A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  Perhaps you’re right, my love, she’d answer. Maybe I’ll do that.

  An hour later she would be in the same position, her eyes still staring into space.

  * * *

  It had been two whole months since the attack on the filter, but Eli couldn’t help noticing that the company still didn’t have things back to normal yet. It wasn’t just sky glitches anymore either. The air felt warmer with each day that passed, and sometimes the cooling blowers would shut down for minutes at a time before coming back on. The sun was no better. If anything, it looked pinker lately.

  Eli tried not to worry about these things. Nobody else seemed concerned. The CloudNet reported it was no big deal, just minor problems caused by the explosion, and the company would have the issues resolved soon. Still, he couldn’t remember any dome problems like these before. The company had always prided itself on addressing whatever minor dome issues came up before anyone even noticed.

  So what was taking them so long this time?

  One afternoon after a particularly grueling review of organizational-performance metrics, Eli woke Marilyn and they went out to the backyard to watch the sky together for the first time in a while. As they lay in the synthetic grass, Eli saw somebody climbing the dome.

  “Look, Marilyn,” he said, suddenly alert. He’d never seen a real person up there. “Do you see that?”

  Yes, darling. How odd!

  The dome ceiling was busy that afternoon with so many adverts, there wasn’t much blue left. It was amazing he’d noticed anyone up there. He could tell right away it wasn’t a simulation. It was a sky engineer, perhaps two hundred feet high and several feet deep into the thick layer of skylight. He could make out her dangling hair ribbons and blue uniform. Eli was aware that the dome had a hidden lattice system tucked among the pixels, but he’d never seen anyone use it before. The engineer appeared to be climbing steadily higher, in the direction of the sun. He wished he still had Sebastian’s spyglass.

  “What do you think she’s doing?”

  I imagine she’s making repairs.

  “Maybe,” he said. Under normal circumstances, Eli knew, the Sky Department saved any maintenance jobs at the top of the dome until night, when their work was less likely to disturb the sky illusion. If the company was taking the extraordinary step of sending engineers up there during the daytime, it seemed to suggest that something out of the ordinary was happening, despite the CloudNet’s assurances. He would have to ask Father about that when he had the chance.

  He continued to watch, still amazed at the novelty of seeing a real person up there. “Claudia!” he called back to the house. “Come see! There’s an engineer working on the sky!”

  Claudia opened the kitchen window. “Why are you wasting the day out in the grass, mi amor? I thought you were studying. Come inside. I make you a grilled cheese.”

  There was the sound of thunder from Outside. Eli had been listening to the drumming of rain all day. “No, you should come out here and look at this!”

  By the time Claudia padded out, fanning herself with a tea saucer, the engineer was at least another fifty feet higher and looked barely larger than an insect among the clouds.

  “Show me, cariño,” Claudia said. “It’s probably just an advert.”

  Eli tried to point her out, but Claudia kept squinting and shaking her head. About halfway to the top, the engineer stopped climbing. It was hard for Eli to see exactly what she was doing, but it looked like she reached deeper into the light, and then a tiny part of the sky seemed to swing open, revealing what looked like a narrow black splinter behind the layers of translucent blue—a crack in the dome.

  “Do you see that?” Eli asked, amazed. “A door in the sky!”

  Marilyn hopped onto Eli’s shoulder. I had no idea there were doors up there.

  It was news to Eli too, although now that he thought about it, he realized Dome Maintenance probably had all kinds of stuff up there that most people didn’t know about. It made sense for the engineers to have somewhere to put their equipment.

  For a few seconds the engineer disappeared through the door, and then she returned again. Claudia was still squinting. She shaded her puzzled eyes with her hand.

  “Where are you looking? I don’t see any engineer.”

  Suddenly there was a deafening crash a lot like thunder, and then a buzzing sound shook the sky. The engineer seemed to wobble, and the next thing Eli knew, she was falling.

  Even Claudia saw her now. She gasped.

  Eli watched with horror as the engineer plummeted from the clouds. Almost as soon as she started to fall, a cord shot from her body to the top of the dome. It must have held fast to something behind the light, because in seconds it tensed and slowed her fall like an elastic band. Soon she was swinging back and forth—a long, thin pendulum in the sky.

  The dome made another earsplitting crackle, and then, far to the left of the spot in the sky where the engineer had dropped, fiery sparks started to fly in all directions. Marilyn shrieked. Eli felt her claws digging into his shoulder as he watched the sky begin to change. First one pixel and then another went violet. It started as a tiny dot, but it grew like a bruise spreading in fast motion. Soon it stretched in all directions, wiping out every cloud until the entire dome was electric purple.

  An instant later everything went dark.

  This time it was Eli who gasped.

  “¡Dios mío!” Claudia whispered beside him.

  Eli had never seen the dome do anything like this before. It was the middle of the afternoon and the three of them were standing in complete darkness. There weren’t even stars.

  All around them he could hear neighbors opening their windows and calling out to each other, wondering what was going on.

  It took almost an hour for Dome Maintenance to get the sky back up. They had to reboot the whole system. Even then it was obvious things still weren’t right. The air grew so warm it was hard to think, and Eli could hear the cooling blowers struggling to restart. For more than twenty minutes, a thin spray of water showered down onto the corner of Benefit and Thayer streets as if from some unseen pipe in the dome. People gathered around it and watched. Most startling of all, every now and then large patches of the sky flashed with unexpected colors. The area over the Bank of InfiniCorp building would turn brown and then green. The horizon would blink metallic silver.

  It was distressing.

  Eventually the company got the blowers working and the water leak plugged. A smiling news lady, plump and thirtyish with glittery teeth, appeared on the CloudNet to explain what had happened.

  “This afternoon the city of Providence was once again the setting of a dramatic dome incident, this time caused by a creative product launch gone awry. Apparently an overly playful marketing intern in the Atlanta-based Department of Refreshments decided to surprise his supervisor with an ambitious and”—she made a wry smile—“not entirely authorized kickoff campaign for our newly formulated grape soda. The idea was a dazzling purple daytime display, but unfortunately the intern’s program included an error that caused the municipal sky to temporarily shut down. A sky engineer doing routine maintenance was thrown from the dome ceiling, but nobody was hurt, and no lasting damage was done to the system.”

  Her coanchor, a man with bright blue hair piled several inches above his head, chuckled. “Seems like we’ve got the makings of a true marketing genius on our hands.”

  The two of them laughed.

  “The intern has been reprimanded,” continued the blue-haired man, “but no criminal charges are being made at this time. As we speak, the Providence sky is putting on quite a display. Residents are urged not to be concerned. The discolorations will return to normal. Rest assured, the company has everything under control.”

  “In the meantime,” the lady said, “enjoy the show!”

  * * *

  Eli went back to his room and tried again to concentrate on his studies, but it wasn’t easy. Through his window he could see the sky st
ill turning odd colors: one second it would flash in pink and green stripes, then entirely black, then back to normal again. It did this every few minutes and was different each time. He’d never seen anything like it before. It was as if Leonardo, his imaginary sky artist, had lost his mind and the curious images Eli had been noticing for weeks were starting to take over. And yet nobody else seemed concerned.

  He couldn’t help remembering what the crazed Outsider had said: Your dreamworld is breaking up before your very eyes.

  He had to admit, it was spooky.

  He shut his study module and rubbed his forehead. “I think my brain is going to explode.”

  Marilyn didn’t answer right away. At that moment, only her tail was visible, hanging limply over the top of one of Eli’s open drawers. After the excitement of the sky malfunction, she’d wasted no time in linking herself to another dream game.

  Hush, darling …, she said, her voice so distant he could barely feel it. I’m flying over medieval France in an air balloon. It’s harvest season.…

  Eli sighed. He couldn’t bring himself to go back to his mind-numbing lesson just yet. After a moment he reached up and let his finger pass through the surface of the CloudNet sphere that floated over his desk. At once a face appeared, a beautiful blond girl of about seventeen, with flawless skin and a perfect white smile. Her name was Heather, and she was one of the CloudNet assistants. Eli knew she was artificial, of course, but every time he saw her she gave him butterflies.

  “Eli! Hon!” she said. “How fabulous to see you!”

  His face went warm, and for a moment he looked down at his hands.

  “What’s up this time, big guy? Hey, there’s a new Dirk Drickland stream. You’re gonna love it!” Her head morphed into a shot of a muscular boy with long silver hair and a knife clenched between his teeth. He was climbing a steep cliff as flaming arrows whizzed past his head.

  “Oh my god!” Heather said. “This episode totally fries!”

  Eli rubbed his forehead again. “Actually, that’s not what I—”

  “Okay, okay. Not a big Dirk fan, I get it. No prob. Oh, I know! A new look ought to perk you!” The image of Dirk morphed into a series of grinning boys in billowing shirts. “Just a tip: think vertical stripes, Eli. They would so make you look taller.”

  Eli held up his hand. “No, no! Stop, please!”

  Heather’s pretty head filled the sphere again, only now she was pouting. “No need to get huffy. I was just trying to help.”

  He considered requesting a different CloudNet assistant, but her eyes were on him again and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Heather,” he said, “did anything happen to pop up on the CloudNet about … you know … the Outsider lady with the white eye?”

  “That again?” She wrinkled her nose. “God, Eli, you should stop wasting your time asking the same dumb questions about crazy Outsiders. Don’t you have studying to do?”

  He ignored her. “Can you please search one more time? Maybe there’s something new. One of the perimeter Guardians might have picked her up or something.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re the boss. No, there’s still no report of any Outsider with an all-white eye. There’s a sale today on artificial irises, though. Want to see the selection?”

  “Please, I’m serious.”

  She giggled. “Okay, Eli. You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”

  “Check again on Outsiders. And while you’re at it, look into why the sky is taking so long to fix. Are there any known dome-design weaknesses tied to the air filters? Maybe a software flaw or something?” He paused as another idea came to him. “Look up the Final Days too. Any information about the end of the world, maybe in the form of a giant storm that could be on its way. If there’s even the possibility the weather could do permanent damage to the domes, I want to know.”

  “If you say so,” she said. “Okay, I just checked, and there’s nothing about any giant storm or dome-design weaknesses. And you already know why the sky’s taking so long to repair. It’s because the Fogger attack did so much damage. As far as the Final Days, there are gobs and gobs of information about that, Eli. People have been predicting the end of the world since forever! Do you really want me to list out zillions of files?”

  He sank lower in his chair. “No. I guess you’re right. It’s pointless.”

  Even as he said it, it was hard for him to shake the feeling that something was going on that nobody was admitting. But why didn’t anyone else seem alarmed? What was the matter with everyone? What was the matter with him?

  He slammed his fist on his desk. “I don’t care what the CloudNet says!” he said. “Something bad is happening! The sky never acted this way before, and the cooling systems never used to give out all the time! Why can’t anyone tell me what’s going on?” He glared hard into the sphere. “All I want is the truth! Can’t anybody give it to me?”

  There was a momentary hiss. Heather, whose jaw had dropped at Eli’s unexpected outburst, suddenly froze in position as if somebody had flipped a switch and halted her processor. It was freaky.

  “Heather?”

  She didn’t answer. Stranger still, a moment later her nose split clean off from the rest of her face. Eli watched, wide-eyed. The nose floated slowly to the top of the sphere and then broke into thousands of pieces that drifted in all directions. Her eyes were next. They moved apart and melted away.

  Eli’s breath caught in his throat. “Marilyn! Marilyn, wake up. You gotta see this!”

  In the drawer behind him, Marilyn must have heard the urgency in his voice, because she stirred. Her orange eyes peered over the edge. What is it, my love? Eli didn’t need to answer. She could see for herself.

  Heather’s entire head was disintegrating.

  Soon all that was left was a cloud of movement, tiny cubes of color that swirled inside the sphere like confetti. If Eli hadn’t been so aware that Heather was a simulation, he might have screamed. Then he heard voices from inside the confetti. They were ghostly soft and their words were unclear, as if a crowd of people were murmuring to each other all at once. They got louder. Eli squinted into the blur.

  “Hello?”

  “Your request has been noted, Eli Papadopoulos,” the voices whispered, blending together into a single breathy chorus. “In a complex fabric of illusion, a single thread of reality can be hard to distinguish. Do you understand what it would mean to disentangle it? Are you sure you’re ready to accept the consequences?”

  Eli hesitated. What on earth was this? Another program bug? Some crazy stream Heather found for him on the CloudNet?

  “What if you disentangled the truth only to discover that your whole life has been a sham?” continued the voices. “Would you really want to know? What if you were the last chance to save a dying world? Would you take that chance even knowing it would be the hardest thing you ever did, and that you would probably fail?”

  “What kind of a crazy question is that?” Eli asked. “If I were the last chance, then of course I would. Who—?”

  But the voices interrupted him. “But how can you be sure? What if it meant you would have to give up everything important to you? Everything you love?”

  “Sebastian, is that you? This isn’t funny! Why can’t I see your face? Where’s Heather?”

  “Heather is on pause. We must speak quickly. In seconds this patch will be noticed and we’ll be disconnected.”

  “So you’re saying we’re … off CloudNet? You hacked into my sphere?”

  “That is correct.”

  Eli’s mouth went dry. He’d heard about off-CloudNet connections, but nobody had used them for years. There was no need for them anymore because InfiniCorp’s gigantic systems took care of everything for everybody. The only people who even tried to go around the system nowadays were criminals.

  Foggers.

  Marilyn’s voice echoed in his head. You don’t want anything to do with this, Eli. Shut them down!

  Eli spoke into the confetti, struggling t
o keep his voice calm. “This conversation is over. I’m turning off the sphere, and then I’m reporting you to my father.”

  “We have the answers you’re looking for, Eli.”

  He felt a sudden tightness in his gut. His hand stopped in midair. Even Marilyn stayed quiet. There was something very wrong here, something that could get him in serious trouble. And yet now he couldn’t bring himself to touch the sphere and send the voices away. If they really knew what was going on, he wanted to know.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  “Who we are doesn’t matter. We can help you disentangle the fabric of lies.”

  There was a sudden static pop. For an instant the cloud of tiny colored cubes froze. Almost immediately they began whirring around again, only faster now. Something was wrong.

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re out of time,” the voices said, breaking up. “Eli, you are in great danger. If you want the truth and are prepared for the consequences, tell no one about this conversation.” The colors in the sphere started to vibrate.

  “Don’t go! Tell me what you know! Is a terrible storm coming? What’s going on?”

  Their reply was so faint that Eli could only just make it out. “We’ll be in contact.”

  All at once the colors shot together and formed the image of a burning sun, dazzling and orange. Eli had barely a moment to take it in before it broke apart again, but he recognized it right away. It was the same image as the one on the page he’d found tucked inside the Alice book.

  “Wait!” He put his face up close to the sphere. He wanted to shake it, to somehow force the mysterious voices to speak again.

  But it was too late. They were gone.

  And then he felt Heather’s eyes on him once more. Her head filled the entire orb; her pretty mouth hung open in exactly the same expression of surprise that it had the moment she’d disintegrated. Eli and the Heather simulation were practically nose to nose.

  “God, what bug got up your butt? No need to pop a neuron. Don’t you know I’m here to serve? Eli? Eli?”