I programmed my Gate to play music and laid down on my bed and listened to the sounds pouring in around me. With my eyes closed I could still see Hemingway and his perfect jaw line that swept up to his ear, his cheek bones molding the bends of his skin in all the right ways, the curve of his bottom lip when he smiled, his brown-gray close-cropped hair. And his laugh. I could hear it. His steel-blue eyes were looking at me in my mind, tap-tapping into my brain, his eyes alight with electric galaxies.
I stared into his eyes in my mind. Could I ever get close to him? I needed to. There was so much I didn’t know about him. What was it like when he slept? How did his body feel to hold? How did his hair smell? Did it have a fragrance the way a human’s would? I needed to know.
The song played. I started feeling really down. Like there was no hope for me.
Sitting up in bed, I scraped my fingernails over my scalp and through my hair, which was long, caught the bulk of it into one hand and pulled it into a crazy, twisty knot on top of my head. I went to the mirror in my small bathroom.
“OK,” I said, “It’s OK. You’re not a freak, self,” I coached myself. It worked. Well, usually. It wasn’t working now. Maybe when my dad got home I could talk to him about it.
Yes. Sounded like a good idea. He’d confine me to my room for a month until I forgot about Hemingway.
“OK, you’re being insane.” I said to my reflection. I flinched. A strand of blonde hair fell into my face out of my cool hair-tower. My skin was pale, normally, but it looked paler than usual at the moment. My hazel eyes were as boring as ever. But looking at them right then, I could see nothing extremely different between my own eyes and what I’d seen in Hemingway’s. There was consciousness there. Something alive. Something brilliant and self-aware.
That was the most important thing about it, right?
2: Mei
How fickle am I? A week went by and I was beginning to forget that I’d ever been interested in a guy named Hemingway. Really. That’s how fickle I am.
The thing about it was, I knew I just needed to get past him and all the energy he was taking up—thinking about him, wanting to see him again, daydreaming about him.
The rules are pretty strict. From childhood we’re taught there’s something different between humans and androids. They have no souls. Beneath their skin, there’s blood, sure, but it’s running through arteries and veins that have the building blocks of metals in them. I mean, if you cut open an android like Hemingway, you’d see almost everything you’d see in me. The biggest difference, I guess, so they say, is that his heart is this big bluish thing. And mine is red.
But for myself, I’ve never looked inside an android. I’ve also never even seen my own heart. For all I know, I too have a blue heart. And maybe our hearts look the same.
“Ms. Retta,” the historical geography teacher was saying.
“Uh, what?” I asked, looking back at him, away from the window where I was watching a crowd of athletes walk by as they headed for the sports field. They looked good. That’s what I was thinking, to be quite honest about it. My eyes focused on the teacher, Dr. Craspo, who was an android, by the way. That was the rumor anyway. I’d never seen any evidence to back that up, though.
“We all thought you might know the answer to the question,” Dr. Craspo said, tilting his head down and looking at me over the tops of his spectacles. He wore those for effect, entirely. I was quite sure of that.
“Which question was that, Doctor?” I asked, feeling my ears begin to burn. I tried coaching myself into not blushing all the way. It wasn’t working.
“Can someone else fill Retta in?” He glanced around, pursing his lips like he’d caught me being real bad or something, as though daydreaming was a sin or the like.
The most obnoxious girl in the universe lifted her hand. Oh please, I said to myself, sighing, and shaking my head dramatically. A few of my neighbors noticed and muffled their chuckles.
Of course Dr. Craspo called on her. “Agatha,” he said.
She turned to me with her eyebrows all raised like she was my superior, and spoke while wagging her head for emphasis, “Where was the first extraterrestrial human colony?”
Her voice was like the high-pitched whine of the atmosphere filters in the industrial section of the dome. It made me want to claw my ears out, and I’m not being dramatic when I say that.
I nodded and smiled politely at her, as though this were the most important question in all the galaxy that anyone could ask me. I leaned forward attentively, and tilted my head to one side as though seriously considering it. “Ah, beautiful. Beautiful question, Dr. Craspo, and thank you so much, Agatha, for bringing it to my attention. As we are all aware, the first and most historical human colony out into the stars, as they used to say, was on the moon, of course. Earth’s moon, that is, as we all recall that several other moons have had colonies on them, both successful and unsuccessful. But let’s not dwell on the tragedies of human history.”
I almost thought some of my classmates might stand up and clap when I finished. Just for teaching Agatha a lesson. And Dr. Craspo, a bit, since he had a propensity for trying to catch us students when we were daydreaming or nearly falling asleep. Sometimes historical geography could be unusually boring.
But no one clapped. Everyone’s head swiveled as one back toward the teacher. His mouth was drawn into a thin line. “Thank you for that very educational answer, Retta,” he said dryly. I waited for him to say something about paying better attention next time, but he didn’t. He just turned back to the giant Gate behind him and began whipping objects across the display with his hand. Here comes Earth’s moon, whup, there it goes, here comes Titan, and Europa, and there they go. Here’s a satellite image of the first colony, there it goes, here’s a detailed image of the first enormous civilization movers as they crept through space out towards their fates among the moons and stars.
It went on like that.
Finally class was over.
Out in the hall, a few of my friends approached to congratulate me on showing up Craspo. We laughed and then moved in a large herd towards the cafeteria. I got a lunch tray with some kind of salad on it and went to a table with my oldest friend, Mei. We sat down and she launched immediately into some story about a show she’d been watching all week. I’d never heard of it because I worked three times a week after school and didn’t have time to watch shows. Not that I wouldn’t have liked to.
“So the premise is basically that all of these people are confined in a ship that’s just drifting along. They’re told that it’s going somewhere. But when they look out the ports, they can’t tell if they’re moving. The whole thing is to see how they work together. Like with cabin fever. It’s a total psychological experiment, right?”
I nodded. “Sounds gripping, really. I wish I could see it.”
“Oh my heavens,” she said, suddenly.
“What? Serious, I mean, I do. Sorry,” I said, drawing back like she’d bitten me. It felt like that. She just snapped at me. And I really didn’t want to see the show. I didn’t care, actually. It sounded completely boring and I thought she detected that in my tone.
“No,” she said, laughing and grabbing my arm. “Look.” She nodded toward the farthest door. OK, so the cafeteria is huge. Our school is huge too. There’s at least twenty thousand kids in it. And there are probably five cafeterias. Anything’s possible, that’s the point.
I had no idea what I was going to see when I looked toward where Mei was pointing. Honestly, Hemingway was the most distant celestial body from the small nebula that was my brain. I’d almost forgotten him.
So I looked and there he was. Standing in the doorway. All by himself. Looking as gorgeous as I recalled.
My stomach shot into my toes. My heart went towards the sun and I swallowed hard, pushing down the anticipation.
“Wow,” I said.
“He’s freaking gorgeous,” Mei said, her voice a whisper. “Where has he been all my life?”
We watched as Hemingway went through the serving line, got a tray of food, and strode to a table and sat down. I’m not exaggerating when I say he moved like poetry. He had an unfair advantage, though, being an android. I was as ungraceful as they come, being a human and all that.
But I could sit and watch him for hours.
“I know him,” I said to Mei. She was going to kill me for not telling her about him.
“What?” she said, turning and punching me in the arm before I even had the chance to explain. “You know him, batch?”
“Hey, no need for that, seriously, Mei. It’s not a big deal. He introduced himself a week or so ago when I was at the coffee bar. We sat and talked for a few hours after I got done with my shift.”
“Wow, what did he say? What’s he like? I mean, he looks like an angel. How could you even pay attention?”
I nodded. “Well, I mean, that was kind of hard because he has these eyes that you can just fall into forever. And I did. But, he left. And then I haven’t seen him since.”
“So you didn’t ravage him? I would have ravaged him,” she said, glancing back at him. He’d taken a seat and was eating by himself at a table in the middle of the room. Kids were walking around him, groups of them, and watching him was difficult. We kept getting glimpses of him there, by himself, as their moving bodies parted like curtains around windows.
“Please, I mean, I only sat at the coffee bar. Well, and we walked around the mall a bit, but all we did was talk. How would I have ravaged him?” I muttered, taking a bite of my salad. I didn’t really have an appetite by that point. Still, I ate. It was in front of me and sometimes I’m an external eater. Anyway, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to ravage him even though we sat at the coffee bar talking. I wanted to. But I certainly wasn’t going to tell Mei that.
“Find a way, that’s what I’m saying. You could have taken him in the back room. Or out into the city and hidden in an alley or something.”
“Fine, sure, I guess. But Mei,” I began, wondering if I should tell her or not. “I’m pretty sure he’s an android.” I made the decision in a split second. She should know. Maybe she’d change her tune.
“No way, no. Nuh uh! Him? It’s always the best-looking ones, isn’t it?” She sat back and slapped the table. Her brown, nearly black eyes flashed and she flipped her silky dark hair back and shook her head over and over. She was quite mad about it. Evidently.
“But he’s still gorgeous, right?” I prodded. Across the cafeteria, someone approached Hemingway and began talking to him. I felt a hot knife of jealousy all but slip between my ribs. I couldn’t see who it was. Their back was to me and the crowds thickened right when it happened. I saw him look up at whoever it was. He smiled and I felt my insides respond in a great knotting that made me stop eating completely. I sighed.
“Of course! Sure,” Mei said, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. “I mean, blue heart or man. Gorgeous is gorgeous. No doubt about it.”
I sighed again. “Well, I’m still going to be his friend, if he’s interested. That’s not weird, right?”
“Not at all! It’s not like we live in a bubble. I mean, we do, but we have to mingle with them. So, yeah, why not?”
“Do you ever wonder how many people are androids? It’s like, we only know of a few. But maybe there are more. Maybe we can’t tell with all of them.” I pushed my tray away and slumped onto my hand, propping my elbow on the table. Hemingway was getting up and leaving with whoever it was. As he walked out, I kept trying to get a glimpse of the person escorting him from the cafeteria. It was too far and the crowds were irritatingly heavy. I only saw him for a moment, but there was something in his face. Like frustration. Consternation. Or fear.
“No, why the crap would I wonder? We know who they are. Most of them. I mean, it’s not like I pay intense attention to who’s a blue heart and who’s not. Why would I?” She took a bite of an applange. The red skin split apart and the pulpy orange bits spilled out.
“Just curious. Have you heard that Dr. Craspo is?” I leaned close to whisper that. Who knew whether or not he was, and who had started the rumor? I didn’t want to be caught spreading it. Especially if it wasn’t true.
“Pfft,” she said through a mouthful of fruit. “I don’t even care. So that show is totally loaded in my room at home. You could come over on the weekend and we could have a marathon slumber party where you catch up to where I’m at.”
It sounded fun. Well, no it didn’t. It sounded like pure misery. I didn’t care about the show enough to waste an entire weekend watching it. Plus she was being a bit of a brat, not even engaging in conversation with me about truly interesting subjects, like who was a blue heart and who wasn’t. Didn’t she care that they were among us, blue hearts? Didn’t she care that we couldn’t always figure out who was an android, but that they looked beautiful and yet we were supposed to somehow deny any type of meaningful feelings we might foster for them? It was total crap.
And no one was asking “what the heck?” No one but me, apparently.
3: Stig
Friday night and I was at work.
As if that wasn’t crap enough for a seventeen-year-old like me, there was a huge dance going on in the plaza outside the coffee bar.
These dances happened every weekend, so it was nothing new that I stood thirty feet from the party and didn’t participate. It’s not like I would have gone to the dance even had I not been working. Mei was probably at home watching that dumb show or getting a massage and a mineral bath or something (she’s from a rich family and I am not). Who would I have gone with?
Work was fine. Really, it was. Between songs the bar got very busy. During songs one or two stragglers would come in, looking shy and cautious, or sweaty and out of breath, and they’d order a cold beverage of some sort. At that time I was a model of the perfect server.
But usually during songs, I stared into the massive crowd as everyone else moved in a great mob of bodies. I gazed on, forlornly, thinking of how crappy it was that I was working instead of having fun.
Though the place was fairly spotless, I wiped the counter down again with a put-upon sigh. Outside in the plaza, a huge hologram of the vocalist danced in the middle of the room over the largest Gram player I knew of, singing his guts out as the mass of people hopped around and moved to the beat.
To pass the time, I sang along to myself, imagining I was in a romantic comedy like you do when you have to escape to fantasy or else go mad. In this particular holo-film I was making up, the girl was a wallflower (what else?) even though she was gorgeous (not unlike me) and didn’t really know it because she was humble, like me (I blush when people compliment me. That’s humble, right?). And out of nowhere, the girl becomes the object of a beautiful man’s affection. He’s also secretly rich. He tries to win her love without making it too obvious, and she reforms him from being arrogant, but that undesirable trait was just a huge misunderstanding. Deep down he was always really incredibly kind and decent.
The song fit the story I made up. I did a little spin behind the large, vintage espresso-maker and then sashayed a bit, waving my cloth as I made up new moves and sang along quietly to myself.
Matt was in the back room, trying to shut out the music—he called it a headache, and an incessant racket, and said there’s absolutely no musicality to it—and so I was alone as I daydreamed and wobbled to and fro (my signature dance move). The only people that might see me were out in the mass of flesh dancing and reaching for the hologram singer, as though they could actually touch him.
Ever since I saw Hemingway in the cafeteria, there had been this little pearl of fire in my heart. It’d just been there. Alive. I found myself slightly scared of it. But it also got me really excited, as though something was about to happen. As though at any moment, I’d open a door and there would be a lotto guy with a humongous check for fifty trillion markkas, or I’d look up and there would be Hemingway, with a knee-melting grin on his face and I’d suddenly realize, I really di
dn’t care what happened. Let them imprison me. Let them take me away. Let them punish me.
I choose him.
The song outside ended and I stopped dancing, feeling a little pulse in my neck from the exertion—I don’t exercise much, so when I do, I really feel it. I did one last spin and slapped the counter at the far end of the bar with my cloth, going down into a deep lunge to do it. When I straightened, there was someone on the other side of the bar.
“Oh, hey, excuse me,” I said. Then I realized: it was Hemingway. “Oh, uh. Hey! How—how are you?”
He smiled. I felt that little pearl of a fire in my heart being stoked into a blaze. His eyes searched my face. “Retta,” he said, grinning as though he knew a secret about me. “Nice moves. I had no idea you were so gifted.”
I laughed uncomfortably. “Ah, ha ha. Sure.”
“Maybe we should go to a dance sometime.” He stepped toward the bar and dropped casually onto one of the stools.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked, ignoring his invitation. Not because I didn’t want to go with him to a dance—because I wasn’t sure he was serious or just making conversation.
“Busy, but I finally had time to come see you again,” he said and put his arms on the bar. I couldn’t help it—I noticed his fingers and remembered how I wanted to touch them or have them touch me. My face was suddenly on fire, so I hid behind the espresso machine and began making a drink.
“How about a cappuccino? With gobs of froth?” I offered.
“Why not?”
“Are you here for the dance?”
“No. I came just to see you.”
So forward. But my heart leapt in response. I smiled and couldn’t find an answer, so I concentrated on making his drink. I pulled levers and made steam and paid attention to how much milk to add. It’s an art, and I actually suck at it, but I have fun and the customers never complain. I pretend that’s because they’re just nice, but maybe it’s because they don’t really know the difference.
Blue Hearts of Mars Page 2