Forjee’s was located in an unfashionable section of the Earthship, and being as close to outer space as it was possible to be inside the layered hull of the giant vessel, theres was always a very real risk of death by decompression should an enthusiastic projectile puncture all three outer hulls. This didn’t seem to bother Forjee’s customers; usually because they were too drunk to care, and if they weren’t too drunk to care, then their only concern was their sobriety.

Garret Small was the proprietor and sole member of staff in Forjee’s, and accomplished this by being very, very big and very, very bad tempered. Even the borderline criminal types that drank in his bar would think twice about eyballing someone if they needed a step ladder to do it properly.

There had been trouble in the early days, but Garret had soon put a stop to it, usually by hitting it very hard on the head. The end result of this reputation was that Garret held a particularly boring job, doing little more than serving a drink every five or ten minutes, and occasionally making an unconvincing show of cleaning the glasses. The boredom wasn’t a problem for Garret because, in stereotypical keeping with his huge muscular frame, he was very slow of mind; if he was beginning to feel bored by early afternoon he would generally not realise until well after midnight – by which time, he was asleep.

Right now, however, Garret was particularly interested in a conversation which, judging by the conspiratorial demeanor of the two people involved, he was not meant to hear. Due the large quantity of alcohol the two people involved had consumed that evening, he could to hear them just fine.

‘We’ll get caught,’ said one man in a loud, urgent whisper, ‘they’ll find it!’

‘No, they won’t.’ replied the other man in a much calmer but equally loud whisper.

The first man downed his drink and said, ‘Why are you so chilled? Aren’t you even a little worried? If they find it they won’t lock us up; they’ll eject us into space!’

‘Carl,’ said the second man with a sigh, ‘I’m not worried for two reasons. The first of which is, when you look at it, we didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t steal it, we found it. The second reason – and this is the important point, the cornerstone of my calmness, if you will – is that they won’t find it!‘

This statement was followed by the localised silence of two people trying to be really quiet in the hope that the silence would act retroactively. It didn’t, and the raised voice had even caused a few nearby patrons to look, somewhat blearily, in their direction. Confident that everyone else had gone back to their business, the two men allowed their heads to extend to a more comfortable distance from their collar bone, and continued.

‘I know we didn’t steal it, Riley, but we haven’t turned it in either, and the longer we leave it the more it’s going to look like it was us that stole it.’

‘You worry too much,’ said Riley, ‘if it was that important, it wouldn’t have been on the floor in the mens toilets, would it? It’s just a map.’

‘A map with the Administration’s seal on it.’

‘We won’t get caught!’ insisted Riley, allowing his volume to rise again.

‘I’m going to bed,’ said Carl, standing up, ‘my shift starts early and I don’t want to turn up half asleep and still drunk. I don’t think drawing any kind of attention to myself would be a good idea right now.’

‘You worry too much,’ repeated Riley to the retreating back of Carl. He drained the last of his drink and, with an alcohol infused grin, gestured for another.

.

Three things occurred to Carl Goram as he shuffled nervously along the corridors of section 4G. The first of these was the persistent thought that Riley was either a good actor, or an idiot. It was probably the former, but that didn’t stop Carl thinking of Riley as the latter. The second thing that occurred to Carl was that, in the three hundred and forty eight year history of the Earthship, there had been no recorded incident of a citizen being flushed into space… on purpose. There was hope there.

The final thing that occurred to Carl was a dark, skulking thought that, while innocent in itself, carried worrying implications with it. Why aren’t they looking? Why haven’t we heard anything on the news?

The item that he and Riley had found in the mens toilets at work was a small black data cube that Carl had discovered by stumbling over it; the act causing it to begin projecting a map in the air a few feet above it. The map showed a convoluted route that led through a number of areas where access was restricted to operational personnel. It wasn’t until Riley had picked the cube up, and it had flashed red and displayed messages of unauthorised access that alarm bells had started to go off in Carl’s head.

Carl had insisted on turning the cube in, or leaving it there and pretending they’d never seen it, but Riley had other plans. They’d later found out that the strange symbol that was embossed on the sides of the cube was the crest of the Invisibles; Earthship’s secret police.

Carl hunched up, stuffing his hands into his pockets and speeding up; in his eyes, the shadows had just got that little bit bigger. Earthship’s artificial climate included lighting control, and as it was now half past eleven in the evening; public lighting was dimmed. He turned off of the main corridor that ran through section 4G, and stopped at a carriage dock. As he waited, he felt the urge to run creep up through his tortured brain, but that was ridiculous; he lived in section 8P, another four decks down, and there was no way to move between decks for regular citizens – other than the carriages.

Barely a minute had passed before the large, spherical structure that was the carriage, slid into the dock and lowered its drawbridge-like hatch to permit entrance. Carl quickly hurried into the carriage, and was surprised – despite his current bout of paranoia – at how relieved he was to see the carriage empty. After the gloom of the corridors and the dock, the brightness of the carriage hurt his eyes; a brightly lit space of whites and light blues, with the inner and outer seats facing each other in their concentric layout completely empty. Carl let out an almost inaudible sigh of relief and sat down opposite the hatch on the far side of the outer circle.

The carriages were a marvel of engineering in the sea of engineering marvels that was the Earthship. Comprised of two layers – the inner carriage and the outer roll shell – the carriage maintains orientation with the ship while the roll shell can freely spin around it. From the outside, the carriage system looked nothing more than a series of over-sized ball bearing, rollings along the runner tracks that could take them to any section of the ship. From the inside, up stayed up, down stayed down, and passengers would barely feel a shudder as they were transported. It was a fantastic piece of technology, and it had never failed in the centuries since launch.

Until now.

.

Riley Frong stared through hungover eyes at the screen in front of him in disbelief. Unlike his friend, Carl, Riley was not working today, and so had taken full advantage by drinking himself into his own, blissful oblivion. It was now late morning, and Riley already wished he was still drunk.

The news report was very clear; last night, just before midnight, the carriage system had had a failure, resulting in a carriage coming out of of its rails at a dock, and slamming into a bulkhead with enough force to turn the spherical carriage into a pancake. The carriage system was closed down while technicians checked things and inspectors inspected things, but despite the ship-wide shock of the carriage system failing – having not failed in the living memory of anyone aboard the Earthship, it was not this part of the story that had Riley dumbstruck.

The news had reported that a lone passenger had been in the carriage when it came to a terminal stop. The passenger being one Carl Goram.

Riley was not as susceptible to paranoia as Carl, but he could not fail to see the suspiciousness of the carriage system having a fatal breakdown for the first time since the Earthship left Earth over three centuries ago, and at a time when the only passenger in the affected carriage was one of only two men who knew a secret that was clearly meant to be kept secret. He, Riley, was the other man.

Riley’s eyes shot wildly around the room as sudden paranoia gripped his soul and squeezed. It was unfortunate for Riley that the figure in gloom of the bathroom doorway chose this moment to speak.

.

Riley pounded down the corridors of 8P – a residential section – and didn’t look back. He was barefooted, and wearing nothing but a pair of loose jogging pants and a vest top, but the corridor floors were smooth and relatively clean, and the temperature of the Earthship was kept at a comfortable sixteen degrees Celsius so this didn’t cause a problem.

When the man in his quarters had spoken, Riley had gotten so wound up that he uncoiled at once, and something was going to give; Riley was grateful for the fact it hadn’t been his bowls. He’d leapt out of the room, opened the door to his quarters as quick as he could and ran, his survival instinct taking over. But now, running aimlessly through the ship and out of immediate danger, his survival instinct receding, leaving his reasoning to decide what to do next.

Riley thought furiously as his head pounded from alcohol-induced dehydration and his legs and chest burned from this sudden burst of activity in a body that had spent years sat at a desk. He couldn’t take the carriage system – not after what had happened to Carl – and without using the carriage system, there was no way of getting off of this deck.

The Earthship was massive, and since launch it had taken on a life of its own; become a legitimate city in its own right. There were places he could hide. Hell; there were places he could live without ever being found by the authorities, he just had to get there. Deck twenty eight and below were practically lawless; the goings on down there made Forjee’s look like a well kept, upper class establishment. If he could just get down there, he’d be safe from the authorities. Whether he’d be safe from the inhabitants of deck twenty eight was another matter, but it was one that could be dealt with later. He turned a corridor and headed for his only hope.

.

At the centre of the Earthship was the Forest. The Forest was, well, a forest. A few square miles of densely packed trees and undergrowth surrounded by some of the most efficient green houses known to humanity. While the greenhouses were responsible for the majority of the Earthship’s food supply, the Forest served an equally important function; oxygen. In addition to the ships many environmental systems, the Forest had been devised as a means of keeping the oxygen levels up, the carbon dioxide levels down, and the populace from going stir crazy. The Forest was crawling with citizens looking to get away from the cold metal corridors for a while, and despite the size of the Forest it was not uncommon to come across fellow citizens even in unsociable hours of night.

Riley had reached the Forest via network of maintenance crawl ways that, strictly speaking, he shouldn’t have known about, but he had lived in section 8P all his life and had spent much of his childhood exploring. He was only marginally surprised to find that the once spacious crawl ways had shrunk considerably since he had been a child.

The Forest extended up from deck fourteen to deck three, and all intervening decks formed rows of balconies around the area. Riley knew exactly how he would get down to the Forest floor, an activity from his childhood coming to his aid again. Most of the trees grew no higher than deck five, but a few grew taller, and in a certain spot near the arbitrarily labeled ‘north’ end of the Forest, one tree grew to just under deck eight.

Each deck encircling the Forest was lined with four foot high transparent safety wall; to allow maximum viewing while minimizing accidental death by ground. It had been a dare, for Riley and his friends, to climb onto the safety wall and leap off, grabbing the tree. It may have sounded dangerous, but in truth the Forest was so dense that, on the few occasions when Riley or one of his friends failed to reach or hold on to the tall tree, they invariably fell from branch to branch, and walked away with little more than a few bruises.

Riley looked around. He couldn’t see anyone on deck eight. He couldn’t see directly above or below him by leaning over the balcony, and the Forest canopy dismissed any hope of spotting people on the Forest floor, but his paranoia addled mind could not see another option. He climbed up onto the safety wall, and leapt.

It had been twenty, maybe twenty five years since he last made this ‘leap of death,’ as his friends had called it. Despite his poor fitness, Riley’s older, longer legs provided more of a push than he expected, and he felt cold pang of dread as the tip of the tree sailed underneath him. He’d overshot!

Riley scrunched his eyes closed and tensed his body as, with expected inevitability, his right leg slammed into a thick branch. The shock of the impact uncoiled his body for just a second, but before he could get control, his stomach slammed into another branch; his body draping over it like a disregarded shirt momentarily before he slid off. The next branch connected with his head, making a sickening, and knocking Riley unconscious.

.

‘You really ought to have listened to me, Mr Frong,’ the voice seemed to come from some distance away, and was slightly muffled as though its owner was talking through a door. ‘I admit that it can be startling to find a stranger in your home, but,’ and here the voice took on an icy tone, ‘running away as you did is very guilty behavior.’

Riley groaned and, with some reluctance, opened his eyes. Fireworks exploded somewhere in the back of his head and he winced. Holding the back of his head with his hand, he sat up. He was surprised to find that he had been sat in a rather comfortable chair, in a pleasantly decorated chamber. The walls were papered – a rarity outside of decks one to four, and a large simdow – a panel that displayed a perfect simulation of a preselected scenery – was installed down the most of the length of one wall.

Riley’s eyes focused on the figure in front of him. The man was tall and slim, dressed in a long, grey coat and a fedora. Riley didn’t know much about fashions of 1920’s America, but if he had, he would thought this man could fit right in. The man was holding a pistol with an air of nonchalance that suggested it could quite easily become an air of blinding pain.

‘Wha – what do you want?’ Riley stuttered.

‘You have seen something that you should not have seen, Mr Frong. It is my job to remedy this… discretion.’

‘We didn’t steal it!’ Riley blurted out desperately.

‘How the item came to be in your possession is not our concern,’ said the man calmly, ‘that you have seen the item, is.’

‘I didn’t look!’ Riley tried, though he didn’t believe it would work, ‘I don’t know what it says.’

‘My dear Mr Frong,’ said the man, a sinister smile crossing his lips, ‘who ever said that the item ‘says‘ anything.’

To Riley’s surprise, the man sat down in a seat opposite, and seemed to relax. ‘We know, Mr Frong, that you have seen the item, that you know that it is a map, of sorts, and that you have seen the map therein.’

‘I don’t anything about where the map leads,’ whined Riley.

‘Of course you don’t. However the importance of the secrecy of the location which that map leads to is so crucial, that we cannot have any knowledge of it. Not knowning what is behind the door is not enough, Mr Frong, we need you to not know there is a door at all.’

‘Are you going to kill me?’ quavered Riley, sounding almost childlike.

He was beginning to regain some control over limbs; the freezing terror of his situation being slowly overruled by his survival instinct. Riley weighed up his chances of overpowering the man, even if just for a moment, to allow him to escape. He didn’t have time to formulate a plan, however, because no sooner had the man stopped talking did the world go dark… again.

.

When Riley came around this time, the first thing he felt was a cool, fresh breeze against his face. There was heat, too. Not the uniform heat of the Earthship, but a directed heat. The breeze was cool but he could feel the heat on his face despite it. It was… pleasant. He sniffed experimentally, and wondered if this was the afterlife. A familiar voice dispelled this theory instantly.

‘It’ wonderful, is it not?’ said the man.

‘Where am I?’ asked Riley, sitting up. He had still not opened his eyes, and realised that he had been laid down on a cold, coarse ground.

‘You, Mr Frong,’ said the man with certain menace, ‘are outside the Earthship.’

Riley’s eyes shot open with wide-eyed panic, and immediately clamped shut again as a blinding light burned itself on his retinas. After a further two attempts, Riley was able to hold his eyes open, barely, and squint at the vista before him. He was speechless.

‘It is quite a sight,’ said the man, agreeing with unspoken words, ‘the first time I saw it, I nearly fainted.’

Riley nodded frantically, not sure what else to do.

‘The air is different,’ continued the man, ‘hundreds of years of processed air just can’t be as fresh as,’ the man took a big, theatrical breath, ‘this.’

Riley was sat on a rocky outcrop in what Riley knew from pictures to be a mountain. In front of him was a green sea of trees. The only thing Riley could relate the experience to, would be looking down on the Forest from deck four, only the Forest here had no boundaries, extended as far as the eye could see and was illuminated by a brilliant light in the… the sky.

The concepts of ’sky’ and ‘horizons’ were one, well, concepts in Riley’s mind. Neither he, nor anyone he had ever known had seen a real sky. Except this man, it would seem. Riley looked at the man, trying to find the words he needed to say, but evidently his face said it all.

‘The item you found was indeed a map,’ said the man, not looking away from the distant horizon, ‘there is precisely one exit that truly leads outside the ship, and it is hidden. Hidden well. There are reasons for the secrecy. Reasons why humanity cannot be permitted to roam freely across the world that gave birth to them, but these reasons will neither please you nor help you.’

‘You are going to kill me,’ said Riley despondently; it was more a statement than a question.

‘Yes,’ said the man eventually, and as casually as a man stating that he intended to buy a new hat that day. ‘I have brought you here because I believe that the need for your death is… unfortunate,’ and now the man looked at Riley, his grey eyes boring into his soul, ‘unfortunate, but necessary. I felt it only fair that you gazed upon this,’ he gestured with his hand to encompass the landscape before them, ‘this paradise, before your life is ended.’

‘Why? Why do you have to kill me? Why are we all locked in a big rock when the world outside is fine? Why?‘

The man simply smiled apologetically. Riley’s emotions fought to be heard; anger, fear, confusion. The man gestured towards the horizon again.

‘Please,’ he said with genuine concern, ‘do not waste this moment, look upon the beauty we have saved from ourselves.’

Riley turned. He stared at the clear, blue sky. He allowed his eyes to drop down to where the endless blue met the rolling green, and the forest that extended all the way to the sloping rock under his feet. A tear began to roll down his right cheek as, for the first time in his life, he looked up and saw no ceiling, but endless, blue infinity. A thought occurred to him, an urgent thought that rushed to be said. His mouth opened, and everything went black for the last time.

The End

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