Blip was talking to the controls and allowed a soft “Hush” to escape as he did so.
Syn thought, stupid bot. Just do your job and don’t boss me around. He could pay attention to two things at once. He didn’t need to concentrate. Syn concluded it was just an act. He wants to be more human than I want him to be.
The screen on the control panel beeped. Blip whirred and narrowed his eyes. The panel beeped back at him.
“Rude,” Blip said, offended.
“What’s…” Syn couldn’t even get the words out before she received another “Hush” from the football-shaped robot.
Syn spun in the air and aimed toward the door. With a small push of her feet against the back wall, she propelled herself forward. It didn’t take much effort to move in the near weightlessness this high up. Syn loved the sensation, though—fun, absolutely crazy fun. She would venture up to the needle just to enjoy the wildness of spinning and wheeling unencumbered through the air.
Syn put her arms out in front and braced herself as she moved toward the door. Her fingers gripped into the fine crack between the windowed Jacob doors.
Blip still argued with the control panel. She never could figure out exactly how he worked with the different interfaces and AIs on the ship. Sometimes they seemed stubborn and unbendable to Blip’s desires. There were others that he could just connect with and rewrite their entire processes. Yet, she was amazed at how, given enough time, he could get them to do anything.
Syn pulled at the doors. They were over four kilometers high in the air. Syn had heard of a fear of heights in the films she watched. But on the Olorun, this seemed so odd. All someone had to do was to look up and see the ground above them. Wherever you were on the Disc, you were looking down at the ground (or up, depending on how you wanted to describe it). So, yes, they were high up, but this high up, they were also near weightless. If Syn stepped out, she would slowly start to drop down. Slowly.
There was a hatch up above, along the underside of the needle, and she could climb from here. Stay close to the tower and push yourself up.
The doors began to open. There was a tremendous amount of pressure on them, and they were difficult to budge.
Blip whirred and shouted, “Stop!”
Syn glared back at him. “I’m not one of your machines.” He could try all he wanted to get the Jacob to turn on and take them the rest of the way, but her way seemed more fun. Syn continued to pry at the door.
Blip flew up, inserted himself between her and the door. He turned and bumped her arm away with the back of his head. Syn lost her grip, and the doors slid shut with a slam.
“Blip!” Syn said. She swatted at him, and he whirled out of the way. “Stop treating me like a baby. I know we’re high up but I can float to the top. We’ll just use the hatch.”
Blip wobbled in the air, buffeted by the hard slap. He just narrowed his eyes and then zipped to look eye-to-eye with her. “It’s not about that. There’s almost no air out there.”
Syn paused. No air? What did he mean? “Blip, what are you talking about?” Outside those doors was the Disc. She could look down, and though they were nearly minuscule dots, she could still see the trees and houses. There was the small rectangle that was the soccer field. A lake twinkled below them. The reflection of the sunstrip rolled across its surface.
Blip sighed.
Syn scowled. She hated when he did that—it was a sure sign to her that he thought she was being stupid. “I’m not dumb,” she scolded back. She pushed away and crossed her arms. “We’re taking too long. I just want to get up there.”
“How high up are we?” His tone had changed. He had dropped the scolding, but he was now purposely talking in a lower tone, spacing out his words, making sure Syn clearly understood him.
Syn remained unmoved. Her arms were crossed, her chin down, and she stared at him through narrowed eyes. Around her, her dark hair floated in the gravity. She grunted, “Schoolmaster Blip.”
“Fine. I don’t have to explain it to you. Just do me a favor,” Blip moved back to continue his argument with the elevator, “And stay away from the…”
“Oh, great Blip, please don’t withhold your wisdom from my tiny little mind,” she growled. Yet, inside, she did want to know what he was going to say. She wanted to know why she could not go up and float to the needle. And he knew she wanted to know, so instead of a lecture, Syn was on the edge of begging him to instruct her. Syn slapped her hand on the wall. She felt as if she could never outgrow him. He would always have something more that she needed from him. She would always be in chains to him that were forged from her continued and seemingly never-ending ignorance.
“Really?” Blip quirked up an eyebrow.
Syn scowled and thought Stupid Blip. Yet, she nodded. It was slight—maybe not even a nod, just a move of the head.
It was enough. Blip turned and raised himself up. Syn was floating several inches off the ground. Blip made sure to move, so he was looking down at her—not much, just so his eyes were an inch higher than hers. Perhaps it made him feel more like a teacher. Whatever the reason, Syn wanted to grab him and punt him down the Disc.
She spat out, “So, little football, are you going to tell me?”
Blip sighed again. “As I was saying, how high are we?”
Syn just stared.
Blip allowed a moment of tension, and then he continued, answering his own question. “We’re 4.5 kilometers above the base of the Disc. How does the Disc have gravity since we’re in weightless space?”
It was Syn’s turn to sigh. “It spins.”
Blip nodded. “Yes, it spins. And because it spins, the Disc has gravity. However, the closer we move to the axis point, the needle around which the Disc spins, the less gravity there is. All of the air in the Disc is also under the pressure of the gravity being created by that spin. Oh, there’s air up here, but the air is far denser the further down the tower you go. When you’re at the base of the Disc, the air is at its densest. It’s designed that way. When you hop in the elevator, we pressurize the elevator so that the air pressure is the same as it is at Disc base level. The needle is pressurized too. We work hard so that you experience the same air pressure everywhere you go.”
Syn frowned. She hated when he used the word “we.” It creeped her out. She knew there were other AIs on Olorun—although they were all dumb bots. Blip was unique—a distinct, individual mind like hers. Yet, he still talked to the other machines with their varying degrees of technology. She knew he had assembled a team of bots that worked to make life easier for her. But the “we” was just weird. It made her feel that there was a whole world of conversations going on that she was not a part of. Her frown deepened, and she thought, we? Why not “Us?” but she didn’t say anything. Again, her doubts surfaced. She wanted to shout again at him but no, not now. This wasn’t the time.
Blip continued, ignoring her frustration. “But if you go out those doors, the air pressure is significantly less than when we are down at the base. So much so, that you’ll suffocate.”
Syn looked over her shoulder. Okay, I hadn’t thought about that. She just thought she would slip out and float all the way up to the hatch and save the day. It had to be that easy. Except it wasn’t, and she had nearly opened that door and killed herself.
She’d have been like all the other humans: dead on Olorun. Sometimes she felt like the ship was just waiting for her to die. She was the lone person on a ship that had housed thousands. Of all those people, she was the only one not dead. The only one living. As if she was the holdout. Perhaps the ship was readying to do something new but waited on her to die like some little gnat buzzing around.