Voltra Dreams of Blue Skies
My grandma always told me of the blue skies before the time of the storms.
“The blue just went on and on,” she said. “Half of what you saw was blue all day, sometimes spotted with white with clouds. It felt endless, until it wasn’t.”
“Why did the storms start?”
“We took the world for granted,” Grandma said. “At least those who were in charge did.”
“Just a few did this to everyone?” I asked. “Why?”
“That was the way of the world before the storms,” she said. “People looked out for themselves, while the world was dying. Since lightning is dangerous for everyone, it brought us together again.”
“I would have loved to see the sky, just like it was before,” I said, closing my eyes to imagine. Grandma leaned over to kiss me on my forehead.
“Blue dreams, my angel,” she said. It made me smile.
And so blue dreams found me that night. I stood at the peak of a mountain, high above the dark lightning clouds. The sky absorbed most of what I could see, feeling almost endless. I woke up with the start of an idea burning inside my mind. If only I could climb high enough to get past the clouds, I could see the sky the way it was before, the way it still was up there.
There was a way to go outside, with protective grounding gear that some wore to look for food and materials outside. It was metal, with cables that connected to the ground to cast off lightning that might strike you. The metal worn was insulated with wood, plastic, or rubber. Wood was the most plentiful, but there was always plastic in the world.
“Would the clouds end if you went high enough?” I asked at breakfast. We lived underground, but still followed the time counting of old. The day and night still made sense, but the difference between bright and dark was small because of the black clouds in the sky creating lightning.
“It’s very cold up there,” dad said.
“And there is no air,” mom added. “There's less and less breathable air the further you go, so everything takes a lot longer.”
“But would the sky look blue?” I pushed.
“I suppose,” dad said. “Blue like your fingers when you get up there. It’s THAT cold.”
“Have you ever gone up that high?” I asked. Dad looked to mom for a moment of silent communication.
“No, that’s a bad idea by all accounts,” he replied. “There is nothing to see up there. The hunting parties don’t even need to go that far.”
“But—”
“Finish your breakfast, honey,” Mom cut in, “Gotta get you to school.”
I looked down at the bowl of oatmeal with apples and raisins. The world was dangerous above ground. Countless people not geared enough failed to come back. Uncle Jay was one of those unlucky in the hunting party.
I brought the idea up to my friends at school.
“That’s silly,” Mark said. “There is nothing up there except more lightning and more clouds.”
“It’s not silly!” I replied.
“I believe you,” Hannah said. “It would be amazing to see the vast blue sky above, but it’s dangerous to try to go outside. It’s safer to live underground.”
“Safe isn’t enough,” I said. “It’s not enough for Voltra.”
“Your name’s Tamara, dummy,” Mark said, and made himself scarce before I got a chance to hit him. Hannah looked at me with a smile.
“I like Voltra more,” she said.
“Me too,” I said. We locked hands and walked to class together.
Most of the things we learned at school had to do with the world underground. We learned how things worked, and how people interacted, and about the brave hunting parties clad in insulated gear. By the time lunch rolled around, I felt subdued in my dreaming. No matter how many times I brought up the subject of going above the clouds, the teachers shot the idea down.
I found myself at odds with everyone, even if they wanted to keep me safe just like my parents, I could not stop dreaming of blue skies. Every night I was either flying through them, or sprawled on a patch of grass looking past the illuminated caverns to the vast blue. Each time, I woke up to disappointment and was told that my dreams were out of reach. I was CERTAIN there was a way get past the clouds.
I started designing, by everyone’s opinion, a pointless machine to transport me up to the peak of a mountain, and an insulated suit that would fit me. The only person who believed in me was Hannah. She took on the name Hanover to my Voltra. It was her and me against the world, brushing off the mocking from other students, and dismissals from the adults.
“What if we set up a way to reach beyond the clouds?” Hanover asked. “That way anyone could go beyond the clouds in safety to see the sky.” I jumped up from my seat in excitement, hitting my head on a beam. Hannah rushed to soothe it, with a worried look on her face. She was hands down my best friend.
“That’s a brilliant idea, Han,” I replied under her care. “I just don’t think they’d risk it. Those jabs of lightning coming down from the clouds are powerful. I heard people who go out on hunting parties, are sometimes lost to them.”
“We can make them see the light,” she replied. “How bright do you think it is up there?”
“Very bright?”
“I hope so.”
“I have to see it, at least SEE it, and soon,” I said, meeting her eyes.
“I’m ready when you are, Voltra,” she said.
“Our best chance is to sneak onto a hunting party car when they wheel out,” I said, sitting up with plans already brewing. “There will be resistance. We will have to be stealthy about it. They can’t know that we’re there. I think we can fit in the weapons cache if we take the weapons out.”
I watched Hanover process the idea for a moment, hesitate, then shake her head. She smiled, then stood up and reached for my hand.
“Let’s do this,” she said.
“Next hunting party is leaving tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s meet at the hub in the morning. Bring the suit you’ve been making. I have mine always in my bag.” I rummaged through the backpack to pull out a small jumpsuit created out of spare parts of other pieces of discarded hunting party clothing. There was no guarantee that it would protect me, but I was done waiting.
“Wow!” Hannah said. She reached to inspect it. “Put it on.”
“Now?” I asked. She nodded silently. I took off my standard clothes and slipped into the suit as she watched on. “How does it look?”
“Beautiful,” Hanover said.
“Well, it’s a bit patchy,” I said.
“No, it’s beautiful,” she said, tracing her finger over a lightning bolt I cut out of yellow material to stick to the shoulders. “Mine’s nothing like this. I love the lightning bolts.”
“Thanks,” I said, realizing I was blushing with happiness.
“Volt…ra,” Han said slowly, tracing the lightning bolt again.
She headed home after I changed out of the suit. Our plan was finally in motion, and my dream to see the blue sky ever closer to realization. I imagined the vast blue just the way grandma described it. The excitement held me from sleep, until I collapsed from exhaustion. The blaring sound of my alarm clock woke me back up, drooling on my pillow. I recalled what I had planned for this day, and grinned. The suit was ready in my backpack.
I headed downstairs to get some breakfast, only to be stopped by mom at the table. Dad was there, too. Both were being strange for some reason. Their faces were stone cold, worried. I tried to recall if I did anything out of the ordinary lately that would spoil my adventure. I knew they were against my ideas. They typically brushed them off like my teachers. This felt different.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Honey,” Mom said, looking toward Dad. He reached out his hand for my backpack, but I yanked it out of the way.
“What?” I asked.
“Please give me your backpack,” Dad said, looking sad. He looked worried, and it felt like something happened. A stray thought of betrayal entered my mind, but I shook it off. Hanover would not do something like that. My best friend would not.
“Why?” I asked. Dad did not ask again, only reached again, looming over me to get a hold of it.
“What’s this, Tamara?” Dad asked, pulling out my suit. I said nothing, only looked in his eyes. I felt hurt, but his eyes looked equally pained.
“Were you—“
“I was going outside, yes,” I said. “I need to see it, mom. I need to see the blue sky grandma talks about. It’s still up there, dad!”
“You’d have gotten yourself killed!” He burst out. I recoiled at the shout. I had never heard him shout before. The force of that emotion made me feel ashamed. He was never angry at my ideas when I brought them up. Mom always shut my ideas down, but dad always gave it a second thought. Now, his face was so full of anger.
“Say you’re sorry,” Mom said. They both stared me down. I wanted to burst back that I was not sorry for having big dreams, but the fear of dad’s shouting still kept me silent. Instead, I ran into my room and jumped into bed. It had to be Hannah. Nobody else knew about it. No! It was not her. She would not do this to me. Not on purpose at least. I curled up in bed, tears welling in my eyes. I still saw the sky behind my eyelids, urging me on, only now it felt so far out of my reach.
I ran the events through my mind in silence. The darkness of living underground felt like a heavy burden on my mind, but humans adjusted in order to survive. The hunting parties preyed on the animals that found a way to live along with this change in the sky. They were a tough meat, often carbonized by lightning when struck after getting caught in the traps.
Alongside the hunting parties going out for “fresh” produce, we grew underground farms supplied with energy from geothermal corridors dug in a rush to survive underground. They were not very efficient, but they kept us alive and breathing. I remembered this much from the droning voices of teachers at school.
There was little choice in the future. The smartest half of students would be forced into being future engineers to sustain our life. The next quarter past the half would become the operators of all the mechanicals, the administrative bunch. The remainder did the jobs others avoided. Everything felt so planned out that when something like a dream of blue skies entered my mind, I fully ventured into it.
“Psst!” I heard behind the curtain of my opening to the underground city. “Voltra! PSST!” I slid the curtain open to find Hannah in tears.
“Hanover?” I asked. She lived in a different neighborhood altogether. “How’d you get here?”
“I’m SORRY!” She burst out, breaking down into tears.
“Shh!” I said, and held out a hand for her to come inside. “Come on, Hanover, get in here before my parents hear you.” I could feel the tears on her hands when she took hold of my hand. Did she really cause our escapade to fail on purpose?
“I- My- Mom- and- my fault-,” she said between sobs.
“Slow down,” I said, and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at it for a moment, then lunged to hug-tackle me to my bed. “What happened?” Hannah sat up next to me and took a few deep calming breaths.
“I took my suit out to try to put lightning bolts on it like yours,” she said. “And mom walked in. When she saw it, she freaked out. I had to tell them what it was for, our plan. And now— now—” Her lip quivered, trying to hold back a sob.
“And now?” I asked.
“Mom and dad said we have to move,” Hanover said. I felt that like a strike to my heart. I was the prey caught in a hunting trap, and the lightning was coming to strike me down. I held Hannah for a few more minutes in quiet anger.
“It’ll be ok,” I soothed. This broke my world of happiness. I WOULD get to see the blue sky, no matter how much effort and secrecy it would take. As grandma often told me, it is pressure which makes charcoal into diamonds. “It’ll be ok.”
Hannah left with a kiss to my cheek, something I found a little odd, but she was my best friend. There was no reason to feel weird about it. I put it out of my mind. She was my friend, but if she moved, she would make other friends and forget about me. The thought made me sick to my stomach. Someone who had been in my life for such a long time was being ripped away, and my parents were the cause of it.
Before long, Hanover moved away. Not only that, but grandma stopped coming by. When I asked mom and dad why, they always gave the same answer.
“She’s tired,” Mom would say.
“It’s a difficult trek for someone her age,” Dad said.
“Why don’t I just go to her then?” I asked in response. Mom’s hand landed on my shoulder.
“That’s not a good idea,” she said. “Another time. Ok?” Each time I asked played out the same way. The knowledge of what I wanted to do somehow reached school ears, teachers and students. It attacked me from all sides. All of a sudden, I was not just talking about things at school. I tried to make my dream a reality, and everyone else was afraid of that. Even Mark avoided me at school because of this.
At every stage of this descent, I still only saw blue when I closed my eyes. I still dreamed of flying through the vastness of that sky, landing on an exposed mountain peak to gaze over the clouded floor. I would look over to a mountain peak across the way to find Hanover waving, and take wing again over to her. It was a nice dream, but often ended with an upset. Once I landed over by Hannah, I hugged her only to find a puff of white cloud instead of my best friend.
I woke up with a start in the middle of the night, only to stay in bed silently. I would have to do it myself. I had to make the journey up the mountain to prove to everyone that it could be done. I would take the name Voltra for the one who conquered the lightning storm, and then show Hanover the sky.
The design of my new suit would have to be better, not just a patchwork of plastic and rubber. It would take time. Over the course of the build, I dodged snide remarks from other kids at school, brushoffs from my parents, and dismissing statements from my teachers. They were born into this sort of world, lacking freedom. I was in a generation that had a little more freedom, with parents hoping their children would choose a better life with good grades to become engineers.
It took some time to get it pieced together, but I finally had my very own resistance suit. Not only did it dislocate any lightning that headed my way, it absorbed a part of it into portable batteries for light in the darkness. The dissipating of lighting was done by metal chains, inside a rubberized tube leading to three tails that would drag behind me where the lightning could channel into the ground. Even hunting parties had only one such tail. I had to be ready for a higher intensity, since I was going to ascend the mountain.
The time was perfect. Just enough time had passed for my parents to believe I was over my outburst. Little did they know, they only ensured my adventure. I looked over to my side where Hanover would be, and the seat grandma sat in to tell me stories. Both were still with me, no matter the distance between us.
On the morning of it, I hesitated. I had to pretend like everything was fine, and go off to school, meanwhile actually heading to a location near the hunting party exit. It was a long tunnel they drove through, but I would be walking through it between the time they went out, and when they returned. There was a small window for this, as the hunt only lasted a few hours.
“I’m with you,” I heard Hanover whisper behind me while putting on my suit. I turned to find nobody there, but knew she was with me. I smiled. Hannah was such a good friend, and only now I realized that she had a thing for me. If I came back, I would find her, and kiss her.
“I’ll come back for you,” I murmured in response. “Wait for me, Hanover. I’ll show you the blue sky.” I strapped the suit on, and prepared for the hunting party nearby. When the hatch opened and the huntsmobile passed through it, I dashed for the gate. From what I have seen, the doors only stayed open a few minutes. I gave it my all to get there on time, even leaping through the threshold thinking it would close on me. It did not.
“Oh,” I said, stood up, and looked off into the distance to find a member of the hunting party drop some device just as the gate closed. It was one of the metal bulkheads they used for gathering geothermal energy. Our schools made sure to tell us all about it, seeing as half the kids there would be forced to do maintenance on them. “That could be trouble.”
I dashed away from the bulkhead doors as they slid open again. I hoped the guy would just think he was seeing things and move on, but that was not my main concern. I ran down the tunnel in my home-made resistance suit, chasing something that could very well kill me. I would not have it any other way.
The run became a trot, arriving as a walk in a few minutes. The tunnel was long. I rushed at first because of the guy, but I had hours to get to the other end. Even then, I would have to wait there for it to open again. It felt dark and endless, but I had the batteries partly charged to cast some light onto the carved rock. With the geo-thermal technologies, I thought the tunnel would be metal to prevent cave-ins, but it was just rock.
When I actually made it to the external gate, I sat in the corner to lie in wait for the hunting party to come back. After about an hour of waiting, a bright light burst in the darkness, targeting me.
“GO BACK!” A voice shouted over the speaker. I hesitated to move, but when I got up, the light followed me wherever I went. “GO BACK, NOW!”
“I’M NOT GOING BACK!” I replied. I tried to hide in the darkness again, but the searchlight found me again. They had cameras on the exit, but I had no idea why. It was a huge waste of resources to lead a precious cable down such a long tunnel not only for energy, but also for communication. I sat at the center of the gate in defiance.
“TAMARA DAWSON!” I heard over the loudspeaker. It was my mother’s voice. How did they find out so quickly? “GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!” I sighed. The creators, unhappy with what they created. I had half a mind to detail their dream-killing actions, but my watch beeped in alarm. I only smiled, then laid down on the ground as the gate slid open.
The vehicle that barreled through had a gap between the tires. I knew they would always drive right down the middle, and watched the wheels roll over on my sides. Rather than see the underside of the hunting vehicle, I locked eyes with a young man who was inside said car. The middle was open, and empty, exposing the whole hunting party to a view of me in my resistance suit for a brief second.
“Huh,” I said, then tumbled backwards a few times through the opening as the metal bulkheads slammed shut. I was outside. The first leg of the journey was behind me. Now the real fun began, that was to say, the real danger.
It was about mid-day, when the obstructed sun was at the highest in the sky. The scene I saw beyond those gates was nothing I pictured. Not one of the school resources prepared me for this. The sky was not only clouded over at every single point, but the lightning in the distance was constant, flashing bright from random directions in rapid anxiety. I expected the lightning to come and go, strike the land a bit in storms rather than exist in a constant blue light around. Luckily, the sky had a tinge of brightness to it.
The flashes of light from all directions were crazy distracting, but my destination was nearby. We learned about the Grant Mountains in school. It was an identifying landmark of the scenery, and a place where humans gathered some of the lightning for power. The mountain was about the safest to ascend as even though the lightning was always hitting it, the whole thing was coated in wires taking the electricity away.
I set off for the Grant Mountains, only to receive the first lightning strike. The power that touched down felt incredible, coursing through the metal parts of my suit. It all lasted a second, but I dropped to my knees as the three tails cast the electric charge to the ground. It was scary, but also very exciting. I set off into some vegetation to shield myself for a bit. When I came back out, I was at the foot of the mountain, lined with wires and structures supporting them high above.
The lightning that struck down was absorbed into the metal and channeled into the cables. The whole mountain was used as a battery, making me wonder where it was stored. I shook the thoughts off to a memory of my grandma, telling me a story of the blue sky. It drove me. I was closer to my goal than ever.
It was colder already, just at the base of the mountain. Underground, we had heat from the geothermal systems, but there was a wind outside that I was not prepared for.
Walking around the foot of the mountain took a bit of time, but I had to find a good place to start the ascent, a face I could climb, or even just walk to the summit that vanished behind the dark clouds. I imagined the clouds part to the blue sky that I dreamed about every night. I looked over to see Hannah by my side, but there was nobody there.
“I’m definitely coming to find you,” I said, noticing a strange panel of metal in the rock. It looked just like— It burst open, folding down like a door with a clang. A vehicle burst forth clad in lightning resistant tech. The tail was different, segmented metal pieces with a metallic orb on the end. When lightning struck this little buggy, the orb cast it off in multiple directions, dragging behind on the ground just like my three tails. It was a great idea to lower the amount of friction on the tail end.
I looked at the panel, expecting it to snap closed, but it did not. The whole metal part looked like a ramp above surface, allowing something to exit, but nothing could reach the top of it without climbing on surrounding rocks.
“Who are you?” I heard behind me. I turned quickly, drawing a knife to defend myself. Before me stood a child, wearing the most intricate jumpsuit I had ever seen. The whole thing was silver and gold, sticking out in various spots while being coated by some kind of plastic or rubber. “Your suit’s weird.”
“I made it myself,” I replied, inspecting his. “Yours looks… busy.”
“My pod made it for me,” the kid replied. I tried to discern whether he was a he, or she was a she, but the whole thing had a hood that obstructed anything beyond the face. He looked over at his wrist until something beeped. “You shouldn’t stay here. There is an overcharge coming. Oh, you’re still using tails.”
“What’s wrong with tails?” I asked. She lifted his shoes to expose the metal spikes on her soles. It did seem like a smarter idea to dissipate the electric current, but the hunting party always used tails. “What’s an overcharge?”
“I see, you’re one of the moles,” SHe said. “An overcharge is a concentration of a lightning storm when the charge mounts to a hundred times the energy. It happens when the clouds get compressed.” I watched as he motioned her hands in a circle.
“I have my suit on, I’ll be fine,” I said, and started walking off. SHe reached out and held me back.
“If my suit can’t survive the overcharge, it would be a miracle if yours did,” SHe said. “Come on, don’t be a weird mole person.” I hesitated while looking at the distant summit, then followed the mystery kid.
We arrived at a structure up in a tree, decorated with gold and silver to look like nothing I had ever seen before. The loose pieces glittered with what little light managed to get through the dark clouds, and there was a faint light inside the structure. I half-expected the inside to be rough, but once we got there, the room was lined with the same stuff his suit was made up of.
“Here,” SHe said, tossing over a fluffy stick. “Get that static off of you so you don’t kill my electronics.” I watched as SHe wiped a similar thing over their body, then threw it into a metal bucket. I followed suit as SHe disrobed from the strange suit. SHe was actually a girl, about my age, with short black hair.
“I’m Voltra,” I said, hoping she would not question the name.
“Angel,” she replied, folding her suit up to much less than I thought it would occupy. “So, why was a mole person like you above ground right before an overcharge?” She walked over to the faint light and touched it to make the whole room come to life. Various lights appeared and some monitors turned on to some technical stuff. I tried to get closer in excitement, but she held up a hand. “Hey, hey, now! No touching.”
“I ran away to see the sky,” I said. “Not the clouds, the blue sky beyond it. My grandma told me about it many times.”
“Your grandma lied,” Angel said. “Go back home. The clouds cover the whole sky. There is no way to get past them to see what once was. Trying to do that is looking to die.”
“I’m going to do it, Anders,” I said, creating a nickname for her. I would one day get past the black clouds with Anders and Hanover. We would show the world that there was a whole vast blue out there. Up the mountain and past the darkness.
“I told you, my name is Angel,” she said. “That plan is mad. The overcharges multiply at higher altitudes. It’s a bad plan to try it with your gear.”
“Can you help me make a suit that I can use to do it?” I asked.
“Kid, I barely know you,” Angel said. “I just saved your life. You should be a bit more grateful. Those dreams of yours will be the death of you.” She could not understand my determination.
“Thanks for the help,” I said in appreciation, then stood up to leave.
“Where are you going?” Anders asked. “There is still an overcharge going on out there. If you go now, you def gonna die.” I smiled, then stepped over to hug her. She was visibly surprised at the show of affection, but hugged back after a few seconds.
“I need to go before it gets dark,” I said.
“It’s— It will take you at least two days to ascend that mountain, even if you do make it,” Angel said, then turned to rummage around in the corner box of random stuff. “At least take this, ok? It’s an uno reverse for lightning.” I looked at her in confusion.
“It reflects lightning back,” She explained and pushed it at me. I took it, and hugged her again. This time she held onto me for a few extra seconds after I let go, rubbing her forehead in the crook of my neck. “Don’t get yourself killed, crazy girl.”
“I’m Voltra,” I said, “Lightning can’t stop me.” Anders rolled her eyes at the claim, then waved me away while shaking her head. I took one step outside and realized that the day was already gone. I climbed back in much to Anders bursting out laughing. She let me stay the night to wait out the overcharge without a second thought.
“So you’re a runaway?” Angel asked. “Welcome to the club.”
“You ran away, too?” I asked. “What about your family?”
“Have none,” Anders continued. “It’s always been just me. Do moles really have families under all that rock and earth? It’s a bit different up near the surface. Don’t get me wrong, I love my freedom, but…“
“But?”
“Family is the one thing I’d give up some freedom to have.” The phrase rang out in my head. I ran away to chase my own freedom, but I meant to come back, share my experiences, and fight to let everyone else see it. Anders lived alone, hoping for a even just a bit of family dynamic one day. When we went to sleep,I drifted into the endless blue. Anders and Hanover were by my side, smiling and laughing. I woke up first, and left before Angel convinced me to stay with her where it was safe.
After waiting out the overcharge at Angel’s place, I was outside for the second day in my short excursion. The air was charged and smelled of iron. The first leg of the ascent was easy, walking underneath the metal structures gathering lightning strikes to use as power. When those ended their protective redirecting, it was just me and the lightning.
I held the strange rod she gave me close at hand as I ventured past the field of lightning gatherers. I hoped it worked the way she said, but I had no idea what uno even was. The first lightning that struck down, hit me, sending a powerful charge through my suit without bothering the stick Anders gave me. I felt the strike like a shiver, setting my hair on ends, but dissipating through the suit and back to the metal structures behind me through my three tails. I tapped the stick Angel gave me in various spots, but it did nothing.
I kept ascending, bit by bit, playing with the device buttons and dials. I regretted leaving before finding out how to use it. Eventually, I pressed a button that did something. It expanded a bubble of some sort of rubber above, then snapped the rubber over me.
I was in shock for a moment. It did not obstruct my vision since it was clear, but clung to my body. It was no worse than the suit I was wearing, but it felt a bit more sticky. I tried to pull the rubber away from the suit, finding it come off pretty easily. I could breathe through it. The stick itself was still attached to the bubble that snapped over me, like a tether to the whole surface.
A burst of lightning lit the sky above me, and looked to be skipping through the clouds in my direction, but it bounced off me and struck one of the metal structures still nearby. Anders outdid herself. I had to bring her back underground to provide her with a family experience, but first I had to go into the blue.
The further I got from the metal structures gathering lightning, the less the lightning followed me, all the way until I was far above them. When I was the high point, the lightning sure loved me as the target, but I came prepared. As I went, I dropped metal spikes into the ground to attract lightning instead of it going after me. It worked for that first day of the climb. Some surfaces I had to actually send, but living underground among the rocks made climbing second nature.
When the night rolled in, the lightning got less frequent. Maybe the sun had a special effect on the clouds that made the strikes more active. It was weird that the hunting party left as the morning started. Maybe it had to do with the wildlife they were hunting. I made a tent in a cave and watched the bright flashes cut from the dark clouds above to the ground below. I knew there was blue above them. There had to be.
In the morning, prompted by my alarm, I watched the frequency of the strikes increase. From far away it was like a dance of light, if forgetting how dangerous or deadly it was. I set off again at higher difficulty, but still had the stick from Anders. The way up involved more and more climbing, and I felt the most exposed when the three tails hung off a cliff face without connection to a surface. I could not climb in the rubber bubble. The outside was slippery, just like the inside, so it had to come off.
There was no way to hammer in support buckles, so every climb was freehand, but I was not going to give up on this. I had enough energy to get past the clouds, but they felt so far away. By the time I neared them, I felt the air charged with electricity at every step. I wore the rubber bubble at all times, but the lightning did not look to want to strike me. The clouds were around me, lowering my visibility, with a layer of rubber between the electric charge that could stop my heart.
“Ok,” I said to myself as I walked through the darkness. “Let’s be calm about this.” The steep incline approached another climbing face. I would either have to remove the rubber coating and climb, or attempt to send it while coated. I chose the latter option, looking for easy handholds rather than fast ones. I had to tuck the tails inside the bubble so they did not work in reverse of their operation.
“Easy,” I said. “Hold by hold.” I ascended slowly, and carefully, keeping the blue of the sky in my mind as inspiration. I would clear the black clouds and see it, the endless expanse above our planet, a gradient of atmosphere that kept us alive even though we made a few mistakes. When a rock gave way under my grip, I felt betrayed.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed, tightening my hold on the other hand. I could not see anything below me, just darkness of the clouds. The air that snuck through the breathable rubber felt so metalic and earthy. I felt the crackle of electricity on it, as if made of pulverized sparks. “Just a bit more.”
When I reached a ledge, it felt like the middle of nowhere. Above me, the clouds covered my vision, and below only the darkness remained. I was safe, but nowhere near the summit. Even if I brought some sort of measuring equipment, it would be useless in this darkness charged with static. I thought back to Hanover and Anders, to my mom and dad. I even thought about the school friends and everyone who dismissed my dreams.
That night, I dreamed of blue skies again, but I was alone. I woke up with a start still in the middle of the night. The black clouds were thicker and denser than before. The environment felt calmer, less loaded with charge, but still smelled of electricity. I slowly removed the rubber bubble from myself to find the clouds float around me casually. I took this opportunity to climb higher, free to grab holds without the slippery rubber on my fingers. It felt like the black clouds accepted me, as if I had reached high enough to allow passage.
The rest of the climb was easy, and I started seeing a brightening above, but it was not because day was approaching. I was seeing bits and pieces of the blue sky through the parting dark clouds. My excitement mounted, multiplied, making my heart pound. I could not be stopped. I dreamed of this. I longed for this. Come what may.
The light I saw through those clouds was not blue at all. Some spots cast light through the clouds, but the rest remained dark. When more of the black clouds shifted away, the spots of light multiplied in the sky above. These had to be stars. The cold was biting at my fingers and toes already. Even though I brought padding to keep myself warm, it was not nearly enough. I had to spend some energy on heating coils I built into the suit.
“Ahh, that’s better,” I sighed, as the heat slipped all over me underneath the suit. I had to put my fingers under my armpits before looking up into the sea of endless lights of the night. Here I was dreaming of endless blue, and a vast array of gemstones hung above. I knew they were distant stars like the sun, but had never seen an example. “Reading about this in a textbook would not do it justice.”
I sat there in the starlight, near the summit of the mountain. I made it all the way, but could not stay. There was a limit of power in my suit, and the day was still so far away. I had to make a choice. Did I want to risk my life to wait for the day to begin, or descend the mountain with knowledge that an ascent was possible. I wanted to make a machine that would go up here for everyone to see this marvel. For now, I had to weigh the options.
“I can’t leave,” I said. “The chance that I’d be allowed to do such a thing again is nil.” I remained, clinging to my source of heat while watching the horizon. The night seemed to blossom in stars. The longer I stayed, the more of them I could see, until there was no discerning empty space significant enough. The whole sky was a sea of lights, as the horizon grew brighter blue on the sun’s approach.
I watched as the dark blue slipped to standard blue, encapsulated by stars being erased from existence by a more intense light coming. I kept my hands close to my mouth to breathe on them and keep them from freezing. When the first sliver of the star made it past the horizon, I looked away from it. I knew for a fact the light from it would hurt my eyes. I had never seen it before. Instead, I looked up at the gradient of blue to light blue. Before long, everything in my vision was the light blue that was promised by my grandmother.
“I have to go,” I said, feeling my body stiff from the cold. The thought of grandma shook my mind back to survival. I breathed on my fingers again, feeling the cold shiver down my body. I stayed too long. I had to get down, and fast. The battery on my suit was running low. I started carefully climbing down, but found my hands weak and my feet numb. This would be trouble.
I ran through a few decisions that I had to make in my mind. A careful descent would be too slow and just as dangerous because of my numb hands and legs. Starting a fire this high up would be hard and keeping the fire going would need fuel. I could use the rubber bubble to descend faster, but it would most likely break it. It might even break my suit. If I got below the clouds without the suit or the bubble, the lightning would show me no mercy.
I felt a lull in my mind, and started pacing to keep the blood flowing in the parts of my body it could still flow to. There was no time. I had to climb down, no matter what happened. I managed to get down the first wall, but tripped on the steep downward slope following. Without thinking, I deployed the rubber bubble to cushion my tumble, hoping that it would stop a short way down. The slope ahead cut to another cliff side. I saw it on every circle around in the tumble, and then the ground dropped away. I hoped the bubble would hold against the impact, but knew there was no chance. I closed my eyes, picturing blue skies I only got a small glimpse of at the summit. This was worth it.
The impact shredded the rubber bubble. I landed on my side, getting the wind knocked out of me. My mind drifted off to sleep right away, no matter how worrying it felt. I had no say. I would dream of blue skies until the end. I saw blue, darkening into the night, until it was dark.
The next thing I saw was a fire, throwing random sparks above the flames. It was warm and comfortable, but everything else around me was dark. I was in the black clouds, which hung over the scene like a gray fog. There was a piece of cloth over my face, and when I tried to remove it, a hand stopped me from doing so.
“Keep that on,” said a man’s voice. “You’ve inhaled a lot of the ash already.” He had a mask on, with round goggles that reflected the light of the fire menacingly. Over his mouth, he had a large circle that filtered the air he was breathing. I sat up to warm myself by the fire.
We sat in silence for a while, as he studied a device on his wrist. Sometimes he glanced off into the darkness of the ash clouds as if he could see through them. Some time later, he stood up, looking off in one direction.
“We have to go,” he said. “An overcharge is climbing up.”
I did not question him. He snuffed the fire out with his heavy boot, and took off. I followed behind him, wondering what I could ask him. I was already grateful that he saved me. Part of me wanted to go back up the mountain to see the blue sky again, and another part wanted to go home, getting Anders on the way back. I bumped into him when he stopped suddenly.
“There,” he said, pointing into the darkness. I looked off, but saw nothing, and looked to him in confusion. He took a hand and unscrewed one of the circular eyepieces of the goggles. Behind it were the most green eyes I had ever seen, and a heavy scar right next to his eye in the shape of the letter Z. When I looked through the eyepiece, the ash cloud became more of a fog. I saw the mountain, and in the distance, the array of metal structures gathering lightning from the cloud strikes. It was the path I took up the mountain. “Go home.” He took the eye piece back, and screwed it back onto his mask.
I walked a short distance forward and looked back, but he was no longer there.
“Hello?!” I called out. “Wait! Thank you! What’s your name?” I listened to the silence of the charged billows, and thought I heard a low whispered “Auverne” in the emptiness, but maybe it was my imagination. I descended the mountain in the direction he directed, but worried of the lightning once I was past the clouds. I could remove the scrap of cloth from my mouth, and found the fabric very thin, but soft. I hoped that my suit would save me until I got back to Anders.
I found the pod in the remains of trees. It was about the only part of the long-lost forest that had glowing lights. The dark clouds erased all the sunlight I saw above, making the plants that needed a lot of it die out. Those needing only low light thrived, but all were subject to the lightning. We still had trees underground, fueled by synthetic growing lights in the cultivating areas of the city. They provided us with food and oxygen, as we provided them with water and stuff we pooped. It was a co-operative existence.
I climbed up the tree to the enclosure, but found nobody there. It was the start of the day, so I had to wonder where Anders went off, but cozied up in her bed exhausted and fell asleep. I dreamed of stars this time, and the progression of the bright sun from beyond the horizon and into the sky. I saw the darkest of blue sky brighten with yellow light, shifting to that heavenly blue I saw. I would come back one day, and make it possible for anyone to see that majesty.
I was shaken awake by a big hand, and jumped to my feet without thinking. My eyes were still out of focus. When I could finally see, a large man stood at the bed, holding up both hands.
“Who are you?” I asked, patting around my suit for a weapon, or something I could use as one.
“Who are YOU?” He replied. “You were sleeping in my bed. You broke into my house. At least you didn’t eat my food, I guess.” I looked around confused. The room was just like Angel’s, with few key differences. I did wonder why the bed was so large. The entrance also seemed a bit bigger. It was almost a copy, and I could not tell it apart before.
“I— Do you know Angel?” I asked. His confused look turned into a smile.
“Mole girl!” He burst out pointing his big blobby finger at me. “Angie told me about you, but I didn’t believe her.”
“So you know her?” I asked. “I was coming down the mountain, and thought I was going to her place, but ended up here. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Angie’s a friend,” the guy said, then slapped his big hand on his thigh. “Didn’t make it all the way and had to turn back, right?” His face was very happy now, almost too happy.
“Actually, I—“
“OH!” He exclaimed. “My name’s Borden, by the way. Nice to meet you, mole girl.” I was starting to think “mole” was not a nice word.
“I’m Voltra,” I said.
“Ohhhhh, Voltra,” he said. “Sounds a bit made up.” He let a pause linger in the air until it made me feel uncomfortable.
“It’s Tamara,” I said. He just nodded, then turned to a blank panel on the wall, tapped a few buttons to show a pulsating green circle. When the circle stopped pulsating, Anders’ face popped onto the screen, half-awake.
“GUESS WHO!” Borden burst out so loudly that it made me jump, and it definitely made Angel snap awake. “I found the mole girl you told me about in my bed!”
“Who?” Anders asked. I stepped up to the panel. “Voltra?! Holy crap! I thought you were fried for sure!”
“Hey, Angel,” I said. “I thought this was your place, so I snuck in. Are you nearby, or did I get it really wrong?”
“I’ll be right over,” Angel said. She left the screen, as Borden tapped the screen to turn it off.
“I did make it past the clouds,” I said, to continue his previous question. His eyes opened wider, to actually see them. The man was strangely heavyset, but moved around as if all of it was fluff. “The clouds don’t strike you with lightning when you’re inside them, but you have to wear a mask so the ash doesn’t get into your mouth and lungs. Once you’re past the clouds, it gets really cold. I almost froze near the summit, but I needed to see the blue sky my grandma told me about.”
“Wow,” Borden said, laying down in bed. “A blue sky, huh? Too bad we can’t all go up there and see it.” I jumped to his side.
“That’s what I’m trying to make possible,” I said. “I want to make a device that you can go into and take a trip up above the clouds, so that anyone could see that sky again, to see the stars.”
“Stars? Aren’t those just a bunch of lights out beyond the clouds?” Borden asked, looking up at his ceiling decorated with random strings of light. He reached his blobby hand up, as if longing to see what I saw.
“There are billions of them,” I said. “They fill your vision. It’s like a sea of stars beyond this place, and the longer you look, the more of them you can see. Imagine going up there in a heated bubble that lets you just lay there for the whole night. I’d spend every night up there, if I could, and all day of blue.” Borden looked over to me with his hand still up to the ceiling.
“Don’t you think someone already tried that?” He asked. “I’m sure it’s not as simple as you think.”
“It doesn’t matter how difficult it is,” I said, then sat down beside his bed. “Nothing’s going to stop me. Nothing is going to stop Voltra.” He smiled, then looked up again.
“Billions of them, you say…” He said, then let his hand rest as he drifted off to sleep. Angel stopped by a few minutes later, and we left Borden to dream of the sea of stars beyond. In just a few minutes of walking, I found a tree that looked just like the one I climbed up to Borden’s pod.
“So?” Angel asked as soon as we got inside.
“So, what?”
“Did you make it up there?” She asked. “Or did you have to turn around?” I smiled, puffing up my chest proudly.
“I made it up beyond the clouds,” I said, then looked in her eyes. “Thanks to you. I also survived my descent thanks to you, and another person that I met in the clouds. He told me that you need to wear a mask in the clouds so you don’t breathe in the ash.”
“A person in the clouds?” Angel asked. “That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” I said. “He has some sort of technology that let him see through the clouds.” Anders put a finger to her chin for a moment, then nodded.
“That’s gotta be Auverne,” She said.
“You know him?”
“He’s kinda like a legend,” she said. “I didn’t really believe it, but now maybe. He’s said to be immortal, walking around in the darkness of clouds, because he’s the one who caused them.”
“Immortal?”
“Yeah,” Anders said. “Meaning he can’t die. The black clouds happened because of a weapons accident, and the legends says that it’s his penance to go around in the darkness, saving stranded people.”
“Well, he did save me,” I said. I wanted to show Auverne the blue skies and stars also. Maybe he was just waiting for somebody to guide him out of the darkness the same. “How come your place looks just like Borden’s?”
“It’s a pod,” she explained. “They’re manufactured based on the size of the person in deployable form. They give you the pod to put anywhere you like, and that’s all they owe you being born on the surface. Beyond a deployable home, you can’t expect anyone to help you survive. Borden put his pod up in a tree after seeing mine, but his is much larger. I worry every day that his will fall because of the size difference.”
“That’s cool,” I replied, walking around her pod. There was a surface further away from the middle that had to be the outside. “Oh! Come back with me.”
“Back?” Angel asked, mental wheels turning to try to understand. “You want me to go up the mountain with you again?”
“No, back home,” I said. “Come back home with me, to the underground. We’ll definitely be back to the mountain later, with Hanover, too.”
“Hanover?” Anders asked, then shook her head. “I’m fine here, mole girl. I don’t want to live in the dirt.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “We have running water and heating. We have light, and there is also farm fresh food. It’s kind of a perfect system, even if they force the smart kids to run it.”
“If it’s so perfect, why’d you leave?”
“I told you already,” I replied. “I wanted to see the blue sky that grandma told me about. Next time, I’m bringing Hanover and you to see it with me. We could carry more stuff to keep us warm up—”
“I’m fine where I am, Voltra,” Angel said, looking away. I stepped over and hugged her.
“I value your point of view,” I said, thought I wanted to pull her along with me home. “If you change your mind, find a way to get a message to me. Maybe you can tie it to some animal in a trap our hunting parties catch, or just talk to them.” Anders looked at me and smiled.
“I will,” she said. I wanted to ask if she meant that she would come with me, but did not want to push.
“I should get going,” I said. “My parents are sure to be upset. I’ll probably get grounded for a long time. Hah. Get it? Grounded. Because I live underground.”
“I hope you get to build your track up the mountain one day, Voltra,” Angel said.
“I’ll try for one better,” I said. “If Auverne did cause the black smoke a long time ago, I’ll see if I can get his help to clean it up.”
“You want to clean up the sky?”
“Seems only right,” I said.
“Your dreams are really big,” Angel said.
“That’s what they should be.” Anders smiled, and nodded. I left feeling revitalized in my drive. There was so much to look forward to, but there were a few things I was not looking forward to. Namely, my parents’ reaction. Maybe they would just cry from happiness that I was safe rather than punish me for following my dreams. It felt unlikely.
I waited where the hunting party exited, and snuck in through the open door. I knew I was on cameras, and knew a security group would pick me up. When Mom showed up at the head of them, I was rightfully surprised. I expected her to be angry, to yell at me, but she hugged me instead. There would be time for punishment later, but for now I just held onto her. I could not wait to tell her about the things I had experienced. I wanted to tell her about my dreams of cleaning up the sky so that everyone could see the blue without having to climb a mountain.
When we got back home, following a debrief of sorts, Dad hugged me, too. I withheld information about Auverne, Borden, and Angel. They did not need to know that I met anyone, just that I made it past the clouds. Once that hope of seeing the blue sky was in their minds, time would do the rest. The word would spread and come back to me with interest to make it a reality.
“You worried us,” dad said, standing next to mom, a united front. That was the punishment stance. I knew it would be bad, but how much worse could they make it for me after not being able to see grandma and pushing Hanover away? I was amused that they still thought there was something they could do to hurt me. “Tammy, we‘re very angry with you.”
“You didn’t let me see Grandma,” I said. Mom looked over and shared a look with dad. “And you pushed my best friend away.”
“We were trying to protect you,” Mom said. “It’s dangerous out there. The clouds can kill you instantly. You‘re our child, so we made the hard decisions that kept you safe. That’s what parents do.” She did not raise her voice, but every sentence felt like she was shouting at me.
“There are people living up on the surface,” I said, then put my hands over my mouth in surprise. I was not supposed to tell them either, but they had to understand. Going outside was not instant death.
“What?” Dad asked, he broke the united front for a moment of happiness, but mom yanked him back to her side.
“They live in these pods, single living spaces they can deploy anywhere,” I said, realizing that it sounded a bit far-fetched. “And there are people living INSIDE the black clouds, too. Or, at least people who can live there. I only met one person there. He had technology that helped him see through the darkness.” Mom put a hand to her mouth. Dad looked ever more excited at the revelations. It was nice to see his eyes light up.
“Why didn’t you tell the guards about that?” Mom asked. “If they find out you lied, it will get us in trouble. Don’t you understand how fragile the system of people living underground is, Tamara?” I knew exactly how fragile the balance was. School was not just there to teach, it was a recruitment program to sustain life underground. For that reason, I faked my test scores, I pretended to be simple, and was rewarded with freedom while still too young to do menial labor.
“It’s exciting,” Dad said. Mom delivered a sobering strike with three fingers to his side. He winced at the impact, but smiled. “Sorry, hon, but it really is exciting to think that some people can survive out there even with the way things are.” Mom looked displeased at his view. “But we’re very upset with you, Tammy.” His face still had a smirk that failed to die down for the serious eyes he tried to show. It made him look goofy.
“I’m sorry,” I said, playing along. “I felt betrayed when you took my friends away, so I lashed out.” There was truth to it, but the difference was that I was not sorry that I went outside, no matter how dangerous it was. There would always be danger, and that was why the hunting party existed. Maybe I could join their ranks in the future. That way, I could meet up with Anders as much as I wanted to.
“Alright, go to your room,” Mom said, buying into my apology. I grabbed some food from the fridge and snuck off to consume it in the comfort of my bed. It felt so incredibly soft in comparison to all the surfaces I slept on since I left. Even the pod beds were not close to the softness of my bed. I looked up to the blue painted ceiling and reached out to it, imagining it was Hanover, reaching back to me. I had to go find her for next time. We could become hunters together, and then meet up with Angel.
The future sure looked sky blue to me, no matter the resistance.
“The blue just went on and on,” she said. “Half of what you saw was blue all day, sometimes spotted with white with clouds. It felt endless, until it wasn’t.”
“Why did the storms start?”
“We took the world for granted,” Grandma said. “At least those who were in charge did.”
“Just a few did this to everyone?” I asked. “Why?”
“That was the way of the world before the storms,” she said. “People looked out for themselves, while the world was dying. Since lightning is dangerous for everyone, it brought us together again.”
“I would have loved to see the sky, just like it was before,” I said, closing my eyes to imagine. Grandma leaned over to kiss me on my forehead.
“Blue dreams, my angel,” she said. It made me smile.
And so blue dreams found me that night. I stood at the peak of a mountain, high above the dark lightning clouds. The sky absorbed most of what I could see, feeling almost endless. I woke up with the start of an idea burning inside my mind. If only I could climb high enough to get past the clouds, I could see the sky the way it was before, the way it still was up there.
There was a way to go outside, with protective grounding gear that some wore to look for food and materials outside. It was metal, with cables that connected to the ground to cast off lightning that might strike you. The metal worn was insulated with wood, plastic, or rubber. Wood was the most plentiful, but there was always plastic in the world.
“Would the clouds end if you went high enough?” I asked at breakfast. We lived underground, but still followed the time counting of old. The day and night still made sense, but the difference between bright and dark was small because of the black clouds in the sky creating lightning.
“It’s very cold up there,” dad said.
“And there is no air,” mom added. “There's less and less breathable air the further you go, so everything takes a lot longer.”
“But would the sky look blue?” I pushed.
“I suppose,” dad said. “Blue like your fingers when you get up there. It’s THAT cold.”
“Have you ever gone up that high?” I asked. Dad looked to mom for a moment of silent communication.
“No, that’s a bad idea by all accounts,” he replied. “There is nothing to see up there. The hunting parties don’t even need to go that far.”
“But—”
“Finish your breakfast, honey,” Mom cut in, “Gotta get you to school.”
I looked down at the bowl of oatmeal with apples and raisins. The world was dangerous above ground. Countless people not geared enough failed to come back. Uncle Jay was one of those unlucky in the hunting party.
I brought the idea up to my friends at school.
“That’s silly,” Mark said. “There is nothing up there except more lightning and more clouds.”
“It’s not silly!” I replied.
“I believe you,” Hannah said. “It would be amazing to see the vast blue sky above, but it’s dangerous to try to go outside. It’s safer to live underground.”
“Safe isn’t enough,” I said. “It’s not enough for Voltra.”
“Your name’s Tamara, dummy,” Mark said, and made himself scarce before I got a chance to hit him. Hannah looked at me with a smile.
“I like Voltra more,” she said.
“Me too,” I said. We locked hands and walked to class together.
Most of the things we learned at school had to do with the world underground. We learned how things worked, and how people interacted, and about the brave hunting parties clad in insulated gear. By the time lunch rolled around, I felt subdued in my dreaming. No matter how many times I brought up the subject of going above the clouds, the teachers shot the idea down.
I found myself at odds with everyone, even if they wanted to keep me safe just like my parents, I could not stop dreaming of blue skies. Every night I was either flying through them, or sprawled on a patch of grass looking past the illuminated caverns to the vast blue. Each time, I woke up to disappointment and was told that my dreams were out of reach. I was CERTAIN there was a way get past the clouds.
I started designing, by everyone’s opinion, a pointless machine to transport me up to the peak of a mountain, and an insulated suit that would fit me. The only person who believed in me was Hannah. She took on the name Hanover to my Voltra. It was her and me against the world, brushing off the mocking from other students, and dismissals from the adults.
“What if we set up a way to reach beyond the clouds?” Hanover asked. “That way anyone could go beyond the clouds in safety to see the sky.” I jumped up from my seat in excitement, hitting my head on a beam. Hannah rushed to soothe it, with a worried look on her face. She was hands down my best friend.
“That’s a brilliant idea, Han,” I replied under her care. “I just don’t think they’d risk it. Those jabs of lightning coming down from the clouds are powerful. I heard people who go out on hunting parties, are sometimes lost to them.”
“We can make them see the light,” she replied. “How bright do you think it is up there?”
“Very bright?”
“I hope so.”
“I have to see it, at least SEE it, and soon,” I said, meeting her eyes.
“I’m ready when you are, Voltra,” she said.
“Our best chance is to sneak onto a hunting party car when they wheel out,” I said, sitting up with plans already brewing. “There will be resistance. We will have to be stealthy about it. They can’t know that we’re there. I think we can fit in the weapons cache if we take the weapons out.”
I watched Hanover process the idea for a moment, hesitate, then shake her head. She smiled, then stood up and reached for my hand.
“Let’s do this,” she said.
“Next hunting party is leaving tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s meet at the hub in the morning. Bring the suit you’ve been making. I have mine always in my bag.” I rummaged through the backpack to pull out a small jumpsuit created out of spare parts of other pieces of discarded hunting party clothing. There was no guarantee that it would protect me, but I was done waiting.
“Wow!” Hannah said. She reached to inspect it. “Put it on.”
“Now?” I asked. She nodded silently. I took off my standard clothes and slipped into the suit as she watched on. “How does it look?”
“Beautiful,” Hanover said.
“Well, it’s a bit patchy,” I said.
“No, it’s beautiful,” she said, tracing her finger over a lightning bolt I cut out of yellow material to stick to the shoulders. “Mine’s nothing like this. I love the lightning bolts.”
“Thanks,” I said, realizing I was blushing with happiness.
“Volt…ra,” Han said slowly, tracing the lightning bolt again.
She headed home after I changed out of the suit. Our plan was finally in motion, and my dream to see the blue sky ever closer to realization. I imagined the vast blue just the way grandma described it. The excitement held me from sleep, until I collapsed from exhaustion. The blaring sound of my alarm clock woke me back up, drooling on my pillow. I recalled what I had planned for this day, and grinned. The suit was ready in my backpack.
I headed downstairs to get some breakfast, only to be stopped by mom at the table. Dad was there, too. Both were being strange for some reason. Their faces were stone cold, worried. I tried to recall if I did anything out of the ordinary lately that would spoil my adventure. I knew they were against my ideas. They typically brushed them off like my teachers. This felt different.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Honey,” Mom said, looking toward Dad. He reached out his hand for my backpack, but I yanked it out of the way.
“What?” I asked.
“Please give me your backpack,” Dad said, looking sad. He looked worried, and it felt like something happened. A stray thought of betrayal entered my mind, but I shook it off. Hanover would not do something like that. My best friend would not.
“Why?” I asked. Dad did not ask again, only reached again, looming over me to get a hold of it.
“What’s this, Tamara?” Dad asked, pulling out my suit. I said nothing, only looked in his eyes. I felt hurt, but his eyes looked equally pained.
“Were you—“
“I was going outside, yes,” I said. “I need to see it, mom. I need to see the blue sky grandma talks about. It’s still up there, dad!”
“You’d have gotten yourself killed!” He burst out. I recoiled at the shout. I had never heard him shout before. The force of that emotion made me feel ashamed. He was never angry at my ideas when I brought them up. Mom always shut my ideas down, but dad always gave it a second thought. Now, his face was so full of anger.
“Say you’re sorry,” Mom said. They both stared me down. I wanted to burst back that I was not sorry for having big dreams, but the fear of dad’s shouting still kept me silent. Instead, I ran into my room and jumped into bed. It had to be Hannah. Nobody else knew about it. No! It was not her. She would not do this to me. Not on purpose at least. I curled up in bed, tears welling in my eyes. I still saw the sky behind my eyelids, urging me on, only now it felt so far out of my reach.
I ran the events through my mind in silence. The darkness of living underground felt like a heavy burden on my mind, but humans adjusted in order to survive. The hunting parties preyed on the animals that found a way to live along with this change in the sky. They were a tough meat, often carbonized by lightning when struck after getting caught in the traps.
Alongside the hunting parties going out for “fresh” produce, we grew underground farms supplied with energy from geothermal corridors dug in a rush to survive underground. They were not very efficient, but they kept us alive and breathing. I remembered this much from the droning voices of teachers at school.
There was little choice in the future. The smartest half of students would be forced into being future engineers to sustain our life. The next quarter past the half would become the operators of all the mechanicals, the administrative bunch. The remainder did the jobs others avoided. Everything felt so planned out that when something like a dream of blue skies entered my mind, I fully ventured into it.
“Psst!” I heard behind the curtain of my opening to the underground city. “Voltra! PSST!” I slid the curtain open to find Hannah in tears.
“Hanover?” I asked. She lived in a different neighborhood altogether. “How’d you get here?”
“I’m SORRY!” She burst out, breaking down into tears.
“Shh!” I said, and held out a hand for her to come inside. “Come on, Hanover, get in here before my parents hear you.” I could feel the tears on her hands when she took hold of my hand. Did she really cause our escapade to fail on purpose?
“I- My- Mom- and- my fault-,” she said between sobs.
“Slow down,” I said, and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at it for a moment, then lunged to hug-tackle me to my bed. “What happened?” Hannah sat up next to me and took a few deep calming breaths.
“I took my suit out to try to put lightning bolts on it like yours,” she said. “And mom walked in. When she saw it, she freaked out. I had to tell them what it was for, our plan. And now— now—” Her lip quivered, trying to hold back a sob.
“And now?” I asked.
“Mom and dad said we have to move,” Hanover said. I felt that like a strike to my heart. I was the prey caught in a hunting trap, and the lightning was coming to strike me down. I held Hannah for a few more minutes in quiet anger.
“It’ll be ok,” I soothed. This broke my world of happiness. I WOULD get to see the blue sky, no matter how much effort and secrecy it would take. As grandma often told me, it is pressure which makes charcoal into diamonds. “It’ll be ok.”
Hannah left with a kiss to my cheek, something I found a little odd, but she was my best friend. There was no reason to feel weird about it. I put it out of my mind. She was my friend, but if she moved, she would make other friends and forget about me. The thought made me sick to my stomach. Someone who had been in my life for such a long time was being ripped away, and my parents were the cause of it.
Before long, Hanover moved away. Not only that, but grandma stopped coming by. When I asked mom and dad why, they always gave the same answer.
“She’s tired,” Mom would say.
“It’s a difficult trek for someone her age,” Dad said.
“Why don’t I just go to her then?” I asked in response. Mom’s hand landed on my shoulder.
“That’s not a good idea,” she said. “Another time. Ok?” Each time I asked played out the same way. The knowledge of what I wanted to do somehow reached school ears, teachers and students. It attacked me from all sides. All of a sudden, I was not just talking about things at school. I tried to make my dream a reality, and everyone else was afraid of that. Even Mark avoided me at school because of this.
At every stage of this descent, I still only saw blue when I closed my eyes. I still dreamed of flying through the vastness of that sky, landing on an exposed mountain peak to gaze over the clouded floor. I would look over to a mountain peak across the way to find Hanover waving, and take wing again over to her. It was a nice dream, but often ended with an upset. Once I landed over by Hannah, I hugged her only to find a puff of white cloud instead of my best friend.
I woke up with a start in the middle of the night, only to stay in bed silently. I would have to do it myself. I had to make the journey up the mountain to prove to everyone that it could be done. I would take the name Voltra for the one who conquered the lightning storm, and then show Hanover the sky.
The design of my new suit would have to be better, not just a patchwork of plastic and rubber. It would take time. Over the course of the build, I dodged snide remarks from other kids at school, brushoffs from my parents, and dismissing statements from my teachers. They were born into this sort of world, lacking freedom. I was in a generation that had a little more freedom, with parents hoping their children would choose a better life with good grades to become engineers.
It took some time to get it pieced together, but I finally had my very own resistance suit. Not only did it dislocate any lightning that headed my way, it absorbed a part of it into portable batteries for light in the darkness. The dissipating of lighting was done by metal chains, inside a rubberized tube leading to three tails that would drag behind me where the lightning could channel into the ground. Even hunting parties had only one such tail. I had to be ready for a higher intensity, since I was going to ascend the mountain.
The time was perfect. Just enough time had passed for my parents to believe I was over my outburst. Little did they know, they only ensured my adventure. I looked over to my side where Hanover would be, and the seat grandma sat in to tell me stories. Both were still with me, no matter the distance between us.
On the morning of it, I hesitated. I had to pretend like everything was fine, and go off to school, meanwhile actually heading to a location near the hunting party exit. It was a long tunnel they drove through, but I would be walking through it between the time they went out, and when they returned. There was a small window for this, as the hunt only lasted a few hours.
“I’m with you,” I heard Hanover whisper behind me while putting on my suit. I turned to find nobody there, but knew she was with me. I smiled. Hannah was such a good friend, and only now I realized that she had a thing for me. If I came back, I would find her, and kiss her.
“I’ll come back for you,” I murmured in response. “Wait for me, Hanover. I’ll show you the blue sky.” I strapped the suit on, and prepared for the hunting party nearby. When the hatch opened and the huntsmobile passed through it, I dashed for the gate. From what I have seen, the doors only stayed open a few minutes. I gave it my all to get there on time, even leaping through the threshold thinking it would close on me. It did not.
“Oh,” I said, stood up, and looked off into the distance to find a member of the hunting party drop some device just as the gate closed. It was one of the metal bulkheads they used for gathering geothermal energy. Our schools made sure to tell us all about it, seeing as half the kids there would be forced to do maintenance on them. “That could be trouble.”
I dashed away from the bulkhead doors as they slid open again. I hoped the guy would just think he was seeing things and move on, but that was not my main concern. I ran down the tunnel in my home-made resistance suit, chasing something that could very well kill me. I would not have it any other way.
The run became a trot, arriving as a walk in a few minutes. The tunnel was long. I rushed at first because of the guy, but I had hours to get to the other end. Even then, I would have to wait there for it to open again. It felt dark and endless, but I had the batteries partly charged to cast some light onto the carved rock. With the geo-thermal technologies, I thought the tunnel would be metal to prevent cave-ins, but it was just rock.
When I actually made it to the external gate, I sat in the corner to lie in wait for the hunting party to come back. After about an hour of waiting, a bright light burst in the darkness, targeting me.
“GO BACK!” A voice shouted over the speaker. I hesitated to move, but when I got up, the light followed me wherever I went. “GO BACK, NOW!”
“I’M NOT GOING BACK!” I replied. I tried to hide in the darkness again, but the searchlight found me again. They had cameras on the exit, but I had no idea why. It was a huge waste of resources to lead a precious cable down such a long tunnel not only for energy, but also for communication. I sat at the center of the gate in defiance.
“TAMARA DAWSON!” I heard over the loudspeaker. It was my mother’s voice. How did they find out so quickly? “GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!” I sighed. The creators, unhappy with what they created. I had half a mind to detail their dream-killing actions, but my watch beeped in alarm. I only smiled, then laid down on the ground as the gate slid open.
The vehicle that barreled through had a gap between the tires. I knew they would always drive right down the middle, and watched the wheels roll over on my sides. Rather than see the underside of the hunting vehicle, I locked eyes with a young man who was inside said car. The middle was open, and empty, exposing the whole hunting party to a view of me in my resistance suit for a brief second.
“Huh,” I said, then tumbled backwards a few times through the opening as the metal bulkheads slammed shut. I was outside. The first leg of the journey was behind me. Now the real fun began, that was to say, the real danger.
It was about mid-day, when the obstructed sun was at the highest in the sky. The scene I saw beyond those gates was nothing I pictured. Not one of the school resources prepared me for this. The sky was not only clouded over at every single point, but the lightning in the distance was constant, flashing bright from random directions in rapid anxiety. I expected the lightning to come and go, strike the land a bit in storms rather than exist in a constant blue light around. Luckily, the sky had a tinge of brightness to it.
The flashes of light from all directions were crazy distracting, but my destination was nearby. We learned about the Grant Mountains in school. It was an identifying landmark of the scenery, and a place where humans gathered some of the lightning for power. The mountain was about the safest to ascend as even though the lightning was always hitting it, the whole thing was coated in wires taking the electricity away.
I set off for the Grant Mountains, only to receive the first lightning strike. The power that touched down felt incredible, coursing through the metal parts of my suit. It all lasted a second, but I dropped to my knees as the three tails cast the electric charge to the ground. It was scary, but also very exciting. I set off into some vegetation to shield myself for a bit. When I came back out, I was at the foot of the mountain, lined with wires and structures supporting them high above.
The lightning that struck down was absorbed into the metal and channeled into the cables. The whole mountain was used as a battery, making me wonder where it was stored. I shook the thoughts off to a memory of my grandma, telling me a story of the blue sky. It drove me. I was closer to my goal than ever.
It was colder already, just at the base of the mountain. Underground, we had heat from the geothermal systems, but there was a wind outside that I was not prepared for.
Walking around the foot of the mountain took a bit of time, but I had to find a good place to start the ascent, a face I could climb, or even just walk to the summit that vanished behind the dark clouds. I imagined the clouds part to the blue sky that I dreamed about every night. I looked over to see Hannah by my side, but there was nobody there.
“I’m definitely coming to find you,” I said, noticing a strange panel of metal in the rock. It looked just like— It burst open, folding down like a door with a clang. A vehicle burst forth clad in lightning resistant tech. The tail was different, segmented metal pieces with a metallic orb on the end. When lightning struck this little buggy, the orb cast it off in multiple directions, dragging behind on the ground just like my three tails. It was a great idea to lower the amount of friction on the tail end.
I looked at the panel, expecting it to snap closed, but it did not. The whole metal part looked like a ramp above surface, allowing something to exit, but nothing could reach the top of it without climbing on surrounding rocks.
“Who are you?” I heard behind me. I turned quickly, drawing a knife to defend myself. Before me stood a child, wearing the most intricate jumpsuit I had ever seen. The whole thing was silver and gold, sticking out in various spots while being coated by some kind of plastic or rubber. “Your suit’s weird.”
“I made it myself,” I replied, inspecting his. “Yours looks… busy.”
“My pod made it for me,” the kid replied. I tried to discern whether he was a he, or she was a she, but the whole thing had a hood that obstructed anything beyond the face. He looked over at his wrist until something beeped. “You shouldn’t stay here. There is an overcharge coming. Oh, you’re still using tails.”
“What’s wrong with tails?” I asked. She lifted his shoes to expose the metal spikes on her soles. It did seem like a smarter idea to dissipate the electric current, but the hunting party always used tails. “What’s an overcharge?”
“I see, you’re one of the moles,” SHe said. “An overcharge is a concentration of a lightning storm when the charge mounts to a hundred times the energy. It happens when the clouds get compressed.” I watched as he motioned her hands in a circle.
“I have my suit on, I’ll be fine,” I said, and started walking off. SHe reached out and held me back.
“If my suit can’t survive the overcharge, it would be a miracle if yours did,” SHe said. “Come on, don’t be a weird mole person.” I hesitated while looking at the distant summit, then followed the mystery kid.
We arrived at a structure up in a tree, decorated with gold and silver to look like nothing I had ever seen before. The loose pieces glittered with what little light managed to get through the dark clouds, and there was a faint light inside the structure. I half-expected the inside to be rough, but once we got there, the room was lined with the same stuff his suit was made up of.
“Here,” SHe said, tossing over a fluffy stick. “Get that static off of you so you don’t kill my electronics.” I watched as SHe wiped a similar thing over their body, then threw it into a metal bucket. I followed suit as SHe disrobed from the strange suit. SHe was actually a girl, about my age, with short black hair.
“I’m Voltra,” I said, hoping she would not question the name.
“Angel,” she replied, folding her suit up to much less than I thought it would occupy. “So, why was a mole person like you above ground right before an overcharge?” She walked over to the faint light and touched it to make the whole room come to life. Various lights appeared and some monitors turned on to some technical stuff. I tried to get closer in excitement, but she held up a hand. “Hey, hey, now! No touching.”
“I ran away to see the sky,” I said. “Not the clouds, the blue sky beyond it. My grandma told me about it many times.”
“Your grandma lied,” Angel said. “Go back home. The clouds cover the whole sky. There is no way to get past them to see what once was. Trying to do that is looking to die.”
“I’m going to do it, Anders,” I said, creating a nickname for her. I would one day get past the black clouds with Anders and Hanover. We would show the world that there was a whole vast blue out there. Up the mountain and past the darkness.
“I told you, my name is Angel,” she said. “That plan is mad. The overcharges multiply at higher altitudes. It’s a bad plan to try it with your gear.”
“Can you help me make a suit that I can use to do it?” I asked.
“Kid, I barely know you,” Angel said. “I just saved your life. You should be a bit more grateful. Those dreams of yours will be the death of you.” She could not understand my determination.
“Thanks for the help,” I said in appreciation, then stood up to leave.
“Where are you going?” Anders asked. “There is still an overcharge going on out there. If you go now, you def gonna die.” I smiled, then stepped over to hug her. She was visibly surprised at the show of affection, but hugged back after a few seconds.
“I need to go before it gets dark,” I said.
“It’s— It will take you at least two days to ascend that mountain, even if you do make it,” Angel said, then turned to rummage around in the corner box of random stuff. “At least take this, ok? It’s an uno reverse for lightning.” I looked at her in confusion.
“It reflects lightning back,” She explained and pushed it at me. I took it, and hugged her again. This time she held onto me for a few extra seconds after I let go, rubbing her forehead in the crook of my neck. “Don’t get yourself killed, crazy girl.”
“I’m Voltra,” I said, “Lightning can’t stop me.” Anders rolled her eyes at the claim, then waved me away while shaking her head. I took one step outside and realized that the day was already gone. I climbed back in much to Anders bursting out laughing. She let me stay the night to wait out the overcharge without a second thought.
“So you’re a runaway?” Angel asked. “Welcome to the club.”
“You ran away, too?” I asked. “What about your family?”
“Have none,” Anders continued. “It’s always been just me. Do moles really have families under all that rock and earth? It’s a bit different up near the surface. Don’t get me wrong, I love my freedom, but…“
“But?”
“Family is the one thing I’d give up some freedom to have.” The phrase rang out in my head. I ran away to chase my own freedom, but I meant to come back, share my experiences, and fight to let everyone else see it. Anders lived alone, hoping for a even just a bit of family dynamic one day. When we went to sleep,I drifted into the endless blue. Anders and Hanover were by my side, smiling and laughing. I woke up first, and left before Angel convinced me to stay with her where it was safe.
After waiting out the overcharge at Angel’s place, I was outside for the second day in my short excursion. The air was charged and smelled of iron. The first leg of the ascent was easy, walking underneath the metal structures gathering lightning strikes to use as power. When those ended their protective redirecting, it was just me and the lightning.
I held the strange rod she gave me close at hand as I ventured past the field of lightning gatherers. I hoped it worked the way she said, but I had no idea what uno even was. The first lightning that struck down, hit me, sending a powerful charge through my suit without bothering the stick Anders gave me. I felt the strike like a shiver, setting my hair on ends, but dissipating through the suit and back to the metal structures behind me through my three tails. I tapped the stick Angel gave me in various spots, but it did nothing.
I kept ascending, bit by bit, playing with the device buttons and dials. I regretted leaving before finding out how to use it. Eventually, I pressed a button that did something. It expanded a bubble of some sort of rubber above, then snapped the rubber over me.
I was in shock for a moment. It did not obstruct my vision since it was clear, but clung to my body. It was no worse than the suit I was wearing, but it felt a bit more sticky. I tried to pull the rubber away from the suit, finding it come off pretty easily. I could breathe through it. The stick itself was still attached to the bubble that snapped over me, like a tether to the whole surface.
A burst of lightning lit the sky above me, and looked to be skipping through the clouds in my direction, but it bounced off me and struck one of the metal structures still nearby. Anders outdid herself. I had to bring her back underground to provide her with a family experience, but first I had to go into the blue.
The further I got from the metal structures gathering lightning, the less the lightning followed me, all the way until I was far above them. When I was the high point, the lightning sure loved me as the target, but I came prepared. As I went, I dropped metal spikes into the ground to attract lightning instead of it going after me. It worked for that first day of the climb. Some surfaces I had to actually send, but living underground among the rocks made climbing second nature.
When the night rolled in, the lightning got less frequent. Maybe the sun had a special effect on the clouds that made the strikes more active. It was weird that the hunting party left as the morning started. Maybe it had to do with the wildlife they were hunting. I made a tent in a cave and watched the bright flashes cut from the dark clouds above to the ground below. I knew there was blue above them. There had to be.
In the morning, prompted by my alarm, I watched the frequency of the strikes increase. From far away it was like a dance of light, if forgetting how dangerous or deadly it was. I set off again at higher difficulty, but still had the stick from Anders. The way up involved more and more climbing, and I felt the most exposed when the three tails hung off a cliff face without connection to a surface. I could not climb in the rubber bubble. The outside was slippery, just like the inside, so it had to come off.
There was no way to hammer in support buckles, so every climb was freehand, but I was not going to give up on this. I had enough energy to get past the clouds, but they felt so far away. By the time I neared them, I felt the air charged with electricity at every step. I wore the rubber bubble at all times, but the lightning did not look to want to strike me. The clouds were around me, lowering my visibility, with a layer of rubber between the electric charge that could stop my heart.
“Ok,” I said to myself as I walked through the darkness. “Let’s be calm about this.” The steep incline approached another climbing face. I would either have to remove the rubber coating and climb, or attempt to send it while coated. I chose the latter option, looking for easy handholds rather than fast ones. I had to tuck the tails inside the bubble so they did not work in reverse of their operation.
“Easy,” I said. “Hold by hold.” I ascended slowly, and carefully, keeping the blue of the sky in my mind as inspiration. I would clear the black clouds and see it, the endless expanse above our planet, a gradient of atmosphere that kept us alive even though we made a few mistakes. When a rock gave way under my grip, I felt betrayed.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed, tightening my hold on the other hand. I could not see anything below me, just darkness of the clouds. The air that snuck through the breathable rubber felt so metalic and earthy. I felt the crackle of electricity on it, as if made of pulverized sparks. “Just a bit more.”
When I reached a ledge, it felt like the middle of nowhere. Above me, the clouds covered my vision, and below only the darkness remained. I was safe, but nowhere near the summit. Even if I brought some sort of measuring equipment, it would be useless in this darkness charged with static. I thought back to Hanover and Anders, to my mom and dad. I even thought about the school friends and everyone who dismissed my dreams.
That night, I dreamed of blue skies again, but I was alone. I woke up with a start still in the middle of the night. The black clouds were thicker and denser than before. The environment felt calmer, less loaded with charge, but still smelled of electricity. I slowly removed the rubber bubble from myself to find the clouds float around me casually. I took this opportunity to climb higher, free to grab holds without the slippery rubber on my fingers. It felt like the black clouds accepted me, as if I had reached high enough to allow passage.
The rest of the climb was easy, and I started seeing a brightening above, but it was not because day was approaching. I was seeing bits and pieces of the blue sky through the parting dark clouds. My excitement mounted, multiplied, making my heart pound. I could not be stopped. I dreamed of this. I longed for this. Come what may.
The light I saw through those clouds was not blue at all. Some spots cast light through the clouds, but the rest remained dark. When more of the black clouds shifted away, the spots of light multiplied in the sky above. These had to be stars. The cold was biting at my fingers and toes already. Even though I brought padding to keep myself warm, it was not nearly enough. I had to spend some energy on heating coils I built into the suit.
“Ahh, that’s better,” I sighed, as the heat slipped all over me underneath the suit. I had to put my fingers under my armpits before looking up into the sea of endless lights of the night. Here I was dreaming of endless blue, and a vast array of gemstones hung above. I knew they were distant stars like the sun, but had never seen an example. “Reading about this in a textbook would not do it justice.”
I sat there in the starlight, near the summit of the mountain. I made it all the way, but could not stay. There was a limit of power in my suit, and the day was still so far away. I had to make a choice. Did I want to risk my life to wait for the day to begin, or descend the mountain with knowledge that an ascent was possible. I wanted to make a machine that would go up here for everyone to see this marvel. For now, I had to weigh the options.
“I can’t leave,” I said. “The chance that I’d be allowed to do such a thing again is nil.” I remained, clinging to my source of heat while watching the horizon. The night seemed to blossom in stars. The longer I stayed, the more of them I could see, until there was no discerning empty space significant enough. The whole sky was a sea of lights, as the horizon grew brighter blue on the sun’s approach.
I watched as the dark blue slipped to standard blue, encapsulated by stars being erased from existence by a more intense light coming. I kept my hands close to my mouth to breathe on them and keep them from freezing. When the first sliver of the star made it past the horizon, I looked away from it. I knew for a fact the light from it would hurt my eyes. I had never seen it before. Instead, I looked up at the gradient of blue to light blue. Before long, everything in my vision was the light blue that was promised by my grandmother.
“I have to go,” I said, feeling my body stiff from the cold. The thought of grandma shook my mind back to survival. I breathed on my fingers again, feeling the cold shiver down my body. I stayed too long. I had to get down, and fast. The battery on my suit was running low. I started carefully climbing down, but found my hands weak and my feet numb. This would be trouble.
I ran through a few decisions that I had to make in my mind. A careful descent would be too slow and just as dangerous because of my numb hands and legs. Starting a fire this high up would be hard and keeping the fire going would need fuel. I could use the rubber bubble to descend faster, but it would most likely break it. It might even break my suit. If I got below the clouds without the suit or the bubble, the lightning would show me no mercy.
I felt a lull in my mind, and started pacing to keep the blood flowing in the parts of my body it could still flow to. There was no time. I had to climb down, no matter what happened. I managed to get down the first wall, but tripped on the steep downward slope following. Without thinking, I deployed the rubber bubble to cushion my tumble, hoping that it would stop a short way down. The slope ahead cut to another cliff side. I saw it on every circle around in the tumble, and then the ground dropped away. I hoped the bubble would hold against the impact, but knew there was no chance. I closed my eyes, picturing blue skies I only got a small glimpse of at the summit. This was worth it.
The impact shredded the rubber bubble. I landed on my side, getting the wind knocked out of me. My mind drifted off to sleep right away, no matter how worrying it felt. I had no say. I would dream of blue skies until the end. I saw blue, darkening into the night, until it was dark.
The next thing I saw was a fire, throwing random sparks above the flames. It was warm and comfortable, but everything else around me was dark. I was in the black clouds, which hung over the scene like a gray fog. There was a piece of cloth over my face, and when I tried to remove it, a hand stopped me from doing so.
“Keep that on,” said a man’s voice. “You’ve inhaled a lot of the ash already.” He had a mask on, with round goggles that reflected the light of the fire menacingly. Over his mouth, he had a large circle that filtered the air he was breathing. I sat up to warm myself by the fire.
We sat in silence for a while, as he studied a device on his wrist. Sometimes he glanced off into the darkness of the ash clouds as if he could see through them. Some time later, he stood up, looking off in one direction.
“We have to go,” he said. “An overcharge is climbing up.”
I did not question him. He snuffed the fire out with his heavy boot, and took off. I followed behind him, wondering what I could ask him. I was already grateful that he saved me. Part of me wanted to go back up the mountain to see the blue sky again, and another part wanted to go home, getting Anders on the way back. I bumped into him when he stopped suddenly.
“There,” he said, pointing into the darkness. I looked off, but saw nothing, and looked to him in confusion. He took a hand and unscrewed one of the circular eyepieces of the goggles. Behind it were the most green eyes I had ever seen, and a heavy scar right next to his eye in the shape of the letter Z. When I looked through the eyepiece, the ash cloud became more of a fog. I saw the mountain, and in the distance, the array of metal structures gathering lightning from the cloud strikes. It was the path I took up the mountain. “Go home.” He took the eye piece back, and screwed it back onto his mask.
I walked a short distance forward and looked back, but he was no longer there.
“Hello?!” I called out. “Wait! Thank you! What’s your name?” I listened to the silence of the charged billows, and thought I heard a low whispered “Auverne” in the emptiness, but maybe it was my imagination. I descended the mountain in the direction he directed, but worried of the lightning once I was past the clouds. I could remove the scrap of cloth from my mouth, and found the fabric very thin, but soft. I hoped that my suit would save me until I got back to Anders.
I found the pod in the remains of trees. It was about the only part of the long-lost forest that had glowing lights. The dark clouds erased all the sunlight I saw above, making the plants that needed a lot of it die out. Those needing only low light thrived, but all were subject to the lightning. We still had trees underground, fueled by synthetic growing lights in the cultivating areas of the city. They provided us with food and oxygen, as we provided them with water and stuff we pooped. It was a co-operative existence.
I climbed up the tree to the enclosure, but found nobody there. It was the start of the day, so I had to wonder where Anders went off, but cozied up in her bed exhausted and fell asleep. I dreamed of stars this time, and the progression of the bright sun from beyond the horizon and into the sky. I saw the darkest of blue sky brighten with yellow light, shifting to that heavenly blue I saw. I would come back one day, and make it possible for anyone to see that majesty.
I was shaken awake by a big hand, and jumped to my feet without thinking. My eyes were still out of focus. When I could finally see, a large man stood at the bed, holding up both hands.
“Who are you?” I asked, patting around my suit for a weapon, or something I could use as one.
“Who are YOU?” He replied. “You were sleeping in my bed. You broke into my house. At least you didn’t eat my food, I guess.” I looked around confused. The room was just like Angel’s, with few key differences. I did wonder why the bed was so large. The entrance also seemed a bit bigger. It was almost a copy, and I could not tell it apart before.
“I— Do you know Angel?” I asked. His confused look turned into a smile.
“Mole girl!” He burst out pointing his big blobby finger at me. “Angie told me about you, but I didn’t believe her.”
“So you know her?” I asked. “I was coming down the mountain, and thought I was going to her place, but ended up here. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Angie’s a friend,” the guy said, then slapped his big hand on his thigh. “Didn’t make it all the way and had to turn back, right?” His face was very happy now, almost too happy.
“Actually, I—“
“OH!” He exclaimed. “My name’s Borden, by the way. Nice to meet you, mole girl.” I was starting to think “mole” was not a nice word.
“I’m Voltra,” I said.
“Ohhhhh, Voltra,” he said. “Sounds a bit made up.” He let a pause linger in the air until it made me feel uncomfortable.
“It’s Tamara,” I said. He just nodded, then turned to a blank panel on the wall, tapped a few buttons to show a pulsating green circle. When the circle stopped pulsating, Anders’ face popped onto the screen, half-awake.
“GUESS WHO!” Borden burst out so loudly that it made me jump, and it definitely made Angel snap awake. “I found the mole girl you told me about in my bed!”
“Who?” Anders asked. I stepped up to the panel. “Voltra?! Holy crap! I thought you were fried for sure!”
“Hey, Angel,” I said. “I thought this was your place, so I snuck in. Are you nearby, or did I get it really wrong?”
“I’ll be right over,” Angel said. She left the screen, as Borden tapped the screen to turn it off.
“I did make it past the clouds,” I said, to continue his previous question. His eyes opened wider, to actually see them. The man was strangely heavyset, but moved around as if all of it was fluff. “The clouds don’t strike you with lightning when you’re inside them, but you have to wear a mask so the ash doesn’t get into your mouth and lungs. Once you’re past the clouds, it gets really cold. I almost froze near the summit, but I needed to see the blue sky my grandma told me about.”
“Wow,” Borden said, laying down in bed. “A blue sky, huh? Too bad we can’t all go up there and see it.” I jumped to his side.
“That’s what I’m trying to make possible,” I said. “I want to make a device that you can go into and take a trip up above the clouds, so that anyone could see that sky again, to see the stars.”
“Stars? Aren’t those just a bunch of lights out beyond the clouds?” Borden asked, looking up at his ceiling decorated with random strings of light. He reached his blobby hand up, as if longing to see what I saw.
“There are billions of them,” I said. “They fill your vision. It’s like a sea of stars beyond this place, and the longer you look, the more of them you can see. Imagine going up there in a heated bubble that lets you just lay there for the whole night. I’d spend every night up there, if I could, and all day of blue.” Borden looked over to me with his hand still up to the ceiling.
“Don’t you think someone already tried that?” He asked. “I’m sure it’s not as simple as you think.”
“It doesn’t matter how difficult it is,” I said, then sat down beside his bed. “Nothing’s going to stop me. Nothing is going to stop Voltra.” He smiled, then looked up again.
“Billions of them, you say…” He said, then let his hand rest as he drifted off to sleep. Angel stopped by a few minutes later, and we left Borden to dream of the sea of stars beyond. In just a few minutes of walking, I found a tree that looked just like the one I climbed up to Borden’s pod.
“So?” Angel asked as soon as we got inside.
“So, what?”
“Did you make it up there?” She asked. “Or did you have to turn around?” I smiled, puffing up my chest proudly.
“I made it up beyond the clouds,” I said, then looked in her eyes. “Thanks to you. I also survived my descent thanks to you, and another person that I met in the clouds. He told me that you need to wear a mask in the clouds so you don’t breathe in the ash.”
“A person in the clouds?” Angel asked. “That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” I said. “He has some sort of technology that let him see through the clouds.” Anders put a finger to her chin for a moment, then nodded.
“That’s gotta be Auverne,” She said.
“You know him?”
“He’s kinda like a legend,” she said. “I didn’t really believe it, but now maybe. He’s said to be immortal, walking around in the darkness of clouds, because he’s the one who caused them.”
“Immortal?”
“Yeah,” Anders said. “Meaning he can’t die. The black clouds happened because of a weapons accident, and the legends says that it’s his penance to go around in the darkness, saving stranded people.”
“Well, he did save me,” I said. I wanted to show Auverne the blue skies and stars also. Maybe he was just waiting for somebody to guide him out of the darkness the same. “How come your place looks just like Borden’s?”
“It’s a pod,” she explained. “They’re manufactured based on the size of the person in deployable form. They give you the pod to put anywhere you like, and that’s all they owe you being born on the surface. Beyond a deployable home, you can’t expect anyone to help you survive. Borden put his pod up in a tree after seeing mine, but his is much larger. I worry every day that his will fall because of the size difference.”
“That’s cool,” I replied, walking around her pod. There was a surface further away from the middle that had to be the outside. “Oh! Come back with me.”
“Back?” Angel asked, mental wheels turning to try to understand. “You want me to go up the mountain with you again?”
“No, back home,” I said. “Come back home with me, to the underground. We’ll definitely be back to the mountain later, with Hanover, too.”
“Hanover?” Anders asked, then shook her head. “I’m fine here, mole girl. I don’t want to live in the dirt.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “We have running water and heating. We have light, and there is also farm fresh food. It’s kind of a perfect system, even if they force the smart kids to run it.”
“If it’s so perfect, why’d you leave?”
“I told you already,” I replied. “I wanted to see the blue sky that grandma told me about. Next time, I’m bringing Hanover and you to see it with me. We could carry more stuff to keep us warm up—”
“I’m fine where I am, Voltra,” Angel said, looking away. I stepped over and hugged her.
“I value your point of view,” I said, thought I wanted to pull her along with me home. “If you change your mind, find a way to get a message to me. Maybe you can tie it to some animal in a trap our hunting parties catch, or just talk to them.” Anders looked at me and smiled.
“I will,” she said. I wanted to ask if she meant that she would come with me, but did not want to push.
“I should get going,” I said. “My parents are sure to be upset. I’ll probably get grounded for a long time. Hah. Get it? Grounded. Because I live underground.”
“I hope you get to build your track up the mountain one day, Voltra,” Angel said.
“I’ll try for one better,” I said. “If Auverne did cause the black smoke a long time ago, I’ll see if I can get his help to clean it up.”
“You want to clean up the sky?”
“Seems only right,” I said.
“Your dreams are really big,” Angel said.
“That’s what they should be.” Anders smiled, and nodded. I left feeling revitalized in my drive. There was so much to look forward to, but there were a few things I was not looking forward to. Namely, my parents’ reaction. Maybe they would just cry from happiness that I was safe rather than punish me for following my dreams. It felt unlikely.
I waited where the hunting party exited, and snuck in through the open door. I knew I was on cameras, and knew a security group would pick me up. When Mom showed up at the head of them, I was rightfully surprised. I expected her to be angry, to yell at me, but she hugged me instead. There would be time for punishment later, but for now I just held onto her. I could not wait to tell her about the things I had experienced. I wanted to tell her about my dreams of cleaning up the sky so that everyone could see the blue without having to climb a mountain.
When we got back home, following a debrief of sorts, Dad hugged me, too. I withheld information about Auverne, Borden, and Angel. They did not need to know that I met anyone, just that I made it past the clouds. Once that hope of seeing the blue sky was in their minds, time would do the rest. The word would spread and come back to me with interest to make it a reality.
“You worried us,” dad said, standing next to mom, a united front. That was the punishment stance. I knew it would be bad, but how much worse could they make it for me after not being able to see grandma and pushing Hanover away? I was amused that they still thought there was something they could do to hurt me. “Tammy, we‘re very angry with you.”
“You didn’t let me see Grandma,” I said. Mom looked over and shared a look with dad. “And you pushed my best friend away.”
“We were trying to protect you,” Mom said. “It’s dangerous out there. The clouds can kill you instantly. You‘re our child, so we made the hard decisions that kept you safe. That’s what parents do.” She did not raise her voice, but every sentence felt like she was shouting at me.
“There are people living up on the surface,” I said, then put my hands over my mouth in surprise. I was not supposed to tell them either, but they had to understand. Going outside was not instant death.
“What?” Dad asked, he broke the united front for a moment of happiness, but mom yanked him back to her side.
“They live in these pods, single living spaces they can deploy anywhere,” I said, realizing that it sounded a bit far-fetched. “And there are people living INSIDE the black clouds, too. Or, at least people who can live there. I only met one person there. He had technology that helped him see through the darkness.” Mom put a hand to her mouth. Dad looked ever more excited at the revelations. It was nice to see his eyes light up.
“Why didn’t you tell the guards about that?” Mom asked. “If they find out you lied, it will get us in trouble. Don’t you understand how fragile the system of people living underground is, Tamara?” I knew exactly how fragile the balance was. School was not just there to teach, it was a recruitment program to sustain life underground. For that reason, I faked my test scores, I pretended to be simple, and was rewarded with freedom while still too young to do menial labor.
“It’s exciting,” Dad said. Mom delivered a sobering strike with three fingers to his side. He winced at the impact, but smiled. “Sorry, hon, but it really is exciting to think that some people can survive out there even with the way things are.” Mom looked displeased at his view. “But we’re very upset with you, Tammy.” His face still had a smirk that failed to die down for the serious eyes he tried to show. It made him look goofy.
“I’m sorry,” I said, playing along. “I felt betrayed when you took my friends away, so I lashed out.” There was truth to it, but the difference was that I was not sorry that I went outside, no matter how dangerous it was. There would always be danger, and that was why the hunting party existed. Maybe I could join their ranks in the future. That way, I could meet up with Anders as much as I wanted to.
“Alright, go to your room,” Mom said, buying into my apology. I grabbed some food from the fridge and snuck off to consume it in the comfort of my bed. It felt so incredibly soft in comparison to all the surfaces I slept on since I left. Even the pod beds were not close to the softness of my bed. I looked up to the blue painted ceiling and reached out to it, imagining it was Hanover, reaching back to me. I had to go find her for next time. We could become hunters together, and then meet up with Angel.
The future sure looked sky blue to me, no matter the resistance.
Comments
Post a Comment