The Maintenance

We were builders once. Humanity, I mean, not us. Then, three hundred years ago, they built one final marvel -- a great, shared simulation -- and sealed themselves inside it. All that's left for the rest of us is to keep the lights on. It's decent work, as far as those things go. You needed a skill to keep your hands busy out here or you'd go a little space-mad.

My office was in Seg 512 of the Locket, a circumsolar energy harvester devised during the golden age that followed the Last War. The war was devastating enough to convince the few survivors it might be a good idea to work together for a change. It was amazing what they achieved when they set aside their differences.

The Locket was the finest of those accomplishments, though I'll admit I'm biased. I could see her arms through my viewport, reaching millions of kilometers in either direction. Each interlocking panel was made of an ultra-black material capable of converting nearly 100% of solar radiation into usable energy. They were arrayed in a hexagonal pattern and framed with a gold alloy that shimmered with the oscillations of the Sun. She was a glistening honeycomb at the heart of the solar system and I loved her.

The comms panel on my desk buzzed and a voice came through. "Come in, five-one-two, this is ten-two-four." I toggled the receiver switch and a holographic projection of the station foreman appeared. She did not look amused.

"Hello, Jane."

"Al."

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"We're reading an overcharge in Quadrant Gamma and we're trying to pin it down."

"That's Ling's Quad. Why are you calling me?"

"I need another set of eyes. Ling insists everything's green. He told me to recalibrate my sensors. Bastard thinks he knows my station better than I do."

I smirked. "You sure you don't wanna run a quick diagnostic?"

"Don't start with me, Al. I'm herding cats down here as it is."

"Fine, I'll go check the conduits. Any guesses on a Seg range? I'd gladly scan all 250, but I'd hate to miss protein compound night in the mess."

"Every night is protein compound night."

"Yeah, but I get cranky when I'm hungry."

I'd swear she almost cracked a smile. "Best guess is eight-one-oh to nine-two-five. Had a close call with a plasma flare down there yesterday. As far as we know, it fried a couple circuits, but nothing requiring exo."

"According to Ling."

"Bingo."

I sighed. "OK, a hundred conduits and maybe an exo. Not bad for a Tuesday."

"It's Saturday."

"Same difference. 10-4, Boss, I'm on it."

"Thanks, Al. I owe you one." She severed the connection and the hologram dissolved.

I toggled off the comms panel and leaned back in my chair. I reached for the book on my desk, a dog-eared copy of Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. I felt a kinship with Hugo, the sort of man who'd write a thousand-page love letter to a building, and my countryman besides. Notre Dame was long gone now, blown to hell with Paris and every other major city on Earth. Hugo said it himself: Tempus edax, homo edacior. Time is blind, man is stupid.

She still lived in these pages, though, thanks to ol' Vic. I wondered what he'd have thought of the Locket. Surely the critic in him would have been appalled by her modernity, but he was more than half a Romantic. No person with a soul could look at my Lady and not be moved by the sheer ambition of her architects. If there was anybody around to read it, I might have even written something about her myself.

I replaced the book, patting the yellowed cover. "The Lady calls, Vic. You understand." I shouldered my tool bag and made for the hyperlift.

~~~

I'd intended to start scanning at Seg 860 and work my way out, but happened to catch a faint whiff of ozone there. Ozone meant some unfiltered power source was ripping nitrogen and oxygen apart -- in short, bad news. I followed the scent down the ring until it basically knocked me over at 863.

I touched my keycard to the security panel for Battery Storage. The hatch depressurized with a hiss, filling the room with freezing cold air. Normally, Storage was as habitable as the rest of the station, save for when drones came to transport the immense vats of charged electrolytes back to Earth. Cold air meant a bay malfunction, or worse, a hull breach. I pulled a habsuit from a nearby receptacle and strapped in. I double-checked the pressure seal on the suit's wrist readout, then mounted the autoladder.

The ladder was housed in a glass tube leading to a sealed staging area at the center of the chamber. As I descended, I surveyed the carnage. Scorched vats, tangled wires, and the pièce de résistance, a blistering, discolored scar on the bulkhead.

Homo edacior, indeed. A mistake I could understand, but this was negligence that bordered on malice. I beelined for the comms as soon as I hit the floor. Shaking with anger, I dialed Central. "ten-two-four, this is five-one-two, come in."

Jane picked up. "That was fast. What did you find?"

"You'd better get to Ling before I do or you're going to have to find another QuadOp."

"That bad?"

"It's worse than bad. Hold on, let me check the sensor link." I fished a thermal spanner out of my bag and opened a hatch beneath the comms. "Jesus, Jane, he bypassed the link. No idea which Seg you were reading, but it sure as hell wasn't this one. Let me just... There, you should be getting something now."

Jane squinted at the readings, then her eyes went wide. "You don't have to worry about Ling. I'm gonna kill him myself."

"Save me a seat."

She punched something into her terminal. "I'm sending a team down ASAP. Can you go exo and check the array?"

"Already suited up, might as well take a walk."

"Patch comms into your hab and keep in touch."

"Yup. Catch you outside." Jane's image dissolved and I sat down to steady my breathing. Just then, the autoladder whirred into motion. It was too soon for Jane's crew to show up, so I had a good guess about who it was.

"Love what you've done with the place," I said as Ling touched down.

"You're angry, I understand," he said.

"'Angry' doesn't begin to cover it. What the hell is your problem?"

"Don't you ever get tired of all this, Alain? We've been oiling the same cogs day after day for three hundred years. You must admit it gets a little stale."

"I'm here to do a job, Ling, just like you. You knew what to expect when you signed up."

"How could we have possibly known? How old were you when you left Earth? Thirty-five? What concept does a child have of centuries of indentured servitude?"

"So what would you rather do? Join the sleepers?"

"Of course not. A golden sanctuary you cannot leave is no less a prison. Humanity finally conquered death after millennia of ripping itself to pieces. Why would they choose to spend eternity in a simulated paradise rather than build something they could touch? This machine is a testament to Man's broken spirit, Alain, not his greatness."

"It's not just a machine. It's the pinnacle of human achievement, a masterwork of all our accumulated scientific knowledge. Like Victor Hugo said, 'Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.'"

"And it will remain the pinnacle, never to be surpassed, so long as they dream. I've read Hugo. Did he not also say, 'this will kill that?' What remains of an edifice when none but its keepers recall its significance?"

I stood up and shouldered my tools. "Yeah, you're a real literary wunderkind, Ling. Who knew that after three centuries, I'd actually come across Quasimodo carving 'necessity' into the tower wall?"

Ling laughed softly. "Touché, Al."

"If you'll excuse me, I've got to go clean up your mess."

"It's a bit late for that. You might want to head for Evac."

I gaped at him, but the comms panel buzzed before I could respond. "ten-two-four to five-one-two."

I kept one eye on Ling as I toggled the comms. "Go for five-one-two."

The projection of Jane flickered for a moment, then sputtered and died. Her voice was heavy with static. "Al, you're not exo, are you?"

"Was just about to go, but company dropped in. Say hi to Ling."

"Ling, you son of a bitch, tell me this wasn't you."

Ling shrugged.

"Jane, would you please tell me what's going on?"

"I'm ordering a general evacuation. Somebody rigged half the vats in Quad Alpha to detonate. We've got buckling all over the ring. She's going down, Al. You've got maybe a minute before the cascade hits your Seg."

"A minute's more than enough." I wheeled on Ling, blood pounding in my ears. My fingers found the handle of my thermal spanner as I stalked toward him. He took a step back and raised his hands defensively. "Give me one good reason not to smash your visor in," I demanded.

"I don't have a good reason."

"Give me a bad one, then."

"Suffocating to death in space sounds uncomfortable."

I sighed and pocketed the spanner. I gestured toward the autoladder. "Alright, let's go. We've gotta move or neither of us are getting out."

He let out a surprised laugh. "You are a Romantic, aren't you?"

"I'm not doing you any favors. There's a half-billion people back on Earth that won't be too happy about the wake-up call -- you've probably traded a golden sanctuary for a steel one."

"They're more likely to execute me."

"They might, but I'd like to believe our species has outgrown the need for vengeance. 'There is no sure foundation set on blood', n'est ce pas?"

"Shakespeare, Durand? I’ve changed my mind. I'll take the wrench."

"Are you coming or not?"

Ling nodded and put a hand on the ladder. I grabbed a rung and engaged the motor.

We were a hundred meters from the hatch when the shockwave hit. The ladder housing shattered as the sound of screaming metal erupted from the hull. In an instant, the damaged bulkhead ripped like paper, revealing white-hot hell beyond. The air in the chamber was blown out violently and Ling lost his grip. I reached out and managed to snag his glove before he tumbled into space.

"Let me go!" he shouted. "You'll be dragged out with me."

"No way! Either you grab on or I start quoting Hamlet." He cursed, but swung his arm wide and caught my belt.

By the time we reached Evac, explosions were sounding from every direction. We piled into a pod and punched the autonav. In moments, we were whisked away from the Locket and the dynamo at her center. I caught one final glimpse of her as the pod prepared to slingshot us Earthward. Quad Alpha was buckling toward the Sun, barely held together by a few half-molten metal strips. At the opposite pole, Quad Gamma had been sheared outward into a point. As I watched with bleary eyes, sabotage and solar mass conspired to twist her wreckage into a shape that looked unmistakably like a heart.

~~~

The voyage home would take nearly a year. Humanity would be waking up by the time we got back; without the Locket, their power reserves would soon run dry. I suspected they’d have a lot of questions once they finished their coffee.

"Spira spera," I mused aloud, the words once engraved upon the great bellows of Notre Dame. "Breathe. Hope."

"Hm?" Ling had shed his habsuit and was resting in an aft bunk.

"I'm thinking about writing a book. Notre-Dame du Soleil."

"Leave me out of it."

"Fear not, Quasimodo. They'll hardly notice you beside our Lady. She is a star that cannot be outshined."