Annulus Read online

  “Use the azoth,” she suggested.

  The pod dropped a few feet into the buckling ground, like a plane would in turbulent air. The steaming water was rolling back toward them faster now. Any moment, they would be hit by a sweeping current of hot, searing water that would cook them in a minute or less.

  Arthur reached for the small chunk of ore in his pocket, the black rock that he had obtained from unlocking the keys. Of course, he thought.

  The pod was made of white matter voxelized by nanites, and the azoth was the antithesis of the process. He pulled out the ore and touched it to Winter’s seatbelt. Instantly, the broken buckle dissolved into nothing, and the last mermaiden finally dropped into the arms of Autumn and Liz.

  Spring moved her hand over the window in a hypnotic wave, brushing the dirt from the glass. The rolling hot water hit the pod, jolting it back, and those inside were thrown into the rear wall of the craft. Arthur opened his eyes and could see hot water pouring into the cracks and openings caused from the crash. Steam was rising outside, but there was Spring, her hand on the glass and her head down.

  The metal below them heated immediately from the blistering water. Everyone propped themselves up, relieving thier skin from the pain of the hot framework. The pod bobbed in the current, throwing everyone around. Liz’s hand caught on a structural beam, and she screamed from the discomfort. Arthur pulled himself up with Autumn using part of his serape to grab onto the hot craft.

  Despite the heat, Spring was solid as a statue as everyone else was flung about in the hot current. She muttered in pain only to concentrate harder. What water was fumbling was now directed in a steady motion upward. Arthur waited; he knew that, at any moment, the bolts would give way and start bombarding them like hot bullets. Autumn, Summer, Liz and Winter held onto him tightly.

  “I am getting so hot,” TRUDI moaned in a nubile way.

  In a final push upward, the pod lifted by the water, breaking onto the surface. Spring held her hand steady, trying to resist the pressure encompassing her body. She snapped her eyes toward the group, then moved her hand in a deliberate dance. The water swished and swirled outside the pod, holding it secure next to the cliff ledge.

  Arthur sprang for the door and carved along the hinges with the azoth, successfully decimating the exit. He kicked the door of the pod, bending and breaking it, until it popped open.

  “Get out,” Spring yelled. “I can’t hold it for much longer!”

  “Oh my god, she is going to blow her hood,” TRUDI yelped.

  The group jumped out of the pod, trying to avoid touching any metal with their exposed skin as they exited. Arthur tumbled and looked back in panic. Spring’s hand trembled from the strain in power, holding the pod up with thousands of gallons of water rushing under it.

  Just as Arthur got to his feet, the pod fell back into the hot water with Spring still inside. He ran to edge but saw nothing. Not a trace of life in the water.

  Spring was gone.

  2

  Stranded

  The day was hotter than Arthur had expected it to be. While Annulus Station received a full dose of sunlight on its underside, or “backside”, its inner side — where the land was — only received a portion of the sunlight reflected from Earth, called “Earthshine”. While oceans reflected the least amount of light, roughly ten percent, land reflected ten to twenty-five percent, and clouds reflected around fifty percent. And since the blue light was scattered more than other wavelengths by the gases in the atmosphere, the surrounding light leaned more toward that hue.

  Arthur looked up at the heavily clouded Earth. Within the overcast openings, he could see the large ice sheets that covered the Earth from the North and South. The ice sheets were the determining factor for why Annulus received so much reflecting earthshine. He speculated this was the result of above average temperatures and no coincidence; the station used bright paneling and copper outfits wherever it could to help draw the heat out into the vacuum of space. His maw already felt like sandpaper in the dry heat.

  From what he remembered, the Umbral Zone was the most desolate region of Annulus Station. As the ringed world rotated with the Earth, it received an amount of sun equivalent to living along the equator on the planet. One day for Earth was one day for Annulus. The same for nighttime.

  It was only a matter of time before the Annulus would be operational, and this area fully developed — its nanites voxelizing whatever Axiom City wanted. The scalding lakes and arid terrain would soon be turned to skyscraper buildings and burroughs for humanity to come to like it was on the other side.

  In the distance, steaming lakes and jutting fumaroles built from the sublimation of gas pockmarked the landscape, which curved upward from a thick hazy line of atmosphere, encircling the earth above. A burst of hot water shot out of the neck of a cylindrical rock formation like a geyser. As it hit the ground, the water steamed upward and evaporated as fast as it had fallen. The Umbral Zone was a unique, unformed place. A primordial environment cascading into something that would someday serve as the future home for humanity. It was strange to be standing on something that was literally being built around the globe.

  Just past the fumaroles, Arthur caught sight of random clumps of debris wrinkling in the hot air. For a second, he thought they were mirages, but then he remembered hearing of the hordes of nomads willing to chance the journey to live on the backside of Annulus. Arthur concluded this was the trash they had left behind. Similar to how he felt at this moment.

  He looked to his exhausted makeshift crew. Each one was more tired than the next. Liz held herself steadily, though it was obvious she was still in shock they had survived. As for Autumn, Summer and Winter, distress clouded their moods, as they mourned their sister who had given her life for them.

  Arthur looked heavily upon them, his heart clenching just as much as theirs. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The women looked up at him with sorrow; he might have even noticed a bit of disdain from Summer and Winter. But who else could they blame? He was the one that had freed them from their servitude. He was the one they had offered themselves to, and now he was the one they depended on in their new life.

  Arthur had an inkling about the powers that Spring had used to save them, but he knew now was not the time to ask if any of the other women could try. Arthur hoped that Spring was all right and had perhaps found an afterlife her culture had spoke about.

  Arthur felt the hot sand as he sat down. He grabbed a fistful and let the warm, manufactured grains of rock run through his fingers as he tried to remember his survivalist training. Enconn had made him train tirelessly through numerous classes to prepare him for expeditions. He went over the basics in his mind: food, water and shelter. A human being could go without food for two weeks. Without water, only three days. Arthur considered shelter and grimaced, remembering the pod sinking to the bottom of the lake. He felt the loss, for it had carried a fully functional voxelizing machine. The clumps in the distance waving in the heat provided him a new glimpse of hope, though. Perhaps a shelter could be constructed from the trash of others.

  He looked at the shifting lake behind him, knowing it wouldn’t recede anywhere near enough for them to get the pod. Gone was TRUDI and her tantalizing quips, sunken deep in the irradiated water that had been poisoned by the process of manufacturing white matter below the crust. It was just like how the old saying went for sailors stranded out at sea: Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink

  Arthur looked at Liz and remembered her extensive background in the geological sciences. Something in her studies would surely come to the surface in a place like this. He scanned his eyes up her thighs, and couldn't help but admire her charisma and youthful insight. She had proven to be quite the mentee, her fast thinking helping them escape multiple situations.

  “We need water,” Arthur said finally, removing his coat and draping it over the maidens.

  They were still in seashell bathing suits, their fair skin exposed to the Earthsh
ine. With enough time, they would burn. The sisters huddled together, shading themselves under his garment.

  Liz nodded, but Autumn had a puzzled look about her. She finally decided to ask the obvious question.

  “But isn’t there water there?” She pointed to the lake.

  Summer was quick to agree with her, adding another obvious fact. “All we need to do is let it cool off.”

  Arthur shook his head. “That water is irradiated and a byproduct of the particles colliding below us.”

  “Ir…” Autumn tried to say the unfamiliar word, “…radiated?”

  “Yes,” Arthur said, now standing to his feet. “Irradiated. There is a lot you don’t know of this world, that science has shown us.”

  “What are you afraid of? We are of noble womanly descent and quite educated. I would say more than the likes of you.” Winter asked snidely, challenging Arthur.

  “All you need to know is that something is poisoning the water,” he quipped.

  The girls were unsatisfied with his answer, but he did not feel obligated to divulge such explanations when he knew that the details wouldn’t help the current predicament they were in.

  “Can we remove this poison?” Autumn asked plainly.

  The idea struck Arthur with interest, however he had no clue how to remove dissolved radioactive particles from water. From his studies in physics, he remembered reverse osmosis playing a role, but he had no carbon at the moment — which would be another concern later, the fact that they would need fire to stay warm.

  He took a deep breath to break up the stress weighing on him like fifty-pound dumbbells. One thing at a time, he thought. He looked to Liz, who seemed consumed by the question. Her mind fabricating a solution of sorts. She pursed her lips as her deep brown eyes lit up in a cascading eureka.

  She extended her index finger and drew in the sand. The object looked like a bucket, but vanished as the soil recombined and mended itself. This astonished Autumn, watching the earth move, though she could control the element herself, as the gate keeper of it.

  And just like that, Arthur remembered his most valuable asset. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the jagged, black rock. The women all watched him as he tossed it to Liz.

  “Try this,” he suggested, gesturing for her to continue what she was planning.

  Liz poked the craggy, black ore into the voxelized sand, and immediately it dissipated, not forming back to its original, coded form. The mineral was proving to be the true antithesis to white matter. In the hands of the wrong person, the substance could be harmful.

  Liz used it to sketch out an idea for a device in the sand. While like a bucket, it had several layers — Arthur counted seven — which she crosshatched differently to distinguish from one another. She drew the final layer thicker than the rest. Below that was a reservoir. Liz finally drew two horizontal lines outward from the top of the bucket.

  Arthur and the sisters moved behind her to get a better picture of what she had in mind, and Arthur realized it was a bucket only in the broadest sense of the term. She’d created a filtering reservoir that would sit in the dirt.

  “This is how we can get drinking water,” Liz proudly said.

  Arthur’s smile broadened as he studied the schematics permanently engraved in the sand. Each layer was unique. The question that came to mind next was more than obvious, so Autumn beat him to the punch.

  “What are the layers made of?” she asked.

  Liz started at the top, where she made a wavy line that without a doubt looked like water. She continued down the layers. The next one was thicker; she wrote out the words ‘porous cloth’ to the side of the device, and made two arrows showing their locations, above and below the middle layer.

  The middle layer was only marked with one set of diagonal lines, and she pointed to it, explaining, “Between the two layers of porous cloth, we will press any clay soil we can find.”

  She motioned under those to a layer which she’d crosshatched with ‘X’s. “This will be made of any small stones we can find.”

  Under that was the thickest of all the lines. She explained that they needed to find some flat piece of metal that they could puncture holes in.

  Arthur, astonished at the jerry rig she had outlined, cocked his head sideways and thought it through. “And you are sure this will take out all the irradiated particles?” he asked.

  Liz let out a deep breath and looked around at their current circumstances, wondering, “What other choice do we have?”

  Arthur nodded. She was right. If they didn’t find a suitable water source, dehydration would get the best of them.

  “Wait,” Autumn interjected, motioning her finger where the water would come dripping out. “How are we supposed to get the filtered water once it’s made it past all the layers?”

  “We would have to dig to it, unfortunately,” Liz revealed.

  The depth of the hole would determine how much effort they would have to exert in this hot climate, and staving off exhaustion was a priority when water was this scarce. They would need to take it slow and steady. Their bodies were already losing water from just sitting there.

  Arthur glanced over her diagram once more and then looked back up at the horizon, the indents of hot water followed by finger-like fumaroles jaggedly crawling out from the ground. And then the notion hit him. If they incorporated Liz’s specifications into the fumarole upside down, they could use the erupting motion of the geysers to get their water. It would rain clean water.

  Just as fast as the eureka moment struck came the next challenge: gathering the assets. Arthur looked across the hot, curving horizon. He counted at least seven different clumps of debris reflecting bright white in the earthshine. He thought he could make out something black as soot almost smoking in the distance, but chalked it up to the billowing waves of heat distorting the partially complete curved space station floor.

  “We need to gather supplies,” Arthur said, grabbing Liz’s hand and pulling her to her feet. “Liz and I will scout for any supplies we can use. Everyone else, stay here in the shade. If you can find the strength to journey about, be sure to gather any rocks you find to help with the filter.”

  A rumbling sound came from deep within the ground. Arthur eyed the lake, watching it. What is happening?

  Along the sides of the station, where the ground ended, walls rose to outfitted glass that wrapped up and secured the generated atmosphere. The walls buckled a bit but thankfully held their ground as the rumbling passed.

  Arthur was shocked, but then remembered the construction process. As the station came together in the Umbral Zone, earthquakes would occur as the landscape changed. He looked back at the irradiated water, sloshing back and forth in its indented puddle. His fears were relieved when he saw the water settle.

  “What was that?” Autumn asked.

  “Tremors,” Arthur told her. “The station is slowly changing as the city of Axiom emerges. The terrain is in constant flux. These are the growing pains we will have to endure while we make our way to a more secure location.”

  The sisters looked at each other, less confident in the arid land they stood on. Liz smiled hesitantly while she made a makeshift headwrap from her shirt to help keep her head cool on the upcoming trek. Arthur furrowed his eyebrows, gazing into the distance with a determination to survive, and stepped out into crinkling sand.

  3

  A deep wound

  General Corbin Malick stood over a dark, open burial site, distraught. His head hung low, pushing his long, thick, black beard into his neck in thoughtful prayer as the coffin that carried his wife of twenty-two years was placed over the gloomy opening. As the pallbearers lowered her into her final resting place, a soft voice uttered a prayer out into the cold expanse of the cemetery. The words hung in the air like a foul stench.

  “You are a spirit. You are your own soul. You are not mortal. You can be free,” said a lilting voice across from him. A woman held a thick, leather bound book, delivering
the deceased her last rites. “By Allmother, amen.”

  Malick opened his teary eyes. The decorated woman in red tunic and purple sash — the dress denoting a leader of the Church of Neology — maintained a stoic demeanor as she read. Her name was Alora Daniels.

  Alora’s lustrous blonde hair, pulled back into a bun, sat above her soft facial features that were speckled with a range of dark moles that seemed to align in some mystic form, reinforcing her divine dominance. Her constituents said she was as tough as nails, but Malick didn’t mind her arrogance. She was the leader that had brought him comfort when he’d admitted to wanting to take his own life during an audit session. He blamed himself for the loss of his wife, but she had been effective in convincing him otherwise through audits of the mind. She was magnificent, and would ultimately bring the church into the new century, taking care of the human condition and its fragile soul. Alora bowed her head and hummed slightly, invoking the rest of the followers to replicate the series of hymns.

  Malick closed his eyes once again, wincing from the pain that destroyed him from the inside, the blame he placed on himself. He had gone on an expedition to the Yucatan, chasing a hubristic scientist on a foiled journey that would eventually turn south… He would never have thought that his family would be subject to a terrorist attack at home.

  He opened his eyes again, looking to his left. A small boy no taller than his waist stood next to him, dressed in military-like dress blues. His arm was cast neatly and sheathed in a sling. He shared Malick’s dark eyes, black hair color and chubby fingers, but not his expression, as he was still too young to comprehend the full meaning of what was happening today. The burial of his mother.

  Pain stabbed Malick in his gut again. He knew there would be a moment when his son, Aden, would ask about his mother, and he would have to tell the boy that her death had been caused by a coalition of eco-terrorists, a group of humans that rejected the actions of their fellow man who were trying to save the Earth. By releasing ‘scrubbers’, small nanites to cleanse the Earth of pollution and filth, they’d put into motion horrid consequences.