Chapter 2: The Weight of Tomorrow

The ground beneath Eden's feet was wrong — too soft, too alive. Not the cold steel of Ship 10 but something that yielded and breathed with each desperate step. Ancient trees leaned overhead, their branches clawing at a sky that burned in colours no sky should be: violet bleeding into orange, a sun going down like a wound.

He was running. He did not know why he was running.

"What—" His own voice came out ragged. He turned his head and there was only forest, twisted trunks, hanging moss, a path of packed earth littered with dead leaves. "Where am I?"

A hand closed around his wrist.

"Eden, what are you doing?!" A girl. Golden hair loose and flying, a face he had never seen in his life, eyes very blue and very frightened. She hauled on his arm hard enough to nearly take him off his feet. "RUN!"

"What?! W— who is this?"

She did not answer him, because in the logic of the place she had no reason to; she only ran, dragging him behind her, and Eden ran too because his body had decided to before his mind caught up.

How does she know my name?

The question surfaced and sank. Behind them, something came through the undergrowth. Not footsteps. A sound like splintering wood and tearing earth, the sound of a thing that did not go around trees.

"This way, Eden!" she called over her shoulder. "The old bridge — we can lose it there!"

It. What is "it"?

What the hell is going on?

Ahead the trees thinned and the ground fell away, and there was the bridge: old stone, moss-choked, its far span broken and hanging over a dry ravine. She pulled him toward it, still holding his hand, still leading, and Eden's chest burned and his legs ate the distance and for one moment — one strange, floating moment — the running felt easy. Effortless. As if his body remembered something his mind had never known.

Then her foot caught.

A root, gnarled and half-buried, and she went down hard on the stone, and the sound she made was the worst sound Eden had ever heard.

"Eden, help me!"

She was reaching for him. Flat on the bridge, one arm stretched up, fingers grasping at the air between them — and in her terror there was something else, something that made no sense at all: recognition. As if she had known him for years. As if she had been waiting her whole life for him to be standing exactly there.

He took one step toward her.

Then the shadow fell across them both, and Eden stopped.

It came out of the treeline on all fours and rose as it came. Grey — ashen, the grey of something long dead that had never been allowed to finish dying — with limbs too long for the body they hung from, and skin that drank the light instead of returning it. Its eyes opened like two coals blown upon. When its jaws parted there were rows of teeth, and behind those rows more teeth, and thick saliva ran from them in ropes.

Eden knew what it was. Every child in the colony knew. It was painted in warning red on the wall of every school corridor on every ship, beneath the words THE ENEMY OF MAN.

Enger.

Move, he told himself. Move. Reach for her. She is right there, she is one step away, one step—

He did not move.

The creature's head swung toward the fallen girl with terrible unhurried certainty. She screamed his name one more time, and those jaws came down—

Eden bolted upright.

His heart slammed. The air was cold and recycled and tasted of iron filings. His hand was up, outstretched, reaching for someone who was not there and never had been, and for a long moment he could still smell green water and turned earth, still hear her voice shaping his name.

Then the alarm shrieked at exactly 0600 hours and shattered what was left of it.

The sound tore through the cramped quarters of Sector 7-B. Eden's eyes focused on the familiar sight of rusted metal ceiling panels and the ever-present hum of the ship's life support. Another day on Ship 10. Another day at the bottom of the world.

He rolled out of his narrow bunk, feet hitting the cold steel floor with a dull thud, and sat there with his elbows on his knees, breathing.

The same dream. Always the same dream. Years of it now — the forest, the girl, the burning sky, the root, the hand, the teeth. Always ending with him standing perfectly still while something ate someone who was calling his name.

He shook his head to clear it and the images did not clear. That was the part he had stopped mentioning to anyone. It was getting sharper. Once it had been a smear of colour and panic. Now he could count the leaves. Now he knew the exact grain of the stone on that bridge, and the exact pitch of her voice, and it did not feel like a dream that was fading with age. It felt like something coming closer.

The gravity here always felt heaviest in the morning, as if the colony itself were trying to press him back into the mattress. Ten percent stronger than the pull his ancestors had been built for — though Eden had never known anything else. This crushing weight was simply life. Yet in the dream, running had felt easy.

"Eden! Move your lazy bones!" His mother's voice carried from the kitchen alcove, barely three metres away. "The shift bell rings in twenty minutes!"

"Coming, Ma!"

He pulled on his standard-issue grey coveralls, the fabric rough and worn thin from countless washings. On the chest pocket the CyberElectronics logo stared back at him: a stylised circuit board formed into the shape of a crown. Five thousand years after the Great Departure, Zeus's mark was still on everything, down to the clothes on a Ship 10 worker's back.

From the charging cradle on the shelf he took his band and clipped it around his left forearm. It woke against his skin — a brief cool tingle as it found his pulse, then the small green chirp of a full reserve.

VITALS NOMINAL. RESERVE 100%. GOOD MORNING, E. REEVES.

Everyone wore one. They were issued at birth and worn until they came off a corpse, and the reason given was health: at 1.1g the human heart works harder than it was built to, and the band watched over circulation and metabolism and the slow toll of the weight. It also told CyberElectronics where every wrist in the colony was at every moment, which nobody said out loud.

The family quarters were four rooms: a main living area that doubled as a kitchen, two tiny bedrooms, and a hygiene unit barely large enough for one person. Home to Eden, his mother Vera, and his younger sister Luna. It was not much, but it was theirs — more than some families on Ship 10 could say.

Eden splashed cold recycled water on his face and studied himself in the scratched metal mirror. Dark hair he had given up trying to flatten, olive skin inherited from Mediterranean ancestors he would never know, brown eyes that his mother said held too much curiosity for his own good. At eighteen he was already taller than most adults on Ship 10 — good nutrition was a luxury reserved for the higher-numbered ships, and he had somehow grown anyway. His mother called it a blessing. Eden had never been able to make the arithmetic of it work.

"Did you finish your readings last night?" Luna asked as he emerged. His sister sat at their tiny fold-out table, already in her school uniform. At thirteen she still had three years before she would be assigned to a work detail.

"Of course." Eden ruffled her hair, earning an annoyed swat. "Chapters twelve through fifteen of The Glorious History of Our Salvation. Zeus saves humanity, Zeus builds the ships, Zeus leads us to the promised land. Same story every day."

"You shouldn't talk like that," Luna whispered, glancing at the door. "What if someone hears you?"

Their mother appeared from the alcove with three steaming cups of synthetic coffee substitute. Her face was lined with premature age, the result of fifteen years in the recycling plants. "Your sister's right, Eden. Keep those thoughts to yourself."

"I know, Ma. I'm just tired of pretending everything's perfect when—"

"When what?" Vera's voice took an edge. "When we have food? When we have air to breathe? When we have protection from the void?" She gestured at the porthole and the star-filled dark beyond it. "Your ancestors were chosen, Eden. Never forget that. We earned our place here."

Eden bit back the reply. His mother had grown up on the stories, the way everyone on Ship 10 grew up on the stories — passed down mother to daughter through more generations than anyone had ever bothered to count, polished smooth as a stair by five thousand years of use. To her, their cramped existence was still a miracle. To Eden, who had never known anything else, it felt more like a cage.

The shift bell rang, its deep brass tone reverberating through the corridors. Eden drained his coffee and took his work tablet off the charger.

"I'll see you both tonight," he said, kissing Luna's forehead and squeezing his mother's hand. "Try to stay out of trouble."

"That's my line," Vera replied with a tired smile. "Remember — head down, mouth shut."

The hallways of Ship 10 were narrow and utilitarian, lined with pipes and conduits carrying water and power and air through the vast body of the ship. The walls were painted a dull green that had probably been cheerful once, decades ago. Now it was just another shade of institutional depression.

Workers streamed past, all heading toward their assigned sectors. Eden recognised most faces. His district held perhaps eight hundred thousand people and everyone knew everyone else, at least by sight.

"Eden! Wait up!"

Marcus jogged to catch him, red hair still messy from sleep, coveralls stained with grease and coolant. He was three years older and had been working the maintenance tunnels since he turned sixteen.

"Another glorious day in paradise," Marcus said, falling into step.

"You're in a good mood for someone about to crawl through waste recycling pipes."

"Actually, I got reassigned." Marcus's grin widened. "Emergency detail up on Ship 7. Agricultural sector needs hands for the harvest rotation."

Eden stopped walking. "Ship 7? Are you serious?"

"Dead serious. Some kind of equipment malfunction, and they need people who know mechanical systems." Marcus's expression sobered. "Look, I know it's temporary. But Eden — I'm going to see what it's like up there. Real food. Natural light in the growing chambers. Maybe even catch a look at someone from the higher ships."

"Don't get any ideas. You know what happens to people who try to move above their station."

"I'm not planning anything stupid. I just want to see what we're working for. Understand what this whole system is supposed to accomplish."

They reached the junction where their paths split. Marcus would take the transport tube up; Eden would go deeper.

"Be careful," Eden said. "And try not to let them see how much you're paying attention."

"Always." Marcus clasped his shoulder. "Maybe when I get back I'll have some real food to share. None of that synthetic protein paste."

After Marcus disappeared into the tube, Eden went on alone toward Sector M — the power distribution centre. For two years his assignment had been monitoring the conduits that channelled energy up from the dwarf planet's core taps into the ring. It was tedious work, and it gave him access to information most people on Ship 10 never saw.

The centre was a vast chamber of humming machinery and endless rows of monitoring stations. Holographic displays showed the energy flow of the entire colony: twenty ships, hundreds of millions of people, all of it drawn from the grey rock turning below them.

"Morning, Eden." Supervisor Kane looked up from his control station, weathered face creased in its permanent frown. Kane had worked the power systems since before Eden was born, and rumour had it he had once been offered a posting on Ship 8 before some scandal pulled him back down.

"Morning, sir. Anything unusual in the overnight reports?"

"Same as always. Ships 1 through 3 running fifteen percent above baseline. Must be nice, wasting power on luxuries." Kane's tone was acid. "Meanwhile we cut heating in Sector 12 again. Third time this month."

Eden took his position at station 7 and pulled up the overnight data. The numbers told the story they always told: the lower ships rationed and shivered while the upper ships consumed freely. Ship 1 alone drew as much as Ships 8, 9 and 10 combined.

Then something caught his eye.

An anomaly in the flow to Ship 1, lasting a few minutes around 0300 hours. Consumption had spiked to nearly double baseline, then dropped back as if nothing had happened.

"Supervisor Kane? Did you notice this surge to Ship 1 early this morning?"

Kane glanced at his secondary display and shrugged. "Probably running heavy equipment. The wealthy don't worry about efficiency."

But Eden was not satisfied. He had watched these systems for two years and he had never seen a spike shaped like that. Ship 1's draw was usually steady — enormous, but predictable, the flat line of a household that never has to think about cost. This was different. This looked like something switched on, and then switched off in a hurry.

Almost like they had been running something they did not want anyone to notice.

He copied the data to his personal storage, telling himself it was only curiosity. But underneath he knew better. His whole life he had been told the hierarchy existed for everyone's good — that the people at the top deserved the top because they had saved the species.

Looking at those numbers, Eden could not help wondering what they were really doing up there, and why it took so much power to do it in the dark.

The rest of the shift passed without event, but his mind kept circling back. When the end-of-shift bell rang he had made up his mind. Tonight, after his family was asleep, he would go into the distribution archives and find out how long this had been going on.

After all, his ancestors had not been chosen only for their strong hearts and steady nerves. They had been chosen for their capacity to survive and adapt — and, he thought, for the kind of mind that cannot let a wrong number alone. Maybe it was time to put the inheritance to use.

Walking home through the crowded corridors, Eden could not shake the sense of standing at the edge of something far larger than himself. The data was only numbers on a screen. But sometimes numbers tell a story nobody meant you to read.

Whatever was happening on Ship 1, he was going to find out. Even if it meant risking everything his family had in their small corner of humanity's floating refuge.

The weight of the colony pressed down on his shoulders as he walked. But for the first time in his life, Eden felt like he might be strong enough to push back.

And somewhere behind his eyes, a girl he had never met went down on old stone and reached for his hand.