The Far Dawn (24 page)

Lucky
isn't a word I'd choose for my history, but so far this plan is breaking right.

As we move, I consider how weird it is to be back in Eden. I look up at the light blue TruSky, the diffused glow of SafeSun through SimClouds and feel that light, humid air, so delicate compared to the harsh deserts, steamy jungles, and biting cold I have been in since. And the smell, so pleasant, tinged with flowers. Being here now, after everything since EdenWest, I feel like I get it, I so get why all these people chose this, why you'd lock yourself away in one of these domes rather than face reality . . .

But it's getting real in here now.

Something explodes a block over, and as we speed through an intersection I see figures running furiously amid clouds of smoke and shouting.

The soldier skids to a stop. Up ahead, a crowd is milling. A woman and a man are huddled up in the curving second floor window of a luxury apartment complex.

“You're no better than the rest of us!” someone shouts to a chorus of support.

A rock flies through the air and smashes the window.

“We'll go this way.” The soldier skids out and takes a side street for two blocks, then turns onto the main avenue through town, the twisting SensaStreet that is supposed to be pedestrian only.

“Good morning, Mr. Marks,” the SensaStreet says to me in a series of overlapping voices that filter up from the glowing hexagonal panels. “Please update your preferences by purchasing your favorite breakfast sandwich! It will be ready at the next intersection.”

The voices speak in intervals, one blending into another.

“Mr. Marks, we don't know your shirt size. Let us know so we can pick out the coolest new T-shirts for all your summer adventures!”

“Mr. Marks, do you like tacos?”

There is a flash and the voices whine to a high pitch and die out. The SensaStreet begins to go dark and ahead I see a crowd cheering this result as two men swing axes at an open power compartment on the side of the street.

“Animals,” the soldier mutters.

But I have to wonder: Who are the animals, those that are coming together to cheer, or those fleeing for the exits?

The soldier veers right and into an alley between curvy plastic-looking buildings. Gunfire rattles. It sounds like it is coming from all directions.

We emerge from the alley, and ahead I see the wall of the dome and in front of that a line of soldiers along a barricade of carts. Two hover copters buzz overhead. The soldiers in them are firing stun bursts into a crowd. On the ground, the soldiers push back with tall plastic shields.

As we speed toward the barricade, two soldiers clear the way with long stun bursts from their pulse rifles that sends people staggering and convulsing, doubling over and vomiting. We splash through one of the brown pools.

We race through the gap, and the soldier stops on the other side of the barricade. Without the sound of the bike, the shouts and screams of the crowd are overwhelming.

“This way, Mr. Marks.” The soldier leads me toward a frightened huddle of Eden citizens who are in line at a little checkpoint guard stand. Beyond that, people are heading toward a large door that leads outside into the searing sun.

“Okay, just stand in line here,” says the soldier, “and you'll be on your way, sir.”

“Thanks,” I join the line, heart racing, and try not to listen to the screams and accusations of the crowd, try not to think of how Owen from Yellowstone Hub was always on that side of the barricade, not this one.

I step up behind a family of three: mom, dad, and daughter. They watch nervously over their shoulders as the rioting people pulse and seethe, the Eden forces shocking them back.

“It's not fair!” someone screams.

“Take us all! You can't leave!”

“Penny,” the father in front of me calls to his daughter, snapping her out of a nervous trance, “don't listen to them.”

“Okay,” she replies, like that won't be possible.

Everyone in this line carries a small, black shoulder bag with the EdenCorp logo on it. Rana's skull bag is similar enough that in this chaos, the guards are unlikely to notice.

We move slowly past the checkpoint, a soldier there scanning our finger bar codes, and I can't help but watch the angry mob receding behind me and feel guilty that here I am, one of the incredibly few who is getting to leave. And these people don't even know how bad it's going to get, how dark this world will likely grow without its heart. . . .

“Welcome, Charmaine, Walter,” the soldier with the scanner says as he checks the fingers of the parents in front of me. Then he checks Penny. “Hey there, little lady. Ready for a really fun ride?”

Penny just nods, looking pale, terrified.

It is my turn and I keep my head down. “Welcome, Mrs. . . . well, that must be a glitch.” The soldier peers at me. I wait for him to tell me to get out of the line. Finally, he says, “You traveling alone?”

“Yeah.” I try to sound nonchalant.

“Let me check your retina for verification.” He holds a pen-size light to my eye, then checks his phone. “Okay, yes, Mr. Marks, here you are. Welcome aboard.”

I pass him and continue along behind Charmaine and Walter and Penny as we are marched quickly toward the double doors and the brilliant sun. We are just about there when something booms and a blast of air nearly knocks us all over. I look back to see smoke rising from the crowd, and I can hear desperate wailing.

“Just cover your ears, honey,” says Walter.

“I'll cover Standish's ears, Daddy. They're smaller,” she says, and puts her hands over the head of the pink bear she carries.

We step out into the early morning, the sun just up and skimming across the ground right at us. My bionic eye hums as it tries to focus.

Ahead, the thread of a space elevator shimmers, extending up into the blue as if it never ends. A pod awaits, larger than the one Paul used in Antarctica, doors open.

“This is so exciting,” I hear Walter saying.

“Let's just hurry,” Charmaine says over gun cracks as she rubs Penny's shoulders.

Penny cranes to look back at the dome. “But I don't want to leave,” she whimpers. “Daddy, I don't want to go.”

“It's okay,” says Charmaine, but she is crying, too. “We get to be very happy, even though this is sad.”

I try not to listen. They haven't lived outside the Eden bubble. I want to hate them, but I'd also like to be a boy with parents, taking a trip from one safe place to another, with the promise of more easy days.

Or, depending on how my plan goes, the promise of imminent death.

Penny hasn't done anything wrong
, I think.

Neither had Elissa. This thought fills me with a rich bitterness. I try to just close my mind.

We reach the metal steps, and as we do, there is a huge explosion and smoke billows out of the doors to EdenEast. A mob surges through a jagged hole in the wall, sprinting toward us.

“Go!” the soldiers shout. They push us forward, herding us into the pod.

And I take my last step on planet earth.

22

A PLEASANT FEMALE VOICE INSTRUCTS US TO EACH take one of the restraining belts that hang from the ceiling and clip it around our waists.

The doors slide closed and the sounds of the rioting are extinguished. Just outside, soldiers are holding back the mob, and now that we can no longer hear them, they become just a curiosity seen through the small windows in the door.

After a moment of heavy breaths and whispers, the selectees begin to relax and sigh with relief and turn their attention to the wide screen that at the moment displays a view of the rocks just beneath the pod. They anticipate that this screen will provide
quite a show
once we get started.

“It would be nice if there were beverages,” a woman comments, fanning herself.

It's like for them, we're boarding the elevator onto one of the old mega cruise ships that circled the globe pre-Rise, like we're heading up to the promenade deck, to drink from blinking glasses or eat a seven-course dinner.

“I wonder what will happen to the poor people in there,” another woman says. “The Changs were nice people,” she comments to her husband.

He shrugs. “What can be done,” he says, but it's not a question.

“Please prepare for immediate departure,” the female voice says. “Your future is just moments away.”

The selectees' chatter rises enthusiastically. One man flicks on his phone. “The fitness centers are supposed to be top-notch,” he says to the man beside him. “Apparently you can get great muscle isolation in zero gravity.”

I listen to this, feeling numb.

“These are the chosen people of our race?” Rana wonders in my ear.

Charmaine adjusts the sweater around her shoulders, like there might be a chill when we get up there.

Penny, meanwhile, clutches Standish tightly to her chest and watches the people around her with worried eyes, almost as if she knows this isn't right. As if she's wondering what she's gotten herself into.

I rub the side of my leg, the hard impression there. Try not to think.

There is a beep, and the female voice counts down: “Three . . . two . . . one. . . .” Immediately, the pod begins to hurtle skyward at full speed. It feels like we are being shoved into the floor, and we are lucky to have the restraints.

Everyone adjusts to the incredible force of the ascent and I watch the video screen showing the view beneath us: of the desert and EdenEast and the pyramids all shrinking. And then the brown bed of the Nile, the sickly green Mediterranean Sea, the mountain ranges, the continents, the deserts of Europe, and the savannas of Russia. I see the greening steppe of Northern Europe, now distantly the lush, forested mountains of Greenland and the emerald coasts of the Arctic, the glitter of Northern Federation cities, just brushed by dawn light.

“Thank god we're finally off that hellhole,” Charmaine says to Walter.

“Good-bye, Eden,” says Penny quietly.

Hellhole.
But I think the farther we get, the more beautiful the earth becomes, the more jewellike and painted and wondrous. From up here you can't see the trash, and the brown smog of fires and toxins give the world a sepia tone like that of old maps. There are oceans to be sailed, deserts to be crossed, northern forests to be explored, and all of it looks romantic and none as lost as it felt to be there.

But it is lost to me now. And again I have to press down on that terrible feeling of sadness, of isolation. Can I really be making the right choice? But then I remember that, yes, there is only one thing left for me. And this is it.

The planet bows out in an elegant curve beneath us, like looking into the largest eye, with a sky-blue iris—
Lilly
—threaded with browns and hazels and emeralds.

Then suddenly, without warning, the hum of the elevator ceases completely.

We have crossed the skin of the atmosphere. Into space.

Off world.

Everyone's voices hush.

Still we travel, up and up, the continents losing their minor features, becoming broad swaths, the clouds looking like they are painted, the planet looking like a glossy marble, until finally we begin to slow. The video screens switch and now we see the view above us, the thread ascending to the belly of a spindly spaceship.

At first it looks awkward and small, fragile, like something a child could drop and smash, but as we close, we can see the size of it, at least two kilometers long, maybe more, made of three main sections. The front is a short series of square compartments that branch in a T-shape. It is dwarfed by the massive central cylinder, which spins slowly. It is so enormous that as we approach we nearly lose the sense of its curve. Hundreds of small pods and other cylinders stick off it; and in the center, it is ringed by giant antennae. I think they look like masts. Behind the main cylinder there is a long, skinny section like a tail, and then a cluster of glowing egg-shaped pods. The engines.

“Ladies and gentlemen and children, welcome to
Egress
. Please remain affixed to your restraints while docking commences. Do not attempt to exit the elevator until the green signal lights and the doors open. Thank you for your patience. We look forward to beginning a new dawn with you.”

“Here we are,” I whisper so only Rana can hear me.

I can't help myself from starting to shake. We are getting close to the moment.

The pod stops and after a series of hisses and mechanical whirs, the voice announces, “Airlock secure.” A bell sound chimes and the green light comes on. Everyone begins to unfasten the restraints.

The doors slide open.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, right this way,” says a tall, elegant woman with deep brown skin and green hair. She wears a black skirt and blouse, and we see other workers who are nicely dressed as well, darting around the clean white halls.

“This feels very elegant,” says Charmaine approvingly.

“She makes me want to destroy something,” Rana whispers.

We are led from the pod down a series of carpeted halls with glass walls. To either side, men and women sit at high-tech consoles, working diligently.

“You've all been assigned staterooms, but first we'd like to give you a brief orientation.”

Glass doors hiss open and we emerge into the central cylindrical core of
Egress
. It is a dizzying sight. A uniform grid of low buildings and walkways spreads before us, accented here and there by small grassy spaces. It is level in front of us, but then this scenery stretches up and completely around the curve of the cylinder. Looking up, we see upside-down buildings and people walking on paths they should fall from, but they don't.

“Mommy, are we going to fall if we go up there?” Penny asks.

“No, sweetie.”

“The view is disorienting at first,” says our hostess, “but the ship's rotation creates gravity and the effect is such that wherever you are standing will feel like right-side-up, solid ground.”