* * *
Cam didn't meet Arik on the maglev platform this time. Arik thought about pinging him from outside the Wrench Pod, but decided to go in on his own, instead. He knew his way around by now. He'd been in enough times to pick up soil samples from Cam that he was almost always greeted by heavily gloved waves and deep nods of welding helmets as he walked through the shop on his way back to the dock.
But the shop was dark and almost empty tonight. Arik could hear a drill press on the far side, and could see a single masked figure bent over a piece of steel in an isolated pool of light, but otherwise the Wrench Pod was as empty as Arik had ever seen it. He instinctively followed his normal unobtrusive route along the perimeter of the room.
Cam was alone in the dock. He was clamping down the rovers' power cords when he heard Arik step on to the hollow metal floor.
"Hey," Cam said. "Is there anyone left out there?"
"Just one person. I couldn't tell who it was."
"Ok, good."
"What's with all the secrecy? What's going on?"
"The situation has changed," Cam said. He secured the last plug and sidestepped his way out from between the rovers. He spoke as he crossed the metal grate floor to the lockers. "I can't get you any more dirt, Arik. From now on—" He opened a locker and removed an environment suit. "— you're going to have to get it yourself."
Arik stood still for a moment watching his friend, then smiled. "Are you serious?"
Cam was pleased with the drama he'd created. Although Arik had never actually said it, Cam knew how curious Arik was about the outside. When you grow up in a fully contained environment like V1, taking even a single step outside was the equivalent of crossing an ocean.
"Remember how I told you any idiot could operate an e-suit?" Cam said. "That includes you."
"Are we allowed to do this? Did you ask anyone?"
"Why would I do that? If I asked, they might say no. How does the saying go? It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission?"
"Do you think anyone will find out?"
"People come in and out of here all day long," Cam said. "Nobody's going to notice, and even if they did, nobody would care. What's the worst that could happen?"
"I guess it's not like we can get fired."
"Exactly. And if we did, we could just play cricket and ping pong all day."
"So show me how to use this thing."
"It's incredibly simple," Cam said. "The hardest part is the stirrups." Cam reached into a box in the locker and grabbed a fist full of short elastic straps with alligator clips at either end. "Sit down and take your shoes off."
Cam showed Arik how to attach the straps to keep his pant legs and shirt sleeves in place. Once you started sweating, he explained, it was possible for loose cuffs to bunch up and restrict blood flow to your arms and legs increasing the risk of painful and debilitating muscle cramps. He then told Arik to tilt his head to the side and put two audio drops in each ear.
"And now to make you an official member of the Wrench Pod," Cam said. He stood behind Arik, reached over his head, and tied something tight against Arik's forehead. Arik turned to the mirror in the locker and saw that it was a clean white hachimaki, complete with the traditional rising sun on the forehead. "It shows that you're determined and focused," Cam told him, "and also helps keep the sweat out of your eyes."
"This feels like a rite of passage."
"It is. You're one of us now." Cam held the dingy environment suit up against Arik to judge the size. "You're lucky. This should fit perfectly. I'm at least six centimeters too big for the biggest one. One day I'm just going to split it open and die of an embolism on the spot."
Arik started working his feet into the boots. "Let's not talk about dying right now."
"Seriously, this is all perfectly safe. You know I wouldn't let you do it if it wasn't, right? Zaire and I do this all the time."
"Well I don't. The closest I've ever been to outside is the dome."
Cam was helping to shove one of the suit's boots onto Arik's foot, but he stopped. "Are you sure you're ok with this? I didn't mean what I said about the dirt. I can get you more."
"No way," Arik said. "I'm doing this. I just wasn't expecting it."
"Well, it wouldn't have been much of a surprise if you were, would it?"
"I just hope I don't turn out to be agoraphobic."
"Trust me, you won't have to worry about that. You can't see far enough out there to feel like you're in an open space. I'd be more concerned about being claustrophobic."
"Living here would have cured that a long time ago."
Arik put his arms through the suit's sleeves and Cam started sealing up the front.
"Once we get the cartridge in, the suit will finish sealing. It'll feel a little strange at first while it pressurizes, but you'll get used to it. I don't even notice it anymore."
Arik pulled on the gloves, and Cam threaded and latched them. Cam picked up Arik's helmet and stood in front of him.
"Ok, here's what I want you to do," Cam said seriously. "Once you leave the outer airlock door, take a right and follow the edge of the building. In about 40 meters, you'll come to a corner. Take a right and keep following the wall. In about another 40 or 50 meters, you'll see a curved wall on your left. That's the Public Pod. You can do anything you want over there. The electromagnetic shields on the windows interfere with the rovers, and most of us are too lazy to walk all that way, so nobody ever goes over there."
The Venera Auditorium was the only structure in V1 besides the dome that had windows, but they were sealed up from the outside just a month after it was originally built. Apparently the engineer who designed the twelve centimeter thick aluminum silicate glass panes didn't know enough about how the Venusian atmosphere filters sunlight, and requested the wrong coatings in the specification. The error was discovered after several of the Founders complained of irritated, bloodshot eyes, and even partial but temporary blindness.
"What does the electromagnetism do to the rovers?"
"It screws up their navigation systems and cameras."
"Why didn't they just bolt the shields over the windows?"
"The structure wasn't designed to have holes drilled in it, and they didn't have enough spare welding material to weld the plates on back then. They tried an adhesive, but the atmosphere broke it down after about a week, and all the plates fell off. Finally they decided to run wires through the insulation in the walls between the panes and use good old fashioned electromagnetism to make them stick."
"Clever solution, actually."
Cam held the helmet up close to Arik's head and judged the size. "Let's try a bigger one. You have an extra large brain." He placed the helmet on top of a locker, and started down the row looking for a more appropriate size. "By the way, that whole story about them using the wrong kinds of filters on the windows is all made up. You know that, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"You want to hear the Wrench Pod version of the story?"
"I don't know. Do I?"
Cam reached for a helmet. "What really happened was that the GSA never thought about how a 3,000 hour day would affect people psychologically. Back then, the Venera Auditorium was the only structure in V1, so people couldn't get away from the light. Eventually it drove them all insane, and they ended up ripping each other to pieces with their bare hands. The GSA had to send in a new crew to clean up the mess and start over again."
"You guys seriously believe that?"
"Cañada claims to have used that trailer right there to haul the bodies out and bury them."
"Great. So now I have to worry about zombies out there in addition to everything else."
"That's right. He says if you take one of the rovers out into the magnetic field and switch on the mic, you can hear the screams of the first wave of Founders being murdered in the static."
"You people are deranged."
"Now you're really an official Wrench Pod member," Cam said. "That story doesn't leave this room,
by the way."
Cam looked surprisingly earnest. Apparently the Wrench Pod took their lore very seriously. "Don't worry. I can't really see myself retelling it."
"Here, try this on."
Arik slipped the helmet over his head. Cam put his hands on either side and moved it around to test the fit.
"Ok, this one works. Feel ok?"
Arik gave Cam a thumbs up, and Cam threaded and latched the helmet ring.
"All right. All you need now is your cartridge."
Cam pulled a hexagonal tube from the stack on the right side of the door.
"Turn around."
Arik turned his back to Cam, and a moment later, he felt a change in the suit. He could feel the glove and helmet joints stiffen, and the seam down the front of the suit contract. The pressure changed inside the helmet, and a heads-up display in the visor showed him his air supply, battery life, suit pressure, and comm status.
When Arik turned back, Cam was standing in front of the wall using his workspace. He signaled for Arik to wait a second, then tilted his head and filled his own ears with audio drops.
"Comm check. Can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear."
"Good. One last thing."
Cam took a bucket down from the equipment rack and handed it to Arik. Arik had to hold it out from his body and bend at the waste to see the tools inside.
"The handle on the shovel telescopes if you get tired of bending down."
Arik nodded in his helmet. Cam could hear him breathing hard.
"Don't worry. You're going to love it out there. This equipment is completely foolproof. Just remember: two rights, and the Public Pod will be on your left. When you're ready, come back the way you came. The entire perimeter is lined with white strobes, so as long as you stay where you can see them, you're fine. And there's a red strobe over the airlock so you can't miss it. Copy?"
"Copy."
"Stay out there as long as you want. I'm going to be in here rebuilding Clara's suspension, so I'm in no hurry. I'll be able to hear everything you say, and I'll keep an eye on your suit's status, so don't worry about your HUD. Now go have fun playing in the dirt."
Cam gave Arik an encouraging cuff on the side of the helmet. Arik nodded and turned toward the airlock. The suit didn't feel as heavy or as bulky as it looked, but it would take some getting used to — especially the helmet. Arik had never experienced such constrained vision before, and there was something disconcerting about listening to himself breathe. Being aware of every breath he took seemed to suggest that he had to consciously remember to take the next one. The feeling would pass, he told himself. He moved the bucket to his other hand and touched the pressure panel beside the inner airlock doors.
The huge slabs of steel slid apart noiselessly. There were no warning lights or alarms or automated instructions, presumably because nothing could go wrong. According to Cam, the system was foolproof. The inner and outer doors were physically linked, and the outer doors wouldn't open if the suit wasn't properly pressurized. The helmets were unbreakable, and the suits were a ballistic composite fiber material that couldn't be compromised by anything Arik would encounter out there. Cam wouldn't let him do this if it wasn't perfectly safe.
Cam's voice was in his ear. "Touch the panel on the inside of the inner door. When the panel next to the outer door turns green, you're good to go."
"Copy that."
Arik turned and touched the panel, and the inner doors closed. It was completely still in the airlock while the computer scanned and evaluated. Arik imagined what was happening all around him in the portion of the spectrum beyond human detection. The suit was communicating with the airlock, indicating its presence and reporting its status, but the airlock was necessarily skeptical. Since a suit could malfunction, the airlock had to run its own set of tests to determine the number of people inside it, probably using lasers that Arik wasn't able to see, or possibly radar. It used complex algorithms to determine that there was only one person standing there, to conclude that it was a bucket that Arik was holding rather than another human standing close by. The algorithms had to be smart enough to differentiate between a human and a rover, and to account for an infinite number of configurations of equipment, tools, and materials that might also be present. Once the airlock was confident in its evaluation, it would compare its number to the number of suits reporting in, and if and only if those two numbers were precisely equal would the panel beside the outer door turn green.
The airlock was not only relying on its own evaluation to be correct, but it was also relying on the software that Arik's environment suit used to evaluate itself. And both the airlock and the e-suit relied on the cartridge to accurately measure and report its status. And, of course, all of these systems relied on robust and functional hardware. It didn't matter how reliable your software was if the O-ring that maintained the seal between your cartridge and your suit had been allowed to deteriorate to the point where microscopic cracks formed that would expand under pressure and eventually cause the ring to rupture. Or if a helmet was inadvertently exposed to a chemical compound that weakened its molecular bonds over time just enough to allow them to break in a circumstance just beyond the limits of the helmet's own diagnostic tests.
Arik understood that even the digital world was fundamentally analog. Even in the seemingly unambiguous case of true versus false, there were billions of complex physical processes involved in determining that a one was actually a one and a zero was actually a zero. He knew that the word "foolproof" actually meant "good enough" and that once all the measurements were taken and all the variables defined and all the expressions evaluated — and once the physical world with its entropic underpinnings had its say — you could only hope that when it really counted, the results would fall mostly in your favor.
The panel turned green by the outer airlock door, and Arik reached down and touched it. The doors parted and the airlock was pierced by an expanding plane of hazy tangerine light. The brightness flooded Arik's helmet, and burned away the sterile white glow of the diode tubes overhead. Arik stared out into the dense haze in front of him, then took his first steps out into a world that he knew was fundamentally beyond anyone's control.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dead Air
Darien's workspace hadn't been active for the last 42 minutes and 22 seconds, and there was no status message. It was unusual for him not to be available during lunch. He usually brought his boxed meal into his office and ate in front of his workspace, reviewing water sample results, checking pressure readings, and going through the queue of messages that had invariably accumulated since closing his workspace last. Since the accident, he sometimes even took a moment to check up on Arik and see how he was feeling.
But Darien was offline today. Arik sent out a ping and waited for a response. Somewhere in V1, a notification was being rendered on the closest piece of conductive polymeth to his father's last known location, and Darien's personal tone was being emitted from the surface of the plastic to help him locate it.
Arik didn't ping people very often. He preferred asynchronous communication. For issues that weren't urgent, it made much more sense to leave a message that could be responded to whenever it was convenient, and when the recipient had the time to devote to a thorough and appropriate response. Arik, along with most of Gen V, considered pings to be borderline rude, though there were plenty of people in V1 who felt differently. Certain people (namely those who didn't have jobs that required them to focus for long periods of time, and were therefore unfamiliar with the concept and merits of prolonged concentration) thought nothing of not only sending out dozens of pings a day, but even sending multiple pings to the same person. These were the user accounts which, sooner or later, found their way on to almost everyone's ping blacklist.
One of the original programmers of the ping system thought it would be a good idea to return the 3D spatial coordinates of where a ping notification was rendered. It was probably done for debugging purpose
s, and thought benign enough that it wasn't worth removing. Since ping notifications were rendered as close to an individual's last known location as possible (which was updated every 10 milliseconds or so), someone eventually discovered that they could combine a ping's 3D coordinates with a set of schematics to figure out exactly where anyone was in V1 at any particular moment just by sending them a ping. And since almost all the inner walls in V1 were conductive polymeth, there was no place — literally no place — that a ping couldn't find you. Initially, the technique was too complicated for most people to figure out, but it was only a matter of time before the entire process was scripted and shared, and could be exploited by anyone, regardless of technical aptitude. After months of receiving daily complaints, the Technology Department finally took the time to remove the single line of offending code, thereby restoring a reasonable sense of privacy to V1.
Darien was an important enough man that he generally kept himself accessible, and even more so since Arik's accident. Even if his workspace wasn't open, he was almost always somewhere in the Water Treatment Department which meant he was easily reached. And his and L'Ree's relationship wasn't such that Arik had to worry about his ping interrupting them in the midst of a midday tryst. But there was one activity in which Darien regularly partook that he would not allow to be interrupted. When Darien was playing cricket, nothing short of a catastrophic structural breach or flash oxygen fire could get him to lay down his bat.
* * *
Arik took the maglev to the Play Pod. The gym was usually moderately busy in the middle of the day as residents worked toward their weekly exercise quotas. Everyone in V1 was required to get a minimum of 100 minutes of exercise per week (not to exceed 420 minutes due to oxygen conservation ordinances), and since there was a limit on the rate at which oxygen could be consumed over a given period of time, you couldn't get away with cramming all your exercise in at the end of the week. Of course, nobody actually enforced exercise quotas, so only those who were incapable of disregarding the rules were actually bound by them. Most people in V1 simply had their favorite activities — cricket, martial arts, walking rather than taking the maglev — and it was pretty much left at that.
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