Beneath White Clouds

By Eric Landreneau

Martin had a good life, a happy family, a steady job where he was rarely noticed - and he liked that. It was boring. It was safe. Until the day he fell below the clouds.

He found the world below strange beyond anything he would ever have wanted to imagine, so strange the whole world refused to believe him when he returned home.

With half of humankind set to take to the stars, and the other half set to die unknown beneath the ice, two stories from different sides of the clouds twist together, a brief encounter throwing a monkeywrench into a turning point in history. The worlds above and below unravel and re-weave as the struggle for truth becomes a fight for survival against genocide by bureaucracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Landreneau
• Release date: Dec 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370009367

Eric Landreneau

Author. Advocate for empowered creativity and the growing voice of the individual.

Book preview

1 — Grind Above

The Munson residence, Skyward City.

August, 147 Post-Impact.

Monday - Early morning.

Braap braap braaap!

Mrrn...

Braap braap braaap!

Mmnuu.... No! Martin hit the snooze icon hovering at his bedside.

Silence.

Blessed silence. Cozy luxury, sheets warm and tucked tight around him. Martin shut everything out. This was all he ever wanted. Blessed silence, white-washed peace fading to sleep. This alone was his secret, favorite thing.

Braap braap braaap!

Mmnnooo! He reached out, touched the projected bedside screen and slid the alarm off.

Yes... he thought, burrowing down into his pillow. Don't think nothing. Don't do nothing. This all I want... all I have to do. If I just... don't... wake... He would have thought If I just don't wake, nothing will bother me, but he fell back into unconsciousness before the thought put itself together. Martin smacked his lips, perfectly content, and resumed drooling. He didn't even hear his wife calling, and would have ignored her if he had.

Jude stopped calling. She hit a button.

A field coalesced under him, smart enough to differentiate between sheets and occupant. It kicked up, none too gently, waking him into a panicked state, and dumped him on his feet. Hard.

Jude and Rosa had been working on Martin for years. They had this down to an art.

Rrrrnnn!

The bed sank into the floor behind him. Droids whisked the bedding off to be laundered.

Martin would have screamed profanities, but even the rough treatment of the house's fields couldn't fully wake him up. So he just groaned and accepted his lot, beginning the rituals of waking. Still groggy, he shuffle-stumped over to the window, slumped forward, and face-planted on the outward-leaning transparent span. It tingled a little. A line of drool made its sluggy way down the surface, popping and evaporating. The window gave a little under his weight, but held, cushioning him. Like much of the building, the window was a force-field, projected and delicately balanced by the stratohab's staff of AIs.

Martin cracked open one eye, honed in on the drool and watched it sizzle away. The fields were fastidiously self-cleaning. The slight tingle where his skin touched meant they didn't quite know what to make of him and his sleep-scuzzed face. That tingle was part of his morning ritual; a mild buzz to wake him enough to get to his coffee.

Once his brain was awake enough to comprehend the drool he focused outside on the far drop to the Deck below. The clouds were calm today, an endless carpet of puffy white, spreading on and on to the horizon. The only break in the monotony was the thin towers of his city, rising up from the clouds. The buildings were spaced widely, each a huge, saucer- or kidney-shaped bulge atop its impossibly thin umbilical tower.

Slumped on the windowpane, Martin dozed off again into dreamy bliss.

Maaaaartin! Jude's voice, squawking through the intercom, dragged him back awake.

He blinked and pushed himself off the sloping window. Hmm... whu? As his mind growled awake, signals from his body overruled his base desires. Wanna sleep. Wakey sucks. Gotta pee.

Martiiiinnn! Breakfast!

Hungry. Gotta pee!

Mmm. Coming... he mumbled, knowing she couldn't hear and wouldn't care. They had a routine. She probably knew down to the second how long it took him to stagger out of the room after she ejected him.

Oh, Señor Martin, you bes' ándale, ándale! Rosa's voice emanated from the walls, and Martin winced. The house-mind's voice stroked his nerves with all the gentility of a bag of glass. You gon' hafta take—

Rosa! Stuff it!

Martin stumped to the bathroom, dropping his PJs as he went. Scurrying droids flocked to clean up his mess while Rosa chattered, Ay, dios mio! Look this mess you leave. What, you think I your nanny? Now move you puffy brown ass, or you gonna be late after dropping off—

Rosa! Can it! Martin's ears burned. He didn't like raising his voice.

The AI voice faded, emulating the sound of someone leaving the room. Well, eskoooooose me for just wanna be helpfu...

Martin tried to descend back into the comfortable fuzziness of his early-morning stupor. If only he could figure out where Banji got that bargain-bin personality patch, and how the boy had embedded it so well. Her voice, this early in the morning, awakened some murderous urges. But Martin's stupor was powerful, and reclaimed lost territory easily. Fuzz-brained and numb, he entered the hygiene unit. Void. Pulse-shower. Sonic-Depil. Computer-cuff to right wrist. Smartsuit dressed itself on him, with the usual peripheral gadgets woven in.

Uuuunnngh...

He slumped down at the kitchen table and looked into the sunrise. The windows auto-polarized for him. Jude pushed his breakfast over. Whatever complaints Martin had, she'd never failed to warm up a good breakfast. Bakon rashers and hash from the automated ag-factories down below the Deck, coffee from the finest precision-tuned hydroponic stack. It was said that substitutes like bakon and beeph were indistinguishable from the true meat of old, though few alive had ever tasted anything different. Martin didn't care, happily gnawing the salty, fatty slabs of whatever-plus-protein. Good food was a science, and the robots in the sealed production facilities below the Deck handled it well.

After the first wave of hyper-caf from the enhanced coffee hit his bloodstream he woke enough to say, Thanks, dear.

Mmmm, she said, not breaking stride as she tapped away at a projection of rapidly-cascading multi-colored tablets which whizzed, binged and shazaamed as she vanquished them.

You code a new recipe in for this bakon? It's goo—

Wasabi-maple. High trend flavinoid of the moment. Enjoy — it's predicted to go passe in thirteen hours.

Well, but we'll still be able to get it after—

"Shhhh! Midwives' conference today, and three cases ready to pop any time. Especially Mazzi — that belly of hers gets any bigger, the kid'll birth her. I don't clear this level before facing all that crap, I'll completely glitch."

Martin shut up and ate, staring out the window. His eyes rolled from one familiar building to the next, taking in the skyline as sunrise painted the Deck and gilded the towers. There were already cargo movers and sky buses zooming about. At the horizon he saw his own workplace, a great blocky affair on four towers with a bulb of modern, sweeping corporate office on a fifth tower of its own. Skyward Fabrications, the heart of Skyward City. He caught a glimmer rising up one tower: a shuttlevator bringing goods up from below. Shipments never stopped, not on the weekend, not overnight. Mondays were the worst, with the backlog of inventory to check in and distribute. Food, goods, components for Operation Dandelion...

Squinting, he saw a glimmer of movement on the external platform: shipments being readied for lift.

Bakon turned to ash in his mouth — probably not a very drastic chemical conversion, anyway. Aw, for cryin' out loud! The Crane's flying over today!

That's nice, dear. Jude's game interface squealed a fanfare.

Ugh... Martin massaged his temples.

The Orbital Crane emitted kinetic fields strong enough to lift objects from strato-level to orbit. Every project, every timetable, everything they did in Skyward City revolved around the Crane's schedule. If Mondays are the worst, then Flyover Mondays deserve a brand new adjective.

You're still talking, dear?

Martin glared at his wife. The polarization filters made the room dim, and the lights were low. In the light from the game projection flickering on the lower slopes of her eyebrows, nose and chin, Jude looked so much sharper and more hard-edged than the woman he'd married.

And she's the very first person some babies meet. Yikes.

He reached out to a minimized interface projection over the breakfast bar and pulled down, expanding the holographic window to watch the morning news.

A podium before a room full of reporters. A lectern bearing the seal of the Civic Administration stood on the podium. A crawler of 3D text hovered in front of Martin's holo-window, declaring SPECIAL COVERAGE! in the newsfeed's official business font. Adminstrator Kopp took the stage — with her dark skin, hair a flawless bob in natural grey and trademark color-blocked skirt suit, she was easy to identify. Everyone knew the Chief Administrator, top dog of the human race, on sight.

There were salutations and formalities, then Administrator Kopp smiled into the cameras and got to business. My fellow citizens, I am pleased to tell you that the construction of the Orbital Lift Crane's expanded payload apparati has been completed, and testing has gone flawlessly. It has been a long, arduous journey for our engineers, construction crews, AIs, for all of us. After conferring with Indus, the prime AI overseer of Operation Dandelion and ground-level production, we have set the long-awaited test lift of the abandoned Tower 315 in Skyward City for four days from now.

Martin nearly choked on his bakon as the reporters on-screen went berserk. He swallowed the half-chewed bite and said to Jude, "You hear that? The test lift is Friday!"

Hmmm.

Can you believe that? It was almost nauseating, how quickly he was whiplashing from gloom to euphoria.

Believe it when I see it. She didn't even look up.

Martin shook his head in wonder. We could be living in space in... in like a month! A dawning joy filled his heart that this might be my last Flyover Monday! EVER!

Administrator Kopp gestured for quiet. I know you are all as excited as we are in the Administration. Heck, it's been hard to think these last few weeks in the Administration Offices, there's been so much buzz. Polite chuckles from the audience. But let's not get ahead of the game just yet. Indus reports that the fleet of Ark-Frames is nearly complete and 95% stocked, but we haven't developed a timetable yet for the final disembarkation. We will proceed with the test lift. Everything waits on that. If that succeeds — and I am confident it will — then we will move on to the next phase of Operation Dandelion. If we find problems, then we will do as we always have done: assess, adapt, and proceed. We are the survivors of the Impact, the seed of humanity's new dawn across the Solar System. I thank each and every one of you for your efforts, for your part in Operation Dandelion and the salvation of our civilization. Now, I have time for a few questions...

Martin didn't hear the babbling of the pundits, and minimized the screen before the talking heads got into their analyses, fact-checking, expert interviews, and other wind-baggery. His head buzzed. I'll get to see it? I'll get to be there? There had been so many delays and hiccups in Operation Dandelion — the unified project of humanity to finally get off of their broken-down homeworld — that he and everyone else had stopped bothering to hope.

Martin grinned. It's really happening now!

Jude sighed. You heard the lady. It might fail. It's just a test lift. Don't get yourself worked up. OpDandi's gonna plow on its own pace. It'll happen when it happens. 'Till then, babies need delivering and shipments need... ahh, she flicked her hand, whatever it is you do.

Martin sat up straighter, attempting to puff his chest in a manly fashion. QC inspection and routing control team management. Geeze, would it kill ya to remember?

Mmmm... Jude's attention was fully on her game.

Defeated, Martin returned to his breakfast. He couldn't impress his wife, but at least he knew where he stood with bakon and eggz.

Harper, their fifteen-year-old daughter came out of her room and left out the front door, right on schedule. She didn't stop for breakfast; that would have given Martin enough time to process what she was wearing (or wasn't) and make a fuss. What little there was of her getup was mostly black. The door shussshed shut and she was gone a full two seconds before he could raise a finger and open his mouth. H-hey... the protest died, his brain catching on to the fact that he'd missed the window of opportunity. He could chase her down, make a fuss about how his beautiful little girl would not be flouncing around looking like a tramp... but his food would get cold, and there was no winning embarrassing a teenage girl in front of her friends.

Jude cleared her level, and Martin grabbed for a little more human interaction. You think they make ghost-busting modules for home-minds?

Jude stopped, her coffee hovering at her lips, and scowled. Her lips moved, silently repeating his words. She tilted her head to one side. What? It was just one word, but she managed to pack a whole boatload of derision into it.

For the Phantom, said Martin. Spooky thing's been flitting around here for weeks, quiet as death, just passing through at all hours, not saying a word. Creeps me out.

The... Phantom... her scowl deepened, then vanished as she understood. Oh! Don't call her that, Martin!

Well, what? If it's not a phantom, then... maybe it's a demon. It's eaten my little girl's soul and taken over her body.

Jude snorted. Don't call her the Phantom, and don't call her a demon. Call her Harper. Then she muttered into her cup, You're the one who insisted on that stupid name.

Martin shoveled a fork-full of eggz into his mouth and talked as he chewed (he considered this to be one of his better skills). Harper? Harper's the name I gave to the little girl who used to talk my ear off about solar sails and escape velocities. My little astronaut. He pointed his fork at the door. "That's not Harper. That's the Phantom."

Jude shook her head. She's fifteen, Martin. We all turn into little horrors at that age. She'll swing the other way. In two weeks, you'll probably miss the Phantom.

Martin checked his chrono and leaped from the table. Holy Moly! Look at the time! He left his breakfast unfinished, but held on to his coffee, slurping as he scrabbled for his bag and his car.

Errr... where did I put that thing? He checked under chairs, behind the couch, under the bar. We get this fancy modern house, all open and bright... spartan decor... here? No! And still I can't keep track of my own car!

Jude sipped the last of her coffee and waded through Hurricane Martin to the kitchen counter. She picked up Martin's lunch and his car from their usual spot and held them out for him. Here, goofball. I need you to drop off Banji. My car's on the fritz again.

Martin groaned. "Aw, fer cryin' out lou— Wait, Banji? Banji! But how am I gonna—"

Maybe if you didn't saddle me with your spazzy second-hand cars, this wouldn't be a problem.

Ooooh, Señor Martin! Rosa's voice cackled from the ceiling. She toooold you!

Martin spluttered, But but but—

But-but-but. Jude mocked him. "But I should leave you at the mercy of the public shuttle. I'm the one whose job might have me tearing across the city at a moment's notice. And yet somehow you've convinced me that you should get the good car. Well, no Banji, no car. Jude twisted up one side of her face, a know-it-all smirk he found oddly fetching, even still, and tapped her wrist. Tick-tock, Martin." Even though people didn't keep watches on their wrists anymore, and clocks didn't tick without an anachronism app, the gesture kept its meaning.

Martin deflated. Not that he ever inflated much before Jude burst him. Right, right. He slumped over to the door to Banji's room.

A freight-train of noise and light hit Martin as Banji's door opened for him; all the spectacle of a planetary assault. Banji had his holo-game blown up to fill the whole room. A ringed world, dozens of moons, and thousands of improbable warships whirled around them. Most were in some phase of exploding.

The sudden vertigo did not react well with his breakfast. Martin fought down eggz and bakon and forged into the fray, stalking through the battlezone like a god, towering over a combat carrier, making for Banji and his game chair, which had a cockpit projected around it.

Banji! What did we say about conquest before school?

His moon-faced son didn't even blink. Rmm mm mmm mmmmm mnnm...

"No games in the morning, Son! You're gonna be bouncing off the walls, doing everything but paying attention!"

Mmm... srry. Banji blasted away.

Martin sighed and touched Banji's shoulder. Come on. We have to go.

Banji shrugged away from Martin's hand and started an attack run on a capital ship. Jus' two minutes. Can't stop, Dad. Gotta getta save point.

Martin smirked. Rosa. Save game state and close. The holo winked out, revealing a room that was a bit more of a disaster than the zero-gee battleground. Martin cut off his son's protests. 'Save points' were old news when I was your age, kid. You gotta stop thinking I never played a video game. Trigger-Finger Martin, they used to call me in my sim-league days. Now get your venture-belt.

Banji dripped out of his chair, dove into a pile of rubbish and came out with the belt clicked around his waist. Whatever you say, Dad.

Martin put a hand on the boy’s forehead, blocking him from leaving the room. And clean up this mess, kid.

Uh, but Dad—

Now! What, you raised in a barn?

Ain't been barns in almost a century, muttered the boy. With all the weight of the world on his shoulders, Banji laboriously summoned an interface and tapped the tidy up icon. Bots flitted into the room, stowing toys and sorting clothes, while stains better left un-named sizzled away into oblivion.

Ay caramba Señor Martin! I have to clean up after everyone? Your boy gonna be a slob jus' like you! Maybe one day you can learn clean your own mess, huh?

"Rosa, tidying up is your function!" Martin felt a little thrill at his display or authority. Satisfied that Rosa would bring order to the bedroom, Martin ushered Banji out.

Behind him, Rosa's voice muttered as her droids scrubbed away, Tree million force-field projection calculations I manage every minute, wit' holographic overlay and texturing, and he says I made for 'tidying up?' I like to see him herd forty-seven droids at once...

Out on the launch-pad Martin set down his car and synched it with his and Banji's venture-belts. The car, just a briefcase-sized module, rose between them. Fields reached out, forming seats and restraints under their backsides so they were sitting in mid-air. Then it projected the main field, a bubble which surrounded them, tear-drop shaped, transparent on top and opaqued on the bottom. With a nudge at the controls they drifted up and joined the flow of traffic. A school of similar tear-drop cars whizzed all around them. Martin had the car route them past Banji's school.

So, what are you studying today?

His six-year-old stopped making warring spaceships out of his hands and shrugged. Thermodynamics, I think. And Impact History. She's gonna make me do a report on Robert Krissy... Krichan... Krinna—

Krishnashankar. What a visionary. Martin's eyes got misty. You know, his brilliance saved—

I know. Saved us from the cold, kept us in the light. Banji's face brightened. I'll start practical force-fields soon!

Good, good.

Ooh, ooh, and today's the last day of astrogation in sim-gym. There's a test on orbital insertion.

Well, they sure are moving you kids fast these days... A projected billboard loomed over the stream of traffic, featuring Administrator Kopp and a countdown to the test lift of Tower 315. Martin whistled. Then again, you guys are gonna have a wild new job market up there. Martin leaned back and sipped his coffee. He hadn't set it down, and didn't need to steer; that was what the car was for. Feeling him lean back, the car reclined the seat further, thinking he wanted to lay down. Coffee splattered his pants. Darn it! Stupid fritzy dog-brained piece of— Er, I mean...

Banji beamed at him. Go on, Dad. Piece of what?

Nothing. He tapped the holo-icon for the chair controls and slid the back-angle upward. Manually, he thought, like some kinda caveman. Nothing, son. Anyway, here's your school.

Goodbye, Dad.

Goodbye, Son.

He tapped the homing switch on Banji's venture-belt. The belts were smaller, less-sophisticated versions of cars. They couldn't be steered, just set to home in on pre-programmed destinations. The belt extended a little field bubble around his son, separated from the car and dropped down to the school's urchin-packed landing pad.

Martin flew onward, his car synched with traffic, over and under the bulging, rounded, thirty-story buildings perched above an endless sea of clouds. The buildings were saucer, lozenge, kidney and even boomerang shaped, held up above the poisoned wasteland by the unending labor of fusion plants and field projectors below, tended by an army of dutiful robots. The stout umbilical columns gave them the look of towers beyond John Graham Jr.'s wildest dreams. Sipping his coffee, Martin watched the city fly by as the stream of cars brought him to the blocky, pyramidal headquarters of Skyward Fabrications, the buzzing nerve center of their city in the sky, churning away for Operation Dandelion.

2 — Grind Below

Below the Deck.

Tuesday - Early morning.

Modun kicked at a bit of burnt slag — what passed for ambiance in the Barrier Lands. Hoi, what's taking the cranked thing so long?

Janks spat in the direction of the gaping black tunnel in the gnarled, craggy cliff face. The Barrier itself shimmered just a few feet inside, like oil on a puddle. Cranky piece a' work's fallin' apart. Bosses don't give a shit. You know that.

Far off to the left and right, the Barrier field emerged from the cliff, arcing gradually into a dome over the entire massive Complex. The shimmering energy shield blunted the howling, frozen winds, trapping in enough industrial waste heat to keep the Complex above freezing, warm enough for bio-robot Units like Modun to operate.

Modun shoved his hands in his coveralls and dropped his rump onto his leviplat. The levitating disc sank a hand-span under his weight, then rose. Behind him a couple of gargantuan Big Lifters sat in the dirt, scratching. One nudged the other, and it shoved the first one back. The opening blows of a tussle set the ground shaking. Modun tapped the prod button on his leviplat's panel, which zapped his Big Lifter, Stumptooth, right in what passed for its brain. It whimpered a little — a wheezing, high sound for something so big, coming from the peg-toothed maw below an otherwise featureless chrome dome.

How do the Bosses think we'll make these cranked Q's they keep raising, when we gotta keep waiting for this broken old Ore Worm to start our shift?

You keep asking questions like that, said Janks, scratching his filthy, dredded beard, implyin' that th' Bosses give two hot sparks about us. Why dontcha clamp it and wait like a proper Grimer, huh?

Modun sighed and kicked his feet, spinning his leviplat like a top. He let it twirl a couple of times, just watching the scenery go by — grey, grey, black, grey, grey, black... Then he planted his feet with his back to the tunnel mouth, staring back at the Complex. It was a forest of Columns, each sprouting from their own little mountain — half buried fusion reactors and force field generators. Conduits, pipelines and rails unraveled from the bottom of each Column, snaking down and out to weave into the fabric of industry that was the Complex. They shrank in diameter as they rose to only a couple dozen feet, tightly bundled and never moving as they shot up into the Deck. Up where the Lords lived. No Lords down in the Complex. Not never. Just foundries, smelters, factories, blazing-bright hydroponic stacks, and Unit settlements wherever they could squeeze them in. There were smoke stacks that never stopped belching flame. The grinding clacks and roars of the shuttlevators never stopped, as the big cars raced empty down the flanks of the great Columns, then chugged their way back up, full, up and up and up to the Lords above the Deck.

A sound broke the doldrums, but not the earthshaking rattle of an approaching Ore Worm. It was a low, tonal moan, a steady wwwooooo increasing in frequency. A sound all Units knew, and hoped never to hear come that close. Modun whirled around, looking for the source. Janks pointed upward for him, at the oncoming Hunter.

The chrome machine, bulky and tapering like a horseshoe crab, fifteen feet wide from one packed-up segmented blister pod to the other, dropped toward them. It came to a stop between them and the tunnel mouth, silent and menacing. Modun and Janks kept still, trying not to react, though they both wanted to run. They kept their faces up and their hands showing. Appendages unfurled from the central sensory blister, looking them over and scanning them deep. The crude implant in the side of Modun's head buzzed uncomfortably as the Hunter accessed his biometric readings.

Grimer Units 5799275JK033 and 1960423MD970, it said. Report the whereabouts of Greener Unit 1260092AD657.

Please clarify. Grimer Unit memory systems do not efficiently recall identity codes, said Modun. Stalling. He kept his voice as even as he could.

Records indicate Greener Unit responds to 'Addie.'

Modun fought to keep blank, as memories shot through his brain. They'll tear her apart, Old Onetooth had said, her hoarse whisper like steel claws, carving her words deep into Modun's memory. They catch that swell on her, they'll rend her right there. Bits and pieces. Back to the vats.

Modun didn't move, didn't say a word to Janks. He wanted to signal, to do something. Janks had never really committed himself one way or another, but Modun knew Janks had an idea what was going on. The Hunter would catch any motion, any signal, so he didn't try. Hunters were very good at reading Unit gestures and postures and deducing intentions. He didn't think about what his biometrics were showing the robot; worrying about them would only make them worse.

The older, burly Grimer just shook his head. Location unknown.

The Hunter turned to Modun. He kept his eyes low. Location unknown.

Grimer Unit 1960423MD970. You are known to co-habitate with 1260092AD657.

Correct. Location of Unit Addie is unknown, said Modun.

The Hunter hovered there, staring them down, processing, scanning their biometrics. Modun's guts tied themselves into knots.

Biometrics indicators are escalating, indicating anxiety response. Explain.

Modun forced his hands to unclench. "Um... Proximity of a