She pushes her toys to the side and sits cross-legged on the floor. Other dolls and stuffed animals look down at her from the tops of her bed and dresser. Bored with them too, she rests her forehead against the yellow wall. She breathes and forgets where she is. She breathes and forgets her father doesn’t like her doing this.
At least she tries to forget. Luckily, her father doesn’t catch her like this often because he’s always at the lab, concocting new flavor blends for nourishment and beverage cubes ready for reconstituting. When she thinks about all the people in this city and beyond who consume her father’s work, her head hurts. Because of her father, not only do people get nutrients (they can’t survive otherwise), but they get to experience flavors from long ago—steak, pasta, shrimp.
Stop thinking about him. Think about the bees. Their color. Gold. Gold. Gold. Think about their sounds. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. But thoughts of her mother now burrow in. “Where do you go?” her mother asked once. “Nowhere.” “Nowhere?” “I’m here. But I hear them,” she said. “Hear who?” “The bees covering the wall.” “You mean the poly-nanotech?” her mother asked. She nodded. “If I try not to see, I see their gold.” “Try not to see?” her mother asked. Frustrated, she pressed her fists to her thighs and said, “I’m in a bee cloud.” Her mother studied her. Then, nodding as if she understood, she said, “How I wish I had your imagination. To let go like that. It’s a gift, Fernly.” She didn’t know what her mother meant, but she reasoned if other people can’t visit the bees, then it is a gift. She’s happiest with the bees. Her favorite exhibit at the Botanical Museum, the Blooming Valley, has digital bees flitting across hologram flowers. The whole room buzzes with their electric flight. When she loses time she’s with them—the microscopic robots making up the protective layer over the walls, floors, and ceilings that behave and sound like how she imagines bees danced through the air once.
Stop. Think about their buzzing. About how they feel. Tickle. Tickle. Tickle. But she can’t focus. Wanting to feel the bees’ delicate dance makes her think of the not-so-graceful movements of the shaking man. She sees him sometimes on her way to the Education Institute on the days her mother feels like walking and they take the longer route. With all its holes, his clear outerwear suit is more a net than the full-body, head-to-toe covering it’s supposed to be. He has many blisters from the rain that leaks through the holes. The compiboard he holds under his suit says he needs money to repair his mask. The way he shakes, his mask must be really damaged too. With his phone on his lap flashing Ready to Receive Payment, he sits, shaking and twitching, on a pipe sticking out of the shiny building. She likes the shiny building. It sparkles. Nothing else sparkles in the city. She thinks other people like the building too because they look up at it when they walk by. People don’t usually look up.
People look at the building but not at the shaking man. Except for once last week. Someone stopped and talked with him. Hopefully to give him money. Seeing the act of generosity made her even happier than being with the bees.
But that happiness faded, like the bee cloud always does. A few kind words or some money won’t make the sick man okay.
Stop thinking about him. The bees. Think about them. She can’t, though. Thinking about the shaking man makes her thoughts turn to ferns. Ferns used to soak up bad stuff, stuff that makes people like the shaking man sick. The Fern Forest is her mother’s favorite exhibit at the Botanical Museum. Fernly likes the exhibit too. When she asked her mother if she was named after the species, her mother laughed.
“I wish I could say you were,” her mother said. “But the truth is we saw a town on a historic map and liked the sound of it.”
“The name’s me,” Fernly said. “I think so too. That’s why I love the exhibit.” Stop. The bees. Only the bees. Fernly mashes her forehead to the wall. Think only about them. Their buzz. Hear them. But thoughts of the Fern Forest, like fern leaves themselves, continue to fan out in her head. Ferns existed two hundred million years before flowering plants, she learned at the exhibit. If she were a plant, she’d be a fern. She isn’t peppy like her five classmates. She doesn’t feel showy like them, not like a flower. Caregiver Lehrer, a soft-spoken woman at the Education Institute, called Fernly an old soul once. It was during a break. The other children were playing. Fernly was at her desk, staring up at the ceiling (there were no new stories on her compireader worth reading that day). Like at home and everywhere else she’s been, the poly-nano layers covering the ceiling, floor, and walls at the Education Institute are programmed in shades of yellow (her mother says people choose yellow because they miss the sun). Fernly focused on the yellow ceiling that day, hoping she’d stare right into not seeing and find bees here too.
She didn’t hear Caregiver Lehrer pull a chair up next to her. When Caregiver Lehrer asked her what she was thinking, Fernly jumped.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Caregiver Lehrer said, pushing her glasses up her nose (they’re always sliding down). She smiled. She has a kind smile, one that justifies in Fernly’s mind why even educators, not just those who tend to the elderly, hold the title Caregiver.
“Where do you disappear to, Fernly?” Caregiver Lehrer asked.
Fernly shrugged. That’s when Caregiver Lehrer, her smile even warmer, called her an old soul. Fernly’s not sure what a soul is, but she understands what Caregiver Lehrer meant. She feels old. Like ferns.
Stop! The bees. Hear them. See them. But ferns keep unfurling in her head. If only ferns adapted to today. With their ability to absorb bad stuff, maybe the rain wouldn’t burn. Maybe there wouldn’t be phage surges either. Then people wouldn’t get sick like the shaking man. People wouldn’t die. Often now her mother tells her to look away when they’re outside and the phage siren sounds and the red lights flash. There’s usually someone who decides not to put on their mask.
Will the shaking man die? Stop! Don’t think about him! The bees. But Perdi flutters through her head now. Giggling Perdi. She used to be a classmate. After Perdi’s death (she had a weak heart, Caregiver Lehrer told them), the other children cried or huddled together in corners to whisper about where Perdi might be now and how they missed her. Fernly misses her too. So much so her throat burns when she thinks about Perdi’s giggle or how she always poked her tongue out at Eli, the boy who constantly teases girls.
Her throat aches now thinking about her. But Fernly doesn’t wonder where Perdi might be. Perdi alive or dead—like all of them—is energy, and they learned energy can’t be destroyed. It can only be transformed. She reminds the other children of this whenever they talk about Perdi, but this scientific fact doesn’t comfort them. She doesn’t understand why. There’s much about her classmates she doesn’t understand.
No more thinking about other things! She stares at the wall. She breathes. Her hot breath coats her cheeks. Think only about the bees. She breathes again. See them. Hear them. Then she feels it. Yes, feel them. Her shoulders relax. They’re coming.
Her jaw slackens. Her breathing slows. She isn’t aware of these things. What she is aware of is that gold floods her. There’s a soft whirring sensation, like soft wings fluttering, against her forehead. She hears them now, buzzing like bees, the nanobots in the poly-nano layer covering the wall. She’s with them.
Gold. Bzzzz. Tickling. She even smells a faint sweetness. Bliss. Her breathing slows even more. REEREREERER! She jumps. It’s the phage surge siren outside. Even indoors it’s loud. The bees disappear. She’ll have to concentrate even harder with the distraction. She presses her forehead to the wall again. Feel them. She exhales. See them.
“There you are,” her mother says behind her. “Didn’t you hear me calling?” The bees interrupted again. She sighs. “I hear the siren.” “It is going, isn’t it?” Her mother doesn’t wait for her to respond. “It’s getting to be so often now. Anyway, there are more important things. I know you’re visiting your bees, but you must hear what Erix Crisp has to say.” Her mother smiles. “It’s historic.”
Fernly doesn’t like disappointing her mother (her father does it too much), so she follows her to the living room where Erix Crisp, the AI news broadcaster that’s usually on only in the mornings and evenings, is pacing across the viewer. Green and yellow masses swirl across a display behind him.
Her mother sits on the sofa and pats the seat next to her. Fernly sits, thinking this is unusual. Erix Crisp on in the afternoon? And she’s never seen her mother like this. Her hands are clasped to her chest, and her smile is even bigger than just moments before.
Erix Crisp’s smile is big too. Bigger even than the one he wore the other night when he was hosting The Decadel housing lottery. He had such a big smile that evening when he was pointing out how grateful everyone should be because the greatest minds live in this city or will soon be, thanks to the influx of climate refugees. Great minds solve problems every day. He got the AI audience really cheering with that. Her parents clapped too. She didn’t see why there was applause when the city was losing not just one outer loop—which, as she learned at the Education Institute, is tradition with each Decadel—but two. The Planners, according to Erix Crisp, had difficult decisions to make, and that’s why two loops are going to the Scavengers and Recyclers this Decadel. Things must be bad, Fernly thought, but with the way her parents clapped, she felt she must not be understanding. It was equally baffling to her why her parents were even watching the show. They didn’t need a new home because they didn’t live in the two outer loops, and as far as she knew, they didn’t enter the lottery to trade their current home for another.
When she expressed her confusion, her father, looking perplexed, responded, “The Planners have information to make good decisions for us. There could be countless reasons why homes in two loops are being condemned this Decadel. And why wouldn’t you want to share this evening with the city? This happens only once every ten years. Everyone watches. People will have new homes. And the city will get added resources from the outer loops thanks to the Scavengers and Recyclers. This is good. You really stump me sometimes, Fernly.”
Her father stumps her a lot of times. “Pay attention now, Fernly.” Her mother taps her hand. “That’s right, folks,” Erix Crisp says on the screen. “Our great Climatologists see an upcoming break in this pattern.” He points to the darkest green and yellow bands on the monitor behind him. “This pattern that’s been over our city for over thirty years with no signs of relenting. That is until now. The Climatologists are predicting that we will have three days of no rain at month’s end. And no rain means…” He lifts his arms high.
“The sun!” the AI audience shouts. “Can you believe it?” Erix Crisp says. “Three days of sun.” “And I was hoping for an hour or two,” her mother says. “Amazing!” Her mother’s phone buzzes. She pulls it from her dress pocket. “Yes, Wain,” she answers. “Yes, I’m watching. Fernly’s watching too. Fernly, do you want to say hi to your father?”
Fernly doesn’t have time to answer. “Yes, Wain,” her mother says. “I know you’re busy. We’ll talk more tonight.” Fernly slides off the sofa and sits cross-legged on the floor. She puts her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands and watches Erix Crisp excitedly continue his broadcast. “First,” Erix Crisp says, “we had a historic Decadel. So many fortunate people are—as I speak—readying themselves for their new homes. And now this? With know-how, we know the sun’s coming. With optimism, we never lost hope. And with gratitude, we accept our good fortune, don’t we?”
Fernly’s seen images of the sun. She’s read about the planet’s history and how, for the longest time, sunrises and sunsets were daily occurrences visible to everyone (unless you lived near the polar caps). Now there are only certain parts of the world where the sun can be seen. In this country there’s one territory where the sun appears daily—Wizenland. If you live in Wizenland, you live underground because the sun burns. Even more so than the rain. It dries up all the water on the ground and in the air. There’s no rain in Wizenland. Ever. The only water is deep underground. When it comes to water for surviving, it’s not much different here. The city pumps its drinking water up from way down too. Even the depths aren’t enough to clean the water, though. Both here and in Wizenland, water purification companies employ thousands, so her father says.
“The sun,” Erix Crisp says. “Can you believe it?” “You know,” her mother says, “we should clear the windows.” Fernly sits up. “Windows?” On the outsides of buildings, there are outlines of windows around the shadowed yellows of internal poly-nano layers. She’s never seen a trace of a window from inside, though. “It’d be good to clear them now,” her mother says as she taps her phone. “So we can appreciate the change in view when the sun makes its appearance.” Her mother squints at her phone’s screen. She smiles. “There’s the setting.”
Fernly gasps when clear rectangles appear in the living room’s yellow walls. Three of the clearings are the same size. Three are much larger. These larger rectangles make up the top halves of the walls of what her parents call the reading nook. Fernly rushes to the nook. In her hurry her knee hits the side of the reclined chair her father sits in nightly with his compireader. She sucks in a breath from the nervy pain.
She sucks in another breath for a different reason when she looks outside. Her legs wobble. They’re so high up. The people in their outerwear suits sloshing along the rain-flooded sidewalks below look so small. So do the cars churning through the water-filled avenue.
“We have windows,” Fernly whispers, her banged knee forgotten.
“This takes some getting used to,” her mother says as she joins Fernly. “What a sight. I understand this was the balcony and used to be completely open to the air. People sat out here. In the air. With no protection. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? During the Great Retrofitting, they sealed these up with the poly-nanotech, like everything else.”
Based on her mother’s open-to-the-air description, above what looks to be a short brick wall, Fernly deduces there’s no glass between the interior and exterior poly-nano layers. There’s just forever trapped air. That’s probably why the phage siren sounds louder here.
“I don’t see balc—” Fernly hesitates, trying to remember the word her mother used. “What about balconies?” her mother asks.
“I don’t see balconies,” she says. “From the outside.”
Her mother scratches her neck. This is her signal that she’s thinking. “From the outside I imagine they look like oversized windows. We’ll have to take stock when we’re out next.”
She nods. Her mother’s reasoning makes sense. Fernly looks at the building across the avenue from them. So many faint yellow squares and rectangles and even some circles. All hints of the windows that could be.
“Why don’t people leave the window shapes clear inside?” Fernly asks.
“Well, you know the Preservationists require Building Managers to keep the clear setting on the exterior, so everyone can appreciate the history of our city.”
Fernly nods again. She learned this at the Education Institute.
“On the inside, you know people can program their walls any color they like. Most people pick yellow.”
“Because they miss the sun,” Fernly says. “But the window shapes? Why not pick clear?”
Her mother scratches her throat again. “Well, there isn’t much to look out at, is there? The green lights and gray rain are just—they can wear a person down. It’s dreary. It’s sickly- looking, really.”
“The lights are red now.” “Well, yes. The phage siren and lights are still going.” “The red is pretty. From up here. The red lights make the raindrops look like twinkling red dahlia petals.” The bees in the digital Blooming Valley exhibit seem to like the red dahlias best. “Petals?” her mother says, laughing. “You and your imagination, Fernly. You’re right, though. It does look pretty. With the red lights. But when a phage surge is over and the lights go green—well, things look outright sickly. The gray rain mutes the green lights in such a depressing way. It’s hard being out in it when we’re running our errands, isn’t it? Imagine looking out at that all day. Definitely depressing.”
Fernly’s not sure. From up here, for the first time, she has a sense of the life that goes on in this city. It’s exciting. It’s hard to imagine green lights diminishing that.
She spots debris on the other end of the short brick wall. Dragging her forehead across the smooth poly-nano layer, she moves closer to the mysterious clump. Twigs. And dried leaves. She recognizes these things from the pictures she’s seen at the Botanical Museum.
There’s something fuzzy in the clump too. “A feather,” Fernly whispers. She never thought she’d see a feather in real life. She’s seen replicas of birds and their feathers at the Natural History Museum. Some of her classmates say birds still exist and that some people have access to them and their eggs. She’s not so sure. Her father says it’s unlikely. Eli claimed he had an egg once. She’s sure he was lying but her classmates believed him. People like stories more than facts. Her classmates listened intently as he described how the egg tasted like a perfectly reconstituted toffee cube, not like how the egg cubes taste at all.
She stares at the feather, wondering if an egg really tastes like a toffee cube and whether toffee cubes actually taste like real toffee from long ago. There’s a white vein up the feather’s center that starts out thick on the bottom and thins at the top. She remembers reading that this is called the quill. The tufts flowing out of the quill she remembers are called barbs. The feathers on display at the museum can’t be touched, but they look soft, like this one. She wonders if their visual softness is an illusion. Describing the feather parts as barbs makes her think so. This feather isn’t colorful like the ones in the museum. It’s not bright green, blue, or red. It’s dusty gray. But that doesn’t matter. This is a real feather, not some display. She sighs. It’s no different than a display. Not really. This feather is encased like the ones at the museum too. She presses her forehead against the poly-nano layer, wishing she could break through and touch it.
Her mother peers over her. “I guess your great-grandmother didn’t have time to sweep off the railing—I think they called this the railing—before the Retrofitters came through.”
All this time this feather and the bundle of twigs and leaves it’s caught in were behind the programmed yellow wall that the Retrofitters installed decades ago and Fernly had no idea. What else has been locked in? she wonders.
Erix Crisp continues talking on the viewer behind them. “Folks, it might be tempting to venture outside without your outerwear suits when the rain stops later this month. But I remind you that it’s hot now, and it’s going to be even hotter with the sun. And I’m going to keep reminding you of this until the sun’s departure. Your suits don’t only protect you against the rain. Remember, they provide necessary temperature regulation. So you must wear your suits to beat the heat.”
“Maybe it’s not good the sun’s coming,” Fernly says. Her mouth dries thinking about the parched terrain of Wizenland.
“Of course it’s good. I saw the sun once. I was a little younger than you. It was glorious,” her mother says.
Her bee cloud is glorious. This feather is too. She’s not so sure about the sun.
“And the sun’s light will be dangerous,” Erix Crisp says as if validating her worry. “You don’t want to be out in it, even with your suits, for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Your suits won’t protect against sun exposure.”
“Will our walls?” Fernly asks. “Protect us? Oh, I’m sure,” her mother says. “Otherwise, he’d say something.” Fernly listens for the warning, but he says nothing about the poly-nano layers. “So, for a few days,” Erix Crisp continues, “you must keep your errands brief.” He leans in closer to the screen. “The Planners are discussing a holiday.” “How wonderful,” her mother says. “Maybe your father won’t have to work.” “More details soon, folks,” Erix Crisp says. “The sun,” her mother whispers. “Audney always said the sunflowers at the Botanical Museum are as pretty as the sun. I bet she’ll change her mind when she sees the sun again.” Her mother talked about Audney only once before. It was an evening last year when she indulged in extra glasses of wine at dinner. The wine was good, she remembers her mother saying. Her father and his team designed the blend. Her mother commented on how well it reconstituted. She was sure it tasted as good as the finest vintages when vineyards existed. As she drank, her mother slipped from compliments into memories. Her father continued to nod as her mother spoke, but Fernly wondered how much he heard. Throughout dinner he seemed preoccupied with the wine’s smell (he kept sniffing it), color (he kept holding his glass to the light), and taste (he kept swishing the red drink around in his mouth).
“Audney’s mother died,” Fernly says, recalling how sad her mother was that night. “I told you that?” She doesn’t wait for Fernly to respond. “Of course I did,” she says. “Then you know Audney and I were close when we were little. Inseparable. Her favorite exhibit was the sunflowers.”
“That’s why you don’t like the exhibit?” Fernly, confused, asks. Her mother always avoids the room filled with digital and preserved sunflowers when they visit the Botanical Museum.
“Well, I…I like it. It’s just hard for me to see it. I guess because seeing those flowers reminds me of how happy we were and how sad things got after her mother died and her father made it clear he had no interest in this side of the family. I lost a wonderful aunt. Because of her father, I lost my cousin too. My best friend. A sister really.”
“Why did he do that?”
“Her father?” Scratching her throat, she looks up at the rainy sky. “Maybe because he’s rich and we’re not. Who knows? Understanding people—well—it’s not so easy.”
Fernly nods. People are more confusing than anything.
Her mother puts on a smile. “That’s the past. We have so much to look forward to. The sun, Fernly. Can you believe it?”
Fernly doesn’t respond. She’s still not sure about it.
“Should we go?” her mother asks. “To the Botanical Museum? It’d be good to see the sunflowers. To prepare for the sun.”
“When do you want to go?” Fernly asks. “Now,” her mother says, smiling even wider. “It’s too late.” Her mother laughs. “We’d still have almost two hours to explore if we hurry. And we’ll see the ferns too. And the bees, of course.” Fernly wants to see the bees any way she can, but going to the Botanical Museum on a whim isn’t routine. The windows. The feather. Nothing about this afternoon has been. Behind them on the viewer, Erix Crisp says, “Now, some of you may have deduced that if we can see the sun—” Her mother spins around. “The moon?” “That’s right,” Erix Crisp says. “The first two nights will be clear too. And we’ll see the moon.” “Oh, this is historic,” her mother says. “Now,” Erix Crisp says, “it’s still too hot for you to be outside without outerwear in the evenings. You know that. And there’s the risk of rogue showers. Day and night. So you must keep your outerwear suits on.”
“The moon. Can you imagine?” Her mother looks up at the sky again, smiling as if she can see the moon right now. “You know, the best part of a spacecation for me—if we could afford one—would be seeing the moon. And now we get to!”
“Will the moon look like it does in pictures?” Fernly asks.
“Prettier, I’m sure. That one day, when the sun came out when I was little, the rain started too quickly. So no moon that night. But now—” Her mother clasps her hands to her chest again. “Let’s go to the Botanical Museum. There’s that exhibit on flowers that used to bloom at night. We should see that too. In honor of the moon.”
“It’s not too late?” Fernly asks instead of states this time. “Not if we leave now,” her mother says. “Come on, Fernly. We don’t do enough spontaneous things. I know you don’t like it, but it’s good for the soul.” “Even old ones?” Fernly asks. “Especially old ones. What does your father say? Shaking up routines is as good as a spacecation?” The phage siren stops. The red flashing lights outside turn to green blinking ones. “The surge is over,” her mother says. “Excellent. We won’t need our masks on our walk now. Not for a while at least. It’s so much easier to breathe without them. Come on, Fernly. Let’s shake up our routine.”
Fernly takes a deep breath. “Okay.” “Okay? Wonderful! Let me touch up my makeup.” Her mother zips to the bathroom. The gray rain dulls the green lights outside. The world becomes dreary. Fernly understands her mother now. Staring out at this all day, even at this height, could wear a person down.
“The sun, Fernly!” her mother shouts from the bathroom. “Can you believe it? And the moon! Like Erix Crisp says, we have much to be grateful for.”
Fernly still isn’t sure. She looks again at the specks of people below. How strange it is, she thinks, that in a few moments she and her mother will be small dots like everyone else in this gray-green world. From up here there’s no distinction between one dot and the next. From up here even the shaking man, if he were below, would be no different than anyone else. She gets a sinking feeling that she’s been thinking about Perdi all wrong. Her throat burning, she fears that maybe everyone just gets smaller and smaller until there’s nothing left of them at all.
Her breath catches.
No. That’s wrong.
“Come on, slowpoke,” her mother says. “Slowpoke. That’s a funny word.”
Perdi is still Perdi. The bees are small. But they’re still bees.
Staring down at the moving dots, she hears her mother speculate about the origins of slowpoke. Fernly rests her forehead against the clear poly-nano wall and breathes and stares until she can’t hear her mother anymore, until the people below blur into disappearing. And then she’s with them, the dots below. Like with the bees. But now instead of buzzing, she hears sighs. Instead of gold, she sees sickly green-gray. And instead of soft tickles of purposeful flight, she feels clomping, splashing steps heavy, hungry even, in their aimlessness.
Perdi is still Perdi. The bees are still bees. And people are—
“Come on, Fernly.”
Fernly sighs. Blinking, she peels her forehead off the wall and thinks how a single bee is beautiful like a single person is, like Perdi. But after visiting the dots below, people together aren’t beautiful like bees together, not like her bee cloud. People together are ugly.
Ugly like the green lights in the gray rain. Ugly like— “Let’s get moving,” her mother says. “There may be time for me to get you something at the gift shop. If we leave now.” Thoughts of ugliness scatter. Fernly grins. “Really?” “Yes, really. If we leave right now.” Wondering what new toys the gift shop might have, Fernly rushes to put on her outerwear.
THE END
Deborah S. Prespare lives in Brooklyn, New York. She completed her undergraduate studies at Cornell College and received an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in Menda City Review, Potomac Review, Red Rock Review, Soundings East, Scoundrel Time, Third Wednesday, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and several other publications.
Euphony Journal 