Midnight at the Electric

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  As he spoke, he zeroed in on the features he mentioned, each image taking over the expanse of the room, making people literally take in their breath as he toggled from one thing to the next.

  “It has all the elements we need to make clothes, plastic, steel, and fuel, and of course—the golden ticket—water. To date, it’s relatively empty of human life, but that will change. We have four hundred and twenty-two people working on Mars, soon to be”—he looked around the room—“four-hundred and thirty-eight. These folks live in one habitat, about the size of a shopping mall.” Now a dollhouse view into an elliptical dome appeared in the center of the room, with floor upon floor exposed: an apartment looking out on a dry landscape with two moons hovering above, a swimming pool, a movie theater. The next image showed a woman growing beans and cabbage under a domed Kevlar ceiling hundreds of yards above her. Then a cheesy image of a couple, each flashing the thumbs-up sign, holding a baby. People tittered.

  “We’ve had fourteen marriages to date since the program began, and, so far, nine babies have been born extraterrestrially. We’ve chosen you all with compatibility in mind. I don’t want to be too technical about it, I’m just saying, we think you’ll jell.”

  Adri shifted uncomfortably in her seat because she was allergic to jelling.

  “It’s truly a magnificent future you are helping to create. One day we’ll have transformed the atmosphere so we can walk and breathe freely anywhere on the planet. One day we’ll leave the domes and take off the helmets. We are counting on you to plant these seeds.

  “I’ll be meeting each of you individually. At that point we’ll sign contracts saying that we commit to each other: we commit that we’re happy with you as a recruit and want to keep you, you commit to seeing the expedition through. This is how we protect our investment. In the next two-plus months, you’ll be training with us for your new jobs. But in the meantime, we have a cheesy Vid for you. I’ll see you all at Personal Sessions.”

  He started the Vid, the first image—of the shuttle—stretched glowingly above the room, floating three-dimensionally in the air. And then he left the room.

  The Vid covered things Adri already knew: technical information about the ship, the chemical makeup of Mars, some major ways the Bubble Habitats functioned, how nature on Mars would one day be possible.

  When it was over, the regular overhead lights flickered on, but an image of a one-day terra-formed Martian forest lingered in the center of the room. Adri would miss forests. Suddenly it dawned on her how many things she’d miss.

  People lingered and chatted and trickled into the hallway. Across the circle, two people laughed with each other. Self-conscious, Adri tried to follow a group out, but they hovered in the doorway talking, with her awkwardly tacked to their edge. Then someone—Saba, she thought—turned and smiled at her.

  Adri tried to think of something to say. She had zero ability to engage in small talk, but she knew she was supposed to jell, so she glanced at the holographic forest and then, grasping for straws, said, “I like nature.”

  She wished she could swallow the words, and embarrassment flamed her face. I like nature?

  Saba just looked confused, and Adri tried to pretend she was bored.

  “See you,” she muttered irritably, then slid past the group and out the door.

  On the way home, Adri insisted on driving. Lily’s maps didn’t work, and they got lost leaving the city. They drove past the Endangered Animals Habitat, which Lily kept calling the zoo, and the same government buildings two or three times. Finally Adri managed to weave into the outskirts: green suburbs full of pleasant old houses.

  Lily looked out the window, hmming and huhing to herself, clearly turning something over in her mind.

  “What?” Adri asked finally, irritated. She’d tried to shake off the embarrassment back at the Center. But now she was only annoyed with herself.

  “Well, I don’t know how you all do it,” Lily said. “I don’t even know why you’d want to go to Mars in the first place.”

  “I want to do something that means something,” Adri shot back, more tersely than she meant to. She took a breath and let it out. “People may need to live on Mars someday soon.”

  Lily nodded politely. She looked a little disinterested, or at least it seemed that way. “Huh,” she said.

  “It’s like starting the world over,” Adri pressed, trying to drive the point home, “but with more brains. Like doing it right.”

  Lily thought for a minute. “I’m just wondering who you’re saving the world for. Since you don’t seem that into people.”

  Adri cast a blank glance at her then turned her eyes back to the road.

  “I’m just saying it’s a big sacrifice,” Lily mused. “It’s a loving act.”

  Adri tried to think how to express herself. “It serves our interests to rely on each other. Love is a survival mechanism; it’s evolution.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “Oh geez.”

  It irked Adri that Lily didn’t get that Colonists were envied by everyone, and deserved to be envied.

  “There are huge perks,” she said, her hands tense on the steering wheel. “I’ll get to live for hundreds of years.”

  “Psh. You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to live that long.” Lily pushed her hands through the air as if pushing away a gift.

  “Well that’s good, because they only want younger people,” Adri shot back.

  Lily looked amused, as if she didn’t know they were arguing. “Well and what’s so great about younger people?” she teased.

  “For one,” Adri said, “we didn’t use up the planet like you guys did. You know, older people.”

  Lily thrust her hands through the air once again, finally a little tense, her mouth tightening. “I know you young folks will get it all sorted out. I’m sure it’s not so bad.”

  “Well there’s no Miami and hardly any Bangladesh and no polar bears,” Adri said tightly. “And they’re paying billions of dollars to start a colony on Mars because humans need an exit strategy. So how bad do you want it to get before you think it’s bad?”

  Lily didn’t reply for a while, and Adri looked down at her hands on the steering wheel. Instead of shaming Lily, she was acting like an idiot: she was trying to hurt an old lady’s feelings, and she couldn’t understand exactly for what.

  “Well, you lied,” Lily said finally, looking out the window.

  “About what?” Adri asked.

  “You are kind of an asshole.”

  A long silence followed in which Adri tried to absorb the words, which hurt but were probably true. Then Lily pinched her shoulder softly.

  “That’s okay, I like assholes. They’re colorful.”

  Adri blew out a breath, exasperated.

  “Can I write you? After you’re gone?” Lily asked.

  “Um, yeah, I guess so. We can video too. It’s not, like, the 1800s. It’s not like I’m taking a vow of silence.”

  Lily smiled. “Of course. Things are changing so fast, I lose track. I always thought that was so wonderful, the ways people are changing things. But apparently I was wrong.” Her mouth turned up at the corners sarcastically.

  They pulled up to the house. Lily gazed around the farm as they climbed out of the car. “My mother was an optimist. Maybe I got that from her.” She cast a glance sideways at Adri. “She loved this place. And now there’s hardly anyone around to remember her or the people who used to belong to her.”

  Adri looked out toward the tortoise house, and Lily followed her gaze. Galapagos happened, at that moment, to be staring over at them while chewing a big piece of lettuce, her eyes glittering and observant.

  “Well, I guess she remembers,” Lily said. “She’s like those glasses in The Great Gatsby. She’s seen it all, but she’s not talking.”

  Adri hadn’t read The Great Gatsby.

  “You remind me of her a bit,” Lily said. “My mom, that is. She was a force of nature too.”

  Adri didn’t know what t
o say, so she didn’t say anything. Compliments only embarrassed her. And she wondered why Lily was so constantly, irrepressibly nice to her.

  That night, after Lily went to bed, Adri was restless, wired. When she started looking for the letters again, it wasn’t with much hope of finding them, it was just an urge she couldn’t explain. Maybe if she found them, she could give them to Lily as a gift—a symbolic apology for being a fairly crappy person. She went about it systematically, scouring the house—every room but the one where Lily slept—looking in cabinets, the attic (full of more junk than she’d ever seen in one place in her life), every shelf of every closet.

  Finally, curled back behind a line of books, half stuffed behind a shelf that had come loose, she found a thick, bursting manila envelope, and her heart skipped a beat. It contained a clothbound journal fraying at the seams. Property of Catherine Godspeed, it read on the inside cover. Even staring at the name, she couldn’t believe she’d been lucky enough to find it after so many years.

  The first page was full of tight, scrawling handwriting. She tried to flip to the back page, but when she did, a pile of envelopes and postcards fluttered out from where they’d been tucked, landing scattered on the floor. She knelt, gathering them together in an awkward pile, and then sat back on her heels.

  The letters were still neatly in their envelopes, yellowing but legible, all addressed to Beth Abbott (and the later ones to Mrs. Beth Godspeed), and return-addressed Lenore Allstock, Forest Row, England.

  She carried them up to her room.

  Years later, even after she’d followed the trail of it all as far as it would go, Adri would always think of that moment, kneeling in front of the bookshelves, as the moment she first touched her own history.

  She sat cross-legged on her bed and opened to the first page of the journal, and read the first lines.

  The dust came again this morning. It kicked up out of nowhere, looking like a gray cloud rolling across the ground instead of the sky.

  She kept going. She didn’t surface again until dawn.

  CATHERINE

  PART 1

  PROPERTY OF CATHERINE GODSPEED

  CANAAN, KANSAS

  MAY 20, 1934

  The dust came again this morning. It kicked up out of nowhere, looking like a gray cloud rolling across the ground instead of the sky. I was just walking out of the barn with a bucket when I saw it blowing across the northeast edge of the farm, but by then it was too late to get to the house. I had to hold on to the fence not to fall over my own feet, and then all those grains of dirt ran their hands against me and polished me like sandpaper, crawled into my eyes and throat. And then it passed, and the sky was that relentless blue again.

  Now everything has a thin layer of grit. All Mama’s books in the library are powdered. My toast this morning was dusty and so were my eggs. But we are lucky this week. Sometimes the dust blows for days.

  I dream about rain and wet leaves, even when I’m awake. I could lie down on a patch of green grass and never get up.

  I found this postcard in the bottom of one of Mama’s drawers, while I was looking for pennies she might have left there before they became so scarce.

  I’ve read it over six times, and I still don’t understand it. There’s never been a Lenore in our lives, and Mama’s never mentioned her.

  I can see her now, out at the side of the house, sweating over the kitchen garden—which feeds us—and Ellis, our helper over by the barn listening to baseball on his wireless, feeding our one skinny cow. Galapagos is wallowing in the mud in what used to be a pond and trying to catch a fly. Beezie is in the hall coughing on the dog.

  I want to ask Mama about Lenore, but she is the best imitator of a stone you ever met. You can have a whole conversation with her just by yourself. I’ve spent my whole life trying to read her signals. She has a way of pulling you into her silence.

  This morning she said she smells rain on the dry wind. We all looked at each other and agreed that rain is on its way. But our eyes said something different.

  We’re a house full of secrets. The main secret is that we are afraid.

  Twenty-four sunny days in a row. Where have the clouds gone?

  MAY 25, 1934

  This morning in church we prayed for rain and President Roosevelt. I spend most of my time in church trying to keep Beezie from picking her nose or whispering loud and embarrassing observations like how if Jesus knew for sure he was going straight to heaven things weren’t that bad for him anyway. Beezie’s so tiny she may just as well be half elf, but she’s a hellcat and everyone knows it. Meanwhile they barely notice me at all. Even Mama calls me her brown bird: I’m not pretty, and I blend in. But Ellis says if I’m a brown bird, I’m a vulture, for the way I circle the house in the evenings. I’m so restless I could fly out of my skin.

  Ellis is the one who told me to start writing things down. At church, he sits at the end of our family bench, and when I glance his way, his head is invariably bowed. When I’m bored during the service I let myself picture him asleep in the bunkhouse—in my mind, I kiss him awake.

  After service we made our way through the chattering, cheerful Sunday crowd gathered outside the church door, catching up with each other on the week’s happenings. On Main Street the heat and the sun beat down on us all like a fist. As usual, everyone went out of their way to talk to Ellis. He’s not a vulture but a peacock, dark-haired, always with a twinkle in his eyes like he just heard a joke, and a smile like he never met a stranger. People are drawn to him. He’s the town pet.

  We stopped in at Jack’s store. While Mama bartered some old farm tools for flour, Ellis and I picked out other things we needed and loaded them onto the counter. I handled an apple and then put it down because the store is mostly a museum of things we can’t have.

  “They say the last storm blew dust all the way to New York, Beth,” Jack was saying to Mama as she stood looking down at a newspaper on the edge of the counter. He looked drawn, worried, like everyone does all the time now. “They say some places in Texas, it’s piled up in drifts that can cover cars.”

  “God will bring the rain,” Mama replied. She has the slightest bit of an English accent. It always stands out. She moved here from England when she was young, and she’s always said the grass there is so green and wet it looks like a carpet, that the trees that fill the woods are as covered in green as limes.

  Mama is full of faith, but recently mine has been running through my fingers, dribbling out. I can’t seem to catch it.

  Jack’s daughter Lyla darted out of the back of the store and gave us a happy wave, because like everyone else, she’s in love with Ellis. The only difference is, I think he loves her back. They’re both seventeen, a year older than me. Ellis likes to annoy me by calling me “the kid,” but Lyla shoots him looks when he does it, standing up for me.

  Ellis stepped forward, leaned on the counter, and tapped his fingers as Lyla loaded a shelf. “Any way you all can do better than three cents on this apple?” he asked, pulling it from where I’d replaced it. I was mortified, but Lyla smiled and slid it into a bag with the flour for free. That’s the effect Ellis has on people. I know I’ll end up giving most of it to Beezie anyway, but it still gives me a warmth inside.

  Ellis was just stepping up to whisper to me when something else grabbed our attention—both at the same time.

  It hung behind the cash register, tucked sheepishly below eye level: a poster, dominated by a beautiful dancing girl in a long gold skirt and big hoop earrings. Behind her were lions, a cobra twirling out of a basket, a man holding barbells, a Ferris wheel. The words Ragbag Fair—Coming Soon! were written across the top in red.

  “Whoa,” I said, gaping.

  “Whoa,” Ellis echoed. “Would you look at her.”

  I slapped his arm and shook my head. It wasn’t the dancing girl I was drawn to but the picture tucked away at the upper-right corner like an afterthought: a bolt of lightning threading through a pair of gnarled old hands, and these word
s beside it: Would you pay $10 for Eternal Life? You Can at the Electric! Midnight Shows Only!

  “What’s the Electric?” I asked Jack.

  “One of the exhibits, I guess. They’ll be here for weeks, sounds like. Paid me two dollars just to hang it here, but . . .” He looked sheepishly at Mama. “I might just take it down and give the money back.”

  “That’d probably be best,” Mama said, eyeing the poster doubtfully. Mama’s a timid sort. She’s never broken a rule in her life, and these kinds of carnivals are frowned on by just about everyone.

  But all the way home, I was thinking about the poster—the old, wrinkled hands, the lightning bolt.

  Ellis once told me that if they had a way of weighing people’s souls along with their bodies I’d be 2 percent fat, 10 percent water, and 90 percent unattainable desires. (Ellis has made a lifelong career out of telling me about myself, but he can’t do math.) He says I talk about rain and daydream about rain and think about rain so much that the only way I’ll ever be happy is if I am reincarnated as a puddle. Every place we’ve ever seen a photograph of, I’ve told him I want to see it.

  Anyway, I often tell Ellis things I’d tell no one else, but if I told him how badly I wish I had that ten dollars for the Electric, he’d laugh in my face. I want him to think well of me. He hates superstition as much as he hates cities and spinach and snakes.

  Ellis came to us three years before the dust, just after Daddy died. It was the middle of a bone-cracking winter. He was eight years old, and I was seven. Farmers would meet the trains, full of orphans escaping the poverty of the cities, and pick them out like puppies.

  I wasn’t supposed to be there that night. Mama needed a strong, healthy, older boy to help with the heavier farm work Daddy had left behind, but I wanted a little sister so badly that I lay in the back of the truck to stow away so I could pick her out myself. (I didn’t know then that Mama was carrying Beezie.)

  As it turned out, neither of us got our wish. We got there too late, and there was only one child left unwanted—the right age for Mama, but pale and skinny and delicate, standing alone and coatless on the platform, shivering like crazy. When Mama offered him her coat, he said no thank you and that he wasn’t cold. He was trying to look strong and dependable, but very unconvincingly. I could see the compassion in Mama’s eyes.