Rob Bignell returned to Starfarer’s Cafe this week with a tale from one of the O’Neill cylinders orbiting Earth’s moon, where a young boy just wants to find a friend and have some simple questions answered.
Jeffey gazed out his bedroom window at the ribbon of lights stretching across the O’Neill cylinder above him. It reminded him of pictures he’d seen in school of how the Milky Way appeared in Earth’s night sky, a band of curved sparkling light bounded on both sides by a dark nothingness. If he waited long enough into the night, those lights would go on, almost one by one, just as the stars that he’d heard about each suddenly appeared in Earth’s sky. Sometimes on weekends, especially during holidays like Settlement Day, laser light shows would dance above the lights, as if an aurora borealis. He pondered if the people who lived there went to the beach like he did, if their teachers taught the same things that his did, if their families ate the same foods as his. Just as he wondered if someone might be looking back down at him asking the same questions, his eyelids grew heavy, and he drifted off to sleep.
***
The next morning, Jeffey stared out the floor-to-ceiling school window at the broad slice of greenery above him. It always appeared above him, though he knew that was what his teachers called an “optical illusion,” for every minute the cylinder rotated, so sometimes he actually was “above” whatever was on the other side. Gravity kept him from falling, they said, and created the feeling that they always were at the bottom.
A spitball pinged the back of his head, breaking him from his daydream. He rubbed where it hit and turned around.
None of the kids behind him were paying attention. Why wasn’t the teacher paying attention either?
Sten, the class bully, glared at him. “Turn around you little freak,” he said.
The other boys sitting next to Sten chuckled and grinned.
Jeffey looked back to the holoboard. Another spitball hit him in the back of the head.
I wish I could go to that ribbon, Jeffey thought to himself. I wish I could see what is there. It’s got to be better than here.
***
That evening, Jeffey sat with his parents, as they enjoyed dinner fresh from the printer – vegan steak, baked potato, and green beans mixed with vegan bacon.
He looked up at his parents. “How do people get to the other side of the cylinder?”
“The central tram connects to elevators that link the ribbons,” his father said. “Pass the salt, please.”
Jeffey’s eyes widened; he hadn’t realized it was that simple. “Can we go there?” he said, as handing his father the salt shaker.
His parents looked at one another.
“There’s nothing to see,” his father said. “It looks just like it does here.”
His mother glanced at him. “Why do you want to go?”
Jeffey shrugged. “Just curious.”
His father changed the subject to his maintenance work that day. Still, the answer gave Jeffey hope. And if it looked just like where he lived, then perhaps there was someone there who also was just like him. Then again, he wondered, if everyone there was like everyone here, what were the chances that a freak like him would have happened twice in the universe?
***
Saturday morning as his father slept in and his mother attended some lab club meeting, Jeffey walked the few blocks to the tram station. Since the tram ran the entire length of the ribbon, if he timed it right, he could catch the one heading to the elevators. His father hadn’t said where the elevators were, but he guessed they had to be at the end of each cylinder, as that was the only place connecting the ribbons.
As he rode the tram, he looked up at the other ribbon and tried to guess what people did there. He recalled how when online and talking to other kids his age, he’d ask if they lived on the other side of the cylinder, but they always were from another habitat circling either the Earth or like him the Moon. One time in school, a classmate had even pretended to be from the other ribbon, which sent Jeffey into asking a barrage of questions. The classmate’s idiotic answers left the class laughing uproariously, and Jeffey realized he’d been had.
Jeffey stepped off the tram at the end of the line. Once the crowd of adults, towering over him like tall prairie grass, cleared, he spotted a kiosk with a map. He walked up to it, and mimicking his father’s phrasing asked, “Show me the elevators that lead to the other ribbons.”
The blueprint of the cylinder’s endcap appeared with an arrow pointing at the elevators and then a route to them lighting up and flashing.
“Thank you.” Jeffey knew he didn’t have to thank the AI, and his parents often harangued him when he did, but doing so seemed natural, and he’d seen plenty of other people do so as well.
He walked toward one of the elevators, but when he reached it, the doors did not swish open. Instead, a computer voice stated, “Display pass please.”
A pass? “I don’t have one,” Jeffey said.
“A pass is required to use the elevators,” the voice said.
His shoulders drooped, and he stuck his hands in his pockets, tried to think of how he might get a pass, though that seemed as likely as he being allowed to pilot a shuttle to the lunar surface.
Two men in navy blue coveralls approached, conversing and paying him no attention. “There’s an access passage to the mirror locking strut machinery on the endcap passage,” one said as passing. “It’s a lot easier than donning a spacesuit for an ECA.”
“I’ll get my toolbox,” the other responded.
An endcap passage? If it led to the solar mirrors, wouldn’t that get him halfway to the other ribbon? Could there be a passage from that ribbon to the mirror as well?
There has to be!
***
As Jeffey approached the kiosk to find where the passageway was, he froze. Sten, a crooked smile on his face, stared at him.
The bully looked up at his parents. “Can I go over and say hi to my friend?”
“Of course you can,” his mother said.
Sten smiled wickedly at Jeffey then headed toward him.
Jeffey ducked into a crowd of people just departing the tram, worked his way to the center. He’d learned that the safest fish in a school was the one in the middle where he could not be easily picked off. He looked back, saw Sten weaving his way through the crowd toward him.
“Hey Jeffey, where are your parents?” Sten shouted.
Jeffey worked his way to the other side of the moving crowd, and upon reaching it, stepped outside it and waited for all to pass. Sten did not follow, no doubt was caught up in its movement and heading away from him. He walked briskly to the kiosk, as Sten’s parents stood in the distance, arguing with one another.
“Show me the passage that leads to the other ribbon,” Jeffey said.
Once again a blueprint of the cylinder’s endcap appeared with arrows pointing at the passage and then a route to them lighting up and flashing.
He took off for the passage.
***
From the distance, Jeffey spotted a man standing at the passage’s entrance. It was open and wide enough to accommodate several people walking shoulder to shoulder, and appeared well lit. Yet, the man there blocked it like he were large boulder in front of a cave’s exit.
Jeffey glanced over his shoulder, didn’t see Sten. No doubt his parents have caught up with him. Hopefully he’s now being scolded.
Looking for a shadowed section of the endcap, Jeffey sauntered over to it and leaned against the wall. The man didn’t appear to be a guard, seemed to be someone waiting for someone else by the way he kept looking up and tapping his foot.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. Jeffey fidgeted, found himself growing irritable and then forlorn.
“When will I ever find out what’s on the other side of the cylinder?” he whispered.
And then, as if the universe were answering him, a squawk came on the man’s comm watch.
“Harry said we’ll have a team from Meadowscape check out the locking strut machinery, that we’re needed on the water purification level.”
“All right,” the man said, “I’m on my way.”
The man headed down a nearby staircase.
Jeffey waited until he couldn’t hear any more footfalls against the nanocarbon stairs. When he didn’t, with a pounding heart, he headed for the open passage.
I am going to the other side of the cylinder!
***
Jeffey walked up a nondescript, constantly curving passageway. Its only distinctive features were a yellow line on the wall, at about his eye’s level, and that the passage constantly rose. The incline was nowhere as steep as the hiking hill his dad had once taken him to on his ribbon’s southwestern end, but it was longer. Way longer.
Jeffey wished the passageway would end. He couldn’t wait to see what was on the other side of the cylinder.
And that alone – the thirst to know what the answer to his question – kept him going, though his legs ached.
***
After about an hour, a reddish line gradually appeared on the wall as the yellow line began to fade. Jeffey wondered if there was a significance to this. I must be getting closer, he thought despite that his feet were sore. Soon I will get my wish and see what is on the other side of the cylinder.
Jeffey at last reached a window where he could look out. He could see his ribbon below and then above him the ribbon he stared at each night. The two ribbons were equidistant from one another. He marveled at how far away his house and school looked, or at least he thought the tiny box was his home. It seemed the right number of sidewalks away from the school.
He refocused his attention on the ribbon above him, could see homes and what looked to be a school just like his, except they were on their side. Well, the whole ribbon was on its side, he thought.
A footstep sounded from the passage ahead, and he jumped away from the window, turned to see who was coming. If it’s one of the maintenance crew, I’m in trouble!
But it was another boy, about his age and wearing a red cap. He waved. “I thought I heard someone else!”
“What are you doing in here?” Jeffey said.
“I came here to see what’s on the other side of the cylinder.”
“That’s funny, so did I. Just trying to get my bearings.”
The boy stared out the window, gazing at the ribbon below while Jeffey stared at the ribbon above.
“You’re not looking the right way,” Jeffey said. “That’s where we came from.”
The boy’s eyes widened as he looked at Jeffey. “No, you’re not looking the right way.” He pointed at the upper ribbon. “That’s where we came from.”
The boys’ mouths fell open as they locked eyes upon one another.
“Wait, you come from–?” Jeffey said.
“And you come from–?”
Then they both said at the same time, “You’re from the other side of the cylinder.”
They laughed.
“Well, I got my wish,” Jeffey said.
“Me too,” the boy said.
“What’s it like there?”
“My family goes to the beach on weekends. During the weekdays, I go to school; sometimes it gets boring, and I stare out the window at your ribbon. My dad likes vegan chicken and cheesy potato, so we have that a lot for dinner. I love watching the lights come on at night on your ribbon – it’s like there are stars in the sky.”
Jeffey could hardly believe it. “It’s that way where I live too!”
“I’ve always wanted to meet someone from your ribbon. That’s why I had to sneak into the passageway and try to get there.”
“Me too, and I had to sneak in as well. We should go back. There probably are people looking for me, and it’s a long way.”
Jeffey nodded, thinking of his sore legs and feet. “When I get home, I want to talk to you. What’s your net handle?”
They exchanged handles, together took one last long look out the window, then headed the way they came.
After a few steps, Jeffey turned around and saw the boy looking over his shoulder too. They waved at one another until they each disappeared around the bend.Tonight, when I look up the cylinder, he told himself, I’ll know someone who lives on one of those stars above me.
Rob Bignell is the author of more than 100 books and the owner/chief editor of Inventing Reality Editing Service. He has been writing science fiction since for the past half-century.
