A Crack in the Sky (12 page)

She was under Eli’s bed, gazing absently in the direction of Eli’s overhead fan, when suddenly it started to hum. It stopped after a second or two, but by then Marilyn was alert, her eyes wide. Had she done that? At the moment it happened, she’d felt something in her brain, like a spark. She rolled onto her stomach and fixed her gaze on the fan. She tried to make it hum again. Nothing happened. But she continued to concentrate, focusing her thoughts on it, imagining herself traveling inside its motor and through the processors that controlled it.

All at once it hummed to life, and this time its blades started spinning.

Eli looked up from his desk. “That’s weird.” He got up and jiggled the control that turned it off. Then he went back to his work.

But in the darkness under his mattress, Marilyn felt a sudden thrill. Somehow she’d tapped into the electrical system just by
thinking
about it.

Over the next few days, she discovered she could link to any of the various processors around the house. She could communicate with the dishwasher, the security system, even the sensors on the toilet seat. She felt her way through Eli’s father’s electric razor and explored the complex logic of the toxin-detection software.

And then she made her most thrilling discovery yet: Sebastian’s old Dream Gamer sent vivid images and sensations directly into her mind as if they were really happening to her. Without leaving the house she began to have incredible new experiences. She could pass entire days lying motionless, her eyes glassed over as she mentally flew over fields of dancing rhinos or rowed with Vikings to conquer exciting new lands.

Every now and then Eli’s voice would break through as if from far away. “Why don’t you take a walk or something?” he would say. “It can’t be healthy for a mongoose to lie around all the time. Go get some fresh air, explore the yard.”

Perhaps you’re right, my love
, she’d answer.
Maybe I’ll do that
.

An hour later she would be in the same position, her eyes still staring into space.

*   *   *

It had been two whole months since the attack on the filter, but Eli couldn’t help noticing that the company still didn’t have things back to normal yet. It wasn’t just sky glitches anymore either. The air felt warmer with each day that passed, and sometimes the cooling blowers would shut down for minutes at a time before coming back on. The sun was no better. If anything, it looked pinker lately.

Eli tried not to worry about these things. Nobody else seemed concerned. The CloudNet reported it was no big deal, just minor problems caused by the explosion, and the company would have the issues resolved soon. Still, he couldn’t remember any dome problems like these before. The company had always prided itself on addressing whatever minor dome issues came up before anyone even noticed.

So what was taking them so long this time?

One afternoon after a particularly grueling review of organizational-performance metrics, Eli woke Marilyn and they went out to the backyard to watch the sky together for the first time in a while. As they lay in the synthetic grass, Eli saw somebody climbing the dome.

“Look, Marilyn,” he said, suddenly alert. He’d never seen a real person up there. “Do you see that?”

Yes, darling. How odd!

The dome ceiling was busy that afternoon with so many adverts, there wasn’t much blue left. It was amazing he’d noticed anyone up there. He could tell right away it wasn’t a simulation. It was a sky engineer, perhaps two hundred feet high and several feet deep into the thick layer of skylight. He could
make out her dangling hair ribbons and blue uniform. Eli was aware that the dome had a hidden lattice system tucked among the pixels, but he’d never seen anyone use it before. The engineer appeared to be climbing steadily higher, in the direction of the sun. He wished he still had Sebastian’s spyglass.

“What do you think she’s doing?”

I imagine she’s making repairs
.

“Maybe,” he said. Under normal circumstances, Eli knew, the Sky Department saved any maintenance jobs at the top of the dome until night, when their work was less likely to disturb the sky illusion. If the company was taking the extraordinary step of sending engineers up there during the daytime, it seemed to suggest that something out of the ordinary was happening, despite the CloudNet’s assurances. He would have to ask Father about that when he had the chance.

He continued to watch, still amazed at the novelty of seeing a real person up there. “Claudia!” he called back to the house. “Come see! There’s an engineer working on the sky!”

Claudia opened the kitchen window. “Why are you wasting the day out in the grass,
mi amor?
I thought you were studying. Come inside. I make you a grilled cheese.”

There was the sound of thunder from Outside. Eli had been listening to the drumming of rain all day. “No, you should come out here and look at this!”

By the time Claudia padded out, fanning herself with a tea saucer, the engineer was at least another fifty feet higher and looked barely larger than an insect among the clouds.

“Show me,
cariño,”
Claudia said. “It’s probably just an advert.”

Eli tried to point her out, but Claudia kept squinting and
shaking her head. About halfway to the top, the engineer stopped climbing. It was hard for Eli to see exactly what she was doing, but it looked like she reached deeper into the light, and then a tiny part of the sky seemed to swing open, revealing what looked like a narrow black splinter behind the layers of translucent blue—a crack in the dome.

“Do you see that?” Eli asked, amazed. “A door in the sky!”

Marilyn hopped onto Eli’s shoulder.
I had no idea there were doors up there
.

It was news to Eli too, although now that he thought about it, he realized Dome Maintenance probably had all kinds of stuff up there that most people didn’t know about. It made sense for the engineers to have somewhere to put their equipment.

For a few seconds the engineer disappeared through the door, and then she returned again. Claudia was still squinting. She shaded her puzzled eyes with her hand.

“Where are you looking? I don’t see any engineer.”

Suddenly there was a deafening crash a lot like thunder, and then a buzzing sound shook the sky. The engineer seemed to wobble, and the next thing Eli knew, she was falling.

Even Claudia saw her now. She gasped.

Eli watched with horror as the engineer plummeted from the clouds. Almost as soon as she started to fall, a cord shot from her body to the top of the dome. It must have held fast to something behind the light, because in seconds it tensed and slowed her fall like an elastic band. Soon she was swinging back and forth—a long, thin pendulum in the sky.

The dome made another earsplitting crackle, and then, far to the left of the spot in the sky where the engineer had
dropped, fiery sparks started to fly in all directions. Marilyn shrieked. Eli felt her claws digging into his shoulder as he watched the sky begin to change. First one pixel and then another went violet. It started as a tiny dot, but it grew like a bruise spreading in fast motion. Soon it stretched in all directions, wiping out every cloud until the entire dome was electric purple.

An instant later everything went dark.

This time it was Eli who gasped.

“¡Dios mío!”
Claudia whispered beside him.

Eli had never seen the dome do anything like this before. It was the middle of the afternoon and the three of them were standing in complete darkness. There weren’t even stars.

All around them he could hear neighbors opening their windows and calling out to each other, wondering what was going on.

It took almost an hour for Dome Maintenance to get the sky back up. They had to reboot the whole system. Even then it was obvious things still weren’t right. The air grew so warm it was hard to think, and Eli could hear the cooling blowers struggling to restart. For more than twenty minutes, a thin spray of water showered down onto the corner of Benefit and Thayer streets as if from some unseen pipe in the dome. People gathered around it and watched. Most startling of all, every now and then large patches of the sky flashed with unexpected colors. The area over the Bank of InfiniCorp building would turn brown and then green. The horizon would blink metallic silver.

It was distressing.

Eventually the company got the blowers working and the water leak plugged. A smiling news lady, plump and thirtyish with glittery teeth, appeared on the CloudNet to explain what had happened.

“This afternoon the city of Providence was once again the setting of a dramatic dome incident, this time caused by a creative product launch gone awry. Apparently an overly playful marketing intern in the Atlanta-based Department of Refreshments decided to surprise his supervisor with an ambitious and”—she made a wry smile—“not entirely
authorized
kickoff campaign for our newly formulated grape soda. The idea was a dazzling purple daytime display, but unfortunately the intern’s program included an error that caused the municipal sky to temporarily shut down. A sky engineer doing routine maintenance was thrown from the dome ceiling, but nobody was hurt, and no lasting damage was done to the system.”

Her coanchor, a man with bright blue hair piled several inches above his head, chuckled. “Seems like we’ve got the makings of a true marketing genius on our hands.”

The two of them laughed.

“The intern has been reprimanded,” continued the blue-haired man, “but no criminal charges are being made at this time. As we speak, the Providence sky is putting on quite a display. Residents are urged not to be concerned. The discolorations will return to normal. Rest assured, the company has everything under control.”

“In the meantime,” the lady said, “enjoy the show!”

*   *   *

Eli went back to his room and tried again to concentrate on his studies, but it wasn’t easy. Through his window he could see the sky still turning odd colors: one second it would flash in pink and green stripes, then entirely black, then back to normal again. It did this every few minutes and was different each time. He’d never seen anything like it before. It was as if Leonardo, his imaginary sky artist, had lost his mind and the curious images Eli had been noticing for weeks were starting to take over. And yet nobody else seemed concerned.

He couldn’t help remembering what the crazed Outsider had said:
Your dreamworld is breaking up before your very eyes
.

He had to admit, it was spooky.

He shut his study module and rubbed his forehead. “I think my brain is going to explode.”

Marilyn didn’t answer right away. At that moment, only her tail was visible, hanging limply over the top of one of Eli’s open drawers. After the excitement of the sky malfunction, she’d wasted no time in linking herself to another dream game.

Hush, darling …
, she said, her voice so distant he could barely feel it.
I’m flying over medieval France in an air balloon. It’s harvest season.…

Eli sighed. He couldn’t bring himself to go back to his mind-numbing lesson just yet. After a moment he reached up and let his finger pass through the surface of the CloudNet sphere that floated over his desk. At once a face appeared, a beautiful blond girl of about seventeen, with flawless skin and a perfect white smile. Her name was Heather, and she was one
of the CloudNet assistants. Eli knew she was artificial, of course, but every time he saw her she gave him butterflies.

“Eli! Hon!” she said. “How
fabulous
to
see
you!”

His face went warm, and for a moment he looked down at his hands.

“What’s up this time, big guy? Hey, there’s a new Dirk Drickland stream. You’re gonna
love
it!” Her head morphed into a shot of a muscular boy with long silver hair and a knife clenched between his teeth. He was climbing a steep cliff as flaming arrows whizzed past his head.

“Oh my
god
!” Heather said. “This episode totally fries!”

Eli rubbed his forehead again. “Actually, that’s not what I—”

“Okay, okay. Not a big Dirk fan, I get it. No prob. Oh, I know! A new look ought to perk you!” The image of Dirk morphed into a series of grinning boys in billowing shirts. “Just a tip: think vertical stripes, Eli. They would
so
make you look taller.”

Eli held up his hand. “No, no! Stop, please!”

Heather’s pretty head filled the sphere again, only now she was pouting. “No need to get huffy. I was just trying to help.”

He considered requesting a different CloudNet assistant, but her eyes were on him again and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Heather,” he said, “did anything happen to pop up on the CloudNet about … you know … the Outsider lady with the white eye?”

“That again?” She wrinkled her nose. “God, Eli, you should stop wasting your time asking the same dumb questions about crazy Outsiders. Don’t you have studying to do?”

He ignored her. “Can you please search one more time?
Maybe there’s something new. One of the perimeter Guardians might have picked her up or something.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re the boss. No, there’s still no report of any Outsider with an all-white eye. There’s a sale today on artificial irises, though. Want to see the selection?”

“Please, I’m serious.”

She giggled. “Okay, Eli. You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”

“Check again on Outsiders. And while you’re at it, look into why the sky is taking so long to fix. Are there any known dome-design weaknesses tied to the air filters? Maybe a software flaw or something?” He paused as another idea came to him. “Look up the Final Days too. Any information about the end of the world, maybe in the form of a giant storm that could be on its way. If there’s even the possibility the weather could do permanent damage to the domes, I want to know.”

“If you say so,” she said. “Okay, I just checked, and there’s nothing about any giant storm or dome-design weaknesses. And you already know why the sky’s taking so long to repair. It’s because the Fogger attack did so much damage. As far as the Final Days, there are gobs and gobs of information about that, Eli. People have been predicting the end of the world since forever! Do you really want me to list out zillions of files?”