AL Clark by Jonathan G. Meyer (digital e reader .txt) 📕
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- Author: Jonathan G. Meyer
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The center control panel was labeled: ACCESS TO SPOKE 4, and on it was the standard red and green indicator lights. Below the control panel, bold lettering cautioned, STAND OUTSIDE RED CIRCLE. He was standing outside the circle. Still, he hesitated for a second before sliding the card through the slot. Somewhere above him came a series of thunks, and in the center of the ceiling two halves of a circle retracted to open a passage.
Through this hole in the ceiling descended what looked like a large capsule. A conveyance like no transport capsule he’d ever seen before. Although he could tell it was old by its dull coloring and cloudy windows, it was still a thing of beauty. Twelve feet tall and eight feet around, it was smooth and streamlined. A triumph of technology. The entire middle section was clear plastic, except for a man-sized access door.
He cautiously stepped into the capsule, and the interior lights ‘clicked’ on. The inside of the compartment was empty, except for the simple controller on the wall with a button for the door and a card slot to activate the lift.
In the center of the capsule—was a tree. Four inches around and topped with four short branches at shoulder height. Age had turned it a dull green, with yellow highlights that created what some might call sculpture in a stark environment.
He wondered, is it form or is it function?
The door closed automatically as soon as he used the card and a dull vibration could be felt through the floor as the capsule started slowly rising, gaining speed as it went. The pale silver walls of the spoke slid rapidly by, and as the capsule shot up, he noticed his card beginning to float from his chest. He had an idea of what was coming next, so he grabbed for the tree.
This feeling was something he knew. It seemed he was familiar with zero gravity. The tree was the perfect handhold to keep him from floating around and causing himself harm. Functional as well as beautiful.
The ride to this point had been smooth and silent, but as he approached the top of the spoke, and the lift started slowing down, the vibration intensified as if it were struggling. He was just beginning to worry when the capsule slid out of the spoke and ground to a halt—into nothing.
His eyes gradually adjusted, and he spied far away lights slowly moving in the distance; both in front and behind. To his side were stationary lights similar to the other beacons. A door closed below him and allowed the distant lights to appear more distinct. When his eyes adjusted; he could see well enough to determine his whereabouts.
He appeared to be inside a giant metal ball, as seen from the inside, easily one hundred feet across. The lights he saw were the indicator lights of the other spoke lifts as they rotated slowly around. On each side, the vague outline of two stationary doors beckoned.
To delay his search did not enter his mind. It was now time to get some answers. With one hand holding the tree, he reached out and pressed the button to open the door. Bright lighting quickly ramped up outside the capsule until he could see the immense open space at the center of the huge wheel. The Hub of the ring. He floated out of the capsule and turned, to find a boy hanging onto a recessed handle; just floating there with wide open eyes staring straight at him.
The boy made no effort to move, and the look on his face was one of complete surprise. His voice squeaked a little at first until he finally forced out, “Are you...real?”
The man laughed and shook his head. He said, “Are you?”
The young man was relatively clean, with blue coveralls, long blonde hair, brown eyes, and a big smile. He was around eighteen, and maybe a little taller than the man.
The boy told him, “My hibernation pod malfunctioned almost a year ago, and I’ve been waiting for someone to show up ever since. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. I’m Christopher Morris...who are you?”
“Well, for the time being, I guess you can call me Al.”
“Umm, Al...what?”
“Clark...Al Clark.” He looked down, chuckled and said, “It’s a long story, Christopher. For now, how about you tell me about yourself.”
Christopher was lonely and talkative. He suggested they go to the quarters he was using in the yellow section to sit down and talk. Al pushed off and floated towards the capsule he rode up in when the young man stopped him.
“I wouldn’t use that lift if I were you—it doesn’t sound right. I use the number one lift. Two and three won’t work because the doors are overridden and locked, so one is the only lift that works as it should.”
Al considered the vibration he felt on his way up, and decided he didn’t like the number four capsule either.
The boy chose one of the larger living quarters with three rooms, close to the number one spoke because he liked hanging out in the zero gravity of the hub; to help him relax, he said. He wasn’t worried about housekeeping in his quarters, and it showed, to the point where Al had to move some things to sit across from him at the small table. The boy offered him an energy bar to which he declined, and they began talking.
The biggest question on Al’s mind was, “Where are we, Christopher?”
“Please, call me Chris, and right now we are in a habitat ring located on the front of a spaceship called the Excalibur. You don’t know where you are?”
“I figured out I was in space, and on what seems to be an abandoned space ship or a space station. What I don’t know—is where. Let me ask you this. Do I look familiar to you? I mean, have you seen me before?”
Chris took a close look at Al and replied, “You don’t look familiar, but they rushed me onto the ship at the last minute, and I didn’t meet many people.”
Al’s disappointment was evident. He took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I guess I need to explain why it is I’m so clueless.”
He told Chris about waking up in the box, not knowing where or who he was, and about his excursions so far, up until the time he found Chris staring back at him across the hub.
When Al finished, Chris told his story about how he was thrown out of his hibernation pod to an empty habitat ring. For the better part of a year, he had almost gone crazy living by himself and trying to stay busy. A seemingly endless number of long days and longer nights. He now knew the ship like the back of his hand and spent extended periods of time exploring.
Chris jumped up and grabbed something from the bed and gave it to Al. “I started a journal. I missed the first two days and made an entry every day since.”
Al thumbed through the eight by ten notebook and found it surprisingly easy to read, complete with intricate drawings covering a broad spectrum of subjects. A map of the interior of the habitat ring was laid out in detail. “These sketches are good Chris. I am impressed.”
“What else did I have to do? Some of those drawings took up weeks of my time,” the boy joked.
Chris described the room where he awoke, and Al thought it sounded a lot like the cubicle that held his coffin-like box.
Chris was told there were a thousand people aboard the Excalibur. He admitted he didn’t know for sure, as he had been rushed in to fill a last minute cancellation, and had seen little of the ship. He believed the person he replaced must have died before he could get aboard the starship because the lottery they held included hundreds-of-thousands of applicants from all over the Earth. If you had a hundred dollars and could pass the strict physical and psychological tests, you had a chance. Finally, one-thousand people were picked by the Excalibur committee to be aboard the ship when it left. The lucky ones.
The Earth had become a difficult place to live; due to runaway global climate change and its effects. There were wars all over the planet making it seem like half the world was always fighting someone for something. Many people wanted to go to a place like the planets described in the lottery brochures.
Chris had a limited access card that didn’t work all the doors. Because of the limited access, he was unable to get past the hub to the rest of the ship. He was trapped in the giant wheel and spent his time exploring the habitat ring when he wasn’t relaxing in the ring’s center because of the zero-gravity.
He was in the hub when the meteor shower took out the green section just two days ago, and it almost scared him to death. He told Al the ring could handle small rocks because it was self-healing, but the big ones were unstoppable and made a racket inside the ship that is unimaginable.
Al sat back and thought, Could it be the meteor shower that woke me? His thoughts were sluggish; fragmented. If it had been two days since he slept, he needed to rest. Al considered whether he should move into quarters of his own, or help Chris clean this one. To simplify their future planning, he decided to help Chris. The boy was happy to oblige.
Later, with Al just about to fall asleep in one room, and Chris in the other, Al called out through the open door, “If this is a colony ship, where are we going?”
“We were on a thirty-year journey to a planet called Avalon.”
“Thirty years, huh? To colonize?”
“Yeah, that was the plan.”
****THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER taking turns getting showers, they dressed and headed for the mess hall in the blue section. They each grabbed a food package, heated them up, and took the food to a table to eat.
Sitting and talking at one of the many empty tables, they agreed that somewhere on this ship there were people, either dead or alive. Anxious to get moving, they finished their meals and headed to the hub to find them. While they walked to the number one lift, Chris filled Al in on what he knew of the mission and their ship.
“This ship, the Excalibur, left earth orbit in 2160. It was decided by the ‘people in charge,' that all colonists and crew would be put into hibernation until three months before the ship established orbit around the planet; to minimize resource usage. At that time
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