Rayne climbed the ladder one rung at a time into the endless blue nothing. She was late. 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 condensed into a small, featureless grid. Rayne used to wonder what she looked like to them, until she realized that most people never look up. One could assume that her job would be pointless then, a futile attempt to maintain some kind of normalcy. God knows she felt that way more often than not. Especially on days like today. All Rayne wanted to do was to sleep in, the warm cocoon of her bed calling out to her, even from a thousand feet below.
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 make herself a little nest 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 all of that up here, 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. Partially because it was always the same, partially because it was a blunt reminder of how artificial every aspect of her life truly was. Of all of their lives.
A grey landscape sat motionless on the screen, tinted with faintest rust color. The featureless landscape stretched out for miles. There were no trees or buildings to show the hurricane level 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 nearly doubled her over. Every inch of her body was begging her to climb back down, to go back to sleep. She was no good to anyone dead. But, she didn?t have the time for this. Even though looking up was a pastime only still held by the elders of the colony, she?d heard stories of the last time a painter had shirked their responsibility.
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 ground, some left the ground completely. The Founders had decided they wanted to stay on the surface, to be the first to reclaim the Earth, if the time ever came for it. Rayne had doubts that time would ever come.
They?d designed every aspect of the colony to mirror the life they had outside. On the ground, it was nearly impossible to tell the two apart, from what Rayne had heard in stories at least.
But something was off.
People grew anxious and angry. They fought behind closed doors, until the conflict started spilling out into the streets. The prison, designed to fit less than a hundred of the five thousand person colony, 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 skies 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 was driving 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 thought it would take for the Earth to reclaim itself. So whatever needed to be done to fix this, it had to be done by hand.
A small team was assigned to search through atlases and starcharts. They studied them as though their lives depended on them, which they very well might have. Rayne?s grandmother was the only one on the day committee, the only one willing to face the heights while the lights were still on. She climbed the same ladder as Rayne had 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, 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 the ladder again.
Now it was Rayne?s turn. And she?d been stuck in bed for the last three days, with a rattling cough and drenched in cold sweat. 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 pervaded the colony, and it was nearly at a breaking point.
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 and give a concerned speech when he got home. But more likely than not, he wouldn?t notice.
People almost never look up.
Topic: Draft 1 (Read 4690 times)