Filling in a blank with some extremely thin butter
---
WE knew the city was damaged.
The city had been built to tolerate up to four block being open to atmosphere. The city would drop, the anchor cables would re-tension to trim her level, and she'd settle a kilometre or so lower. We couldn't conceive of anything doing more damage than that.
That trimming was the important bit. It kept the city level - even as ships landed and took-off, or people went to work in the morning, or came home in the evening. Trimming with the cables compensated for that change in load, without having to pump ballast. Being more than a few degrees out of trim was a dangerous condition, because it stressed the entire structure.
Anyway. We had three blocks open to atmosphere. Still within limits. After about eight hours, pressure in the open blocks equalised and the city settled at her new level. We started sounding out for repairs. We'd had a fright but, well, as far as we could tell, the city was holding. We had a few strange things up on some levels - doors that weren't closing or opening properly - getting stuck in their frames and the like - or vent dampers getting stuck. Annoying things, but nothing concerning.
Bellamy told me to put a pressure suit on and go down to check on the anchor points- we were getting some strange readings on the tensioners and were still about a degree out of trim. So I did. Nothing unusual. Told her I'd be back in a few hours, stepped out the airlock and rode an IVA chute down. I'd done it fifty times.
I don't know what happened to them, whether they stayed up at their posts until the end or whether they tried for it when the evacuation alarms sounded. There was fifteen of us in all. None of them got out. That was the last time I saw her, or anyone else on my team.
It takes me an hour to get down, and I don't know what's going on above me.
I'm at the bottom, at the anchor station, and the cable is singing. I'd heard them sing in the breeze, but this was something else, deeper, louder, more tortured. I can feel it through my boots The forces on them must've been immense. They're pulled dead taught, not an iota of slack.
I try to radio it in.
No answer.
The atmosphere must've been blocking transmission. No big deal - it happens. There's a hardline inside a small shelter in the anchor itself. I could use that. The air itself is buzzing with tension, crackling with electricity. It was like being in the same room as a live high voltage cable.
The hair on my arms stood on its end.
Before I can open the hatch, the cable goes dead silent. It sags. It starts to drop, building to a roar like an oncoming train as it accelerates. I get the idea that thousands of tons of steel and carbon are about to drop on the spot where I am standing and I run as fast as venus will let me. It's like running through liquid water.
The ground is vibrating as the cable begins to land, coiling, snaking and lashing around. Fragments of carbon the size of cars spall off and fly in the breeze. One of them, hitting me at speed, would just implode my suit. I wouldn't even know I was hit it'd just be lights out.
After ten minutes of pure terror, it's silent again. There's wreckage and dust all around me. Fragments weighing tons are drifting lazily in the breeze. Torn black fibre waves like hair from broken ends.
Nobody from above thinks to check in.
I try radio.
No answer.
I try again.
No Answer
The anchor survived. There shelter's still there, with food, an atmosphere, an emergency beacon and what should've been a hardline - if the cable hadn't snapped. I remember thinking, I'd have a hell of a story to tell them when I got back up. They'd probably already written me off as dead, but I'd show them.
I hunkered down, set the beacon, and waited.
Three hours later, I heard another bang - without any warning, just a slap on the portholes of the shelter, like a bomb had gone off. It spilled my rations on the floor - I was lucky the windows didn't burst from the shock. Five minutes after that - what felt like an earthquake - rising up from the ground, rather than crushing down from the roof. I honestly thought it was just another cable. It never occurred to me that it could be the city itself.
Such things weren't possible.
I could see nothing out the porthole but boiling cloud, all lit up with that same steady, sulphuric yellow light.
I try to radio again.
No answer.
Every hour, I try my radio. Every hour I get the same answer. Eventually, the battery begins to die and I genuinely wonder if they've forgotten about me. Do they think I'm already dead - mulched, then incinerated, when the cable snapped?
After three days in the shelter I'm beginning to believe it.
I'm rescued from purgatory by the Shelter intercom. A voice, from outside, checking if anyone managed to stay alive inside. Yup, I'm still alive. It's about time.
"Thank the Gods. You're the first survivor we've found."
Maybe there're were more people on the surface? I'd no idea still what happened. The Galaxy had begun to mourn and I still expected to go home to my apartment in Shin-Dotonbori for a hot shower. I still had a report to give on the cable breaking. We had to seal the breaches, pump the atmosphere clean and get the city back up and working again. I'd a new soundtrack album I wanted to listen to. The local bar was having a quiz night tomorrow.
Life had to resume after the break.
I suit back up, and step outside. It's a Cyclops shuttle - a ball-shaped craft with a single viewing port, three ROV garages and a back-porch to carry two people in hardsuits. From the markings, I realise it's come all the way from Crystal Moscow.
Things must really still be difficult up there, I remember thinking.
I step up on the Porch, clip on my safety line, and give the Pilot the customary thumbs-up to launch.
It's rarely clear enough on Venus to see the mountains, but as we take-off I'm astonished to see the black shadow of broken hill in the distance - a jumble of dark jagged rocks and broken ends. I'd been down to that anchor station and half dozen times and never seen it before. The ruins of the cable formed a broken snake, coiling in its direction. It had a stark beauty to it, a hellish, inhospitable desolation.
You're in no doubt you're somewhere in the universe that is utterly hostile to your existance. Every molecule in this space is lethal in a way no other world is. The Moon, the Deep Ocean - there is nothing which compares to the emnitywith which Venus greets its visitors
And we were doing everything we could to change that.
After twenty minutes, I realise we'd been flying for ten minutes too long. I key open the intercom to the pilot.
"We're not heading to the city?"
The silence that answers is my first inkling of the depths of tragedy that had just occured. That moment where he realises that I don't know, and now he has to be the only to tell me.
"The City's gone."
He says it so simple, I don't believe him. "They moved it to orbit?"
"No," he says "Crystal Osaka collapsed three days ago."
Everything starts to make a cruel sense, even as I wish I doesn't. I wonder if I passed out, and it all had to be a nightmare of some sort. The pilot ruins the illusion on me.
"You're the only survivor we've found on the surface."
That was the moment I felt my soul die.
There were twenty-one hundred people in the city when they evacuation alarm sounded. They got eight hundred and twenty off. I was the only one they found on the ground.
---
WE knew the city was damaged.
The city had been built to tolerate up to four block being open to atmosphere. The city would drop, the anchor cables would re-tension to trim her level, and she'd settle a kilometre or so lower. We couldn't conceive of anything doing more damage than that.
That trimming was the important bit. It kept the city level - even as ships landed and took-off, or people went to work in the morning, or came home in the evening. Trimming with the cables compensated for that change in load, without having to pump ballast. Being more than a few degrees out of trim was a dangerous condition, because it stressed the entire structure.
Anyway. We had three blocks open to atmosphere. Still within limits. After about eight hours, pressure in the open blocks equalised and the city settled at her new level. We started sounding out for repairs. We'd had a fright but, well, as far as we could tell, the city was holding. We had a few strange things up on some levels - doors that weren't closing or opening properly - getting stuck in their frames and the like - or vent dampers getting stuck. Annoying things, but nothing concerning.
Bellamy told me to put a pressure suit on and go down to check on the anchor points- we were getting some strange readings on the tensioners and were still about a degree out of trim. So I did. Nothing unusual. Told her I'd be back in a few hours, stepped out the airlock and rode an IVA chute down. I'd done it fifty times.
I don't know what happened to them, whether they stayed up at their posts until the end or whether they tried for it when the evacuation alarms sounded. There was fifteen of us in all. None of them got out. That was the last time I saw her, or anyone else on my team.
It takes me an hour to get down, and I don't know what's going on above me.
I'm at the bottom, at the anchor station, and the cable is singing. I'd heard them sing in the breeze, but this was something else, deeper, louder, more tortured. I can feel it through my boots The forces on them must've been immense. They're pulled dead taught, not an iota of slack.
I try to radio it in.
No answer.
The atmosphere must've been blocking transmission. No big deal - it happens. There's a hardline inside a small shelter in the anchor itself. I could use that. The air itself is buzzing with tension, crackling with electricity. It was like being in the same room as a live high voltage cable.
The hair on my arms stood on its end.
Before I can open the hatch, the cable goes dead silent. It sags. It starts to drop, building to a roar like an oncoming train as it accelerates. I get the idea that thousands of tons of steel and carbon are about to drop on the spot where I am standing and I run as fast as venus will let me. It's like running through liquid water.
The ground is vibrating as the cable begins to land, coiling, snaking and lashing around. Fragments of carbon the size of cars spall off and fly in the breeze. One of them, hitting me at speed, would just implode my suit. I wouldn't even know I was hit it'd just be lights out.
After ten minutes of pure terror, it's silent again. There's wreckage and dust all around me. Fragments weighing tons are drifting lazily in the breeze. Torn black fibre waves like hair from broken ends.
Nobody from above thinks to check in.
I try radio.
No answer.
I try again.
No Answer
The anchor survived. There shelter's still there, with food, an atmosphere, an emergency beacon and what should've been a hardline - if the cable hadn't snapped. I remember thinking, I'd have a hell of a story to tell them when I got back up. They'd probably already written me off as dead, but I'd show them.
I hunkered down, set the beacon, and waited.
Three hours later, I heard another bang - without any warning, just a slap on the portholes of the shelter, like a bomb had gone off. It spilled my rations on the floor - I was lucky the windows didn't burst from the shock. Five minutes after that - what felt like an earthquake - rising up from the ground, rather than crushing down from the roof. I honestly thought it was just another cable. It never occurred to me that it could be the city itself.
Such things weren't possible.
I could see nothing out the porthole but boiling cloud, all lit up with that same steady, sulphuric yellow light.
I try to radio again.
No answer.
Every hour, I try my radio. Every hour I get the same answer. Eventually, the battery begins to die and I genuinely wonder if they've forgotten about me. Do they think I'm already dead - mulched, then incinerated, when the cable snapped?
After three days in the shelter I'm beginning to believe it.
I'm rescued from purgatory by the Shelter intercom. A voice, from outside, checking if anyone managed to stay alive inside. Yup, I'm still alive. It's about time.
"Thank the Gods. You're the first survivor we've found."
Maybe there're were more people on the surface? I'd no idea still what happened. The Galaxy had begun to mourn and I still expected to go home to my apartment in Shin-Dotonbori for a hot shower. I still had a report to give on the cable breaking. We had to seal the breaches, pump the atmosphere clean and get the city back up and working again. I'd a new soundtrack album I wanted to listen to. The local bar was having a quiz night tomorrow.
Life had to resume after the break.
I suit back up, and step outside. It's a Cyclops shuttle - a ball-shaped craft with a single viewing port, three ROV garages and a back-porch to carry two people in hardsuits. From the markings, I realise it's come all the way from Crystal Moscow.
Things must really still be difficult up there, I remember thinking.
I step up on the Porch, clip on my safety line, and give the Pilot the customary thumbs-up to launch.
It's rarely clear enough on Venus to see the mountains, but as we take-off I'm astonished to see the black shadow of broken hill in the distance - a jumble of dark jagged rocks and broken ends. I'd been down to that anchor station and half dozen times and never seen it before. The ruins of the cable formed a broken snake, coiling in its direction. It had a stark beauty to it, a hellish, inhospitable desolation.
You're in no doubt you're somewhere in the universe that is utterly hostile to your existance. Every molecule in this space is lethal in a way no other world is. The Moon, the Deep Ocean - there is nothing which compares to the emnitywith which Venus greets its visitors
And we were doing everything we could to change that.
After twenty minutes, I realise we'd been flying for ten minutes too long. I key open the intercom to the pilot.
"We're not heading to the city?"
The silence that answers is my first inkling of the depths of tragedy that had just occured. That moment where he realises that I don't know, and now he has to be the only to tell me.
"The City's gone."
He says it so simple, I don't believe him. "They moved it to orbit?"
"No," he says "Crystal Osaka collapsed three days ago."
Everything starts to make a cruel sense, even as I wish I doesn't. I wonder if I passed out, and it all had to be a nightmare of some sort. The pilot ruins the illusion on me.
"You're the only survivor we've found on the surface."
That was the moment I felt my soul die.
There were twenty-one hundred people in the city when they evacuation alarm sounded. They got eight hundred and twenty off. I was the only one they found on the ground.
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.