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Leona has finally come back to the Superscraper after spending days at Homes
for Humankind, working on something big. She even made a short trip to Haiti
without even telling Mateo about it. She hasn’t given any details regarding
their plans, but Mateo has briefed her on what he and the volunteers
discovered as they were exploring the sublevels. She wanted to see it for
herself, of course. She is particularly interested in the fusion reactor on
the very lowest level. She stares for a few minutes, not vocalizing her
thoughts. Then she walks over to it, and starts opening panels and hatches.
She presses a few buttons, and flips some switches too. When she’s
satisfied, she brushes the dust off her hands, and walks back over. “It is
more interesting than you thought.”
“Why’s that?”
She points. “See that over there, that collection of tubes?”
“Yeah. Kind of looks like an organ.”
“It’s part of a cooling system.”
“Sounds reasonable to me. Fire hot. Fire burn,” he says like a caveman.
She smirks knowingly. “Let’s go back upstairs. I need to test something.”
They take the elevator up. Leona stops on the main floor, and opens the door
to a maintenance closet. She looks around a little bit before finding what
she’s looking for, which is apparently a large metal pipe. She smacks it
against her other hand to test its strength, then they get back into the
elevator to go up a few more floors. She doesn’t say a word this entire
time. Mateo doesn’t think she’s going to hurt anyone with it, but he’s very
confused, and a little nervous. She usually likes to explain herself along
the way.
They get out on the fourth floor, and walk into a random unit. It’s not
being used by any of the people they took in. Still silent, Leona pulls the
pipe into a backswing, and sends it straight into the window as hard as she
can. It’s not too hard, because she never played baseball, or works out, but
it should have done at least a little damage. There is not a mark on it.
Also silent, Mateo reaches out. She hands him the pipe, and he takes his own
shot. Nothing. Impenetrable. “What does this tell us?” he asks.
She takes back the pipe, and hits the glass again, like a pickaxe this time,
and not with all of her might. She feels the seams with her fingers, and
looks closely at them. “Does this kind of window remind you of anything?
Like, when you think back to the times you’ve encountered one that appears
to be indestructible, were you in an office building, or were you...in
something else?”
Puzzled, Mateo winces, and tries to think. “I mean, they’ve always been like
that when I’ve been on ships?” He shakes his head tightly, and widens his
eyes. He looks around at the room that they’re in, and slides his palm on
the walls. “This is a ship?”
“I think so. In fact, I think that it’s just a giant evacuation vessel. They
built them to replace the original arcologies in the main sequence during
Project Airtight, but we never saw them. The whole planet could be evacuated
in a matter of hours, if need be.”
“Leona, one of our new friends did the math. If some lived up top, and some
below, a million people could fit. How many would you need to save literally
everyone?”
“At a million per ship, that’s about eight thousand, just like this one.”
Mateo gazes out the window. “Is that possible? Do you think more exist?”
She sighs and watches the sun set upon the city. “That...would be crazy.”
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