The Platform

by J Noah Summerfield

  The first paragraphs weren't the exciting truths that she hoped. It was an early report about how the algae stopped growing in the fields. Apparently the same chemicals that set the continents on fire restricted ordinary algae growth. This forced the people on the platform to use more and more of their stores. It was just like the situation that they faced now. The document also contained detailed instructions for how they developed some basic agriculture out of the western sea-mount in case the fields were ever destroyed. Sycamore probably pulled up the document to see how Walter dealt with the same situation. She skimmed over the paragraphs, found information on the rate of consumption, failed attempts to replenish supplies, confirmation that the regional fish stocks had not replenished from pre-migration numbers.

  Sycamore's frustration made much more sense. Twenty years ago, the algae fields were barely able to keep the platform afloat. But there wasn't any solution. The people on the platform must have starved. Initially, the document read as though most of the people died because the resources were spread too thin. Eventually, those that did survive were able to live off the limited supplies. But that wasn't it. The people were starving. Over a period of weeks, the population on the Alpine dropped, but without any mention of how or why. Did they starve to death? The possibility was certainly implied. She also wondered if they abandoned the Alpine altogether. Maybe they simply boarded some boats and just left. She could imagine that five or ten people on a boat can fish enough for themselves to survive on the open ocean. Four hundred people with only a handful of boats couldn't. Was there anything in this that Sycamore could have possibly learned?

  This was interesting, but it didn't exactly tell the unknown history of the Alpine. She turned to the final page. The words were not at all what she expected.

  “It is with regret that I am alive to report how the few of us survived. Sycamore Johnston, Captain of the Roughnecks, took the initiative. He assured us that he could keep us alive. I believed him, and I believe in him. I trust him completely. In deferring to his guidance, it remains my responsibility to accurately report what happened here so that someday future generations can learn about the legacy left by their forefathers.”

  Beatrice gradually understood what she was really reading. It wasn't the bare iteration of events. It read like a confession. However, it wasn't Sycamore writing. He lived through this. But he wasn't the one writing. She brought the papers closer to the dim bioluminescent lighting.

  “We are desperate. I am desperate. Not since our ancestors abandoned the continents to the chemical fires has our group been so lost. I also know that I may not survive what is happening here. I am compelled to leave this record in case I do not survive. This record will allow those who follow to learn from our mistakes.”

  Whoever was writing this sure had a hand for the melodramatic. Beatrice sighed. Fine. She was a future generation, born in the year after someone wrote this document. This wasn’t meant for her enjoyment, which was ironic since she spent so much of her time thinking that no good came from the past. The past brought untold death to the human population. It was also a frustrating reminder that her life should have been defined by poverty and suffering. She would never have the control over her life that she enjoyed now.

  “We often recite the joys that we have now, the small victories. We abandoned the continents and escaped with our lives. I know this. It makes every moment something that I cherish. Every smile, tear, joke and scream that I share with my wife makes the struggle worthwhile. I never doubt this, and I know that she doesn't. If only joy was enough.

  Sycamore and I are at odds. We know that we must keep what happened here a secret, but the world we face is not likely to improve any time soon. I don't expect the situation to improve within my lifetime. The platform may face a severe food shortage again. It may happen in the near future, when those that live through it can recall what happened. But it may happen again decades from now when few will remember what we did. I hope the very person that reads this document will preserve it. It is a small thing that I can do to preserve what is left of the gift that I cherish.”

  Her attention didn't waiver as she reached the end of the document. Maybe this document was meant for her.

  “Sycamore took some of the older people, some of the weaker people, those that couldn't work the rig or weren't strong enough to swim the algae fields. It had to be those that weren't strong enough. We would need the strong ones if we got through this. We chose who should die. Sycamore took the responsibility on his shoulders to kill them as painlessly as possible. Initially, the choices were easy—the dead and dying. But over time, we had to make harder choices. Some of the people that we chose were healthy. Sycamore pressed on. He pushed for one woman. She was a cook. The woman lost herself to despair. There was one fisherman who opposed the choice because she had a daughter, an infant, a newborn. The woman couldn't cope with what she had done, but the infant would need a mother. But he was new to the community, so we ignored him. Sycamore argued that someone needed to go, or else no one would survive to raise the child. He won the debate with the support of a few others. So he killed her, and we ate her.

  It pains me to write these words. Mankind has suffered so much over the past century. The pain, however, is something that we inflicted on ourselves. We must also remember how fragile our humanity truly is. Apparently, it doesn't take much for us to forsake everything that we hold dear for the possibility of just one more precious day on this planet. It is ironic then that we sacrifice so much to be on a planet that our ancestors scarred with abandon.”

  Beatrice's grip on the papers tightened. She held her breath as she finished the document. Cannibals. They were cannibals. That's how they survived. They didn't grow more food, they didn't replenish supplies from other platforms and they didn't find more fish. They didn't do any of these things because they weren't options.

  She didn't know what to do. This document didn't provide any solutions, at least none that Beatrice could accept. She wasn't going to start eating the other people on the platform just to make the next few weeks a little easier.

  Then it hit her. Sycamore didn't read this document to find a solution to the food shortage. He read it because he suspected that someone on the platform was already slaughtering humans for food. As the paper said, the experience was kept secret among those that survived. So, he suspected that whoever was killing people now must have lived through the experience before. The question was, who? Her eyes glanced over the last few sentences.

  An infant's mother died. They ate her. Sycamore killed her. Then they ate her. How could she look him in the eye after she read this?

  Beatrice gagged. She tried to suppress the reaction, but only doubled over. She threw the sheets at Sycamore's desk, as though creating a little distance between her and the document would change what she read. The papers scattered. Most of them fell to the floor in disarray. She pressed her back against the wall, smudging the bioluminescent material against the back of her coveralls.

  Someone on the platform was killing children to eat them. Cannibals.

  That possibility changed everything for her, for the people that lived on the platform. She imagined that it could only be worse for those that survived the culling from two decades prior. The document didn't provide a list of who those people might be. The only person that seemed committed enough to the whole enterprise to warrant a mention by name was Sycamore Johnston himself. In one or two generations, that name would be meaningless to anyone that read this. Right then, he was the one with power. And he got it by killing anyone around him that he considered too weak to save.

  She bent over to pick up the papers that fell to the floor. She haphazardly put the sheets into a neat pile. Meanwhile, she tried to identify which sheet had the last page. It wasn't difficult to find. She looked at it again. There was a reference to a “fisherman.” There must have been hundreds of fishermen that lived on the platform over the years. That didn't help.

  He killed her,
and we ate her.

  She couldn't get past it. They ate them. Who? Who was on the platform when this was happening?

  She looked closer at the paper. There was a signature line. The signature itself was faded beyond recognition. But it was there. Below the signature were two faded words, like the signature line to a letter.

  Walter Turpentine

  It says Walter's name. Walter was there. Of course he was there. He was the Administrator when this happened. That's why he is running his own investigation. That's why he refused to step aside once he discovered how much of the food supplies were destroyed. He has the same suspicions as Sycamore.

  The document remained in her hands as she worked through these possibilities. Walter. Sycamore. Sage. Sage was her age. But the new mother could have been hers. Feret. So many. Even so, all of them were connected. And Walter's wife. He refers to his wife, not by name, but it has to be Naamah. She participated. All of them must know who else lived through that. All of them must have their suspicions. It explains everything that Sycamore did over the past two days.

  And Hani. He worked the fishing boats here for as long as she knew him, and the derrick was never a regular part of his work detail. Hani must have been the fisherman. If Sycamore is behind the disappearances, then he must be after Hani because Hani would naturally oppose everything that Sycamore was doing.

  If that is true, then her people were going to execute an innocent man.

  The office door opened as these thoughts percolated in Beatrice's mind. Soft light illuminated the floors and the far wall. She saw someone's silhouette in the doorway. The person was back-lit, so Beatrice couldn't make out any of the features, but the identity was unmistakable. She had seen the silhouette of this man many times before. He was tall. His shoulders were broad, and his clothes had a clean trim. A thick cane with characteristic nubs casually rested under his left hand. It was Sycamore Johnston.

  Beatrice remained where she stood. Her heart raced as she waited for him to make some move. But he just stood there, in the doorway, absolutely still. Maybe he didn't know she was there. He probably felt that something was off, but wasn't sure what exactly. So Beatrice didn't move. She didn't dare, now that she earmarked him as a murderer and a cannibal. There wasn't a more invasive act that she could do beyond breaking into Sycamore's office. Her hands remained perfectly still for fear that the papers might crinkle. But what was going to happen? Was she going to stand there and hope that Sycamore just walked away? Did he already know that she was there and he was waiting for her to make the first move? Maybe he realized that she was reading the report about the famine from twenty years earlier, and he expected her to retaliate violently. She just didn't know. Until she did know what Sycamore planned on doing, she could at least remain still, absolutely still, while she looked at the silhouette of a man that killed and ate his companions. A few beads of sweat formed on her forehead. The monotonous drone from the air vents grated on her ears.

  Sycamore Johnston didn’t look too pleased to find Beatrice fiddling with his papers. But then, he didn't make any immediate moves to lash out at her. Maybe he wasn't surprised that she took the initiative. Maybe he wanted to find out how much she had learned, if anything at all.

  “Good evening, Beatrice,” he said.

  There wasn't anything between them, just the artifice of a doorway. Sycamore took a few measured steps into the chambers. The move took Beatrice off guard, as though she should somehow respond to the subtle change. If the Administrator attacked, then Beatrice would leap for his desk to create space between them. She wouldn't dare confront him head on. He was much too large and experienced for her to make any real dent in a fist fight. She could outmaneuver some of the larger Roughnecks, but not someone like Sycamore Johnston, who spent his life subduing raving lunatics. No. Her best bet was to dodge and outrun. Maybe there was something on the desk that she could use as a weapon, though it was unlikely that anything had the reach of Sycamore's cane.

  She shifted her weight to her right leg.

  “Is there anything that you would like to speak to me about?” Sycamore asked.

  He was inviting her to volunteer what she had just found out. If she even dared to bring up the subject of the platform's past, she had to be careful. She could easily put Sycamore on the defensive, and that wouldn't end well for her. She had to remember that, as far as he was concerned, she was still his to command.

  She had to remember that this was her history as well.

  The uncertainty sent her head swimming for a brief spell. Her path, her loyalties, had been so straightforward until just five minutes earlier. Sycamore Johnston was the man in charge, the man who determined whether your life on the platform was wasted or useful. But what did he do to get there?

  On the other side, Hani was a victim of circumstance, a man who she mercilessly persecuted. There was the Walrus, a fat old man who was a victim of his own moral center. And two twin boys were gone, one dead, one missing and presumed dead. The only indication that Sycamore even cared was that he sent her after them.

  It was as though she was his alibi.

  He smiled at her. It was genuine, disarming. There was no malice or misdirection in his face. His head was slightly cocked, his forehead wrinkled in a way that patiently waited for some response.

  After another moment of bewilderment from Beatrice, he picked up his cane and tapped the floor. He put the cane in front of him to rest both hands on the top.

  “You know what happened here twenty years ago,” Sycamore confirmed. The statement rolled off his tongue naturally, as though it wasn't loaded with consequences.

  “I do,” she said.

  “That is quite a relief.” He tightened his grip around the top of his cane. “At least to me. Does it trouble you? Does the history of this place make you uncomfortable?”

  It did make her uncomfortable. She thought she knew this place, the people in it, how it operated. She realized how limited that knowledge really was, how it focused on the day to day life on the platform. She didn't know anything about the layers of history that came with the place. God. She was only beginning to discover those layers. The calculating intelligence behind Sycamore's eyes was like a high unassailable wall for her to climb. Until she made the assent, she couldn't be sure who she was talking to anymore.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  Fine. He was giving her an opportunity to clear the air. No judgments. No penalties.

  “Hani is just a scapegoat?” History was done and done. What she needed to know was how it affected the here and now. “Because he opposed you?”

  “Opposed me? When did Hani oppose me?” Sycamore seemed genuinely confused.

  Beatrice wasn't sure how blunt she could be in her reply. “Twenty years ago.”

  “What about it?”

  “He opposed you twenty years ago, when you turned on each other to survive. He was determined to find alternatives. He said that there were limits.”

  “What limits?”

  Did he forget entirely? Maybe. It was twenty years ago. The finer details may be lost in Sycamore's mind. What if that wasn't the only time that the platform turned on its own people? She knew that they were prepared to do unspeakable things to survive. She didn't know if it happened only once. She considered the possibility. As far as the present, the only thing she knew was that Sycamore was lashing out at Hani for some shared past. How far back did that go?

  “The time with the mother. She was sick, but Hani thought she should be spared because of the child,” Beatrice said. She was confusing herself, trying to explain what happened. A mix of horror over what happened and doubt over what she thought she read muddled the order of thoughts in her head. Maybe she was missing something. Maybe there was some crucial fact that she overlooked.

  “What? No, my dear. You have it backwards. Hani was the worst. He was completely mad, convinced that the blood of a new mother would make for better chum. He was killing people and using the victims as bait
before we even knew what was happening. But we were starving. I always attributed it to willful ignorance. The Walrus said that we were too weak to notice. Once we realized what he was doing, he had already kept the rest of us alive for two months after the point where our surplus ran dry. We didn't like it, but some people were simply grateful that it wasn't them. Since everyone benefited, we agreed not to punish the one man who was willing to do something for the rest of us.”

  What? That's not what she read. The document that she was holding didn't contain the entire history. For that, she would need to get more than the Walrus's perspective on things.

  The blood seemed to empty from her arms.

  She could hear the crumpling paper in her hand. Each crinkle betrayed some understanding of the people that surrounded her, which proved to be utterly wrong.

  “With enough blood, Hani could attract top predators to our waters. That's when he learned how to make chum. The fisheries emptied. The algae fields died. We had nothing. Hani came up with the solution. Because of him, we could avoid eating each other. So that was something. But in between those catches, we had to make some choices. Only at first, we didn't know it.”

  “But Hani did.”

  Sycamore frowned. “Initially, Hani was the one that made those choices for us.”

  Hani murdered his own people so he could make chum? But she read that a Fisherman opposed the killings. Instead, the Chum Man was involved from the very beginning? Her head swirled as she put the pieces together.