A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  She turned her head and looked into Eli’s eyes. You’re impossible, you know that? If we’re going to do this, let’s get it over with.

  Eli took a deep breath and one last glance at the funbot. By then it had stopped whacking him and was only watching.

  “Climb, Eli Papadopoulos,” it whispered. “Climb.”

  Eli grabbed the ladder with both hands and swung his legs onto it. Seconds later he was already several feet off the ground.

  The higher he climbed, the warmer the air grew. Lights flickered and digital images whizzed past. A beach umbrella opened and closed overhead. A herd of floating cows grazed all around them. But this was good, Eli realized. On any other day, with the sky behaving normally, he would never have been able to get away with such a climb. At least in all this chaos there was little chance anyone would notice him.

  He kept climbing, and gradually the curve of the dome sloped backward until it was necessary for him to keep one foot wrapped around a lower rung at all times to stop himself from falling. The ladder was concealed under so many pixels that Eli couldn’t make out how it was fastened to the hidden girders. At least it felt steady. He tried not to look down. He concentrated on moving to the next rung, and then the next.

  I think I’m going to faint, Eli. Don’t look. I think I saw our house down there.

  Despite himself Eli glanced over his shoulder. She was right. He picked it out too; it looked like a green and gray Victorian dollhouse in a miniature model of his neighborhood. He was so high up, he had to look away in case he lost his balance. He wondered how the sky engineers ever got used to this. What was he doing? Maybe Sebastian was right. Maybe he really did have brain fever.

  “Close your eyes if you need to!” he called. “Concentrate on holding on!”

  At perhaps a hundred fifty feet above street level, just when the slope of the sky seemed almost too dangerous for him to continue climbing, the ladder’s path abruptly curved into the light. He was upright again, thank god, and moving in a vertical direction. A few steps later his entire body was immersed in color. The pixels were almost too small to be distinguished from each other, and yet like reeds being bent back in an overgrown pond they moved apart as he climbed, creating a path. All around, three-dimensional digital images formed and drifted and broke apart. Two gorillas in short summer dresses waved shopping bags. A beautiful salesgirl with long earrings held up a cup of blue liquid and sighed like she’d just discovered true love.

  From overhead boomed a female voice, calm and cheerful but loud as a thunderclap. “PARDON OUR APPEARANCE. WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.”

  Marilyn screeched, burying her face in Eli’s cloak. Eli almost lost his grip, but he caught himself. The voice was so thunderous that he was certain people all the way on the ground would hear it.

  “WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE AND ASSURE YOU THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM. INFINICORP IS TAKING CARE OF EVERYTHING. ENJOY! CELEBRATE! WHY NOT VISIT THE MALL?”

  Eli tried to ignore all the distractions as he continued climbing higher and higher. Soon he’d climbed so deep into the layers of light that he could barely see the ground. Eventually his hand brushed against something unexpected—some kind of ledge. It was just to one side of the ladder. He stopped climbing.

  “What do you suppose this is for?”

  I don’t know, and I don’t care. Marilyn’s face was still hidden under his cloak. She was shaking.

  Eli reached out and pulled himself onto the iron grating. He wanted to explore, but it was hard to see much through all the flashing images and whirling colors. He felt around with his hands. On the far end of the ledge he found a smooth surface, flat and cool like glass. He wondered if he’d reached the inner wall of the dome. It was possible, but he wasn’t sure. He parted the light with his hands and peered through. Whatever the surface was, it reflected his face like a mirror. And then his fingers discovered something round and solid protruding toward him. He gripped it and found that it could turn.

  This was no mirror, he realized. He remembered the sky engineer he’d seen climbing the dome, and the crack of darkness she’d climbed through.

  “Marilyn, I think we’ve found a door.”

  She wriggled under his cloak until her head poked out into the light again. She didn’t say a word. Eli tried to gather his courage. In his mind he was picturing the white-eyed Outsider. So, what’ll it be, then? In or Out?

  He took a deep breath, and then he twisted the knob and pushed.

  The door slowly swung open.

  11

  a new mission

  It had been almost three weeks since Tabitha was brought to the reeducation facility, and still she hadn’t agreed to join the other Waywards on the production floors. Representative Shine had even mentioned to her that Tabitha’s was one of the longest-ever stays in the admissions ward. “But that’s fine,” she said. “You’ll let me know when you’re ready for the next step. I have faith in you.”

  The truth was, Tabitha was a lot calmer now than she’d been at first.

  She still thought about Ben sometimes, but less and less often. She’d pretty much gotten over her disappointment in him and in the Friends. All she felt now was regret that she’d allowed herself to be so taken in. And even though she understood that her newfound peace of mind came, at least in part, from the influence of the CloudNet sphere over her bed, it didn’t bother her much. After carrying the secret weight of her dual life for so long, it was a relief to let the burden go. It wasn’t as if the Friends had turned out to have had anything real to offer. They had abandoned her. That much was obvious by now. So, for a change, why not allow herself to be happy that InfiniCorp was taking care of her?

  Life wasn’t really so bad here.

  In fact, it was pretty okay.

  By then she rarely left her bed. She knew the facility’s whole CloudNet menu practically by heart. For hours at a time, she explored its passageways and lost herself in her favorite dream games. She appreciated the way the sphere kept everything else at bay. As if a switch had been flipped, her worries would disappear, and all that remained would be a light-headed, radiant feeling. She’d never experienced it like this at home. Even the room was starting to glitter.

  One day Tabitha awoke from her afternoon nap overflowing with gratitude for this place, which had made her feel so cared for even after everything she’d done. She wanted to do what she knew was right. She yearned to make Representative Shine proud of her. So the next time the angel-faced girl came in to clear away the snack tray, she stopped her.

  “What’s the matter, Tabitha? Something wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I—I just wanted to let you know, I’m ready now.”

  Representative Shine didn’t say anything. She stepped back to the side of the bed, set the tray down, and took Tabitha’s hand.

  She looked so happy.

  * * *

  Throughout that night, her last in the white room, Tabitha drifted in and out of sleep, imagining what might lie ahead for her the next day. Whatever it was, it would be very different from her old job at the Department of Intern Relations, that was for sure. She hoped she would live up to company expectations this time.

  Early that morning, about an hour before wake-up, a blue-uniformed employee came to disinfect her bathroom. This wasn’t unusual. Twice a week since she’d been in the tower, they had come in to sterilize the toilet and run a mop over the tile floor. There were no robots here—at least, none that she’d seen. It was as if nothing in this facility had been modernized in many years. The Cleaners never said a word. They just came in, did their job, and left. Tabitha had learned to ignore them by then.

  But that morning the Cleaner was one she’d never seen before. A muscular girl with a wide nose and a mole under one eye, she appeared to linger near the end of the bed, sorting through the sterilizers in her equipment cart longer than seemed necessary. And Tabitha got the weird feeling she was watching her. To be honest, it made her uncom
fortable. Had she done something wrong? Was she in some kind of trouble?

  She closed her eyes and pretended to fall back asleep. But that was when the girl whispered to her:

  “Sister Tabitha …”

  She opened her eyes. The girl was standing over her now, looking into her face. She spoke again: “A single thread of reality can be hard to distinguish in a complex fabric of illusion.”

  Tabitha thought it was an odd thing to say. Yet at the same time it stirred something unexpected in her, like a distant memory. She felt sure she’d heard it before, but when?

  “The sour milk smell. Think about that. Concentrate on it.”

  It was funny, but until that moment she’d almost forgotten about the bad smell. She’d become so used to it, in fact, that she hadn’t thought about it in what seemed like ages. But now she realized it was still there.

  “It’s the stench of the ocean acidifying,” the girl continued, “the marine macrofauna collapsing. The ocean is almost dead now, but you can use the smell as a lifeline. Focus on it. Follow it out of the haze and back to reality.”

  Somewhere in the deep recesses of her consciousness, Tabitha felt a vague rush. Yes, she did remember something about this from the secret meetings and whispered conversations. Something about the end of the world. With the Cleaner’s dark eyes on her, Tabitha did what she was told. She concentrated, trying her best to isolate the unpleasant odor from all the other distracting sensations. Soon she could feel it burning at her nose once more, and as it did, her other perceptions seemed to come back into sharper focus. The room stopped shimmering. All at once she experienced clarity like she hadn’t felt in days, maybe even weeks.

  She sat up. “Get me out of here.”

  “It wouldn’t be easy,” the fake Cleaner answered. “This place is a fortress, and we’re three hundred miles from land.”

  “Are you saying it can’t be done?”

  The girl paused. “There would be risks, but the Friends have the means to make it happen.”

  “I don’t care about the risks! I’ll take the chance!” She slipped out of bed and started to reach for her clothes. “So, how is it done? Are you going to sneak me onto a boat or something? Smuggle me out in a box? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  “Whoa, hold on. Escape isn’t what the Friends have in mind for you.”

  Tabitha stopped. It took a moment for this to sink in. “But … but I have to get out of here. I want to go home, back to the domes.”

  The girl shook her head. “You can’t go back to the artificial cities, Tabitha. Not ever. You need to accept that.”

  Tabitha’s stomach sank. She took a deep breath. “All right. Outside, then. I’ll live in the desert. Somehow I’ll find a way to survive out there.”

  “You don’t understand, and we’re running out of time. The Elders have already decided what you’ll do. Your ability to fight the spheres is exceptionally strong. There aren’t many who could snap out of a CloudNet trance like you just did—not in this place, anyway. Do you realize that?” She glanced nervously at the door. “We have a new mission for you. Things happen for a reason, Sister. The Elders never intended for you to be captured, but now that you’re here, they believe this is what was meant to be. The best way for you to aid the cause is to remain here as our operative. You’ll be a lone conscious agent, an unsuspected Friend among the sleeping Waywards.”

  Tabitha couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So … you’re just going to leave me here? How could that help any—?”

  “I have news about Brother Ben.”

  That stopped Tabitha midsentence. By then Ben felt like a distant part of her life, an old, shameful mistake that was behind her now. “You don’t have to tell me. I already know. Ben was a traitor. He gave up names, including mine. And then he killed himself.”

  The girl shook her head. “Not true. If that’s what they told you, it was a lie.”

  Tabitha opened her mouth to speak but then closed it. Standing by the side of her bed and blinking into the face of this girl, she felt like the whole world had frozen to a halt.

  “Ben wasn’t a traitor. He didn’t give anybody away. He tried to find you. After you were taken, he disobeyed the Friends and snuck Outside to search for you. He called out your name in the ruins. That was how he ended up getting captured, and then soon afterward he died trying to escape. But it was all for you. He did everything he could to try to get you back.”

  She felt like the air had been knocked out of her. So she’d been wrong to lose her trust in Ben after all? After weeks of believing that he betrayed her, now she was supposed to switch gears again and accept that he’d been a good friend—and a good Friend—all along? As much as she wanted to, it was hard. She’d been twisted back and forth so many times, she wasn’t sure whom or what to trust anymore. Why should she doubt the Friends any less than she doubted the company? Hadn’t they both done enough damage to her already?

  “Ben devoted his life to serving the Greater Purpose,” continued the whispering Friend. “He would have wanted you to do this for us. Now is not the time to lose faith. You know what’s coming. You know that securing any future at all will require personal sacrifice from each of us.” She leaned in closer. “We all have our tasks, Sister Tabitha, and this is yours. The Friends are counting on you.”

  Tabitha’s jaw tightened. Where were the Friends when she’d been surrounded by company thugs Outside by the St. Louis dome? Where had they been all this time she’d been in the tower, counting on them? The girl with the mole went silent, waiting for an answer, but Tabitha was struggling with the wave of heat rising inside her. She clenched her fists.

  “What’s wrong with you people?” she said at last. “How could you use me like this? How can you ask me to stay here, rotting my life away for you?”

  “Sister, you made a solemn oath. If you really believe, as the Friends do, that el Guía is coming, then why should you doubt the wisdom of the Elders?”

  Tabitha blinked at her. She realized that this was the problem. She didn’t believe. After all she’d given up for the Friends, she wasn’t willing to give any more for a savior who wasn’t coming. It was just another illusion. She spoke through her teeth now: “You’re as bad as they are.”

  Suddenly she reached back and slammed her fist into the girl’s face. The fake Cleaner’s hand flew to her nose. She staggered backward, sinking against the wall.

  Tabitha took a step forward and stood over her. “Tell the Friends no thanks. I’m done making sacrifices for them or anyone else.”

  The girl gaped at her, eyes wide. A thin line of blood trickled down her wrist. After a moment she pulled herself to her feet. With Tabitha still glaring, she wiped herself with a napkin and then wheeled her cart back to the door. She turned to Tabitha one last time.

  “The Elders won’t take this lightly.”

  When it was clear she would get no answer, the fake Cleaner wheeled her cart into the corridor and closed the door quietly behind her. Tabitha’s fists were still clenched. She almost wished the Friends hadn’t woken her. At the end of all things that mattered, would it really have been so wrong to leave her feeling okay? Maybe it would have been better that way.

  She didn’t know.

  All she knew was that she was alone. Nobody was looking out for her. Not the Friends. Not the company. Nobody. She’d almost let herself forget that nothing was black and white, just shades of gray everywhere you turned. But she was done trying to figure out what was right and wrong. So little was in her control, anyway. She couldn’t save the world any more than she could have saved Ben. The only future she had any chance of rescuing was her own.

  If she was ever going to find her way out of here, then she couldn’t count on help from anybody else. Which was fine by her. Because from now on the only person she was going to look out for was herself.

  12

  through the looking glass

  and what eli found there

  The reflecting d
oor swung shut behind him. Eli and Marilyn found themselves in a long, cramped room with a low ceiling and a musty odor. In here the coolers were so strong, there was a chill in the air. From somewhere up ahead they heard a soft mechanical hiss, followed by silence, followed by another hiss, at regular intervals. Eli squinted into the gloom. Across the long walls were shelves piled high with what looked like salvaged parts from electronic equipment: burned microchips, light generators, wire scraps, lengths of pixel tubing, and countless other gadgets and electronic parts Eli couldn’t even identify.

  “It looks like a high-tech junkyard,” Eli whispered.

  What now? Marilyn asked, hiding under his cloak.

  “I don’t know.”

  He took a tentative step into the clutter, then another, squeezing his way between wooden crates that were scattered all over the floor. The room seemed to go on so far that he couldn’t even see the opposite end. The intermittent hiss grew louder as he moved deeper in. Long shadows flickered across the ceiling like ghosts.

  Suddenly Marilyn squirmed. Wait! Don’t move!

  Eli froze. “What’s the matter?”

  We are not alone.

  Eli peered across the mess and tried to scan the room, but he didn’t see anything that caught his attention. What he heard, though, was the hissing machine, close now, cycling through its repetitive process. Hisss. Stop. Hisss. Stop. Hisss. What was it, anyway?

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move.

  Eli!

  He spun around. A figure was crouched on the floor. Eli’s breath caught. It wasn’t just that somebody was there, watching him from the shadows; it was that this stranger was one of the most frightening visions Eli had ever come across. His face was covered with so many leathery scars, it was painful to look at. He had long gray hair and a dirty white beard. He was obviously an Outsider. He wore a hooded environment suit, threadbare, and a menacing black glove that went all the way up his left arm. His other hand was exposed, and the skin was wrinkled and lined with veins. He looked ancient, at least as old as Grandfather. Then Eli noticed something hanging over his shoulder, a metallic cylinder that swelled and shrank with each breath the savage took. It appeared to be some kind of respirator, and Eli realized it was making the hissing sound.