“We’ll figure this out, J. This is fixable. There has to be a way.”
“I’m not so sure.” Scooting off the bed, she began to pace on the short strip of floor between the door out to the hallway and the suite’s bathroom. Every puzzle has an answer, please let me see it.
She couldn’t, though, but chose to act anyway. “I won’t accept this.” Drying her eyes on her shirt sleeve, she faced the door.
“Where are you going?” called Alex as she stepped into the hall.
“To figure it out,” she replied, so deep in thought that she reached the stairs before realizing how rude she’d been to dismiss him so.
Down a level, she looped back, turned a corner, and stopped at a door labeled LIBRARY. She’d passed by it a number of times and had never seen anyone inside. Signaling it open, she stepped into a closet-sized space big enough for a utility bench, three chairs, and a lingering, musty smell.
“Please don’t let it end this way,” she whispered as she sat. Swipe. She touched the bench surface and the interface came alive. Scanning the selections, she considered what action to take.
Modern libraries depended on two foundational technologies—communication and integration. They needed to be linked to every source of information, and they needed to organize and present information so it was understandable to the patron.
Poking at the interface, she tested different ways to boost the signal strength between the Explorer and Earth, figuring that it would give her more options. After several hours of intense concentration, she succeeded in increasing the power by less than one percent.
Her frustration spiked and she slammed her fist on the bench surface.
“Calm down.” She said it out loud, then leaned back so her head poked into the hall. Looking both ways, she was relieved to see that no one had witnessed her tirade.
She contacted Cheryl to brainstorm, but after a short conversation, Cheryl added to her burden. “Sid and I are on extended patrol. I’ll always get back to you, you know that. But there will be long delays for the foreseeable future.”
Juice felt more alone than ever before.
Alex brought her sandwiches and tea at midnight. “How’s it going?”
She rose and gave him a long hug. He enveloped her in his arms and held her until she lifted her head. “To have him out there and know I can never talk is so painful.” She buried her face in his chest. “I can’t lose him.”
“What have you tried so far?”
“I’ve confirmed that his source filters are working perfectly. Well, nothing I do can get past it, anyway. I’ve sent messages that say some variation of ‘Hey, Criss. It’s Juice. Remember me?’ every way I can think of, but he hasn’t reacted.”
She picked up a sandwich and took a bite, then sipped the tea. “I included personal information about him to confirm I’m an insider. I sent it through conduits only a real insider would know. I put it in places he couldn’t miss. And I varied the message to see if that mattered.”
Shaking her head, she sat down at the utility bench. “It didn’t. He didn’t react that I could tell, which makes me think he didn’t see any of it.”
“Can I sit with you while you work? I’ll keep you company.”
She pressed her lips together and looked up at him. “I’m cycling pretty hard between angry and sad. I feel sad right now, so having you here is great. But when the anger comes back—and it will and it will be sudden—you don’t want to be anywhere near here. I can be mean.”
“Got it.” He turned to leave.
“Hey, Alex. Wait.”
He turned back.
“I love you.”
He smiled, then leaned over and kissed her temple.
The next morning, Juice returned to the suite to sleep while the other passengers emerged for breakfast. She woke in time for lunch, and she and Alex brought their meal to the library.
“His source filters are intrinsic procedures,” said Juice. “So I think of them as being like our autonomic system. We can’t command our heart to stop beating or even be aware of how that rule exists in us.” She took a bite and continued as she chewed. “How would I signal you from afar to tell you to take control of your heart? That’s what I’m trying to do with him.”
Alex gathered the dishes. “I wonder if we could make a virus that infects him in such a way that it disables the source filters. Then, after he sees you and lets you in, we cure him.”
She got a faraway look in her eyes. “It sounds dangerous, but maybe. That’s not my skill set, though. Could you do something like that?”
He shook his head. “Nah. It sounds cool as an idea but I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Alex left Juice to her labors, and after a few more hours, she took a break to exercise.
The ship had a first-class athletic pod and she had a lot of frustration to work through. Climbing inside, she programmed a two-hour workout. On a lark, she chose as her setting a roadway through the foothills near the leadership lodge.
Running along the edge of the road, she reached an intersection and turned right. The road had a gentle upward slope, and after a bit she turned again, this time onto a steeper winding lane—one she’d been on many times—that climbed the mountain in a long and looping route.
It took the full two hours, but the narrow road eventually passed a cute, well-tended farmhouse. A red barn sat near the house, and except for a smattering of weeds growing along the foundation, it too looked neat and maintained.
Both structures sat toward the front of the land, the rear portion of which was a lush hayfield. The whole clearing was surrounded by woods where the border had an abrupt edge, almost as if the plot had recently been hewn and cleared.
Juice stopped running, and while her heart rate slowed and her breathing tempered, she studied the scene from the road. The farmhouse seemed so real, she half expected Anna and Marco, the resident caretakers, to come out and greet her.
The barn looked real, too. Except the one on Earth had a warren of tunnels running beneath it, and one of those tunnels concealed a room-sized hollow. Secreted in that hollow was a four-gen console, a console that held Criss, safe from intruders and secure from detection.
Shutting down the pod display, Juice dabbed her face with a towel and acknowledged a certain emotional comfort from the simulated visit. She told Alex about it a few minutes later when he joined her in the shower.
The next day, Juice returned to the library well before breakfast, worked all day, and ate only when Alex brought her something. She had a few ideas, some of which took minutes to try while others took hours to labor through. Nothing in her bag of tricks showed even a hint of promise in linking her back to Criss.
In the exercise pod that evening, she didn’t pretend. Emotionally drained and carrying a full load of frustration, she started her run at the leadership lodge.
Two hours uphill is a long run for any athlete, but she’d done this route many times in real life and knew how to pace herself for it. She tested her limits, though, by running like her life depended on it.
She repeated the sequence the next day—struggle and fail in the library, run up the hill to Criss’s hideout, and spend time with Alex. It became a routine that continued for the next week, and then the one after that. She didn’t know what else to do. Her only success from all that effort was that she shaved four minutes off her time for the lodge-to-farm run.
They were a day out from Earth when the routine on the Explorer changed. It began with the Aloha Mahalo party, a signature event advertised in the cruise ship literature. Juice led the way into the ballroom where she was greeted by Gretchen, the ship’s entertainment director.
“Aloha,” said Gretchen. Wearing a modest version of the classic hula dancer costume, she draped a beautiful fresh-flower garland over Juice’s neck. Then she hugged Juice and gave thanks for their safe passage together across the solar system. “Mahalo.”
Motioning Juice forward, Gretchen turned her attention to A
lex. Tommy, a white-haired extrovert who slurred as if he’d gotten early access to the rum punch, squealed to Juice, “I bet you didn’t expect to get laid today.” He pointed to the flowers. “Get it? Lei. Laid?”
She nodded and smiled, then turned to wait for Alex as he took his turn experiencing Tommy’s wit. She hooted when Alex replied, “Actually, this would be my second time today.”
Glittery signs that could have been made by one of the crew’s kids twirled lazily from the ceiling, flashing words like “Happy,” “Gratitude,” and “Love.” Alex pointed. “Every good party should have signs that tell you how to feel.”
Juice found herself enjoying the food and drink. She also enjoyed meeting for the first time some of the people she’d been living with in close quarters for so long. They all gasped when, for the party’s grand finale, the back wall of the ballroom became transparent, allowing them to look directly into the ship’s hold. A sleek private shuttle, dark green with gold streaks down the side, sat poised on the deck.
Three passengers said their final good-byes, exited the ballroom, reappeared when they entered the hold, waved to the group, and clambered into the small craft that would carry them to their homes on the Moon.
Before the shuttle hatch closed, a service bot scurried onto the deck carrying a bright blue courier bag. It climbed onto the shuttle and the hatch closed behind it.
“What’s with the bot?” Juice asked Captain Hardaway, who happened to be standing next to her.
“The client wants whatever is in that bag to be on the Moon as soon as possible and is willing to pay for the service.” He shrugged. “We’re happy to oblige.”
Back in their suite, Juice and Alex packed their belongings. The first ferry down to Earth left before breakfast the next morning, and they’d registered to be on it.
Alex piled their belongings on the bed while Juice pulled the rucksack out from beneath it. Looking inside, she noted that one of the seams of the three clean-pouches no longer aligned with the others. When she’d stowed the crystals, all the pouches had the same orientation. “Were you poking around in here?”
“Nope,” Alex replied as he continued to pack.
The porter came by to collect their bags—the crew had loaded the ferry shuttle while the passengers slept—but Juice kept the rucksack back with their personal items. She would carry it down herself.
Sid and Cheryl met them at the Albany Spaceport after an uneventful descent. On the ride up to the Adirondack Mountains, they spoke of everything except Criss, almost as if they were clearing the decks of the easy stuff before getting down to business.
Alex could barely contain his amazement when the lodge came into view. And when they stood in the cavernous grand foyer and he looked up into the vaulted post-and-beam ceiling with its majestic arched windows, he whispered to Juice, “Just three of you live here?” It made her feel self-conscious, especially when she showed him her private five-room suite on the second floor.
Up in the lookout loft, Alex tipped his head back and oohed at the forested mountain slope rising up from the property’s edge. Turning, he aahed at the manicured space out back with its specimen trees, dramatic flowerbeds, and expanses of green grass.
Juice sipped water as she looked up the mountain. A lone cloud in the noontime sky cast a shadow across the slope. When it cleared, she made a decision.
“I’ll be right back,” she lied, fearing if she told the truth, they might try to talk her out of it.
She hurried to her room and changed into her running gear. Exiting out the back of the lodge, she followed a line of hedges to the woods and, once under the cover of trees, ran along a path out to the road.
She’d been an elite runner in college, a status achieved by those with athletic talent and a fierce competitive spirit. With clear skies and plenty of light, she set a pace that would shave another three minutes off her best time in the Explorer’s exercise pod.
Whip whip whip. The pad of her feet on the roadway created a hypnotic rhythm she found comforting. As she turned onto the winding lane that looped up the mountain, she began to worry about her impending reunion with Criss—things she would say, and how she would respond depending on what he said.
In her heart, though, she knew it wouldn’t be a conversation. He would either let her in or he wouldn’t.
He will. Her conviction came down to faith. He loves me.
Recognizing her swirl of thoughts as unproductive fretting, she pulled herself to the surface by focusing on the moment. The cadence of her breathing regular as a metronome, in her head she sang songs, choosing off-season Christmas carols because she knew the lyrics. Then she looked for tree fractals—a first branch that looked like a miniature of the tree itself, with the first branch off it mirroring the bigger branch, and so on.
Then she reached the switchbacks.
Halfway up the first one, she started breathing through her mouth, knowing it would dry out her tongue but needing the oxygen. Rounding the first corner in just over four minutes, she started up the next leg.
The zigzag up the hill switched seven times, which meant there were eight lengths for her to run. At about four minutes apiece, she would be going up very steep hills for the next half hour.
So she let her thoughts swing back inside her head, focusing now on her pain. By the third switchback her legs and chest burned. By the fifth, she hurt everywhere. And still she ran, pushing her pain level up close to where injuries happen.
The plateau at the top was a welcome sight. Huffing hard as she reached it, she slowed to a fast walk and sipped water, giving her body a few seconds to recover before she started the final push. From here, she had twelve minutes of flat through the forest, and then she’d be at the farm.
The left side of the narrow road up ahead had a shoulder of grass and scrub. The shoulder on the right was a bit wider because it also held a drainage ditch to channel runoff down the mountain. Past the shoulders on both sides lay untamed forest.
Not wanting to let her muscles tighten, she kicked from a walk to a jog to a run. Cool mountain air flowed down from above, creating an invigorating contrast with the bright sun to her left.
She stopped. The sun should be on my right.
Looking back over her shoulder and then ahead down the road, her confusion compounded when she realized the drainage ditch was on the wrong side as well. How did I get turned around?
She walked in a tight circle, hands on her hips, looking both directions and trying to figure out what had happened. She continued into a second loop. By the third loop she’d lost all sense of direction and went with her visual cues.
Starting down the road toward the farmhouse, a different feeling emerged, this one a combination of confusion and denial. While it looked like the right direction, it didn’t feel it.
And then it clicked. Criss.
He had the best defensive system in the world. She’d never engaged with it before now so she didn’t know details of how it worked. But she knew it started with passive actions that steered interlopers away.
So she turned and started in the direction that felt less wrong. Around the next curve, the road appeared to bank down the hill. Knowing it didn’t, she saw this as confirmation that she was being steered away.
Would he lead me over an edge? She doubted it, though these measures were likely from his automated systems and she didn’t know how aggressive he made them. That spurred a different thought, though. Shouldn’t I be invisible to him? She took his defensive actions as a positive sign.
She couldn’t trust her eyes, so to reduce the level of misinformation, she closed them. A feral grunt came from behind her and she imagined a black bear or maybe a mountain lion. But she didn’t look, certain it was a mirage. These mountains had bears and cats—wolves too—but she’d never seen them out this way. More misdirection.
Eyes still closed and ignoring the cacophony in her ears, she lowered herself to the ground and patted the road surface. Moving her hand in a broad arc
, she located the edge of the road and scooted herself toward it and then onto the dirt.
Stretching a leg toward the forest, she used it to probe for the ditch. Unable to find it from a sitting position, she lay on her side, one arm stretched its full length overhead so she could keep a hand on the road surface. Yes! With her legs outstretched, her lower legs sloped down into the gully.
So she knew which direction to go regardless of what her other senses told her. Keep the ditch to the right.
She had a hat tucked in with her water pouch, and she pulled it out and set it on her head, tilting it at a steep angle so the visor hung down and covered her eyes. Since she couldn’t trust what she saw, she chose not to see at all.
Keeping one foot on the roadbed and the other in the dirt, she resumed her trek, though at a much slower pace and with a decidedly odd gait. With her arms stretched out in front of her to detect danger, she imagined she looked like a zombie out for a walk.
Grrrr. The throaty roar of an unknown forest creature intensified and it scared her. But she knew there were no animals. And this road led to the farm.
She fell into a rhythm—slide the right foot forward along the dirt; slide the left forward along the road. Though she made steady progress, walking blind made her anxious.
She had a small win when her foot hit a stick. On end, the stick stretched from the ground to her shoulder, making it a perfect cane she could use to feel her way forward.
She gained confidence and lengthened her stride, and then something attacked her. Grabbing the front of her hip in a sharp bite, it held tight, spinning her to the ground. Whimpering, she swung the stick at it. On the second swipe, her stick hit something and bounced off with a rigid thunk.
Peeking from under the cap, she realized she was in battle with a waist-high post. Stuck in the ground just off the road, it marked a trail into the woods. She’d walked straight into it at full stride.
Using the post for support, she pulled herself up and rubbed her hip where a nasty bruise surely blossomed. She had a fleeting thought of Alex. He’ll want to know how I got this.
Counting steps after that, she kept track of distance. Two more falls and forty minutes later, she believed the farm was near. When the ambient sounds changed in a way she’d expect from cleared land with large structures, she knew she had arrived.
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