The Bridge: A Science Fiction Survival Story

Chapter 9: Control

"This was a mistake," Said Skip from the edge of my plot, "I never should have agreed to this, and now you're ruining perfectly good seeds."

It had been several weeks since Skip had agreed to the deal, and though he was true to his word to never set foot within my plot, his comments still came frequently.

"Skip, what did we agree on?" I asked, rehearsing passages from the guide as I ripped out sprouts that had just broken soil, leaving only the largest behind.

After seedlings have developed two leaves, remove approximately one out of every two, selecting those that are the smallest and leaving the largest behind, allowing the healthiest germinations to persist. Doing such frees up root systems, allocates space for air and light, and will provide greater yield.

"But I won't stand by for you to throw away perfectly good crops! I let you change what you wanted to plant, Horatius, after Ann planted the same thing there for twenty years! Twenty years, and you wanted to change it! Just do your gardening like you're supposed to!"

"I am," I muttered, and ignored him and the growing crowd of gardeners as I pulled plants up by the roots, tossing them away. Every step along the way Skip had balked- from changing the soil to manure composition, to using the guide to determine which plants would fare best with increased light, to making my holes in the fashion I had devised years before.

"Yeah," Shouted Nean from the growing circle, "Stupid -"

But his voice cut off as I turned to face him, the sweat beading around my eyes, gripping the shovel tight enough that my biceps showed through my shirt. A few nervous chuckles sounded as I stared at him, though far fewer than there would have been two years before, and sounding thinner.

"What was that, Nean?" I asked, "I seem to remember when you said it the first time. I remember everything that you've said, Nean. Everything. I haven't forgotten a word, and it would be best for you to stop reminding me. You may rather I forget."

Nean swallowed, and broke his gaze away as I straightened my back, now taller than him.

"We'll see," He said, turning away, "We'll see what happens when the chief hears about this, when your crops fail."

But the chief never did find out. He never had the chance.

Two days after the incident, he died in his sleep, a cluster of confused doctors surrounding his bed the next morning, wondering how someone so healthy could perish in the night. According to them, he seemed even healthier than anyone else on the ship, due to his rapid weight gain and the bump that had been growing larger on his right shoulder each year, now nearly the size of his head.

"A sign of the chief's ruling power, the arm of his law, and the power of his hand," The head doctor had said after discovering it, and the chief had taken to wearing tighter shirts to display its presence.

After his death, Pliny's apprentice had taken command, one the chief had assured the ship for years would provide a future brighter than they could imagine. And Segni had smiled at the ceremony, the crowd cheering, and had declared a feast be administered in his and his father's honor.

But one week after the chief's death, Pliny made an announcement during my lesson.

"Horatius," He said, "There is something that I wish to show you. Something that precious few know about on the ship, something that Segni should know if he attended his lessons, and that his father neglected to tell him before death. Something that I do not trust Segni with, and, should you ever become historian, you must know."

"What is it?" I had asked, placing a strawberry on the counter for Clea. It was her favorite food, and I had grown it just for her, sneaking the largest one out of my field.

"Come, follow me," He had answered, and led me from his apartment, "Keep your distance, though. We have done well in keeping our interactions secret, and now that Segni is chief, more caution may be necessary."

He led me through the corridors of the ship, to where the rooms grew colder and we approached the center, near where the ice grew on the walls. Typically, this area was deserted, the rooms too frigid for living and the fields unable to support life, and hallways turning unpredictably to behave like light and heavy rooms. It was quiet, our footsteps the sole source of noise, and our dim shadows the sole source of movement.

And after nearly a half hour of walking, Pliny opened a small side door into a stairwell, and we descended.

"Long ago, before the Hand of God," Pliny said, his voice echoing, "It is said that the ship was one. But not only was it one, Horatius, but it was different. According to records, the area we now walk was once habitable. The lights above you could once change in brightness as you desired, or the air temperature be adjusted. We know this among many other things, many other ways that we could control the ship, rather than the ship controlling us."

"Why does it matter, though, Pliny?"

"Think to gardening, Horatius. Think to how much more you could produce if you could change the lights as you wished, or even the temperature. But beyond that, think if you could decide which of the corridors were light halls. Or if you would heat this portion of the ship again, and use these fields."

"But how? How would we do that?"

"That, is the question Horatius. And rather than how, is should we."

We had come to a door, a door that was nearly encapsulated in ice, and Pliny removed a screwdriver from his pocket. Aiming for the cracks, he chipped around the edge of the door, until it shifted in the frame and he could open it.

The room we entered was caked in dust, and so cold that my breath formed in front of me, colder than I had ever experienced in my life. It jutted out beneath the ship, such that windows extended in every direction, allowing for a full view of the empty space surrounding the ship. A table was in the center, nearly a hundred books piled up on its surface, all bearing the same resemblance as the Guide to Gardening given to me by Pliny. And behind them, there were shelves of lights- tiny lights that flashed, surrounded by rows of buttons and levers, countless knobs and switches.

Above, on the ceiling, I read words that had long been forgotten, but were etched into the metal.

Command Center: The beacon in the darkness, the hope of humanity.

"What is this place?" I whispered, afraid even to break the silence, my eyes wide.

"It's how the ship used to be controlled," Answered Pliny, "It's where our greatest strength used to be."

"Then why don't we use it?" I asked, walking over to the table, "Why don't we take advantage of it?"

"Do you remember the story of the Great Thirst, Horatius?" Pliny asked, and I nodded.

"Before the Great Thirst, our numbers were at three thousand. Now they are but a third. I told you that the Great Thirst was resolved when the historian Archim discovered how to restart the flow of the water reservoirs, and that much is true."

Then Pliny leaned forward, and pointed to a row of controls at the far end of the room.

"What I never told you is that Archim is the reason why the Great Thirst occurred. That he killed two thousand people by pressing one of those buttons, because he thought he could double the reservoir production, and just barely managed to partially correct his error after several days of frantic research before the entire ship died. As I said, Horatius, we have an inkling ofhow to control the ship. But should we?"

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