Next day was hot. There’s a shocker.

Ever since the company started taking down the chillers from the main complex, there were not enough air conditioners to cool the living dorms sufficiently and basic ventilation systems just weren’t doing enough against the rising daily temperatures. The latest bad news was the cooling systems in the dorms were being scavenged for spare parts to keep the offices and executive living quarters up to speed. They tried to deny the fact, but you couldn’t hide the maintenance guys ripping pipes, wires, and compressors out every five hundred feet. The real question was why were they stripping our resources if they had everything under control up there?

Mayan believed it was only going to get hotter. Earth wasn’t doing so great and the sky cities were expanding. Filthy fuckers just kept building. Covering the skies, repeating time and again the mistakes that’d sent them up there.

And created the shitpit I lived in down here.

“Hey!’

I turned in time to see Mayan bounce up the hallway, fresh as a breeze we haven’t had since last year.

“Hey,” I replied with a grin. I’d slept after she’d left, finally. Now I felt a little more like myself.

Mayan wordlessly fell into step beside me as we shimmied and hopped our way through the ever thickening traffic of bodies that now occupied hallways that fed the stations. The lifts and trams departed from a central hub, using compressed air and electricity to ferry workers across the complex. It was a “green” line solution. At least that’s what the posters and propaganda lining the tiled platform corridors claimed. At one time, it might’ve all been shiny and new, but that was ages ago. Now, It was dingy and caked with dirt. The lights flickered with filthy, faded screens that gave them sickly blue-green hues, ever-present dust covered once shiny white tiles.

As the crowd reached the open platform, the people spread out and we breathed easier. It was hot here too and being mashed together with so many other bodies was not pleasant.

“When can we talk about the map?” Mayan leaned closer to whisper in my ear.

A tram car whooshed in, appearing nearly out of nowhere, and near silent. It slowed to a stop. I always admired the sleek lines of the design; white, tubular aluminum bodies of the passenger cars, with bright blue stripes and the red lettering ‘Skyway Refineries-Phoenix’. The cars had enormous bulbous windows and were standing room only. All mucked up with reddish-brown dirt now.

When it came to a full stop was the moment I relished most. A blast of cool air burst from the small gap between the car and the platform. I wasn’t the only one that hung over it for the milliseconds of relief to get the metallic, grease smelling breeze it provided.

“Welcome. Skyway Refineries wishes you a pleasant day. Mind the automatic doors, please!”

The tinny, cheerful voice chimed as the hundreds of workers crammed into the compartments. Same as every day, it grated my nerves. I moved aside so Mayan went in first, and followed her to a corner so she could lean against the wall while I held a grip that hung from the ceiling.

She looked side-to-side, but pouted a little to have to wait to bring it up again.

It’s not that I hadn’t been thinking of her map. It was undoubtedly cool, but it just wasn’t something a Junker could get excited about. I humoured Mayan and her side quests often enough because most of all, she was nice and smart, and because she was a genuinely fun person. Constantly smacking down her ideas of a better life, or adventure, fortune and fame, was getting tiresome, even for me. I didn’t mind being her side-kick most days, but it wasn’t always in my own best interests.

“Ideas?” I asked, not willing to commit to anything. She shrugged. My shoulders sagged. “I can’t miss another shift, Mayan,” I warned, knowing the gleam in her eyes was suggesting we play hooky. Again.

“I know,” she groaned and looked to her feet. When her face lifted again, she was grinning mischievously.

“Then it has to wait till after,” I told her firmly.

She nodded with a surrendering shrug.

The tram whooshed along, near silently, save for the chatter of the workers. Convo’s of this and that—family problems, supply complaints, living standards, gripe and illness— floated to our ears. I sighed involuntarily. It was a crushing existence, even if, like most people in the car, you were resolved to it.

Mayan was not oblivious. And weirdly, she knew I wasn’t either, even though I had no explanation for my higher awareness of having been born at the Phoenix Complex. Generations of workers, descendants of the originally contracted—aka fairly compensated workers were born here, and every generation since found the ‘compensation’ aspect dwindling. Once workers earned a fair wage and time away for vacations, now they worked for food, lodging, and to generally stay alive. Even our clothing was company issued. We had nothing, gained nothing, and therefore could never leave. Mayan called us ‘tenant workers’. I just didn’t bother and openly accepted the description of ‘slave’. But the cities in the sky…

It’s not that I would lose my job if I missed a shift. The company needed me to work. But if I failed to show up, or didn’t do a decent job and reliably so, they could demote me. Seeing as I was only a level three loader, one level above the guy that dug through the raw scrap with bare hands looking for small pieces of precious metals, the thought of losing my rig and the solitude of its cage and quadrant sounded worse than anything.

Mayan stayed quiet for the remainder of the trip. Four stations down, I moved to disembark, but she followed. I waited until the platform was empty to question it, but she beat me to it.

With a raised hand, she shut her eyes but spoke first; “I know what you’re going to say ‘fool’s hope’.”

I folded my arms and shrugged in agreement. She’d covered it pretty nicely.

“But what if I told you the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ was a top secret project the Unified was working on, and—” she said and placed her hand to my mouth to stop me from interrupting, “my father worked on it?”

The digi clock on the wall told me I had exactly three minutes to show up and scan into my rig. I sighed.

“I went through his stuff last night, after I left your place,” she went on, but at least was talking fast. “I found something. Lots of somethings. Meet me at your hanger after shift. You won’t be disappointed.” Before I could answer, she lifted on tip toes and pecked my cheek, but spun to sprint in the opposite direction towards her workstation.

“Low blow, Mayan!” I hollered.

She lifted a hand and waved, but didn’t look back.