The school day was over. Steve walked out of the Building and swiped his Ident in the reader, walked over to the edge of the walkway, and looked down through the amber-pink sky. Just a way to kill a few minutes before the HoverDroid reached the dock to shuttle him back home. Everyone's got their own way to pass empty time. Some study. Some chat. Steve glanced up to see a few using their portable game systems and thought of his father's strictness.
He had blue eyes and short-cropped golden hair on his head. His face was a child's but the vibe he gave off when you looked at him, talked to him, was decidedly not so. It had something to do with his posture; twelve-year-olds don't
stand that straight. They don't walk that stiff. Seeing him, you were left with the vague feeling that something harder, something colder, was trapped in that tiny body.
Steve looked down again, and saw a gray soup of smoke that swirled and whirled around. Well, swirled and whirled are perhaps the wrong words, for they imply speed. The smoke moved, definitely moved, but slowly. Calmly. At its own pace, thank you very much. And it wasn't really smoke, either; it was cloud. Steve tried to imagine individual currents within the mass. He pictured them as color-rivers; here, a little bit of black, there, a dash of purple, red, white!...
He walked forward, onto nothingness.
One of his classmates looked up for a second, momentarily startled out of
Duke Nukem Forever II.
Of course, it wasn't air but plastic that held him; yes, Steve could recite the
chemical formula of the substance by heart. It's what permitted humans to live and thrive in these majestic floating cities that would've been unheard of only fifty years ago. You weren't really supposed to
stand on the outer barrier like this, just sit back and look through it, but it's not like it really mattered. The structure was strong, fantastically so, in twenty-odd different ways that, yes, Steve could explain to you if you gave him twenty minutes to discuss alpha-bonding and electron-prediction pathways.
The plastic curved up and away only a few feet from where Steve stood. It formed a perfect barrier there that was steel-like to his right palm but would yield like water to a HoverDroid. It curved up, up, up---forever up---past the housing areas, past the
police and even the
government offices. All parts of the one, glorious Building. You lived on a straight, city-wide, vertical column of metal and plastic. It was sheathed, throughout, with another, curved layer of that wonderful
polymer. You looked down; you saw the firm steel vanish beneath the hazy cloud layer, with a slight hint of widening as it descended. You looked up; you saw a gray rod to the heavens. The Building was a true space-needle. No sign of decreasing in width or length as it rose, either. The Building just
was, just
continued, past all human sight and mind.
The Ident reader beeped a low tone at steady intervals and Steve knew his Droid would arrive soon. He turned around, walked from the plastic barrier to the metal walkway, picked up his backpack and waited. Thirty seconds later: there it was. Gunmetal gray. Sleek lines.
Jansen Tek written on the right side.
The HoverDroid hung in open air on the other side of the plastic. Picture a sphere. Now make it oblong, give it an eye-seducing coat of shimmering paint and fix tens of asymmetric projections and compartments and tools upon its SmoothSteel hull. Six of the longer ones were the claw-arms. Two of these held a tiny manipulator-field generator: looked like blue baseballs, pulled like fifty enraged oxen. Throw in a
positronic brain and you've got yourself a HoverDroid. The rear engines fired: the robot approached slowly. Ten feet away now. Steve stood watching the Droid's movement and was entirely unsurprised when the image appeared hazy. Seven feet. Yes, something was definitely happening on the surface of the plastic now, as the molecules rearranged themselves around in a beautifully synchronized dance that Steve could tell you about if you let him, just give him five minutes, please! Two feet. Plastic bubbled outward, collapsed inward, surrendered and fled. Zero. The robot floated through the perfect, Droid-sized hole, killed all movement, and descended silently in front of the boy. He looked blankly back. It was a scene out of an old Western, twisted into self-parody. The four-foot boy and the twenty-foot robot stared each other down, spirit and sensor unmoving, foot and jet fixed to the floor.
Seconds passed.
Click.
A plastic sheet flipped itself off the center of the Droid to hang inverted, above, from two hinges. An oyster's pearl of a tiny room lay inside: a chair, six videoscreens, buttons and switches and speakers and gizmos and doohickeys. Steve wasted no time: soon he was seated and facing the swiftly-closing cockpit sheet.
After the safety straps came down, he stated: "Command: `Depart.' " And the Droid did.
With a
joystick under his right hand, Steve spun the camera at the Droid's top a full 180 degrees around. He watched the Building's plastic shield rematerialize with the Droid's passing, like quick-healing flesh covering a wound. Perfectly stable. We were never here, he thought. The plastic is solid was solid will be solid.
Steve killed the camera and plugged his three front screens into a video-stream channel. Same as everyday. He'd lean back in his chair and watch this for the rest of the seventeen-and-a-half minute ride to his residential block.
This is how children of the twenty-fifth century ride the
school bus home.
Her name was Leslie.
Steve was in
physics class while the teacher was talking about space/time vectors and sine and cosine when he saw her. She sat on the right side of the room, under the window to the outside (covered by plastic of course). Steve was zoning out, doing the I'm-sort-of-paying-attention-but-not-really dance. He yawned. He stretched his arms behind his back, and tilted his head up and to the side. And...there she was. Staring right at him. Both people froze: a moment captured in time. Then Steve's face darted away, embarrassed. The teacher hadn't noticed anything; kept droning on about velocity and force. Her pointer danced rapidly around the large viewscreen at the class's front: equations wrote themselves into existence on diagrams with its passing. Minutes passed. Steve's gaze wandered over a bit...he didn't
mean to, of course, it just sort of happened...and ended up looking straight at her. Blonde hair. Slender. Kind of cute. Stone-still. She wasn't looking back at him this time: wasn't looking at anything in the room, in fact. Her eyes were fixed on the tiny window she sat under. A strange one, thought Steve.
Suddenly the statue's hands snapped into a frantic display: electronic
stylus flew over desk. A stylus doesn't make any noise unless you press too hard, go too fast, and wear away the sensitive metal at the instrument's point. Steve could hear the
scrr sound from twenty feet away. For a second he thought she was doing the sensible thing, the
logical thing. Catch up on notes. Then Steve realized that her head hadn't moved during the entire display: just remained fixed on the plastic-covered sky.
Definitely a strange one.
About a week later Steve saw Leslie again. He didn't have a name yet: just a face. Steve was in the
study hall. He had a pile of books at his table, along with everything he could possibly need for a productive session. Electronic stylus. Electronic desk. Bottle of water. The hall was huge: vast beyond belief. Imagine an (American) football field. Now imagine ten of them, cut up and shoved around and glued together to form one, enormous square. Cover the field with a forty-foot tall gray ceiling, add white steel walls, and you'd get the rough outline of the room. Steve wouldn't have been able to explain it like this. It wasn't big or huge for a study hall, just...a study hall.
The study hall, in fact. He knew no other. Steve would also probably have given you a questioning look if you mentioned a queer, made-up word like '
football' to him.
Each student maintained their own table in the hall. A
PIIIIIING would ring out when the period ended and all the students would rise, walk over to one of the room's two hundred mobile walkways and wait for it to carry them onward. The walkways all fed into one large opening at the back end of the hall like mad-made
river deltas. Their next class awaited. Books and bottles remained behind. Steve didn't know what happened to all that stuff when everyone left. You brought your three-pound electronic desk and stylus out, of course, you
always carried your desk and stylus with you no matter what,
of course...
The boy had much time to wait before the time-period elapsed, so of course, his mind wandered. Steve had heard whispers of tiny robots: an army of metal servants that swarmed over the discarded items after the students left. And, of course, they put them back in
exactly the same positions, placing them just so that when the same group of students came back no one would be the wiser. After all, thought Steve, it's not like his class was the only who used this room. It was
the study hall. Maybe the robots stored everyone's things thousands of levels down, in one of the places off-limits to schoolchildren and citizens alike? Past the cloud layer that separated Civilization from--
Two ice-blue eyes peered from over the top of his textbook.
Steve gasped and threw his head back in surprise. The textbook fell away; a nose and a pixy's smile shone through. The shock gave way to a mounting anger and Steve opened his mouth to scream just who the
hell are you and what business do you have frightening people half to
death --- when she cut him off.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?!", she said, and instantly the face's mirth was gone, the smile vanished and even the eyes filled with wordless apology: the left arm thrown suddenly forward but not touching, as if to right him with nothing more than its own stability.
"I...yeah. I'm fine. Who are you?" She still bled concern. "Seriously, it's alright, I'm fine."
She relaxed her arm and the light was struck again. Ice-blue eyes right into his.
"I...I saw you reading a copy of
Starbeasts and Other Tales from FarAway a few minutes ago, aaaaannnd...well...I really really liked that book too and --"
They talked for what must've been a half-hour: Steve judged time here not with a watch, but with the well-learned power of routine. It was easy, dancing conversation at a wind-storm's pace; Steve could barely find himself keeping up with the river of words that poured so easily from that girl's mouth. In the last half of it, though, he felt himself adapting. His mind had kept up easily enough. It was his mouth, that poorly-exercised muscle, which found itself folding and shaping and flowing and giggling in tune with the blue-eyed, smiling girl.
PIIIIIIIIIIIIING
Steve and Leslie lay down, outside. It was several weeks after that first meeting. There was this nature reserve that Steve was showing her; nothing much, just a tiny little grass-and-trees thing on top of one of the Building's many tiny little roofs. But to these two, it was paradise.
They looked up into the universe's inkwell. It, along with all the stars and planets and moons and galaxies, was chopped in half by the Building's soaring silver.
"Steve...you ever wonder what's below the clouds? I mean, no one lives within fifty stories above it and no one ever talks about it and when I asked my Dad (who's the smartest man you've ever met, you agree?), even he didn't know."
"All the time, Leslie."
"If I go below the clouds, will you come with me?"
"Sure thing, Leslie."
"Really! No kidding?!"
"Absolutely."
"You know, you don't
really need to scan your card so many times. It works if you do it only once. It's like one of those old-fashioned
elevator buttons we saw in the HistoMuseum a while ago. Just wait."
He stood at the Ident terminal on the outside walkway, facing the plastic dome of the Building. His outstretched right arm hung lengthwise; the fingers curled around...nothing.
She'd snatched his Ident card.
It took Steve precious seconds to realize this but when he did the marble shattered all at once. Legs jack-knifed, hands twisted, eyes squirmed in shock. He loved talking to Leslie, he loved talking to Leslie more than pretty much anything, but these dumb little baby-games...man, he could sure do without 'em.
Leslie just laughed. "You look funny when you're surprised!"
And just like before, the steely fire arose. "Hey! Give me my card back, you jerk!!"
She stuck her tongue out. "Oh,
fine. Man, you're no fun!
The boy pulled at the offered card and turned. Snap-heel sharp. As he looked to the horizon's line, he saw the HoverDroid already in the midst of entering the plastic shield, and tasted victory. Soon I'll be home and far, far away from this...oddly infuriating, card-stealing girl. The mouth twisted: a hard, lipless grin.
The grin melted into confusion. For the HoverDroid's cockpit-guard had opened, revealing the tiny room...
Two seats!?
Steve spun.
"What...how...?"
That pixy's smile again. Steve was getting good at naming these.
"My Dad works for Jansen Tek so ever since I was really little he's been teaching tricks and stuff. I know enough
programming to override lots of what the HoverDroid does!"
She held up a tiny, plastic chit.
"I put this in the card slot when you weren't looking, and it overwrote what you punched in for my own route and 'Droid-type data!"
And in a flash she was gone, a flying leap into the HoverDroid and fingers danced and twirled and spun against the harsh orange glare of the control lights; a symphony of tiny movements.
"My Dad'll teach you how to do this! Come on!"
And Steve walked into the waiting mouth of the HoverDroid and all was a rush of air, a touch of flight.
The talks on the outside walkway with Leslie became part of Steve's daily ritual. Her curiosity was boundless: things like
technology and
science she never stopped asking about. Steve answered as best he could. His knowledge pool was large, his understanding deep, but occasionally Leslie hit on a question he could not answer. After one of these exchanges (Leslie had asked him about the slow rotation of the Building, and to calculate its minimum size based on the energy needed for that movement), Steve responded flippantly:
"You know, we have 'classes' at this 'school'. You pay attention, sometimes you learn something."
She looked back at him and the words poured:
"Oh, Steve! Of course I know I should pay attention. But the teacher's so incredibly mind-numbing that I just can't help it, I just can't help it Steve when I start thinking about clouds and rainbows and stars and spaceships - and have you seen that window I sit next to? Have you ever looked out of it? If you have, you'll know I can't think about vectors or whatever when I'm there."
Steve nodded. He was used to these energetic outbursts from Leslie, now. Still wasn't quite sure what they meant, intellectually, but he felt...
something whenever her gums flew and her eyes breathed. And he knew she felt that indescribable
something too, just like that night they dreamed under the stars. And that's all you really need, right?
He balled up his right fist and gave her a gentle punch on the shoulder.
"You're a strange one."
She smiled back.
"I know!"
"You told me yourself!"
As she spoke she stared at him with a rising intensity he hadn't seen from Leslie before. Her eyes were hooked spears, shooting out and burying deep into the side of his head. Her arms were frozen flames, barely concealing the destructive energies trapped inside. She stood stone-still.
He couldn't help but turn to face her.
"You want to see what's below the clouds, don't you? What's been hidden from us?"
Steve nodded. He spoke, confused:
"Of course I do, Leslie. You know that. But what do --
"Why don't we find out, then?"
And suddenly Leslie turned from him, her face pointed up at the polished, black ceiling of the Droid's mouth.
"Command: Open hatch!"
And before Steve could inhale sharply at the roaring blast of cold wind striking his face through the suddenly uncovered entryway, Leslie sprang forward. And as she stood on that window-frame to the sky, looking for all the world like a high-diver before the drop, Steve felt himself rise, felt himself grab blindly for an inch of fabric to pull the stupid, suicidal girl back--
Too late.
And Steve looked over the Droid's open lip at the receding figure below and launched himself out of the cockpit with a wordless scream, a plunging eagle of shirt and backpack and hair, knowing only Leslie and seeing Leslie and seeking Leslie as the wind enveloped in a howling, unknowable fury; a rippling cloak of air, a cloak that pulled at Steve's arms and legs and eyes and cheeks and held firm, tossing the boy around like a child's doll, a plaything of gravity and speed...
The raptor and prey flew through sky and cloud.
Steve knew he wouldn't catch Leslie. It was all simple physics; they'd accelerate, 9.8 m/s^2, until they hit terminal velocity. She wouldn't slow down; he wouldn't speed up. She would always be floating there, in sight and out of reach.
The figure grew larger before him.
Steve wiped vapor from his eyes. This wasn't possible. . In however many seconds he had left before he hit...whatever he'd hit (rational thought swiftly overpowered adrenaline, and he knew death was sure), Steve had the privilege of witnessing a basic law of physics crumble before him.
Skirt and shoes came into view now. And there she was, face to face with her pursuer.
Leslie's devil's smile made Steve want to scream. "We're going to DIE!," he shouted, knowing at the speed they were falling, there was no way she'd have heard anything but noise.
Silently, she raised her left index finger.
Steve brought his eyes up and boggled. For above, their robotic savior was; its black metal surface glinting with the fire of a thousand suns, its noiseless ion engines pouring out gouts of thrust as it soared downwards. And when Steve saw the steel arms reaching out from the top of the Droid to them, electric-blue orbs at their tip, he knew. He didn't know how, didn't know the details, but the big picture...he knew.
"You planned this!," he shouted to Leslie.
Her face grew impossibly brighter. "Of course I did!"
And so the boy and girl slowly descended through silvery blankets of air. Caught in a manipulator field from their soulless protector/pursuer twenty feet above, they looked around with wonder. For Steve and Leslie saw the thinning cloud layers-- felt the gray recede -- and they leaped and whooped at the knowledge that no one in hundreds of years had experienced this. And when the cover vanished, spitting them out into the open air beneath it all...they found what they were looking for.