Her father reached for a wrench and tightened a bolt. The
machine’s hum dropped into a lower register. She wondered if he’d even notice she was gone.
Glenn moved fast, before she lost her nerve. She swiped her finger across the glass and the form flew away. As she got up, the gel chair swam back into place as if she had never been there.
Glenn leaned in the doorway and looked out into the dark forest that ran along the edge of their property. Even though the towering lights that marked the Rift border were set a mile back into the trees, Glenn could just see their eerie red glow.
“Night, Dad,” she said.
A wrench turned. Something popped and hissed.
Glenn turned from the workshop, leaving the sandwiches where they were, hoping he would remember to eat.
Glenn flopped onto her unmade bed without even bothering to turn her lights on. Gerard Manley Hopkins leapt up from the darkness and joined her, flopping over onto his back to expose his belly. The little cat was slate gray from nose to tail except for a perfectly white circle, like a patch of snow, at the base of his throat. Glenn scratched at the circle until, as if a tuning fork had been struck, a rumble rose up through his fur. Glenn had loved that sound ever since she and her mother had found Hopkins near death on their front porch ten years ago.
He lay there helplessly, bleeding and battered, but the instant Glenn touched him he began to purr. They had spent weeks nursing him back to health.
With a touch of a finger on her tablet, a series of tiny projectors around her room came to life, throwing a 3-D image of the night sky onto her bedroom ceiling. It was as if the ceiling had disappeared and she was looking straight up into the stars, unburdened by the light pollution that hid the real stars behind a flat curtain of gray. Glenn would be exhausted at school, but she didn’t care.
“Eight thirteen.”
There was a soft tone as the house’s computer went to work.
When it was done, a faint green dot winked at a corner of the ceiling.
“Expand.”
The green dot grew larger until the emerald body of the small planet became visible. A text field popped up next to it, but Glenn ignored it. She already knew everything there was to know about 813.
Mineral-rich and Earth-like. Much of its surface covered in heavily canopied jungles. A single research outpost situated on the northern continent.
The next manned trip to 813 would leave in four years. If she couldn’t get through high school and the Academy in that time, she’d never be picked. If she did, she’d be twenty when the ship left and, traveling beyond the speed of light, twenty-five by the time she got there. Of course, due to the quirks of physics, while five years would pass for her, twenty or thirty would pass for everyone at home. Her father would be in his seventies by the time she got there and even older if she ever made the trip back. No one ever did come back, though. What would be the point? Everyone you knew would be gone.
Glenn pulled Gerard Manley Hopkins close.
“Don’t worry, Hopkins, I’ll take you with me.”
“Rooooowr …”
“Seriously. They encourage people to bring pets now. Makes the trip easier.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins wiggled away from her. His eyes glowed in the dimness of her room, skeptical.
“What?”
Hopkins sneezed dramatically, then ran to the edge of the bed and leapt off, disappearing down the hall.
Glenn fell back into her thick pillows. “Coward.”
A sharp ping startled Glenn. Her tablet pulsed blue, on and off, sending cold shadows dancing around the walls. She knew who it was.
Kevin had been messaging her ever since last night. She had ignored the messages, all ten of them, but there he was again. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach. Ignoring him was a losing game. He was Kevin Kapoor; he would never give up. Glenn snatched up the tablet and opened the line.
“Kevin, look, I don’t think — ”
“Cupcake Slaughterhouse.”
Glenn stared at his image on the screen. Kevin was rail thin with big brown eyes opened wide and intense. His Mohawk was magenta and stood straight up like an open fan. In his hands he held a wrinkled, ink-splattered page. Glenn could tell he’d been at this for hours.
“That’s a terrible name for a band,” she said.
“Art School Foot Fetish?”
“This is why you called me? This is what couldn’t wait?”
“Ha,” he squeaked. “Like you were doing anything. Hey. You
think Lorna Bale is a robot? I mean, robot is the only answer. Right?”
“Answer to what?”
“How she could be so hot. I mean, nothing naturally occurring could be that hot.”
“I don’t know. The sun? Listen, Kevin — ”
“Lorna Bale Is a Love Robot,” Kevin said. “Now that’s a good name for a band.”
“Kevin.”
“Lorna Bale Is a Love Robot. Tonight only!”
“What did you want?”
“Fine. You hanging around after school tomorrow? I could, uh, really use some help with history. It doesn’t fit into my worldview, you know? Cause and Effect. Action and Reaction. What’s that all about?”
Kevin waited for her to laugh, but Glenn looked away from the screen and twisted her rumpled comforter in her fingers. She wished she could dive underneath it and disappear. So this was how he was going to play it. This was the plan.
“Please!” he mock wailed. “If I don’t learn my history, I’ll be condemned to repeat it! Condemned, Morgan!”
In moments like these, Glenn wished she would have simply
walked away that first time she met Kevin outside his father’s office.
Dr. Kapoor was the highest-ranking local council member and the district psychologist. Glenn had been seeing him, at her father’s insistence, every week since her mother had left ten years ago. One day she was on Dr. Kapoor’s waiting-room couch doing her homework when Kevin sat down on the floor beside her and started talking. Glenn ignored him completely but Kevin returned the next week and did the exact same thing. And the next. And the next. He kept up that one-sided conversation for six solid months until he finally turned to Glenn and said: “You know, Morgan, I will not be dissuaded. For I am stalwart.”
Glenn had laughed. Stalwart. She had never actually heard someone say the word out loud before.
Glenn turned to her window. It was already lightening with the dawn. What did it really matter if she met him? As soon as Dad signed the form, she’d be out of school and on her way.
“Sure, Kevin.”
“Ha! I knew it! I knew you couldn’t say no to a chance to — ”
Glenn swiped her hand over the glass and cut the connection before he could finish. She was surprised to find her heart pumping and a staticky buzz sizzling through her. Glenn looked up and there was 813, a great green stillness amidst the jumble of stars. Somehow knowing it was there, like a distant promise, put Glenn at ease. None of this mattered. She would get where she was going and everything would be fine.
3
“But why did everything change after the Rift? And why did it happen in the first place?”
Kevin sat cross-legged on the snow-dotted soccer field the next day. His fingers clasped his stubbly skull on either side of his now cobalt blue hair. It was as if he was trying to hold his brain in. Glenn had spent the last hour helping him study for a history test covering major events from 2023 to 2153. Leave it to Kevin to get fixated on day one.
“We’ve been over this,” Glenn said. “We can’t get stuck.”
“I have a thirst for knowledge, Morgan. I want answers to the big questions.”