The group walked outside and onto a covered patio-like area. Levi took a lungful of the night air, grateful to be alive.
“So people died down there?” Levi asked. What kind of place did he just move to?
“It seems like that is a strong possibility,” Hu said.
“Daddy? Someone wants to kill you?” Kierra asked with newfound terror.
Before Vernean could answer, three more muscular men surrounded them. “Sir, we’ve got to get you out of here as quickly as possible.”
“Wait!” Kierra shouted. “What about Levi, Daddy?”
“I’ve got it from here, thanks.” Levi needed to take charge of his family’s safety and being in this man’s vicinity was obviously dangerous.
“Are you sure you’re feeling alright son?” Vernean asked with legitimate concern.
“Yes, my head is clear now.” Mostly, he thought. “We’ll just grab a taxi.”
“Alright, but make sure you take the bypass since the Stellar Grand is on the ceiling.”
“Okay, thanks,” Levi responded, although he didn’t understand what the hell Vernean was talking about.
The security team enveloped the Ambassador and his daughter, and hurried them towards the street. Levi heard Kierra yell goodbye as they disappeared into the dark, official-looking vehicle. They sped off just as police cars and ambulances began surrounding the general area down the street. Air-borne machines began descending fast like vultures after a kill. Men and women in various types of uniforms jumped out of their designated transporters and began running into the spaceport with kits and gurneys and guns, frantically barking orders.
The first people began emerging from the underground spaceport. Most of them were screaming, covered with black soot or drying blood. The emergency personnel tried to contain the crowd to ask questions and check for injuries, but the sheer mass of people made it difficult. Levi saw a woman holding a bleeding head, a man cradling an obviously broken wrist, and a child screaming desperately for her mother. Levi looked for Fletch. The problem was he didn’t know what Fletch looked like, so he searched for an Indian-looking man. No luck.
The media closed in next. Reporters and their camera crews set-up at a record pace and began commentating the chaos. They were too far away to understand clearly, but he caught the words, “explosion,” ‘terrorist attack,” and “casualties.” The first covered body emerged from the building. He saw long brown hair splaying around the gurney under the ghostly sheet and his thoughts immediately went to his auburn-haired vision. He whipped out his phone and called Talon Terry. It went straight to voicemail so he began to text her.
Are you okay?
He wasn’t even positive he had actually seen her. Was she a hallucination from the drugs? He prayed she was still safe in Fort Bragg — that he had imagined her. Levi had heard things about Ohmani on the ground. It was a short-stay hub between Earth and space, littered with hotels, casinos, and nightclubs so that people could be entertained during their short stopovers. It was known as “The Las Vegas of Space” where one could let loose during their travels. But this? This was not normal and he could clearly see that without having lived here. The people were panicked. He had to get his family to the hotel.
In his current state of mind, distracted by post-bomb bedlam and semi-drugged, he had not noticed Axella break away from his side. He looked around and saw her stumbling over toward the public entrance of the spaceport – the entrance where dead bodies were being rolled out now in a constant stream. What was she doing? Levi shouted her name and began running towards her.
“Bathrrooom,” Axella slurred and waved a dismissive hand. Levi could barely hear her over the ominous thumping of the helivacs. She then disappeared through a door in the side of the building. Couldn’t she have picked another bathroom? As they waited for Axella to re-emerge, Bockie dropped her usual cheekiness. There was nothing but heartache and agony here. After a full minute, Axella came stumbling out wiping the sides of her mouth.
“Thirrss suuucks.”
“Yes, it does. Let’s get out of here.” he agreed.
“Yes, let’s get to the hotel. I heard it’s less bloody over there,” Bockie said…cheekily.
“This area is probably going to be all closed off. Let’s walk a few blocks and find a taxi,” he suggested. They began walking in the opposite direction of the spaceport, dodging people running past them. When they turned a corner around a rather tall building, they stopped in awe of the urban sprawl before them.
The spaceport was below a colossal city…more massive than Levi could have ever imagined. Even the pictures he had found could not do the reality justice. The first thing that caught his eyes were the neon signs flashing on billboards or flying seamlessly between the mazes of the buildings. Everywhere the architecture was sharp, sleek, and uniquely angled, giving the city a futuristic vibe. After his eyes refocused to the ground, he realized the people were just as bright as the neon lights themselves – and not just their obnoxious choices in hair, clothes, and accessories. Some or all parts of their flesh appeared to be dyed in all colors of the rainbow.
One woman stood in front of Levi, dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt. She was clearly waiting for someone with her hand on her hip and her foot tapping impatiently on the ground. The side and back of her head was shaved, but a nest of blue and yellow Havana twists sat on top in a colorful tower. The weirdest part of her appearance wasn’t her hair, it was her dyed robin’s egg-blue skin. Another women passed in a business suit clearly on her way from work. At first she appeared normal with a professional-looking brown French twist, but as she turned to look for traffic crossing the street, she showcased golden leopard tattoos falling down one side of her face. Suddenly, he didn’t mind standing out if it meant not looking like these people.
The masses of bodies were busying along, completely ignorant of the bomb that just went off. The explosion had been almost a mile below their feet a couple blocks away and the sounds of the blast had probably been easily drowned. Levi looked at Ms. Impatient and internally hoped she wasn’t waiting for someone who had perished not but five minutes ago.
“There you all are!” he heard a voice yell behind him.
He turned around and flinched. An alien stood there, smiling at him with slightly pointed canines. They were the same height, but this alien had a long neck. He was hairless, with pale, almost white skin and a large skull.
“It’s me, Fletch!”
Levi was terrible at hiding his emotions, and it was obvious he was surprised.
“Not expecting me to be a Ryley, huh?” he chuckled. “I like to surprise first-comers. Don’t worry, I don’t bite.” He lifted his upper lip to showcase a set of sharp teeth.
“I’m not worried,” Levi lied. “I just expected you to be Indian.”
The midaki sects had made their way down to the ground just as humans had expanded into space in the twenty-two years since The Great Rescue, but they had mostly come to the larger cities with embassies like New York, Dubai, Tokyo…and Delhi. It was still very rare to see them in smaller cities, and even less so in small towns like Fort Bragg, California. It’s not that Levi had anything against aliens, he just wasn’t used to them.
“Ah. Well, I’m helping you break labels then,” Fletch smiled widely. “I’m sorry about being late. I forgot how bad floor traffic was near the spaceport.”
Levi blinked at Fletch.
“There was a bomb.” Bockie interjected dryly.
“Huh?”
“A bomb,” she reiterated. “Levi accidentally drugged himself on the plane and Axella drank herself into a stupor and so this high-to-do famous man helped us out of the spaceport because his daughter has a massive crush on Levi. We were coming up a back service shaft to avoid the media frenzy when…BOOM.” she flung her hands out animatedly.
“What? I hadn’t heard. That’s why all those airvecs are there?” he pointed to the flying cars still descending on the other side of the building, which blo
cked their view of the pandemonium.
“Yep. It was a good night to be late,” Bockie remarked.
“Who would have done something like that? You could have been killed!” Fletch exclaimed.
“Can you take us to the hotel?” Levi asked, not wanting to think about the possibility. He just wanted to get out of there.
“Sure. We have to go to the ceiling,” Fletch explained. When Levi gave him a confused look he continued. “Everything is relative to where the spaceport is. Right now, we are on the floor of the asteroid because the spaceport is here. The ceiling is up there,” he gestured, pointing up to the sky.
Levi looked up and saw bright dots littering the sky in the same neon colors that were surrounding him now. At first glance it looked as though there might be a mirror glued to the ceiling of the hollowed out space in the asteroid…but then it hit him. There was a whole other city above his head, the tops of the skyscrapers protruding down towards the center of the asteroid and towards him.
“That’s the ceiling? The hotel is up there? We are going to be living upside down?” he asked, horrified by the idea.
Fletch muffled a chuckle. “Don’t worry. When we get there you will feel like this side of the asteroid is upside down. This was in the training videos, or were you too doped up to watch them?” he teased. “Remember the centripetal force created by spinning the asteroid creates artificial gravity. That means the inside surface of the asteroid has gravity similar to Earth, but the center of the asteroid has no gravity.”
“Of course,” Levi said sarcastically. Why couldn’t he be a nerd? Life would be so much easier.
“It’s science, don’t worry. The bypass is a literal connection between the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the asteroid. Actually, I would suggest taking the PB…pedestrian bypass. It’s only a couple blocks from here. Then we can just catch a cab to the hotel when we get to the ceiling, save some money.”
“Thank you Fletch. I really am glad you’re here…and alive,” Levi added.
As they walked, the news of the bombing projected on buildings throughout the city. People around Levi stopped and watched, covering their mouths in shock that the horror was so close to them. Some even took off down the street to see for themselves. Fletch, Levi, Axella, and Bockie kept walking past the stilled crowds while Fletch kept asking Bockie about her recollection of events.
Finally, they arrived at their destination. A series of giant glass tubes stood side by side like organ pipes shooting upwards. They were all fully illuminated with white light and decorative neon accents. The tubes were the only discernable objects in the black interior of the asteroid, and as Levi stood in line, he could see similar such tubes scattered in clumps throughout the city. Only one of these tubes, now shining a dull green, ran perpendicular to the bypasses.
“That’s the illumination rod,” Fletch began to say as if reading Levi’s mind. “It provides the city with light during the day and fades into this greenish color at night.”
Levi watched as groups of ten to fifteen people walked through a door at the base of each glass tower. They sat in rows inside the enclosed pod, fastened their harness, and were shooting into the sky several moments later. Other tubes contained people who were travelling from the ceiling to floor. Upon reaching the bottom, they unbuckled themselves and walked off without a break in their conversation.
It was their turn next.
“Come on, it’s fun,” Fletch encouraged.
The sliding glass door opened and a voice beckoned them in. They sat down in the seats and Levi felt like he was about to experience an amusement park ride. “We cannot leave until all passengers are secured in their seats,” the recording spoke. Levi had to help Axella with her harness before he could sit down himself. She groaned and leaned against the contraption. Levi was relieved she was still slightly incapacitated and unaware of the heights they would soon be reaching.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.” The platform moved slowly upwards at first and then gained speed. Levi watched the people below him become ants and the colorful city fade into what looked like a kindergartener’s painting. Suddenly, he started to feel light. He relaxed his arms and they began slowly rising. His bottom began lifting off the seat and his shoulders pressed up into the harness. No gravity in the middle, he remembered.
Suddenly he heard Axella begin dry heaving. Please not now, he pleaded. Levi tried to take his harness off to help her but it was locked in place. There was nothing he could do. The passengers watched in horror as Axella vomited into the pod and it floated in mid-air. The barf began splitting into smaller chunks and those chunks fragmented into smaller globules. The yellow-tinted pieces began spinning and spreading rapidly, causing people to try and dodge them in their restricted conditions. They were doing a fairly good job of it until the platform began turning slowly, causing the spew to slam into people’s faces, chests, and legs. The platform continued to turn until it had gone a full 180° so that Levi’s head was where his feet were before. On their way up…down…people spoke angry words at Axella in unchoraled forte.
“Ierrmm soo soorryy. I ferrl terribbler,” she kept murmuring, aware that she had somehow managed to vomit on an entire group of strangers. Bockie was laughing in her seat, trying to push down her dress that was floating up to reveal her chicken-thin legs.
After another minute or so, Levi watched his flaccid arm slowly lower as they approached the ceiling of the asteroid. The sense of heaviness came back to his body and he felt his bottom push back into the seat. The ant forms of human figures started appearing again, and Levi watched them grow larger as the pod continued to descend. This side of the city looked similar to the floor – intimidatingly huge and hectic. He had moved from a modest beach town to one of the biggest, most advanced cities in the solar system.
“We have arrived. Please unfasten your harness and exit the pod,” the recording instructed.
The passengers left the pod grumbling under their breath and shooting Axella dirty looks. Levi unfastened her harness and supported her with his frame again. “Almost there.”
“That was a blast!” Bockie whooped. “Ax, please get drunk more often. It is quite entertaining.” She came over and wiped a little regurgitate off Axella’s cheek.
Quite the parent, Levi thought. He didn’t know how she managed to not have a speck of dirt or vomit on her person, but somehow it didn’t surprise him.
“Well gang, let’s catch a cab to the Stellar.” Fletch suggested, probably thinking it polite to divert conversation away from Axella’s embarrassing episode. “It’s only a ten minute drive from here, maybe fifteen with traffic.” They began walking to the curb, where taxis sat and waited strategically for passengers getting off the PB. “So, Levi, you don’t feel like you’re upside down, right?”
Levi looked up at the ‘floor.’ It was the same view he had had on the other side. “No, not at all. That is unreal.”
They got into a taxi with a silver-dyed Ryley driver. It used another dialect Levi did not understand. Fletch laughed. “I know. Can you take us to the Stellar Grand please?”
They pulled off the curb and started driving through Ohmani’s ‘ceiling.’ The news of the spaceport bombing was also projecting here. The taxi swerved to miss one man who was trying to walk and watch the news simultaneously. Levi heard the taxi driver murmur an expletive under his breath and then speak to Fletch in the same cacophonous dialect. By the serious tone in their voices, Levi assumed they were talking about the bomb. They drove for about fifteen minutes, giving Levi and Bockie more time to soak in the eccentric people of Ohmani.
“I’m going to dye my skin purple,” Bockie announced.
The taxi driver laughed.
“Please don’t,” Levi pleaded.
They arrived at the hotel. The Stellar Grand was a ritzy chain, but this one in particular was especially extravagant. It was marble white, with giant pillars, striking gardens and impressive fountains.
; “Good evening ladies and gentleman.” An android greeted them in what sounded like a British accent. It had on a red uniform with the Stellar Grand logo embroidered into the breast of the jacket. “Welcome to the Stellar Grand. Are we checking in this evening?”
“No, actually my mother just got a job here. She is the new hospitality manager.”
The android looked at Axella, and Levi was hoping he could not smell her. “Welcome to the Stellar Grand family, Ms. Avondale. We have been expecting you. My name is Caleb Burger, like the American sandwich. I am the hotel’s majordomo.”
“Mmniice terrr mee yer,” she blabbered.
“She’s afraid of heights,” Levi tried to play off with a lame shrug.
“Ah. Well, ma’am, let’s get you settled into your new suite, shall we? Maybe we should take the back elevator, hmm? Don’t want the bosses to, err, get a bad first impression.”
Great, more back elevators. They collected their bags and walked around the side of the building to the back entrance. Caleb swiped a badge and they entered. The elevator was immediately to their right. Levi was praying Bockie did not mention what had happened in the last elevator they were in.
“How about that bomb? Were you guys there? You must have just missed it,” he remarked casually.
Levi gave Bockie a firm stare.
“Yeah, a bunch of loonies the lot of them. Why are you in a robot?” Bockie asked.
“Ah,” Caleb began, “because I am handicapped. A few months ago, I got into a very bad car accident here on Ohmani — both my legs were completely crushed. I already had pretty bad type II diabetes and so the doctors just couldn’t save my legs. I was sure I was going to lose this job — lots of walking around and talking to people, but like a true family, the Stellar Grand helped me out. Paid for me to get an Extension cube installed in my house until the pain went down enough to come back to work. I’m thinking about getting hovering legs now that I’m used to this Extension.” He laughed. “You are going to love it here, Axella. We’re a family, always looking out for one another.”
Journey to Ohmani (Across the Infinite Void Book 1) Page 7
