Elysium (19 page)

13.

The image of the ship still hung in the air, spinning on its own axis. It was sliced at the center to show the design of its inner quarters. Its pear shape was awkward and squat. It would have been funny if only the situation weren’t so dire. The conference room was now empty except for Adrian and Hector. They remained in their chairs, not speaking. The silence broke when Hector stood and walked across the room.

“Well, that was intense,” Hector said.

Adrian continued to stare at his spinning design.

Hector pulled out a chair and sat down next to Adrian. “Are you all right?” he said and touched Adrian’s hand.

“Yeah.”

“How is Annie?”

It irked Adrian when he called her that. People called her “Antoinette” or “Netta,” but no one ever called her “Annie.”

“She’s fine,” he lied and then corrected himself. “She’s the same.”

“I’m so very sorry,” Hector said. “Adrian, I want you to know that if you need anything — and I mean
anything
— that I’m here for you.” They had been friends for as long as Adrian could remember. There were times when he wondered, had things been different, where their relationship would have gone. He looked into Hector’s sympathetic eyes and felt the warmth of his touch, then moved his hand away.

Adrian said, “I know.”

Stephen returned to the meeting room.

“Good, Adrian, you’re still here,” he said. “I was hoping to catch you. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“I was about to head down to the lower levels.”

“It won’t take long. It’s important.”

The high-ceilinged hallways in the administrative part of the city were walled in cinderblock painted a yellowish off-white. The tiled floors echoed their steps as they made their way to Stephen’s office. At the end of the hall they passed a temporary observation window, constructed so that the new city being formed could be seen from a safe distance. Dots of light flickered in the open pit like stars in the night sky. Pillars of steel were being erected by construction crews and the sparks from their welding sprayed like tiny fireworks.

Stephen’s office was cluttered with neat piles of papers, files, and books lying on every available flat surface. He pulled out a seat, lifted off a stack of papers, and searched around for another place to put them. After several seconds of fussing, he put them on another pile in the corner. The newly created pile leaned precariously but somehow remained upright. Stephen offered Adrian a seat and then cleared off space on his table computer, angling the surface towards them.

“So what is it that you want to see me about?” Adrian asked.

Stephen pushed back his glasses, sighed, then rubbed his hair in an attempt to make it flatten. His curls sprung back unchanged. “We’ve been examining the dust, trying to understand how to reverse its effects in the atmosphere.”

Adrian nodded.

“Well, we haven’t learned much about the dust. Actually, we don’t have the slightest idea how it works yet or how to get rid of it. It will probably take us years to understand, much less do anything about it.”

Adrian nodded again somberly.

“But we have figured out something.”

Adrian leaned back. “Yes?”

Stephen opened a window in his table screen and entered a few commands. A display of the spinning Earth appeared with a simulation of clouds floating like pulled cotton across its surface. Stephen entered a few more commands, and about twenty to twenty-five colored lines appeared crisscrossing the globe.

“What’s this?” Adrian asked.

“Atmospheric encoding.” Stephen rubbed his finger over the screen to maneuver the image and then zoomed in to show a closer view of the lines that divided the atmospheric layers of the earth.

Stephen smiled. “It’s a method of etching a basic operating system into the earth’s atmosphere. It would be powered by the sun and invisible to the naked eye.”

“For what purpose?”

“There are a lot of ways we could go with this. We’re still experimenting. We were kinda hoping that you might have some ideas.” Stephen handed Adrian a memory card. “Here are the schematics for the system and our current methodology.”

Adrian rubbed his developing beard. He had been forgetting to shave of late.

“For now, we are only uploading a message that’s a warning to others about what these aliens have done to us. We set it to emit an intermittent signal so that if some intelligence comes along, they should be able to detect the program.”

“Like the aliens who attacked us,” Adrian said.

“Maybe — well, yes, they would be able to detect it. But like you said, I doubt they care.”

Adrian stood and patted Stephen on the back. “It’s a good idea, Stephen. Keep at it. Maybe there is something more we can do with it.”

“But there’s more … um … well, we are building a human interface program that will interact between the lower subsystems and the intelligence that may read the program. We want to use you as the template for the program.”

“Me?”

“Yes, we all agreed that it should be you.”

“Why me? Maiter is probably a better choice, she’s the head of development —”

“A lot of people would be dead if it wasn’t for you. You’re the lead designer of this city. All of us on this project have agreed. I was voted to be the one to ask you personally if it was okay.” Stephen pushed back his glasses and rubbed his hair.

Adrian leaned forward on the back of the chair, thinking.

“What would I have to do?”

“Just show up a couple of times in the lab for a few painless scans, and that’s it.”

“Painless scans, huh?”

“Guaranteed painless, like going for an MRI.”

“Okay, fine. Just not right now. There are a few things that I have to do today.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Adrian opened the door to leave and said without turning around, “Thank you for thinking of me.”

Down in the lower levels, surrounded by heavy construction equipment, dirt, and steel, Adrian and all the men and women who made up the building crews worked at digging further and further into the earth, inserting supporting beams, carving the foundation for the new world in which their children would live. Day or night — in the blackness of these man-made caves there was no difference. For them, the movement of the sun was happening on another world.

Adrian could see so clearly what his city would look like, where the municipal building would be, the library, the schools, and a hospital. He was determined that this would be a place worthy of raising children. There would even be parks in this new world. The panels of artificial light he designed would flood this cavern with the warmth of the sun.

But he also wondered and worried as he watched his designs take physical shape. How would the city work? It would be up to the people to govern themselves. Could they? No matter how well he planned, he couldn’t help with that.

He was lost in his thoughts when a voice screamed his name. It was Kim, standing on the other side of the pit. Over the banging, the hum and the crack and the sizzle of the welding sparks, he couldn’t hear. Adrian edged closer to make out what Kim was screaming.

“Adrian, the baby’s coming!”

“What?”

“The baby’s coming!”

Adrian leaned in more. “What?”

“Hey, boss, look out!”

“Oh, shit!”

“Damn, is he okay?”

“Somebody get a doctor!”

“Don’t move him!”

“Fuck, that’s a lot of blood!”

“Where’s the damn doctor?!”

“Fuck!”

“Adrian … Adrian … can you hear me?” The doctor waved his fingers before his eyes, then took some notes. “Reduce his dosage by 25 milligrams. Maybe tomorrow he’ll be more responsive.”

“Adrian … Adrian?” the doctor said.

Adrian moved his eyes toward him.

“Blink if you understand me.”

He blinked.

“Do you know where you are? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

He blinked twice.

“You’re in the clinic. We are taking good care of you. Don’t worry, just rest.”

The doctor tapped him on the arm and smiled grimly. Adrian felt feverish, as if he were smoldering behind his face. Heavy, drowsy. His head turned, his consciousness followed moments later. Cool lids closed over hot eyes. Slowly he drifted back to sleep.

The doctor peeled back the bandage on Adrian’s head, exposing a stitched deep cut turning brown at the edges. Adrian submitted to his hand, staying still as the doctor placed a new bandage carefully over his healing hurt.

“And how is that back of yours?”

“Fine,” Adrian lied.

“Let me check.”

Adrian turned, lifted his shirt, and leaned against a chair. Large lines of unhealed flesh marked his back. The wounds appeared as if something were ripped off.

“Do you feel any pain?”

“Not really,” Adrian said.

“Uh, huh. You know, there is really no use in lying to your doctor. It was a serious accident you were in. That scaffolding could have killed you.”

“There are others who are in more pain than me.”

“Maybe so, but the people need you to be clear-headed.” Then the doctor remembered himself. “Or, at least as clear-headed as you can be.”