Hell of a way to go cold turkey.

Though, I suppose it’s hard to let go of old habits, and I did start smoking these damned things when I was only eight SYs old. Twelve Standard Years ago. Wow.

Back then I would never have thought that the moon could shine so brightly. You just can’t see it from down there – at most, when it’s really full, it’ll filter down through the Gas and turn the blackness of night into some eerie shadow realm where you can almost, but not quite, see the faint outlines of the refineries and the bulky tops of the ST mines and factories.

I’m taking a big risk by being up here, I know. If I’m caught, I’ll be lucky if they just shoot me on the spot – but it is just so damn beautiful, I can’t leave. Not just yet.

The guys are probably absolutely frantic by now, searching high and low for me… and with just cause, I suppose. If the Toppers get their hands on me and don’t shoot me before they realise who I am, then we’re really in for it. I think I’d handle the torture – at least I sure hope I would – but it’d become really difficult if, or rather when they’d decide to break out the drugs. Or the mind-cutter.

No, I know too much to allow myself to be captured.

But they won’t look here. Not the guys, not the Guard, no bored Topper on a nightly stroll – It’s too high. The aug is working overtime to keep my system with air, and it still feels a little thin. Of course, this smouldering nic-stick and all the poisonous gas I keep drawing from it isn’t really helping any.

Meh, it isn’t as if I’m actually getting anything out of it, anyway.

Watching that small, dim, orange pinprick of light grow smaller and smaller as it slowly, almost gently, tumbles down the cliffside, makes me just a little too aware of how high up I am. But, intimidating though it may be, this place is my sanctuary. I’ve hatched some of my very best plans here, watching the stars, the moon, the sunrise…

The sky.

Endless, beautiful sky as far as the eye can see, sprinkled with stars and lit by that huge, luminous moon, and still so much darker than any Gas-night. An endless void, open above me, and it feels as if, if I keep staring at it like this, I'm going to fall up into it and be forever lost in that deep, cold, velvet darkness.

That's what you get for being born a Gas-dweller, I suppose – some kind of chronic agoraphobia.

Holy shit, my heart is beating so fast now. It feels like the aug's stopped working, like the thin air is suffocating me and I can't breathe, can't think, can't let go of this stupid, cramped hold on the cliffside. And still, a part of me is falling upwards. I know it can’t be happening, I’ve not been educated much, but I do know how gravity works and I know that I am still standing here; I can feel the cold rock under my hand, its rough hardness through the back of my jacket and its comforting solidity under my feet.

But a part of me is not standing there anymore. It’s up there, hovering in the middle of that beautiful, terrifying, exhilarating emptiness, soaring underneath those glittering stars. Like a bird.

I didn’t know about these strange critters called birds, until we accidentally raided a shipment of books from distant planets. There was a book in there that was all about birds, how many different kinds there were and how they’re constructed and how they live, back on old Terra.

And they fly. They can really fly. Just like cargo-shuttles, Sol fighters and Pri-jets.

Just like me, right now.

My heartbeats have calmed down, and I’m breathing okay. I’ve passed the test, again.

…And suddenly I just want to laugh, loud and wild and free, howl out my defiance up at the sparkling sky and the infinite emptiness of space and this whole, wretched, screwed-up world.

But I restrain myself and let this bubbling, shining, glowing, tingling feeling stay bottled up inside me, as I allow the bird of my mind to sweep out over the greenish-blue Gas, diving almost so low that it touches the topmost wisps, racing up the cliffsides and the high walls of the Top-dwellers’ cities with mind-warping speed, and outwards, ever outwards over the gently rolling, twisting and swirling sea of Gas until it reaches the very edge of what I can see…

Oh my god. There’s the sun.

That minuscule sliver of radiant gold, just at the edge of the Gas, turning the wispy whirls a most incredible shade of pink all around itself, and bringing with it a light that not even the inky blackness of space can swallow; the stars are already fading at the horizon.

And I know that deep down below me, far beneath that wispy surface, dull alarms are going off, calling all day-workers back from their sleep and announcing the end of the labour for the night-workers, until the sun sets again. It’s still dark down there, and it won’t be light until about three hours from now, and even then, if anyone should have the time and the spirit to look up from the ground, the sun would only look like a dull, flat disc from down there. So dull that it would be hard to believe that that little shard of light is the very thing that lights up the whole world.

I should know. I can’t remember how many times I have stared up at that pale disc through the Gas, wondering, thinking…

Those are my people, down there. People just like what I used to be, and it’s for their sake that I’m doing all of this. All the raids, the sabotages, the thefts – it’s all for them. For those poor, misguided Gas-suckers who thinks dying at the age of thirty or so by slowly coughing their lungs up is a perfectly natural way to go, who thinks the Top-dwellers are some kind of demigods – created as a nobler breed than the mundane Gas-dwellers to rule over this wretched world – and that the top-air is too pure for gritty, lowlife Gassers to handle.

Bullshit. All lies and propaganda that the Toppers contrived to keep us in our place, far beneath them and their high, clean cities. We know that, me and the guys, and we will continue to spread the word, will continue to educate the Gassers who dare to seek the truth, will continue to foil those lying Top-dweller bastards and sabotage and ridicule them, until they realise that they can’t keep us down anymore.

Until they recognise our rights and start treating us as human beings.

We call ourselves the Birds now, after having read that old book. It seemed apt, considering that one day, we intend to rise and soar above the Gas. Per aspera ad astra, my daddy told me once. Through the difficulties, towards the stars…

I always wondered how he knew about the stars.

The sun is no longer touching the horizon, and the swirling sea of Gas has turned fully from greenish-blue to orange-pink, except where the Topper-cities on their high mountains cast their long, dark shadows. That disc of gold and perfect light is too bright to look at, but I can’t help but let the bird of my mind soar out to greet it, to bask in that glory just once more, before I have to get back down into the dusky world of the Gas.

Not for the first time, I reach out with all my heart and my body, wishing with all my being that I could hold some of that glorious radiance in my hand, so I could bring it down with me and show them. Show them all just what they’re missing. Show them just what we’re fighting… and dying for.

But I can’t, and it’s high time to leave now. On the gusty winds of morning, the bird of my mind returns to me again to rest, but even as I climb and jump, step by step deeper down into the thick blanket of Gas, I can feel it inside of me. Waiting, dreaming, ruffling its feathers and remembering… what it was like to fly, to be free.

My name is ST-4860/75, and that’s the code that’s burned into my neck, but nowadays my guys call me the Eagle – and that’s what I am.

The king-bird, leader of them all.

And I will show them how to fly.