Searching for Sun Chapter One

Willy the Whale will whistle and this whale’s will, shall will it all away. Now stop asking me for rhymes.

—Asami (Hadano) Five

Recorded by Cloey in the Joke Phrase Volume

Moon, Date: 2316

The Space Whale Museum looked like a white, ribbed mountain with a craterous hole in it. Sapers had been triggered and disintegrated the wall. The Growth Project children were gathered around the front entrance of the museum to view the charring remnants of a neighboring chip factory, minders herding them so that no one wandered off into the rubble.

“Heretics did this,” Ms. Clamps warned the children, her eyebrows scandalized up towards the widow’s peak of her hairline. Her thick, dramatic arm pointed at what remained of the once towering chip factory, now cremated to a dusty shell. “Terrorists! Insurgents wanting to eradicate the progress of the past three hundred years. They’ve been known to purposefully corrupt artificial intelligence so that machines kill innocent workers, just to prove the point that technology is vulnerable, unable to comprehend that machines only do as they are programmed. It is not the tool you must blame; it is the person behind that tool.”

Asami stifled a snicker as Sam mouthed the words rolling his eyes. She wanted to laugh, but Erika was standing next to her, attention rapt, cloudy, black hair nodding along with every word Ms. Clamps uttered. It was one of Ms. Clamps favorite mantras, “Don’t blame the sugar bowl for your fat fingers or the simulators for your bad test scores, responsibility lay within the human will, the person behind the tool.” Until it didn’t, Asami always added in her head, because it seemed she could do everything in her will to be good, and people still didn’t approve of her.

“This chip factory—” Ms. Clamps continued on, “isn’t the first act of violence, and if these terrorists had their way, they would even do away with the Growth Project!” This last sentiment made all the G.P. children shift about on their feet uncomfortably.

How could a group of people be against them? Yet the thought was hurtful, like a sour candy burning her stomach, the thought that someone feared her enough to want to undo her. She looked back once more at the crumbling grace of the moon’s whale museum. It couldn’t have done anything wrong to deserve that, could it?

She didn’t understand what the terrorists’ agenda had to do with a museum, but maybe to blow up the chip factory they couldn’t avoid the museum. She had been looking forward to visiting it since Sam had gone to the moon for his sixth birthday. Now it was her turn. Her sixth birthday had come and gone, and the trip was two years late, not for her birthday, and not to see the whale museum; but she planned to get her fill of sightseeing anyways.

As she looked over the wreckage, she hoped the museum had just been built in the wrong place, too close to the chip factory they had come to tour, and which Ms. Clamps seemed intent on their still viewing, though all that was left was a charred and smoking bubble like a piece of chewed up, spat out black gum.

The factory had been toasted just that morning and an unpleasant burnt tinge still clung to the air, of chemicals and scorched hair. Security guards had corded off all the buildings, and a troop of shiny android guards were patrolling the street. Along with four adult minders, a security guard from the Space Lobby stood watching the G.P. tour, his big hands playing with a tiny, tinsel colored wrapper that one of the kids had handed him. Looking at the man, Asami wondered why he looked so bored. It had to be different living on the moon, more exciting with so many attractions, yet the security guard didn’t seem to enjoy it. She would have liked it, living up on the moon with the sky so full of the big gray earth. It was so much larger than the moon was in the earth’s sky, it was a super moon. Plus, other than large factories, the moon was almost fifty percent theme park. Heidi said they were going somewhere farther away from Earth than the moon. When Asami was grown, they would travel to the Libra galaxy, 120 trillion miles away and join the first colony, someplace where they didn’t even have museums yet.

The children rustled in a forcefully polite semicircle on the perimeter of the factory wreckage as Ms. Clamps continued gesticulating, her hooked finger slashing through the dusty air as if she could conduct the factory back into existence through sheer energy. The children watched with dewing boredom, chewing on crater cavities, gravity taffy, mooncakes, and sourstars, which they had acquired in the Space Lobby while Heidi consulted with Declan—her chief of security—about the terrorist attack.

Asami liked the mooncakes best because the wrapper had a big yellow moon with a smiling face on it and the cakes were enclosed in a marshmallow skin patterned with gray craters. Had the moon been so perfectly gray before the colonies?

Sam gave a slight tug on her long yellow hair. She had often wished her hair darker, like Sam’s, to match her Chinese features and darker skin, but Heidi said her design was one of the geneticists’ favorites and that they had pulled out an ancient blonde gene from her genetic ancestry that had nothing to do with the white genetic Y chromosome that was used to give her blue eyes. Asami had been born in a phase when geneticists were manipulating physical traits and seeing how far they could bully them, resulting in some rare combinations. Sam was older and had escaped this phase with his light skin, Irish features, and floppy dark curls as he hunkered down beside a large placard advertising whale riding prices.

Ms. Clamps turned her back and extended her arms as if to hug the wreckage. Asami sidled away from Erika. She was a good friend, but anytime Sam wanted to do something fun, Erika would turn big, brown puppy eyes on Asami and tell her Heidi wouldn’t like it. Erika possessed the sort of stare that seraph’s must use to inspire repentance. Asami slipped behind several taller children until she stood beside Sam. She didn’t know what he was up to, but she had learned to follow his lead if she wanted in on the fun.

His wrist flicked and a loud bang and a sizzling twirl of fire exploded to the left. Asami recognized it as a firecracker Sam had been eyeing in the tricks and treats shop. Screams filled the air and Asami ducked backwards with Sam, scampering through a low hole in the side of the whale museum. They crouched together pressing their backs to the wall. Sam was sniggering loudly, peeking through the hole as Ms. Clamps clutched a child before her considerable bulk like a thin shield. Their minders, recovering, tried to restore order.

Looking at the way the wall had crumbled in on itself she thought it must have been sapers. Sam had been telling her terrorists liked to use them. They were a new energy bomb, sapping up all the materials it could, sucking them dry of energy and then outputting that energy all at once, creating an explosion. From the way the ruble dusted under her feet, she knew, and shot Sam a meaningful look.

He shared a mischievous grin and mouthed, sapers.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light in the museum’s hall, she smelled salt. The center sea aquarium had shattered and left a water stain and a thick crust on the floor with glow-in-the-dark purple rocks. Holographic tropical fish still swam in the air where the tank had stood, looping acrobatically in the air. Asami stood in the littered remnants of structural debris made of pieces of ceiling and wall. It was a crumbling pile but still had sharp bits that poked up like shredded tree branches. Dust plumed about her feet in the artificial gravity, bouncing up around her white shoes like miniature atomic bombs.

A case on display showed white and blue t-shirts with swimming whales on the chest, and beneath lay stuffed toys, small, motorized swimming whales for the bathtub, and plushy ones as big as she was. Sam grabbed a bright white shirt three times too large, pulling it on over his sweatshirt. It reached his knees and lit him up.

At the end of the hall, beyond the sparking wall fixtures and posters, was a decorative dome with the initials S.W.M. Asami grinned at Sam; the museum was empty, and it was all theirs. The ceiling sloped up like a card house, the walls bending into a point. A replica of Earth hung from the ceiling, a gray-white and orange orb with dots of light signifying the great sky countries. These dots illuminated the oceans like fiery glitter. Beside it, the moon circled gray and dotted with green. Asami found the green spot where they were. Life-sized whales suspended in midair above her head floated past, casting shadows about the room with their tails still swimming in holographic motion. Asami could almost imagine herself beneath the sea, except Sam was rummaging through cupboards behind her.

Sam stuffed several robotic bathtub whales in his pockets and opened a packet of plankton bombs. He threw his head back and emptied the contents, letting the candy fizzle in his mouth till he had green foam around his lips.

“Stealing already?” a snobby brunette stumbled down the rubble towards them.

Asami turned back to the display cases hoping that ignoring Maxi would make her less annoying. Maxi was only one growth group earlier than Asami, but she liked to act like she was ten cycles older. Secretly, Asami wondered if someone had put some Arabian horse genetic material in Maxi. She had learned in class that the horses were known to be hot tempered, intelligent, and difficult to control. Just like Maxi. She even tossed her hair like a horse swishing its tail.

“You really shouldn’t hang out with the freak, Sam. She’s giving you bad habits.” Maxi peered into the candy drawer next to Sam.

Asami rolled her eyes again. Maxi didn’t care about thieving, and no one could sell these goods now, not after the explosion.

“Just eat something,” Sam said loftily, leaning back against the counter like a king. “What will it be for the lady? No, not plankton bombs, far too messy,” he wiped at his green foaming mouth, “a crater cavity?”

Maxi smirked and grabbed two handfuls of asteroid bars.

Asami opened a low cupboard in search of a plush version of Willy the Space Whale so she wouldn’t have to break the glass display case. The smell hit her first, hot and rusty. Then she saw a gray dusted boot.

A man with crusty red in his hair and a gap in his forehead looked back at her. Someone had wedged the man inside the shelves amongst the plush toys. He was missing a leg and the floor of the white cupboard was colored black cherry beneath him. Squished beneath his bloodied hands and in place of his missing leg, the plush whale tumbled over him and seemed to dance around him in a circle of purple tails and happy, laughing eyes. Attached to his shirt by a metal wire was a holographic image of Willy the Whale, big and purple, slapping his tail side to side. Asami reached inside and took the holographic button from the crusty red shirt.

The man’s brown eyes seemed to watch her, glazed with dust, but at the pupil there was reflected movement of his holographic tag. Willy the Whale was dancing inside the man.

Sam let out a high scream in Asami’s ear, spraying green spittle in her hair. She hadn't heard him approach, but she supposed that was a normal reaction. Her voice was lost down her throat. She felt her insides rush with some emotion, but didn’t know what it was, something sharp, her senses all on alert. She wasn’t scared, and she wasn’t sad.

Maxi and Sam were running. Their feet kicked up dust as they scampered out of the hole they had just entered. Asami thought that was kind of funny. Even if he wasn’t a good man, he couldn’t hurt them now. But it felt wrong to leave him alone.

She sat down opposite the one-legged man and picked up a purple plushy, noticing spots on his nose like red freckles as she hugged it. She wondered if the man still felt pain. Did it hurt to die? If one could no longer live inside the body, where did they go? She had learned in science that nothing truly disappeared, it just became something new, like with the sapers. Perhaps death was like a flower, big, brilliant, and noticeable, but afterwards it left many more seeds behind it.