Metropolitan Strata

Three lines of colorful scarves emerged from the shadow of the city gates into the harsh, white light of day.  Scarlet poppies whirled from the walls to shower them, stark against the sandy, face-covering hoods worn by the stiff men who filed out the gates behind them, knuckles white on their weapons.  Lacria stood in the shade of a stairwell and watched the colorfully clad heads stop in the sand.  Painful though it was, it was easier than watching the people celebrating on the walls with tears in their eyes.

In the crowd of pale colors and flowing garments, a man in a tailored jacket the color of the best farm soil leaned against a wall beside another stairwell, gray eyes peering out from beneath a slim, pale brow.  People didn’t so much avoid him as they avoided focusing on him.  He was an aberration, something which did not belong in their environment, a mystery they could not explain and so chose not to notice.  Lacria noticed.  She saw him move when he sought to escape the blazing heat of the day, a line of deliberate motion in the chaotic crowd.  With a final glance for the sacrifices now locked outside the city, Lacria followed the man.

She caught him at a small gate in the city’s rear wall, kept locked and seldom used.  No one else was within three streets of them.

“Wait.”  Lacria pitched her voice differently and shortened the word, affecting the accent of a higher floor. 

It stopped the man; he turned and seemed confused when he saw Lacria, who passed for a local.  “Yes?”

“What floor did you come from, the twentieth?”

“I…don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right.”  Lacria gestured at the gate.  “And I suppose you’re just an ordinary Kalnite dressed like that, about to leave the city, which only the sacrifices do in the Purges?  About to walk across the desert to where the sky meets the wall and you can take the lift to a different level of this damn ship?”

His eyes narrowed.  “You know?”

“I know.  What off Earth are you doing here, dressed like that?  It’s anachronistic.”

“I’m the Storyteller.”

Lacria stared at him.  “I thought that was an urban legend.”

“With a grain of truth.  We should talk, but not here.  Meet me at the top in, say, an hour?”

“You still haven’t answered what you’re doing here.  Do you just come down to watch the Purge for fun?”

“No!  It’s barbaric.  I was here to check something for the top.”

“The higher floors aren’t much better,” Lacria muttered.  The Storyteller opened his mouth, but she preempted his objections.  “Fine.  I’ll meet you at the top.”

Sand fell from Lacria’s black hair when she untied her scarf on the top floor, the grains pinging off the aluminum floor panels.  In a chair at the center of the massive, domed space, Thadinus winced at the mess, but he inhaled the warm, sunny scents which seemed so alien in the metal and polymer planetarium shell with a smile.

“How is it on the third floor, Lacria?” he asked.

“How do you think?  They’re preparing for another Purge.”  She folded the scarf, aligning the edges precisely and smoothing the fine fabric between each fold, before tucking it into her satchel.

Thadinus winced.  “If the population grows naturally…”

Lacria held up a hand.  “Spare me the lecture, Thadinus.  I know.  I know how every level does it, and it doesn’t make it more pleasant to witness.”

Behind her, the elevator door slid open.  “Typically graphic for the third, though.  You don’t have to torture yourself.  That’s not our role.”  The Storyteller strolled in, hands in his pockets.

“Nor is it forming a personal legend, Storyteller,” Lacria retorted.

The man paused.  “Perhaps I’ve not presented myself to you in the best light.  My real name is Nostrum, and you must be Lacria.  Thadinus has mentioned you before, but I never thought to meet you.”

“You’re Nostrum?”

He raised his brows.  “I guess I’m not what you expected, then.  Makes me wonder what Thadinus has been saying about me.”

Thadinus glanced between the two of them.  “I take it you encountered each other?”

Nostrum inclined his head.  “Indeed.  Imagine my surprise when this woman, attired and mannered much the same as anyone else on the third, addressed me in the accents of the twentieth, and knew the secrets of the other floors.”

“He wasn’t even bothering to blend in.  You know he wanders around in this, regardless of what level he’s on?”  Lacris gestured at Nostrum’s attire.

Despite Lacria’s objections, Thadinus merely sighed.  “He is hardly the first, you know.  Most people neither need nor want to know the truth, so they ignore what they do not understand or cannot integrate into their limited understandings of existence.”

“It’s the gorilla all over again,” Nostrum added.

Lacria glared.  “It’s irresponsible, and it’ll cause problems.  Prior events are not a guarantor of future results.  The twenty fifth, twenty third, and twenty second already know, and that’s produced no few complications.”

“But also benefits.”  Thadinus waved a hand, and the planetarium projection turned off, along with the screens which always hovered around him.  “My friends, it is fortuitous you are both here.  This is no time for rehashing arguments older than us.”

Nostrum slid another chair along the tracks to sit beside Thadinus.  “Then what is it time for, Thadinus?  Is there a problem?  I haven’t noticed anything in my travels recently.”

To answer, Thadinus displayed a static image.  “One of the astronomers on the 22^nd flagged this image three years ago.  The navigation computer accounted for it, and I never saw it until last month, when the CDHS popped an alert based on an analysis chain overlayed on persistent observations of this object.”  He replaced the first image with a second one, in which the spherical object, still the blackest ball imaginable, filled two thirds of the frame.  A second display accommodated a trajectory trace.  “Over the past three years, the object’s trajectory has deviated from standard astrodynamic projections, consistent with small, internally generated impulses.  Additionally, the object is a nearly perfect geometric sphere, marred only by a few small pockmarks and accumulations of foreign matter on the surface.”

Frowning, Nostrum folded his arms, putting creases in his jacket.  “It must be one of those interstellar objects.  Dozens of them fly through the system every year, and they’re all a little odd.  Impulses have been observed in them before, linked to outgassing caused by passage through the heliosphere.”

“Not this time.”  Lacria stepped forward and walked around the image, which became a three-dimensional projection of the spherical object.  “It’s artificial.”

A polished brass pen appeared in Nostrum’s hand, which he began rolling between his fingers.  “Ridiculous.  None of the intelligent species we’ve contacted have interstellar capabilities, nor any interest in that sort of civilizational exertion.”

“We can’t tell for certain with remote sensors, and the object isn’t emitting anything.  I had the ship ping it with a coherent radio wave – no encoding, just a clearly deliberate transmission – and there was no response we could discern.”  Thadinus closed both displays of the interstellar object and activated a different one.  “Unless it makes further course corrections, the object will bypass us by about five million kilometers.  This is more of a concern.”

Lacria exhaled.  “Earth.”

Not the planet; the display showed a space capsule of familiar-unfamiliar design which marked it as anthropogenic on an overt rendezvous trajectory.  An indicator overlay estimated four months to rendezvous.

“I was aware of the vessel earlier, but the computer assessed a less than twenty percent chance we were the intended destination until recently, when it made an adjustment maneuver that bumps the probability to over sixty-five percent.”

Nostrum grimaced.  “How many know about this?”

Thadinus ticked them off on his fingers.  “Twenty-fifth, of course.  Twenty-first through twenty-third.  The twentieth will know soon if they haven’t realized already.  By the time they’re a month out, the nineteenth will probably know, and the eighteenth might detect them, too.”

“No idea what they want?” Lacria asked.

Thadinus shook his head.  “We’ve received no recognizable transmissions or communications from either of the approaching objects.”

Nostrum pressed the cool metal of his pen to his forehead.  “This could end the city.”

Despite her frown, Lacria folded her arms.  “Maybe that’s for the best.”

With a snap, Nostrum jabbed at her with his pen.  “For the best?  That’d be the ruination of almost three centuries of effort!”

“Effort to what end?” Lacria snapped.  “Another dozen generations living with purges and assassinations to keep the population in check and the society from advancing beyond what’s ascribed to a given floor?”

Thadinus held up a hand.  “The original architects – “

“Are dead!  None of us are anthropologists.”  Lacria shook her head.  “Besides, there’s nothing we can do about either of these problems, is there?”

Thadinus’s head drooped.  “There is not,” he affirmed.  “Or at least, very little.”

Nostrum closed his eyes.  Lacria nodded sharply.  “Was there anything else?”  Nostrum didn’t answer; Thadinus shook his head slowly.  “In that case, I’ll see you around the centuries.”  Turning on her heel, she stomped back to the elevator and let it whisk her down through the city’s eras.

If Nostrum was forced to choose a favorite floor, it was probably the fifteenth.  The city of the fifteenth floor rose above the layers upon which it was built, flourishing with intricate gardens, gorgeous paintings, splendid sculptures, and evocative poetry.  It escaped both the poor, desperate edge of lower floors and the ceaseless, almost frantic energy of the higher ones.  He sat in an outdoor café serving orange blossom tea and rosewater biscuits – he avoided the ones laced with opium – and listened to a man strumming a buzuq beneath a colorful awning.  His jacket hung from the seatback, and a notebook sat on the table in front of him, its bright white page reflecting the artificial sunlight.

A few sentences in tight, neat cursive filled out the top of the page, but Nostrum’s eyes were closed, he was leaned back in the chair, and his grip on the pen was loose.  The picture of an anachronism in repose, from the pen in his hand up the creased sleeve of the starched, crisp, white, button-down, cotton shirt.  A hand tentatively tugged on that sleeve, and Nostrum’s eyes snapped open as he shot to his feet.

The boy who’d tugged leapt back, and when Nostrum’s heart settled back into his chest, he bent down to look at him.  “My apologies, young man.  You startled me.”

“Are you the Storyteller?”

Nostrum walked his pen through his fingers, the metal barrel flashing.  “So some call me.”

“Can you come with me?  Mother said to bring you if we saw you.  It’s important.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”  However, Nostrum saw little harm in humoring the boy, and allowed himself to be tugged by the sleeve down the street after snapping his notebook shut and leaving a few coins in the local currency on the café table.  “What’s your name?  And who’s your mother who makes requests of the Storyteller?”

“I’m Athalah.  Thuri’s my mom.”

Nostrum missed a step and nearly tripped over a gap in the stone walkway.  When he recovered, he began striding along such that Athalah almost fell behind, dodging the carts of grain and the colorful fabrics hanging between the rectangular adobe facades.  Athalah ran into a doorway ahead of him, and Nostrum strode through without slowing.

“Mom, I found – “

“You know you can’t expect to just summon me and I appear, Thuri.  I told you that often enough.”

“ – the Storyteller,” Athalah finished.

It was cool and dim inside the low-ceiling room, and Nostrum blinked as his eyes adjusted.  It smelled of warm bread, olive oil, and za’atar.  Thuri dusted flour from her hands and folded her arms as she turned to regard Nostrum.  When Athalah closed the door, she blinked.  “Huh.  So, you’re mortal after all.”

“What?”

Thuri stepped across the room and touched the receding hair at Nostrum’s temples.  “I was never quite sure, you know, no matter what you claimed.”

Nostrum snatched her hand down and pulled back from her.  “You can’t just ask for me and expect me to appear.”

“You think I’d ask for you if it weren’t important?  After almost twenty years?”

Nostrum hesitated.  “When you put it that way…”

Thuri sighed.  “It’s the horizon.”

They were alone outside the city, standing before the wall and the elaborate artistry which conveyed the illusion of a horizon to the inhabitants of each level.  It was convincing from within the city walls, and few people left if they could avoid it.  That way, though they knew their world was decidedly finite, it was easier to forget.  Hence the problem with the smudge now marring that illusion.

Nostrum gazed up at it and cast around the barren surroundings.  “What happened?”

“Kamedid was testing some contraption.”  Thuri shrugged.  “What I want to know is why it hasn’t already been repaired.”

“Just an oversight, I’m sure.”  Perhaps Nostrum’s response was a tad too quick.  “I’ll take care of it.”

A minor issue, easily corrected by the repairers, but Nostrum should not have needed to direct them.  People on the fifteenth floor were more likely to spend a week or two debating the implications of the change than to behave drastically, but the same could not be said for every level.  Furthermore, Kamedid should not have been testing technology capable of damaging the horizon, even with a smudge like that; it was beyond the fifteenth’s designated level of technological development.

Nostrum spent the afternoon walking through the city market, asking questions about Kamedid.

“Kamedid?  Every time I think he’s completely cracked, he pulls off something brilliant.  Splendid mind, if scattered.”

“I couldn’t carry the bucket without spilling half of it, so he made this for me.”

“Kamedid…weren’t he the one that built that lifter thing, so we don’t have to cart all them bricks by hand?”

  “That scatterbrained fool owes me four darics!”

After an evening meal with Thuri and Athalah, Nostrum took the elevator to the planetarium.  Before the doors fully opened, he strode out, calling to the center of the room.  “Thadinus, there’s a problem on the fifteenth.”

Thadinus rotated his chair to face Nostrum.  “What manner of problem?  I noticed you directing repairers there.”

“His name is Kamedid, and we need to – wait, is there a problem with the repairers that a couple can’t be spared to repair the horizon?”

“I’ve pulled all but a minimum complement to support preparations, and we’re too far from the nearest asteroid to make a resource stop.”  Thadinus scrubbed his face, which was stained by four days of stubble.  “We finally received a message from the Earth vessel, and it’s…concerning.”

Nostrum stopped.  “Concerning how?”

Thadinus shook his head.  “Maybe I read into it, or perhaps connotations have changed since the last correspondence, but the integrity of the longitudinal study may be the least of our concerns.”

Nostrum flicked his pen through the air like a conductor’s wand, summoning a transcription of the message.  His brows rose, and he cursed softly.  “Do you need help?”

“I’m making what preparations I can.  Limit your reliance on the bots, but otherwise there isn’t much you could do.”

“Alright.”  Nostrum rolled his shoulders back and grimaced.  “If that changes, let me know.  I’ll take care of Kamedid.”

When Lacria opened her eyes, the woman was still on the ground, the man was still looming over her, and everyone else was watching or hurrying away from the altercation.  The heat she felt did not come from the residual radiation emanating from the stones, nor from the thick, dark clothing she wore to match the women’s attire on the fifteenth floor.  Her hands shook, and her heart beat too fast in her chest – until she moved.  Not away, not to the side, but to where she wasn’t supposed to go.

A wild kick missed the woman on the ground as Lacria’s precise sweep buckled the man’s supporting knee and tumbled him in a heavy heap on the stones.  Lacria completed the compact motion which was developed into an artform on higher floors before she extended a hand to the woman.  “You should go.”

“Go where?  I don’t – “ the woman’s eyes widened, and Lacria yanked her aside before the man surged back to his feet and charged both of them.  Lacria dodged; she had to yank the woman aside.

“This way.  Come on.”  Practically towing the woman behind her, Lacria ducked down an alleyway, passed through a doorway which looked like a dead end but which she knew from the fourteenth level was actually an old, partially bricked up passageway, jogged through another, even darker alleyway, and then emerged, smoothing her clothes and tucking her hair back under her scarf, onto a major thoroughfare.  It was still dark, this being the fifteenth level, but dark in an ordinary neighborhood was a different, less fearsome kind of darkness.

The woman finally managed to yank her arm back from Lacria’s grip.  She took two steps back and stared around, panting, before she cast a glance at Lacria almost as frightened as she’d been before and took off running into the night.  Lacria started to call after her, but sighed and lowered her hand.

It was a quiet street at night.  Lacria was not surprised to stand alone on the street, save for the receding woman she’d sought to rescue, and a man in a brown suit jacket slipping out of a house at the end.

She blinked.  “Nostrum?”

After two quick steps in which he seemed to decide he couldn’t pretend he’d failed to hear her, Nostrum stopped and turned towards Lacria.  “Ah, Lacria.  I didn’t expect to see you here.  Don’t you prefer the lower levels?”

“I try to visit all the levels on a regular basis.”  She narrowed her eyes, taking in his discomfort and furtive attitude.  “What are you doing here?  Is this some kind of assignation?”

A confused series of expressions passed over Nostrum’s face.  He started to deny the accusation, then bit his tongue.  “Perspicacious of you.  Yes, something like that.”

Lacria shook her head.  “I don’t want to know.”

“I wasn’t planning on reciting the details for you.”  The squeaking of Nostrum’s leather shoes seemed loud in the desert night as he shifted from foot to foot.  “Shall we be going?  It’s rather late to be standing about in the middle of the street.”

“Yes, I suppose.”  Lacria sighed.  “Do you know why everyone is avoiding the eastern side of the city on this floor?  I’ve sought to make discrete inquiries, but no one wants to explain it clearly.”

Nostrum tapped his lips.  “Hm, I may know something about that, but this does not seem the place to discuss the matter.  We should be going.”

“Is it something – “

“Elsewhere,” Nostrum insisted, walking rapidly down the street. 

Lacria followed, pressing her lips together at his rude interruption.  She paused in her tracks.  “Why are you so insistent we get off this street?”

“Insistent?”  Nostrum forced a chuckle.  “I’m not being insistent, I just think it’s rather more reasonable to have a conversation somewhere other than – “

Whoomph.

Behind them, the home from which Nostrum had come burst into flames, which rushed from every opening in a colossal exhalation before settling down to a steady flicker and ominous glow.  Lacria jumped and whirled on Nostrum.  “What did you do?”

Nostrum winced, but he did not appear apologetic.  “What must be done.”

Lacria glowered.  “What must be done?  Who was it?  Well?”  Nostrum didn’t answer.  “Is this what you do, go around assassinating people to keep the floors from advancing beyond their assigned era?  Does Thadinus know?”

Nostrum stepped back into the shadows as people rushed from their own homes to quench the fire, and Lacria followed him.  When she paused for breath in her rant of rhetorical questions and accusations, he held up a hand.  “He’s not dead.  I imagine he’ll reach the elevator within the hour.”

Lacria’s glare didn’t soften, but she swallowed what she’d been about to say.  “If he hadn’t agreed to leave?  No, don’t answer that.  I don’t think I want to know what’s been done in the name of preserving the integrity of this ‘study.’”  She stepped closer to Nostrum.  “It won’t last forever.  Nothing can.”

Nostrum brushed past her and began walking towards the city’s edge and the elevator.  “The story’s not finished yet.”

It was not far from the planetarium to the twenty-fifth floor, nor a difficult journey.  Still, it was laborious for Thadinus as he sat in his chair in the elevator.  He’d not descended to any level of the city in almost ten years, and he felt unprepared when the elevator door opened to bright, artificial sunlight reflecting off a city which ran right to the level’s walls.  The illusion was ruined upon such close inspection, but everyone on this floor knew the truth of their strange existence.  The mayor and a small delegation awaited him.

“Welcome, Shipmaster Thadinus.  We’ve prepared a suite for your stay.  What news of the Earth vessel?”

“More demands, more promises which sound like threats.  Nothing revelatory and nothing useful.”  Thadinus wheeled his chair down the ramp out of the elevator, and the delegation fell in about him.  “As for the interstellar object, it remains inert to all the sensors and devices we can point at it.”

The mayor nodded.  “Our people are standing by to support your efforts, Shipmaster.”

Thadinus grimaced, but he did not deny the title as he usually would.  There wasn’t supposed to be a shipmaster, but of those who knew, and who did not live in one level of city, someone was inevitably the leader.  That was him, and he wished he could return to the times when it didn’t matter.

In his suite, Thadinus waited in the sitting room while the mayor’s assistants prepared refreshments, and various specialists trickled in for their meeting.  A sharp, young troubleshooting and testing engineer recommended by the city’s chief engineer; the principle investigator for the astronomy and astrophysics team responsible for monitoring the two approaching objects; a middle-aged analyst from the information office; the lead strategist for the civic order directorate.  They joined the mayor and Thadinus in the sitting room, introducing themselves to him, but he did not remember their names or faces.  He’d corresponded with some of them before, but he kept a distance from them in his mind.

“Our assessment might be more relevant if you gave us more access to the ship’s logs from the twenty-fourth.”  The information analyst stated this without a tone of complaint, like it was simply a statement of fact, though Thadinus knew the same request had been elevated to him at least ten times since he’d requested the office’s support.  “My team views them as likely being the most comparable in culture and technology to the approaching Earth-craft.”

“Not in technology.  At least, not their actual technical knowledge.  They might have a comparable level of technology, but they’ve forgotten most of how it works or how to recreate it.”  Thadinus waved his hand to pull up a projection before remembering he wasn’t in the planetarium.  “There is one main thing which the twenty-fourth may be able to offer us, and it’s part of what I wished to discuss with you all.”

The analyst gave him a sharp glance.  “You mean weapons.”  At his surprised look, she folded her arms.  “It seems obvious.”

“How do their weapons help us?” the lead strategist asked.

Thadinus sighed.  “Please do not share this information beyond this room.  The twenty-fourth floor has the smallest population of any level on the ship as a result of over four decades of near-continuous internecine warfare.  On three separate occasions, their conflict required robotic intervention to avert or repair damage to infrastructure and support systems which affect more than their own level.”

“I’d ask how that evolved, but I think the more relevant question is why does it matter?” the mayor asked.

“The point is that this Earth vessel is unlikely to respect our arrangement, and we may need to give at least an appearance of defensive capability,” Thadinus said.  “I need volunteers to join some of my agents in visiting the twenty-fourth floor and retrieving relevant weaponry and other equipment.”

Silence.

Shock.

A tremulous response from the chief engineer.  “Volunteers to…leave the level?”

“Temporarily, for a brief mission.”  Thadinus remained uncertain this was the right decision, but he pressed ahead, regardless.  “One of my agents with experience on all levels will lead the team.”  He cleared his throat.  “This is by no means the only course of action we are pursuing.  Most of our work will be on other matters to prepare.  This is just…hedging our bets.  Giving ourselves options.”

He steered the conversation to stabler topics, like robotics and astrophysics.  The interstellar object, whatever it was and whoever built it, remained on its course, and Thadinus would rather have placed all his focus there.  He hoped he would have the opportunity to do so in the future.

Lacria gazed up at the elevator ceiling, surrounded by nervous officers of the twenty-fifth floor’s civic order directorate, and wondered how Thadinus talked her into this boondoggle.

“Please, Lacria, I need you to do this.  There isn’t anyone else,” he’d said.

“What about Nostrum?”

“He said no,” Thadinus admitted.  “Besides, he almost never visits the twenty-fourth.  He would stand out too much.”

That was certainly true, but Lacria still frowned.  “I don’t visit it often, either.  Not as often as I should, less than the other industrialized floors.”

Thadinus gave her a serious look.  “But you do visit it.”

“Well, yes.  I…thought it was part of my role.”  It was obvious to her by now that her ‘role’ had few real requirements or responsibilities.  Except now, when Thadinus needed something from her.  “This is not a good idea.”

“I know.”  Thadinus bowed his head.  “I know, but we must have options before the Earth visitors arrive.  Not that I intend to use them, but they will believe I would.  Their messages remind me of some histories I’ve read, and also of what’s reported from the twenty-fourth.”

Lacria chewed her lip.  “I didn’t mean it’s a bad idea to have weapons to defend the ship.  I meant that allowing this degree of transit between levels sets a dangerous precedent…and the twenty-fourth is dangerous.  Unpredictably dangerous in a way I don’t think you quite internalize.”

Thadinus met her eyes.  “That’s why it has to be you.”

In the present, the elevator stopped and a display indicated they’d reached the twenty-fourth floor.  Lacria adjusted her mask and pressed a button behind her ear.  “Comms check.  All units, report status.”

After the requisite readiness chorus, Lacria checked the vicinity around the elevator and, assured it was clear, triggered the door to open.  Her mask engaged immediately, but a faint, sulfuric spiciness still reached the back of her throat and reddened her eyes.  Her boots crunched on dirty, glassy sand and debris, and the light spilling from the elevator door behind her seemed too clean compared to the wan artificial sunlight filtering through the permanent, jaundiced haze.

Her team filed out of the elevator behind her, shuffling, coughing, and glancing back over their shoulders as the elevator door closed, disappearing into the rest of the wall and its illusory scene.  They presented a mix of discombobulation, hyper-vigilance, and incomprehension, which all manifested on the twenty-fourth floor as unpreparedness.  Lacria almost wished she’d come alone to fulfill Thadinus’ mission.

“Tighten up, everyone,” she directed.  “Keep a loose perimeter, and everyone keep your eyes moving.  Remember the cover story, and stay together.”

They shuffled into a loose formation around her, and she began marching across the desolate landscape.  Twisted metal grew from ruined stone like nightmarish interpretations of industrialized flora, and the still air amplified the pervasive sense of unease.  After walking for almost an hour, they reached a camp.

Their locations and natures varied, but this was civilization such as existed in the shattered remnants of the twenty-fourth floor for as long as Lacria knew it.  A ramshackle watch tower, haphazard ditches and walls, dirty shreds of synthetic fabric strung between broken machinery.  Tribal groups – not that they thought of themselves that way, but they seemed so to Lacria – scratching survival from the ruins, shuffling about on meagerer rations than the second floor afforded the worst hunter.

A crack of a weapon sparked on the stone to Lacria’s right, and a voice crackled over the common frequency.  “Declare yourself, strangers!”

Two of Lacria’s party cowered behind her, while the others gripped their makeshift weapons too tightly.  Lacria took one step closer.  “I come for trade, not war.”

“What have you to trade?”

Lacria held up a clean pouch which seemed out of place in its present environs.  “Food.”

Food for weapons.  They traded with three separate camps before returning to the elevator with only minor incidents.  The second camp tried to hold them up for the rest of their food supplies, but Lacria shattered a man’s elbow when he tackled her, and fast talking, faster weapons, and fastest walking away got them out before it turned into a real firefight.  In Lacria’s experience, that was the best outcome she could have hoped for going into Thadinus’ mission.

It left the rest of her team from the twenty-fifth shaking, barely able to complete their trades at the third camp, and two vomited in the elevator on the way back to the twenty-fifth.  She let them off, then took the weapons up to the planetarium and turned them over to Thadinus for his preparations.  He sat in his chair, displays dancing around him, and Lacria was relieved by the deepening of his worry lines when she presented the fruits of his scheme.

“The rest of the team…?” he asked.

“No significant injures.  I directed observations at them for the next few months, but I doubt any of them will want to leave their level again.”  Lacria’s lips twisted.  “They probably think every level of the ship but theirs is like the twenty-fourth.”

“It is not a pleasant place.”  Thadinus gazed at Lacria for a long moment.  “I noticed something interesting, though.”

Lacria paused.  “Oh?”

“In the years since you learnt the truth, you’ve spent more time on the twenty-fourth floor than the twenty-second, the twenty-third, or the twenty-fifth.”

Their eyes caught.  “Is that a problem?” Lacria asked.

Thadinus shook his head, not breaking eye contact.  “Just interesting.”

She nodded stiffly, then spun away from Thadinus.  “I’ll be on the sixth, I think, if you need me.”  The elevator doors closed behind her, and both she and Thadinus were left alone.

If Nostrum were to write about the present moment, he might describe it as the first time in centuries the city in all its historied layers became a port city instead of the space-locked desert as it was built.  He was not writing, though, as he waited on the other side of the airlock in his best three-piece suit, with a golden pocket watch sparkling in the harsh, industrial lighting, a bowtie adorned with the constellations on his neck, his hair combed back, and his pen peeking out of his pocket.  Outside, the Earth vessel, long barely more than a moving mote of light, enlarged itself with its gradual approach.  There was no standard docking interface, but a conformal tube provided passage from the vessel to the outer airlock door.  Once a seal was confirmed, Thadinus triggered the unlocking sequence, and Nostrum watched through the viewport as figures in bulky, armored spacesuits transited down the tube.

When it finished cycling and they marched into the ship, Nostrum noted how they stared around at the sleek surfaces: surprised, and covetous.  He smiled and offered them a flourish and a shallow bow.  “Welcome to my city, travelers.  It’s been a very long time since we’ve had any visitors.  What brings you out this way?”

The woman in front, appearing only a little less bulky now that her spacesuit hung in the airlock, touched her left hip with her right hand in a strange salute.  “Thank you for welcoming us, sir.  I’m Lieutenant Colonel Marala, here on behalf of the Combined Unified Recovery Effort for the Reformation State.”

Nostrum pieced it together in his head.  “CURERS?  Clever, clever.  My name’s Nostrum.  We’re not in need of any recovery efforts here, curative or otherwise, though we appreciate the effort you’ve put in to get out this far.”

“The effort encompasses all humanity, sir.  We all have to work together to restore what was lost because of the war.”

“We weren’t part of the war.”  Nostrum could imagine what it must have been like – he’d been to the twenty-fourth twice, though he avoided it thereafter.

Marala nodded.  “We thought as much.  You are all the more needed, now.”

“I’m certain we can come to some kind of arrangement.”  Nostrum gestured towards the elevator.  “For now, if you would care to come with me?  I think it would be helpful if I showed you what our project here is all about.”

The planetarium was dark and deserted when the elevator stopped to allow Nostrum and his visitors to disembark; Thadinus was on the twenty-fifth, and Nostrum didn’t know where Lacria was staying.  Marala and her team looked around at the empty dome in some confusion, which was not much alleviated when Nostrum began pulling up various displays.  A few showed curated views of the various levels – recordings, in most cases, made to look like real-time feeds – but most showed the background material on the program from its inception: planning documents, proposals, update briefs, concepts of operations.

“Our project here, ladies and gentlemen, is to study the evolution of human society through the curation of temporal layers of a single city.”  Nostrum flourished his hands, conducting the displays into varying prominences.  “The people on each level live in isolation, most of them entirely unaware of the other levels and associated time periods of the city which fill the ship.  It is an opportunity for archeologists to study in real time what on Earth they can only observe retrospectively.  Humanity’s oldest cities, like Jericho and Aleppo, are built upon layers of history, a kind of metropolitan strata…”

“Why?” Marala cut Nostrum off as the Storyteller warmed to his subject.  She peered at the video projections of the lower levels and followed the progression of civilization through to the twenty-fifth floor.  “Why on Earth would anyone do something like this?  Were our ancestors with the ability to build a ship like this so callous and stupid?”

Nostrum coughed.  “What?  It’s an incredible accomplishment.”

“It’s incredibly wasteful.  Not to mention cruel to the people forced to live in fake little dioramas.”

“To be fair, this is just one of several contemporaneous vessels which were made along various themes.  Other projects had different objectives, though I cannot say how they are doing after all this time; we do not keep in contact with them.”

Marala grimaced.  “We identified one derelict of similar external configuration, but it was stripped of useful resources before we arrived.  The first such vessel we actually visited refused all contact and fired upon us when we sought to approach.  So yours is the first we’ve been successful in visiting.”

Nostrum cleared his throat.  “Well, I cannot speak for my ancestors who initiated and built this place, but I can tell you of what it has become and what it is today.  I am called the Storyteller, and I travel between the levels, observing, documenting, and understanding them for the fulfillment of the project.”

“Right.”  Marala glanced at her team.  “By authority of the Reformation State, Recovery Effort order number four, section A, subsection five, this vessel, its personnel, and its contents are enlisted in the recovery effort for the human race.  If this ship has the ability, begin heading towards Earth.  If not, tugs will be sent to move the vessel, and transports will begin shuttling critical personnel for processing and participation in the recovery effort.”

Nostrum sighed.  With a slash of his hand, the displays vanished, plunging the planetarium into semidarkness.  “I guess Thadinus was right.  No ‘new birth of freedom’ after your civilization-destroying war, just more of the same.  You intend to impose your will on this ship and its occupants?”

Marala folded her arms.  “I don’t intend to.  I will.  Or do you think some primitives on horseback who don’t know they’re living on a single level of spaceship are going to stop me?  This is not conquest.  I have a mandate from the Reformation State to act on behalf of the whole human species.”

“It’s funny.  Out of twenty-five levels on this ship and through its centuries of operation, only one has devolved into complete civilizational collapse.  Whereas Earth has suffered complete civilizational collapses which required centuries of recovery on at least dozens of occasions.  Some civilizations never recovered.  Yet here, where one would think conflict would be fiercer due to the imposed constraints, only the twenty-fourth floor experienced true collapse.”

“Are you going to work with us, or are we doing this the hard way?” Marala asked.

Nostrum stepped back and sat down in one of the chairs.  “Marala, I think you’ve focused on the wrong things and forgotten something rather important.  Yes, each level of this ship has a different technological and civilizational baseline.  The lower levels are shockingly primitive at times, it’s true.  But, this ship has twenty-five levels.  They’re not evenly divided chronologically, but the twenty-fifth level is something close to the real twenty-fifth century, or even beyond it.  Do you think they’ll be helpless against your scavenged tools and technological scraps?  Your craft – and I applaud your courage in coming out so far in it – looked like cobbled together twenty-second century equivalent technology.  Your weapons aren’t much better.”  The elevator opened, and armed maintenance robots scuttled into the planetarium; Nostrum kept his discomfort from his face and voice.  “Now, we are prepared to share knowledge.  We are prepared to have a conversation.  There may even be some people from the higher floors who are willing to go with you.  But shall we now negotiate in better faith, without you thinking you can threaten us into compliance with your tyrannical whims?”

Marala fought to resist clenching her fists and gritting her teeth as she stood in a brightly lit receiving room on the twenty-fifth floor.  Her address – her plea – was finished, and the audience was dispersing with much shaking of heads and murmured expressions of sympathy.  One elderly man came up to her and patted her hand.  “You’ve been very brave, young woman.  I’m sure you’ll be back on the right track soon enough, as the old saying goes.  Terrible business, war.  I’m sure our scientists and other bright folks will share what they know, give you a leg up, as it were.”

Most were like that; none volunteered to accompany her back to Earth.  Nor could she rightly blame them, looking through the window at their bright, safe city, stretching from horizon wall to horizon wall.  Her attempts to elicit solidarity with the broader human species, or a connection with their ancestral planet, fell flat on ears which had heard only third-hand accounts of Earth from their great grandparents.

Having observed this and Marala’s nine previous presentations from the back of the room, Nostrum strolled up to join Marala by the podium, hands in his pockets so his anachronistic jacket bunched a bit around the waist.  “Well, I’m sorry you’re not getting any recruits, but you’ll be glad to know my team finished loading the curated database onto your spacecraft.  I suspect that will be more helpful than any number of personnel.”

“There’s no need to pretend, Nostrum.  This is exactly the outcome you wanted.”  Marala shook her head.  “It does surprise me a little that not one person on any of the floors you’ve allowed me to address would want to leave.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re all stuck in here!”  Marala waved vaguely at the horizon walls and down through the floors.  “Your population is tightly controlled, childbirth is policed by the government, no one can go anywhere, and the people you’ve had me talking to know they’re living in an artificially constrained box.”

Nostrum raised his brows.  “They’ve never known any other way.  I suppose they don’t know to desire the things you desire, just as you can’t understand why they do desire the things you would never allow them.”

“What if I visited the lower floors?  Those populations might be more receptive…”

“Out of the question.”  Nostrum’s response was the same as it had been the last six times Marala asked.

Marala exhaled.  “Fine.  I guess we’ll be leaving soon, then.  Not much point in sticking around and talking until I’m blue in the face without accomplishing a damn thing.”

She stomped away from Nostrum, making her way towards the rooms allotted to her and her team.  When the door opened, she stopped and put a hand on the empty holster for the weapon she wasn’t allowed to carry onto the ship, for a strange woman stood inside her room.

“Who the rad are you, and what are you doing here?”

The woman did not look away from the window.  “Close the door, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Answer my questions.”

“Not until you close the door.”

Reluctantly, Marala stepped over the threshold.  Her team spread out beside her, and she allowed the door to close.  When it did, a flicker ran through the room’s electronics, and the woman finally turned from the window.  Her attire matched other citizens’ of the twenty-fifth, but her hands were more calloused, her face tanned, and a brightly colored scarf of a cruder weave wrapped decoratively around her neck.  “The glitch won’t last long, so I will be brief.  My name is Lacria, and I am one of the people who can travel between levels.”

“Nostrum didn’t mention…”

“Nostrum doesn’t want me involved in this.  I think he thinks I’ll betray the entire project to your team.”

Marala sat down and raised her brows.  “Then I take it you won’t be doing that?”

“No.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

“Because I’d like to make you an offer.”  Lacria checked the time.  “Not everyone – on any level – is as content as Nostrum has doubtless made them seem.  He’s been curating your audiences.”

Marala snorted.  “I figured that out after the second session.”

“I can communicate your offer to people who would be interested in it.  I make no promises on how many would accept, but it wouldn’t be none.  If, that is, you can arrange for transport.”

“I…might be able to do that.”  It would be difficult, but depending on what Lacria was offering, Marala thought her superiors would consider it worthwhile.  “It would take time.  A couple of years.  And I’m not taking just anyone – they’d need to be people worth the effort.”

“Like the critical thinkers and the most curious people in this bloated experiment?  The dreamers who can imagine something beyond their finite horizons and long for the change that’s never allowed?  People who think beyond the limits of their assigned time period?”  Lacria leaned in, looming a bit over Marala.  “They’re worth the effort.”

Marala wanted to accept on the spot, but she hesitated.  “I have one question.  What do you get out of this?  Do you intend to be one of the people who leaves?”

“Me?”  Marala didn’t think Lacria’s surprise at the suggestion was feigned.  “No, I won’t be joining you.  For all its flaws, and all the issues I have with it, this is my home.  I can’t abandon it so easily.”

“Then what?”

Lacria stepped back and glanced again at the time.  She shook her head.  “It’s not for me, Lieutenant Colonel.  It’s for the people who will go with you.  I think they should have the chance.  That’s all.”  Another glance at the time.  “I have to go.  Do you agree?”

“I – yes.  Yes, I’ll make it happen.”

“Thank you.”  Lacria slipped out the door and disappeared down the corridor.

Marala took a deep breath, held it, and let it out in a rush.  “I guess this trip wasn’t entirely a waste of time, after all.”

They were queued up on the planetarium level, watching the approaching transport vessel, the cosmos outside the ship, or simply staring at the gleaming metal surfaces and shining displays.  Almost two hundred people stood like a core sample from the ship’s artificial strata, wearing the clothes and enacting the customs of each century.  There was at least one from every level, even the twenty-fourth.  Kamedid stood amongst them, clutching notebooks written on papyrus from the fourteenth floor, paper from the twenty-second, and an electronic version from the twenty-fifth.  Despite his nerves, he caught Lacria’s eyes from where she stood at a distance and managed a smile.

Lacria smiled back at him.  Nostrum was glaring at her, and Thadinus sat in his chair with his hands folded in his lap, his eyes downcast.  However, even Nostrum refrained from rehashing the arguments they’d had for almost two years yet again in this moment.

“Sure you don’t want to go with them?” Nostrum asked.

Lacria nodded.  “I’m certain.”

The transport ship docked.  Protocols were in place for pathogen management, passenger processing, and other requirements, but the group of voyagers began boarding the transport vessel in good order.  A few cast glances back, a few shed tears, but none turned back or changed their minds.  The time for those decisions was past.

“It feels like the beginning of the end,” Thadinus softly observed.

Nostrum folded his arms.  “The story’s not finished yet.”

“No, but it will change.  It will never be as it was.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Lacria asked.  “Perhaps it needed to change.”

“I would rather it didn’t,” Nostrum grumbled.  He looked down at his feet, then back up at the last passengers boarding the transport.  He exhaled, long and loud.  “Still, I guess it’s inevitable, as they say.  And a story’s no good if there aren’t stakes.  Consequences.”

Lacria waved as the transport airlock sealed.  She turned to her companions.  Thadinus smiled at her.  “These were worth it.”  She looked at Nostrum.  “Personally, I’d like to see where the story goes from here.”