Becoming Chosen

It’s tempting to look past all the sacrifice, the money, effort and time which must be consumed and concentrate on that time when everything will change for our decedents. To think about those days when the restrictions come off and they begin their triumphant deceleration into their new home. But I, we, must all resist. Until the time the Sealed Archives open, there is no other world, no other Way. This is not a conceit but a foundational requirement of our great project. Like we will insist for the future travelers, we must put away thoughts of tomorrow and exist in the needs of Today, only.

-Foster Delhim, Excerpt from his Launch Day speech, Sealed Archive

Ronan was bored to tears. Swabbing out ventilation ducts was a seriously low input. He supposed it was by design, giving anyone sentenced to it plenty of time to think over their sin against the Way of Maintenance. He had already made his uneasy peace with the Way before getting assigned this duty.So on that score the F.O. was not getting his way.

Being a junior on the Surface Crew was definitely not a path he would have chosen for himself. But he had to admit that the difficulty and danger of the work kept your attention, at the very least. Wipe the ceiling, wipe the left-hand wall, move on, repeat, and repeat and repeat. Ami got the floor and the right-hand wall and that’s all there was to this task. Nothing but boring minutes leading to tedious hours, hours piling on top of each other, all exactly the same.

Even conversation dies in an environment like that. There are only so many things to talk about when you have nearly no intellectual stimulation. If there was a bright spot, it was that this was the last full day of punishment for both of them. Soon they would be back with their normal crews, and thankfully doing something, anything but cleaning blasted ducts!

Ronan’s cleaning trance was so deep, that when his data-set spoke he nearly jumped to the overhead.

“Crewmembers Candemir and Sunderland, this is Life Support Control, respond.”

“What could they want?” Ami asked.

Ronan just shrugged and pulled his data-set off his belt. “Candemir, responding.”

“Ronan, this is Lt. Husted, the two of you are working along C-2-5 right?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” Ronan said with a smile. He had worked under Husted when he had been on the Way of Life Support; a-follow-the-Way-girl, without doubt, but not rigid and mean with it like First Officer Nesbit. “Is there a problem?”

It was the right question. Officers could always call you on the data-set, but it was rare for them to do so if it were not important. Ronan saw Ami’s face getting serious as she thought it through.

“Nothing critical,” Husted told them. That was a relief; critical was the word officers used when there was a life-threatening situation. Whatever Husted wanted, it was unlikely to be dangerous. Maybe hard, dirty and touchy, but not dangerous.

“It’s just that we are getting some odd readings from in and around juncture C-6-5 and A-24-5. We’ve sent in some Skitters, but they don’t show anything.”

“What kind of odd readings, ma’am?” Ronan asked. “Do you think a sensor is failing?”

“Well, truth be told, we don’t know what to think it is. The signals are too far apart and don’t seem to repeat like a short would. Plus, there is no one circuit that could account for all of this.”

Now that was odd! Ronan shot Ami a glance, thinking she might have an idea, but his friend just shook her head.

“I could send in a full-dress incident crew,” Husted continued. “But our schedule is very tight right now. I figure you and Sunderland could use a break from dusting; maybe get to do something interesting? So, are you willing to help out?”

Ronan grinned at the exaggerated way Ami was nodding for him to say yes. Like either of them would turn down a chance to do something different, and earn some points with an officer. It was a safe bet Lt. Husted knew it too.

“Of course, ma’am,” Ronan said, sure his grin could be heard in his voice, “We’d be happy to check it out and report back to you.”

“Excellent,” Husted said, “I’m loading the data we’ve collected to your ’sets. Go see what is going on and report.” There was a pause, then Husted continued, her voice a little lower, “Ronan, I don’t need to tell you that you should not fix whatever you find, do I?”

Ronan’s grin turned to a grimace, but he resisted the urge to sigh. He’d earned the reputation that made Husted ask that dreaded question.

“No, ma’am. We’re not on the Life Support Way. We’ll just be an extra set of eyes and hands to find the problem. Once we do, it will be your team’s job to bring things up to standard.”

Ami put her hands up and mimed kissing a butt, when she heard Ronan spouting the standard line. He gave her a silent middle finger back.

“I was pretty sure, but it’s good to hear you say it. Go get started. Oh, and Ronan, do a good job here and both you and Sunderland will see a small commendation in your records. Life Support Control, out.”

Well, that was better than being shoved out an airlock! Husted really was a good woman.

Just like they had been taught, Ami and Ronan had taken a few minutes to look over the data and settle on a plan of action. It was such an ingrained part of their lives they didn’t even notice it.

True to what the Lt. had said, the data was strange. There were multiple signals of air return gratings being opened then showing closed again. The Skitters had looked the whole area over, but the little machines couldn’t see any obvious cause. There were also some records of door access pads being used, but not with any code that would work.

What kind of malfunction would cause that? Ronan began to wonder if it was a fault in the computers that monitored life support. That was a scary idea, but he quickly dismissed it. All computer systems were triple redundant. Besides, the Life Support Control crew would have run diagnostics as one of their first moves.

The duct juncture in question was near one of the elevators that ran from the Surface all the way through the ten decks of the Tech, even connecting to the giant void of the Habitat Cavern.

Ami had insisted that the problem had to be coming from the main ventilation tunnels, based on the premise that no-one would mess with the return grates, not even a little kid. Ronan didn’t have a better alternative idea, so he had gone with Ami’s plan to approach the problem area from the tunnels they were already in.

As they approached the junction, they slowed down. Both of them clicked the recording unit on their chest mounted lights. SOP was to record all problem instances, no exceptions. On the one hand it was important to have that data, but on the other it made speculating a dangerous proposition for crewmembers who already had a reputation for off-the-Way thinking.

The ventilation tunnel stretched off into the dark beyond the beam of Ronan’s light. So far, they had seen nothing. But the odds of a major failure were low. Any failure that size would have been found by the Skitters, or so extensive it would have showed on fifty different trouble-screens.

Still, the procedure was clear, gather as much visual data as possible. In this case it meant shining his light and camera up at the ceiling and back and forth between the walls. Just as he finished panning down, Ronan thought he saw something moving, just at the very edge of the light.

“Did you see that?”

Ami looked over at him, partially blinding him with her light. “See what?”

“I thought I saw movement, down by the junction.”

“Hm, I didn’t see anything. You’re not getting the tunnel spooks, are you?”

Ronan glared at Ami. Now her question would be on the record for all time. Why couldn’t she learn to think before she spoke? Once would make him happy right now.

“Let’s continue our sweep,” Ronan said, hoping the little bit of video wouldn’t find its way to any of the conversation boards. He really didn’t need to be nicknamed “Tunnel-Spooked”.

As the two Tech came into sight of the big T-junction at the A-24 tunnel with C-2, they both could hear a sound, just out of sight around the bend. Without a word, both Ronan and Ami sped-up.

If pressed later, Ronan would not be able to tell anyone what he thought he would see when he turned that corner. But no matter what he had in mind it was nothing compared to reality.

Crouched down by a return grate was a person, but not like any person Ronan had ever seen. It might have been a girl, but it was hard to tell. Her hair looked wrong, too long, not at all like the regulation length every Tech wore. It was hard to know for sure. The hair was a knotted mess, as if something sticky had dried in it.

Ronan thought it might be blood. He could see a black stain on the back of her torn shirt. His light reflected off her skin, showing a long cut that had obviously scabbed and then broke open more than once.

The girl was looking right up at Ronan and Ami, her blue eyes wide, her face pale, even as she was trying to jimmy open the grate in front of her. Ami let out a high-pitched chirp of surprise.

“I won’t go back!” shouted the strange girl. Then she got up and ran away into the dark.

It was so unexpected, so strange, that Ronan felt the need to pinch himself to be sure he wasn’t dreaming. A second of thought told him he wasn’t; he’d never had a dream this strange! With that flash of insight in mind he sprinted after the fleeing girl.

Ami yelled, “Wait!” but Ronan didn’t pay her any mind. Something was telling him he needed to know about this strange girl, and letting her get out of sight was not an option, even if his friends legs were too short to keep up.

He kept running until he could just see the back of girl, then slowed a little. This tunnel didn’t turn or have a junction for at least another thousand yards. There was nowhere for the girl to go, except through a grating, into an interior hall. She could try, but Ronan doubted that she would be able get one open before he caught up with her.

The footsteps ahead were a little ragged. Whatever had happened to the girl, she was exhausted. Setting a pace that would slowly close the distance, Ronan listened. Yes, he could hear her breathing hard. It wouldn’t be long now.

The girl crumpled to floor of the tunnel, her deep breathing turning into sobs. Ronan thought it was the saddest sound he had ever heard.

“Miss? Can you hear me?” Ronan said stopping about thirty feet from the girl. “You don’t have to be afraid; no one is going to hurt you. I promise.”

The figure in the dim light sat up, putting her back against the wall. That was progress, right? “I’m going to walk up near you, okay?” Ronan asked. The girl didn’t respond, but something in the way she held her shoulders suggested that she wouldn’t flee again, at least not right away.

As he approached, Ronan could see old blood on the front of her shirt as well as the back. What had happened to her?

“You look like you’ve been hurt. Whatever happened, I’d like to help you.”

The girl looked up and into Ronan’s eyes. She might be tired, and hurt, but the strength in her gaze said she was far from beaten.

“The cut on my back is worse than I thought. It really hurts,” the girl said, her voice low and horse

“It looks like it does,” Ronan agreed, feeling lame for repeating what she just said.

“If I let you help me, you won’t send me back?”

Ronan had no clue where back was at this point, but he could at least answer this question. “I won’t send you anywhere. But I’m not exactly in charge of everything, you know?”

His honesty earned Ronan a crooked smile from the girl. “Well, an honest answer is the best one,” she said in a tone that suggested someone had told her the same, many times.

Ronan answered with an aphorism of his own, “We do the first step, finish it, then move on. Now it seems to me the first step is we get you medical attention, some food and new clothes. We can put all the other steps on hold until then, fair?”

“Say true, more than fair.”

Ronan smiled himself. Her turn of phrase was odd, and she had a cadence to her speech he had never heard before, but it was really very charming.

Ami came pounding up the tunnel at this point and joined the two of them. She was out of breath, and as usual, angry.

“By the Builders! Why didn’t you wait?” Ami demanded of Ronan.

“I didn’t want to lose her,” he replied, gesturing to the girl.

Ami wheeled on the sitting figure, “And you! Why did you run? And what in the name of all the Ways are you doing playing with ventilation grates?”

Ronan winced. His friend was not the most tactful in the best of times. He expected the stranger would devolve into tears again, but she surprised him.

“I was hidin’. To be sure, anyone with half a brain could see that,” came the heated reply, the girls face fierce and her eyes snapping.

“Well, a child would know better than to mess with Life Support if they wanted to hide.” Ami shot back, “Don’t you know anything?”

Ronan wanted to step in, but Ami was on a tear and didn’t give him a chance to interject.

“How did you get hurt? Something dumb I’m sure,” Ami said angrily. “And what kind of clothes are those anyway?”

The girl’s expression had gotten angrier and angrier as she was harangued. She pushed herself up off the floor, stood and straightened her clothes as best she could.

“My name is Miri Blaylock, and I have come from Habmo3 to join the Town-people!”

“Rust and Ruin!” Ami shouted, “She’s a Farmer!”