Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1)

by Sky Corbelli

  Chapter 2

  Please Step Outside

  Ezra didn't stop running until he had cleared the family property and entered Sanctuary city proper. He paused to catch his breath, panting with relief. Looking up, he caught the sun's last rays striking the barrier – a protective bubble that kept their air clean and blocked harmful radiation – bathing the landscape in various hues of pink and shades of violet. “Unnatural colors,” Ezra mused, looking out over the rest of the Legacy hilltop. Graceful arches and ornate columns, styled after the estates of the ancient Romans, played games with the light and shadow. “But pretty in their own way.”

  He checked his time display. Two minutes until five. Slightly behind schedule, but still well within the safety zone. Hoisting his glider, he set off at a jog for the nearest transport station. Dialing in his destination for the university district, Ezra paid the transport fee and hopped onto the wormhole generation platform. The scenery abruptly changed as the generator engaged, the elegant station's interior replaced with the open-air port at the university plaza.

  Ezra jumped on a museum shuttle just as it was leaving on its route. As they passed the Webatorium, bright banners featuring the triumphant return of the Lolcats exhibit, he went over the plan in his mind.

  It was simple, really. Eight months of sending out unannounced gliders and timing DOLT response units had provided plenty of data. Finding the area with the longest time between barrier breach and actual contact from the officers on duty given him with the ideal flight path. A little digging through old surveys of the Barrier Mountain range had led him to a set of coordinates for a small ledge on the far side of the mountains. The side that faced the world.

  Suppressing his parents' research on remote creation and deployment of portals was no problem. Wormhole research and technology was his Legacy, after all, at his sole discretion to develop and release.

  From there, it was an easy task to make it seem as though he was beginning his testing phase, when in fact he already had a reliable working mechanism for throwing wormholes to the nearest receiving port, and even to locations where no port existed at all. The only obstacle was where to make the portal. Naturally, all wormhole travel originating within Sanctuary or on the space station above was strictly monitored by DOLT. Through extensive testing, however Ezra had determined that they couldn't detect incoming wormholes at all, so long as they were instantiated outside the barrier.

  He smiled, thinking of the wormhole controller device waiting for him on the generator platform back in his lab. In just a few minutes, he would simply fly out of Sanctuary, pick up the device, and originate a new portal through the existing one, thereby sidestepping DOLT security measures entirely. He'd bring back proof that the world outside was safe, that they no longer had to cower behind the barrier with their enforced population limits and infinitely reprocessed food.

  Of course, he wasn't an idiot. Along with the controller was a radiation badge, so in the unlikely event that his thesis was wrong he could simply step back through the wormhole and return to the comfort and safety of his lab for decontamination. And, just to be extra safe, he had ordered a mandatory maintenance inspection for all ports closer to his test zone than his lab's port, just so the generator couldn't find some other receiving port by mistake. All of the tricky parts were already taken care of, the rest was just science.

  Ezra kept riding until they reached the Sanctuary Center. The stately building at the summit of Sanctuary was an embodiment of the city itself. Solid walls and domes showed safety and security, protection from the outside world. Sweeping arches and floating fountains, promising the ingenuity of the future married to the beauty of the past. And rising from the pinnacle, as far as the eye could see, the space elevator loomed like some monstrous, surgically straight cut in the fabric of reality.

  Despite the relatively warm night, Ezra shivered at the sight of it. “This is no time to dwell on the past, Ezra,” he reminded himself sharply, “pull yourself together.”

  He walked inside, past the relatively small group of business people waiting for the next scheduled wormhole up to the space station. Founder's Day seemed to have cleared out all but the most dedicated of travelers, just as he had hoped. A security officer held up a hand for him to stop, but Ezra flashed his credentials. “Legacy business.”

  The guard took one look at his clearance and jumped to attention, saluting rigidly. “Of course, Mr. Hawkins. Take all the time you need, sir.”

  Ezra fought down a smirk as he walked past the security checkpoint. Dolt, he thought, marveling at the aptness of the department's acronym.

  Past the wormhole generators, past the computing stations that kept logs of matter composition and global positions primed for travel off-world, up the maintenance staircase and ladder to the roof, Ezra reached his goal: the space elevator platform, suspended on its cables just above the Center. Elevator travel had fallen out of practicality with the advent of wormhole technology, and this relic of the past had not had a passenger in over ten years. Now it would serve his purposes, as the highest point from which he could launch himself.

  Ezra took a moment to look out over the city. Lights began flickering to life in the grunt residential districts, filled with practical little houses that boasted none of classical flair so omnipresent up on Legacy Hill. Bits of a song floated in, signs of the night's revelry getting started. But for the most part, Sanctuary was quiet, anticipating what would come with baited breath. “An angel, arms outstretched,” Ezra breathed, “waiting for me.”

  He glanced down at his clock again. Thirteen after five. Time to go. He unfolded the modified glider with practiced movements and strapped himself in. Inching up to the edge of the platform, Ezra closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped. The on-board computer took over immediately, repulsors under the wings correcting his flight and moderating his speed as he soared toward the barrier. Ezra let out a whoop of pure exhilaration, skimming over the city, drawing startled gasps and wondering looks from everyone on his path. Oh yes, this will be a Founder's Day they'll all remember, he thought to himself with amusement.

  There was a brief tingle as he passed through the barrier at seventeen minutes after five, and then he was free.

  The flight to his rendezvous point took another fifteen minutes, and even the joy of riding on the wind was hampered by the bleak landscape below him. Endless miles of short, stubby grass rolled down to the base of the mountain range that encircled the city in a second, naturally formed ring of protection from the desolation that lay beyond. Supposed desolation, Ezra reminded himself.

  Sanctuary had been home to the last remnants of mankind for over a thousand years, after their forefathers had all but destroyed the world. The Great War, they called it, a conflict that left nothing but uninhabitable wasteland and poisoned oceans, lakes and rivers. Mankind had flexed its muscles, and life had been driven nearly to extinction.

  At least, that's what the history books said. Ezra had seen the planet though, from the viewport of the ill-fated Millennial Legacy launch during the celebration of the thousandth Founder's Day, seven years ago. It had looked beautiful and serene and perfect and vibrant. It had looked alive.

  After he was given a clean bill of health and released to his research, Ezra had run tests on grass gathered outside the barrier. The textbooks all said that Sanctuary was founded on one of the few places that had been relatively untouched by the war and its horrible aftermath, but he had found nothing out of the ordinary about the plants outside. There was no residual radiation, no subatomic deformities at all. They were just plants. Boring, ugly plants, to be sure, but healthy and natural.

  Thinking back to his time spent recovering aboard the space station, there had been no windows that faced Earth. When he had asked about it, the nurses had told him that the planet was so hideous that the station had been purposely designed that way, to remind mankind that their future lay out in the stars, not tied to a dying world.

  But Ezra
knew that something had changed. He had hinted at it to colleagues, but no-one ever seemed to take him seriously enough to just look at the facts: somehow, the world had renewed itself. Well, he thought resolutely, if they're too blind, then I'll just have to open their eyes. I'll open everyone's eyes, and usher in a golden age of expansion and rediscovery. He nodded to himself. He would show them something, something to make this a Founder's Day that shook Sanctuary to its roots. Something that would have made his parents proud.

  Ezra shook his head. Science, he had to focus on science.

  As the glider descended, he saw the wormhole snap into existence. One moment there was the monotonous brown of the grassy slope. The next there was a one meter wide window into his lab.

  The thing to understand about wormholes was connectivity. Sub-atomic particles could move from one place to another instantaneously. It was a simple matter to follow the paths they left, one jump to the next, and connect two points in space. The matter from one point was practically already in the other point, with quantum tunneling. And, since the position of any particle was a naturally uncertain element, switching the locations was as simple as dumping Heisenberg waves through the connection. The slope ahead of Ezra was still connected to the patch of bland grass that had been switched with the generator platform, but that patch of grass was now connected to his lab back in Sanctuary.

  The real trick was accounting for the wormhole's behavior around the space where it was created: namely, that it liked to stay there. The Earth, however, had a tendency to move rather quickly around the sun and its own axis.

  His lab's generators could pull along both ends of the wormhole while maintaining the portal itself – locking them in their positions relative to the surface of the Earth – for a total of four hours before the batteries would fail and the connection would drop. Cut that time in half for the second wormhole he would generate to jump outside the mountains, and Ezra had just under two hours to complete his expedition if he wanted to avoid a very long walk home. And some explaining when he got to the barrier. He shivered, shaking away the thought. Probably safe to just keep it short and sweet then.

  He quickly folded the glider and tossed it back into the lab, collecting his gear and checking the radiation badge. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he entered in the coordinates for his destination.

  Ezra took a deep breath as the wormhole connected, and stepped through. He found himself standing on a flat shelf of stone, blinking in the sunlight, as he took his first look at the world.