by John Skipp
Steve blinked and the woman was now wearing cloth shorts and a tank-top. She was standing beside him, looking down into his eyes, smiling.
“Come on,” she said, nodding her head back, toward the bed, as if she was about to fall, smiling, backward. “Let’s lay down.”
Because Steve had never been on an interstellar thrill-ride before, he imagined certain things being just like they were on Earth. A long line of sweating tourists waiting to board their apartments, the clanking of the chain that would raise the apartment above the planet (that “way up” feeling of dread and excitement banded together), bad music pumped through shitty speakers, a carnival barker describing the exaggerated horrors of the ride and the mettle of those brave enough to try it.
But the launch site at New Jupiter Station 1 was nothing like this.
Steve should have known. This trip was special. He hadn’t seen another rider (a Dropper, Rob said) since boarding the shuttle, though he knew others were on board. Sometimes, at night, he thought he could hear phony turbulence through the walls. Sometimes he even got up and pressed his face to the glass, looking for those people.
But, despite the distant whisper of tinny voices, Steve never saw one. He wondered why. The pamphlet didn’t explain the significance, though Steve could guess; if a man could handle a year of semi-isolation, surely he could withstand two months surrounded by the real thing. The view itself ought to occupy him and he probably wouldn’t have time to think about silly things like isolation, solitary confinement, and the fact that he couldn’t step outside the four glass walls for sixty days.
For the most part, Steve didn’t think about other people at all. The virtual women who appeared, suddenly, were so well timed it was as if Downey had a direct line to his brain. The moment Steve dipped below a certain level of happiness, an athletic blonde would appear; small breasts, big eyes, bigger smile; Steve’s ideal physical woman, a thing he hadn’t really known himself before boarding the shuttle. Steve allowed these mysteries to belong to the men and women who built the ride. Who cared how it all worked? What difference did it make why the apartment wouldn’t explode halfway through the planet? Who cared how Disney and Downey knew there was no life on Jupiter and said it would be a mistake to think otherwise?
Who cared?
On the day he arrived at New Jupiter Station 1, Steve thought again of the waitress from the diner near his apartment back on Earth. As the men and women in white helped him out of his simulated apartment and escorted him down a long winding hall, Steve thought of her smiling when he told her he’d registered for the Drop. It excited him, knowing that when he returned home he’d have the story of all stories for women (real women!) with smiles like that.
Four agents escorted him, their tight jackets and pants showed off their own athletic builds, and Steve did feel something like a celebrity, a special person, a person of great interest. His own formfitting yellow suit was the only color to stand out in the tunnel and he couldn’t help but imagine a daisy, himself as the potent pollen centerpiece, traveling confidently toward the real thing, the actual apartment, all simulations and getting-used-tos accounted for and over with.
“You did wonderfully in your training,” one agent said, quietly, then gently tugged on his elbow, steering Steve around a bend to a second long hall.
Only this hall wasn’t white.
This hall was as transparent as the walls of his apartment would be.
Steve stopped walking.
Below him, he saw it for the first time, horrifyingly massive, the colors and motion much more severe than anything he had been prepared to face.
Jupiter.
“Jesus.”
He felt a tinge of embarrassment, as if the Downey men and women would be disappointed to discover their prized Dropper was actually, in the end, scared silly.
He crouched and planted a flat palm against the glass floor and stared down into the abyss he had volunteered to experience.
“Jesus,” he said again. And the planet seemed to respond, seemed to swirl into a lifeless, mean grin, before the clouds and gases dispersed, creating new shapes, new illusions.
The agents helped him up.
Ahead he saw the leviathan metallic crane-arm and the empty transparent apartment, so out of place!, gripped in its claws.
“So,” Steve said, a tremble in his voice. “So … it just … falls from there?”
“Drops,” one of the Downey men said. The others smiled brightly. “Welcome, Steve, to The Jupiter Drop.”
Intense, an almost overwhelming sensation, standing beside the table, taking in the apartment (much nicer than the simulated one), noting the glass door, too, trying not to make eye contact with the men and women operating the crane, the agents standing on the platform, waving goodbye.
Either Jupiter was loud as Hell or the machinations of the crane were bringing Steve to cover his ears. Would the next two months be just like this? Should he say he wanted off?
“All good?” a voice asked, stronger, less tinny in here.
Steve nodded.
He wondered when they were going to strap him in. Did the pamphlet talk about this? He recalled the word “equilibrium,” saw it a hundred times on the pages. Homeostasis. Maybe he should’ve read more, trusted less?
Jupiter’s surface moved, constantly, beneath him. Steve tried not to look down. Don’t look down. But the pamphlet didn’t say not to look down. The whole point of this was to look down.
So Steve looked down.
Shapes below, the size of countries, then colorful webbed fingers gripped the arc of the surface, then reached, spread till they vanished over red horizons; golds and yellows swarmed as one new hue; fresh fingers rose, fresh countries, a sudden and improbable perfect circle, before its circumference melded into the heads of meeting storms.
I want off.
The Downey agents were waving goodbye; no barker here, no sale; Jupiter sold itself.
Numbers through the speakers. Decreasing. A countdown?
Steve gripped the edges of the tabletop, sat down in a chair. No seatbelt? No safety?
He thought of Dennis Coleman, nicked by the front bumper of Steve’s car. One minute raking leaves, the next falling back, head hitting a tree …
“Hey,” Steve said, rising, then sitting back down. “Hey, am I supposed to be strapped in?”
Waves from the staff. As if animatronic. Only the arms move. From the elbow down.
Waving.
Goodbye.
Goodbye, Steve.
The numbers continued to decrease and Steve tried to count down with them but God damn the noise of the crane and the volume of the storming below obscured them. How close was he to falling, to dropping, to spending two months inside that madcappery beneath?
“Hey,” Steve called again. “Is there a safety harness? A belt? Is there—”
He heard the number seven. All by itself. Not seventeen, not seventy-anything. Seven.
Steve rose.
He yelled.
“HEY! Hey, I want off! HEY! I WANT OFF!”
Waves from the staff, a purple mist rising about them on the enclosed platform, as if the planet below was counting down as well, reaching up to make an exchange, to take the apartment from the crane.
Hadn’t seven seconds passed? Absolutely. Must have been seventy then. Steve went to the glass door and pushed, pulled, knowing of course that the thing was locked, coded, from the outside. Nobody ought to be able to open a glass door as they’re falling through a planet. But he tried. Tried to open the door.
“Hey, I’m getting off now! Sorry, but I’ve had second thoughts!”
A tremble in his voice, then a hand upon his shoulder and Steve turned quickly, too quick, and saw the slightly uneven face of an otherwise beaming brunette. The purple mist rising behind him reflected black in her eyes and when she opened her mouth it was as if she were counting down the muffled numbers herself.
“What?” Steve asked. “What did you say?”
<
br /> She smiled and shook her head no, playfully, get away from the door silly, you can’t open it from the inside silly, come sit down with me at the table, wanna lay down?, wanna touch my rubbery belly to take your mind off the planet?
Steve turned back to the door, the glass, the platform, pounding now with both hands.
“I WANT OFF, DAMMIT! ”
Fingers upon his chin, turning his face toward her, her dark eyes so close to his, her breathless mouth open, relaying numbers, yes, no doubt, the number one, in fact, solitary, not one hundred, not one thousand, not one and one again.
Then—
—the drop.
And Steve screamed as the storms below rose to meet the floor of the apartment.
Immediate thoughts of Dennis Coleman. Thoughts of Amy, too, leaving him, taking the kids, telling him the kids can’t watch their father lose his mind over an accident; he was teaching them the wrong things about guilt, the wrong way to get over something; the way he was carrying on the kids were going to think it was okay to spend your whole adult life trying to change one silly moment, history, your own history, move it an inch or two to the left.
The kids were going to think they could move history, Amy said, she actually said.
Steve, standing with both hands against a glass wall, couldn’t take his eyes off the scenery, the sights, the planet. The lights framing the apartment made it so no sun was necessary and even inside what should be the darkest, most dense areas of Jupiter, he saw.
And yet, he thought about Dennis. About Dennis Coleman never seeing anything so incredible, so absolutely horrifying and invigorating at once. If Steve had seen this before that autumn day on Miller Street, would he have nicked poor Dennis’s knee? He didn’t think so. He knew the answer was no. There was no way a man could be a part of such an infinitesimal oversight had he seen the depth of the cosmos in person. Steve was changing, right now, one day deep, would never be the same, would never see Earth the same way again, would never not notice a man raking leaves into a gutter one house before his own.
Dennis. Dennis Coleman should have got the chance to see this. Had he seen this he would never have raked leaves in the street to begin with. He’d have valued each and every passionate second of life and he would’ve let the leaves rot rather than stand in a street, a place where a car could come, could come nick a knee.
The view was …
There was no word for what the view was and no word for the darkness beyond the view either, the infinite (no, there are boundaries, an end to this) chasm of black the apartment lights couldn’t reach. Steve wanted to do more than tell his ex-wife, write his kids about it, call Dennis Coleman’s grave. He wanted to show them. Show them the green fingertips that turned orange as they connected with the glass, then spread like something sentient across the ceiling, the floor, until Steve was completely entombed in an orange, then red, box, then seeing clearly again as the gases the mists the webbed fingers released the apartment and allowed it to fall, to drop; the beginning of a two month descent into gorgeous improbabilities.
Eventually, thoughts of Dennis receded, and Steve stepped from the glass, stepped deeper into the apartment, took stock of the options afforded him. The small toilet and shower were sectioned off by a white curtain. The bed, white sheets, white headboard, was flush against a glass wall. No television in here. No computers. Nothing more entertaining than Jupiter itself, and the inside of Jupiter, and if a man or a woman needed something more than this …
Steve stepped to the kitchen nook and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He carried it with him to the bed, sat on the mattress edge, and stared. He watched the blues and blacks and heard the howling of violent winds.
He lay back on the bed.
“I’d like a friend,” Steve said, then blinked, and when he opened his eyes he saw a funny, tan blonde seated at the table. He wondered if the Downey knew not to send the brunette from the Drop, the one who had held his hand as the apartment was released by the crane. He was grateful for this woman instead.
“Pretty incredible, huh,” Steve said. Because he had to say it to someone, even someone who wasn’t alive.
Alive.
THERE IS NO LIFE ON JUPITER! IF YOU THINK YOU SEE LIFE ON JUPITER, YOU ARE MISTAKEN!
But Steve was alive. Wide awake alive. Experiencing the apex of human stimulation alive.
And Dennis Coleman was not.
“Come here,” Steve said and the blonde got up and Steve saw she wasn’t wearing any shorts at all, no underwear, nothing, and he wondered again if the apartment knew, was somehow wired to his brain, his desires, knew he wanted to lay on his back as this blonde climbed upon him, as the walls and ceilings went blue then orange then white beyond her.
The “virtual mom” pitch in the advertisement seemed unnecessary to Steve when he first read it. But a week into the Drop, “Mom” was as welcome as she’d been in childhood.
“Have you noticed you’ve entered the far north temperate zone, honey? You’re still very far from the rings. You might not see them from here, but you know, it’s nice to know they’re there.”
There there. Mom always used to say “there there.”
“No,” Steve said, fixing a sandwich at the marble counter. “I mean, yes, but I didn’t know that’s where we are.”
A clucking of a tongue. Mom.
“You should’ve read the brochure, honey. It’s all in there.”
Steve smiled. Strange relief, so alone out here, to be nagged by Mom again.
“I noticed the clouds,” Steve said, knowing this vague statement wouldn’t be enough for her.
“Counter-rotating cloud bands, dear.”
Steve carried the sandwich to the glass wall, watched the fresh colors curl in and over one another, vibrant snakes in the mist.
“I also noticed the sound has picked up, Mom. It’s gotten louder in here.”
She sighed.
“It’s bad, yes. But you know what? It’s the price you pay for the view.”
She was right. And she was right-on, too, so exactly like his mother in tone and content that Steve had to wonder how extensive the interview process with her must have been.
“Steve, dear.”
“Yes.”
“No need to think about that nasty accident out here.”
“I wasn’t.”
“But you were. And that’s okay. But this isn’t the place for guilt. This is a new journey. An experience all its own.”
Steve ate his sandwich and observed Jupiter’s colors overlapping; a bright flash of lighting so close to the apartment that Steve recoiled.
Leave it to Mom to make him feel guilty for having felt guilt.
“I know it, Mom. But …”
“But what?”
“Do you think it could have been anybody, Mom? Anybody driving down Miller Street that day? If I hadn’t nicked him … would somebody else have?”
Silence from Mom. Steve wondered absently if she was searching somehow for the right response.
“You’re talking about Fate,” Mom said.
“Am I?”
“Yes, dear. You’re talking about things happening no matter who is there to start or stop them.”
Steve ate another bite.
“I guess I am.”
“Oh, honey. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“Mom.”
“No, I don’t think it would’ve happened had you not been driving down Miller Street that day.”
Steve smiled. Sadly. Now this was as close to Mom as possible. She would never have gone for Fate.
But she knew other ways to sooth.
“But is it your fault that microbes are dying in your mouth as you eat? And who’s to say we’re any more important than them? And aren’t you but a microbe here, a week into Jupiter, passing the north temperate zone?”
Steve rose from the table fast and stepped to the glass. He’d seen something outside.
“Mom, did you see that?”
&n
bsp; “See what, dear?”
“I thought I saw … I swear I thought I saw a …”
“A what, Steve?”
“Nothing.”
But he didn’t take his eyes from the glass wall. Didn’t stop staring into the motley abyss and wouldn’t remember to take another bite of his sandwich for another five minutes.
Steve woke to a tapping on the glass.
He opened his eyes in the dark, the outer lights off for the “night,” for sleeping. Tomb-like darkness hugged him close, wrapped its own black fingers around his ankles, his wrists, his neck, slunk down his throat as he opened his mouth to say something, then finally did, the one word piercing the black, fracturing the opacity like a different kind of storm.
“Lights!”
And the lights came on and Steve hardly noticed the myriad hues, like stained water, swarming the walls of his apartment. All he noticed was that there was nothing to knock on the glass. Nothing by the walls. Nothing on the ceiling or beneath the bed, either.
Nothing at the glass door.
Two weeks into the Drop and Steve was disinterested in the transmuting bands, the morphing paint, the way the world beyond the apartment constantly shifted, never to repeat its exact self again.
But he wasn’t tired of the shapes he saw, the quick flashes, in strobe, a figure here, a configuration there. Sometimes, if you looked for too long, you could see a person out there, arms extended, as if falling, dropping, without an apartment, without the assistance of Downey.
Steve stared. He sat upon the edge of his bed and looked up, through the ceiling, into a wash of chromism, magnificent tincture and dye. Every now and then an eye would look back; not the dreaded red eye of Jupiter, but an eye as small as his own, peering out from the vapor, the greasy luminosity, beseeching; the look of someone forlorn, worried, in need of help.
Shelter.
Steve got up.
“Mom.”
“Yes, dear?” Never a sleepy take on her voice. As if Mom never slept.
“I saw something out there. And I believe it was a person.”
A slight intake of air. Perhaps the sound of a smile.