“Aww, was it something I said?” Jolie pouted as she put down the tool.
“Yes.” Ana wasn’t sure why she was so unsettled by Jolie’s admission, but she couldn’t shake it.
“Way to be direct.”
Ana stood, wiping her hands on the towel. “Could say the same about you.”
A look of sadness crossed Jolie’s face as she replied, “One hit after another.”
Ana shook her head. “Look, I’m flattered, but you’re not my type.” Lies.
“What is your type?”
“Someone who’s not my roommate.” More lies. “And aren’t you a little young for me? It would be like dating a student.” Ana ruffled Jolie’s damp hair as she walked away. “Completes the look,” she shouted back. She almost avoided seeing the shock on Jolie’s face.
Once she reached her lab and shut the door, Ana slumped into the desk chair and threw her head back, running her lavender scented fingers through her hair. She should go back there and apologize, but she couldn’t. She was afraid of what she might do to the woman who had just shamelessly flirted with her. Shit, she thought. This was supposed to be a one-sided fantasy, not an actual possibility. Her wrist buzzed and she touched it to open a feed. A waist up hologram of Martine appeared in front of her.
“Thank God, Martine. Great timing. I’m in deep trouble and I need your help,” she whispered.
Chapter Eight
“Kyoko, you want to loosen the bolt and remove the silver canister.” Ana stood facing the wall in her lab. “That’s it. One more turn. Okay.” Through her glasses, she watched the maneuver as if she were in the control deck, guiding Carlos and Kyoko through cameras mounted on their space suits.
“Canister removed,” Kyoko said. She slowly pulled the weightless piece of machinery from the open engine compartment.
Even though Kyoko was safely on the ground in Japan, Ana knew she really was moving slowly in the simulator suit she was wearing right now. She touched the side of her glasses and her input changed to Carlos’s view. He was tethered to the spacecraft, watching Kyoko and waiting for orders to replace the canister.
When the time was right, Ana said, “Carlos, insert the canister and turn it a half turn to the right.”
“Okay, canister inserted and turned.” He floated away to let Kyoko back in. Ana’s stomach lurched for a moment. They’d been at this for several hours already, and she had been feeling motion sick for the last two.
“Kyoko, retighten the bolt with the pistol grip, and, Carlos, you can shut the panel when she’s done.”
“Maneuver completed,” Carlos said.
From her virtual position next to Ana in the control deck, Martine said, “Good work, team. No mistakes.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Kyoko said.
Ana looked at her watch and logged the time it had taken them to replace the part. Not bad. “Okay, we have one more, and this will be a long one. Is everybody okay to continue?”
“I’m a go,” Kyoko said with an audible sigh.
Carlos echoed her exhaustion and they began the final simulation of the day. If everything went well, they’d be done in the early morning hours. Ana was about to give the command to move to the solar assembly at the top of the craft when she heard the front door shut. She listened for a moment as footsteps thudded down the hallway into Jolie’s room. She heard something metal clatter on the floor and held her breath. A moment later, the bedroom door shut. She looked at her watch: 10:12 p.m. She hadn’t seen Jolie all day, so this was the first chance she had to apologize.
A private video feed showed up in her VR glasses. Martine was giving her a strange look. “What’s going on? It sounded like we lost you there for a second. Is your connection okay?”
“Sorry, got lost in my thoughts for a minute.”
“Is this what we discussed last night?” Martine looked concerned, but also mildly amused. Ana knew Martine thought she was a prude who needed to have some casual sex every now and then. She’d said as much last night. Why she focused on her and not, say, Kyoko, who also didn’t seem to have any romantic attachments, was beyond her.
“I’ll get it under control, I promise.”
“Ana, just remember what I told you. Sex is great, but don’t get attached. You can make it work, but remember that the mission comes first.” It was easy for her to say. She was looking at a lifetime with her true love, Liv. Even though Martine was in France and Liv was in Antarctica, they saw each other a few times a year, and Ana was pretty sure they had virtual sex a few times a week.
“Noted.” Ana sighed, shutting off Martine’s feed. She didn’t need to be reminded that she shouldn’t fall in love with anyone, particularly her roommate. If anything happened, it had to be casual. No feelings. She refocused on Kyoko and Carlos, who had already started moving toward the front of the ship. She watched them clip and unclip on a series of rings, floating in what seemed like slow motion, and yawned. This was going to be a long night.
The repairs to the solar panels were done around 2 a.m. Ana scribbled that into her log and shut off her headset. She was exhausted, but too nauseated to go right to bed. She’d never gotten used to virtual reality, and was not hopeful that she’d adapt to zero gravity without losing her lunch a few times first.
She went to the couch where she picked up the paperback that Jolie had been reading. Judging from the dog-eared pages, she’d made it almost all the way through in just a few weeks. Ana had owned it for a couple of years and had never managed to read more than a few paragraphs at a time.
She opened the book where Jolie left off, a few pages from the end, and began to read. Soon, her eyelids began to droop and she pulled a blanket over her. She reread the same paragraph four times before putting the book down. She’d never finish it. Just as she drifted off, her wrist buzzed three times, her setting for urgent messages. Startled, she threw the blanket off and sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“Fuck. What is it now?” She projected the sender data onto the table and saw it was from her mother. She was instantly annoyed. Her mother must know what time it was, and she surely knew that they’d been in simulations all evening. At least it was a message, and not a direct call.
She rolled her eyes. “Play message,” she said into her wrist.
“Ana, it’s your mother. I’m at the airport in Paris and I’m going to be on the next flight out of the city. I hope your meetings with the stakeholders didn’t end disastrously. You don’t have the people skills that I do, but I haven’t heard from anybody wanting to back out yet.” Ana groaned. Clearly, an extended vacation wasn’t enough to turn her into a nice person. Her mother’s voice continued, “I’ll be at the complex in seven hours to get an update from you in person, so be awake by then.” She stopped speaking and Ana turned the app off. Her blood was boiling, and she was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep now. In a few short hours, she’d have to fill Dr. Mitchell in on every detail from the past few weeks, including explaining Jolie’s presence. That was not a conversation she was looking forward to. She set her alarm and picked up the book again, rereading the paragraph for a fifth time.
Ana’s wrist buzzed and she jolted awake, confused. It was dark in the room. She looked more closely and saw that the windows had been darkened to keep the light out. She could see thin beams of pale daylight slipping in around the edge of the door, and was relieved. She had slept for a couple of hours at least. Even worse than debriefing her mother would have been doing it while half asleep.
“Daylight,” she croaked, and each window became clear. She smoothed back her hair and looked around. On the table in front of her was a mug with a note attached. She inhaled the aroma of the lukewarm coffee, took a sip, and read the note.
Hope you got some sleep. See you later. -J
Ana smiled and folded the note into the book. It was some kind of peace offering, a sign that Jolie maybe didn’t hate her after all for her ill chosen words. The warmth that Jolie brought to the house was quickly replaced with a chil
l as Ana imagined her mother here, barking her orders and expecting Ana to obey. She relaxed a bit knowing that Jolie wasn’t going to be around to meet her mother. That would have been the worst-case scenario. Now, technically Ana didn’t even have to tell her about her new roommate at all, unless she was actively monitoring the data from Cassiopeia and figured it out on her own.
She had fifteen minutes until Dr. Mitchell’s scheduled arrival. Fifteen minutes to shower, get dressed, get her notes together, and figure out if or how she was going to mention Jolie. Ana went through the motions of getting ready, but her head was elsewhere. What would she say about Jolie? What could her mother do about it? And, most importantly, why was that all she could think about?
At precisely 8 a.m., a car arrived in the driveway. Punctual as usual. Ana answered the door, still towel drying her hair, and Dr. Mitchell pushed right past her.
“Hi, Mom. Please, come in,” she said, sarcastically.
“Ana, sit down and get out your notes. I don’t have all day. I’ve got meetings with the stakeholders in an hour and I have to update them on some things we discovered while I was gone. I have six screens for you. You should read them, then throw them away.”
“I know the drill.” She sat next to her mother, who wore a black business suit and smelled like expensive perfume. Ana crinkled her nose.
“Here. These are the two most important documents. One is a change to the training schedule. I met with Martine and she agreed that accelerating the schedule would be prudent in light of the other document. I’ll let you read it on your own. You’ll probably need time to absorb the information. The high-level summary is that we have information about another mission, and it’s connected to the failed colony. Martine will tell you more than you’ll find on these screens. Coffee. Do you have coffee for me?”
Ana put down the screen she was holding and sighed. It didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do, what she told or didn’t tell her mother. It wasn’t going to change Dr. Mitchell’s constant disappointment in her. She’d heard snippets of the story throughout her life, and had gathered that her mother had been one of the original candidates for MarsOne. She had been pretty far into the process when she became pregnant with Ana. If she couldn’t make history herself, then her daughter, who had ruined all her plans in the first place, would have to do it, or so Ana had always believed. Dr. Mitchell worked tirelessly to ensure that the mission came to fruition. She might not be on board, but she would be controlling the entire operation from the ground.
Ana made a mug of coffee, heated the one Jolie had made for her earlier, and returned to the couch.
“Thank you,” Dr. Mitchell said curtly. “I’ve had a headache for hours. Now, update me on the meetings.”
Ana gave her a recap as far as she could remember. She had anticipated needing to rehash all the details, but she had been a little distracted.
“And the simulations?” Her mother recorded information with her bracelet as quickly as Ana shared it.
“All done in under the allotted amount of time.”
“Good. I think that’s all I need. I’m going to head over to the university now. Will you be in Dr. Brighton’s lab later?”
Ana put her hands on her knees and squeezed them until her knuckles turned white. It was all she could do to keep from hitting the table in frustration. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
“What on Earth are you going to be doing instead? Playing in your orchard? That’s not going to further the mission. You know that.”
Ana steeled herself. “For your information, I wasn’t going to go to the orchard today. Even if I were, at least I’d be having fun. You’re always talking about positive mental health. Is there anything you do that you actually enjoy?”
“Of course. You know everything I do is to put you down in history as one of the first successful colonists.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Ana said.
“Ana, you know as well as anybody that you can’t have a normal life. No use trying to pretend you’re a regular person. You’re better than them. You’re smarter. You have a future that they only dream of. Everything’s a sacrifice, and we all gave up things for this mission.”
Ana wanted to cry, but she took a deep breath instead and stood up. “Maybe there are some things I don’t have to give up.” Like her orchard. Like a chance with Jolie. She thought about her childhood, which was full of quality mother-daughter time until her mother signed on as mission director. She remembered the nights Dr. Mitchell would come home after midnight, fall asleep on the couch, then leave the house before sunrise. Ana had always understood that this was a necessary part of the mission, and it hadn’t bothered her before now. She watched her mother’s creased face frown at the table as she sent a message. She hadn’t even paid attention to her own daughter’s last words as they flew into the open, then settled back in Ana’s mind like a fog.
“I have work to do,” Ana said. “I hope everything goes well in your meeting.” Ana turned, walked out of the room and into the lab, shutting the door behind her. She heard her mother get up and leave without another word. Ana put her head in her hands and burst into tears. She couldn’t end up like that.
Chapter Nine
Jolie typed her response to the last question on her Art History exam and pressed the submit button. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her feet, stretching her legs to the back of the chair in front of her. Her classmates continued to work on their tests, some of them with extreme concentration. She should probably care a little more, but she’d much rather be creating art than studying it. Her mind wandered to the series of sketches she’d been working on. Usually, she drew landscapes, desolate, dry places like where she grew up. But ever since she ran into Ana in the hallway, she’d been branching out and drawing people. One person in particular, really.
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten all day and it was mid-afternoon. Truthfully, she didn’t have much of an appetite. Five days of waking up at dawn and returning to the house late at night were catching up with her. She was still a little stung by Ana’s rejection, though it had faded into a light awkwardness when she imagined running into her. She’d have to work harder to contain her attraction, since her flirting was making Ana uncomfortable.
A message popped up on her screen. For an instant, she panicked, thinking it was Ana wondering why she had been avoiding her, if she even noticed in the first place. To her relief, it was Nova inviting her to dinner at the sorority house, as she had done the past few days. Jolie contemplated going again, but she was too exhausted to keep up the ruse. She was tired of making small talk with people she didn’t really care about, except Nova, of course. Karlee wasn’t so bad either, once you got to know her. Still, she couldn’t avoid Ana forever. She would have to find some way to rise above her feelings so she wouldn’t have to move back to the dorms again. Surely she could pretend not to want to kiss Ana every time she did something awkward or adorable, which was all the time. She politely declined Nova’s invitation and grabbed her bag, tiptoeing past the distracted TA and out of the classroom.
The day was the coldest of the season so far, and Jolie shivered in the light jacket she had brought with her. As she waited for her taxi to arrive, she thought back to a year ago, when she bounced from class to work, then to the library, the studio, and back to her room for a few hours of sleep. She barely had any time to herself between doing everything she could to hold on to her scholarship and working in the art studio. A calmness washed over her as she stood on the curb with her tennis shoes hanging over the edge. So much had changed in that time, but mostly, she just felt older, maybe a little wiser, definitely not more in control of her life.
The taxi pulled up in front of her and sounded its telltale melodic horn. She unlocked the door with her handprint and stepped inside. As the car pulled away from the curb and began driving down the main road, she felt the anxiety well up in her chest, and did her usual counting exercises. It was so much better now
than the years following the accident, and that was something to be grateful for. Still, she had occasional flashbacks of that car crossing the center line, the overwhelming helplessness of her own two hands and the car’s computerized steering. The sickening crunch, the leaking chemicals, and then the sterile white of the hospital.
It had been hailing all night, and there was a tornado watch wailing through her radio. She should have waited it out at the dance studio, but she was tired and looking forward to a shower and a big plate of whatever her mother had made for dinner. She noticed the car coming toward her in the opposite lane, but didn’t think much of it until it suddenly swerved into her lane. She didn’t remember much else, except that her car swerved as well, avoiding the head-on collision and instead sliding through the coating of hail into a tree. It could have been much worse, said the car company, who should have been legally at fault. They had an out, since the other driver was operating his vehicle manually.
What happened after was a blur. Surgeries, physical therapy, and the promise of a fully integrated experimental leg. She could walk again, and the company who created it paid for her recovery. It had been a no-brainer in her household, even though part of her body was technically still their property.
When Jolie emerged from her thoughts, the car was turning onto Ana’s driveway. She placed her hands on the smooth dashboard to cool them, and wiped a band of sweat from her forehead. She did her best to look composed, though she felt drained remembering the accident. She hoped Ana wasn’t home so that she’d have a minute to relax. Seeing her straight away would keep her heart racing, though not for the same reasons. She peeked through the window next to the door and saw nobody inside. Relieved, she opened the door, set her bag down on the coffee table and sprawled on the couch.
“Cassiopeia, put on a vacation show.” She closed her eyes as a panorama of pristine azure water and white sand beaches filled three wall panels. The narrator described what he called “ultimate luxury,” and soothing steel drum music played in the background. Jolie pictured herself there, her toes sinking into the hot sand, walking hand in hand next to the undulating water with a faceless person she knew deep down was Ana.
The Universe Between Us Page 6