Glass Sky

by Niko Perren

  Jie squirmed. Am I supposed to answer? But Witty had turned his attention to Tania during the laughter. Jie glanced at the monitor. He looked good in the virtual suit that Penny had chosen, though his leg was jiggling again.

  “…atmospheric CO2 is now near 500 parts per million, so it takes much more sulfur to hold temperatures down than it did ten years ago,” Tania was saying. “A sunlight control shield offers a better way to cool the earth, because it gives us some influence over the severe weather that is the side-effect of any attempt at geoengineering. Our goal is to restore an environment where plants and animals can flourish, because that’s also an environment where people can flourish. But that’s going to require big changes.”

  “How do we make those changes?” asked Witty.

  Tania turned to the camera. How is she staying so relaxed? “Remember the fuss about the first transportation grids?” she asked. “People insisted on their right to sit in traffic for hours in private vehicles. And remember when energy companies lobbied to ban solar panel imports? The steps we need to take will face as much opposition today, and seem as obvious tomorrow. But they’ll be worth it. I grew up in Alaska, and I could walk out of my back door and drink from every stream in the forest. There’s no reason we can’t get back there in our lifetimes.”

  She turned to include Jie. “First, we use sunlight control to stabilize the climate. That’s where Jie comes in.” Jie sat up, ready for a question, but Tania turned back to the audience. “Next we change land use. A thousand people in an apartment tower have a lower footprint than a thousand people on acreages.”

  “So you’d take away my cottage in the country and move me into a vertical slum,” said Witty. “Damn. Just when I found reliable contractors to do the bathroom.” He winked at Jie. “It sounds impossible, Tania.”

  “So did air travel in the 1800s. But the reality is we’ve already done exactly what I’m proposing. In 2035, Guatemala was stripped bare, 94% of its forest gone. People grew corn on mountain-sides, using sticks as shovels. My team reinvented Guatemala City by building parks, and adding transit. When we create great cities, people want to live in them. New York! London! Hong Kong! The poor flooded out of the countryside, which let us consolidate and automate small-hold farms. Guatemala now grows far more food on far less land, which leaves more room for wilderness. If we did this globally, we could create a garden planet dotted with dense clusters of humans. We could live close to jobs, schools, and culture. And we’d be connected to nature by thirty-minute train rides.”

  Witty made a small motion with his foot, triggering a burst of applause. “So, Jie. Are you an environmentalist like Tania?”

  Tania was a lantern, lit by enthusiasm. But Jie’d never drunk from a river, and the closest he’d come to a wild animal was the chained lion he’d once petted at the Beijing Zoo.

  “I’m nanoengineer who was in wrong place at wrong time.” There was a smattering of laugher. “But I have son. I don’t want Cheng to grow up in world we destroyed.”

  “The planet’s future depends on your success on the moon,” said Witty. “How does that feel?”

  Jie felt a sudden panic and went completely blank. How can I possibly describe it? Then coherence flooded back. “I’m scared,” he admitted. “I am not an astronaut. And my job on the moon is research. It is very difficult to predict schedule. I miss my son already.”

  ***

  Tania watched Jie squirming in his seat. Poor guy. He looks terrified. No time to worry about him though. Witty kept the questions coming.

  “Tania, you’ve been very vocal about not cutting the UNBio preserve budgets. Yet there are also rumors that some preserves will be bio-harvested. How do you explain that?”

  “The Climate Council squandered the ten years of relief that sulfuring bought us,” said Tania. “Some areas are now beyond saving. And when an ecosystem faces extinction, the best of our bad options is to bio-harvest.” She reached into her pocket and touched her gorilla coin. “I helped harvest Virunga Park in Rwanda, when I first graduated from university. Deforestation had changed the microclimate, and large sections of the park burned in the ensuing drought. Mountain gorillas were dying by the hundreds.” She stopped. Don’t cry. I can be emotional. But don’t cry. “It was a soul-crushing experience. I don’t do it lightly.”

  “Yet you’d do it again?”

  “It’s the lesser of evils,” said Tania. “By freezing tissue samples and seeds we have the potential to bring extinct species back to life. Like we did with mammoths. When the shield is completed we can use it to protect what’s left, and slowly turn Earth around.”

  “And if Jie fails?”

  “That’s not an option,” said Tania grimly. She glanced over at Jie. Is he really our great hope? He seemed nice enough, in a nerdy, awkward kind of way. But he belonged in a lab somewhere, tinkering. Jie too was a climate refugee, she realized, driven out of his natural habitat by the growing chaos.

  ***

  After the show, Witty invited Jie and Tania to his lounge, a lush room colored with Persian carpets and expensive art. Along the wood-paneled back wall stood a well-stocked bar. Jie’s eye caught on a painting, blotches of color and material with just enough form to suggest two naked women embracing each other.

  “It’s an original Betts,” said Witty. “My studio is bland, so my lounge must be the opposite. What can I get you?”

  “Just a Coke,” said Jie. “Diet.”

  “A red wine, please,” said Tania.

  Witty fixed drinks while Jie and Tania settled into deep leather armchairs.

  “Have you ever been in wilderness, Jie?” Tania asked.

  “No, not really,” said Jie. “I take Cheng to Beijing’s parks sometimes. Or I did. Now there are too many dust storms.”

  “A shame,” said Tania. “Underneath our clothes, we’re still animals. Deep down. In here.” She touched the back of her skull, where it joined the neck. “I can’t explain nature any more than you could explain being a parent. But you should experience it, at least once, before you leave this planet.”

  Witty handed Jie a glass. “Tania’s right. Swimming in an ocean. A tropical beach with a jungle behind you…”

  “…or hiking in the mountains,” said Tania. “Watching the sun hit the peaks.” It radiated out of both of them, a passion, like religion without the ceremony and rules. Jie thought of the rugged peaks around the Xinjiang Space Center. Standing on the balcony, watching the sunset, he’d experienced a shadow of what they were talking about.

  “I have a four-day break with Cheng before I leave,” he said. “I was going to spend it in Beijing. Where should I go instead?”

  Tania pulled out her omni. “Here. My personal number. I’ll find you something good.”

  “It has to be a beach if he’s bringing the kid,” said Witty. “If the kid’s not having fun, nobody is.” He sipped his beer. “So here’s a question that’s been bugging me. We talk about using the shield to protect the UNBio preserves. Yet I’m pretty sure that if the opportunity comes up to use the shield for financial gain, the preserves will come a distant second. What do you think, Jie?”

  “I’m just the engineer,” said Jie. “That is politics.”

  “Yes. That’s what Oppenheimer said about the atomic bomb,” said Witty. “But politicians haven’t been responsible stewards of the planet, have they? Who’s doing the worrying?”

  “I’m worrying,” said Tania. “The next UN Climate Summit is in July, and we can’t afford to miss that opportunity. I intend to present a vision of what a postshield world will look like. And the research to support it.”

  Witty tilted back his beer, finishing it in three gulps. He smacked it down on the table. “I’m sorry to be cynical,” he said, “but the US and China aren’t going to let you near their shield with your vision. They’ll want full control.”

  “Then they’re going to have one hell of a fight on their hands,” Tania said.

  Chapter 15

 
DARGOOL STOOD WHERE they’d left him, a statue in the grayed-out world. Jie studied the positions of the frozen guards.

  ‹Ready?›

  ‹Ready.›

  Color flowed into the scene. Dargool blinked. ‹You didn’t think I would share something this powerful with the rest of the Council› he sneered. ‹Guards. Kill them.›

  The Guards leapt forward, swords high, shouting. Jie scrambled backward, working his way up the ridge so that he wouldn’t be surrounded. Thwuk. Thwuk. Two guards fell, Cheng’s arrows in their throats. Thwuk. The third shot flashed at Dargool, but Dargool just laughed, waving it casually into a puff of ash.

  ‹Don’t waste ammunition,› Jie yelled. He parried a sword and countered low, slashing at an attacker’s stomach. The man looked at Jie in horrified disbelief as his entrails squirted over the grass, a hot sticky mess. Jie retreated further into the forest.

  He fought off another guard, and then another. Cheng did the same. Seven guards down. Teamwork! The survivors wavered, trapped between their maniacal overlord and the lethal combination of elf and warrior. Thwuk. Another arrow. A strangled cry. The remaining men bolted into the forest.

  Dargool yelled in rage, a high, animal sound, and flicked his hand twice. Fire flashed from his fingertips in bolts, a malevolent predator cutting a swerving path around the mossy tree trunks. Two fleeing guards writhed in agony as flames enveloped them, and they fell, twitching, to the ground.

  ‹Dargool’s too strong,› yelled Jie. ‹The cup’s re-enforcing his magic. Run!›

  ‹No way, Dad,› said Cheng, falling out of character in his excitement. He unleashed another arrow, this time at Dargool’s horse. Clever kid! Once again Dargool waved it to dust. He turned to Cheng, his face gray, emotionless. ‹I like that horse.› With a flick of Dargool’s fingers Cheng’s elf cracked like an old painting and crumbled to the ground in a rain of flakes.

  The game world faded out and they found themselves back in the chat room.

  ‹Maybe we can ambush him,› suggested Cheng.

  ‹Maybe it’s time to stop for a while,› said Zhenzhen’s voice from outside of the game. ‹It’s beautiful outside. And you guys haven’t even seen the beach yet.›

  ‹I hate beaches,› said Cheng.

  ‹You’ve never been to a beach,› said Zhenzhen. ‹Why come to an island in Thailand if you’re just going to game?›

  Jie pulled off his headset. She’s got a point. I don’t think this was what Tania meant by experiencing nature.

  ‹Let’s go with your mom,› he said.

  They followed Zhenzhen out of the resort’s gloomy gaming center and into the evening sunshine. A sandy path cut through the palms to their cabin.

  ‹Take off your shoes,› Zhenzhen suggested.

  Jie did. He wiggled his toes in the warm beach sand, Zhenzhen’s hand in his, soft fingertips on his wrist. Wispy clouds flamed pink, then red, as the sun fell into the jungle to a chorus of insects. The moon, half full, crept above the low hills on the mainland. So distant. So cold.

  ‹Look, look!› Cheng cried, pointing at the tiny lights flitting over the beach. ‹Fireflies!›

  He ran into the dusk, scooping at them with cradled hands, the game world forgotten.

  ***

  Jie and Zhenzhen sat hand in hand at the water’s glassy edge. Two old men walked past in the dawn light, filling black garbage bags with the nighttide’s gifts. The sun crept into the sky as they enjoyed a comfortable silence. They’d been lovers sometimes, over the years, and last night had been another one of those rare “on” moments. When it flowed, they let it flow. Sometimes people made life more complicated than it needed to be.

  Cheng appeared in the cabin door, rubbing his eyes. They breakfasted on the cereal and fresh fruit that had been left on their porch.

  ‹Can we go back to the gaming center?› Cheng asked.

  ‹Let’s have a real adventure instead,› suggested Jie. ‹We could learn to scuba dive.› It would be nice to dive in the ocean instead of the dirty training pool.

  Cheng spread his legs, rooting himself to the ground. ‹No. I don’t want to.›

  ‹Your elf would go diving in a minute.›

  ‹Only to save your drowning warrior from his armor,› Cheng laughed. Zhenzhen watched, smiling. She never gamed. ‹I’m old-fashioned that way,› she’d told Jie once.

  It took some persuading, but Jie managed to drag Cheng to the dive shop. A Thai man in an outlandishly flowered shirt helped carry rebreathers, fins, and masks to the end of the hotel dock. “I’ve set your gear for 4 meters maximum,” he told Cheng. “If your mask fills with water, close your eyes and the pumps will clear it.”

  Jie slid off the plastic boards into the water, gasping at the temperature change. Wow. I feel so much freer without the space suit. And nobody’s going to tell me I’ve died. Cheng sat on dock’s edge, swaying forward then back, battling his confidence.

  ‹Need a shove, mighty elf?›

  ‹No.› Cheng slid into the water, arms windmilling, and surfaced coughing.

  Jie splashed to help, but Cheng didn’t need it. Within a few minutes he was finning along the shallow sea’s bottom as if he’d been born a dolphin. They moved amongst the rich ocean life almost unnoticed as the rebreather recycled their air. A school of tiny silver fish darted away in a synchronized flash of light.

  Fifty meters from shore the ocean dropped off sharply at a sea wall. The fish loomed bigger here, and Jie felt a rush of vertigo as the floor vanished into darkness. Cheng spotted a turtle, flapping below like some reptilian bird, and gave chase, trailing it into the depths. An act of the young and invincible: Cheng’s generation trusted the safety nets provided by the machines. Sure enough, at 4 meters the computer added buoyancy to Cheng’s vest, preventing him from going deeper.

  Suddenly, Cheng clutched Jie’s arm, pointing into the shimmering gray beyond the dropoff. It took a moment for Jie to spot it, and then – a huge shark, sleek and primitive, like something from a horror movie, idled underneath them, camouflaged by the dim light. The water seemed to turn icy in its wake. They hurried back to shore.

  “Just a reef shark,” the instructor reassured them. “Nice find. Reefies are harmless. If you think they’re big, you should see the whale sharks.”

  “Whale sharks?” asked Jie. Cheng’s eyes widened.

  “I could arrange a trip this afternoon if you’d like. Guaranteed sightings. They’ve all been tagged with location trackers, so they’re easy to find. Everyone’s got to earn a living these days. Even the fish.”

  ***

  ‹Want to go diving again today?› Jie asked.

  Cheng eyed the water. ‹Can we go later?› Maybe seeing the whale sharks yesterday hadn’t been such a good idea. To think that such leviathans still roamed the seas. It was possibly the most memorable experience in Jie’s life so far, though that distinction wasn’t going to survive the week.

  Jie scrambled to head off the inevitable gaming request. ‹Why don’t we explore the jungle instead? Maybe we can see some monkeys.›

  ‹Monkeys?› asked Cheng.

  ‹We’ll have to be careful though,› said Jie. ‹Dargool’s men may be laying in ambush for us.›

  Cheng looked over his shoulder into the forest, only just realizing that an entirely different world lay in that direction. ‹Cool!›

  Jie packed apples and cookies, and they set off, leaving Zhenzhen reading on the porch. The path meandered into the thick growth behind the cabin, soon becoming a leafy tunnel full of birdlife and strange insects. They walked for nearly an hour, and finally reached a secluded beach looking west to open sea on the other side of the island. It clearly wasn’t visited much. Reeking garbage clogged the sand, mostly plastic diapers and bottles. They didn’t linger. Instead they retreated into the forest, where Cheng spent several hours chasing bugs. He captured pictures of each one with his omni, and that evening he tried to identify as many of them as he could online.

  ‹I assumed he’d become
an engineer,› Jie whispered to Zhenzhen as Cheng scrolled through photos in a corner. ‹Now I’m not so sure. I’ve never seen him so absorbed.›

  ‹It’s a beetle,› Cheng burst out. ‹See, it’s got Elytra.›

  Elytra? Jie smiled sadly. Cheng provided no end of little surprises. And he’d sacrificed so much of Cheng’s childhood already, burning it at the altar of work as if financial success could somehow recover all those lost moments. He glanced over at Zhenzhen, and squeezed her hand.

  ‹I’ll take good care of him,› said Zhenzhen. ‹It’s only six months.›

  Six months. A lifetime to a nine-year-old. I’ll do it all differently when I come back.

  Two thousand kilometers west, overlooking the same ocean, a white rocket inched down a rusted railway track towards the launch pad.

  ***

  Monkeys visited the cabin, scampering right to the balcony’s edge to noisily demand food. Jie and Cheng swam in the ocean again, and this time they followed the reef sharks. And Jie and Zhenzhen had sex again. It had been a long time for Jie, and he realized that more than the physical act, he missed the emotional connection. I want somebody in my life again. Somebody to love. I’ll do that differently too. When I come back.

  And then, it was time. Jie stood on the beach, far from the rush and the noise of the city, capturing the memory of waves murmuring to the sand. An environment unplanned by human hands. A bustling chaos of plants and animals, living to a rhythm apart from clocks and quarterly earnings. He felt more at peace than he could remember.

  Cheng dropped bits of gravel on an anthill, blocking the holes to see how the ants responded. He seemed different too. Calmer. More of a kid. Maybe that’s what Tania was talking about. We have an instinctive connection to the natural world, an invisible tether to our apehood. Cheng belongs here. Playing in sunshine. Not locked in a game room by a dust storm.