Something Real Page 4

  *~*~*

  A week and a half later, Sean woke in total darkness. It wasn't as if such a thing had never happened before, but it was definitely a rare occurrence that he was up before the sun—or, these days, before the light shields had opened. He always meant to go to bed early, start the day off right, catch the worm, all that business, but then he would sit down at his computer for just a minute to quick check something, and then time stopped until, with a whizz and a bang, the clock skipped forward three or four—sometimes five or six—hours, and all his good intentions were for naught. Next thing he knew, he'd be dragging his eyelids apart to the sound of his alarm underlain by the noises of Mallory banging around in the kitchen or the bathroom, making that god-awful caterwauling she called "singing". By that time, the light shields were usually permitting a healthy dose of starlight from the nearest mass of incandescent gas. Since Sean hadn't done any better than usual that night at getting to bed on time, it was a bit of a surprise to find the light shields still closed after his eyes had opened.

  It was even more of a surprise to discover his alarm was going off in the dark. He hadn't changed the time, and the light shields never altered when they opened and closed, so the ambient light should have been the same as every other morning. Dragging a hand over his face, Sean rubbed at the crust in the corners of his eyes, shook his head to clear it, and sat up. Likely he'd just ignored some memo about maintenance or testing on the shields today; mucking his way through the frequent—and frequently useless—jibber jabber the ISU's official committee sent out to all inhabitants of ISC2 was a waste of time and effort Sean rarely forced himself to endure. Sedge, Giz, or Mal inevitably brought up anything important, and they would explain it to him without all the fancy phrasing and unnecessary words.

  But it soon became clear that they didn't know what was going on either. In fact, Sedge seemed downright worried.

  "Don't you understand what will happen if the shields are broken?" he had demanded.

  Sean pretended to think for a second. "It'll stay really dark?"

  "Besides that, you asshat."

  Snorting, Sean suggested, "Why don't you just tell me, Sedge? Then I won't have to try and figure it out, and you won't have to get annoyed with my stupidity, and we'll both be happier."

  "It's not stupidity," Sedge muttered. "It's your inability to take anything seriously." But he had taken Sean's advice and outlined the consequences: losing the source of the solar energy that powered large portions of the colony; death of the plants that provided a big part of the carbon dioxide-oxygen exchange within the carefully controlled air supply; deterioration of the mental health of the colony's residents as they slipped into solipsism syndrome and depression. Sleep cycles would be disturbed, the colony would need to expend more energy on lighting without a way to increase supply or replenish what was used. Judging by the grim expression on Sedge's face, Sean was kind of surprised that "colony violently explodes; we all die" wasn't included on the list.

  But none of Sedge's predictions seemed to have come true by the time Sean left work that night, and although Mallory frowned quite a bit during dinner, glancing periodically at the window, they both seemed perfectly healthy when they went to bed.

  There was a memo the next morning from the ISU officials in which they explained that the light shields were suffering from a minor technical malfunction and would be up and running again soon. They apologized for the inconvenience of the darkness and wished everyone a pleasant and productive day. Sedge looked only moderately mollified, but Sean whistled his way to work in the dark. It was kind of fun, he thought, like some sort of a game. Even when the solar powered devices started to shut down, he imagined he was back in his parents' house during a power outage. If only he and Mallory had brought any candles with them, they could have had a grand old time.

  It was becoming less entertaining, however, by the fourth morning he woke up without light. The cantina had no hot water, which meant no coffee. Everyone around him was irritable, and even Giz was an unshakable grump. In order to conserve what power they had for the machines they needed, there was no light in the entire tech wing except the tiny footlights in the hallways and whatever glow their monitors gave off. Although Sean preferred to work in a mostly dark room, it was all a bit gloomy, and with the unrelenting blackness, he was starting to feel a little bit like one of those nocturnal lemurs with the giant, unblinking eyes and the long, knobby fingers. It sort of felt unreal, dreamlike except for the parts when Sedge and Giz would snap at him or at each other because of some stupid little thing they would normally have laughed about. Sean would have gladly sold his left kidney for a smiling face by the time Giz stomped off to the break room, Sedge trailing morosely behind. When the door slid open only a moment later, Sean squinched his eyes shut for the span of a breath before he spun his chair around, hoping that he was about to find a friendly new face.

  Aaron was walking toward him, a slightly taller man following a couple of steps behind. "Hey, Sean? This guy's got a problem I think you're better suited to handle than I am."

  It took him a minute to place the person standing quietly in the middle of the room, but the instant he did, he blurted, "You're the violin guy!"

  Aaron glanced between them quickly. "You two know each other already? Awesome." Taking the opportunity to escape back to the tech support desk, he skedaddled as quickly as he could and left them alone. Apparently violin guy's problem was a pretty significant one if Aaron didn't even want to take the opportunity to escape cranky callers for five minutes; the tech desk had been flooded ever since the shields stopped working. Apparently people could mess up anything in the dark, even simple tasks like remembering to plug in the machine or hit the power button before trying to use it.

  Cocking his head slightly to the side, Sean asked, "What was your name again? Something with an E."

  "Evan." He offered a half smile along with his name.

  "Evan! That's right." Sean bounced his fists off his knees. "So what are you doing over here? I thought you did fancy architect stuff over in the Engineering Complex."

  Evan shifted his weight awkwardly, scrubbing a hand over his face that did nothing to fix his disheveled hair. "Well, yeah, normally. But if I show my face in there again without a solution to this light shield problem, I think somebody might chuck me right off the planet."

  "Oh, so you're the one, eh?" Sean shot him a teasing grin, one eyebrow arched.

  Rubbing his eyes, Evan sighed. "I told you that was my first big project. Well, apparently now that it's failing, it's my first big fuck up. But I can't find anything wrong with it. I've gone over the designs and over them, met with damn near every engineer in the colony to see if they could find the problem, even gone up for a manual inspection—which, by the way, was awful, since the suits and weird gravity and oxygen tanks are the part of living in space that I absolutely abhor—and there's nothing wrong. No broken panels, no missing bolts, no debris jamming any mechanisms, nothing. They just suddenly stopped working, and nobody knows why."

  Sean stared a moment in surprise, then snorted out a laugh. "I think that's more words than you said the entire time I was in your room."

  Evan's flush was instantaneous, and Sean couldn't quite stop the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth when he saw how cute it was, especially combined with the little duck and shuffle that accompanied it. "Sorry," Evan mumbled. "I shouldn't have doused you with my sudden bout of verbal diarrhea."

  "Hey, it's cool." Sean grinned. "Pops always said a person couldn't have a normal conversation with me because I always talk too much about the wrong things." The furrows that flickered across Evan's forehead prompted him to add, "He was always teasing me about not being able to keep my focus on the conversation I was having, instead rambling on about whatever other thing had grabbed my attention or just wandering off mid-sentence. But he was just as bad as me, and he knew it."

  "Oh."

  Sean waited a beat, but there didn't seem to
be any more forthcoming. "So what brings you down to tech support with a problem Aaron can't handle?"

  "The light shields, of course." Thin lips tipping up in a wry smile, Evan asked, "Did you think I had a chance to screw something else up this week between going over my work a hundred times and meeting with every engineer on the planet?"

  "You do sound like you've been sort of a busy bunny. Who knows how much trouble you've been getting up to?" Sean rocked back and forth a few times in his chair, enjoying the slow, rhythmic creaks it made until he noticed Evan's eyebrows starting to lift and remembered that Giz and Sedge always threatened to kill him when he made that noise. He abruptly sat up. "But seriously, what brings you to tech support? You think your light shields have a computer virus or something?"

  Evan sighed at Sean's evident skepticism. "I have no idea," he admitted. "I just know that it's the one thing I can think of that I haven't tried yet."

  Sean hummed thoughtfully, drumming his fingers against the bottom of his seat. "What do you know about the light shield software?"

  "Pretty much nothing. Once the math and drawing part requires writing code, I turn the project over to somebody who doesn't think it all looks like complete gibberish." He shrugged one shoulder sheepishly. Even in the dim light of the monitors, Sean could see that the small movement took enough effort that Evan nearly fell over.

  "Here." Sean pushed Giz's chair toward Evan's knees. "Have a seat and tell me what you do know, and we'll see if I can figure out the rest." Feeling the need to offer some sort of reassurance to a human being on the brink of collapse, he grinned, winked, and said, "If your problem is computer related, I can find it. All you need to do is point me in the right direction."

  "Thanks." One side of his mouth lifted into a tired smile. "It's probably my fault, though. I mean, the software hasn't changed, right? There's probably some weakness in my design that finally reached the level of stress required to cause a breakdown."

  "I wouldn't be so sure. To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer." Sean wiggled his eyebrows, pulling his legs up underneath himself as he spun his chair around to face his keyboard again. Evan's quiet laugh was music to his ears.