Chapter 6 ~ Dome
In the morning, the whole episode seemed strange and remote.
There had been a medical exam the night before. A large bruise just beginning to darken on her leg was treated by a cheerful nurse, who’d waved a glowing wand over it and told Anna it would be better by morning. Then she was questioned by an officer of the Defenders, who had recorded her statement and examined her woomera. To her surprise, he hadn’t confiscated it.
Yet.
Gone was the bloodstained Import uniform she’d worn, stuffed into a chute in the fresher. Anna hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings the night before, but she’d found that fresher with a sonic and stayed inside it until the sensation on her skin changed from pleasant tingling to something a little harsher. She’d been trying to scrub away her memories.
Anna was certain she’d slept late, and confirmed it by checking the clock next to her bed. Orange numbers alerted her that it was 1130. Silva had a twenty-two hour day, with time measured from 0000, which everyone called midnight, to 2159, the minute before midnight of the next day. Now that Silva was in an orbit closer to its sun, the years were significantly shorter, at 360 days, than when the colony was first founded, when the planet had spent a leisurely 400 days in transit around its sun. It made for an easy system of timekeeping, and it had a rhythm similar to Earth standards to it: sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-two hours in a day, thirty days in a month, and twelve months in a year.
Anna had once figured out how old she was in Earth years as a class assignment. At sixteen Silvan years, she would be two months short of her fifteenth birthday on Earth. Not eligible for the Growing the Future Program yet, but she didn’t think there was any such program back on Earth. When the colonists left Earth, there was no need to encourage population growth. Earth already had more citizens than it could feed. Her ancestors who’d come to Silva on the starship Cradle had been top scientists in their fields, considered essential for the journey. If not for that piece of luck, she would have been born an Earthian, and from what she’d learned in history class, she wouldn’t have liked it there. Even in the aftermath of Doom, things had to be better on Silva.
1130 in the morning was far later than she’d be allowed to sleep in Nampa, and she lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling very decadent. It was cool in the room and her bruise wasn’t painful. Checking it, she found that the skin color was normal.
In Nampa, bruises healed in their own good time. Dome tech is aweing.
Beth sat up in her bed on the opposite side of the large room.
“Have you taken a good look at the freshers?” Beth said. It was the first full sentence she’d uttered since the girls were escorted to Room 2801 in the Growing the Future block. They’d learned that places in the Dome were organized by purpose into blocks. They were on the twenty-eighth floor of a building that had at least seventy-five stories, right at the corner by a tube that took passengers up or down.
“It’s so cool in here,” Anna said.
“We have two freshers, one for each of us, and each with a sonic,” Beth called from inside one of the freshers. “Shampoos, soaps, creams—”
“It’s so cool in here,” Anna said. “So cool you have to use a blanket. Beth, let’s get serious for a minute. You do realize that if Logan had passed his test, he would have been on one of the other vans last night.”
The smile melted from Beth’s face. “And he’d be dead now. I know. I never thought I’d be happy that Logan was left behind. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get back to him. I miss him so much, Anna, it feels like I’m only half here. You’ll help me, right? Help me finish the program without blowing my chance to be with Logan again?”
Anna stood up and hugged her. “Of course. I promised Logan. Anyway, what could go wrong? Our bodies are made for this, or so they said. And in the meantime, we get to live like princesses.”
There was a soft chime from the door. They both said, “Come in,” at the same time.
A trim, middle-aged woman entered, wearing a pink shirt and slacks. The shirt was monogrammed “GTF”—Growing the Future—on one shoulder and “Matron Rosa” on the other.
“Hi,” Rosa said. “I’m your program matron. I’ve been walking around introducing myself to all my new girls. I’m the one you come to with questions or problems. We’ll get to know each other very well. I take care of all of you like you were my daughters. Do you have any questions right now?”
“This place is aweing,” Anna said. Awe-inspiring doesn’t come close. That’s just how you describe a sunset. Whoever knew people lived like this?
Rosa smiled and nodded. “The usual reaction.” Her face became serious. “In light of what happened on your trip here, we’re starting out a bit slow. You got some extra sleep, but there’s an early start tomorrow, a program tour. I suggest you take the rest of the day to get settled in. You can take naps if you want. There’s nothing scheduled today. Wake-up tomorrow will be at 0730 and the day starts with group exercise. You’ll also have mandatory time on your ASS for at least an hour a day.”
Anna started to chuckle but was stopped by Rosa’s frown. Evidently the matron had been saying that a lot this morning, and getting the same reaction from her girls.
Rosa gestured toward a door on Beth’s side of the room. “If you’re wondering where your Aero Shaper System is, it’s in that room. Your individual times and difficulty levels will be recorded. I’ll come by to get you and show you the way in the morning. Questions?”
“What do we wear in the morning?” Anna asked. As far as Anna knew, she had only the nightgown she was wearing to her name.
“I guess you haven’t found the closets yet.” Rosa indicated that Anna should come over to the wall next to the bed she’d claimed. Up close, Anna could see that there was a faint outline on the wall the shape and size of her palm print. She placed her palm there, and a door slid open to reveal a large, walk-in closet with more clothes than a Burban would see in a lifetime.
Beth had discovered and opened her own closet. “How do we do the laundry, Matron?” Her clothing from the night before lay in a heap by her bed.
“You can call me Rosa. Drop the used clothing in a chute. There’s one in each fresher. If you want to talk about anything that happened last night, you can ask me, or I can set up counseling sessions for you.”
Anna had a couple of questions on her mind. “Are attacks like that common? And are the Devos always so . . . bloodthirsty?”
Rosa considered. “Attacks as close to the Dome as you experienced are very rare. In fact, I can’t think of one in the last decade or more. You have nothing to worry about here. You’re safe inside the Dome. As for the Devos, they are usually interested in supplies. They steal what they can, don’t harm anyone, and retreat to the desert. You can bet the Defenders will be studying this event. Maybe something’s got the Devos stirred up.”
The day passed quickly as the girls explored the features of their rooms and ventured out to a café for meals. Astonished that they actually had a choice of what to eat—bowls of fruit for the taking!—they lingered over their meals, talking to other girls in the program. Everyone was welcoming, and Anna was something of a celebrity. Word had spread fast that the only survivors of the Devo raid owed their lives to her.
Late that night, Anna slid between the cool sheets and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. She wanted to talk in the dark room for a bit, but Beth was emotionally exhausted and fell asleep within minutes. Anna got up and stood next to the window, looking out over the city, or at least what she could see of it. It was an incredible view. Buildings of various heights and shapes, some of them improbably suspended or slowly rotating, spread out as far as she could see. Intense neon-bright colors made the scene look unreal, and tubes snaked everywhere—on the exteriors of buildings and between them, looking like glowing vines. Although it was the middle of the night, this section of town took no notice of the hour. She could see people st
rolling at ground level amid flashing signs. She stared until her eyes wouldn’t stay open anymore, then crawled into bed.
Only moments later, it seemed, soft music began playing from a speaker somewhere near her ears. It was the sound of a flute, the notes as clear and refreshing as a splash of cool water on her face. Her favorite type of music.
How did they know?
She tried to remember if there was something on the psychological test about music, but she was fairly sure there wasn’t.
I guess they could have asked Mom and Dad. That was the first time it occurred to her that while she was busy with her Import tests, her parents might have been elsewhere, being interviewed—squeezed—for personal information about her. It did make the transition easier to have some familiar things, but it was also a little . . .
Creepy.
Her mind flashed back to the skimmer, to the vision of the bloody pipes protruding from Kammy’s chest and the blood-curdling sound of Orra being torn apart. Anna’s hands gripped the sheets tightly and for a few seconds she let the terror of the moment flow over her. While she didn’t welcome the intrusion into her mind, she wouldn’t try to suppress it either. Those memories were part of her now, a way of honoring dead friends in the only way she could.
When she was breathing normally again, she noticed a red button flashing on her nightstand, so she pressed it.
“Good morning, Anna. Rosa will be at your door in thirty minutes. Please be ready.”
So my life in the Dome begins.
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