Lightning Thief

1023 P.N

21:00 

I failed. I failed Her.

And now I am running, chest heaving, stumbling over peaked dunes, kicking up the red dirt on Surface Hill, aware of the shouts and pounding feet behind me. My heavy sack bangs against my legs and I consider tossing it into a crate, but the precious cargo within will take me an eternity to gain back. 

I have a lengthy run ahead - over a mile, across unstable Surface terrain, down sandy banks, through my hole in the boundary fence back into the Depths, then along backstreets until I reach my hatch on 11th. Rain pelts my face and I can feel my hair stand on its ends, the atmosphere charged.

Toes curled in my boots, I lower my body against the wind and sprint, full force towards home.

21:58

For my incompetence, I punish myself by letting out only one Spore per room - one for the diner/ kitchen/ office space/ my bedroom area and one for Her bedroom. My old bedroom remains in darkness, still sealed off with binder tape - we can’t afford such luxuries now.

There is no sound, bar the hum of the tiny balls of light that drift about- fireflies contained in spheres, bouncing off of walls and ceilings. 

There is no other light other than the occasional flicker from our hatch jellyfish; they float about lazily in their standard-issue aquarium. 

Uncorked bottle in hand, I slump at my desk, a sigh heavy in my mouth. I need two Spores in this room alone if I’m going to complete a sleepless night of pacing, trying to come up with a new plan, but I can’t bear to take away Her comfort. 

On the desk before me is my livelihood: fantasy art, depictions of history so long ago, sold at market to curious minds. Beneath these are diagrams and drawings - 30 P.Ns of desperate planning to infiltrate Surface Hill - and for what? Angry, I upset the piles of paper onto the floor and then groan as I hear bedsprings creak.

She’s awake.

I rise and peer around Her door. The lonesome Spore rests on her dresser and illuminates half of her face in a yellow veil. I see her puffy eyes and the burgundy blotches sprayed across her neck and cheeks. Her little body rises and falls in an unsynchronised fashion and I notice her fists are clenched. This isn’t conscious - a lump forms in my throat.

I can’t tell her - not tonight. 

Avoiding her eyes, I lurch to her bedside unit and yank the drawer; a cacophony of rattling sounds as amber glass bottles roll into view, their contents a variety of colours and shapes. In silence, I unscrew one and shake two pills into my palm. It’s almost empty, not that I haven't noticed - the red note on my memo board reminds me every morning.

“What happened?”

I ignore her question and gesture. She lets me place the pills on her tongue and swallows them dutifully. Then I guide her backwards into a lying position and place a kiss on her forehead, my fingers brushing her cold bald scalp, lingering on the thick black scar that judders from temple to temple.

1028 P.N 

07:23 

MEDICAL BILL - OVERDUE.

The envelope (and its predecessors) lies unopened in a pile on the floor directly below my hatch opening. I flip this latest instalment over onto its belly with my foot so I don’t have to see the big bold red letters peeking through the cellophane window. It amuses me, that despite being well over a millennia past The Night and its outdated methods and lifestyles, Council still insist on contacting all inhabitants through post.

I blow on my heated grain milk and turn my attention back to the caster; previously muted, I punch up the volume and chew my lip as the daily Light Values slide across the screen.

Damn. 10 Spores are now worth only half a Flare, but the price of Photon, Lumen and Lux have risen again.

The caster agent, a blonde woman with dazzling teeth, happily announces the birth of yet another Councilman’s baby, that the Trading festival on the Surface continues into its fourth day and that the Depths can expect a few rain showers in the afternoon. 

This agent wears a clean white shirt tucked into pants underneath a wool blue jumper with gold embroidery along the sleeves. Council issued - of course, the trademark calligraphed C sewed prominently over her breast. I wonder if the caster agent is planning to attend the festival later, to joke over mai-tais with her peers about her flashy estate, whilst standing in her neat-as-a-pin uniform and manicured nails. My lip curls and I flick red clay remnants from underneath my own fingernails and notice suddenly that my nailbeds are yellow-brown.

Suddenly a shrill noise sounds and I whip around to find a reminder pop up on my memo board. It’s just approaching 07:33 Roes (short for rotations, or 07:33 am in old speak), but if I hurry I can make it to The Outpost by 8. I yank on the ladder to the hatch and scoop up my sack and the overturned letter as I go.

08:03 

The Outpost, the central hub of all main activity in the Depths is, as expected, swarming. 

Today’s Value shift has seemingly set every sane person into a panic, employed or not because, by the time I arrive, my queue stub reads #101. Thankfully, a few inhabitants grow impatient of waiting and within the rotation, it’s my turn to step up to the window.

Dean is on duty again and he smiles weakly as I drop my sack onto the counter.

“Buying or selling?” he asks obligatorily. We both know I am never in a position to make a profit from The Outpost. I gaze at the coded heavy steel door sitting behind The Outpost workers. 

When I was young, my School day trip to The Outpost taught me that the Vault contained miles of tunnels, snaking underground to chambers of shelves and units, crammed with pretty much everything an inhabitant of the Depths could ever want. I had watched a video file in the library archives of something called a warehouse and seen how people used to race through shelves of stock sourcing purchases, before boxing them up in cardboard and setting them on crates. Now, of course, the Vault is stocked by machinery and purchases are summoned through pipework to the front counters. 

“Dean,” I trill. “Is Maggie out of the maternity ward yet?” 

Though Dean spends all of his spare time at mine playing Hold ‘Em, my introductory chatter is merely for the benefit of the ears around us. 

Dean frowns and strokes his peppered stubble. I beam at him and his shoulders sag.

“Listen” he whispers rounding forward to bend towards me. “I can’t keep looking the other way dude - you know the Council’ll be onto me before I -”

“I know bud” I whisper back, interrupting. “But I’ll make good on my promise; besides, I need to get you and Mags over to mine soon so I can cook a good meal-”

“A good meal isn’t going to cut it in the lockup” Dean hisses and grimaces as the worker beside him shoots a look in our direction. Dean rubs the cuff of his fraying Council uniform.

“I can’t risk it - not now that we have another little one.”

He jerks back as I rummage violently in my sack and produce a vial containing a shimmering molten gold-coloured liquid. I cup it protectively in my fist, shielding it so only we can see it. His eyes go wide and he glances around nervously.

“Where did you get that?” he hisses and cups his hand over mine, visibly shaken. 

“Dude, what the hell are you doing?”

“Giving you a downpayment.”

I am aware of the physical and metaphorical gold in my possession. 

“You can have this if you double my quota for Zumoride - deal?” 

Dean’s nostrils flare with excitement, his hands twitch over mine. He’s doing the calculations, weighing up the benefits and the risks.

“Hey, whatdya name the baby?” I ask bringing Dean back to focus.

“Huh?”

“The baby - what’s its name?”

“Ariah.”  

Cute, I think.

“Have you got your bill from the Infirmary yet?” 

I can tell by the way Dean’s shoulders hunch up to his ears that he has- he bites his lip and slips the vial from my hand.

Pushing back in his chair, he goes to work processing my order, fingertips swiping and tapping away at his portable caster. With a final tap, it's done and my vial disappears from view- into Dean’s pocket. He’ll have to make the conversion into Flares later after dark - there’s no way a Lumen could be found in the boundaries of the Depths, least on a Depthsman himself. We can’t afford them.

I remove my sack from the counter as its compartment opens up and spits out 2 amber bottles, filled with pills.

I wave and shout something about dinner plans with Dean’s family as I leave the queue, eager to get home.

Finally, She will have her first double dose of Zumoride this year.

I decide I will bake a fruit loaf (her favourite) to celebrate and envision letting out three Spores tonight. As I walk through the streets, my mind full of possibilities, I fail to notice the shadow cast across my back, bouncing with increasing footfall, and as I exit The Outpost city lines, I feel a crunch across my skull and everything goes black.

1037 P.N

19:45

“I want to hear The Story.”

My gaze, resting on my hands folded in my lap switches to hers, chocolate eyes pleading at me. I am aware She is stalling her final meds before bed and I know why. Perched on her bed, I hold open my arms and she clambers into them, warm scalp pressed to my cheek. I remember the days I would anticipate a mouthful of afro-puff pigtails, but now the gap between us is a reminder of her predicament.

“Again?” I laugh and She giggles. She knows it's a long one and settles her back against my stomach to get comfortable.

And so I tell Her - The Story, our Story. 

The tale of how we, the remnants of humanity, came to be here on 1037 P.N (Polar Night), 1000 years clear of The Night, the day the star they called the Sun, died. 

I tell her how the broken planet we inhabit, once lush and green, became arid and hard, an expanse of wasteland. 

I tell Her that, to sustain life, Council discovered and harnessed the power of secondary light sources, from both animals and weather that would power and heat our cities 24/7 and provide a new currency. Thus, they created the Light Values: Spores, Flares and Photons, originating from animals, like jellyfish and fireflies, and Lumens and Lux, originating from elements like fire and lightning. 

Over time, the cities separated and became the Surface and the Depths: the rich and the poor, divided not just by a wired fence and boundary patrol, but also by their access to Light Values. 

The rich became richer and made investments to harvest their own Lumen and Lux. They bought access to fire-making tools. They installed Lux panels on their roofs and tower-high funnels in their sand gardens, ready to conduct lighting during frequent electrical storms. The panels powered their homes and the funnels produced an abundance of fulgurite, a natural mass formed when lightning strikes sand.

Council use Surface Hill- acres of land fitted with funnels every square meter- as their core harvesting field for fulgurite. Just one piece of fulgurite crystal became equivalent to humanity’s highest Light Value - a Lux.

At this, I stop. We know this part all too well.

Together we turn to look at the empty amber bottles at the edge of her bed. There will be no Zumoride tonight, tomorrow or for the foreseeable future. 

“I’m sorry,” I say and wince as pain dances across my vision. She tenderly touches the welt protruding from the crown of my head. 

I hadn’t alerted Council about the mugging. What would I say- someone stole medication I had just purchased from a trusted employee of the state who accepted a stolen Lumen?

Suddenly, She stiffens in my lap and I grasp her wrist as I see her teeth clamp down on her tongue, her muscles twitching, eyes blank. I call her name in despair, but all I can do is watch as the seizure takes hold of her and vow to return to Surface Hill during the next electrical storm.

1041 P.N

18:00

Dean called me crazy at my own dinner table. I told him I knew the risks and was out of options. He said harvesting fulgurite during an electrical storm was suicide and I said She needs the surgery imminently and I don’t have years to convert worthless Flares into Lux; neither can I bear to allow Council workers to collect all those crystals the morning after for themselves.

Maggie shushed Ariah in her arms and gave me a sympathetic smile.

“Will the surgery work this time?” she asked as Dean speared a carrot and launched into a familiar dialogue about the injustices of the Depths.

I shrugged.

“I have to give us the option to try.”

1048 P.N

07:31

And there it is - the news I’ve been waiting for. Thank you, I whisper to the caster agent pointing to weather charts. 

Just four days to go.

1050 P.N

07:23

Dean’s weathered face flashes onto my caster and I sink into my chair, mouth agape as the allegations fly across the screen in their tape ticker. Serious, fraud, investigation…

My mind whirls in panic and I dive at my new plan markups, desperate to get the job done and do what I said I would do - for Her. And for Dean.

1052 P.N

22:13

Boundary patrol had doubled since the investigation launched, but my hole in the fence remained happy to see me. I’d shuffled along the edge of the dunes and ducked past jittery boundary officers swinging flare sticks and guns, too busy watching the darkening skies to notice me bypass the warning signs surrounding the harvesting enclosure. I’d planned to this point - from here forward, I was in new territory.

The land before me is like a golden patchwork quilt: funnels stand tall, reaching to the sky, whilst eight thinner wires shoot from its base into the sand. At the moment, the sand lies barren, awaiting the promised abundance of fulgurite crystals, months' worth of wealth attainable from just one lightning bolt. I crouch low on the edge of the loading bay, sack at my feet, as I feel my skin crawl and my fingers itch. Any moment now.

My mind wonders to her. Recently, her bronze complexion had faded, and she had become silent, bar the intermittent whimpers and thrashing limbs beneath her duvet. I hadn’t sat and held her hand in days, but left untouched bowls of grey sludge on her dresser; it was all a few Flares could buy us, my paintings worthless in the Value rise. 

I burned in anger at the news reports I watched every morning of thriving Surfacers, living in obscene affluence, uncaring about the suffering of their relatives beyond the rusty barricade.

Just you wait until dawn, I’d whispered to her sleeping form as I’d left our darkened home.

Then I think of Dean.

Maggie’ll lose the hatch now that her husband is a criminal; she and her children will be dependants of the state, caged in boxed housing they used to call tower flats, with limited access to all Light Values, as determined by Council. 

I told Dean I would make good on my promise and today, I will hand deliver his inheritance, what he is owed, to his grief-racked wife in her new pitiful slum residence.

Then I will gather my child in my arms, march boldly across the lawful boundary crossing and straight into the nearest Surface Infirmary, demanding to see the best neurologist in the city, my fist full of fresh fulgurite crystals. We’d never need to set foot in the Depths again.

I am breathing hard now, lips pursed and eyes darting across the skies, watching for that tell-tell burst of light. And then it happens; a crack in the sky and beautiful brilliant light hurls towards the ground. The sound is deafening; my entire body vibrates as I watch, frozen in time, pure light, so scarce to our fractured world, create fissures in the sand and little tubes of glass pop into being.

Meters away, a cluster of fulgurite, the size of two fists, skids to a halt, thrown from its point of origin in an explosion of creation.  

My eyes glaze. Our ticket to life on the Surface, just me and her, moments away. 

A piece of salvation.

My hips and legs unfold and I gallop towards my treasure, hand enclosing around it gratefully. 

“Stop and come out - slowly.”

An officer beyond the enclosure steps from the shadows, his gun aimed at my chest. Damn.

Around us, the thunder ripples through the air and I feel a second wave of tingles in my extremities. He must feel it too, because suddenly he starts to shift and dance, unsure to run or stay to apprehend me.

The bang beside my head makes us both jump and as my feet start to escape, I marvel at the light, white and stark zipping past my head towards a funnel; I have dodged death. 

But then the bullet from the discharged gun flies through my chest and I plummet to the ground as my life and the cluster, my daughter’s deliverance, rolls forever to oblivion.