Sample from the novel "Sky"

Excerpt from SKY

BOOK 2 CHAPTER 1

The day began with a sudden blast of light. My irises strained, protecting retinas from the morning lights. "Damn," I growled out loud, turning over in bed hoping to bury my face in darkness. But the damage was done, I couldn't sleep if it was dark, now. I hated this breach of personal privacy, outloud asking someone to tell me why we never got to sleep in on the floor.

I often asked myself that and other pointless questions regarding the conditions of life in our fragile, hidden world. I guess it took the edge off some of the real concerns that bombarded me once I left the inviolate world of induced sleep.

A flash from a dream came to me and the shock squeezed my breath. But it slipped away, leaving me in a blind ambiance of mystery.

Then my com monitor came to life with an audio code bearing the signature of Omega Pod C-2. Knowing the code, I said "Hope you're not as stressed as I am this morning Kevin. What's down?"

Kevin's features materialized in the monitor as he spoke. "Well, it's been four months since we got a seismic fluctuation worth investigating. I wondered if you would join me outside to check the sensor complex."

I didn't have to think long about this one. It had been a week since I'd been out, and I could feel it. "I'd love to go," I said. "I'll meet you at Decad Alpha in an hour."

"Great, Jules. I could use some company. Besides, I've reserved Big3 and you know how empty she is with only one aboard!"

We smiled and nodded silently before breaking contact. This could be good, I thought. Going out always calms me. It took me thirty minutes to eat and dress for the trip. But I wanted some scenery before I left. Just enough to get me in the mood...

A half smile touched my face as I reclined into my viewer. It was pointless to restrain the childhood emotions that flooded me. A tingling sensation exploded inside as I entered the program mid flight, clouds zipping past. The crystal display of blues and whites surrounded me, filled me with a sense of freedom and power. I luxuriated in its intoxicating splendor for several minutes.

But I knew this had to be a quickie. I coaxed the controls into a dive and watched the clouds recede upwards, giving way to my home below. Entrance into the water at half a kiloknot used to shake me up, but now it served to cleanse my worries. When the ocean floor finally ascended I felt ready for anything.

I blinked, doused the view and jumped from the chair. I was suddenly determined to reach Decad Alpha in a record 29 seconds.

But I didn't. Half way there I got another flash from the dream and my lust for racing vanished. Something triggered by the view I just left. I stopped and stood, panting in the spider corridor. Yes, there was something next to me in the clouds - something large... red. I knelt and closed my eyes, hoping to get more detail. The object was oblong and I remembered reaching toward it to determine its size. But my memory faded and I couldn't grasp what happened... something like an explosion, or being surrounded by the thing. Arrg! I stood up to try to shake off an overwhelming sense of grief at losing the image. An inner tinge told me it would come later, but I had powerful doubts.

I shook my shoulders and walked to the decad lift. Once alone inside I regained some composure and faith. I longed for this excursion like a breath of fresh air. Ha! Fresh air - what an oxymoron, I thought. Somehow, though, I liked it and was known to use the expression frequently, always good for a few laughs.

Kevin greeted me with his trademark bear hug, and we both smiled broadly as we walked side by side to Big3's docking port. This is the kind of uplift I needed. I watched Kevin activate the waterlock pumps, a contagious grin brewing amid the wrinkles of his ageless face.

I was stepping into Big3, thinking casually about my dream when a drop of cold water splashed into my face. My thoughts were instantly preempted by a sense of danger, then glee. I reached out and grabbed Kevin by the shoulder, swung him around and pointed at my face.

His smile exploded, then he flattened against the wall of Big3 in mock attention. His right hand was stiff against his forehead, offering a salute with fingers crossed. I couldn't hold it in. The burst of laughter came so suddenly that my exhale scattered saliva all over his face and torso. After that, everything was funny. We enjoyed several minutes of remorseless laughter.

We had some peculiar customs on the floor. Most were created to bolster morale in a world in which we literally carried the weight of the oceans on our shoulders. I got the waterlock drip, so I had the helm on this excursion. It was our way to repay the involuntary fright following unexpected contact with any water at these depths. Most of us had, at one time or other, found ourselves near a seal failure. The smallest spray of water could, in seconds, become a raging torrent capable of tearing flesh from bones. For this reason, an unexpected drip in a waterlock begged for a stiff laugh.

Once I settled down from our laughter, I buckled into the harness and sang the checklist song.

Tighten down the hatch, set the ballast pump to run.
Flood the waterlock, but stop before it's done.
Check that O2 pressure reads five hundred pounds per hour.
Six fuel cells must test top of the green on power.
The carbon retriever should read a hundred and fifty c's,
Four impeller's balance showing less than twenty milli-g's...

My hands moved in cadence with the stanzas. In thoughts beneath the lyrics, I went back to my childhood. My father often said that voice raised in song was fear's most powerful enemy - and our most powerful ally. Song and laughter were interjected into our culture wherever it could be used to strengthen our hearts while providing a function. Checklists on the floor were therefore never written but laced into familiar tunes.

I finished the Big3 checklist and looked over to Kevin. "How long do you think we'll take?"

"It should be less than ninety minutes, unless we've got a repair job," he replied, his fun-loving smile glued expectantly in place.

"Good," I said. "We've got power for a good three hours. Let's go!"

Kevin took the aft seat. He had access to the science station and aft manipulators. I could hear the soft clicking of his keypad as he spoke, "I'm ready for dim-out. The seismic station is eight point one out on the three two zero."

"Got it." The nav computer was displaying the route profile. "We'll skirt Flat Top to the west and save a couple K's. No sense in going auto on such a short hop!" I turned to look at Kevin with a smile that said I couldn't wait to sink into a manual flight. "I'll set the sonar altimeter alert at twenty, though. I'm a bit rusty."

I disengaged the docking ring and felt a moment of drift vertigo as we matched the ocean current. I activated the inertial stabilizers (IS) and noticed my vertigo dissipate. As I felt myself melt into Big3's controls a mild trance came over me. I began to think back to why we were here. IS technology was one of the last scientific advancements developed before Tillman, and it was almost solely responsible for the success of the project. I heard tell that before the advent of IS, ocean floor civilizations were too cumbersome to be self-sustaining. Once drift and turbulence management was automated, fine motor emulations were effective for construction and maintenance crews. Buoyed by the urgency of the Tillman event (including unlimited funding) and sped by IS technology, timeliness for our two sister civilizations were reduced by a factor of ten. Many of the project founders, fearing the realization of their dreams would come after retirement, were astonished and vindicated to become some of the first resident administrators.

The sound of Kevin's voice broke my trance, "wasn't Administrator Karn your great grandmother or something?"

Kevin and I had a way of thinking in parallel and I had begun to expect it. It still vaporized my latent loneliness when it happened and I responded with a grin in my voice, "she was my third great grandmother on my father's side. Her contribution was in the field of artificial intelligence. She was responsible for 52 AI subsets in our master system, 36 of which still defy improvement." I paused, testing my tolerance for embarrassment, then said "she and I look startlingly alike."

"I know. I recently took a historical view and came across the first session of the resident administrators. I thought I was going crazy when I saw you discussing the value of AI in our floor civilizations. So I did some research."

I decided not to play hard to reach. "You know how to make me uncomfortable and complimented at the same time, Kevin." But this wasn't the time to be distracted. The altitude alert was buzzing its first level warning and I blushed as I turned forward to respond to the needs of the helm. Our moment of closeness deflated slowly and I felt a sad twist in my gut as it did so. It was an illusive luxury to be at ease for long periods down here, I thought. We always had to be on call for one life threatening emergency or another.

Then the dream hit me again. But this time I was running toward the red object on green colored ground, no longer in the clouds. My mind reeled from my response to the image. I had an overwhelming urge to break free of this suffocating world and breathe the open air, fall on the grass. Still engulfed in the flashback, I had sense enough to hit the autopilot button before the altitude alert came on again. My emotional state was obviously not compatible with a manual flight.

I turned to Kevin, who was looking at me with a concerned brow. "Did you know I've been having dreams about the surface," I said?

"Yes," he lied. At least I thought he lied. Kevin wanted me to think that he knew everything about me. It was his way of saying that he needed me in his life, and as always, I was deeply touched by the realization.

We talked while the autopilot took us to the sensor station, and the time passed by quickly. With the IS and autopilot working together the ride was nearly as smooth as if we were sitting on the ocean floor, so when the destination alert sounded I was surprised. I looked at Kevin with a disappointed half grin as I turned around to start the docking sequence.

The waterlock drip missed both of us on our way into the station. Our conversation stayed on the task of checking instrumentation records and sensor control subroutines for malfunctions. When we had dug as deep as we could a silence came over us as we sat together in the confined quarters of the seismic unit. We both knew what it meant, but it was the hardest thing to verbalize. I think we feared that as soon as we spoke our conclusion an instrument failure would sound or a seismic event would register, spoiling our breathless dreams.

But nothing happened for several minutes during our mute anticipation. Kevin broke the silence with a laugh that turned into a voice full of tears. "I fear so deeply to have hope," he said, barely able to finish.

I had rarely seen him so moved, and I was unable to speak - my emotions were so augmented by his. We sat side by side wrapped in each others arms while our feelings peaked, then calmed and transformed. Then we looked at each other understandingly and disengaged. This time I broke the silence. "We must check with the other colony. Surely we can't both be wrong!"

Kevin looked up with an expression that meant he was ahead of me, saying "I checked last night. Their records suggested a repeat of the first seismic null, but they assumed it was because of an upper level computer gnome they've been struggling with."

Then I saw the beginnings of an upsurge of excitement enter his eyes as he continued. "This could be really big. The last seismic null lasted almost a full century, but nothing could be done given they had no idea how long it would last. Now we have repetitive data to analyze. If the meteoric cycle can be charted, an expedition will surely be launched."

I turned in my seat and completed a contact on the station's com panel. "This information is too valuable to carry back with us. I'm filing a priority report to the ABC." As I finished speaking I turned my head to Kevin and gave a little nose laugh about the ABC. It was a little joke we Techs liked to poke at the Administrative Board Chair. In a nutshell, it expressed our distaste for non-participating administrators by implying they thought operating the colonies was as simple as ABC's without ever getting their hands wet. I composed and linked the message and sent it "priority" which meant it would reach the ABC sometime within the hour. Ample time to return home and rough out some plans before the board had a chance to convene, I thought. I glanced at Kevin and saw by the monitor display that he was already compiling seismic data.

"I want to get this data in my hands before they have a chance to mess it up!," Kevin said with a surprisingly condescending tone. "The Board got hold of the Oceanic Spectrometer Array data after the last kiloton event. Somehow they managed to erase the file directory, scrambling the ordinates. I have never forgiven them - it was a pet project of mine."

I let him stew, wanting to suggest he allow himself to feel hope just a few moments longer. But hope had become a rare and deceiving commodity on the floor. Too often it had been shattered by the unforgiving sea - a corroded bolt or a forgotten seal would give way to her might at the highest and lowest of times. But it was the hopeful heart that wore the scar, not the woeful soul. Kevin dared not yet trust, so he rubbed this old wound sore to keep his aching hope at bay.

We worked silently while preparing for the return trip. I kept glancing at Kevin - keeping tabs on his emotional state. But I wasn't sure if I could wait out his mood, my excitement was wanting somebody to bounce off of. It was when we stepped toward Big3 that I turned on him, my explosive smile burning a short fuse. "You and I are visiting the surface whether they approve it or not. Just don't get quiet on me Kevin!" I had his shoulders in my hands, shaking them.

He couldn't resist this assault on his mood. It far overpowered any resistance he had mustered for his defense, and his face changed. "God, I want to surface so bad I can taste it in my ass," he blurted, a smile all over his face. We hugged then, falling to the floor of Big3, all caution lost to a painful bout of laughter... which was cut painfully short.

---SKY will include 3 books within the full text, which is half completed---

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