The wind whips your clothes here, a feeling you will never get used to.

Normally it was dead still, but this close to the leading edge, a few gusts break the confines of the eye and threaten to throw you over the side of your little ship. Still, the closer you get, the more time you will have. You need every moment. This dive is a desperate one. Ocean season has come early.

You signal to the pilot, a familiar gesture that sends a jolt of energy up your spine in a purely Pavlovian response. 

It’s time to dive.

You tap your watch then hold your breath and let the wind overbalance you, plunging you through the square on the floor and out of sight in a blink. A rope zips down with you, attached to your harness, the only tie between you and your home in the sky.

You panic. You always panic, but that’s what keeps you alive. The complacent divers get left behind, the daredevils fly too close to the clouds.

Fins extend from your suit at the forearms and calves and you use them to steer straight down, compensating for the pushes from the swirling clouds in front of you. Or above you. Directions get muddled up when you fall. Only one matters. Down.

The ground looms slowly, but you know that it is an illusion. The ground has one purpose in life and it is to distract you long enough to reclaim the solid objects your people stole from it centuries ago. Man wasn’t meant to fly and the ground remembers.

You banish these thoughts from your head and focus on the count, checking the speedometer on your wrist and doing the necessary calculations. The height of the fall is known, as is terminal velocity. Some quick differentiation on the beginning acceleration curve and you have 163 seconds to fall.

The ground is close now, but you trust your math, waiting. The tops of the trees flash into view and your resolve is threatened for a moment, knuckles white on the cord. 

Then the clock ticks 163 and you pull, feeling the familiar jerk from your harness as the parachute arrests your fall. Your boots are barely 100 feet above the ground. The rope falls slack behind you, perfectly avoiding your parachute.

Quickly you navigate in tight circles, trying to center the fall and hurry. You’ve bought maybe a minute with your quick math. Others can’t do it in their head, relying on set times that don’t change based on surface area and friction. They lose a minute. Sometimes they lose more.

Your boots hit the ground and you let yourself fall, twisting to pack the parachute. You stuff it in a bag and allow yourself to glance skyward. One glance home. 

Above you, the small ship does not move, now 200 meters  from the storm front and gaining. To the observers on the main ship, the Oasis, it will look like it is moving backwards, being dragged toward the trailing edge of the eye.

Then you are off, sprinting over the ridge. In the early years of the ships, when they needed to restock, they sent their crews down blindly, having no idea where the storm was headed. Three out of five came back with nothing. One didn’t come back at all.

Fortunately, you have maps now, telling the divers where to go. You know there is a village 100 meters away that will have enough food and, more importantly, motors to get you through the coming weeks. Already the eye is shrinking as ocean season approaches.

The ground is soaking wet as it always is, mud sucking at your boots. The village is small, usually too small to warrant a dive, but here you are anyway. You run through the paved stone streets to the biggest buildings, rope barely noticeable as it dogs your footsteps. The shutters on the houses are shattered. Trees litter the streets, some collapsing entire houses. A standard scene.

You kick down the door of the first house, not even bothering to see if it’s unlocked. Inside, it's dark, but you’ve already clicked on a flashlight in anticipation. There is a pantry that you raid for all its canned goods, sweeping them into a foldable crate that snaps off your belt. There are other items on the counter that look like food that you don’t recognize so you ignore them.

A white fan sits in the hallway and you attack it on sight, tearing through the cage with wire cutters, yanking out the motor, the transformer and the magnets. This alone makes the dive worth it. Each motor can be used to produce electricity when spun and you live half a mile from a storm that loves to spin. Unfortunately the power generators go down every other day in the raging winds. 

You check your watch and keep moving.

The next house is better. You find multiple motors, tearing through cheap plastic and soft aluminum to get to your prizes. Each goes gently in a container, food cans tossed into their crate.

The next house, the last house has nothing.

You grimace, looking over the wooden shelves and the old iron stove. You messed up. You should have ignored this house, it was too small. 

You look at the oncoming storm clouds. The eye is more than halfway by, to dawdle would mean death and the death of the ship that is betting its life on your decision making.

But to fail could mean the same fate for everyone on the Oasis.

You rip open doors, finally finding the door to the root cellar in the kitchen. Basements are always off limits during a dive, usually empty or taking too long to search. You betray orders here. There are no other options.

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The steps are rickety, but you are light and can always climb out with the rope on your back. You take them three at a time, turning the corner with eyeballs spinning in every direction. Then you freeze.

In front of you cowers a little girl, clutching at the rough hand of her father. He looks at you with wide eyes as she buries her face in his shirt. Then he reaches for the gun on the table.

You unholster yours in a moment of adrenaline then wince and lower it. He puts his hands over his head and keeps them there.

“Who are you?” You ask, voice mechanical through your helmet’s speaker. Humanity was supposed to be dead, wiped out by the eternal storm.

“Farmers, sir” he says, face now white as a ghost.

You take off your helmet, “Ma’am actually” Then you remember the time and glance at your watch. “Storm!” 

It's almost too late

There is a table full of old motors, carefully disassembled. You cross the room and sweep them into your bag, no longer caring if a few get damaged. There are jars of pickled things right next to them and you begin helping yourself, throwing in as many as possible.

“Hey, we need those!” The man says behind you, loud in the enclosed room. You realize he had to speak over the rushing sound that is slowly increasing from outside.

“We need them more”

“Please,” he says and you turn on him. There are tears in his eyes, glimmering like the raindrops that sometimes fall on Oasis. “I’ll starve.” He pulls the girl closer, “We’ll starve.”

You pause, ticking away seconds you don’t have. Can you really doom these people to death here? Are you that cold-hearted? 

You let your shoulders fall and sigh, but it is not up for debate. Thousands of lives rest on your shoulders right now. You put your helmet back on and level the gun again. “Sorry,” says the mechanical voice. Then you are gone, sprinting up the stairs and out in the open.

Outside, the world is a foggy haze. The wind makes you stumble down the stairs as you run to the other crates you gathered. It’s late, maybe too late, but you have too many thoughts in your head to think about that now.

You detach a large metal rectangle from your suit and throw it on the ground where it expands into a solid platform in some sort of origami. The crates are thrown on the platform then carefully measured and weighed out as to not tip the thing. You pray they won’t cut the line. 

Maybe they should.

The rope on your back is knotted in seconds and you attach it to the corners in a specific weave, muscle memory creating the design in seconds even with shaking hands. Then you hit the recall button.

Instantly the line goes taut, yanking you and the platform into the clouds. The wind ripples your clothing from above as well as behind. The world is completely overrun by clouds. Rain pouring onto you in random intervals, soaking you to the bone.

This is the closest you’ve ever been to the storm before. They should have cut you loose. In their shoes, you would have cut yourself loose. They are endangering the life of every person on the ship by keeping you alive right now. They must be truly desperate for supplies. 

Or maybe they decided that working together for ten years means something.

Lightning crackles behind you, so close you can smell it through the filter on your respirator. The world erupts and you fall over, laying face down on the platform. It’s after a moment that you realize that it was thunder, so loud that you lost balance.

You stand up, ears still ringing, grabbing the rope for balance. It’s stretched at an angle. 

Dear lord. They're trying the Klopps maneuver.

You still can’t see anything, but you know that above you, the ship is racing the storm. They are now battling with a headwind that is putting their engine to the brink while dragging several hundred pounds behind them on a string.

The platform rocks back and forth, threatening to bring up the nutribar you ate earlier. You put a hand over your stomach and remind yourself it’s a good thing. It means you are closer to the ship. A shorter string always vibrates faster.

The storm refuses to give up its prey though. The wind picks up even more, tipping the platform noticeably. You pray that you secured the cargo enough. You pray that the ship is fast enough.

Lightning claws at the sky leaving lines in your vision. Thunder rumbles a threat in its deep voice. The platform is soaked now, one wrong move will send you slipping off the side and down to the earth below, protected by a tangled parachute that will never open in time. And even if it did, the storm would tear it to pieces.

Then, suddenly, you are through, flying out into the blue skies. 

You collapse, exhausted as the ship rocks back and forth and the crew above you finishes reeling you in. You take your helmet off and rest your head on the cool, wet metal. Not in regulations, but comfortable.

The platform slots perfectly into the square in the floor, finally giving your world edges for what feels like the first time in hours. The crew rushes toward you, but you wave them away, chest heaving, eyes closed. After a minute, you stand up.

“What the hell were you thinking?” You yell, the moment you regain your feet. The crew looks at you, scared and taken aback.

“What do you mean, Ma’am?” ventures Jax, the winch operator.

“You know exactly what I mean,” you say, jabbing a finger into his chest, “You should have cut me loose”

“But we saved your life,” He says, holding the statement out like a shield.

“And you all almost died because of it”

You put your head in your hands, and let your heart rate settle. They’re a good crew. The best you could ask for, even after a solid decade of impeccable service. You almost killed them with your hesitation. They almost died today. 

Because of you.

The comm screen flickers to life with a crackle and everyone looks at it. The commander's gruff visage fills it, bright red and too close. He’s smoking, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and another in his hand. The only sign he was ever worried.

“Was the dive successful?” He barks.

You snap to attention, “Yes sir”

“What the hell took you so long?” There is a note in his voice that puts you on edge.

You pause for a moment. The little girl’s face flashes in your mind. The man’s “please” rings in your ears. You doomed them. No one could keep any crops alive in the storm, that food was all they had.

Even that can’t distract you from the fact that humans are alive, surviving on the surface that is supposed to be too hostile for human life. They clearly have been all this time. 

The Commander is wrong. Centuries of education is wrong. Your skyward existence is wrong.

“Nothing sir,” You say, eyes on the floor,  “just lost track of time.”