Miscalculation

dberstories (56)in #story • 6 years ago (edited)

Wind rushed past Eric's face, buffeting his eyes, making his cheeks billow ridiculously. He tried to look around, but his vision was gone or terribly limited. He felt strange, weightless, like he was falling, but no longer accelerating. As though he had been falling for a very long time.

Eric burst awake, his body covered in hot sweat, his heart palpitating.

Pure fear overwhelmed him and then slowly settled down, until at last he could breath normally again. He got up and inched, positively crawled, toward the floor to ceiling window he had, as recently as last night, loved to peer out of like Zeus looking down from Olympus.

Today he could barely bring himself near the thick, clear plastic. He passed by it as if it were an angry rattlesnake. Beyond the heavy pane he saw the expanse of clouds, and peaking through them, miles below, the undercity.

The room spoke and it startled Eric. "Good morning sir. Your paper and breakfast are ready."

Eric was sick to his stomach. He needed to get Earthside. "No, thank you Dawn. I need transport to the surface."

Dawn responded dutifully, without a thought to its wasted breakfast. "Of course sir, what time would you like to leave."

Eric almost said "immediately," but then reconsidered. Airborne transportation to the surface was worse than just staying in his apartment all day. Hell, he probably shouldn't leave at all. But he looked outside the window again, at the distant surface of the planet, and his terror returned.

"Forget it. I'll take the elevator."

There were four elevators to the surface and they ran on a rotating schedule so that one arrived and left every fifteen minutes. To get to the elevators residents of EcoHab 3 needed to make their way from the sprawling edges of the complex toward its center.

Eric stepped out of the small, conventional elevator which connected the 98 floors of his residential spire to the "street" below.

In front of him milled the chaos of EcoHab urbanity. Humans of all shapes, sizes, and modifications criss crossed each other, past countless food stalls and boutiques, all 100 meters beneath the Grand Solarium. UV filtered sunlight poured through the million facets of the great dome. Beyond the glass of the dome rose the residential spires, their peaks touching the bottom of the stratosphere.

Eric took a deep breath and started toward the center. It would be a two kilometer walk to the elevators, and for all Eric knew this whole damn place was going to fall into the Earth today. He walked quickly.

A little sound buzzed in his ear. Maxine was calling him. The photo of a woman appeared in the upper right corner of his vision. He accepted the call with a thought.

"Eric, I don't have as much cash as I thought, could you bring some extra?"

Eric didn't stop walking. "Sorry Max, I can't."

Maxime sucked her teeth. "Oh come on Eric, are you really that cheap?"

"No, it's not the money. I can't come today."

"What?" The line went silent for a moment and then returned, now with Maxine's angry face filling a full quarter of his vision. "No way, Eric. We talked about this. Business my ass, you're coming today."

Eric dodged a pair of bio-morphed man-lions. He accidentally shouldered one and it turned and bared it's teeth with a growl. "It's not business Max, I just..." what? I sometimes see a hint of the future before I wake up in the morning and today I saw myself falling to my death? "...I don't feel well."

Maxine's lips puckered angrily. "Eric - if you don't come to the Carnival with me today, we're done. Really." She waited wearing her duck-like anger.

Eric almost slammed into a Mycomerchant, stopping just in front of him. The old purveyor took the opportunity to display several colored pouches of flavored high nutrition fungal paste. Eric frowned and kept walking.

"Sorry Max, I got to go." He willed the call to end and caught just the start of Max's angry curse.

"One to the surface." The ticket dispensor confirmed the cost and encouraged Eric to swipe his thumb for payment. Eric did so, the machine whirred a bit, and then spit out a ticket to the surface.

Eric scanned the monitor displaying the schedule - only two minutes before the next elevator. He breathed a hesitant sigh. Almost there.

He waited, standing nervously, at the gate. There was a small line, only about two hundred people, most of them normies - no surprise as modified folks were not well tolerated below. Each elevator was a hundred meter cube, so this would be no where near capacity.

Soon one of the other elevators arrived and the doors to the one in front of Eric opened. He followed the line and got on board. Inside there were several hundred seats, a small bar and food stall, and lots of standing room by the clear walls, to better enjoy the spectacle of the descent.

The doors to the elevator closed and finally Eric felt at ease. Within twenty minutes he would be on the ground. Then it was just a matter of waiting out the day in a pod hotel and coming back tomorrow. Maxine would understand.

Eric found a seat near the middle of the cube and settled into it. With a light mechanical whir the elevator began its careful descent.

It began to lower, slowly, until the top of the clear elevator was below the lip of the EcoHab station platform. Eric looked up through the clear ceiling, bidding the sky farewell, and saw a man leap off the platform. In mid air, the "man" extended broad wings and arrested his fall. Even 30 meters away, Eric could see the exposed hooves of his feet and the fur where his bare skin ought to have been. A heavily modified griffin.

The elevator kept lowering as the griffin landed on top of it. Above the chimera the useless faces of security officers could be seen peering over the platform edge. The griffin took off a backpack and placed it dead center on the roof. He crouched near it for a few more seconds and then leapt off the edge of the elevator into the sky, disappearing like an albatross into the white fluff of the clouds.

Eric's gaze was drawn to the backpack, looming above him, and a screaming fear shot through his gut. Miscalculation. The bag turned into a white hot fireball, shattering the ceiling and sending shards of tiny plastic down to the floor, into Eric's eyes. Blinded, he could feel the elevator jolt from under him and then plummet. Wind rushed past Eric's face, buffeting his eyes, making his cheeks billow ridiculously.