C James - Dome Six

All of a sudden, his body lurched and he flailed his arms. Tosh gasped along with everyone else. “I think something broke!” she said. “No, no, no…”

Dawn had broken outside, bringing fresh light into the Agora. Tosh could see that a strap on the man’s harness had broken. He was just hanging there, literally by a thread.

A few moments later, the man in the rescue crawler stood on the edge and clipped into his own sled. As he hurriedly prepared to rescue the stranded worker, he turned their way for a moment. Dee sucked in air and dug her fingers into Tosh’s arm.

The rescuer was Byron.

Even in the half light, there was no mistaking his dark beard or how he moved. It was definitely him.

“It’s okay,” Vi assured her friend. “They’re okay.”

Dee squared her jaw and blinked away tears as they formed, but Tosh knew she was as knotted up as she was.

He cranked his way out to the man who was stuck, to raucous applause. Tosh still couldn’t work out the logistics of the rescue. It offered a reason to keep Dee talking and not thinking. Perhaps selfishly, she needed to do the same.

“What happens now?” she asked Dee.

“If the sled’s stuck, he’ll have to clip directly onto my Dad,” she said.

Tosh could hardly believe her ears. The same safety hardware that failed to keep the dead young worker safe would now have to bear the weight of two men.

The Agora became so deathly quiet that Tosh could hear people coughing. All eyes were locked on the roof. Finally, with massive effort, the stranded worker stretched across and clipped himself to Byron’s harness. But the other one was still attached to the stuck sled and his weight was on it. He pulled a knife from his vest and sliced the strap, sending him swinging back and forth under Byron. There was a collective gasp.

Byron reached down to try and steady him. As he did, the lone strap holding him aloft appeared to lengthen suddenly. Tosh’s free hand flew to her mouth.

It happened fast. As Lewis swung back under Byron he fell, tumbling head over heels through the still air just as the thin pop of the failed strap met their ears. He fell for four or five long seconds before plummeting into the airbag with a sharp thwack . But it was accompanied by another sound, immediately swallowed by the cheers of the crowd.

It sounded like ripping cloth.

Tosh didn’t know how, but she immediately realized the airbag wouldn’t re-inflate all the way. Byron still hung from his sled, inching closer to his crawler. He’d probably make it, but if he didn’t…

“Stay here,” Tosh said to Dee. She shoved people aside and bolted down the steps as fast as she could. She heard small footfalls behind her and whirled to see that Dee ignored her order. There was no time to argue.

The heavy air got more oppressive as they descended. Floor supervisors tried and failed to stop them from ducking under the chains. Murmurs arose from the floors full of students, either because they’d just noticed the air flapping out of the airbag’s ripped seams or the crazy people bolting down the stairs. Tosh’s lungs were on fire, but she kept going. Finally, they reached the ground and broke into a run toward the leaking airbag.

The small ground crew didn’t have enough hands to deal with the situation. Two of them tended to Lewis while the rest gathered up seams in their hands to keep air inside, aware that Byron might fall at any second.

Without thinking, Tosh joined them, rolling the material in her fingers to seal it. Dee did the same next to her. A worker from the ground crew placed a firm hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, I need you to return to your Tower,” he said.

“Like hell,” she barked, shrugging off his hand. “You need everyone you can get. Help!” she shouted to the thousands of gawkers. “We need help!”

Little by little, people from the lower levels raced down the steps and dashed across the Agora to join the rescuers. They gathered the failed seams in their fingers. It was working, but the bag still wasn’t inflating quickly enough. The whole thing still leaked like a sieve.

“Thirty-eight, what’s your status?” one man barked into the radio.

“I’m almost back to the crawler,” returned Byron’s voice. “Just one more meter…”

Hearing his voice was a relief, but he sounded panicked and fatigued.

“Oh shi—” said the voice on the radio.

Tosh’s heart stopped. A second later, she caught the outline of Byron’s body silhouetted by the orange light through the Dome. She took a deep breath and gripped the fabric with all her might.

“Hang on!” she screamed.

Byron struck the airbag with astonishing force, like he’d been fired from a cannon. It instantly tore the fabric from everyone’s hands. The blast of air through the tear knocked Tosh and Dee forcefully to the ground. The bag went flaccid. Crewmen rushed forward to help Byron, who was on his back about two meters from the center, not moving.

Tosh helped Dee to her feet.

“Are you all right?”

Dee responded by leaping atop the rapidly collapsing airbag, which had ripped completely free of the inflator fan.

“Dad!” she screamed.

Tosh followed her, scrambling over the loose material to reach them. She thought she saw his leg move from over the folds, then he brought his hands to his face, body heaving. She couldn’t tell if he was crying or laughing. Maybe both. She and Dee fell on top of him.

“Dad! Dad, are you okay?!” Dee yelled.

He wrapped her up, laughing like a crazy person, but there were tears, too. The good kind. He saw Tosh and extended his other arm toward her. She’d never felt closer to anyone. Even Elle.

“Oh, my girls,” he said, his voice quavering. “Did I have a day.”

To Hideki, the bay full of junked service bots and assorted Dome tech that failed the test of time wasn’t a Boneyard — it was a candy store. There was nowhere else for it to go. In the old world, they would’ve pushed it into a landfill, covered it with dirt, and called it good. But the Dome was a closed system. Metal and plastic could be melted down or otherwise re-used, but the mishmash of circuitry, screens, and delicate electronics could only sit there and gather dust.

His brain was already starting to glitch a bit. The little flashbulbs popping off in his head heralded waves of euphoria to come. For a while he’d feel like he was flying. Later, perhaps, floating in a warm stream or having a parade of tiny orgasms. You just never knew with the yellows. It depended on your mood, and being all alone in the Stores during a drill made Hideki positively buoyant. After what he’d been through in the FPC, he deserved this.

In another dimension, he would’ve ended up as a technician like his father. Electronics and mechanical things just made sense to him. When he and Tosh were very little, it was she who took a greater interest in his mother’s medic work. She was technically more of a first responder, but she knew her stuff as well as anyone.

The older he and his sister got, the more their father pushed them to strive. To keep learning.

“IDA makes a map of your life,” he liked to say. “But you’re still the one to draw it.”

But the harder he pushed, the more Hideki pushed back. In hindsight, he could see how foolish that was but his father’s constant badgering about his studies brought him closer to his mother and, ironically, sparked his interest in biotech. Meanwhile, Tosh’s interests shifted to information systems and AI.

It had been so freaking long since he had a bona fide mystery to try and solve. He wasn’t any closer to understanding his parents’ disappearance but obsessing over it hadn’t done him any good. The Authority’s explanation was garbage. Anyone who knew the senior Yamamuras knew that. If everyone in the Dome got chewed to pulp by the multimeal processor, his old man would be left to wonder why they were all so stupid.