by G. C. Julien
Right now, all I want to do is walk up to her and say hi, which is ridiculous. I think deep down, even though I want to stop her from harming others, I also want to save her; I want to help her battle whatever illness she’s suffering from.
It sounds so pathetic and I’m embarrassed for even thinking it. If Mom were around, she’d likely tell me she’s proud of me for wanting to help rather than destroy.
The short stocky woman standing by Eve waves her arm over her head and says, “Come on, I’ll show you.”
In one quick motion, Eve snatches the Luminus floating beside her head and tucks it into her pocket. Obviously, she isn’t going to her room; she’s following this woman, whoever she is and wherever she’s taking her.
I take a step forward as if prepared to follow her, even though it’s none of my business, when Emily’s voice slips into my ear.
“Hey, stranger.”
“Emily!”
Beaming, she wraps her arms around my shoulders and gives me a tight squeeze. “You okay? Did you find Nola?”
I nod. “She’s taking care of people. Apparently, there’s some advanced medical facility somewhere in here. I’m assuming that’s where she went. I don’t know how I’m gonna find her when she gets out… This place is huge.”
Craning my neck, I gaze up upward at the glass ceiling that appears to be a mile away. There must be at least ten levels in here, and I can only imagine how big each one of them is.
“Everyone’s saying to go get settled and that we’re going to be given a tour afterward,” Emily says. She then points at her Luminus. “How cool is this thing?”
I smirk. “Pretty cool. You feeling okay?”
She doesn’t look as bad as she did earlier, likely the result of her excitement. Emily’s still recovering from her pneumonia, but all in all, it looks like the worst of it has passed.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Come on, let’s follow these little things and see where they take us.”
She takes a step toward hers and it hovers away so smoothly it looks like it’s on an invisible track. Emily starts jogging toward it, and with every step she takes, her Luminus moves farther away.
“This way!”
We aren’t the only ones chasing after our Luminus Spheres. A bunch of young girls keep hopping up and down to catch the little ball like cats swatting at butterflies while their guardians try to hold them back.
“Rashi, that’s enough!” one mother says, tugging at her daughter’s wrist. Rashi, her little girl, slaps both hands over her eyes and starts crying, though it sounds more like a tired whine.
“It’s going to the elevator,” Emily says.
“So is mine,” I say. “You think we’re close to each other?”
Emily shrugs. “Maybe.”
There are a dozen elevators lined up against the back wall. They look like glass tubes—slender, cylindrical shapes with a medium-sized platform large enough to fit a small crowd of people.
Emily stands in front of the elevator farthest right, waiting for it to do something. When nothing happens, she bends forward, her back round, and starts jabbing her thumb all over the metallic frame. “How does it work? There’s gotta be a button somewhere.”
I plant my feet in front of the elevator next to hers and stare at it. There’s a reason they asked us to repeat scripts, isn’t there? Maybe these only work through voice recognition.
“Open door,” I say, and with a soft swoosh, the glass door slides open. Grinning, I turn to Emily. “It works!”
“Open door!” she shouts, her voice carrying across the Hub but then quickly slaps a hand over her mouth when several heads turn our way. Then, before stepping inside, she turns to me and says, “If I don’t see you up there, I’ll catch you later.”
We both step inside our elevators at the same time and the doors close behind us with a swoosh. Through the glass, I watch as women and children gather in Elysium’s Hub, arms waving and lips flapping. There’s so much liveliness—so much emotion. Above their heads, hundreds of Luminus Spheres float quietly, waiting to take each one of them up to their rooms. Surely, once they’ve finished meeting new faces, they’ll follow their spheres like we’re doing and settle into their new living spaces.
I turn to my left and spot Emily smudging her hands all over the elevator’s glass from the inside. What the heck is she doing? Is she seriously looking for a button again? When she catches me staring, she flattens her palms on either side of her face as if to say, What do I do?
The doors opened through voice command, therefore, it would make sense that the elevator also functions through voice command. So, without knowing for certain, I point at my lips and Emily lights up. Though I can’t hear her, her lips move, and at once, her platform disappears up into the air.
“Take me to my room,” I say.
At the very center of the elevator’s glass door, a blue screen appears with my name written on it: Lucinda Cain. Under it, it says, Fifth floor, room 591.
And with a sound so soft I barely hear it, the elevator levitates, making everyone in the Hub look smaller and smaller. It blows my mind. The last time I was on an elevator, I could hear the cables dragging it up. This thing, from what I saw before stepping in, doesn’t even have cables. I have no clue how it works, but it feels like I’m being brought up on a cloud.
And room 591? How many rooms are there in this place? I don’t have the time to put too much thought into it; the moment the elevator’s glass doors swoosh open, Emily’s face appears. Had she been standing any closer, she’d have fallen into the elevator with me.
“Emily!” I shout with excitement.
Several eyes turn toward us, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
“Looks like we’re on the same floor,” she says, smirking the way she does when she’s up to no good.
“What?” I ask. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”
“Because you should thank me. I asked to be next to you.”
I’m a bit surprised to hear this—not that Emily would make such a request, but that Vrin or that Nayma lady would actually do it. That was incredibly nice of them. They didn’t have to do that, and they did it anyway.
I get the feeling this place is going to be great.
“You realize we could have taken the same elevator—” I say.
She dismisses me with a flick of the wrist. “That would have ruined the surprise.”
Swinging my bag over my shoulder, I smile at her. “So what’s your room number?”
“It’s 592,” she says, and she’s still smirking like she orchestrated the whole thing—which, I guess, she did.
“Thanks for doing that,” I say. The last thing I wanted was to end up beside someone I don’t know, or to end up all alone. I glance behind Emily, where dozens of kids and adults sit around tables that appear to be made of resin—they’re shiny, light gray, and reflect the pod’s fluorescent lights overhead. The ceilings are uncharacteristically high, and combined with the lighting, they make the tables even shinier.
On either side of us are corridors with glass walls, which I assume must wrap around the entire building. You can see the Hub perfectly through the glass. It’s filled with scores of women, and from up here, they look like dots across a white canvas. I may only be five flights up, but it feels like ten because every floor is so tall.
The same green and purple plants that decorated the Hub are lined up throughout the corridor, slouching slightly away from the walls. The distance between each one seems almost too perfectly measured, and underneath them, small shadows spread across white floors that are so glossy they look like glass.
At the far back of the room is an entryway without a door—instead, a large metallic border frames the opening. People come out through it carrying plates with food and making their way to the large tables which are also meticulously positioned across the room.
Then, the smell hits me and I nearly fall flat on my butt. It smells of warm salted roast beef—the kind of roast
beef only a grandmother can make—and of buttery potatoes. I can practically taste the butter sliding across my tongue, and my mouth fills with saliva.
Emily’s jaw drops and she looks at me with big bug eyes.
She doesn’t have to say anything, and neither do I. Snatching my Luminus the way Eve did it, I stick it into my pocket and march toward the crowd of food-carrying people.
I don’t care about finding my room, or even about finding Nola right now. All I care about is this food. And meat. God… I haven’t tasted meat in forever. For the last four years, I’ve basically led a vegetarian, almost vegan, lifestyle. I can’t complain about it, though. Eve did a good job at making sure we were getting proper nutrients, but the smell of that beef…
A string of drool slips out of my mouth and I quickly wipe it away. Several eyes turn on us as we walk forward and it isn’t until we reach the actual source of the food that I realize how quiet everyone’s gotten. No one’s eating anymore; they’re staring at me and Emily. Some of them are even midbite, mouths partially open with stringy beef hanging out.
“What’re they all looking at?” Emily asks, lips close together. If she were a cartoon character, she’d have spoken out of a hole at the corner of her mouth.
I gawk around the room, and then it hits me. They’re all wearing sky blue outfits with buttons up to their necks—they’re nice, much nicer than Eden’s hemp clothing, but they all look alike… like clones.
Emily gives me an up-and-down look no doubt reading my mind. Her jeans are as worn out as mine are, and we’re both wearing ratty old sneakers. Today, I managed to slide on an old pink hoodie that I’ve had since I got to Eden. When it got too tight, I stretched it out until I heard the seams snap. Its sleeves are too short for me now, so I roll them up to my elbows.
Emily’s shirt, an old T-shirt that looks like it may have belonged to her dad, hangs down to her waist. Compared to what everyone else is wearing, it looks like a rag you’d find in a mechanic’s toolbox.
“Is that them?” someone whispers.
The person sitting next to the young boy who spoke, a spikey-haired blond woman with glasses and a bird nose, shakes her head, which I assume is translation for “I don’t know.”
Weren’t they expecting us? Surely, Vrin announced to everyone that newcomers were on their way. Maybe I should have waited for the adults to take the lead instead of running ahead of everyone. Emily bites her lip and tugs at the bottom of her torn T-shirt.
I bet she’s thinking the exact same thing.
“Lucy Cain and Emily Wilmer,” comes a man’s authoritative voice.
My first instinct is to look at the walls, and then at the ceilings. I don’t see anyone, so I can only assume it’s coming from that robot thing APHRODITE. Then again, APHRODITE is a female voice, so I don’t know who’s voice this is.
Whoever is speaking clears his throat and I feel stupid. The man is standing near the entrance to the kitchen wearing a strange outfit—a long yellow cotton jacket that sits over a plain white T-shirt and hangs over the top of loose fitting pants.
Who is this guy? And why’s he dressed differently from everyone else?
He smiles at us, revealing perfectly white teeth. Though I can’t see his face in its entirety because of his bushy brown beard and shoulder-length wavy hair, he does seem like a nice guy. Thick flat eyebrows sit over his eyes like fuzzy caterpillars. Although exceptionally big, they suit his face. He’s older than my mom was and definitely older than Eve. His sideburns, long hairy things that attach to his beard, have a hint of silver in them. They don’t make him look old, though; they kind of make him look mature and responsible if that makes sense.
He’s about to repeat our names again with that same smile on his face when I nod and say, “Y-yes. That’s us.”
How did he know it was us?
That’s when I see an odd handheld device in his hand. I only notice it because he taps on the screen, inputting information. Then, when he catches us staring, he lets out a grumbly laugh and says, “I don’t wear glasses, so you won’t see me wearing anything fancy like Nayma.”
The glasses, I remember. They must have been advanced versions of his device. What did he do? Scan us? Is that how he knew who we were?
Instead of waiting for us to walk to him, he makes his way to us. At the same time, he waves a hand in the air and says, “Resume,” and everyone goes back to chatting, eating, and scraping their utensils against their plates.
When he reaches us, I have to crane my neck back to look at him.
Holy crap is he ever tall. He’s taller than that guy with the gray dog, and that guy was pretty tall.
“My name’s Adimmer,” he says. He rests a hand over his belly and bends forward, reminding me of how Mom used to describe gentlemen—polite, kind, and caring.
“I’m one of Elysium’s Facilitators,” Adimmer says. “Think of me as the male version of Nayma, only… with less power.” He taps the tip of his handheld device and slides it into his overcoat’s pocket. “I’m responsible for the fifth floor, while Nayma oversees all of Elysium.”
“How many of you are there?” Emily asks.
Without blinking, he says, “Eleven, including Nayma. There are ten floors in all of Elysium, and they’re all similar. Well, at least in the main building.”
The main building? In my peripheral, Emily’s jaw drops. Though I don’t react the same way as her, I’m equally as stunned. It’s hard to get over how big this place is.
“I’m responsible for showing you the ropes around here,” he says, planting two hands on his waist. “But there’ll be plenty of time to give you a tour. You must be hungry. Come on, I’ll get you both a plate.”
Nearly stumbling over my own shoes, I follow close behind, grinning at Emily from ear to ear.
CHAPTER 22 – EVE
Monarch Suite, I think, drawing my shoulders back.
“Ain’t she a beaut?” says Mary-Anne.
She reminds me of a child who gives their parent a Christmas gift for the first time in their life. It’s obvious she wants to be thanked and told what a wonderful, generous woman she is for giving me her Monarch Suite.
“I got our Facilitator to transfer your profile over,” she says, and although I have no idea what she’s talking about, I’m assuming it has something to do with my access to this room.
Something tickles my thigh, and out comes my Luminus.
Mary-Anne lets out a chortle as it makes its way to a flat platform at the center of a glass coffee table. The moment the Luminus lands on the platform, its light flickers, which leads me to believe it’s made its way to a charging station.
“Thing’s pretty smart, isn’t it?” she asks.
I nod, but I’m far too mesmerized by my new space to pay any attention to her. The room itself is five, six times the size of my room in Eden. A kitchen built of high-end glass appliances, marble countertops, and metallic cupboards sits at the right of the room. The counter curves around the kitchen, and two bowls of fresh fruit sit on top of it. Between these is a dazzling jug of water with lemon halves floating inside.
Slowly, I turn to a massive bay window that takes up the entire back wall of the room.
“If you prefer darkness,” Mary-Anne says, “all you have to do is ask.”
I’m not quite certain what she means by this.
She raises two playful eyebrows and directs her gaze to the ceiling, no doubt referring to APHRODITE.
“Just ask?” I say, and she nods with so much passion that her entire body shakes.
“Close the blinds,” I say. I’m about to ask Mary-Anne if blinds was the right term to use when the glass of the window darkens. And then, as if by magic, its pigmentation changes to match the color of walls around it.
Mary-Anne must be staring at my big-eyed face; she lets out a laugh so loud and abrupt that I flinch. “It takes awhile to get used to, but that’s only the beginning of it. Come here.”
As I follow her, pot lights overhead i
ncrease in brightness to make up for the darkness in the room.
“You can turn those off, too, but I wouldn’t recommend doing that until it’s bedtime.”
She’s still laughing as if everything she says is intended to be a joke. I’m not quite certain how to respond, so I simply smile at her.
“Oh, by the way,” she says, stopping midtrack and causing me to bump into her, “That fridge isn’t any ordinary fridge, either. It’s a Chepire model, if you’ve ever heard of it.”
I stare at the fridge, wondering if Mary-Anne is pulling a prank on me. I can’t possibly be standing in the same room as a Chepire fridge.
* * * * * *
“Money doesn’t grow on trees!” my mom shouts.
She isn’t usually this upset about money, but today, she’s having a bad day. And she isn’t usually mean to me or Mila, either—especially not Mila, her baby girl, as Mom calls her.
“Mom, that’s not what—” Mila tries.
“I don’t want to hear it!” my mom says. I can tell she’s really pissed off when the veins on her temples pop out, looking like little electrical wires. Her hair almost seems like it’s been in contact with those electrical wires; it’s frizzy and damaged and appears bleached white underneath our kitchen’s fluorescent light.
Mom only gets this upset for two reasons: men and money.
Ever since all this crap started—ever since men started freaking out about women outnumbering them—Mom’s been on edge all the time. All she does is rant about how dumb men are and how they all belong in hell.
Every day, that’s what she talks about; every day, that’s what I hear and what I’m starting to believe.
And as for money, well, Mom’s never had much of it, and now she’s responsible for the two of us. I hate it when she takes it out on Mila. All she did was ask for a new school bag. Any other day, Mom would have sighed and walked away, too overwhelmed to think about another expense. But today, I guess she’s had her fill.