Beyond Ever Blue Skies

by Clive S. Johnson

  Now seeing her out of her overalls, Morgan realised how truly slim she was, but not “Scrawny” as Mr. Craytov would have it. “Lean” was the word Morgan settled on—but excitingly shapely, he couldn’t help but note. He looked away, unseeingly, at the other occupied tables and tried to concentrate.

  “Well,” Stephanie eventually said, tipping forward, this time taking only a sip of her wine, “then this Atmos operation should already be onto it. They should sort it out.”

  “But what if they aren’t? Or if I’m wrong about Atmos?” and this time Morgan kept his gaze on Stephanie’s disconcertingly blue eyes, his mind clearing a little. “Twenty percent you said, but what… What happens if it’s still going down? It might be fifteen by now, for all we know.”

  She took another sip of her drink then shook her head, her hair sweeping across her shoulders. “No, we’d have noticed ourselves by now,” and she blinked to one side. “Fifteen to nineteen and ‘Healthy individuals are unable to work strenuously and their coordination may be affected’.”

  “Fifteen to nineteen! That’s not much of a drop.”

  “Ten to twelve percent and peoples’ lips would be turning blue.”

  “Blue? Crikey! What do mine look like?” and he pouted at her.

  She giggled. “Hmm, well…nice; the right colour I mean.”

  “And below that?”

  “Around eight percent and unconsciousness begins, then,” and her face now seemed all eyes, “at six to eight—‘Death within eight minutes’.”

  “Blimey. Then… Then we must be somewhere in the nineteen to twenty range,” and he breathed a sigh of relief. “But for how long?”

  “Depends on how good Atmos are at monitoring the air, I suppose, or if my supervisor can get through to them. And how long it then takes them to put it all right, of course.”

  “If it is being monitored. It’s not something you’d immediately think would need it; I wouldn’t have. And why should it change, anyway?” but all this elicited from Stephanie was a shrug before she got to her feet, her empty glass in her hand.

  “Come on, my turn to get them in. The same again?”

  “Er…yeah, that’s fine, thanks, Stephanie.”

  “Steph.”

  “What?”

  “My friends call me ‘Steph’,” and Morgan smiled up at her.

  “Your friends? Oh, er, yeah. Well, in that case, another’d be fine, thanks…Steph.”

  When she got back with the drinks, Morgan had come to a decision: “I can’t just leave it, Steph. It’s too serious and there are too many unknowns.”

  “But what else can we do? I’ve already flagged it up to my supervisor. It’s up to her now. After all, it’s having a direct effect on Agri-Prod’s output. If we lose those plants entirely, we’ll have lost our most potent antiseptic.”

  “But don’t other sections have them as well? So you can replenish your stock from theirs?”

  “It’s the same air wherever you are in Rundkern, Morgan, but I suppose I could check with other agri-prods, see how their plants are faring. I’ll do it when I’m next in.”

  “Which is when?”

  “Not till Saturday, but I like to get in most days, if only for a few hours. To be honest, I’d live there if they’d let me.”

  “Same here,” Morgan unguardedly let slip. “Well, what I meant to say is…” but all he could do was stare at her lips, at the sheen the rapidly waning dusk light now lent them. “Er, well…I’m… I’m not really sure exactly what I meant.”

  “Well then, it’s a shame we can’t get into Agri-Prod right now. It’s got some really peaceful corners hidden away, you know: beautiful and tranquil. Perfect for getting your thoughts together, and where you might then work out what you really meant to say.”

  Morgan at first only stared at her, something strange and only half understood swirling about in his chest. “But,” he barely dared whisper, “the…the park’s open all night,” and to his amazement she grinned. “And,” he quickly added, “it’ll be empty of ‘Pricks’ at this time of the evening: all home, doing their pre-bed yoga to ensure a perfect night’s ‘Rest and Recuperation’.”

  For a brief moment, one that for some reason seemed to promise an eternity, silence engulfed them as they stared at each other, the bar’s hubbub magically banished. Then they both spluttered and burst out laughing, tears soon streaming down their cheeks.

  “I suppose,” Stephanie allowed, once her laughter had subsided, “it’ll be one of the few quiet places around here.” She briefly narrowed her eyes at Morgan before finally smiling and nodding, just the once.

  After they’d drunk up, left the bar and were nearing the park entrance, Stephanie asked, “How come you’re so… Well, for a lecy-eng you’re pretty laid-back,” and she slackened her pace, cocking her head as she looked him over. “And clearly not into all that false-fitness shit.”

  He stopped and grinned at her. “False fitness?”

  “Yeah, all that pointless muscle pumping and improving lap times. I mean, what’s it all for? The pricks don’t do anything, nothing that needs that level of fitness and strength, anyway. How hard must it be, sitting at a desk?”

  “But you do do strenuous stuff, don’t you, Steph? I know you push heavy wheelbarrows about, and you must dig and prune and…and all sorts of other manual things.”

  “And look at me,” she said, holding her arms out, revealing what to Morgan looked like a perfect physique. “Fitness for purpose, that’s what I always say, but tell that to the pricks, to those who’ve got all that muscle yet can’t even lift a smile to their faces.”

  When they went into the park, they did indeed find it empty. They also found a bench on the edge of a stand of trees where they sat quietly for a while. The grass stretched out before them, another small copse close by, all sharply made monochrome in the bright starlight.

  After a while Stephanie asked, “Which school did you go to?” her voice sounding unnaturally near.

  “O, Lef’s on JAC319. You?”

  “Aef’s on—”

  “JAC502; yes, I know it; had a big rewiring job there a few months ago. It surprised me how different it was from mine, though.”

  “Different?”

  “All those big labs, and the allotments and gardens in the grounds. Nothing like the small workshops and classrooms ours had. It was also so much bigger; almost got lost in there the first few days.”

  “Your mum and dad lecy-engs, then?”

  “Er, no… No, they’re not. Both flui-engs, as it happens.”

  “So why—”

  “Oh, just one of those quirks, I suppose. Even as a nipper I was forever taking stuff apart, fascinated by how lecy stuff worked.”

  “Must’ve been a worry for your parents; I mean, with the risk and everything.”

  “No… Well, maybe a bit, but then, when my assessments got me into Lef’s, I know they were really proud of me.”

  “I bet you were dead happy yourself, though; getting to do what you really loved doing, and with all that extra—”

  “Er, well, yes…at first, I suppose,” and Morgan kicked his heels at the grass beneath his feet, quickly wrapping himself in the evening’s still air.

  Stephanie slid a little nearer, her hand then resting beside his own on the bench seat. “I loved Aef’s, every minute of it, then couldn’t wait to get into Agri-Prod. My dad worked there, and my grandma and grandad, but mum was at a processor’s most of her working life, till I was born.”

  Morgan remained silent, staring into the distance.

  “You… You don’t strike me as being entirely happy in Lecy, Morgan? if you don’t mind me saying,” she quietly said.

  He moved his hand away from hers and safely onto his knee as he faced his thoughts. “You know when you said you’d love to live in Agri-Prod, if they’d let you? Well, where I’d want to live is…”

  He stood up and paced a few strides away from the bench, then turned and gazed at Stephanie, but without
quite seeing her. And without thinking, he blinked up the lecy network, its brightly coloured and densely congested image supplanting everything else.

  He heard her ask if he was all right and felt himself nod, as though someone else had answered, then found it again: “Supply only: Atmos”.

  “This is my real world and where I’d want to live, not the institution and the pricks who run it but the pure operating system itself: Rundkern’s lecy network and all its subsystems and data sheets, its routing diagrams and configuration guides, its natural laws and its rules, its regulations and—”

  He felt her warmth close by and his thoughts faltered, but he couldn’t bring himself to clear his vision, to remove himself from his own private world. It gave him security, he now realised, a familiar place and…and a purpose, too. Yes, a purpose—but now he had an even more important one, one whose solution just had to be somewhere in this inner world of his.

  Then something he could neither explain nor had ever anticipated coursed through him like an electrical shock, one that radiated from his lips. Stephanie… Steph was…was kissing him!

  He blinked to one side but all he could see at first swam blurrily before his sight—until the lids of her now hidden sky-blue eyes appeared, a mere inch from his own. When what seemed like a lifetime later she eased her lips from his, she held her gaze firmly to the ground.

  “Do you…” but her voice sounded troubled, uncertain, a lost look in her eyes when they again lifted to his. “Do you really not mind slumming it?”

  “Slum… Slumming it?”

  “Being kissed by an agri-eng? Being a friend to one?”

  Morgan didn’t at first understand, but then he remembered Mr. Craytov’s comment about “Chalk and cheese” and sighed, a long and heartfelt “Ah” of realisation.

  “Steph?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I know I’m a lecy-eng—I know that, and there’s nothing I can do about it—but I’m not a prick. You said so yourself, remember?”

  “I do.”

  “In which case, my friend…could we do a bit more of that kissing?” and for once, and for some time, Morgan lent not a single thought to his treasured lecy network.

  5 Thwarted on Many Fronts

  It seemed to Morgan that his lecy network must have felt itself somehow cuckolded, for first thing the next morning his perscom received a call-out job. Through grogginess left him by too few hours’ sleep, he blinked up his queue and there sat “Supply-trip at 12C4 on JAC126 – Toynbow, Mrs L”. He was about to mark the entry as “Seen”, directly onto the system, when he remembered in time.

  “Damn Mr. Craytov’s door monitor, the prick,” and for a long moment the previous night came lucidly back to Morgan. He would have to go in to the workshop first, he told himself as he reluctantly dragged himself back to the present, then out to do the job before calling Stephanie, as he’d promised to do.

  When, not long after, he entered the job number from his perscom into the reader and was let into the lecy workshops, he found them deserted as usual. In his own, he went straight to his coffee cup, and once charged and his job acknowledged, sat back, enjoying his drink.

  The lecy network diagram tempted him from the large screen: so much easier to work with than when projected onto his vision. He leant forward and peered at the Atmos symbol’s legend. He’d never worked on a “Supply only” and wondered where its data sheets might be kept.

  Instinctively, he blinked twice at the symbol and, surprisingly, an overlaid box appeared: “2 on JAC326 – Atmos”. Although familiar buttons were arrayed below the text, all were greyed-out but for “Notes”, which yielded nothing more than “Apply KEN”.

  “KEN? What in Rundkern is KEN?” then the address jogged him. “That’s not far from my job: a couple of alleys across and at the same edge of the section.” He made a mental note, finished his coffee, picked up the components predicted as having likely failed, and left the workshops.

  Mrs. L. Toynbow’s tripping supply did indeed turn out to be a degraded master fuse, in the usual place beneath the tiles outside the apartment block’s front door. He soon replaced it with one of the fresh ones he’d taken with him. The woman—a couple of half-dressed toddlers clinging to her trouser legs—was so grateful that Morgan couldn’t turn down her offer of a coffee.

  “Every time I ran the hot water for the twins’ baths,” she explained to Morgan, now sitting in her kitchenette, “the damned thing went off.” She once more pushed her lank hair back behind her ears and sighed.

  Like ducklings he’d once seen on a school trip to a reserve somewhere, the toddlers followed her back and forth. In their case, though, their large and unblinking eyes never left their strange visitor, the one currently drinking coffee in their own particular nest.

  When he eventually got away and reached JAC326, he found one side of the quiet alley had the usual row of regularly spaced front doors. Along the other side, however, ran a blank white frontage. At its midpoint stood a single door, “2” on its small number plate. Morgan looked around it, expecting a blue sign but finding none. He scratched his head as he looked up at the long and otherwise featureless building.

  “Oh well, I suppose there’s nothing for it,” and there being no bell push, voice-box or eye-reader, he steeled himself, made up a quick excuse story and rapped on the door.

  Nothing happened, not for quite a while, and so eventually he shrugged and moved away, carrying on down the alley.

  “Perry?”

  “Yes, Morgan?”

  “Get me Steph, if you would?”

  “I am afraid I do not have an entry for ‘Steph’. I note I have one for a ‘Stephanie Chandry’, though. Would you like me to assign ‘Steph’ to this one?”

  “Oh, yeah, right. Okay.”

  “Done. Do you wish me to call her now?”

  “Please,” but it rang for some time before being answered.

  “Hi, Morgan. I’ve had to come out of a meeting, so you’ll have to be quick.”

  “I thought you weren’t in till Saturday.”

  “I just bobbed in for a short while and got collared by my supervisor. It seems she’s had no luck reporting the air problem. Says she got short shrift from her boss; told her she must have got it all wrong, that…well, that ‘Air’s just air, isn’t it?’, which sort of sounded familiar. Look, I’ll have to go. Can we meet later? Maybe round at my place at two? Mum and dad are visiting my Aunt Ag today, so there’ll be no one else in. We can talk…then maybe…”

  “Yeah, that’d be good; I can’t wait to see you again.”

  “And you,” and a soft-breathed pause followed before she breezed, “See you, then. Must go,” and the call disconnected.

  Morgan went back to his workshop to log the job as finished, then took some time to search out any further details about either Atmos or KEN. He found nothing, but then reasoned that “2 on JAC326” was likely nothing more than a service room, where the lecy supply terminated. To be sure, though, he’d have to get in and check, which would mean asking how to apply to KEN, and for that he’d no doubt need the excuse of a properly assigned job.

  Wary of being in the workshop for too long, he quickly finished off and soon left, checking the time on his way out: a bit early to go straight to Stephanie’s.

  When he got home, he found his mother and father in the sitting room with Jowett, the toddler sitting on the floor, playing with toy blocks—or throwing them about, to be precise.

  “Didn’t hear you come in last night, Morgan,” his mother said, straining from her chair to gather some of the scattered blocks from under Morgan’s feet.

  “Here, I’ll get them,” Morgan offered, and for the first time he realised just how tired his mother looked. “It was late when I got in; didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Late?” his father grunted and narrowed his eyes at Morgan, who put the blocks away and slumped down in a chair, from where he watched Jowett try to jam a snot-smeared block into his mouth. Then Morgan snatche
d another glance at his mother, at the dark patches beneath her eyes.

  “Will you be in for dinner?” she asked, yawning.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Going somewhere?” his father asked, an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  “Shortly…in about an hour.”

  His father’s eyebrows briefly lofted, then he grunted again. “Back to hiding in your workshop, no doubt, seeing you’ve clearly nothing in the real world to interest you.”

  “Got a call-out first thing, as it happens.”

  “Blimey! Real work, eh?” which Morgan treated as purely rhetorical.

  His mother groaned as she again leant forward, this time lifting Jowett onto her lap. The child mewled, straining to get to his blocks. “Come on, mite, let mummy clean your face,” but Jowett only screwed it up as she gently smeared a baby-wipe across his mouth.

  Morgan found himself wondering, if it ever came to it—if it ever could—how he’d feel if Stephanie ended up in his mother’s situation: having had to wait so long for a second child’s allocation.

  “Are you all right, Morgan?” his mother said, staring at him. Then he realised he must have been staring at her.

  “Er, yes, Mum. Fine. I think I’ll go out for a bite to eat first.” He quickly got up, “I’ll let you know if I’m going to be back for dinner,” and hurriedly left.

  As he clattered down the stairs and out into the alley, he told himself, “Now hang on, Morgan, getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you? I’ve only just met Steph,” but then he stopped, his memory of their previous night making it seem he’d known her for ages. His unseeing stare, though, finally revealed Josh’s to be still open and so he wandered across.

  “Cutting it fine, against the line,” Josh almost sang at him as Morgan pushed in through the door. The breakfast bar was empty, Josh wiping down the tables. “Only goulash left if you’re after food, if it suits your mood.”

  “Please, Josh. Thanks.”

  “No probs,” and he was soon back with a dish, carefully laid on Morgan’s chosen table before he carried on wiping down the others.

  Morgan ate a few mouthful’s before asking, “You have a wife, don’t you, Josh?”