Skylight

The Skylight—the glowing green aurora set above the robots’ city—it was the sustenance of all technology, without which not a single technological thing would work. Below the Skylight, the volcanic caldera was encased in checkered panes of glass, and the robots worked within, never resting.

The robots gathered minerals there, surrounded by valves, pipes, and machinery. The human Colonists knew nothing of how it worked. On the slopes where lava did not flow, the robots built the Ecologiums, where the human Colonists lived in safety and abundance. With the lands beyond, the robots carved out ecosystems. Flora and fauna, brought from the Ark, found refuge.

A thousand years passed since the founding of Colony—eleven hundred since the Ark set out from Mother Earth.

In the beginning, Mother Earth promised that the Skylight would shine for a thousand years, but Reverend Galen said that the Skylight would shine forever. In his reformational treatise, published in Founding Year 495, with logical deduction based on established theology, Galen proved that the Skylight would indeed shine forever: Mother Earth bore Colony out of her womb, and the Skylight was the umbilical cord, and since the time of Galen it was traditional for every infant’s umbilical cord to be preserved, its mummified cast a keepsake, a reminder of Mother Earth’s eternal love for every Colonist. And the word of Galen spread, and in only a few generations none were left in all of Colony who disbelieved.

But Galen was wrong. On the first minute of the first day of the year 1001, the Skylight went dark, and the robots disappeared.

Michael didn’t notice at first; his VR visor still had its battery. His video game, The Elder Scrolls XII: Sparfeld, still worked perfectly. That night, he finished grinding his archery talent to rank 300.

“Michael!” cried Sarah, his wife.

The room was dark, and he could only see her by the light from his visor, yet still she did not fail to take his breath away. Her skin was ebony black, like the obsidian of the Fire-Blasted Plains, where the level-99 dragons dwelled; none had more lustrous black skin anywhere in Sparfeld, nor in any other video game he ever played. Her bright blue eyes were like the sapphires of Lenxia, prized by Sparfeld’s enchanters for their magical properties.

“Are you even listening to me?” she asked.

“Come again?”

“Have you noticed the lights are out?”

“No. Well, yes. Why did you turn off the lights?”

“I didn’t—that’s the thing. And they won’t turn on!”

Broken Technology! Technology was made to be indestructible, like his visor which had been passed down in his family since the Founding. But if the lights no longer worked, then there would be darkness in his household through all future generations!

He opened the door to the courtyard, and his neighbors were out, even though it was past midnight.

“What’s going on?”

“The Skylight—it’s dark!”

Gone was the aurora hovering over the volcano. The Home Star—the brightest star, set above the Skylight aurora—missing. The other stars seemed brighter than ever before.

“Damn Galen! That fool!” shouted Michael.

“Don’t say that! It must be a test!” said Arthur, his neighbor.

Michael returned to his home, to his visor, to his virtual reality. He saw that his battery was low. Without the Skylight, there would be no way to ever recharge it. He knew this was the end. He logged into his character one last time.

Alas, great hero, Dunbar! Slayer of dragons, slayer of giants, slayer of elves, Emperor of Sparfeld, usurper to the throne, and also: The President of the Magus Guild; first among equals of the Thieves Consortium; Chief of the Guardian Watch; Protector of the Republic; Hero of the North; Hero of the South; a level-99 Archmage, knowledgeable in all schools of the arcane; master of the elements, a conjurer of fire, frost, and lightning; skilled also in the sword, the bow, and the dagger; and a master blacksmith. He was Michael’s father’s character and his father’s father’s before that. How wretched that this hero should fall not in battle but with a whimper!

Through his many feats of bravery, Dunbar had amassed a collection of 1,568,324 gold coins, which he carried on his person. He dropped them on the ground in Beggar’s Quarter of Crest City, and the beggars rushed to collect all the coins before returning to begging. And then, seeing that his battery had died, Michael removed his visor and went to sleep.

He awoke the next morning to an argument the neighbors were having. He put on his clothes and walked outside. Sarah was already there.

“It is a grave transgression to defecate anywhere other than the Recycler!” said Arthur.

“But the Recycler won’t flush. What should we do?” asked Ellen.

Now Arthur was a stodgy old man, thrice Michael’s age and twice as stubborn. But to Ellen’s question, Arthur had no answer. He just repeated the same line about “not doing things that should not be done.”

Michael badly needed to take a dump. He opened the door to the communal Recycler. It was too dark in there to see anything but—Mother Earth, that smell! The floor was slippery under his feet. Disgusted, he left and shut the door behind him.

The hatch to the outside was opened already, and he walked towards the southern wilderness. If anyone saw what he was doing, he could be shunned. Other people were out that day, some coming and some going, likely there for the same secret purpose.

He found a large, twisted oak tree, and its roots formed a crescent that faced away from the dome, and he crouched down and began to do his business. He looked towards the southern plains, called New Serengeti, and from his slope he saw a herd of wildebeests flow across the horizon like tiny ants, so many that they couldn’t be counted.

It was dangerous to venture too far from the Ecologium—lions roamed. The robots had worked hard to establish the savannah ecosystem, which included tall grasses, trees, lizards, rodents, insects, fruiting plants, and wildebeests and the lions that fed on them. Native vegetation could still be found in rocky crevasses and on other continents—known to exist, but no one had ever built a boat. But many types of animals were not present anywhere on the planet: bears, cattle, birds, and dragons—these animals could be found in Sparfeld, but never on Colony. Michael was glad Mother Earth had not sent any dragons. Lions were enough to worry about.

The planet was rarely traveled. The Ecologiums provided for every want and need, and the virtual worlds within were free of danger. There was nothing that could be explored outside that could not be explored just as well from within, in virtual safety, and even in that much—to explore the real world virtually—few bothered because other worlds were more interesting.

He had never seen his Ecologium from the outside. It was an expansive building, built on the volcano slope. Prominent under its glass dome, towering over its walls, was an enormous standing stone wheel, eight meters high. Every able-bodied colonist was supposed to run circles up its path for one hour a day, to keep their legs strong. This involved running upside-down for half of the circle, which, as every child quickly learned, was not as hard as it looked with a proper running start. But from what little Michael understood of physics, such things were supposed to be impossible on heavier planets.

At the top of the dome was a hatch, called the Dispenser, where, every morning, the robots would fly in to drop a large pellet-shaped capsule full of food. The robots had brought them food every morning, except that morning. When he reentered the courtyard, all his neighbors were gathered under the Dispenser.

“Just be patient, friends. Mother Earth has not abandoned us,” said Arthur.

“It won’t come,” said Michael, intruding. “Not without the Skylight.”

“You’re scaring the children, Michael.”

Michael turned towards Sarah. “Come with me; let’s gather food from the wilderness.”

“But there are lions out there,” she replied.

“I’m not afraid of lions.”

“I am.”

Her face was stern; she wouldn’t change her mind; he knew her well enough.

“Be patient,” said Arthur. “Soon, the robots will come with our food.”

“But what if they don’t?”

“Every breath we take, we owe to Mother Earth,” said Arthur. “Our only hope is to trust.”

Michael turned to the others, “I will go to the south and find food. Who will come with me?”

No one replied. He approached his friend, Cecil, the husband of Ellen. “Will you come with me?”

Cecil was the same age as Michael, and the two of them looked so similar that they were often confused for one another—brown skin, tall, golden eyes, round faces and shaven heads.

“Why don’t we wait here and see what happens?” asked Cecil.

“But what if nothing happens? Then we’ll have just wasted time,” said Michael, frustrated.

Cecil had no reply. Michael approached his father, also named Michael.

“I’m too old for this,” said his father. “Find someone younger.”

Michael approached Sam and Charles, brothers, both younger than he. “Even if the Skylight turns back on, it’ll be good to try wild food for a change.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t think I could be much help,” said Charles. And Sam only shrugged.

Michael turned to all his neighbors.

“I will go to New Serengeti. I’m afraid to go alone. Will anyone come with me?”

“Go, then. Leave and don’t come back,” said Arthur.

So Michael left alone, taking with him only an empty bag that had once held his visor. But Sarah caught up to him as he was leaving.

“Michael, wait! Going alone is dangerous. Take this,” she said.

She gave him a flathead screwdriver—a single solid piece of reflective metal. Barely a weapon, but better than nothing. Maybe he could sharpen it if he found a rock.

“I’ll kill a lion with it,” he said, and he went on his way.

 

He checked every tree and brush for any kind of fruit or nut, and he found nothing. It took him an hour of walking to finally acknowledge the grass under his feet; if he wasn’t hungry enough to eat it now, he would be soon enough. He plucked a blade and put it in his mouth—it tasted bitter. But as he continued, he tasted every type of leaf, flower, or blade of grass he passed.

The fourth type of grass—it tasted sweet! But tearing it was difficult, either with his teeth or his hands. The large strands of grass were as tall as his waist. He tried and failed to pluck one up from the top. The blades were coarse and stringy. Yet when he stabbed the base of the grass with his screwdriver, holding it steady with his other hand, he was able to shear it apart. He gathered thirty-five blades this way, and he folded the grass, so it would fit into his bag, filling it to the top.

Who am I? he thought.

He had never done anything like this—never traveled outside the Ecologium, never been in any true danger, and he never had to work for anything in is life. His “work” had just been one video game after another.

Who Am I? Not Dunbar.

He wasn’t even half as powerful as a level one hunter, which Dunbar must have begun as, long before Michael was born. He was just a forager and not even a very good one.

Unlike the elegant trees of Sparfeld, the trees he passed were twisted and warped, and their branches curved upwards until they impacted back into the trunks, converging into a tangled mess of wood. There were no seasons on Colony—it was about the same temperature year-round—and so each tree had a season to itself: Some were green, some were red, some were flowering, some were bare of leaves, and one tree—it was full of acorns! If he jumped, he thought, perhaps he could reach the acorns.

There was one thing he could do better than Dunbar, and it was jumping. Dunbar could barely even jump his own height, but Michael could jump his own height five times over. In Sparfeld, jumps were quick and short, and everything just seemed heavier. Fragile things dropped to the ground would fall and shatter before one could catch them, as if thrown at a wall. But real life was not like video games. He jumped, and as he was slowly floating upwards, he braced his arm against the lowest branch, stopping his ascent to prevent himself from jumping up even higher than he intended.

He found a ripe acorn hanging from the tree, breaking it off with a slight tug. He bit down and found it hard as a rock. Ouch! As he spat the acorn back into his hand, he felt something crumble in his mouth—as likely a chip of his own tooth’s enamel as any piece of the nut.

On a nearby branch, a flying squirrel chirped. It bared to him its quite sizable set of molars, as if to say, “I have much better teeth than you,” and “I could chew that, no problem,” and “You should leave the hard tasks to the squirrels.”

Perhaps he was reading too much into its expression. Hunger does strange things to the brain. Still, it chirped incessantly.

He lunged at it and pinned it to the trunk of the tree—it bit his finger, but Michael didn’t care—he had caught the little thing; he was a hunter now. He twisted his fingers, wrapping them around the neck of the squirrel, pinning it immobile against the tree trunk.

He tried to think of all the ways that he could turn this squirrel into a meal—raw squirrel would be the easiest, but it would be better to make squirrel soup, perhaps seasoned with the sweet grass and cooked over a fire.

Still pinned to the tree trunk by Michael’s hand, the squirrel twisted its head, and it looked back at him with its large, beady, black eyes. Michael wrenched a finger tightly under its chin to brace its jaw.

It looked utterly pathetic and, on second glance, not at all appetizing. He could feel the back of its ribcage thumping against his palm. He took the screwdriver in his left hand—still holding the acorn between his fingers. One small jab to the neck would be all it would take to end this squirrel.

He hesitated. He wished there was some way to make squirrel soup without hurting a squirrel. He didn’t have the killer instinct.

“You probably taste like garbage,” he said, and he let the squirrel go.

Instead of fleeing, the squirrel sat back onto the limb, looked into his eyes, and started cooing—perhaps he had made a squirrel friend! But then the squirrel leapt towards him and swiped the acorn from his hand, almost knocking his screwdriver to the ground. It flew away far into the horizon, flapping its arms until it disappeared.

“You little …!” he cursed, and he licked his sore, bitten hand.

But he gathered forty acorns from the tree into his bag, pouring them through the crevices of the sweet grass, and he jumped down, continuing south.

He found a patch of blue flowers—the same shade as Sarah’s eyes. He tasted a petal, and it was bitter. But he wanted them anyway because he loved Sarah, and these petals matched her eyes. Out of room in his bag, he took twenty large blue petals, one by one, and shoved them into his pockets.

He found a blade of grass, a new type. Biting into it, it tasted like dirt. He threw the blade back down. He gazed at the horizon.

Could I be like Dunbar? Someday, perhaps.

Walking further in the hot sun, he saw the herds of wildebeests run, far in the distance. And he decided then that he would become like Dunbar—a hunter, but not a hunter of squirrels. No, he would be a hunter of wildebeests! He saw them hopping across the landscape—he couldn’t even start to count them. He didn’t know how or who would help him, but he would kill a wildebeest, and the meat from it would feed the whole Ecologium.

Even Dunbar started as a whelp, as a weakling, in the very beginning. But from the first, he showed courage. They all did. In every video game he ever played, the hero had courage. Even as a cub, it would have been obvious to all that Dunbar would grow into a mighty lion.

He heard a lion roar—an actual lion—frighteningly loud. Uh oh. It appeared out of the brush.

No fear! What would Dunbar do?

Dunbar would turn the lion into a plume of fire and blood using only his mind and his little finger. Michael couldn’t do that; he didn’t know how. There would be no use in running. If it was anything like the lions in Sparfeld, it would charge him as soon as he turned his back. There were two ways to survive: Fight it—or stare it down.

He threw his screwdriver, hitting the lion in the shoulder, but the lion stood its ground, not even flinching.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he shouted. “I am Dunbar, a mighty warrior!”

He moved towards the lion, and it paced backwards, and it roared again, so loud he could feel it in his bones. Without changing his posture, he snapped up his screwdriver with his feet and kicked it into his hands. He threw it again, as hard as he could, and this time he hit the lion in the face. He saw the lion flinch.

Instead of pacing back, the lion moved to pounce.

Time slowed. He tried to duck, but he wasn’t falling fast enough. The lion was lunging at his neck. With his left arm, he grabbed a strand of grass and pulled himself down to the ground, faster than he could fall.

He saw the lion fly over his head, its four legs flailing, and he gave it a kick in the rear for good measure, propelling it further. The lion glided for thirty meters down the hill. With its stretched back legs, it managed to tip the ground, but this brief contact sent it into forward cartwheels, kicking up dust with every spin, and it cartwheeled down the slope, landing in a ditch near a rock. The lion looked up and growled, but, seeing how far it had traveled, it relented. Michael retrieved his screwdriver and his bag he had dropped. He set out for home.

 

It wasn’t until he had reached sight of the Ecologium that he noticed his wound. Three red gashes on the back of his right wrist. The lion must have swiped him as it passed over. With his screwdriver, he tore a piece of cloth from his shirtsleeve and used it as a bandage.

He found Sarah waiting at the gates. She must have been watching for his return. She screamed at him when she saw him.

But he dropped the bag of sweet grass and acorns at her feet, and he said, “Eat.”

“You found food!” she shouted. Then she covered her mouth as if the neighbors might hear her.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked.
“It’s nothing.”

 

They returned, and Michael tended to his wound while Sarah rummaged through the basement of the Ecologium, searching for anything that could be of use. And she turned an old dish from the dispenser into a pot, and she rigged five visors with still-working batteries, surrounded them with warm clothing, stacked tightly so they could overheat, and the top of the stack was hot enough to nearly boil water from the tap.

She softened the acorns in the hot water, and with a bowl and a rock, she ground them to powder and made acorn soup, and she seasoned the soup with diced pieces of the sweet grass.

She also ground the blue flower petals, but they were still bitter. She gave the powder back to Michael.

“They’re pretty,” she said. “But I don’t know what use they could be.”

 

The neighbors overheard them overnight. In the morning, they confronted Michael at his door, Arthur leading them.

“You have food?” Arthur asked. He looked tired, hungry, and ashamed.

“And I would give you some if you would only apologize,” said Michael.

Arthur demurred. But he saw the wound on Michael’s arm, the three gashes that the lion had carved with its claws.

“Your hand—what happened?” he asked.

“I fought a lion,” said Michael.

“And you won?” asked Cecil.

“We fought to a draw.”

They all gasped.

“But how?” asked Ellen.

“The lion pounced, but I threw it down. And I struck it with my screwdriver. It tired of the fight, so it left. And I also left.”

Sarah, who heard them approach, had already cooked them up some more acorn-sweet-grass-soup. She brought a bowl of it and put it in front of Arthur’s face to smell. But as he grasped for it, she pulled it back and smiled.

“This is Michael’s soup,” she said. “He went into the wilderness alone, he fought the lion, and he brought food. And you gave him no help, only shame. But now you expect his food because you are hungry?”

Arthur said nothing, but he looked embarrassed. Even he must realize that the Skylight was not turning back on.

“If you want his soup then we shall be a tribe, and Michael shall be our chieftain!” Sarah shouted.

To Michael’s surprise—indeed, this was the most astonishing thing that Michael had ever seen—stodgy old Arthur, the man who, to Michael’s knowledge, had never changed his mind once in his whole life, hungry for only a day and a half: Arthur bent his knee and knelt. And the others did the same.

And Ellen said, “Michael fought the lion, he will lead us into the wilderness!” And she gave them soup to eat.

When they finished eating and discussing their plans—for Michael had said, “We shall kill a wildebeest!”—they took metal pieces and electronics from the basement below, and they set them in the courtyard, and, by the light of the sun, they could see what they had and what they could use for their wildebeest hunt.

From the metal sliders of the server racks, they made spears, and they sharpened them with rocks from the slope of the volcano. From their RAM, they made serrated teeth. Their hard drives they smashed, and from the broken pieces, they took wedges of metal. These metal plates they bent for pressure and, with a latch, secured; the serrated teeth they set on edge; they made a trap—to snare the legs of the wildebeest.

“We are like a pack of wolves,” said Michael. “Our strength comes from cooperation.”

From their power cables they made rope; from their mousepads they made slings. Michael sharpened his screwdriver to a point. They left the children with the elders, and they set out on the wildebeest hunt.

“Show courage!” said Michael. “If we believe that we are strong, so will the lions. Never run or cower in the face of a lion. It is better to fight than to be easy prey.”

And Michael stopped, and he reached into his bag. And the rest of them stopped, too, because he was their leader. Michael took the powder of the blue flowers, and he spread it across Sarah’s face, creating streaks of blue under her blue eyes, and then he kissed her on the lips.

“We are like the poisonous frog,” said Michael. “If the lion bites, he will regret it. And we will paint ourselves bright colors, so that he knows he will regret it.”

“Do me next, chief,” said Cecil. So Michael painted Cecil’s face with streaks of blue. He painted the faces of five others, until he ran out of blue powder.

“We are like mages of illusion,” said Michael. “We survive by our wits only.”

They met no lions that day because the lions kept their distance.

Underneath the path of the wildebeests, they set their snare, and a wildebeest was caught, and the other wildebeests ran past it.

With their slings, they ambushed it, and its wounded legs gave out as it was pelted by rocks, and then thrice they stabbed it in the chest with their spears.

And they drained the blood of the wildebeest into their server cases, and they used it for paint, and Ellen, Sam, Charles, and Michael himself—all who had not been painted blue with the flowers—they painted their faces red in the blood of the wildebeest, so their faces could have a color too.

The rest of it they cooked over a fire kindled with sticks.

And they passed other tribes from all the other Ecologiums, and the other tribes also hunted the wildebeests. A great primal instinct, dormant for so long, had risen anew in all the Colonists.

They looked above. The Skylight aurora shone again, and the Home Star lit up anew, and it flew away, the Skylight with it, dimming as it left. The robots that had watched over them rose into the sky. They never saw the robots or the Skylight again after that.

But on other planets and other colonies, the robots were needed. This ecology was complete, so the robots left for new frontiers.