Dawnrunner

Part 1 - Chapter 1

“Darkness, not of a cloudy night, or a night where there is no moon, but darkness as if the light has gone out in a room that is locked and sealed.”
– Pliny the Younger, on the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, about 100AD.

My name is Carliah Webb, identity number: SR27560, and today is my birthday. This morning I blew the candles off a flourless cake with chocolate icing and made a wish. I told myself I wouldn’t wish for the same thing I did every year, the same thing we all wish for every year, but I did. Two things have not changed about my life since the day I was born: I am a resident of the largest Human Sanctuary on Earth, on the continent formerly known as Australia, and I have never seen the sun.
I am 23 years old.

The not too distant future…
 
“Carli! Carli, come on! Get out here already! You’re missing your own party!” The voice behind the door belongs to Vincent lo Bianco, my idiotic best friend – correction, best male friend (sorry Rachel, love you). It sounds like he wants to break down the door and drag me out kicking and screaming. Truth be told, I don’t really feel like partying tonight. As far as I’m concerned, I was well behaved and waited a full hour before scurrying upstairs. With a scowl I close the cloud-tracking window on my computer, which shows the areas over Europe where the sun can still penetrate. Vincent knocks again, louder, making me jump in my chair.
“Alright, I’m coming!” I yell back. At the door I stop and press the side of my body against it, resting my head on the frame and my hand on the handle. “What’s the password?” I ask in my best immature voice.
“Come on Carli,” he whines at me. “Save the games for the party, everyone’s waiting for you.” I smile a secret smile – the one I hate, showing all the teeth – because I know I’ve got him stuck.
“No password, no entry.” Childish, I know, but whatever: it’s my birthday. “You do remember it, don’t you?” He’d better not have forgotten, I don’t care how many years it’s been.
Vincent is silent for a moment, putting his lifetime record at serious jeopardy. Finally he whispers one word through the wood: “Cats…” placing a long emphasis on the ‘s’.
It was a dumb choice of passwords: it always made me sad. If I could have had anything for a birthday present, at least out of the things that fit into boxes, it would have been a cat, but they’ve been extinct since before I was born.
I release the barricade that is me from the door and watch Vincent less-than-gracefully saunter into my room (where’s Rachel when you need her for the there’s-a-boy-in-my-room joke). Vince is impossibly tall, to the point he has to duck whenever he walks through any of our doors. He makes up for it by having the kind of broad shoulders you dream about dancing on when you’re a little kid… and again when you grow up. If he wasn’t already dating Rachel I might have told him that someday. The facial-hair experiment for the month is thin goatee, which will likely end with Rachel shaving it off in his sleep.
“You have to come down Carli, they’re getting your presents ready.”
I groan and roll my eyes. “Vince, please!” I push myself against his chest and try failingly to do the whole bat-your-eyes thing girls do when they’re asking for a favour. “Just give me five more minutes then I’ll come down, I promise.”
Vincent looks at me like I’m the bad dog trying to talk its way out of leaving a mess on the carpet. For a moment I think he’s going to follow up with a comment about my particularly un-host-like behaviour, but instead he takes my shoulders and turns me around so that I’m facing away from him and pulls me back against his chest. Before I can protest he holds up a box in front of my eyes, small but beautifully wrapped with blue paper and a white bow. He waits until I take the box out of his hands then whispers in my ear “Happy Birthday, Carliah.”
His sudden departure leaves me stumbling to find my balance and robs me of the chance to speak. I’m left alone in my room holding the mystery birthday present, which I eventually decide to place on the desk: I’m determined to beat his little game and open his present last, despite his devious ploys. With my head held high, I turn on my heel and head for the stairs.

At the bottom of the staircase I flick the switch for the lights to the living room. Maybe because it’s my birthday I won’t get a lecture about wasting energy before the city lights dim. I know I’m not the only one who’d rather waste five minutes worth of power than stumble in the dark trying to find the switch.
Rachel appears out of nowhere and just about scares me enough to run back up. She has wild red hair that has gotten messier while I’ve been gone – Vince’s work, no doubt – but still looks gorgeous. I hope she knows I hate her for that. She’s generally stunning with long legs and a figure that can pull off just about any outfit, but especially the dress she’s picked out for tonight. I, meanwhile, have dark brown hair that has an unkindly life of its own, and a body that punishes me whenever I eat anything with carbs. Rachel is hiding my present behind her back, and from the look on her face, she’s more excited about it then I am.
“Happy Birthday!” she screams. I feel like tying her ankles to the floor just to keep her from jumping off planet Earth. When the bouncing stops she somehow manages to hand me my present and hug me at the same time. It’s a peculiar rectangle-oval shape and very soft, very unusual for someone who’s only membership card belongs to the home-entertainment tech-store. Inside is a bag, not the kind I usually buy but a medium-sized backpack. It’s purple with dedicated laptop and book spaces. I have absolutely no idea why I now own this. Invisible hooks pull the corners of my mouth towards my ears as I grab Rachel into a hug and start whispering.
“The last time I went camping was with you, and we were 10!” I say as quickly as possible.
“I know, trust me,” she whispers back.
The next person to cross the room is my mother, who makes some joke about sending me away that has the whole crowd laughing, except me: I’m still waiting to see if she’s serious. Her present is smaller, thankfully. It’s an envelope, which seems harmless enough. I manage one calm breath before I turn it over and my lungs collapse completely. The back is sealed with the sun-shaped emblem of the Global Effort. I shoot a panic-stricken look at mum and Rachel, both of whom are beaming and are obviously very proud of themselves. Vincent is nowhere to be seen. Of all the times for him to act like me and run away…
My hand is shaking as I cut the 8-pointed sun in half:

TO: CARLIAH WEBB, SR27560,
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PURCHASE OF TWO TICKETS ABOARD THE

DAWNRUNNER

EXCLUSIVE TRANSPORT OF THE GLOBAL EFFORT FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE HUMAN RACE.
THIS SERVICE WILL ALLOW PASSAGE FOR YOUR AND ONE COMPANION OUTSIDE THE BOUNDARY OF THE AUSTRALIAN ISLAND HUMANITY SANCTUARY TO A PRE-DETERMINED SKY-CLEAR LOCATION. A MILITARY ESCORT WILL BE PROVIDED AT ALL TIMES TO ENSURE YOUR SAFE JOURNEY AND RETURN. ALL NECESSARY DOCUMENTATION WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE TO YOU VIA YOUR CENTRAL ACCOUNT.

COMMANDER-GENERAL RUPERT R. LOWE,
GEPHR

If there is a part of my body that still has feeling, it must be off hugging itself in the closet. I stand there staring at the page, my hands shaking, and otherwise completely unable to move. The Dawnrunner, the only way in or out of the island, and I’m going to be on it! Finally I manage to look at the room full of people waiting for me to reply.
“This… this is impossible!” I cry as the two of them pull me into yet another hug.
“Do you like it?” one of them asks, though I’m not sure which.
“Like it?! Do you know what this is?” I pull myself away and look at them both straight in the eyes. Mum takes my head in her hands and tells me what I’ve been waiting to hear for over twenty years:
“You’re going to see the sun!”

I don’t remember much of the rest of the party. Rachel shows me the matching backpack she bought, in pink. I don’t even have the presence of mind to tell her she is behaving exactly like the ten-year-old camper versions of ourselves. Vincent doesn’t reappear for at least an hour. For the rest of the night, he never leaves Rachel’s side. At one point she tells me he is nervous about the fact that we are going. Even with the military escort there are stories of people who haven’t returned from a Dawnrunner trip. Some of them were scientists sent out on government assignments; others were just people like us desperate for a taste of sunlight. It isn’t until I am back upstairs that I even remember to open his present.
I leave the purple backpack on the chair across the room and climb on the bed with the small blue box. It’s obvious he’d wrapped it himself: the paper looks as though it had been torn apart rather than cut. The ribbon is nice though, so I take it off carefully and put it on the desk. Inside the paper is a phone, a top-of-the-range model. The Global Effort emblem-sun is carved on the back and above it are engraved the initials CW. I turn it on and immediate the screen fills with a giant V, the symbol of the Valkyrie satellite network. It’s preloaded with my central account details and my music collection. I momentarily go red at the thought of Vince reading through my embarrassing song choices before I notice the flashing message at the bottom of the screen. It’s asking me to enter a code, which I find on the Dawnrunner letter.
At once about a hundred pages of technical information about the train is downloaded into the device, as well as the itinerary for the trip, information about the places we’re going to, full profiles on the military and service crew and a list of do’s and don’ts for passengers. The whole thing collapses into a new menu option at the top of the page and a fresh item on my to-do list for tomorrow. Thoroughly overwhelmed, I turn off the phone and the lights and let the darkness take me.