News from the Clouds

by Robert Llewellyn

‘Of course your old country doesn’t have the really big culverts,’ said Kirubel. ‘Maybe we will see one of the really big ones. The Chicago Culvert is very big. Lalibela Culvert, that is where I’m from, that is very, very old. Was it not there in your time?’

  ‘The Lalibela Culvert? No, I don’t think I’ve heard of that. But then I haven’t seen anything but these incredible cloud things.’

  It had mystified me as to how I could be accepted so casually into this whole new world; no one seemed to be in the least surprised by my arrival.

  ‘I understand,’ said Kirubel, ‘You have just come through the cloud portal.’

  ‘The cloud portal?’

  ‘Yes, we made a detour three days ago, we made sure we were nearby when we expected you and sent out spotter drones to escort you to safety. There are people on Cloud Ten who can explain. I only know what the captain told me.’

  ‘But no one seems surprised to see me,’ I said. ‘In the other places I’ve been, I don’t even know how to explain, but where I just left, London, a massive city called London, it was October in 2211. Anyway, they were all very surprised to see me. Many of them didn’t believe where I’d come from.’

  ‘You are not the first,’ said Kirubel. ‘You will soon understand. Come, I must deliver you to the committee and get back to Cloud Nine before the weather forces us to undock.’

  I followed Kirubel through the huge crowds of people, barely able to take in what I was walking through. It was almost too big to take in. Unlike the vaguely tubular or balloon-like structures I’d been in on Cloud Nine, this was a vast white cavern. I could see many layers above me, kinds of smooth shaped balconies rising above me, possibly hundreds of metres high. Whatever I was now in was beyond vast. It soon became impossible to register that this machine, this structure, was floating thousands of metres in the air. I must have walked along with several thousand people and literally tons of packages being carried by them. As a pilot I knew one thing from experience: people are heavy when you lift them into thin air.

  After many minutes of slow progress through the crowds we reached a large circular doorway in which stood three figures. A very short African man with a white beard, a tall blonde woman who looked worryingly thin and stared at me in a rather startled way and finally a rather suave-looking middle-aged white man with grey hair.

  ‘Welcome aboard, Mister Meckler,’ said the African man.

  We shook hands and then Kirubel said, ‘Gavin Meckler, this is Wekesa, he will look after you now.’

  Kirubel pulled something from inside his suit and spoke to the old African man. ‘We have his craft safely stowed and he’s been through a full medi.’ He handed over a small transparent thing about the size of a key fob. ‘All the portal data is here, estimates suggest we have a three-month window until we can rendezvous with the portal again.’

  ‘Thank you, Kirubel,’ said the old African man. ‘Give my regards to Captain Hector and we’ll see you again soon I hope.’

  ‘In calmer times,’ said Kirubel.

  ‘In calmer times,’ said the old African.

  At that, Kirubel gave me a friendly pat on the back and walked back into the crowd.

  ‘Well, well, this must all be very strange for you, Mister Meckler, but we’re very happy to welcome you onto Cloud Ten. We will soon be undocking from the other clouds, we need to get back upstairs fairly quickly,’ said the old man, pointing upwards.

  I was relieved to find out they had stairs on Cloud Ten, I didn’t fancy trusting myself on the pale blue elevator sheets again.

  ‘Wekesa means we have to get Cloud Ten to a higher elevation, there is a very powerful storm approaching and we need to get above it,’ said the blonde woman. She had a fairly strong German accent but it wasn’t this fact that made me momentarily pause my thoughts.

  This was suddenly familiar. I had a fleeting thought and immediately a tall and rather intimidating woman knew what I was thinking. She smiled at me again and I found this slightly frightening.

  ‘You have a kidonge, Mister Meckler. So do I.’ she said.

  7

  ‘This is essentially a survival machine,’ said Wekesa. ‘It can support a little over three million people for periods of up to two months without docking, ground charging or restocking.’

  I said nothing. I didn’t need to. I had met people like Wekesa back in 2011. They adopt a communication protocol that is described by the military as being in ‘constant send’ mode.

  They never shut up, which in this particular instance was fine by me. Wekesa was giving me some serious data about the survival machine I was walking through.

  ‘The outer skin, if laid flat on the ground, would cover an area of 82 square kilometres. The outer skin is a nano-porous, photovoltaic microfibre. Each square metre of the material produces 18 kilowatts when in sunlight and weighs 13 grams. If a one metre square section was to be tightly rolled, the material would be capable of supporting a little under 7,000 kilograms, which I’m sure you understand indicates it is very strong.’

  Wekesa pulled a small sheet of cream material out of his trouser pocket and handed it to me. ‘You can keep that,’ he said.

  By this stage I was used to the feeling of ridiculously light and thin materials. This was like having a sheet of semi-translucent gas land on your hand. Although my eyes could see it, the nerve endings in my fingers were far too crude and insensitive so I couldn’t feel it.

  I screwed it into a ball and it more or less disappeared. I let it unfurl on the palm of my hand and pinched part of it with my thumb and forefinger. This stuff was so light that even with the air movement produced by our very slow walk, it would have blown away.

  ‘The structure is filled with slightly pressurised air which is warmed by a mixture of direct solar infusion during daylight hours and the compressed heat system during darkness,’ said Wekesa. I made a mental note of that, I wanted to learn how you compress heat.

  ‘The temperature of the air within the non-porous structure of Cloud Ten is 15 to 18 degrees Celsius warmer than the air outside, which gives the structure lift. The areas used by inhabitants of the cloud are kept at a constant 23 degrees Celsius regardless of exterior temperature. The entire habitable area within Cloud Ten is pressurised to maintain comfort, the system is capable of functioning at altitudes between 50 metres and 12,000 metres. We are currently rising at one metre every two seconds and will reach our necessary operating height of 10,000 metres in a little under three hours.’

  During this fascinating monologue we had moved further inside the massive floating city. I was treated to the vision of vast interior halls without a straight line in sight, other than the floors we walked upon. Comparisons to a giant land-based shopping mall or impressive university building don’t do justice to what I saw, this was larger and far more spectacular.

  It did occur to me that whatever the reason the people of this 2211 had gone to so much effort to build a vast floating city, they could surely have created a simpler, more utilitarian design and it would have done the same job. This was a dizzying spectacle of immense depth, height and width. All around me were twisting forms of what I took to be inflated supporting struts but which were all made of the same basic texture and colour.

  Everything I saw was the same vaguely cream colour, except of course the hundreds of thousands of people moving about.

  Here was colour in abundance. Their clothes, while all being of the same cream functional base design, were adorned with an incredible collection of intense colours, some of the strapping and refinement seemed to be luminescent, glowing almost.

  I stared around during our slow journey. The entire structure seemed to be glowing softly and although I could barely make out where I was, I could tell from the last glimpses of the outside world I’d seen from Cloud Nine that night had fallen on whatever part of the planet we were fl
oating over.

  ‘We are now heading to one of 20 residential sections,’ said Wekesa. ‘In this area we have requisitioned a sleeping pod for you. Each residential area consists of a little over one million cubic metres of habitable space split into sleeping pods, cleansing areas and medical and support services. Each section can sleep up to a quarter of a million people at one time.’

  At this point Wekesa glanced at me as if checking for a reaction. All the way through his monologue my reaction had been pretty much constant. It could loosely be described as slack-jawed amazement, as if a Stone Age hunter was watching an a380 take off.

  Wekesa almost smiled and then carried on. ‘Sleeping is generally done in shifts. The occupants are informed of their sleeping period by their wrist strips.’

  Wekesa handed me a small circle of cream material. ‘You can keep this,’ he said. ‘It’s your designated wrist strip. It will guide you during your trip on-board Cloud Ten.’

  I inspected the band briefly, a thin, slightly glowing circle of almost non-existent material. I slipped it over my left hand.

  ‘It operates a little like a kidonge,’ said the tall blonde woman. ‘Although it is a lot less powerful, it should help you understand what is happening.’

  Her name was Theda, she was 49 years old and was born in Wolfratshausen just south of Munich and had a daughter called Ilka who was 22. If I’d never experienced the power of the kidonge this sudden influx of knowledge would have done my head in, but I just smiled.

  ‘Thank you, Theda,’ I said and patted my new wristband. ‘This will be very useful.’

  ‘The residential areas are situated in the upper sections of the cloud. In order to gain access we need to use the elevator, the elevator you need to use is number 20. It is this way,’ said Wekesa.

  He nodded down at my wrist. I glanced at the wristband, it had a number 20 showing in white numerics and a green arrow pointing slightly to my left.

  Whatever concern I’d had about the elevator in Cloud Nine evaporated when I saw elevator number 20. As we rounded a corner of the baffling interior I was greeted with a sight that made my lungs stop working.

  I saw another large hall, a gently curved atrium which appeared to slope up slightly. There were loads of people on the floor around me but up the far wall, a blue wall, thousands of people were going up and down as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

  It was like the view from a traffic helicopter looking down on a busy five-lane freeway in Central Los Angeles. It looked chaotic and incredibly dangerous but not only was this a vertical freeway which disappeared beyond the ceiling of the space I was in, there were no cars.

  Just people flying up and down in their hundreds.

  We made slow progress through the milling crowds, which became more dense around the foot of the elevator. It took me a while to comprehend we were in a sort of slightly chaotic queue waiting to get on.

  By this point I was feeling very hot and uncomfortable. I didn’t want to go up this thing, the nearer we got to it, the more I tried not to look up.

  Of course you can’t help it, you just have to look, and I did.

  I wish I hadn’t, I could see so far up it was ridiculous, the figures sliding up just disappeared into tiny specks and the gap between the blue elevator wall and the floors above looked impossibly wide. How on earth would you ever get off!

  ‘I will ride next to you to give you support and comfort,’ said Wekesa. ‘The first ride on a Cloud Ten elevator is sometimes a little disconcerting, even for people born in this era.’

  Wekesa held my hand, turned me around as we neared the silent blue wall and leant back. Without much say in the matter I leant, back, too and instantly we started to climb. Being pulled aloft by your clothes should be a very uncomfortable experience, however, I was only barely aware that my body weight was being supported by the intricate design of webbing and supporting pads built into my flight suit, and anyway, I was far too terrified to be concerned by such trifles.

  Foolishly I looked down as we slid upward. I saw Theda and the grey-haired man get on below us. I was too terrified to wonder who this man was, he still hadn’t said a word.

  I think Wekesa was still talking to me as we continued to shoot up the blue wall, but I didn’t hear a word of it, I was breathing too fast. Just when I thought I was beginning to cope, a group of small children whooshed past me on the way down, they were singing as they travelled. They seemed tiny and not in the least perturbed by the fact that they were hundreds of metres up, sliding down a wall that was part of a giant balloon that was thousands of metres above the sea.

  We passed what I took to be kinds of balconies as we continued our dizzying journey. The system was clearly not designed for people to get off at this point, as there was a very obvious safety wall running along the edge of these balconies, with behind them what I took to be offices or kitchens or schools. It was very hard to tell, we must have been travelling at urban car speeds; everything became a blur.

  After a few more seconds the floors became more regular and closely spaced. We must have gone past dozens of floors, each one crowded with people waiting to go up or down, I had no idea which.

  I felt Wekesa’s hand pull me and I leant forward. We started to slow down and we stepped from the blue wall of terror onto a cream and slightly bouncy floor.

  ‘We are now 2.3 kilometres higher than the main lobby,’ said Wekesa, still on constant send. ‘You will find the walking surfaces on the upper levels are more flexible.’

  We waited for the others, they appeared moments after we got off and walked toward us.

  ‘Did you enjoy that?’ asked Theda.

  ‘Um, I don’t know how anyone could actually enjoy that. It was bloody terrifying, but I’ll admit it is utterly amazing,’ I said.

  ‘I was also very impressed the first time I rode it,’ said Theda.

  ‘Come, I will show you your sleeping pod,’ said Wekesa, who seemed to ignore everything except his explanatory monologue. ‘All you need to remember is that you need to go to level 2011, we thought that would be easy for you to remember, and pod number 32, your age.’

  I laughed a little, this was all so much more bonkers, brain-melting and utterly baffling than anything I’d encountered in Gardenia or London.

  ‘Great,’ I said finally, not wishing to offend my guides.

  We approached another circular entrance and beyond, as far as I could see, on either side of a brightly lit and seemingly endless corridor were row after row of small circular units.

  ‘Number 32 is here,’ said Wekesa, patting what looked to me to be an inflated door in an inflated frame. It had a recognisable number 32 stenciled on the door, but the opening was at shoulder height and I couldn’t see how I’d get up into it without some kind of handle or step, neither of which was immediately apparent.

  Beneath it was another similar door, number 31. I didn’t want to kick their fairly frail-looking door in as I clambered inside.

  ‘How do you get in it?’ I asked. Wekesa firmly grabbed my right wrist and put my hand on the door, It opened by flopping down, it inflated a little more and the inside of the door contained some sturdy steps.

  ‘Like so,’ said Wekesa, again with something that resembled a smile.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  So, I was on a cloud as big as a city with possibly three million other floating souls. I had a sleep pod and a flight suit. I had met a woman who knew about a technology that only existed in another place which clearly most people I’d met on the clouds had no idea about.

  To say the mystery was all-engulfing is to underestimate how baffling, terrifying and confusing this all was. I knew I’d survive the ordeal by simply not thinking about it. I knew if I thought about it for more than a second, I would go properly insane.

  8

 
‘Have you ever heard the phrase, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from divinity”?’ asked Theda when we arrived in a dimly lit corner of a busy and rather shabby canteen-type space on the same level as my sleeping pod.

  ‘No,’ I said, as I sat down at a wall-mounted table and chair arrangement that stuck out of the inflated wall. ‘It’s good though, I like it. I’ve seen more than my fair share of almost divine technology recently.’

  ‘I assumed you might be familiar with it because it was coined by a man from your era, a writer called Sir Arthur C. Clarke,’ said Theda, as she put three squashy liquid pillow things on the flimsy lightweight table. I was very relieved to see these containers had straws coming out of them. I didn’t want to embarrass myself trying to open the damn things like I had done in London.

  ‘Oh, right, yeah, I’ve heard of him,’ I said. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey and all that.’

  ‘That is correct. Well, Sir Arthur’s quotation came to me when I arrived here. That is how I initially responded to witnessing the technology we are surrounded by now, particularly the elevator. It was hard for me not to wonder if this was the work of gods.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I have to say that hadn’t occurred to me.’

  ‘Oh, I apologise, I had assumed you would be open to the notion of gods having a concrete influence on the activities of humans.’

  ‘Um, no, sorry, I don’t.’

  ‘There is no need to be sorry,’ she said. ‘I am intrigued and clearly my grasp of your particular period of history is mistaken. I thought you would suffer from detrimental religious belief symptoms.’

  ‘My wife does,’ I said. ‘Well, she did, 200 years ago.’

  I was about to ask Theda exactly when she had arrived and where she had arrived from, but at this point we were joined by the silent grey-haired man. He had been with us the entire time but had been behind us in the queue for the plastic food pillows.

  I had said farewell to the highly informative Wekesa by the blue wall elevator of terror; he had just leaned back and disappeared downwards, leaving me with Theda and the man with grey hair.