The Girl Who Found the Sun

by Matthew S. Cox

  Lark whistled. Shaw clapped a hand over his face, eyes wide. Trenton gave her a look like she’d suggested they all light themselves on fire.

  Ben cringed. “That is going to be a difficult option to get past Noah.”

  She started to throttle him by her grip on his shirt, but Shaw and Trenton pulled her back.

  “Easy, girl,” said Shaw.

  “I’m not a freakin’ horse!” snapped Raven.

  Shaw laughed, which infuriated her as well as made her feel silly. If she flipped out and lost her cool, it would only make it easier for Noah and any sub-administrator to dismiss her. She took a deep breath, wincing at the obviously metallic flavor.

  “Okay.” Raven released her grip on Ben’s shirt and held her hands up. “I’m calm.”

  The guys let go of her.

  “Humor me and check on the filters. I’m on your side, Raven. Really, I am.” Ben smoothed his shirt down. “I don’t want anyone to die, especially the kids. You have some good points about the systems, but you’re basically talking about trading one kind of death for another. Things would have to be really dire in here for him to even consider that.”

  Fury welled up. She shouted, “Are you—?”

  He raised a hand. “Let me finish. Things would have to be dire in here for him to consider outside air unless we can show him undeniable proof it’s our only option.”

  Raven turned away, arms folded, head down. “Undeniable proof like me carrying Tinsley’s body into his office?”

  Everyone sucked in a little breath.

  “No, Raven. I’m with you. I won’t let it go that far. Promise.” Ben nudged her arm. “Your mind’s full of doomsday scenarios from all those books you read. All I’m asking is that we make sure we’re looking at one before we act rashly, open the door, and kill everyone.”

  “We went outside and came back okay,” said Lark from her seat.

  “Two people taking a quick trip is not even close to the same thing as flooding the entire Arc with potentially toxic vapors.” Ben sighed, then rolled his neck around. “Please check the filters, give me a chance to try and up the efficiency on the scrubbers, and let’s compare notes in an hour or three.”

  Shaw and Trenton both nodded, so Raven reluctantly gave in.

  Ben led the way into the adjacent room containing the bulk of the ventilation and air purification machinery. The eight CO2 scrubbers lined up along the far wall like a group of giant, boxy cows at a trough. In theory, one unit had more than enough capacity to re-oxygenate the air for an entire floor level. Eight units working for six levels should have offered plenty of failure tolerance, but after so long… it felt as if the scrubbers barely did anything.

  Air coming from the various intake vents throughout the Arc went down a massive conduit to the hydroponic farm, then came back up to this room where it traversed a fourteen-foot-long steel cabinet duct on the right side of the room containing seven banks of filter inserts separated by fans. The main air mover, a huge eight-foot-diameter fan, sat ‘behind’ the CO2 scrubbers, sucking air through the primary filter cabinet into the scrubbers, then forcing it into the ducts for distribution out to the Arc again. That giant fan provided most of the suction drawing air in the Arc’s various intake ducts.

  Ben referred to it as ‘Zeus,’ since if it became angry, everyone would probably die.

  She approached the long primary filter unit, put on her goggles and breathing mask, then lifted a panel to expose a section holding ten inserts, each a forty-by-forty inch square. A stiff breeze erupted from the opening, scattering a wash of pale grey silt on the floor around her. The air blast continued billowing her hair. A thick coating of fuzzy grey dust coated every filter panel, thicker on the right (incoming) side, but it had also accumulated on the left, suggesting that air blowing down between filter sections remained saturated with dirt.

  “Shit,” muttered Raven.

  She pulled one square out to examine. Slabs of congealed dust broke off and fell to the floor, bursting apart into starbursts of pale grey. The filter insert had an accordion-fold section of material sandwiched between mesh screens, and it definitely appeared to have been through hell and back. It might have been fiberglass, cotton, or polyester—or some combination of the three. Studying it for a moment convinced her she could most likely hand-build replacements if she had appropriate materials. Unfortunately, that would require waiting for the hydroponic team to grow cotton-plus, the plants to mature, be harvested, and processed into fabric. The production staff could make paper from various vines and stems, which meant a cardboard-like housing might be possible if she couldn’t save the existing filter frames.

  “I see the way you’re looking at that.” Shaw gestured at with the demeanor of an old cowboy indicating a dead horse. “Washin’ the guts won’t work. Tried that yesterday. Damn thing disintegrated into fibrous mush. Been washed too many times.”

  “All we can do is brush them out dry,” said Trenton. “Even doing that, I broke two of them. The material’s just too weak. Softest brush I could find tears the fabric.”

  She sighed. “Okay, let’s take them into a space with minimal air flow, bang them out, and give them a light brushing. Won’t be ideal, but it’s better than leaving all this crud in the system.”

  “Good plan.” Shaw grabbed four panels out of the section she’d opened. “Trent, you go on and grab the rest of them, bring ’em to the parts room. When you got this whole thing empty, get in there with a brush and clean the duct. If we’re still bangin’ on filters when you finish that, come help us.”

  “You got it, boss.” Trenton began pulling filters out and stacking them.

  Raven and Shaw went to the parts closet, a room a little smaller than her quarters full of shelving. It didn’t have a vent intake, so none of the dust they knocked loose would be drawn back into the system. She left her goggles and filter mask on, and proceeded to bump the filter squares against the steel shelf, close to the floor.

  Shaw did the same.

  Armload by armload, Trenton carried filter tiles into the room and left them in stacks. Eventually, he had the whole primary filter unit empty and got to work cleaning the cabinet. Raven tried to find the balance point between gentle enough not to smash the filter but forceful enough to dislodge crud. A few times, she tore holes in the old material from simply handling the inserts.

  Air’s going to pass through multiple filters. Couple of small holes aren’t a big deal.

  Two hours later, they agreed no more could be done to resuscitate the filter panels. The fabric inside remained an off-putting shade of dark grey, but it no longer appeared to be growing fur. Trenton’s idea of using compressed air sounded good, but the high-pressure blast caused the membrane to disintegrate. Three giant mounds of grey silt had formed on the floor where each of them had been working. Raven volunteered to deal with that while the guys lugged the ‘clean’ filters back to the machine. She spent a few minutes sweeping up the dust and putting it into an empty plastic drum. The lid would seal it away from going back into circulation. Maybe she could get permission to go dump it outside.

  The condition of those filters made one thing obvious: they’d all been breathing contaminated air for a while. She tried not to imagine the same dust coating the inside of her—or Tinsley’s—lungs.

  It’s probably worse in here than outside.

  She jogged out of the parts room heading over to Ben, who sat on the floor by the third CO2 scrubber, using a laptop connected by cable to the machine to run a diagnostic routine. No one had taught her the first thing about it, so all the moving lines, pie graphs, and bar charts meant little. Unfortunately, though a computer, that particular one only had software to run diagnostics for the air scrubbers, not a true operating system.

  Raven lifted her goggles up off her eyes. “There’s a problem…”

  Ben tapped another key, then looked up at her, blinking in surprise. “What happened to you?”

  “Happened to me?” She froze, momen
tarily worried that some undetectable toxin from outside made her grow a face tumor or something horrible.

  “You’ve turned grey.”

  She looked down at herself, her clothes the same color as most of the concrete around them. Her face—except for what the goggles and mask covered had to be the same. “That’s exactly the problem I mean. We’ve been breathing this crap for a long time. You haven’t assigned me to the filter unit before. When’s the last time someone cleaned those?”

  “Fourteen wakes ago,” called Shaw from across the room.

  “What?” She gawked at him. “That amount of crap built up in just fourteen wakes?”

  “Not so surprising.” Ben poked a few keys on the pseudo-laptop, causing the display to change to a whole bunch of fluctuating numbers. “Most of the ventilation ductwork running around the Arc has an inch-thick layer of fur lining it.”

  “Ugh.” She cringed. “Why aren’t we in there cleaning that out?”

  “Because, in order to do so, we would have to shut down the airflow to parts of the Arc in sections. Otherwise, all that crud would go flying down the ducts and end up in these scrubbers. The substrate is… not in the best condition. It’s already turned black from the mess getting past the filters.”

  She banged her fists on her hips. “Dammit. Are you serious? Of course it’s getting past the filters because the filters oversaturate in fourteen wakes! We should be cleaning them daily.”

  The ‘you’re right. I messed up’ look he gave her almost resulted in a fist upside the head. Lazy son of a… my daughter’s sick because you forgot? She let her frustration leak out on a sigh. Stay rational. I can’t do any good if they think I’m crazy. Noah already thinks I’m seeing things from some unknown poison. Never should have told him about seeing someone on the other tower.

  “Okay, so… it’s an emergency. If we all work on it, we can get through a section pretty quick. Shut off the vents, we go in and scrape the ducts…”

  “Remember what you were saying about the scrubbers’ efficiency? I’m…” He glanced at the screen. “Concerned that shutting down airflow to any section could rapidly lead to inadequate air quality. We’d only have twenty minutes or so before the air in that part of the Arc became harmful. In the confines of the vent shaft, you guys would be the first to pass out.”

  Despite being terrified and furious, Raven calmly plucked the computer from his lap, set it on the floor, grabbed his hand, and dragged him to his feet. Without a word, she hauled him to the door, across the engineering room, and across the Arc to the admin corridor and Noah’s office.

  “You’re going to…” Ben looked around nervously. “Seriously?”

  “Yep. We will convince him of the need to immediately start working on a way to ventilate with outside air. There’s no reason for me to mention the filters hadn’t been cleaned often enough to prevent the CO2 scrubber substrate from becoming ruined, or that the ducts are years behind on cleaning.”

  Ben slowed his stride, but didn’t pull back against her too hard. “You’re really not afraid of it out there?”

  “I’m not afraid of breathing it, no. Generally out there, I don’t have enough information to know if I should be afraid or not. But, the air’s fine. Doc took samples from my throat and nose, testing them for bad shit. He said I’m clean. And I swear to you, I felt better out there. Like I didn’t have a weight on my chest making it harder to breathe.”

  “I don’t feel like that.”

  She glanced sideways at him. “Neither did I before I went outside. You don’t notice it because it’s always there. You notice after it’s been gone a while and you feel it again.”

  “You know going outside sounds crazy. The entire point of the Arc was to isolate and protect us from the air on the surface.”

  “I’m aware of that,” said Raven, not breaking stride to Noah’s door, which she opened. “But it’s been centuries. And… in case you haven’t been keeping a scorecard of what’s breaking down, we are in trouble. I’m not waiting for people to die before demanding we do something.”

  “So you want to”—Ben glanced to his right, seemingly startled to find himself already in the head administrator’s office—“Hi, Noah. Sorry to barge in.” He looked back to Raven. “You want to potentially poison everyone because you think we’re going to die? What sense does that make?”

  She exhaled, shot him a look, and walked up to Noah’s desk. “We don’t have time to argue about this. The air quality inside the Arc has already deteriorated to a dangerous level. Our CO2 scrubbers might be completely useless already. The only oxygen we’re getting is coming from the plants in the hydro farm. The filters are one giant mass of fur. Hydroponic chemicals are leaking all over the place. Turbines are one stiff breeze away from collapsing. We can’t wait for people to start dying before we accept we have a giant problem.”

  “Slow down…” Noah pushed aside the logbook he’d been occupied with when she burst in. “Explain it to me clearly.”

  She squeezed her fists tight, but kept a calm face. In as slow and careful detail as possible, she explained everything one at a time, stressing the condition of the turbine towers, signs of oxygen deprivation in the kids, the scrubbers, the filters, the thick layer of muck in the ventilation ducts, and so on. “… which means the only reasonable option we have left is to come up with a way to vent the Arc using outside air.”

  Noah stared at her for a few seconds before bursting into laughter.

  “This is serious.” She looked at Ben. “Tell him. I’m not hallucinating.”

  “I’m… afraid a lot of what she says sounds like what’s going on.” Ben kept his gaze off to the side, refusing to challenge Noah with eye contact. “Spent a couple hours earlier testing the scrubber units and the monoethanolamine substrate is… well, to put it bluntly, shot. It’s supposed to be a clear, viscous liquid, but it’s a black, viscous liquid.”

  “Well, synthesize more of it then,” said Noah as if he’d suggested something obvious.

  “We can’t.” Ben finally looked at him.

  “And why is that?”

  Raven screamed ‘you should know. You’re the administrator!’ in her head, but held her tongue.

  “We don’t have anyone skilled enough at chemistry to do it.” Ben fidgeted. “Haven’t been able to for several generations now.”

  “Are there or are there not sufficient educational materials at our disposal to train someone?”

  Ben nodded. “Yes, we have the documentation.”

  “Why has no one been trained?”

  “Couple reasons. The coursework requires hands-on experimentation that we lack the raw materials for. All the chemicals had been restricted by a previous administrator for ‘necessary’ projects, not ‘playing around in a lab.’ Second, most of the electronic components in the chemistry lab no longer work. The machines necessary to assist in the synthesis of chemical compounds haven’t been operable in decades. The machines needed to make replacement components for those machines haven’t worked in decades. Since we have not had the functional capacity to produce advanced chemicals or electronics in some time, the educational administrator felt it a waste of resources to train people on skills they couldn’t possibly use.”

  “There’s an educational administrator?” asked Raven, eyebrow up.

  “Not anymore.” Ben sighed. “We needed one when they had to manage a staff of twelve teachers. I suppose you could call Sienna the educational administrator in a technical sense now.”

  Noah’s stare could’ve boiled the skin off a person at ten paces. “Why is this the first I’m learning about this situation?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to take that up with Kathryn, my predecessor.” Ben’s grimace said ‘you’ve been told this multiple times already’ but he didn’t dare say it out loud.

  Sensing Noah about to blame Ben for this entire situation, Raven spoke up in hopes of sparing her boss (and friend) from unjustified retribution. “Does it matter how we�
�ve ended up in this situation when there’s a way out staring us in the face?”

  “Your idea is sheer madness,” said Noah, his anger fading. “No one in their right mind would even consider such a thing. We are far better off breathing air that’s a little dusty than air that’s deadly.”

  “Noah…” She leaned forward, resting both fists on his desk. “The air in here is approaching deadly. It’s well past dusty. I admit we don’t know how much toxicity is possible from the hydroponic growth fluid fumes, but even if you ignore that, did you not just hear Ben tell you that the CO2 scrubbers are probably not even doing anything? There isn’t enough oxygen in our air. The turbines might fail at any moment. We lose them, we lose the fans. Then everyone dies in their sleep. My daughter is already sick. Ariana is sick. The children are showing symptoms of oxygen deprivation. Daniel is in a coma because of it. He could die.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So your solution to us all suffering a sneaky, suffocating death is to poison us all so we die much faster?”

  “Dammit!” She pounded the desk. “You know it’s not dangerous out there. I went out twice and came back fine. My father went out several times.”

  “Did he tell you how sick he got after the first trip?” Noah raised an eyebrow. “Probably not since you weren’t even born yet. He stumbled back in, eyes watering, face puffy, barely able to breathe. It’s a damn miracle he recovered. And, if it’s so safe out there, where is he?”

  Ben whistled. “Not right.”

  “It’s okay.” Raven stood straight. “He didn’t say it to hurt me. It’s a true statement. But… you don’t know what killed him. When I went out there, I could’ve fallen off the turbine tower when it collapsed out from under me. That doesn’t mean the air is toxic. Another tower might have fallen and crushed me. Or what if I fell in a hole, broke my neck? There are a thousand ways to die in any environment, but you’re assuming one.”

  Noah shifted his jaw side to side. “I’ll have doc run some tests on the air to confirm your worries about the oxygen levels.” Noah reached for the phone on the desk.