Caerulea

I remember how violently my hands were shaking. Others had jumped. Dad had told me about them. I remember he said most of them were suicides, and the way his mouth twisted strangely when he said it, almost as if there existed no countenance to express the emotion he was feeling. There were others too though, Yarrow, who jumped with intent to survive. You are my daughter. I know you will be okay.

My hands were triggered into shaking, my breathing became rapid and shallow, I nearly passed out and fell over the edge because I had been standing there recollecting this memory and trying to reconcile the shame and guilt I was feeling over the concepts of suicide and survival occurring within the same thought. Why should he and my mother have had to suffer and I be permitted to continue on? How could I ever feel okay with myself and find the strength to survive? Where would I find it even if I felt I should? And would I ever feel happiness or love again? I felt like my soul had been sucked clean out of my body into the vacuous nothing of space.

My trembling fingers reached for the chute straps for just a moment intending to drop them from my shoulders and let my body teeter over the edge into closure, into oblivion, perhaps into some sort of spiritual sanctuary free from all of this pain. A steady current of icy wind had been whipping across my face, stinging my cheeks and blowing my tears back into my hair. Then I remember hearing a sound from somewhere within the infrastructure behind me that sounded like voices. On a knee-jerk reaction I leapt outward and fell toward the quilt of fields spread below.

* * *

The impact knocked the wind out of me, and for a few seconds I felt I'd never breathe again. For a brief moment I wished it. I stuffed the chute back into its pack and stowed it in a large sage bush. There were a few large pines spread out and marching up the hills to the west. To the east the land flattened out into grassland. Just to the south there was a menacing gray dome-shaped building. Dad told me that would be there but that they wouldn't see me so long as my solar cloak held out.

I looked back up at the ceiling, the bottom side of the sky-deck city of Caerulea a mile and a half above. It was one of thousands more up there, a floating mosaic of power-mongering, neo-plutofascist monuments of extortion still sickeningly flying the flags of democracy that flicked in the high wind like the bifurcated tongues behind their behemoth lies.

I had grown up down here at the bottom, amongst the crime, the poverty, the violent outbursts of nature that made it nearly impossible to produce the crops needed to feed the population. We had all the technology in the world at our fingertips, yet still it did little against the formidable power of nature. Year after year my family had struggled to keep a healthy and plentiful crop growing despite the immense thinking power of 'our' machines that we'd pay for for generations to come. We were forever enslaved to our debts. Still, I preferred the life we had below. I had had a brief glimpse of 'the dream' when they arrested my dad and brought us up for interrogation. I had seen it in all of its shimmering glory, the 'happy' people living in an excess of power and wealth that nobody below could have ever imagined.

* * *

The solar-relay lights that lined the ceiling like honeycomb were shining white and hot. I walked along one of the old roads, as they called them, taking care not to make much sound. Dad had told me that they had once been paved or cemented so that heavy, ground-based vehicles could traverse across them. The roads were essentially ancient remnants now, mostly broken up bits of brittle gravel and dust and grass. Once he told me of ancient footpaths that had existed before the machines had ever been invented, how some of them can still be seen if one knows how and where to look. It was a scary thought. If walking had left scars upon the Earth's surface for millennia, what of the the colossus of this technology? It seemed to me that these new scars were not so much upon the Earth, but upon existence.

* * *

We had never never seen stars, most of us. Growing up I could hardly imagine what the poets of history had been describing when they said things like all through the night, your glorious eyes were gazing down in mine, and, with a full heart's thankful sighs, I blessed that watch divine. Such a state of starry bliss was nothing but a figment to me. I was ten when I discovered my father's illegal antique book collection hidden in the heat-cellar. Over time I read them all. Poetry was my favorite and my Dad was always reciting lines for me. I'll never forget him saying: the fault is not in our stars, but within ourselves. The significance of that memory deepens with every recollection.

I did see one star though. You could get a glimpse of the sky that existed above Caerulea when standing directly beneath one of the airflow holes built into the ceiling, just like the one I had fallen from from. There wasn't much to see. From the ground looking up at it was like looking at a tiny pebble held at arms length above you. But when properly timed and aligned one could see the blazing gleam of the sun through those holes, and if you had some knowledge of star maps and really dialed in the timing, it was possible to see a star. I remember walking through the field gripping my dad's hand, fearful of being caught out at night by security patrol or crop vandals. Dad chuckled quietly as the wind blew my messy blond hair into disarray. Yarrow, you look a bit like Big Bird. I laughed too, though I didn't get the reference. When we came upon our spot we sat in the field and took turns looking up through his binoculars. Then it appeared. One faint shimmering white light traversing across the little hole above us. It was not there for long, but I never forgot the way it seemed to whisper promise down from above that something unharmed still existed out there in that abandoned sky of ours.

* * *

I came to the slight rise in the otherwise endlessly flat road that I remembered so well. Just off to the east was our home. Once there I went once around and cautiously peered into the windows. I remember seeing our large table in the center of the kitchen where we had spent so many mornings and evenings eating and talking and just trying to live a happy existence. We cherished those rare moments when we weren't slaving away on the farm or spending late night hours on my 'illegal' education.

I thought up the code to the front door and the locking mechanism clicked free. My chest flooded with memories and pain and regret. The feeling of loneliness gripped me so that I could hardly breathe, but I kept moving, through the foyer, up the stairs, into my parent's room. Dangling from a small necklace stand on my mother's dresser beside a few of her other favorites necklaces was a small heart-shaped locket hung from a silver thread. I don't remember how long I stood there with it open in my hand, crying, watching the digital images slowly pass through inside of it, all delicate and full of love, images of my dad with my mother whom I had hardly known. I wanted to stay there forever, memorizing her face, searching her spirit, but I had only minutes to get out. I closed my eyes and pulled up another code, this one from my implant, and instantly a holographic tree of data sprang out from the locket. It was all there, the silo coordinates, the launch codes, the destination guidance system. I closed it tight, hung it around my neck and fled.

As I ran through the field I kept telling myself between gasping sobs that it wouldn't be long now. That freedom awaited was all I had to keep me going, a small sliver of hope that something good might yet come from all of this. The locket began to glow red and chirp notifying me I was close. Looking down I saw it turn to green. The rapid chirps blended to a solid tone and I stopped in my tracks. When I looked up I saw the shadow of a man standing before me in the darkness. He grabbed me by the arm and briskly led me down a metal staircase descending below the field.

* * *

His name was Rubik and he had been a friend of my dad's. I remember him visiting not so long ago, I must have been about twelve at the time. He had come by from his farm after we had had our harvesters sabotaged in the night and our crops torched. The two of them had spoken in very hushed tones, talking about a project they were collaborating on, part of some secret society of engineers, coders, designers, writers, thinkers, creators, artists; indentured farmers all. I didn't know what they had been working on, but Dad told me that someday I would.

Before his suicide he finally told me of the resistance, the transport shuttle they had built, the plan to escape and spread out through the galaxy to various free zones to join with networks of activists willing to speak out, to condemn, to stand up against the tyrannies of Earth. At the time I had felt the excitement of liberation, emancipation, even adventure. Now all I could feel was grief for all that had been lost.

Rubik must have sensed the depth of my sorrow as he glanced back at me. He clasped my hand in his and gave a gentle squeeze.

"There are more of us, Yarrow. You will not be alone. Your father asked me to mentor you, and I intend to honor that, if you wish. You and I will work our way out to Liberum Plagiarius where I know some people."

"Will we make it out?"

"I hope so. They can't pick us up until we've passed through the air tunnel. With our solar cloak and velocity at that point, we've got a good shot. It's time to go."

There were others seated in the shuttle and they turned and smiled at me, giving off an undeniable sense of trust and kinship, if slightly veiled behind by worn nerves. I strapped into my seat and looked up through the slate portholes above. I remember seeing a crescent of light forming as the cover to the silo slowly slid aside like the moon passing before the sun, and light began to pour in. The entire ship began to rattle violently. My eyes were closed closed tight and I hardly heard the launch sequence: five... four... three... two...

He was pushing me on a swing that we had hung from an old oak tree on our land. He was laughing his hardy laugh as he tousled my hair on the backswings. My mother was sitting on the grass on a blanket and watching me with a subtle, angelic smile, and creases of happiness in the corners of her eyes. That memory was the thought I had as we shot out and up toward the the heavens.