by Rob Dircks
I don’t know whether to say anything. I don’t.
“He left us when I was two. Me and my mom. Alone in New Jersey. Mostly lies since. I don’t know what’s true.”
“Hey. I thought you said you had two sisters.”
“And I thought you were a sustenance farmer who lived alone with her chickens.”
“Fair.”
“No. I was messing with your head about the sisters thing. I don’t have any sisters. I always thought that would be cool, though. Singing into our hair brushes together and talking about our favorite bands.”
“And braid circles.”
“What the hell is a braid circle?”
I hop off my bunk and – tentatively – motion for her to sit next to me on the floor. “We don’t have a third, but…” and as she sits down at my knees, back facing me, I take a few little bunches of her hair and begin to fold them. “Rock likes the Fishtail, and Scissors likes the Four Strand, and my favorite is the Farris Waterfall.”
“You can braid that thing on top of your head?”
“It used to be very long, down past our butts, all three of us. Then my Dad had the genius idea of cutting mine off and bleaching it for the show. He said that way I’d never get found out. Boy, that worked out.”
She turns to face me, undoing my work, looking grave. “I’m sorry I did what I did, Paper Farris.”
“No. It’s better this way. I hated being Robin Smith. I hated being someone I’m not. I should thank you.”
“Shirley Schneider.”
I squint and tilt my head like a confused dog.
“That’s who I really am. Shirley Schneider. Don’t laugh.”
“Um, you’re talking to someone named Paper.”
“Good point. Yeah, Shirley and Sally Schneider, if you can believe it, bouncing from state to state with the Air Force, she was in logistics or something, they wouldn’t let her stay put. She got me a nanny that happened to be into singing, so something like four hundred competitions later, we write ‘Baby’s Gone,’ and I show up on America Sings! and everybody lives happily ever after. Whoopdie-doo.”
“I’m… sorry.”
“Nah. Look at the two of us. We’re here aren’t we? Best shape of our lives, well-fed, we’re on an adventure, and we both have somebody somewhere that loves us.”
“I miss them. Terribly.”
“Yeah. Mom’s not so soft and cuddly, but same.” She reaches out and tugs a patch of my hair. “We should really get rid of those ridiculous bleach tips. Unless you’re going for a pop-diva look like me.”
“No. You can have pop-diva. It’s all yours. I’ll get the scissors.”
I move to rise, but she grabs my hand and pulls me back down.
“Wait. First… can I… hug you? Nothing weird. I promise.”
“Um, sure. Of course.”
She reaches over and embraces me, and it reminds me so much of Rock and Scissors, it’s like a gift, it transports me home, and I ask myself how I could ever have doubted Aurora, underneath all the flash and the snark she’s just like my sisters.
We sit like that for a while, and she whispers, “This is nice.”
The little doubt pokes me again. “Um, can I ask you a question, Aurora?”
“Sure.”
“Back in Stage Two, when you wound up with the only spacesuit… I never got to ask you… that was just a coincidence, right?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
She pushes back, peering deep into my eyes. “Would you ask your sister that?”
50
The Butter Woman
Well, the mystery of the ever-so-slightly-off food we’ve been eating since week three has finally been solved.
It’s called Food Printing, and it’s our next class in Stage Three.
And I love it.
Food has held a strange place in my life in Fill City One. One would think with our living conditions and lack of anything but the most basic food rations, we’d find other things to obsess over. But the opposite was true: every Sunday afternoon we could manage, we’d watch cooking shows from the mainland together, groaning at the delights being prepared and dreaming of their taste on our tongues.
“Now would you look at that! Oh, my Lord, have you ever seen that much butter?”
“Nana, remember that time we had butter on our pancakes? Can we do that next weekend?”
She held the three of us a little tighter, like a hen readjusting her clutch of eggs. “Hmm. I believe I could call in a favor with Jack. I bet if we each wrote Jack a little letter saying something we liked about him, we’d find some butter in our rations this week.”
And so we wrote to Jack, the grocery manager, and here’s what my letter said: “Dear Mister Jack, You are my favorite person in the whole world. Aside from Nana, and Daddy, and Rock, and Scissors, and maybe two of my friends. Or three. You are my favorite right after those people. We would like to have a pancake party next Sunday, and do you know what goes really well on pancakes? Yes, butter goes really well on pancakes. And I hear that you are the man to call for butter. The very best man. The butter man!”
Nana loved my letter, and Jack apparently did too, because we had enough butter in our rations that week not only for pancakes, but to make the chicken and goat and mashed potatoes all taste a little dreamier. Mmmm. Butter. Jack liked the letter so much, in fact, he insisted Nana call him The Butter Man, and before long, that was his name throughout Fill City One.
And now I’m The Butter Man. Well, The Butter Woman.
We’ve each been given some time, after training, with the Food Printer, and I have, of course, decided to perfect my butter. Almost-butter.
The food printer on High Heaven will create food for the crew from twelve basic ingredients stored in bulk – proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and minerals, along with some aesthetics like colors and fibers and spices. Much like the printing unit that creates the PPMM of the domes, this machine paints food from the plate up, almost molecule-by-molecule. For me, it answers the question, “How do you get a tech geek to actually like cooking?”
The others have created passable steaks, seafood, pasta, even vegetables like – yes – beets. But they’ve been going broad, not deep. Their creations will go down better than pastes and pellets on the long journey to Mars, but like the foods we’ve been eating for weeks here, they’ll never pass for the real thing. I, on the other hand, have spent my time obsessively tweaking and tweaking the ingredients, like a mathematician, to create the most accurate possible simulation of just one thing.
Benji nudges my elbow. “That’s an awful lot of butter, Paper.”
“Hey. I have a thing, okay?” I take out some spoons and point to the giant dollop of yellowish heaven. “You want to try?”
The rest of them approach, tentatively, and Drew smacks his lips. “Damn. Wow. I can’t believe that’s not butter. Mike, go get your lobster and let’s dip some. Lobster with butter. Red Team, ten points.”
Aurora and Marina tsk. “Come on, it’s just butter.” But then they taste it. “Oh.”
We’re catching up. Our team is only twenty points behind-
The doors to the Great Hall slam open.
Zach Larson marches in.
“Turn off the cameras.”
Without missing a beat, ever the pro, Ted barks into his headset, “Run the new romance backstories in 3… 2… 1…” Nods to Zach.
“Good. Teams. Change of plans.”
We shouldn’t be surprised there’s a change of plans, it is Zach Larson after all, but we’re surprised nonetheless. Drew approaches him. “Zach. Is everything all right?”
“I’m sorry to say, no. The Senate just introduced a bill. The Off-World Biocontamination Act.” Our hands shoot up with a million questions, but he waves them down. “Yes, it’s crazy. Basically, they’re saying it’s unlawful to have humans, with all our bacteria, potentially contaminating other planets.”
Drew shakes his head. �
�But we’ve been to the Moon. And every piece of equipment currently on Mars has been handled by humans. And our hardware is the cleanest ever.”
“Doesn’t matter. They’re trying to stop us from going. Something’s up. If it passes, by this weekend the FBI and Homeland Security will raid us, and shut the whole thing down. Now, I have a senator friend or two, but there’s only so much they can do…” He looks directly at me. “Someone really doesn’t want us to go.”
I move to him and whisper, “The… element?”
He leans down, whispers back. “No. More like what I was talking about. A turf war.”
Claire stamps her foot. “So that’s it? It’s over?”
“Over? Heavens no, Claire! Onto the good news. I’ve moved Stage Three’s finale to tomorrow evening, and we’ll begin Stage Four the following morning.”
Ted raises his pen and points. “But, sir… Stage Four is in the simulator here… right? What’s the difference? What’s to prevent them from raiding us and shutting down the simulator?”
“Simulator?” He laughs. “Think fun, fun, fun, Ted! Why simulate, when we can-”
“Sir. Please don’t say it.”
“Ted. Make it happen. In two days, we start Stage Four: Launch.”
Ted’s mouth drops open and his pen hits the floor.
51
Paper 2.0
Wow. Okay. A lot to juggle:
1. The federal government suddenly wants to take down this private space mission, which has been years, maybe decades in the planning, one week after I return from a near-death experience with everyone’s favorite mobsters, the Gitanos.
2. We’re launching into space to beat the vote on their Off-World Biocontamination Act. In forty-eight hours, after the game-show-like finale of Stage Three, the remaining contestants will launch into space and compete from the actual High Heaven instead of a simulator. If we don’t beat the vote, and still try to launch, we will probably all go to jail.
3. My family, and Jane, are in potential mortal danger.
4. The contestants are questionably okay with my return, some more so, and some very obviously less so. Aurora, predictably, swings wildly between the two.
5. I am falling in love with a Gitano.
6. Someone with inside access to the show has tried to sabotage the whole thing, willing to kill us all, for unknown reasons. And that person or persons are still at large.
So… why am I smiling?
There must be something wrong with me.
Somewhere along the line, somewhere among the small and large disasters that have consistently taken place since finding the scarab, something happened. I became something different.
But you know what? Maybe that’s… not a bad thing. My old self, Paper 1.0, thought life inside Fill City One was hard. The work was most definitely grueling, and nothing came easy. But in a way, that made me soft. Naive. I had just the area within the thirty-foot walls to worry about, and it was easy to say, “If I ever get out,” not knowing just what would begin to happen the moment I did.
But now I’m Paper 2.0, diving into the deep end of the real world, and I find that I’m able – after a little flailing and splashing and near-drowning – to swim. And you know what? I like swimming. Yes. I like pushing forward. I like the idea that this is the farthest thing from easy, that trying to make it to Mars is kicking the crap out of me, making me prove it to myself and the world over and over again how bad I want it. I’m beginning to like the idea, at last, that I am some form of representative for my people, that my life being on the line is not just about me, but about all of them, even the mainlanders.
Yes, maybe it’s all that – or maybe I’ve just gone batshit crazy like my mother.
“God. Will you shut the hell up?” Aurora barks.
I open my eyes. “Yikes. Was I saying that out loud?”
“You were whimpering and thrashing around and laughing, and kissing your own hand and whispering ‘Angel,’ and murmuring something about life, love, and freedom. God, you are so annoying. Come on. We’ve got a transport coming for Larson’s game show, and I need this last hour of sleep to regenerate my brain.”
“You need a lot more than an hour.”
She jumps down from the top bunk. “Wise ass.” Grabs her pillow and smacks me with it.
And yes, we have an actual, straight-from-the-movies pillow fight, feathers exploding into the air, and I’m certain the Likes are going through the roof out on the Big Board, I mean, two women having a pillow fight on live TV? But I don’t care, it’s fun as hell. We finally fall in a heap on the floor.
Aurora sighs. “You ready to go down, Farris?”
“Take your best shot, Schneider.”
52
Old School Game Show
I didn’t know Zach had this in him. Of course, he’s the consummate showman, proven again and again, as well as being the consummate businessman, in fact the world’s first trillionaire. He makes it look easy. All of it.
But this?
He stands there, in front of us, in a bow tie and a sear-sucker suit, his silver hair slicked back against his head, and a wall of categories behind him. Zach Larson has morphed into an old-school game show host. Complete with index cards and a microphone.
“Well, well, contestants! Here we are, at the finale of Stage Three: Back to School. I’d like to invite you to take your places before the board.”
We step up to our individual podiums, grouped into three colors, our remaining Red, Green, and Yellow teams. The whole thing would be strange enough, but we’re not standing in just any outdoor arena – the entire set and massive bleachers have been set up in the shadow of the High Heaven, right here on the launch pad in the middle of the desert in Arizona, the main dome from Stage Two visible in the distance. We gasped when we first landed here and stepped off Martha, craning our necks to take in the gargantuan rocket that stretched into the sky. The largest rocket ever constructed, nearly twice the size of the Saturn Five rockets that brought the first astronauts to the Moon, its base is a cluster of fifty-six engines, each of which could swallow Martha whole. A rush of awe had filled me, looking at this giant thing, a thing that showed in physical reality the potential of the human race, what we could accomplish if we worked together, the best minds and the best hands, weaving possibly the most intricate machine in the history of man, and proving beyond any doubt that we deserved to be here, and to knock on the door of other worlds.
But now the behemoth ship is being used for something just slightly sillier: the Stage Three game board is being projected onto it. This board, I’m told, is modeled after an ancient TV game show called Jeopardy, apparently the longest running show of all time in its day. (Survive This!, a reboot of the ancient Survivor, being the current holder of that record, with an astounding forty-two straight seasons.) On the board are five columns of point amounts, from ten through fifty, under category headings including Medical, Chemistry, Engineering, Space, and Mars. Looking past the board to the wild crowd, I once more truly appreciate Larson’s genius. At first I thought all this was just a ploy to bring in boatloads of advertising revenue – which it most certainly has – but as the show takes shape I see he’s doing a lot more: he’s educating the people around the world about Mars; reigniting their fire for exploration and discovery; and reminding them that the drought of human space exploration – not a single manned mission to another world has taken place since 1973, over a hundred years ago – is finally coming to an end. Zach Larson is getting them ready to break out of their isolation, their Earth-centric haze, and reach past our limitations, to some new potential.
Or he’s just really good at making money and likes to hear himself talk. Either one.
Mike Horner nudges me. “Psst.”
Mike hasn’t talked to me since I returned, he’s really gone out of his way to avoid me, and other than that one little fist bump back in class we haven’t interacted at all. “I’m sorry, Mike.”
“You already said that. Listen
, I’ve got a thing about honesty and loyalty. Can’t change it, I’m sorry. I’m working on it. But I wanted to let you know, I realize you’ve been through a lot, I respect that, so you’re still invited.”
“Invited?”
He just smiles. “Shh. It’s starting.”
Larson puts his hands in the air to raucous applause. “Ready for some fun, fun, fun, folks? Rules are easy. First one to smack their buzzer answers the question for points. They then control the board, choosing the next topic and point amount. When the board is complete, I’ll ask a final question on which you can wager up to your team’s entire three-week total. The two teams with the most points will proceed to Stage Four. The teams will then disband and each contestant will compete individually for the coveted spot on the crew of High Heaven.” He turns to the audience. “Now, no helping them please - that would be cheating!” He winks, and the thousands of fans in attendance laugh and jeer, as they all know at this point “rules” is an overrated word, and life is more fun when they’re broken.
“Ready, contestants? I’ll go first. Mars for ten points. How many moons does Mars have, and what are their names?”
Avery slams down her hand and her podium lights up. Bwonk!
“Yes, Avery?”
“Dog shit.”
“Avery, come now, this is a family show.”
“Dog feces.”
“That’s better. Still not right, though. Negative ten points for Yellow Team. Anyone have the correct answer?”
Aurora buzzes in. “Two moons. Phobos and Deimos.”
“That’s correct, Aurora! Ten points for Green Team. The board is yours.”
“I’ll take Medical for twenty points.”
“All right: What is the itchy skin condition tinea pedis better known as?”
Avery slams her hand down again.
“Yes, Avery?”
“Dog shit. I mean, dog feces.”
“You’re trying to lose this game for some reason, Avery, aren’t you?”
