A Crack in the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyes fixed on the dome, waiting to catch anything that didn’t seem to belong up there.
    He’d discovered that if he paid close attention, he could sometimes spot strange things—curious, fantastical images that most people seemed too busy to notice or care about: Dozens of digital bats would appear to swoop down at him. A fanged pterodactyl or a giant flying hippo would appear briefly in the distance. A freight train on fire might streak across the dome so fast, it could have been mistaken for a meteor. The time to look, Eli had found, was right after a storm had passed by. A week earlier, after an especially dramatic squall, he’d spotted a bespectacled old gentleman in a tweed suit floating a hundred feet or so above his house. The man was pedaling a contraption that looked like an old-fashioned bicycle except it had enormous red, feathered wings. After a few seconds, the image disappeared.
    Eli knew none of what he was seeing was real. They were simulations generated by the CloudNet, the automated computer network that controlled the spheres, the sky, and all the other electronic processors in the dome. Still, the images both fascinated and worried him. Uncle Hector had said the company wanted him to stop thinking about sky anomalies and pay attention only to his studies, but the fact was, Eli couldn’t help it. Besides, he didn’t care what the company wanted.
    No, that wasn’t true. He
did
care. He cared about InfiniCorp because he cared about his family. It was almost the same thing. But lately he was having so much trouble stayingfocused on his training that he wondered how on earth he would ever make it as a senior executive. He wanted to do the right thing by taking his place in the organization, but, unlike Sebastian, he felt secretly ashamed because he had no idea where that place might be. Just like looking at the sky in recent days, thinking about the months and years ahead filled him with trepidation.
    “You know what I think?” he whispered to Marilyn. “I think there must be something wrong with me.”
    Beside him on the grass, the mongoose appeared lost in concentration, her neck craned toward the southern edge of the dome ceiling, which was crowded with cloud-vertisements. After a moment she started whistling and chirping.
    Eli twisted to see where she was looking. Then he saw it too. Over the Department of Painless Dentistry building, about three blocks away, a troop of silver monkeys was swinging from cloud to cloud. Small in the distance, they grew larger and clearer as they passed overhead, leaping at each other on their way up across the sky. He had to admit, this was an impressive one. Whenever he caught one of these sudden, absurd simulations, he tried to take in every detail. The monkeys got close to the center of the dome, perhaps a quarter mile high, and then vanished.
    Marilyn ran around in circles as if she appreciated the show, but Eli sat frozen. If these random images weren’t a sign of some troubling underlying malfunction, then why were they there? They weren’t advertising anything. They didn’t seem to have any purpose at all. As terrifying as Eli found them, they were often beautiful too. Whoever the programmer was, he decided, he must have had the soul of an artist.
    He even came up with a name for him. Leonardo.
    Leonardo of the Wild Blue Yonder.
    Eli wondered if he himself had a purpose. His whole life was already mapped out for him, and yet when he thought about the future it filled him with dread and uncertainty. He couldn’t explain why. With Marilyn at his side and his eyes still scanning the sky, he had an idea it had something to do with what was happening up there.
    Which made him suspect there really was something wrong with him. He felt like the only kid in the world who could get scared just by looking up.

2

the family
    The next day was InfiniCorp Day, the anniversary of the Grand Reorganization. On celebration days such as this, Eli was allowed to set aside