Submerged

Ruh roh raggy, rooks rike romerone romitted ropyright rinringement

Chapter 1 — Launch Day

In a colony at the bottom of the ocean, inside one of five interconnected steel domes, in a large hall was the canteen. And in that canteen, at four in the morning, was a single person. A person who was pouring over and making notes on documents that were sprawled out in front of him with the care and attention of a drunk projectile vomiting. Rich could never sleep on days like these. He had tried in vain the first few times, but the excitement was too overwhelming; It was launch day.

Down here in the colony there was nothing more exhilarating than when launch day rolled around. Rich circled three potentially problem areas on the probe but after cross-checking a few charts he crossed them out. He was getting to the point where he was starting to see things that weren’t there. There was no way this special alloy casing wasn’t going to breach the 150 metre line. And yet, he was still nervously pulling at his moustache. After all, the only way to see if something will go wrong is to do the launch. But, through sheer force of will, and enough caffeine to power a small town, he was staying somewhat focused. And he really needed to, because it was launch day.

This job was quite possibly the most important on the colony, as its main goal is to make the colony obsolete. Rich was in charge of the launches of the colony. This meant that he was in charge of designing methods of getting a craft and/or person across the 150 metre threshold without losing contact, as has happened for centuries. If he did this, everybody could finally leave and whatever they were down there for could be brought to an end. And hopefully today was the day that it could be made possible. Launch day

A pain like someone twisting a knife in his head hit Rich. He leaned back and held his head, momentarily forgetting the bench had no back and slamming his hands on the table to steady himself. Which was strange, usually the stress headaches come much earlier. Rich wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not. But it didn’t matter because there was only one thing that really mattered right now: It was launch day.

To take his mind off things he started staring into space, a tried and true method of not succumbing to a work-related heart attack. His eyes fixated on the insignia on the other side of the canteen. A blue orb that had been painted and re-painted so much over the centuries that it had lost all original meaning. Rich was alive when the insignia had the vague semblance of what it used to be. Rich wondered if what the insignia looked like originally was what The Earth surface looked like. He fantasised about being the one to be able to send the first people past the 150 metre line, the first generation of The Earth explorers. Maybe today he could do it because, well, you know what day it is.

Nobody knew why this colony existed. Records and oral accounts existed for almost everything else. What The Earth looked like, or at least pleasant descriptions of it as no images existed, how old The Earth was, the speed of light, how far away from the sun they were. Everything. Except, of course, what this colony was for and why. Dating methods placed the colony at around 500-1000 years old, but they were only able to use the tools they had available down there.

A foghorn blaring over the loudspeakers jolted Rich out from his stupor. He’d managed to zone out for two hours and it was six. He was late. He scooped up his charts and rushed out the door. He briefly considered heading to his room and getting some shut-eye before the launch. After all, he was already late. What’s a few more hours? Rich perished the thought and crossed the canteen, still half staring at the blue orb insignia.

The colony was made up of five connected steel domes encased in glass siting in a rock cave. Inside the domes themselves, walkways, gangways and corridors were packed so tightly together you’d think you were in a dark-grey steel rat maze. Doors abounded with paper signs glued to each to say what each room was and/or who it belonged to. Sometimes it was a biology lab, sometimes it was somebody’s room. You could never tell unless you made an effort to check, but at 6 in the morning it was safest to assume that each room contained a sleeping person. Despite Rich’s frantic rushing, he still made sure to stay light on his feet.

As he got closer to the connector between this dome and the dome the launch room was in, the construction of the floor, walls and roof became less a patchwork of rusty grates and portholes that didn’t look out to anything. It was more like perfectly moulded steel and the occasional row of rivets dividing them. The lights, too, went from the orange buzz of a light that hadn’t been changed in some lifetimes, to the radiant white tinged with yellow.

Rich finally made it to the connector, and the launch room was situated just at the mouth of the other side. The connector was a long, windy affair that seemed to twist for no reason. Rich didn’t mind, though. The entire time he was walking, and indeed every time he walks through a connector, his eyes were glued to the windows that ran along each side. The floodlights outside illuminated the rich blue, speckled with the shiny silver of dust. There was nothing but that for the length of the hallway, yet Rich wasn’t looking at what was right there, he was looking at what was beyond it. Deep into the dark of the water, past the 150 metre line.

There were scant few people Rich passed because, come on, it’s six in the morning. But as he left the connector and took a sharp right down to the launch room, he saw a small group of people crowded around the door. Launch time was 8:10 exactly, this was the early morning crowd who liked to mingle and get a better position to see the launch. For most people, if you didn’t secure your spot quickly, you’d have to figure out how the launch went from the reactions of everyone else.

As Rich slipped through the crowd, he was met with kind hellos and pats on the back. Rich saw a face he didn’t expect to up the front.

“Benny?” He questioned, “What are you doing here? I thought the council told you to assist for Dr Rontgen.”

“If I say they didn’t will you do the launch faster?”

Rich grinned at him and plopped down on the chair. “Smartass,” he mouthed, as he turned around and picked up his clipboard. The instructions showing how to perform basic initial checks were faded to the point of illegibility, but at this point it was like riding a bike. These procedures were designed to be performed by a team of at least eight, but with nobody ever breaking the 150 metre line after 14000 launches, Rich had long been the only person who still cared enough to volunteer.

“Beginning proceedings for launch number fourteen thousand two hundred…” Damn, he almost had it this time. He grabbed the clipboard and flicked a few pages over. “…eighty seven.” The crowd murmuring increased to an almost deafening level. People were variously talking amongst themselves and heckling Rich with shouts of “AND A HALF.” Rich found that funny at first but the joke gets old after the first few hundred launches. However at this point, by sheer necessity, Rich had learnt how to ignore the crowd and bury himself in the pre-launch checks. However, he did find himself from time to time eavesdropping

“Why do people say ‘and a half,’ how do you have half of a launch?” A woman asked what Rich ascertained to be her boyfriend.

“Haven’t you heard the story?” He responded. She shrugged. “There’s a rumour that, about fifty years ago, they had a volunteer for a launch. Except he wasn’t in a craft, they were just going to suit him up, give him a handheld engine, and launch him past the 150 line.”

“And?” She asked.

“And half of him launched.”

Rich couldn’t see her reaction, but after hearing that it seemed she was content with just quietly watching the launch.

He pushed in the button under the CRT monitor and it faded into life following a THUMP. After a colourful jumble of static that one could stare at for hours, especially those running on no sleep, at least twenty readouts cluttered the screen. Some were line graphs, some were seemingly random numbers, and some showed simple vertex diagrams of objects that didn’t even look like they were made by humans. They were each labelled with unhelpful titles like “LAZR” and “TIME TO TDY.” The only one that mattered to the people behind Rich still chatting away was “DFRR-Y” or “Distance From Radio Receiver.” Nobody knew what the ‘Y’ stood for but it didn’t seem to matter. There was once an entire team who’s job it was to work out what each of these readouts were, but once the basics were down they were reassigned to working the field.

He peered over the console and out the window to the brass cone that was hooked up to and gently swaying on the launch mechanism. First check finished: It was actually there. Its shell was a triple alloy of materials that were only completely known to Rich, but made him absolutely sure that this will be the craft that will break the 150 line. He had tried explaining it to a few interested people down at the canteen but he could see their interest drain before his eyes.

There were a few more checks of things that—

“Get on with it!” On of the people at the front shouted above the murmuring. Rich actually had his concentration broken, which was a rarity. He wheeled his chair around, making sure to rotate as slowly as he could, and locked eyes with the kid near the front who had shouted at him. There was a few uncomfortable moments of silence before his father let out a meek, “Sorry,” and shepherded his protesting son through the crowd and out the door. The murmurs started back up almost immediately and Rich wheeled back around to start the next checks.

Probe latched? Yes.

Blasting material chamber? Filled.

Probe engine? Online.

Jaw? Clenched.

Rich laid his palm on the button of a microphone that was duct-taped to the wall of the console. A pathetic ringing noise blared from the PA speaker and everyone immediately quietened down.

“Launch will commence in one minute,” He announced, fighting the urge to yawn as hard as he could. Everybody behind him cheered despite his delivery and the murmurs had transitioned into loud conversation. Originally Rich had tried putting more effort into the announcement, but realised that regardless of how he did it everybody freaked out

At this point pretty much all his work was done, but he enjoyed the showmanship of delaying the launch for just a little bit of time. Rich actually did nudge the course of the probe slightly more to the right. He didn’t know why, maybe he wanted to try doing at least something impulsively. He flicked a few switches he knew for a fact were no longer connected to anything and hovered over the red switch. The part that makes contact with the operator’s finger had long since worn away and even had a slight concave feel to it. Rich pressed the microphone button with his palm and shouted, “LAUNCH!” Flicking the switch as he did.

With a rather underwhelming sound and a cloud of dust, the probe had been launched. What were once relatively calm and stable readouts were now going haywire. As the probe continued, some were sliding off the screen and being replaced with new similarly unintelligible charts and numbers. Photos of various spots Rich had programmed the probe to take pictures of were snapping in and hastily leaving so as to not interrupt everything else. Rich was frantically scribbling down everything he deemed relevant or anomalous, but he was always keeping an eye on that “DFRR-Y” reading.

100…105…110. It kept climbing towards that magic number and Rich’s heart was beating out of his chest. The longer it went, the louder the crowd got. The football chants and relatively subdued cheering had given way to the hooting and hollering of a pack of animals.

140…145…CRASH. The entire screen went totally dark and Rich took a moment before lunging for the power button and giving it two rapid pushes, pen still in hand. Everybody behind him fell completely silent. The static was brief, the screen was still warmed up. In large, impossible to miss text, a great red “150” faded into view. The people up front saw this and groaned in unison, turning around and wading through the crowd.

Rich leaned back in his chair and pushed himself to the side with his feet, snatching the clipboard, and showed everyone what was displayed. Most people were disappointedly mumbling as they either glimpsed the screen or worked out what had happened from the reactions of others. Some walked in, hoping that by reading the screen closer it might say something else. And a few gave Rich some halfhearted words of condolences or encouragement before grumbling their way out. Rich was quiet, leaving himself to his thoughts and waiting until everyone filed out.

Rich flicked a few pages over the clipboard and penned a “150” in a table, below fifty other entries that had the exact same thing. All written by an operator who was rather quickly losing patience with this whole affair.

The Field

The food in the colony was, unsurprisingly, terrible. I hope you like potatoes, because we had lots of those. And they were all grown in this one dome under a million sun lamps. When Rich walked up the entrance steps he was almost blinded. The transition from the comparatively dim connecting corridors to the dome that had aspirations of being a midday sun was overwhelming. In front of him was a thin path flanked on either side by crops that rose about twice his height. He could just barely make out the council building in the distance but he took a left and started walking the path that girt the dome. It was just about harvesting season, and some of the field workers got a bit over-enthusiastic with their scythes.

Still, it gave Rich a chance to look at the scenery, like the steel grey structural beams that rose up into the ‘sky.’ And…this was going to be a long walk. It seemed like an eternity of listening to the ambience of a million scythes cutting into a million crops and having to hop awkwardly over various humming hydro-regulators whilst also having to hold onto his plastic folder. However, the tall crops suddenly stopped and was replaced with rows of potato plants that stretched off into the distance. The only things that broke up the grid of plants were workers busily tending to the crops and artificial trees that dotted the intersections of the dirt walkways. Rich was relieved to see the trees, the petition he signed had gone through. It at least made for nice shade which the workers were taking full advantage of.

Rich had always been fascinated by the idea of trees. Big tall logs which shot from the ground and had other smaller logs jutting out of it near the top. Great tufts of grass sprouted out of these smaller logs and covered the top like the head of a mop. Just as they’d described it.

Rich finally found a path into the field that had a low enough chance of disembowelling him. He nervously gripped his clipboard as he drew closer to the council building. He took off his jacket as the sunlamps continued to bear down on everyone with endless scorching heat. It did soften the harshness somewhat that if the heat wasn’t excruciating then everybody would starve to death.

“Hey!” One of the workers shouted at Rich, lowering her hoe as she aborted her swing and wiped sweat from her brow. Rich was shocked, he’d been in his own mind for the entire day he forgot that people could see and even talk to him.

“Mmm?” He managed get out.

“You’re the launch room guy, right?” She asked

“My mum usually calls me Rich.”

“Alright Launch Room Rich, how did we do this time?”

Rich pursed his lips and the woman seemed to get it immediately.

She groaned, “Not even a .1!?”

“Nope.”

“What about the hull pressure? Did that spike when it hit the 150 line?”

Even some people working around her briefly paused and tilted their heads when she said this.

“Oh…um…” He said, rifling through his folder. “Nope, all normal…How did you know about that?”

She shrugged, “I read up on stuff in the colony library sometimes. Probably something I read but don’t remember.”

Rich furrowed his brow as he began walking again towards the council.

“Seeya,” She said, getting right back to what she was doing as Rich gave a halfhearted wave back.

He wanted to keep talking but if he spent another second in this heat he was probably done for. Rich was surprised to see the doorway of the council building completely clear. Until a week ago the council had always used a first-come first-served system. Which worked back when the council usually got through everyone in a day barring a few stragglers who joined the line last minute to complain about the quality of the food or whatever.

Now with a booming population and more and more people being reassigned to the fields, there’s been a rough transition period to put it charitably. And the council instituted a booking system.

Rich was the first meeting on the docket. In his mind, this meant either he was the most important or he was the one they wanted to get out of the way first. Or it could just be where he ended up who knows.

He headed down the breezeway into a small stone room. It had the dim lighting of the rest of the colony but whoever designed it compensated by just throwing lights and wiring everywhere. Sitting around the curved table opposite Rich were the seven council members chatting amongst themselves.

The coolness of the room for Rich was short lived as it was replaced with the sweltering heat of having relaying his failure. The woman who sat at the centre broke off her conversation and looked at Rich.

She scanned the papers that were strewn in front of her before exclaiming, “Hmm, oh…ah yes, the launch team!” She exclaimed.

Everybody stopped talking and stared, first at the woman and then directly at Rich. Their stares felt like daggers being twisted back and forth in his stomach. She flicked her pages back to their resting state and an uncomfortable silence descended on everyone.

She readjusted her glasses. “So, were you unable to secure any volunteers for the launch team?” She asked.

Rich’s stomach was still wrapping around his chest so all he could give was a jittery nod.

She grumbled and wrote some notes on one of the spread out pages. It seemed like she knew exactly which page she needed but refused to organise them.

“Okay, noted. We’ll make sure to help you with any outreach efforts in the future.”

In the future? The next launch is only a month away.

“The distance?” She asked,

“150,” Rich said, hoping if he said it quick enough they might think this launch was different to the last billion.

She nodded and noted this down in what appeared to be a notebook buried under some food records. She placed down her pen, sighed, and clasped her hands together.

“I’m sorry you have to hear this…”

Uh oh.

“Harvest season is coming about and its getting harder and harder to farm the crops. I understand that your expertise is in propulsion but we need every hand we can get to feed everyone. As such, I have to cut your launches down to once every six months. In the meantime, you will be assigned to working the field.”

Rich only now realised that he was still clutching his folder to his chest like a child refusing to give up their toy. He dropped his arms to the side and the papers almost slipped from his grasp.

“What about the research? What about the future of this colony? We should be able to leave at some point, so why not make every effort to do so? And once we leave, we’ll have all the sun and dirt we could need!”

She pursed her lips and looked around to the other members of the council.

“Could we please have the room?”

“Madame councillor?” One of them asked.

“Please. Call it a recess,” She replied. The murmuring councillors all hopped off their chairs and filed out of the room at varying paces.

The councillor hopped down and walked around the table to Rich.

“I’m really sorry about this. If I’m being honest, I love the launches and I wanna get off this rock just as much as you. But we need to think about the here and now. Harvests are down even with drafted labour. We’re scraping the barrel here, you get it, right?”

Even though Rich really couldn’t, he nodded anyway to get it over with quicker.

The councillor nodded in reply and Rich disappeared out before she saw the tears well up.

The Field, again

He had been given instructions from the field warden and gotten to work. Warden was a perfectly apt description of the position because the work was like the prison labour he had read about back on Earth. Swing the hoe, strike the earth, plant the seeds, move a step to the right.

It was this all throughout the day, and there was an entire field to do. There was never any discipline given, but the guilt Rich felt at the prospect of not feeding people was enough to keep him going. But the sweat and the blistering heat was making him feel like a sponge that couldn’t be rung out. He had been doing this for weeks, but it never got any easier.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Rich heard a voice behind him say. He whipped around and saw the woman from before.

“Oh, you’re the girl from before.”

“My mum usually calls me Dawn,” She said, grinning. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing launches, not here with the rest of us?”

“I got demoted.”

She grimaced. “But those launches were the lifeblood of this place! How could the council do this?”

“Trust me, I argued all of this to the best of my abilities. Right now I just want to get on with my job and bide my time.”

Dawn nodded uneasily. She understood, but just like Rich she didn’t like it. “You’re ploughing wrong, by the way.”

“Hm? I didn’t think there was a wrong way to do it.”

“Of course there’s a wrong way to do it! You could throw it at that tree, that would be a wrong way of doing it. Here, give it to me,” She said, holding her hand out. Rich plopped it in her hands and she attacked the ground with the form of someone who had been doing this for years. “You need to limit the wind-up. You think you’re going for power but the dirt only extends so far down, you’re just wasting energy. You should be aiming for accuracy instead.”

She handed back the hoe and Rich followed her example. A much more conservative wind-up and an unsatisfying PLOP onto the dirt. She shook her head and smiled.

“You’re really bad at this,” She said, laughing.

“Yes, well my skill-set isn’t as applicable to this work.”

After a lot of failed ploughing and laughing, the two moved over to the lone tree on this hill to rest. It was an artificial tree, made to superficially represent the trees on Earth they had heard about but with more ability to shade from the “sun.”

Both were too busy catching their breath to talk, with Dawn taking slow, measured breaths and Rich sucking in desperate gasps. As the atmosphere settled a bit they both did a bit of people-watching. There were few workers here, as everyone took this time to relax and they were in a field far away from anyone else. It only gave Rich minor hope that at least if he did this long enough he would be as tanned and bulky as everyone else here.

“What do you think it is?” Dawn asked. Rich looked over to her, confused.

“I think we’re farming potatoes this season.” She laughed.

“No, I mean what do you think’s at the 150 line?” She asked. Rich stayed quiet, waiting for her to posit her theory. “I like the idea that we’re an egg.”

She looked at her like she had just passed gas. “I beg your pardon?”

“Seriously! If you look at our colony from a god-level, you’ll see a well functioning, self-sustaining organism. Maybe we’re the yolk of an egg and we’re gonna hatch.”

Rich stayed silent, trying to parse all of this. He tried to say something that wouldn’t be rude or offensive. “I’ve heard some people say that this is the entire universe. This 150 metre radius sphere we’re enclosed in. This would mean this whole place would be 14 billion litres of water, which probably would be enough for most people.”

“You really don’t think there could be more for us? That there’s more than just the colony and the water?”

Rich shrugged. “I don’t know what’s out there. And honestly, I don’t think it’s worth speculating about. As far as I’m concerned, anything that can’t be put through scientific testing isn’t worth speculating.”

Dawn blew a raspberry as she pushed herself. “C’mon, we’ve got work to do.”

Shovels broke the earth and Dawn was much more enthusiastic about it than Rich was, who was slowly dying inside from it all.

“You alright, Rich?” She asked.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“Did you want another rest?” She asked.

“No, I mean just in general. Being away from that console, trying to breach the 150 line. That’s what gave me purpose. This is busywork.”

Dawn was offended. “Busywork!? This is essential work that we need to do. We have a labour shortage so someone has to do it.”

“That’s the thing, there isn’t. The reason my work is being sidelined is to save face. That people who don’t work the field are just lazy.”

Dawn smiled. “Not without merit, I see.”

Rich stared daggers at her, but relented when he realised that, at least to a certain extent, she was right.

“Well, next time you get to do a launch—”

“Six months from now”

“Yes, six months from now, you gotta get me in on it. I’ve never sat in on a launch before but it sounds interesting.”

Rich struck the earth and left his shovel in. “And this doesn’t have anything to do with getting out of work?”

“Why can’t it be both?” She asked, grinning.

Rich rolled his eyes. “Sure. It’d at least make the council happy that I doubled the launch team.” He looked at where the sun was in the sky then hurriedly looked at his watch. “Can you take over for me? Sorry, but I’ve got a lunch meeting I have to go to.”

Dawn smiled. “Sure thing, captain.”

The Mentor

The food of choice for this season was the cassava. As he rushed down the hall he was trying to not let the minced cassava slop over the sides. It plus the seasoning of choice, cayenne pepper, certainly made for an interesting smell. He zig-zagged through the hallways and came across the door: 205. It was a grey steel door speckled with spots of rust with a porthole window right where Rich’s face was.

In lieu of a hand to knock, Rich kicked the door a few times making sure to look around and see if anyone thought he was crazy. “Come in,” A hoarse voice shouted as loud as it could. Rich pushed in the door and a woman was lying in her bed.

She was easily fourty years older than Rich and was gripping onto a tissue like it was a part of her. She motioned him to put the bowl on the table in the middle of the small room. He did so and sat awkwardly at the end of the bed, his head having to tilt to the side to fit.

“Hi Moneybags,” She greeted warmly.

“Hi Adelaide,” Rich returned.

“I heard what happened to you, I’m really sorry to hear.”

Rich waved his hand, “Ah, don’t worry about it. I still get my launches, just more infrequently and with more manual labour.”

Adelaide chuckled, allowing her phlegm to surface and sending her into a coughing fit. While there she pointed to the bowl and Rich rushed it into her hand. “Thanks,” She eked out. Her gratitude dried up when she saw the food. She brought her nose closer and gave it a whiff.

“It’s cassava and cayenne,” Rich interrupted, still having not taken a bite.

She frowned. “Oh dear god, what are they doing to you people?” She asked.

A smile grew on Rich’s face. “We don’t have to eat it, it’s fine. I just figured it’d be good to—”

“This is so you have something to do with your hands, isn’t it?” She asked slyly.

Rich didn’t respond, answering her question.

She meekly raised a hand, and flicked some dirt off of his shoulder. “Jesus, to think I taught you complex fluid dynamics so you could use a hoe for most of the day. I still remember when you were a teenager and I caught you messing around with my instruments in the drive room. What happened to the council that let me take a random kid under my wing because he was doing shit he wasn’t supposed to?”

“I think they’re still there. It’s the people who are upset about it, is all.”

“You don’t think people were upset about my launches in my time?” She asked. “Not just that, but we had a full fledged team back then. Maybe it’s for the best.” She reached for her bowl, only to have the smell flash back into her memory and she withdrew. Rich put his bowl on the table and folded his hands in his lap.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“Well, have you broken 150 yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you think there’s any hope for it?”

Rich furrowed his brow. “What are you getting at?”

A nerve had been struck, and Adelaide could feel it. But she ploughed on regardless. “I’m saying…there’s a reason I retired when I did. I mean, I’m glad you were there to replace me. I couldn’t have asked for a more capable person to do so. I mean this out of complete love and concern. I think it might be time to pack it in.”

The words cut like a chainsaw. Rich felt his heart rip in two.”But, when you retired you said that, no matter what, I needed to hit that line. ‘Like a fucking freight train’ I think were your exact words.”

“I meant it. I thought I didn’t have the ability to break 150. You were…are one of the smartest people I know. More than me, I’d even say. I thought if anybody could crack it, it was you. I think the council realised this before me, but it might be time to stop. Dedicate yourself to something that doesn’t tear you up from end to end.”

Rich didn’t know how to respond. He wanted to be angry, he trusted her. This was the one person’s opinion he valued the most and it was telling him something truly horrific. And it was true. Every failed launch was feeling more inevitable. Every launch still had the certain promise of failure and yet he was still not sleeping before each one. He needed to say something, though. The silence was getting long and ridiculous.

“I’ll get you an extra pillow. If I have to see you crane your neck like that anymore I’m going to get sympathetic neck pain.” He gave a pathetic smile and before she could say anything he was gone.

Tears welled up in his eyes despite his best efforts to push them down. He had passed by people in the hallway in the past who were just inconsolably upset about something or other. It was deeply uncomfortable for him and indeed that’s when the eye contact would cease entirely.

In his times of emotional distress, he always looked out the windows. The darkness barely illuminated by floodlamps outside. Even from 150 metres away, his problems seemed minuscule. Whatever was out there would probably scoff at his pointless issues with the problems of the rest of the universe to deal with. It wasn’t helping him today.

“RICH!” He heard a familiar voice shout. Dawn walked up to him, shovel in one hand and a full bag in the other. “How did your meeting thing go?”

Rich could barely process all the information he was receiving right now. He just had the presence of mind to wipe his eyes clean. “Oh, I’m still doing it. I’m just getting her an extra pillow.”

“Oh!” She said, realising. “It’s one of THOSE meetings. That’s alright, I respect it.”

“What?” Rich said, now realising himself. “Oh! No, nothing like that. It’s an old friend of mine.”

Dawn smiled. “I figured. You really gotta learn sarcasm one of these days. Come on, I have a pillow at my place that I’m not using,” She said, waving her shovel around with no regard for others. Rich sighed and followed, entering into the large, almost completely windowed connecting hallway.

They walked in silence for a bit, Rich still trying to figure out what was in the bag without being too prying. He tried to get his mind off of it but it was just too weird to forget.

“Y’know, whoever designed this place had a real eye for beauty.”

She shot him a side eye and looked at him when she realised he wasn’t ill-advisedly using sarcasm. “Excuse me?” She asked.

“Seriously. You may see just a grey hallway. But look at those windows, look at the view into the yawning abyss. Nobody HAD to do that. They could have just made this place look like the inside of a ping-pong ball. Whoever made this place put in windows because they wanted us to ask questions. What’s out there? There could be entire colonies just like this on…grass or something. Maybe this place is a prison and the wardens just forgot about us.”

“Or it’s an egg.”

“Or it’s a…it’s not an egg.”

“Alriight,” She sung. “But when I’m proven right in a hundred years I get to piss on your grave.”

Despite how gross that statement was, Rich laughed. “Sure,” He half-assedly agreed.

They arrived at her room and, pushing the door in, a few things hit Rich at once. The smell. The smell of wet mulch and musky earth, it’s waft bringing with it a humidity like something he’d only seen standing next to the boilers. Further in and it was clear why: Shades of wet earth and dry dirt adorned the walls and floor, making an unpleasant squelching under Rich’s boots.

The only areas it seemed to avoid were her bed and central table. Dawn could see the bewildered look on Rich’s face immediately, she was waiting for it. “I’m not crazy, I promise,” She promised.

“The evidence seems to disagree,” Rich mumbled, still transfixed on the abstract art in front of him.

“No, it’s a personal project.”

There was no possible personal project that Rich could think of that would warrant such a thing. But Dawn continued. “I’ve always read about Earth, just like you. I wanna live there just as badly as you and everyone else. What people keep talking about is how dirty it is. Apparently everything’s on the dirt. The grass, the trees, even the buildings. So I’ve tried to make my room into a little planet.”

“And you’re not worried it’s so humid in here I’m about to have a heart attack?” Rich asked.

“Hey, if Earth’s like this then better get used to it, eh? Come on, it’s really fun!” She reached into her bag and, unsurprisingly, pulled a handful of dirt.

“Did you get that from the farm?” Rich asked, a little more accusingly than he expected.

“There’s so much there, they’re not gonna notice a bag at a time. Stop worrying! All you have to do is run it under the tap for a bit and…”

It landed on the wall with a satisfying BLAP and coated a portion of wall that was still uncovered. Bits of dirt trickled down and coated further parts. He was ashamed to admit but it did look pretty fun, but he couldn’t get sidetracked. He had an awkward conversation to get back to.

“Hey, you alright?” Dawn asked. “You seem a little dejected.”

“Oh, I’ve just had a long day.”

Dawn patted him on the shoulder. “Working the field takes some time to get used to. Trust me, you’ll get better at it. And it’ll feel invigorating instead of… however you feel right now.”

Despite missing the point, her reassurances did actually make him feel better. If at least it was just the emotions than anything else. Without another word he grabbed the pillow which rested at the foot of her bed and left.

When he returned, he saw Adelaide with a rare apologetic look on her face. “Hey, Rich,” She began sheepishly. Rich lifted her back up and began tucking the pillow underneath her. “Listen—”

“You don’t need to say it,” Rich interrupted. “You’re right. As soon as I’m done with the next launch, I have someone else I have in mind to give it away to. It’s time I worked on the here and now.”

She said nothing, but lay a gentle hand on Rich’s arm.

Final launch

The fact that it was the last time he would be doing this, Rich was surprisingly energetic. Once again Rich hadn’t slept since the night before, but it no longer had the stomach-crushing anxiety associated. He was just excited, he finally had a reason to do these launches that didn’t hinge on the success of the launch. He had a purpose, a person to succeed him.

How medieval, He thought. I wonder if this is how kings feel? No wonder they’re all crazy for power.

The room felt brighter now, somehow. The floodlight flowed into the window with its usual shimmer, but the dance of flares was more interesting to Rich. He hadn’t felt like this since before he started working the launches. Just looking out the window and enjoying what’s there, rather than thinking about what’s out further.

The snapping of fingers brought Rich out of his daydream.

“Rich!” Dawn shouted.

“Hm?”

“You were in the middle of the readout.”

“Oh, um. It’s 2.8.”

Dawn dutifully scribbled this into her clipboard she had unceremoniously brought with her into the launch room. She was concentrating harder on everything they were doing than any of the work Rich had seen her do.

“Are you rounding up for me or is it actually 2.8?” She interrogated.

Rich sighed, rolled his chair to the side and waved her over. Yep, 2.8.

“I’m going to make sure you know every little nut and bolt of this system, don’t worry.”

- “Oh god, if you’re right about the egg thing I’m walking into that airlock myself.”

The Island

His brain was finally making visual connections with the ideas he had read about. Sand? Grainy beige stuff that was at that moment worming its way into his shoes. The water wasn’t above him it was below him. Grass was this green sticky-uppy stuff coming from the ground that wallpapered the whole island before the sand.