The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  The scent of the basement rushed out to meet us—dank and alive. It smelled like the soil in our garden in Oakedge, mixed with the musty boxes of Baba’s that Mom kept stored in the eaves of our house.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Benji said. “Isn’t this like breaking in? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “No one lives here,” Ilana said.

  “No one alive, anyway,” Benji said.

  “No one lives here,” Ilana said again. “Who’s going to care?” She pulled a flashlight out of her backpack and shined it down the stairs.

  Theo went first. He had a big metal flashlight that cast a narrow band of golden light down the stairs. I stayed close behind him. As we descended, I realized that he had a sweet-spicy smell to him, like cinnamon, only all his own. I wondered how I could have known someone my whole life, practically, and not realized that about him.

  We stopped at the bottom of the stairs, a tight little circle of us. Theo, Ilana, and Julia shined their flashlights all around. The walls were lined with shelves, and the shelves were full of cloudy jars. Benji stepped forward and put his hand on one. “Are those eyeballs?” he squeaked.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Theo said.

  “Then what are they?” Julia asked.

  “Canning,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me. I moved closer to the shelves and squinted in the faint light. “Green beans.” I pointed. “Pickles, carrots, tomatoes.”

  “In those jars?” Julia asked.

  “People used to do that,” I said. “They’d grow extra and then can them to get through the winter. Baba told me about it. Now it seems like too much work, that’s what she said.”

  “And the eyeballs?” Benji asked.

  Ilana pointed her flashlight right at them. “They look like eggs,” she said.

  This was something else my great-grandmother had told me about, before she died. “Pickled eggs. Baba said they were delicious, but she didn’t know how to make them.”

  “Ugh,” Julia said. “That sounds disgusting.”

  “These ones look like they melted.” Benji picked up a smaller jar filled with clouded golden liquid.

  “Honey,” Ilana said.

  “Really?” Benji struggled to twist open the lid. “I love honey.” He jammed his finger right in and pulled it out, covered in the sticky stuff, and pressed it into his mouth.

  “Wait! You don’t know how old that is,” Julia said.

  “Honey doesn’t go bad,” I told her.

  Julia narrowed her eyes as I scooped my finger in. It was cool and smooth, and in my mouth it tasted like eating a warm sunny day, nothing like the super-sweet stuff we had in our condiments station, filled by the deliver bot each week.

  Theo took the jar from Benji and took a taste himself. His eyes grew wide before shutting halfway. He looked like he did when we were kids, when he was still chubby and goofy.

  We passed the jar around, and even Julia took a taste. “There are shelves and shelves of it,” Benji said. “This is amazing. There’s enough for all of Firefly Lane, maybe even the village.”

  “We can’t tell anyone about this, numb nuts,” Theo said.

  “He’s right,” Julia agreed. “This has to be our secret. Our honey hangout.”

  “The Firefly Five at the Honey Hangout,” Benji said. “Sounds like a funny TV show.”

  I glanced over at Julia. She didn’t tell Benji we weren’t the Firefly Five anymore, and I figured that was a good sign.

  “Come on, there’s more to see,” Ilana said. We made our way farther into the basement. It got cooler as we moved, and I found myself inching closer to Julia and Theo. Theo’s hand brushed against mine, and I thought he might try to hold it, and I wondered what I would do if he did. Instead he switched his flashlight into that hand and veered off toward a stack of boxes.

  I found a table full of notebooks with speckled black-and-white covers. Each one had a month and a year written on the front in slanted cursive. I opened one to a page toward the middle of the book. At the top of the page was a sketch of green grass, flowering trees, and a small garden. Each plant was labeled. It looked familiar and I realized it was the backyard of number 9. Pollen and nectar galore, but still the bees suffer, it said. Brood nest still small. Many bee mummies on bottom board.

  “I think it’s notes about the bees,” I said. I kept flipping through. My eyes were drawn to the careful sketches that looked the way my own drawings did in my head, before I actually tried to get them down on paper. Other pages were nearly filled with words, all in that slanted script. It was hard to read in the dark of the basement, but I was able to pick out some sections written in a heavier hand:

  Today I lunched with the Krita executives (Me? A lady who lunches?) and then to cleanse my palate, I checked on the hives. It was a beautiful day out on the farm, with a soft breeze coming from the west.

  It was a bit like the journals we had to keep, and I realized that’s what I was holding: Dr. Varden’s journal. She was much more detailed than I ever was, especially about the bees:

  Many bees with pollen under their wings, a pretty shade of bright sunshine yellow. Queen Bee was seen on second frame of middle box. Appears healthy. Brood pattern is consistent and complete.

  More Krita workers coming from Boston. Krita building even faster than these bees. Ugly little pillbox houses. My Firefly Lane is still safe from it, at least.

  I flipped through the pages of the journal and read more while my friends chatted around me. The taste of honey was still on my lips. Then I saw Baba’s name, and my heart galloped away.

  The hive must survive. And so we say good-bye to Queen Victoria and hello to Queen Elizabeth. Lucy tells me it’s sentimental of me to name them, and she is right. But perhaps there is more of that in me than I or anyone else suspects. Perhaps that is why I cling so hard to my vision of this place and resist the changes of the Krita board. But then, perhaps I ought to take a hint from Queen Victoria and abdicate my little throne.

  On and on I read until I felt like I knew these bees and the person who cared for them. Dr. Varden had always seemed like a person from a time I could never connect to, as far away as Mae Jemison or Marie Curie. But these books made her real, someone I could touch.

  The honeybees serve a purpose. Without pollinators, up to 90% of plant life would be lost—including much of the food we eat.

  Humans? The necessity for our species is less clear. I’ll work to save the bees.

  She talked about how bee colonies had collapsed in the winter of 2006 and 2007, back when there was no Old Harmonie, only Dr. Varden’s farm. They simply vanished. Beekeepers checked their hives in the spring, and instead of finding a warm mass of buzzing bees, they found nothing. No bees. No corpses. Gone.

  It is still not certain what caused the Colony Collapse of aught six and aught seven. Most likely it was not one thing, but many: the combined deleterious effects of stressed colonies, pesticides (including the ones used to fight off the mites that attack our bees), the mites themselves, limited diets in the agricultural industry, pathogens—a dangerous cocktail overflowing.

  And so it goes,

  and so it goes,

  and so we go.

  “What’ch’ya got there?” Ilana asked, peeking over my shoulder. I saw Julia on the other side of the room, digging through a box of old clothes.

  “It’s a journal, I think. Mostly about bees, but other stuff, too.”

  “Cool.”

  “I think so, too,” I said. “Maybe it has the answers I’m looking for.”

  “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Ilana said. “We should go upstairs.”

  A rickety set of old wooden stairs led upward. It was right when Ilana put her hand on the banister that we heard a robotic wailing noise coming from outside: high then low, high then low. Each village had a siren on top of its tallest building. When it rang, it meant get to shelter right away.

  “A safe-in-place drill?” Julia asked.

  No one knew. “We�
��re sheltered here,” I said.

  “We can’t stay here,” Benji said. “Everyone will be looking for us. Mori’s house is closest. Let’s go!”

  We hurried out of the house. Ilana and Theo put the bulkhead back on, though at a crooked angle. We didn’t think anyone would notice. Back on our bikes, we raced home.

  16

  Dad was waiting at the door for me. He threw it open and ushered us all in. “We were in the woods,” I lied.

  “The closest house,” he said. “Why didn’t you go to the Russerts’?”

  The closest house to number 9 was actually the Collins family, who had somehow managed to get an exception to the two-child rule, and had two sets of twins under five. As we’d raced by, Mrs. Collins was running across the yard with a toddler under each arm.

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say.

  “Oh, indeed,” Dad replied. “Go on inside until we know what this is all about. I’ll let your parents know where you are.”

  “It’s not a drill?” Julia asked.

  “No, Julia, it’s not a drill.”

  “It’s funny how the houses are all the same,” Ilana mused.

  “They aren’t that way in California?” I asked.

  “California?” she said, looking confused. “No, I suppose they aren’t.”

  “Are you okay?” Benji asked.

  Ilana looked upward, as if into her brain, then shook her head. “Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry. We had a lot of these at Calliope. Lockdowns, we called them. Sometimes they’d last for days.”

  “Days?” Benji asked.

  “You got good food?” Theo asked me.

  “Some,” I said.

  “We’re not going to be here for days,” Julia said.

  “And anyway, isn’t it better to be together?” I asked. “I mean, Theo, really, you want to spend all that time with your nanny? Or Benji, with your sister?” We made our way toward the back of the house. “You know, I can’t even remember the reasons for the siren,” I said. We had learned them way back in first or second grade.

  “Weather, Outbreak, Outsiders, Other,” Benji said. “WOOO! How could you forget?”

  “I hope it’s weather,” Julia said. “That could pass quickly.”

  “Right,” I said. “Like maybe a tornado.” We had never had a tornado, but I’d read that the sky turned green. They had them a lot in the Wrightsville Kritopia, where they’d sweep across the flat landscape. I wondered what it would feel like to see the sky the color of pale pea soup. Our sky, though, was bright blue and dotted with puffy white clouds. “But I don’t think it’s weather.”

  “Did you take that from the house?” Julia asked.

  I had forgotten that I still had the notebook in my hand. I’d ridden all the way home with it tucked into my armpit. “I didn’t mean to,” I said. But I had, hadn’t I? I’d wanted a chance to read more. “I’ll put it back the next time we go.”

  “Why would we go again?” Julia asked.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Ilana replied.

  “We have to get out of here first.” Julia sniffed. “I mean, you might want to stay here forever, but some of us have other stuff to do.”

  Dad poked his head into the kitchen. “It’s all of Old Harmonie,” he said. “Your mom sent a message that the siren sounded at the corporation, too. But there’s nothing to worry about.”

  My friends shifted next to me. None of them were going to challenge my father. “All of Old Harmonie is under lockdown, and we shouldn’t worry?” I asked.

  “Lockdown?” He shook his head. “It’s just a precaution. If it were serious, we’d have more instructions.”

  “Right,” Benji said. “Just a precaution. Let’s make the best of it. What’d you do during all those lockdowns, Ilana?”

  “Oh, you know, play games. Cards.”

  “We have cards,” I said. “Let me get them.” I dug through a drawer on a sideboard and found an old beat-up deck of cards with pictures from each of the Kritopias on them. My friends had sat down around the kitchen table. “What should we play?” I asked, tapping the deck against the tabletop. “War? Go Fish?”

  “How about Snap?” Ilana suggested.

  “I don’t know that game,” I said.

  “It must be a fabulous Calliope game,” Julia said.

  I handed the deck to Ilana, who began to shuffle.

  “I’ve been called in,” Dad said, peeking his head back into the room.

  “Outbreak,” Theo said, nodding his head so his thick hair flopped into his eyes, and he had to push it back with the heel of his hand like a toddler.

  Diseases could spread quickly. Back twenty or thirty years before, a virulent strain of pertussis—whooping cough—took out a big chunk of the population of South Boston. All those people gone, just because of a cough. A bunch of the people living there tried to get out, but that part of the city was put under quarantine and no one was supposed to enter or leave. Krita sent drones with medicine, but it was too late for most people. There’s a rumor that some of the people did break through the quarantine and made it all the way to Old Harmonie, but that would have been a tremendous journey. And even if they had made it here, we couldn’t risk letting all those sick people inside our fences.

  Dad shrugged on a lightweight coat, which meant he was planning to be out past sunset. “Nothing for you to worry about. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Stay inside, okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. Even if I had a choice, there was no way I would go outside during a safe-in-place. Just the thought of it made my stomach plummet.

  Distracted, Dad left his phone on the counter. I grabbed it and ran to the front door, but he was already driving away in the KritaCar that had arrived to bring him to Center Harmonie.

  When I got back into the kitchen, my friends were staring at one another in silence.

  “We’re going to be fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if it was true or not.

  “But it’s an outbreak, Mori,” Benji said.

  “They’re probably just being cautious. Like when I got that stomach bug.”

  I was the only one of my friends who had ever been really sick. Benji got the occasional cold, plus his asthma and allergies. Everyone else was perfectly healthy. When I’d started throwing up, they’d taken me in a sealed shuttle straight to the hospital in Center Harmonie. No one was allowed to see me for seven days. I lived in a bubble, cared for by the mechanical arms operated on the other side of a glass wall by nurses who wore masks just the same. I pretended it was all a dream or a scary movie that I couldn’t turn off. I told myself it was bad, but it wasn’t real, wasn’t actually happening to me.

  I remember for days my brain was so fuzzy, and all the world seemed terrifying. Just stepping onto the ground when I could finally get out of bed, I imagined all the things that could go wrong—a slip, a trip, the ground disappearing beneath me—and wound up crying and crawling back into bed. The doctors said it was perfectly normal, and my mom said it was because I’d been away from other people so long. I guess they were right, because eventually the fear subsided. I was a lot more cautious after that, though—I never wanted to end up back in the hospital.

  I was fine, of course. And I was certain this was going to be something similar. The adults had it under control: that’s what our systems and order were for.

  “If the lockdown is for all of Old Harmonie, it must be something pretty bad,” Julia said. “Something super-contagious.”

  “There are numerous highly contagious diseases,” Ilana said as she contemplated the playing cards.

  “Not helpful,” Theo told her.

  “It’s under control. Let’s just play the card game.” I picked up the deck and tried to shuffle. Several cards fell down onto the table. I scooped them back up. “How many cards should I deal?” I asked Ilana.

  “If it were totally under control, we wouldn’t be in lockdown,” Julia said.

  My father’s phone buzzed. I glanced over and saw the text mes
sage as it scrolled across the screen: ETA? Third possible case. Confirming diagnosis.

  “Third possible case of what?” Theo asked. He was reading over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, scroll back through the messages. It might say.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Fine. I’ll do it,” Julia said, and leaned across the table.

  “No!” I said again, and grabbed the phone before she could.

  “Give me the phone, Mori,” she said. I could feel the anger and panic coming off her in waves.

  I clutched the phone to my chest with my left hand. I still had the deck of cards in my right hand and I was squeezing them so tightly that I could feel each little edge cutting into my palm. “No.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” she said. “Just give me the phone.”

  Next to me, Benji shifted in his seat. “I know you don’t like to break rules and all, but we just need to know. It’s the not knowing that’s killing us. So just look and it probably is something not so bad, and then we’ll all feel better; it’ll be fine.” His words came fast and he couldn’t quite look at me.

  “Mori,” Theo said. “Benji is right. It’s better knowing than not.”

  “That is generally true,” Ilana said. It wasn’t exactly a strong agreement. She was sitting in a chair at the head of the table eating an apple from the fruit bowl on our counter.

  “Fine,” I said, “I’ll do it.” I moved to put the deck of cards down, and they all flew out of my hands and scattered across the table and on the floor. Kings and queens and aces and spades all staring and pointing at me.

  “Fifty-two pickup!” Ilana said merrily.

  “What is wrong with you?” Julia asked her.

  “Getting agitated isn’t going to change the situation,” Ilana replied. She took another bite of her apple, then began sweeping the cards toward herself.

  “I’m only agitated because I don’t know what kind of disease is in our community right now and Mori won’t tell us.”

  “I said I would.”

  But before I could check the phone, Julia lurched forward to grab it. I held tight while she tugged. “Julia, stop! It’s my dad’s phone!”