A Wrinkle Ironed Out

Ada lies on her back, her face about an inch from the roof of the cathedral, and she rubs the ashes with damp cotton swabs. The left elbow of the Virgin Mary approaches her, a small piece of blue appears, the latter in a vibrant field of color drawn out in the dark. When Ada was a child, a project like this would authorize a team of conservationists, a film crew, a book on both front and back. As he grew up, Calmness sat on the ground like a woolen garment, and our interests shrunk and returned to our doors, to our paths, to the curtained rooms. The cathedral is no longer holding services, and Ada is familiar with her values ​​alone and unseen.

Or do you, time. Some months ago, when an angry mob prepared to fire their weapons on the trail, the Calms ransacked a hectare of their dormitories to dust and blood. Now three hundred self-determined soldiers sat under the cathedral, watched by a multitude of marble angels. And with Ada on her platform, listening to their boots move up the stairs down the caves.

Ada, sitting in a bowl with her girlfriend, was wearing broken covers and neatly put on an olive jacket.

"They know you're all down there," said Ada.

Thom drinks his wine, his eyes fixed on the paper he puts on the table. "It's good they told you."

He says: “A spirit is a different person. "It's bigger."

"Wow, that's great."

“It is like the last time,” he says. He visited the camp, too, and sat in those small tin boxes. She remembers how it felt to breathe - a weighty soup, visible in her lungs. He selects his cuticles and adds, "It's been weeks you have known."

“And they've been doing nothing for weeks,” she says, patient.

"The mill could be better. The walls are stronger. It's hard to see the top."

Thom folds up the map and leans back in his chair. "Ada, this is not a problem that needs to be fixed. They will not hit the cathedral, it is a historic one. It is actually a museum."

"Thom--"

"They understand cause and effect. If they plan this area, there will be riots. People have feelings about ..." He jokes sarcastically.

Ada's fingers move in her thighs. "Statistics for them," he said. "You overloaded one side of the figure."

"Oh, Ada." She smiles in a way that she thinks is strengthening her knee. She is very beautiful, and she is much younger. Attractive brown eyes with wrinkled corners. Face no one refuses. "Even if something very bad happens, we will survive enough. We will stay in the bowels. The building would not have fallen so low, and there is a tunnel in the back."

She breathes Ada into this and raises her hand to her mouth as a wave of panic rises inside her. Thom stretched out his other hand and brought it to his lips. "I will live," he said.

Calm has been orbiting the Earth for almost three decades. Ada is old enough to remember what things were like, how she felt when we were the spark of life alone, but she doesn't think much about those days. Calm smooths any wrinkles of resistance, plodding, and durability, a carefree weight that makes human life easier and more straightforward. Easy. In a World Translation where an unknown mind can handle and understand.

Thom is an ally. Ada takes her hand out of her hand. "They know," he said again. "You can't stay here."

She sighs. "It is not my decision that I will make."

"Of course it is."

"Ada ..."

"As soon as you send the next rocket, they'll--"

"Ada." He stops, a map placed under his arm. Even with a frown, his face was warmly welcomed. "I'm sorry to put you in this position. But it is my duty as an officer to follow the instructions, and my instructions, in this case, are clear." He is not a prince. No more army.

She rips her nails, revealing new unfinished skin as it swallows the air. "You are right about the problems."

He puts his palm over his head. "She's tired," he said, leaving her alone with a dreaded stomach.

Earth is a depot: easily accessible near a commercial route, a manageable gravitational source, a comfortable distance from the scary sun, a regolith of the moon melting into glass and aluminum, plenty of water, occasional useful infrastructure.

Calmness does not really matter what we do. The uncontrollability of any scale will evoke blurred awareness, partial focus on every bombing, individual manifestations. Calm blows the air with the weight of their attention, a creepy slide so far, without our understanding, when the line is skipped. Even if from a geosynchronous distance, the granularity of their view produces a lump of sufficient size. And that bump only creates Calm's response to the distraction.

They emanated from terrifying waves from orbit, huge air pistons that shattered all structures and everything in them, eroding city blocks and all their problems.

Tom and his army are in turmoil.

Ada cleans the oily dust on the Virgin's wrist. The air is like water in his lungs.

The Catacombs are older than the buildings above them, buried hundreds of years after the Romans died, and there are still works to honor them. Underground frescoes, spots, and cracks in many wet and neglected lives, torment Ada's conscience. They melt very quickly now because of the hot air and cigarette smoke, and his fingers move as he thinks about it. The corridors are full of soldiers and their business; there is not enough space for him to work.

There is not enough room to stay, either. That's not right. And sometimes Thom's brothers and sisters in their arms cough in the middle of the nave, restless and hungry for a new place. They open the big doors and sit on the benches in the sunlight as the dust from the square blows on their feet. And they are talking.

Ada is in the back of the ceiling and does not see these people. But he canister, even when they do not seem to care. He knows a lot about these breath-taking, sweaty, laughing travelers, most of whom are part of his age, all alive and despairing that he doesn’t care.

"It won't get in the way."

"Yes, you will see."

"They're going to hit everywhere. As soon as we launch, boom." A sharp fracture of a person hitting his thigh.

"We'll be gone. It's all a long way. I'll tell you, this trash doesn't play."

Ada dips the end of the cotton swab into the clear water, drains the air through the roof, and removes a small number of soil particles. His heart leaps upon his bones; he throws himself into the sick treasure of concrete and the colors that have consumed his life.

A gas mask is the hardest thing to find. You can pull one out of an old bomb shelter under the center, and it will hold tight leather straps until it stays in place properly. The lenses hold the room as far away as glass.

Everything else is waiting on the dusty shelves in the closet: bleach bottles and drain cleaner, lots of empty paint buckets, portable fan.

You drink air by suffocating.

Ada is not a big woman. He can move one body at a time, dragging it with his arms and falling to the ground with the marble, passing through the narthex, and out into the yard. Some were able to run until they reached the road before collapsing. Some fell down the stairs in a crowded barracks that held those who were following them underground.

Ada takes her time, relaxes when she should, and organizes her approach, as a single and orderly one in this as she is with all of her work. He walks the entire length of the tunnel with a gun on his shoulder. You make sure it is a complete job.

Without sunlight, he organizes their cool bodies into isolated rows on trees and benches, as neat as he can handle on his own and is easily seen from above. Easy to calculate.

Most of Thomas' skull is missing, his hair and coat are black with dry blood, but his face is visible. Ada grabs her boots and pulls her into the middle of the yard, leaving a wet trail on the ground.

He opens a plastic bag for the remote launch system as wide as he can and puts it on Thom's chest. The screen describes a sleeping rocket. Its keyboard was smashed to pieces with the butt of a gun.

He looks up at the sky in the azurite sky and breathes deeply into the cool, clear air.