The Aethernet Falls

Chapter 2 - Sasa

Sasa or, as she was known to everyone other than her brother, Clarissa lived in the same district as Boros, though it was through the labyrinth of streets and open-air markets that were the mark of the lower classes. Boros’ trip there was only made more difficult by the awe-struck masses staring up at the sky as the great masses of data came crashing down.

It took him a half an hour to even reach the right street. Half an hour of elbows to the ribs and gentle shoving as people paid no attention to anything but the sky. By the time he actually made it to her apartment he wasn’t even sure if she’d be there or not. Even if she was, he wasn’t sure she’d be paying enough attention to answer when he rang her apartment.

She did though, her usual, cheery self coming through the tinny sounding speaker, “Who’s that?” Boros could hear the smile on her face. The small security camera on the call panel whirred gently as it searched for a human face to display to its inhabitant. Boros looked away for a moment, force of habit from earlier years, but turned to face it and smiled as warmly as he could given the circumstances. He heard a sharp intake of breath, “Bobo! Its been ages. Come on, come on!” she sounded giddy, more so than usual.

A few seconds delay and the front door opened inward on smooth, well-greased hinges. Boros walked inside and called the lift. He was always jealous of his younger sister’s apartment complex, it was clean and everything seemed new despite being built at the same time as the one he lived in. For whatever reason, even within the poorest district in the city, a line had been drawn and he was decidedly on the wrong side of it. We take care of our poor over here, and let them fester over there.

The door to the lift was already open. It was well-lit and devoid of graffiti, unlike the one in his apartment. He walked in and pressed the screen, activating it and scrolled through the list of names until his found his sister’s and pressed it. The doors closed and the force of the rapidly ascending lift forced him to shift slightly.

When the lift reached the correct level, his sister was already standing there, waiting and smiling wide. “Bobo!” she shouted and spread her arms wide, embracing Boros as he stepped past the threshold.

“I keep telling you not to call me that.” He muttered in her ear. Still, he returned the embrace.

Clarissa wriggled free with a frown, “Come on, you still call me Sasa.” Her voice was playful and her eyes were wide. Boros could see her pupils were dilated, her eyes shining slightly.

He put on a playful smile of his own, but wasn’t sure quite how he managed it, “But you like it, Sasa.” He kept looking at her eyes, which were moving around as though they were unable to follow anything in her brief lapse of concentration. “You’re dosing again, aren’t you?”

His sister frowned again, for real this time. She turned her head away from him and looked down the hall, the opposite direction from her apartment. “Yes.” She managed to whisper. “But-“ her voice raised, before Boros interrupted her.

“But that’s not why I’m here.” The nagging feeling in the back of his mind came back as he said it. It carried with it a distinct sense that something was wrong this time. The Streams themselves might be harmless as they fell from the sky, but the fact that they were falling was definitely not a good sign.

Clarissa’s apartment didn’t have actual windows like his own. It was located in one of the central rows of the complex. There were windows on either side, however. Windows with security screens and heavy, ornamental drapes covering them. He couldn’t see the glow from the sky as her apartment was on a lower level, and the lights in the building were much brighter than that of his own, as if to proclaim to the entire city that this building was better than the other ones in the district.

It was dead quiet as well. He knew from experience that the doors that lined each side of the hall weren’t perfectly soundproofed, though they were much better than on his floor, and anyone standing in the hall could usually hear a loud sports broadcast or blaring music from parties in apartments that never seemed to sleep.

It was eerie, the stillness. Not something he was used to, not something anyone was used to in this district. When he thought about it, even the streets were suspiciously quiet as he shoved his way past gawking pedestrians, and in between vehicles stopped in the middle of the street. Everyone’s heads turned up to the sky, either too afraid or too amazed to utter a single word.

Looking out the windows at the end of the long hallway might have been a pointless endeavour. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to look back up at the sky as it fell down on them. Part of him was afraid that he would become one of the people struck dumb by whatever was happening in the sky.

For the first time that day he felt afraid. He was no longer confused by the feeling he got whenever he thought about the Aethernet. He was plainly, simply afraid. The kind of animalistic fear you feel when you realize your life has been threatened. The kind of fear that decides what kind of person you were when it came down to matters of life and death. He was determined not to stand there like a deer stuck in the headlights, and in a moment of unexpected, almost impossible clarity he knew what everything meant.

“This is the end.” He whispered to himself. Clarissa looked at him, confused. “This is the end.” He repeated himself, more self-assured than before. He didn’t know how he knew. He just felt it with such an absolute certainty that any other possible meaning that could have been derived was just meaningless drivel.

“Clarissa, you have to come with me.” He nearly shouted in the hallway. Only now did he realize his eyes were unfocused, almost hazy as he lost himself for those brief moments he was deep in thought. “Clarissa, you have to come with me now!” He was shouting. He looked at her; even through the drug-induced haze she was experiencing the fear showed clear on her face. Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes clamped tightly shut.

It was only when he saw his sister in such a state that he realized how completely unhinged he must have seemed. Lost in reverie one moment, then muttering like some religious doomsday lunatic, then shouting at her, telling her she had to come with him with no explanation.

He reached out and grabbed her arm gently, something he’d done ever since he knew that he had to comfort his younger sibling. She opened her eyes and looked directly into his. Her pupils had shrunk to needlepoints and widened rapidly as she focused on him.

“What’s going on?” She sounded suddenly feeble. Weak. The comedown must have started.

“I don’t know.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “But you should come with me. I…” He paused not to find the right words, he knew what he was going to say. He just couldn't figure out how he knew. “I just have a bad feeling about this. The Streams, I mean. I don’t think they’re meant to fall from the sky like that.”

“But all the feeds say they’re harmless.”

“Its not the streams I’m worried about.” He looked down towards the window at the far end of the hall, trying to will the blue-green glow to peak through the drapes and penetrate the brightness of the building, as if seeing them would help him make sense of things. “Its what they mean.”