Annulus Read online

  For the world was different now.

  Stillbirths in humans were on the rise; now, human conception was nearly impossible without medical intervention. Earth’s natural glaciation cycles were setting back in, and the climate was changing. The spirit of Malick, and the morale of his companions, was bitter cold.

  Alora had finished her eulogy of kind words, and a mound of clay dirt appeared over the casket as the nanites voxelized a layer of fresh soil over it, forever sealing his beloved dear in her final resting place. He gently squeezed his son’s hand, almost as if to release the pain in any way he could, but it was still there. A gaping hole in his heart.

  As the crowd cleared, heading to the main building just beyond the pines, where the Celebration of Life would take place, Alora came to his side. She was almost radiant in the light, like an angel, when she placed her hand on his shoulder, stopping him from walking with the rest of the group.

  At first, he couldn’t meet her eyes. He let his gaze drift to his son, being guided by other church officials, but then he felt a hand in his own. It was warm and summery, dissimilar to how his soul felt at that very moment.

  “Malick,” Alora breathed. “I know this time is hard for you, but I want you to know that the soul is not finite.”

  “Yes, I remember,” he said blindly, recalling the scripture.

  The soul was eternal, boundless and infinite.

  “That is why we must finish our work,” Alora said, her soft voice turning more determined.

  Malick wiped a tear just before it fell from his eyelid and down his cheek. He took a deep breath and considered what she wanted. She had every right, asking him to work in a time like this… A time that would influence humanity on multiple levels.

  “An eye for an eye,” Alora continued. “Your wife was taken from you. What you knew as your life. And we shall take their lives in exchange.”

  She was referring to the eco-terrorists, who called themselves the ELFS: Earth’s Liberation Front Society. A schismatic branch of Neology that condemned Enconn for releasing the ‘scrubbers’ on Earth. These were the people responsible for blowing a hole in the middle of Malick’s life, and he would make them pay.

  “The ELFS,” Malick confirmed.

  “Yes,” Alora said. “I’ll personally see that they are eradicated from this planet.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “In the meantime,” Alora grabbed his arm and began steadily walking him to the facility, “I need you to find Arthur.”

  “It’s believed he fled to Annulus,” Malick said without emotion.

  “Then that is where you will go,” Alora decided.

  “Yes, Allmother.”

  4

  Treasure Trash

  It was such an odd landscape to wrap Arthur’s head around. A space station ring build round earth. What an overwhelming thought. Gone was typical horizon where things would disappear over it. Now, only a thick hazy line of atmosphere would define the far distance and the rest of the station climbed upward and around the Earth.

  Liz trekked next to Arthur, steadily holding her ground.

  Arthur distinctly remembered when he had interviewed her for the intern position. He’d been impressed that she had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, a feat that took the determination, strength, and passion. He smiled, looking at her now, admiring her burning will to survive.

  Liz caught his impromptu gaze and cracked a slight smile. Her skin was fair and already flushed in the arid climate. They were nearly five hundred feet away from a trash heap when Liz asked the question that was burning in his mind.

  “Do you think they all still have powers?”

  Arthur, relieved to be addressing the elephant in the room — or in this case, the alchemical mermaids on the space station — replied, “I think so.”

  “Why don’t they use them?” Liz wondered. “Spring saved us easily enough.”

  “Yes, but that was in the heat of a moment,” he said. “Perhaps a stressor is needed to trigger their abilities. Besides, Spring was the strongest of them. Maybe she is the only one who kept her powers.”

  “Interesting,” Liz said with a huff in her breath.

  This line of questioning took him back to another he recalled with puzzlement. Liz must have noticed his distraught expression, because she asked ‘What is it?’.

  “Do you think they’re real?”

  The accusation that the mermaid sisters weren’t real, but composed of nanites and his own mental fantasy burned in the back of his mind. General Malick had once suspected it, and if that were true, their manifestation in this world would be Arthur’s fault. These sisters were now living and breathing entities, with memories of families. But were they his responsibility? If anything were to happen to them, including the two feisty sisters, he would be awashed with guilt, but did that make it right for him to tell them how to live their lives?

  “I think they are,” Liz confirmed. She continued to speculate, “And what if, when the ship crashed into those islands in the Yucatan, the nanites were… somehow absorbed into the rock when they were decimated? This could have been a viable source of nanites to allow the mermaids to form.”

  “Liz, if they were manifested, I would want nothing else but to see them returned where they came from. It’s unfair they are in this situation I am responsible for.”

  She was silent for a few more feet.

  “What if this was all created by your imagination to get an antithesis to white matter?” she asked.

  “What are you talking about?” He pretended not to know what she was speculating, for he knew deep down that it might be true.

  “The azoth. The black ore you got from the maidens after unlocking them all,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s more than just a coincidence that the philosopher’s stone can destroy the voxelizing technology you helped develop?”

  Arthur dwelled on her comment, not wanting it to be true. He thought about the consciousness being able to manipulate the nanites, and immediately blamed the spiritual corporation. It wasn’t his fault; Neologists were the ones that wanted all this. They wanted to upload their souls into this station’s mainframe when it was completed.

  I’m just a pawn, he thought.

  Besides, the thought of the human soul being stateless was ridiculous to him. The human condition was a fragile thing, and playing God like the Neologians wanted to do was not of his interest.

  “If that is true, then it will be my utmost responsibility to care for them,” Arthur affirmed. “Either way, we are all in this together.”

  “What about General Malick?” Liz finally asked, a small frown on her face. “He will come for us.”

  General Malick was a crazed, power-hungry militant leader. Not just the thorn in Arthur’s side, but the impending bomb that would destroy them all. The man had already proven resilient when tasked with something, and now his pride was on the table. He wouldn’t let him just escape — hell, they had probably already excommunicated Arthur from the Church of Neology, following their usual course of action to sabotage everything Arthur had come to know and love.

  Despite this dreaded thought, one thing kept him afloat: Liz was with him now, and no harm would come to her as long as he was near. He hoped.

  “He will,” Arthur admitted. “That is why we must get our affairs in order here, and then move camp as soon as possible.”

  “Or get that harem of sisters to harness their powers,” Liz offered.

  Arthur was hesitant to agree, but slowly nodded his head in acceptance.

  He was thankful Spring had sacrificed herself to save them. She was a brave soul. He was determined to honor her when this was all over.

  He knew the rest of the sisters would be a force to be reckoned with if they harnessed their respectable elements.

  The thought was interrupted when he looked up to see the first large heap of trash and debris, a mix of shiny grey aluminum, brilliant white painted flaps, and round, black, rubber wheels. The objects were
familiar to Arthur, and he kneeled down and grabbed the pieces, placing them into the skeletal structure they had once comprised.

  “This was the fuselage,” Arthur said, grabbing the wheels and orientating them to the sides and front. He then reached for the large white flaps that became more recognizable as wings when he laid them out.

  Arthur looked for a piece that was duller and heavier. As he picked up the dowel-shaped object, he tested the density with a quick toss into the air, and caught it, feeling the pull of the heavy object in his hand.

  “A steel pipe,” Arthur confirmed for Liz, then set about looking around for another piece, but to no avail.

  He reached down and grabbed more aluminum, quickly striking it against the steel, hoping for a miracle, but his inner scientist knew there was no point. He needed flint… but to find that among airplane wreckage would be less than likely.

  A silly idea struck him, and he reached into his pocket for the black ore. The azoth was the decimator of anything made of nanites, but how would it interact with normal matter… say, hardened steel from Earth?

  He struck the steel, and a spark flew off the material onto the ground below.

  His eyes widened and lit up, and he looked at Liz with surprise. She struck a bewitching smile and nodded. When the cold set in, at least they would have a chance of staying warm.

  “This was a small craft,” she noted. “Not enough for a band of immigrants. Smugglers, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps,” Arthur nodded, moving onto sifting through more of the trash. “I would assume a supply run for the nomads already here.”

  “Nomads?” Liz asked.

  “Humans who abandoned their life on Earth for a new one here. If we can find them, maybe we can get their help.”

  Liz looked up at the cold, partially iced-over Earth, as bright and white as the clouds swirling around it. “It was our fault they left,” she said solemnly.

  Arthur hesitated to debate with her on the topic. He knew the leading nations of the world had released the nanites on Earth and were successful in preening the environment pollution. Furthermore, it eliminated all climate change. The Earth transitioned back to its natural weather cycles and that would mark the day the long winter came — advancing glaciers covered the Earth as far south as the Great Lakes.

  “Look here,” Arthur said, raising up a large swath of synthetic material in his hands. He carefully pulled on the fabric, careful not to snag it on anything on the way up.

  “What is that?” Liz asked, trying to make out the yards of material that seemed to never end.

  “A parachute,” Arthur said, finally reaching the end and wrapping it up carefully. “This gives me a crazy idea.”

  “Crazy idea?”

  “Yes,” Arthur confirmed.

  He raced over to the skeletal fuselage he had been fussing with a moment before. He ‘let his inner tinkerer loose’; something his father would always say. For curiosity helped fuel the imagination, and here, Arthur could let his imagination run free.

  He dropped the parachute in the center and ran back to the wreck, sifting through a plethora of broken aluminum bars and cables that once held the craft together.

  “You see,” he explained in his overly confident way, “Annulus Station is being constructed around the Earth, which means it has a larger circumference. Distance will be our greatest enemy here unless we can cut that factor down.”

  “Okay, know-it-all. You want to build a roller derby with a sail?” Liz was joking, but let the smirk fall from her face as she realized Arthur was dead serious.

  “A roller derby powered by the wind,” Arthur clarified. “You remember how rough it was coming in. The winds would provide enough power to pull the craft with all of us on it.”

  “But to where?”

  “I only hope we can find another encampment,” Arthur said, starting the construction of the craft he was so excited to see come to fruition. “After we have water and shelter, the next thing we need to find is food. I have no clue how the nomads sustain themselves.”

  “We’ll figure that out once we solve this puzzle,” Liz said.

  Liz dropped to her knees and moved around the aluminum bars he had already placed. She looked up and smiled before she spoke. “If this craft is going to pull all of us, then you will need horizontal load-bearing beams here and here.”

  Arthur’s heart warmed when she offered that tidbit of helpful information. She was brilliant, ten times smarter than him. He admired her wits, and her beauty was second to none.

  As she worked on the craft, kneeling next to him, he eyed her deep red lips, which pursed together as she thought. He wanted to kiss her in that moment, but held himself back. The sisters were waiting on them.

  Arthur tied the last aluminum bar into place, rose from his knees, and wiped the dust from his pants. The indent in the sand quickly filled in, leaving no trace of where his hard work had taken place. Even knowing what exactly was happening, having helped design the technology, it still fascinated him how the nanites reverted back to their originally programmed form.

  Arthur looked to the remaining heaps of trash and debris in the distance, and then to the setting light before them. Night would be upon them soon, and they still needed to make the filter for the water.

  The craft before him and Liz stood no larger than a midsized car on Earth. Outfitted with three wheels, the front one connected to a steering rod and a makeshift steering wheel. While they’d used the original plane’s cockpit’s seat, they had furnished the passenger area with a large bed so the rest of the sisters could join them.

  Liz hopped in the back, eager to jettison off and christen the craft’s maiden voyage. Arthur stepped inside, carefully feeling the sturdy structure he and Liz had conjured up. To his surprise, it was rock steady. Hardened by triple reinforcements, they had made it to bear the large load to come.

  As Arthur sat down, he gripped the steering wheel, then felt his pocket for the azoth, and reoriented the hardened steel pipe that would give them fire. He thought for a moment about his father, a watchmaker; if there ever was a time for him to use what he had learned from him, it was now.

  He slammed down on the makeshift lever attached to a coiled metal spring. The parachute shot up into the prevailing winds, high in the air. Immediately, the chute caught, and the strings pulled taut and yanked the wheeled craft they had built. Arthur held the controls tight, looking back to make sure Liz was still on board. A terrible feeling came over him, but there was Liz with the biggest smile as her head garment flailed majestically in the rushing wind.

  They were cruising. The controls jostled, feeling every bump in the otherwise perfect, curved terrain. Arthur banked left and then right, dodging the first set of fumaroles he saw coming up in the distance. Then there was a shifting lake, this one not as deep as the one they had lost their pod in. Arthur hardly had time to admire the poisoned, crystalline surface as they whisked by.

  The sight was astonishing. Racing along the convex desert terrain surface, dodging scalding fumaroles, lakes and rocks, all while glancing upward at a brilliant blue and white Earth shining upon them. For a moment, despite the predicament they were in, he felt a blanket of happiness overcome him that he had not felt since he was a small child.

  What a world I am on now.

  Arthur could see a small, dark blot in the beige desert sand, approaching from afar. What looked like a series of stacked rocks and boulders covered in a recognizable garment resolved into a clearer picture as he brought the craft closer and saw the girls. Next to them were two small piles of stones varying in size from small to large. The sisters had done a great job finding stones for the filter… They were proving to be more resourceful than he expected.

  Not bad for a few thousand-year-old Atlantean sisters thrown into the future.

  Arthur dodged the last shifting lake before he reached the women at the camp. He reached to his side and pulled on another lever that would press down on the spinning tire to slow the
craft down. The parachute pulled tight against the wind, and the smell of burnt rubber filled the air. The craft slowed just before the sisters.

  Two makeshift tents behind them had been carefully fashioned with the surrounding rubbish materials and rocks. Arthur was impressed to see the ingenuity the sisters had demonstrated together.

  He motioned for Liz to grab the lever that held the brake, and stood tall, pulling the parachute down from the current of wind that did not want to let go. He tugged on the thin synthetic material to shake out the ballooned air within. Arthur then rolled up the parachute and tucked it under his arm, twisting a smile at the shaded girls who looked back at him with owlish eyes.

  “You made a transport?” Autumn asked, smiling and crawling out to inspect the odd-looking craft.

  “Yes,” Arthur said proudly. “This will cut our journey time down considerably. The only drawback I see is the limited prevailing winds we are at the mercy of.”

  Winter crawled out from the tent behind Autumn. She fixed her eyes on the parachute Arthur carried under his arm. She yanked it from him and inspected the material thoroughly.

  “You imbecile,” Winter chastised. “Don’t you know anything about sailing?”

  While Arthur had an extensive background in physics for engineering, he despised water because of a childhood accident of falling overboard. He looked curiously at Winter, waiting for her explanation.

  The dark-haired girl swayed her hips as she walked around, loving the attention as she commanded the group’s attention. She had a sober and rigid mood about her.

  “The direction in which a sailboat moves depends on the force of the wind and the resistance of the water,” Winter informed them. “To get certain orientations of the boat, the combined effect of the wind and the water is a net force that pushes the boat diagonally.”