Red Rock

Chapter 5: I Can't See (Part 1)

Chapter 5 I Can't See (Part 1)

Beating down on the surface of the Junket, the sun burned the salty and wet skin of unprotected travelers. Daire sat in the shade in his underwear where the temperature was only slightly cooler in the relentless humidity. His skin was pruned from being in constant sweat but it didn't bother him. He would rather sit outside in the scorching heat next to the water than be crammed in his tiny bedroom three levels below, for the ocean had a certain hypnotic quality to it. The white waves were the only entertainment he needed to get lost in his own world. It had been almost forty-eight hours since he had boarded the crowded ferry near the equator, traveling to Akin's Space Elevator.

Daire wasn't paying attention to the blurry shadows interrupting his line of sight when people walked by at their own accord until they became a frequent nuisance. Back to reality, he observed the commotion around him. "Have you seen it! C'mon let's go! It's huge!" a little girl exclaimed pulling her mother by her wrist down the gallery.

'Looks like we're almost there!' Daire thought, making his way to a staircase. He took multiple flights of stairs to the upper deck, watching passengers flood out of their holes like some kind of feeding frenzy. When the stairs came to an end, he found himself paralyzed in open 'awe' with his eyes fixed on the sky. A structure with seemingly infinite height laid on the horizon, extending from the surface of the ocean into the endless sky in the form of a long rope. The structure was Godly in nature. The minds of the smartest people in the world built this, and it took even them countless years to create. Daire felt fear - a primitive instinct engrained in him to respond to potential threats and things that he did not understand. And right now, everything he ever knew and thought possible had been shattered.

*

The Ferry arrived at the floating city hours later. The departure from the aging ship couldn't have happened at a better time, for Daire was eager to get away from the zoo of people crowding into his space. 'Welcome to Shift!' an unprofessional looking sign read as he took his first few steps on what barely passed as land for the first time in a couple of days. The current of pedestrians kept Daire moving as military personnel herded the passengers leaving the ferry. "This way sir," or "This way ma'am," they would say, slightly pushing each passenger in the right direction.

Shift had a population of around thirty thousand, consisting only of Akin Corporation employees, which included engineers, construction workers, architects, pilots, crew, dock workers, and soldiers. The soldiers were fully equipped with assault rifles making sure everyone around knew that they meant business and would not be taken lightly. Daire knew by the way the passengers were being herded toward the space elevator that occupied the middle of the city that he wouldn't be staying long.

Daire was tired of people, tired of being in crowds, tired of being ordered around, and tired of being tired. He waddled his way into a large circular building surrounding the vast carbon ribbon with thousands of his fellow travelers. People were coming from everywhere; different ferries from different parts of the globe were arriving around the giant floating platform and being funneled to the center of the city. Daire entered the building and sat down in a conveniently placed seat at the perimeter, peering out the thick clear windows of the building watching officials, workers, and soldiers scramble left to right all tasked with their individual jobs. 'What is going on?' Daire thought, curious at the behaviors of the Akin workers.

"We're going to need everyone to sit down!" yelled an official trying to get everyone's attention. It was no use, the noise in the circular building was too loud and no one cared enough to cooperate. The official yelled a second time but was again ignored by the travelers who were all involved in their own conversations. Suddenly, a large jolt shook the ground. The world around them trembled fiercely, causing screams of scared passengers not ready for such an adjustment. The sense of balance in the room had been violently altered, dragging all standing passengers to the ground in an unforgiving fashion. Holding on for dear life, Daire held on to the bottom of his seat and crunched up into a ball until the violent shaking subsided to little more than a tremor. The screaming stopped. Terror turned to awe as the circular building turned into a transport slowly spinning in an upward direction on the carbon nano-tubes.

The circular transport rose higher and higher as the space elevator delivered an increasingly stunning view of Earth each inch it came closer to high orbit. Children pressed their heads and cheeks against the window trying to see as far down as they could before getting the jitters and turning away, leaving their oily imprints behind. Daire smiled at the careless freedom the kids unconsciously shared. It didn't seem fair that their parents or guardians had taken the initiative to make such life altering decisions for their children. It was almost saddening to see their freedom of choice taken away before they could even comprehend their own rights. 'Maybe this is good for them,' Daire thought, trying to picture what the kids' futures might have in store, but it was impossible. How could he imagine their future when he couldn't even imagine his own?

Daire took the place of the children and stared out of the large windows looking down on Earth. It was almost surreal how small everything looked. Earth was no more than a rock floating on nothing. It looked like something you could find in your backyard, remnants of something much larger and made from things imperceptibly smaller. Taking the view of God, it seemed impossible to highlight humanity's importance at such heights; we were no more than bacteria on a blue marble living under a microscope. While the world was getting smaller with each passing minute, everything else was staying the same. The stars were no closer, the planets no further, space no blacker. It was an infinite scale that no unit of measure could enlighten the mind on the great masses of the universe. We were tiny, insignificant to the changes around us, our creator could destroy us just as quickly as she created us, and we could do nothing. If there was a god, she certainly seemed indifferent to the consequence of humanity.

*