Shroud

The day seemed more dreary than most, but I couldn’t even be sure that it was technically the day. Lessons were supposed to be ending soon and the anticipation of freedom overtook me, the robotically delivered instructions faded into the background as I stared out the window. Lights in the distance came and went from the warehouses, automatic drones transferring finished product to the orbiting carriers above. We never saw those carriers, or anything above the dark gray clouds that constantly hovered above. That's how they supposedly named the world during the time of the first settlers, Shroud. It's been my home all my life, and is supposed to be my home for the rest of it too. All I know are the churning mines and the refineries that go along with them, set against the dramatic peaks that briefly break the cover of clouds. The peaks have been calling to me, they say that the stars are waiting. Seventeen years of a wait is far too rude of me.
Outside of the general education building sat the main promenade, one of the few places on the world that had the thought of being inviting to actual people. Businesses lined this section, whilst on the further outskirts greenhouses and their perpetual glow sat, sustaining this otherwise desolate place. The closest mountain sat at the eastern end of the promenade, some entrepreneurial soul built an artificial ski slope on the base of it. So I went off in that direction, steadfast in my desire to finally see the stars. The various essential services of any settlement flanked my sides; food stalls, medical services, and clothing outlets filled the small, plain buildings that filled the colony. The one essential business that is unique to Shroud are extensive artificial tanning floors that can fill multiple levels of any given building. The lack of sunlight would normally make any human as pale as a newt, but the abundance of tanning salons makes it so the average person on the street has anywhere from a normal complexion to that of a burnt piece of toast.
I passed corporate offices about half way towards the peak, the building was the largest on the promenade, with large floors leading into three slender towers that shot up towards the sky. They control most things on the world, since the economy is almost entirely made up of the mining and refining that they own. Personale streamed in and out of the blank facade, going to do the only thing there is to do on Shroud, make money for someone else. Businesses turned to greenhouses and intermedentent housing units as I moved past corporate headquarters and towards the mountain. Apparently people don’t like living with such a large formation looming over them, but with the constant cloud cover I don’t see the difference. The glittering lights of the pods bringing hopeful skiers up the mountain were in the distance, but they wouldn’t bring me all the way to the top. The crowds became smaller as I continued towards the mountain, with just the buzz of greenhouses around me. They grew all sorts of plants from other worlds, the soil on Shroud can only handle weak, unconsumable plants.
The small lobby of the ski resort was in front of me now, entering the building an artificial warmth overcame my body. I purchased a pass for the highest stop on the lifts, it also allowed me to take hand warmers and a ski coat for the harsher winds of a higher altitude. The pod was small, I was the only person in it and the walls still felt too close. As it began to glide along the wire, the desolate landscape of the mountain became more apparent. The artificial paths of now and the fake trees that surrounded them only made up a small portion of the mountain face, the rest just barren rock with intermittent native flora. The fake trees seemed to shake violently with the wind, dancing wildly like drunken dancers on a club floor. Particularly strong gusts would pick up loose snow and whip it around violently in the air until all of the frozen molecules broke down. The pod pulled into the transfer station that would put me onto the final line. The station was runned down, with unoccupied food stalls and an unnatural amount of litter for the almost empty space, being blown back and forth with the little wind that could make it through the cracks in doorways. Whilst waiting for the final pod outside of the main building, the jacket and hand warmers made their debut as useful gadgets, keeping my body warm in the intense winds of the mountain face. The final pod was older than the previous pod, an optimistic soul would call it charming, I would personally call it a cold metal box. Walls protected the passengers from wind, but the ambient temperature was still chilling to the bone.
My final destination was a simple platform, the fake snow couldn’t even be bothered to extend much further past it. I stepped off the platform onto the half snow, half rock mix that is left when not much care is put into maintenance. The wind strength was so strong that I was more impressed than annoyed at it, flapping the jacket in the back like a superhero’s cape and blowing every strand of my hair into a million different directions. I fastened the jacket tighter, put on the hood, and tightened my grip onto the handwarmers; ready to begin on the trek upwards. An intense wave of anxiety and dread overtook my body, but with every step I took it slowly returned to the back of my head. Quickly, I moved past the area that could still be loosely considered a ski resort and was surrounded by dark rocks and strange plants. The native flora of Shroud was alien to me even though it has always been just out of view. The strange tree-like figure that I walked past didn’t have any leaves, and the trunk and its branches waved in the wind rhythmically back and forth. The small grasses that existed were centered around the alien trees, sticking straight up out of the ground like the tip of a throwing dart. The modules said that the trees created energy with the movement, and that the grasses then harvested gases from the atmosphere, but I had never seen the process in person. So many things that should be familiar are alien.
Coming up from the plants there was an insurmountable wall of rocks in front of me. Some almost as big as a car and some as sharp as nails, seemingly impossible to overcome. I walked along the edge of the rocks, one foot in front of the other to avoid slipping down the other incline that I had just overcome. There weren’t any footholds at all in the rocks, just huge smooth edges punctuated with sharp spikes. My lack of movement made the intense chill of the mountain feel even stronger, my bones felt like rods of ice suspended in my flesh. Suddenly, I saw movement coming down the wall of rocks, delicately hopping down from one spike to another fast enough as to not break them. It finally landed on a large and sturdier spike near my head, the animal had the shape of a large cat, but it had a trail of spikes along its spine that shined in varying shades of bioluminescent blues and greens. The creature’s body was translucent, and it had a mouth with large teeth and large eyes that stared straight at me on the ground. It started to go back up the spikes in a specific order, seeing no other option I decided to follow along. The creature was specifically going on the outcroppings that wouldn’t break with pressure, allowing me to climb and hop from on to another all the way over the giant wall of rocks. Now on top of the rocks, I could see where the mountain extended past the cover of clouds and was exposed to the true view of the cosmos. The feline animal continued walking past the rocks, following it I eventually saw it climb into a small cave, disappearing back into the depths of the mountain. Before making my final ascent, I looked back down the mountain towards my home settlement. The straight lights of the promenade spread out until the mountain on the other side of the colony stopped them, the buildings glowed continuously; with more intense light being found at the center of the promenade. To the side, the stream of drones from the refineries made their way into the sky towards their assigned carriers, and the gaseous by products of industrial production streamed upward, to be carried off by the strong winds found so high up on the planet. I was saddened at the thought of losing this part of me, Shroud was my home and I was never expected to break free from it, but I knew that I could not be contained by my dark home any longer and that I had to see my new horizons in the stars.
The thick clouds felt like walking through a beach if every sand particle was suspended in the air perpetually. I had to shield my eyes from the many particulates in the dark clouds as I continued up, only when I didn’t feel any resistance on my hand was I able to bask in the awe of what I saw. The sky looked like a billion flickering candles all burning at once, with brighter bodies shining like lamps on a darkened street. Lessons would teach us about constellations on the origin world, but I don’t know how anyone could make shapes out of the endless expanse of stars that were in front of me. On the bottom of the horizon the massive carriers sat, receiving the drones that came from the planet’s surface. They were huge hunks of metal, with a seemingly endless expanse of windows and loading docks that went longer than the longest street in the colony. I turned away from them to experience the cosmos as they were originally, unpolluted. The stars continued on, and the planet’s moon shined brightly in front, seeming to stand guard for any visitors to the court of the stars. To think that humans were in almost every one of those systems, and who knows how many that I could not see from my small viewpoint. An endless amount of possibilities awaited anyone in the rest of the galaxy, a trillion different roles on billions of different worlds all ripe for the taking. I had to sit down, it was all so overwhelming. My body was warming with the anticipation of it all, I could finally leave this dark place and go somewhere where I would have a purpose. I laid my head back to see all of the horizon at once, the carriers at one end and the moon at the other, with the stars encompassing it all. I had never felt so alive before, the stars warming my heart to the possibilities of my life to come.
They found my body weeks later, dead from exposure. But from what exposure, couldn’t be decided upon.