The Cloud

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Without oxygen, there’s no noise or life, our government warned us, so we never left the submarine.

Every last day of the month, the randomly selected “Organizers” met in a last effort for democracy to decide whether to move the Ship. Xolo was selected this year. She found out about her Organizer duty the same day she read the breaking-news headline: “Oxygen Levels on the Surface are at a Record-Breaking Low.”

“It’s a waste of my time,” she said to her older sister from the other end of the kitchen table.

Her sister, too busy nursing her baby, didn't give an immediate reaction.

“Fine, don’t fulfill your Organizer duty, Xolo,” her sister said without looking up at them, her stern words spoken through her nose, “but I’m not paying the fine for you.”

“It’s doomsday propaganda.” Xolo’s violet eyes widened as she hunched her shoulders and took a bite of her toast in sulk.

“We must learn to accept the things we cannot change,” her sister said, quoting their late mother, “remember, peace comes from trust.”

~

Xolo was the youngest of the 30 Organizers sitting around a sizeable misshapen table.

The woman directly in front of her, who must have been only a few years older than her sister, stared at her with watery eyes before a big man with a grey mullet and a booming voice began the meeting: “I’m the Chair of the Storm Protection Agency. As the report you were all mandated to read states, you have the whole day to make a final, written-in-stone decision."

He paused, scanning the group looking for the weak link before speaking up again and projecting a slideshow of curated data: crew health, Ship oxygen levels, passenger demographics, hurricane watches, surface pollution levels, the state of the nuclear engine, and possible relocations.

“What about synthetic food shortages,” a delicate man said, raising his voice from the far end of the table.

The other Organizers nodded in agreement expressing their disillusionment.

“Unimportant,” the Chair snapped.

“And the other ships? “the delicate man said, his anxiety felt through the air.

“Sir, we have more important matters at hand,” the Chair said, “for one, the agency has decided one of you must check the surface.”

Xolo was never one to be fearful, at least not openly—but this was different—the immediate silence around her hinted that the other Organizers felt the same. At least to her knowledge, no one had tried to breathe the surface air in over two decades. Wasn’t it impossible?

“They’ll die,” the woman with watery eyes bellowed, water streaming down her pronounced nose and round cheekbones.

“We distrust the government enough,” the delicate man reassured the group avoiding eye contact with the Chair. “Why would they kill one of us off.”

Xolo heard her mother's voice, “Peace comes from trust," so she spoke up, "I'll do it,” standing up and walking over to Chair, ignoring her shaking arms.

Her awareness gravitated to her smallness as the Chair was well over a foot taller and broader than her. Xolo shook his callous hand and walked out with the man leaving the Organizers behind.

~

Xolo wore an earth suit created to withstand the air's morbidly low temperature and oxygen levels. It was comfortable enough. As Xolo steered the miniature boat, heavy rain hit her sideways as the wind thrust barely kept the boat from toppling over. Dark, turbulent clouds hovered close to the waves; Xolo had seen images of these clouds in school, although no one she knew had seen them in person.

She was safe enough, at least that’s what she repeated out loud.

A message from the Ship told her to cruise out for a few miles, and Xolo did just that. In sync with the turbulent skies, her fear brooded. She could only map out water and a small white cloud among the storm clouds. The Cloud followed her for over an hour until it disappeared. She took a picture of the Cloud and sent it to the agency, although she received no reply. She wasn’t sure exactly what the agency expected of her, and maybe that was the point. All the agency told her was to venture out and assess the surface, whatever that meant: couldn’t they have gotten a rover to film?

A flash of cardinal red caught Xolo’s attention a few feet in front of the boat. She messaged the agency about the site, but again, she received no reply. She tried to look for it, but it was pointless. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for anyways. Xolo hoped she'd discover a fish, although they were said to have gone extinct a century ago. Something about admiration and prestige gave meaning to her life; she daydreamed about finding the last shark on earth, winning some prize, and being praised by everyone on the Ship for years to come.

She continued onward for a few more hours, almost outgrowing her fears and enjoying the sea. She was the only person she knew who had ventured out this far from the Ship. In all its chaos, the surface was beautiful, she thought. Admiring the rainstorm, she noticed the Cloud again, although it doubled in size. Xolo stopped the boat to admire its brightness. She took photos of the phenomenon as the Chair told her to collect images of anything “of interest." Xolo thought the Cloud would disappear as before, but it didn’t.

The Cloud followed Xolo as she steered the boat back to the Ship, doubling in size by the minute until inevitably, she found herself inside the Cloud.

The lights of the world turned off. Xolo scavenged through her pocket and found a nuclear-powered flashlight attached to her suit; when she turned it on, there was nothing but the sensation of a dense unknown substance surrounding her, weighing her body down.

Again, she messaged the Ship but nothing.

She tried to outrun the Cloud, but the more she powered the boat, the more wrathful the Cloud got. The Cloud tightened itself around Xolo, gasping her out of breath before releasing her as if it were exhaling. As the minutes went on, Xolo was at the mercy of the Cloud’s bloody instinct. Frantically, she looked for an escape—a way out—an exit from this frantic monstrosity. The Cloud spun rapidly, rapidly until she was disoriented and puking inside her helmet. The thrust of malicious air ripped parts of her suit, exposing her right forearm. Before Xolo’s violet eyes, the Cloud stretched itself and grabbed Xolo’s exposed skin, turning it purple. Her body temperature dropped, and her arm went numb. Xolo thought of her mother’s words—“We must learn to accept the things we cannot change”—as the helmet cracked, and Xolo prepared herself to take her last breath.