Rayne climbed the ladder one rung at a time into the endless blue nothing.
Normally the night crew would still be there, plucking each star out of the sky as the lights in the dome grew brighter and brighter, with no apparent source.
Beneath her, the colony shrunk to a small, featureless grid. Rayne used to wonder what she looked like to them. Now she knows most people never look up.
Though the Painters know better, a normal colonist might assume her job would be pointless, a futile attempt to maintain some kind of normalcy. God knows she felt that way more often than not. Especially on days like today.
She'd been stuck in bed for the last three days, with a rattling cough and drenched in cold sweat. All Rayne wanted to do was sleep; the warm embrace of her bed called out to her from a thousand feet below. But she had a responsibility to everyone in the colony. The daytime sky had been empty for days, and people had begun to notice. Even if they didn't realize it, they noticed. A current of restless energy had permeated the colony, and it was nearly at a breaking point.
Rayne hauled herself into the camouflaged pod tucked against the wall of the dome. To anyone paying attention on the ground, she would have simply vanished into the vast blue nothingness.
The pod was cozy; she'd been allowed to put some personal touches up there. A grey cot was propped up against the wall, tucked between a small bookcase and a drawer where she kept some personal painting supplies. It was a bitch to get it all up there, but with the help of a couple drones things had worked out.
A screen was embedded in the wall. It was meant to look like a window, but Rayne knew better. Windows to the outside wouldn't survive.
They'd put it there to give her inspiration but there was never anything particularly inspiring about what she saw. In part, because it was always the same, and it was a blunt reminder of how artificial her life truly was.
An empty grey landscape sat motionless on the screen, tinted the faintest rust. No trees or buildings to show the hurricane winds that constantly barraged the outside world. They'd all been razed by one thing or another.
Rayne turned her back to the screen and sat on the floor of the pod. A deep, rattling cough doubled her over. Every inch of her body begged her to climb back down, to go back to sleep. But she didn't dare.
Though looking up was a pastime only retained by the elders of the colony, everyone had heard stories of what happened the last time there wasn't a Painter working the daytime sky, even if they didn't know the cause.
It was before she was born, back in the early days of the colony. The world was on its dying breaths as clusters fled to artificial safety. Some below the surface, some left the Earth completely. The Founders had decided they wanted to stay above, to be the first to reclaim the Earth, if the time ever came for it. Rayne doubted that time would ever come.
They'd designed every aspect of the colony to mirror life outside. On the ground, it was nearly impossible to tell the two apart.
But something was off.
People grew anxious and angry. They fought behind closed doors, until the conflict spilled out into the streets. The prison, designed to fit less than a hundred of the five thousand colonists, was filled by the end of the first month. No one understood what was happening. The council held a meeting. They tried new policing initiatives, dealt out higher punishments for lesser crimes. Cameras were put on 24/7 surveillance, and drones circled the dome like vultures.
Then, and only then, someone decided to look up.
Above them, they realized, was an endless blue nothing. No sun, no clouds. At night, no moon, nor stars. It was artificial. It was unnatural. It drove everyone stir crazy.
They'd designed everything to be perfect, the architecture, the city planning; they even had fake trees in fake parks, but no one had thought of the sky. The program was set to be blue and bright in the day, dark and black at night. Beyond that, the Founders thought, there was nothing more that needed to be done. And, it couldn't be changed. The program was set to run undisturbed for seven hundred and sixteen years, the amount of time the Founders calculated the Earth would take to reclaim itself. So whatever needed to be done, it had to be done by hand.
Teams were assigned to scour atlases and star charts, studying them as though their lives depended on it, because they did. Rayne's grandmother was the only Painter on the day team, the only one willing to face the heights while the lights were still on. She climbed the same ladder as Rayne every day for nearly forty years, forming the clouds in the sky like God. No two were ever the same.
She made stories in the clouds to keep herself sane, scenes out of vapor that would swirl until the circulation reclaimed the moisture for use the next day.
It never rained. The council considered that a waste. So every day was sunny, or slightly overcast. But every day told a story. She taught Rayne how to do it, much to her father's distress. Slowly, her grandmother stopped climbing the ladder, joining Rayne once a week, once a month, until she never climbed again.
Now it was Rayne's responsibility. And she'd be damned if she let a cold get in the way. They all would be.
Despite her father's protests, she'd snuck out of the house after he went to work. It would be fine. Worst came to worst he would notice the clouds and give a concerned speech when he got home. But more likely than not, he wouldn't.
People almost never look up.
Topic: Draft 2 - The Painter or Endless Blue Nothing (Read 3942 times)