Behind The Sunshade

The sun is gone. A dome called the Cradle covers the world, and under it, an artificial light called the Edisun runs constantly and casts no shadow. People live in stacked cities, sorted by Stack number and assigned by usefulness. No one remembers the sky. No one is supposed to want to. Wesley Farrow is seventeen. He lives at the bottom of Stack 5 fixing air systems, waiting on the Beta Test that decides where the rest of his life happens. He has a hidden alcove behind a ventilation shaft. He has a mother who was officially recycled eight years ago. And he has Roz.       Roz is not supposed to exist. The Partisant outlawed thinking machines a long time ago. Wesley built her anyway, from salvaged Edisun boards and a heat sink torn out of a soup warmer, working from schematics his mother sewed into the lining of her coat before she vanished. She left him one instruction. Build her. She'll help you find me. He thought his mother was dead. He is starting to think she isn't. The moons are moving. The Edisun is beginning to flicker. And at the top of the tower, in a sealed station no citizen has ever seen the inside of, the Spinners are turning something the Cradle was built to keep out. Wesley is about to see his first shadow.