2200 Blues Chapter 1 (Early Draft)

By G.R. Nanda

A blanket of orange emerged from the atmosphere. The purple sky, its red clouds, and setting evening sun began to disappear from Nickel’s view. Orange gas flowed over the window through which he was looking out, in floating particles and coalescing clumps. Where the sun was, a ball of red could be seen amongst the screen of gas, still burning into sight. But slowly, the frenzied gas took over, thickening around Nickel’s descending American Eagle aircraft, and the fiery halo of light dimmed, decreased, and eventually went out. 

All was orange. Nickel could still see clumps and particles floating around like snowflakes. The white outline of the spatial calibration map glowed from the navigational monitor situated on the dashboard in front of Nickel. On the right side, two vertical lines illustrated the scaled depths of the atmosphere. In between them a triangular pin prick was lowering, its tip pointing downwards. Once it reached the base it stopped. But Nickel knew that the Eagle was still descending. He could hear the engine rumbling under his feet, and the triangle was still pointing downwards from its tip. Nickel realized that the map had reached its limit. Wherever the ship was going, it was a place outside of the map’s knowledge. 

He frantically swiveled around in his chair, surveying the circular control room of the Eagle. The monitor in front of his chair stretched around the walls of the Eagle. He could see that screens were flickering. The lights embedded in the domed ceiling turned on and off. There were desks in the middle of the room. Chairs behind them shuddered. The monitors hanging from the wall shook.

The force of the descent pounded against the walls, and roared. All the screens and lights turned off. Nickel turned around, grabbed the nylon seat belt from under his seat and strapped it across his lap.  The orange light of the gas outside cast itself into the room in a murky swath. 

Nickel waited. He sat solemnly and tense, waiting for the verdict. For his fate. For the longest time in forever, he’d felt in control of his life; the Eagle was his life. As long as he could pilot and maneuver the Eagle; as long as it was functioning, Nickel was on top of the world because he and his aerial craft actually were on top of the world. 

Nickel squeezed his eyes shut. A buzz of panic swarmed his head. The insides of his eyelids changed colors, responding to the shifting brightness of the gasses outside. A feeling of utter despair sank into his chest. He felt water collect at his eyes. He couldn’t cry. He was an adult; a 16 year old man; a whole grown man. A drop of tear escaped his eyelids and streamed down his cheek. It was joined by another from the next eye. He opened his eyes, letting the water flow. The dam of artificial security had fallen apart, letting a river of pampered adolescent anguish flow.   

A screen to Nickel’s far left suddenly glowed and displayed an appearing and disappearing warning sign. But in seconds it went black. Nickel pulled his head with his arms and stayed as still as he could. His eyelids were now dark. 

The bottom of the ship grated against a surface. The floor rumbled. From below came a long piercing sound that hurt his eardrums. Nickel remained crouched. The grating ceased, but it reverberated in his mind. The Eagle gave a few more sporadic clanks as it settled itself on a seemingly precipitous terrain, moving around and thudding. Nickel opened his eyes and looked up at the world beyond his glass window. Still nothing but orange gas. 

A groaning came out of the back of the ship. Nickel shut his eyes, pressed his body against his chair and clenched the handles of his chair, bracing for the next series of impacts. There was no series of impacts. The groaning died, and all Nickel could hear was the eerie howling of the windy, gaseous atmosphere. He was breathing heavily. 

He opened his eyes again seeing nothing but a mellow orange outside; an atmosphere moving faster than Nickel was used to it moving past his Eagle. Usually it was him zooming past everything. Not the other way around. 

The screens and monitors slowly came back to life one by one. First, each screen displayed a green background  before they all returned to the various analytical and navigational software that were in use before. The entire ship flickered to life, alighting and resuming all computational and technical functions as before.

Nickel felt too numb and helpless to take any course of action. He inhaled deeply. Do something. You can’t be still. Use the Eagle! You have a glibbing aerial craft! You stupid glibb! Just use it! He pulled up an energy consumption data sheet on the pilot’s desk screen in front of him. The ship had used up more than usual concentration of ionized fuel per minute in trying to resist the forceful descent in this atmosphere. 

Nickel closed his eyes in frustration. Jesus glibbing CHRIST! Keep MOVING! Nickel opened his eyes and chose a power savings option. The entire ship was now expending 15% less fuel and electricity than usual.  

Nickel got up and began pacing the ship. It helped calm his mind. He walked to and fro, with no real agenda. He had no idea what he was going to do. He hadn’t thought out what he would do in a situation like this. He was in territory beyond the digital mapping in his computer database. He didn’t have enough ionized energy to ascend high enough to ionize more in the ionosphere. To simply put it, he was completely and utterly glibbed. 

It felt like all of his fault. What if I died here? He couldn’t die. He would do something. Think of something. He couldn’t jeopardize the sustainability of the Eagle. He walked to his pilot screen. He opened up the craft storage folder, and viewed the contents of the tactical terrestrial equipment. It read:

Docking Chain

Surveyor Belt

Surveyor Antenna

Flexi-Tent 

Cooking Griddle

Flexi-Pack

That should suffice. For now at least. Nickel would be on his first terrestrial and tactical mission since leaving The United States of America on the Eagle. The first time laying feet on the earth, if the earth was even what his ship was planted on. 

He ran to the middle of the room and stood on a circular platform embedded into the floor. He stamped his right foot 2 times, his left 3 times, then finally his right 4 times. The floor rumbled. The platform descended into the darkness of the Eagle’s underbelly. 

The lower he moved, the more lights flickered on, one by one in sporadic formations lighting the circular base of the “basement.” Thin strips of orange lights wrapped around the circular walls glowed brightly. Circular igloo-like chambers were at the bottom. These were the various rooms or “closets” that allowed him to live and function in as close to a house the Eagle could be. 

The platform lurched to a stop a few feet above the bottom. Nickel jumped off and ran to the storage chamber. He turned the circular lock clockwise, opening the door. 

He grabbed his tactical equipment and lugged them outside of the chamber to the underbelly floor. He took his tent, an expandable luggage from which hung cotton flayers and locked it into the slot in his metal pack. 

He grabbed the docking chain, a compressed two-foot chain link of tubing, and attached it to a ledge in the bottom of his pack. The metal webbing attached itself into the pack’s ledge as the chained tubing receded into the circle. 

Remembering that he had never traversed the environment outside (he was used to traveling everywhere safely within his Eagle), he went back into the chamber to collect his tactical suit, a long dark nylon outfit for his body padded with metal plates colored an army green. At the top was an attached helmet. He pulled off the helmet and unzipped the torso of the suit from the neck to the pelvis area. He slipped it on and zipped himself up. He held the helmet in his hands, a green case with a long black visor in the middle. In the visor he saw the reflection of his face. He saw eyes, with dark ringlets hanging underneath. He saw the small pink dots of his acne sprouting from his brown skin. He saw the reflection of someone who wasn’t ready to walk on the earth. Yet he slid the helmet over his head, wrapped the surveyor belt around his waist, put on his pack and walked over to the platform, stomping his feet and then ascending back up to the control room. 

Lugging the weighty pack, he walked across the back of the control room and into and down steps into an alcove where there was a hatch that could be opened to the outside. He grabbed the handle with both hands and pushed down as hard as he could. It squealed with tension until it unlocked and clicked open. 

Howling air filled Nickel’s ear. From the slowly widening gap between the door and the doorway, he could hear and feel the cold force of the gaseous turmoil outside. Orange gas entered through and quickly dissipated once it crossed over into the ship.

He closed his eyes and lurched forward. His hands pushed the door and he nearly tripped over the doorway. The world was screaming around him. He opened his eyes and slammed the door shut behind him. 

He grabbed the docking chain from its ledge in his pack and slapped its end onto the side of the Eagle. The small legs of a metal claw emerged out of the end of the chain, clamping down on the rusty metal surface. 

With the tubed chains slowly extending behind him from his pack, Nickel trudged along the rough and crusty earth of this orange landscape. The chain would extend to a total of three miles. Nickel hoped he could find less windy ground within that distance. 

He walked forth, in a nonspecific direction, breathing deeply inside his helmet to remain calm. For the longest time, all he could hear was the forceful wind, his boots crunching the rocky eroded earth, and his own breath. 

The first time he heard something other than those sounds was when he could no longer see the beginnings of the docking chain or the Eagle. 

He saw a line emerge in the sky. It was a sleek solid black image hovering behind the orange. He looked upwards and moved towards it. Fear swarmed him, but curiosity compelled him. 

As he moved closer to it, he saw the bottom of its body rooted in the ground. He jogged over to it and put his hand out to it. His fingers trembled for a while. He shoved his hand onto the object and clamped down tightly with fingers. A coolness spread across his palm from the thing. It was a pole. A steel pole. The kind planted outside the American military outposts Nickel’s father used to work at.  

God………..Where am I? Nickel looked upwards. As the overhanging gas passed, he saw a tattered black flag hanging limp at the top of the pole. His heart pounded. He had to remember to breathe. 

He took slow quiet steps forward, away from the pole. They became faster. His eagerness was short-lived 

“AAAAAaaaaaahahhaaaUUHH!” Nickel’s muscles tensed and he lurched to a stop. He ran back to stand behind the flagpole (it wasn’t thick enough to hide him).  

He couldn’t see anything else except for the orange smog and the pole. Nickel held in his breath and stayed as still as possible. There was more unintelligible moaning. 

“UUUUUUUHHHH!” It was followed by a long cacophony of coughing. Nickel let his breath leave his tight lips. Sweat trickled down his temple. What is that? he thought. A human? A mutant? The coughing stopped at a final desperate wheeze. 

“Curse my life!” The voice was boyish. This mutant, or human-whatever he was, spoke English. With a North American twang. That was a commonality Nickel shared with him. A place to start. Suddenly, that made him want to trust him even less. The point of the American Eagle was to leave home, leave society and culture. “Curse you! I thought there were enough meds!” There was more coughing. It rose up in bits and sputtered in streams of sickness. 

“You already knew-” came a rougher, deeper voice broken up by coughing. “….There are only enough for a week! If you go over that, they disappear until shine-day! So don’t complain to me! You see me complaining to you? And I’ve been here years longer than you! If anyone, anyone has a right to complain, it’s my old ass that’s been here before you were glibbing born!” Nickel was bewildered, but also intrigued. He wasn’t moving forward. However, he certainly wasn’t going to risk making noise while going back to the Eagle.