Power Down Page 7

  No. He would have heard that. Blaster fire isn’t a quiet thing, even when there’s layers of steel and hundreds, if not thousands, of feet between you and the person firing the gun. The walls of this place would have vibrated like a pitch fork.

  Someone hit a wrong button then. Keith and Rebecca are going through some kind of routine check and hit an A button when they meant to hit a B button. That’s more likely. He’d been there in the room with them when they had gone through the required checks. It was monotonous routine, done without the care that it probably should be.

  This was the more likely scenario, and once they get the alert that critical functions have been killed in certain parts of Zulu the systems will be brought back online. Give it a few minutes, and Zulu’s hum will start rebuilding itself note by note by note.

  Deep breath, Jim. This will resolve itself.

  Lebbe sits by the door and turns his attention back to the videos on his datapad. He goes back to the video from Kansas City. He watches the screen. He studies the faces. He tries to get back there, but he can’t. His mind won’t make the jump back into the screen. He can’t get onto those streets.

  He puts the data pad down, and turns off the screen. It goes black, and so does the rest of the room. He stares out into the darkness. He knows. This isn’t nothing. He’s worked with Keith and Rebecca for years now. Yes, some of the things they are tasked with can become routine. They move through the steps quickly then on to other routine tasks. That doesn’t mean they're sloppy. They’re anything but. They’re fast, but they’re meticulous. Besides, the engineers that designed these stations wouldn’t let major systems turn off with the push of a single button. They’d require verification. They’d require a second and third click, more actually, before they allowed any one person to make large chunks of the place uninhabitable.

  No, this wasn’t a mistake. Something is wrong. This station is compromised. His station, the one he’s been hired to protect, is no longer safe. He has to fix that.

  He goes to the doors again and tries the handle once more. He puts all he has behind it, nearly coming off the ground to try and get something to move. Still nothing. He points the brightened screen of his datapad out into the black again. It lights up a six-foot area in front of him, revealing absolutely nothing.

  He points the screen left; then he points it right. Where to go? Right takes him back to the maze of offices. He's still not familiar enough with the space to guarantee that he won’t get lost with the lack of light. Left it is. He finds the inner wall and puts his hand against it, letting his fingers run along the cool metal as he walks. And uninterrupted metal is all he feels.

  He walks farther and still no more doors that lead either out to the main floor or to some other set of interior offices. He wants the former, but, right now, he’ll take the latter. He can feel the wall curve as it arcs slowly away from the doors Lebbe usually uses.

  He has the datapad in front of him, but he still can’t see anything. He knows, though, that he’s been walking a while. At least it feels like it’s been a while. He should have felt something on this wall by now, right? He takes a few steps away and holds the datapad out in front of him. He still sees nothing more than the shadowy outline of support pillars in the dark.

  He begins walking again. Away from the wall this time. He has a hand out in front of him, just in case. His mind begins to puzzle out where the next door might be, and he realizes that it’s likely he’ll have to walk a quarter of his ring. When he entered behind Frank’s he came down one of the long support walkways that connects the rings to Zulu. It’s supposed to lead to the south point.

  The next point would be what? The east point? Yes. The east point. Wait.

  He begins drawing rings he can’t see into the dark air. He makes motions like he’s following the degrees on a compass, but he can’t think. He can’t work this out. He begins walking again, faster this time. He breaks into a slow jog then picks up his pace. He should be feeling the wall again, but he’s not. It slows him down, he thinks, and he needs to get out of these rings.

  He runs faster. Then faster again. He’s not jogging anymore. He’s at what feels, at least to his old muscles, like a full sprint.

  “DAD!”

  It comes out of nowhere and is louder than even his rapid breathing. He stumbles to a stop and puts his hands on his knees, head down. His chest rises and falls, pumping like a piston.

  “Dad,” the voice says again. He looks up and holds his datapad in front of him, and there she is, emerging from the dark. It’s Sarah.

  TEN

  The elevator dings, and Keith steps onto the main floor of Zulu. Nerves tingle across his body. His stomach rolls. It happens each time he's down here. There are people walking the main floor. It's all chaotic, and he hates it.

  Keith is a creature of order. He's a creature of habit.

  Of filthy, dirty habits. Habits that turn you inside out and burn you down so the only place to rebuild is a place like this one.

  It's the pointlessness of the chaos that may bother him most. It's the milling about, the movement for the sake of movement, that feels like those last days at home, on Earth, before he had to leave.

  It's the bubbles in a pot that's building pressure. It's the people he called friends. It's the people he considered family working themselves into some kind of Modi-fueled frenzy just for the sake of it. Just to give themselves something to do.

  “Constructo destructo,” he whispers to himself.

  And there's Modi here. He can smell it. Buckets of the stuff. That's also the reason he hates coming down here. A transfer station at the end of the galaxy is a great place to detox. But not if you are still surrounded by temptation. The main floor is where temptation lives. Not with the other people who call Zulu home, but with the travelers passing through.

  Keith watches them on the cameras set up to monitor the main floor. He punches up their feeds on his terminal when things are slow. He'll watch the people mill about on Zulu's main floor. He'll flip between the feeds and zoom the camera in on the faces as they come stumbling into the cameras’ main views, playing a little game he calls Spotty the Modi.

  He looks for the vacant eyes, the ones that seem to be fixed at some far-off point. Their mouths are often slightly slack. They are struggling to hold themselves up on both feet, dragging a shoulder across the wall of the gangway that leads to the points on Zulu's outer rings where ships dock.

  If they aren't currently in the throes of a Modi trip he looks for the signs that they just came out of one--pulse racing, eyes wide and unable to focus. Head that won't stop shaking. Fingers that won't stop moving like they're typing some sort of quick code into the air. They'll fully crash soon enough, deep and through the floor. But, for now, their body is busy tweaking out all the final drops of Modi still inside.

  This crash, the fight by your body to let go of this thing that it needed, is hard. Impossible. Keith fought this fight on his way out to Zulu. Of course, his name wasn't Keith. Still isn't, but no one here knows that. The papers he showed to get this job and the identity he's been living under ever since aren't his. Well, they weren’t. They feel very much like mine now.

  Those first moments when it was time to board the first ship that took him off Earth were the most nerve wracking. Or, better, they should have been, but his mind was so blasted by the pair of Modi shots he'd downed less than an hour earlier that he couldn't hold a thought in his head for more than a second.

  The full detox that would shake his guts and try to pull his insides out by punching a hole in his chest wouldn't hit him until he transferred to a second ship at a first ring transfer station near the moon. He'd had a handful of vials to keep him properly looped if he could judiciously consume them. He couldn't.

  By the time he got onto the transport hauler that was to take him to a Mars sector transfer station he was starting to feel the tingle in his fingers that was nature's reminder that he needed to override reality. So, he found the ca
bin assigned to him and holed himself up in his tiny room and let the Modi work its way out of him. He went through the twitchy fingers and the shaking head and the sweats and the vomiting until he was back to normal. At least as normal as you can be when you are fully hooked on the stuff that comes in the vial.

  He sniffs the air on the main floor of Zulu like a dog looking for a scent. There's a tang that hits the back of his throat. It's Caribbean Dream. Or maybe it's Malibu Punch. It's been a while. Hard to tell the difference anymore. He runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth, and he can feel it. He can taste it. He wants a shot of Modi more than he's ever wanted anything. And this is why he doesn't come to Zulu's main floor. This fight was hard enough the first time; he doesn't wanna do it a second.

  He looks around quickly, hoping to see Lebbe right away. He doesn't.

  Crap.

  He walks quickly, head down, to The Quickstop. He looks for Frank. He smells food cooking on the grill and hears the conversations all around him. It's just noise. A moment later the little man steps out from the back of his shop and gives Keith a wave.

  "Have you seen him?" Keith asks as Frank approaches.

  "Who?" Frank asks.

  "Lebbe."

  "Not in a while. He ate earlier today."

  Keith is still looking over the people wandering the main floor of Zulu. "When was that?" He asks without turning back to Frank.

  "Couple hours ago."

  Keith smacks a hand on the countertop and thanks Frank. He crosses the main floor and heads to the convenience store.

  He sucks in deep. He didn't want to go here, doesn't want to step foot here. This is Modi's home on Zulu. It's still not legal, but if you want it this is where you get it. Cute blonde that works the main register at night gets it for you, not the long haired dirty dude who stocks the shelves all night, because life's like that.

  He walks in and the aroma hits him like a punch to the face. It's a mix of all different flavors of Modi. There’s the sweet stuff. The savory stuff. The sour stuff. It's all meant to go down smooth, you just have to find your favorite. But no matter the taste, the trip is the same.

  Everything is dreams and rainbows and candy-coated thoughts until it’s not. And when it’s not is when everything goes very, very bad. The air is sucked from your body, and it feels like a fall from a 10-story building. You crush into the concrete and everything feels broken. You want to move, but you can’t. You’re wrecked, head to toe. So you just lie there in a stupor, unable to talk or think.

  Eventually you’ll roll over. You’ll sit up. The fog will fade and you’ll come back to yourself and be off looking for that next shot of Modi

  There's a small crowd inside the convenience store. Mostly just travelers looking to restock their supply of personal effects--toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs.

  A twitchy kid stands in front of the wall of freeze-dried and vacuum-packed foods. Beef on the left, floor to ceiling. Then chicken dishes. Then a single column of pasta followed by deserts. These were lunch and dinner most nights for Keith. He never bothered to be overly picky about what he grabbed. A couple of these. A couple of those. In and out. Speed was the priority.

  He does a slow turn near the central island that serves as the place where the pretty girl with the short hair takes money and deals modi. Lebbe’s not here. Keith exits quickly and quick steps to the elevator to take him back to Zulu’s control room.

  The doors open, and Keith steps inside. As the doors close he takes a deep breath. His heart slows down. The anxiety that laid like a blanket across his shoulders begins to lift. By the time the doors open just a floor up, everything is back to normal. He walks down the hall, and can hear Grey through the door. She’s shouting at Rebecca.

  ELEVEN

  “What do you mean it's gone?” Grey asks.

  “I'm not sure I understand your question.” Rebecca is pointing to her screen. “It's just not there.”

  “Don't be like Keith,” Gray says.

  “Hey,” Keith says as he comes through the door.

  Grey sighs and closes her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she says. “But I just don't understand what we're seeing."

  Rebecca says: "It's gone ma'am. I could see the air handlers before and now the panel on the dashboard where we control the air handlers is missing. I don't know where it went it. It just disappeared.”

  Keith steps to the monitor. He looks at the screen for a moment then turns back to Grey. “Yeah. It’s gone.”

  Grey lets out a scream. “Damn, you two,” she shouts. “I understand that it’s gone. I see the blank space. I see the hole on the screen. But where did it go? Why is it gone? What’s happening with my station?”

  Keith walks in front of Grey while she speaks and sits behind his own terminal. He logins in and begins typing instructions. Grey finishes and steps behind his chair. She watches him work.

  “What is that?” she asks after a moment. “What are you looking at?”

  “It’s just a few different command boxes.”

  “And what do they do?”

  Keith doesn’t answer. He continues to type.

  “What do they do, Keith?”

  “They are just boxes where I can type in commands.”

  Grey paces small circles behind him and mumbles to herself. It’s quiet at first, but she gets increasingly louder.

  “... I got stuck at this God-awful place. This shit assignment that no one wants. Smile. Take it. It’s a command position. Work it for a year then put in for something else.”

  Grey looks to Rebecca. She shrugs.

  “...nope, not that one. It goes to Collins. Assistant spot on the Manhattan. To Morris. Fricking Morris. Guy couldn’t have gotten out of first year without cribbing off my work. He gets a bump. Should have kissed more ass.”

  She’s flailing her arms now. Keith feels his cheeks get warm and flushed. He’s watching her spin out of control, and he’s reminded of the time when his mother lost it on a store clerk who’d told her they were out of some meaningless item she needed. His dad had just left, and they—him, his mom, and his sister—were in the middle of a store aisle, surrounded by canned goods.

  Mom pulled the same thing. Mumbling then ranting. She ended it by pulling shelves full of canned goods to the floor. Keith looks around to make sure Grey can’t do something similar.

  The circles Grey is pacing grow. She’s making wide arcs now, covering the entire floor. She stops at the railing and leans into it. She shouts at the big screen in front of her.

  “They expect me to service all of this,” she points to the screen and the small part of space Zulu is responsible for, “but they give me this crew, this skeleton bunch of galaxy school rejects. Can’t find one damn dashboard. I should let the whole thing burn."

  Keith wants to protest. Space can't burn. It doesn't work that way. But she knows that. Just like his mom knew better than half the things she was shouting about 20 years earlier. Instead, he stays seated and let's this tantrum run its course.

  Grey's ranting is all nonsense now. She's talking about family and friends, everything spiralling away from the current situation and now encompassing any frustration she's seemingly ever had.

  Keith looks to Rebecca. He gestures her over.

  "What have you tried?" he asks once she arrives.

  "Not a lot. She kind of lost it pretty quick."

  Keith digs around in the system. He looks in directories. There's nothing on the first level.

  "Go lower," Rebecca says. It's a sub-directory. We see it on the main screen because it calls for it, but that's not where it lives. It's code is somewhere else."

  Keith digs but finds nothing.

  "You gave me an idea," he says. "Code. Go to the source."

  He goes to the root of the system and works his way back to the top, scanning the code for the lines that would power the missing dashboard.

  "Weird," he says.

  Rebecca has been watching the code flash by over Keith's shoulder.


  "It is," she says. "Where could it have gone? How did the code disappear?"

  Grey is still caught up in her moment, but she's quieter. The front of the storm has seemed to pass. We are now into the gentle rain. She's talking now about the whole idea of stations out this far and the need for Zulu to exist at all.

  "... shut the whole thing down, would anybody even notice? Maybe we shouldn't even bother with trying to fix this. Let it all collapse, one system after another. I can get everyone off this place and just go down with the place."