The Platform

by J Noah Summerfield

  The sun beat on her skin. The warmth seemed greater here than on the Alpine. The continental waters were supposed to be warmer than the southern platforms. At least that was what some of the fishing captains told her. They didn’t know if that was because there was more land near the equator and so the radiant heat from the High Fires affected those waters more, or if the sun was just more punishing near the equator. But for whatever reason, the fishing vessels always reached a point where the heat was so intolerable that they had to turn back south.

  Red lights saturated the sky. It could have been a sunset, but the sun was nowhere near the horizon. Sage had heard of the red sky. She knew the sky would look different than in the south, but she had not expected something so drastic. The color reminded her of a lobster. It felt different, alien. And it made the difference in temperature that much harsher. It shouldn’t feel this hot, not in this open plain, with the wind and the sky. This felt like an oven.

  Sage recognized this heat. It felt like a cauldron in the main deck, and those pits burnt with fire. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. The moisture on her legs made her wetsuit stick to them.

  A distant roar seemed to hover from overhead. Sage looked around. Everything was orange. The tall grass exploded around her. The flames seemed to fall from the sky. The fire blasted her once-supple skin. She burnt, blistered and boiled. Sage fell to her knees. The flames tore at her hair and her swim gear. The whole grass plain was on fire and was cooking her alive. The skin on her back and stomach burnt away. Her feet and knees seared to the obsidian beneath her. She was stuck. She pressed her elbows to her chest and covered her face. The pain was beyond anything she had known. Her flesh was bursting from inside. The flames cut at her spine. It was then that she understood what it meant to fear the land, that the continents meant certain death.

  She tried to flee. To return to the ocean, but it wasn’t there. It was a whiteout. A cloud of hot steam hovered over where the Atlantic Ocean used to be. Scarred bodies of fish and crustaceans gasped for the slightest drop of cool water. She had no idea that the High Fires were this bad. No wonder humans abandoned the continents. What choice did they have?

  Hani! Where is Hani!

  He should be here to help her. He had the boat. He could take her to a place where the ocean was still cold. He wasn’t here. The coward. He left her. That hyperactive mucus membrane of a sea cucumber. He knew what would happen when she reached the shore. And he left her there to burn all the same to save his own skin.

  Makrigga wouldn’t do that. He would have stayed to help her. But of course, he wasn’t there. He was on the Alpine. The sand tiger ripped his leg apart.

  Now all she had was Hani, and he left her.

  She wished she was back on the Alpine. She cried out, screaming until the flames engulfed her lips and her tongue, and then a gaping nothingness of silence. The only sound she heard was the crackle of the flames. Underneath the seething sequences of pain, she wondered why it had to be like this. The flames whisked away her shut eyelids. She felt the heat tear at her eyes just before they burst.

  Sage smacked her head against the side of her bed. She felt sick and sluggish. She blinked through the haze and looked around, straining to fight exhaustion and dehydration.

  Her pod was dark. Of course, every occupant’s pod was dark. There wasn’t even a glimmer of light from the crack below her pod’s door. She wondered if she could have her eyes permanently adjusted to the darkness, like the glowing deep sea fish that occasionally rose upwards and illuminated her window. It would be like a superpower.

  Stumbling out of bed, she took a few steps and collapsed. Sage curled up on the floor, reached towards the slab, grabbed the rough blanket, and threw it on top of herself.

  “This is miserable.” She passed out.

  An hour or so later, Sage mustered the energy to sit up and lean against the side of her bed. She listened to the periodic hiccups in electricity, the groans from the ventilation system, the hum that was replaced by the occasional echo of rain. She pulled back the guardrail covering the bioluminescent light strips. The familiar faint green glow softened everything in her pod. The constant drone from the air vents didn't help the throbbing in her head.

  Drrr. Drrr. Drrr.

  She tried to focus on the muffled conversations from neighboring pods, and the occasional howling of wind that penetrated the Alpine’s interior.

  She pressed her face to the thick glass porthole, looking into the blackness beyond, tried to peer upwards. Sometimes, on bright days, she could see a hint of light. The ocean permitted some sunlight to cut through the ocean and illuminate her pod only during the clearest and brightest of days. Either this was not one of those days, or it was well past sundown. It felt like the latter.

  Sage felt a sea lion’s grumble in her belly. She got up and gravitated to the food vending cafes. She always had a voracious appetite, and she was known through the Alpine for shaming grown men with her bottomless stomach, yet she remained slim.

  She left her pod to find something to eat.

  Those occupants fortunate enough to avoid the hazardous duties attendant to ice breaking attempted to grab some sleep. This problem was always present, but more so during storms, when the surface levels were inaccessible, the entire population was confined to the interior, and sea sickness permeated through the platform. The experience was different for each occupant.

  Sage occasionally gagged at the smell. Sometimes she held her breath before passing someone who was especially rank, but appearances were deceiving. The platform was originally provisioned for sleeping pads, but even this supply was based on a population that was a fraction of the Alpine’s real numbers.

  Sage ignored the vulgar comments from around her. She had no interest in keeping another mattress warm or keeping anyone company for a little food.

  She never said yes. Why did they keep asking? It was very annoying.

  Bioluminescent strips provided the primary source of lighting for the platform’s sub-surface levels. The yellow-green neon glow was derived from phosphorescent algae, plankton and other marine life. It was among the few plentiful resources on the platform. But the lighting could not disguise how dank the lower levels became over the years. The place suffered from the long agglomeration of body heat from hundreds of scattered and aimless people, in stark contrast to the crisp and frigid waters outside. The place was flush with grime and grease. A handful of philanthropic tenants shuffled around. They checked on the infirm as they passed through the platform’s vertical corridors. They checked to see if the people were still alive. They prepared boiled water for tea and for soup. They carried the sick to the medical bay. And they settled more than a handful of minor scuffles.

  Sage thought that they did this more to scrounge for scraps from the dead than to work through some need to help.

  Off to the side, nearly hidden by a random access-way, a small child was sitting on a sixty centimeter artillery shell from the days of heavy military industry. There was no telling what other paraphernalia people hid away from the world in the dark corners of the structure.

  Several Squatters smacked each other with stray pieces of iron over whose turn it was to sleep next to a warm air duct. Sage didn't think that any of the swings from either would cause much damage. It was amusing to watch. She pressed herself against the corridor wall as the Squatters smacked each other. In the scuffle, the air duct then passed to a little girl.

  A dead cat hung from its tail next to her. Its body was rigid.

  The girl scratched the cat’s hind legs. “Good cat,” she said. “Good cat.”

  That’s not just any cat, Sage thought. That’s a Norwegian forest cat, Felis catus. It was probably the last in the whole world.

  This really was just a meager outpost of an abandoned humanity. It was not the same as during calm periods where life had the air of a never ending voyage. This was a reality check, a reminder of how much their species suffered over the past century, and that there was
no one left to help if the situation worsened. The occupants could not escape this fearful drudgery soon enough. Some of the younger children whimpered, and the elderly barked at them in turn. They were told to clamp their mouths, or they would use their bones as firewood. The older children did not cry. They experienced similar storms before and were accustomed to the torments. Some were even accustomed to the smell.

  One pod with a door ripped off its steel hinges opened to a room of aged and rotted men and women sitting on a mish-mush of found objects. They were quietly entranced by nothing, cradling tiny cups of tea. The door was their table. Their noses were sniffly red from the cool air, skin worn and wrinkled, fingernails ripped from their fingertips. The banner of a colored flag traversed the pod’s ceiling, decorating the room with a snippet of life and pride. One elderly occupant finished sucking on an algae ration. He smiled to reveal pink-brown splotched gums. He held up his cup and gestured to the electric water heater positioned in the far corner. Someone refilled the cup. These malignant creepers were human once, but no longer. They long ago left the province of men, now nothing more than creatures of the deep, skulking in the dark.

  Sage slowly recognized Naamah, who looked as graceful as ever, wrapped in her thin shawls and engaged in some conversation. This was more inviting than when she saw her in the baths.

  Sage approached. The Tea Lady acknowledged her with a crabby sort of grunt.

  “Green tea, please?”

  The Tea Lady poured some boiling water into a small pot and scooped some dried leaves into a spoon infuser. “Sit,” she said. Then she shut the clamp and placed the infuser into the pot. The Tea Lady sunk back into her stool, raised her legs on a tough woven basket.

  Sage leaned against the wall and slid down to sit on her butt. She tried to listen in on what Naamah was saying to find a suitable point to slide into the conversation but she could barely understand what she was saying.

  It was the drone. It drowned out Naamah’s words.

  Drrr. Drrr. Drrr.

  The Tea Lady rose from her stool and poured the hot tea once the leaves were perfectly and delicately steeped.

  Sage let the seeping leaves and the tea’s aroma waft into her nostrils. “It smells good.”

  “What?”

  “I would like you to know that I appreciate how nice it is to drink your tea.”

  The Tea Lady made a passing glance at Naamah. She didn’t appear sure if the compliment was directed at her. Then the Tea Lady turned back to Sage.

  “Do you have anything better to do than bother old ladies and their tea? This young generation has no idea how lucky it is. No death. No escape. No worries. Who do you think you are?”

  “What? No.”

  She would have better luck trying to strike up a conversation with a southern foam-nest tree frog.

  Naamah spoke up. “Be careful what you say, young lady, before you ruin our gathering. I was in a good mood before you upset our dear proprietor.”

  “Sorry? I was just...”

  “I have a pot of boiling water with your face all over it,” the Tea Lady chimed.

  Sage was increasingly flustered by the spat of aggressive declarations.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “Then what do you think you did?” Naamah said.

  “The girl is rotten,” the Tea Lady confirmed. “I don’t like rotten girls. I can’t do anything with them.”

  The people behind Naamah and the Tea Lady, sitting deeper in the pod, watched the exchange with mild disinterest.

  “Now wait a second. Calm down. This girl isn’t rotten.” Naamah appeared to come to her senses. “She just hasn’t aged in the way we are accustomed. She didn’t know any better. And now you do, correct?” She turned to Sage.

  Sage nodded. There was the kind and thoughtful Naamah that she knew form her morning services, the Naamah that shared a pod with the Walrus. Considerate. Sharing. Ready to speak up on behalf of someone for no reason other than because she should. Not the endless stretch of dead coral that she saw at the baths earlier.

  “Good. Now come share a cup of tea with us.”

  “No tea!” the Tea Lady disagreed.

  “Don’t be so crude. Now come in, little girl. Sit down. Have a cup of hot tea.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BEATRICE PLANTAIN,

  THE “BRAIDED WOMAN”

  Beatrice sat in Sycamore's large wooden chair. The leather crinkled under her skin as her body sunk into the material. Sycamore would toss her into the Atlantic Ocean if he found her sitting in his chair. Of course, he was speaking to Buckminster below the main deck to address what they were going to do with Hani Katharda, so she had time to sit in the one comfortable chair on the Alpine. She enjoyed sneaking into Sycamore's office after dark. The temperature in her compartment sometimes dropped too much for her to sleep. She would wake up in the middle of the night shivering. Her thin coveralls never provided much warmth. Sycamore's office was one of the few isolated, quiet and warm places in the entire platform. The room was dark. She kept it dark when she was inside. The only thing she wanted to do was sitting and thinking. It wouldn't help anything if other people knew that she spent her time hiding out in the Administrator's office at night.

  She shut her eyes as she settled into the crinkling leather. After two days of dealing with angry mobs of people and a murder investigation that she wasn't equipped to solve, she finally had a chance to relax. She could think about what she learned so far, about the burden that Sycamore placed on her shoulders. Sycamore trusted her, but she couldn't help but think that someone else would be more capable than her to deal with all of this.

  Walter came to mind. He was by far the most capable person on the platform, even if he was old and useless.

  That thought made her smile. The useless man was also the most useful.

  Of course, Beatrice did not intend on stepping down to make room for someone that was past his prime. It didn't seem to keep Walter from trying to meddle. He must know that Sycamore assigned this to her. Walter had a reputation for disregarding ceremony and hierarchy. Maybe Walter didn't expect her to succeed.

  Why would Walter think he could find out who killed the twin when she couldn't?

  She hoped that Dr. Gossamer would uncover some mistake that would allow her to solve this problem. She had hoped that the twins' pod would yield some clue that would send her in the right direction, but the only thing she’d found were the bodies of some leeches. She still didn't know who on the platform would even keep leeches.

  And now Hani Katharda was going to take the fall for all of this because Buckminster blamed the explosion on him. She couldn't care less about Hani. Maybe he was the murdering swine after all. Her own security teams saw him during the riots in the lower corridors, only to disappear for some time. He may suffer from the exact sort of lazy and entitled failures that Sycamore despises. What troubled her was that if Sycamore was prepared to let Hani die for these twins, then that meant he didn't trust her to solve this problem on her own.

  That pissed her off.

  Hell, if Hani was going to take the fall for the twins anyway, then she would make sure that it was Hani that killed them in the first place. How hard could that be? Beatrice had no idea, but the idea was invigorating. She could come up with something. With enthusiasm, Beatrice swirled around in Sycamore's chair. She could pin the twins on Hani, ensure that Sycamore didn't feel like she couldn't do the job, and then continue the investigation after they executed him. That would give her an opportunity to find the real culprit. Maybe she could do it before anyone else disappeared.

  She had a few hours before Sycamore executed Hani. That gave her enough time to speak to Dr. Gossamer again, retrieve some of the leeches from the twins' pod, and then...what? Two days of running around in circles and she couldn't put together enough of a case to even frame the fall guy. Some brilliant idea. She might as well give up and let Buckminster have his man.

  With resignation, she sl
ammed her fist. The impact shook the handful of items on Sycamore's desk. Two bookends shaped like frogs shifted slightly. A computer monitor shook off years of dust. She didn't understand why Sycamore kept the monitor on his desk anyway. He never used the thing. It was very unlikely that the contraption even worked after all this time. If there was any chance of making some use of it, he should give it to the Mousy Girl. At least she had a chance of restoring the electronics. Beatrice lifted her hand and a few pieces of paper stuck to the side of her palm.

  Leaning in, she took a closer look at the papers as she peeled them from her hand. She expected to see some of the Mouse's ledgers of the algae rations. But that would have been in columns. These weren't columns. This paper had paragraphs. She placed the papers back into an organized stack. Now Sycamore would know that someone was in his office. Come to think of it, the Mouse didn't use paper. She used an electronic slab to track this information. They didn't do anything on paper anymore. There simply wasn't any paper left. As far as she knew, the platform used the last ream of paper over twenty years ago. Sycamore wasn't even the Administrator back then. Walter Turpentine was.

  So why did Sycamore Johnston pull up a document from when his predecessor was the Administrator? And he had held meetings in this office all day long. Why would he leave this out in the open? She took her role as Sycamore's security head very seriously. If she didn't have enough sense to read on, then the job wouldn't be worth the algae she got as compensation. Beatrice's entire experience turned on bare survival. Forget the past. It doesn't pave the way for the future. The past led to all of the problems she faced in her future. For all she knew, Sycamore shared this belief. So why this paper?

  Whatever the reason, it was worth a little more light. She stepped towards the walls with the document and pulled off a thin cover to reveal the bioluminescent strips underneath. The pale green glow added an ethereal sheen to the room. Maybe, at long last, she would get some insight into the secret history of the Alpine. It was ironic that the whole history wouldn't amount to more than a few words on a couple flimsy sheets of paper. They were yellowed and thin. Even the text was largely faded. The paper smelled moldy, as though Sycamore kept the documents in a wet container.