The Encounter
written about 2010 by Liza Loop
It was a dark and stormy night but few residents of Massapequot-Atlan would be aware of that. Aneelya stepped out of the elevator and turned left along the perimeter promenade gazing at the storm through the droplets on the transparent hull. The waves were breaking just above the handrail, adding their patterns to the droplets. The wind whipped the ocean into white caps as far as he could see.
None of the twenty-nine thousand, nine-hundred, ninety-nine other people who inhabited the Massapequot-Atlan ocean colony were taking advantage of the dramatic spectacle nature offered them just beyond the wrap-around window of their home. Of course, some would have taken the commuter sub from the edge of the Atlantic continental shelf where they were anchored, destination Boston or New York or Baltimore so they were not home tonight to enjoy the storm. Others might prefer the more tranquil deeper views. Storms rarely penetrated more than twenty feet below the surface. But submarine vistas were always available and almost always the same. The fish and other marine life came and went. The varieties were different on the east side that hovered over deep water beyond the continental shelf than in the west where the bottom was close by. But for Aneelya the fury of the storm was a reminder that human existence hadn’t always been so tranquil. He longed for challenge and danger.
The next viewing lounge was about a kilometer ahead along the gently curving promenade. Aneelya hoped the lights would be off so he could clearly see how the lightning lit up the clouds as the storm passed over them. Rough weather posed no danger to the mostly submerged structure. The greater bulk of M-A, as they called it, was so deep that even hurricanes and the fabled Nor’easters passed over them without so much as a ripple in a cup of coffee. He walked quickly, drinking in the excitement just beyond his reach.
The viewing lounge was as dark as he had hoped. Jerking the door open he switched the motion sensor off before it could flood the room with light. He followed the curve around, took a front row center seat and leaned back in the padded theater chair. He was glad the room was empty. There would be no inane comments about how civilization had again conquered raw nature. Maybe humans had conquered here on Earth but there were plenty of planets where colonists were discovering that Nature’s repertoire was much more extensive than Earth-dwellers imagined.
As an atmospheric scientist, Aneelya understood a great deal about the lightning display he expected to observe tonight. He also knew about the large scale electrical discharges known at ‘sprites’ and ‘blue jets’ that were likely to be happening above the clouds and so could not be seen from sea level. Taking account of such phenomena was important for safe launches into space from Earth. They were even more critical as a ship approached a planet from above whatever kind of clouds Nature had waiting for unwary astronauts. He was intimately familiar with computer simulations of Earth’s atmospheric acrobatics as well as those in the rest of the solar system and those hypothesized to exist on several exo-planets. But nothing computer generated could thrill him like watching the real thing in real time.
The storm approached rapidly, made more dramatic by the external microphones that brought both the snapping of the thunder and the slapping of the waves into the viewing room. Rain squalls to the left and right cut visibility down to less than 100 meters. But in the middle the sky was clear so that the lightning bolts illuminated the structure of the clouds. The thunder followed each flash more closely as the winds closed in. Flash. One-one thousand, Two one-thousand, Three one-thousand, Four one-thousand…Ten, one-thousand. Crash. Pause. Flash. One-one thousand, Two one-thousand, Three one-thousand, Four one-thousand. Crash. Pause. Suddenly the whole viewing room lit up as lightening hit the empty flag pole of the marina just out of sight leftwards of the viewing room. The huge thunder clap was immediate and Aneelya heard a gasp behind him. There was someone else in the room. He cast his eyes around in the darkness but couldn’t see anyone. The next flash, several seconds later was little help. The storm had passed over them going southwest and the lightning in the clouds was no longer visible. For the most part the show was over so he felt his way back to the switch and brought up the house lights.
It was no wonder Tarik had been hard to pick out in the dark room. Her skin, although brownish, was as dark as the purple velvet of the theater seats and her short brushy hair and large eyes were even blacker. Almost everyone in M-A was some shade of brown but this woman was exotic looking. Aneelya smiled and waved at her. “Hi. How did you enjoy the show?”
“Spectacular,” she said. “Hold on and leave the lights on. I’ll come down.” She rose, sidestepped to the aisle and strode down the ramp to the door where he waited for her. She extended her hand to him. “I’m Tarik. I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“More’s the pity,” he replied, responding to her greeting gesture. “Aneelya, here. Do you come here often?”
“Not usually,” she replied. “I was hoping for some inspiration for my work.”
“How ‘bout we go grab a cup of coffee or something and you can tell me about what you do – and about yourself too. I’m sure you’re aware of how striking you look. I was wondering whether you’re a purebred or a throwback.”
“Yes on the coffee and yes, I’m purebred. Fifteen generations that we know about. Originated in Ethiopia. Want to hear more?”
“I’m all ears,” he said guiding her along a radial toward his favorite café on this level. “Do you feel as special as you look? – if you don’t mind talking about it to a stranger.”
“Talking is fine. Actually, that’s part of my work. I’m a music historian specializing in ancient Africa. I do lots of public speaking and perform whenever I can so I’m used to explaining stuff to people I don’t know. I certainly look the part, don’t I?”
They both laughed as they entered the empty café and approached the sleepy barista. “I’ll have the Ethiopian dark roast,” he ordered with a grin. “What’s your pleasure?”
“Sweet hot chocolate, actually,” she said, sliding onto a bench near the window. “Sometimes I need a break from Ethiopian.”
“I was wondering about that. Maintaining a purebred family must be quite a commitment. And it’s something the kids don’t have much choice about until it’s too late.”
She nodded. “Uh huh. My nieces and nephews look just like you. My older brothers think the purebred movement is too much like a cult so they married out. My parents are very disappointed and they’re hoping I’ll follow their tradition. I do want to have kids but I haven’t made up my mind. Sticking to purebredism really narrows the field.”
“How many of you are there on M-A?” he asked.
“Only six resident families if you count my brothers’ separately. I live with my folks. My second cousins moved here about five years ago and their kids are all little. The other two families aren’t Ethiopian but they’re as black as we are and they’ve bred true for three generations so we let them register. So if I didn’t travel and wanted to stay purebred there would only be three husband-candidates. Fortunately I get around quite a bit. I lecture on all the continents and a good number of ocean colonies even though I’m not attached to any one university.”
“Sounds like a pretty exciting life,” Aneelya said wistfully. “Have you ever been off-planet?”
“Only once, to the Pan-Mars Music Festival three years ago. The conference was a blast but I hated space travel. I was sick the whole week enroute. Earth is quite big enough for me.”
“Really?” He sounded surprised. “I go out three or four times a year and I love every minute of it. I feel so confined here. That’s why I watch the storms. They give me a sense of distance. And, of course, planetary weather is my business and every storm is a little different. You said you hoped watching this one would inspire you. What’s that about?”
“Oh, simple. I’m working on a show about how native peoples tried to use song and dance to control rainfall. We have a few recordings of ancient rituals of this kind but not enough for a whole show so I have to improvise. They used drums to represent thunder but the rhythms are tricky. I thought listening to the real thing would help me compose. It’s so rare to actually hear thunder and rain these days. My audiences can’t make the association with the music unless I make it extremely obvious. I have to lead them from recordings of the real thing through my compositions that mimic the weather sounds very closely to the authentic ancient music. That way they get it. If we don’t work at it humanity will lose its history.”
“Sort of like it’s losing its racial diversity,” he mused. “Sometimes I feel so ordinary, so anonymous, being brown like everybody else. There are a few throwbacks in my family. I have an aunt who is very white and a cousin on the other side who is a lot darker than the rest of us. But mostly we’re pretty homogenized. My aunt’s husband is pretty light-skinned too but their kids are like me. How did you say it? They didn’t ‘breed true.’ “
“Exactly,” she nodded. “That’s why we have the registry. Sometimes a very dark throwback will want to marry into a purebred family. There’s nothing wrong with marrying whoever you want, of course. But if you choose to participate in preserving a racial line that shows the old traits you can’t afford the genetic dilution brought in by a throwback. If you do there’s no telling how the kids will turn out.”
He scanned her elongated face and tall, thin frame. “Yeah. Like I said, the kids don’t have much of a say in it do they? Did your parents choose music for your career too?”
“No. At least I don’t think they did. Everyone in my family dances and sings but nobody is compelled to do it. It just seemed to fit me easily. I studied jazz in high school because I liked it. Since my purebred relatives were always swapping folklore and stories about Earth’s racial history I knew a lot about that too. It wasn’t always a good thing to be black or brown you know. There was an era in North America, and South America too, I guess, when having dark skin meant you could be owned by a lighter skinned person.
“I heard about that – Negro slavery by European descended whites.” Aneelya drained his coffee cup. “But on other continents it was more a matter of who won the war than what color the loser’s skin was. The white Greeks made white prisoners into slaves and lots of dark Africans enslaved other Africans. So slavery wasn’t always a racial thing. It was more political sometimes.”
Tarik nodded in agreement again. “You’re right,” she said. “I wish everybody had as wide a grasp of history as you do. It’s bad enough here on Earth what with people forgetting the stupid things humans have done to each other over the millennia. I think purbredism is a little over the top but I’d hate to see us lose all our cultural diversity.
“Not much chance of that,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve been on Mars. The settlement is only fifty years old and they’re already starting to think Earth people are weird. They think we must be crazy to leave our colony habitats without a space suit. The kids don’t understand that our outside air is breathable. Mars already has a new culture.”
“I know, I know. I saw a lot of it at the conference. They have to adapt to conditions there, I understand that. But they don’t have to forget where they came from. I’m just so afraid they’ll forget all the lessons humanity has learned and have to experience the bad stuff all over again. You know, like wars and slavery, ecological disasters and, well, they could get xenophobic and begin to think Earth people are dangerous. They might decide genetic manipulation should be regulated by the government instead of letting parents decide like we do. I don’t think I want to leave Earth again. I have enough challenges trying to make sure the other continents know about African history.”
Aneelya gazed out the window of the café. He could just make out the outlines of the garden plots across the avenue. The clouds must have cleared because moonlight was streaming through the dome. The conversation was becoming difficult for him. Learning about Earth’s history and its different cultures was an amusing pastime for him but he wasn’t passionate about it the way Tarik obviously was. His excitement came from puzzling out what Nature would throw at humanity next. He and his fellow scientists had a pretty good idea of how to predict future conditions on Earth. They knew that they needed to monitor the jet stream and the magnetosphere to get input data for their weather and climate models. They had gotten pretty good at forecasting volcanoes and earthquakes by tracking movements in the crustal plates and magma flows. Sunspots and solar flares were well enough understood to anticipate electro-magnetic disruptions. Even nearby comets, meteors and asteroids were no longer mysterious collision hazards for Earth dwellers. The idea that humanity might pose a significant danger to itself was not something he had thought much about. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to know a lot about how people had been cruel to each other in the past. Human nature might be significantly more difficult to understand than Nature’s nature.
“Hey,” he said after a pause, “would you like to go down to the marina and see if we can get a boat? The storm is over so it might be safe to motor around for a bit.”
She looked shocked. “You mean leave the colony hull in an open craft? In the dark? At this hour?” Such a daring adventure had never crossed her mind before. “I’ve taken the sub to the continent hundreds of times and I’ve flown all over Earth but I’ve never been in a motor boat. I didn’t know you could do that. You really think it’ll be safe?”
“We won’t know until we go out and look,” he replied. “Come on. Let’s go see what it’s like. The marina’s always open but the harbor master won’t let us rent a boat unless he thinks the sea is flat enough. I go out all the time. It’s beautiful at night.”
“Won’t it be cold?”
“Maybe,” he smiled. “We’ll get sweaters and waterproof jackets with our life vests. And we won’t be out long – maybe 15 minutes or ½ hour. Let’s go look around. If it’s too rough we’ll just walk on the docks.”
She stood, gathered her purse and wrap, then followed him out the door of the café. The temperature on the streets of Massapequot-Atlan was kept about 68 degrees Farenheit during the day and allowed to drop 7 or 8 degrees at night. When the external air was near these levels the portals would be opened and ocean breezes wafted through the colony. Most of the time, however, the climate of the north Atlantic was considerably colder than M-A inhabitants found comfortable so the portals were closed and the heat pumps regulated ambient temperature. Inside apartments, offices and shops there were thermostats that allowed residents and proprietors to control their immediate surroundings. The submarine port was a little above the equator of the cylindrical colony hull, about halfway down the vertical extent of the structure. Passengers boarded through a lock so the external weather had no impact. For children born on M-A their first trip to the continent was often their introduction to the vagaries of Earth’s climate. Before leaving M-A for the first time kids might have seen and heard weather from one of the viewing rooms but never have felt it. Although anyone was welcome to take advantage of the 5 surface marinas located around the exposed top of the hull, few did. Motoring, fishing, sailing and swimming in the open ocean were considered extreme sports that only the most daring engaged in.
The ocean colony hull was shaped like an elongated egg. It had twelve levels, nine of which were used by inhabitants. The top level protruded above the ocean surface with its deck about two feet below sea level. Much of its domed roof was transparent so Level 1 housed both garden plots and recreational facilities. The perimeter promenade circled the inside of the hull, interrupted by four viewing rooms. The six floating marinas were positioned around the outside of Level 1, three small facilities for recreation, one for the fishing fleet, another for the fish farms and one for sea-surface cargo. Level Two was mostly taken up by storage facilities and industrial processes that required air cooling since it was close to the surface. Both the cargo and the passenger submarines docked on Level 6 near the halfway depth of the hull. Passengers usually preferred the two- to three-hour subsurface rides to US dryland cities because they were smooth and independent of storms and seasons. Level 7 housed the automated machinery that sustained conditions necessary for habitation of the hull as well as automated manufacturing that functioned for months at a time without human intervention. Level 11 was ballast storage. Keeping all heavy items not currently in use near the bottom of the hull made the whole structure remarkably stable. People lived, worked, shopped, learned and recreated on the other levels. Like Level 1, Level 12 had a transparent dome that provided a 360 degree view of the ocean floor. People visited Level 12 for recreation, education and to conduct scientific research. Residential living rooms and executive offices occupied the circumference of most levels making maximum use of window area. Shops, restaurants and workplaces filled the interior spaces. Avenues were laid out in concentric circles on each level and were intersected by radial Streets that ran from the central circular plaza to the hull.
Aneelya guided Tarik to the left along the arc of the avenue in front of the café and took the second right one block to get to the perimeter. At the outer door he pushed the call button to request exist to the marina. A sleepy operator answered.
“Does the harbor master know you’re coming?” asked the operator.
“No, we just decided to go out on the spur of the moment. He won’t be expecting us,” Aneelya replied.
“We could go another time,” Tarik cut in. Her enthusiasm for this adventure was ebbing away rapidly.
“Better call him first,” said the operator. “Do you have his code?”
Aneelya pushed on the door with his fist to express his frustration with being so completely regulated within the colony and then noticed Tarik’s frown. “Of course,” he said in a cooperative tone that hid his disgruntlement. “I’ll ask the harbor master to call you for door release.”
“I’ll be right here,” laughed the operator. “I’m not going anywhere.” The intercom disconnected with a click.
The harbor master answered Aneelya’s ring with a friendly yawn. “Sure, come on out and take a look around,” he said in answer to Aneelya’s request. “I don’t know about free motoring in a run-about though. It’s still pretty choppy after the storm and, well, you know the models. My screen says there’s another rough cell about an hour out from us. It could miss us but the sims aren’t that accurate. What would I tell the guard captain if a squall capsized you and he had to take the cutter out to rescue you? Say, it’s pretty chilly out here. Do you need me to grab a couple of jackets for you?”
Grinning broadly through the window at the white-capped swells that were still slapping the colony hull, Aneelya finished the arrangements. He put his hand on the door handle to wait for the unlocking click and looked up at Tarik. Horror was written on her furrowed brow and her knuckles showed even blacker than the already dark skin of her clenched hands. “This whole idea frightens me,” she said in a small voice. “I’m sure I don’t want to risk my life in a boat but what if the wind comes up while we’re out on the dock? Won’t we get blown away?”
His grin faded. “It’s perfectly safe on the dock. And we could just sit in a boat while it’s tied up. That way you could get used to the feel of it bobbing in the water.” The lock clicked open and he held the door for her as a blast of cold air invaded the exit platform above the promenade. She pulled her light wrap around her shoulders and followed him down the swaying ramp steadying herself with the railing. She stumbled as she stepped from the ramp to the contrasting movement of the floating dock and he put his arm around her waist to offer stability. She started to pull back, uncomfortable with the intimacy of his touch but then leaned against him to keep her footing.
“I’m gonna’ freeze out here,” she muttered. He pointed to the harbor master’s hut thirty steps farther up the dock and pushed her along gently.
Reston, the harbor master, dropped a warmed jacket over her shoulders as they entered the toasty warm hut. “You’ll want to take that off in a minute or two but it will make you think you’re warmer immediately.” He indicated two folding canvas chairs for them and reseated himself in a large wooden chair that looked like it had been molded to his ample backside. “How did you get mixed up with this crazy wanderer?” Having caught her breath, Tarik glanced quickly around the room and brought her eyes to rest on the harbor master. Reston looked like an illustration of an old fashioned sea captain from one of her Bristish or American history books. He had a full grey beard and windblown hair that touched his shoulders. His trousers sported more embossed gold buttons than needed to keep them in place and his white shirt had blousy sleeves with long cuffs and hung open at the neck. His weathered, wrinkled skin suggested he might be very old but his smooth movements said otherwise. Both men baffled her.
“We’re not exactly ‘mixed up’,” she replied. “We just met a couple of hours ago. We were both watching the storm in the East viewing room. You two seem to be old friends.”
“Well, I’m old, no doubt about that. And I guess he’s a friend. A former shipmate anyway. I was crew on a research vessel and he was part of the science team. We must have been off Earth for about three and a half years. Saw four planets and better than 20 asteroids. That was my last voyage. The doc said I could either die miserably in space or find myself a healthy occupation Earthside. There’s not much excitement on the continents. Out here in the ocean is the closest thing I could find to an alien environment.” He shrugged and turned his attention to Aneelya. “When are you going to ship out again?”
“My 3-month gravity rest is up in about 3 weeks, Res. I’ve been hanging out with my parents and ragging on my sister for choosing the wrong man to marry. I’ve got three gigs lined up and I need to decide which one to take.”
Tarik must have warmed up some because she opened up her jacket. Reston reached for an old fashioned tobacco pipe. “Go on,” he said. “Tell us about your options.”
Aneelya glanced at Tarik. “Are you comfortable here for a few more minutes? We were going to at least walk the docks.”
She glanced at the dark water visible through a small window behind him. “Oh that’s ok. I’d like to hear your plans.”
“Well, SSM, that’s Sol System Mining, is expecting the outer asteroids to open up soon for exploration. They want to send out an advanced science team to survey conditions on several of the larger ones. The small ones don’t have any atmospheres so there’s no climate to speak of. They won’t need me there. The materials people do the prospecting and all the habitats have to be basically space-hardened. But the larger bodies have all sorts of interesting atmospheric changes depending on what gasses there are and how far from the sun their orbits take them. That would be a 5-year contract.”
“Then there’s an opening for someone with my skills at the Ramada Mars Colony. That would probably require me to become a Colony citizen and I’m not sure I want to do that. Fixed colonies, no matter where they are, have a certain regimentation that begins to irritate me within a year or two. I grew up here on M-A and I’m usually fine here for six months or so. But once I know the routine and most of the people I get antsy. So, Mars would be safe, steady work and dull as dishwater in short order.”
“There’s also a spot on the Exo-planet Expedition IV for a climatologist. Now that would be real adventure – and I’d need to close down my affairs here because I wouldn’t be coming back. I don’t know whether I’ll qualify or not – I’ve been studying a lot to prepare for the interviews.”
Tarik gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “Would you do that? Aren’t the chances of getting killed on a trip like that really high?”
“Yup,” he grinned. “There’s been no contact with the previous three teams since the first one left 5 years ago. We don’t know whether they’ve been destroyed, are still traveling or are happily colonizing some rock somewhere. They don’t call the volunteers Kamikazes for nothing.”
“I wish I were younger,” Reston said wistfully. Tarik shook her head.
“I don’t understand why anybody would even consider such a thing,” she said. “I can see Mars or even the asteroid thing but why risk your life like that? Don’t you want to have a family? I thought you really liked your career. There’s so much work to do here.” She got up and walked the few steps to the window. The wind was picking up again and little waves slopped onto the surface of the dock. “Maybe we’d better go back. It doesn’t look like walking out there will be very pleasant.”
Aneelya and Reston looked at each other for a long moment as if they could share thoughts without speaking, then Aneelya shrugged and turned toward the door.
“You can leave the jacket on the hook just inside the hull when you go in,” Reston offered. “Very nice to meet you. Come back on a calm clear afternoon and we’ll get you that boat ride.” He shook hands with Aneelya and slapped him on the back. “You come back and tell me what you decide, YaYa. I might be able to introduce you to some helpful folks. We sure had some fun last time.” He held the door for them as they dashed into the wind heading for the hull.
The iris scanner had them identified and the door unlocked before they could reach for the handle. Any known person could come into M-A even though there were safety restrictions for leaving that required human decisions. Tarik found the hook for her coat, left it and looked down the promenade.
“It’s pretty late,” she said, “and it’s certainly been an – ah – interesting evening. Thank you and the very best of luck to you.” She turned toward the radial street.
“Wait! I mean, please don’t rush off. Did I do something to upset you?” Aneelya’s expression was half way between puzzlement and dismay.
“Oh no,” she said. “I’m not upset. I’m still a little cold but I’ll warm up. And this really has been a change from my normal activities. I meant it when I said it was interesting.”
“Me too. I mean your story is interesting. I’ve heard about purebreds before but you’re the first I’ve ever met.” He paused and looked back toward the outer doorway. “We could go out on the docks again when the weather is better. The ocean is really beautiful on a calm day.”
“I don’t think so.” She shook her head.
“OK. Maybe you could play some of your music for me. What’s you number? I’ll give you a call next week after I’ve had my next interview.”
She looked directly at him and cleared her throat. “Aneelya – YaYa, is that what the harbor master called you? – I don’t think there’s any point in our getting together again. We’re really on very different trajectories. I’m going to stay here on Earth for the most part, continue my historical research and try to keep ancient African culture from being completely forgotten. It isn’t because you’re not Ethiopian or not an attractive guy. You’re a fine person. It’s that – how did the harbor master put it? – You’re a wanderer. Yeah, I travel and what I do excites me. But you’d be bored to tears after the first 10 minutes of one of my conferences. Even though I was born in this ocean colony my idea of water recreation is wading up to my ankles in the Red Sea. You want to go motoring in the North Atlantic in a thunder storm.”
“But if we got to know each other we might find more things we like to do in common.” He was grabbing at straws.
“And then what?” she asked. “Just when we get comfortable with each other’s company you’ll take off on a one-way trip to Planet X. No, this was a chance encounter. It’s been a pleasant, if a little challenging, evening. I’ll remember it. I’ll remember you and we might run into each other again before you leave for good. But I don’t want you to call me.”
He couldn’t think of an effective counter argument. “You’re probably right,” he said. “There were a couple of times tonight when I couldn’t think of what to say next – like now. I guess ‘thank you’ would be appropriate. I was having a good time before we met and these last couple of hours have been good too. I’m glad you’re doing the work you do. People like me probably would forget where we came from if people like you didn’t remind us. And what I do is important too. Human beings are going to continue to colonize space and my work really does improve their chances of success. But you’re right. I’m addicted to wind and waves and weather and electrical storms. I don’t just want to study them, I want to be out in them as much as I can. Wading on the shore is just what I do before I dive in.” He put a hand on each of her shoulders and gave her a quick kiss on the check. “You have a wonderful life,” he said and started clockwise down the promenade. After about 10 steps he looked back to see her back disappearing through the door to the elevator to the lower levels.
It took him about 5 minutes to jog back to the viewing room where they had first encountered one another. This time he looked carefully around the room before dousing the lights. This time it really was empty. The first lightening flash was faint and the thunder that rolled out from the speakers many seconds later was only a low grumble. It would be a while before this second storm front reached the hull. He took a front row seat again and leaned back to wait for the wind to whip the ocean into another frenzy.
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