“What if we get rid of it when we’re done? The amplifier, I mean. Then they wouldn’t be able to make another wormhole big enough to put the Earth back.”
“I suppose that couldn’t hurt,” Byrani began, “but Professor Yematoro had the entire class working on this side project. He kept it theoretical, of course—we never built the amplifier—but we had some smart kids in our class, and I mean smart. If I can figure it out, I’m sure they can too.”
“You think they would build another one for Origin?” Tiera tried to remember how many students she had seen in Kert’s lab when she first arrived here. And only three are on my side—sort of.
“I’m positive.” Byrani laughed. “Just think of the recognition you’d get for that! That might even be enough to earn residency rights on Origin itself! You’re lucky I’m such a good person.” She paused. “And I think living on Origin would be hell. Have you met an Original person? So stuck-up.”
Tiera snorted, thinking of Dr. Chis. “I know what you mean.”
“Okay—one of these two should work,” Byrani abruptly switched topics, holding up two of the plastic rectangles against the soft light of the ceiling. Tiera swore she saw some sort of golden shimmer when they caught the light—but she wasn’t ready to switch topics quite yet.
“What if we time it so that they can’t put the Earth back?” Tiera asked. “What if we do it when they’re just about to start wiping out the Milky Galaxy? Then they’d have nowhere to return the Earth to.”
“That might work. Unless they just throw the planet out into empty space.”
“Oh. Right.” Tiera was starting to feel frustrated. Is there nothing that could protect the Earth once it’s here?
“We really can’t know until we do it though—it’ll work out,” Byrani assured her.
“I sure hope so.” Tiera stood up and stretched, then pointed to the two squares of circuitry Byrani had picked out. “So is that it? Do I need to load my pockets with anything again?”
“Not this time. All I need now are nano-gloves, but I can probably get Darshy to let me borrow his.” Byrani stood up and meandered over to the door and Tiera followed her. They still had some time before their surveillance phantoms were ready.
“What are nano-gloves?”
“Well they’re gloves,” Byrani started insultingly slow, trying to bait a reaction out of Tiera—and it worked. Tiera rolled her eyes, and Byrani laughed. “That’s so silly—that thing you do with your eyes. Anyway, nano-gloves let you work on microscopic projects. They coordinate with miniature tools and all that.”
“And Darshy just has them lying around?”
“They’re locked in his room, actually,” Byrani corrected her. “And I don’t think you understand how passionate Darshy is about building things. This is his third degree in mechanical engineering he’s working on right now—though his first two were from Rencin.”
“Does Rencin not have good schools?” It was beginning to sound like a third world country to Tiera. Or a third world world.
“They’re definitely Origin regulation—don’t get me wrong—they’re just . . . well, they’re not the Faroa Technological University.” Byrani snorted. “And they don’t have the Technological University’s sponsors, either.”
“I hope you guys are done, because your phantoms are on their way,” Xana cut in from Tiera’s pocket. “Remember your shoe, Byrani. And Tiera, you’re on her left.”
“Yep, we remember,” Byrani said, slipping her ankle out of her right shoe, a sort of royal blue slipper. After spending an entire week with her, Tiera was beginning to notice Byrani’s fondness for blue.
Tiera pulled her long coat around her loose Faroan clothing and stood as close to the door as she could, waiting for Xana’s mark. “So why don’t you have your own nano-gloves?” Tiera asked.
“I’m more into programming than engineering, though I still have to know my way around the hardware to get what’s going on.” Byrani patted her coat pocket, where the circuitry squares were. “I’m not nearly as good at programming as Xana, clearly—but I guess her focus has been on communications software while mine’s always been on space tech.”
“And Daven?” Tiera was surprised she had never asked about this sort of thing. All she knew was that Daven was studying programming.
“His interests are more like mine, but honestly he’s better than me. Or at least he’s more serious about it all than I am. This is only my first university degree, but it’s his second.”
“And you were all working in the same lab.” I don’t know enough about tech students on Earth to know if that’s normal or not.
“Alright,” Xana said, interrupting their conversation. “In five, four, three, two . . .”
Byrani put her palm on the door and it slid open, and Tiera hurried out into the hallway ahead of her. She turned slightly toward Byrani, who was fiddling with her shoe on Tiera’s right.
“And . . . go,” Xana ordered.
The two of them walked the length of the hall until they reached the elevator, Byrani pushed Tiera in backwards, and then they tried not to laugh as they pretended to make out until they reached the ground floor. (Byrani always made it difficult though—this time she was tickling Tiera’s sides as she made stupid faces.)
Once they were safely out of the building, Byrani turned to Tiera. “Do you want to come over to my place and watch me work on the amplifier? I can show you how nano-gloves work firsthand if you want?”
“I don’t think you realize how obsessed I am with this, Byrani,” Tiera said flatly. “Of course I want to watch you work on it. Just let me swing by my apartment to change first.” Tiera felt a pang of hunger. “And to eat something.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Byrani said, putting a hand over her stomach. “I’ll start around 16 then. And I won’t wait for you if you’re late.” That gave Tiera a little under an hour.
“I wouldn’t want you to,” Tiera said with a frown. They only had a few weeks—22 days, to be exact—before the black hole date, and thinking about it made her awfully uncomfortable.
After walking Byrani to the car port, Tiera headed north and toward her apartment. Watching the occasional silver car speed by from the sidewalk, she hugged her coat closed against the autumn air and thought about their next move. We won’t know if the amplifier is finished unless we test it, but how are we going to do that? From what she understood, they’d have to reroute a lot of the city’s power to make it work, and that definitely wasn’t going to go unnoticed. I’ll just file that under “unanswered questions,” along with most everything else. Tiera tried not to get frustrated—she felt like every step of this project brought with it more and more uncertainty. But at least we’re moving forward.
Three blocks later Tiera was climbing the stairs to the fourth floor of Dawning Court Apartments. Looking over the railing as she made her way to her apartment, Tiera was surprised to see a few people in the pool below. Maybe it’s heated? She frowned. I guess I wouldn’t know. I’ve never even used it. It had been three whole months since Tiera left Earth, but she had been so busy—first with her classes, then with prison, and now with saving an entire planet—that she still hadn’t made full use of her apartment’s amenities.
Tiera reached apartment 11 and let the door scan her palm, then she walked inside. Xana was there on the couch that separated the entry from the living room, her eyes fixed on their TV-sized smart glass, which she was using to manipulate some footage of Tiera and Byrani in the lab building. Right now it only showed the two of them—everything else was white.
“Hi, Xana,” Tiera greeted her, but Xana didn’t respond. Tiera looked over the couch and noticed the dirty dishes and the clear, paper bags of junk food scattered around Xana’s feet. “Xana, how long have you been in here? Didn’t you go to class this morning?”
“No,” Xana said simply, but she still didn’t look away from the screen. It looked like she was testing out the phantoms she had created of Tiera and Byrani
now. The background shifted from a beach, to a supermarket, to a restaurant—it was all very dizzying.
A brush of guilt colored Tiera’s mood, but it clashed instantly with the gratitude she felt for having such a dedicated friend. “Xana, I . . . ” She wasn’t sure what to say. She’s helping me save my home, but she’s sacrificing so much of her time and energy to do it. I don’t feel comfortable asking that of her, but I don’t want her to stop either—not if it means saving Earth. Tiera stood in their apartment’s small entryway, trying to work out her conflicting feelings while watching Xana work on the surveillance footage.
But suddenly Xana stopped. She paused everything she was doing and turned around to look at Tiera, draping her arm over the back of the couch as she did so. “Tiera,” she began, her tone serious, “I’m doing this because I want to help you. Besides, my degree is just a distraction.” Xana shrugged, turning around to face the smart glass display again. “If I weren’t taking classes, my parents would force me to live with them—or worse, work with them.” Xana made a gagging noise. “I’d rather use my skills to hack the university’s surveillance systems than to create advertisements for my mother’s marketing firm.”
Tiera let this sink in for a moment. “Thank you,” she finally said, and Xana shrugged in response. She was in the middle of altering the phantoms’ movements now, probably so that they wouldn’t exactly match the movements Tiera and Byrani made in the original footage.
It took her stomach’s rumbling to remind Tiera to stop watching Xana work and to get moving already. Tiera pulled out the leftover meat and tortillas she had made from scratch a couple days before and made a soft taco, sprinkling cheese and lettuce on top, which she promptly ate. Then she hurried to her bedroom to change—she only wore these Faroan-style clothes when she absolutely had to now. Tiera slipped on her specially tailored red jeans and gray t-shirt, then hailed a magnet car with her smart glass. Within minutes she was on her way to Byrani’s.
Climbing down the steps to Byrani and Darshy’s basement apartment, Tiera pulled out her smart glass and saw that it was 16:09. That’s not too late—I probably didn’t miss much. She put her palm on their door, and a very flustered Byrani came to answer it.
“—won’t break them! How many times to I have to tell you?” Byrani was talking over her shoulder when the door opened, and she hardly looked at Tiera before marching back to her living room, where Darshy was waiting with his arms folded.
“Sure, you might not break them, but even if there’s a chance—”
“But I’ve used nano-gloves before!”
“In one lab!”
“Would it matter if I had used them in a million labs?” Byrani shot back. Then, before Darshy could respond, she added, “No, really. Think about that. Is this really about my experience or are you just that determined not to help us?”
Tiera stood just a few steps inside their apartment, watching Darshy think as he glared at Byrani with his mouth half open. He’s afraid. He doesn’t want to risk being linked to our little project. All of a sudden Tiera had an idea of how to make all of this easier for him.
“I’m sorry—am I missing something? Why don’t you want to help Byrani with her homework project?”
Darshy looked at Tiera in surprise, and then confusion. “‘Homework project’?”
“Yes, homework project.” Tiera crossed the entry, tiptoeing over dirty clothes and garbage, then joined Darshy and Byrani in their living room. She took a seat on one of their squishy chairs. “One of her professors assigned the class to see if they could make improvements to a remote wormhole generator. All from home, too! Weird, huh?”
“Totally weird,” Byrani added quickly. “And true. Totally true.” She nodded so much at Darshy that it looked like she was seizing.
“A homework project.” Darshy looked from Byrani to Tiera. “A totally legal homework project.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to the two women in his living room. After staring at the polished white floor—or the garbage on top of it—for what seemed like forever, Darshy finally looked up. “I might be able to let you borrow my gloves for that.”
“That’s great!” Byrani threw her arms above her head in excitement, and she and Tiera shared a smile.
“I still don’t want to leave you alone with them though,” Darshy continued, interrupting their excitement with his caveat. “I haven’t forgotten that you’ve only ever used nano-gloves once. I’d like to sit in on your homework project and make sure you don’t break anything.”
Byrani looked more than a little put out at the idea of being babysat, but Tiera didn’t want to risk losing Darshy’s help. “That’s perfect,” she said before Byrani could speak. “There’s just one thing: it’s supposed to look like Byrani is doing this on her own, or she won’t get credit. Do you mind if we pretend you were never involved?” Tiera looked at Darshy pointedly. He’ll get it. He’s smart. This is what, his third degree?
Darshy just grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Chapter 24
It felt a little weirder than she expected, listening to Rihanna on her smart glass, since she was so far removed from everything Earth-related, but Darshy had asked Tiera what kind of music she liked, and this was it. Luckily Xana had converted all of the files in Tiera’s old phone to a smart glass format while Tiera was in prison, otherwise Darshy’s question would have had to wait. He had the slightest frown on his face as he listened, but it might have had more to do with what Byrani was doing than the music.
“Why are you doing that?” he asked. Darshy and Tiera were both sitting in squishy chairs, watching the live feed of Byrani’s work on his TV-sized smart glass.
“So the coil doesn’t slip off!” Byrani sat on the floor, wearing both nano-gloves and a pair of dark goggles, the latter of which was strapped to her face to block out the room’s light. She was pinching the air with her right hand and rotating it clockwise, and the mechanics of the nano engineering box in front of her mimicked Byrani’s movements at a microscopic level. All of this would have looked extremely silly to Tiera if the blown up, smart glass image of Byrani’s work weren’t proof that something was actually happening. “Do you have a better idea?” Byrani paused her work and yanked the goggles off of her head.
Tiera looked uncomfortably between the two roommates. Darshy had been backseat building since Byrani started working nearly a week ago—it started when he insisted Byrani stream the feed from her goggles onto the smart glass hanging on the wall, just so he could watch her every move, and it had steadily been getting worse.
“Well, you’re pressing it against the base. It’ll be too taut that way, and it’ll wear out faster. It would be better to just grab a post with a wider head.” Darshy pointed at the copper coil on the screen as he spoke, then gestured toward the toolbox icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
“Does it matter how long it lasts? We’re only going to use this thing once!”
“I’m just trying to make it as good as possible,” Darshy defended.
“Wait—just once?” Tiera interrupted. “I thought we were going to test it first?”
“In a simulator,” Byrani answered Tiera in a much nicer tone than she used with Darshy. But as soon as she turned back to him, the vitriol was in full force. “Fine! But we’d almost be done already if we did it my way.” Byrani pulled the goggles back over her eyes and reached a gloved hand over to grab a different post from the toolbox.
“Everyone would die if we did it your way,” Darshy muttered.
“What?” Byrani swung her head in Darshy’s direction, but from the display on the wall Tiera knew all Byrani could see was the large, metal sphere at the center of the remote WG.
“Nothing.”
“It had better be nothing.”
Feeling awkward, Tiera pulled out her smart glass and thumbed through the list of songs that Xana had just sent her. The song she was playing now was almost over. I’ve got to have something a little more
calming that Rihanna. Maybe an indie artist?
“Hey Tiera, can I pick the next song?” Darshy asked, reaching for his own smart glass.
“Oh! Sure, that’s fine.” Tiera put her smart glass back in her pocket, and a few seconds later Darshy was playing some strange instrumental music over his apartment’s sound system. It’s like Baroque Bollywood. And it’s awful.
“Have you heard this band before?” Darshy asked enthusiastically. Unfortunately he looked like he hoped Tiera would like it.
“I don’t think so, but I haven’t really listened to a lot of Faroan music since I got here.” Tiera forced a smile. “It sounds interesting though!”
“Well it’s Rencinite, not Faroan, but they do have a bit of a following here. I definitely think it’s interesting too.” Darshy laughed—he looked embarrassed.
“Turn that haphazard nonsense off. I’m trying to concentrate here,” Byrani grumbled from the floor, and Darshy shot her a glare. Then he looked at her work on the smart glass display.
“What!” He jumped up. “Don’t connect the electrodes like that. Do you want the magnetizer to work or not?”
Tiera squinted as Byrani loosed an onslaught of some very profane language.
Darshy tried to get a word in edgewise. “If you would just—”
“No!” Byrani pulled the goggles and gloves off as she stood up, then shoved them into Darshy’s chest. “Why don’t you do it, if you’re so smart?!”
“What?” Darshy gave her a nervous look. “But I can’t! If I get caught—”
“Darshy, you’re already doing most of it anyway!” Byrani exclaimed. “And how are you going to get caught? Is there a camera in here?” She looked around the room in exasperation, then turned back to Darshy. “We’re still going to say it was all us! You might as well use your own hands instead of mine. Right Tiera?”
“Um.” Tiera really didn’t want to get in the middle of this. But then it looked like she already was. “We’d definitely pretend you were never involved either way. And it would save us a lot of time—we only have 15 days left, after all.”
Tiera's Earth (Andromeda 9 Book 1) Page 25