The Rainbow Maker's Tale

by Mel Cusick-Jones

  “No,” she admitted, although I got the feeling she was holding something back still. She shrugged dismissively – a sure sign that she meant something more serious than she was about to say. “It’s me being a whining teenager I suppose. It’s just as you get that bit older you realise that you’re going to become your parents one day – in some way, shape or form – and that’s quite scary. Going to work alongside them makes me feel as though it’s the first step on that slippery slope!”

  So, Cassie was scared of turning into her parents? That sounded truthful enough and the awkward smile that appeared on her lips as she said this convinced me of it even more. I felt like Cassie had told me something she’d not shared with anyone else before – I couldn’t be sure of course, but I’d never seen her look sheepish when I’d watched her with her friends – and the thought of that made me intensely happy. “I suppose you’re right.” A grin stretched my face as Cassie laughed with me.

  We were still walking. Cassie was so close beside me I could feel the warmth of her body as my arm brushed past hers. It was hard for me not be distracted from this but I was, because I just realised that this would be the end of our conversation. We were close to the centre of the park now, and a short distance away from us a group of young people were sitting around enjoying an afternoon of freedom. They were our classmates, but her friends. I would not be joining them.

  Unwillingly my feet slowed not wanting to leave her, but unable to go on further. One or two members of the group looked up as they recognised Cassie approaching – both of them boys. It did not surprise me that their faces wore particular expressions of interest.

  “Are you not joining them?” Cassie asked, noticing my pace slowing.

  I hoped I heard a trace of disappointment in her words. “No, I’ve got a better idea – why don’t we go somewhere else – just us…” I wanted to say, but of course I didn’t. I couldn’t. One time only, remember.

  “It’s a little…crowded for me.” I said instead, smoothing my face into a mask so that I could not betray myself any further. This had been a mistake – a pleasant one, but a mistake nonetheless.

  “You don’t have to go,” Cassie murmured as I was preparing to leave. I barely heard her words: my mind was elsewhere now, disengaging rapidly as I planned my escape.

  “I have to get home,” I replied flatly. No other excuses presented themselves and it seemed pointless to even try. I was already walking away. “I might see you on work experience if you’re with your parents.” I knew that I wouldn’t. I wasn’t taking an early rotation. “Bye Cassie.” It was an afterthought…a final polite farewell to close the conversation…you can’t finish without saying goodbye.

  “Balik?!”

  I heard Cassie call my name and pushed my feet faster, moving me away as swiftly as I could without running. If I turned around, I wasn’t sure I could actually control myself.

  Did she call out to me again?

  I couldn’t be sure, but thought I heard my name a second time. Raising my hand briefly in farewell, I continued in the opposite direction and did not look back at Cassie.

  Chapter 3

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  I scolded myself viciously as I stamped in the opposite direction than the one I really wanted to go in. My feet made dull thump sounds against the plastic pavement as I went, angering me even more. The noise reminded me I was in a fake world. It reminded me of why I shouldn’t be talking to Cassie.

  STUPID!

  A woman I rushed by jumped away from me looking startled, as though I’d shouted the words aloud, yelling them into her bland, emotionless visage. The furious expression on my face must have been frightening to elicit such a strong reaction from someone. Immediately I fought to regain control of my facial muscles, forcing them back into place, reverting to my usual neutral mask.

  I was so angry! Why did I even open myself up to temptation? I had no answer to that question. I had no answer! And that rankled, just as much as my irritation at allowing this lapse in my well-cultivated behaviour. There was no point in any of this. It was too late.

  Well, I can make up for it now, I muttered silently, knowing that there was no reason at all for me to have to speak to Cassie ever again. I’d spent long enough living inside this stupid resin world – alone – to need her company now.

  What could she possibly know about the SS Hope that I didn’t already?

  I immediately dismissed the question. I could not imagine Cassie holding the key to the secrets of the station I had tried to unlock, no matter what Scarlett had believed. No. I should never have tried talking to Cassie. It was over.

  To reinforce my stance on this matter I made a mental list of reasons why that was the case: school was over, so no more classes with her; we both lived in the Green Zone, but never saw one another outside school…or rather she didn’t see me, it wasn’t perfectly true that I never saw her… Stop it! I shouted, immediately aware that I was straying from my original objective. Another woman turned to stare at me as I went by, her expression clearly shocked. It was strange, just as before it was as though I’d yelled the words out loud. I shook my head distracted as much by her odd behaviour as I was with thoughts of Cassie. Shaking my head to clear my mind, I continued with my list.

  We were both due on placements at The Clinic and within Engineering, but they would not be at the same time. I thought back to our conversation: Cassie had applied for an earlier residency to give her longer at each place, whereas mine was on the standard rotation and not due to start for another three weeks. The image of her face rose in my mind, her features creased into a frown, unhappy at the prospect of starting at The Clinic early.

  There was nothing I could do about that, I reminded myself, as an involuntary desire to help her swelled inside me. It was frightening how much I had already allowed this stranger to exert a hold on me. No. There was nothing I could do, I repeated firmly. Unless I changed my plans… My subconscious ambushed me with this errant thought, immediately tempting me from my planned course.

  No, I repeated firmly.

  There were plans I had made and preparations already undertaken. I was resolved to continuing with them. Even though I had only formed them more fully in the last three weeks since the accident with the viewing screen, the basic idea had been developing in my mind for a long time: since another accident nine years earlier…

  Park 17 was far behind me now and my feet slowed to a more normal walking pace as my anxiety lessened. I did not want to look out of place amongst the other pedestrians. There were more people filling the avenues and squares now, as the station inhabitants began to finish work and filter homeward. With an upward glance, I confirmed my guess that it must be about 5.00pm: the mirror-sky was still bright and clear, showing no sign that the slow progression towards night had begun. At 5.30pm the artificial daytime would begin its retreat: the mirrors high in the ceiling of the space station rotating slowly away from the light of the sun, many thousands of miles away, and allowing the darkness to take hold. But, for now there were no shadows between the buildings, and I needed somewhere to hide out.

  I barely noticed the buildings around me as I passed by. To my eyes everything was the same here: blank and characterless, made of the same pale, strong plastic resin as virtually everything else on the space station. For all the difference it made, I could be walking by apartment blocks, municipal buildings or even pavement, turned on a ninety-degree angle and run up the walls. It was all the same and it was all built on lies.

  You can’t walk forever, I reminded myself. That was true. Sooner or later I would walk into a boundary wall, or perhaps a checkpoint that lead out of the Family Quarter and into the Married or Retirement Quarters. But, I couldn’t pass through any of those, could I? The laugh that bubbled up my throat, acknowledging my painful joke, was more a strangled cry; and like most of the emotions I ever felt, I swallowed it, locking it back inside me, unseen by the world around me.

  Stop! It was a command t
o myself. I didn’t need to wallow in self-pity, I needed to do something productive. For the first time I looked around me – really looked – and recognising the buildings nearby, I realised that I had not automatically run towards home, in fact, I had gone in the opposite direction.

  My second home…I laughed silently to myself as I continued walking – consciously now – towards my favourite place on the whole space station.

  I wanted time. Time alone to get myself refocused on the plans I had been making for as long as I could remember. And I wanted time to push away the distracting thoughts of Cassie that kept ensnaring me as I ran away from her. One conversation changes nothing, I reminded myself firmly as the Red Zone Clinic and centre of the residential hub rose into view ahead of me.

  On a whim I turned back across the plaza, taking a shortcut. Today I wanted time alone, without questions and prying eyes; I wanted more time than a brief trip to a park would give me. I needed real space, and to get that space I would need to lay a false trail.

  Paranoid, I accused a split-second after deciding on my route.

  I didn’t care – I was paranoid. Since the incident with the viewing screen, when I found the hidden transmitter, I suspected I was being watched all the time. It was probably stupid to feel this way, but I couldn’t help it.

  My increased suspicion was the reason I had resurrected one of my old experiments. When I’d first understood the properties of the item – that now sat securely in the pocket of my day-suit – I’d found it exciting to think that I had in my possession something that could manipulate one of the operating systems on the station, though I’d never put it to much use before. During the last three weeks it had become my constant companion.

  In all honesty I’d virtually forgotten about this tool until I’d found the second receiver inside the viewing screen in my bedroom and became conscious of the fact that all my conversations (not that I had many) were being transmitted to an unknown communication system within the station. But it was the first thing that sprang to mind when I’d realised I would want to be able to move around without being tracked by the scanner system if I was going to explore the issue further.

  Being nothing if not thorough, on discovering the problem with my viewing screen, I had decided that further investigation was required to determine whether mine was the only screen that had this unusual secondary system connected to it. This was very unlikely in my opinion due to the fact that there was obviously a wider network that my viewing screen was connecting into and I doubted it would have been created solely for me – or by accident. But opinion was not fact and so following good research practices – as I always did – I knew I would need to verify my initial findings and put my hypothesis to the test.

  But getting to other viewing screens, without being seen or tracked, would have been impossible. To confirm my suspicions, I needed to get at other screens, dismantle them and check their contents. That’s when I’d remembered my earlier discovery…

  From a certain age I found myself left alone quite a lot by my parents. They seemed content that I was not engaging in any dangerous activities – although that was often not the case – and were inclined to leave me to my own devices. I didn’t mind this at all, though I suppose for some people it would be upsetting to think that your parents didn’t actually like you very much. I was reasonably indifferent on this point: they seemed to find being in my company as difficult as I found being in theirs.

  With all this freedom, what was I going to fill my time with?

  That was easy. I investigated and searched, planned and experimented, with anything and everything I could find. There were no friends to distract me – after I saw Scarlett die, I didn’t want to be around other children: I didn’t trust them. Instead, I worked on finding out all I could about the space station: how it worked, who did what, where every type of network went to…

  At first it was very simplistic – I was only eight years old after all – but I actually got better rather quickly. It seemed perhaps that my brain had some particular talent for working in this logical way. And so it was that after exhausting all of the available routes of investigation, I began looking at some of the less obvious ones.

  I was probably twelve by the time I graduated to full-blown espionage. Before then it was mainly sneaking into any open utility systems I could find and wandering around every part of the Family Quarter looking for clues. Father was an Engineer, working regularly on projects and repairs in the Family Quarter and, to my intense delight, during one of my outings I discovered that in the office at our apartment he kept a stock of tools, along with data cartridges containing blueprints, floor plans, utility routes and heavy plant operating manuals.

  After discovering this hoard, I regularly borrowed items that were useful in gaining access to areas that had previously been closed to me. Then there were the data cartridges themselves, from which I learned about a very different side to the space station. Through a combination of specialist tools and information, my understanding of how the Family Quarter operated blossomed rapidly. Soon I was able to access whatever I wanted, whenever I chose, limited only by the scanner system tracking my whereabouts. .

  One day, rummaging through the contents of a tool kit – searching for a particular kind of transmission board – I’d sliced my finger open on something sharp at the bottom of the box. After rinsing the small wound and dressing it with a protective sleeve, I’d returned to Father’s office and carefully began removing the contents of the box to find what I’d cut myself on.

  At the very bottom of the box, lying flat against the black plastic base was a square sliver of some unusual material. It was so thin you would barely notice it, except that I must have moved it somehow to expose one of the sharp corners to have cut myself. This time I removed it carefully, pressing the thin material between my bandaged finger and thumb. I lifted it towards my face to get a closer view.

  The piece was grey-silver in colour, approximately two inches square with an odd surface finish, part-shiny, part-matt. I was certain it wasn’t any kind of plastic or resin, which I knew virtually everything else in the Family Quarter was constructed from. As I cautiously pressed my fingers along the edge of the piece it flexed slightly: not as easily as a fabric, but certainly it was not as rigid as plastic.

  For several minutes I continued testing the movement and feel of the square, being careful not to damage it as I considered what it could be. Finally – although I could barely believe it – I concluded it must be some form of metal.

  From everything I’d been taught, to find a piece of metal here – however small – should have been impossible. We had always been told that it was only used in the outer construction of the space station and was not present in any of the habitable quarters. At one point in my life, I would have been shocked by this discovery; but, by that stage I knew that what I found when I investigated was very different to what I’d been told.

  One of my first discoveries had been when I’d calculated that the space station could not have the gravitational field we were told it did, if it was laid out in the manner we were told it was. Our astro-engineering lessons taught us that we lived on a space station designed as a giant, rotating wheel, which recreated the natural gravity field of Earth. If that was the case, based on the size of the Family Quarter alone, it would require the Retirement and Married Quarters each be thirty times bigger than the Family Quarter in order to create a ship large enough to generate the right levels of gravitational pull.

  The calculations did not match with what we were taught about the station itself: that the Family Quarter was the largest of the three habitable zones. There was supposedly a minimal amount of uninhabitable space within the station, as well.

  To my mind the combination of these elements left three options: the external design of the space station was different from what we’d been told; the other two Quarters were much bigger than we were told; or there were other parts of the ship that existed – very la
rge and completely unknown – that we were told didn’t. However, you looked at it, there was something strange going on.

  So – even though I knew I should not be able to find metal in Father’s tool kit, when he had always maintained that he worked only within the boundaries of the Family Quarter, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t possible. As I had turned the small fragment around in my fingers, I’d wondered whether my Father lied about where he worked on the station, or whether metal was used somewhere else other than the external ship structure. It was an interesting distinction – even if it meant lies both ways – and I filed it away for future research.

  I came to the conclusion that whatever the truth was, my Father must not have realised that this fragment had found its way into his tool kit, because I was sure that if he had, it would have been removed. And so, certain that I would not be discovered if I took it I slid the small piece of metal into my pocket and packed the tools back into place, where they had been before my discovery.

  In secret I was able to experiment with the metal over the following weeks, using chemicals borrowed from the school labs and tools from Father’s office. Finally, I determined that it was a form of aluminium: lightweight, but strong. Once I knew what I had I wanted to find out what it could do and so next came a series of tests to try and find some use for the metal. But there was nothing. It did not affect the viewing screens or data centres, nor was it useful in manipulating the electronic access systems which locked-down areas of the quarter (and were therefore one of my main targets). It was only as I was about to give up and relegate it to the jumbled stash of items I kept buried in Park 42 that I found out what it could do.