Jane and the Exodus

by T. R. Woodman

  “The second reason is he wanted me to be safe. He said good people have an instinct to protect their children—especially their daughters. He wanted me to have that too. He said I have a lot to learn about being a person, and I need time to learn it—just as all children do—not so sure I agree with him, but that’s what he said.”

  “Once again I’m amazed at the way Dad thinks,” Jane said, shaking her head and turning back to watch her kids on the playground.

  “Yeah, I guess he’s pretty smart too.”

  Jane chuckled. “Smarter than either of us know,” she added.

  They sat quietly on the bench together. Jane listened to the sounds of the kids laughing on the playground and the gentle breeze blowing through the leaves on the trees around her. She put her arm around Evelyn and felt her tuck in close. Maybe I can do this, she thought, feeling a nervous flutter in her chest dissipate.

  Moments passed, neither of them anxious to move or speak, and then Evelyn cleared her throat.

  “You know, Jane, I hate to mess up our big-sister–little-sister bonding moment here, but I did come looking for you for a reason.”

  “Oh? What for?”

  “I need to talk to you about something. Remember when I said I wasn’t expecting us to have a ‘jerk’ at the end of our leap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I figured out what happened. One of those military shuttles got too close to us, just as I engaged the Leap Frog. It must have been touching the skin of Vista as we leapt. It was pulled into the leap, and it collided with us while we were in transit.”

  Jane felt her chest constrict, and she pulled away from Evelyn to look at her more directly. “Did it do a lot of damage?”

  “Not a lot, but the shuttle clipped the underside of Vista. It didn’t hit any of the life support systems, and it didn’t rupture anything, which is why I didn’t detect any problems right after we stopped.”

  “Okay … so we’re okay, right?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. Everyone on Vista is fine. Nobody was hurt, other than a few bumps and bruises from people falling over after we stopped, but the shuttle exploded … nobody on board survived.”

  Jane felt a familiar pang of sadness, remembering how she felt when she thought her mom had died in a shuttle explosion.

  “The shuttle wasn’t equipped to handle the travel. I’m sorry, Jane.”

  “That’s okay, Evelyn. How were you to know they were going to ram the space station? It was an accident.”

  “Yeah,” Evelyn said with a loopy tone, giving Jane the impression she had more to say about it.

  “Is there something else?” Jane asked, hesitating for a moment, unsure she wanted to know the answer.

  “There is … but it’s a little hard to explain. Even though the energy given off by the explosion didn’t affect us physically, it did affect the way the Leap Frog works. Actually, it destroyed the part of it that pulls us through time and space.”

  “You can fix it, right?”

  “Well, that’s the irony, Jane … We have backup systems, but because they were all operating in the background while the primary Leap Frog was running, they were damaged too.”

  Jane looked at Evelyn, surprised. Even though she didn’t understand exactly what happened, she knew exactly what it meant.

  “So we’re stuck?” she asked, not sure how to ask what she wanted to.

  “Unfortunately, yes. I can’t fix the Leap Frog … at least, I don’t think I can … so ‘stuck’ is a good way to put it. But, there is some good news,” Evelyn said, shrugging a shoulder.

  “Yeah?” Jane asked, feeling hopeful.

  “Yeah. As it turns out, we leapt far enough that I have found a planet for us to settle. It meets all of the requirements we have.”

  “You did?” Jane said, getting excited.

  “I did. See for yourself,” Evelyn said, standing and pointing toward the dome.

  Jane stood and glanced up, noticing that Evelyn had changed the dome images. Where the nebula had been, there was the image of a world. Jane stared. It was beautiful. It looked a lot like Earth. It was marbled, blue and white, and looked to have some greenish or brownish land masses, but given the distance and the size of the image, it was hard to tell.

  “Evelyn, that’s wonderful!” Jane said, turning and giving her a hug that Evelyn clearly wasn’t ready for but seemed to enjoy nonetheless.

  “It is, Jane. It is wonderful news. But there’s a problem too.”

  Jane let go of Evelyn.

  “What?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Well, it’s a lot farther than it looks. Without the Leap Frog, at our current speed, it’s going to take us a long time to get there.”

  “How long, Evelyn?”

  “About forty years.”

  Jane was speechless and stared at Evelyn as if that would cause her to change her mind.

  “Forty years?”

  “Forty years.”

  Jane wasn’t sure what to think. As the reality of what Evelyn said slowly sank in, Jane’s life flashed before her eyes, or rather the life she thought she was going to have.

  Forty years? If it was true, she’d be almost sixty before they got there. Almost sixty before she would set foot on real land. Almost sixty before she would ever see Tate again. Her kids would be grown and would have kids of their own. She wasn’t even married, and she would be a grandparent before they arrived. And they all would have lived almost all their lives, trapped on Vista, with nothing to keep them going other than the hope of a life on a strange planet they wouldn’t see for forty long years.

  Jane started to feel a panicky sensation in her gut, the nervous energy starting to build, and her mind started to whirl with questions. How am I going to tell Dad? How am I going to tell the kids? How am I going to live my life in this bubble?

  Feeling her breath getting short, Jane heard the footsteps of someone running toward her. Glancing away from Evelyn, she looked toward the playground and saw Joseph running up in his own effortful way. His face was sweaty from playing with the others, and he was winded, but the joy on his face seemed to be coming from somewhere deep within him.

  “Miss Jane,” he called out, pulling up a few yards short of them, “can Evelyn come play? We’re playing tag—boys against girls—and we need her help.”

  Jane looked down at Evelyn, who was already looking at Jane with a surprised expression. Neither of them spoke, and then Jane, her thoughts stunted, looked back at Joseph. She felt the warmth of his joy, the joy of being in and loving the moment. It felt like the light when they traveled through space. She could feel it soaking into her, relaxing her, and she grew calm.

  “Miss Jane?” Joseph asked, still smiling.

  Jane looked at Evelyn. “How about it, Evelyn?” Jane asked. “You want to go play with the other kids?”

  Evelyn looked at Jane then at Joseph and back at Jane, seemingly unsure about what to do next. “But, what about the—?”

  Jane smiled at her, shaking her head gently to interrupt. “It’s okay, Evelyn. Go play. We’ll have plenty of time to figure all that out later.”

  A smile grew on Evelyn’s face. “Thanks, Jane,” she said, grabbing Jane around the waist and giving her a hug. Then, peeling away, Jane watched with a smile as Joseph and Evelyn ran off toward the playground together.

  The End

  DOPPELGANGER GIRL

  The exodus continues with DOPPELGANGER GIRL, book two of the Stargazer Series. Continue reading for the first chapter.

  BEAUTIFUL

  The lake shimmered like shards of glass in the sun. It was enormous, but the water was strangely calm, and she felt like she could cast a stone into it from the shore and watch the ripples roll out for miles.

  She knelt, letting the tips of her fingers touch the cool clear water, feeling the ever-so-subtle shift in the water rise over her fingernail and then fall back down to the tip. She pushed her fingers deeper into the water, touching the salt-white sand,
and noticed the flecks of black, as if someone had sprinkled pepper in it. The sand felt coarse, sharp against her skin. She pushed her fingers deeper, packing the cool, heavy wetness of the sand into her palms, squeezing, and looked out into the water.

  Quickly the shore fell away, disappearing into the blue and then blackness of the lake, and she could see the twinkling movements deep within its darkness. Not a second later, thousands of tiny, almost-transparent fish came to greet their strange visitor. They swirled around her hands for a moment and then, perhaps tiring of the novelty of their ten-fingered guest, left just as quickly.

  Waving her sandy hands in the cool water and then shaking them gently, she stood, turning to look behind her.

  The plains stretched out lazily for miles—fifty miles or so by her estimation—and while she couldn’t see where the plains ended and the forest on the other side began, she could most certainly see the mountains beyond. At such a distance, they looked like someone had painted them on the side of a great wall, leaving them to bleach in the sun until they were little more than a fading memory. The mountains were tall, with the one in the center soaring over forty thousand feet into the icy pale grayness above. Even so far away, it was intimidating, and she couldn’t help but feel that if the mountain ever toppled over, it would crush everyone who dared to look at it, purely out of spite.

  She had never seen anything so breathtaking anywhere on Earth. But then again, this wasn’t Earth.

  “Evelyn, will you hurry up?”

  Evelyn turned away from her mountain, glancing over her shoulder at the interrupter of her moment, returning her gaze quickly to the granite monolith on the horizon.

  “Yeah … coming,” she replied under her breath, almost out of respect, as if the mountain might be listening, disturbed by her—the intruder.

  “We have a lot to unload here,” the interrupter said, breaking the silence again.

  Evelyn shook her head and turned to walk across the sand.

  “I said I’m coming, Jane,” she barked, annoyed at losing the last bit of her fleeting moment. “Give me a break, will ya? I’m sixteen years old, and I’ve spent a grand total of twenty-seven minutes standing on actual land.”

  Glancing up at Jane, Evelyn could see the glare soften in her eyes. Jane set down the crate she was holding, the thin corded muscles in her shoulders and biceps relaxing enough as she did that they no longer looked like tension cables.

  “Right,” Jane said, smiling and chuckling. “Forgot about that.”

  Evelyn watched Jane turn and disappear up the ramp into the belly of the shuttle, reappearing a few seconds later with another crate just as big as the first.

  “Tell you what,” Jane started, dropping the crate with a sigh. “Help me out with the smaller stuff before it gets too hot out here. Then we’ll take a break and go for a swim … That’s something else you’ve never done,” she added with a mischievous grin.

  “Right,” Evelyn said, a smile flickering on her lips. She knew that going for a swim would be too dangerous, no matter how refreshing the lake looked. They knew nothing about what might be lurking in those waters, but she didn’t want to ruin the moment.

  “Great idea, sis,” Evelyn said, following Jane up the ramp. Stepping to the top, her eyes quickly adjusted from the unfiltered brightness outside, and she watched Jane grab another of the large crates full of supplies for their camp. The muscles in Jane’s shoulders and arms rippled, and Evelyn couldn’t help but admire her older sister. Six years on a floating space boat eating mostly manufactured food hadn’t affected her at all. She was still beautiful and probably fitter than when they left Earth.

  Evelyn reached to pick up a smaller crate, looked down at her own biceps, and was quickly disappointed. They may have shared the same DNA, but Jane was obviously putting it to better use than she was. I’ll have to work on these, Evelyn thought, flapping her elbow and looking for a hint of tone in her arm. Frustrated and shaking her head, she walked back down the ramp with her box.

  “Are you really sixteen, Evie?” Jane asked, setting her crate down.

  “Yup, sixteen … or somewhere close to it,” Evelyn replied.

  Jane put her hands on her hips and furrowed her brow. “Close to sixteen … you don’t know for sure?”

  “Well, not really,” she added, shrugging her shoulders and setting down her box. “Biologically speaking, I’m sixteen. But I guess technically, my body is only eight, because my tissues grew to about nine years old in the first year. You know that expression about growin’ like a weed? Well, that was definitely me. But, yeah, biologically, I’m about sixteen.”

  Jane quickly put her hands to her mouth. “My God, Evie. I just realized we’ve never celebrated a birthday for you. I don’t even know when it is!”

  Evelyn giggled and turned to walk back up the ramp into the shuttle. “That’s okay, Jane. Don’t feel bad. I don’t really have one,” she said over her shoulder, and as soon as she did, a shudder flitted up her spine. It was another reminder that she wasn’t like everyone else. She glanced down at the boxes, and felt as if the coolness of the metal floor had crept up her legs into her chest.

  Jane jogged up the ramp, and Evelyn heard her footsteps halt. “Evie?”

  Evelyn clenched her jaw. Not wanting to linger on the moment any longer than she had to, she picked up the box and tried to take a wide loop around the bay. “Just forget it, Jane. It’s okay.”

  As Evie tried to scoot around her, Jane grabbed her arm. “No, Evie …” she started as she stepped in front of her. Though she was only two inches taller—another flaw Evelyn knew would be corrected in due time—Jane knelt slightly to look her in the eye. “It’s not okay. Sometimes I forget you’re different—”

  “Yeah … but I’m reminded of it every day,” Evelyn interrupted, tucking the small box under her arm, refusing to look her sister in the eye.

  “Oh …” Jane sighed, letting go of her arm. “I get it.”

  Relieved to be free, Evelyn gave her a half-hearted smile and walked down the ramp with her box.

  “Well,” Jane called down after her, “there’s one way to fix this … We need to pick out a birthday for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jane,” Evelyn said, rolling her eyes.

  “No, really … how about today?”

  “Well, that’s a little arbitrary, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. It’s a special day … It’s the day we arrived here …” Jane waved her arms around, gesturing to the open spaces around her “… It’s the day we arrived at the planet you found for us. Why not make today your birthday? What day is it anyway?”

  “Jane, we’re not on Earth anymore. Our days are a little longer on this planet … Our year is a little longer … We don’t have the same number of days in a month or months in a year …”

  Jane crossed her arms and cocked her eyebrow, obviously not appreciating Evelyn’s explanation.

  “It’s June first.”

  “Great,” Jane said, relaxing her arms and smiling. “There you go. June first is your birthday. Today is your sixteenth birthday.”

  “Can I be seventeen?”

  “No, you can’t. Sixteen it is.”

  “Great, another year of hormones.”

  “Trust me, I’m doing you a favor. One day you’ll be glad to be a year younger. Plus, you really don’t want to miss your sweet sixteen. And what are you talking about … hormones? You have the clearest complexion I’ve ever seen.”

  “Jane, my body went from zero to nine in a year, just in time for a training bra and puberty. I’m going to be seventeen—”

  “Sixteen, Evie,” Jane corrected.

  “Okay, fine. I’m going to be sixteen—today. I haven’t known anything but hormones.”

  Jane nodded, curling her lip. “Yeah, I get your point, but today we can celebrate your sixteenth birthday … and I’m sorry we missed the others … really, Evie.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you know, being differ
ent isn’t so bad. If you weren’t different, you never would have found this place for us. You never would have made it possible for us to travel here … Geez, Evie, if it weren’t for you, all the colonists up on Vista would have died before we even had the chance to leave Earth. Millions of people owe their lives to you.”

  “Let’s not go overboard here. Hundreds of people, maybe. Not millions.”

  “No, Evie … millions. We’re going back at some point … to bring people here. Maybe millions will come … you never know. And it wouldn’t be possible if you weren’t different. You’re brilliant. You’re beautiful—”

  “Jane, we have the same DNA.”

  “Like I said … beautiful,” Jane added, emphasizing the word again with a grin.

  Evelyn blushed.

  “Just remember, you’re different, but you’re perfect just the way you are.”

  “Thanks, Jane.”

  “Hey, what are sisters for?” Jane added with a shrug of her shoulders. A moment passed, and Jane scooted around to grab her around the shoulder, leading Evelyn down to the water. “So, to celebrate your sweet sixteen, let’s go for a swim.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Yes, it is. You’re thinking too much.”

  “That’s usually the case,” Evelyn mumbled to herself.

  Letting go of Evelyn, Jane walked down to the edge of the water and stripped off her clothes down to her underwear, gently tossing them up the beach. Evelyn looked at her sister’s perfectly toned body as she waded into the cool water, and then watched her disappear into a ring of ripples as she dove into the lake. Well, eight more years until I’m twenty-four, she thought. With genes like that, I guess I have something to look forward to.

  “Come on, Evie,” Jane said, coming up for air a good ten yards out from the shore.

  Evelyn walked down to the edge of the water and, less confidently than her older sister, peeled off her own clothes, tossing them next to Jane’s. She blushed, wondering why she felt embarrassed to be in her underwear on a planet with almost zero people on it, but she couldn’t help herself.