The Girl Who Found the Sun

by Matthew S. Cox

  Dad…

  She gingerly slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Tinsley, and sat on the rug by her father’s storage chest holding a feebly glowing crank light. His notebooks might have information. Perhaps he could help the Arc from beyond the grave. When she’d read about the ruins to the west, she’d gone over a little more than half of his writing. She took the seven other journals she had not yet touched out of the box and opened the one on top.

  Reading by crank light proved challenging. Raven ended up lying on her stomach, holding the small device right up to the page. Her father had apparently also seen ‘strange two-legged creatures’ out in the forest, but his comments always involved motion in the distance or a sense of being followed.

  Two notebooks later, she ran to the toilet, then resumed her search.

  A few pages into the fourth one, a big circle shaded with a triangle pattern drawn on the left page stood out as unusual since her father hadn’t drawn too many sketches in the journals. The addition of a stick figure and some trees near the bottom gave a sense of scale, suggesting the sphere to be roughly five stories tall.

  Raven cranked the flashlight up to full brightness and held it close to the text, still sprawled on the floor on her chest like a kid.

  Her father wrote about spotting a giant silver ball poking out of the forest in the distance. Believing it to be a Plution spaceship, he hastily left the area. She backed up a page to read the entry before that, which indicated he had set out from the Arc going east.

  “East,” whispered Raven.

  That other tower was east.

  She tapped her foot on air as fear, curiosity, and desperation roiled in her heart. A Plution spaceship might be exactly what she needed to find, provided it had been abandoned. Sure it would be as old as the Great Death, as old as the Arc, but they didn’t need any of its systems to work, only a ready-made structure strong enough to hold back ferals. Something resilient enough to survive space travel could surely still be able to stop an angry bigfoot.

  That track in the storage place looked just like a man’s footprint. The ferals aren’t as big as Noah thinks. Probably mutant humans who developed crazy body hair.

  The chance that a usable structure sat only a few days’ travel to the east presented an opportunity she couldn’t ignore on the chance that Plutions might be there. Breathable air, live plants, birds… none of those seemed possible if the aliens remained. Maybe they’d gone home after thinking they’d destroyed all life on Earth. Or, the planet might have healed, and the Plutions died off, unable to tolerate the change of environment.

  I have to look at least. She had binoculars. If Plutions still occupied the starship, using it as a base of sorts, she’d see signs of activity from far enough away that she could run. Aliens being so close would also explain why Noah had such a fear of going outside. Maybe he knew about them, too.

  With a plan—reckless as it was—came hope. She shut off the crank light and returned to bed.

  Raven opened her eyes to Tinsley kneeling on her chest.

  The scrawny child pushed Raven’s head side to side by a hand on each cheek.

  “Hey,” she rasped, her voice a whispery croak.

  “Hi, Mommy.” Tinsley stopped jostling her head back and forth and sat back on her heels. Frizzy black hair cascaded down her bare chest over prominent ribs, almost in her lap.

  She looks more like me than Chase. Raven reached up and brushed at her child’s hair, grinning. The only obvious feature the girl had inherited from her prick of a father had been a lighter skin tone. They sometimes joked that the Arc had a ‘person printer,’ which started with Xan, then Sienna, then Ariana, Cheyenne, and Raven, then Tinsley, and finally Josh as it gradually ran out of ink. Of course that made no sense considering Xan was eleven, half the age of Sienna or Raven. But it still made them laugh.

  “Bells shouted at us already. I turned ’em off.” Tinsley crossed her arms behind her head and stretched.

  Raven couldn’t resist the defenseless belly in front of her face, and tickled it.

  Giggling, Tinsley fell off her to the side, curling up on the bed and squealing peals of laughter—at least until she started coughing. Raven stopped tickling her, which made the girl pout.

  “Sorry I’m sick.”

  “You’re not sick. The air’s bad.” Raven sat up. “Ugh. I overslept. C’mon. Time to go.”

  Tinsley crawled off the bed, heading to the toilet room. Raven got up and changed out of her nightgown.

  “Mommy?”

  She turned to find a naked Tinsley standing there looking annoyed. “What?”

  “All my inside pants are in the dirty bin. I don’t got any more.”

  “Dammit. Forgot to clean…” She looked down at herself, realizing she’d been wearing the same set of inside clothes for the past three wakes. Too much panic and chaos going on for her to remember the laundry. “I’ll wash stuff when I get back. Or, ask Sienna to do it while I’m out. Wear the least stinky ones.”

  Tinsley shrugged, crossed the room to the clothing bins, and proceeded to pull dirty items out and sniff each one before tossing them back over her shoulder to the floor.

  Faris is an idiot. Raven grumbled to herself about the resource administrator. Allocating cotton-plus to making child-sized inside clothes had been ‘not a priority’ given how few children they had in the Arc as well as kids’ habit of growing out of things. The woman didn’t want to waste material on garments that would eventually be useless, and they didn’t want to use up space in the hydroponic tanks on cotton-plus that could be given to food plants. Tinsley’s entire wardrobe, except for her mini-poncho, consisted of garments three or more times her age. The tattered red skirt had been Raven’s at that age, and belonged to at least two other girls before her.

  Tinsley eventually found a pair of inside pants that didn’t smell bad, and hastily dressed. She adored that red skirt, mostly because it once belonged to her mother. Generations ago, people in the Arc wore jumpsuits or shirts and pants, back when producing fabric had been routine and no mothers had to steal bed sheets from empty quarters to make inside clothes for their kids. The cotton-plus ponchos required less material and less skill to make—and lasted longer on growing kids.

  She waited for the child to finish pulling on her tread socks, took her hand, and hurried down the hall to the cafeteria. Sienna and the other kids had already left, proof that Raven overslept pretty bad. She grabbed a few breakfast muffins from the serving area, handed one to Tinsley, and ate while walking to the classroom.

  Tinsley stopped at the doorway, peered up at her, and broke down crying. The child clamp-hugged her like she expected never to see her alive again. Her outburst brought silence to the class, all four kids plus Sienna staring at them in the doorway.

  “Shh.” Raven took a knee, hugging her back. “I won’t be out there long.”

  “I wanna go, too.”

  I can’t bring her anywhere near Plutions. A brief vision of disgusting aliens shooting beams of green slime at them made her shiver. “Not this time, kiddo. The place I’m going might be a little dangerous.”

  “Don’t go then.” Tinsley squeezed her.

  She took the binoculars from her tool satchel and explained how they work. “I promise I won’t get close to bad guys.”

  Lip quivering, Tinsley gazed down at the floor. “Okay.”

  Raven kissed her on the head and sent her into the classroom.

  Sienna rushed over to the door. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Just… she really wants to go with me. Not sure if it’s a good idea to take her into unexplored territory.”

  “Isn’t that what you did before?” Sienna poked her.

  “Different this time. Dad thinks he found a Plution spaceship. It’s in the east, which is the direction I needed to go anyway to check that tower.”

  “You still believe in those?”

  “You don’t?” Raven blinked.

  “I dunno. I used to.” Sienna k
icked her toes at the floor. “As a kid. But… aliens seem kind of far-fetched, don’t you think?”

  Raven fidgeted. True, she hadn’t ever seen any documentation about what the Plutions looked like, wanted, or did. All of it came from stories passed along verbally. What she’d read about various aliens in fiction novels had likely fueled the fires of her imagination into making the Plutions out to be something more like creatures of fantasy.

  “Maybe. I’m going to be on edge as it is. Having to worry about keeping her safe out there, too.” She might be safer in clean air. “Oh, umm… I hate to ask, but things have been so crazy I forgot to do laundry. Any chance you might help out? She ran out of clean stuff.”

  “After class, sure. If you’re not back by bedtime, I’m going to lose my shit.” Sienna hugged her.

  “Dad mentioned the ship is a couple days off. Probably won’t be back here by bedtime.”

  Sienna stared at her for a long moment.

  Damn. She’s about to try to talk me into staying.

  “Just be careful, okay?” Sienna hugged her again. “That’s why Tins is upset. You going away for a few days.”

  “I can move faster alone. And, Dad wasn’t in any hurry. Bet I can get there in a day and a half.”

  Sienna chuckled. “Whatever, just don’t do anything dumb.”

  “I promise I won’t.” She released the hug, took a step back, and sighed. “Well, let me get started. Faster I’m out the hatch, faster I’m back.”

  Her child crying in the classroom and her ‘sister’ staring at her from the doorway came damn close to ending the mission, but better Tinsley cry than run out of air. Hands clenched into fists, she hurried across the Arc, heading to the escape tunnel—until a random idea diverted her to the infirmary. The doc had to be the smartest person the Arc. While he didn’t have the ‘official’ medical education that doctors of generations past did, he certainly possessed the intelligence for it. He also had a giant library of books with all sorts of information, not one of them a made up story.

  She ran in the door, startling Preston, who reclined on a sofa in the back corner, reading a book thick enough to serve as a weapon.

  “Raven…” He sat up, closing the book over a finger to hold his place. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Well, a lot is wrong, but not with my health. I wanted to ask if you knew anything about the Plutions.”

  He chuckled. “You’ve been out there a few times. Kind of odd to ask now.”

  She explained her father’s notes about the spaceship. “I want to know what to expect when I get there.”

  “Hmm. Interesting.” Preston replaced his finger with an actual bookmark and set the tome aside. “I’ve come to consider the story of ‘Plutions’ as a personification of a concept. Over multiple generations of us living down here in an isolated society, our store of accurate information about the past eroded. Much of it was never in printed form. When the last of the computers failed, all of that information fell out of reach. I’ve read about ancient societies that existed many centuries before the Great Death. They used to worship the sun as if it were a living, thinking god. Even in our present limited scientific awareness, we know it is a celestial body.”

  “Right…” She nodded.

  “Plutions, the notion of alien invaders, are—in my opinion—the same thing as sun worship. It is a bastardization of the word ‘pollution.’ Some generations ago in the Arc, talk of pollution destroying the world outside shifted to the idea that some manner of creatures had been responsible for the destruction.”

  Raven stared at him. “You don’t believe in the aliens?”

  “No. None of the toxins had extraterrestrial origins. The Great Death came about as the result of something humans did. We destroyed ourselves.”

  “That’s stupid. Who would do that?”

  He shrugged. “Unfortunately, that’s a question I can’t answer. Perhaps it could have been an accident. More likely carelessness.”

  “Dad always said the bugs died out and no one cared. I thought the Plutions did that and we didn’t have time to fight back.”

  “You’re not entirely wrong, but no aliens are involved.”

  Raven trembled with excess energy. If he’s right, I don’t have to be scared of aliens. And that’s also not a spaceship… what the heck else could a giant silver sphere be? “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be about anything. Oh… to answer a question I’m sure you have, I did perform swab tests on the Saints. None of them had any detectable levels of toxins in their system either.”

  “That’s incredible…”

  “It’s premature to become excited. There are likely many places out there on the surface that remain toxic and hazardous to humans. Pollution is not evenly spread across the planet. Alas, we have no way to tell how far away anything dangerous could be. If you see areas with no plants growing, or pools of liquid that don’t appear to be water, or places that smell bad… avoid them. Anywhere with a radiation symbol as well.”

  “I will. Thanks. I gotta get going.” She took a step away, but paused. “Do you think Noah will really agree to leave the Arc?”

  Preston drummed his fingers on his knees. “He’s a cautious man and he does not like change. However, he’s not blind to what’s going on. I think he maybe has too much faith in your team’s ability to keep everything operational. It’s like asking me to fix a dead person back to life.”

  “Yeah.” She bowed her head. “What about the ferals? Do you think they exist?”

  “I am not convinced they don’t.” He chuckled. “I’ve been trying to get Noah to send someone out to where the Saints lived, but he hasn’t. The man still believes going outside is a death sentence due to some slow-acting disease.”

  She shifted her jaw side to side. “Want me to look around? Where is it?”

  “Beyond the windmill field at the north end is all I know. Don’t imagine it’s too far away.”

  “Okay. I’ll check it out.”

  Preston saluted her with his giant book.

  Most of her fear shifted to eagerness. The lives of everyone in the Arc weighed on her shoulders, depending on what she could find topside. Even if she couldn’t convince Noah to change his mind, if she convinced enough other people, it might not matter what Noah thought.

  This sounds like Lark’s theory happening all over again. Half the people wanting to go outside, half being too scared. Or more like three quarters. Whatever. We don’t have the same choice they did. Back then, the Arc would have seemed safe. If we don’t leave soon, we’re all going to die.

  She headed to the cafeteria and collected a supply of bread, muffins, and water that should last her three days if carefully portioned. Noah had given her permission, even if it had been sarcastic, so she didn’t try to conceal her trip. She started toward the exit, but during a final check of her gear realized she’d left the katana in her room. Grumbling, she rushed back for it in case of ferals.

  The door to the escape tunnel remained locked, so she backtracked to the security room.

  Ann looked over at her. “Hey, kid. What’s up?”

  “I’m not a kid. You know I’m twenty-two.”

  “Compared to me, you’re still a kid.” The redhead grinned.

  Raven gestured at her. “You’re what, thirty-six? That’s not old.”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Time to fit her for a cane,” said Jose from the next desk.

  Ann gave him the finger.

  “Going topside. Mind opening the door?”

  “Again?” asked Ann and Jose at the same time.

  “Yeah. Official scouting mission.”

  Whether she sounded confident enough to believe, or they assumed she’d been in and out so many times now it didn’t matter, no one bothered calling Noah to verify her story. Ann got up, took a key from a peg on the wall, and went with her to open the door.

  “Good luck out there.” Ann patted her shoulder. “Try not to get dead.”
/>
  “Not high on my list of things to do.” Raven smiled, then hurried into the passageway.

  She jogged past all the doomsday graffiti, ignoring it. The doc believed the Plutions were an it, not a they, poison left over from society past. Pollution, not Plutions. If true, that meant people made the silver sphere and it most likely would not be a space ship.

  I can’t wait to see it!

  25

  Father’s Daughter

  Nothing scares me. I mean that literally. When you know something bad happened somewhere and find nothing, it’s time to be concerned. – Ellis Wilder.

  Raven eased the hatch down and peered up at a vast expanse of billowy grey clouds.

  Studying them for a little while convinced her it didn’t seem likely to rain soon despite the overcast sky. A steady breeze came in from the east, driving the windmills faster than she’d yet seen them go. Even the sluggish turbine eight appeared to be keeping up with the rest. Perhaps the stronger air currents broke the crud off the gears. Both turbines on the sagging towers wobbled precariously.

  If the wind blows any harder, those two are going down.

  She headed across the open dirt, hoping the doc’s warning of areas where no plants grew didn’t apply here. For at least sixty feet around the hatch and all the way into the windmill farm, the ground consisted of dirt and sparse weeds. Something kept foliage away. Perhaps the Saints destroyed or moved plants that sprang up for some reason.

  Fearful that a tower might collapse and crush her, Raven kept her distance from the steel lattice structures, navigating the wind farm at a rapid jog. Fifty some feet past the last row of three turbines, she found a path leading down a hill to a relatively flimsy-looking shack that showed signs of recent human habitation. The lower elevation concealed it from view on the ground, the trees hiding it from her when she’d been up on the tower. Someone had stacked up logs of cut wood on the right, near a grill made from scrap metal.