If they are letting people near it, it’s probably safe. I can stop checking and double-checking my body for symptoms of death.
I want to ask more questions. Lots of them. I need to see it again, wrap my mind around its existence so my experience doesn’t feel like a bizarre dream.
Even though my parents and Rita’s parents have forbidden it, Dominick, Rita, and I decide to go see the vertex in Quincy anyway. Dominick can pretty much do whatever he wants since his mother is so busy between work and taking care of Dominick’s younger brother, Austin. She’s lucky Dominick’s such a good kid.
Rita arrives at my house and comes inside to change. Her parents don’t let her wear jewelry or makeup or real clothes, so throughout high school she’s developed the habit of changing clothes in bathrooms. She steps out of my bathroom wearing a black blouse, black shorts, and black flats. What makes the outfit pop is her neon-green beaded necklace and matching earrings.
“Check me out. Alien chic.” She poses in the doorway while I snap a photo of us.
My clothes are anything but chic. Purple cotton tee and jean shorts, gray Converse sneakers. Typical American chic, if that’s a thing. I’d rather blend in than stick out.
We pick up Dominick and start our journey to the site. Rita drives so she can have full rights to the music selection. She brings along a playlist to set the right mood. I have to give her credit—she did her research. We’re jamming to Five Man Electrical Band’s “I’m a Stranger Here.” I’ve never heard the song before, but it’s hilarious with everything that’s happening in the world. A minute ago it was Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien” and Katy Perry’s “E.T.” Next up on her list is Will Smith’s “Men in Black” and Blink 182’s “Aliens Exist.”
Rita sings obnoxiously out the driver’s side window. I look at Dominick stuck in the backseat. He’s grinning and looking at his phone. It’s nice to have one loud friend and one quiet one. Balances things out. It’s even nicer that they get along.
Rita screams lyrics at a family crawling past us in a Jeep while her jet-black hair swirls in the wind.
The mother in the Jeep gives Rita the another-wasted-teenager-on-drugs look. Little does she know Rita’s stone-cold sober. Drunk, she’s actually less fun and usually vomits and falls asleep.
“Alex,” Rita says, “remember that night when we slept in the tent in your backyard and told stories with flashlights?”
I laugh. Good times. “Yeah, remember Benji scaring the crap out of us?”
“Yes, that’s what I was going to say! He kept insisting that some flashing lights in the sky were a spaceship, and we totally believed him.”
“He said they would come down and suck our brains out. Then he kept making freaky suction noises all night. Typical Benji, trying to drive me nuts. I had nightmares for weeks.”
Dominick chuckles in the backseat.
“Leave Private Benjamin alone,” Rita says. “I’m gonna marry that boy someday.”
“Yeah, in another dimension maybe,” I say. Benji thinks everything that comes out of Rita’s mouth is petty and gossipy and loud. It’s funny that what makes him dislike her is exactly why I like her.
“Weird that we are actually dealing with something extraterrestrial,” she says. “I just want to look the thing in the eye, see what all the fuss is about.”
“Is your church still freaking out?” I ask.
“Oh yeah. They’ve forbidden any discussion of traveling through them. They believe that Jesus will save us in the Second Coming, not holographic humans from a parallel future. They’d rather us die.”
Same as my dad’s philosophy, strangely enough. Who knew Dad would ever see eye to eye with a religion?
Dominick laughs out of context from the backseat.
“What’s so funny?” I ask. I turn around and see him reading off his phone.
“Sorry, it’s just that people are asking the holograms the weirdest questions,” he says.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like ‘Can we bring pets?’”
“What’s the answer?” Rita asks.
Dominick scrolls down the screen and grins. “They said, and I quote, ‘No. Although our photosonic filters are prepared to eliminate malignant human bacteria and viruses from the past, we cannot successfully integrate all of the possible animal species from your planet without knowing how they will interact with our ecosystem. We are sorry for any hardship it may cause.’”
“That’s rough,” Rita says. “I can’t bring Dobby.”
Dobby is her feral cat. At least, Dominick and I think he’s feral since he attacked us the few times we tried to enter her house. Despite his behavior, she loves him anyway.
Dominick continues. “Next question. ‘What kind of food do you have?’”
“Ooh, that’s a good one,” I say. “What if they eat gross Klingon food?”
“Blah, blah, blah, Star Trek,” Rita whines.
Dominick ignores her. “Answer: ‘We have high standards for optimal nutrition. We provide mostly fruit, grains, and vegetables through rations three times a day. Meat is a rare delicacy.’”
Rita beeps the horn as another driver cuts her off. “My parents will freak that they have something in common with the holograms.”
Rations. The word carries the weight of desperation with it and hits me in the gut.
Dominick goes quiet as he scrolls through questions.
“You’ll have to read through these later,” he says. “There are so many already. Some of these are awesome. Like this one. ‘What about money? Do you have a monetary system?’ Their answer? ‘We do not have a monetary system. Everything is free and open.’”
“What the hell does that mean?” Rita asks.
“That means anyone who is rich here will never want to live there,” Dominick says.
Dad was right. They do sound like communists.
After being stuck in Boston vertex traffic for the next two hours and fighting a massive parking nightmare, we still have to walk for another mile to get even a glimpse of the vertex. When neither of them is watching, I swallow a pill.
Soldiers from the National Guard and U.S. Army form a perimeter around the vertex, surrounded by other local police and media conglomerates. The public stands outside a roped boundary. My chest tightens at the sight of the crowd surrounding the vertex. I take a deep breath for five counts, hold it for two, let it out slowly, and repeat. The holograms said it is an individual’s choice whether to go or stay. The government said we could ask our own questions. How are we ever supposed to get close enough through all the hoopla?
Rita is speechless. Even from a distance she’s impressed. By making the vertexes taboo, her church may be inadvertently pushing her toward believing the holograms.
Dominick stays quiet, staring at his phone. I hug his arm. He looks up at me, and I swear I can suddenly picture him as a child. His eyes twinkle with innocence and excitement, like when a kid discovers that baking soda and vinegar react when mixed.
“What is it?” I ask.
“They have a meritocracy.”
“What the heck is a—whatever you just said?” Rita asks.
“Question,” he reads aloud again from his phone, “‘What type of government system do you have?’ Answer: ‘We have a planetary meritocracy. We believe the most qualified person from each field should rule, not the most popular, for the benefit of the planet. We have an elaborate, holistic testing system in place to find the most qualified people in every major field, including creative and more physical domains, to represent the people. Our meritocracy consists of one thousand one members at a time, and they must be reexamined every three years. Anyone can take an exam, at any age, every three years. The top person on each test earns a voting seat.’”
“That’s better than our system,” Rita says. “Remember when Angie beat
you for class president? I mean, come on.”
Dominick secures his glasses in place. “Thank you for reminding me of my failures.”
“I meant it as a compliment. If she had to take a test, she totally would’ve failed.”
He grins. “True.”
We move as close to the hologram and vertex as we can manage. It reminds me of the time Rita and I switched seats at a Paramore concert by sneaking closer and closer to the stage. But the main attraction isn’t a hot guy in tight jeans strumming on a guitar, or a girl with multicolored hair belting out a high note while the stage lights up behind her. No, this is just plain weird.
It’s funny how everyone is clamoring to interrogate the holograms. Like we’re all searching for flaws with their planet. If we were interviewing ourselves about our world, we’d never pass our own criteria. There are plenty of things we tolerate, know are wrong, and still ignore. Like how leadership is often determined by popularity and not competence. Weird that we have high expectations for outsiders but low standards for ourselves.
Or maybe, just maybe, deep down we’re hoping their planet’s better. That they figured out all our problems by the year 2359, and we can simply travel there and erase our mistakes.
“You know what bothers me?” I ask. “Why do the vertexes only work in one direction? Why can’t we go, check out their planet, come back, and tell people about it? Wouldn’t that make sense? It seems like an obvious trap.”
“True,” Dominick says. “But they said it takes a lot of dark energy to keep all the vertexes open for an extended time. That’s why they sent holograms instead of coming themselves. Light has no mass. Plus, it sounds like the vertexes are set up to pull us through. It’s not a doorway. Works more like a sideways, cosmic funnel cloud.”
“Blah, blah, blah, science,” Rita mocks.
I nod. “I guess. Just seems too convenient.” Looking back at the crowd, I realize that there’s no way we’re getting close enough to ask a question.
“This crowd is impossible,” Dominick says.
From a distance, I spot the same crazy lady from the hospital, the one they had to sedate, near the front of the crowd. She’s wearing oversized jeans with a dingy, yellowed shirt that looks like it came out of a dumpster. She screams at the hologram through a megaphone, but so many people are asking questions at once it doesn’t respond. I can’t make out all the questions in the commotion, but crazy lady’s voice carries over the crowd like a blow horn through a foggy night.
“Shape without form,” she shouts through the megaphone, pointing her free hand at the hologram. It’s an indictment, and she’s the prosecutor.
“Shut up, lady. Move outta the way.” A burly man with a short beard pushes her to the side.
She pushes back and breaks through a police barrier. “Shade without color.” She tries to snatch at the hologram. Something in her words makes sense to me, but I can’t quite figure out why. Two cops drag her away while she kicks and flails. Bet they’ll give her another dose of whatever was in that needle.
Crazy lady is not alone in her quest to be heard. Another group grabs her megaphone from the ground and starts chanting, “Jesus is the only Lord and Savior. Jesus is the only Lord and Savior.”
“Sounds like my parents,” Rita says. Her voice has lost its edge. Religion seems to suck the life out of her instead of celebrating how alive and vibrant she actually is.
“If it’s any consolation, that woman the police just arrested sounded like my mother when she gets drunk,” Dominick says.
Rita smiles, and he pats her shoulder. Moments like this remind me why I’m with him.
I want to ask the hologram my own questions, but the questions I have, it can’t answer. Should I still finish high school? If there is a comet, will I be okay in your world? Should I leave if my family wants to stay?
The government has decided to send a wheeled robotic device through a vertex fitted with a live mini-camera on its frame and other monitoring devices so we can witness what happens when a person steps through to the other side.
The holograms claim our technology is obsolete in their future, and even if our devices were more advanced, the other parallel planet is too far away for our instruments, never mind our minds, to fathom.
Sure enough, scientists navigate the little robot, nicknamed Scout, by remote straight through a vertex in California. As soon as Scout hits the swirling blue energy, it vanishes. So do all traces of it on our monitoring systems. It’s a leap of faith.
Someone in Florida caught a sparrow on video flying into a vertex. It’s all over the Internet. In the footage, the sparrow makes a loop in the air, attempts to change direction, and disappears into the blue oval at top speed. The hologram outside the vertex places one hand in front of its stomach and bows low from the waist in a strange show of respect for the deposit.
I find myself thinking about that bird for the rest of the day and writing about it in my journal. I wonder what will happen to it in their world. They said no pets.
Chapter 5
Day 17: August—4,019 hours to decide
Question: What is your view on death?
Answer: It is a natural part of life, although the average human’s lifespan on our planet is around 250 years due to medical advancements.
Benji arrives in uniform a week later. He fills it out more than the last time I saw him. It’s hugs all around, and I watch both my parents dote over him for the next few hours. My mother cooks his favorite dinner, eggplant Parmesan, and Dad randomly pats him on the shoulder like a football coach with his star player who just helped win the state title.
Benji’s been stationed at the vertex in Quincy for security reasons. He won’t discuss details, but I know he knows more than he’s saying because he keeps avoiding eye contact with me. Dad asks him for specifics, but Benji’s a genius at maneuvering around questions and skirting the truth. The military trained him well. Or maybe he was always like that.
The men spend the evening in the backyard drinking beer and talking. Mom cleans up their mess and checks the spare bedroom, Benji’s old room, for the thousandth time to make sure Benji will be comfortable. The gender lines have been drawn, and I don’t fit the illustration. It’s not until later that night, after leaving the bathroom, that I find Benji still up in the spare room watching the news and eating popcorn.
“Hey,” I say from the doorway. I should know better than to engage him in small talk, but I want more information on the vertexes.
“Hey,” he replies.
I enter and sit on a cedar chest at the foot of the bed. Mom’s favorite blue and white floral quilt from our great grandmother lays folded over the bottom half of the mattress. It’s usually in the chest so it doesn’t get ruined. I’ve always hoped she would give it to me someday, yet here it is spread at Benji’s dirty feet.
“Mom spoiling you enough?” I tease, running one hand across the quilt’s stitching.
Benji grins. “There’s no such thing.” He tosses popcorn into his mouth.
“Whatever.” I steal a handful of popcorn. “So what’s the real scoop? What are you really doing here?”
“I told you. Security.” He wipes his buttery hand on the quilt. “Get your own popcorn.”
I try to ignore the small grease spots on one of the white squares. “No, really.”
“Really.” He stares back at the television screen. The same news feed plays of the bird from earlier in the week, except there’s an added interview with an ornithologist who predicts the bleak odds for the sparrow in a foreign environment. “Honestly, the government doesn’t care if some people leave. That will help with overpopulation. They’re more concerned about what could come out.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. “But the holograms said the vertexes only work in one direction. You mean like if they’re totally lying?” My mind starts to swirl. I knew it was too
convenient. It’s the perfect cover. Wait, wait, wait, and then BAM. Alien invasion. Right when we get used to having the bizarre things around. “You think some futuristic army is going to pop out of the five hundred vertexes and start a war?”
“You never know.” He shoves a fistful of popcorn into his mouth. “You gonna freak out now?”
“No. Shut up.” A fluttering, dull pain gathers in my chest. “I can’t believe they think putting you as a guard is going to help save us.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He chews on a few more half-popped kernels. “Tomorrow,” he says. His face doesn’t move.
His ominous tone makes my insides curl. “Tomorrow, what?”
“Tomorrow it begins.”
“Aliens are coming?” I ask, half joking, half concerned after his last comment.
“Well, no. Not aliens. We don’t know all that,” he admits. “But let’s just say tomorrow the world as we know it may change.”
“That’s all you can give me?” The surface of my skin brims with negative energy.
“Tomorrow,” he repeats.
I stay up all night, even after taking Ativan. Freaking jerk. Benji and I do not mix well. We’re like water and oil. Or more like oil and fire. He knows how to make me burn, and he seems to enjoy it.
The following morning, August 18, Benji’s forecast rings true. The United Nations announces a change—they’ve lifted the stay on all vertexes within UN countries. We can decide for ourselves whether or not we want to step through to the other side. They warn that there are no guarantees either way, but they admit they must “allow for individual freedom.”
The choice is ours. The only catch: all vertexes will be monitored for safety, and they will keep track of those people who leave, “for world census purposes.” I wonder if they are telling the whole truth. I wonder if Benji even knows the whole truth. I scramble to write all the details into my journal.
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