I love science fiction. I love all speculative fiction and I guess it began with Start Trek: The New Generation and Captain Picard in my living room. There is something lovely about imagining a future of new beginnings. I promised that I would share a novel with my subscribers and followers and here you go. This one never made it to the world and it’s my gift to you. I hope you enjoy. Each Sunday until we’re done you’ll get a batch of new chapters.
Broken String Theory
Disease and destruction have ravaged the planet, but one thing still has value...pretty young girls. Eve wants nothing else in the universe more than to be a Hopeful, one of those bright and shining young scientists chosen among millions to be colonists on Mars, and today is her last chance to make that happen. Even one more day at Miss Lorene’s School for Exceptional Girls will be too many.
Damian wants nothing else in the universe more than to finally find his mother and be free from his billionaire father’s reach. As head of his father’s security team he has access to surveillance all over the world, but if the man ever finds out what he’s doing, and who he’s been doing it for, a shared bloodline might not be enough to save him.
Damian and Eve are two very different people on two very different paths, but when the colony decides that couples are best for the future they’ll have to decide if the thing they want most in the universe is worth giving up the world for...together.
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
Isaac Newton
Chapter 1 - The Old Life- Eve
Earlier That Morning
“I don’t care for old men.”
I don’t mean to start us on that old conversation. It’d only ruin our last morning together and turn the powdered sugar on the beignets to salt in our mouths. To her credit, Switch doesn’t take the half-hearted bait, she just shrugs and lets the statement whither in the morning breeze. It ruffles her red curls and cools the coffee in our cups. A jamaican blend one of the older girls left behind in a secret stash when she got matched and married. We aren’t allowed caffeine, sugar either, for the most part.
“You look old,” she teases.
“Glitch!” I quip back. She laughs into her cup and it disappears in grateful slurps.
I got three hours of dreamless sleep last night, slightly less than usual, but it was worth it to get my chores done early enough to avoid any objection to our morning fete.
We’re pretending to celebrate my birthday. We’re also faking a celebration of Switch’s appointment.
BP’s phony laughter tinkles as she chats at the end of our cobblestone walkway with Judge Parsons, the source of my ire for the moment. The wrought iron partition is the only protection we have against Lookie Lou’s like him. That and the electrified fence that flanks the back of the house and the six foot brick wall that it hinges on, but the front still harkens back to a gentler time when such measures weren’t needed. Our century old Victorian sits on two full acres here so we can afford to be a little lax with the security. It’s not like the private neighborhood security let anything get by them anyway. The Fruit of Islam have had the contract on this neighborhood for almost ten years, almost as long as I’ve been here. They’re okay, respectful, they don’t leer. The judge laughs at whatever BP’s going on about, and chances a step closer, crossing his arms over his sweaty Georgia Tech t-shirt, probably to make sure he keeps his hands to himself.
The judge always makes it a point to stop. I’ve spoken once or twice, but BP seems to be his favorite. His salt and pepper hair bounces as he begins to jog in place on the sidewalk. His eye catches mine and he waves. I smile brightly and reflexively wave back. Be pleasant. Respond to greetings in kind. Always have a ready smile.
“Good morning, Ash!” he yells. “Switch! Congratulations! What branch?” he yells.
Switch explains her placement in the half corporate half military branch of the GSS Security Corps she’s been forced into, a far cry from the Mission Corps we’ve all been killing ourselves to get into for the last five years. He pretends to listen all while smiling stupidly and counts himself lucky that he’s on a first name basis with Miss Lorene’s girls. Rumors about us and Miss Lorene’s School for Quality Girls are as vast and varied as raindrops in a hurricane.
As if on cue a delivery truck glides by. Judge Parson’s head turns and the roaming infrared eye picks up his ID and our running ad pops on its side. It’s my face this time, six feet tall and mysterious, as we all are in our white uniform hoods. It shrouds my eyes in faux piety, but you can tell it’s me – the mole on my left cheek, the deep red lips and thick braid that snakes out of the hood and rests on my breasts. I slowly smile as the tagline blooms just under the name:
Miss Lorene’s School for Quality Girls: A boarding school of the highest caliber. The finest students. The finest wives.
“Lookin’ good.” Switch offers.
“Ugh! I hate those ads,” I say.
“I don’t know why she insisted we wear the hoods,” Switch offers. I’d think seeing the merchandise would raise interest more.”
“It’s the mystery of it all. Every man can imagine that the girl of his dreams is under that hood.”
“Nah. I think she was just being cheap. You can run that ad until we’re both rocking our grandchildren.”
The ads and our Picstream feed just add fodder to the rumor mill. Miss Lorene hired one of the city girls, too homely to be real competition, and too poor to turn down the cash, to take pictures of us going through our day to post on our feed. Our faces are always obscured, but there’s always a mouth, smile, or casually placed finger on a chin to add intrigue. Some of the other schools have full time cameras installed, but you don’t have control about what people see with those, and she’s all about control.
Current rumors are as follows:
our feet are so delicate we have to wear custom shoes when we walk outside
the Good Lady (aka Miss Lorene) had our ribs removed to maintain our figures
we only have two day periods, and
our shits smell like chocolate pudding
Outrageous lies. Some of them are true. Some of them we started ourselves in whispers through those very wrought iron gates on days like today. Belief is what matters. It’s what the Good Lady counts on. It’s what she profits in. But back to the judge...
“Impressive!” Judge Parsons offers with seemingly genuine admiration, that or something less civil as he blinks dramatically. I know he thinks an iris camera makes him look monied and hip, but the blinking from the dry eye it causes makes him look like a drug addict.
Douche.
“Well, good luck then,” he offers before he picks his knees up to his chest and pads off down the street. We’ll find the video of the conversation on his PicStream feed later today and request a deletion, but everyone he wants to impress will have seen it by then.
“You’re too hard on them you know,” BP barks at me as she strides up the wooden steps to make her way back to the porch.
“I didn’t say anything,” I say.
Not that she could hear anyway.
“So, what? I can see it on your face. Richard can tell you hate him,” BP says.
“So we’re on a first name basis now? Do you call him ‘Dick’ during your little morning chats,” I reply.
“I would. He looks like a Dick,” Switch teases.
We both giggle.
BP rolls her eyes. “You never know when you might need a friend after the trials, and Judge Richard Parsons is a good friend indeed.”
“I can’t believe the Good Lady lets you talk to him,” I add.
“She’s grateful I do. The skeletons in her closet could start a football team.”
Her voice drops to a whisper at the end of the sentence and we all turn our heads toward the door, then the porch windows. We sit in silence for a second or two letting the creak of the porch fans snatch our voices. She’s listening. Even if she isn’t listening, she hears.
“I dislike him and all the men like him for good reason. There is no market if there is no buyer,” I counter.
“And you would know,” Switch mumbles.
The insult stings. I’ve never had to go on a date. Scratch that. I’ve never been allowed to. Switch has been on too many to count, and she’d be going on more if her physical exam had come back clean. No, if the test had come back like we all expected it to she wouldn’t be here at all. She’d be on the Lunar base in the final phase of her training for the colony, but girls with ovarian failure aren’t fit to be colonists. Girls who can’t have babies aren’t fit to be wives. They don’t get dreams, they get work. She bites her lip and reaches out for my hand in apology. I know she doesn’t mean to be a pain.
Silence falls over us for a moment. Her stockings, white, which is traditional, pool around her ankles like a garter snake that hasn’t shed his skin, while with each slow breath she closes her eyes. Her customary engagement suit, also snow white, swells and deflates like a cocoon. Needle didn’t really have time to tailor the jacket like she would have liked. There was no time. No one would have thought she’d wash out of the running on a technicality and it doesn’t matter if you move by marriage or military, the suit is the same. My funny friend taps her feet in heels she’s not used to wearing and the French veiled pancake hat pinned to her head looks a little too small for her frizzy red french braid. Still, she’s pretty, as pretty as she’ll ever be again. I try to memorize her face. I’m making every effort to record every hollow and curved bone.
The screen door swings open and Honey dances onto the porch, setting a silver tray steaming with fresh beignets in front of us. She’s already talking. Honey is on her sixth crush of the week and like always she’s tempting fate with her declarations of love.
“Mrs. Honey M. Chang. No, no. The Young Mrs. Damian S. Chang.” she muses. A slight breeze rustles the hem of her linen drawstring pants against her bare feet.
“…was married in a late June celebration held at Piedmont Park. In absence of her father, who was killed in a tragic panda attack at the Atlanta Zoo.”
Our tiny engagement party bursts into laughter.
“You aren’t going to tell him your real name?” Switch asks as she reaches for the one of the piping hot confections.
“No. I like Honey better than my real name.”
We collectively roll our eyes.
“So about this freakish panda attack? I thought your father was killed in a submarine malfunction when you married Jack Baldwin?” I tease, remembering her last wedding announcement to one of the President’s many sons.
“He recovered. I guess the mouth of hell proved harder to find than he thought,” Honey sings.
“They do say you can never go home again,” I tease again.
“Who says?”
We roll our eyes again. Honey’s my favorite of the little sisters, but she’s hopelessly naive.
“Aren’t you getting a little too old to be mooning over completely unattainable guys. The boy crazy thing is getting a little old,” BP chastises. She’s tall and her long athletic legs are crossed leisurely at the knee as if she’s superwoman taking a coffee break. We wear silk soled toe slippers for clinic hours. Supposedly, they make it easier to walk silently, but I think the Good Lady just likes the Asian aesthetic. The shoes look silly on BP’s large feet though.They aren’t ugly, just big and somewhat inelegant. They’re feet meant for combat boots or platform heels. Either that or nothing at all.
“Damian Chang is not unattainable. His birthday is January 17th. He’s nineteen years old, the youngest of three boys and his favorite sport is Soccer. His father is the richest man on the planet and he’s a devout Christian, just like me. ”
“Yeah, and none of that is remotely verifiable. The Teen Bop feeds are notorious for lying and you don’t even know what he really looks like. He runs his Dad’s security team doesn’t he? They wear those weird face masks,” I offer as I bite into one of the pillowy doughnuts, floating momentarily into culinary heaven. I’ve often had nightmares starring nameless men in those feature obscuring plastic masks.
“I’m too boy crazy?” Honey asks.
Switch, BP and I all answer in unison. “Yes.”
“Fine. You want me to drop the boys? I can do that. Has that delicious looking Mr. Lancaster jogged by yet?”
“Just missed Parsons,” Switch offers.
“Ewww. He’s like fifty if he’s a day,” I joke.
“So what! He’s on the down swing. I’m sure he’s easy to please at his age. I can finally be the woman of leisure I’ve been trained to become.”
“Girl, get off of our porch,” I chuckle, shooing her back into the house.
“Yes, I don’t want to hear anything about old men looking for young wives. I want to enjoy my time with my friends,” Switch teases.
BP clears her throat and raises her cup. “To the loveliest girl Georgia ever bore. This is your season. This is your time.”
I raise mine to Switch and follow BP’s lead. “To Miss Lorene’s School for Quality Girls, where selection, service and sweetness are the only rules of the day.”
“Here, here” Switch adds with a mocking smile and then she laughs, but some of the humor is gone. I giggle, but the water in my eyes belies my true feelings. Switch can only nod and take one last sip of coffee before Miss Lorene appears in the shadows of the open front door. Switch’s transport car has arrived.
Despite the heat Miss Lorene’s dressed in knee high black leather boots and a vintage black a-line dress with crinoline. Black lace kid gloves cover her thin fingers. Teardrop pearls dangle from her ears and her hair is pulled severely into her ubiquitous ballerina’s bun. Of course, her lips are covered in the deepest of reds. She’s striking. Beautiful and terrifying in her perfection, as if she’s the example of what we should be.
A square jawed officer exits the blue and green vehicle and pushes the call box outside of the wrought iron gate. The bell rings throughout the house and out onto the porch, but Miss Lorene will make him wait. She doesn’t ever move until she’s good and ready.
Like trained dogs, we line up, elbow-to-elbow, ready for inspection, instruction or insult. Lunar barks at the tension in the air before Switch walks over and activates the sleep mode under his chin. Built to look like a Beagle/Collie mix, Switch built her from scratch and coded her to filth, weaving solar fibers into her fur so that she recharges on walks. It doesn’t occur to me until his glass eyes flash blue and then dim that he won’t be going with her.
Cool air rushes from the open door and dries the sweat on my neck. BP is tallest so she stands in front and curtsies first. Switch bends as if to follow her lead but stops mid-movement. I can’t see her face, but I know that something is wrong. She’s taking too long to bend, too long to defer. She straightens her back and tilts her chin to yell over her shoulder.
“Officer whatever your name is, you got a uniform for me in that transport?”
“I do,” he calls back in a bold tenor. Miss Lorene still hasn’t moved to let him in.
“That’ll work.”
Knowing that something is off Miss Lorene shoos Honey back into the house with an almost imperceptible tilt of her head. She’d been spying from inside the door. Though my head is bowed I can see Switch pull the pin from her hat and toss it on the ground through my eyelashes. At first she’s mumbling while she pulls out the braid in her hair, but by the time she kicks off her heels and begins pulling down her stockings everyone can hear her clearly.
“To my venerated teacher, Miss Lorene Deveaux, I leave my stockings. Gently worn, they may be, they still have a wiff of my ass which I implore her to kiss.”
My eyes go wide and I bite my tongue to keep from laughing. Though I am screaming inside, I don’t move even the smallest muscle. I don’t dare.
Switch throws off her jacket, as she backs down the stairs into the sunlight, out of the reach of the Good Lady and shimmies out of her skirt.
“To BP, I leave my collection of Horror stream codes. You know where to find them.”
BP doesn’t flinch. I’m sure she’s staring out of the corner of her eyes as I am, straining to see what Switch will do next.
The blouse is tossed to the yard.
“To Eve, my sweet, shy friend, I leave you the love of my life.”
In bare feet she rushes back onto the porch and pulls me down the stairs and into the sun with her. It takes all of my courage to follow her and not let my body go limp against the porch.
She grips both of my hands and stares into my eyes. Her hair is wild with a single tear streaking down her cheek, a face filled with more joy than I have ever seen.
“I am sorry for her. I don’t know what she’ll do to you for this, but you can still win,” Switch whispers. From some inconspicuous place she slips a folded piece of paper into my hands and closes my fist around it.
The officer coughs, shattering the moment.
“That’s my time folks! Ya’ll take care now!”
If you were looking from across the street I guess it would like she was waving, but up close the middle finger is unmistakeable. A minute later she is gone.
Inside I’m laughing, screaming, crying. I’m rolling around in the grass at the hilarity of it all. I’m leaping in the air with my fist pumping to the rhythm of a Soca song. I’m singing “Did you see that?” In my best imitation of Marion Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial...on the inside. But on the outside I’m as still as if I’d been planted. I don’t move until I hear the swish of Miss Lorene’s dress as she moves inside. The door is left open. I know what to do.
Chapter 2 - Clever Girl - Eve
The woman in front of me smells like lavender and camphor and her heels look as if she walked out Egypt on her bare feet to follow Moses to the promised land. She is my last client of the day. BP’s already been upstairs for an hour getting ready to take the registration test for Mission corps. Our school has a 100% pass rate, a bragging right Miss Lorene is loathe to relinquish. We all get to do it. Even me.
“That feels nice, Honey. You’re always so gentle with Miss Powell.”
People who speak in the third person always irk me, but I smile and continue with the massage. The customer is always right. Never speak if a smile will do. Passive positivity is key.
It won’t take long to get the polish on and then I should have at least a good half hour before we have to leave. It won’t be enough for a shower, but I should still be able to do my face.
I’m locking the door behind Miss Powell when Honey walks in with a bucket and mop.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, though something tells me that deep down she isn’t. Not really.
Honey’s small with a round face limp curls and a wicked keloid scar that stretches from her heart to her collar bone. She’ll never make it in the military or the GSS. They won’t even allow her to test. The best she can hope for is a good husband. A nice rich husband with cash for medical bills.
I’d pity her if I had the time, but if I hurry I can still have ten minutes. I slosh grey water against the black and white tiled floor, tiles that Miss Lorene had flown in special. From the right angle they look like birds in flight, and I join them as I soar up the stairs two at a time, ripping off my clinic hood and jumping out of my skirt before I hit the third floor. BP, thank God, has laid out my clothes for the day, a white and blue silk crepe dress with tiny blue birds scattered into the pattern. Thin suede t-strap heels are set near the bed and my hood, a sky blue silk thing hangs on the closet door. I dress quickly and sprint down the stairs for inspection. Just in time to see BP walk out the front door. I rush to follow but Miss Lorene pulls the door closed, leaving BP outside and she and I in the foyer, alone.
Her magnolia perfume forms a cloud around her, thicker than her everyday scent because she’s going out. My stomach hitches a bit at the smell. My body knows how to respond to her, even when I don’t. Her make-up is thicker too, though she doesn’t really need it. Miss Lorene’s face is a perfect unlined endorsement for the school and her beauty business. None of us know how she achieves it. I’ve never seen her wash it, steam it, or God forbid, wear a mask like we’re all forced to do every few days. She’s in her daily uniform, a deceptively simple black Chanel suit dress with a custom high collar. She’s covered that with a lilac swing coat today and a perfect pill-box hat and white elbow length gloves. She smiles at me with perfectly straight teeth, just a shade darker than blinding.
“I am not entirely sure what you think you’re doing,” she says.
I open my mouth to speak but her eyes tell me I shouldn’t respond.
“There is a seedy element of discord being sown in my home. Do you understand that this is my home?”
Again, I’m not to respond.
“This is not just a school, but a place of solace and peace. This is a place of higher learning and character building. This is a place where girls become women and wives. We are the bedrock of this nation, a fractured nation riddled with turmoil…”
She’s on one of her rants. A lecture. That’s good. A lecture and then we’ll go. I don’t need that much make-up, and she can’t go on for too long or we’ll miss our appointment. Rescheduling would take weeks, months even. A lecture is good. A lecture I can stand. Definitely better than..
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sure you know I don’t like to repeat myself. I said that I don’t think you are living up to the ideals of the school. I can’t allow you to represent us. Clearly you haven’t learned very much during your tenure here, despite my tireless work.”
“But…you can’t.”
“I most certainly can and I cannot say that I’m surprised at your defiance.”
“Defiance. I..You can’t! I’ve waited my whole life for this. There may not be another chance to take the test. The quota for missionaries is almost full. I have to go today. Miss Lorene, please!”
My nails dig into the flesh of my palms and press my lips together hard so as to keep the vomit that’s building in my stomach from erupting. I’m vibrating with fear and holding on to shreds of hope that she doesn’t mean what she’s saying.
She opens the door.
“My decision is final, but I will say you did a fine job on Miss Powell’s toes. She spoke very highly of you.”
Click. The door closes and shuts out the light of the day and any hope I had left of ever being more than a trophy wife.
The sliding bar of the security lock sweeps into place with a barely audible sucking sound and whatever strength I have left propels me through the main hall and out the back door to the courtyard and garden. I make it as far as the door to the greenhouse when my reflection catches me in front of the glass. I look back at myself and see the hope drain like blood from my cheeks. There’s nothing to hold onto so my knees buckle and I fall.
I want to pound my fists but I don’t have the energy. I spend minutes, maybe even a lifetime there before I feel Lunar’s ice-cold tongue on my cheek.
My mouth feels sticky and my tongue thick, and even though I know she’s just a robot I scratch her ears.
“Hey, girl. How did you get back in?” I ask.
“BP reactivated me,” Lunar says in that clipped robotic voice of hers.
Oh, God. There’s snot on my dress. I plop down on my bottom and use the hem of my hood to dry my hands. Lunar runs through the doggie door in the kitchen and comes back with her magnetic leash. I roll my eyes.
“No walks today, sweetie. We’re locked in.” The thought clenches at my belly again.
“Walk,” Lunar says.
“Terminate voice response.”
Lunar barks in reply. The robotic voice is destroying the illusion of love and concern that I need right now.
She barks again.
I rub under her belly and she uses her paw to slap my hand away. She barks again but this time it sounds like a word.
“Reactivate voice response.”
She barks again, but this time it’s clearer. Coat? Boat? I draw in a breath, ooooh.
“Note.”
She misses Switch already.
I reach down in my bra for the tiny slip of paper. God knows where Switch got it from. Miss Lorene doesn’t allow us to keep notebooks or diaries. The tiny slip is only as big as a gum wrapper. Ah, it is a gum wrapper. She’d slipped it to me at breakfast. Told me to read it later. I thought it was a goodbye note. I read it.
Peanut butter.
Peanut butter?
“Peanut butter?”
Lunar barks and runs through the herb patch and sits by the back gate. It’s locked and electrified and so much hassle to bypass that we never use it. If there weren’t so much current running through it would be overgrown entirely. Her tail wags wildly and then stops abruptly as a tin wire snakes out of her right ear and up to the security box next to the door handle. The panel glows blue and then orange and finally red before in a whoosh of released compression the lock bar on the door slides out of place.
The courtyard floods with sunlight from the street as the wire recedes back into Lunar’s ear and she pads out the door. In a second she’s on the sidewalk and a second more before she’s at the corner.
I look behind me to find no one there and before my fortune changes I run.
Chapter 2 - On the Move- Eve
Lunar pulls me down the stairs and onto the MARTA subway station, my arm stretched long and my hooded cape straining to stay put. I pray under my breath as she weaves us through the traffic of bodies to the Dome. Fully prepared to beg my way in, I tense when I glimpse the Biofund® chips blinking green on the hordes of people in front of me near the turnstiles, their necks glowing like lightning bugs as they pass through the sensors single file. I try my hardest to pull Lunar back in line, but with over 100 pounds of machinery under her fur, it’s a futile exercise. People are beginning to notice us.
Weary women with swollen ankles and dirty-faced kids in too short jeans stare. I glance around for a policeman that could cause me problems when the chip just below Lunar’s left ear blinks green at the Express Pass line and we glide through. I take a moment, just a brief second of gratitude to think about Switch. She knew I’d need a friend to lead me, even if that friend is a robotic dog running on black market tech. She had to know weeks ago, months ago, that she’d be gone and Miss Lorene’s heart would turn black. No, she was always horrible, I was just too stupid to see it.
A man is staring at me. I know because he’s not moving in an ocean of scrambling bodies. I get as far away from him as I can. I can’t be recognized. I grip Lunar’s leash just a bit tighter and slows down a bit to take stock of our surroundings but I urge her on. We barely make it to a green train car that’s just beginning to close its doors and I plop down into a seat, grateful for a chance to rest my feet. These heels, more fashion than function, aren’t made for walking, at all.
The air inside smells of sour food and irregularly washed bodies despite the fact that this is a CLEAN station car. The only people allowed to travel in and out of these stations have medical clearance, those with enough money to pay for regular testing. Everyone else is relegated to the general use stations. Maybe they only spring for air purifiers in those cars, for all the good it will do. I glance around and realize that though the cab isn’t full I am the only female. My anxiety level rises, setting off Lunar’s biosensors. She’s instantly alert. A low growl, deep in her belly rings out.
“High tech guard dog you got there,” an old man in an oversized suit tells me. I adjust the hood on my silk organza cape so that I can see him better, but not far enough so that he can see me.
His face is odd looking, a bit artificial, like he’d etched in his own wrinkles with an ink pen. His cheeks don’t move like they should while he chews his too-late-in-the-afternoon meal of Waffle House grits and eggs. He reaches over to hand me a napkin and Lunar barks loudly, sending a jolt through the train. He doesn’t flinch.
I take the napkin as he nods towards my feet. From toe to ankle I’m covered in Dogwood pollen. I suck my teeth and make quick work of dusting the nasty yellow dust off my sky blue suede shoes as music fills the cabin and the lights dim slightly. The sliding doors double as a screen and alight as a woman’s grim face fills up the expanse from floor to ceiling.
“Breaking news. Tragedy struck today as worldwide testing for the last round of GSS candidates for the inaugural class of Mars colonists began in Brussels and Johannesburg. Nearly 300 Hopefuls were killed in a blast that rocked the testing center, just steps from the Grand Place and the headquarters of the European Union. A similar attack near the African Union headquarters in Johannesburg has left more than 600 missing and presumed either injured or dead. Details are coming in by the minute.”
My mouth goes dry as the image of a young girl covered in ash crawls toward me from twisted steaming metal. Tears cut a river into her face as she leaves her left leg behind, a sacrifice to the god of catastrophe in exchange for her life. A stare into those eyes and see my face there. The irony that I am running towards the life she was just blown from isn’t lost on me.
“The terrorist collective, Earthlife, known for its outspoken and sometimes violent protests against GSS has denied responsibility for the attacks. Now a word from our sponsors.”
Space, quiet, clean and unrestricted reveals itself on the screen. Endless stars suspend themselves like Dogwood petals on a freshly cut lawn, burning with opportunity millions of miles away. The car falls away as I drift in the expanse. A simple GSS logo appears in the corner of the screen along with its motto: Expanding humanity. Expanding ourselves.
My reverie is broken when the doors slide open. A trio of girls pile on. Their hair, nails, clothes are all dashed in shocks of neon pink, radioactive green or some other similarly bright color. They look and sound like tropical birds. I lock eyes with a girl whose pasty foundation is trying hard to cover the signs of her Roma infection. The virus’ progression is slow but debilitating causing muscle spasms, organ failure and infertility. No one knows where it originated, but one of the most popular theories is that it had something to do with Dakota Pipeline and biological warfare after Canada negotiated annexation of the Dakotas and Minnesota. The United States weren’t so united after the Ogallala Aquifer dried up and the Great Drought started. People fled the plains in droves and carried Roma into the heart of every major city on both coasts.
The girls must be rich enough to retain a private physician if she’s still able to ride the CLEAN cars. She can probably lie for a little bit longer that the orange tinge the antiviral medication is giving her is just a tan. I know better though. She can see it in my eyes. She looks away quickly and I pull my hood down further.
I could help her. I’ve learned more than a few tricks to turn any complexion into the flawless pink or brown of a newborn baby. Endless clinic hours will do that for you, but she can’t afford what I can do, or she’d already have done it, and besides I’m done with all that. My future is in the expanse, out there in the quiet.
“Girl like you shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” the old man says.
His mouth is full of pre-masticated bacon and his little cup of juice wobbles as we lurch forward. I want to tell him to get ahold of it, but that bacon has me transfixed. I scowl. After years of pretending to smile, it feels good to let the corners of my mouth turn down just like they want to.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, where I am,” I reply.
“You trying for a spot?” he asks.
“Excuse me?”
The old man nods towards a still photo floating across the door. It’s a group photo this time, of last year’s Hopefuls, all in their space suits. My heart clenches with unchecked desire.
The old man shakes his head and begins to laugh. “Don’t blame you. The whole world’s gone to pot since the drought. Seems kinda inauspicious to do all this so close to the asteroid anniversary. But what do I know. If I was thirty, nah, make that forty years younger I might do the same. But you look too pretty to be that smart.”
I bite my cheek to stop myself from cursing this old fart out and drawing more attention to myself than I need. Lunar senses my ire and whips her head up.
God is merciful today though, because the doors to the train car slide open and sunlight spills into the cab. Lunar’s at my heels and my watch flashes a countdown in my eyeline as I elbow my way out. I’m walking much faster than I need to and paying far too little attention to my surroundings until I crash into a faceless man.
He’s saying something but the voice distorter he’s wearing makes it come out in jumbles. And then he’s shouting. I can’t read his lips behind the plastic mask obscuring his features and before I can catch myself I hear the screams. There’s something in his hand. I stumble backward but I catch myself. It’s just one guy but then, then he multiplies, like some unlocked power on a gaming feed.
I’m surrounded. Every other businessman on the way to work, or cleaning lady headed back home from her shift throws off their disguise and dons a mask. For just a moment there is an eerie quiet before they all begin to shout, “Earth is life! Earth is life.”
Lunar is barking so fiercely her body is bouncing off the platform. I lock eyes with the too tan girl from before. Fear connects us for just a second before I see the fog. Her hand clamps over her mouth. I don’t wait to see her eyes begin to bleed.
It’s a mad rush to get to the street. Bodies press close and then knock, kick and scratch to move an inch. I don’t look behind me. I know what I’ll see. The Earth is Life fanatics standing over the carnage, still as statues. I know now that thing in the guy’s hand was a gas mask. If I’d packed like we always do on outings I’d have one too, but I was in a rush. I only had one chance.
The smell of hot vinegar fills my nose and my vision blurs. Sick, gurgling screams fill my ears as I take a deep breath and hold it. I fold into the crowd rushing the stairs and push hard against the woman in front of me but she may as well be a brick wall. Tears prick at my eyes and burn. I let go of my expensive training and shove. My hand turns into a hammer and I punch, but the woman doesn’t move. She crumples. A tall kid with a mohawk who is in front of her crumples too. Body after body folds and my chest burns with the need to breathe. I throw up a prayer for forgiveness and climb over them. Every press of my heel meets flesh or bone. In a few steps I am lucky to hit concrete, but I’m not lucky for long. God help them.
The scant number of folks who came prepared with masks looping over their eyes and noses scramble by me. I’m too slow. My lungs grow claws and try to tear their way out of my chest for air, but I keep moving until I can’t, until fingers grip my ankle just above the strap of my shoe. I don’t turn around, because I know it’s that man. I know they’ve come to take a prize and make sure it’s my dead body plastered across the news feeds tonight. Wouldn’t that be a prize? The girl with the hood, her blood red lips slacked in death. Unmasked, at last. I kick, but I don’t have much fight left. The fire’s spread to my muscles and I’m seconds away from breathing in my death. He yanks hard and I fall against the already dead, cringing at the arm circling my waist, the fingers digging into my shoulder and the hand that covers my mouth. Another that covers my eyes.
A nightmare, instantaneous and frightening flicks across my mind’s eye of what he will do to my dead body. I’ve heard the stories, meant to keep us all fearful and grateful to be in our guilded cage. I can’t care. I need to get away. I need to….breathe.
I blink.
“You okay?” the old man asks. There’s a bit of the grits still lodged in his beard. I nod, letting the awful thoughts swirling in my brain go. It’s just anxiety. It’s just anxiety, I chant to myself, too afraid to close my eyes again. Too afraid that one fear will override another.
Chapter 3 - Lucky- Eve
My lungs drink the air. The first breath is so long and so deep my body swells with the effort. The doors of the subway car close behind me and the hush of enclosed strangers is replaced by a burst of laughter and whispers that I suspect is at my expense. Though, the anxiety could just be making me paranoid. In fact, I know it is. I shift from foot to foot in my place in line to get up the platform stairs and try to imagine the universe again. It’s that cool image of untethered freedom that I take with me out of the station, and onto the street. I float like cosmic debris, cold and inorganic, past the protesting hordes of EarthLife in their plastic face masks they use to avoid the facial recognition sensors. They stand like silent sentries, shoulder to shoulder in defiance of the distancing mandate to face the front of the entrance to the testing center. Their phalanx is just outside the invisible line the government allows for protesters. The less zealous of the lot and much more raucous are gathered in the park across the street, faces twisted in righteous anger. Some have got bull horns, others just use the voices god gave them to yell at me, at all of us with a dream. Dwelling on that sick feeling I get whenever I see them will only distract me. I can’t afford to be distracted. Mama would want me to keep going.
Lunar walks with purpose. Of course she does, she’s running a program. Still, it’s hard to think of her as something other than a pet. The glassvine bridge from the train station to the testing grounds is rickety, a sort of bio-tech experiment repurposed as architecture. The translucent floor sways in the breeze and even though I should feel safe, just looking at my feet makes my stomach churn. The higher I climb over the heads of the protesters, my fear of being gassed is replaced with an acute fear of falling. I can’t help but notice I’m the only one walking solo, but I keep my head down and hold onto the hope that I still have an appointment or was the Good Lady lying about that too?
As soon as we snake our way from the main entrance to the official registration area on the side of the building, people begin to point up. Mobile check-in stations encasing a single agent in a fiberglass egg hover high above the Georgia Dome, moving at random from location to location on some unknown schedule. The eggs were built to help reduce crowding and long lines at football games, but they don’t hurt when the threat of terrorism looms. My face looks back at me from the reflective side of a chain of hovercarts as they putter past a dark tunnel, looking very much like a fiberglass caterpillar.
I know before Lunar takes a step that she’s going to want to drag me down there out of the site of God and other non-murdering people. I think about trying to coax her back to a more populated area of the complex, but even the thought tires out at Lunar’s resolve. She can’t be convinced; she has her program, her orders. She’d probably drag my dead body down there if it came to that. The light dims to weak streams in the tunnel and the coolness of sun starved concrete sticks to my skin and I suddenly feel as if I’m underwater. My breath thins to match the silence as my anxiety rises, but in steps, then in feet I hear it, voices, music, and then the familiar rise and fall of a commercial break in the midst of chatter.
My feet pinch in my shoes as Lunar pulls me to the small shaded booth nearly a quarter mile from the original entrance. At first glance the agent looks as if she’s closed, but her flashing green “Next” sign gives her away. The booth floats nearly five feet off the ground and I have to shout to pull her attention away from her soap opera. The theme song to La Cama de Maya, our house’s favorite telenovela drifts down into my ears.
“Hello!”
Lunar barks an exclamation point and she peers down.
“Jesus. Another one of you found me,” she drawls. “Open registration is in Section B5”
Her voice is monotone and she doesn’t bother to turn the volume down on the show. I can tell it’s a rerun from last season.
“I..I have an appointment?”
I kick myself for the question in my voice. I do have an appointment. I don’t know when it is, but it’s been scheduled for months. Probably.
She peers down at me, incredulous.
“Name?”
“Eve Folasade Asongafac”
“Asongafac? Spell it.”
I’m spelling when Lunar nips my hand and I drop the leash. Before it can hit the ground she tears off down the sidewalk.
“Lunar! Lunar!”
I half-heartedly run a few steps in her direction knowing full well that I won’t chase her. Of course, she can’t come with me. Of course, she can’t stay with us at Miss Lorene’s, not after today. Frustration collects in my balled fists, but I let it go and trot back to my disinterested gatekeeper.
“Dogs always find their way home.”
She says this with the same monotone droll that she uses as she tells me to hold out my palm. A small drone, the size of a hummingbird flies into the small pit in my hand. A digital strip of an eye scans the soft flesh before an innocuous looking metal leg flexes and then pierces my finger to draw blood.
“Ouch!,” I instinctively swat at the evil thing.
“Yeah, nobody sees that coming,” she says.
The woman still doesn’t tear her eyes from her show and I suck my finger as the small birdlike thing hovers just out of my reach, humming.
“Confirmed,” it announces and disappears behind the gatekeeper.
“Lucky girl, seems like you do have an appointment. You a socialite?”
I shake my head.
“Celebrity?”
I shake my head again.
She looks down at me from her bird’s nest and studies me. She’s got one of those kewpie doll hairstyles that’s supposed to be the in cut, but it’s too young for her. It looks almost exactly like a Dairy Queen ice cream swirl, only in fire engine red. She could pass as an aging elf for a rundown traveling Santa collective. Her exacting eyes linger over me from head to toe.
“Hmph. Don’t look that high level to me.”
I bite my tongue and wait, grateful to have gotten this far, unsure of what’s to happen next. My finger throbs and in a way I’m thankful. If DNA confirmation wasn’t taken I wouldn’t have any way to prove my identity. I didn’t snatch my purse in my haste to get away. I don’t have a passport or any other ID. Switch had to know that would or at least could happen too. Why didn’t she tell me any of this? Of all the hours we spent talking, not one of them was spent discussing the ins and outs of… Of? What is this? Escape? Adventure?
The question is still pulling at me from all directions when a hovercart races through the tunnel, its wind carrying my silk pleated skirt skyward. I’m scrambling to right myself when another arrives just as fast but pulls up to a hairpin stop right in front of me. The door opens with the same pop of a Coke can and I stare.
“C72456TR. Repeat it back to me.”
“C734...T..”
“No. Listen. Memorize it. This is your name, your social security number, your driver’s license, passport and grandmama’s old bible all rolled into one. C72456TR. Let me hear it.”
I repeat it back to the agent and take a step towards the pod. She doesn’t say anything else and when I look back she’s forgotten all about me. The moment I get both of my feet inside the door shuts automatically and I’m jostled to the rear seat as it putters up the tunnel and into the light. There’s just enough room for one other person, a small person. I’m thinking about who this other person might be when less than a minute later we arrive at another check-point. This one isn’t as clandestine as mine and we have to slow to part the crowd of bystanders. A murder of women in gold bangles and head scarves are fussing over someone. I can’t get a good look because of the crush of bodies. A few people on the outside of the group stare at me through the fiberglass windows. Their mouths are pressed into flat lines, not sadness, determination.
Finally, the cart presses its way through and the door pops open with a hiss. A disembodied voice tells the crowd to back up and a girl steps forward. She’s slim and pretty with tears swimming in her eyes that bubble at the corners. Her skin is the color of wet fire logs, cut fresh and left out in the rain. Her hair is uncovered and whipped into the same Dairy Queen style the check-in lady had, but it looks chic on her. She steps one foot inside and then turns to kiss a woman with a face that matches hers on both cheeks. The woman covers the girl’s head with her hands and begins saying something in a language I don’t understand, but I know it is a blessing, a prayer. I turn my head in respect. A boy is staring at me from the other side of the window. He sticks his tongue out. I’m about to give it right back to him when the door closes and the cart jostles as the girl plops down in her seat. She wipes away the tears with her hands and smiles brightly.
“Dramatic, eh?”
I shrug. She doesn’t know how good she’s got it. She’s drowning in love and I’m the desert flower that’s learned to live without it. I left jealousy on the floor of Miss Lorene’s clinic long ago.
“I’m Miriam.”
She says the name with an accent that I can’t place, but I commit the pronunciation to memory. She holds out her hand after wiping the tears on her thighs. She’s wearing one of those simulation suits the final Hopefuls wear when they’ve passed the first round of tests. Bold statement. I’m impressed. I shake her hand.
“Eve,” I say.
“Lorene’s, right?”
I give her an incredulous look. “How did you know?”
“Your hood. All the boarding schools have their little quirks, right? Private tutors, for me. I’ve always been jealous of the school girls, you know. It’s like a sisterhood, right? If you’re paying attention you kind of pick up on who the contenders are by watching the rounds.”
“Rounds?”
“On C-Span?”
“Oh.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I nod politely. Light spills into the cab from a break in the clouds until a loud crack rattles the cab and something slick and yellowish brown begins to spill down the windows. We both turn our heads in the direction of where it came from, but it’s followed by another and then another before all the windows are blotted out by a brownish tinge.
“What’s happening?”
Miriam looks disgusted but she isn’t rattled. She settles back into her seat and shakes her head.
“Dirty greenies. Thank God they bulletproofed the windows after what happened last year. They’re water balloons. The protestors launch them from neighboring buildings.”
“That doesn’t look like water.”
“It isn’t. I heard that in Year 2 they were actually able to rush the pods and pull one of the Hopefuls out. She didn’t die, but she didn’t launch either.”
Disgust and fear war inside me and my palms begin to sweat. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“You boarding school girls really are sheltered.”
I don’t return her rudeness. Who is she to say what we are and aren’t?
“I’m sorry that was rude. I had a weird encounter with a girl from one of the Paulding County schools the first time I tested. She was an odd bird, kept calling me ma’am. Can you imagine it? She wouldn’t look me in the eye either.”
“I haven’t avoided your eyes.”
“Yes, you have. You’re looking at my forehead. It’s a deflection technique. Your shoulders are straight so I don’t suspect I intimidate you. Maybe it’s a habit, or general discomfort with small spaces.”
“You make a great many assumptions. I wouldn’t think that would be the best way to make friends.”
She chuckles. “Why on earth would you think that I want to be your friend? You are my competition. Though, I guess I have been a bit impolite. I apologize. My major was human psychology. Sometimes I can’t help but analyze.”
“I thought they only accepted candidates from the STEM fields. Psychology is an ...unconventional choice.”
By unconventional I definitely mean stupid. I can give as good as I get, thank you very much.
She smiles brightly and laughs. She knows exactly what I mean. We creep our way towards the Dome and the crowds thin as security gets tighter and the sound of music gets louder. Bass drums kick so loud that the windows start to shake. Crowd noises rise and fall like the sound of the ocean as our protective bubble connects to others just like it at the base of the Dome wall. The pod in front of us is so laden down with luggage that it’s a wonder that it can hover at all. I now notice that each pod is covered in nets that hang evenly along the center of the vehicle. I can’t tell who is inside because they’ve pulled down the security shades.
“Trying to figure out who it is?”
“Do you know?”
She laughs. “Of course, not. It doesn’t matter anyway. Probably one of the sponsored reality show contestants.”
“How can you tell?”
“The luggage. Only the kids who’ve been on one of those reality shows show up with a week’s worth of clothing. Pretty humiliating, if you ask me. It doesn’t matter how much you want something, you’ve got to find out what the other guy doesn’t know. You can run as fast as you can, but you’ll never beat a man on skates.”
“So the luggage says she doesn’t have skates?”
“Exactly.”
Skates are the twice weekly pilates sessions that are supposed to increase flexibility and strength in preparation for gravity poor environments. Skates are accelerated bachelor’s degrees offered on exclusive deep web virtual learning channels. Skates are also organically grown low-carb diets available only to those who can afford solar panels to simulate full sun on high ash days. I’m wearing skates. I know that. She knows that, but she has no idea what I had to sacrifice to get them.
The pod lurches forward as we continue to form a giant centipede along the slick side of the Dome wall. The sound of the crowd washes over us again. Excitement creeps in despite the sealed windows of the pod and I suddenly feel like I need to pee. The windows darken and an image of a smiling woman in an American flag scarf tied stylishly around her neck appears on the door.
“Welcome to the first round of the GSS testing trials. Congratulations, you’ve already taken the first step to realizing the dream of a new human colony on Mars.”
“This again? Wake me when she’s done.”
Miriam settles back into her seat, pulls earplugs from some impossibly small pocket on her jumpsuit and closes her eyes.
The woman’s face on the screen is replaced by the same spliced space video that was used in the commercial. The Orion constellation moves across the expanse in slow motion as a man-made satellite city comes into view.
“This is Torus I, gateway to the universe. Set halfway between our past and our future it is where your real training will begin if you are selected as a colonist for GSS service on the planet Mars. We are all Earthlings and despite the turmoil or recent decades we share a history, a purpose, but should you reach the apex of this journey your children will be Martian. This journey should not be embarked upon without serious consideration. Because of this seriousness the exams have been made especially arduous and multi-layered. You must pass the four sections of the entrance exams, followed by psychological trials, team building and leadership exercises, and a physical.”
Beautiful people, plump with health, in identical white jumpsuits smile at each other on the screen as they prune vegetables in a hydroponic garden, run on treadmills and chat with co-workers in a cafeteria. Everything is polite, apolitical and clean. The woman appears again, this time she’s sitting in an empty cafeteria, identical to the one on Torus I.
“We’ve been selecting colonists for almost five years now and the trials have changed, our expectations have changed — definitely, but for the better, they’ve grown. It’s because of those higher expectations that we’ve added an additional selection trial.”
“What?!”
Miriam, who I would have sworn was dead to the world rips out her ear plugs and jumps to her feet.
“We’ve selected only the best engineers, the finest doctors and the most accomplished chemists, but we aren’t starting a university, we’re starting a colony and that means that we need a society that is as fruitful as it is sustainable. Our colonists must work together, live together and raise children together.”
“Get to the point!” Miriam hisses.
“It is because of this that our final class of colonists will consist of betrothed couples only.”
Miriam and I draw in gasps that could frost the windows with cold shock. I am weightless. Gravity left for somewhere girls get to be free, where protection and security aren’t at all the same thing, where there are choices that don’t mean life or death, freedom or imprisonment, love or assignment. And then, I laugh.
I like the passage you wrote. But speaking of "old men", you may want to share this with the unmarried men, young or old: https://open.substack.com/pub/rogergroves/p/sermon-notes-men-dont-marry-wrong?r=5o921z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true