“Should we take the stairs?” Tiera asked, getting nervous. They weren’t actually going to access the lab today, but they needed good footage Xana could use to cover their tracks whenever they did.
“I have an idea,” Byrani said carefully. “But you might not like it.”
“What?” Tiera and Xana asked at the same time.
“I could push you into the elevator backwards . . . and make it look like we’re kissing.”
“What?!” Tiera almost stopped walking.
“That’s actually a good idea!” Xana said approvingly from Tiera’s pocket. “The camera angle in the hallway changes right before the elevator, so turning around shouldn’t be a problem.”
“But we’d have to reproduce that every time we come! Wouldn’t that be suspicious?” Plus it would be really embarrassing for me, Tiera added in her head.
“It actually might make a good cover,” Byrani added. Tiera wasn’t sure, but it sounded like Byrani was embarrassed too.
“She’s right. Security might wonder why you two walk the same route through this building every time, but never stop to do anything here. It would at least make some sort of sense if you were secret lovers who liked making out in the elevator.” It bothered Tiera how logical Xana made it all sound, and they were running out of time—the elevator was only a few paces ahead of them.
“Oh my gosh—fine,” Tiera ceded, “but don’t actually kiss me.”
“I won’t. But at least try to make it look convincing.” Byrani smiled, which only made Tiera frown.
As soon as they reached the elevator’s wide doorway, Byrani spun Tiera around and leaned in, placing one hand up next to Tiera’s head. It took Tiera a minute to realize that hand was also calling the elevator down, because soon she was stumbling backwards and into the small, white and maroon elevator car. Thank goodness no one’s in here. Tiera had always hated seeing couples make out in public—she never wanted to be on the other side of that.
Byrani wrapped her arms around Tiera as the pearly elevator doors shut, but she was so short her chocolate-colored forehead barely made it to Tiera’s chin, and her short, curly hair tickled Tiera’s nose. “Sixth floor, please,” she said, and the elevator started moving.
“You’re supposed to look like you’re making out,” Xana reminded Tiera from her smart glass.
Tiera felt her face get hot, but she leaned down to touch Byrani’s forehead with her own. “How’s this?” she asked, draping her arms around Byrani’s cerulean coat and forcing herself to look into her eyes.
Byrani’s brown eyes crinkled, and Tiera could feel her shaking with silent laughter as she brought her hand up and held the nape of Tiera’s neck. Tiera finally smiled, and then Byrani started full-on giggling.
“Sixth floor,” the male elevator voice announced, and the door opened. Byrani grabbed Tiera’s hand and led her out, and Tiera pulled her hand away and folded her arms as soon as she heard the door close again behind them.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Byrani teased as they walked through the narrow hallway and toward the lab.
“Tiera, pull out your smart glass and look down at it. There’s a camera on the ceiling ahead,” Xana told her, and she obeyed, pulling out her smart glass to look at Xana’s smiling face. “You look very embarrassed,” she whispered, and Tiera rolled her eyes.
Xana led them through the hall, passing the oval window with the view that had Tiera so mesmerized when she first arrived on this planet, and after walking for a while they reached the lab door. Byrani purposefully dropped her own smart glass here so they could stop, and then they continued walking until they eventually left the building. The second fake kiss in the elevator wasn’t as awkward as the first, but it still left Tiera feeling embarrassed—and it left Byrani in another fit of giggles.
“So how long do you need to manipulate all of that footage?” Byrani asked Xana once they were on the walkway outside. The bright light of early afternoon shone unhindered through its clear covering, which made Xana squint once Tiera pulled her smart glass from her pocket.
“Inserting you two into their live footage shouldn’t be too hard, but there’s more to it than that,” Xana explained. “I need to figure out how to remotely access the elevator so that it moves while your phantoms are in it, and I need a loop I can play of the empty lab whenever you two are in it working.”
“So . . . it’ll take a week?” Tiera guessed.
“Please.” Xana gave Tiera a level look. “I’ll have this done in two days at the most. I’m not an amateur.” From what Tiera could see on her smart glass, it looked like Xana was typing on one of her smart glass tablets. “We will have to record a new walkthrough every time you want to visit though—I’m not sure how sophisticated their bots are, so I’d rather play it safe. The more I copy and paste the same footage of you two into their surveillance, the more likely they are to notice.”
“So we have to do a complete lap of the building before we can actually go to the lab?” Tiera asked. “And you guys made me pretend to kiss for surveillance bots?”
“If you guys wear the same clothes every time, you shouldn’t have to do a complete lap. I can just pull the footage on your way to the lab, then your footage out, and I can use it for your next visit—it’ll make more sense when you actually do it, don’t worry,” Xana added when she saw how confused Tiera looked. “And the surveillance bots are programmed to recognize suspicious activity, Tiera. The kissing is still important.” Something about Xana’s expression made Tiera think that she would say that even if it weren’t important.
“Pretend kissing,” Tiera corrected her. “And thanks again for your help. We’re headed to the library now, so I’ll let you go.”
“Alright” was all Xana said before hanging up. Tiera still wasn’t used to her abrupt goodbyes.
With that, Tiera and Byrani made for the center of the Technological University’s campus, passing its oblong buildings separated by trees in various stages of autumnal molting, their leaves painting the campus to look like a sunset on white canvas. Tiera was starting to wonder if they were lost when Byrani finally pointed to a building on their left.
“That’s it,” she said. “It’s one of the oldest buildings on the planet—but they keep renovating it; don’t worry.” The library was a wide building, and it seemed to be shaped like an eight-pointed star—but it looked surprisingly small, with only three or four stories. It wasn’t until they were closer that Tiera had an idea of its true size.
The crystal concrete beneath their feet suddenly became translucent, and Tiera could see rows upon rows of desks and shelves and towering databases below, all lining a railed opening that bore through dozens of basement floors till it reached the deepest level of the library. They were walking on a skylight.
“Are we going down there?” Tiera asked, trying not to feel nervous at the distance she’d fall if this walkway shattered. I wonder if this is bigger than the building Xana’s parents live in.
“Yeah, but the galaxy models are just a few floors down.”
“Will there be a record of what we look at on the models?” Tiera just realized she hadn’t thought about covering their tracks here at the library—she had been so focused on the lab building.
“I mean, yes?” Byrani started. “But it doesn’t show who’s looking—just what’s being looked at. Probably just for stats. Does that make sense?”
“I think so,” Tiera said, and the pair climbed the wide staircase to the library’s entrance. Its old, corroded brass doors swung open soundlessly, admitting them into a spacious lobby with granite-tiled floors. That granite has to be imported. They passed several smart glass panels under a sign that said “information” and made their way to the elevators.
Byrani grinned at Tiera. “Do you want to do the pretend kissing thing, just to be safe?”
“No.”
After riding three floors down with her arms folded, Tiera followed Byrani down a long, granite-adorned hallway. They pas
sed several closed doors before entering an unused room, and Tiera was surprised to find that it wasn’t as dark as it was because the light was off, but because everything—the floor, the walls, the ceiling—was a deep and matted black.
“Stand in a corner and I’ll get it started,” Byrani instructed.
“Okay.” Once they were in the two corners opposite the square room’s door, Byrani began speaking, and Tiera quickly figured out why the room was black.
“Activate Andromeda model.”
The door slid shut, plunging them into darkness, and a hissing noise came from somewhere above them. Tiera noticed that the room was getting more humid—to the point that it almost felt like a steam room—and suddenly she could see light forming in the center of the room, whites and blues and golden browns swirling and condensing into the spiraling disk of the Andromeda Galaxy.
“How is it doing that?” Tiera whispered, afraid she’d ruin it if she spoke too loudly. She reluctantly looked away from the galaxy before her and turned to Byrani, whose face was illuminated by her smart glass.
“Just a second,” Byrani mumbled, then more clearly said, “Show star system A06089M3T14.”
Once she stopped speaking, the outer edges of the galaxy model flew outward and through Byrani, Tiera, and the walls as the room zoomed in on a piece of the galaxy about a third of its radius from the center. Tiera could now make out the individual stars and dust clouds flying by, which grew as the display area of the model shrank. Soon, the bright cluster of stars at the center of the room separated into a single star, and then that star grew to be the size of a beach ball. One lonely planet—which Tiera figured must be a gas giant, by its size—orbited this yellow star, and it seemed uncomfortably close.
“This isn’t it. Let’s check the next one,” Byrani said.
“How long is your list?” Tiera asked. “How many stars did he have you all look at?”
“He gave us seven. Some are examples of star systems hostile to life, some are favorable to life, and some are in between. He wanted us to know what to look for—or I guess now I know he was just giving us a secret plan to save Earth.” Byrani smiled at Tiera, then looked back down at her smart glass. “Show star system 328E16R4775.”
The model zoomed out, and the rest of Andromeda rushed to fill the room again. Then the room focused on an area of dust and stars much closer to the galaxy’s edge and everything zoomed in again, glowing space stuff flying past Tiera until she could make out the yellow star at the center of it all. Within seconds the model settled on this star system: a bright, yellow star orbited by six planets, not to mention some comets and asteroids.
“I think this might be it!” Byrani exclaimed, typing something into her smart glass. “Highlight this star’s habitable zone!”
A thin disk of soft green appeared a short distance from the star, highlighting one of the small, rocky planets’ orbit. This planet was the second in line from the sun, coming after another rocky planet and preceding two rocky planets and two gas giants.
“It looks like the right size, too! Send the highlighted planet’s coordinates to my smart glass, save highlighted planet, exit the galaxy model, and compare the highlighted planet to Andromeda 1 through 8.”
Following Byrani’s command, everything in the model vanished except the planet from the star’s habitable zone, which moved to the center of the room and expanded to the size of a soccer ball to show more detail. Eight other planets appeared in a ring around this one, and Tiera realized that “Andromeda 1 through 8” must be the formal designations for each of the inhabited planets in the Andromeda Galaxy. She looked at each of these planets in turn: Origin, which looked like Earth but with differently shaped continents; Faroa, a bright white sphere with occasional patches of green; Osya, a marble of blue with a single green continent in its northern hemisphere; Rencin, a lush and green planet with a barren stripe of brown around its equator; Gemis, a planet several times the size of the others with a large patch of green floating in its cloudy atmosphere; Fugon, a planet with almost as much ocean as it had land; Zura, a patchy planet of blues, grays, and greens; and finally Hyran, a planet with a hemisphere of ocean and a hemisphere of land.
“It’s about the same size as the others—except Gemis, of course,” Tiera said, looking from the eight Andromeda planets to the barren and yellow planet in the center of the room.
“And so is Earth, so we should be able to swap these two without messing up the star system’s other satellites,” Byrani added, looking from the model to Tiera.
I wonder if I . . . “Um,” Tiera hesitated, then asked, “Can I ask it to show something?”
“Sure! Go ahead.”
Tiera took a deep breath, hoping that would help her keep her emotions steady, then said, “Show Earth.”
“Activate Milky Galaxy model. Show potential life planet C2406,” Byrani clarified, giving Tiera an encouraging nod.
I guess nobody updated its name since Kert’s expedition, Tiera thought, watching the room respond to Byrani’s command. The nine planets before them vanished, and the swirling Milky Way Galaxy appeared, its center warm and bright with blueish arms dancing outward in a counterclockwise spiral. The room adjusted the galaxy so that one of the arms was centered, and then it zoomed in once again. The model started losing clarity the farther in it zoomed, but when it stopped Tiera still felt a sense of peace overtake her. She sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at the fuzzy, blue-white sphere she called home.
It’s not lost yet.
Chapter 23
“Sixth floor,” a voice said from somewhere above them, and Byrani and Tiera let go of each other just as the elevator door opened. They had done this enough over the past week that Tiera wasn’t really embarrassed about it anymore, but she wasn’t about to start kissing Byrani for real either.
As they made their way past the professors’ offices in the lonely white halls of the lab building, Tiera and Byrani only crossed paths with one person—and luckily it was before they reached the lab area. Nobody had seen them enter the lab yet, and Tiera hoped to keep it that way.
Tiera pretended to trip as soon as they reached their lab, and Byrani placed a casual hand on its door, which slid open as soon as it processed her palm print. The two of them hurried inside and shut the door behind them. But from the view of any nearby cameras, it would have looked like Byrani had waited until Tiera caught her balance, then they had both continued down the hall and into the elevator.
“I’ll have your phantoms arrive in exactly 20 minutes,” Xana said from Tiera’s smart glass. “Remember you’re supposed to be adjusting your shoe when you come out, Byrani.”
“Right. Thanks, Xana,” Byrani said quickly, then she hurried off to one of the cabinets by the opaque window on the far side of the room. Tiera followed, but slowly. She had learned early on that she wasn’t very useful for this part of the plan.
Really I’m not sure I’ll be useful for any part of the plan. So far it looked like Tiera would just be helping Byrani build the remote wormhole generator and its amplifier, but she already knew she’d only be following Byrani’s directions.
Passing the rows of sculpture-like lab equipment and supercomputers, Tiera found a chair close to where Byrani was working and took a seat. Tiera pulled up her coat sleeves to check her forearms again. Still my natural color. It had been a few days since she had gotten her prison tattoos removed, but it still felt weird not to see solid green under her sleeves. The only part of her tattoos that she had kept were on her forearms: a swirling trail of stars that started at each wrist and wrapped around her arms until they reached her elbows.
“Why did you keep those?” Byrani asked, eyeing Tiera’s tattoos before opening a drawer full of lab equipment. “Not that I don’t like them. I’m just wondering.”
“Well,” Tiera began, tracing the stars on her left arm with her finger, “everyone here seems to think these tattoos matter, and I want to make them mad.”
Byrani laughed as she
opened another drawer. “Really? That’s it?”
“That’s definitely a part of it,” Tiera admitted with a grin. “It’s also . . . I mean, the only other people with these sorts of tattoos are prisoners and the farmers on Gemis, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well . . . I like to feel connected to them. Even if we’re stars and stars apart.” Tiera shrugged. “Plus I think it looks cool.”
“That’s a good enough reason for me,” Byrani said, then she opened another drawer with a sigh.
“What are you looking for again?”
“Circuitry for an electricity transmitter. We’re going to have to pump a ton of energy into this thing, and a simple battery isn’t going to cut it.” Byrani spoke without looking up from the drawer she was rummaging through.
“Right.” Tiera wished she had taken some sort of engineering class when she was in college. “Hey Byrani?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever wondered why Kert didn’t just do all of this himself?”
Byrani stopped rummaging for a second, then grabbed a large stack of what looked like clear CD cases and turned around. She pulled a maroon chair up to a table so that she could sit, then she started sorting through the plastic rectangles as she spoke. “Off the top of my head, I’d say it’s because Origin would have just made him put Earth back, but there could have been more of an insurrectionist plot behind it all.”
Tiera let this sink in before she asked her next question. “What’s keeping Origin from making us put the Earth back then? Once we move it?”
“That’s a good question,” Byrani said with a frown. She picked up a small stack of rectangles and stood up to put them back in the drawer. “What do you think?”
“Well,” Tiera began. “This amplifier technology is new, right? Nobody has made wormholes bigger than the ones at the WG station?”
“Not without blowing something up they haven’t, no.” Byrani walked back to the desk and started going through the clear pieces of plastic she had left there.
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