A Shadow Passed Over the Son

by Ryan Schneider

Parker, Sunny, and Bubba walked down the hall to the express elevator.

  Parker reached the elevator doors first, and pressed the call button.

  As they boarded, a door in the hallway opened and they looked back. Old Lady Smattering poked her head out of the door to her apartment. Her bright-white eyeballs bulged from their bony sockets beneath her wild eyebrows and frizzy silver hair. Her disembodied head seemed to float a few feet above the floor. She looked at them as if riding the elevator were some sort of crime. She was a night janitor in The Cloud Deck and Parker was amazed to see her awake at this hour of the morning. He felt her staring at him. Did she know about his dad? Had she peered through her peephole at the colonel and the chaplain? Had she heard them say, ‘We’ve got some bad news’? Old Lady Smattering was rumored to be a vicious gossip. By this time tomorrow, every employee of The Cloud Deck would know his dad was M.I.A. Even the regular patrons would find out. Parker knew the next time he walked across the dingy black-and-white checkerboard floor, past Sandy’s podium and into the restaurant, people would look at him differently. He would no longer be Parker Perkins, the nice boy from the 147th floor. He would be Parker, the warphan, soon to be a ward of the state. The Cloud Deck was his favorite place to do homework, to look out the window at the city, to chat with Sandy and help her close up at night. But now it felt like a place he never again wanted to visit.

  Sunny waved at Old Lady Smattering, who jerked her head inside and slammed her door. The elevator doors closed.

  Parker went to the computer display near the door and pressed 2-0-0, the deck number for Monorail Depot South. It was also his standard path to Skycade, and he knew it by heart.

  Most of the ninety blue chairs in the elevator were vacant, and Parker went to sit with Bubba and Sunny. He was about to sit down next to Bubba when Bubba kicked him, the toe of his shoe rapping Parker’s ankle. Parker curled his right hand into a fist, ready to punch Bubba hard on the shoulder. Bubba opened his eyes wide, his head inclined toward Sunny. Parker realized why Bubba had kicked him: he should sit next to Sunny. He moved toward the vacant seat beside her, careful not to step on Sunny’s feet. Her neat, clean toes protruded from the white leather straps of her summer sandals. Her toenails were neatly trimmed and shiny.

  “Do you like my sandals?” asked Sunny. “I got a pedicure today. You guys should try it. You get a foot massage, too. It feels so good. I almost fell asleep.”

  Parker stared at Sunny’s toes as they wriggled inside her sandals. He felt funny again and quickly looked away. He surveyed the elevator, searching for a distraction. On one wall of the car loomed a large flat-panel digital display. The screen depicted a schematic of the building and a red dot indicated the elevator’s current location. On another wall hung a display of the current weather, including real-time up-to-the-minute temperature, wind speed and direction, and humidity on each of the open-air observation and recreation decks, as well as down on the surface streets far below. The monitor said: SUNNY and Parker glanced at Sunny sitting beside him, then back at the monitor. It depicted the same sun smiling behind dark glasses, despite the blanket of fog shrouding the entire eastern seaboard. A third big monitor displayed a twenty-four-hour news network, complete with global news, sports, and financial data; someone had muted the volume on the newscaster, who stood in the shower, his hair and body wet and covered in a creamy white lather. He caressed a green bottle of shampoo he was tasked with selling between ninety-second segments of actual news.

  In the rear of the car stood a dozen tourists, all wearing shiny gold Sky City Plaza Hotel sweatshirts like the ones sold in Sky Gift and Shop. The tourists spoke excitedly in a different language. One gentleman seemed to be explaining the operation of the elevator, motioning with his hands and pointing at the schematic display on the wall.

  Everyone leaned ever-so-slightly as the elevator accelerated horizontally. When it reached the outside of the building, the back wall of the elevator slid open like paneled curtains to reveal a massive window looking out onto the city skyline. The gray mist swirled against the glass, obscuring the magnificent view. The tourists chattered and snapped pictures. Parker wondered if they were discussing the peculiar summer fog, photographing the rare meteorological conditions, like the people upstairs at The Cloud Deck had done earlier.

  The elevator’s computer placed the car on a vertical track and the powerful electromagnets propelled it rapidly upward. Parker was so entranced by the tourists that he didn’t feel the car decelerate as it reached its destination. A bell chimed pleasantly and 2-0-0 appeared in bright red numbers above the door. “Two hundredth floor . . . ,” declared the elevator proudly. The tourists applauded. They were still clapping as the doors slid shut after the kids had disembarked.

  Parker, Sunny, and Bubba stepped into the giant breezeway that was Monorail Depot South. It created the feeling of an old-world train station with a modern theme. On the walls were many large touch-screen displays depicting a zoomable layout of the entire Sky City Plaza, with a distinct flashing red dot indicating You Are Here. Long, glowing strands of fiber-optic cable were embedded in the ground. The cable emitted bright pulses of light like directional arrows, leading to waiting areas of the same color: red, white, blue, green, and yellow. A traveler was thus virtually assured of arriving at his or her destination simply by knowing the color and number of the monorail or elevator of their destination. It was all part of the proposed plan to make the new Kingdom City the most friendly place on Earth. Parker followed the glowing red line and thought of the pink-shoed sky marshal who shot the man for stealing the elderly woman’s paperback novel. It seemed Sky City was friendly unless you broke the law, in which case it became most unfriendly. In an age when people respected consequences more than laws, some people were still willing to gamble.

  Parker, Sunny, and Bubba followed the bright red line toward the red waiting zone for their train. The depot was a flurry of activity, though not as bustling as during the weekday commutes, when the people traffic could be maddening. They walked past green, blue, and white trains all being boarded. A bell rang out, indicating a train was entering the station and a bright yellow monorail glided into the depot with yellow lights flashing. The bright color reminded Parker of the snug yellow blouse Sunny wore and the gift she’d given him, now sitting on his coffee table, not to be opened until later. The train stopped in the yellow zone just as a second yellow train and a blue train departed down two of the many dark tunnels. The tunnels filled with bright yellow and blue light. Parker often came to the depot in the evenings, and spent an hour or two riding the monorails, enjoying the brilliant glowing lights of the different colored trains, especially as they moved between the enormous towers, rocketing across their tracks like massive glowing worms speeding through the night sky.

  Outside the station sprawled a massive open-air recreation deck. It teemed with sidewalk cafes and vendors selling hot dogs and warm, roasted peanuts and big puffs of pink and blue cotton candy spun around long white cardboard cones. Vendors handed treats to excited children while moms dug through their purses for money and dads pulled crisp bills from their billfolds. The food aromas filled the train station with the scent of fresh coffee and candied nuts and warm waffle cones. Parker felt his stomach grumble.

  Great pillars and giant archways around the perimeter supported the roof of the deck and the floors above it, and allowed the sun and a gentle breeze to enter. Though this morning, wisps of fog curled through the archways.

  Tall oak, pine, and white-barked eucalyptus trees lined the perimeter of the park, and a vast green lawn filled its center. A brown wooden sign painted with yellow letters stood at the entrance to the park: Welcome to Canary Downs. A small lake occupied the very center of the park. Solar energy warmed the water and offered a pleasant place to swim. Despite the wisps of fog drifting through the eaves of the deck, dozens of people were already staking their claims all around the shores of the lake, spreading blankets and unfolding chairs while children waded into
the warm, filtered water. This was the park Parker had known for the past three years. People came here at all hours of the day and night. Children came here with their friends and frequently without their parents. The park was safe. But now that he’d been down to the real park, Canary Downs seemed different, smaller.

  Parker marveled at the newest and most remarkable feature of the park: an enormous stadium. For the past two years, the city council members of Sky City South had lobbied tirelessly for their city to host The Games. In the end, they had convinced the Commissioner, the Board of Directors, and its Chief Financial Officer, Canary Cherrolet, that the largest, most modern sports arena ever conceived could truly be constructed inside a building; their building. They brought in big-name engineers, architects and contractors, advertising, marketing, and event specialists, all of whom argued confidently that not only could Sky City South physically support the weight of a stadium full of two-hundred thousand screaming fans, but that it would also be an exciting and savvy location for the single largest sporting event in the country. In the end, they beat out the earnest attempts by seven other cities and ground was officially broken using a twenty-four-karat gold shovel. The structure would be known as Canary Ann Stadium, named after the first daughter of Canary Cherrolet, the man who not only provided the gold shovel, but much of the funding for the three mile-high towers of Sky City Plaza itself.

  Since that time, construction had been going on around the clock, seven days a week. Now, with the opening ceremonies just a week away, some people feared the worst . . . that as Sky City West readied for its dedication on the celebratory weekend of the opening day of The Games, the stadium simply would not be finished, would not be ready.

  “Looks like they’ve got the upper deck done,” said Parker. He and Sunny and Bubba surveyed the stadium from inside the breezeway as they followed the red line glowing on the ground. Passing through the depot on a regular basis had allowed them to witness firsthand the meticulous creation of the stadium.

  “I hope we can get tickets,” said Bubba.

  “My dad said thirty-thousand tickets would be reserved at a substantially discounted price for people who live in the building, in appreciation for all the noise and dust for the past year,” said Sunny.

  “Where do we get ’em?” asked Bubba.

  “At the box office,” replied Sunny. “When it’s done.” The frame of a modest building was situated to one side of the broad thoroughfare leading up to and all the way around the stadium.

  “I hope they hurry,” said Bubba. “I don’t want to miss the opening ceremonies. My mom told me they’re putting the finishing touches on the upper floors of Sky City West, even though people are already moving in, and that the dedication is the night before the opening of The Games. There’s going to be a party up on the roof, with fireworks. And a carnival and even a roller coaster. She already said she would take us!”

  “Uh, neat,” said Sunny.

  “Sounds like a blast,” said Parker. He hoped they couldn’t detect his pangs of loneliness at the thought of attending the carnival with Bubba’s mom rather than with his own parents. He dared not hope his dad could be home by then.

  They reached the red zone and stopped to wait for the next monorail. Parker recalled hurrying to the train yesterday in Sky City North. He remembered the man reading the paperback, remembered he wanted to mention it to Sunny. He thought for a moment. He couldn’t recall the title, but he remembered the author. “Hey Sunny, have you read any books by Petal Darker?”

  Sunny and Bubba snapped their attention toward Parker. They looked at each other, then back to Parker.

  “Where’d you hear that name?” asked Sunny.

  “A guy on a train was reading her book.”

  “Which one?”

  He tried to visualize the man and the book he’d been holding. Parker clearly saw the glossy black cover, the raised letters, silver at the top, red at the bottom. “It started with an M.”

  “Malina?” said Sunny.

  “That’s the one. Have you read it?”

  “I heard her books were on the list,” said Bubba.

  “What list?” asked Parker. What were they talking about? Why did it seem yet again that Sunny and Bubba knew something he didn’t? He looked at Sunny, waiting to find out if she had read the book, then at Bubba, wondering what list he was referring to.

  “Ladies first,” said Bubba.

  “No, I haven’t read it,” said Sunny. “At least, not all of it. I mean, yes, I read some of it. Most of it, actually. Okay, yes, I’ve read the whole thing. A girl from school brought it to a slumber party. We read the first two chapters out loud. After that, no one wanted to keep reading.”

  “It wasn’t good?” asked Parker.

  “It was awful. Full of sex and death. One girl ran to the bathroom and got sick. Then Lucy’s mom came into the room so we had to hide it. Once everyone was asleep I slid it out from under Lucy’s pillow and continued reading.”

  “I knew you would read it,” said Parker.

  Sunny grinned. “Any book that gets banned is a book I want to read. I don’t need the government or my parents or anyone else telling me what books I can read and what books I can’t read. This is a free country. I’ll decide for myself if a book is any good, thank you.”

  Parker turned to Bubba. “What’s this list you’re talking about? And why is it you guys know about this stuff and I don’t?”

  “The list is the list of banned books,” said Bubba. “It’s a list of books you can’t buy and aren’t really even supposed to own. That’s all I know. I overheard momma and some of the other church ladies talking about it. It was a long time ago.”

  “So why haven’t I heard of it before now?”

  “Beats me,” said Bubba. “I guess if you had a mom who . . . .”

  Bubba stopped speaking.

  “Who was alive?” Parker asked.

  “I didn’t mean that,” said Bubba. “Bad choice of words is all.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  “Anyway,” said Sunny, “Petal Darker’s books are banned because they’re morally questionable and because she professes to align herself with the enemy.”

  “And because they make thirteen-year-old girls throw up at slumber parties,” said Bubba.

  A bell rang out. Another train entered the station. They craned their necks to see what color it was. A sleek, candy apple-red train glided into the depot and eased to a stop. Doors hissed open and everyone boarded. Parker and Bubba ran to the front of the train with Sunny hurrying after them. The doors closed silently along the length of the train and red lights flashed on its roof at either end. Parker and Bubba settled into the nose of the train, in the forward compartment below the conductor. They each lay on a blue plastic bench so their faces were inches from the transparent plastic nose bubble. The bullet-nosed monorail eased out of the depot. It moved silently through the dark tunnel, bathing its passengers in red light, accelerated quickly, then emerged at last into the misty daylight. The train zoomed around the outside of the building at ninety miles per hour. The towers themselves were round, allowing high winds to slip past the structures rather than push against them, and the monorail’s curved track spiraled around the outside of the tower. For someone lying down in the nose of the monorail, it was almost like flying.

  Sunny sat facing the inside of the train, her eyes closed.

  “Yee-haw!” shouted Bubba. “Sunny, you really should come up here.”

  “No, thank-you, Bubba.” She held tightly to one of the vertical handrails, her eyes shut tight. The flat panel display on the bulkhead showed the same newscaster, his entire head now covered in foamy white shampoo. He prattled on and on in silence, likely about the war or the sagging global economy or who-knew-what, as the sound was muted here as well; somebody must really not be in the mood for bad news this morning.

  The train rode smoothly around the perimeter of the building. So great was the perimeter of Sky City South that the
monorail’s angle of bank was barely perceptible, nor was there a noticeable G-load pressing passengers against their seats. All in all, the ride was quite pleasant, and Parker wondered again why it frightened Sunny so.

  “Here comes the bridge!” yelled Bubba.

  The monorail’s track straightened out. Parker expected to see the spectacular view of both Sky City North and Sky City West. Normally, the morning sun glinted off their blue glass. Puffy white clouds often danced around the mile-high towers, obscuring various floors, much to the consternation of the visitors on the observation decks. On a similarly cloudy day, Parker and his dad had once gone to the rooftop of their own building, taking along an empty glass jar. Parker’s dad had lifted him up into the mist and Parker had captured a jarful of a passing cloud. They laughed and laughed, twirling around and around inside the cloud. That jarful of cloud had sat next to his bed from that day on. Beginning about a year ago, Parker had seen similar jars for sale in Sky Gift and Shop next door to The Cloud Deck. They bore fancy labels and claimed to contain “one hundred percent real clouds.” Parker often watched the tourists eagerly plunk down their money. He always remembered that day spent with his dad and wanted to smash every jar to pieces.

  “Don’t forget to look down!” said Bubba, and Parker snapped out of his reverie. They rushed across the bridge, and he and Bubba looked straight down through the nose of the train, anticipating the magnificent, unobstructed view all the way to the ground below. But they saw only more fog.

  Sunny’s eyes remained closed. Tightly.

  “Did you know if you drop a penny from up here and it hit someone on the ground it would go right through them?” asked Bubba.

  “No way,” said Parker. How could something as small as a penny could do such a thing?

  “Yes, way!” said Bubba. “I saw it on SV, on an ad for money laundering and coin cleaning.”

  “Is that true, Sunny?”

  Sunny still had a firm grip on the handrail. Her eyes were still closed. “How should I know?”

  “Your dad’s a scientist,” said Parker.

  “That doesn’t mean he goes around dropping pennies from the tops of tall buildings.” Sunny shook her head.

  Parker wished the monorail had windows which could be opened, wished he had a penny or two in his pocket.

  The monorail sailed across the bridge. Parker peered over his shoulder, straining to see the north side of his building, looking for the graffiti he had seen yesterday. But the fog was too dense and he saw only gray.

  “What are you looking at?” Bubba asked.

  Bubba would know if Parker lied again. “I saw some writing on the side of our building on my way home yesterday. Giant white letters painted on the glass, three stories high.”

  “After you boosted the poster?” Bubba grinned.

  “Yes, after that.”

  “What did the writing say?” asked Sunny.

  “It said Wake Up! It even had an exclamation mark.”

  “Sounds urgent,” said Sunny.

  “Sounds like God trying to get your attention,” said Bubba.

  “I don’t think God would use graffiti to get my attention,” said Parker.

  “Why not?” asked Bubba. “It’s no more or less strange than a burning bush or a bolt of lightning or a weeping statue.”

  “Besides, why would God want to get my attention?”

  “Momma would say ‘That’s for you to find out,’ ” said Bubba. “Is the writing there now?”

  Parker looked over his shoulder again. He saw only fog. “Don’t know.”

  “Then I’d say it was a message meant just for you,” said Bubba.

  The monorail banked gently and careened around the perimeter of Sky City North.

  They entered the tunnel, slowed, and the monorail came to a smooth and gentle halt at the depot. Sunny opened her eyes when Parker bumped into her on their way off the train.

  “Ladies first,” said Bubba.

  “Thank you, Bubba.” Sunny stood up gracefully and sauntered toward the door. Parker looked at Bubba. Bubba winked at him. Ladies first. He would have to try and remember that one.

  They exited the monorail depot and walked to the bank of escalators that would deposit them into the North Plaza Sky Mall Parker visited yesterday. The designers of Sky City North benefited greatly from the logistic mistakes made in the design of Sky City South. Vast improvements were made in the design of the second tower, with an eye more toward aesthetics and beauty over the raw functionality of Sky City South. One of those designs forced Sky Mall visitors to descend via slow-moving escalators into the vast mall, providing not only a stunning view to enjoy but a chance to survey all the stores, boutiques, and eateries, ensuring a more thorough shopping experience for the visitors and a greater opportunity to collect revenue for the store owners. Not to mention an opportunity for all visitors to be studied by security personnel, both on foot and in the control room via hidden cameras. This included music store security guards.

  Parker and Bubba were thoroughly enjoying discussing the descriptive and anatomically-correct implications of being struck on the top of the head by a fast-moving penny. As they neared the mall, it was clear Sunny had heard quite enough about murderous, free-falling coins dropping at nine-point-eight meters per-second-per-second, as described by the ad Bubba had seen on how to literally clean money. Parker had a feeling Sunny was about to vocalize her displeasure when all three of them stopped dead in their tracks.

  Chapter 11

  No Matter What