[SF] Bird's Eye
I wonder if the people down there still look up at the thin line–like a skyscraper on its side–dividing the heavens. If they tell stories by firelight in the ruins of society about hubris rivaling Babel. Ironic that we went from building the straightest path to Heaven to circumnavigating Hell.
The orbital Ring was the pinnacle of extra-planetary architecture, a continuous space station spinning just beyond the fading haze of the atmosphere. Aboard it were my ancestors, who watched bombs fall on their homes, saw the Earth’s complexion turn ashen, and holed up in any crevice they could find as chaos crept its way around the Ring.
Signs of struggle hid underneath the rust and encroaching moss blanketing the station like drifts of green snow. The agricultural section had become imperial in its conquest of sterile space, leaving its mark everywhere.
I traced a crater in the wall with a circular burn mark around it. The bullets had all been fired before I was even born. I plucked the nylon string of my bow, slung over my shoulder. What I wouldn’t give for a single round. To those in the early days, a bullet had been the bogey-man hiding in the barrel of a gun. To me and my family, a bullet would have been a meal.
Hooves clattered distantly, leaving the safety of a carpeted island of green to dash across metal left exposed. I prepared my bow and jogged in the direction of the noise. My bare feet slapped rhythmically against the floor. Along with the vegetation, the agricultural section had released the animals brought from Earth for research out into the larger Ring. The rabbits had been hunted to extinction early. But the deer were wise enough to distrust traps cobbled together from wall paneling, plastic crates, and copper wire.
A rustle to my left brought me skidding to a halt. I let the momentum carry my feet out from under me and slid onto my stomach, drawing an arrow. The main corridor of the Ring was large enough that you would die falling from the ceiling to the floor. I swiveled my head, scanning for any sign of a flank dappled white or a conspiratory antler protruding from its owner’s hiding place.
An old, frail voice crashed awkwardly through the corridor.
“Hello?”
My head snapped to a leaning sheet of metal that seemed fused to the ground by overgrowth. Two nervous bursts of air sputtered from the rubber-black nose of the deer peeking out from its cover. I drew back on the bow. The fiberglass shaft of the arrow, with a metal shaving attached, pointed accusingly at where the deer had been, but it was already clip-clopping further down the corridor. I let the arrow fly, but it glanced off the wall and clattered to the ground.
I slapped the ground with my open palm and turned to face whoever it was stupidly walking the corridor and shouting.
It was an old man. His eyebrows rose like a toddler’s once he caught sight of me.
“Oh hello!”
“Shhhh!” I hissed, now worrying less about the deer and more about the others who wandered the corridor. Not all of them were hunting game. Angrily, I asked, “What are you doing out here, old man?”
He shuffled closer to me, his shoes old and tattered. From what I could see, it was only a foam sole held to his foot by duct tape. He brushed his thinning hair back from his scalp, dewed with sweat, and licked his shriveled lips.
“Well…well, I just got turned around, I suppose. Living in a circle will do that to you.”
A sigh of exasperation escaped me. “What section are you from?”
His eyes became shifty, and he began rocking nervously from side to side as he rubbed an ashy elbow.
“Oh, I…I’m not sure I can say. You see, I wouldn’t want her disturbed…she doesn’t like it when I bring guests unannounced.”
If I had to guess, the old man seemed at the very least ninety. Only my great-aunt had made it far enough to become this fuzzy. My father said it was life’s way of answering prayers. Every adult, including himself, wished to be a child again. And if you made it long enough and lived a life well enough to be surrounded by a family in the end, then you got to be a child again, free of responsibility and cared for.
My father was one of the awkward generation born during the chaos. I had always worried he’d never get to be a child again because he’d never been one to begin with.
I softened and slung the bow back across my body. “I’m sure she’ll just be happy you made it home at all.” I wasn’t sure who this “she” was, but he was beginning to stray from the topic at hand.
“Do you remember the color on the wall?”
The man continued to look around and began mumbling. I placed myself in front of him and pointed at the stripe on the wall. It was blue, the hydroponic section. He stared hard at the stripe, and just as I was about to pick a direction to herd him in, he clapped.
“Red! Red! The stripe, it was red!” The words rushed out of him in relief. I cringed at his volume and looked around us. The textures of the station rippled in my peripheral, but froze under direct scrutiny.
Red was good. The Tourist section was close. I was surprised anyone lived there, much less this dried-out man. People avoided it even three generations later. In the chaos, all the corpses had collected there. The stench drove people off, and the memory kept them away.
I drew out a length of cord looped around my belt and tied it around my waist, with a tail of a few feet leftover. I looked at the man, holding the limp end out to him.
“To keep us together.”
He took it and clumsily attempted to secure a knot. The rope coiled through and around his fingers, writhing stubbornly, refusing to obey. I stepped in and took the ends from his shuddering hands.
“Here,” I said, deftly tying the same knot around my waist. I looked at him and felt a compound of pity and guilt. But it was muffled by shame, having tricked the poor old man into a glorified leash.
We started off down the corridor, and I resolved to trudge beside him instead of in front. We favored the right side. The sun glanced off the earth, bathing the corridor at an angle and leaving a shadow collecting in the corner for us to walk in. I kept my eyes on the illuminated wall opposite us to keep my eyes adjusted to the light.
“Don’t you think it’s funny…that even here we have a blue sky?” asked the man in a voice that was thankfully quieter than before.
“Hmm?” I grunted without taking my eyes from the passing corridor.
He pointed up. “The sky…it’s blue–well, I suppose a little green, but still.”
I followed his finger. The Earth looked like it hung above us through the clear composite ceiling.
Once, when I went out to hunt with my father, we came across a globe in a room that had already been stripped of anything useful. I held it up by the base and laughed. He took it from me and set it on the floor. Pointing at where the brass axis impaled the white, frosted poles, he said those were the top and bottom. I had scowled at him. Obviously, if I looked up and saw the Earth, then I knew up from down. In response, he grabbed me by both hands and spun me around and around until my legs lifted up and stuck straight out to the side.
The old man was lost in thought, staring up at our strange sky. Up to this point, I would have compared him to an awestruck child, but his demeanor wasn’t quite as aimless now. He was searching for something–a favorite word on a yellowed page.
“I will say, I do miss the one down there.”
A short burst of air escaped my nostrils incredulously. This man looked old, but not that old. I opened my mouth to prod him about the statement, when I was stopped first by a smell and then voices.
“Wait,” I said softly, pulling him to the deepest corner of our shadow.
The smell was wet grass and excrement tinted with copper. I looked down the corridor to an agitated cluster of people mumbling to each other. They sounded like they were in some sort of argument, but it was difficult to tell this far away.
I turned to the man, motioning to stay low and follow me. His eyes threw the fading sun back at me, and he nodded with unexpected sharpness.
We crept slowly towards the group. As we drew closer, my fears were confirmed. In front of their erratic semicircle was the subject of contention–the deer. Its blood streaked the section of floor before the intrusion of moss and ferns. I had seen blood on the ground another time–the last time I’d hunted with my father. Nausea gripped me and I abandoned the memory.
“I have the most children,” hissed a woman who was taller than two of the other men. Her hair was a long braid down her back, chestnut with a line of grey tracing a spiral around the coils.
One of the short men spoke, “Children who should be out here hunting as well. How long do you expect the others to feed two ten-year-olds whom you insist on leaving behind!”
The deer had already been gutted and skinned. The same man drew in the air with the tip of his knife, highlighting one of the hind legs.
“That would keep my wife breastfeeding another week, maybe. With the twins, she’s not much more than a strainer for solid food.”
The only man who matched the woman’s height interjected. “No one forced you to knock her up. In fact, I think you were advised against it!” His jaw worked stiffly, the muscles in the corner rippling just beneath his skin like plucked strings. I caught him scanning the woman’s face briefly. A peacock.
The last man, older than the rest, held up his hands, preemptively silencing the coming indignation of the man whose wife had been slandered. Everyone turned to him with respect, waiting for him to speak.
“This is what community is, a bunch of hungry people making each other dinner.” He gestured to the woman and her suitor. “Rachel, Samuel will carve a portion for himself, you, and your children. Let the children prepare it.” He held up a hand as Samuel made a move towards the deer. “First, we will let Joshua take enough meat to feed his family.” He turned to Joshua now. “Once you’ve portioned your meat, cut a meal’s worth and place it back on the carcass. Your twins are not a weakness, but they do require sacrifice from someone.”
Joshua nodded solemnly and went to work cutting away flesh. Samuel stepped in close to the man, bowing his head to whisper something to him. Their lips took turns pantomiming, and the man pointed to the pile of organs that had been set off to the side. Samuel turned his head to regard them, opened his mouth only to close it again, and nodded.
My stomach growled as I watched them pack the meat in tarps and sling the blue squares over their shoulders. Rebecca carried the organs in a grey canvas bundle.
After they were gone, I got up and approached the carrion that had been left behind. The legs had been carried off as they were, and all that was left was the stark white rib cage, with only traces of pink and red clinging to them. I pulled out my knife and went to work whittling away, cupping the measly meat in my hand like wet confetti.
In the end, I had a fistful to put in a pouch too large for my spoils. Up until now, the old man had been crouching behind me silently.
“I’ll trade you,” he said.
At first, I didn’t register what he’d said. What did he have to trade? What would he even want to trade for scraps? I held up the meat.
“For what, this?”
He nodded.
I shook my head and told him it was okay. I didn’t want to take whatever this man had, despite the thin, greasy voice that insisted that without him I would have caught the deer before the others.
We left the deer after scrounging only a few more shreds of flesh and continued to the tourist section. The shadow had filled the room, and the automatic lights came on in the corridor. Despite their height, people had managed to break a few over the years, leaving gaps of darkness like missing teeth in the flat fluorescence.
I had gambled on this old man. I had figured it would take a day to get him where he was going, but my family didn’t expect me back for another two. I had thought I would continue to track the deer as we went and get it after delivering my new friend. I hadn’t considered that the deer might be felled by a stranger’s arrow.
Now I was left with two choices: either return home and hope to scrounge something edible on the way home. My best hope was mushrooms or one of the scarce dogs that weaved their way around the Ring, going door to door begging. Most hadn’t questioned the instinct from their caged ancestors that humans were friends. Humans had long returned to the instinct that four legs meant food.
Or I could continue on past wherever the man lived and look for wherever my deer was headed, a herd watering hole maybe. The catch was that it left my family at the very least two days without a meal. And ever since my father had–no, I push that thought down. I would bring the meat and mushrooms. That was stew, and then I could come back and hunt after they had eaten.
Maybe the group who had packed away the deer lived nearby. They at least seemed reasonable enough to trade. Then again, everyone seemed reasonable between themselves. Any excuse would do to drive off or kill a stranger.
At last, we reached the tourist section. The blue stripe ended abruptly, and a red one took its place. Here I could see remnants of luxury that aren’t anywhere else on the Ring: wood paneling and scrubby carpet that now held mold, and piles of soil scattered in patches from when the inhabitants had tried to start gardens with dirt they took from the agricultural section.
Of course, their crops wilted and died. The tourists had been last to learn the law of irony. Of course, green would overtake the corridor unsolicited, but it was the height of foolishness to think you could do it on purpose. Green was a wily woman, after all. You couldn’t court her–she already had a Ring.
“Do you remember your room number?” I asked the old man, gesturing to the row of wooden doors. The numbers fixed to their faces had long fallen off, but someone, probably from the early days, had gone and scratched new numbers onto the doors.
“Number? No, I live in the observatory.”
“The observatory?” I racked my brain for something that the man could mean instead. Was it possible he actually lived there?
As a boy, I had asked my father about the people on Earth, if things were easier for them. He had pinched his eyebrows together and thought for what felt like forever. He said he wasn’t so sure they were, that we went hungry and worried about the air filters one day giving out, true. But he said that his parents had seemed hurt inside from living on Earth.
He said that in the beginning, everything fell apart slowly. Even as a teenager, there had still been packaged food to eat, and most people still moved together in packs.
There was violence, but it was distributed far enough apart that it wasn’t at the forefront of anyone’s mind. But his parents pulled away. They spent more and more time away from others. He said that they were scared.
Wasn’t he scared? I asked him. He told me he was, but it was different for his parents. Their fear made them think about Earth, about when they hadn’t been scared. To them, they were never going to be safe again, and they didn’t want to be scared forever.
He didn’t understand that at first. He didn’t have Earth to compare the Ring to. So he went to the observatory to try and see the place that held on to his parents so tightly.
In the observatories, you could zoom in on the Earth with a telescope and see everything that was happening down there. And my father saw horrible things. Earth still had bullets that were tossed between people at full speed, with the intent to kill. He could always find a fire and smoke without wandering too far from the last. These were only the things he was willing to tell me. I suspect he saw much worse than that.
I’d always wondered why his parents–my grandparents–had missed a place like that so badly. It had crippled them even before it fell to pieces.
The man and I walked past doors for at least a half hour before we reached the spaceport terminals. Metal detectors lay on their side like dominoes, except one at the end that looked like it had sidestepped its neighbor’s trajectory. The periodic recesses had rows and rows of chairs bolted to the floor, most skeletal after having their cushions raided to make beds or clothes.
Miraculously, a poster on the wall pristinely glowed in a frame, covered by a panel of plastic. It was a picture of a wolf in a spacesuit howling at a distant Earth from the lunar surface.
In simple white block letters, it said, “The Only Way to Beat a Bird’s Eye View.”
I tried to find word play or a joke of some kind. The wolf seemed like an ironic character, but nothing about the poster made me sure.
What struck me the most was the Earth suspended in the pitch-black field of stars. I knew the Earth’s shape from the globe, but it had only been a cartoonish representation. The real thing that I had seen every day of my life filled the entire field of view. Sometimes, as a child, I had lain on my back to look up through the clear ceiling and imagined that the faintly curved surface was a drop of water barely clinging to the bottom of the real sky behind it. And it could fall at any moment to wash us all away.
I reached up and pressed a finger against the plastic separating me from the advertisement, tracing my nail above the Earth’s one ring, made thin and indistinct by distance.
“Damn companies turned the Moon into Disneyland,” said the man.
“Into what?” I asked.
He jabbed a finger at the poster. “I bet there’s people up there right now watching us with opera glasses, laughing their fat asses off.”
I had never given much thought to what was happening on the moon. The Ring was parallel to its orbit, so it was out of sight and mind. You couldn’t see it from anywhere I had been on the Ring, at least.
We continued, passing by the stores and restaurants clumped together towards the end of the spaceport. They had long since been looted and were in varying states of disarray. If I hadn’t been a few decades too late, I would have rummaged around too. I scanned them anyway as we passed. More miraculous things had happened than a package of dehydrated food hiding under an overturned trash can.
A brightly colored smoothie bar drew my attention. It was in better shape than the rest. The tiled floor was relatively clear of trash, and the counters were clear of even the useless appliances not worth looting. What made me the most uneasy was that the doors leading to the kitchen were shut. Every single place we had passed, the doors had either been left wide open or kicked down entirely. Someone was in there.
I held a hand in front of the old man. I pointed at the smoothie bar and pressed a finger to my lips. He nodded, and I slowly undid the knot around my waist. The thought popped into mind to tie it off to a stationary object, but I waved off the ridiculous idea.
Instead, I motioned for the man to stay put, then crept to the door, bent over, with my hand wrapped around the handle of my knife. I opened the door as softly as I could to a kitchen shrouded in darkness. I reached blindly behind me and found the light switch. The kitchen exploded into view. All of the metal surfaces reflected the fluorescent light, printing their outlines on my retina.
I blinked rapidly until I could see clearly. A stainless-steel island sat in the middle of the kitchen. Still crouched, I cat-walked softly around it, grateful for bare feet. I rounded the corner and saw a slightly ajar cabinet snap shut with a small, high gasp.
“Hello?” I said. The cabinet was too small for any adult. I opened it and saw, staring back at me, a round, soft face. It felt like making eye contact with a deer. Fear or surprise hadn’t appeared on her face, only a placid stare.
I’d never been able to look away when caught in an impromptu staring contest with an animal. I was bound to watch its wide eyes for as long as they wished, and every time they chewed or flicked an ear, it made me flinch, worried that it was the moment they would break the stare.
The girl had her knees together and her hands between her skinny thighs.
“Do you have a knife there?” I asked, showing mine in a loose grip meant to demonstrate the object instead of brandishing it. No answer, more staring. I stepped back, not willing to get stabbed by a child.
At first, when learning how to navigate the Ring and its inhabitants, I hated my father for leaving children when we came across them. Parents died frequently in the new way of life, and you were more likely to meet a wandering orphan in the corridor than another hunting party.
One day, I felt like antagonizing him. I called him weak and evil. Of course he wasn’t. He always set something on the ground for them to eat after we left. He ignored my insults and continued walking. I switched tactics and called him a coward. I asked why he would be too afraid to even approach them or speak to them. He stopped ahead of me and turned. I thought I had got to him and continued to spit accusations at him as I walked up to where he patiently stood.
I was asking him if he would want a man to pass my sister if she was the last of us alive when I crossed some imaginary tripwire. He dropped onto his heels and drove two fingers into my side with the full force of a grown man. I dropped and clutched the soon-to-be-bruised area. The epicenter of pain was right between two of my ribs. A knife would have slipped right through into a lung.
He waited until I had caught my breath, watching me from his crouch.
“I knew a man once who tried to help a child. He went right up and put a hand on their shoulder. It spooked the poor thing. Had a piece of glass on them that they stuck right here.” He tapped my ribs. “He died quickly, coughing up blood right in front of the child, at its feet.”
I stopped staring up and rolled my head to look my father in the eyes.
“Son, I’d rather let a child die than let it become a killer.”
I left her there and returned to the man who was still waiting outside where I’d left him. As I was re-securing the rope around my waist, he asked,
“Was anyone in there?”
“Yeah, a child.”
He looked at me, puzzled.
“Where is it then?”
“What do you mean? I told you, in there.” I pointed back to the doors I had left open.
He shook his head at me and began marching towards the doors. I hurried to keep up with him before the line pulled taut between us.
“Hey, wait! I’m pretty sure she’s got a knife. She doesn’t even talk! Wait!”
He ignored me, and soon we were standing in front of the girl sitting in her cabinet.
I pointed at her hidden hands.
“See?”
“Where’s my meat?”
“Your meat?”
“Yes, I traded you for that meat. Let me have it.”
I hesitated but remembered all the meager parcels my father had left behind, lying abandoned in the corridor. I handed him the pouch, and before I could stop him, he crouched down, almost sticking his head into the cabinet.
“Hello,” he said in a gentle voice, “I have some food here. Can I trade it for what you have there?” He pointed at the concealed weapon. She squinted at him strangely, like she was trying to recognize him or remember his name. She nodded and slowly pulled her hands out. My breath caught in my throat, waiting for any sudden movements.
But when her hands finally came into view I had to look twice to see that instead of a knife, she was holding a doll, crudely sewn with shoelaces and rags.
The man also looked surprised and held out a hand. She pushed the doll into it and reached for the meat.
“No no, I’ve changed my mind,” said the man, handing the doll back to her. “I don’t want to trade.”
The girl let her arm drop, giving up on the paltry calories in the man’s hands. But the man handed the meat over too. She took it but eyed both of us warily.
“Do you have anything to cook that with?” the man asked.
A funny question in a kitchen. If any of the appliances worked, this would actually be a very good place to cook raw meat.
She shook her head.
“That’s alright. I can cook it at home if you would come with me and him.” He pointed to himself and then me.
She squinted at him again. Then she turned her scrunched face to me. I couldn’t make sense of the expression.
She turned back to the man and nodded.
Our miscellaneous trio arrived at the observatory just as the Sun began stretching back out onto the corridor floor. Despite being a premium spot of interest for visitors from Earth, it was the one part of the tourist section without fanfare. Above a doorless entryway, a simple comic sans font said “observatory,” and that was it.
A dirty cloth was hung like a curtain over the entrance, which the man held up for us.
“I’m home!” he said into the large atrium.
Unlike the rest of the Ring, the clear ceiling extended on either side to the floor in a continuous panoramic window. The planet’s rounded surface continued east and west, dropping off slowly to form a soft edge against the velvet void of space.
I could see the crescent sun beginning to peek over the globe’s rim to my left, casting a brilliant shimmer across the atmosphere’s vague surface. The telescope at the center of the room had a broken lens.
I scanned the room for any signs of the “she” he had briefly mentioned but saw no one. Instead, commanding the room was the strangest thing I had ever seen in my thirty-two years alive–a tree. I had missed it in my awe for the observatory, but there was a spot on the floor where panels had been peeled back. Dirt had been dumped among the ductwork below, and from the soil shot up a spindly young trunk with gangly arms branching at all angles. And in the spaces between green foliage was the most bizarre aspect of the already incredible scene: apples. Hundreds of apples, perfectly red, hung off the branches, bending them with their weight, teasing the ground as if they might fall at any moment.
The man went up to the tree and patted it with his hand. “I’m sorry I took so long. You know how I get turned around sometimes.” Then he looked back at us, as if just remembering he wasn’t alone. “Oh! And I hope you don’t mind that I’ve brought some guests.”
He gestured me over to the tree and pointed up at the branches. “Here’s what I owe you for the meat. Take as many as you’d like. I apologize, you’ll have to get them yourself. I’m not much for climbing. But I do have some moonshine cider I’ll send you with for the trouble.”
He hurried off toward a cluttered corner of the observatory while I gawked, absently rooting around in the mess of belongings until he came out with a pot, which he threw on a portable gas stove. And soon my meat was sizzling happily over the blue flame.
I slid down to the ground with my back against the tree and just wondered at it all, watching the Earth spin above me for a moment.
The meat gradually cooked, coating the air with the smell of grease. My stomach indignantly growled at me for sitting there and sniffing away at it. So I rose and put a hand on a branch of the tree, ready to climb. Before I could hoist myself up, however, a yellow glint caught my eye. I examined it and saw that there was what looked like a golden ring embedded in the tree. Wood had dripped over the top of it, leaving only the bottom curve exposed.
I carried my heap of apples over to the man and the girl, who sat together staring out at the Earth while they ate. The old man turned and looked up.
“Your bag is over by the stove. If you run out of room, I’ve got some other things to put them in around here somewhere,” he laughed, cracking a pink smile sprinkled with teeth.
Once the apples were contained, I went to sit with them. I noticed that there were thick glasses sitting precariously on the girl’s nose. She looked at me over the glasses, squinted, then pushed them up, and the squint disappeared.
“Those were Heather’s,” said the old man. “The little thing kept squinting, so I thought she might be a bit blind. So I wrangled these up. I don’t think her and Heather have the same prescription, but I’m sure it helps at least.”
“Was that her name?” I asked, then quickly added, “I saw the ring–in the tree, I mean.”
“Yup, Heather and I came up here together a long time ago. For some internship or another. Just two kids who wanted to change the world by leaving it behind.” He grew ponderous and stared out of the window more intensely. I stared too, trying hard to find what he was looking at. My eyes roamed over the patches of land, trying to catch an ant or two crawling around.
“Do you think we’re all gone? Down there?” I asked.
“Mmm, no. And even if everyone down there was, humans don’t go extinct until this thing falls out of the sky.” He gestured all around us, at the Ring.
Silence stretched, and the girl burped.
The man spoke again, “Actually, it’s funny. I think humans did go extinct.” At this, I turned to look at him. He had a loose smile on his face. “I think that we died off when our clothes became billboards and our eyes turned into screens. I think humans disappeared when we stopped eating the things we killed.”
“Then what are we?”
“Dodo’s come out of hiding, I suppose.”
I waved to the man and the girl, silently said goodbye to Heather, and walked home. My back ached from my sack of apples slung over my shoulder. And I had two jugs of cider hung with a rope around my neck.
But by the time I made it home, they felt like they were pushing me forward instead of weighing me down.
My wife looked at me, puzzled, examining the bulging bag and jugs of urine-colored liquid.
In the corner, my son played with my father, walking his wooden toys all over the stump at the end of his thigh.
I set my bag down gently and revealed the apples. My wife gasped, and my son poked at them.
“Are they mushrooms?” he asked.
I laughed with my father, and we tried to explain what a tree was to him. We didn’t make much progress with him.
He picked one up in his ten-year-old hands and sunk his teeth into the red skin. Juice dribbled down his chin.
“This is way better than deer!”
My wife and I shared one jug of cider, while my father took on the other by himself. A blush spread from one cheek to the other across his nose, and he told stories about hunting with me to my son, spitting a little when he got to a particularly exciting part.
As we tucked my son into bed, he was still buzzing.
“How old were you when you started going out with grandpa?”
I tapped my chin dramatically. “Oh…I’d say about ten.”
His eyebrows shot up, and his ears perked like a puppy’s. I leaned in close and put my hand on his chest.
“Next time we’ll go out hunting together. I have some people I’d like you to meet.”
END