WIP – The Scar
You’re all overdue some actual writing from me, I reckon. Boiling Seas editing will resume this afternoon, but you’ll have to wait for that… so in the meantime, here’s the first bit of the project I teased a few months ago. I’m a lot further in than I expected to be. If you like it, there might be more to come, so let me know in the comments!
Without further ado: the beginning of what is, for want of a better title, The Scar.
The sun was utterly without mercy.
He walked slowly, carefully, keeping pace with the trundling drone and the pool of shadow that its broad mirror-shade cast on the hard-baked earth beneath his feet. His suit was like an oven, even with its internal fans and coolant pump working at full capacity for once. Sweat dripped down his face. The toolbox in his hand was heavy.
Just do your job, he thought to himself, and you won’t have to go outside again today. Once a day was more than enough for anyone, even a veteran like him. Going out more than three times in a single shift was strictly prohibited. He’d seen technicians collapse from heatstroke after two.
The drone ground to a halt next to their target collector. He could hear the sizzling as the heat-reflective mirrored coating on the canopy was steadily seared away by the relentless, constant sunlight. He didn’t have much time. And if he broke a drone, he’d be billed for the repairs. So get the hell on with it and get back inside. He bit down on the fluid pipe inside his helmet, sucking down a few drops of water. Up here it was worth more than gold.
He set down the toolbox, knelt beneath the canopy, and popped open the collector’s access panel. From the outside it looked fine: the solar cell was free of dust, and though the things inevitably needed to be taken in and scoured clean of heat-blackening it would last for a good while yet. But it had stopped rotating. The whole array – two dozen cells, each twenty-five square feet – was mounted on carefully timed motors that followed the path of the merciless sun across the sky, not just to collect more sunlight but to shield their mechanisms from the wrath of that same sunlight. And this one had jammed. He could see from the shape of its shadow that it wouldn’t be long before the sun was in position to beat down on the motor and the support pillar beneath – which would probably ruin the cell entirely. Which would bring down his power quota, which would inevitably come out of his salary.
Thankfully he was good at his job.
Beneath the access panel the delicate tracery of wires was covered in dust. He took a small compressor out of the toolbox and blew away what he could with a jet of air. Even when the panels were sealed tight, some dust always managed to worm its way in somehow. With that gone, he could see the problem: several wires had fused in the heat, their insulating coverings melting together. It was a common enough problem. To actively cool all the hundreds of solar arrays with their hundreds of cells would take far more power than the arrays themselves could actually produce – and leave nothing for the people who actually needed that power. That meant that men and women like him had to stay on station, at all times, to make sure that everything kept working. Everyone thought of water as being life – but power was just as crucial.
He flipped the breakers, isolating the cell’s circuit, then proceeded to strip out the fused wires. It would have been tricky in the suit’s thick, protective gloves if he hadn’t done this a thousand times before. Cooling-suit technology had to strike a balance between functionality and protection. Newer models were getting slimmer all the time – some concepts he’d seen were practically ordinary clothes. He did not have a newer model. None of the power-techs did. That stuff was for low-wallers, those rich enough that they’d never have to set foot in the heat in their lives.
It seemed counterintuitive to break out a soldering iron when the sun was hot enough to fuse metal to metal on its own, but in the shade of the protective drone it was still necessary. He seared the new wiring into place, then flipped the breaker to check the circuit. Diodes flared into healthy green life. The solar cell’s motors whined as they began to charge up to move again – but he cancelled that, disengaging the motor manually. Stuck in place for an hour or more, the cell was out of sequence with the rest of the bank – which meant it would just get fried again. Sighing, he took another gulp of water before removing the crank-handle from his toolbox, slotting it into place, and then heaving with all his strength. Achingly slowly, the huge solar cell began to turn on its axis. It didn’t need to move far to catch up, but twenty-five square feet of metal and plastic would have been hard to shift even without the constant, oppressing heat.
Regulations dictated that he should have consulted the array’s computers to align the cell with the rest of the array. He eyeballed it instead. He’d been doing this long enough to get it right by himself. Besides, the array’s computer was a piece of junk, and would take ages to deliver the measurements to his suit. He didn’t want to be out here any longer than he had to.
Satisfied, he snapped the motor back into place – and after a long moment, he saw the cell begin to turn again – very slowly, but it was moving. Job done.
He closed the panel, gathered his tools, slapped the shield-drone on its flank.
“Back we go,” he said, though the verbal command meant nothing. He had to press a button to tell the primitive machine to trundle back to the array’s entrance. He trudged back across the cracked earth, through the swirls of dust that outlined the movement of the wind. The drone seemed even slower than its normal plodding pace. Probably more dust, he thought with a sigh. At least he could effect those repairs inside the building.
Finally, they reached the doors of the squat array hub, nerve centre of the 24 solar cells. He prodded the large buttons of the access panel with his clumsy suited finger, and the outer door of the heatlock opened. He entered, the drone following slowly, into the cramped room that served as repair bay and vestibule both. The outer door closed behind the awkward shield-machine.
“Scrubbing,” said the voice of the computer, a vaguely female lilt. He waited patiently for the whirring, ageing extractor fans to suck some of the dust out of the air. They hadn’t managed a full clean in years. When the green light over the inner door winked on, he removed his helmet. The air he sucked down was almost as hot as that on the outside. He left the shield-drone in the bay, cooling slowly now it was out of the sun, the tarnished metal of its heat-shield groaning quietly as it cooled and warped back into shape.
There were only three other rooms in the solar farm; the control chamber, the access point, and a tiny bathroom. The chamber had a bank of monitors, a creaking, ageing swivel chair, a large water-cooler and a single window, so heavily tinted against the relentless sun that it was practically black. There was a line of hooks for the operators’ heat-suits, and a rattling fan built into one wall. He pulled off his thick suit and hung it up, sighing in relief as his skin felt vaguely lukewarm air again. Underneath he wore shorts and a singlet – as little as possible in the heat. He drained a cup of water, poured another, and sat down on the sweat-stained chair.
He checked the status monitors, the ancient computers telling him that all the solar arrays were now working properly, drawing power from the cruel sun and storing it in the huge capacitors buried beneath his feet, there to be siphoned off elsewhere. One of the monitors had been flickering for months, and nothing he had tried could stop it. It was obsolete equipment – just like the barely-working fan, and the ageing shield-drone, and his stifling suit. The array had a central computer core but it did little more than monitor the heat-lock doors and keep track of when his shift ended. Everything was as basic as possible – because basic was simple, and simple needed less power, which meant that more of the solar array’s output could be siphoned off into the capacitors and then sold on to those who needed it below. Every drop of energy was precious. More precious than my comfort, apparently. Or indeed his life. Humans were not meant to be up here at all, solar bounty be damned. Heatstroke was common. Sometimes it was lethal.
But it was work, and it was what he’d been able to get, and it would do.
He wrote out a maintenance report, cursing the ancient keyboard with its sticky keys. He checked the status of all the other cells, then went back out into the repair bay and tinkered with the drone, opening up its motor assemblies and carving out a thick layer of dust. It got everywhere, relentlessly. But when he tested the motors they seemed to run a little faster. He wrote a report for that, too.
Then there was nothing to do but sit and bake for a few more hours, which he did, glancing occasionally at the monitors, until the computer informed him that his shift was over, and that his relief was on its way. He went into the access-room and waited. This was the one place that seemed to have had more than the bare minimum spent on it: the way back down to civilisation. The panels were polished, the lighting didn’t flicker, and the cooling fan was actually noticeable. This was the first – and often the only – room that safety inspectors got shown.
There was a chime, warning him to take a step back, before the floor of the access-room slid open. The shaft beneath the floor stretched down a long, long way, and though there was an elevator it was again only used for ‘critical’ purposes – in other words, not for the lowly engineers who kept the arrays running. For them, there were stairs and ladders. He bent down and pulled his replacement through the hole. She was sweating already, for the climb was long and hard enough even without the long day’s work waiting at the other end.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” He knew her by sight but not by name. There was a rotating staff of a couple of dozen on this array, but he only ever saw a handful of them, and only then for a few moments at a time.
“Anything happen?” his replacement asked, stepping clear of the hole in the floor and stretching.
“Number five jammed, but I fixed it. Shield’s running slow. Cleaned it but haven’t taken it out again.”
“Course it is,” the woman sighed. “Anything else to know?”
“Nothing I found.”
“Alright then.” They switched places, and he lowered himself into the hole, taking hold of the ladder-rungs.
“Have a good one.”
“Have a good rest,” the other engineer sighed. “Can’t wait till sundown.” Which was another full shift and a half away. He grimaced in sympathy, then ducked down into the shaft and began to climb. The door closed automatically above his head.
Down the first ladder, onto a rickety metal stairwell which creaked alarmingly underfoot. The whole shaft was bored into the solid rock, and was surprisingly cool despite the baking heat outside. It was a welcome respite. He could feel a headache coming on, but that was completely normal – he’d been blasted by the heat often enough to know that he’d be fine until he reached solid ground below. He’d fill up on fluids as soon as he got there.
Down and down he climbed, through layer upon layer of ancient stone. Every array had a shaft like this, carved into the cliffside, safe from the heat above. The expense of taking such a safety precaution was just another of the reasons that the power company used to justify giving their workers the bare minimum of resources in every other aspect of their jobs. It didn’t take him down all the way to the bottom, of course, but it got him out of the sun, and that was enough.
After another set of ladders and a short, twisting stair, he reached the bottom, where the gleaming elevator sat, unused. His arms ached almost as much as his head. Water and a rest, he thought to himself, knowing that the latter was unlikely. Something would come up. It always did.
Technician Ahrize Soliman punched his access code into the door, and stepped out into the cool air and verdant splendour of the Scar.
