darkness, I couldn’t hide any longer.
I couldn’t block out the memories of the days leading up to my self-inflicted exile. All of it replayed in a horrible loop in my head—my father, the river, even the cave in—making it impossible to drown myself in sleep.
“Where are you?” If it was possible to think in volume, I was screaming full blast at the absent voice I wanted so desperately to hear.
After all the testing when I was young, I was afraid that if I told anyone about him, they would send me away. As I grew older, I stopped being afraid of what they might think of me, but feared if they fixed me I would lose his voice, that part of me that made me believe I could be more. Now, for the first time in my entire life when I was heartbroken and scared, he wasn’t here to talk me through it.
I had no idea why he was gone, but it was one more thing I missed from the life I had lost.
For hours I turned over and over, but I couldn’t sleep. I threw the covers aside, got up, and started a new day.
“Good morning, Hailey,” I said, hoping that as an A.I. she didn’t hold grudges.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” she replied without making an appearance.
“Okay, that confirms it, she does hold grudges,” I said to my inner voice out of habit and hope.
I made my way through my morning making the usual rounds, but after breakfast and exploring another vault Hailey still had yet to make an appearance.
Wandering the halls after a long hour, I realized I was lost. Every corridor in the Ark was the same; the doors, the walls, all a polished gleaming white.
Door after door refused to open, and I wondered how long she was going to let me walk around in circles. “Hailey?” I tried to sound apologetic. “I’m lost.”
Several moments passed, and her ethereal voice boomed from every direction. “Where would you like to go, Your Highness?”
“Back to my room would be nice. Thank you, Hailey,” I said, startled but with the hope she would reappear.
“Ten feet on your right,” she replied, sounding embarrassed for me.
I chewed my bottom lip. “Thanks.”
The next morning, I woke up late, and I knew she was still mad. After breakfast, I walked out into the corridor and couldn’t decide where to go. I sat down in the middle of the hallway, and the fox climbed in my lap.
“Everywhere I go, I seem to cause trouble,” I told the kit. “Even in a paradise of information like this.” I shook my head.
“You have been no trouble, Your Highness,” Hailey piped up.
“You’re speaking to me again?” I eyed the empty hallway.
“I was only giving you space. Learning new etiquette takes time. I apologize for overstepping my boundaries. It won’t happen again, Your Highness.”
“You didn’t overstep. I just have trouble expressing myself.” It was the truth, and I laid back on the cold floor and let out a sigh. “You know my friends call me Violet.”
There was a long pause when Hailey finally said, “I think I have the perfect vault for you today, Violet.”
A grin appeared on my face when she did, standing in the hall in front of me. I stood up, carrying the fox and followed her to a new hallway I hadn’t noticed before.
“Has this always been here?” Astonished by the corridor that led to a spiral walkway that went both upward and down depending on which way you chose.
“Yes, since it was built.”
“Why haven’t I seen it before?”
“Perhaps you weren’t looking,” she said in her special matter-of-fact way.
I followed Hailey upward until we came to a set of double doors that was unlike the rest. These were wooden and shiny with lacquer so thick I could almost see my reflection in them.
The doors opened, and I gasped in awe. Unlike every other room I had been in since my arrival, this room was warm with oak-lined walls, thick, lush crimson carpet, and familiar. Rows and rows of books were nestled beneath stone arches that had opaque, glowing screens resembling windows. The ceiling was carved with three rectangular reliefs, featuring intricate patterns of rosettes and curlicues surrounding vivid paintings of a twilight sky. There were eighteen chandeliers in two rows hanging above the aisles of polished wooden tables. There was no dust and no indication that time had ever entered this room.
Hailey beamed. “Welcome to the Rose Reading Room, Your Highness.”
The fox padded alongside me as I wandered in awe down the center aisle, my head craned upward, taking in the powder blue hues swirling with soft pink clouds.
“This can’t be. This building was lost before the ice age,” I whispered. But as I stood in th
e center of the room, I knew instantly what this was. The library in the King’s palace had been designed from images of this place, matching it right down to the cherubs grinning at me now.
“That is what the public was told for security reasons, Princess Violet. The New York Public Library was chosen as one of the entry points of the Ark due to the history of the building itself. This building was built on the foundations of the great Croton Aqueduct, which was over four acres in size. The underlying bedrock had proven it could withstand enormous pressure and provided the stability needed to ensure the survival of the Ark. Along with the historical significance, for creators on the council, it was the only choice location they could agree on when the project was proposed.”
“All of this here. All this time and no one knew,” I breathed. “How are all these books still here?”
“The invention of smart paper, a technology-based paper infused with a nano shield, makes them invulnerable to age and wear. Aside from fire or force, they could likely outlive me,” she answered with her trademark smile.
“Do you know what this would mean to my people, to Amera?”
I recalled all the years I’d spent in our replica of this library. The countless hours imagining this very room, all the people who had studied here, and how much was lost when it was believed it had fallen in the Great Collapse of 2370. Our archives had thousands of articles that had all reported the same thing: The sewers and tunnels below the city had frozen and expanded, breaking apart the infrastructure of the city.
It had always seemed strange that no lives had been lost when this area supposedly collapsed, and now I realized it was because it had all been planned. The creators, whoever they were, had put so much into this place. How much was sacrificed just so that my people could peer into the past?
I sank to the floor under the weight of what it had cost for me to be standing here now. “All those people who died because there was no room in the colonies. This place could have saved thousands.”