She made her bed, tucking in the sheets with practised fingers. Four corners. She then unfolded and smoothed her clothes upon it before dressing. These were her very last ones – one shirt and one pair of trousers, just past knee-length - although they were patched together from all the ones she’d brought with her (seven shirts and three pairs of trousers) when she’d first been Assigned her Turbine.
The Turbine hadn’t been “hers” then, and it wasn’t now either, but she couldn’t help thinking of it that way. Secretly, of course. She never referred to it that way out loud, even though it had been twenty-one years and eighty-four days since she had last seen another person. Even the letters had stopped three years and twelve days ago, and even then there had never been personal messages. Just news, and updates on the Turbine system and all it was doing for the world.
The isolation bothered her sometimes, but it ceased to do so when she thought of all the people she was helping. When she thought of it like that, she wasn’t isolated at all. She was connected to more people than she could count (although if she could count them she would try), through the thick Cable that ran under the sand. The light in her lightbulbs was the very same light they had in theirs, generated by her Turbine.
Now, this morning, like every other morning, the Turbine was still. That was the thing about Turbines – the wind had to be consistent enough for them to work, but not so consistent that they were unmaintainable. The desert was perfect for that: like clockwork, the wind raced through the air and over the sand every afternoon, but in the morning the desert air was still. That was when the Turbine Keeper did most of her work.
The moonlight, while bright out here in the desert, was not enough by which to see the minute details and she did not have a cable long enough to bind a lightbulb to her forehead, so she was confined to daylight hours.
She always got to work quickly, but today that was especially important. Today, she would be doing Blade maintenance. All the screws on the three Blades had to be tightened. All five thousand one hundred and thirty-six of them. And if she were on the Blades while they were moving, she would undoubtedly fall to her death. Today, she was racing against the wind.
In a practised motion she cut a slice of the heavy bread she made every six days from the grain she grew at the base of the Turbine, fed with abundant sunlight through large windows and water from the Turbine-powered pump. Sometimes she wondered whether that well would ever dry up, but that was impossible. She’d been assured that the supply was endless, being replenished by the trickle of rain that fell once or twice a year. In theory, they’d said, she could stay there for a long time. The rest of her life, even.
She wouldn’t be doing that, though. There would be a time when she would be allowed back.
She finished chewing and began to climb. Her living chamber was in the middle of the Tower, equidistant from the Blades at the top and the Garden below. She went upwards in the morning, all the way down once the wind began, and then back up, but only halfway, to sleep. Equal exertion either way, although she barely felt it anymore.
Her arms had not been particularly strong before her Assignment, but now they bulged as she climbed. Her hands, too, had grown tough and gripped the worn rungs of the ladder with a force that threatened to bend them. With these hands, perhaps she could have...
No. She could not let her mind wander that way, even though it sometimes did, even after all this time. Her time of Reflection had to be over now, after all these years, and she would be achieving Remorse at any moment now. The two phases were supposed to be intimately interlinked: Remorse following naturally from Reflection, and finally leading to Reconciliation.
She had spent so many years Reflecting. Watching the scenes in her mind, over and over. She kept expecting Remorse to come, to arrive one day like a visitor, wearing a wide straw hat to shield it from the desert heat.
But it was not coming from the outside: she had to tease it from within. She grasped at it, but her hands were too clumsy. Too hasty. Too violent.
But there was something there, and she would not stop until she had it firmly in her grasp. Like…
No. Not again.
She reached the top of the Turbine and pushed open the little door. When she had first arrived, she had fit through it easily. Now she had to tilt her broadened shoulders. Once she was outside, she stood up straight.
The air was cool now, but soon she would be sweating. The horizon glowed. The morning was when the sand was at its most vibrant: an orange that rivalled any dye. The dye-makers at Yfirfall had been trying to replicate it for decades but had not got it quite right just yet.
Or maybe they had, the Turbine Keeper reminded herself as she took the moment to stare into the distance, as she did every morning to see the first sliver of sun appear over the horizon. She wouldn’t know.
One day, when she achieved Reconciliation, she would be Unassigned. Then she could find out about all the new dyes invented in Yfirfall, the new farming methods for the great herds of cerulean cattle in the East, and the newest structures dreamed up by the Kenningaret in her home city of Noireverre. She had never cared much for any of this before her Assignment, but now she would not mind knowing.
She would also be able to see others again. Sometimes she reflected on what that would feel like and she wasn’t sure she would like it very much. She had been alone for so long. What if people were not as she remembered them? There were no specific people for her to remember – that had been taken care of in the events leading up to her Assignment, events that had caused her great pain.
At the time.
But people in general. What were they like now? What had they been like then, really? Once, she had believed all people were good until there was that one who had shown her otherwise.
It had been then that the Turbine Keeper had discovered the fragility of human goodness. She had discovered that fragility within herself, too. Twenty-one years and ninety-one days ago, she had taken that innate human goodness and shattered it with her bare, bloody hands.
At least, that’s what they told her. And she believed them, but there was something about that which was just out of her grasp. She felt sure that if she could just grasp that, she would achieve Remorse.
The ladders that ran down the Blades were much narrower than the one inside the Tower so that when The Turbine Keeper held a rung her knuckles touched the surface. She’d run out of paint one year and seventy-eight days ago. At first, the edges of the chipped paint had scraped at her knuckles, but now the paint behind the ladder had peeled off completely. The metal underneath was shiny and hurt her eyes when the sun hit it at a certain angle.
She reached the end of the first Blade. She liked to start there because she was more comfortable moving towards the centre of the Turbine than away from it, and she found she worked faster when she wasn’t progressing outwards, towards the open air, and the drop.
She used to have a harness, made of the finest cerulean cattle leather, but that had given up one year and two hundred and twenty-eight days ago. She had been terrified, that first time she had gone to tighten the screws after that, but she dared not skip such an important job. She had sweated and trembled, but if the screws weren’t tightened, the Blades would fall apart. And if the Blades fell apart, the Turbine couldn’t generate power. And if the Turbine couldn’t generate power, so many people would be without light and heat. She would have failed them. That knowledge would be far worse than what would be done to her once it was discovered that she had failed.
Now her grip was firm. She still trembled, but only if she looked down too much.
The sun continued to climb in the sky, and she had to wipe her sweaty hands on her trousers often, one by one, to keep them from slipping. When she did this, she had to hold the wrench with which she was tightening the screws, as well as the ladder. The wrench was heavy and the metal grew hotter, but her calloused hands held it tightly.
She reached the centre of the Turbine and began to climb out to the second Blade, keeping an eye on the angle of the great shadow below her while trying not to think about how far below that shadow was. It had taken her a little longer than usual to do the first Blade, so she needed to make up some time.
She was racing against the wind.
She kept an eye on the angle of this second Blade, too. It pointed upwards, towards the sky. The Blades had never tilted under her weight since they were so gargantuan in comparison to her, but she always worried when the angle was this precarious.
Today, that angle was just precarious enough. As she neared the end of the Blade, she felt as though she was moving ever so slightly to the side, but dismissed it as nerves.
Until she was moving, not so ever so slightly. She had been wiping her hand, so she was holding both the wrench and the ladder with the other. Her practised grip failed her and although she held on to the ladder, the wrench slipped and plummeted towards the sand below.
At first, she was not so worried about that, but when the Blade finished swinging and her internal organs shifted back to their rightful places, she noticed the wrench was gone.
It was her last wrench. She had been provided with three, and the other two had been lost in the sand.
She had three options.
The first was to finish the job with her hands. She tried it, but the screw did not budge. She ruled that option impossible.
The second was to go down, find it, and leave the job for the next day. She ruled that impossible as well because she had never skipped nor postponed this job. If the screws were not tightened regularly, the Blades would fall apart. If the Blades fell apart, the Turbine would be unable to generate power. And if the Turbine failed to generate power...
The third option was to go down and fetch the wrench, and then climb back up to finish the job. It would undoubtedly have plunged into the sand, rendering it invisible from above. She had a magnet for that purpose, but at some point, as she had discovered, her tools seemed to stop responding to it.
And then there was the wind. She would never be able to find the wrench in time to finish the job before the wind would begin.
Although it seemed impossible, she ruled the latter her best option. She was strong, and sometimes the wind came up a little later. She might still win this race after all.
A short while later she was at the base of the Turbine, magnet in hand, knees in the sand. She eyed the Blades above her, squinting into the sun. From where had it fallen?
It was an hour and seventeen minutes later when she found the wrench. Her knees were raw from crawling in the sand, and her back burned. Sweat ran into her eyes, but she dared not rub them with her sandy fingers.
When she closed those sandy fingers around the wrench, her heart leapt and she looked up. The sun had moved steadily while she’d been searching. She already knew it was too late for her to beat the wind, but the thought of that thick Cable that ran under the sand, carrying light and heat to thousands of people, made her start that climb again. She would find a way to finish her job, somehow.
She finished the second Blade and started on the third. She worked faster than she ever had, but made sure every screw was as tight as it could be. She had never been known to do a careless job. Her hands ached and her head throbbed from the heat, but as the angle of the shadow below her slid across the sand like a desert sole, the air stayed still.
She had done seventeen screws on the third Blade when she felt the air begin to move. It was just her imagination, she told himself, but two screws later it became unmistakable.
She had lost her race against the wind.
But she still had to finish her job. The Blade began to creak and shift. This time, she held the wrench as tightly as she had held the throat of that man, twenty-one years and ninety-one days ago.
She gave herself a little time to get used to the movement as the blade swung towards the ground. She closed her eyes at first and then opened them slowly. She trembled, just like that first time she’d gone out without her harness. Maybe after this, she thought, she would no longer have to race against the wind. She could do this job while the Blades moved. If she survived.
With difficulty, she fitted the wrench around the next screw. It clattered, struggling to catch hold of the little metal octagon. It caught on her eighth try, and she turned her wrist in an automatic, practised movement.
She tightened the next screw on her fifth try. The next was too far away. The time had come for her to climb.
Whether she was climbing up or down or sideways was pointless to note. Directions changed as the Blade swung through the air, picking up speed. The racing air cooled her burned skin, but her stomach lurched too much for her to enjoy that small relief.
She pulled herself forward but misjudged the increasing force pressing her against the Blade. Her foot slipped, and she was flung to the side, arms twisting around each other. The wind whipped her against the metal and snatched away her cries.
While she raced through the air, she thought about death. It was not her own death, however, that crossed her mind first.
It was her son’s. She could see his face strained with fear and pain, a fear that in that moment she had thought she could feel too, but now, as the possibility of her own death loomed so close, she realized she had not.
“A mistake,” they had said. The man in the white coat who called himself a doctor had made a mistake. The boy weighed fifty-eight kilograms. He needed twelve milligrams of medicine for every kilogram he weighed, and the doctor had given that to him.
Twice.
“A mistake,” he had said. “I did not keep track,” he had said. Reflection.
“I am sorry,” he had said. Remorse.
“It will not happen again. I will be more careful in future,” he had said. Reconciliation.
She had said nothing. She had thought nothing, just acted. It had seemed natural at the time, for there to be hands around that throat that had breathed those words. Her hands. I did not keep track. It will not happen again.
No, she had thought. It will not happen again.
The doctor had not died that day. She was not strong enough, not fast enough, and there were people watching. But she had wanted him to die. She had been waiting for that feeling to come when he would stop fighting back. She had watched the fear build in his eyes. The same fear he had put in her son's.
She felt that very fear now. She was no longer being dashed against the Blade, but simply pressed against it. She no longer feared being violently flung through the air, but rather she feared that her arms would give up. Her arms that had grown so strong from a job she had been Assigned because she did not feel Remorse about what she had done.
She could do it, now. If she saw him now and tried to kill him, she might be able to do it with these arms. She might even be able to snap his neck instead of just strangling him, killing him in an instant, with these arms.
She could, but now she would not.
Was this what Remorse felt like? When you felt what the person you harmed felt, and realized you would not wish that on anyone? Not even the worst person you knew? Not even if they took away the person you loved the most?
It will not happen again. Even in a daydream.
Her eyes were closed, but sunlight burned through her eyelids as the Blade bore her upwards. As the Blade bore her downwards, the heat disappeared but the remains of the light were still there. Seven hundred and twenty-three seconds later the wind reached that constant speed, perfect for generating power.
Her arms ached and trembled. The metal rung cut into her skin as the momentum of the Blade threatened to rip it from her fingers. Miraculously, the wrench was still in her hand.
But now the movement was constant. She could plan. So she planned to pull herself back to the ladder, and then she did so. She planned to stretch her one leg over, to catch a lower rung with her toes, and then she did so. Her other leg followed, and then she was back on the ladder.
She clung to it, letting herself relax a little but not too much. It still took great effort to hang on, but now that effort was spread out across her whole body, and she could handle it. The fear ebbed away ever so slightly - although there was still plenty of that - but the Remorse remained unwavering.
Once she could bring herself to move again, she lifted a hand and placed it on the next rung. She didn’t need to open her eyes; the distance was imprinted on her. Twenty-six centimetres and eight millimetres. She moved a foot next, and then her other hand.
The wrench clanged against the rung. She felt it through her arm more than heard it.
She still had her job to do, she remembered. And now that she had achieved Remorse, who knew how long she would still have this job?
It will not happen again.
Let her never be accused of neglect or lack of attention. Of losing track. She opened her eyes, which were immediately stung by the wind, and lifted the hand with the wrench.
By the time all the screws were tightened and she was on the platform at the centre of the Turbine once more, the sun setting behind her. But she did not look at that wash of colour across the sky. Instead, she looked in the other direction, at the point on the horizon where the sun had come up that morning. It was in that direction that the Cable ran. Today, her suffering had kept that Cable full of power.
And today, she had achieved Remorse. She slumped to the ground, letting herself relax completely after being so tense for hours. Tears mingled with sweat and she sobbed. “I’m sorry,” she said to that man who had killed her son. “I’m sorry,” she said to her son, who would not have wanted her to suffer this way, even after his death. He would not have wanted her to kill that doctor, either.
She stayed up there as it grew dark, too tired to move. Besides, she wanted to imagine she could see the Cable stretching out into the distance, carrying power. She wished it was on top of the sand, where she could see it, but it had to be under the sand to protect it from the heat. Every eighty days she dug down to ensure it was not damaged, to ensure it was still providing.
If it had been laying on top of the sand, or if she had taken the time to dig further, she would know that the end of the Cable was not hundreds of kilometres away, split thousands of different ways to provide power for thousands of different people.
The end of the Cable was less than a kilometre away. It did not split. And all it provided was a false sense of purpose, a tether to this bizarre and elaborate prison.