Cloud Seed

The night is dark, no moon in sight. I’ve been combing the dust out of my moustache for two hours now. I have no idea where it keeps coming from. It trickles down to the bottom of the basket, joining a pile that already threatens to swallow my feet. The specks sparkle and dance in the faint glimmer of the burners looming overhead. I read in the paper once that dust consists of dead skin cells. If that is true, I must be shedding my skin quite rapidly. I wonder what kind of creature might come to light once it’s off…

I’m joking, of course. I’m joking around by myself because I am bored out of my mind. Bored and hungry.

I try to break off a slice from a moldy brick of hardtack. True to its name, it refuses to come apart. I have no choice but to pour myself a cup of water filtered from nearby clouds and let it soften my meal. All of this while a perfectly fine bag of beef jerky provided by the federation sits idly in the other corner. The sacrifices one makes as a vegetarian…

With nothing better to do while I wait, I carefully take a sip from the cup, only to spit it out immediately. Despite the filter, the water tastes like ash. Particles cling to my tongue. I was certain I had already left the polluted zone behind. The Industrial belt must have expanded by another few miles since my last trip through this area. With this, the tack has officially become legally inedible. I sigh and throw the contents of my cup overboard.

Yes, it’s the era of industry. Cities and factories sprout overnight and spread out in every direction, conspiring to cover the entire planet. Still, there are areas they will never be able to reach, villages and communities so small and out-of-the-way that no one has bothered to add them to the map, much less to the postal route. But the forces of modernity won’t be thwarted so easily. It falls to us, the Airmailmen, to connect these isolated people to civilization by way of letter exchanges, newspaper subscriptions, and import catalogues. There’s nothing quite like seeing the joy and wonder on the face of a satisfied client as they unwrap some spice, tool, or trinket they could never have imagined if we hadn’t planted it in their head. I’m proud of the work I do, and I make certain to do it well.

Still, it’s a tough job.

You’re all alone for weeks at a time without solid ground beneath your feet. Your life is reduced to a twenty-by-twenty-foot wicker basket dangling from an inflated rubber bulb thin enough to be pierced by a bird beak, all of it hinging on the consistency of a fickle flame… Even if you’re not afraid of heights, it starts to mess with your head. People go crazy up here. They call it 'Ballooner Sickness'.

I’ve never had any issues like that. I’m quite level-headed, if I may flatter myself a little. I’m not afraid of heights at all; if anything, I’m drawn to them.

I am, however, deathly afraid of holes.

It may seem like there’s no real difference between a fear of heights and a fear of holes, since both revolve around falling, but there is. When I’m up in my balloon, I can always clearly make out the ground, as long as I stay just below the clouds. Even now, surrounded by darkness, the various apparatuses mounted to the basket feed me all the information I need to make the choices that would maximize my chances of survival in the event of a fall.

A hole, on the other hand, could open up anywhere, take me wherever it wants, and, if I’m unlucky, keep me there until I’ve withered away.

I know it’s irrational. It’s a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, especially up here. It’s just a childhood memory that hardened into the core of who I am.

The night continues uneventfully. I wish I could go to sleep already, but I must stay up until the Burners have drained the current gas canister so I don’t start running on empty while I’m knocked out. The fire sways hypnotically. My eyelids are heavy.

Suddenly, the flame bends sharply to the right, in a way that I’ve only ever seen once before, during the worst crash landing of my career. Immediately, I’m wide awake. I rush to check my instruments. Strangely, the readouts haven’t changed at all. If I were losing air, I should be able to see the needle drift left in real time, but it’s perfectly still. If anything, the values are more consistent than they should be. It’s like we’re frozen in place. But then, why is the burner flickering so peculiarly…?

I feel it at once: A gust of wind blows up my shirt, separating it from my body and making it lose its shape. Instinctively, I turn downwards to look for the wind's source.

A hole has appeared in the centre of the basket.

It’s barely more than a dot, but its presence is undeniable, and somehow, it’s blowing air at me. I recoil and claw myself into the basket’s rim. I feel the blood draining from my fingers. Taking a deep breath, I try to calm myself and understand what I’m looking at. Something must have pierced the basket, maybe a rock shot into the air by this ridiculously powerful updraft. But before I can convince myself, the wind subsides, and the hole begins to grow.

It spreads out at an even pace, swallowing all my deliveries on its way towards me, one by one. Even though I’ve been surrounded by pitch-black for hours now, the darkness emerging from the hole feels ominously alien. I sense that none of the packages will land on the ground below.

Soon, the only thing left in the basket is me. The hole begins to lap at my toes. I jerk my leg back and whimper. It’s no use. I want to pull myself up by a rope and climb onto the balloon, but my legs refuse to obey me, and my eyes refuse to turn away. I am overcome by sluggishness. I can barely hold myself upright.

The bottom of the basket is gone. I am dangling over the open maw of the void, hanging onto the rim with my last strength, desperately trying to delay the inevitable for another few seconds, until, finally, I drop.

I’m falling, free-falling down the pit, watching the light of the burners vanish into the distance. Dust rises from my body in impossible quantities and is carried away by the wind. For a moment, it seems to coalesce into another body in mid-air. Before it can attempt a face, the dust has dissipated.

***

I wake up.

I’m still in the basket.

I drag my head over the rim and throw up.

The first thing I notice once I’ve calmed down is that I can’t see the ground. I’m hovering over a cumulonimbus cloud carpet. Somehow, I must have risen even higher in my sleep.

The second thing I notice is that this carpet is littered with holes.

Not gaps of sky. Deep, dark, abyssal pits pierce the clouds and lead to godless places.

Dust trickles out of my head, following my vomit down the drain. I don’t feel like joking anymore.

Tripping backwards, cornering myself, I become a compressed, scared animal. The back of my neck hits the basket’s wall before my head does. I reach around. Something is sticking out of me. The protrusion has a strange texture, soft and a little slippery, but not slick. I’m certain it’s not made of skin, but I can feel it being touched as if it were part of my body.

Suddenly, as if to punish me, the growth sends a sharp pain down my back. I collapse face-first onto the ground.

Lying there, I can’t keep back the laughter. Finally, after all these years spent up in the air, I’ve lost it.

I’ve caught the Ballooner Sickness.

There’s no helping it. I can’t afford to let these flights of fancy get to me. Packages need delivering. People are depending on me.

I pull myself up, trying my best to ignore the minefield of holes surrounding me, and go to check the instruments. The condition of my balloon is stable, and the gas canister still has some juice left, even though I can’t remember switching it out. I calculate my current location. As it turns out, I’m right above my next stop.

In other words, it’s at the bottom of this hole.

Of course.

I pull down my pilot goggles. They won't do anything to protect me, but they'll at least place a barrier between my senses and this horrible unreality. When I’m done with this job, I’ll take a nice, long vacation to let my brain's fermented juices settle a bit. I’m long overdue, anyway. Maybe I’ll just stay in town. I've heard it's supposed to be quite nice...

Enough dilly-dallying.

I take a deep breath and hold it as I peer over the edge of my basket to make sure I am positioned well. Afterwards, I take a step back, kill the flame, and let myself sink into the void…

Crisp spring morning. Idyllic log cabin. Picture book childhood: Mother, Father, Dog, Shelter.

Fair visiting town. Couldn’t wait. Snuck out without telling. Too young to know.

Hunting season.

Intense fragrance of reborn nature. Downright magical. Thrushes and blackbirds tweeting in the branches, couples flying overhead. Infinite insects, much less these days.

Fungi everywhere.

Spot a doe watching in the distance. Weary, worried. Don’t notice. Too excited. Loved animals. Still do.

Start running. Try to catch up. 

Idiot.

Step, step, step, trap, feet treading air, then fall:

Fall, fall, fall, fall, then fall and fall, and fall and fall 

and fall forever, child.

Fall forever and don’t remember.

Don’t remember landing…

HUNTING SEASON

Soft landing. Mushy landing. Wet landing. Blood on your hands.

Turn around and see yourself reflected in the glass eyes of a life ended cruelly.

Carcass bed. Baby deer, impaled on spikes. Illegal now, standard then. Meat, fresh and local.

Covered in holes.

Get comfortable. You will often return here, for many years to come.

I know. I’m sorry, child.

Ten more hours until your screams are heard.

***

In the early hours of the morning, a balloon of the International Airmail Federation slowly descended onto a wheat field on the edge of a town encircled by an infamously treacherous mountain range. No one attended the landing. The pilot left his vessel in a glittering haze of dust. It looked as if he was trapped in the centre of a perpetually shaken snowglobe.

The sky was devoid of clouds, allowing for a clear view of that brilliant shade of blue which cannot be found anywhere else in nature.