It seemed to have a bright future. Metaphorically speaking. And literally, too--a first-ring suburb, it could not avoid the light pollution from Zwischen, spilling over. By night the galaxy was faint, though stars--asterisms mostly and not full constellations--came into view.
The night was clear, few clouds to speak of. The air was clear, strict environmental laws limiting pollution. The citizens of Clunvers tended to lean towards the Liberal Conservatives, paranoid about their planet's future but stoic in their resolve to defend it. Then there were the Libertarians, disaffected with their bureaucratic neighbors. And--a very few, but loud when they wanted to be--Pragmatic Radicals, proud of their country and ready for a brighter future for it.
The day before had been another quiet day in Clunvers. The temperature had dropped quickly after a long summer and the residents slowly put on other layers, the LibCons among them relieved that it wouldn't stay warm forever.
What were the scientists doing? Trying to look towards the future, hypothesizing? Out at 102d Polyteknik they were waiting on data from a collaboration with the University of 102d, sharing a supercomputer to compute...something. Closer to Anaro was the Glune Institute of Natural Sciences, whose theoretical chemistry professors were embroiled in a fight with some advocates concerned about the potential drug applications of their research. (Said advocates continually overestimated the practicality of GIONS professors.)
And in distant Spenson, at the Stoal Institute of Science, the astronomers were there, were paying attention.
But not to anything nearby. They were listening to deeper space, echoes far too deep to touch Zwangzug. After the debacle that was the space race, they told themselves, there was no use for them to care about anything close to home.
*
The local train moved slowly between streets, perhaps a mile at a time. Laura permitted herself a smile as she looked out the window. No, Clunvers was not that stunning a suburb, but it fooled an exchange student or two every now and then. With so many trains packed in so dense a space, so many tall buildings housing dozens of people, they were convinced that it had to be the big city.
It wasn't. Once you saw the empty streets, the lack of cars, you got used to the mesh of trains. Once you really apprehended the scale of the country, the thousands upon thousands crowded together didn't seem that numerous. Oh, they were significant, significant in the way anyone is significant--Laura, there, one hand on the train pole because all the seats were full, one hanging loosely at her side for no other reason than to proclaim her skillful balance, ID card in her pocket, shoelaces untied because her shoelaces never stayed tied, cap with a blackboard bold Z proclaiming her loyalty to the Zwangzug Zebras in spite of their recent (was it recent? the scheduling of international sports was always a mystery) group stage failures at the World Baseball classic, long-sleeved shirt a bright blue, pants perhaps casual by other countries' standards but ignored by blunt employers who looked past her, or within her, not caring for externalities, socks mismatched, underwear utilitarian--but several thousand times over. But not numerous, people thought.
She looked out at the sky, not directly into the sun of course because she was a follower of rules. But there, something in the sky, something irregular and strange and growing. It grew and grew out the window, then fell out of her field of view, then the crash of noise--
The train pulled into its next stop, and stayed there. Laura wrapped her other arm around the pole.
*
Evan was not a suicidal teenager. Certainly not. He was not lovesick or physically sick or murderous or one for making pacts. He was not about to do anything rash. Evan was not an adolescent for action.
And suicide was drastic. It had consequences. Not just for himself, if he went down that path--which he wasn't going to--but for his hypothetical survivors. His family, who loved him unconditionally. His teachers, his classmates. They might feel guilty. Evan didn't want them to feel guilty.
Evan really, really, didn't like guilt.
There would be others, too. People he would never meet in any event. The people like him. People between the ages of thirteen and nineteen or eighteen or wherever the demographers made their cutoffs, people susceptible to x or y or z. If he killed himself--not like he would--he'd become another statistic. Another data point for well-meaning counselors to say "look, you'd better not carry on down that track because you could wind up like this, look how many people have already." They'd pressure the other kids to change, take drugs, go to therapy, do something that then they'd just turn around and stigmatize. No escape. No way to win.
He wouldn't make things worse for them. He'd survive, somehow. Never mind how useless he felt, how hopeless it got. He'd keep going. He'd been doing it for years.
And there were good days too, exciting moments, reasons to hope. Friday had, briefly, held promise. There was something in the sky, something drawing near. He turned, quickening his step, telling himself the day would be a good day. He could find it, keep a sliver and give some to science to investigate.
Turning around didn't really make a difference.
He took a few more steps and it fell closer, grew larger, and only then did he see the fire. Evan hesitated, then took another step. It'd burn itself out, or if it didn't, he'd walk away.
The fire reached the ground--no, roofs and telephone poles first--and kept going. Evan turned and ran, hissing ragged prayers along the way. My family--where are they--which direction--let them be all right, or Forgive me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm always--he didn't bother asking for protection for his own self, yet he ran. Thin distinctions.
By the time the flame was lapping at his heels, perhaps moments only, he had passed caring. Maybe it would be easier, without family to mourn for him--he couldn't escape being a statistic but at least there would be no guilt left. Besides, he thought, as the flame caught up with him, it was sort of cool. He would feel it all this way--life wouldn't just pass him by without an explanation.
There was pain, yes, but mostly a warmth worth seeking. It came from behind, rising back towards the sky where it belonged, and brought him along. Evan breathed again, let his eyes close, and felt free.
*
No one asked Jordan what he thought. Not that he was hoping for them to, not that he had anything worth saying.
But "Big Max"? Where had they gotten that idea? It was a meteorite.
Meteorites didn't discriminate. They didn't do much in the way of talking, really, didn't bother to ask whether you were young or old, woman or man, Lilliputian or Maxtopian. Even the newspaper guys (it was mostly newspaper--radio wasn't the same these days, but that's another story) didn't ask him where he'd fled from. They just did their research.
What was there to say about Clunvers? It was in the shadow of the capital, maybe that was all there was to it. Easier to talk about him, tell the story of his life. He was a survivor, not by any great skill or brutal willpower, just by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. When the war with Outer Bigtopia had broken out he'd been recovering from a broken leg. When the meteorite hit he'd been up on the tenth floor on the other side of the suburb. Yes, he went there every few weeks to get lunch. No, he hadn't seen it before. No, he wasn't sure where he was going to live now. His daughter, maybe, out in Glune. Perhaps.
People liked survivors. Everyone did, even if it hadn't been through any brilliance on his part. They were easier to interview than victims. And Zwangzug--well, he wasn't sure whether all the interviewers were from Zwangzug or not. Maybe some of them were foreigners, voyeurs for disaster. Most of his compatriots didn't want to mourn, just bury the dead, rebuild the houses, don't forget to dig up the fragments for science--and move on.
"Big Max." Really. Maybe, Jordan told himself, maybe it wasn't Max as in Maxtopia. Maybe it was just max as in maximum. It was big. Very big.
Maybe it couldn't have been any worse. Maybe, just maybe, things could only get better.
Though that still left the question; now what?