They broke the fourteenth level, and the canopy of the Aja jungle fell below them. The dense green foliage blocked out the individual paths that snaked around the outside. They soared higher, and the world of the Disc opened up below them. Syn sighed and thought, Mine.
Below her, splitting open the Aja jungle was the river. Her river. And He separated the waters from the waters… The various populations that inhabited the ship had each given it their own name. Some had called it the Euphrates. Others called it Shui. The few Russians that had assisted with the construction of Olorun called it the Volga. Syn had named it Lokun, in honor of the people that had ultimately launched the craft. She had forgotten most of her language course work from that first year, but she remembered that word. The Lokun was beautiful, stretching the entire distance around the base of the Disc. The ship’s Disc—a large ring—rotated around the center needle of the ship’s fuselage. The rotation produced gravity. It was nearly 32 kilometers in circumference and four kilometers wide. Almost 128 square kilometers of surface for Syn to play and live upon.
The Lokun zig-zagged from edge to edge, its course allowing it to form eddies and currents and pool in places and bottleneck in others. At three different intervals, from the rocks built into the walls of the Disc between the rising settlements, waterfalls pushed the river along.
The water came from the great bodies of water that surrounded the Disc. The biggest danger of space was the radiation. Earth had its atmosphere and magnetic system to divert and absorb the harmful radiation. The atmosphere of the Disc wasn’t capable of that. It was not thick enough. Instead, in a secondary, insulating layer around the entire Disc, an ocean of water floated. It was impossible to get to and impossible to disturb. There was enough water in the shield to flood the Disc and more; easily a kilometer-thick extension on both sides of the Disc.
The river fed back into it. The water filtered to the settling ponds below before it moved back to the surrounding ocean shield. Then the water would pour back into the river, pushing it along. Compared to the water in the shield, the Lokun was a mere trickle. But laying upon it, floating with its current, it felt mighty.
Syn had once taken a boat out without any true intent and allowed herself to float along. For four days, she laid in that boat, circling the Disc. She felt like she was in orbit. Over and over, she saw the same sights move past. She laid there without sleep as the sunstrips along the needle faded into darkness, and the projected stars, a representation of the outside, were allowed to show their light. Her fingers hung in the water, and the small fish would come taste the salt from her fingertips. They nibbled at her skin and then darted off when she moved. She drifted between sleep and awake, allowing the lull of the world, the hum of the engines, and the thrum of the rotating Disc to hypnotize her.
She dreamt that she had stared into the deep of the Lokun, and there, below its mirror surface, was another world. In that other world, there was another Syn, another girl, looking up. Her hair, her eyes… her. But with a different voice and a different mind. Someone human to share this world with. Someone with flesh and blood and tears and anger and fear. Someone beyond Blip and Eku and the animals and the dumb bots. She loved Blip. He was her closest friend. But that night, she had felt very alone. She drifted through the waters and wondered what it would be like to hear another human’s voice, not through some recording, but with her own ears. Would the voice be different if it had been formed with human vocal cords? Would it sound different to her tiny ears if the words had escaped warm lips, crafted with a thick tongue that was moist with spittle? Would the conversation be different if the other person had to pull their hair from their eyes like she often did? If they had to sometimes pause the conversation to run and use the bathroom?
Syn had hung from the bow of the boat and let both hands deep into the water. She saw herself there and saw that reflection mouth other words than the ones her own lips formed. The reflection was living. It was thinking. It was another, and she wanted to fall forward and embrace it, pull that other close to her own chest and feel the thump, thump, thump of its heart and the warmth of its breath against her neck. She wanted to feel the sweat of the other’s skin and let her mutter, “It’s okay. You’re not alone. I’m here.”
But that had been something near to a dream.
She pulled away from the glass, the view of the river Lokun, and thought, I say blast it to the shadow girl, the girl below the waves. Olorun is my world, and the rule of it comes with the thorn of loneliness. Who cares? I’m a god in this little place and…
“Why are you lying to me?” Syn said, her eyes surveying her world.
Blip turned away from the control pad and looked at her. “Excuse me?” he said, his voice low and careful with a hint of confusion.
The ignorant tone he replied with set her off. She wheeled and pointed. “Stop lying. Stop it now.”
Blip moved back, appearing stunned by her words. “What are you…”
But he couldn’t get the words out. Syn interrupted, “The other bot. The other one like you. You knew about it! I saw it in the way you approached it. You were surprised by its arrival but not by its existence. You were surprised that it had crashed. Where do you go at night? When has the feed broken down before? Who was that companion bot? What’s the explosion about? You know all the answers, and you’re not telling me a thing! I want answers.” She was furious. With each sentence she stepped closer to him, her finger pointed at him and spit flying from her mouth. “Stop lying Blip!”
Deep inside though, a small voice spoke, you’re going to send him away. For a moment, the voice caused her to stagger, and she only finished with a stunted, “Stop…”
Blip stuttered at her pauses, “What are you…” and then, “I’m not.” Finally, after her final word, Blip replied, “I…” But he would never finish that sentence.
9
THE JACOB
“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
The Jacob came to a sudden stop, and they were thrown up, slamming hard into the ceiling. They were over halfway up the tower. The further up they went and the further from the base of the Disc they climbed, the lower the gravity was.
They drifted back down to the floor. Syn’s blood floated around them in small droplets. Syn was bleeding—she put a hand on the back of her head and brought it back, wet and red. Dammit! she thought. The interruption in her confrontation had been so sudden that her anger was replaced by shock and without the fuel of anger, she was embarrassed that she had attacked Blip like that. It had all just come bubbling out. It was all there under the surface. She shouldn’t have said it, she thought, and at the same time, she thought, I meant every word. I want those answers.
“Are you okay?” Blip asked, staring at Syn’s hand just as she was.
Her cheeks reddened at his kindness. She didn’t deserve it. “I think so.” The injury stung, but not as bad as others she had. Syn fell often. She had broken bones and the bots were great about stitching her up as fast as they did nearly anything else on the ship. Their repair work didn’t stop the pain, though. Yet, she didn’t feel she was as hurt now as she had been before. “I think I’m okay.”
Blip floated around. “I think the Jacob is dead.”
“Dead?” Syn pushed off and maneuvered to the window, trying to glance up at the needle. There was nothing that she could see wrong. “Everything looks okay.”