The Mayors, part two

He was the only astronaut in the city. Hell, come to it, Steven Reparte was the only astronaut on the entire planet, leave alone our allocation in Kenetica.  He came through the Eleventh Door, of course, and stayed.  There’s the theory that he also went back, but we don’t deal with metaphysics here. That’s for others at the hub, or back on good ‘ole mama Earth, bless Her, and Moon state Tech of course. They own everything.  We’ll never see Earth, but still She looms over like a big pink thumb. Try not to think of it. Now, we didn’t exactly need an astronaut. An astronomer would have done nicely however.

 It was the northern lights. The lights shimmered large in the night sky, immense in form, yet formless. Constant, like the sun and the moon, yet this night they winked. They were in a snit, and had some other allocation been affected we might have known to look for problems. But Kenetica has no equal on the world. We deal with the lights, like other places deal with the waves, or the flights of dragons, or any other myriad deviations in nature. All we can do, us mayors, is play like an oracle and map out a weekly schedule. Johnny gets up, Johnny gets to work, Johnny gets paid, Johnny goes home. Everyone is happy, life goes on.

 “Except tonight, Johnny mucked it up and maybe life doesn’t always go on,” I said, then had a sip of the tea that Miron brought to the table. We were all a bit disheveled, having been roused from our few hours of slumber. Tea was a nice jumping off point, but something much stronger would be needed to see us through Monday.

 Angela pulled a hand through her mussed hair. She was wearing beige tinted sunglasses, big ones, which seemed to cover half her face. “Where’s Reparte? Shouldn’t he be here?” Angela as ever had a beef with Steven, despite his obvious placement here as an honorary. He could come and go as he pleased, and had no distinct role. What other allocation had a friggin’ Earth astronaut?

 “Let’s just go over the transcripts and see what went wrong, ok?” said Miron. He began passing folders around. Angela whipped her cover open and huffed. She took a long sip then looked under her frames at the front page. “Maybe flip to the end, Anj.”

 We scoured the data for hours, and we traded tea for mellow infused coffee from a stash that Reparte had smuggled in from Earth. I silently thanked him, at least, for that. I wondered why he hadn’t yet joined us. “I don’t think we’re going to figure this out from one occurrence,” I said leaning back, worn, in my chair. “Anj, can you just climb into the surveillance basket and try to trace Johnny? Miron, we’ll need to alter the schedule since we’ve lost two citizens.”

 “I can’t see this being a big deal for now,” said Miron as he stood up. “Just a hiccup, but it might throw off the social dynamics. What are you going to do?”

 Before I pulled into Steven Reparte’s lane I could see the cloud drifting off toward the border, south of the Donut shop. Angela was looking toward the obvious direction. Normally I wouldn’t agree with her decision, Johnny being well trained and shrewd. But I knew he would be thrown off whack from the night’s events. He might just head for the exit in panic.

 The house was a cement prefab, tucked under the lip of a forested hill. An immense limestone ledge leaned out over the façade, and the appearance of a tall green door was the only clue that a home might lie beyond the edifice. I parked in the gravel and was going to walk up for knock, when I heard a faint electric whine and some clanking coming from the hanger further up the lane. I trotted around and saw smoke rising from the stack and mixing with the morning haze. The metal door was ajar a smidge and a concerning clatter arose from the shop.

 As well as some choice words. I entered. “Steven, are you alright?” I called out, looking around the spacious hangar for him. His shuttle from the Space Crawler towered above the carts and shelving in the building. Then I saw him hanging from a fin, twelve feet above the scaffold that had collapsed in a heap below him.

 “Hello, Stu. I’m just freshening up the Betty Lou here. Mind raising a ladder for me?”