A splatter of rain on my skin, but it’s bright and sunny under the blue sky. And Jason’s there, and we almost kiss, but then everything changes and we’re at that party where we met because dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they’re never real. They’re never real, and I hate them because they aren’t.
4 ELDER
A CRANKING NOISE MAKES ME LIFT MY FACE UP TO THE broken window, where the glass has split evenly in two. Why am I not dead yet?
Glass doesn’t break like that, not in a perfectly straight line.
And… that’s not the black emptiness of space beyond the glass.
That’s metal. A metal ceiling behind the window?
The two halves of the window slide down, down, and the stars go with them. But that’s… impossible. The stars are supposed to stay in place, not move with the window.
Wait… it’s… it’s not a window. It’s, well, I’m not sure what it is. The Great Room’s ceiling is domed, and the metal covering has folded up along the edge of the room at about chest height. The window — the thing I thought was a window — is really two halves of a giant glass and metal screen sprinkled with sparkling lights, held up by hydraulic arms that hiss and moan at me. The two folded halves rest on either side of the domed room at about shoulder height, and behind them is the real ceiling of the Keeper Level, more metal. More blank, empty, starless metal.
The stars, the beautiful shining stars, aren’t stars at all. It’s just glass and lightbulbs made to twinkle like stars. Fake stars on a screen sandwiched between two metal ceilings.
Why?
I reach up to touch the half of the universe that’s closest to me. The tiny bulbs aren’t quite hot to the touch, but warm enough to make me snatch my fingers away. The straggling remains of a spiderweb stretch from the base of a star-bulb to a tiny metal plaque on the bottom of the pane.