by H. A. Swain
“Who cares what he thinks?” Castor shoots back.
“I care,” I say. “You don’t have to put up with him ogling you.” I shudder. More than once I’ve had to duck away from Mundie’s face looming up next to mine, as if he thinks I’m going to let him kiss me. I’ve told him flat out more than once that I don’t like guys, but each time he says, Yet. Even now the memories make my stomach churn and my face burn with anger.
“Anyway, there’s nothing to worry about,” says Castor as Mundie goes inside the Palace. “He mostly works behind the scenes. I doubt they let him mingle with the guests. He probably won’t even see us. But if he does—”
“I’m not asking him for any favors,” I say.
“You won’t have to. That’s the beauty of him having a crush on you. All you have to do is flirt a little. Make him think you’re into him.”
“But I’m not,” I say. “I can’t pretend I am. You know I’m a terrible liar.”
Castor looks at me and laughs. “No you’re not, Talitha. You’re an excellent liar. Always have been. Now, let’s go.”
I huff, frustrated by the position Castor has put me in, yet again. But I know what I have to do if we’re going to make some money. I step through the bushes after my brother. As always, Quasar scampers after us.
“No, no.” I stop and pat his head. “No dogs allowed. You have to stay here.”
Quasar sighs, clearly irked, but turns away, looking over his shoulder as if hurt, then he ambles off to curl up next to Castor’s red knapsack beneath the bushes as we head for the Palace.
UMA JEMISON
MOON UTILITARIAN SURVIVAL COLONY
“OOM. UMA. PSST. Wake up!” Something small pelts my face. I swat the thing away. “Come on.” Another pellet tags my cheek.
“What in the name of Jupiter!” I sit up, tossing away the covers, and peer angrily over the side of my sleeping berth.
Kepler stands in my doorway, grinning. His head nearly touches the top, and his shoulders fill the frame.
“What are you doing?” I demand, and look around confused. “What time is it?”
“A) Throwing Earth candy at you.” He lobs a small blue disk at me. Then a red one. “These are called M&M’s. Gemini’s dad snuck them back from Earth that last time he went down for business. You should try one. They’re delicious. And B) It’s almost Leap Day! You slept through dinner. Get up. Let’s celebrate. Your Shuttle leaves in an hour.” He walks into the common area saying, “I sent you, like, a thousand thotz, but you didn’t answer.”
I slide my hand under my pillow and pull out my device. His messages flash on my Lenz. “Sorry,” I call after him, then I drag myself down my sleeping berth ladder, pulling my Earth blanket along behind me like a tail.
“Were you even going to say good-bye?” Kep asks when I trudge after him. He plops down on the sofa and commands our hacked satellite connection to appear on the wall screen. “And why didn’t you come back to the lab? Deimos was pissed.” He chomps handfuls of the contraband candy as he scans muted Streams from Earth.
Part of me wants to collapse onto the floor and sob, but I don’t. Kep is sweeter than most MUSCies, but tears still freak him out. So instead, I stand in the center of the room, wrapped in my blanket like a cocooned caterpillar, with a single fat tear trailing down my cheek.
He looks up at me and frowns. “Are you…?” He leans forward, elbows on knees, to peer more closely at my face. Then he sits back, mortified. “Crying?”
“No.” I swat at the tear.
“Yes, you are,” he says. I can hear the near panic in his voice. “Are those tears of joy? I thought you’d be excited! You’re going back to Earth. This is all you’ve talked about since I met you.”
I suck in a ragged breath, then blurt it out. “Dr. Fornax canceled my trip!”
Kep’s jaw drops. “She did? When?”
“Today.” I sniff and manage to keep myself together.
“The day before Leap Day? The day you’re supposed to leave?”
I nod again, but my stomach knots up and my chest tightens at the thought of spending the entire month of Sol up here and never seeing the Earth in person again.
“Because you ran out of the lab today?” he asks.
“No,” I say, and drop down next to him on the sofa. “That had nothing to do with it. She thinks if I go to Earth, I won’t come back.”
“Ohhhh,” he says with a grimace. Then his eyes widen. “Did Micra rat you out for saying you might stay there?”
I shrug.
“Did you mean it?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. We sit quietly side by side as the muted Streams go by.
“I can’t believe she did this to you,” he says. “That’s harsh. Even for Fornax. It’s, like, no-atmosphere harsh. That’s, like, sucked-into-a-black-hole-and-spaghettized harsh.”
“Yeah, it blows meteorite chunks.” I curl up in a ball with my head by his knee. “Now I’m stuck here.”
“Cheer up,” he says. “If you were going to AlphaZonia, you’d have to contend with people like them.” He points to a barrage of CelebriStreamer on the wall.
“Turn on sound,” I command, because if nothing else, at least I can get lost in the absurdity of Earth.
“Elysium Phantastic’s Hair Today Give Away!” says a perky Earthling with a ponytail so long and thick it looks like a tree branch growing from her head. “Check out my DIY vid Transforming Tresses: From Forgettable to Fabulous in 4 Easy Steps with RayNay DeShoppingCart’s Stressless Tresses product line of shampoo, root cream, gel, finishing crème, and nourishmante!”
“Next,” I say.
“Hoity Toity Cherry Pie Smackerooni Lip Glaze by RayNay DeShoppingCart!” giant lips yell at us. The camera zooms out so we see a face, purple eyes, green-tinged skin, and those big pink lips. “Lips so luscious, you’ll want to eat them!”
“Next,” says Kep.
“Prunella McAllister-Gopti here. PruGop for short! Check out my vids! RayNay DeShoppingCart products galore! Pranks, yanks, and skanks are my specialty.” PruGop strikes a sexy baby pose, one hip out, boobs pressed forward, knees turned in.
“No thank you! Next,” I say.
“It’s a MegaHaul of RayNay DeShoppingCart’s finest pet products hand-picked for the pooch of your dreams,” yells a short guy in a furry shirt surrounded by yapping dogs. “How about a BakonTasticBubbleBlower? Or SweetSpot Anal Covers for your furry friends!”
“These people are the single most convincing argument against the existence of intelligent life-forms on Earth,” Kepler says as we skate past more Streams, each AlphaZonian citizen hawking RayNay DeShoppingCart products more useless than the next.
“Go to the main Stream,” I beg. “I want to see RayNay DeShoppingCart.”
“The high priestess of product placement?” Kep asks.
“CelebriStreamer ExtraOrdinaire.”
“CEO of AlphaZonia!” we both say together when he lands on the queen herself.
RayNay DeShoppingCart stands on an Earth beach, enhanced no doubt to make the sands whiter, the sky bluer, and the ocean behind her clean and jewel-toned. Just like the place I swim in my dreams, which is no more real than her augmented reality on our wall screen. She is oddly ageless in that way AlphaZonians are. Smooth, bronzed skin polished with a strange luminescent glow—not the way skin should really look but weirdly attractive. Her eyes are bright blue today, although they change every time we see her. Her hair falls in soft burnished ringlets over her shoulders. Though sometimes it’s short, other times long and wavy, and changes colors as quick as a chameleon.
“Hello, my LUVs. My shining stars,” she says, and reaches up to pluck a virtual star from the fake pink sky. She holds the star on her palm, then blows it into glittery holo dust. Kep and I instinctively duck as the nonexistent sparkles rain down inside the room, then disappear.
“Every one of you is a perfect individual in the infinity of this vast universe,” she tells us. “And to each of you, I s
ay hello!”
I’m so drawn in by her that I raise my hand and say, “Hello!” as if I’m waving to someone I’ll see soon, then my world folds in on itself again when I remember—I’m not going anywhere.
“If I know you, and I do,” D’Cart tells us, and all her millions of followers tuned in around the Earth, “then I know that you need the newest DeShoppingCart HoverTread & Foot Spa!”
“That’s exactly what I need,” Kep says.
“I consume, therefore I am!” I say, and we both crack up at the silly AlphaZonia motto.
“It’s a revolution in exercise and beauty,” she tells us. “Step into our luxurious XeroGrav slippers to glide your way toward a healthy body and pretty toes.” We watch her swan around an airy white room while balanced in glowing blue booties. “My patented technology sloughs off dead skin, trims corns and nails, removes unwanted toe hair, and leaves you with ten gorgeous digits.” She sits beside a pool now, oohing and ahhhing over her own feet. “Now TouchyFeelyTech enabled!” She dips her toes into the water. “Aaaaah! Can you feel that?” she asks. “Order yours today.”
Kep mutes the sounds. “How on Earth is it possible,” he asks, “that someone as vapid as this woman can own an entire city where everyone who lives there single-mindedly tries to sell her products to other people in the world?”
“She’s not as dumb as you think,” I point out. “She invented TouchyFeelyTech.”
“Which is super creepy.” Kepler gets up and walks into the kitchen area to rummage through our food storage. He pulls out a bag of dehydra fries and shoves handfuls into his mouth. “Is life on Earth so terrible that most people want to live vicariously through one person’s visceral experiences instead of having their own?”
“Um, duh,” I say.
“Then why,” he asks, bag paused halfway to his mouth, “were you so intent on going back?” He lifts the bag and tilts the rest of the crispy fries straight into his gullet.
“It wasn’t because of her!” I glance at the screen again. Now D’Cart runs through a green grassy meadow with butterflies and birds darting around her head. Although I know what I’m seeing on the screen is not the reality on Earth, there is part of my brain that still believes it might be possible.
“Then what is it?” he asks.
“I think…” I struggle to find the right way to say it. “I just want to know for sure that MUSC is where I want to be for the rest of my life before I accept my LWA.”
“But what if you went to Earth and you loved it and you didn’t want to come back?” He brushes crumbs from his shirt, then stuffs the bag into our compactor. “Wouldn’t that be worse? Then you’d have to stay down there, which would force your mom to go back. Or you’d have to return to MUSC and know for sure you didn’t want to be here.”
“But that wouldn’t happen, right?”
Before he answers, Darshan blinks on my Lenz and says, You have received a time-delayed holo message from your mother.
“What? How did I miss her?” I grouse.
“Sun flares,” Kepler says. “They’re bad today.”
“Project and play,” I tell Darshan.
A shimmery image of my mother stands in the center of the room. She’s in her mining gear, and, as usual, she looks exhausted. Troubleshooting and repairing the helium-mining robots down on the Moon’s surface for twelve hours a day is a brutal job. Most mine workers live down there, too, in the original Moon Utilitarian Survival Colony tunnels, but we’re lucky. My parents got to live in the Sky Domicile with me.
“Oh, Uma!” Mom says. “I’m so sorry I missed you earlier. I’m deep in the mines all day with an emergency repair. Now there are solar flares, and my pings won’t go through. And worst of all, I have to work overnight!” I hear anguish in her voice. “Myra El Saud is sick and had to be evacuated to triage, so I won’t be there to say good-bye before your trip.”
Her voice catches, and I see her eyes go moist. Like mother, like daughter. Our Earthly emotions always writ large on our expressive faces.
“Listen to me,” she says and composes herself. “Don’t do anything reckless on Earth. Stay safe. And come back to me. I will miss you so much, my love. So very much.” She leans forward and presses her lips to her Cam before her image blinks off.
“Guess she doesn’t know your trip is canceled,” Kep says.
“Guess not,” I say with a sigh. “But she won’t be disappointed. She didn’t want me to go in the first place.”
“So … maybe it’s good you’re not going.”
“No!” I whine. “I wanted to see everything one last time. Flowers and trees and the ocean and … and … and dogs!” I point up at a photo of my father with Mahati.
Kepler stands over me, shaking his head, hands on hips. “We’re going to have to cheer you up. Get your mind off this whole not-going-to-Earth thing.”
“I don’t want to cheer up.” I hunker down in my blanket even more. “I want to mope right here on this sofa for the next twenty-eight days.”
“That’s literally the worst plan I’ve ever heard.” He reaches down and grabs my hands. I keep my arms loose and floppy. “Let’s go.” He pulls.
I refuse to get up.
“Come on.” He yanks a bit harder, which forces me to a sit.
“Where?” I whine.
“You’ll see!” he says, and gives one last heroic tug that pulls me to my feet.
“Fine,” I grumble, and drop the blanket. “But this better be good!”
CASTOR NEVA
ALPHAZONIA, EARTH
TALITHA AND I slide into the back of the line of Yoobies snaking through the cheering HIVE toward the Pink Palace entrance. I can feel my sister’s perpetual nervousness radiating from her like beta waves. She sees this kind of thing as a threat to our safety, while I take it as a challenge.
I keep my chin up and eyes forward, mimicking the haughty confidence of a CelebriStreamer while Talitha minces along beside me, probably worried we’ll be spotted by someone from the Wastelands who’s in the hired cheering crowd, but no one seems to notice us. That doesn’t surprise me. We look the part in our Yoobie clothes with Talitha’s PEST flittering around our faces.
One by one, each invitee steps up to the door. I’m buzzing with excitement. I know the data packet is going to work, thanks to Cristela Wong Holtzmann dancing under the stars down at the Basin. I’ve been following her Stream for months, waiting for the perfect intersection of a Pink Palace party on a night she wanted a DopaHack. Tonight, the planets aligned.
As we get closer, Talitha’s anxiety rises. “What if—” she whispers in my ear.
“No what ifs,” I say through a big fake smile.
The people directly in front of us step up and wait for their TFT chips to connect to the security system. To ensure Talitha doesn’t bolt, I wrap my fingers around her upper arm and squeeze. The extruded black plastic of her jumpsuit is warm from the heat rising off her body. The couple in front of us is recognized by the system, and the door slides open, granting them entry into the Palace.
“We’re up!” I announce, and steer my sister forward. “Don’t freak out.”
As always, Talitha comes through. She’s brilliant at this kind of thing, but needs a little push. Now she turns on her best Yoobie impersonation—shoulders back, head up as we surge ahead through the gauntlet of the HIVE. They hoot and holler, whistle and clap while we wave and blow kisses, pretending to narrate our own existence even though we’re not yet Streaming. And then, in less than two seconds, it’s all over. The data I hijacked from the Yoobie girl’s TFT chip connects exactly as I knew it would. We hear the ding, the doors wheesh open, and we strut through to the rhythm of the D’Cart anthem playing in our HearEars.
“Don’t gawk,” I hiss at Talitha as we follow the others through the plush lobby. My sister’s eyes are wide with wonder, and who can blame her. The interior of the palace is unbelievably decadent, with its pillars and columns. We pass deep, soft settees and elegant armchairs with pol
ished end tables nearly toppling over from the enormous bouquets of roses balanced on them. Everything, from the coral-colored marble floor under our feet to the glimmering rose glass chandeliers over our heads is a shade of pink, from the softest interior of a swirling shell to the deepest red of Mars. Once through the lobby, we pass through another set of doors to a courtyard where the elite of TFT CelebriStreamers circulate among the grassy hills and leveled terraces of the Pink Palace grounds.
We stay on the outskirts of the crowd, hidden in the shadow of the towering pink building. “Come on,” I tell Talitha, and pull her along the banks of a small precisely crafted stream that meanders past flowing fountains and full-blossoming bushes so I can get the lay of the land. We pass a small waterfall that burbles into a lily pond where gold, orange, and white koi fish swim. The stream goes on for another few hundred yards and flows out through a grate in the security wall.
“Remember all the times we hauled stolen water from the reservoir so Mom could wash clothes or cook?” Talitha asks.
“That’s why I built her an irrigation system, duh,” I say as I scan the area for Streaming opportunities. Across the lawn, I spot an enormous swimming pool. “There!” I say. “Let’s go.”
“Doesn’t it kind of burn your ass that these people have enough to spare for all these stupid ponds full of flowers and fish or that ridiculous swimming pool, when we worked so hard for every drop we got in the Wastelands?”
“Wait!” I stop and jerk my head to look at her. “Are you telling me that life isn’t fair? That people in this privatized city have more than their share of resources and don’t give two shits about the rest us except to use us to fight their wars with Merica over fresh water?” I smack my forehead. “This is a complete and total shock to me.” I press my hand over my chest and pretend to keel over. “I might have a heart attack.”
“Shut up,” she says. “You’re a shalose.”
“Yes, I am. But think about it. By being here, we’re evening things out a little bit. Taking something for ourselves because, as you so eloquently pointed out, Life Ain’t Fair, and we got the raw end of the deal. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
