Orange Sun

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. There it was. An orange orb in the sky. The sun. She heard it should be too bright to look at, but it hung behind brown hills and a wall of dust bearing towards them. The room rumbled and trophies and plaques shook in their stands. He quickly shut the window and flashed a smile then coughed.

“Can’t let the dust get in. Took me ages to get this room. It’s all I’ve got now, that and–” more coughing. Once he finished, he came over to Sophie and sat next to her on his bed. She trembled. He ran his coarse fingers up the nape of her sweat-slicked neck. “Like the view? It’s the only one in the whole complex.” His breath smelled of curry and his chapped lips were like dull razors against her ear.

“How long the dust last for?” Sophie asked, doing her best to play the dumb doll.

“Days, hours, weeks. Can’t leave the shutters down much since it’s cracked. Only a peek. Dust gets in and maybe some tetracarbons…” again he lost it to coughs. Since meeting up all he did was cough and ogle. Sophie, despite spending only a few minutes in the loft, enough to walk around and read his plaques celebrating Celestial Horizon's top salesman, sensed a weight building in her chest. The younglings, until they took the steroids, always had the cough, but they say the closer you are to the surface, even the drugs can’t fight the dust. In the room, a fine layer slicked every surface. To think… no, don’t think. Just get it over with. This was the last one. Then she could move out of the pits, away from the other death. The death below. Cancer and growths.

If she got to the mids, then maybe she could finally find a space for her and Verek.

She wanted to tell him, lets get this over with, but of course, she had to play his game. Which meant standing next to his “Salesman of the Year” plaque and a picture of him shaking hands with Harmon Tills, Celestial Horizon CEO, and waiting until his fresh coughing bout passed.

“All the other window hubs got shut for good. They say…” the cough again. “Gad dammit. Mother…” another bout.

“Would you like a glass of water?”

“You shut up,” he said, throwing a finger at her as spittle hung from his chapped lips. She’d have to kiss those, let them kiss her. She shuddered inside but did all she could to not show the dread. He dry heaved and fell to his knees. She stepped forward but he raised a hand to stop her.

The window rattled harder. The single dull yellow light overhead flickered as the roar of outside carrying tetracarbon dust pounded one of the singular protrusion pods. Lofts used to be a labor rewards program from Celestial Horizon for the workers in the Mids and below. Get enough points and money, one could see the outside world and help in the science. Track any signs of growth. Of green, emerald, the glimmer of life.

He wouldn’t stop coughing, and as the storm battered the hull more dust filled the air. Then it came. He fell to the floor, doubled over, hacking. He reached for her and all Sophie could do was pull her coat tighter around, wishing she had more than a long coat and intimates.

“I paid…” he said before he coughed again and blood came with the spittle.

“Tetracarbons,” Sophie gasped and backed towards the floor hatch, the only way into the single room. Oh what she’d do for a mask.

The window rattled again. The shutters threatened to cave in. Her lungs, too, felt heavy.

“Help,” he finally croaked and laid out on the floor.

But there was no help for him. He succumbed, and she’d never come to a loft again, no matter how much offered. It wasn’t worth losing her lungs. Losing her life. Losing Verek. Sophie turned and pulled the hatch. Dust scattered and she drew her lapel over her mouth and nose.

“Please… I paid…” he said. He gasped wheezing breaths. Blood trickled down the corner of his mouth to his ear sticking to stubble and dirt.

“Why?” Sophie asked as he lost himself to coughs again. “Why move into this awful place?”

All the other top floor lofts, windowed hubs, had closed. They all sprouted cracks from the unrelenting dusts.

“I…” the cough and vomit. Sophie grimaced, but he wheezed his last words. “I just wanted to see the sun.”

She left as he coughed and cried for help. But his voice was so hoarse it didn’t pass beyond the hatch or the front door beyond a small kitchen and toilet.

Door closed, Sophie almost took a deep breath, but the dim overhead lights reflected particles in the air. She shuttered and hurried to the lower layers.

Too frugal to pay for a tram to the pits, Sophie descended each vast underground layer as fast as she could. A complex as vast and sprawling as an ant hill. Her high heels clopped on the cement and steel pathways. Stairs and free rickety lifts. Powered by Celestial Horizons, seeking the future, protecting the present. Each level built for a purpose, labeled in sectors. The Uppers, right below the ceiling, had the quality shops, the politicians, and the supposed Celestial Horizon CEO in his own massive condo space. Down lower she entered the Mids and passed crowded walkways where parents and children wore masks and talked in muffled voices. Some looked at Sophie and knew her exactly for what she was. The high heels and poorly hidden fishnet stockings. Back to the Pits, all their eyes seemed to say.

She found another lift with a free pass, but it came with an ad before you could take it. The screen blared to life and the green, gold, and white Celestial Horizon’s logo appeared on the screen. The lift shuttered. She sighed, at least this was one that ran while the ad played.

“Looking for work? Need to satisfy your thirst to contribute? Job opening in the hydroponics lab! Just come with proof of occupancy in middle levels 15 through 30 and your Celestial Horizon Medial Ed Certificate and you’ll be put in spacious quarters and growing the life blood of CE-2033A in no time. Apply at the link.” The ad finished with a picture of two smiling women and a small son. One in a lab coat the other carryied a basket of strawberries, as red as the blood her last client coughed. The boy had one of the GMO, fist sized fruits in his hand glowing with natural awe. Despite the propaganda, the happy lives, the happy smiles regardless of coughs and growths, Sophie took a picture of the link and sighed. Took long enough, but she had the Medial Ed Certificate, now she only needed a space in the Mids. Even if it was a broom closet wide enough to hold Verek and her.

The lift reached level 25, only a few more until the Pits, until her home, right at the Mids threshold. The lift opened and Sophie almost walked into a crowd of people. She blinked at them as they stood, stout as a wall. They all wore black cloaks and plain white masks with nothing but eyeholes.

A stuttering breath escaped Sophie. She stepped forward to ask through.

“Going up or going down?” a man with a smoke-scarred voice asked.

“Down.”

“If you’re unoccupied, we have an extra suit. Care to join us? Going up?” He asked.

“I, I must be going,” Sophie said, clutching her coat tighter.

“We’re going to the CEO. We’re going to the Uppers.”

She hitched a breath. “But the sentries?”

“There’s enough of us this time.” He, too, gave a gentle cough. “We’re done with it. Celestial Horizons. It’s desolation. They feed us to keep us in control. They hermetically seal their upper levels while the dust from the lofts redirect to the Mids and Pits.”

Sophie swallowed.

“We’re done.”

“I should be going.”

“You whore for a living.”

Sophie grimaced.

“Hoping to get to the Mids. To,” the beady brown eyes barely visible through the mask looked past her at the hydroponics ad, “To grow food?”

“Anything, really. I’ll even teach.”

“Most teachers are in the Pits. Even with an Excelled Ed Cert.”

“I just meant anything.”

“I have a friend in hydroponics. It’s all a lie.”

Behind the man, the rest of the group murmured, anger palpable in their shifting cloaks and titling masks.

“They killed our planet. We killed our planet by letting them. The plastics. The oils. The bacteria that’d supposedly break it all down, synthetic compost. Bull shit! There’s nothing up there. Just dirt, and dust, and an orange sun. Now the tetracarbons are in the air. And the energy waste is in the pits. The mids are no safer. My friend, just found a bud on her lower back. Size of a blueberry. The cough is getting to her too. It’s not dust, not PM 2.5, it’s tetracarbons.”

“Oh,” is all Sophie could say.

“How close are you? To making the Mids?”

“One more… job,” Sophie said, blushing and once again shifted with the coat, trying to draw it tighter than it already could. “Two more jobs.”

“Come with us. We’ll make sure the CEO gives you double what your next five clients would have. It’s time the Uppers stopped ignoring those who clean and prune and maintain.”

Sophie shook her head and pushed past them as the lift shuttered and reset. “Pay for Express to your level of choice or click to watch the ad to level 24.” The computer chimed in. “Thank you for choosing Celestial–” but the electronics cut out when the masked man hit the screen.

Down, down, down, through the Mids past sullen souls and a slow degradation. Her heart pounded as passing men grew bulkier, menacing. One wrong turn down a deserted bypath and she’d find herself in what some of her other cohorts called pro bono hell. Luckily, no such encounters occurred and soon she squeezed through ventilation pipes and dim lit passages until she came upon a rickety steel platform housing bored in hovels of homes. The Pits.

She slid her door open and sunk to the floor. She was tempted to check the news, to see if the Mids were closed due to unrest or her client being discovered in the last remaining loft. Yet, as soon as the door clicked shut little feet padded around the corner and bright buggy eyes fell upon her.

“Mama!” cried a small boy and galloped towards her like the horse he always wanted to ride. Nothing more than a mythical creature now. He plowed into her and she clutched him tight and drew in a reluctant breath. His bony shoulders and xylophone rib cage rubbed against her.

“How’s my little stallion?” Sophie asked.

Lights flickered. Beyond her door an exhaust pipe hissed.

“Let’s play!” He jumped in her arms, every bony protrusion kneading into her.

“How about some food first. What do we have?”

“Play!” he screamed and fell into a fit. But it didn’t last long when she dug through the hollow cabinets and produced a can of beans. To think in the Uppers, where the masked rioters would try to overturn the system, people ate lab grown stakes and apples the size of one’s brain. To think, with their filtered air and petroleum strung fabrics, that her intimates were the nicest thing she owned, provided by the service, Celestial Intimates. Celestial Companions. Work at your leisure, you pick the hours. You pick the clients.

The can of beans lasted as short as always and Verek was scraping the metal insides with his finger. He licked and smiled and coughed. Sophie’s shoulder’s shook, but she gave a smile and picked him up. As best she could, she wrestled with him in their tiny room. Lifted and threw him and let his squeal and laughter echo in the chamber. Then she picked one of four books they owned and she read to him. She changed into a dull gray jumpsuit glad to be free of the form fitting laces and straps and leathers. That last client wanted fetish and she always groaned in shame as she changed in front of Verek.

“Go for a walk?”

All too eager, suppressing a cough, he slipped on ratty shoes and they went up and down his favorite steps. He pointed at the fans and the dripping sludge from a leaking drain. They found a frog near the water purifier ponds. She caught it, killed it, and they placed it in the thermos to cook up at home. Same with a brown-yellow slug a few platforms over. Halfway through their exploration they paused in a small opening. The area was perhaps twice as large as their hovel of a space. On the opposite side more figures slid towards the stairs in black cloaks and white masks.

More of them?

Tension palpable.

“Superheroes?” Verek asked.

“Maybe,” Sophie said.

They hurried back home before their catches spoiled. Over a single burner she cooked the two and let Verek eat as much as he pleased. All of it.

Then she bathed him with a rag and cold water. A good sport, he always laughed. “Ice!” he said between hissing teeth. But this was her time to check him for growths and to sink in shame at the sight of his jutting hips and hourglass thighs. No growths. She sighed. But there was a weird mole she’d have to watch and perhaps burn off later.

Soon Verek was in bed inches from her own mat. He rolled over, choosing to sleep with a spoon colored green.

“I promise. I’ll get you a horse,” Sophie whispered. “I strawberry bigger than your fist.” She held his small hand as weary breaths and a body all too used to famine drifted away. “And a friend.” She kissed him on the forehead and stepped around the corner and sat against the kitchen cabinet.

She pulled out the phone, a Celestial Companion issued brick. And that’s when she saw the alert. Mids closed to unrest? But no, her heart sank. Her lips shuttered as soon the outside, beyond her thin metal door, rang with an alarm.

Verek stirred and cried, “What’s the noise?”

“Go back to sleep, love,” Sophie chided, but he was up and wide eyed.

The last loft of CE-2033A had been breached. The lone window cracked, the dust storm broke the shudders. A half dead Benedict Northfield crawled from his lone apartment, door open, and tetracarbon rich silt entered the mids.

Evacuations to the pits were issued. Essential personnel to the loft to attempt containment. Uppers were successfully sealed, no one was harmed there. Uproar among the masked ones.

“Mama,” came the shaky voice of Verek.

She crawled to him and wrapped him in her arms with heaving breaths. Tears slipped down her cheeks. Doors beyond their door opened and slammed. Shouts and panic vibrated. Just like the others. Just like others gone dark. Other complexes with VIP lofts to view the wastes. Some rumors were that they were the last. The last complex. Others said the Uppers had a spaceship to take them off Earth.

Verek sensed her dread, her fear and clutched to her. Sophie cradled him tight and bawled into his dark curly hair. They were so close. So, so close. And beyond their room, citizens attempted to throw up quarantine shields. Uppers barked orders through virtual screens and a wide, spread series of figures in cloaks and masks tired of the tiers, tired of the near constant fight, amassed at the steel doors of the Uppers, tetracarbons be damned, and started to blowtorch away the hinges. Sentries scrambled to put on hazard suits. Wrenches and hoes knocked out the first few.

Celestial Horizon’s soothing female voice came over speakers outside, booming, echoing through the door. “Please stay in your quarters. A small containment breach has been detected. The issue will be resolved in moments. Just know, Celestial Horizon is doing everything in its power to assure you have the best quality, safe, living quarters you could have. Please stay in your quarters.”

Now the unrest alerts. Any access to text messages, rec apps, blocked. Despite everything going on a notification came through for a client request, pennies compared to the dead loft man. A man in a suit with pudgy cheeks popped up on her feed, Harmon Tills CEO. He spouted that everything would be okay. That there was no need to panic.

The echoes of gunfire would never reach the deep corridors Sophie and Verek hunkered in.

And yet, even from those few worthless minutes in her clients loft, as chaos slowly broke around them, she felt, in her lungs, a looming irritation. Something, small and seemingly unstable, worked into the proteins of her membranes. Just as it had worked apart hydrocarbon polymers and strands of cellulose, the cough began as a subtle tickle in her bronchioles. And together, she and Verek coughed, and sat and waited in the depths of the dying earth.