Barrier

Chapter 13: Emmy

They found me hours later, crouched in a small ventilation corner four floors above the screen room. It was strange - I have no memory of getting there. There was a bruise on my leg as if I’d tripped over something, but I didn’t remember that either. I do remember feeling like the walls were closing in on me, like they were suffocating me but I couldn’t move. It must have died down eventually; Rachel said I looked quite calm when they found me.

I didn’t feel calm. I didn’t feel anything, but that’s not the same thing as being calm.

They covered me with a black blanket. Its sensors attached to my skin for a couple of seconds, then adjusted its temperature. I watched it work, in need of something to focus on. Caryn brought a dish of food, a ready-made one from the central Printers. It didn’t taste like anything but it felt good to have a full stomach. It took away the hollowness, a little.

Caryn left to take care of something else but Rachel sat with me until I was finished the meal and the LED on the blanket had gone green. She gave me a hand up and I walked with her on a path sloping downwards until we came to a set of double doors. Real ones, too.

We pushed through and entered one of the three main halls. I kept my eyes shut for the first few seconds – afraid of what I might see, I think. I looked around when I heard familiar voices and almost smiled.

It was an incredible sight. People were sitting along rows of benches – in order of arrival time, judging by the fatigued looks on the newest ones’ faces. People were grouped together. There were children everywhere, concentrated in the centre with blankets and floating heaters. Even isolated as our family had been, I was sure this wasn’t an ordinary occurrence.

It struck me as a trange time for community spirit, but I wasn’t complaining.

Moving efficiently amidst all the bustle in their blue headbands were Caryn and three others I didn’t recognize. Two men were organizing new arrivals near where Charlotte was setting up her space. A woman in her thirties with frizzy blonde hair and unnaturally white teeth  served food and diverted questions to a grumbling Caryn.

I didn’t blame her for being grumpy. It couldn’t be pleasant having to break bad news all the time. I caught snatches of her labours as I passed.

‘When are we going back?’ The woman’s strident tones cut through the air like a knife; most people still ignored her.

‘Who are you?’

‘Why are you doing this for us?’

‘What just happened?’

Again and again – ‘When are we going back?’

Caryn was getting more and more exasperated as the day passed. I felt sorry for her, when I wasn’t busy feeling sorry for myself.

It appeared that people didn’t like facing the truth. It had been a week, and the commotion had hardly died down. New people were arriving in their hundreds every few days, and leaving only slowly to be settled elsewhere.

I saw Charlotte from the corner of my eye. I wasn’t finished with her. I marched over to where she was kneeling, connecting the contact pads on her bedding to the floor. She wouldn’t use what they’d provided. She’d brought her own special kind, designed to prevent wrinkles or back problems. She had the luxury of knowing, of knowing Liskarn was going to be destroyed a week in advance and she didn’t do anything about it.

I forced myself to cool down, to get a little of the not-caring emptiness I had earlier back so I could talk to her. I was still hoping she had an excuse, some kind of extenuating circumstance. She whipped her head around when I touched her side.

‘Sorry,’ she said when she saw it was me. ‘You startled me for a minute there.’

I just looked at her. Why had I bothered coming over?

She sighed. ‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘Charlotte.’ I said.

She shut her eyes. ‘I said I’m sorry.’

‘I just don’t understand! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell everyone?’

‘I couldn’t!’ she said.

‘If it were me,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘I wouldn’t care about ‘not supposed to say’. If it were me, I’d think about all the people that were going to die and I’d get them out, Charlotte!’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘What don’t I understand? What?’

She started to turn away. I stopped her. ‘Wait, just tell me – how did you know about it in the first place?’

‘My parents told me.’

‘But how did they know?’

She hesitated. ‘Emmy, you can’t say this to anyone else. Right?’

I nodded.

‘My cousin Diro works there. He told my parents that Europa is clustering in further and all the outlying settlements are being destroyed.’

‘Why? Why do we have to go closer?’

‘He didn’t say much, just that – well, you know how Heaven’s fifty year anniversary is coming up?’

‘Yep.’

‘They want to move onto Phase 2, he said, something about one of their new machines working better over a small area. We weren’t really paying attention to the reason why, you know?’

‘Phase 2?

She continued as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘He said he didn’t have much time, that we weren’t to tell anyone else or it would be really dangerous for him – he was telling me how they got a new boss a few months back, changed everything –’

‘Right, so they wanted to move onto this new Phase 2 thing, with a machine that works better over short distances. Why did they need to destroy settlements though?’

‘Emmy, don’t you remember what happened in the 50s, with the Isolates? We needed to cluster then, and the Three tried really hard to get everyone to come within the boundaries, but some people didn’t and – it’s so sad, Emmy – the Three put up barriers against the natural disasters they warned us about and –’

‘Anyone left outside the barriers died, I know. It’s sad, but it was a long time ago. This is not.’

‘Let me finish,’ she said, looking at me reproachfully. ‘They’re just being responsible. They couldn’t let that happen again. I mean, what if Liskarn got trapped outside the new cluster? What would we do then?’

‘I get it, Charlotte. I just – why weren’t we told? Why did no one tell us so we could move?’

‘It was their new boss. Diro was brave even to tell us. The old boss had the message ready to be sent out, everyone was supposed to have three months to get out – but then the new one came in and stopped it at the last minute.’

‘What?

‘Yeah, he didn’t understand it either. There was nothing they could do. They said he terrified them.’

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘Do you see why I couldn’t say anything?’

I looked down. ‘You still should’ve told people. Don’t you understand the consequences?’

She gripped my collar fiercely. ‘I know now, Emmy. But I didn’t then. I just wanted my family to stay safe. You can’t blame me for that.’

‘And where’s my family, Charlotte? You know, the one I didn’t get to take with me because you didn’t warn me, you didn’t warn any of us? You can just walk right back over to your parents in that corner and pretend none of this ever happened, but my mother is dead. Noah and Liam could be anywhere. The only person I have is you – and Charlotte, I don’t even know if I can trust you anymore.’

I walked away before I could hear her reply.