The Girl Who Found the Sun

by Matthew S. Cox

  If I had no other option, could I come up with some plan to fix things? Noah will laugh at me if I suggest everyone go outside. She refilled the cup and drank another mouthful. I still don’t know if it really is safe. Looks okay. Smells okay. But, some poisons are invisible. It occurred to her that the tickle in her throat had been about the same spot the doc swabbed earlier. Or maybe she imagined that.

  Despite trying to focus on a theoretical situation where topside was deadly, her mind kept circling back to futility. All the vital machines had been pushed to the breaking point. The Arc no longer had the capability to manufacture new parts, except for small metal pieces. Her team had pulled off amazing feats of repair work on the CO2 scrubbers without any of them being a true chemist—but machines that ought to keep the air perfect for 2,000 people allowed 183—possibly 182 now—to gradually suffocate.

  If I’m not overreacting, we’re in trouble. She desperately needed to talk it out with Sienna, the only one in the entire Arc she trusted enough to bare her deepest insecurities to. But… having time alone with her so they could talk freely away from little ears didn’t happen too often lately. She admired her friend’s devotion to kids no one else wanted to love, but sometimes, being unable to get her alone proved super frustrating.

  She and Tinsley followed the others to Sienna’s quarters, one of the large units intended for a full family. Although it made for a longer walk to the central hub, no way could she cram herself and four kids into a single bed. Her place had three bedrooms and a large common area that reminded Raven of the ‘living rooms’ in houses before the Great Death.

  The kids flopped on the floor in front of the C-shaped sofa and proceeded to set up a board game. Raven took the opportunity to pull Sienna off to the little hallway leading to the master bedroom. There, she explained the depths of her worries.

  Sienna’s eyes widened at the description of the crumbling turbines. They widened more upon hearing her story of how three CO2 scrubbers almost didn’t turn back on. When Raven admitted to taking the filter mask off outside, her as-good-as sister squeaked and clamp-hugged her.

  “Calm down. It’s fine.” Raven squeezed her back.

  “No it isn’t,” muttered Sienna into her ear. “You don’t know what you breathed in.”

  “My gut says it’s fine. Dad kept going out there and he never got sick. I actually felt better out there than I do right now.”

  Sienna leaned back and stared into her eyes. “What?”

  “Like I had more energy.”

  “This is about your father, isn’t it? You think you’re going to find him.”

  Raven looked down. “Honestly? No. The idea never even came to mind. He wouldn’t have stayed away for four years. Something happened to him out there. But I mean, he spent days topside and didn’t get sick.”

  “That we saw. What if he did get really sick but it’s something no one could see until he died?”

  “I don’t think so. He’d have acted different. Lost weight. You just know when something’s not right with someone. You should see all the plants…”

  Sienna fidgeted. “I think you’re kinda panicking. Don’t do anything crazy, okay? Take a couple wakes and think.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I’m not my father.”

  “Heh. Yeah. That man got an idea in his head and just did it without much planning.”

  “True. He thought greatness never came from carefully formulated plans. People let their fear of failure cause them to fail.”

  “C’mon.” Sienna pulled her into the common room so they could watch the kids having fun. “Your dad loved his sayings, didn’t he?”

  Raven laughed. “Yeah. Has a whole notebook full of them.”

  Once the yawning started, Raven collected Tinsley and made the trek down the hall to their home.

  Neither spoke as they shed their ponchos and inside clothes, then climbed into the shower chamber. She washed Tinsley’s hair using the same vegetable-oil derived soap people in the Arc had been using for generations. It didn’t lather much, but it got rid of the dirt. How much longer would it be before that ran out, too? They couldn’t have an infinite amount of lye, and they certainly didn’t have wood to reduce into ash.

  Not tree wood. They burn inedible plant parts.

  Tinsley took the soap and washed herself. Raven leaned her face into the spray of warm water. The same water pouring over her had done so hundreds of times. She showered in water that had probably been consumed by everyone in the Arc, gone down the sewer system, and been purified back into circulation over and over again.

  The air scrubbers are barely keeping up. What’s slipping through the water filtration system?

  Sudden, intense nausea—as though she stood under a spray of untreated urine—almost made her throw up. Up until that moment, she’d never thought twice about drinking water or showering. Everything here is a closed system. Keep out contamination.

  Or at least it used to be. The water crew on level six had tapped an underground water source maybe forty years ago. Drawing from a well that deep beneath the surface had a minimal risk of contamination since they figured the dirt would act like a filter. Of course, they still ran it through the processing system before letting anyone drink it.

  Maybe this isn’t fully recirculated water anymore.

  Regardless of the truth, she convinced herself that the water coming out of the shower head came from a subterranean well and had never before gone through anyone’s kidneys. That kept her from vomiting. She didn’t mind so much the idea of filtering and reusing water. Rather, she didn’t trust the filter system to still work properly. Like everything else here, it had been pressed into service well beyond any reasonable expectation of functional lifespan.

  What’s going to kill us first? The air or disease from bad water?

  She grabbed the soap and started washing Tinsley faster, so they could get out from under the potentially dangerous liquid.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Tinsley.

  “Just hurrying up.”

  “Are we running out of water?”

  “I… no. I’m just worrying about everything today.” She sighed, handed the soap back to the girl, and waited.

  Tinsley didn’t rush, though she stopped dawdling or playing in the water. Every minute or so, a weak cough like the girl had walked into a cloud of smoke echoed in the shower chamber. Once she finished, she passed the soap up—and then played with an empty plastic bottle while her mother hurriedly washed. Showering done, she grabbed a toothbrush and scooped some paste out of the jar, then crouched to brush her daughter’s teeth. Tinsley stood there making silly faces with her mouth open the whole time, then held her face in the shower stream to rinse the foam away.

  Doc tests the water a couple times a week. He’d issue a warning if he found a problem.

  Raven brushed her teeth, then they exited the shower, dried off, and got in bed for story time, back in the same nightgowns they’d worn all week. Raven read a few chapters of James and the Giant Peach to her, their twentieth or so time going through the book. The mechanical clock dials indicated the time as 0-1-1-4 when Tinsley at last, fell asleep. Raven sat there staring at the contraption she’d made as a teen, the rapid clicking of the mechanism remarkably loud in the otherwise silent room.

  That’s one of four working clocks. Won’t be long before everyone’s guessing when their wake starts. Maybe they’ll make my clock the official Arc time. The electronic ones are almost gone.

  Raven scooted down to lay flat, one arm tucked around her slight daughter, holding the child close. Dread that at any moment they could go to sleep and not wake up, suffocating in their sleep, kept her eyes wide open. She hated not knowing why her kid coughed. She hated the powerlessness of being unable to fix her even more. It didn’t matter what Noah said, if she found clear proof that the ventilation system was dying, she’d grab Tinsley and go topside.

  Random worries kept her staring at the ceiling. When next she looked over at the cl
ock, the dials read 0-1-4-6. Long before she ever took her first breath, time ceased being a measure of planetary rotation and became a simple tracking of passing hours. No one had any idea if their clocks came close to what the old world would have called accurate time.

  Just counting hours…

  “Mommy? Why aren’t you sleeping?” whispered Tinsley.

  “Thinking.”

  “What about?”

  Raven pictured the rusting windmill towers collapsing into a twisted tangle of metal and billowing dust, all the lights down here going out. Scrubbers off. The constant whirr from the ventilation fans falling silent. No matter where anyone went in the Arc, they couldn’t escape that sound, so pervasive she didn’t even notice it anymore unless—like now—she thought specifically about it. When the systems failed, the tunnels would fall truly silent. As silent as it had been outside, far from the rattling thrum of fans.

  So many plants.

  As much as she wanted to trust topside, as much as she wanted to tell herself she’d felt better out there, Raven couldn’t simply brush off the scary stories she’d heard constantly as a child about the death lurking outside. If it came down to Noah refusing to listen to her, she’d risk taking Tinsley out there. Her child wouldn’t suffocate in a subterranean tomb. Temptation to sneak out there right now and let the girl see the truth gnawed at her, but she also couldn’t be reckless with her daughter’s health.

  She had to know if the doc found anything in those samples.

  “Mommy?” asked Tinsley in a dazed half-awake voice.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you thinking about?” Tinsley pushed herself up to sit.

  The girl’s voice in Raven’s mind. I wanna see! I wanna see!

  “Just an idea.”

  “What kind of idea?” Tinsley tilted her head to the left. Her frizzy hair draped off her shoulder, hanging almost to the mattress.

  “The kind of idea that we need to keep quiet and not tell anyone.”

  “Ooh!” Tinsley went wide-eyed, but clamped both hands over her mouth as a coughing fit took her. She flopped back down, her head on her mother’s shoulder.

  Dammit! She’s getting worse. Raven sat up and held Tinsley, patting her back until she stopped coughing. A war raged in her mind. Some invisible poison with no smell or taste might be outside, but the air here already hurt her child, probably the hydroponic chemicals being sucked into the ventilation system.

  The girls’ eyes widened. “Are we gonna do something bad?”

  “Not bad. A little sneaky. We’ll get in trouble if they catch us.”

  Tinsley grinned, bouncing, an eager gleam in her eyes. “I won’t tell anyone. What is it?”

  Yeah. The two of us are just like Dad. Anything we can get away with. “Try to sleep now. I have to do some things first.”

  “Tell me!” Tinsley bounced in her lap.

  “If I say any more, you’re going to be too excited to sleep.”

  “Mom…” Tinsley folded her arms. “I’m already too excited to sleep. You’ve already said too much.”

  Raven shifted to lie down again. If she has another choking fit like that, screw what the doc finds. “Do you want to see topside?”

  The child’s eyes grew huge and round. She stared for a moment, too stunned to speak, then whispered, “Yeah.”

  “Okay. End of next wake. Don’t say anything to anyone, even Sienna and the other kids… or we won’t be able to go see.”

  “Promise,” whispered Tinsley.

  Much to Raven’s surprise—and worry—the child fell asleep soon after.

  13

  Our Secret

  When a person takes risks to serve a greater need, it’s heroic. Now, when they take risks for no good reason? That’s called having fun. – Ellis Wilder.

  Alarm bells rang far too soon.

  Raven reluctantly got out of bed, glared at the clock showing 0-9-5-7, and shut off the ringer. Tinsley didn’t stir at all. At the edge of panic, she grabbed her daughter by the shoulders and lightly shook her.

  “Hey, kiddo. It’s wake time.”

  A few seconds later when Tinsley gave a soft moan, Raven’s heart started beating again.

  Don’t flip out. We both stayed up too late.

  She hurriedly changed from her nightgown to her usual clothes, then dressed Tinsley as if changing a life-sized doll. The girl finally woke up at Raven tickling her feet before putting the tread socks on her.

  Too close to being late to suffer the dawdling of an overtired six-year-old, Raven picked her up and carried her out into the hall. She stopped by the cafeteria only long enough to grab breakfast muffins, not staying there to eat. Tinsley gnawed on hers while being carried to the school room. Raven set her on her feet at the doorway and waved to Sienna, who’d already started the wake period’s lessons. Tinsley gave her a quick hug and trudged to her desk. Mind swimming with anxiety, Raven headed down the hall to the engineering room and her workstation.

  She flopped in her chair, eating her muffin while starting on the repair queue lined up along the edge of her table—mostly fan motors used in the vast maze of ventilation ducts. From the look of it, Shaw and Trenton had spent all of last wake swapping dead units out and left the broken ones on her and Lark’s workstations.

  Fortunately, most of the time the fan motors failed, they only needed a good cleaning. Every so often, she’d run into one that burned out and required replacing the coils, brushes, or in some cases, control board. They had a respectable stock of spare boards and parts from other fan motors too far gone to get back online. A mild sense of security came from not having to worry that they’d start losing pusher fans any time soon, but it didn’t reassure her that much.

  Circulating stale air doesn’t help anyone.

  “What the hell do you expect me to do with it?” shouted Shaw.

  Raven jumped, startled at the sudden outburst. She twisted to look at the doorway to Ben’s office.

  “Fix them,” said the boss.

  Shaw exhaled hard, then not-quite-yelled, “Have you listened to anything I said in the past ten minutes? Do you know magic? That’s the only way we’re going to squeeze any more life out of those things.”

  Ugh. Now what?

  “Well… I don’t know what you expect me to say here.” A loud metallic creak—the spring in Ben’s desk chair—drowned out a sigh. “Look, we have what we have. And we’ve been keeping things flowing here for hundreds of years. We can figure it out. Let me talk to Baylee. Maybe we can convince them to run another crop of cotton-plus.”

  Shaw stormed out of the office, carrying a forty-inch-square air filter panel. He stopped three steps into the room, spun on his heel, and jabbed the filter square in Ben’s direction. “These things are clapped out. They’re basically doing nothing but slowing down the airflow.”

  “Exactly why we’ll get them to produce some cotton-plus and we can make new liners.” Another creak came from Ben’s chair. He appeared in the doorway a moment later.

  “That will take months.” Shaw banged the filter panel on his leg, releasing an explosion of grey dust. “Months we don’t really have. Everyone will end up having to wear filter masks inside until this is taken care of. It’s like a damn snowstorm in the ducts, all the dust blowing around.”

  Ben shooed Shaw toward the adjacent HVAC room. “Understood. Do what you can.”

  Raven looked away before either of them noticed her listening in. Muttering to himself about ‘this is all we need,’ Ben hurried out into the hall, most likely on his way to either hydroponics or Noah’s office.

  As soon as the sound of his footsteps grew too faint to hear, Raven jumped out of her chair and ran out, heading to the infirmary. There, she found the doc checking on Daniel, who lay in one of the recovery beds wearing a breathing mask. Seeing the doctor treat the old man with oxygen further convinced her that the air quality in the Arc had reached a point of being dangerous. All the dust that burst from the filter panel… maybe that’s w
hat made Tinsley cough so much.

  Filter mask…

  “Doc?” asked Raven, walking in. “How is he?”

  “Hard to say. He never regained consciousness.” The doc patted Daniel on the shoulder, then approached Raven, meeting her halfway across the infirmary. “I haven’t yet figured out if he suffered brain damage or not.”

  “Did he have one of those heart things?”

  “No. At least if he did it was a very mild one. Best I can tell, he just stopped breathing for a while. CPR worked, though if he was out for too long, he’s already gone.”

  Raven leaned to the side to look past the Doc at the frail old man lying in the bed, too saddened at the thought to come up with anything to say. Making it to eighty had been an impressive accomplishment that few people managed. She didn’t have much hope that he’d wake up again. Witnessing the death of a man who’d been a fixture of the Arc going back to her earliest memories rocked her sense of security.

  Her father had given him a notebook with an ‘if you’re reading this, I’m dead’ message, plus a bunch of sappy stories he’d written about stuff she’d done as a toddler. She hadn’t been able to read them. Even the apology for disappearing on her left her in tears for days.

  A large lump swelled up in her throat. She approached the bed and gently took the elder’s hand. He didn’t feel dead yet, so she squeezed.

  “Daniel, I don’t know if you can hear me. Sorry if I didn’t really say thank you enough for holding onto Dad’s notebook. Guess it’s kinda incredible you had eighty birthdays. Maybe you could be stubborn enough to have a couple more, huh?”

  Daniel didn’t show any signs of reacting.

  “Gonna try to fix this place.” She bowed her head. “Sorry I’m not working faster.”