“Did they start yet?” I ask, reaching over with my chopsticks to snag a mouthful of noodles out of his bowl. His main monitor, connected to a feed he jacked into from the central grid, shows an aerial view of a seething crowd gathered by the Daedalus crash site, secured now with structural supports and construction scaffolding as they rebuild those layers of the city. He’s got the skylights shuttered, so the monitor colors are bright and sharp.
“A few minutes ago, I think. Muñoz is speechifying.…Here, I’ll unmute it.” He flicks his fingers at the monitor, and suddenly the dull roar of the crowd and the president’s voice come through the speaker system.
“‘We are not alone.’” The camera drone circles in closer to President Muñoz, who stands behind a lectern, gazing out at the crowd as her words ring out. “Words mankind has imagined hearing for centuries, ever since the first ancient peoples looked up at the stars and made them gods. I stand here today in front of our answer—we are not, we have never been, alone.” Behind her is the rift, its golden glow visible even in the bright noonday sun. With the doorway between universes permanently open, the whispers—officially named the Collective—have been slowly exploring our world outside the confines of LaRoux’s machinery. They’ve been met with suspicion, with anger, with curiosity, with reverence—and, mostly, with hope. Thanks to their aid, the reconstruction of the city after the crash has gone twice as fast as we could have done it on our own.
President Muñoz takes a beat, eyes scanning the faces of the crowd. “Now we know that intelligence, empathy, and curiosity are not only human traits. We have much to teach, and much to learn. We will enrich each other’s lives as we build a foundation of trust, and hope. I know many among us have questions, or even fears—I know many find that, especially in light of our terrible losses, trust does not come easily. That is why I have created a new position, one voice to speak for the Collective, and to the Collective. In light of all that has happened, some of you may find this decision surprising. But our new ambassador is eloquent and poised, and remains the only human being ever to join, however briefly, with the Collective on the other side of the rift. And no one has reason to work harder toward peace and reconstruction. Please join me in congratulating Ambassador LaRoux.”
The president steps back, to make way for the new ambassador to join her at the podium.
“There she is!” I squeal, poking at Gideon’s leg with my chopsticks. “Holy cow, look at that dress. Jeez, she wasn’t kidding.”
“I still like yours better,” Gideon says around a mouthful of noodles. “The one with the lights and the fringe.”
“The one that got shredded and full of holes because I was wearing it during a spaceship crash?” I eye him sidelong. “I think there’s more dress missing than there.”
“Why do you think I like it?”
I stab at his knee again with my chopsticks. “Shush, I want to hear.”
As the president swears Lilac in to her new position, the camera drone pans across the delegations from each planet. My eyes are trying to find the Celtic knot and single star of Avon’s crest, but it’s Flynn’s face that jumps out of the crowd at me first. I grab at Gideon’s arm, but he’s already grinning. Jubilee’s sitting next to Flynn, and the sunrise-peach color of her dress is beautiful in the sunlight. I don’t think it’d be noticeable if you weren’t looking for it, but I can see Flynn’s got his eyes on her, rather than on the dais up by the rift.
As President Muñoz shakes Lilac’s hand and retreats to one of the seats on the dais, Lilac steps up to the microphones.
A few days ago, when all six of us gathered in Flynn’s hotel room for dinner, Lilac spent most of it ashen-faced in the corner, writing on and tearing up note cards, as Tarver warned the rest of us not to bring up her upcoming speech at the swearing-in ceremony.
You’d never know it to look at her now, though. The smile most people know from cosmetics billboards and style magazines doesn’t waver—her hands are steady. She’s wearing green, a billowing dress cut in a fashion several years old, but it’s beautiful on her. Tarver’s face is distant, his eyes on her as the breeze ripples the fabric.
“My father,” Lilac begins, her voice echoing as it bounces back from speakers spread throughout the crowd, “is a brilliant man. Growing up, I believed he could do no wrong. I imagined him like one of the ancient gods the president spoke of, fit company for the stars.
Her eyes scan the crowd as she pauses to take a breath. “But the stars aren’t gods, and neither was my father. What he was—what he is—is human. Everything he did, every path he took, he believed was right. His mistake wasn’t a lust for power or fame or riches; it wasn’t hubris and arrogance; it wasn’t even the subjugation of an entire species.”
Behind her the rift’s glow wavers, a few filaments of gold whispering through it, curling through Lilac’s hair and settling around the dais. The Collective, too, is listening to what she has to say.
“Roderick LaRoux’s mistake was in believing that he had the right to make the world’s decisions for us. Believing that the burden of choice was thrust upon him, and him alone, was ultimately what destroyed him. He once named a ship the Icarus—and stood shocked with the rest of the galaxy when it fell from the sky in flames.” She glances over her shoulder, the camera panning toward Tarver, whose poker face has only gotten better over the last few weeks of media coverage. “But free will is what it means to be human, and no one can determine the path you take through this universe. Choice is our greatest right, our greatest gift—and our greatest responsibility.”
Lilac glances down, though the aerial shots show she has no note cards. She’s quiet so long that I glance at Gideon, worried she’s forgotten the rest of her speech. I can no longer even hear the crowd through the ambient microphones, so complete is the silence. It’s as though all of Corinth—all of the galaxy, watching on the hyperspace feeds—is holding its breath.
But then she lifts her head, and the performer in me recognizes like skill in her. She’s an orator—and no one ever knew her poise could be so powerful.
“So now, here, today, we all have a choice.” Lilac’s voice rises, passion evident even through the distortion of the speakers. “The world is forever changed now that the rift is opened for good. We will never be alone in the vastness of this universe again. So we can choose to greet these new beings with suspicion and mistrust, with blame and anger. Or we can choose to show them why humanity is worth knowing, worth joining, worth saving.”
She pauses then, as if waiting for her audience—the hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the streets of Corinth, the billions watching on screens across the galaxy, and me, on this beat-up mattress with Gideon’s arm around me—to make that choice for themselves.
“I, for one, have made my choice.” Lilac tips her head up, eyes sweeping the scaffolding forming the framework of the Headquarters building being rebuilt around the rift. “Which is why my husband and I are taking over LaRoux Industries and dedicating its considerable resources to the rebuilding of our city, and to learning everything our new neighbors have to share with us. The new headquarters you see under construction now will be a place for anyone, human or not, to come and learn, and share stories and memories of what it is to be human. They want to know it all—the good, the bad, the darkness and the light. They want you to bring your stories.”
Lilac drops her eyes to the crowd again, her smile, that infectious, galactically famous smile, returns. “The Icarus was named in arrogance. Now, we turn that tradition of names to something good, something hopeful. This new project will be called Eos—named for the ancient goddess of the dawn, in honor of the new world we’ve found ourselves in. It’s my hope that as this new day arrives on planets everywhere across the galaxy, we can all see hope in the dawn.”