Lights

When I was much younger than I am now, my grandfather died, and two lights turned off.

As the dwarfs slid down the sky, becoming blue and brighter, my mother took me to see them, part of a procession trailing away from our Ipoh manor. It began with the familiar walk Earthwards, passing the farmer Jones and his son Caleb, waving as we passed. Then our way became strange as we reached the outer walls of the Gaia. Below me the angled dirt and terraces fell away, rung-by-rung, and my weight left me too, so that by the end my mother had to catch me and arrest my inwards fall.

Within the hub we remained weightless, the disk of the farmland broken in segments below us, silhouetted by the blue of the engine hanging in space. At the outer rim was our manor, spacious and lit by that blue, the farmers coming and going as the rate of spin dictated. Below it all, beyond even the distant engine, the cup of the stars, fading from blue to the red halo around the circle of darkness away from which we fled.

We continued to climb, dragged along, past the second ring of storage and housing, where the farmers lived, hidden from the light of the engines and the eye. I remember my mother pointing out the underneath of our ring, pylons and water tanks and heat stores.

Then above us, the Bridge, the frighteningly few stars stationary in the sky through the forward view. For the first time I was conscious that it was my home that moved, turned, the Universe uncaring, as I watched the Bridge keep pace with the sky.

A blur of people, strange outfits and badges, the view in front of the Gaia unblemished by stars, then a bustling, weightless passage to the room of lights. They surrounded us, tiny and bright, our own unchanging constellation as the sky slid back and went red.

The room was round, covered on all sides with the glowing pinpricks, arranged in a strict grid. I could see - as I had been told I would see - that many, a progressing strip, had been dimmed. One of them, the next in the line, would one day be mine. A door at either end broke the grid, and the dimmed strips were symmetric on either side of this divide, each missing light mirrored on the other side. In the room's centre, floating in crisp navy fabric, was my Uncle, the Captain. My mother nudged me, and I bowed.

---

It was the start of my 21st year, marked by a distant calendar, though the news had reached me some time before, waking in my home on the upper ring and heading Earthwards through the hub.

Below me the crowd were slow and fumbling, rung to rung, hesitant. I mopped my forehead with the strips of rag that used to be the end of my sleeve. On the upper terrace the engines were too bright; the soil was constantly scorched and required turning. Down below the procession continued, either sombre or physically inept, it was hard to tell from a distance.

My father always had kind words for the faces in that throng, but whispered a less gentle vocabulary to me when they weren't nearby. The people below stopped, a few pointing back towards the Ipoh manor, then reversed their course. They'd forgotten someone.

I went back to the soil. The okra didn't care who had died, but it did care that is was dry, and was making its objections known. Too much water used by the manors below, perhaps, drawing from the same tanks that fed the two rings of the Gaia, competition between the four great families in their segments of the rings. Not that anyone in a manor would go hungry if the crop yielded less than was needed.

``Thirsty, Caleb?'' said Christopher, standing over me, navy fabric too large for him.

Guilt at my wandering thoughts swamped me at the sight of the water he was holding out. I took it, sipped eagerly, said ``They're looking for you'' between mouthfulls.

He grinned, gestured at the water, said ``Save some for me?''

I grinned in reply, handed the cup back. I said ``Not like there's more of that coming, once you've gone'' and his smile drifted away.

Above us, past the glow of the engine, the red ring of the halo spun.

Christopher sipped the water, handed it back, said ``Yeah, maybe'', then stared at the soil like he'd never looked down before.

He looked older than yesterday, and I felt I should say something to bring back his youth.

``Struggle to see how this is a bad thing''

He only shrugged in reply.

Past him the ragged fringe of the crowd had begun to move towards us.

``You remember what my father said?'' I mumbled into the dirt, searching for a remnant of water to bring to the surface.

``Earth, Caleb, that's going back a while. He said `good Captains keep their distance'.'' and then snorted, turned away for a moment, looked back with the smile gone, ``Guess that means you're hoping to see less of me''.

``Nah''

I straightened again, took the water from a protesting hand.

``I'm hoping you'll be a bad one. No lights for you.''

Aging seems a different process for the nobles. My face is tanned, leathery, but my wife always complained of its vigour. His face, newly old, seemed dragged down by responsibility. It hung on strings fixed at his least flattering corners.

``I'm Sorry, Chris, uh, Christopher. They'll change.''

He had looked away, back to the spinning stars past the engine. A dark pupil, red at the edges, fading through white to blue as the bowl reached its edge before it broke the equator of the sky's centre line.

Dark above.

He sighed out ``Will they?'', pushing dark hair back where it had fallen from the ceremonial braid. His arms had grown thin, uniform stiff and creasing at the elbow.

``They always have''

He wiped imaginary hairs back into place again, massaged the bridge of his nose.

``It only takes one''

``Nah''

he looked down, gently palmed the back of my shoulder, said nothing. I said ``What's to worry about anyway?'' but again, no reply.

He would die, that was one thing to worry about, never mind the mess we'd all be left with when the other families wanted a turn as Captain.

I tried again, said ``Our light goes off, Earth turns their light off''

His hand fell away, balled into a fist.

``Easy'', I said, and winked when he looked up to me.

The corners of his lips twitched, some age fell away, and he said ``Easy? Really?''

``Are you going to help farm?''

Finally he laughed, crossed his arms. The cropped jacket rose above his belt, shiny and golden.

``Don't you know who I am?''

``Lazy?''

Again a laugh.

A distant shout from one of the trotting, stumbling aristocrats, falling over well-laid beds and squashing topsoil. The age fell back on Chris, eyebrows pinching together.

``Will you come?'' it was a whisper, and I answered in the same register

``Of course''

---

``Sit down, Christopher''

She was old, incredibly old, limbs tiny from so long without gravity, wizened and pale, face harsh contours, eyes dark and steady.

I pulled myself into the chair, strapped myself down. She floated easily, no point of contact, occasionally nudging the metal table between us to maintain our positions. It was scarred and pitted, scratched after so much use.

I wondered how many had sat here before, how many lights had gone out, one for us and one for Earth, if they chose. Behind her the lights were too many to count from a distance, and so many, I thought more than half, were already dark.

Next to where I sat someone had scratched checkmarks in the table, many blocks of etchings, four lines and a crossing one in a set. As with the lights, too many to count.

She smiled, said ``Why don't you start with the basics'', then raised her eyebrows when I didn't reply with more than a pained expression.

``Why you?''

``My Uncle''

``Your Uncle what?''

``My Uncle was Captain''

She nodded, asked her next question.

``Why me?''

``You're chief engineer''

Her robes were patched with orange stripes, mine purple. She nodded again.

She asked why the sky was dark, whether there was less in-front of the Gaia than behind. I said that was a matter of reference frame, and she smiled, asked me to humour her. I explained that we were near light-speed, and Lorentz factors pushed the stars down the horizon, making the eye behind and the dark ahead.

She asked why the eye was red, why it had a pupil, why it was blue at the edges, so I explained redshift, visible frequencies. She asked why it spun, and I made a twirling motion with my finger in the air as I said that it did not, but the Gaia did, so that our feet stayed on the ground. Her expression told me that she didn't remember, not truly, what soil and feet upon it felt like.

I thought of Caleb, outside, tanned and coarse and half dirt.

Then, with them blurred behind her, she asked about the lights.

``What are the lights?''

``Communion with Earth''

``And how do we take communion?''

``The lights are linked. Ours extinguished here, theirs on Earth all at once, then the return, and ours extinguished''

``How?''

``Entangled''

She nodded, and as always with the secretive caste of orange, failed to explain. The stiff navy collar itched at my neck, shaved clean before the journey.

``What is Earth?''

``Earth is...''

I knew what answer she wanted, but Earth had never been home to me. Home was the lower ring, Ipoh manor, the soil and the people and the eye and Caleb. It was not this dark sky and this floating white engineer.

``Earth is home''

She nodded, then raised her eyebrows for the full catechism.

``To which?''

``Earth is home to which we belong''

A smile, puffy cheeks unmoved around the lips, eyes still dark and unmoving.

``Where are we going?''

Again, I knew the answer, felt it stick in my mind, my throat.

``To build--''

``Try again''

She cut me off before I could finish the line, years of practise dismissed in a gentle, wheezing voice. She raised a hand, palm open and upwards towards me, and I answered ``I do not know where we are going''

``Who does know?''

``The Captain''

This time the smile reached her eyes, cold and kind.

``Soon you will see the letter''

I thought she would continue, but instead she spun herself around, upside down to my perspective, sliding around and under the table for a moment. Then the inverse manoeuvre, coming without apparent effort to be in the same position as before, a small device in her hand.

It was black, reflective, a single red button on its top.

``I am satisfied that you know enough of what you have been told. Now I must tell you what you have not.''

Confused, I nodded when she looked up at me.

``You are right that Earth should reply with its light, turning off after we extinguish ours. This confirms that the Captain is the correct choice, the assent of those who made us.''

Her head bobbed from side to side. Something brought the hairs on my arm to stand on end, a shiver from a cold the tightly controlled room would never allow.

``But... But what do you think would happen if they were not the right choice?''

I had never considered it, not really, not beyond what would happen to me. After such a test of character, any who failed would be damned, ineffably judged to be of poor soul, composted or ejected past the engine with the worst the Gaia produced.

But what of the Gaia? I had no sons, but such a test would surely extend to them in turn, bad blood clearly marked, and who after them? There were three large families of old blood beyond my own, each with their own quarter segment of the lower ring, scheming and competing for farmers from the upper ring, and if there was uncertainty --

``Chaos, bloodshed, I don't know...''

``Yes, lad''

She held the device out to me, and I did not take it, only looked at it. How many bodies lost could the Gaia sustain? The upper terrace was already dry, and even with only the lower...

But the engineer was speaking again.

``Should you think the light will not change, this device will change it for you''

The shock gripped me, stomach already turning from the lack of gravity, and I fought down a retching swell. Never, in all my anxiety of watching Earth's light stay lit, had I imagined I could answer for them.

She came close, rested a hand on my shoulder, face at arm's length from me, her robed body suspended in the air.

``There would be no shame in it''

``Wouldn't there?''

Fury behind her eyes then, hard and fast, ``How many bodies for your pride?'', but the chair I had strapped myself to prevented the flinch away from her.

I thought of Caleb, in the crowd behind the door. He would not have me question myself, but I could not imagine him gone from the light and the soil.

``How many before me?''

``How many what?''

``Have changed the light''

She chuckled, kind, dry and stuttering, and gestured at the checkmarks on the table.

``I do not know, would not want to know, but I know how many have taken the option with them''

``You do not know?''

``As I said, lad, it is better that no one does''

I took the device, stuffed it into a pocket, ashamed. She nodded, squeezed my shoulder where her hand still rested, then pushed herself away towards the door. With the thing in my pocket I could forgo the test of me, administered by a distant creator, and know that I had forsaken faith for life.

The nausea swelled again, reaching acidic fingers up my neck, and I forced it down. With a button on my jacket I added to the tally on the table as the engineer opened the door.

---

When I was young, but older than I once was, the Captain died.

Away from the eye and the soil, crops watered and green, Christopher took me to see the lights. Towed at the front of the procession by my new leader and old friend, we passed the outer wall of the Gaia, my habitual travel between farm and home. The climb was easy, but the journey hard, as I shielded him from doting sycophants and weak-willed nobles.

Within the hub I found myself surrounded by metal and plastic, and worried that the dirt under my nails would mark the rungs and straps of our transport. Somewhere to my side was the way those of us who worked in dirt were permitted to use.

The engines, the spinning stars, dropped away from us. Christopher pointed at water tanks and I told him their nicknames, which of them were empty and which of them could be relied on. We passed my home, my wife, not slowing, as there was no one worth collecting. I wondered if, had I been at home when he went to find me, Christopher would have made them stop and see where most of the Gaia lived.

A blur of uniforms, some striped in orange, movements fluid as I bounced off walls and was dragged to one side as Chris was brought into some inner room. The stars beyond the window did not move, and there were so few of them, dim and blue.

Finally they let us into his room. Above a metal table he floated, looked for me, asked me to stand by him, laughed through gritted teeth as I pointed out there was no ground here. But I was ushered back into the crowd by a snarled, crumpled old woman decorated in orange.

She called for silence, pushed herself to the edge of the room, said a few words about Earth. There was applause, and I remembered by father's thoughts on the powers of a world we had never seen, his dismissal of my vaguely held belief in the lights.

Then she flipped a switch, and I watched Christopher as one more light in the long bands on one side of the room blinked into darkness. His face scrunched with tension, hands deep in pockets, as he and the crowd as one body turned to the corresponding light opposite. Somewhere out there, far behind us in the dark of the eye's pupil, a light had gone out.

And no reply came, the light they all watched stayed bright in the seconds that stretched out in silence afterwards.

I looked back to him, found him looking at me, watched him blink something away, frantic and twitching. He was as lost here as I was, I could see it in him, in the tightened hunch of his shoulders, in the shaking hands in his pockets.

I did the only thing I could think, and smiled, nodded. Somewhere behind me the whispers started, low and dreadful. A slow drifting of bodies towards their families and the exits, hands suddenly out of pockets and ready to move.

Christopher raised his eyebrows towards me, eyes wide and searching, a question I did not understand, looking for an answer I did not know how to give. He looked like dry ground, water trapped somewhere beneath.

I smiled again, nodded again, tried to convey my assurance that he was a good man.

He lowered his eyes, smiled faintly, seemed to shake and then nod his head.

The light, watched beneath a blackened sky, went dark.