If she could call it growing up. Programmed?
Zhade followed her down a dark tunnel that used to be a hallway, past caves that used to be labs and offices. The elevator was—obviously—no longer working, so they had to use another ’drill to get to the lowest level. After that, they searched for the door. As soon as she saw it, Andra knew exactly which one Dr. Griffin had meant, even though she’d never seen it before.
It was metal, heavy, with an industrial handle. No window. No label. There were the remains of some sort of sign. It was so corroded, all Andra could make out was jumbled shapes in a vaguely blue color, but she knew it had once been the symbol for cryonics—a snowflake of infinity symbols.
Miraculously, the digi’lock beside it still worked—probably techno’sealed, like the Vaults. She entered the coordinates for Holymyth.
It took all her strength and Zhade’s to pry open the door, and when it finally broke free, it let out a hiss, like a seal breaking.
Behind the door was darkness. And chill. It smelled like stale snow, and as soon as Andra stepped inside, frost clung to her skin. She was about to click on her flashlight when a light flicked on, fifty feet above her head. Another light followed. And another. Kachunk kachunk kachunk. Light after light, down the center of the ceiling, which went on as far as Andra could see. A huge cavernous room filled with . . .
She took a step forward, then another, and then she was sprinting. She stopped in front of a stack of oblong boxes, stacked ten, twenty high. Seven feet long, four feet wide, three feet tall. Like coffins. But not coffins.
Cryo’tanks.
She placed her hand on the nearest one. It wasn’t dull and lifeless. It wasn’t warm under her touch. It was cold, and it was humming. It was operational.
Andra uncovered the nameplate at the base.
Ming Sun.
She wiped away the layer of frost, and there she was. Ming. She was alive. She was lying right in front of Andra, and she was alive.
Andra ran to the next ’tank, wiped it down. Inside was a man with red hair and a grizzled beard. Joseph Stein. Alive.
The next one. Lakshmi Gupta. Alive.
She ran from ’tank to ’tank, reading names and looking at faces. Ellie McGinnis. Rupert Cho. Kaneisha Taylor.
She didn’t recognize any of them, but somehow she knew. She knew. They were from her time. A million cryo’tanks. A million colonists waiting to wake up on a different planet. And if she searched hard enough, she would find her family.
The people she’d thought were her family.
All those weeks ago, the ’bot had said the colonists were dead, and legally they were. They were all still in cryonic stasis.
This was her purpose, right? To save humanity. This was why she’d been created, and if she wasn’t human, if she was nothing more than a tool, then she would at least be useful.
She grasped her ’locket, and everything solidified. The Ark had never left Earth. The colonists were asleep—had been for a thousand years.
And now, it was time for them to wake up.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m so very lucky to be surrounded by people, both personally and professionally, who are incredibly supportive of my writing and this book in particular.
Thank you to my agent extraordinaire, Victoria Marini, for believing in Goddess’s potential, and for being enthusiastic and ambitious and everything I need in an agent. I couldn’t imagine a better advocate for me and my writing. Special thanks to Barbara Poelle, for passing my manuscript on to Victoria. Also, to Maggie Kane, Heather Baro-Shapiro, and the rest of the team at IGLA.
To my editor, Julie Rosenberg, for her guidance and patience, and for bringing out the best version of Goddess. For understanding my vision for the book, sometimes even better than I did. And for putting up with Zhade through several revisions. To the Razorbill/Penguin team, especially Alex Sanchez, Casey McIntyre, and Jayne Ziemba. To proofreaders Maddy Newquist and Marinda Valenti, and copyeditors Vivian Kirklin and Janet Pascal, for patiently handling Zhade’s absurd dialect. To Dana Li and Doaly for the incredible cover design. Also, to everyone at Penguin Teen, for their contagious enthusiasm.
To Emily Suvada: you are The Best™ writer, critique partner, and friend. I’m so inspired not only by your writing, but by who you are as a person. Thank you for being my sounding board and my buddy and my reality check. Not only would this book not exist without you, but I also would have quit writing a long time ago. Thank you for everything you do for me and for all the ways you made this book better. Thanks also for that time when I sent you two options of what I should work on, and you chose the one about the girl who wakes up from cryonic stasis to discover she’s a goddess. Maybe that’ll turn into something some day.
Thank you to Ríoghnach Robinson and Tim Olson, for reading for authenticity and providing insights into Andra’s experience and identity. For graciously offering your feedback and time and guidance. Any remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.
To my master’s thesis committee: Dr. Beth Gargano, Dr. Balaka Basu, and Dr. Paula Connolly. For not throwing out the four hundred page book that showed up in your mailboxes. For all your insight then and support since. And to Dr. Pilar Blitvich, for teaching the linguistics course that influenced this book.
Thank you to my BFFs, to whom I dedicated this book, for all your love and support, and for always reminding me that I am my own power blazer. To Kailan Sindelar, for being my patronus and always celebrating my successes. To Taryn Dollings, for reading the earliest scenes that would turn into Goddess. To Nadia Clifton, for her librarian prowess during the Great Word Panic of 2019. To Bre Weber, for her undying support and for being my biggest cheerleader. To Amanda Loeffert, for drinking my wine and fixing my plot holes. To Alex Batty, for all her amazing graphic designs for Goddess. And to Kelsey Helveston, for writing with me on Sundays and making sure I ate vegetables.
Thank you to Brook Swiger, for reading the first draft of the first book I ever wrote, and for refraining from telling me not to quit my day job (which would have been especially cruel, as I was unemployed at the time). Your encouragement kept me writing.
To Beth Revis, Renée Ahdieh, Roshani Chokshi, Alexandra Duncan, and Carrie Ryan, for always being so kind and encouraging to this floundering new author, and for all their support and advice. To Cora Carmack, for her feedback on the first draft of my query letter. To Jennifer L. Armentrout, for getting me to RT 2014. To all the amazing writer buddies I’ve made this year, especially Jennifer Gruenke, Britt Singleton, Tracy Deonn Walker, and Karen Strong.
To my family, especially my parents. To Mom, for putting books next to the cat chair, and to Dad, for introducing me to Star Wars. Thanks to both of you for always believing I could do whatever I set my mind to.
And to me, for writing this book in the first place and not giving up. Good job, LB: you did it!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As an only child, Lora Beth Johnson grew up telling herself stories and reading past her bedtime. She spent her adulthood collecting degrees, careers, and stamps in her passport before realizing her passion for creating fictional worlds. When she's not writing, she's teaching college English and learning new languages. She lives in Davidson, NC with her little roommate, Colocataire the Yorki-poo. Goddess in the Machine is her first book.
Find Lora Beth on Twitter @LoraBethWrites
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