Outer Sky Read online

Outer Sky.

  Daniel LaGrave.

  Copyright © 2010 by Daniel LaGrave.

  Emily Collgate sat in the dom she’d once been so lucky to draw once she’d come of age. Everything she would never again need packed into crates for the redistribution crews to come and pick it up.

  When she had taken over the living space the chair, a woven chair whose aluminum frame appeared to have more dings, and dents than it had smooth surfaces was already there. The fabric suspended on the tubular frame work of the seat must have changed over time to a washout green, she couldn’t stand that color-green; it always felt so un-natural. Still when you were sitting in it you couldn’t see it, and besides it had been an antique.

  The chair had been sitting next to a real honest to goodness window made of smart glass, and not that cheaper poly resin almost everyone else had if they were fortunate enough to have a window in their dom. Most people simply had wall space. Usually windows were only found at mid-sky now, but there used to be a lot more she’d been told, down in the older doms of the lower sky. Those though had been removed when those living in the lower sky levels, and worst still ground level had become sick. Those living on those levels sooner or later developed strange diseases, and disturbing physical anomalies. It had been a dark time, and Emily was glad to have been born long after that. She had heard the stories of what happened, how the people of their GovCorp had discovered the causes’ and gone to those afflicted, and offered to transfer them to a medical dom while their homes were made safe again. Those who had become ill though, and caught what by then had been called the “fumes”, were often driven mad attacking the GovCorp agents that came to help them.

  After that all windows had been either been replaced, or had been sealed over. Her grans’ dom had been one with the solid walls, only theirs had had many still antique images on their walls.

  Emily’s favorite had been the boats, great elegant things, slender designs which seemed to slice through the water with billowing white sheets that one of her grans had called sails. The strange feature was pretty, but she could see no point in them. One other thing troubled her more though, for some reason they had gotten the water wrong. Instead of dark, viscous, and swirling with every color imaginable, the boats in the images cut through blue green thin water capped in white foam.

  She still wondered at them; for her the last of the mag boats had been put off service years before; their polarized magnetic hull holding them aloft, their wakes leaving large depressions in the water.

  She allowed a sigh to escape her chapped lips, her own ship had come in, but she’d have wait until tomorrow. For now though she could still look out at her own little slice of the world and watch the multitude of brightly colored cockroaches, their gilded wings and carapaces glowing brightly from some inner source. A sliver of ruby light landed on her sill, fanned its four wings gently and cleaned its long luminous antennae before filtering downward again into the lower sky.

  These bright flashes of light and life were usually the most active in the cooler months of the winter season when the temperature outside dropped into the nineties. Far worse though than that simple heat were the summer chars, monstrous storms of thunder, lightning, and superheated winds that dropped out of the upper sky and barreled through the lower skies and into the emptied streets incinerating anything that would burn. It didn’t matter now anyway, and strangely a part of her wished she could tell someone, anyone, but the message she’d received had utterly forbidden any sort of disclosure.

  Her life had changed so completely, and so suddenly. So much so that she couldn’t see her life before as her own. Peering out at the nearly featureless buildings filling her view, she saw now how ugly they were. Had they always looked like that? The endless multitude of them standing silent in the haze compounded their repulsiveness.

  Emily supposed that everything changed once she had received that message from Knowledge tree, the department of GovCorp that dealt with all manner of research and technology.

  Knowledge tree decided how, and for whom such understanding should be used. The group also had the reputation of being secretive, cold, and calculating. Machine minds some had called them, but hadn’t they also developed the treatment for the fumes? Her eyes traced the line of gel compound that acted as additional heat shielding which framed the window, it wouldn’t need reapplying for another five months, but that wouldn’t be her concern.

  Tomorrow Emily Colgate would become just another previous occupant, as well as something there hadn’t been since before her grans’ grans were very young. Emily smiled, tomorrow she would be one of a select few; she would become an astronaut.

  The next morning came early, 5 a.m. and from that moment she woke up the better part of the day became a blur, first travelling from her apartment to the medical facility. That was followed by nonstop medical tests and interviews until finally she was allowed to rest for the day in the dom they had given her. It was nice, very clean, and since it was enclosed within a larger sealed building she could leave it to walk around without the need for her breather mask.

  She’d been warned against trying to communicate with the other candidates since no decisions had been made regarding the crew selection, and they wanted no unnecessary infighting.

  That seemed reasonable enough, but sitting alone in a room that looked for all the world and sky like no one had ever lived in it began to feel unsettling. She found herself missing her window, and strangely that stupid, ugly chair.

  The following days were filled with more tests, thankfully the medical test with their sample taking and needle sticks were over. Other tests were more like games; there were questions and answer types; the sort that asked you about different situations, if something happened what would you do?

  The best ones though were those that took place in the simulation-room, a room made to resemble the interior of the ship’s command center. The best part was all you really had to do was just sit there and think. Everything, she had been told, was set up with what was called a virtual interface. In the case of an emergency there were robotic assistants that could manually override systems should that be required.

  The interfaces between the automated systems, and their minds, what the scientists called their organic processors, were egg shaped pod devices that featured a reclining chair in the pods center. Extending from the walls of the pods interior like so many tentacles was a series of tubes, and electrical contacts that connected the chair and with the seats’ occupant to the rest of the ship.

  Occasionally her attention would drift, and she’d start watching the clusters of serious looking technicians who’d been working on various launch systems as the group of astronauts trained, being brought back to attention by alarm bells if she strayed too far for too long. The expression they wore in differing degrees looked strange, it appeared a mixture of envy, and somehow sorrow.

  As the rest of the flight crew followed their instructors they did so as a group individuals, each seeming to focus completely only on their own aspects of the mission. That thought brought her back around to the mission.

  After another physical examination the flight crew had been shown into a large auditorium, one that was as stark and as seemingly empty as any she’d ever known, for their pre-mission briefing. It felt like a lonely place. When they’d found their seats an elderly looking man approached a podium dragging behind him a tank that linked a breathing mask, eerily similar to the ones that had to be worn when venturing out side, the rasping drawn breath confirmed its’ similar function. He wheezed deep into the mask before he removed it and began speaking.

  “I am dying,” he said. He paused again, as if gathering his thoughts. “But then again we are all dying, are we not?” He shrugged
to himself. “You are the chosen few, I won’t say lucky, but you are those whom are still capable of doing what we will be asking of you. The strain of space travel requires a strong mental focus that many of our populace now lacks. I will say that the fate and legacy of our species completely depends on you. The purpose of this mission, simply put, is to save humanity. To do this you will reconnoiter and to send back information on possible off-world sites to colonize.”

  The tone in his voice rang strangely at this last.

  He replaced the mask, and in haled deeply. He took several breaths before continuing. “Our planet is dying, and should you fail in this endeavor our people will suffer the same fate. Please know that the reality is those of you who take part in this mission will never see the earth again once you are beyond its atmosphere. You will in fact be leaving everything, and anyone you’ve ever known. If anyone feels there are not prepared to make this sacrifice; then please feel free to leave.” He paused long enough to hear only the nervous shifting of chairs, and a few soft whispers.

  “Good.