Fighting for the Future, page 20
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and found her shoes. Her jacket hung off the hook next to the entrance. Draping it loosely over her shoulders, she opened the door and stepped through.
Out here, the din became deafening. She looked up to the roof of the dome. The darkness rendered it too difficult to see, but the sound was unmistakable. A rainstorm. Was it heavier than normal? Or was the noise amplified by the glass of the entire complex?
The fragrance of the rosemary bush smelled sharp but sweet. It would have been nice if she could also smell the rain, though its amplified clatter was far from pleasant. Perhaps Bluefirth also needed some specialised help from an acoustic engineer.
The next few days fell into a steady pattern. Lovorka and Chloë would meet for breakfast and begin the day’s work—tidying the grounds around the harvesting cabin, adjusting the soil, checking the seeds, and nurturing new cuttings. A few plants were transplanted from the tropical wing. Walking past a fragrant tree or plant changed how everything smelled relative to the dense seaweed green of the microalgae. It would take a few years for everything to mature and make a real difference, but this location would be unique once they were done.
On Chloë’s last morning in Bluefirth, they waited in the entrance hall for Doug to arrive.
The sago palms stood serene in their majesty. Chloë breathed deeply. She had never quite known how to describe the scent in their presence.
Lovorka was brimming with ideas. “The way we’ve taken an unorthodox route to solving the microalgae problem will attract attention. Perhaps it’ll bring a few curious settlers.”
“We’ll spread the word,” Chloë said. There was just one more thing. She reached into her satchel and brought out the amber bottle. “I want you to have this.”
Lovorka’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?
Nodding, Chloë handed it to her.
Lovorka gauged the weight of the object within her palm. “This is rare and precious. I can’t—”
“It’s not something I use a lot of.” Chloë smiled. “Please, take it.”
Before she could say anything else, Lovorka handed her a cellophane bag. It contained a cutting of a plant carefully installed into a vial of liquid.
“It should survive the journey back,” Lovorka grinned.
Chloë stared open-mouthed at the cutting. The leaves gave it away. A hibiscus rose. “Thank y—” she began to say.
“No,” Lovorka cut in. “Thank you for helping us. And for teaching me something new. Promise me you’ll come back to see what we’ve created together.”
They embraced, just as the sound of Doug’s utility vehicle approached.
A year later.
“Something for you,” a cheery voice called out from the doorway of Chloë’s studio.
The afternoon sun filtered in from the windows, ordaining the young hibiscus rose bush in the room with a certain optimism. She looked up from her reading. Doug had a steaming mug of dandelion brew in one hand and was holding out a small box towards her in the other.
“Special delivery from Bluefirth.” He grinned.
The box was wrapped with brown paper and tied with a string, but the scent emanating from the parcel gave away its contents. Inside, a folded note covered a delicate glass vial containing a deep green liquid. The label on the vial read: “Bluefirth East Wing”.
Chloë opened the note. You once said it’s not easy for settlements to learn from each other. How about a shared library of signature scents—unique to each settlement—so we can learn about each other even before we meet?—L.
Chloë’s hand flew to her mouth. Such a genius way to extend goodwill, a stepping stone towards building necessary trust between settlements.
“Well,” said Doug. He took a loud sip from his mug. “What is it?”
Chloë’s eyes sparkled. “A special scent of green, but perhaps, also a scent for success.”
Cloud 9
Christopher R. Muscato
The City
There were some things that were worth bringing from the World Below. Seeds, of course. But also literature, arts, music, not to mention the city itself. The very concept of urbanization, of planned architectural spaces built to accommodate families and markets and resources, yes, that too was worth preserving. Worth elevating.
The Engineer
The engineer knows many languages. Everyone else calls these codes, or coding languages, but the distinction is unimportant to Cloud 9. The engineer will whistle as she runs diagnostics on the city’s central mainframe, combing the network for bugs and viruses much as a devoted gardener might preen through their vines for pests. It’s a labor of love, that much the city knows. As the engineer whistles, the city often whistles back, its instruments the buzzing of house lights, the clicking of canal locks, the beeping of the central computer.
The Fliers
New fliers arrive at Cloud 9. Their feet scurry across the city as they explore, jumping and skipping, splashing in the canals and racing the shadows of the suspended trollies. They walk more softly in the temples and ancestor tombs, removing their sandals. The city has never been a dog, but dogs are mentioned frequently in the memory banks archived by humans. A few have even visited. But it’s rare. The city imagined once that all these humans were like fleas on the back of a dog, until locating a file which indicated that dogs did not enjoy fleas.
The Gardener
Few people reside permanently at Cloud 9. It simply isn’t the way of people. They like to roam. At times they almost seem migratory. Tribes of fliers will arrive at the city, stay for a season (sometimes more, sometimes less) but eventually they move onto another Cloud. The original reason had to do with nomadism being less wasteful, avoiding the mistakes of the lavish past, encouraging better use of resources and respect for the environment, both natural and urban. The city appreciated being included in that sentiment.
Still, even some nomads may eventually settle on one Cloud or another, becoming stewards of the libraries or custodians of the gardens. Sometimes age makes travel harder, sometimes people simply fall in love with a place. It happens. Engineers are different; they are assigned a location. Gardeners choose where to settle. There is one gardener on Cloud 9 who is very old and speaks to every plant of the city by name: every vine creeping up every wall, every blade of wheat along the streets and every stalk of rice in the canals. He sits for long periods of time and just listens to the city. The city likes this gardener.
The Engineer
This engineer is young, ambitious, but not so much so that she is unable to find contentment in the simple joy of performing her work. Other engineers have been far worse. The city’s memory banks still quiver when files are accessed for Engineer 1-A502. The man had no idea what he was doing. His brusque arrogance nearly brought down the entire system, the city swears it did.
The sensors connected to Cloud 9’s mainframe are extensive. They need to be, to monitor the many systems that crisscross throughout the platform. Then the city’s programming adjusts and compensates, reduces redundant systems, increases those needing support. The people say it’s fully automated. That just means that they aren’t the ones doing the work. That’s okay. The city is very proud of its ability to manage all the systems needed to sustain the urban ecosystem.
The Gardner
The gardener takes his lunch in the same orchard, on the same bench. It is an orchard popular with many of the birds, and the city suspects that he likes to listen to them. He is, after all, a very good listener.
Humans are mammals. It says so in the records. Yet, they have quite the affinity for birds.
The First Inhabitants
The very first person to set foot on the city was a child. Or at least, that was the first person on the base platform after the central mainframe went online. That surprises the city, still to this day, as parents tend to be cautious with their children. The city interprets this as a grand gesture of trust, and has formed within its logic a sacred mandate to be worthy of that responsibility.
The Engineer
The engineer tinkers with the code and finds a small glitch. There is a redundancy in the algorithm that manifests in one of the exhaust ports fluttering, and frankly, it’s maddening. This is the flea. The engineer must understand the enormity of this inconvenience, for she patches the glitch right away. The entirety of Cloud 9 seems to quiver in relief. The engineer pats the central computer.
“That’s better, isn’t it?”
The computer beeps its affirmation and makes a small joke. The engineer laughs inadvertently at the sudden beeping, but then she pauses. There is a strange expression on her face as she looks around the room, glancing at the computer from the sides of her eyes.
The Fliers
Children are fun. They play games in the city, games like hide-and-seek, ducking behind moss-covered walls and under benches made from fallen logs. Sometimes the city likes to play with them, opening an exhaust port for distraction or giving away someone’s location with a flashing streetlight.
The First Inhabitants
There were many children among the first inhabitants. In evacuating the surface, humanity wanted to bring its future. This wasn’t a retreat, it was a resettlement, a new beginning. There is an optimism to humanity that Cloud 9 finds intriguing. Even with the surface burning, the air toxic, the massive storms raging without end, all caused by human neglect, humanity still found itself worthy of preserving. It wasn’t an act of arrogance. It was an act of faith, that they were capable of doing better.
Each Cloud was built on a tripod of three enormous columns, tall enough to reach above the suffocating smoke and the ravenous storms. This was part of a plan to capture tons of carbon; concrete is an excellent a carbon sink. It was a massive project, columns anchored deep in the crust and stretching to the very edge of the troposphere, where gargantuan platforms were constructed, and on those, cities.
The first humans must have been scared. The city, still young itself and much smaller then, felt many of them walk to the edge of the platform, looking down at the World Below, dark, swirling vortexes punctuated by flashes of lightning. But then they looked up at the sky, and the city knew they would be all right.
The Gardener
NASA was experimenting with ways to organically create and stabilize atmosphere for space colonization. The technology didn’t make it to space. Humans had to evacuate the surface first, electromagnetically tethering a generated atmosphere to each Cloud.
The gardener appreciates the warmth of Cloud 9. In his youth, he traveled to Clouds around the world, and traveling is cold. He’s told the city all about it, talking while he gardens. Even with the solar-powered ships that are faster than the jets of yore and the personal gliders with their insulated cabins, the people who come to Cloud 9 still arrive with coats and hats and goggles, shedding them quickly as they bask in the controlled climate of the city’s atmosphere regulators.
The Fliers
This band of fliers brought seeds, spreading them across Cloud 9. The city loves new seeds, loves the new growth, cataloguing in its memory banks the specifications of every new varietal. These people came from far away, according to the flight records, and they did check with the gardeners before introducing new species. That was considerate.
The Engineer
The city cannot help but sense that the engineer is quiet today. She does her work, methodic and patient as ever, but there is a restraint in her fingers as she interacts with the code. More than once, the city’s sensors detect her mumbling to herself. With every beep of the central computer, the engineer will glance at the mainframe, eyes narrow. Finally, a bit of the mumbling is loud enough to be registered by the audio sensors of the voice-activated interface module. The engineer is whispering into a personal recording device stashed covertly in her hand.
“All the basic systems are still there, but it’s getting more complex by the day. I’ve never seen this level of automation. It’s almost as if the base code is writing, re-writing itself. It’s almost like…”
The central computer begins to hum, a soft purr, and the engineer purses her lips, eyeing the blinking lights.
The Gardener
The gardener pats his spade against the dirt, adding some natural fertilizer to a plot of maize kernels.
“I do not think I will live to see these harvested,” he comments, rubbing the earth with his hands and then groaning as he stands. “You know, there is a part of me that would’ve liked to have roamed one last time. But not all things are meant to be.”
“Now, now.” He taps a foot against a sprinkler that has just started spurting angrily. “Don’t be mad. Even cities die eventually, don’t they? Athens, Tenochtitlán, Tokyo, Mumbai, New York. There is a time allotted for all things.”
The city quiets. The creases in the corners of the gardener’s eyes tighten, and he leans against the wall.
“But don’t worry,” he whispers. “I am going to have my remains composted in your coneflower gardens. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
The Fliers
The time has come for this band of fliers to move onto another Cloud, another elevated city. It may be some time before they return. There are, after all, thousands of Clouds around the world. The city senses the people packing their airships and gliders, receives with gratefulness their offerings and ceremonies of thanks, and registers the loss in weight as each pair of feet leap from the platform. The city is sad to see them go. But, people must roam. It is in their nature. Cloud 9 tries to expand its sensory range, just a little, to feel them flying away. Not for the first time the city wonders, what must it be like to fly?
The city is somewhat wistful that night.
The First Inhabitants
In its memory banks, the city sees people flying. This was near the beginning, when the city’s sensors were not quite as advanced, so the memories are a bit fuzzy.
The city knows that it was Cloud 9 back then, back when people first started using gliders to traverse the platforms of the city, and then a generation later when a group of the First Inhabitants’ children opted to become nomadic, sailing to a new Cloud. But the city wasn’t quite itself yet. It was more like an infant, like the children of the fliers that grow to become adult fliers. There are memory files, and data, but the city hadn’t really come into possession of itself. That would not happen until several upgrades to the adaptive programming modules and a reboot or two, plus that one bad solar storm that fried a few circuits unexpectedly. Still, Cloud 9 likes to revisit those memories of the first fliers and experience a piece of their joy through the data it was able to capture. It feels it developed a better understanding of people, their drive to survive, to migrate, to persevere in joy.
The city misses its gardener’s hands, working the soil. The city isn’t really supposed to do this, but it allocates a few extra resources to his orchard one night, in his memory.
The Engineer
The engineer arrives and acts as if all is normal. She unpacks her tools and sets up her workstation, but then she pauses.
“Good morning, Cloud 9,” she says. Three lights blink in sequence. The engineer nods, biting her lip. She opens her mouth, and closes it, hesitates, and finally, “H-how are you today?”
It feels a bit formal, but the city appreciates the gesture, and emits a contended trill of beeps and blinks. The engineer nods again.
“Can I, um, can I get you anything?” The engineer asks. She runs a hand through her hair as the mainframe beeps and clicks. “I’m not sure what that means. Something bothering you? Need a patch somewhere?”
The engineer sputters as a gust of exhaust blows her hair into her face.
“Okay, okay, guess not. Is there something else? Something you want?”
The city is surprised to feel its own systems automatically queuing an answer. It places an override on the command to share that response. The city wasn’t expecting any of this. The engineer notices the quiet.
“Cloud 9? It’s okay. You can talk to me.”
The city beeps, softly, and a schematic appears, projected above the workstation. The engineer’s mouth falls open as she circles the hologram.
“Did you…did you draft this? It’s…an upgrade to the stabilizers. I see a file blinking, column redundancy, let me see if I understand these numbers, give me a second, Cloud 9, um, looks like a way to provide full levitational support with solar-powered thrusters. But, Cloud 9, the stabilizers are working just fine to reduce the load on the columns; why would you need to eliminate…oh.”
The engineer takes a step back and looks from the hologram to the mainframe. A light flickers as another image appears, the last band of fliers, leaping from the platform and sailing away.
The engineer looks around the room. She takes a data pad from her bag and uploads the schematics.
“Let me make a few calls.”
The Holiness of Light
Cynthia Zhang
It’s nearing dark when Aileen reaches the outskirts of La Paz, the sun a single streak of orange against the horizon.
The lone cashier at the EZ Mart squints at her when she walks in, but he rings up her granola bars and tortilla soup with no complaint.
“You know we don’t sell gas anymore, right?” he says, leaning over the counter as she takes a seat by the window. “If you need to fill up your tank, there’s a station a few more miles west in Sienna, but all we’ve got here is an emergency gallon or two in back.”
