The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  I wrinkled my nose.

  “Well, no, wait, I think when I was seven I fell off my bike and needed stitches.”

  “You don’t remember needing stitches?”

  “You know how pain is. It messes with your memories.” I thought of Theo. He’d been a bit more normal lately, and I wondered if his head still hurt or if he even remembered how he’d acted just after his latency.

  She stood up and strode around to the back of her house, so I followed her. This time I sat on one of the swings. She climbed up the slide and on top of the monkey bars, where she sat with her legs hanging down. “I wonder what kind of seedlings Mr. Quist is going to give us,” I said.

  “I hope there are lots of berries. I really like berries.”

  “Me too. I was wondering, though, if we were allowed to plant a real garden in the woods.”

  “I’ll review the regulations,” she said.

  I laughed.

  “What?”

  “It’s just a funny way to say it. Anyway, it’s not an actual regulation, probably.”

  “You haven’t read the regulations?”

  “Well, not cover to cover.” Everyone had a thick copy of the Kritopia Guidebook for Old Harmonie in their house, but no one had ever sat down and read the whole thing. “I’ve read the part about the history, and some of the philosophy. I think that’s interesting. But I haven’t gotten into the nitty-gritty rules or anything.”

  “Who’s talking funny now?”

  “What?”

  “Nitty-gritty? You sound like my grandma Aggie.”

  “ ‘Nitty-gritty’ is not a grandmother phrase. ‘Fiddlesticks’ is a grandmother phrase.”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks!” Ilana cried out. “I have forgotten to review the nitty-gritty of the regulations!”

  I began pumping the swing. “Oh, fiddlesticks! You’ve gotten far higher than me!”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks!” Ilana said as she stood up on the monkey bars. “I’m falling to my doom.”

  And then she was.

  Falling.

  No, not falling.

  Flying.

  And then, before I could even yell her name, she landed on her feet, crouched down with one hand on the ground like a superhero in a movie.

  All of this before my brain had a chance to figure it out. It was like the camera couldn’t resolve the image.

  “Ilana!”

  But she was laughing. “It’s hardly a jump at all,” she said.

  “Ilana,” I said again, quieter this time.

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” Ilana said. “I fear I’ve upset my friend Mori.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It was just a game.”

  I shook my head. “You could’ve been hurt. Badly. You could’ve broken an arm or a leg or cracked your skull open.”

  “It’s only two point seven meters high. I’ve jumped off of there a million times. Or at least a hundred.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You shouldn’t do things like that.” But all the while I was wondering why I was so upset. I had seen Theo and Julia do things much crazier than that before. And me. I had done things like that once, when I was very little. I remember Julia and me pumping higher, and higher, and higher, then seeing who could jump the farthest. She usually won, but I didn’t mind, because it felt like I was an eagle soaring on a thermal. Now, though, just the thought of it made me sick to my stomach. I could see every possible bad scenario.

  “Is it time for dinner yet?”

  “Sure. Let’s go inside.”

  She started walking toward the sliding door at the back of the house, but then she stopped and turned so that we were staring right at each other. She looked down at me, and I tilted my head up so that I was staring right into her aquamarine eyes. “I’d never do anything to scare you on purpose. And I won’t ever do that again.”

  As soon as we stepped inside her cool house, I heard her parents’ laughter coming from the kitchen. Ilana stopped. “My parents are different,” she said.

  “I know,” I practically sighed.

  “No. Different.”

  “Everyone thinks their parents are weird,” I said. “Even Benji, and his are the nicest.”

  “I didn’t say weird. I said different.”

  “Are there, like, things I shouldn’t say or do?” Julia’s mother didn’t like people to use nonspecific words. It physically pains her, Julia said. Whenever you were around her you had to be careful not to say “stuff” or “things,” or even “dirt” instead of “soil,” or “germs” instead of “microbes.” We usually tried to only go over there when it was her dad’s day at home.

  “No, not that. It’s just that, back in California, sometimes they made my friends uncomfortable.”

  “Because they’re so beautiful?”

  Ilana looked me over. “Did you get dressed up to come here?”

  I looked down at my outfit. This old thing? I wanted to say. Instead I croaked out, “Maybe.”

  She tugged on one of her curls, then let it boing back up. “This is exactly what I mean. They’re just people, you know.”

  “But you have to admit they are especially attractive people. Like you.”

  “That’s just how we’re constructed,” she said.

  I didn’t want to get into an argument with her about how outsides do influence our perceptions, even if they shouldn’t. And I didn’t want to talk to her about how probably she wasn’t even constructed at all. Beauty like that had to come from nature. I said, “I’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t.

  Ilana’s father’s eyes looked like green marbles, clear and shiny. They took in my full measure, warmly, pulling the good to the surface like a magnet. He took my hand in both of his and shook it while saying, “Thank you so much for being such a welcoming friend to Ilana.”

  “Your eyes are very green, Dr. Naughton. I mean, Mr. Naughton. Or—”

  He laughed, warm as sunshine. “It is doctor, but call me Greg. And my lovely wife is Meryl.”

  Ilana huffed and tugged me into the dining room. It had an old wooden table, stained dark with nicks and scratches. There was a brightly colored runner down the middle, with two large bowls of fruit. In between the bowls was a plate of cheeses. I glanced over my shoulder at Ilana. “See,” she mouthed.

  “You don’t—” I began. “I mean, I’ve never seen something like this from the delivery service.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s all local,” Ilana’s mother assured me. “Over in Fruitlands they have a terrific dairy farm, and then in Point Loma there’s a goat farm. That’s blue goat cheese. And then we visited a berry farm in Stow—”

  “No, not Stow,” Ilana’s dad said. “It was in Harvard.”

  “Wait, you left Old Harmonie? For strawberries?” I knew people went outside of the gates for things they needed sometimes, but for something as simple as strawberries? That seemed like an unnecessary risk.

  Ilana’s mom laughed. “That’s where the best ones are.”

  “We get strawberries here,” I said, still trying to work through what they were telling me: that they had been willing to take the risk of going outside of Old Harmonie—not to mention the indignity of decontamination—just to get strawberries.

  Ilana’s mom wrinkled her nose. “A shadow of strawberries, maybe. Not the real deal.”

  “Did you go?” I asked Ilana.

  She shook her head, then picked up a strawberry and took a bite.

  Ilana’s dad pointed to the cheese tray. “You really need to try the blue goat cheese. It’s to die for.”

  “I’m not supposed to eat anything with mold in it.”

  Ilana’s dad raised his eyebrows, and her mom gave a tinkling laugh. “I guess you’d better stick to the cheddar, then,” she said as she lowered herself into a chair with arms that curved around and seemed to hug her. She hooked one leg over one of the arms, grabbed a bunch of grapes, and began popping them into her mouth.

  “I need to wash my hands
,” I said.

  “Of course,” Meryl replied. “You, too, Ilana.”

  Ilana scrunched up her face but followed me into the kitchen. “Wash your hands?”

  “I always wash my hands before I eat. Everyone does.” I switched on the tap.

  “What’s on them? Is everyone extra dirty here?”

  I felt myself blushing, so I jammed my hands under the warm water and scrubbed hard with the pumice soap they had. “No, of course not. It’s just, you know, there are germs, things you can’t see—microbes.”

  “We don’t have that problem in Calliope.”

  “Maybe it’s everyone in Calliope who’s dirty,” I muttered, then stepped out of the way so she could wash her own hands.

  When we came back into the room, Ilana’s father was pouring wine into two glasses. Ilana’s mom sliced off a thin bit of the cheese with the green vein. “So,” she said. “Tell me your story.”

  “My story?”

  “Yes. The story of Mori.”

  “Mom,” Ilana said. “Not everyone has a story.”

  Her mom laughed and said, “Well, that’s a horrible thing to say about a guest.” She turned back to me.

  “Um, well, I was born here.”

  “Not here?” her mom asked, pointing at the floor.

  “No.” I laughed. “At the clinic in the village.”

  “Not in the hospital in Center Harmonie?”

  I shook my head. “My mom said they almost didn’t make it there since I was born early and I came so fast.”

  Ilana’s parents exchanged a look and I wondered if this was the type of information that was supposed to stay in a family. “Anyway, I grew up here. My parents both work in the center. My mom is a fertility specialist, and my dad works in epidemiology. Not like you.”

  “Like us?” Ilana’s father asked. He sat down on a bench on the far side of the table, and gestured for me to sit down, too. I took a seat and Ilana filled a plate with fruit and cheddar for me. She took a huge piece of the blue cheese for herself.

  “You know, artists and all.”

  Ilana’s mom laughed again. I don’t think I’d ever heard my mother laugh that much. “We’re not artists.”

  “Not exactly,” her dad said.

  “I work in robotics,” her mom said. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Artificial intelligence, mostly.”

  “Like the teaching modules?” I asked.

  “Well, not that project, exactly. My work is a little more sophisticated.”

  “And I’m in materials research,” Greg said.

  Benji’s dad worked in materials research, too. He used to bring home goopy polymers for us to play with when we were little.

  “I’m sorry. I just thought—”

  “I love that you think we’re artists,” Ilana’s father said as he plucked a grape from a bunch. “You still haven’t told us your story.”

  “Maybe Ilana is right,” I said. “I don’t know that I have a story.”

  “Well, where are you happiest?”

  I started to say with my friends, but that wasn’t entirely true. “Outside. At night. In the summer. Sometimes my dad pitches a tent for me in the yard and I sleep there. I like to walk out in the moonlight.”

  Ilana’s mom was peeling an orange with bright skin and purple-red fruit. A blood orange; my brain pulled the name out of its deeper memory banks. “Well, now. There you go. Mori the night-walker.”

  13

  When I woke the next morning, a little later than usual, I slipped my glasses on and waited for the room to come into focus. “Mori!” my mom called up the stairs. “Ilana’s here to see you.”

  I clomped downstairs still in my pajamas, my hair a tangled snarl at the back of my head. Ilana was standing in our front hallway wearing orange shorts and a T-shirt with thin stripes. I rubbed my eyes under my glasses.

  “What are you doing today?” she asked.

  “Um, the same thing we do every day. Hang out. Maybe go swimming.”

  “No!” she said. “We are going to Center Harmonie. We’re going to the museum. Hurry up or we’ll miss the bus.”

  “To the museum? With who? Is one of your parents bringing us?”

  “No, we’ll just take the bus, and then we can take a KritaCar home, or go hang out in the park or the central offices until the buses head home.”

  I reached a finger up beneath my glasses and wiped some crust away. The museum was one of my favorite places to go, but I’d never gone anywhere on the bus alone.

  Ilana stepped closer to me. “Listen,” she whispered. “They have a whole section on edible plants—”

  “I know,” I said, feeling myself starting to wake up. “The botany exhibit is my favorite part of the whole museum!”

  “We need to educate ourselves. So come on, get dressed.”

  “I need to ask my parents.”

  She frowned. “Really?”

  “Yes.” I laughed. “I can’t just hop on the bus and head into the city. Geez. Come on, they’re in the kitchen.” I was going to have to come up with a good story to convince them to let us go, a really good reason why we needed to go to that museum.

  Mom was dressed in her work clothes, but Dad had on shorts and a polo shirt and his leather sandals. They were drinking coffee at the kitchen table. “Ilana and I want to take an educational trip to the museum. The Old Harmonie Museum. We can take the bus with you, Mom, and then we can meet you to take the bus home or a KritaCar.”

  Dad started laughing. “You have it all planned out, don’t you.”

  “Not bad for first thing in the morning, right?” Ilana asked. She flashed her brightest smile.

  Mom took a sip from her coffee. “What do you want to see there?”

  “I want to show Ilana the botany exhibit, and also about our history here, since she’s new. Also, I thought maybe going to the museum and learning about all the things we have done here in Old Harmonie could give me a better idea of what I might want for my latency.”

  “Well, now, that’s laying it on a bit thick, wouldn’t you say?” Dad asked.

  I tried to smile like Ilana. “We really do need to pursue all options.”

  The sun streamed through our picture window, and the grass outside was a bright, bright green. It really was a lovely day. Maybe that’s what swayed my usually cautious mother. She turned to Ilana. “You’ll watch her the whole time?”

  “Of course,” Ilana said.

  “And report back immediately if anything happens? I can give you our numbers.”

  “Mom, she’s not my babysitter. She’s my friend.”

  “I’m just covering all the bases.”

  “Bases covered,” Ilana said.

  Mom sighed, then did her crinkly-eyed sad-happy smile. “Fine. But you’ve got ten minutes to get out the door. I’ll find a protein bar and some fruit for you. Now go get dressed and get that bird’s nest out of your hair.”

  Ilana and I clasped hands and ran upstairs.

  We held hands the whole time on the KritaBus, too, giggling together. Ms. Staarsgard was in the front of the bus with the other executives, and she turned and looked back at us. I thought she would shake her head, or put her finger to her lips to shush us, but she just smiled and returned to her conversation with the other administrators. The grown-ups are always telling us that distinctions don’t matter, but you couldn’t tell that from the way they split themselves up: executives at the front, scientists—grouping themselves by specialty—taking up most of the middle, and the handful of artists in the back with us.

  After the drop-off at KritaCorp, the bus rounded a curve and stopped. Ilana and I tumbled into the garden outside of the Old Harmonie Museum of Our History and Our Future. The building was made up of two tall towers that twisted together and were connected by footbridges: a double helix. One strand was our past, and the other was our future, which had rotating exhibits of the latest research being done at Krita. I thought it was just perfect, the way it showed how i
mportant both the past and the future were, and how they were tied to each other.

  I still couldn’t believe that my mom had let us ride the bus into the city on our own (well, sort of on our own—she rode in the middle of the bus on her way to work), and that we would be allowed to take a KritaCar home, all by ourselves. The woman at the welcome desk raised an eyebrow, but then waved us in.

  I brought Ilana to the indoor botanical garden first. It was warm compared to the air-cooled main hall. “They have a sample of every kind of plant that ever grew in this area. Ones that are still alive, and ones that are extinct.” I had spent ages in here, sketching the plants before carefully labeling them. We went all through the exhibit, looking at the plants and trying to decide which ones we had seen out at Oakedge, and which of those we could eat.

  “Come on,” she said once we had seen all of the plants. “What else is cool to see here?”

  We came out of the exhibit on the other side, into the hall of flags. There was a huge flag to represent the heritage of each of the original founders of Old Harmonie, and smaller ones for the newcomers. I knew exactly where the Japanese and Scottish flags could be found, across from each other in the hall. The Scottish flag was blue with a white X across it, and the Japanese flag had a red circle on the white background; they were among the more simple ones, and I liked that. “Which ones are yours?” I asked.

  She seemed perplexed. “Can I choose whichever one I want?”

  “No.” I laughed. “Those are mine.” I pointed. “Japan and Scotland.”

  “How do you know?” She looked me up and down.

  “Well, my dad’s heritage is Scottish and my mom’s is Japanese.”

  “They came from there? Your dad doesn’t have an accent, and anyway, I thought your great-grandmother was a founder.”

  “She was. I don’t mean that’s where they came here from, but that’s where they trace their heritage back to, and so that’s what I am.”

  “You’re not thirteen yet.” She frowned. “Isn’t that when you find out your genetic makeup here?”

  “That’s just your genetics. It’s not who you are.”