EDGE OF DAY

Chapter 30

The Loop station was as big as the Living Dome and just as empty. Like the Living Dome, it had been designed to run on solar energy; thousands of mirrors and solar panels hung suspended in the curved ceiling to capture and harness the sunlight.

Miranda noticed Day staring at the row of pod platforms.

"Hard to imagine this place heaving with travelers, isn't it?" she mused. Day nodded, following along to the furthest platform inside a baby-dome appendix, grafted to the side of the station. It appeared to be a later addition and not part of the original design.

Day knew the Arc's history. The machines built Boulder Arc nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. Their Arc was one of eight Arcs in Colorado completed before the solar flare. When outside temperatures abruptly rose to seventy degrees centigrade across the planet, the power surges, followed by power cuts, caused four hundred and twenty nuclear power stations to enter core meltdown.

The power stations released massive quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere. The floods and storms that followed the sudden evaporation of the Earth's oceans dispersed the radioactive material across the planet. If anyone outside an Arc survived the seven-minute heat wave, they would have died from the floods and radiation fall-out.

"The Loop links us to six other Arcs around the state," Miranda said. "But once the Arcs released the Chimera Series 6 and up, traveling dwindled. Here we go."

A transparent door swished open and Day and Miranda stepped onto the ninth Loop platform.

Destination Multiverse! A colorful sign read. Their twenty-seater pod was waiting for them. The doors opened as they approached.

"When the Creators convinced the machines to build the Multiverse, traveling became obsolete," Miranda continued. "Strap in."

Day sat down and put on her seatbelt.

"The Arcs were all the same, anyway. The machines link all two hundred and thirty-four Arcs across the country, so when something appears in one Arc it's soon introduced and absorbed by all the others."

The Loop pod smoothly began advancing. As they sped up towards the tunnel the g-force pressed Day back into her chair. But once they entered the pressurized tube, it barely felt like they were moving, probably because of the magnetic levitation and their constant seven hundred miles per hour.

"Amazing how much the machines achieved after the Reset, don't you think? No one even bothers to run them anymore. They reinvent themselves, come up with new Chimera games, all the new service droids, alternative ways of recycling and conserving energy and space. The only contribution from humankind in the last twenty-five years is the Multiverse. And if I can't find a replacement, once I'm gone, they'll run the Multiverse too."

Day gave Miranda a short sideways look. Was that what got her up in the morning? What kept her going? What kept her almost sane in the soulless Vanquisher's World? Not wanting to leave everything in the hands of the machines. Had the real world become as much of an illusion as the Chimera's and the Multiverse?

"Here we are!" Miranda said, her voice brightening.

They were slowing. A second later the pod exited the tube, arriving by a platform suspended in the air. Through the pod's transparent casing Day could see above and below. Her breath hitched in her throat.

"Welcome to the Multiverse Gateway," Miranda said.

The Loop platform sat in the center of a building shaped like a mountain-sized seedpod. All external and internal walls were transparent. Thousands of hexagonal cells fitted together filling up the building, while every twenty meters or so, access tubes ran up and down and from side to side.