by Stefan Bolz
She crawls through the narrow channel, part of her trying to make sense of this new friendship with a being that should have no way of understanding her thoughts. But another part of her begins to accept it for what it is, despite it being completely out of the ordinary. But ordinary, she realizes, might not be enough anymore, might not be able to help her do what she knows needs to be done.
* * *
Aries has a pretty solid image in her head of where she has to go to find the marked vent. From the secondary air duct she is in, she soon comes to a larger one. This one is round and allows her to walk while slightly bending her upper body. She walks as quietly as she can, in her mind retracing the channels like she would a three-dimensional maze.
She reaches the perpendicular air duct about a minute later. It goes straight up, about fifteen feet. Without hesitation she jumps straight up into it then uses her hands to hold herself up, pulling up her feet at the same time. This is an exercise she has done so many times that it takes her a mere ten seconds to reach the duct in the next level. From here it's a few turns and two more vertical shafts.
When she climbs out of the last one, she knows she must be close. In her estimation, the marked vent should be somewhere behind the three fans in one of the primary air ducts. The duct she is in curves slightly and spills her out into a tube approximately eight feet in diameter. When she enters it, she can feel the breeze generated by three massive fans. The fans are set behind each other with about twelve feet of distance between them. At full capacity, Aries would not be able to stand at her spot; she would be swept off her feet and sent crashing into a wall further down.
Right now, the fans turn very slowly. She has been through them many times in the past. The first time she hadn't known what to expect and one of the thin blades almost cut her shoulder. But she figured out how to time it. She'd follow one of the three blades with her eyes until it came to a certain spot. Then she would jump headfirst and roll over her shoulders through the gap between the blades. There is a slight time delay between the three fans and when looking straight at them from further away, it looks as if there is but one fan—powerful and awe-inspiring in size and scope.
Aries stands in front of the first fan like a runner before the start of a race, looking at one of the blades. Following its circular path, in her mind she prepares for the jump and the subsequent roll through it. When the blade reaches the height of her eye line, she pushes off, clears the blades, and rolls to disperse the impact. She comes up in ready stance. She jumps again, rolls, and repeats the same with the third fan. Piece of cake, she thinks. From here there are three smaller ducts, each coming off this one. She goes into the first one and follows it to the end where it makes a T but there's nothing in there.
The second duct is longer than the first. She moves through it, wondering if the reason it is longer has anything to do with the vent she had marked. Another thought that keeps coming back to her is the fact that there is a vent cover to begin with. What would be its purpose? More and more, Aries thinks that this vent was an afterthought, something that was installed after the duct system has been put in place.
And then she sees it. The small piece of the handkerchief moves slightly in the breeze. Aries kneels down, takes a wrench from her satchel and, one by one, opens the bolts around the vent. Through the steel rods of the grill she can see far down to the end of the vertical duct.
She thinks about Born-of-Night and of setting her free inside the core, and even though she knows that this is the best place for her for now, she can't help but feel a sting of fear and concern for the hawk’s well-being. What if someone catches her? Maybe someone from the maintenance crews in the lower floors. But underneath that is another thought, and one she didn't want to admit at first. It's the thought of losing her, the thought that she wouldn't come back to her, and that her fragile connection with her would dissipate and she would never see her again. She hadn't realized until now how fond she has become of her and how much she misses her already.
She moves the cover plate to the side, a few feet away from the opening. Her watch says 2:22. There is no time to lose if she wants to be back in her room by 2:38. She moves away from the shaft and back to the three fans. She passes through them without incident. When she rolls through the third one, the question occurs to her as to what would happen if the fan's speed increased. No time to think about it now. It’s 2:24.
Aries reaches her room at 2:36 a.m. She closes the vent, slumps down on her futon and, a few minutes later, falls asleep for the second time tonight.
* * *
"So, does that mean the screen of the DIAG is broken? Or was the initial error report false?" Aries and Ty step out of the lift on the 282nd floor.
"I'm not sure, yet. The error report we received a few days ago was correct. It came in through primary. Then your DIAG showed us the exact same fluctuations we've been getting for the last couple of days. We just didn't know where it was located. This morning, the error report was gone. Just disappeared from the server. The DIAG you took up there yesterday works perfectly. Nothing wrong with it that I could find."
"So what are we doing here?" Aries is aware of the slight annoyance in her voice.
"Somebody a bit grumpy this morning?" Ty opens the door to shaft number five.
"I'm fine," Aries answers. She follows him through the door.
"You're fine like you're fine or you're fine as in leave me alone?" The door closes behind them.
"I'm fine like I can't talk about it fine."
"Fair enough." Ty opens the trapdoor and climbs down the ladder. Aries follows. When she arrives inside the server cube, Ty kneels down and begins to open the panel of one of the servers.
"Wait. Ty, wait!"
Ty stops what he's doing.
"What is it?"
Aries points to the bottom of the panel. One bolt is loose. She slowly shakes her head.
"You must have forgotten it," Ty says.
"I don't think so," she answers.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Aries sees in Ty's face that he is torn.
"What is it?"
Ty presses a button on the side of the DIAG. The device begins to emit a low-volume, high-pitched sound.
"I knew this would come in handy one day. You can talk freely now. This will completely mess up any microphones they might have installed in here. After a while the software will probably modulate the frequency and be able to listen again. But I think we'll have a couple of minutes. Just keep working while we talk. So, what's on your mind, kiddo?"
"Do you really want to know?" Aries is surprised by her own question.
"I'm not sure. You tell me."
Aries isn't so sure anymore either, but she starts talking anyway. "I double checked. I made sure I closed the front on each of the servers. I would not have forgotten to tighten the bolt."
"I agree."
"So, someone must have been in here after me." Aries didn't realize the impact this thought would have on her. She wants to withdraw, change the subject, and move on.
"That means someone was here last night, reset the server, and took care of whatever they needed to do so that, today, the error would not exist anymore."
Ty nods slightly while tugging the wires onto the contacts, one by one. While Aries watches him, a question arises in her. She hasn’t thought about this before and the moment she becomes aware of it, she knows its implications will be enormous and might well change everything.
"Why?"
"I don't know. You tell me," Ty answers.
"Okay. Let's see. The fluctuation is real. And it's not a small thing and it's not insignificant. It's important. Not so much the fluctuation, but what it means. What's the cause of it? How did it appear? Where does it lead us?"
Both look at the screen of the DIAG. The image of the oscilloscope looks normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. When she looks at Ty, she sees something she has not yet perceived in him before. There is a sadness
behind this weathered face, as if the hope that had been held up for so long has slowly begun to bleed out of him.
"What is it?" Aries asks, already dreading his answer.
"That's just... one possible scenario," Ty replies.
"What's the other?"
"The other is that it was a fluctuation in the sub panel that appeared on the oscilloscope as something more unusual than it is. That we haven't seen anything like it before doesn't mean it's something out of the ordinary. I've been here for close to sixty years now, and I still don't know the causes for many of the error messages."
"I think you're wrong, Ty. I think it’s significant. So much so that they sent someone in here to clean it up. I read something once. It said that if you ask the question 'why' often enough you eventually get to the bottom of everything."
She sees something shutting down in him—something that had opened just enough for her to have a glance inside, into the soul of a man who most likely had seen more than she would want to know. She can almost physically feel the door closing between them.
"And I read somewhere," Ty replies, "that to many questions you will find no answers. Only more questions."
"But I—"
"Leave it alone, kiddo. Leave it alone. It's too big for you. Much too big. It would need a thousand of you and then a thousand more and still there might not be a dent."
"Ty, I don't understand. What are you telling me?"
"I'm telling you to drop it, to move on with your life. I'm telling you to forget this day and the day before and move on. Make the best of what you have, you understand? Don't ask questions. Questions around here are like razor blades on boomerangs that will come back to the one who throws them and cut off her head."
"But Ty, there are things here that are wrong. Very wrong. We can't just not do anything. Not say anything. Pretend that we're all okay."
Ty doesn't say anything, looks at her, pleading. This makes her angrier than she would have thought possible.
"Why aren't you saying something? Have you given up? This... we can't go on like this! We have to change something. We've lost... we've lost our most precious possession, Ty, and if we don't start to fight, it'll be gone forever."
Aries is surprised by the strength of her outburst. She’s never expressed her thoughts in that way before. Never had the opportunity to do so.
"I know."
"What do you mean, you know? If you know, why don't you want to do something?"
The silence between them is almost impossible for Aries to swallow. She’s never had a fight with Ty. It affects her more than she wants to admit. And yet, the words she spoke, she knows needed to be spoken.
"Ty, we’re being controlled. Our lives aren't ours. We're slaves. We just don't want to admit it."
Ty nods while looking away and down at the DIAG.
"Ty," she says quietly. "Ty, look at me. Look at me, please."
After a moment he lifts his head. Tears run down his grease-darkened cheeks. As Aries is about to continue, he pushes the button on the DIAG once more and the high-pitched sound stops.
"I think we must have gotten an erroneous message yesterday. I'll switch out the oscilloscope on the other DIAG when we get back. Looks like we're done here. Let's close this thing up, shall we?"
Aries can't believe Ty wouldn't tell her more, why he would not want to. Obviously, there are many things he has not told her. She watches him close the bolts in the panel, unable to decide if she should be angry with him or hug him and tell him quietly that she understands. All she feels is confusion. His reaction had come completely out of left field. She’d expected anything but this. When Ty closes the last bolt and slowly gets up from his kneeling position, she grabs the DIAG.
"Let me carry this for you," she says, and hangs it over her shoulder. She's the first to climb the ladder. Ty follows, closes the trap behind them, and they walk quietly toward the door. Ty punches in the code and the door opens. He walks ahead of Aries when they go toward the lift. He lets her enter first, closes the louver and pushes the buttons for their floor. The elevator begins its descent. Both look straight ahead, no expression on their faces. On the inside, Aries has trouble fighting her tears. The whole way down, Ty's callused hand holds hers tight within it.
* * *
Almost ten hours later, Aries sits at a table watching the comings and goings in the dining hall while wondering how many shapes, tastes, and textures one single algae plant can generate. Even though there isn't really that much left of the plant other than a genetic blueprint so ancient that everyone has forgotten that it was once an actual plant.
This has not been an easy day. Ever since this morning, an awkward distance has lingered between her and Ty that she couldn't shake before she left work. She saw Kiire when she got her food. Her first impulse was to talk to him, to ask him how his day was and to ask him about their little friend. But he walked right past her and disappeared into the kitchen. Of course. There can't be any contact between them in public right now. It's too risky.
The integrated wall screens in the dining hall show an advertisement of a man's life in a ninety-minute movie. You can buy a pixilated version for a day's worth of pay. For high quality you have to pay about a week's worth. This is very popular for people who have lost loved ones. And what better place to advertise this than in an orphanage? A lot of the kids are too young but with the older kids, the ones who earn their own wages, this is very popular and profitable for the Corporation. And outside the orphanage, all the workers and families spend a lot of money on this. Because everything is recorded 24-7, you can pay to look back at any part of your life or, if you want to pay more, anybody else's life for that matter.
Forget and adapt, Aries thinks. And then carry on as if nothing is wrong. Is this our way of dealing with the situation? To give up, to bury our wish for freedom deep down where not even we can ever find it again? A few tables away, she watches Seth sit down; the kids sitting at that table get up and walk away. Nobody, Aries guesses, wants to be seen with him right now. It can only reflect badly on them. She watches him eat for a while. Then, more out of an impulse than a clear thought, she gets up, takes her tray, and walks over to him.
"Is this seat taken?" she asks.
Seth looks up, probably not sure what to make of this. He looks around but doesn't see anybody else with her.
"Yes. I mean... no." He clears his throat. "No, it's not taken."
"Thanks," she replies, while sitting down across from him.
They eat in silence for a while.
"I liked your previous haircut better," Aries says.
"Me too," Seth answers quietly. "I'm not sure if you want to be seen... if you want to be seen with me... right now."
"I don't care. We're just talking. What happened?"
There is no answer. Seth tries not to look at her but somehow can't avoid it.
"I'm really sorry I called you Scarlip."
"You weren't the first one. What about your hair? What happened to your hair?"
"I... I just didn't have time..."
Seth begins to shake slightly. His hands, most of all.
"Are you okay? You're shaking."
"I'm fine."
"You're fine as in I'm fine or you're fine as in leave me alone?"
The way he looks at her, Aries can't decide whether he doesn't trust her or if he doesn't want her to get involved.
"I always watched you."
"Excuse me?"
"No, I don't mean it like that."
"Well, thanks."
"No. What I meant to say was, I always saw you. When you came in here, when you entered the room, I always looked up. I mean, ...how you walked and how you carried yourself. There was something about you."
"I hope that something is a good thing."
"Oh, yes. Absolutely. Yes. Good."
"Now, I don't have much experience with this kind of a thing but you gotta work on your introduction a little bit more, you know. 'Cause if what happened th
e other day was all you got, I don't think you'll have much success. Later on... With us girls. You know?"
"You're not mad?" he asks.
Aries takes a sip of her drink while looking straight at him. "Of course I am. It hurt like hell. But I have a feeling you’ve had a lot of time to think about it."
Seth nods ever so slightly, as if haunted by a memory from somewhere.
"I think I'm gonna go. It was... very nice seeing you." Seth grabs his tray and gets up. "Really nice."
"Okay. Me too, I was... Me too." She watches him leave. When he's at the dish rack, he looks at her once more, a brief smile crossing his face. Then he disappears around the corner. Aries sits there for a while, not quite sure what to make of this. Then she gets up and leaves the dining hall, already thinking about a way to get Born-of-Night to cooperate in order to allow Aries to take her through the ducts and set her free inside the core.
* * *
Aries wakes up with a lingering uneasy feeling. She lies there trying to collect her thoughts. Let it go, she thinks. It doesn't seem to work. She ties her hair into a ponytail, puts on black leggings, a sweater, and a wool cap. She opens the vent cover and slides inside. Two minutes later she is at Kiire's vent, slightly out of breath. Her chest still feels as if she has a large weight sitting on it.
"You sure you want to do this?" Kiire sits at the edge of the futon. No hood tonight. "I think she is beginning to feel quite comfortable in here."
"She can't stay. There's no space. She needs to be able to fly."
"But she is safe here."
Aries thinks about this.
"I know."
"Maybe she could tell you... what she wants. Have you asked her?"
"That's not how this works with her. I can only... I can't speak to her. I don't think she would understand a word I am saying to her. Sometimes I get a glimpse of her surroundings but that's pretty much it."
