Broken Glass and Petals

The sun was very bright inside the Spire. It felt like standing inside a giant lightbulb. The air smelled like wet grass and old dirt. It was a good smell. It was the smell of Spring. Everywhere you looked, there were green leaves reaching up toward the glass ceiling. The Spire was two hundred stories tall. It was the biggest garden in the whole city. It was also the only place where the Lunar-Spring blossoms lived. These flowers were small and white. They only came out for a few days when the sun hit the glass just right.

Edith sat on a metal bench. She was looking at her tablet. The screen was old. It had a long crack in the corner that looked like a spider web. She tapped the screen with her thumb. A little red light started to blink. It was a small light, but it made her heart beat faster. She looked at the numbers. They were going up. One hundred. One hundred and ten. One hundred and twenty. The irrigation line was getting too full of water. The pumps were pushing too hard.

“Jae,” she said. She didn’t look up. Her voice was quiet because she was worried.

Jae didn’t hear her. He was standing on a ladder. He was holding a spray bottle. He was misting the white flowers. He liked the way the water turned into tiny dots on the petals. He was humming a song he heard on the radio that morning. It was a bouncy song with a lot of drums.

“Jae!” Edith said louder. She stood up. Her boots made a loud clack on the metal floor. “Jae, look at the tablet. The pressure is climbing. It’s way too high. We have a leak in the main line. Probably in sector four.”

Jae turned around on the ladder. He looked down at her. He had dirt on his nose and a green leaf stuck to his shirt. “Is it the big pipe? The one that feeds the grove?”

“Yes,” Edith said. She walked over to the ladder. “We have to shut it down. If I turn off the main pump now, we can find the hole and fix it before the pipe pops.”

“No!” Jae said. He climbed down the ladder very fast. His boots hit the ground with a thud. “You can’t shut it down. Look at them, Edith. Look at the orchids. They’re right in the middle of blooming. If you cut the water now, they’ll dry out in ten minutes. The sun is too hot today. They need the mist. They need the hydration.”

“If we don’t shut it down, the pipe is going to burst,” Edith said. She pointed at her screen. The red light was blinking faster now. It looked like a tiny, angry eye. “Look at the spike. It’s spiking, Jae. If the pressure spikes, the whole sector is going to have a glass rain moment, Jae! Do you want the windows to explode? Because that’s what happens when a high-pressure line hits glass.”

“It won’t explode,” Jae said. He was talking over her now. “We just need to—we can just bypass it. Or we can—wait, no. If we bypass, the pressure goes to the lower roots. That’ll drown the moss.”

“Exactly!” Edith yelled. She was waving her hands around. “We have to stop the flow!”

“I’m not letting these flowers die,” Jae said. He grabbed his tool belt. “They only bloom once a year. If they die now, they’re gone forever. We have to fix it while it’s running.”

Edith looked at him. She looked at the white flowers. They were very pretty. They looked like little stars. Then she looked at the glass walls of the Spire. The city was far below. The cars looked like tiny colorful beetles. The people looked like dots. If the glass broke, it would be very bad.

“Fine,” Edith said. She grabbed her own belt. It was heavy. It had hooks and ropes and a big plastic tube of bio-resin. “But we have to go out there. The leak is on the outside of the inner ring. We have to rappel.”

Jae stopped. He looked out the glass. He didn’t like heights as much as Edith did. But he looked at the flowers again. “Okay. Let’s go. Grab the resin.”

They ran to the airlock. The airlock was a small room with two doors. They put on their harnesses. The metal clips made loud snapping sounds. Click. Clack. Snap. It was a lot of noise. Edith checked Jae’s ropes. Jae checked Edith’s ropes. They didn’t talk. They just breathed fast. The air in the airlock was cold and smelled like metal.

“Ready?” Edith asked.

“Ready,” Jae said. He sounded a little bit like he wanted to throw up.

Edith pushed the button. The outer door slid open. The wind came rushing in. It wasn’t a scary wind. It was a warm, spring wind. It smelled like the whole world was waking up. But it was loud. It roared in their ears. They stepped out onto the ledge. The ledge was only as wide as a pizza box. Below them was nothing but air for two hundred stories.

“Don’t look down,” Edith said. She was already hooking her rope to the rail.

“Too late,” Jae whispered. He was hugging the wall. “I already looked. It’s very far.”

“Focus,” Edith said. “The leak is twenty feet down. I can see the spray.”

She was right. A thin stream of water was shooting out of the side of the Spire. It looked like a silver needle in the sunlight. It was spraying right against the glass. The water was making a loud hissing sound, like a giant snake.

“On three,” Edith said. “One. Two. Three!”

They jumped. For a second, Edith felt like she was flying. Then the rope caught. Thwack! The harness pulled tight against her legs. It hurt a little bit. She swung through the air and hit the side of the glass. Oof! Her shoulder bumped into the hard surface. Jae landed next to her. He was swinging back and forth. His boots kicked the glass. Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Stop kicking!” Edith shouted over the wind.

“I’m trying!” Jae shouted back. “The wind is pushing me!”

They stabilized themselves. They were hanging by their ropes, right next to the leak. The water was spraying Edith in the face. It was cold and tasted like minerals. She wiped her eyes. The pipe was made of clear plastic. She could see a big crack running down the side. The crack was growing. It was moving like a slow lightning bolt.

“The resin!” Edith yelled. “Give me the gun!”

Jae reached for his belt. He was shaking. He pulled out the resin gun. It was a big tool that looked like a toy. It was full of thick, blue goo. He tried to hand it to Edith, but the wind caught him. He swung away.

“Jae! Come back!”

“I’m trying!” he screamed. He kicked his legs. He swung back toward her. Their shoulders collided. Thump. It was a hard hit. Edith felt the air go out of her lungs. She grabbed Jae’s arm. She held on tight.

“Got it,” she gasped. She took the resin gun.

She pointed the tip of the gun at the crack. She pulled the trigger. Whirrr. The gun made a low buzzing sound. The blue resin started to come out. It was very sticky. It looked like blue gum. She smeared it over the crack. The water tried to push the resin away. The spray was getting stronger. It was hitting Edith’s hands, making them slippery.

“It won’t stay!” Edith yelled. “The pressure is too high! It’s washing the resin off!”

“Let me help!” Jae said. He reached out. He put his hands over hers. He pressed down hard. He was much stronger than he looked. Together, they pushed the resin against the pipe.

“Keep holding it!” Edith said. “It needs to set!”

They hung there, two hundred stories in the air. They were both soaking wet. The wind was blowing their hair around. Edith could feel Jae’s hands on hers. They were warm. Her own hands were cold from the water. They looked at each other. Jae had a big smile on his face now. He wasn’t scared anymore. He was excited.

“We’re doing it!” he said.

“Just hold it,” Edith said, but she was smiling too.

Suddenly, the sun moved. It came out from behind a big cloud. The light hit the glass of the Spire at just the right angle. The water that was still spraying in the air turned into a hundred tiny rainbows. There were rainbows on Edith’s arms. There were rainbows on the blue resin. The whole world looked like it was made of colored light. It was the most beautiful thing Edith had ever seen.

“Whoa,” Jae said. He forgot to be worried about the pressure. “Look at that.”

“It’s the equinox light,” Edith whispered. “It’s the light the flowers wait for.”

They stayed like that for a long time. The resin started to get hard. It turned from a bright blue to a dull, tough gray. The hissing sound stopped. The water was trapped inside the pipe again. The leak was fixed. Edith checked her tablet, which was clipped to her wrist. The numbers were going down. One hundred. Ninety. Eighty. The pressure was back to normal.

“We did it,” she said. Her voice felt very small in the big open sky.

“The flowers are safe,” Jae said. He let go of the pipe. He looked at his hands. They were covered in sticky blue dots. “I’m going to be blue for a week.”

“It’s a good color on you,” Edith teased. She pushed off the glass with her feet. She started to climb back up the rope. It was hard work. Her arms felt like jelly. Jae followed her. They pulled themselves up, hand over hand, until they reached the ledge. They scrambled back through the airlock and shut the door.

Inside, it was quiet. The wind was gone. The only sound was the thump-thump-thump of the irrigation pumps working perfectly. They took off their harnesses. They were both exhausted. They sat down on the floor, right there in the airlock. The floor was hard and cold, but it felt great because it wasn’t moving.

“That was close,” Jae said. He wiped a smudge of blue resin off his cheek.

“Too close,” Edith said. She leaned her head back against the wall. “Next time, we’re checking the lines before the bloom starts.”

“Deal,” Jae said. He reached over and poked her arm. “Hey. Thanks for not shutting the water off. The flowers really do look good.”

Edith looked through the inner door at the white blossoms. They were fully open now. They looked happy. The sun was still hitting them, making them glow. She felt a warm feeling in her chest. It wasn’t just the sun. It was the feeling of finishing a hard job with a friend.

“They do look good,” she admitted.

She looked down at her hands. They were stained blue, just like Jae’s. She didn't mind. She watched the way the light moved across the floor as the sun climbed higher into the spring sky.