Skyscaping
Poem - by Susan Shell Winston
for Jo, seeing the children laugh and point
made all the difference in the universe
forty years ago she'd started in the WKKP weather room
programming the 3-D displays of storms
and sun-lined clouds
for Polly—was that her name?—to walk through
that'd been back on earth
where Jo could go outside
and see clouds for real
skyscaping was new back then
with Jo's floating display around her
Polly no longer had to point
on a blank green screen behind her
to the path of an approaching storm
that only the viewers could see
six years later
Jo had won the spot
on the third ship to leave
and never look back
but Jo always remembered the clouds
real clouds
that shifted
drifted
dropped rainbow tears
and formed imagined shapes
when you were young
no longer a skyscape artist
Jo's duties aboard The Hope
were to program the holodomes
to display worlds
memories
fictions
left behind
it was the children's dome she loved most
where she could teach the spacer gens
about earth
the way it was
in here, looking up
into a teal blue sky
a single fluff cloud
swirled, curled into a snake
its head rising up cobra-shaped
before it drifted and split apart.
Jo smiled
she never did like snakes though
“Jo!”
it was Colin, handing her a beer
“Congratulations! Your turn has come. Are you ready for tomorrow?”
Jo wasn’t sure why being retired
into a cryo pod
for the next hundred? thousand? forever years or so
no longer being essential personnel
had earned her congratulations
but she lifted the mug in thanks
“To sleep. Perchance to dream.”
“Aye, there's the rub,” Colin answered
“I've always loved it in here,” he said looking up
then at the alpine meadow blooming
In dandelions all around them
that concealed the ubiquitous pots
of real lilies
that continually renewed their air
then he turned back at her
“But you've known that.”
That second puff of cloud shifted into a horse's head
its long mane streaming behind it
as if a wind were blowing
children on The Hope had never seen the wind
or a horse
or a snake
except on a picbook screen
or here in the skyscaped dome
where they learned the names
of their left-behind world
and pointed
Jo took a swig
“You'll keep it going?”
he shrugged
“The computers do most of the creating now. But you've taught me well. Maybe
I can add something of my own someday.”
he'd been born in the second decade gen
a quiet child
at age 5 no friends
she’d programmed a puppy in the sky
a fluffy white Scottish terrier
that wagged its tail at him
Colin had pointed up
and laughed
a sparkling laugh
Jo made the puppy cloud descend
wrap itself around the child's leg
wagging half its body behind it
Colin had a friend then
who went everywhere he went
inside the children's dome
he called the cloud pup Smoky
years later, grown up
he created
under her tutelage
little snowglobe chambers
with little white cloud wagging Smokies
to pass out to new gen kids who
like him
had never seen a real dog
or a horse
or a cloud
the crowd inside the children's dome
of former decade gens
—some whose names she remembered—
was dwindling
having already said their good wishes
for her long upcoming
Rip Van Winkle sleep
and in 100 or 1000 years or so
who knows what kind of clouds
if any
she'd wake up to then
“I made something for you,” Colin said
beside her once again
he pressed it tiny
and hard
into her hand
a small lucite Smoky
“To take with you into cryo.”
He curled her fingers over it
“Promise to take it with you?
To remember—”
he met her eyes
a raindrop tear clouded
in the corner of his own
"—and perchance to.”
he nodded his one last thanks