by H. A. Swain
“Clouds!” I say aloud like a giddy toddler. Then I draw in a deep breath of filtered air. Already it is moister, more fragrant than what we breathe on MUSC. I taste the greenness in the back of my throat as it fills my nostrils, and I think, Home.
Gingerly, I step onto an escalator that descends between two waterfalls that crisscross beneath a small bridge then flow along either side of the moving walkway that takes passengers through an oasis of palm trees, zebra grass, and flower beds on the floor. Red benches jut up among banks of blooming white flowers. At the far end of the terminal, in the center of a living wall, covered with delicate green vines climbing a metal trellis, a blue and green glowing sign proclaims, WELCOME TO PLANET EARTH.
Wheeled HelperBots that look like human-size shopping carts with rotating heads carry the other passengers toward the exit. A lone robot idles at the end of the moving walkway. I step backward, trying to retreat, sure that the moment I’m recognized, a siren will go off, lights will flash, and SecuriBots will wheel out and arrest me, but as I inch forward, the waiting robot announces, “Welcome to Earth! I hope you enjoyed your flight!” Then it spins around and lowers its platform for me to board.
I’m stunned. Is it possible that no one’s figured out yet that I’m gone? Of course, I haven’t turned on Darshan yet, so it’s equally possible I’m in deep trouble. But for now I feel giddy, like a little kid getting away with something. At some point I know someone will figure out that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. But as long as the system keeps inviting me to move forward, I’m going to have some fun.
“Thanks!” I tell the HelperBot, and I step aboard. “Let’s go!”
It whisks me out the front doors of the terminal. Although it’s early evening, god-awful heat still rises from the concrete in waves. I begin to melt inside my suit. The air pump works harder, but it can’t keep up. My hair droops against my neck inside my hood, and a bead of sweat rolls down my spine. There is nothing but hard, compacted dirt and sand surrounding the Shuttle terminal building—more like Mars than the Earth that I remember. Other than the people from my flight who have boarded AutoPods that carry them away, there seem to be no humans anywhere nearby.
A little red and blue car zips up in front of me. The door swishes open, and the car greets me. “Hello. Would you like transport?”
“Okay,” I tell the car, and climb in.
“Where would you like to go?” it asks.
“AlphaZonia?” I say, like there’s any other choice out here.
“Great choice!” says the car. “Any place in particular?”
I rack my brain for something I know, then blurt out the first thing that pops into my mind. “The Pink Palace?”
“Excellent! I’ll take you there now,” the Pod says. I crack up and wish I could ping Kep. He would die if he knew I’m heading to the Pink Palace. What do I think I’m going to do there? Meet RayNay DeShoppingCart in person?
The car zips away. Up ahead I see a mountain range that looks like the spine of that giant sleeping creature napping on the desert floor that I traced from up in the sky.
“What’s that?” I ask the AutoNav system.
“The San Gabriel Mountains,” the car informs me, and then blathers on about the range’s flora and fauna, but I don’t listen.
I’m too busy taking in what I haven’t seen since I was five. I try to remember the names of plants, but the words are long buried under the information stuffed into my brain at MUSC. When I was little, I could name every plant and animal. Catalog them into species groups. That was so long ago. Back when I thought my family (Mom, Dad, the dog, and I) would always be together and I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up. Now, seeing the terraforms and plant life that I’ve missed all these years, I realize that I’ve returned looking for something that I can’t go back to. My family had nothing when we lived here except one another. Now I’m here again, but this time I’m on my own.
Just as we’re about to be swallowed by a tunnel cutting into the side of the mountain up ahead, a loud roar rattles the windows of the Pod. I look up and see a low-flying, large red drone with the MUSC security logo emblazoned in silver on its belly. I scream and duck, but it doesn’t swoop down on the Pod. It keeps going. I turn, heart in my throat, palms wet with sweat, and watch out the back window as the drone screams across the sky, heading straight for the Shuttle landing site, no doubt looking for me.
My Pod enters the tunnel, and everything goes black. “Turn on the light!” I gasp.
To my relief, the windshield lights up. A perky Earth woman with silky blue hair and violet eyes appears. “Hello, there,” she says. “I hope you’re enjoying your trip. Is this your first time in AlphaZonia?”
“No, not exactly, I mean…” I search for words to explain that I am from this place but I don’t belong.
“Great!” she says without waiting for me to finish, because the car doesn’t really care. “Whether it’s your first time here or you’re a repeat visitor, you’ll need a few things to get by.”
“Okay,” I say, and let it go. Maybe the trick is to pretend that I fit in. As we zoom through the darkness of the tunnel, I try to leave MUSC Uma behind. Slough off the worrier, the fretter, the girl who assumes the worst. Can I be an Earth girl full of optimism and promise? At least for a few days before I’m summoned back to the Moon?
The blue-haired female is replaced on-screen by a burly-armed man in canvas pants with an urgent voice. “Hey, you guys,” he grumbles. “I’m Hank the Tank McGrank, and I’m here to tell you that every traveler to Earth needs the DeShoppingCart Armageddon-Ready Multipurpose Urban Survival Tool!” He whips out a small handheld doohickey from a holster on his hip. “An entire toolbox in your palm for every eventuality.” He unfolds it one way, then drills a hole in a wall. Another few twists, and he burns through metal with a blow torch. Next, he’s stripping the wires of a gutted robot. “Because you never know what might happen!” he says, and points straight at me.
“No, thank you,” I say. “Pass?”
He’s replaced by the back of a willowy woman in a flowing white dress and enormous circular hat. She spins slowly until I see a strange gauzy white layer covering her face. A voice-over says, “The best DeShoppingCart solar-powered wrinkle-reducing UV reflection unit with a lipid distribution mask. Keeps your skin smooth and moist even in the harshest conditions—”
“I already have a mask. Next?”
“The DeShoppingCart Bristleless Brush with Sonic Stimulation Hair-Gro Technology—”
“Next.”
“Thinstinctual Thigh Slimmers—”
“No!”
“Shoe Tubes—”
“Nope!”
“Armpit Perspiration Pads with built-in LED Flab-Be-Gone lipo action—”
“Oh, my gad, no no no!” I’m cracking up as the Streamers try to sell me so much DeShoppingCart crap that I don’t need—a Mind Spa that looks like two giant spiders trying to eat my eyeballs; a portable warm gel toilet seat cover and air purifying device, “now with woodland sounds”; a machine that imprints my face on meat. I wish Kep were here. He’d find all of this hilarious.
Just then, the AutoPod pops out of the tunnel into the light. I plaster myself against the side window as we zip past tall metal and glass buildings. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a stone wall with the letters JPL under a blue circle with a red swish and white dots.
WELCOME TO OUR UNIVERSE, the wall proclaims in faded letters. A few moments later, we pass a large oval structure, almost like a crater but human made, with a giant red rose hanging precariously above white columns.
Is that where they grow flowers? I ask Darshan, forgetting that he’s off.
The AutoPod climbs a ramp toward an elevated roadway surrounded by a long glass tube with the number 101 painted along the sides. Once we’re inside, the car speed doubles. I’m pushed against the back of my seat. We round a curve, and the centripetal force shifts my body to the opposite window. To the we
st, I see the sun, a fiery ball about to set above the blue line of the ocean. We continue past an expanse of green on one side and a wide, murky gray river on the other. Everything is moving so fast, I can only make out a blur of green and brown plant life on the jagged hills. On the windshield, Streamers keep trying to sell me personal oxygen bars and germ removal wands, but I ignore them because what’s outside is far more interesting.
“Now entering AlphaZonia,” the car tells me.
“Whoa,” I say. “Slow down! I want to see everything.”
“Would you like to travel via surface road?” the car asks, and I say yes because I want to drink in everything that I see while memories flood my mind. Our house was yellow. There was a flagstone path. The pinwheels were stuck in hard dirt, lined up perfectly on either side of the walkway. My father dropped to one knee when he came home each night after trying to find work, and I ran out the front door into his arms. Sometimes he took me to the ocean to teach me how to swim. He’d stand in the water at the end of the rickety pier, beckoning me to get up the nerve to jump.
I know I can never have that again, but maybe if I’m away from MUSC and back on this Earth, I can create some memories that are all my own. And maybe I’ll make more sense to myself. Like why I have so much trouble making friends and love Earth Streams but never wanted to kiss Kepler and whether there’s an LWA that won’t make me miserable when I go back.
The car switches to the far right lane and takes a circular ramp among a knot of twisting and turning roads, some heading north-south, others east-west. The car slows as it goes down and around until we’re on a surface street with buildings, mostly abandoned, from the looks of their dark windows. But there are also trees and vines and other plant life that have encroached on the remnants of this city. I can’t make out where one plant stops and another begins because my brain is a blur with all the things I haven’t seen in so long and memories that won’t stop flooding my mind.
“Slow down!” I beg. “Go really, really slow.” Am I talking to the car or to my brain?
“You’ve got it,” says the car. “Is this okay?” It rolls along the street at such a reduced pace that I can read the signs for Sunset Boulevard and La Cienega. But I don’t see a single human being.
“Is this all there is?” I ask aloud. “Abandoned buildings and street signs? Where is everyone?”
The car has no answer, but as we round a gentle curve and cross an intersection called North Beverly, out of the corner of my eye, I see a little flash of movement in the road up ahead.
“Wait!” I say. “What’s that?” I squint and see the shadow move again.
“Would you like a closer look?” the car asks, and the windscreen zooms in. I gasp when I see a small furry creature trotting toward us. From a distance, it could be a fox or coyote.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It appears to be a dog.”
“A dog!” I leap toward the door. “Stop! Stop the car. I want to get out.”
“For your safety, please stay inside the AutoPod.”
“No!” I insist. “Stop. I want out.”
“Are you sure?” the car asks. “We haven’t made it to our destination yet.”
“Yes! I’m sure.” The car screeches to a stop. “Open the doors!” I bang on the window until the door pops open, and I scramble onto the pavement. “Wait there!” I tell the Pod.
The little animal stops when it sees me approaching in the road. I want to run toward it, but I move slowly, like my mother taught me when we lived here, holding out my hand in a fist. The dog stays put, head cocked to the side, watching me cautiously. It has a sweet, curious face with a long, slender snout and perky ears. Not big, nor small. It has a regal brown-and-white mane and slender hips plus a bushy tail and pointy ears folded over like page corners of a well-worn book. It almost could be my dog, Mahati, from when I was small! But that’s impossible. My dog would be long gone by now.
“Here, pup,” I call, but it stays put. I desperately want a holo of this animal. A record of its existence. Darshan, on, I command. Record. I blink to capture the images.
Recording, Darshan says.
“It’s okay,” I say as I creep closer, but the dog backs up, tail down, and looks at me askance. I wish I had some food to entice it my way. I must look menacing in my strange flight suit and protective hood.
“I won’t hurt you,” I say, and take another step forward. “I just want to say hi!” I hear the desperation in my voice, and clearly so does the dog, because it will have nothing to do with me. I take one more step, which sends it scurrying to the other side of the street.
“Don’t go!” I call after it. “Come back!”
It takes off up the hill and disappears.
“Damn!” I say, and debate whether I should follow. But I don’t know where I am. I should have been more careful. Moved more slowly. Maybe crouched down so I didn’t look so big.
As I stand there alone, among the abandoned buildings with no people around, a funny feeling creeps across my skin. Suddenly it occurs to me that I shouldn’t have broken orders and come to Earth on a whim. What I remembered as a happy place now seems menacing with its eerily empty streets and no one here to help me. Maybe my mother has been right all these years. Maybe Earth is not a place I want to be.
As I turn to head back toward the car, I hear a voice call my name. I startle at the sound, then realize Darshan is still connected.
“Oh, no. No, no, no! What did I do?” I run toward the car, searching the sky for the red security drone while shouting, “Off! Off! Darshan, turn off!” But it’s too late.
Darshan’s image blinks furiously from the periphery of my Lenz as he says, Emergency incoming call.
TALITHA NEVA
ALPHAZONIA, EARTH
CASTOR AND I jump when the door to our small locked room swings open and Mundie rushes inside.
“You came!” I say, and scramble to my feet.
Castor stays put and mutters, “Finally.” I glare at him, but he only shrugs.
“Can we go now?” I ask Mundie.
“Sorry. Not yet.”
Castor and I both moan.
“But I do have news.” Mundie strides toward me. I keep my back against the wall. “D’Cart wants to see the two of you.”
Castor and I look at each other, then at Mundie.
“Is that a good thing?” I ask.
“Or a bad thing?” asks Castor.
Mundie doesn’t answer. Instead, he holds out his hands to me and says, “Come on. You don’t want to keep her waiting.”
I cross my arms tightly so I don’t have to hold Mundie’s hand, but I fold my mouth into a smile so I don’t seem too standoffish.
Castor grabs me by the elbow and hisses, “Be nicer to him,” in my ear.
“You be nicer,” I hiss back, and yank my arm away.
We follow Mundie to an elevator that takes us up several floors to a hallway with thick velvet roses embossed on the walls and plush magenta carpet that absorbs every sound. As I’m taking in the beauty of the Palace, I see Castor trying to blink onto a connection, but our iEyes remain transparent.
Mundie notices, too. “Nice try.” He smirks. “All signals are locked down inside the Palace. Not even hackers can get in.”
“Wanna bet?” says Castor.
I punch him and mouth, Stop it.
Mundie takes us to a large, sunny room where D’Cart stands with her back to us, watching a floor-to-ceiling holo of red MUSC security drones zigzagging above the desert.
“What’s going on?” Mundie asks, marching forward.
“Something’s up at the MUSC landing site,” D’Cart says, still facing away.
“A crash?” Mundie joins her to study the scene.
D’Cart shakes her head. “No, the Shuttle landed fine about fifteen minutes ago, but they seem to be looking for someone. Probably an escapee.” She looks at Mundie and wiggles her eyebrows. Then she notices us over her shoulder.
“Oh, l
ookie here!” She spins, sending the silk of her rose-colored kimono swirling around her legs. “The amazing Neva twins have arrived!” She glides across the room toward us, her robe swishing with every step.
I know I should feel afraid, but actually I’m giddy. RayNay DeShoppingCart is more gorgeous up close and in person without all her makeup and a crazy hairdo. Her skin glows. Her eyes are bright. And she looks almost, well, friendly.
“Have Mundie and the DomestiBots been treating you well during your stay?” she asks us warmly.
I nod, uncertain and guarded. There’s no reason for her to be so nice, but Castor, as usual, has to be combative.
“Our stay?” He snorts. “We’re here against our will—you know that, right?”
I try to stomp on his foot to shut him up, but he’s too quick and hops away so I look like I’m stamping my foot in frustration. Castor and I glare at one another for a quick second until D’Cart says, “Yes, well, that’s what happens when you get caught stealing from me.”
I reach for Castor’s hand as a wave of dizziness rolls over me. This is when things will get bad. This is when she will tell us we’re being sold to some ReConstruction project to pay off our debt to her. We wrap our fingers together and hold tight. But, instead of staying mad, D’Cart tosses her head back and laughs, melting all the tension in the room like ice cream on a hot day.
“Watermelon juice?” She points to a pitcher and four glasses that appear to hover above the pink marble floor.
“Yes, please!” I jump at the chance for a drink because my mouth has gone as dry as the Salton Sea.
