Sky Parlor: A NOVEL

by Stephen Perkins

  Though he was certain they weren’t aware he knew about their frequent marital spats, he remembered overhearing the crescendo of murmurs, his parent’s voices slashing at one another like verbal rapiers as he lay in bed at night, pretending to have fallen asleep. His father, a surveillance tech that worked for the city transportation committee, had never fully approved but only pretended to condone the decision to allow his bio-transfer, while his mother, both strong willed and perhaps domineering, the sister of a high-ranking member of the president’s sustainability council, insisted the bio-transfer of her only son represented the way of the future for humanity.

  Funny, he often thought, while tossing and turning under the sheets at night, listening to their voices keen at an ever greater pitch, how mothers and fathers, despite their best intentions, always seemed to have a propensity to taint their offspring with their own inherent insecurities, prejudices, and even their dreams and desires, however unfulfilled and deferred.

  Even more amusing or perhaps to be more accurate, tragic, he would sometimes think, how neither one of them nor anyone else for that matter, had ever bothered to consult him on the matter of how he felt about his bio-transfer. It seemed, at least in the mind of his mother, to appropriate the right in preordaining her son’s life, perhaps even before he had been conceived.

  “Have you never considered we might have disadvantaged,” he secretly heard his father explain to his mother, “condemned our very own son to a life of misery, not to mention ridicule from his fellow students at Columbia Prep?”

  Lucius supposed that perhaps his mother, while blinded by her own vicarious desires, had never considered most of his fellow students, like Boudica and Bobby Lee, were ‘breeders’ and that her husband and his father, was wiser than she ever bothered to surmise.

  Though his programmable synthetic Nano-tech had given him superior strength and stamina when it came to physical education class, and advanced logic and reasoning skills, which came in especially handy with mathematics and the sciences, most of those students at Columbia, like Bobby and Boudica, came from families who had still not chosen to make the bio-transfer, and he found himself sometimes wondering, if life wouldn’t be a lot easier if he were more like them.

  Sometimes, while silent, solitary and merely watching them through the school cafeteria window, they looked to be having such fun, laughing and joking together while outside at recess. Though he oftentimes imagined what it would be like to join them, Lucius remained in the cafeteria, devoted in serious concentration while studying and reading. He began to mull too, about regrets his future had been planned out for him when, right from an early age and soon after his bio-transfer, he had been officially designated as a tech working for the council.

  Why, Lucius began to wonder, shouldn’t he have the choice for whom he wanted to work or even to work for himself – what if he decided he wanted to be president of Sky Parlor someday like the current leader Ulysses?

  Though he hoped someday to widen his circle of ‘breeder’ friends beyond just Boudica, there was still no greater inspiration to the imagination, he decided, than when after bedtime, Lucius would sometimes sneak up onto the roof of his MU building with his telescope to gaze in utter fascination at the constellation of stars which shone like polished diamonds during clear summer nights. Yes! – he felt intrigue marshal forth magical visions – imagining himself as president of Sky Parlor someday, the undisputed leader of everyone living underneath those stars and constellations. Maybe then, he thought, all the breeders in Sky Parlor, and not just Boudica, would begin to like him, perhaps even love him.

  Lucius waved his holo-screen into a horizontal position and activated the holo-type:

  You’re a breeder suffering from oxygen deprivation due to umbilical strangulation at birth.

  Sure enough, as soon as Lucius had typed out the message on his holo-screen, Bobby Lee Tepper, the captain of Columbia Prep’s football squad, leapt from his monorail seat and hulked over him.

  “Yeah whatever, smart ass saint,” Bobby Lee berated, while the faces of his three chortling friends behind him riddled with amusement. “Maybe if you weren’t so blinded by science, you’d see I could kick your Nano-teched ass into a bucket of bolts.”

  Before Lucius could collapse his screen and stand up to deliver another witty retort, Bobby noticed his friend, Boudica, had arrived onboard.

  “Oh hi, Boudica,” Bobby greeted as Lucius noticed Bobby’s fearsome scowl transform to a delighted grin. “Hey, you know, me and my friends here, we’re going to the Paramount this afternoon. Everybody says,” his crystal blue eyes gleamed, “Doc Zoe’s got some new VR game cubes – why don’t you come along with me, we could grab a cube together and be Romeo and Juliet.”

  “No thanks, Bobby,” she replied. “I think I’d rather drink poison and then stab myself.”

  Lucius snickered while Boudica sneered through her mocking smile.

  “You see, Bobby, I’m afraid I’m just not in the habit of being seen in mixed-use public spaces or in VR cubes with knuckle-dragging troglodytes.”

  Bobby sensed his three friends stifling laughter as his ivory cheeks began to tincture with a bright red hue.

  “What are you laughing at, morons?” he snapped at his friends and varsity teammates before his broad-shouldered frame skulked into the seat behind Lucius.

  “I guess you told him,” Lucius joked as Boudica sat in the seat next to him. “You’re not going to believe what I’ve discovered though. I took some hi-res shots of some of the stars and planets the other night, and after examining them closely, I believe they’re not celestial bodies but holographic projections.”

  “Wow, that’s really strange,” Boudica replied, widening her hazel eyes. “But how could this be?” she said, scrunching her pixie nose. “I mean, even though Sky Parlor has a crystalline dome to protect us from the pollution outside the walls, caused by the ‘Great Rapture,’ that’s still the real sky and real stars in outer space we see through it, right?”

  Lucius tapped his palm to activate his holo-screen.

  “I don’t think so,” Lucius said with excitation flashing in the irises of his brown eyes. “Notice, how this picture of the planet Saturn looks like its shimmering,” he stuck out a long finger toward the hovering screen, “like you would expect the modulating frequencies of a light projection to do. I did some calculations, and while performing a comparison and contrast study with some rare star charts I found on the holo-web, the positioning is all wrong.”

  Boudica leaned over to get a closer look at the gallery of pictures saved on Lucius’s holo-screen.

  “Oh wow,” she exclaimed, “I can see what you mean – even Saturn’s rings look like lights. But what could all of this really mean?”

  “It may mean that the sky we see during the day is not the actual sky we see, but a holographic projection against Sky Parlor’s crystalline dome, and that the stars and planets in the nighttime sky are also,” Lucius said. “This could also mean, they’re not millions of miles away above the dome like Doctor Gregor Zoe claims – but there is something else up there being hidden we’re not allowed to see or know about.”

  Boudica’s brow began to furrow, and her eyes filmed over with a cloud of confusion.

  “But if this is true, Lucius,” she said, “does this mean that outer space isn’t real, and if the sustainability dome is hiding what’s really above us way up there – what is it?”

  Lucius felt his mind brimming, for above everything else about her, he most appreciated the quality of Boudica’s uncommon and inquisitive mind.

  “I don’t know – yet,” Lucius affirmed, wagging his chin. “But these pictures prove the real sky between us, and genuine outer space are being covered up with holographic projections. I know this sounds crazy because no one’s ever thought about it, but it could be that the same power source used to create our manufactured weather inside the dome is also used to create these holographic projections somehow. What I haven’t really
thought about is,” he explained as Boudica felt her pulse jump, noticing her best friend’s hazel eyes begin to shimmer, “what this all means for SAGAN’s space missions to deep space and for Doctor Gregor Zoe, and all the things he’s said about outer space and the planets, about water and inhabitable atmospheres on Jupiter and Saturn’s moons. If all these heavenly bodies are merely light projections – then this brings up several questions: to where exactly the last space missions teleported, and where are these images being projected from and, rather than protecting us from the environmentally unsustainable land beyond the walls of the city, caused by the ‘Great Rapture,’ is there something else they don’t want us to know? Is something else, other than the real sky and outer space being hidden from all of us? Could it be what’s beyond Sky Parlor’s sustainable dome isn’t really unsustainable; they just want us to believe it is to keep us trapped in here for some ulterior motive?”

  Boudica slowly cast aside a long tress of red hair obscuring her wild eyes and, throwing back her milky white neck, began to laugh.

  “Oh Lucius – but that can’t really mean…you’re suggesting that maybe all of us here in Sky Parlor – both saints and breeders – have been caged like rats,” she exclaimed. “I can only imagine what our sustainable science instructor back at Columbia Prep would say about this – that you’re –”

  “Yeah, I know,” Lucius joked. “No need to say it, Boudica. Mister Kaiser would say that I need to visit the techs to have a special diagnostic run on my cerebral Nano-connections to make sure they’re functioning properly, right?”

  The monorail came to a halt at the landing and Lucius collapsed the holo-screen. As he and Boudica rose to debark from the nearby sliding door, a brutish Bobby Lee collided with the back of his shoulder, knocking Lucius forward with only the head rest of the seat before him to break his injurious fall. Recovering his balance, and though unaccustomed to such emotional outbursts, Lucius felt a strange but smoldering fire begin to rage within, and he began to close his fist into a tight ball.

  “Hey Bobby,” he called after his tormenting nemesis.

  Bobby wheeled around, but Lucius’s arm was already wound up to strike. Boudica winced as Bobby’s jaw felt the full brunt of Lucius’s cobra-quick blow. Dazed, Bobby felt his beefy legs turn to rubber and he fell backwards out the sliding door and onto the cold concrete of the monorail platform. Before Bobby Lee’s trio of stunned friends and teammates rushed to help him back to his feet, Lucius and Boudica stepped over Bobby, sprawled and groaning on the platform.

  Though Lucius began to feel a queer sense of what he interpreted as gnawing regret, he observed that his friend Boudica felt no such compunction. She began to crack a smile, noticing the steady trickle of blood that seeped from the corner of the reigning football hero’s pouting lips.

  “Looks to me as if you’ve been blinded by science, huh Bobby?” she scorned, giggling.

  Aided by his three stunned companions, Bobby Lee staggered to his feet. While probing with ginger fingers, he stroked the outline of his jaw that felt knocked askew, then wiped the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. Lucius gulped as Bobby Lee began to wobble toward him on his still unsteady feet as if the monorail platform were made from eggshells. Lucius felt his limbs shocked with a charge of uncertainty but began to exhale a relieving sigh as he saw a surprise grin grow upon Bobby Lee’s face.

  “Hey, you’ve got a good punch there – for such a science freak,” Bobby said as his smile grew even wider.

  While an odd mix of apprehension and triumph swirled in his brain, again, Lucius gulped. Resembling what appeared to be begrudging affection toward a younger sibling, Bobby reached out with his muscled arm and, to Lucius’s secret relief, slapped his broadened shoulder.

  “Hey Bobby, c’mon, let’s hurry to Paramount Complex so we can get into one of the new cubes before they’re taken,” Bobby heard one of his three impatient friends suggest.

  “Nah, you guys go ahead without me.” He ignored them as they filed past and hurried down the stairs leading away from the monorail platform. “I’ll catch you up later with a zap-com.”

  While stifling her spate of giggling, Boudica turned toward the monorail platform’s steps with Lucius in tow and left Bobby standing alone.

  “Hey, wait a minute guys,” Bobby said, following them. “You know,” he began, speeding to catch up, “I think maybe we can make a deal,” he said, rushing to cut them off at the top step.

  With an expression that resembled desperate conciliation, Bobby began to plead, wildly gesturing with his meaty hands.

  “Both of you already got straight A’s on your final exam experiment for this semester’s science grade, right?” he said, attempting not to sound as if he were begging.

  “You mean the one demonstrating geometrical vector induction,” Boudica said, her tone laced with annoyance.

  “Yeah, or whatever,” Bobby’s flummoxed lips replied. “I’ve never told anyone this, but I’m barely passing science and, well; I think I might need some help.”

  “Let me guess,” Boudica said as her vibrant eyes narrowed and turned to flaming chasms, “our sustainable science instructor, Mister Kaiser, just warned you about the fact you haven’t made any effort in preparing an experiment to demonstrate for your final exam this semester, and its due by Friday. Everyone at Columbia Prep knows, if you were anyone else, other than the big football captain playing in the big city championship this Saturday night, he would have failed you already – which isn’t fair. Well, you can forget it, Neanderthal beefcake,” she scoffed.

  Bobby winced as if Boudica’s scold had pierced him like a verbal dart.

  “No, wait Boudica,” Lucius spoke up, deciding to be diplomatic. “I think we should help Bobby Lee here and become his tutor. Maybe we can help him come up with an idea. But only if say, he’s willing to pay a small fee of thirty UIC credits,” he went on to suggest.

  “That’s thirty each, Bobby,” a business minded Boudica said.

  “Cut it in half and make it fifteen each,” Bobby negotiated, “I’ll throw in some prime tickets, right on the fifty-yard line for the city championship, and you’ve both got yourselves a solid deal – what do you say?”

  Bobby flashed his ivory horse teeth and thrust forth his rugged hand.

  Before making a final decision, Lucius glanced at Boudica who gave a reluctant nod of her freckled rosebud chin.

  “Alright, Bobby, I guess we can help you,” Lucius agreed, grasping Bobby Lee’s outstretched hand.

  “Great – then since we all live nearby on the same MU block, why don’t both of you come to my house, later on this afternoon – and Boudica here is right, I’ve only got a few days and my oral report is due in class on Friday, which is only one day before the big championship game on Saturday night,” Bobby said.

  “No time like the present, huh, Bobby. But we want those credits first,” a stern Boudica insisted.

  “Hey, no problem, babe,” Bobby assured. “Though you may think otherwise, Boudica, you can ask anyone on the team, Bobby Lee Tepper is known as a man of his word. You can count on that.”

  Boudica’s eyes transformed to fire spewing earthquake crevasses.

  “Always remember, jock strap boy,” she said, jabbing her freckled chin toward Bobby, “I’m not, and never will be, your BABE!”

  “Alright, Bobby,” Lucius agreed, “We’ll see you tonight at your house, to help you out with some ideas for your experiment.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait,” a wary Boudica cast like a poniard tipped with lethal poison. “This is going to be very interesting, Lucius.”

  “Ha, suckers,” Bobby thought as he watched his pair of newly acquired business partners descend the stairs from the platform, “I just bought myself a good grade – and on the cheap too – for only one week’s allowance,” he gloated in self-congratulation.

  Down on the street, Bobby’s energized legs began to churn in a steady rhythm while trekking the two blocks to the family home on t
he third floor of Columbia’s MU-21. For a moment, he thought of joining his friends at the Paramount located very near his MU complex and Columbia’s demarcating border that separated it from the neighboring region of Columbia’s schoolboy football rivals, Arcadia. But somehow, he thought, no matter how life-like Doc Zoe’s VR games seemed, there was nothing like the adrenaline charge to be had from suiting up to play football – a real game with real-life consequences.

  Swarms of ‘sustainable’ bicycle traffic rushed by on the main thoroughfare as the sun began slowly dipping towards the dusky horizon, dimmed by a cluster of darkening clouds.

  Considering further, about the deal he just made with Columbia Prep’s pair of star science students, getting sucker punched by Lucius, and parting with his weekly allowance was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, reasoning he would acquire a good grade in a subject he despised, while delegating the hard work to others. No one would be the wiser, and his father and mother, a nurse technician at Columbia General Hospital, could remain proud while he led his team to yet another glorious city championship on Saturday night, before a capacity crowd and millions more watching live on the holo-web.

  Now at the front entrance of MU-21, he held his hand up to the palm recognition unit, and with a whoosh, it rapidly slid open. Before entering the elevator in the lobby, he peeked inside the windows of the fashion apparel shop at scores of milling customers gawking in fascination at the latest holo-displays.

  “There’s no better time than now to look fabulous while staying environmentally sustainable with the latest from some of Sky Parlor’s best and hottest designers!”