The Other Side
What goes up might not come back down.
We didn’t argue in the mornings after he got the job.
I didn’t want to be upset before he went to work. It was never a guarantee that he would make it back down the space elevator with the rest of the crew.
Our mornings were spent high on tension and burnt toast, and bitter coffee. I still bought whole beans from the store, though we had a replicator in the house now and he kept it stocked with the right ingredients. I programmed all the recipes according to my mother’s dog-eared recipe cards: her meatloaf, chicken paprikash, and beef bourguignon. Even her French toast.
The replicator couldn’t follow instructions. Or maybe the ingredients weren’t the same. Everything that came out of its doors was plastic on my tongue.
“Stop messing with it,” he told me.
“I’m just trying to get the toast to come out crisp, not burnt.” I lowered the heat setting two levels, and the replicator beeped.
He sighed and looked out the window. A light snow flurry had passed over the night before, spreading a dust of white stuff on the dry lawn.
“Winter’s come. Makes for harsher conditions up there.”
“Wear your mittens.”
He smirked. “I’ve got an insulated suit. I don’t need mittens, Elle.”
The replicator dinged again, and its doors opened. The toast was black.
I still drove a now-vintage Honda Civic without a touchscreen. Our neighbors, Mike and Jessica, had a pair of matching self-driving cars. Part of me was jealous; Jessica never had to get out of bed to take Mike to work. Some other part of me appreciated my hand on the wheel and my eyes on the road.
The elevator was set up in an old rail yard that had long been abandoned to gravel and weeds. Intergalactic Industries bought the yard, set up a few modular buildings, and moved in a group of scientists. For a few years, I saw only the flicker of lights inside the laboratories and offices at night as I drove by.
Then, the cranes, as large as dinosaurs, appeared. Intergalactic Industries had already built a few launch pads on a hundred-acre parcel they had bought a mile south. Now they were building a stationary platform for the space elevator.
I always thought these things would look more impressive or futuristic with holographic displays and sleek lines and contours like ice floes in a river. Instead, I saw a lot of corrugated metal walls, windowless towers, and spires that extended higher than anyone could see. The platform itself was an ugly mess of dark gray material and sharp edges. When I looked out the kitchen window, I saw its hulking girth sitting in the rail yard.
The idea of being ratcheted up there sent a chill through me unlike anything I’d ever felt. Just pure terror, rippling through every part of me. But Jake didn’t have this problem.
Jake’s problems were different. His mom warned me about his father’s romance with the bottle before we got married. Runs in the family, she said. I laughed and laughed. I didn’t realize just how many bottles there were.
He had an engineering degree, but he was a rough man. He hated the office, the labs. Hated the sterile environments, the piles of paper. So, when the line for the space elevator went up, a light sparked in him I never could’ve lit no matter what I tried. After three years of unemployment, he went for it.
“Asteroid mining,” he said. “It’s insane, Elle.”
I folded a pamphlet in my hands. It was red and tan and had an Intergalactic Industries logo on the front. Strange, how I never saw paper much anymore.
“It looks scary.”
“It’s not that scary. You know that it’s safer than anything else. They’ve been working on it for decades now.”
His eyes were bright and clear. The frown lines around his mouth resisted his enthused smile.
“I don’t want you to do it,” I said.
He cupped his dry hand over mine. “I’m doing it.”
Ten minutes later, we were in the Civic on the way to the yard. Jake had nicks from his quick shave job, and the collar of his white shirt was wrinkled, but he didn’t care. When I dropped him off, he bounded out of the car like a little boy, and my heart dropped.
The snow started up again when I got back to the house. Jake said nothing on the ride over. Had we even argued? I couldn’t remember anymore.
Maybe I’m just fussy. Old-fashioned. A washed-up fogey like my grandpa was when I was young.
I made tea the old-fashioned way; I still had a kettle and a stove. Just in case of power outages. Jake had set up a back-up generator though and so the replicator would never be without power.
I gazed out the window, hoping maybe I would see something for once in the yard. A flicker of the thick cable or the elevator itself. But I could only see an old crane hanging in the sky and the platform. He’d be well on his way up at this time.
What was the difference now? Miners went up instead of down. At least he wouldn’t get black lung.
“What if you get flung into space?” I asked once, nearly in tears.
Jake’s stern face drained away with laughter. We were sitting at the table, eating another awful replicator meal. The thing couldn’t even make a grilled cheese sandwich.
“It doesn’t work that way. God, I wish you didn’t worry so much about it.”
Feeling stupid, I poked at the partially charred macaroni noodles on my plate. He sighed.
“It makes me happy, Elle. I wish you understood that.”
I hated how I felt after those dinners. Like some desperate and lovesick teenage girl. Like I would wilt and wither away without him.
The kettle whistled. I poured the boiling water in my cup and thought about dinner. We always had dinner even when he got back late.
I wasn’t a teenage girl. Just a housewife.
I went to the grocery to buy a steak, potatoes, and asparagus. The aisles were lined with replicator cartridges: protein packages, carbohydrate reducers, garlic and chive flavorings, reuptake valve filters.
Mike and Jessica’s pantry bulged with assorted tubes and packets. Steak Diane? No problem. Omelette du fromage? Simple, as long as Jessica had gotten more powdered egg substitute. It was just like the stuff my dad used when we went camping, and we all thought it was gross then. What changed?
I walked up to the kiosk at the front of the store and tapped in my order. The touchscreen was tall and wide, with sharp images. I selected a sirloin steak, and the kiosk chimed.
“Would you like to purchase a refill for your replicator?”
“No thanks,” I muttered.
A muffled giggle came from my left. At the other kiosk stood an older woman. She wore a long wool coat and boots, and her cheeks were as red as her frizzy hair. I smiled at her and finished my order.
When I got home, I pan-fried the steak and roasted the asparagus and potatoes in the oven. The weight of the metal pan in my hand made me feel useful. I was creating something, filling the kitchen with the smell of a home-cooked meal. The only other thing I needed was an apron and a pair of heels.
I arranged the steak and vegetables on the plate as artfully as I could when the clock struck 6. Simple as it was, I was happy. Even Jake had to admit all this new technology did nothing to improve a steak.
The sky grew dimmer until the sun set. Mike’s self-driving car had not pulled up yet to drop Jake off. I put the plates in the oven to keep them warm and brought up a news broadcast on the tablet. The news anchor droned on about the stock market.
7 o’clock came and went. I snagged a few potato pieces from my plate to tide me over. The anchor told me at length about the recent 0.1 percent decrease in the unemployment rate.
8 o’clock arrived. It was dark. I tried to call the office, but there was no answer. Only a message saying to call back during business hours. I tried Jake’s phone in vain, but no answer. If he were still at work, he wasn’t allowed to use it, anyway.
At 9 o’clock even the news anchor abandoned me. I ate my meal at the counter under the blinking lights of the replicator. I wrapped his plate and put it in the refrigerator. Outside, a thick layer of clouds covered the sky. The lights on the crane and platform flickered.
The Civic hummed as I drove down to Intergalactic Industries’ space elevator site. Gravel crunched under the wheels of the Civic as I came to a stop. Two other cars were already parked outside the gate. A few lights on the perimeter of the parking lot and fence were lit. Next to the crane the space elevator’s cable stretched up into the clouds.
One car had an Intergalactic Industries logo on the side. A man was halfway out of the car, leaning his leg on the doorjamb. He had a cellphone pressed against his ear and spoke quickly in a low tone.
“Uh-huh, okay. There’s no way to get them down?”
I slammed the car door to get his attention.
“Hold on, Dave,” he looked at me. “What do you need, miss?”
Even in the minimal light, I could see how young he was. He had black hair and the stubble of a high school boy, but his eyes glimmered.
“My husband hasn’t come back today. What’s going on?”
“You’re Elle?”
I nodded.
His eyes went wide, and he pressed the phone to his ear again. “I’ve got her here now. What do you want me to say?”
He turned away. His voice dropped even lower, until I could only hear the whirr of the mechanical equipment and wind blowing. When he turned back, my stomach clenched.
“Jake’s up there. We can’t get him down.”
“Can’t get him down?”
“He... he didn’t come back down with the rest of the crew.”
I gathered my breath. “Was there an accident?”
He pocketed his phone and hesitated for a moment.
“He’s my husband.” I tried to meet his gaze, but he stared up at the platform. At this distance, it seemed like a mountain that might drop from the sky and crush us and everything else beneath it.
“Doesn’t look like there were any malfunctions or accidents.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Jake didn’t come back. Mike tried to get him to strap his himself in, but he refused.”
“I see.” A spark of fury flashed through me. Jake had done this on purpose. “He’s got some sort of protection, air and all that, right?”
The man glanced away again.
“Is he dead?”
“Probably.”
The ground beneath me seemed to falter and fall away, and my body felt weightless. I was floating. Was this what it felt like up there?
The man came over and placed a hand on my shoulder. My body shivered and shook. I did not push him away. His low voice warbled in my ears, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. Some apology. Tears burned my eyes, and the cold seeped in around the edges of my jacket. I gazed up at the black sky and snow fell. It looked as if the stars were crashing down to the ground.
The platform hung there at one end of the thick elevator cable.
And on the other side, Jake.