Lumia

The sun was shining.

That wasn’t something Lumia got to say very often, as the world below Plato was always covered in shadows. She knew the numbers: 1,623 parts per million carbon dioxide, measured this morning, which had resulted in an average temperate increase of 8.14 degrees Celsius. However, numbers could never capture the sheer dreariness of a world without sunlight. Nor could pixels capture the beauty of a sun-kissed sky.

King’s College had a spacious yard nestled between its curved glass buildings. It was simple yet unbelievably dazzling. Grassy fields sloped down from its glassy confinements, rolling gently into a valley whose trough coalesced into a gravel path, all sloping and transforming so smoothly that the path was near hidden to the inattentive eye. The hills curved so perfectly that they seemed more natural than natural. Sunlight reflected off the buildings and dappled the field with a prismatic glow.

Dotting the hills were eleven fig trees. The enveloping warmth of Plato’s artificial summer brought fat figs to bear. Though they looked tempting, the students did not pluck them. Rather, birds of vibrant colour and song flittered between their leaves, singing their thanks for the ripe and abundant meal. Benches were inconspicuously nestled within the hills. From one location Lumia would see a bench and the students that it harboured, but from another it was hidden, the students sequestered within the hills and their voices muffled by the landscape. Every slope and tree offered their own paradise, such that the many students that sat upon the grass or lounging under a tree were tucked away from the world.

And there at the end, where the yard came to rest, was a sight that left Lumia gasping at its majesty. The great floating city ended abruptly, the dome climbing suddenly from its edge and far into the heavens. Beyond the dome were the pristine greys, blues, and golds of a cloudy sky. It was right up against the safety barrier that Lumia stood, gazing out onto a blanket of heaven in complete awe.

It would have been wonderful if her friends could enjoy the scenery with her. Instead, they sat under the shade of a fig tree, arguing.

“You have to be the most irresponsible, reckless, childish idiot that I have ever met!” shrieked Morgan.

“Wow, that’s a bit harsh,” Leo said dryly.

“Harsh? Do you want harsh? Then wait until the Principal decides to punish you. Wait until every student in school laughs in your face over how stupid you are!”

Leo waved a hand dismissively. “Look, all I did was tell the truth. If they wanted us to prepare a speech, they should stop playing games and just say so.”

“Do you not understand our situation?” Morgan wailed. “We are in Class Euripides. We should not have to be asked to prepare a speech.” She drew herself up and folded her arms. “In fact, when we were told that we were going onto stage, I took the initiative and prepared one.”

The birds are so fascinating, Lumia’s thoughts trailed off. There are so few on the surface. I would love to hold one and feel its feathers, or at least see one up close.

“Huh?” Tock chimed in. She was squatting at the base of the tree and sifted the dirt with a stick, gradually exposing one of the thick roots. “But you looked just as confused as everyone else.”

Morgan’s eyes popped wide. “No, I—I only wanted to see if anyone else had a speech prepared. Clearly that was not the case.”

I wonder how I can immortalise this moment. A poem to capture the beauty of King’s College—no, Plato. No, Earth itself!

“And what, let you bore the audience to death?” Leo said. “At least my speech was interesting. None of that pointless, formal stuff.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Alan snapped. He was slouching next to Leo on a bench, but now straightened up to speak. “Raphael told us how good her speech was in the test. I mean, I didn’t hear it because I was trapped, but he’s not going to lie to us.”

Morgan nodded with a smirk. “That is right. It was an inspiring speech. We would not have been able to pass if the students could not be convinced to work their hardest. Or would you have preferred that I leave everything to you?” She raised her eyebrows at Leo.

Perhaps a sonnet? No, too stuffy. Definitely not a haiku—I have far too much to say! It must be free verse. How else can I express such natural majesty but with a form that flows just as naturally? Okay, maybe a rhyme or two. Let’s keep some pairs together.

“Can we just let it go?” Tock said. “I really don’t want to think about it anymore.”

“No, we should not let it go,” Morgan snapped. “There is no guarantee that Leo will not repeat this action in the future. His behaviour today was appalling—definitely not the sort of attitude that a student of Class Euripides ought to be demonstrating.”

“Oh, that’s grand coming from you,” Leo scoffed. “Weren’t you the one that threw a fit last night because of a joke?”

Climbing up the sunlit towers.

Perched upon a ledge, I see

Hills and valleys with… fruit—no. Should it even be about food? Biological needs are too primitive a subject.

“Hey!” shouted Tock, leaping up. She circled around to stand in front of the bench and scowled at Leo. “That’s too much. You two might not like each other, but you don’t need to argue over everything.”

Leo threw a hand in Morgan’s direction. “Then tell her. She started it!”

Tock glanced back at Morgan, but the normally stuffy girl was frowning at her feet with her arms folded tight across her stomach. Tock whipped back to Leo. “Okay, I admit she was being a bit… whatever, last night. But that’s still no reason to treat her like this.”

“I can’t believe you said that,” Raphael muttered under his breath. In their isolated alcove under the shadow of the fig tree, there was little else to drown out his words. They could hear him clearly. “You just painted a target on our backs. We’re choked. We’re all choked.”

Ah, I think I have it! Lumia proclaimed. She mentally recited her completed poem.

Perched upon the sunlit tower.

Safe under the dome.

Valleys growing motley flower.

Furl my wings; I’m home.

Lumia recited the poem once more and considered. Maybe that’s a little too primitive. Oh, I know. I can write one about the students.

“We already had a target on our backs!” Leo shouted, now standing. “So how about we be a bit more realistic. The Educators are going to make our lives hard no matter what we do, so instead of rolling over and letting everything choke to death, we can fight back.”

No, let’s talk about the birds. Definitely the birds. Now maybe I can expand upon it by including more vivid imagery, such as—hm?

A dull buzzing sound circled around Lumia. She followed the noise and saw a furry yellow insect hovering around her. It took her a moment to connect virtual images and written descriptions with the creature, but when it happened Lumia let out an excited gasp.

She had never seen a bee before! Most of the world’s bee populations had gone extinct a century ago, their decline and disappearance coinciding with the progression of cloud cover and the decay of plant life. But this was a bee. An impossibly real bee.

Lumia wasn’t sure how, but seeing its laboured flight and its slow, wobbly motions, she was convinced the bee wanted to rest. She felt connected to it, as though both were overwhelmed by the day to day of being themselves, working tirelessly in a world that expected so much of them.

Gingerly, Lumia raised her hand, palm down. The little insect hovered about her, then came to a rest on Lumia’s hand. Her heart melted at the sight.

She must have been exhausted from a hard day’s work, Lumia figured. A work which was necessary to keep her hive and all of Plato’s flowers alive. She deserved a rest. Lumia smiled softly as the tiny creature flexed its wings and pulsed its… abdomen.

She had nearly forgotten; bees have stingers.

Stiffening up, Lumia’s voice caught in her throat. She tried to look over her shoulder to see if her friends noticed her plight, but she didn’t want to turn her head too much since it could scare the bee and make it sting. She didn’t want to speak too loudly either because that might do much the same.

So she spoke softly, “Help.” Her classmates kept arguing, completely oblivious. Lumia raised her voice, and squeaked, “Help!”

The shouting stopped. Lumia checked her hand to ensure she hadn’t startled the bee, and to her relief it was still patiently flexing its wings. Sighing, she cranked her head around to look at her friends. They all watched her with puzzled expressions.

Bee, Lumia mouthed. They didn’t understand. She rotated her arm carefully so that they could see. “There’s a bee,” she whispered loudly.

A grin stretched across Tock’s face. “Oh, that doesn’t surprise me!” she giggled. “The bee thinks you smell sweet, like a flower. That means you’ve been eating too much sugar.”

Lumia was too panicked to worry about Tock’s little implication, so she pocketed that information away as another shameful reminder of how bad her eating habits had become. “What do I do?”

“If you ignore it, it’ll fly away,” Raphael answered calmly.

“But what if it stings me first?”

“You’ll be fine. Besides, the pain is only temporary.”

Lumia glanced nervously at the bee, then back to her classmates. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” they answered in unison.

Taking a deep breath, Lumia relaxed and put her fears out of mind. It was, after all, a matter of the imagination. Plus, the consensus of her friends helped to forget how unpredictable the world was, along with all the dangers that it brought. If she considered the bee another creature doing its best to get by, just like her, she felt a sort of kinship with it. She had no reason to fear it.

Keeping her hand steady so as to accommodate her new friend, Lumia turned to watch the rolling clouds. It occurred to Lumia that her classmates had stopped arguing. Had her worries convinced them to put aside their problems? That gave her an idea.

“Can I ask you all something?” she said, peering over her shoulder. “Can we not fight today? I know things have been tough since we’re new to… this,” she said, inferring their place in Class Euripides. “And believe me, I know all too well what it’s like to be thrust into a situation that is both new and terrifying.”

She took a breath to slow the conversation down, to let them take in her words and connect with them. “But we’re going to be classmates—no, a familia—for many years now. And I’d like it to be years, not mere months. So can we forget our worries for today?”

Lumia spun quickly to face them front on, taking her bee friend in her flight. She beamed at her friends. “So can we all just try to get along—”

The gravel path beneath her feet trembled. A deep, long moan rumbled all around her, from the sky and the earth and all that was in between, like the dying breath of a whale. Then there was a deep, heart-thumping pulse. Her footing slipped. Lumia took a step to steady herself as the sound petered out. She spun to the Edge where she’d felt the trembling was most severe. The bee flew from her hand.

The clouds had vanished, blasted away in mere moments by the city’s weather modification systems. Lumia had to stare far into the distance, along the curvature of the planet, to see a hint of cloud. Slowly, her eyes shifted down. She wasn’t sure she believed what lay beneath her.

A crater lay at an angle before them, close to perfectly round just as Plato was. From their altitude, it was tiny. Grey dots speckled the land around it: the vestiges of human civilisation, utilitarian structures arrayed neatly. Beyond the settlements, the land was dead, all ochres and sepias as far as the eye could see that clashed hard with the cobalt sea to the west.

Lumia stared at Earth mesmerised. Living amongst a ruined city had been one thing. When she looked up as a child, she would see crumbling towers. When she looked around, she saw an infinitude of refuse. It was easy to forget what the world had lost when you were buried in the filth of its remains. But from their place in the heavens, where one could see over the walls and peer across mountains, the destruction that had befallen their world, the mistakes of humankind, was all too apparent. It was overwhelming.

Morgan strode up beside Lumia and stared at the emptiness below. Then Tock, followed by Alan then Raphael. Leo hung back a little, but eventually joined them. They watched in mournful silence. They weren’t the only ones.

Dozens of neat and black-garbed students emerged from their oases to line up along the barrier, to witness a truth that was hidden from them under clouded skies. Passing Educators paused their duties and joined their students, all humbled by a quintessence of the knowledge that they’d dedicated their careers to bestowing on others.

Morgan was the first to break the silence. “Hope. That is what the town was called long ago. It was the place where Plato was created, the vessel of the Ascension, and it stopped being that in 2187 CE when Plato lifted into the sky. It used to house humanity’s greatest science and technology, but was long ago swallowed up by the California Desert.”

They all knew this information. It was one of the first facts that was drilled into students’ heads when they began their tenure in the school system. It was one of the first morsels of knowledge that Lumia had been tested upon when she Ascended. However, nobody wanted to interrupt Morgan. For Lumia, it was almost necessary to hear it once more, to memorise this moral: fail, and the fate of Hope awaits the world.

“It used to be the Mojave Desert,” Tock added, her voice breaking slightly. “But everything kept drying up and the plants all died off. It spread everywhere on the American West coast. We renamed it to remind ourselves what happens if we fail. Now, Hope and all the cities that didn’t get buried underwater are dried up wastelands, with a few survivors hanging on for life each year. Every now and then, Plato touches ground with them to trade any resources they salvaged for food.”

Raphael shook his head. “But there isn’t much left to salvage. Our visits to this land are getting less frequent. Soon, we’ll stop visiting them entirely and they’ll have nothing left to eat.”

Forcing a smile on her face, Lumia turned to the others. “Then let’s not allow them to suffer. If we work our hardest, if we put our noses to the grinding wheel and study, we can make a difference. For all humankind.”

They stared back at her, stone-faced.