Solar Flare, page 12
“I do,” she answered as she settled inside the shuttle. “You wanted me to come talk you out of it. Not to change your mind about your vote, of course, but to tell you to at least wait the decade or two that will prove the vote correct.”
“What if that’s too late?” Tai challenged.
The shuttle began to accelerate as Sara answered, though much more mildly than the rocket. “You’ve read the protocols. If we negatively impact even one tenth of a percent of species, we’ll leave.”
“Permanently?”
Sara rolled her eyes. Really, sometimes arguing with Tai was what she imagined it might be like arguing with a child. “That will be for future generations to decide. Maybe by then we’ll have discovered a way to live in the orbitals without dying of ennui. Or artificial gravity. You know as well as I do, the physicists believe that once we solve the question of the weak force, our problems will all be over.”
“That’s what they thought about nanotech, too, and look where that got us.”
Sara took a deep breath. Perhaps when they were in the same room together, Tai would be less obstinate. “As I said, we will make more mistakes. And Gaia and time together will overcome them. But what about you, Tai? Are you really willing to destroy humanity in order to save the rest of the planet?”
“We’re not destroying humanity.” Tai’s voice soured peevishly. “We’re removing humanity’s infection from the planet. What happens after that is entirely up to us.”
“It’s the same thing,” Sara insisted. “The evidence of the last thousand years leaves no doubt about what will happen if we don’t return. Humans can’t live like this—even fifteen hundred kilometers from the surface is too far away. Who wants to raise children in a tin can? We need grass, and sunshine, and waves, and rain. A few birds and bugs would be nice, too. Much as I love Jupiter, he’s not enough. Nothing up here is. In a couple of hundred years, we’ll wither away completely.
“Unless we get another chance.”
The shuttle slowed to a stop at the nexus outside Central Control. Exiting the vehicle, Sara took a deep breath and propelled herself the final few meters to the entrance. Now was not the time for self-doubt. Whether Tai was bluffing or not, she had to talk him down.
Inside, she found him strapped into a chair at the top of the circular chamber about ten meters above her. Behind him, a timer in the middle of a hundred other screens showed a clock ticking down in black numbers against a bright red background: 13:24.06…05…04.
Wondering if all this theatricality was more for Tai’s benefit than anyone else’s, Sara let herself fall slowly toward a chair on the deck across from him. “If it were octopuses threatening to destroy the planet,” she asked, “would you destroy them, too?”
“Octopuses aren’t threatening to destroy the planet.”
“Are you sure? According to the cognitists, they’re the closest species to breaking through. And really, what’s so different about octopuses and humans anyway? Gaia created us both. Harming either is the same as harming Gaia.”
He didn’t reply. Deciding they were still too far apart, Sara pushed herself up across the room. As she passed the center, she couldn’t help but reach down to him and smile. Just like seeing the Earth and stars, it was much more powerful to see someone face to face. Especially your partner. Screens were not the same. Digital wasn’t analog. Tai’s face was more textured. Less brutally clear, but more nuanced. More human. With a screen she would have seen every pore in his face separately, every strand of hair. Without a screen, she saw the whole of him rather than the parts, the same way she’d seen the universe half an hour before.
She realized he wanted her to persuade him, whether he was bluffing or not.
“Do you really think we’re that different from octopuses?” she asked softly. “What will Gaia think if she never sees us again? They say there’s no harder death than the death of a child. Aren’t we one of Gaia’s many children as much as any octopus?”
Again, he didn’t answer. Settling gently in the chair beside him, she took his hand gently in hers.
“I know you, Tai,” she soothed. “Just as you know me. I know how much we both love Gaia. If you really wanted to hurt her, you’d have already done so. But you haven’t, and I don’t think you ever will. Do you really think she doesn’t want to give us a second chance?”
Tai dropped his head in resignation. “I knew you’d never believe me,” he confessed. “But I still had to try. Returning is too dangerous. There has to be another way.”
“If there is,” she said, “we’ll find it. In the meantime, healing ourselves is as important as healing Gaia, right?”
He sighed. “I suppose.”
Lightly cupping his chin with her hand, she lifted his face. Their eyes met. The brown in his reminded her of the rich dark earth in 4’s gardens. Even after fifty years there was so much left to explore.
Together.
She smiled. “Did you even use real explosives?” she asked.
He blushed. They knew each other so well. “I did, but I don’t think they’ll work. It’s not like any of the orbitals have much information on bomb making. There’s not a lot of manure lying around up here either.”
“Oh, Tai,” she said, squeezing his hand once more. “Let’s forget this foolishness and go home.”
With a long, soft sigh, he reached up to the blinking screen behind his head and touched the display. The countdown stopped.
Humanity would return.
REFRACTION
by Devan Barlow
“You look worried.”
I started at the voice behind me, but smiled once I realized it was Jan.
"From behind, I look worried?"
She rolled her eyes. "Your shoulders do a thing."
“Very scientific.” Jan was a solar engineer, specializing in Gleam glass.
“Hush.” She draped her chin on my shoulder and I tilted my head. Her familiar scent mixed with the scents of the plants on the roof, making me feel safe. While the building’s many balconies held the bulk of our edible plants, the roof garden brimmed with succulents and asters, the bright purple flowers welcoming beacons to the butterflies that had finally returned the year before.
“The storm woke me,” I said. “I was worried about the plants.” The thunderstorm the night before had ripped me out of a dream, to the sight of lightning drawing temporary patterns on the sky. I’d tried to go back to sleep, telling myself the rain was good for my plants, but had still come out here earlier than I usually did.
“They’re always tougher than you expect,” Jan said, not unkindly, and she was right. Aside from some wind-scattered petals and soil, my survey so far had revealed no serious damage.
The sun was rising, and the purple-red light inflamed the building’s solar panels. As usual, I’d paused my work to watch the sunrise, and I liked to imagine the plants watching with me. My hands and fingers were limned with soil and it made me proud, being connected to the plants and the sky and the life of our Collective. Jan made a small, contented noise as we watched the sky lighten.
Then I tensed, jolting Jan from her perch. She started speaking but I squeezed her hand, tilting my head to get her to look. “The storm,” she murmured.
As the sun rose, a strange pattern was revealed on the nearby structure of another Collective. Large, scattered dark spots, as though pieces of it had caved inward.
They used the old style of solar panels, the type we’d used before we had Gleam glass, designed to go dark if they experienced a power failure. Fixing them could take weeks. They wouldn’t have weeks.
“It must have started an electrical fire. There’s no way they’re getting enough power.” I pulled back from the railing and Jan lifted her hands from my shoulders.
“You need to tell the other Speakers. We have to help them!”
“Lia—” she started in warning, looking back out over the balcony.
A familiar sound echoed from Jan’s waist and she tapped the terminal secured to her belt with solar-threads capable of storing power for up to twenty hours. All the Speakers had them to monitor the systems. Her brow furrowed into a map I recognized better than I wanted to as she read the message.
“There’s a Speaking called. I’ve got to go.” She hesitated, and I could almost hear her mind working. “Don’t—”
“I understand.” I’d long ago resigned myself to the role the Collective took in Jan’s thoughts, at the very least neck-and-neck with myself. I picked up my shears, and made a show of culling a weed. This may have been the least “useful” of the Collective’s gardens, but taking care of beautiful things was its own kind of important, even if this wasn’t what I felt like I should be doing right now, given what we’d just seen. “Go, take care of whatever’s falling apart today. I’ll see you later.” I smiled, but she knew me too well to miss my evasion.
In the end, though, duty won and she left. Her footsteps on the stairs were out of time with the soft snipping of my shears.
* * *
The Speaking room was on the fourteenth floor, both physically and metaphorically the center of the Collective. Doors on each of the eight sides opened onto balconies rife with plants, most of them currently being tended. Every child learned at least the basics of gardening once they reached the age of four, so all could help to feed and heal the community. It had been a long time since any parent had requested their child be assigned to me, wanting them to learn more "sensible skills." I neither blamed them nor minded the quiet.
Above the top of the doorframes was this level's ring of stained-glass windows. On this floor they were an oceanic pattern, dolphins and fish acting as carriers for the light. These designs were what helped us to survive. The tinted “glass” was actually a composite of glass and nearly invisible wiring that held the energy it absorbed, allowing us to power our systems even at night, albeit at a lower level of use. More importantly, it meant a stormy or foggy day didn't undo us the way it used to, before my father unlocked the secret of what he named Gleam glass.
Seth cleared his throat, urging the Speaking to order as he and Tamara took the center of the room. The chamber was designed so the octagonal space in the center was slightly lowered from the circular seating, giving the impression the Speakers were always at a disadvantage. I took a seat three rows from the floor, on an aisle, my thoughts boiling with indecision.
Tamara, though, stood on the floor like it was exactly where she'd always intended to be. Her dark eyes scanned the crowd and she looked pleased with the large turnout. The Speakers rotated in pairs through leading these gatherings, though everyone was aware that particular combinations garnered greater attendance.
Speakers gave voice to the various departments they headed, as well as administering the Collective as a whole. They met in a private weekly council, but it was rare for Collective-wide Speakings to be called more than twice a month for general updates, and we’d already had a more regular Speaking five days before.
Jan was across the room, in conversation with another Speaker, but she glanced up and saw me. Her mouth pursed in a blown kiss before she turned back to her colleague.
"We stand here together," Tamara and Seth exchanged a nod and then spoke the ceremonial words in tandem, tracking each other in their peripheral to keep the rhythm of the invocation everyone in the Collective knew by heart, "in light of the ones who came before us.”
Heads nodded in the crowd, eyes closed in silent agreement.
If I do this, everyone will hear me. I saw my father as if he hadn’t been dead for thirty years, scolding me to take more initiative, do something useful with my life, really, for his daughter to be such a useless—
I stood up. Seth’s eyebrows lifted in surprise but he nodded to me, giving me permission to Speak.
"The collective to the west of us has lost much of their solar panel functionality." My voice felt too loud in my chest, as if my lungs didn't know how to deal with so much volume. "I motion that we offer them aid." The air in the room stiffened and I felt every eye in the room land on me, like insects swarming a healthy plant.
Stop now and this’ll die down after a bit of teasing. My connection to Jan meant even that wouldn’t last very long. Just that silly gardener, the one who loves flowers. Pity she didn’t turn out more like her father.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever raise a motion in a Speaking before, and I was already wondering if I shouldn’t have raised this one. But the holes in that building, like bites taken out by hungry jaws…
"I propose we bring samples of Gleam glass with us, so we may instruct them as to its use and help prevent another incident like this storm from laying their systems low."
"What've they ever done for us?" a voice called out from somewhere in the crowd.
"Hush!" Tamara’s eyes darted through the crowd to skewer whoever had dared speak out of turn. She turned her gaze to me and I felt myself shrink, though I was almost half a meter taller than her. "What is your reasoning for this request?"
I wanted so badly to look at Jan, but I couldn't. If I let myself divert from this path, I'd never find my way back.
"The ones who came before us made sure we were safe," I said, forcing my father's disapproval out of my mind, "but they did it at the expense of denying their help to others." I remembered seeing people through the windows, those who arrived too late to join the Collective.
"Why can't they come in?" I had asked my father, confused by this harsh act coming from the people I'd been told would save us. "There's plenty of space." To me, any space was plenty of space, after the early years living in that closet by the university, all my father could afford after spending everything on his research. Even to have windows letting in the endless light was freeing.
I didn’t know, then, how little exploration would come.
"We're full," was all my father said, all anyone would ever say when I asked why no one else could join us. "They'll have to find someplace else." His words were as clear in my mind as though he still stood at my shoulder.
And I grew up, the building got higher and higher and more balconies were filled with plants and more parties went out to trade and my father's Gleam glass saved us even more than we knew we could be saved. New Collectives sprouted, new growth in my wide, trapped view of the world.
I thought of that, as I refused to let myself think of all the people staring at me, and I said, "I think we can do better."
"We survived, and survive, because of our strength," Tamara replied, her voice taking on a note I didn't understand.
"It's got nothing to do with strength!" I exclaimed before I had the wherewithal to stop myself. "It's about helping people who need it! Isn't that what the Collective is supposed to be about? Caring for the community?"
"There are limits to Gleam supplies—”
"Unless we want to trade with the sea farmers," I said, almost pleased at the murmur this evoked behind me. "Or we want new types of clothing to wear, or we're low on medicine. Then we seem to have plenty of it around."
We gave the secret of Gleam glass engineering to none, but there was a group of Speakers dedicated to producing Gleam-inspired batteries we could trade with, enough to power regular solar panels should weather or other factors render them ineffective, and those made us desirable to other Collectives.
She opened her mouth, her eyes gone hard, but I said, "Why does the community stop only where you say it does?"
"You may be your father's daughter," she said, "but that gives you no authority in this Speaking."
The subtext was blatant. I could have been a Speaker if I'd wanted, could have achieved a better-respected position amid our agricultural efforts. The daughter of the man who first synthesized Gleam glass could do just about anything she wanted. But no, that opportunity was far behind me, because I had always wanted quiet and solitude and my asters.
Tamara said, “Does anyone second Lia’s motion?”
I wanted to turn and look at the other, implore them to back me up, but my father’s voice rang in my memory, and I found I couldn’t move.
"Motion dismissed," Tamara declared. I stared at the soil caked into the lines of my hands, as the people on either side of me made no pretense of not staring.
“Now,” Tamara continued, her voice soft but crisp, “moving on to today’s agenda. We have just become aware of a very serious development, one that demands our attention as it involves the Collective’s well-being." Her head tilted as if she was considering her next words, though I suspected that was not the case. "I ask Speaker Jan to explain."
Jan?
I tried to catch her eyes across the room but I couldn't. Or she didn't let me. Jan was a Speaker. She led Speakings when it was her turn in the rotation, she reported on the systems all the time. This wasn't unusual. So why did this time seem different?
Seth stepped aside for Jan to take the center of the floor, though I saw him give Tamara a pointed glance, which the other Speaker ignored. Jan returned her terminal to its place on her belt and shook her head, as if shaking off the memory of my ill-fated motion.
“One of our systems has been compromised.” Jan went on to explain a shortage in one floor's Gleam glass power. Such a thing meant people had been using power without properly requisitioning it, watching old film discs at night or taking showers when it wasn't their turn or who knew what.
A prickle on my skin brought my eyes up as Jan ended her explanation with a motion to restrict Gleam privileges for floor twelve for the next two months. Tamara was watching me, and I couldn’t help but see a glimmer of triumph in her expression.
I looked at my hands again, and my face burned with embarrassment as I realized what Jan’s summons this morning must have been about.
I’d asked for people to stretch a little further, give up a little energy, only for Jan to reveal some of our own were already taking advantage. If we couldn't trust each other to use resources fairly, how could we trust another Collective?
The group to the west had been part of us once, back when our Collective was nothing more than an idealistic series of renderings annotated with hope. They left before my father unlocked the secret of Gleam glass, and the embargo placed on them by the Speakers meant the advance was never shared with them.
