HOWARD DEKAKE

Howard Dekake had barely slept in three days, not since that night. He had tried going to bed as usual, but sleep itself was impossible. His mind kept turning over and under what he had heard, trying without success to make it mean something else, something innocuous. He tried telling himself that it was just some boozy babbling or something he had imagined, but its internal logic was too powerful, it fit too tightly with everything else. He wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, about it but there was no one he could trust. So he had to carry that poisonous knowledge himself, and it gave him no respite.

He had become desperate for sleep, just a few hours of quiet oblivion. The night before he had tried everything. When alcohol didn’t work Howard had tried a sleeping pill washed down with some warm milk. Useless. Instead of knocking him out, the pill had given him a distracting sense of unreality. It seemed that if he squinted just right he might see through the brush strokes of his perceptions to the canvas that held the grand illusion together. Howard chased that skeptic fantasy around in circles for most of the night but it held nothing.

The timed lights flipped on at their normal hour and he got out of bed. He walked into the bathroom and started shaving as he would have any other day, but it was hard for him to pay attention. The light, the tactile sensation of shaving had pushed aside the night’s illusions but in its place his mind returned to those words overheard. Just a simple slip by a man in a position to know things, but it was enough. Three days of obsessive thought had worn groves in his mind, each point following the next with rote inevitably. It had become a silent inescapable mantra pushing everything else out of his head. Howard couldn’t deny the conclusion, that it was all pointless now.

He might have stood in front of the shaving mirror for hours if his head had not started buzzing. The buzzing came from just behind his left ear, where the Punitive Anti-truancy Chip (PAC) was installed, and it was jarring enough to break his nihilistic reverie. The chip and it’s degrading buzzing was just another thing that he had put up with his entire life, put up with because he had believed in the larger purpose. Now it was another petty oppression forcing him into another day of tending machines and aquaculture tanks in the nausea inducing near weightlessness of the ships core.

The buzzing was to let him know that he had fifteen minutes to make the lift for work. If he missed the lift the chip would report him the Center for Productivity through Discipline (CPD). The CPD encouraged punctuality through the judicious application misery and boredom in the form of privilege reduction and happiness counseling. Howard quickly finished shaving, pulled on a jump suite and his thin-soled shoes, and hurried out the door.

In order to make the lift Howard was going to have to use the sub-corridors, there was a way down near his room. He walked to a bulkhead and pulled it open. Behind it was a short fixed ladder that descended down a narrow tube, the end of which was obscured in darkness. Howard climbed down the ladder; the treads were hard and narrow through his shoes. The sub-corridors spread throughout the ship. They were the principle access to most of the basic infrastructure, but the systems rarely broke down, and so the corridors were not used very often. For this reason the corridors were kept mostly dark. The only lights were motion sensitive, each flipping on with his approach and then off with his departure. Because of the brightness of the lights and the darkness of the hall it was impossible to see farther than ten or fifteen feet in any direction. Sometimes kids, the adventurous sort, would use the corridors to play hiding games, staying still or crawling along the floor to keep the lights from giving them away. To Howard’s fatigue fogged mind, that unchanging pool of light gave him all the sense of motion that a treadmill might.

His feet guided him by habit, a left turn, then a right turn, and then straight. The sub-corridors were one of the only places on the ship with litter. Mostly it was the detritus of children at play, the kinds of things that wouldn’t be missed. He passed a paper airplane folded from what looked to be a school worksheet and then a half inflated red ball. The buzzing in his head was getting worse, putting Howard on edge. He kicked the red ball; it made a dense thumping sound against his foot and shot into the darkness. It slapped against the corridor wall, the impact slowed it down enough to wake up a light. He could see it rolling unevenly along the floor for a moment, then the light shut off.

Howard took one more turning and arrived at his ladder out. He climbed doggedly up and pushed the bulkhead open. He was now in a commercial/social center. It was a wide boulevard with a 15 foot ceilings, higher ceiling than usual for the residential shell. There were a few kiosks selling hot drinks and snacks, some bars and restaurants that were shuttered for the morning, and a well worn playground, the kinds of things that encouraged people to leave their living quarters.

The lift was in it’s own building, about 100 ft from were Howard had exited the sub-corridors. He hurried over to it and walked in the door. The room was filled with backs, the rest of the shift listening to the end of the daily briefing. Giving the briefing was labor lieutenant Ellen Cassenoix. She was tall, strong woman about ten years older than he. Howard found her intimidation and tried to stay below notice as much as possible.

“Okay people, that wraps the days work detail. You’ll get your individual assignments when we reach the core.” Said Ellen. She paused for a moment, and then looked directly at Howard before turning and punching the door key for the elevator. The door slid silently open and Howard shuffled forward with the rest of the group. He tossed a nonchalant nod toward Ellen. Her brows drew down into a definite frown. “Shit” he muttered. The last of the group save Howard and Ellen entered the elevator. Howard nearly inside when Ellen grabbed his arm.

“You missed the briefing again today.”

“I’m sorry, I got lost.” Howard’s tiredness was making him bolder than usual.

Ellen ignored this. “You look like something my cat puked up Dekake.”

“I’m here, what else do you want.”

“Well I’d like it if you looked like you had slept last night, but I’d settle for you not stinking” said Ellen. “It’s bad enough breathing this thousand year old air without you polluting it.”

Howard really didn’t want this conversation. There was a dangerous throbbing behind his eyes and a plaintiff voice in his head that was emphatically agreeing with everything Ellen said. He looked longingly toward the interior of the elevator. Eighteen pairs of carefully averted eyes didn’t meet his gaze. No help there. “I’m sorry lieutenant. I just wanted to make it to work. I promise to give hygiene my full attention at the end of the day.”

“Shut up Dekake” said Ellen. There was a pause; Howard imagined he could hear Ellen counting to ten. “Take a seat, you’re holding everything up.”

“Yes lieutenant.” Howard sat.

Howard entered the lift and took a seat. Ellen followed, stopping just inside the door to punch a button and then taking a seat herself. The doors slid closed silently, and then with a slight jar, the lift began the assent.

The trip only took about five minutes, pretty remarkable given the near 1½ distance that had to be covered, and for the most part nobody talked during the ride up. Some people said that they enjoyed the view, passing through the park level, and then watching it drop away into a patchwork of greens that extended in all directions. But even those who enjoyed the view acknowledged that the shifting gravity on the way up was unpleasant. Howard kept his eyes screwed shut in a vain attempt to avoid vertigo and ritualistically cursed the engineer who had designed windows into the lift.

Finally, after what had seemed an eternity, the lift arrived at the core with a solid sounding thump. Around him the other workers were pulling magnetic crampons from beneath the seats and placing them over their shoes, after a moment Howard did likewise. Seeing that everyone was ready Ellen opened the door and stepped outside with the careful choppy gait granted by the crampons. Just outside the door she stopped and waited. The rest of the workers followed; as they passed Ellen she handed each worker a tablet detailing their assignment for the day. Howard waited in turn. Ellen handed him a tablet. He read his detail, welding on the exterior of the core, hanging from a flimsy tether with the ground 1½ miles in any direction he might care to look while attempting to patch a corroded metal panel. Howard shuddered.