He winked at Okvist again, and the rookie returned a conspirative smile.
“I’m so sorry, Cosmo,” Halley said. “I wouldn’t ask you if it was a defective light bulb. But a hissing sound coming from an escape pod could be something serious, and we can’t …”
“All right, all right,” Cosmo interrupted her. “It’s a matter of life and death, I got it. I’ll go and check it. But what are you gonna do for me in return, Halley?”
After a moment of perplexed silence, Halley asked, “What am I gonna do for you? What do you want me to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cosmo said. “How about you buy me coffee some day?”
Halley laughed out loud, sounding relieved. “When you said you wanted me to do something for you in return, I was expecting a rather more indecent proposal. But coffee is good. Yeah, I think I can do coffee.”
“All right, it’s a deal then. Give me a minute.” Cosmo tapped his earpiece to mute the connection.
Okvist looked at him and shook his head disapprovingly. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re a married man, man!”
“So? A married man can’t have coffee with an unmarried woman? What are you, some religious fundamentalist or something?”
Okvist shrugged. “Hey, I’m just saying.”
“Son,” Cosmo said, “it’s about time I told you a thing or two about the true nature of marriage. When I get back. I have to head up to the B-deck now to see what that hissing noise in B0722 is all about. Halley is right, a leak in the escape pod or the seal between the pod and the habitat module could have some nasty consequences.”
“All right then.”
“I shouldn’t be too long. Meanwhile, why don’t you carry on fitting windows. It can be done by one person, it’ll just take a little longer. I’ll catch up with you soon.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Okvist said, “no worries. I’ll probably get it done faster without some frail quadrogenarian standing in my way.”
Wagging his finger at the rookie, Cosmo said, “Careful, kid. I’m keeping my eye on you.”
“Yes, sir!”
Cosmo left the module and turned right. After thirty meters he reached the hatch to the ventilation shaft. Using ventilation shafts as a mode of transport was a violation of standard procedures and officially frowned upon by ArkCorp’s health and safety officers, but it was the quickest way to get from one deck to another.
He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past one in the afternoon UTC—not that such time specifications made a whole lot of sense when one was orbiting the Earth at twenty-six thousand kilometers per hour. In fifteen minutes, logistics were going to seal the Z-deck cargo bay. Cosmo didn’t have much time to lose, and he was getting slightly nervous now. As he tried to open the hatch to the ventilation shaft, his sweaty hand slipped off the handle and he hit his knuckles against the cold, hard metal of the hatch.
“Dammit!”
Relax, he told himself. It’s gonna be fine. Just take it easy and don’t get nervous now. In a few minutes you’ll be dead and all your worries will be gone.
Cosmo rubbed his hand dry on his jumpsuit and placed it on the handle again. He pulled it up and opened the hatch effortlessly.
There you go.
He entered the ventilation shaft. It was narrow and dark, only dimly lit by LEDs signifying maintenance hatches every other couple of meters. A long line of rungs lined the shaft from the bottom to the top. Cosmo grabbed one of them with both of his hands and pulled himself up with a tug. Like a capsule in an old-fashioned pneumatic tube, he shot upwards. After only two seconds he had reached the B-deck hatch. He opened it and cautiously poked his head through to see if anyone was in the corridor. Faint voices were coming from some of the habitat modules in the distance. Cosmo exited the ventilation shaft, leaving the hatch a crack open, and tapped his earpiece to resume communication with Halley.
“Are you there, Halley?”
“I’m here, Cosmo.”
“Me too. I hear voices from some of the B-deck habitat modules. Why did I have to make my way up here?”
Because that’s part of your plan.
“Because I wanted to send someone who knows what they’re doing and not have some rookie fix a potential leak with a stick of chewing gum.”
“Right,” Cosmo said, making his way towards habitat module B0722. “Good answer.”
“Besides, you were the one who did the wiring on that escape pod. If you messed it up, it’s only fair that you fix it yourself.”
“Careful, missy,” Cosmo warned her. “If your supervisor finds out that you took me off my assigned task instead of sending a designated repair crew, you’ll have some explaining to do.”
“Is that a threat, Mr. Morgan?” Halley asked teasingly.
He reached B0722. “I’m just reminding you of standard ArkCorp protocol.”
“Right,” Halley said and chuckled. “Speaking of standard protocol, how did you get to the B-deck so quickly anyway? Have you been using the ventilation shaft again?”
“Nah,” Cosmo said. “I’d never do that. So what’s the number of that habitat module again?”
“B0722.”
“Right. I’m almost there.”
After waiting a few seconds, Cosmo opened the door. The hissing noise coming from the escape pod was unmistakable. “Whoa,” he said, “it sounds like a pressure cooker in here.”
“I can hear it,” Halley said. “That’s not good. Do you want me to send a specialist to assist you?”
“Give me a second to locate it,” Cosmo said, already inside the escape pod. He removed the wall covering near the hatch to reveal two dozen strands of cable and the small music player that was emitting the hissing noise. Without switching it off, he placed it in the breast pocket of his jumpsuit.
“I think it sounds different now, Cosmo. Muffled.”
“I’m inside the escape pod now. Still trying to locate the source. Stay with me.”
“Aye, captain.”
Cosmo placed his hand firmly around the cables in the wall. “So tell me, Halley,” he said as he disconnected them from the ship’s main network with a violent tug, “where are you from?”
“I was born in Brazil,” Halley said, “but we moved to Florida when I was nine. Orlando. Spent my life there ever since.”
“Nice.” Cosmo turned to the escape pod’s main console and pressed the manual override button. “You ever go back to Brazil, Halley?” He set the evacuation countdown to sixty seconds and activated it. A look on his wristwatch confirmed that the transmission he had covertly programmed into the console was working.
Fifty-five seconds.
“Every summer,” Halley said. “My grandparents still live there. Aunts and uncles, too.”
Cosmo pushed himself off the console and sailed across the room towards the door. “And do you still speak Portuguese?” He sealed the door from the outside and shot back towards the ventilation shaft.
Forty seconds.
“I do,” Halley said. “But not quite as good as I’d like. Sometimes it’s embarrassing when one of my uncles makes some silly joke in Portuguese slang that I don’t understand, and then I never know if the others are laughing at the joke or at the stupid American who doesn’t understand what’s going on. But it’s okay. My Portuguese is still good enough to get by whenever I’m down there.”
Twenty-six seconds.
“Halley, I think I found it,” Cosmo said as he opened the hatch and slid back into the ventilation shaft, the music player in his pocket still hissing. “One of the cables connecting the pod hatch to the main circuit has come loose, causing the seal to malfunction. I can fix it, nothing to worry about.”
Eighteen seconds.
“Are you sure, Cosmo? I’d really rather have someone come down and have a look at it. If you cannot fix this within the next two minutes, I’m going to have to call in a mission specialist. This could be a serious …”
Twelve seconds.
“Halley, it’s fi
ne,” Cosmo interrupted her, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Don’t worry. I got this. I’m reconnecting the cable now. It’ll take five seconds. Let me just …”
One second.
At the exact same moment the escape pod blasted away from the ship, Cosmo tapped his earpiece to cut his connection with Halley. In the distance he could hear the muffled, violent thud caused by the sudden decompression of habitat module B0722. A klaxon sounded along the corridor outside the ventilation shaft, accompanied by the metallic clank of closing safety locks.
“Cosmo!” Halley shrieked in his ear.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he said, knowing that she could no longer hear him. As he heard her panicking and crying for help, he took the earpiece out of his ear, held it against the wall of the ventilation shaft with one hand and pierced it with the tip of the screwdriver he was holding in the other, rendering it useless. Cosmo Morgan was now officially dead, the seventeenth worker to lose his life during the construction of the ark-ships. In lieu of his body, which was never going to be recovered, an empty coffin decorated with the UNSPAG seal and an American flag would be laid to rest in the cemetery of his hometown of Westphalia, Maryland, in a ceremony attended by local, state, national and international dignitaries and representatives. “He gave his life,” they would pathetically say, “so that humankind may live.” The mere thought of it made him cringe, and unlike Tom Sawyer he had no intention to attend his own funeral.
Cosmo turned himself upside down, and like a dog paddling in a pool he propelled himself down the ventilation shaft, pulling himself along the rungs. When he reached the bottom of the shaft, he stopped and listened intently. When he was reasonably satisfied that he wouldn’t run into anyone, he opened the hatch and slid out into another dimly lit corridor not unsimilar to the habitat areas on the decks above. But the doors lining this corridor didn’t lead to habitat modules. Behind these doors lay storage units, mostly for tools and spare parts, but there were also some units that held emergency food rations—powdered milk, freeze dried rice, protein bars. The ark-ships were supposed to be self-sustaining, and on the decks above, the exodants were going to grow their own crops and tend their own livestock in order to feed themselves. The food supplies down here were merely for emergencies, and his situation—Cosmo had decided—qualified as an emergency.
He made his way down the corridor to the very end of that long line of doors. Here, behind the last of these doors, lay a storage unit much smaller than the other ones and only about half the size of a regular habitat module. This is where Cosmo had set up camp in the last few months. Once his supervisors and coworkers had grown used to the fact that he liked to extend his working hours to patrol the ship and do his own quality control, Cosmo had begun to dedicate a good portion of his voluntary overtime to furnish the place with some of the basics of human existence. Among the things he had secretly brought down here were a mattress and blankets, an electric kettle for hot water, and two boxes full of his own clothes. Every time he had come down here, every day after every shift, he had taken off one piece of garment that wouldn’t be missed when he returned to his living quarters—the workers’ dorm—and so over time he had built up a sizeable wardrobe. He didn’t know how long he had to spend down here on his own before he could dare to mingle with the legal exodants on the decks above, but when that time came he at least wanted to be able to put on a fresh set of clothes. The food supplies he had amassed were basic to say the least—mostly canned meats and vegetables—but compared with the emergency rations in the adjacent storage units they seemed almost luxurious. He was going to need his own food supplies only for a few months anyway. Once the ark-ship was on its way and teeming with exodants, he could simply stroll into one of the numerous food courts and get all the food he could eat. After many a heated debate about the economic system to implemented on the ark-ships, the government had decreed basic food supplies to be free for everyone on board. People would still be able to buy ingredients from the shops to cook whatever fancy meals they desired in their own habitats, but meals in the public food courts were going to be free. This was a survival mission—nobody was going to be left to starve.
Until the magical Land of Cockaigne became a reality, though, Cosmo’s main concern was trying to remain hidden from everyone’s view. As long as there were any ArkCorp personnel left on the ship hustling and bustling—and there would be until shortly before the first exodants arrived three months prior to setting sail—he couldn’t risk running into anyone who might recognize him.
‘Hey! If it isn’t Cosmo Morgan! Fancy seeing you here! I thought you were dead!’
Only when his coworkers, up to the very last one of them, had left and the only people sharing this vast ship with him were exodants could he allow himself to lift his self-imposed solitary confinement, leave his hiding place and be seen. Cosmo had calculated that the chances of any of the passengers or crew by some freak coincidence knowing him personally were almost infinitely small—at least eight sigma—and even then he would probably recognize them before they recognized him, giving him enough time to walk the other way. The only uncertainty left in Cosmo’s plan were exodants who might have seen—or were about to see for it had yet to happen in the next few days—his face on TV: Cosmo Morgan, the seventeenth worker to die during the construction of the ark-ships. Surely they were going to show his picture on the news, but he had taken precautions even for that: he didn’t bring a razor. Three months’ growth of facial hair would render him unrecognizable even for his own wife and daughter.
But they’re not going to join me up here anyway, Cosmo thought with a bitter smile.
Cosmo closed the door and turned the lock. As his gaze wandered across the murky, crammed storage unit, and the adrenaline rush began to subside, a distinct feeling of depression was beginning to sink in. His life as he had known it was over; there was no turning back. He would never set foot on planet Earth again or talk to anyone he had ever known. The future, whatever it might bring, would be very different. A clean slate, a chance to start over, to live life anew, to avoid repeating previous mistakes; and—probably—to make new ones.
He reached into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit and pulled out the two items that were in there: the music player that had helped him fake his fatal freak accident, and a photograph of his wife and daughter that he had taken himself, two years ago in the summer during a rare trip to the beach.
How happy they looked, Cosmo thought. How happy we were.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. But you left me no choice.
He loved them; he loved them both more than he had ever been able to express, but Shiva’s betrayal, he knew, was something he could never forgive or forget. If he had stayed, the grudge would have eaten away at his heart and soul. It would—sooner rather than later—have been the end of their marriage, and it would have been pretty ugly. Cosmo had chosen the only viable alternative, the only sensible way to save their love: he had to fake his own death and make it look like an accident, not a suicide. Sure, Shiva and Lyra would be devastated when they found out, but they would eventually get over it like any other person that ever lost a father or husband, and most importantly, they would never be aware of the grudge he was holding, a grudge he didn’t want to hold. It was the grudge that was holding him, really. Either way, the sizeable payout from his life insurances would help them get a head start in whatever life might look like on Earth after the impact. In five or ten or twenty years, so Cosmo hoped, they—he himself as well as his wife and daughter—would all be happy and think back fondly of the times they had spent together.
He floated across the room to the corner where his mattress was strapped to the floor. With a strip of adhesive tape he stuck the photograph to the wall right next to his pillow. It would be the first thing he looked at in the mornings and the last thing he’d see before he went to sleep each night. Then he took off his blue jumpsuit, tucked it away in the crack between two storage boxes, and slid into the sleepi
ng bag that was velcroed to his mattress. Cosmo curled up in a fetal position, and as he closed his eyes, a single tear floated away slowly and aimlessly into the darkness.
1.7 Exodus
ARK-SHIP KRONOS – OCTOBER 17, 2135
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Hieronymus van Zandt said when he first stepped outside—or inside, really.
A graveled slope led down from the elevator towards a small creek that meandered along the valley-like landscape and trailed off in the distance. Wide-open spaces alternated with patches of shrubs and trees covering the grassy hills all the way to the other end of the giant tube two and a half kilometers away. Together with the artificial sky—bright blue with tufts of white clouds—the landscape emanated the distinct feel of a pleasant spring morning, even though it was October and the official time on board the ark-ship Kronos was around five in the afternoon.
“Trees!” twelve-year-old Druid exclaimed as he dashed past his parents and his older sister.
“Welcome,” Gibran Zwinger said, “to the Zwinger, the largest recreational open space ever created outside of the Earth.”
As his wife and daughter stepped up to him, Hieronymus frowned at Zwinger. “The what?” he asked.
Zwinger, bald and scrawny, rubbed his hands as he gleefully explained, “The Zwinger, Captain. Technically, this whole construction of two giant tubes rotating in opposite directions to create artificial gravity is called a Zwinger tube, named after my father who originally designed it—may he rest in peace—and, I suppose, after me who first built it. However, on the other four ark-ships I’ve visited so far, people have readily taken to its abbreviated name ‘the Zwinger’ to refer specifically to the open landscape in the inner tube, and with your permission I shall encourage the passengers on this ship to do the same.”
“The hell you shall,” Hieronymus said.
Zwinger looked puzzled. “Captain?”
“Don’t you even know what your own name means, Mr. Zwinger?”
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