A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  This Alice story, though, was new to him. He didn’t remember seeing it in Grandfather’s archives.

  He flipped through the pages. Lots of prose, a few illustrations, even some poems. Marilyn climbed onto his shoulder and looked on. When he got to the back, a sheet of paper fell out. It looked old and discolored, and it was torn along the edges. The only marking on it was a crude image drawn in brownish ink—a sketch of what looked like a blazing sun, with rays that twisted at jagged angles.

  Had the savage drawn this? What did it mean? There was no way to know. Eli turned to the beginning of the story to start reading, but he heard Dr. Toffler powering back to life behind him. There was the unmistakable whir of its systems rebooting, the whispering sound of unfolding joints.

  “Representative Papadopoulos? Excellent, you’re back. Let’s stop wasting time, shall we? Come here, sit down. We have lessons to work through.”

  Eli closed his eyes, bracing himself for more drudgery. Before he turned around, he slipped the paper into his pocket.

  Seconds later, as he took his seat by the old droid, he noticed the mongoose was still on the bed, staring into the open book. She was crouched over the page, her snout inches from the text and her brow furrowed as if she were concentrating. He continued to watch. She looked like she was trying to read, and, crazy as it seemed, he knew it was possible that was exactly what she was doing.

  On Eli’s birthday, when Grandfather had given Marilyn to him, he’d said:

  “This, my dear boy, is a three-month-old mongoose, a common Indian Gray. But make no mistake, there’s nothing common about her. You won’t see many animals like this one in your lifetime, I can promise you that.”

  In his wrinkled fingers he’d held up a squirming creature no bigger than his fist. He took her by the scruff of the neck and handed her to Eli. Eli had held his breath. He cradled her in one arm, cupping his free hand gently across her back. This calmed her.

  “The thing you need to understand, child, is that there’s a special chip planted in her brain. The operation that put it there is very hard to perform successfully. Very rare.” He leaned in close and whispered, “Illegal, in fact.”

  Eli had stared, wide-eyed. “What does the chip do, exactly?”

  At this the old man sat back in his armchair and grinned. “I don’t honestly know. An old friend gave her to me, and he didn’t say.” Then his expression turned mischievous. “Whatever it does, though, I have no doubt that finding out will be part of the fun. Happy birthday, Eli. She’s all yours.”

  Too astonished to speak, Eli had stared deep into her eyes.

  Chip or not, he was thrilled with her.

  In the ten weeks since, he and Marilyn had been almost constant companions. He sometimes walked her down North Main to peer through the windows of the pastry shops or to visit a comic-book store together. In the afternoons they’d sit in the backyard and share a cinnamon bun. Marilyn preferred bugs and mice, but she wasn’t picky.

  Now almost six months old and fully grown, she measured just under two feet long, although her tail made up half that length. Eli was always watching her, on the lookout for any odd behavior that might be from the chip. So far he’d seen nothing especially strange. She seemed smart for an animal, but he didn’t know much about mongooses. As they wandered the neighborhoods, cats would sometimes hiss at her, or dogs would growl and cower, sensing, it seemed, that there was something unnatural and frightening about her. But that wasn’t her fault.

  In any case, the more time Eli spent with her, the more he adored her. With Mother and Father often away on business and no schoolmates to keep him company, Eli had spent much of his childhood separated from other people. Even within his family he was considered something of a loner.

  He’d never had a real friend before.

  * * *

  The afternoon following his discovery of the Outsider, Eli took Marilyn out to the backyard to study the artificial sky. For several days he’d been doing this. He’d lie in the synthetic grass with his eyes fixed on the dome, waiting to catch anything that didn’t seem to belong up there.

  He’d discovered that if he paid close attention, he could sometimes spot strange things—curious, fantastical images that most people seemed too busy to notice or care about: Dozens of digital bats would appear to swoop down at him. A fanged pterodactyl or a giant flying hippo would appear briefly in the distance. A freight train on fire might streak across the dome so fast, it could have been mistaken for a meteor. The time to look, Eli had found, was right after a storm had passed by. A week earlier, after an especially dramatic squall, he’d spotted a bespectacled old gentleman in a tweed suit floating a hundred feet or so above his house. The man was pedaling a contraption that looked like an old-fashioned bicycle except it had enormous red, feathered wings. After a few seconds, the image disappeared.

  Eli knew none of what he was seeing was real. They were simulations generated by the CloudNet, the automated computer network that controlled the spheres, the sky, and all the other electronic processors in the dome. Still, the images both fascinated and worried him. Uncle Hector had said the company wanted him to stop thinking about sky anomalies and pay attention only to his studies, but the fact was, Eli couldn’t help it. Besides, he didn’t care what the company wanted.

  No, that wasn’t true. He did care. He cared about InfiniCorp because he cared about his family. It was almost the same thing. But lately he was having so much trouble staying focused on his training that he wondered how on earth he would ever make it as a senior executive. He wanted to do the right thing by taking his place in the organization, but, unlike Sebastian, he felt secretly ashamed because he had no idea where that place might be. Just like looking at the sky in recent days, thinking about the months and years ahead filled him with trepidation.

  “You know what I think?” he whispered to Marilyn. “I think there must be something wrong with me.”

  Beside him on the grass, the mongoose appeared lost in concentration, her neck craned toward the southern edge of the dome ceiling, which was crowded with cloud-vertisements. After a moment she started whistling and chirping.

  Eli twisted to see where she was looking. Then he saw it too. Over the Department of Painless Dentistry building, about three blocks away, a troop of silver monkeys was swinging from cloud to cloud. Small in the distance, they grew larger and clearer as they passed overhead, leaping at each other on their way up across the sky. He had to admit, this was an impressive one. Whenever he caught one of these sudden, absurd simulations, he tried to take in every detail. The monkeys got close to the center of the dome, perhaps a quarter mile high, and then vanished.

  Marilyn ran around in circles as if she appreciated the show, but Eli sat frozen. If these random images weren’t a sign of some troubling underlying malfunction, then why were they there? They weren’t advertising anything. They didn’t seem to have any purpose at all. As terrifying as Eli found them, they were often beautiful too. Whoever the programmer was, he decided, he must have had the soul of an artist.

  He even came up with a name for him. Leonardo.

  Leonardo of the Wild Blue Yonder.

  Eli wondered if he himself had a purpose. His whole life was already mapped out for him, and yet when he thought about the future it filled him with dread and uncertainty. He couldn’t explain why. With Marilyn at his side and his eyes still scanning the sky, he had an idea it had something to do with what was happening up there.

  Which made him suspect there really was something wrong with him. He felt like the only kid in the world who could get scared just by looking up.

  2

  the family

  The next day was InfiniCorp Day, the anniversary of the Grand Reorganization. On celebration days such as this, Eli was allowed to set aside his study modules, leave Dr. Toffler in his box, and travel with his family to Grandfather’s mansion. These were Eli’s favorite days. Fortunately, there were plenty of occasions to celebrate. Company holidays, Grandf
ather’s birthday, the Fourth of July. Sometimes there was a Papadopoulos family wedding. No matter what it was, Eli knew that the CloudNet news cameras would be there to cover it, which was why everyone prepared so carefully. The laundry droids would set out the boys’ best balloon pants with matching jackets and ties. They would also pack an extra set of casual clothes for them, just in case there was a football game.

  Even when he was a small child, Eli understood that the message for the media was this: See? We’re like everybody else. A normal family. We even play football together.

  Once they were clean and suited up, Eli and Sebastian would follow their parents into the transport, which had the familiar InfiniCorp logo emblazoned on its side: DON’T WORRY! INFINICORP IS TAKING CARE OF EVERYTHING! The transport would fly the four of them out beyond the Providence dome, and Eli would gaze down through the window. From high in the air, Outside looked bleak and empty to him—endless miles of sand and barren roads with only occasional patches of abandoned buildings. Eventually, far on the horizon, he would be able to make out a silver glow, the first shimmer from a massive hemisphere of metal and light twice the size of the Providence dome.

  New Washington, where Grandfather lived.

  Eli loved these family visits to the mansion—these photo ops, as he sometimes overhead Mother and Father referring to them in whispers. Eli had twenty-three cousins and eighteen uncles and aunts. Plus Grandfather, of course. He was the one Eli looked forward to seeing most.

  Grandfather, whose actual name was Hector Papadopoulos but everyone called him Grandfather, always made a special fuss over Eli. At some point during the commotion the old man would always wave him over.

  “There he is! My fat lamb!” he would say. And then, “What is it that nobody ever sees, never arrives, and yet no one doubts will come in mere hours, at most?” Grandfather adored riddles and always had a new one ready when Eli visited. Eli was good at figuring out the answers and often got them right on the first guess. It was usually some sort of play on words. He’d consider for a moment and then give his reply.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Then Grandfather would laugh. “Nicely done!”

  While the CloudNet cameras snapped pictures of the other children, Eli and Grandfather would head into Grandfather’s private office, away from the commotion, to play checkers, another of Grandfather’s favorite pastimes. Grandfather sometimes let Eli beat him, but not often. It wasn’t his way.

  “What an observant child!” Grandfather would say whenever Eli made a clever move. “Such an intelligent boy!”

  Eli was a frustration to Dr. Toffler and a disappointment to most of the Papadopoulos family, but to the old man none of this seemed to matter. Eli was Grandfather’s special favorite.

  Eli was proud of Grandfather and what he’d done for the nation. He’d started the company as Papadopoulos Incorporated and evolved it into a giant organization that sold just about every kind of product and service there was to sell. He’d kept it growing by merging and acquiring and gobbling up competing companies until at last it became one gigantic conglomerate, InfiniCorp, the organization that built, owned, and ran everything in the whole country. Everything. Which was wonderful because Grandfather had organized it all, made it more efficient.

  When the Great Sickness came, sweeping across Europe, Asia, and Africa, killing millions, only InfiniCorp was strong and organized enough to protect its employees. There wasn’t time to design the perfect vaccine, but InfiniCorp scientists created a fragile concoction that had to be used within minutes of its manufacture. By the time the virus hit North America, InfiniCorp was ready. Soon after, the domed cities were completed, and InfiniCorp’s employees were able to live in a protected space where climate-bred illnesses couldn’t reach them.

  So of course Eli was proud.

  Each and every person living in the domed cities owed his life to Grandfather!

  Today InfiniCorp was still a family-owned business. After the Great Sickness, Grandfather was hailed as a hero; the petty complaints about one company holding so much power disappeared virtually overnight. Now everyone understood that the Papadopouloses were leaders. They ran things. They managed the domes that shielded everybody from the storms and heat. They cleaned up messes and did what they could about the Outsiders. And most important, they protected their employees when it mattered most. Not only had Eli’s family turned the whole disorganized nation into one ideal society, the most advanced and productive in human history, but they kept everybody safe and comfortable while they awaited the completion of the Great Cooldown. If it hadn’t been for Grandfather, the employees of InfiniCorp would have suffered the same fate as the rest of the world: if they’d survived the Great Sickness at all, they’d still be scrounging in the desert wilderness, trying to survive in the scorching heat. Grandfather said even if there were still any Outsiders alive on other continents, all the other nations of the world had been virtually destroyed.

  Grandfather was the greatest hero ever. Everyone knew that.

  * * *

  Eli and Grandfather stood in Grandfather’s office gazing at the magnificent music box the old man kept on a block of carved marble at the center of the room. The size of a grand piano, the musical contraption was in the shape of a domed city, with little wooden houses and shopping centers, shiny towers, and jeweled streets, all under a protective dome of glass. It was one of a kind, an astonishing work of art. Eli had been drawn to it since he was a small boy.

  Beside him, Grandfather leaned into the glass and spoke the code words that switched the machine on: “Good morning, folks. Time to wake up.” He winked at Eli. At once the model began to hum, and little lights came on in the houses and buildings.

  Next Grandfather produced a wooden box containing hundreds of tiny metal keys in velvet casings. He waited for Eli to choose one. This was part of their ritual. Each key triggered the mechanism to play a different melody, but since the keys all looked pretty much the same, Eli was never sure which music his chosen key would unlock. He picked one at random and slipped it into the keyhole. The city came to life. Little people walked the sidewalks. Tiny transport pods moved along the streets and flew in circles in the sky. Eli pressed his face closer to the glass. The music was Bach’s Minuet in G. Its restrained, measured notes gave a stately feel to the mechanical movement.

  “How’s that mongoose?” Grandfather asked. “Any unusual behavior yet?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she’s smart—for an animal, I mean. But it’s hard to tell. Yesterday she ripped up one of my socks.”

  He grunted thoughtfully. Eli could see the old man’s reflection in the glass. Short and stocky with a wide nose, his sky blue eyes still maintained the good humor and vitality of his youth. Now, though, he was almost completely bald, with only a thin line of white hair over his ears. His face was etched with pockmarks, barely visible, which he shared with Eli’s parents and uncles and aunts, and all those old enough to have survived the Great Sickness. But it was Grandfather’s deep wrinkles that had always fascinated Eli. At seventy-nine, Grandfather was the oldest person he’d ever known. For the past few months Eli had been observing him, taking note of the slow, shuffling way he sometimes moved and how he occasionally wheezed when he breathed. It worried him a little. Despite his age, Grandfather had always seemed invincible, but now Eli realized the years were catching up with him.

  After a minute or so, Grandfather stepped back from the music box and started in the direction of the checkers table. “Come on, then,” he said. “I believe the time has come for me to whip your butt again.”

  Eli smiled. This routine was the same every time he visited. Before following, he leaned close to the glass and said, “Good night, folks. Time to go back to sleep.” Somewhere in the complex mechanism, a sensor detected that these were the shutdown words, the second part of the Master Key, as Grandfather called it. The music stopped, all the little pods flew back to their parking stations, and the people went home. The lights in the mechan
ical city went dark again.

  It was as Eli stepped past the ancient books on Grandfather’s shelves that he remembered what he’d almost forgotten. “Oh! Grandfather, I have a riddle for you!”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

  Grandfather didn’t answer, or maybe he wasn’t really listening, because he was busy setting the checkers pieces in their places. In any case, when he didn’t respond after a few seconds, Eli decided to give the answer.

  “Two reasons,” he said. “First, because both can produce notes that are flat, and second, because you never put either of them with the wrong end in front.”

  Grandfather looked up.

  “It’s a strange riddle, I know,” Eli admitted. “In fact, I don’t understand the second answer at all. But it was in a book I found. A really interesting book. Here, I brought it for you to see.” He pulled the Alice book from his pocket and held it up, thrilled to show off his discovery.

  For a moment Grandfather didn’t say a word. He stared at the cover, his bushy eyebrows pulling together. At last he said, “Where on earth did you find this, child?”

  “I was wandering around and saw it under a pile of old junk.” Eli had planned this answer ahead of time. Even though he’d been dying to show Grandfather his find (Grandfather was the only other person Eli knew who cared about such things) and would never have lied to him, Eli also knew he had to be careful what he said about where the book had come from. It belonged to an Outsider, after all. If anyone found out, it was possible he’d be forbidden to keep it. Until now he hadn’t shown it to anyone, not even Sebastian.

  Fortunately Grandfather didn’t press him for details.

  “The second answer to the riddle makes sense only when you notice the way the author spelled the words,” he said, looking up at Eli. “Never is printed n-e-v-a-r, which is raven backward. That’s the Mad Hatter’s riddle.”