Becoming Chosen

Is there a more powerful thought than that you are the chosen of God? It does so many things. It makes one feel special. It means that outsiders are automatically less, and it puts a burden of expectation on everyone it is applied to. For the purpose we need it, this statement cannot be topped. Hopefully Jewish people will forgive our appropriation of the title. After all, it is in a noble cause.

-Marta Jager, Excerpt from Minutes of the Cultural Committee, Sealed Archives

Miri woke with a start. Her first thoughts were confused. The last thing she remembered was being so hot, and Ronan saying something about not taking her helmet off. Now she was lying on her back, in a pale blue room, with a sheet over her.

She lifted the sheet and confirmed what she thought; she was naked. Now how did that happen? In fact, what happened on the surface? And where was Ronan?

As if summoned by her thought Ronan walked in, clothed in a towel wrapped around his waist. Most days that would be an interesting sight, but her friend looked like he had been dragged through a knothole, as Farhi used to say.

His face was pale, and worried. The way his shoulders slumped just screamed that he was exhausted; mentally and physically. He put a hand up and brushed his wet hair away from his eyes.

“You’re awake! I’m so glad,” Ronan said. A tired, but happy smile made an appearance on his face. He came over and gave her a hug. Miri was very aware of how little each of them were wearing.

“Yeah, me too. What happened? Where are we?”

“I’ll tell you everything, but first, can you sit up and drink this?” Ronan asked holding up a tall beaker of orange colored liquid.

Carefully holding the sheet over her breasts, Miri swung her feet down to the floor. For a second, things wanted to spin, then they steadied up. Ronan offered the beaker and she took it, then took a sip.

It was that weird drink some of the Tech liked. The one they claimed tasted like oranges, even though it didn’t. There was some other flavor underneath, nasty, like medicine.

“Go ahead and drink the whole thing,” Ronan told her when she went to put it down. He had that serious look he got, so Miri didn’t argue. Obviously he wasn’t going to give her any answers until she did what he wanted.

As she sipped her nasty drink she looked around. There were two open doorways to the room they were in. One led out to what looked like the little sister of the suit room they had met Chief Anderson in. All suits and liners and other mysterious gear.

The other looked into a tile lined room. Aye, there was a shower head. And it was dripping. Well, that went some way to explain her and Ronan’s wet hair. But it brought up a whole bushel of other questions.

Not wanting to wait, Miri finished her drink in one long pull. She set the beaker down and took a second to wrap the sheet around her so it didn’t need to be held.

“Gods of Earth that stuff is vile, what is it?”

“Anti-radiation meds. I know it tastes horrible but the orange mostly hides it. How do you feel?”

“I’m okay, a little weak but okay.”

“No blurry vision? No headache, stomach ache?”

“No. What is going on?”

Ronan ignored her, instead going to one of the inset cabinets along the far wall and pulling out a little flashlight. He came over and shone it in her eyes. Miri sighed. He was on a mission, no doubt. Might as well go along. It had to be faster than trying to pry information out of him.

After sitting through a few more basic diagnostic tests, Ronan sat down next to her.

“So, you want to know what happened?” he asked. It took all of Miri’s self-control not to shout she’d been asking that for the last ten minutes.

“Yes, please. The last thing I remember, my suit was heatin’ up, then bang, I’m here.”

Ronan took a deep breath, then let it out, ending in a little shutter. “I was so worried,” he said, then catching her glare he pulled himself together. “Okay, so we were out of the surface and your suit was overheating. Then you fainted. We weren’t too far from the airlock so I pulled you there.” Then he stopped.

“Well that explains where here is, in a general way. Care to take a shot at explainin’ where my clothes are? And why we’re both wet?”

Ronan blushed. Really blushed, not only was his entire face red, his shoulders and the upper part of his chest as well. And he looked away, staring directly at the wall across from them. Miri thought she’d have to prompt him, when he finally spoke.

“We didn’t tell you, Chief Anderson and I, but the amount of radiation on the surface is exceptionally dangerous. The suits would protect us, but not forever. If we’d made it in the forty minutes or so Anderson thought it would take, it wasn’t going to be a problem.”

“And?” Miri asked, trying to decide if she thought this behavior was annoying or funny.

“And, well, we were out there a lot longer than that. The shielding on the suits was right at the failure point, and they were dangerously radioactive themselves.” He paused then took a deep breath. “We needed to get decontaminated as quickly as possible. So I, uh, cut your clothes off and washed you down with decontam-gel.” All through the last part his words were getting faster and faster. When he finished he still didn’t look at her.

Miri sat back for a second and thought. The first time she had been naked with a boy’s hands on her body and she hadn’t even been conscious for it. At least the way events went in her life was consistent.

The more she thought about it, the funnier it got. She tried to hold it in, but the hanged-dog look on Ronan’s face and his inability to meet her gaze was just too much. Her laughter rang through the room, and echoed out of the shower.

“What?” Ronan asked, turning to her, his face stricken. That just set Miri off even more.

After recovering her composure, but with the possibility of further outburst lurking in the back of her throat, she looked back to him.

“Poor Ronan. He has to save a first-time walker, drag her into an airlock, then take all her clothes off to make sure she doesn’t die from the Skin Melter. And he’s worried about what the girl will think o’ the fact that he washed her while she was passed out.”

Ronan looked at her for a second, then she could see him start to get angry. “Yeah, laugh at me, that’s the thanks I deserve,” he said turning away.

Miri put a finger on the point of his chin, and pulled his head around to look at her again. “I’m not laughin’ at what you did, just how you were actin’. You saved my life, maybe more than once. That deserves recognition.” Very slowly she leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

Things might have gone further, but now that Miri was sure they would pair at some point, she didn’t want it to be in a decontamination room. Besides, they weren’t safe yet. They still had to reach the habmo’s before the turn was finished. If she listened, she could still hear the on-then-off rumble of the jets firing.

“We need to keep moving. What do we do next?” Miri asked.

Ronan looked a little dazed, maybe he had been hoping they would pair right away. He shook himself once, all over. It seemed to give him back his focus.

“Okay, we need to get back into the suits. New suits that is. The one’s we used are far too hot.”

“Right, I wouldn’t use the one I had anyway. It was literally too hot inside.”

“Once we get suited we’ll take the elevator down to the Habitat Cavern and find our way inside a habmo.” Ronan continued.

Miri stood, keeping a grip on her sheet, though it felt vaguely ridiculous after what she had just found out. Still, old habits die hard. She walked into the suiting room and began looking for a new suit liner.

There had been a couple of bad moments when she first got sealed in her new Void Suit, but they passed quickly. As scary as things had been, it had only been for a short time, from Miri’s perspective, and it hadn’t permanently frightened her off using a suit.

Likewise, the ride down the elevator had been uneventful. Especially since this shaft did not have the clear walls like the one she rode up from the Town. That all changed when they passed through the smaller air lock at the bottom.

The two of them emerged onto a narrow walk way, which curved up steeply to the left and right. They were close enough to the center of the ship that there was very little gravity. So little, in fact, Ronan insisted they use their tethers at all times. After what had happened on the surface, Miri didn’t even roll her eyes.

The view was confusing at first. There was a huge curved structure that stayed overhead. Titanic buttresses arched up from the wall behind them to brace whatever it was.

The structure ran out into the enormous cavern, where it split, then split again, forming a gird like wall, punctured by nine more smaller spindles, each holding an entire habmo. All of it was rotating past at more than a fast walking pace.

Looking at it Miri started to feel strange. In short order she felt as though the whole massive structure was above her, ready to fall on her, then below, with her ready to fall on it. Adrenalin sang through her, and she desperately started chanting the Surface rules under her breath, trying to slow her breathing.

“Don’t look up at it,” Ronan said too late. “With this little gravity, it’s easy to make yourself dizzy.”

“Too late,” Miri muttered, as she cast her gaze down to the open grid walkway. She felt gentle hands on her shoulders, as Ronan turned her to face the wall they had come through.

“Almost everyone has a problem, this close to the bearings.” Ronan told her, then pointed to a ladder a few yards up the curve of the walkway. “We’re going there. Take it slow, floating loose in here is almost as bad as coming loose on the surface.

Miri followed Ronan as he moved slowly and carefully along. She had been in low or no gravity many times on the elevator to the Town, but she was always strapped down, with nowhere to go until the ride was over.

“Why do you move so slow?” Miri asked, hoping to distract herself from what was going on in her peripheral vision.

“The gravity is low because we are close to the center of the ship, but that doesn’t do anything for your mass. You just feel lighter. If you get moving too fast you will keep going in the direction you’re traveling until you hit something. Then you’ll hit just like the three hundred pounds you weigh in the Tech areas.”

“Huh?” Miri asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know,” Ronan’s voice came through the speakers, and even though all she could see was the back of his suit, Miri was sure that he was smiling. “It’s just how things work. There is a lot of math that tells you why. But most of the Tech just take it as a given fact and move on.”

Miri was about to say something about how that never worked for her when she realized she was getting to close to Ronan’s back. She put her hands down on the rail on either side and gripped, expecting to stop.

She did slow, but there was a hard jerk on both of her wrists. Now she understood what he was talking about, and swore to herself she’d look up the math first chance she had. For now, it was best to just go along with what Ronan said, after all he was the one who was trained for this kind of thing. It was not a comfortable thought.

They arrived at the ladder. It stretched up to the tubular bearing wall above.

“Right, now we’re going to climb up. The drill is to set your tether above the next rung, climb to it. Unclip, set it one rung higher, then repeat. Got it?” Ronan asked.

“One rung at a time, clip, climb, unclip, re-clip, climb. Aye, I can do that,” Miri said, clipping her tether to between the rungs at eye level as Ronan had indicated. She started to reach for the ladder, but Ronan put hand on her arm to stop her.

“One last thing. We are climbing closer to the center of the ship, there is no gravity from the spin there, so you’ll feel lighter as you go. Don’t rush. This is the place where a new Walker is most likely to float free.”

The ache in her wrists kept Miri from sighing. It was becoming more and more apparent that Ronan did not say these things to be annoying. He was doing it for her safety, and probably his.

“Can do.” Miri said and stepped up onto the ladder. She slowly went through the process once, then stopped. “Like that?”

Ronan nodded with his whole helmet. It looked a little like he was bowing three times. “Just like that. Slow and steady, all the way to top.”

Miri kept her focus on the what she was doing for the first few rungs. After she felt she had it down, it stopped being interesting.

“So, what is this thing we are climbin’ to?” She asked to pass the time.

“It’s the central cradle bearing.” Ronan said, as if that explained everything.

“Aye. And that is?”

“Oh, it’s the part that holds the cradle the habmo’s are in. Inside it there is another long metal pole. The bearing lets the ship rotate around it, without spinning the habmos. If they spun with the rest of the ship, the gravity would be far too low. So they have their own spin.”

“Doesn’t friction make it hot?”

“It would, if they touched. There are several sets of giant magnets in the wall overhead. They push the pole away from the cradle and keep it exactly in the center. With no air, and no contact, there is no friction.”

Her travels among the Tech had taught Miri some of the concepts Ronan was talking about, but not all of them. Luckily she had learned to store up her dumber questions and answer them by accessing the ships archive. She had a pang of regret as she wondered if she would ever have access to the deep well of knowledge again.

Even though she was nearly weightless, the climb was harder than she thought. There was the effort to get the bulk of her and her suit moving upwards, then the strain of having to stop drifting upward, using her arms. Like so much among the Tech, simple seeming things were anything but.

Eventually the ladder ended at a square opening and cage-like walkway, just like on the surface. Miri, after checking what she wanted to do with Ronan, moved into it, and clipped her tether securely. Ronan followed in the same slow-motion way.

“Now, we’re going to walk along here, until we come to the end.”

“Then what?”

“Then? Then we jump on to the cradle pole.” Ronan said in an ‘of course’ kind of way.

“What?” Miri nearly squawked. “The pole is turnin’ or the bearin’ is, whatever. They are movin’ relative to each other, and you want us to jump? What happened to stayin’ tethered at all times?”

“You’ll see,” Ronan said. This time Miri could see his grin through the curve of his helmet.

“Smug superiority is not an attractive garment, no one should wear it,” she told him, more than annoyed.

Ronan sensibly said nothing, just turned and started working his way out along the caged path. After a few minutes of excruciatingly slow progress they came to the end of the bearing.

It was impossible not to look across at the spinning complexity of the habmo cradle. It spun in front of them in stately silence.

“Okay, smart guy, now what? Do we take a runnin’ leap?”

“No. Or at least, not yet.” Ronan said as he made his way onto a small platform set on tracks. He waved for her to follow. When they were both securely clipped in, he worked a set of controls and the little tram started off, against the direction the cradle was turning.

As it moved, the cradle seemed to slow, until it looked as though it had all but stopped. Slowly, over the curve of the cradle pole, a walkway came into view. Ronan fiddled with the controls and the walk way came to a stop, directly in front of them.

“We’re traveling at the same speed as the bearing, but in the opposite direction, it means we are at rest relative to the pole.”

Ronan reached down and opened the little gate before them. “Now, we are weightless, so be extra careful. Just reach out and clip your tether to the path.”

With one hand latched on to the railing, Miri did as she was told. Apart from the lack of weight it really was just like on the surface. Once she was sure she wouldn’t float away, she ‘jumped’ down to the pole.

“Like I said, we just jump,” Ronan told her smugly. Miri decided to let it pass, for now. Just wait until she got him in a habmo. Then they’d see how he liked it when everything was strange and scary. Maybe she’d push him into a lake. In the shallow end, of course. Still she was willing to bet that none of the Tech were good swimmers. Jump down indeed!

Miri looked down, shining her lights on the surface nominally below her feet. It was some of the impossibly smooth stone that much of the ship was made of.

“How do they maintain this?” Miri asked.

“I’m not sure. I’ve never been on the Way of Habitat Maintenance. But stone like this is special. I’ve been told the Builders did something with the molecular structure, but it’s not a technology we have. Let’s get moving.”

The next hour was all variations on the theme for Miri. More slow walking, climbing, and, of course, about a thousand times unclipping and reclipping her tether. About the only interesting thing was when they approached the madly spinning habmo’s. Painted on the flat side of each were towering numbers.

She had to lean back to see Habmo3, her home spinning above them in the upper tier of the cradle. She noticed it was moving much slower than the others.

“Why is Habmo3 movin’ so slow?”

Ronan looked up too. “Um, I think the crews slow them to do work on the bearings. About every two years they need to replace parts, but they can’t stop it or have the shaft sitting on the rock or the spindle. But slowing it down makes it easier. I guess that’s part of why the Chosen have Festivals.”

Miri was sure it wasn’t the only reason. But it made sense. If you have to move everyone out of a habmo, you might as well make it a time for youngsters to find their mates. Nothing on the ship was single purpose, even Festival.

Looking up Miri felt a wave of homesickness. There was her home, so close, but also empty. Except for the Tech who would be doing maintenance work during Festival.

The two of them worked their way along the cradle pole, then climbed nearly a mile, until they were at the magnetic bearing for Habmo2. Miri was breathing hard and her suit was blowing cool air on her face by the time they reached the two-mile-high rear wall of the habmo.

Ronan used Chief Andersons code to call a maintenance elevator. After a short wait, an open door rotated into view. A cage like the one they had ridden on the main bearing slid out and decelerated until it was stationary relative to where they stood.

Again, they jumped aboard, then clipped in. The little cart slowed as it let the main axis of the habmo catch up to its speed. Miri had a moment of disorientation as the Habitat Cavern seemed to spin faster and faster around them as gravity returned. Just when she thought she might become ill, the little machine came up to the open door and slipped inside. The elevator closed and began moving them down.

“I didn’t even know there was another set of elevators in every habmo,” Miri said once she was sure her stomach would stay in place.

“That’s probably by design. There is nothing out in the main cavern for the Chosen. Rust, you are probably the first in hundreds of cycles to even know what a Void Suit is, let alone wear one. If some kids got into this elevator they’d die as soon as it opened.”

Miri chewed that over. Like so much she’d learned in the last weeks it made sense, but it also rubbed her the wrong way. Who were the Builders to make the decision for everyone like that? It was worse than the adults at home.

Her lips curved in a smile as Miri realized that all the adults she had ever known where subject to the same denial of knowledge, at least until they became Elders and it was too late to do anything about it.

When the elevator finally stopped its odd gyrations, the door opened onto a narrow corridor, very much like the ones the Tech lived and worked in.

“Wait, I thought we were inside the habmo?” Miri asked, after undogging her helmet.

“We are, but under the floor. There are a lot of systems that keep the environment steady in the habmo’s. This is where some of that work is done.”

Miri thought for a second, “Ah, now I get it. This is where the water goes! I always wondered how deep the hole at the bottom of the ponds was. Now I know.”

Ronan gave her a grin that made her heart beat a little faster. Then led the way down the hall. There was a smaller version of the suit room, complete with other environment suits. As well-equipped as it was, it lacked any regular clothes.

“I guess the crews bring their own,” Ronan said, after a fruitless search. “We’ll have to wear the liners until we can get some clothes from the Chosen inside.”

“As long as I can take a shower, I can live with it,” Miri said. She went into the small tiled cube, and slid the door shut. Peeling out of the sweaty, clinging, garment was the work of a moment., Then she went to work on the pee funnel. Ugh, it was awful going on and coming off! Finally, the adhesive let go and Miri tossed the unrighteous thing into the corner of the shower.

While Ronan was showering, Miri explored. There was a room with an array of screens, all of them blank. She knew how to power them up, but resisted out of fear it would send a signal that someone on the bridge would see.

There were other doors leading off the hall, but they were closed, and Miri left them that way for the same reason. A feeling was growing inside her, she wanted out of these stone warrens, and back into the open spaces of a habmo. She was self-aware enough to smile at the irony of it.

She was still wandering around, when Ronan found her.

“Ready to go?”

“Yes! But I thought of somethin’, won’t the next person who comes this way know we’ve been here? The two extra suits are going to be a dead giveaway.”

“Yeah, probably. I thought about taking them with us, but they weigh a ton and hopefully we’ll be long gone by the time anyone thinks to look. After all, they can’t know which habmo we went into, so they will have to search all of them.”

“Gods of Earth know we need a break. Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Miri agreed.

Ronan led the way to the end of the hall. There was a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a hatch with a code lock. He climbed up and punched in the code, leaning away so the power hinges could swing open. He climbed up, then waited on the narrow coping surrounding the hatch. Miri followed.

Once the hatch below had shut, the two of them stood in a narrow tube only slightly taller than they were. Miri thought it would be another elevator, but when Ronan coded again, the hatch above them swung up. Dappled green light shone down, and the air had that familiar feel of growing plants. Until she smelled it, Miri hadn’t realized that she had been missing it.

Ronan gestured to the ladder, and Miri climbed up, back to the world of the Chosen.