Compete

by Vera Nazarian

  “Lark Two? WTF?” Gracie puts her hands on her hips and glares at Blayne full-on.

  “Oh, jeez . . .” He shakes his head. But there’s just a tiny trace of a smile in the corners of his mouth.

  “Okay, look,” I say to Gracie, because suddenly I get it. Duh, what an idiot I am sometimes. “He just doesn’t want to go, because, well, use your brain. He’s not going to be comfortable there, with other people dancing.” I don’t say it, but I hope Gracie figures out my meaning, the boy can’t exactly dance without the use of his legs.

  But Gracie frowns at me, glances at Blayne and then back to me.

  There’s a pause.

  “In case it’s unclear, I’m not exactly fleet-footed,” Blayne says suddenly. It’s as if he’s read my mind.

  Gracie continues to look from him to me. “No, no,” she says. “Both of you need to use your brains! It’s a zero-gravity dance! As in, weightlessness! So it doesn’t matter if he can walk or not. When it’s low gravity, he can sit it out, but he can definitely dance in Zero-G!”

  Okay, wow. Gracie’s absolutely right.

  Blayne and I stare at each other, then Blayne raises one brow. “Lark Two has a point.”

  “Lark Two?” Gracie ruins the effect of her moment of brilliance and whines again. “Cut that out, that’s just way confusing! I’m Gee Four and she’s Gee Two, and no one’s Lark Anything. Want me to start calling you Bee One?”

  “Too bad and too late. As of today, we’ve officially got a Lark Two,” Blayne says, with a sarcastic crooked smile.

  “No, we don’t!”

  “I dub thee Lark Two—”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, realizing it’s almost 9:00 AM. “I’m going to be late to work, so please behave, Gracie—and Blayne, hang out with her please, okay?”

  And as Gracie looks away momentarily, I mouth silently to Blayne, “Watch her, I beg you!”

  He raises one brow then rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay, got it.”

  And then he sings a tone sequence and deftly turns the board around in the corridor. “Come along, Lark Two, I’ve got an Imperial Command Ship to show you.”

  I leave them be and run to the Command Deck Two central hub, toward the Resonance Chamber. By the time I make it to the CCO corridor, I see the numbers of Atlantean crew hurrying back and forth, and can finally gauge the serious level of work that’s about to take place.

  I haven’t noticed any doors to the Resonance Chamber before, but now I realize that they have been there all along—almost seamless floor-to-ceiling panels facing the junction where the corridor turns, and the corner CCO office stands.

  They stand open now, and as I approach I see a softly lit great interior, beckoning me inside.

  I walk past several crew members doing something to wall panels in the hallway right next to the entrance, and then I go in—or rather, I take a step. . . .

  Holy lord in heaven, wow!

  I am inside an immense sphere—a hollow ball the size of a football field.

  How is that even possible? This spherical chamber is immense, it goes up hundreds of feet in all directions, and it’s at the center of this ship.

  How huge must the ark-ship itself really be, to fit this sphere? I recall seeing what an ark-ship looks like on approach via shuttle. . . . But even so, the miles of hull going up and down and across don’t properly register. My mind cannot grasp the dimensions. I try to think of some kind of analogy, and the closest I imagine is a round fruit, like a peach, with a pit in its center—that would be the proportions of the Resonance Chamber to the rest of the starship. Except, the starship is not a sphere but a flattened saucer. . . . It occurs to me, the Resonance Chamber sphere probably defines the height of the ark-ship. Imagine if someone took a peach and flattened it under a press, but enough to leave the pit intact. That’s the starship!

  As I’m thinking these crazy thoughts, some Atlantean pushes past me into the chamber, carrying things, so I get out of his way, and step inside.

  Okay, let me explain what I’m actually stepping on.

  The spot at the doors where I’m standing is the exact widest circumference level of the sphere. Half the dome is above my head, and the other half is below—an upside-down dome, or a great bowl, dropping off into a dizzying empty space, lit with a soft milky illumination that seems to have no source and is seeping through the smooth glassy panels themselves.

  A ten-foot wide walkway runs in a donut circle all around the inside of the sphere chamber. Upon it, people are working—currently doing acoustical diagnostics and testing the orichalcum underside portions of the panels that comprise the sphere’s walls. . . . In the next few hours, others will be setting up the tables and refreshment stations, putting up decorations, installing special lighting and the musical DJ stations.

  I step into the walkway, and look down at the “bowl” area, momentarily getting some of my old fear of heights back—there’s no railing at all, and the drop is pretty tremendous. . . .

  “Gwen, over here!”

  I turn, and it’s Gennio, about a hundred feet away on the walkway, doing something to the panel before him.

  I approach quickly and see that he’s holding a three-by-four-foot, gently concave panel that he’s unsnapped from the wall. There’s a solid orichalcum layer revealed in the wall underneath, but this outer panel itself is smoothly polished and resembles milky-white frosted glass.

  “Hey,” I say. “Please don’t tell me you have to pop out every single one of these panels in this chamber?”

  Gennio laughs. “Oh, no! This device tells me which ones need to be checked, so I simply walk around the room perimeter—and Anu too, and a few other techs—and when a panel is flagged, we pop it out and test it.” He then takes the panel and puts it gently back in its spot with a snap. Once in place, the panel fits seamlessly into the wall of the sphere.

  “How do you remove it? There’s no edge or anything I can see,” I mutter.

  Gennio hands me a similar small gadget from his pocket. “Here, simply pass it over the panel and it will be electro-magnetically released from its bond.

  “What about all the panels all the way up there? The ones on top of the ceiling, and at the bottom of the bowl? Can we go down there?”

  “Sure, if anything down there is flagged, or up there, we go up, or we go down.” Gennio points to a panel about ten feet down along the curvature of the bowl. “There’s one faulty one there.”

  “How do we get down to it? Do we jump?” I speak only partly in jest.

  “Hey, Gwen Lark, Earth girl!”

  I turn to see Anu moving toward us from the opposite direction of the walkway. He’s actually not on the walkway itself but alongside it, suspended in the air, gliding on top of a hoverboard in a loose skateboarder stance.

  “Aha,” I say. “So that’s how you get down to the bottom and up to the ceiling.”

  “Precisely,” Gennio says. And then he points to a stack of hoverboards a few feet away on the walkway. “Just grab one whenever you need it.”

  Now that they mention it, I see in the distance quite a few Atlanteans on hoverboards levitating at various points near the ceiling or down in the bowl below, as they perform diagnostics work.

  I look around, and smile slowly. “This place is awesome!” I say.

  A few minutes later I am moving around the room on my own, checking the panels as Gennio and Anu taught me.

  The device is easy to use, a small intuitive touchpad, and the functions are nearly automated. I pull panels, test them against the device, return them back in their slots. When needed I take a hoverboard and use it to rise up or go down to reach a distant spot. The sensation of floating around this great chamber fills me with odd excitement and anticipation for the Dance tonight.

  “I know there will be thousands of people here,” I say to the guys at some point. “Where will they all fit? This walkway is going to be way overcrowded.”

  Anu makes a loud horse-laugh. “Want to start showing her the flo
or lifts?” he says to Gennio, while giving me sly looks.

  “Oh!” Gennio looks up from his panel tile. “It’s all movable, Gwen,” he says.

  “What?”

  “The bottom part of the room.”

  “Huh?” I frown. I still don’t quite get it.

  “Like this—” Gennio does something on his touch pad. And then as I watch, a section of the bowl below, made up of about ten connected panels, starts to slowly rise toward us, like an elevator. It separates like an onion layer from the floor of the chamber, and a darker layer of orichalcum is revealed underneath.

  The section stops moving exactly at the level of the walkway and hovers in place.

  “Wow . . .” I say.

  “Now, imagine the whole floor below rising up like that,” Gennio says. “The Dance will begin with the floor raised to this main level. Each single panel is individually adjustable, so we can raise and lower any part of this chamber at will.”

  I stare up. “What about the ceiling tiles? Can you bring them down too?”

  “Sure.” Anu nods. “But why would you want to? Nobody is going to stand upside down on the ceiling. During weightlessness they will just be flying around all over the place anyway.”

  But Gennio responds to my question thoughtfully. “You know, if needed, gravity can be completely reversed on the ship. . . . So that the ceiling could theoretically function as the floor. In which case, yes, we can manipulate the ceiling panels exactly the same way. Of course I can’t imagine why we would need to flip gravity upside down—”

  “Hmm,” I say, as my imagination starts working its way into crazy town. “What if the ship was stuck or crashed somewhere, and it was flipped over, and we were all walking on the ceiling, so then—”

  “You are pitifully crazy, Earth girl.” Anu shakes his head at me in superior disgust.

  “No, wait!” I say. I am on a roll. “What if we’re in the gravity well of some kind of star or a black hole that exerts a strong gravitational pull at the ship from the wrong direction, then flipping gravity inside the ship would make sense!”

  Gennio and Anu both give me strange looks.

  “I think you have work to do,” Anu tells me. “Over there, two more panels are calling you personally by name. ‘Check me, check me, crazy Earth girl!’ they say—”

  I sigh and get back to it.

  A little over an hour later we’re done with the acoustic diagnostics.

  “That’s it for us,” Gennio says, as we walk back inside the corridor. “Decoration begins at 11:00 AM, but that’s another Blue Quadrant crew team’s responsibility.”

  “Oh, really?” I say, perking up. “So we don’t need to do anything for that, or for Lighting at 1:00 PM, or Music Programming at 2:00 PM?”

  “Nope.” Anu wipes the back of his sticky forehead tiredly. “That’s for the other Blue losers. As Aides for the CCO, we’re done here.”

  “Blue losers?” I raise one brow.

  “Just ignore him,” Gennio tells me. “He’s with the Red Quadrant and thinks his Quadrant will do a better job when it’s their turn to host the Zero-G Dance.”

  “Heh!” Anu wiggles his brows meaningfully. “We always do a better job. That’s why we’re number one!”

  “Not true!” Gennio is getting visibly annoyed, judging by the way he fiddles with his handheld, putting it away in his pocket finally. “The Quadrants are theoretically equal in function and importance. The numbering is just an old tradition—”

  “Oh, yeah?” Now Anu glares at him. “Then how come Red is always number one in nearly everything we do? And Blue is number two? Oh, and mustn’t forget the losers Green in third place and last place super-losers Yellow!”

  “Hey!” I say. “I’m Yellow. Don’t knock us.”

  “I don’t have to, you knock yourselves every time just fine!”

  “Don’t listen to him, Gwen.” Gennio rubs his head furiously. “It’s only somewhat true—there’s a tendency for Red to be more aggressive in achievement, and Blue to be more precise. Green is more steadfast and persistent, and Yellow is creative and original. But that’s about it. All other tendencies are artificial—just a bunch of myth.”

  “Yeah, yeah, tell it to yourselves, losers.” Anu starts walking away, head held high. “Wait till the Quantum Stream Races, when Red will win all the top spots and smash you, and leave you Blues and Yellows wailing in the back like fatty blubber fish.”

  “Whatever, jerk.” I say softly in his wake.

  And I go to look for Gracie.

  The rest of the afternoon goes by quickly. Blayne and Gracie are missing for most of it, and I have no idea where to look. But I’m not too worried—I’ll see them for dinner and definitely at the Dance.

  At around 6:30 PM we get back from the Cadet Deck Four Meal Hall. Blayne escapes to his barracks for a nap, promising he will make an appearance at the Dance. Gracie and I head to my personal cabin, to freshen up and do the girly stuff before the Dance begins. And by girly stuff I mean mostly watch Gracie wash up, apply last minute makeup, brush hair, and fuss nervously about the stupid little things related to our looks.

  “Do you have to be there exactly at seven?” Gracie asks, as she stands before my tiny sink mirror and pulls back her eyelid and looks deeply inside her eyeball.

  At least that’s what it looks to me like she’s doing. . . . But she tells me she’s curling her eyelashes with eyelash curlers that look like medieval torture implements, then applying eyeliner, sparkly eye shadow, and mascara, then putting in false strip lashes. She is also using an eyebrow pencil, a blemish cover-up stick, and powder foundation makeup, and finally lip liner and lipstick.

  Honestly, I have no idea what she’s doing—her makeup bag is laid out on my bunk and frightening cosmetic stuff is everywhere. I get a momentary flashback to Consul Denu—at least there’s no perfume. Back home I never had to deal with seeing all this monstrous beauty ritual happening outside the privacy of her own room, but now, here we are. . . . What can I do, I love my sister.

  “No,” I reply to her question. “As far as I know I don’t need to be there right at seven. Gennio, one of the other CCO Aides will be on duty for most of the night—he’s one of the guys in charge of the gravity synchronization with the music, together with some other guys from the Blue team.”

  “Oooh! Sounds so awesome!” Gracie makes a giggle sound, and applies blush while sucking in her cheek then smiling to make the cheek “apple” stand out—apparently that’s how you’re supposed to apply blush properly.

  There is one consolation at least. She’s wearing her nice white Cadet uniform, and there is no horrendous dress.

  “Almost done!” Gracie says, after unpinning her long dirty-blond hair because she’s decided to wear it down after all, at the last minute. “Just going to brush out my hair one more time.”

  “Okay, I need to do that too, after you’re done,” I say, tugging my own ponytail by the rubber band to release my mess of long hair.

  “Hey!” Gracie stops doing everything and turns around to look at me. “Where’s your honeybunch Logan?”

  “Oh.” I purse my lips. “I think he might be working now, but I’m sure I’ll see him at the Dance.” I don’t tell Gracie how Logan’s been reassigned here to ICS-2, or under what circumstances.

  “Oh, cool.” She gets back to her hair fussing. “He’s way yummy-dreamy, and hope everything is going great for you two.”

  “Yeah,” I say, smiling lightly. “I guess. . . .”

  “You guess? Aww come on, Gee Two, let me know, details, spill!”

  “Oh, hush, silly,” I tell her. “It’s private.”

  Gracie stops again and spins around. “OMG! You guys did it!”

  “Gracie!” My mouth falls open. “How rude! And no, we have not, and you shouldn’t ask that kind of thing.”

  “Okay . . . sorry.” But she makes a silly face and turns back to the mirror.

  That’s when I start to blush with a delayed reaction. Tha
nk goodness she’s no longer looking at me.

  Besides, it’s almost time to go.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  At last we head to the Dance.

  Yes, I got to brush my hair, and my ordinary uniform seems to be okay, with nothing out of place. So now we make our way through crowds of teens—overdressed, stunningly dressed, and wearing every imaginable trendy varieties of look-at-me outfits.

  Even before we reach the Command Deck corridor, we can hear the music.

  It’s a light pounding Earth bass rhythm, and the song’s a recent pop-chart hit.

  Great, I think, with a pang of rising fear, it’s high school dance hell all over again.

  But Gracie’s got a big happy grin on her face and she is buzzing with excitement.

  We turn the corner, and we see . . . blue.

  The light ambience is coming from the hallway, seeping softly to color all things—walls, floor, ceiling, even the moving shadows and human shapes—and it’s pulsing in time to the music. People are packed in the corridor, moving past Atlantean guards in crisp parade uniforms.

  I see an ocean of girls with slinky black dresses showing cleavage, long legs and bare backs, intricate hairdos, amazing striking makeup, weird pseudo-historical outfits, feathers, sparkling fabrics predominately blue in color, gaudy lipstick on fat puffy kiss-me lips, gloss and black kohl. . . . I see guys with slicked-back hair, spiky hair, weaves and long locks and curls and buzz-cuts, wearing jackets, shirts and formal tuxes, and everywhere white-and-gold dress uniforms of the Fleet.

  And we haven’t even entered the Resonance Chamber yet!

  “I am seriously underdressed,” I mutter.

  “Yeah, you are!” Gracie says. “Want to head back to your place and maybe find something else to wear?”

  “Oh, no. . . .” I shrug. “I don’t own anything nice anyway.”

  So we keep going.

  Finally, we’re at the doors, going inside.

  The milky-white sterile sphere from this morning has been completely transformed.