“Ready to go down to the Contact Room?”
We walk the halls together. Vandemeer gets Sabbaths off too, but sometimes he spends them working with us anyway. I couldn’t have asked for a more determined medic. He’s always preaching to me about not checking scoreboards, but as we walk down to the Contact Room, he’s eyeing every single one.
“It’s a Sabbath, Vandemeer. The scores aren’t changing anytime soon.”
“I know,” he says, smiling. “Just proud of your progress.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not freak just yet. There’s a long way to go.”
“How positive.”
Vandemeer swipes us into the Contact Room. A handful of techies sit in front of glowing screens. I catch glimpses of lunar alignments, solar charts, the works. I’ve been escorted through a couple of times now to make calls home and I still can’t make heads or tails of any of it.
Vandemeer nods me toward the feed room and strikes up a conversation with one of the techies. But as I open the door, I realize there’s already a call in progress. Jazzy sits in the reception seat. A woman fills the screen in front of her. She’s strikingly thin, and her entire head’s been clean-shaved. Cancer couldn’t take the bright blue from her eyes, though. Both of them look my way, and it’s not hard to see where Jazzy gets her looks.
“My fault, Jazzy. Didn’t realize I was early.”
I start to leave, but Jazzy waves me in. “Emmett! Come meet Mama!”
Something about her excited smile pulls me forward. She’s only got one minute left on her call home, and she’s inviting me into it? Jazzy slides over to make room and throws an arm around me as I sit. “Mama, this is my friend Emmett!” she says.
The woman flashes a pageant smile. “You takin’ care of my girl up there?”
I can’t help smiling at the familiar southern drawl. “Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s one of the good ones, Mama,” Jazzy says, surprising me.
Before Jazzy’s mother can ask another question, I quietly excuse myself to let them say goodbye. Heat’s crawling up my neck and down my back as I hover by the doorway and wait for their call to finish. I’ve never thought of Jazzy as a friend, but I guess she’s not like Roathy or Longwei. She’s always been kind to me. The only thing I have to hold against her is that she might be the one who takes what’s mine. I’ve never thought of her as a friend because I’ve kept both hands gripped on the idea that she’s competition, nothing more.
Her call cuts off and she stands. I watch her take a quiet moment to collect herself. That’s something I’ve always noticed about Jazzy. She knows how to take her deep breaths offstage. It’s the reason she can always be so composed and ready for whatever’s next. As she leaves the room, she gives my arm a passing squeeze. “Glad you got to meet her,” she whispers.
Her departure leaves me feeling guilty. I hate that she’s just a name on a scoreboard.
Vandemeer appears at my side. “One minute until they feed through.”
I nod and take a seat as he closes the door. We’ve had five or six calls now. Sometimes the signals are too weak to establish a connection. Moms hasn’t shown up for one of them, because she’s started treatment. Babel’s kept their word, they’ve fast-tracked everything, but that means she’s fighting hard now to get better. It means she’s too sick and exhausted to make the long-distance trips to Babel’s comm center. That doesn’t make her absence any easier. Every time the screen turns on, I hope she’ll be sitting there next to Pops. Hope’s a funny thing that way. No matter how many times she’s not there, I always have more for the next time.
When the screen loads, though, it’s just Pops.
“My boy,” he says. “You look great, Emmett.”
It must be summer in Detroit. He’s wearing a classic black tank and has his hair cut short. I can picture him in the barbershop chair, telling Terry summer’s coming and he’s got to look good if his wife’s about to be back in dresses.
“Last time you said you were in grind mode,” he says. “Work paying off?”
I forget the details I’ve given to him and the details I’ve kept hidden. He knows someone got stabbed by accident. He doesn’t know it was me. He knows Babel’s offering us lottery tickets. He doesn’t know how much fine print there is. I’m not sure if it’s childish or grown-up, this fear of mine. A fear of telling him the full, unfiltered truth. I just think it’s time I shouldered my own burdens instead of letting him do the heavy lifting.
“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “I’ve been climbing back up the scoreboard. Doing well.”
He nods, tells me to keep going, always pushing me to be better. Sometimes I get so caught up in what’s going on aboard Genesis 11 that I forget there’s someone Earthside, praying and hoping and dreaming of what might happen if I pull this off. He told me to do it for me, to fight for my future, but he has no clue how badly I want it for him, for Moms.
“So everything’s okay?” he asks.
“Still have work ahead of me, but I’m healthy and I like my chances.”
Pops smiles at me like we’re not a billion kilometers away. He looks ready to ask more, about the ship or about me or about space. But I’m tired of this place. Far too tired to waste our precious minutes on any of it. “How’s Moms?” I ask. “I miss her. I miss you both.”
“Good. Real good, son. The treatments seem like they’re working.”
We never say the words. Chronic, failure, death. We talk about her sickness without talking about it. I was still little when Moms first found out about her kidney disease, when she first started spiraling down. Pops shouldered the load after she lost her job, after the insurance money ran dry. It was all so hard for me to understand. I’d get mad that she was so tired. I thought it meant she didn’t care about me. The older I got, the more I understood, but sometimes you hold those strikes against people in the darkest corners of your heart.
I nod. “She’s not working, is she?”
“Not yet, but she misses that desk job she had in Moore Square. She’s trying to get back to it, you know? It made her feel normal. For a while there, she’d come back home and talk about it. You know how she usually is about work.”
“Work ain’t for home,” I say, smiling.
He laughs. “Exactly. So she’s better, but still no traveling. That’s why she’s not here. Babel’s station is about a six-hour drive. I don’t think she can handle that kind of distance, you know? But the other day she asked if I’d take her to the store, Emmett. That’s when I knew she was turning a corner on all of this.”
“The store?”
“She wanted to buy work clothes. Man, she looks some kind of fine in business casual.”
I cock an eyebrow at that. He’s right. That is a good sign. At some of the lowest points, she’d talk about giving clothes away. Acted like she didn’t have much use for them, not the direction she was heading. The idea of her buying clothes is a great sign.
“There’s this one dress,” Pops is saying. “Whoo…It takes me back….”
I groan. “Pops. Really?”
“Hey, it’s the reason you’re here in the first place.”
“Five minutes,” I remind him. “We get five minutes, and this is what you talk about? There’s something wrong with you—you know that, right?”
He laughs again. “You’ll see what it’s like one day, trust me. Anyway, she’s getting better every day. I’m doing fine. She couldn’t come today, but I do have a surprise for you.”
I watch him lean over and rap his knuckles on a side door. A few seconds later it gasps open and PJ McQueen steps into the room, his grin wider than the screen, his eyes darting and excited.
“My due! Look at this guy!” PJ sits down next to Pops, still grinning. “Hey, Emmett. I know that you were getting tired of me domming you in pickup games, but you didn’t have to leave the solar system out of shame, man.”
Laughter shakes my whole body. “Please, PJ. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”
&n
bsp; “Right, right. Guy goes to space, gets a big head, acts like I don’t rain j’s for days.”
I laugh again and glance over at Pops. “What were you thinking, bringing this clown in? He’s supposed to be on a strict training program, Pops. Scholarships start next year. Have you taken your two thousand free throws today, PJ?”
PJ makes a face. “Come on, I could take off one day to talk to the celebrity.”
“Celebrity? I don’t know what Pops has been telling you, but I’m not a celebrity.”
“Course you are,” PJ says. “Whole world’s going nuts. Babel went viral last week.”
I frown. “Viral? What?”
“The Babel Files,” he says. “Everyone at school’s talking about it, man. All these girls started claiming they had things with you too. Don’t worry—I shut down the rumor mill and set you up nice for when you come back.”
I shake my head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
PJ grins, giving his shoulder a dust-off. “Well, I told most of the girls to get lost. But I think Shae Westwood’s down to date. Just call me your intergalactic wingman.”
“Not that, PJ,” I say. “The other thing. What are the Babel Files?”
“An article,” Pops answers. “Haven’t they shown you the article?”
“No.” I shrug. “We’re in space.”
“Oh man,” he says, clapping his hands together excitedly. “It’s pretty cool. There’s a whole page about you. They snagged your last yearbook photo and interviewed some teachers.”
My mind’s spinning. “There’s an article about me?”
“Yeah, you and all the other recruits. It was kind of cool. You always talk about these kids, and now I know what they look like, you know? Gave me a face to go with the stories you always tell. I see what you mean about that Longwei kid.”
“But,” PJ interrupts, “not one mention of the Most Excellent Brothers? For shame, man. That was our time to shine. I expect name drops in future interviews.”
I laugh again. “But who published it?”
Pops opens his mouth to respond, but as his lips move, the sound cuts. I hear a bass vibration and then a little high-pitched whine. His voice patches back, scrambles, and mutes a second time. After thirty seconds of interference, I jump up and open the door.
“Hey,” I call to the nearest techie. “Sound isn’t working.”
The woman frowns at her glowing screen before detaching from her station. With another frown, she crosses over to the doorway. As she reaches the entrance, the screen flickers twice, and when the image returns, the sound does too.
“…morning or something like that. But like I said, they’re going nuts over it.” There’s a pause. “Emmett? You there, Emmett?”
“Seems to be working now,” the techie says.
I scramble back into my seat. “Yeah. Sorry. You were cutting out some.”
“Oh, okay. Well, like I was saying, Vegas is taking bets on you guys. They have no idea what they’re betting on, but it’s kind of cool. And you won’t believe—”
The screen vanishes. In the corner, I see that the five minutes has elapsed. In the mirrored dark of the screen, I look exhausted. Sighing, I push myself up and move back through the Contact Room. Vandemeer’s waiting outside. I almost share my suspicions, but I remember that even trustworthy Vandemeer is being watched. He still wears Babel’s watch and needs Babel’s paychecks. He’s at their mercy as much as I am. So I tell him that Moms is getting better and list off a few of PJ’s stat lines from playing varsity as a freshman last year, but I don’t mention the glitch or my suspicions.
I don’t tell him that I noticed how the sound cut when Pops went into details about the Babel Files article. I don’t tell him that I think the glitch happened on purpose, because nothing on this ship ever breaks or malfunctions. If Babel wants something to work, it works. So what was he saying that they don’t want me to know? Whatever it is, I brace myself. Just one more thing to keep an eye out for, one more change waiting on the horizon.
DAY 100, 2:45 P.M.
Aboard Genesis 11
The best thing about having Sabbath off is the steamer. I hunker down inside, naked and sweating and relaxed. Detroit could get so cold. My guilty pleasure was simple: hot showers. Sometimes I would walk straight home from school and strip down. Didn’t bother with soap or shampoo, just wanted to disappear into warmth. Hot water only lasted for a few minutes back home, but it was still my favorite part of the day.
Babel’s devices never fail. If I go to take a steam bath, there’s steam. If I want to disappear into the simulator and pretend I’m in the Alps, I can. They’re not a company with faltering technologies or half measures. Knowing this is comforting and disturbing. Comforting, because I know we’ll get to Eden. After seeing all their bells and whistles, I have no fears of dying in a freak explosion or a botched landing. Disturbing, because Babel isn’t a company with a plan B. They’re more likely to have plans A through Z, and I’m not even sure we know all of plan A yet. It’s like looking at a puzzle that’s missing twenty or thirty pieces.
When I feel my fingers start to wrinkle, I press and hold the release button. Hatches glide outward and fog gasps ahead of me like moon mist. I take a quick shower and towel off before doubling back to the cafeteria.
I was hoping to find Bilal again, and I do, but he’s far from alone this time. I’m not even all the way down the stairs before I catch the first snatch of excited conversation.
“This means we’re famous,” Katsu is saying. “If the whole world’s reading about it.”
Jazzy says, “I always wondered what it’d be like to be a celebrity. I started hating pageants after a while, but there is something fun about being onstage.”
I round the corner and everyone looks up. Katsu jumps to his feet, raising both arms like he just finished a marathon. “Emmett! We’re famous, man! You can call me Hollywood!”
“Hollywood,” I repeat, eyeing him. “This about the Babel Files?”
Katsu smacks my arm excitedly and looks back at the others.
“He heard about it too. This is amazing.”
I slide past him and take the empty seat across from Azima. She’s braiding Isadora’s hair, and Isadora is braiding Jazzy’s hair, and Jazzy is drawing a tattoo on Jaime’s arm. It’s the kind of thing that only happens on Sabbaths. They’re the deep breaths we all take between endless sprints. The only time we can kick our feet up and act like normal people.
Bilal waves at me from the far end of the table. He looks showered and normal again, but I can still see a little red in his cheeks. He’s halfway through a slice of pie. I make an effort not to look at Azima after looking at him. Naturally, Longwei’s not here for the festivities. He tends to vanish whenever there’s a crowd. I notice that Kaya and Roathy are absent too.
“How many of you heard about it?” I ask.
“All of us,” Azima answers. “One way or another.”
I nod. “I wonder why they published it.”
“Who cares why they published it?” Katsu replies. “I’m famous. When I go back to Japan, I’m dating supermodels. Racing sports cars. I’ll be that guy they show at sporting events, you know? The one the announcers talk about for a few minutes. With the big sunglasses.”
Isadora laughs. “I don’t think we’re that kind of famous, Katsu.”
“Why not?” he asks. “We’re like…sexy astronauts!”
Jazzy makes a face. “Do you always have to make it weird?”
“Yes,” Katsu replies proudly. “I’m here to make it weird. Everyone knows that.”
“He has a point,” I say. “About us being celebrities. We’re the youngest people to ever go into space. Pretty sure that’s a big deal.”
“You really think so?” Bilal asks through a mouthful of pie. “We’ll all be famous?”
Jazzy shoots another look his way. “You’re the nicest kid in the world, Bilal, but you have the worst table manners I’ve ever seen.”
Before Jazzy can get too embarrassed, Azima says, “I don’t want to be famous.”
“Really?” Isadora sounds shocked. “If you’re famous, you can do whatever you want. You can go to all the parties. Get the best seats at restaurants. I want to be famous.”
“Famous people are corrupt,” Azima says. “They are unhappy. Everyone knows this.”
“I don’t want to be famous either,” Bilal chimes in quickly. “Too much attention.”
I notice him looking hopefully in Azima’s direction and have to hide a laugh. Katsu looks around the rest of the table in shock. “Then the two of you can live your quiet lives while Isadora and I go to parties. Emmett? Jaime? You two coming dancing with us or not?”
Jaime shrugs. “I don’t really dance.”
Katsu groans before turning to me. “Emmett. Please. Please say you’ll party with me.”
“In Japan or Detroit?”
He laughs. “Let’s meet in the middle.”
“So…the ocean?”
He laughs louder now. “You’re all officially invited to my middle-of-the-ocean party. We’ll eat all the best food and dance on yachts and whatever else famous people do. And just to make sure Jazzy comes, we’re making it a sexy astronaut theme.”
Everyone laughs at that. For a while, they talk about their favorite celebrities. Bilal’s obsessed with some philosopher in Palestine. Isadora confesses that she wants to date the entire Brazilian soccer team. I get caught up listening for a while and almost forget I’ve got somewhere to be. I excuse myself and head back to our room, hoping I haven’t kept Kaya waiting too long.
As I come back in, I hear her shower running, so I sit down at our table and pull one of the reports on the Adamites. This one’s a random scientist’s theory on Adamite mythology. Once I would have fallen asleep after the first paragraph, but Babel’s tests have made my mind sharper. Things that were once hard are becoming easy. I wonder if this is the student I could have been without all the distractions. If I could have come home and spent hours doing homework instead of babysitting cousins. I file it under N for Never Know.
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