by Phoenix Hays
“Hey, cool,” Joe said, pointing at the monitor in front of Lilly.
Panels all around the three rings encircling the massive ship opened and released material that unfolded into curved sails.
Gradually, Joe could feel a pull at his feet.
“Is that gravity?” Ayrin asked.
Patrick’s necklace fell back against his chest.
Feet all across the cabin clunked to the floor of the shuttle. One final push backward in their seats let the passengers know that Sanctuary’s ion drive was pushing the craft away from Earth.
Captain Thatcher walked back into the cabin.
“Sanctuary is now headed away from the collision between the Oppenheimer String and Earth. After Mars is ready, we’ll head back toward the red planet and begin the process of setting up our colony. For now, feel free to go ahead and unbuckle. You’ll find the living quarters of the ship are through the access hatch you used to board the shuttle. May our journey be successful on our long way to our new home.”
Cheers erupted from the people inside the cabin.
Joe turned to Patrick.
“What’s going to happen to the people still on Earth?”
Patrick looked at the boy with a somber look.
“I’m sorry, Joe.”
Joe stifled another sob, put his face in his hands, and leaned forward in his seat. Tears streamed down his face. All he wanted was to be with his mom and dad again. He tried to remember a time when he was happy. When it was a good day.
Lilly patted Joe’s shoulder as he closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 84
Ayrin blinked and was back on the shore of the lake in southwest Ohio. Joe was sitting in front of her, watching his bobber. The wind picked up and rustled the branches above them. Song birds sang their tunes as waves rolled across the surface of the lake.
Joe stood there in his blue Tyrannosaurus T-shirt and green camouflage shorts. He looked over and smiled at Victor who was sitting further down the bank.
Ayrin smiled when she saw the bobber sink below the water. A huge smile covered Joe’s face as he grabbed the fishing pole and began reeling the bass in.
She looked up. “End Glimmer sequence, Scholar.”
The scene froze in place and slowly the clarity of the trees faded. The sky turned from light blue to white. The water disappeared along with everything else leaving the boy standing there, fishing pole in hand.
“Goodbye, Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Joe,” she said.
Joe’s image faded away.
Ayrin waited a moment to let the white light surrounding her fade back to the familiar walls of green and silver metal. The table Ayrin had been leaning against rotated forward, allowing her to step off of it. She removed the glimmer headset from her temples and placed it on its hook attached to the table as a panel in front of her slid open, and a gray-haired man wearing a blue hooded silk cloak strode through the opening. His brown eyes gleamed brightly and he wore a grandfatherly smile on his face.
“So, Ayrin. How was the experiment?”
“That was amazing, Scholar Laine,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”
Scholar Brifol Laine smiled. “I’m not surprised. The Glimmer suit you’ve been wearing stimulates your muscles as you experience the Glimmer. You’ll want to rest up.”
“I wish I could. I’m due for my shift soon. But I’m confused. I thought Glimmers only showed one person’s experiences. How was I able to see both Great-Grandpa Joe and Patrick Weaver’s memories?”
“You, young Ayrin, are the first to experience a Glimmer from two people at the same time.”
A tear formed in the corner of Ayrin’s eye. “How did you do that?”
“It took a lot of work,” Brifol said. “You’re familiar with the process we call ‘logging out’?”
“I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I’ve heard of it,” she said.
“We can digitize and download a person’s memories if we have access to the brain before the neurons completely decay. Recently, the process has successfully been applied to the DNA of the deceased. Although we can’t pull a complete log out, we have found that many of the most potent memories are imprinted on our DNA. These are the ones we can log from the individual.”
“That’s unreal!”
“Oh, it’s very real, and that’s how you were able to witness the final moments of mankind’s time on Earth. It’s one thing to download and organize someone’s genetic memories, but combining two sets of memories is tougher than pulling out a Rudgin’s tooth.”
Brifol lifted his right arm. Across it were a series of bright blue lines, shapes, and dots. His left hand swept across them in a deliberate manner.
Ayrin shielded her eyes from the lights coming on in the room and stepped out of the immersion suit she was wearing. She handed it to Brifol.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It was my pleasure,” Brifol said, folding up the suit. “It’s only fitting that someone from the Bay Clan be the first.”
Ayrin hugged Brifol. He returned her hug and then took her shoulders in his hands and stepped back. Brifol leaned forward, eyes narrowed and brows lowered. He spoke in almost a whisper.
“Now, you know that viewing Glimmers from the original settlers is illegal, right?”
Ayrin’s smile melted away, and she nodded.
“You must not tell anyone about this. There’s more that I need to decode so that you can view more of their lives, but if the Construct finds out about this, viewing a Glimmer will be the least of our concerns.”
“I won’t say a word, but I don’t understand—”
An alarm sounded, and Ayrin stepped back. The thin silver lines running from her fingertips down her palm and ending in the dark bracelet around her wrist pulsed with light as she activated her Holo-COM by quickly tapping her fingers against her thumb. She held her palm up as a blue hologram filled with writing hovered above her hand.
“Aw, rust. I’m late for my shift.”
“Go on,” Brifol said. “I’ll finish shutting the Glimmer sequence down.”
Ayrin turned and jogged out of the doorway.
White electricity crawled up the tall walls rising up on either side of Ayrin. She headed down the long entry hall of Glimmer Station. Before reaching the over-sized entry door, Ayrin turned back to look at the massive expanse.
It’s amazing that all of human history spanning the time between the Ascent to Sanctuary project and now resides in this library.
Ayrin stopped at the counter on the left side of Glimmer Station’s lobby and typed her name into the console facing her. A moment later, the door behind the counter opened and a robotic arm placed a gray container in front of her. She took her helmet and turbo rifle from the container. She turned and quickly bowed to the guard standing beside the door and opened it. Lifting her helmet onto her head, she covered her face with her dust scarf by snapping it into place on her helmet and stepped outside. Even though the front of Glimmer Station was shaded by the upper levels, the midday heat was inescapable. Sliding her turbo rifle around from her back, Ayrin checked it over. The stock extended at the push of a button and the ammo indicator glowed green with a full magazine. A large blade sat just below the barrel of the weapon. She cradled the rifle with her left hand and tapped her right hand’s fingers and thumb together to activate her Holo-COM and a black visor slid down in front of her eyes. She stepped out in the bright light of the Sun.
Ayrin jogged down the steps and reached the landing at the base of Glimmer Station. She looked out over the lower end of Dros Plemnia – the city built into the side of Mars’ largest mountain, Olympus Mons. Glimmer Station was positioned near the midpoint of the city, where the marketplace started and extended down the side of the mountain. A gust of wind blew a cloud of dust through the marketplace. Booths of all shapes and sizes filled the market while their merchants bartered with shoppers and each other. Most of the men were wearing colorful robes made out of blue, green, brown, or burgundy materi
al. They wore scarves around their heads to protect themselves from the Sun’s rays. The women in the market wore similar robes and scarves consisting of reds, purples, yellows, and tans. A large man in the nearest booth chortled with laughter and patted the smaller man next to him on the back. A mixture of smells ranging from spices to animal excrement wafted through the air. A pair of drones that reminded Ayrin of Adam carried packages as they flew down the street.
Beyond the marketplace and further down the side of the mountain, the slums ringed the edges of the city just inside the containment wall that had been built to protect the Dros Plemnians. Several plumes of smoke rose from the factories located in the slums.
Looking in the other direction, single family residences and multi-unit buildings rose up along the slope of the mountain. Above them, the towering buildings owned by corporations loomed in the distance. Red dust blew through towering structures that rose above the market as a brief gust of wind came down the mountain. Even further up the slope, flying vehicles traveled along orderly paths in the sky on their way to and from the Construct government’s buildings that loomed over the city.
She climbed onto her single-seat guzzler bike and turned and turned to look back at Glimmer Station. The large pillars in front of the building stood in silent witness to the city below them.
I can’t wait to come back here to see the rest of that Glimmer.
Another beep sounded, and she clicked two fingers together. Above her open palm, the holographic image of a man appeared.
He sneered at the site of her. “Ayrin! You’re five revs late for your shift.”
“I know, sir. I’m on my way.”
“Not good enough,” the man said. “When I schedule people for Rudgin watch, I expect them to be on station. Get there. Now.”
The hologram flickered off, and Ayrin sighed as she tapped at the control panel between her handle bars. Rumbling to life, the engine shuddered beneath the bulbous purple cowl at the front of the bike. She throttled up the guzzler and the large fan below the engine spun up to lift the vehicle off the ground. It coughed black smoke from its exhaust pipes that extended out on either side of the fan’s rounded cover. Ayrin accelerated the bike and tore off through the market, disappearing into the crowd.
About the Author
Phoenix Hays lives in southwest Ohio with his wife and three kids. He has two Great Danes and his wife has three cats.
To connect with Phoenix and find out about upcoming book releases, please
Read more at Phoenix Hays’s site.