Cracking the Sky

by Brenda Cooper

  “We won’t be able to tell you much more. You’ll work with healthy animals.”

  Susan swallowed. “I don’t like secrets.”

  Lana’s smile was back, this time touched with empathy. “I understand. I imagine this does seem odd to you. But look around this city, any city. The economy’s no good. It hasn’t been for a very long time.”

  “There are still jobs for vets. I’ll find one.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you will.” Lana’ feature settled into a serious pose. “Look, this is part of a dream that a lot of us have. It’s a good thing. We’re recruiting a few more specialties, ones we need but that we didn’t already have in our families and friends circles. I’m sorry it’s secretive, but you’ll understand why when we explain what we’re doing. It will be better than whatever else you can find. I’m sure of it.”

  “Why not someone with more experience? Why me?”

  Lana looked away. “We’ve researched the best students and free adults. And we like you.”

  “How do I get in touch with you?” Susan asked.

  “It’s a chance to work with animals. A chance to do what you love. And the people are all amazing. I promise.”

  They—Lana—wanted her to decide now. Susan closed her eyes and let herself feel. That’s how she worked with animals—instinct and feeling put together with her training. She felt her circumstances, her loneliness. Whatever she did, she was going to have to move, start over with new people. Most of her friends from school had gone on to jobs or gone home already. She had neither.

  “Do you have the NDA?”

  “We’ll provide it to you when you meet us.”

  There was an opportunity here. A real one. She could see it in Lana’s eyes. In spite of the fact she wasn’t sure she should, she liked Lana. Besides, she’d always been one to try for adventures when they came up. “Can I change my mind?”

  “Of course. I’m convinced you won’t.”

  Even though her practical side hated her for the movement, she held out her hand to Lana.

  Lana took her hand and shook it, relief flashing for a moment across her face before the professional smile returned. “Be ready to leave in two days. We’ll send you information.”

  Susan nodded, letting the decision sit inside her gut, trying to decide if it was festering or if it was good.

  Lana stood and looked down at Susan. “Welcome aboard. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  With that she was gone, leaving Susan to stare at the sculpture hanging over the park and watch the wind draw ripples in its netted sides.

  *

  The Star of Humanity surprised Tanya three days later with another invitation. It happened while she was packing up. She’d come to the realization that if she went now, she could afford to keep her belongings in storage here and take Tom and her car and head south, try to find a job in Portland or San Francisco. She knew people in both places and had arranged for crash space in exchange for cash in Portland, and found work as a housesitter in San Francisco. If neither of those cities had teaching jobs, she’d apply in some of the shrinking towns in-between.

  Somebody must need a good teacher.

  She would be good. She knew it. Never mind that the fall rosters were all filled up and the Seattle school district had a waiting list.

  It spooked her when she opened her phone to find a message that she suspected came from Peter, as if they knew she was almost packed, almost mobile.

  She stared at it.

  Meet me at Pike Place Market? Near the falafel vendor? Be ready to travel.

  As usual, there was no way to reply. Just the white background and the blue border.

  She pocketed the phone and started folding the coats in her hall closet and putting them in the last box. In an hour she had everything in her car, some of the boxes squished up against the window as she closed the door, and no place for Tom but on her lap. Surprisingly, he didn’t protest at all as she clipped a thin lead to the collar and then held him too tight for him to squeeze out of her arms, locked her door with one hand, bent to slide the key under the mat, and got settled in the car. Tom usually hated the lead. This time, he curled on her lap so she had to push the seat back a bit to get the steering wheel to turn. “We’re off,” she said. “Ready for an adventure?”

  He purred.

  Three hours to get ready to travel. Who the hell did Peter think he was? It took another hour to unload the boxes she was leaving behind—physical books, dishes and coffee cups, clothes, an old computer she still needed to clear off before she could recycle it. She signed the storage contract, paid for three months, and put the key on her chain.

  There was room in the car for Tom to sit somewhere else but he insisted on staying on her lap. So Tanya drove to the freeway with the cat on her lap, chewing on her bottom lip and swearing to herself that she was going to Portland.

  Not that lunch would be bad. The dishes had been packed last night and all she’d had today was the back end of a box of stale crackers.

  Which is how she found herself holding one fat yellow cat snuggled in her arms and walking through the tourist crowds to order a falafel. The market smelled of spices and cut fruit and stale coffee. An old busker with a long beard played a scratched up guitar so loud that she had to work to keep Tom from clawing her.

  Peter came up from behind like a surprise and started walking beside her. Even though she’d been expecting him, she flinched. He looked just as good as he had in the coffee house, slightly better dressed than most of the people around, slightly better groomed.

  Since he looked happy to see her, she relaxed a little. He didn’t feel like someone looking to recruit girls for a street harem or push drugs or anything. He looked like a successful tech guy, like someone from Microsoft or Amazon or Nintendo or anyplace else like that.

  She stopped in front of the falafel storefront. Her plan was to eat, hear Peter out, and then leave for Portland. She’d only paid for an hour on the parking meter. “I’m hungry.”

  “You’re not certain yet. I understand.”

  They stopped and he bought her a falafel. To her surprise, Tom went willingly into his arms, freeing her so she could eat. It raised Peter two notches: one that Tom would go to him, and another that he’d accept a sure fight between cat hair and his expensive clothes.

  The bad news was that he kept walking. They went down the stairs by the fountain and headed into a parking garage. She took her last two bites in a hurry, wanting her hands free in case she was reading the situation wrong. He led her to an elevator and up three floors. She found herself in a round room with tables. Curtains covered what must be a beautiful view of Puget Sound. There were about ten people there. At least half of them wore blue shirts of one kind or another. Like Peter. She sat down at an empty table, cat and all, and looked around. The room was pretty bare, although a pile of boxes lined one wall.

  A red-haired woman with a slight tan and a splash of freckles came over and sat down beside her, holding one hand out toward Tom, who gave it a sniff and settled deeper onto Tanya’s lap. “He’s pretty. What’s his name?”

  “Tom. And I’m Tanya.”

  “Susan.”

  Probably a Star of Humanity person. Although she was dressed in green and had goose-bumps on her arms in spite of the reasonably warm room. “You’re not from here, are you?” Tanya asked.

  The woman shook her head. “Are you a vet?”

  “A teacher.” She blushed. “Well, I want to be. I have my certificate. But no job.”

  “I’m from Phoenix. And maybe this is a job.”

  Tanya swallowed. That explained the tan on someone so fair. “Maybe it is. But I thought they wanted teachers.”

  Before Susan had a chance to answer her, a thin man with a ghost of a beard came by and set two pages and a pen down in front of each of them. How quaint. Paper.

  At the front of the room, a young woman with dark hair cleared her throat and started staring down the room, demanding silence with her sen
se of presence.

  “That’s Lana,” Susan whispered.

  There were only five people in the room with papers in front of them.

  The woman’s voice suggested she was used to talking to crowds. “Good morning. I’m Lana. We’re glad you have chosen to trust us this far, to consider joining us. I know you’re looking for more information, and I promise to provide it. First, let me explain why we are keeping a secret. Then, we’ll go over the documents on the tables in front of you. Those are non-disclosure agreements. If you choose to sign them, we’ll share information with you and then you can decide whether or not to join us.” She paused, as if for effect, and smiled, adding, “And we hope that you will want to know more about what we are doing.”

  Tanya expected them to introduce people next, but Lana just kept talking. “There are some dreams that are bigger than the current social structure can support. There are problems that we have not been able to address, some that we will not be able to correct in time, in spite of heroic efforts by many individuals, and by some NGOs, companies and countries. In fact, the Star of Humanity was born out of companies doing the hard work to create sustainability, to solve hunger and disease and change our energy usage patterns.” She paused, pacing the room and looking at the possible recruits. “Efforts to find a sane balance inside of the geo-political situation we all find ourselves in will continue.”

  So they were corporate. That both calmed Tanya and worried her, and it did change the game some. Beside her, Susan twisted her hair in her fingers and looked as dubious as Tanya felt. Why them, then?

  “We have kept news of this off of the web, even off of the social network rumor mill. In some cases, you are the lucky ones here because as individuals, you didn’t try to post about your experience with us.”

  Susan’s hand shot up.

  Lana nodded.

  “How can you keep a secret today?”

  “A fair question.” Lana looked at someone in the back of the room, some exchange happening with only gazes. Permission? “You may know that today when you search for a topic, you get back a set of answers tailored for you. Ads designed for you. Information you are likely to click on. You, in fact, are the engine that drives the net. Each of you, creating your own web based on what you choose to look at.”

  Well, sure. That’s why she always found out about new vineyards, and why she got so much biology news. She hadn’t thought about it as a way to keep things from her. After all, before she started looking for the Star of Humanity, she’d been able to find anything she really wanted. If she knew a business or person existed, she could play with search terms until she found them.

  “The filters that do this are automatic. Humans do not decide what you see, you decide what you see, setting your preferences into the vast programs that drive the biggest search engines of the web by what you select. You decide what you want. That’s how it should be. But the same tools can be used to hide things.” She paused again, looking around the room as if she expected a challenge.

  None came.

  “Search engines can be used to withhold information. Governments have been doing this since just after the dawn of the Internet. And our goals are bigger than the goals of any government. But for each of you, we believe you’ll find they are aligned with your goals.”

  Did she want to be hidden?

  She had a half hour left on her parking meter. She couldn’t afford to have her car towed.

  An oriental man in his mid-thirties raised his hand. “Why are you recruiting cooks?”

  “We found we need some skills that we don’t have. So we set out to find people who would have those skills. For example, Ling, we needed someone who could feed large groups of people well, and you just returned from a volunteer job where you did that in Russia.”

  Lana swept her gaze across the whole room. “We’ll join each of you at your tables and explain the NDA in detail, give you time to read it. In reality, it’s very simple. You agree not to speak of anything we’ve said in here or that we will say in here. You agree that whether or not you choose to join us, you’ll never speak of this in open social networks—physical or virtual, or on the Internet. This is not substantially different than the agreement you would sign for a programming or research job with any firm that we know of. It may look strange and a little bit scary to those of you in this room, but that’s only because you are not in professions where agreements like this are normal.”

  Peter came up and sat at the table with Tanya and Susan. Hushed conversations started. Tanya picked up the piece of paper in front of her. The best she could manage was to pretend to read it, her mind still stuck on the idea of using search engines to hide information. She wanted to teach to help children find out about the world, to bring light to their lives. How could something hidden bring light?

  Susan was obviously reading the NDA closely. She asked Peter a quiet question and he answered in whispers.

  Ling signed his papers.

  Tanya touched Peter’s arm. When he looked at her, she said, “I have to go put money into the meter for my car. I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ll do it for you.”

  “I want to do it.”

  “Really, we can—”

  Her body tensed and Tom stood and stretched, the ruff on the top of his back thickening. As always he could feel her emotions. “I need to think, Peter. I need air.”

  “Let me talk to Lana.”

  As soon as he got up, she started for the door. She expected someone to step in front of her, but no one did. She expected Peter to bound after her, to be at the elevator before her, and then beside her in the parking garage. She made it all the way up the steep Pike’s Place steps before she relaxed and took a deep breath. What if she became hidden, what if she couldn’t smell the salty air of the Sound and the mixed fish and fruit of Pike’s Place whenever she wanted? What could she be giving up before knowing what was being offered in exchange?

  When she looked down the steps she’d climbed, she still didn’t see Peter. Not that she had time to look closely—she was down to five minutes on the meter.

  As soon as she settled Tom onto her lap in the car, she started it up and began her drive south.

  *

  Susan sat beside Ling on the deck of the Northern Star, the Canadian sea slapping at the boat’s fiberglass sides one deck below her. Ling pointed ahead of them to starboard. “Whale!”

  Sure enough. A humpback leapt up out of the water, almost pausing for a moment, as if it could fly. When it fell back, water splashed up and caught the sun, making a spray of tiny rainbows.

  It felt like a gift.

  Something she had never seen and would never see again.

  Half an hour later, a bit of iceberg floated by, a small thing, although she knew that most of it was under water. “That might have come a long way,” Ling said. “It might have come all the way from the Arctic.”

  “Have you ever seen a glacier?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I took a tour once, and we watched blue ice calve into a dark sea spotted with seals. It might have been the most majestic and sad thing I ever saw.”

  She smiled. After three days on the boat, she had learned that Ling felt deeply but showed little of it in his tone or on his face; it came in the poetry of his words. “I’ve never even seen an iceberg before,” she said.

  “But we will see the stars,” he said.

  “Yes, we will.”

  MY FATHER’S SINGULARITY

  In my first memory of my father, we are sitting on the porch, shaded from the burning sun’s assault on our struggling orchards. My father is leaning back in his favorite wooden rocker, sipping a cold beer with a half-naked lady on the label, and saying, “Paul, you’re going to see the most amazing things. You will live forever.” He licks his lips, the way our dogs react to treats, his breath coming faster. “You will do things I can’t even imagine.” He pauses, and we watch a flock of geese cross the sky. When he speaks again, he so
unds wistful. “You won’t ever have to die.”

  The next four of five memories are variations on that conversation, punctuated with the heat and sweat of work, and the smell of seasons passing across the land.

  I never emerged from this particular conversation with him feeling like I knew what he meant. It was clear he thought it would happen to me and not to him, and that he had mixed feelings about that, happy for me and sad for himself. But he was always certain.

  Sometimes he told me that I’d wake up one morning and all the world around me would be different. Other nights, he said, “Maybe there’ll be a door, a shining door, and you’ll go through it and you’ll be better than human.” He always talked about it the most right before we went into Seattle, which happened about twice a year, when the pass was open and the weather wasn’t threatening our crops.

  The whole idea came to him out of books so old they were bound paper with no moving parts, and from a brightly-colored magazine that eventually disintegrated from being handled. My father’s hands were big and rough and his calluses wore the words off the paper.

  Two beings always sat at his feet. Me, growing up, and a dog, growing old. He adopted them at mid-life or they came to him, a string of one dog at a time, always connected so that a new one showed within a week of the old one’s death. He and his dogs were a mutual admiration society. They liked me fine, but they never adored me. They encouraged me to run my fingers through their stiff fur or their soft fur, or their wet, matted fur if they’d been out in the orchard sprinklers, but they were in doggie heaven when he touched them. They became completely still and their eyes softened and filled with warmth.

  I’m not talking about the working dogs. We always had a pair of border collies for the sheep, but they belonged to the sheep and the sheep belonged to them and we were just the fence and the feeders for that little ecosystem.

  These dogs were his children just like me, although he never suggested they would see the singularity. I would go beyond and they would stay and he and the dogs accepted that arrangement even if I didn’t.