by Nirina Stone
“How can that be?” she wonders. She watches Henry again. A small portion of his chest rises and falls as he breathes and her eyes land on a stain of metal seemingly right in the middle of his chest.
When she looks back at Gideon, he points to it and says, “Know anything about that, dear?”
Dear, she thinks. He speaks in a similar manner as his granddaughters. That shouldn’t be a surprise but it’s unnerving. His granddaughters were crazy, she thinks. What does that make him? How did they turn out that way? She’s a lot like her nayne, after all. What if his granddaughters inherited their crazy from him?
She’s suddenly not sure how much she should tell him about her life before, or much more about Petra and how Henry managed to get himself a metallic chest. The fact that Petra had saved his life by “pouring” a portion of her into him. Sidney decides she doesn’t have to share that much information with this strange man who lives in an entirely different world under the ground.
“No,” she finally says, and he nods his head though a flash in his eye tells her he doesn’t believe her. That’s fine, she thinks. It doesn’t matter anyway. Because the moment Henry is healed and she knows he’s fine, she intends to tell him she wants to stay in the Blue, doesn’t want to follow Gideon anywhere, and wants to go find Petra before leaving. If he intends on staying with Gideon, that’s fine by her. She doesn’t plan on doing the same.
Chapter Ten
Henry
AS HE SLOWLY SIPS ON the broth Gideon brought him, Henry keeps an eye on Sidney and wonders if she’s planning to run yet. In the short time he’s known her, she hasn’t been keen on staying put for long so this is definitely a scenario where he expects her to head off soon.
He wonders how she’ll do it, given that she’d need that disc Gideon holds in his front pocket. There’s no way out otherwise, is there? He looks around the place again. It took years, he thinks, to get the place functional like this. Still, Gideon’s an inventor of sorts. He must have several other little machines like the one he’d used to bring the robot cat back to the surface.
Henry still wonders why the thing had come down to attack them in the first place. Those cats, from what he learnt, were the left-behind exotic pets of Allendians when they had run the dome. They were considered low maintenance, cute companions that left no mess behind unlike real animals. They were very popular. They were also supposed to be kept in a charging station in wait for the re-emergence. He hasn’t a clue what would have caused them to wake early, far too early.
It reminds him of how fast he’s healing. He looks down surreptitiously. His metal chest is in place, uncovered. Gideon hasn’t mentioned anything yet. Henry wonders what the man thinks of it. He doesn’t quite know what to make of it himself. His identity has always been shifting. The youngest in a large family that was frowned by other Allendians because the ideal family consists of two, at most three children. Theirs were a family of twelve.
Still, it wasn’t considered illegal given that they didn’t take up any more space or use up any more energy than other families. They lived in a small unit like everyone else, had their own solar and lived off the land as much as possible with their hydroponics. He remembers it all fondly, even if they were considered the poor family in their compound. We may have been poor, but we didn’t lack for anything.
Even when the panics started, everyone started getting sick and dying around us. We took care of each other.
Until there was no one left to take care of. He tries not to think about that.
Following that life, he was pretty much a raider up until he moved against the people he’d lived with, and fell in with Petra and Sidney.
And then Petra did that thing—she poured a portion of her metal into his chest to “save his life” she’d said. He believes that she did save his life, but to what cost?
One thing he’d always identified as, no matter how much his life changed, was that he was Allendian through and through. And—now—
His eyes land on Sidney again as she eyes what’s around her and she finally sees him staring at her. He raises an eyebrow when she offers a small smile, like she’s innocently waiting for instructions.
Oh I know better than that, he thinks. He reckons she’ll wait until night time. That’s her preferred time to sneak away. She’s actually a lot like the robotic cats, come to think of it. Her bite’s probably just as bad, he chuckles as he continues to sip on his broth.
Chapter Eleven
Sidney
SHE WATCHES GIDEON as he piles all the things they will need for the journey to the southern dome, the Red Dome, where an Allendian civilization awaits. A civilization she doesn’t intend to join any time soon. Not until she finds Petra, finds a way to put her together. There has to be a way, and then they can travel there together.
Gideon mutters as he works, as if checking off lists in his head. “Dried biscuits. Lots of dried biscuits. These were supposed to last another two decades for me. What’s a little less time now? Water, of course. Lots of water. No water to be found out in the Barren. What weapons? Oh, right.”
He continues to putter around, it’s easy for her to tune him out as she watches him move. She doesn’t know how to get the disc away from him, and in any case, she didn’t see the numbers he’d input to make the thing work. So she needs to find some other way out of here.
Then she remembers the lift. Somehow the cat managed to get into it, but how? It wouldn’t have had the numbers—
She wonders if the lift can be workable without that disc after all.
“Hear you go,” Gideon says, startling her out of her trance. “This will be a bit big for you, but let’s see how we go.”
He hands her a pair of large insect-like see-through eyes that she pokes suspiciously. Does he want me to put this thing on my face?
When he nods and darts his hand forward with the thing, she understands and reaches for it. He mimes with his hands, indicating that she puts it over her head, pulling the elastic behind. The thing floats on her face and she thinks it’s too big, just as its sides shrink into place, moving on to her face like it was always meant to be. Huh. She breathes in through its plastic-smelling nostrils. So it does fit after all. Gideon nods at her again and mutters something under his breath as he moves away. Then he turns back at the last minute. “Take it off, child. Don’t waste the oxygen in here where we don’t need it. When we head out to the Barren, that’s when you put it on.”
As she moves to remove the thing, it magically becomes bigger again. She places it beside her, wondering if she should take it along with her when she gets out of here, or if she should just leave it behind. She looks around at all the other gadgets and gizmos that Gideon’s built or collected and fixed across the years. She eyes a pile of about two dozen more of these little masks and decides he probably won’t miss this one if it goes missing. A light spasm in her stomach could just be nerves, she tells herself though she knows it’s entirely something else and she wonders why she’d suffer guilt about taking this one thing.
He did feed me, she thinks. He’s taking care of Henry, making sure he heals and is well-rested. He’s taking us out of here. All this even though he misses his family.
I shouldn’t take anything from this man, she decides. She doesn’t need an oxygen mask anyway. Not in the dome.
Chapter Twelve
Petra
SHE WALKS SOUTH, FOLLOWING her scanner’s indication that that’s where the humans headed first. The city is deserted, she can tell. Even the large cats that once roamed here are long gone, dispersed, it seems into thin air. Or perhaps they’ve run out of critters to hunt and simply laid down to be eaten by the nightly acid rains.
Then, her world turns dark as her body disintegrates into nothing.
When her body’s pulled together again—she’s back to fighting for memories; back to not knowing how long it’s been. It takes hours for her to remember that she’s following humans, hours more to confirm the city is deserted. How man
y times has she pulled apart involuntarily like this?
She knows she’s broken, but it’s impossible to see just how broken. Every joint and limb works, but at diminished capacity. She attempts to take inventory of the supplies in her left leg. There is nothing left. Not a vial, no lighter, nothing.
Something else is wrong, but her scanner doesn’t specify what it is. It’s like the entire dome has shifted. Like it’s not the same one she’s been living in for decades. And yet, looking around her, she confirms the tell-tale signs that this is still indeed, the Blue Dome. For one thing, fitting to its name, the Blue Dome always has a tinge of blue across its glass. “All the more to reassure people that they are living on Earth,” she thinks, unsure of where she’d learnt that.
So if it is still the Blue Dome, what’s changed? Other than her broken self, of course.
She disintegrates and integrates several times, just standing and analyzing in this spot. For all she knows it’s been a minute, an hour, or a lifetime. Nothing is clear.
She stands still for a moment, fighting to stay in one piece. She scans, trying to scan further than she has before. Whatever is wrong is not showing itself to her and for a moment, Petra’s unsure of her directive. Clouded memories slowly show themselves to her. The girl—Sidney—had the flu. Petra was hunting her, to make sure the re-emergence could happen. For Allenda has to be cleansed of the flu-ridden in order for the re-emergence.
But Petra’s scanner didn’t work and they were heading to the southern dome to check on Sidney’s blood.
They met Henry. She recalls his face. Weathered and lined, but kind, she thinks. He was a raider—not a raider, simply a survivor. The memories come back faster and faster. The house in the south that was thoroughly cloaked—everything about that home was illegal, including the twins that had hid in it.
She remembers the attacks. Then the raiders. She’d made sure Sidney escaped them. She got rid of them. How?
A small wisp of silver flows towards her right foot and she steps back, then realizes what it’s made of—her, or some sort of derivative of her. Logically, she calculates that allowing it to incorporate into her will strengthen her systems. If there are holes within her that keep separating her like this, adding more silver is akin to adding more strength, more power. So she doesn’t step away further as it attaches itself to Petra’s right foot and she watches as it merges into her leg, and more and more silver dust does the same. It’s not part of what originally made her, she thinks. Still, the addition of the dust makes her insides stronger and, for the moment, she’s looking to build herself stronger so she can continue on this quest without constantly splitting into powder. It’s inefficient.
She starts to take on some of the memories of whatever bots had come before her as their dust settles into her system. She partitions them so they’re still apart from her own memories.
Then she turns south and starts walking.
Chapter Thirteen
Henry
“HOW WERE YOU PLANNING to escape here?” Gideon asks Sidney. “Out of the dome, I mean?”
“I’m not sure,” she says, her voice small and meek in the massive cavern. “Would have figured it out once I got to the outer edges. Maybe would have made a blaster.”
“A what?” Gideon says.
“A blaster with sparkers,” she repeats, her voice stronger. “Though once I found out what Petra was made of—all that silver dust I’d used—I’d have to find another source—”
Henry wonders how she’d learnt to make those explosives in the first place, but of course her nayne would have been the one to show her. Then he realizes she’d never told him how her nayne died, but now’s not the time to ask her.
“Sure,” Gideon says as he watches the kid carefully. “That could have worked, given that you had enough explosives—coz the dome’s made of pretty strong stuff, I don’t know how much you would have needed for it to be effective. Even then, once you got out, how would you have survived the desert? We live in domes here for a reason you know.”
Henry sighs with relief when Sidney continues the discussion, ignoring Gideon’s condescension.
Sidney pauses for a moment, as if it dawns on her that it was an exercise in futility. Finally, she says, “Nayne told me there are tunnels. There were tunnels once that linked the domes. Figured I’d find the entrance for one of them.”
The answer stumps Henry. He’s never heard of such tunnels, but Gideon nods his head, in agreement. “Yes there were a few,” he says. “They were our superhighway once upon a time. I suppose your nayne didn’t tell you though, the tunnels were destroyed once the flu hit the Blue Dome. Our travels will lead us out into the Barren for a while. Speaking of—”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. He merely walks around the corner, as if that was the end of that.
Sidney looks over to Henry. “How did your nayne know so much about the domes?” he asks. He’s never heard anything about tunnels or actual exits from the dome before now.
“I—I don’t know,” she says. “She just did.”
He wonders who Sidney’s nayne was in the old life, before everything fell apart.
“What was her name?” he asks, realizing he’s only ever heard Sidney call her ‘Nayne’ and nothing else.
“Maria,” she says softly. “Her name was Maria Chester.”
The name’s not familiar to him, but that’s not surprising. It’s been too long since Allendians in the Blue Dome had much time to socialize and be friendly with each other. In times of desperation and hunger, survival above all was the code of the day, more so than civil discussions and social interactions. Still, he longs for a time when he could sit around with friends and family and just relax. Just spend hours on end not thinking of anything but sunbathing and a quick swim in the lake.
Chapter Fourteen
Sidney
WHEN GIDEON COMES BACK around the corner, he carries a small blue and white box with him and places it on the table. He continues with his muttering again as he sets it up with small black wires, which he then plugs into a grey box attached to the far wall. “Okay,” he says as he approves of his set up. “Okay.” Then he pulls a chair up and looks down at the box as if to decide what to do next.
He’s the strangest man I’ve ever seen, Sidney thinks as she watches him stare at the thing. Finally, he brings up his right index finger and starts to tap out some sort of pattern against the top of the box.
“What’s he doing?” she whispers to Henry. She probably doesn’t need to whisper but the intense look of concentration on Gideon’s face tells her it’s helpful at least.
“Can’t say that I know,” Henry admits. “But give it a moment. We’ll find out soon enough I’m sure.”
After a couple more minutes of Gideon tapping away, he finally stops and sits back to stare at the machine again. Then, before Sidney is able to say a word, the thing starts a tap-tap-tapping sound of its own and Gideon freezes in place until it’s done. He sends a couple more taps, to which he receives another rattle of taps, and finally, what seems like several minutes later, he’s done. He packs the box and its wires up and loads it on to the other things he’s been collecting for their trip.
“What is that thing?” Sidney finally bursts out, before Henry can ask the same.
“It’s an old style messaging system,” he says. “The best way to send out secret messages. Had to teach it to myself years ago.”
Interesting. Nayne had told her that long ago, they’d used things called phones, radios, audio-types of things. The only type of tapping she knew about was what they’d labeled ‘texting’ on phones. Things that were long since left behind on Earth, not a technology they allowed on Allenda. This is something new though. Just how old could it be?
“And who exactly—” Henry says as she’s thinking about phones, “—were you messaging right there, Gideon?”
Huh, good question she thinks as she frowns at him. Was the thing that powerful that he could send a message to t
he Red Dome? Maybe to let them know that we’re on our way? That’s handy, she thinks.
“An ally in the Barren,” is Gideon’s curt reply. “We’ll have to meet up with them halfway through our trip so we can replenish supplies. Reckon with a child in tow, it’s best to do that than go through the red desert for an entire week.”
She wants to object to being called a “child” again, wants to reassure him that she’ll be fine no longer how long they’re out there, but she bites her words back. What does she know about traveling out in the desert for days on end? Besides Gideon’s apparently done this several times before. More than anything, it doesn’t matter, she remembers. Because I’m not even going.
Henry watches her, suspicion in his eyes and she wonders how long he’s looked at her like that, as if he knows precisely what she’s planning, as if he’s expecting her to run. She raises her chin slightly to challenge him. It’s not like he can stop her if she wants to go. Sure, he’s healing fairly quickly but he’s not near a hundred percent yet. Besides, who is he to stop her? If she wants to stay put, neither one of them has a say in it anyway. Right? Still she fights that bubbling in her stomach again—the tiny ripple of guilt that seems to pop up every now and then. She swallows and tries to think of anything else that will get rid of it. It’s silly, she thinks. Why feel guilt? No one’s started traveling or lost anything—no one will lose anything once she goes. She hardly knows Gideon—and Henry, well they really only met a few days ago. It’s not like they’re great friends or anything. She thinks she’d miss him just a bit. Well his companionship in any case. He’ll be fine, she thinks, and so will she.