Lost in Space

by Kevin Emerson

“Well, I mean, sort of? But it wasn’t even really me, right? I was still in school, so…”

  “But it was you!” Judy’s voice echoed in the cave. “If you’d been seen, if you’d gotten caught—”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t!” she snapped. “I’m here and everything is the same as it was. Now stop doing your mom impersonation for a minute or I’m not even going to share this with you.” She picked up a package of Green Tea Drops and tore them open.

  I fished out one of the sugar-dusted Star Chews. It was dark red: pomegranate. I popped it in my mouth and my taste buds exploded at the combination of sour and sweet. Man, I’d forgotten how much I loved these!

  The candy filled my mind with memories, too, ones that, since we’d arrived here, I’d barely thought about. Like walking home from school with my neighbor Ali, who was also in the after-school engineering elective, and stopping at the very same Corner Market Penny had just visited. I could picture the cluttered aisles, that stale white lighting inside. We used to get snacks and eat them on the way home, and we always sat on the rock wall near our houses to finish them because we’d been too busy talking.…

  “Good, right?” said Penny, smiling at me.

  “Amathin’,” I said around the gooey candy. Clumps of it were sticking in my teeth just the way they used to. “You’wan’wun?” I held out the package to the Robot with a candy-covered grin.

  “Danger,” he said.

  “Fine, have it your way.”

  “What does he eat anyway?” said Penny.

  “Battery charge,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know—it was a joke.”

  Judy huffed. She was still frowning, and gave Penny another quick glare, but then she picked up the roll of Cocoa Pandas and quietly sang, “Cocoa Pandas in a tree.” Hearing that old jingle made us all grin at one another. She dug into the foil top of the roll, peeled it back, took one, and then passed them around.

  Penny had a mouthful of tea drops, but she took a Cocoa Panda anyway and shoved it in, too—which made her crack up, and then me.

  “Mmmm, so good,” she mumbled.

  “The best!” I said, letting a Cocoa Panda melt in my mouth.

  Even Judy couldn’t help laughing. Now she tore open the Sour Fizz and poured a little pile onto her tongue. She winced and almost coughed as the powder reacted in her mouth.

  I laughed watching her do this, but just then a strange wave of light-headedness made my vision swim. There were spots in my eyes, and this weird floaty feeling in my skull, sort of like I didn’t even know where I was. I had to put my hand down to steady myself.…

  Everything got jumbled, and this wave hit me and I felt so sad, and there was a little fluttering panic in my chest, a feeling like I had just lost something really important… tears brimming, heart racing like it might burst—

  Then it passed. The world seemed right side up again.

  “Here, Penny, try these,” I said, holding out the package of Star Chews.

  “What?”

  I looked up and saw Judy peering at me.

  “Oh, sorry, Judy, I, um…” For some reason, I was holding my hand out to my left, as if there were someone else here with the two of us.

  Also, my hand was empty. I flexed my fingers.

  Hadn’t I been holding something?

  “What are you doing?” Judy asked.

  “Oh, nothing.” I rubbed my head. What had I been doing?

  “Do you feel all right?” Judy got to her feet, crouched beside me, and put her hand on my forehead. “You’re still kinda warm. I think you’re feverish from going through that doorway. Which is why I’m going to forgive you for calling me Penny.”

  “Sorry, I, um…” Penny? I felt like I could picture her right here with us. Like she had been here, the whole time. But that was impossible. “I guess I just wished she were here.”

  It was times like these—adventures when me and Judy and the Robot found things like this doorway—that made me miss Penny the most.

  Except it also felt true that she really had just been here. Like I could picture both of those possibilities in my head, and they both seemed like they were real.

  Judy stood. “She definitely would have thought this was cool. Although you can almost guarantee she would have used this doorway to do something reckless again.”

  Like the candy, I thought, looking at the cave floor in front of me. What candy? The candy we were eating with Penny. I remembered us laughing and passing it around.

  Okay, this was getting weird. Why was I thinking of eating candy here in this cave with Penny; why could I almost picture it when Penny had never been here with us?

  But then I realized that I was probably thinking of candy because that was what got Penny in so much trouble back on Earth. Just a few months before we were supposed to leave, she’d gotten caught on surveillance cameras stealing candy from Corner Market, and she’d been expelled from the colony program. What could you possibly have been thinking? I remembered Mom saying, tears streaming down her face. That’s not even me! Penny had shouted back. Look at what I’m wearing! I don’t even own those clothes! She’d been so adamant, and I’d wanted to believe her, we all had, but in the end it hadn’t mattered.

  After that, we almost didn’t leave Earth at all, but then Mom had been able to get Penny’s case reviewed, and after tons of meetings and signed forms, Penny was finally reinstated, except by then it was too late: Her spot on the twenty-fourth mission of the Resolute had already been given to someone else. There was room for her on the next mission, but that wouldn’t be for two whole years. And so Dad had volunteered to stay and wait with her.

  We’d had to say good-bye to the two of them at the spaceport, everyone hugging and crying, Mom trying to reassure us that it would be okay, that the time would fly by.

  Except then the attack on the Resolute had happened, and I remembered that moment after the crash when me and Judy and Mom had realized that we might never get back, that we might never see Dad and Penny again. We’d wondered: Had word gotten back to Earth? Did the colonial program have any idea where we’d ended up? We still didn’t know. At least if they’d been here with us, we would’ve all been lost together.

  But Dad was here. Penny, too! I thought, and it felt so true. What was happening to me? I figured I was getting things mixed up because I had just time traveled. Anybody’s brain would be confused after that. And yet, I could picture both Penny and Dad in my memories, as if they’d actually been here, but then at the same time I could also picture them not being here. There we were, on the Resolute with them and without them. Crashing on this planet with and without, and on and on. Even this cave…

  I looked at Judy, who was taking photos of the doorway with her communicator. “Hey,” I said, “does anything seem weird to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, like, with your memories? Like about Penny and Dad?”

  Judy’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I, um, I swear I can remember Penny being here with us. I know that sounds crazy.…”

  Judy nodded slowly. Did she remember it, too? But then she said, “I think that doorway really messed with you. I want to get you back and run a more thorough checkup.”

  “Okay.” So it was just me. Which meant Judy was probably right. I’d traveled through space and time. Who knew what that would do to a human brain?

  “You feel good enough to head back yet?” Judy asked. “We need to tell Mom about this thing. She could use some good news. We all could.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I stood up. My head swam again, and I had that strange feeling like nothing made sense.

  Judy started up the tunnel. I followed her but stopped and turned back to the doorway. “Coming?” I said to the Robot—

  But the Robot wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t! As much as I still wished otherwise, Mom had made me send him away two days ago, after the other colonists had convinced her he was too dangerous.


  Except I also remembered him being right here with us in this cave. Standing there, saying Danger, while Penny and I went through the doorway.

  I pictured Penny again, putting on the harness and going through the doorway into some dark place. Where had she gone? The memories were hard to follow, especially because at the same time, I remembered her not being here.

  “Will,” Judy called from up the tunnel. “Come on.”

  But as I caught up to her, my thoughts kept fighting with each other. The Robot and I came here. We had to hide from those mothasaurs. Except I also remembered coming here on my own, and yes, hiding from the creatures, but by myself. No! We were hiding out in the tunnel entrance, I thought as I reached the top of the tunnel.

  We were right here playing tic-tac-toe!

  I stopped and peered at the ground by the cave entrance, sure that I would see a grid drawn in the dirt, but there wasn’t one.

  CHAPTER

  We made our way back to camp: across the log bridge, through the forest. As we went, my head started to feel clearer. It had been so weird back there in the cave, the way my thoughts had been so mixed up. But the fresh air and the sunlight helped. Still, I looked over my shoulder. Had I heard something? A mothasaur? Or was I looking for the Robot or Penny, even though, obviously, they weren’t with us?

  Judy was probably right. Going through that doorway had scrambled my brain. Here in the forest, it was also hard to believe that I’d really been back in my old room, but I rubbed my jacket pocket and the bump of Captain Quasar.

  We reached the clapping flowers and I smacked my hands, activating the carpet of magenta blooms. That made me smile, except then I had a weird memory of Penny’s face lighting up the first time we’d discovered these. Another impossible thing, but it felt so real.

  Also, picturing that made a fresh wave of anger well up inside me. I still couldn’t believe Mom had ordered me to send away the Robot! After the rest of the colonists had seen him in the fight with the mothasaurs at the light tower, they’d taken a vote, and even though Mom had tried to talk them out of it, I remembered seeing the worry in her eyes and feeling like she was probably happier with this result anyway. I’d had to walk the Robot to the edge of camp and order him to go away, and he’d stood there for a moment, his face lights still, like he didn’t understand, like he didn’t want to leave… but he’d followed my command, just like he always did, and I’d been alone ever since.

  Except I also remembered Dad fighting for him to stay, convincing the colonists that the Robot was more help than harm. And I remembered the Robot helping me pull circuit boards and explore the trails with me, but those memories seemed foggy, almost distant, and besides they couldn’t be true, even if they felt true—

  “Will.” I turned to see Judy standing close to the water’s edge, looking over her shoulder at me. “Where are you going?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She cocked her head. “Camp is this way.” She pointed with her thumb down the shore of the lake.

  I looked in front of me, up the slope. Judy was right, of course: Our camp was that way, at the Jupiter 11. So why was I going this way? Because that’s where our ship is, the Jupiter 2. Except, of course, it wasn’t. The Jupiter 2, our Jupiter, was long gone. We’d lost it when the glacier had collapsed. I remembered standing at the edge of the crevasse with Mom and Judy as we watched our ship plummet into the darkness with a massive crash of ice. Why had I been thinking otherwise?

  Because I also remembered Dad flying us out of that collapsing ice, flying us to safety, parking the ship at the top of this very hill… but now I realized that there was no trail in front of me, just vegetation, while there was a well-trodden path in the direction that Judy was pointing.

  I shook my head and jogged over to her. “Sorry.”

  “Still feeling weird?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been having these moments where it’s like I remember stuff that didn’t happen.”

  Judy frowned. “This is what I was worried about. I shouldn’t have let you go.”

  I followed along behind her, my thoughts still jumbled. Even though I kept seeing proof right in front of me that those other thoughts about Penny and the Robot and Dad weren’t real, they still felt like they were. I wondered if maybe because the doorway had scanned my thoughts and feelings, it had scrambled me so that things I’d imagined or wished for now seemed like they’d happened, you know, like those times when you wake up from a dream and you’re sure it was real.

  That made sense, but it didn’t change how real it seemed in my head. Plus, I was still feeling a little dizzy, and the hike back up to our actual camp wasn’t helping. As we neared the top of the hill, I glanced over my shoulder—maybe I was confused and looking for the Robot again?—when something moved in the corner of my eye. For just a second, I saw a blurry movement on the trail behind us, and the branches and leaves rustled. I blinked and looked at that spot, but then everything was still. I checked again a few steps later but didn’t see anything.

  The path led to a clearing where the Jupiter 11 was parked. This was the ship that Hiroki’s family lived in. They’d been nice enough to let us stay with them after we lost our Jupiter. I glanced back at the distant mountains and those high glaciers where the Jupiter 2 was buried, and remembered those terrifying moments of that first night: crashing in water, Judy getting stuck after she went to get the batteries when I panicked, my hike up to the top of the mountain to get magnesium that I thought would help melt the ice. Another double memory flashed in my mind, of Dad and me hiking up there together. I did remember wishing he’d been there, being freaked out on that mountain by myself. And then I’d fallen down the crevasse that dumped me out below the glaciers, in the forest where I met the Robot. He’d saved Judy and helped us get into the Jupiter 2, but we’d had to abandon it after the glacier became unstable.

  Luckily, we’d found Hiroki and his daughter, Naoko, and granddaughter, Aiko. They were so nice and generous, but it was definitely difficult having to share space, food, and supplies.

  “There they are!” I heard Mom say.

  She and Hiroki were standing outside, huddled around a tablet. Mom was pointing to the afternoon sun, and Hiroki was nodding.

  “What’s up, guys?” said Judy.

  “Nothing,” Mom said tightly, in that way she did that always meant the opposite. “We’re just doing some tests. How are you guys?”

  “We’re good,” I said immediately.

  “Sort of,” said Judy. “Will took me to this cave he found, and there’s something there that you need to see. Something amazing.”

  “Amazing, huh?” said Mom, consulting her tablet. “Well, I’d love to come exploring with you guys, but right this moment it will have to wait. I just called Victor. We’re going to have a meeting in about twenty minutes with all the survivors. I’d like you guys to be there.”

  “Sounds serious,” said Judy.

  “Yes… it is.” Mom turned away and it looked like she wiped her eyes.

  “The girls left out some food if you want it,” Hiroki said.

  “Thanks.” Judy stood in place for a minute. “Any chance we can get a preview of this big serious thing you want to tell us?”

  Mom shook her head. “Inside.”

  “Come on,” I said to Judy, and tugged her arm toward the hatch. We went to the galley, grabbed cheese-pasta protein packs, and took them to the cockpit, where we sat in the big chairs, with the view out over the lake. Mom had scolded us more than once for eating in here, but she seemed too busy to notice.

  “Huh,” Judy said as she peeled open her pack. “Considering I haven’t eaten since breakfast, I’m weirdly not hungry.”

  “That’s because—” I caught myself as I realized it was happening again: My thoughts were sliding around, and I found myself remembering eating candy in the cave with Penny. I even remembered Judy singing, “Cocoa Pandas in a tree…”

  “What, you think the doorway messed with me, too?” said
Judy. “Just from being near it?”

  “Maybe,” I said. All of a sudden, I felt tears stinging at the corners of my eyes.

  Judy heard me sniffle. “Hey, what is it?”

  “I just wish Dad and Penny were here,” I said.

  Judy rubbed my back. “Me too. I know I used to complain about Penny a lot, and I was very used to Dad not being around at all, but…”

  I nodded and wiped my nose. “I keep having these memories of them being here, like, with us.”

  Judy frowned. “I am a bad doctor letting you go through that doorway. It might also be dehydration, and then of course there are the unknowns of acclimating to this planet’s exact atmosphere and gravity. My point is, there are plenty of reasons not to feel normal around here. You should drink some water.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Kids?” Mom leaned in the doorway, her face serious. “Meeting time.”

  “Whatever this is,” Judy said to me as we stood, “she is super wound up about it.”

  We trailed after Mom and saw that Hiroki, Naoko, and Aiko were gathered in the common room, along with Victor, his wife, and their son, Vijay. Dr. Smith was there, too, along with Don and a couple of other colonists. Everyone stood around the central table, where Mom had set up a holographic animation that showed what I assumed was this planet orbiting around its star.

  “How did it go with the fuel run?” Mom asked.

  “Right where I said it would be,” said Don, pointing his thumbs at himself. “A Jupiter with a full tank of fuel.” He winked at Judy, and I saw her roll her eyes.

  Mom just nodded.

  “I thought that might earn some smiles,” said Don, “maybe a robust round of thank-yous.”

  “As if any number could ever be enough,” said Victor, eyeing him.

  “It’s a big help,” Mom said to Don. “Where’s the fuel now?”

  “Parked safely at our camp,” said Victor, crossing his arms. “Now, what was so important that you asked us to risk traveling before dusk, Robinson? Hopefully a spot of good news for once.”

  Mom bit her lip. “Unfortunately, no.” She glanced at Hiroki, who nodded to her. “Hiroki and I have been observing some strange features of this planet’s orbit since we arrived. You may have noticed that the sun tracks oddly in the sky from one day to the next.…”