Albatross
by sacredlilac
"Why can't you just tell us what you found?" Junko asked again as I waited for my co-workers from the rooms adjacent to mine to amble along the dim corridor and assemble outside the middle chamber of the the lowest level of the machine that kept our island in the sky.
I kept silent and pushed open the door. An ancient proverb, something everyone teased me about always studying, said, A picture is worth a thousand words. As we filed inside, their gasps told me it wasn't wrong.
The bright lights of the control panel directly beside the entryway flashed merrily on the tangled mass of plant tendrils that had filled the rest of the room, choking the cogs and belts that operated a section of the machine that ran the island's levitation mechanism.
"The plants..." began Junko.
"Have completely stopped the engine." I sighed and scrubbed at my scalp. "At least now we know why we've been having so many other problems lately."
Paulo looked shocked. "This would have taken years of growing to accomplish."
I nodded. "My guess is since Richard and Whetu's son went over the side. I don't know how they kept the greenery from messing the machine up before, but it has now."
Junko shook her head. "But that was five years ago! How could they have hidden this so long?"
"Richard and Whetu were married, I doubt they'd sell each other out." I looked around with raised brows. "Come on, I've certainly never been into any of your rooms, even for a quick hello. Everyone trusts that we want to remain in the sky and will do our jobs to keep us up here."
"But why would they want to crash the whole island?" Abeni asked. "That's murder. Where are they, anyway? And what happened to Ping and Amelia? They worked in this room too. Could they have been in on this, as well?"
We all glanced at each other guiltily then quickly away to focus on the greenery.
We often went in and out without seeing anyone for weeks on end. If someone was off sick we wouldn't know because once we were in our own chamber, we were sealed off for twelve hours oiling and inspecting and doing whatever was needed. None of us lingered after work, either. We wanted to get up to the fresh air as soon as possible.
A fresh gust of guilt filled me. It was stupid to feel somehow responsible, but of anyone to notice our co-workers had gone AWOL it was me, since I always stood at the Edge on the topside level for an hour after my shift to watch the other islands bob along in the Tethered polygon that served to keep them not crashing into one another and our 'country' all together.
Rain or shine, I needed to reconnect with the wide open sky, feel the wind in my hair and on my face after long hours closed in a stuffy little room.
Every now and then I'd catch sight of a jet-pack pilot zooming off like an arrow, arms tucked to their sides, air-sledge trailing behind with items for delivery. Their helmet visor revealed their beaming face as they flew uninhibited and unimpeded by the need to obey gravity on their way to another island, taking my heart with them.
Sometimes a co-worker would join me, but I couldn't say I ever took the time to notice who came and went from the door I stood a few feet away from.
"How did you find this, Farid?" Paulo asked.
"My wife wanted to invite everyone over for a dinner party. She says we've been too isolationist lately. I happened to come here first."
Frederica walked forward, looking in awed respect at the plants that had completely filled the room and twined their way through the intricate array of cogs and belts. "This is quite an amazing feat of horticulture actually. They've grown this in a room that completely lacks sunlight. How did they do it?"
Paulo joined her. "They used air plants so they didn't need soil or a hydroponic system, just water. They must have a lighting system in here too. Yes, up there!" He indicated several long track lights suspended along the ceiling and in-between wall panels and pointed out the large discs where the air plant roots rested and could be watered. The discs had been secured to several points up the walls and suspended from the ceiling overhead as well as scattered over the floor.
Paulo rubbed his forehead, deep in thought, as he continued, "My guess is Richard was the one behind the plants. He wanted to be in Agriculture, not Levitation Maintenance. He was crushed when the Lottery assigned him down here, away from the sky and plants. Same reason his son went over the side. He drew the Archives."
Junko looked shocked. "Are you sure?"
Paulo nodded. "My wife works in Security and saw the footage. He left a note, too. Security isn't supposed to talk about anything, but it shook her up so much she was having nightmares. In all the years we've been up here, there's never been a successful jumper until now."
"I've always said the Lottery is a bad way to assign jobs," Abeni said. "How did his son get past the Rebound Barrier, anyway? I've never heard of it not bouncing something back up."
Paulo walked forward, moving tendrils and vines to examine the mess. "Richard's father worked in the Barrier Department. Their son visited him at work, found out what section they'd be turning off next for routine maintenance that wouldn't have any jet-pack pilots who might catch him on the way down, and voila. Boy meets Earth. It was an ingenious plan, really. He had to time it perfectly and had a six foot gap to pass through. They've got a guard on the sections being turned off now."
"I bet the Director rolled a few heads when that came out," Junko said, jumping and pulling down lengths of plant for Paulo to slice with the laser knife he'd taken from his toolbelt.
Frederica and Abeni went to different sections and started cutting. I worked my way deeper into the room and pulled out my own laser knife.
Paulo hummed affirmation. "The security cameras caught the whole conversation, even if Security didn't. The Barrier team was on poop pipe for weeks."
We all groaned at the mention of the worst punishment on the island: cleaning the sanitation pipes. Almost every resident got into enough trouble once in their life that they had to do it, so there was always someone for the job, because, like all manner of vehicle, even one spanning miles in circumference like ours, it needed regular upkeep. Especially since our lives literally depended on the island being in perfect working order and, until now, nothing sent a spanner into the works of our relatively sedate and predictable lives like the toilets malfunctioning.
"What's really bad is how to fix this mess," I said. "We'll have to evacuate if we can't get the engine working again."
Abeni asked, "How long do you think we have? We need to alert Emergency Services, the Tether Department and the other islands just in case. We'll need time to get every airship and private transport over here ASAP for evacuation and to save as much of the food stores and equipment as possible."
In silence we needlessly calculated and recalculated.
Frederica cleared her throat. "The problem will be finding enough replacement parts fast enough to fix what's broken in here."
No one dared voice what we'd known as soon as we'd stepped in the room because none of us wanted to be the one to say we couldn't save our home. It was on us for letting it come to enough harm that it would crash into the yellow fog that was all we saw of the ground.
Everyone froze when deep within the room an ominous thunk sounded followed by a grinding and screeching of metal.
"Thunder and lightning! That doesn't sound good," said Paulo.
Before his words had faded, a metallic scream sounded and a cog broke away to ricochet off the side of the room and veer back towards us. We all ducked instinctively with varied cries of alarm and watched helplessly as the piece bounced again, leaving behind a sizeable dent above the door, then back where it sheared through a section of tendrils and embedded itself in the far wall.
Several more cogs pinged off and ricocheted through the room followed by hoses that came loose and began waving around, hissing air or spraying a variety of oils and other fluids.
Paulo shouted, "Get on the horn, Abeni. We need to evacuate!"
She flew to the com-panel and dialled Emergency Services. We listened in wide-eyed horror as she explained that this was not a drill and the island was in danger of crashing.
Crashing.
Our island hovered a mile above the Earth. Above the layer of thick clouds left behind by our ancestors that our records said had changed colors over the years, but still hadn't dissapated.
Drones were sent down regularly to check for habitability, but, as far as we were told, the ground was choked by poisonous gases released from unceasing volcanic eruptions that occurred due to a combination of a planet-wide nuclear war and too many deep drilling sites that had somehow disturbed the tectonic plates. With sunlight blocked by the clouds of volcanic ash and hazardous rain falling from the bombs, the ground had died. Our ancestors had had enough time to create the floating islands that housed all that remained of our species.
"There will be an investigation," Junko said. Her eyes filled with tears as her dreams of getting a Licence to Procreate went up in smoke.
Frederica put an arm around her. "There won't be much to investigate once this behemoth goes down, will there? Besides, why didn't Security pick up on this room? Or anyone notice our co-workers are all apparently missing? We aren't the only culpable parties here."
A clarion alarm sounded and the yellow emergency light began pulsing color through the room. Throughout the island, people would be rushing to the nearest com-panel to get instructions about what was happening.
The screen beside the door blinked to life filled with the Director's face.
"Citizens of Ruchomy, this is not a drill. Please remain calm. We need to evacuate the island as quickly and orderly as possible. Remember the evacuation drills we have practised. Calmly return to your quarters and retrieve your essential belongings then proceed to your evacuation point in an orderly fashion. I repeat, this is not a drill. Transports are on their way from the surrounding islands. Please remain calm. Emergency teams have the situation under control."
The screen blinked to black, then immediately came up with the Director's angry face. "You lot stay right where you are. I'm on my way for a full report." The screen clicked off leaving weighted silence in its wake.
Before anyone could comment, several thunks came from the chamber next door. As one we ran out to investigate.
Paulo gripped his hair in anguish as we all stood looking through the doorway at the deteriorating state of the room he'd spent the last seventeen years maintaining. Before we could examine the extent of the damage and assess how many parts would need to be replaced, identical thunks began sounding from each chamber down the corridor.
"If I find Richard, I'm going to throw him over the side!" Paulo shouted.
"And where might Richard be?" came the Director's stern voice from the end of the corridor where he stepped out of the lift.
His heels made slight clicking noises on the brushed metal floor as he walked over to us.
We lined up like a bunch of schoolchildren about to be punished with bowed heads and hands clasped behind our backs.
"No one knows, Director. Whetu, Ping and Amelia are missing as well."
The Director turned his steely glare to Adrastos, the Head of Security, standing beside him.
Adrastos started keying rapidly on his com-pad. "On it."
"Then tell me what you do know." The Director crossed his arms and glared at us.
The Director was going to punish whoever spoke up first the hardest. I was the only one without kids, so, with a small gulp I stepped forward and explained what had happened.
I finished with, "The damage is too severe. We need to un-Tether immediately and salvage whatever we can."
Abeni stepped forward to join me. "We don't know how long we'll stay afloat, sir."
"Enrique," the Director's personal assistant held his com-pad at the ready. "Use the secure connection and send a private message to every Director planet-wide to request every drone from every island for salvage. And I mean every single country. If we can get enough help, we might be able to save everything not welded down. Tell the Tether Department to begin unhooking procedures immediately. Send a Tether-wide alert to gather jet packs for salvage workers to wear for emergency bail-out. If anyone on our island causes problems or we find they've withheld equipment, they'll be put on sanitation duty for a month. Thank God we practiced evacuation procedures every year."
The Director frowned at us, then continued to give rapid burst instructions to those present, sending them off running, before he got on his com-link to contact teams not present.
Finally he turned to us and said, "So what do I do with you cockroaches?"
The stairwell door opened, leaking flashing yellow light into our hallway.
I heard Frederica gasp as Richard stepped out with a gleaming knife in his hand, his eyes trained murderously on the Director's unprotected back.
"Richard, no!" I yelled as he lunged forward.
I leapt and pushed the Director to the side. Richard's knife sliced through the air, but I felt the slight sting of it along my forearm.
Paulo and Junko rushed in and tackled Richard to the ground. Paulo sat on his back and twisted one of his arms around and held it immobile. Junko got hold of the knife arm and beat his wrist on the floor until he let it go. While Richard secured that arm beside the other, she unsnapped the sheath from Richard's belt, stowed the knife and snapped it to her own belt.
Abeni slid along the wall around them to get to me where I lay on the floor cradling my arm. After a quick examination, she took off her jacket to press tightly against the seeping wound.
"They're lying to us! They're lying!" Richard screamed at the Director, who was shakily getting to his feet.
"About what?" Junko asked.
"The ground! There are habitable areas. They keep us over the cloud banks, but we can go down! We can go back. We can get out of the godforsaken sky and live on the Earth like we were meant to."
The Director stalked over. "What are you raving about?"
"I've seen the reports with my own eyes! We could go down and not have to restrict the amount of children we have, or apply for a procreation licence at all! We could eat food grown in real soil, not our own recycled shit. We wouldn't have to worry every time there was a thunderstorm if we'd be blasted from the sky or not. It's you power-hungry administrators that keep us up here. Controlling us like rats in an experiment."
The Director squatted and tilted his head to look at Richard better. "Taking down our island just puts a strain on the islands around us, Richard. Imagine how many irreplaceable resources we'll lose when it's gone. We can't exactly get more materials from the ground. Or, you just end up killing everyone. Destroying everything we've ever known."
Richard laughed, the sound so menacing every hair stood up on my body. "Oh, don't worry, Director. We're all going down. We're not birds, after all."
Silence beat by for one long heartbeat, two.
With a jab the Director activated his com-link. "Enrique! Send out a planet-wide alert to have every island check every room on the machine levels. We may not have been the only targets!"
Richard, his face pressed to the floor, began to chuckle which quickly grew into a deep belly laugh.
Furious, the Director turned to him and snarled, "You fool! There is one small area of land, and it is barely habitable. The rest of the areas where the fog has cleared are all over water."
Unashamed that he might have condemned us all to die, Richard said, "Then I suggest you get us out of the sky safely and hope that our islands will float just as well down there, Director."