by Wendy Mass
“What is it?” she asks, exasperated. She leans around him so she can keep an eye on the dancers.
“That’s not really your grandmother,” Ty says.
Annika’s attention snaps back. “I’ve seen old pictures. I know my grandmother when I see her and that’s her.”
I can tell by the way Ty’s left eye has begun to twitch that he can’t believe he has to explain something as basic as how the Afterlives work. “I’ll try to make this as easy to understand as possible,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a four-year-old. “This is your grandfather’s sim, so everyone you see is created from his memory. He is the only real person here. And by real, I mean his essence is still here. His body, of course, isn’t still alive. Following me?”
Annika’s brows furrow in confusion. “So if I go up to my grandfather, he’ll know who I am, but my grandmother won’t?”
Ty shakes his head. “Neither of them will. Your grandfather is truly reliving his day exactly as he experienced it the first time. You won’t be born for another forty years, so he doesn’t know you yet. He will only return to his present self for a brief juncture as the sim gets reset for the next event.” Ty pauses to grab a mini hot dog from a waiter’s plate. I grab one, too, and pop it in my mouth. It melts in the perfect combination of warm dough and salty meat. Delicious!
Annika taps her foot. “And how long till that happens?”
Ty swallows and dabs at his mouth with a napkin. “In your time frame? Let’s see.” He cups his holoscreen carefully in his hands so no one in the sim will see it. “In about a kilosecond. You’ll be able to talk to him then.”
She gets ready to run again but Ty puts out his hand to stop her. “Wait. I said we still have a whole kilosecond.”
“Well, how long is that?”
Ty looks thoughtful. “Let’s see… if every time a human blinks, three hundred million billion attoseconds have passed, then—”
“Attoseconds?”
“You know, the time it takes light to travel the length of three hydrogen atoms. About a billionth of a billionth of a second. Isn’t that how you tell time on Earth?”
“No! We use this.” She holds up her arm. Then, seeing her watch has been replaced by a dainty pearl bracelet, she lets her arm drop. “Well, you know what I mean. Hours, minutes, seconds. That’s about it.”
“Oh. Then it’s about sixteen minutes and forty seconds.” Ty’s screen beeps and he glances down to read the message. “I need to go attend to a small glitch in a new arrival’s sim,” he says, shoving the holoscreen back in his pocket. “Apparently in her sim it’s supposed to rain pebbles, but instead we’ve got rotten fruit. Making quite a mess, to say nothing of the smell.”
“How can it rain pebbles?” Annika asks me.
“The planet she comes from must be very close to its sun. If the ground is molten, it would rain tiny pebbles instead of water droplets like on your planet.”
“You’re making that up. There’s no—”
Ty cuts her off. “Stay out of the way until I get back. The Afterlives have rules even I don’t know about. I’m sure we’re breaking at least a dozen of them by being here and I have no idea what would happen if you were to interact with anyone, especially your grandfather. Please do not repay my kindness by trying to find out. Dad will get me demoted to stable detail on Orion Five.” He shudders at the thought.
“But Ty, wait,” I say, stepping forward. “What if Annika dries off? Is the water in that pond real?”
Worry crosses Annika’s face and she quickly reaches up to feel her hair. “It’s totally dry!”
“Don’t worry,” Ty replies. “Just like the people and the food, we replicate the water in the sims. But you won’t need it because the molecules in the air are real, too. You can breathe in all the oxygen you want. For slightly less than a kilosecond longer, that is.”
“Oh,” Annika says, inhaling deeply. She lets it out slowly and smiles. “Cool.”
He turns to leave again, but this time it’s Annika who stops him. “Wait! What if my grandfather disappears before this simulation or whatever you call it ends?”
Ty glances at the dance floor, then shrugs. “We’ll hope for the best.” With a quick salute, he points to a recently vacated bench by the pond, takes one step backward, and disappears.
Annika shivers. “I’ll never get used to that.” We head over to the bench and sit. Annika positions herself so she can still watch her grandparents. They are now feeding each other pieces of yellow cake and laughing. “Okay, Joss, I’m giving you fair warning. If I’m not distracted really well, I’m going up there no matter what might happen to your brother. Cleaning stables might be good for him.”
“Trust me, the stables on Orion Five aren’t anything you’d wish on your worst enemy. The smell alone would take a few hundred years to wash off.”
Annika stands up.
I pull her back down. Ty may not be my favorite, but no one deserves that fate. And he did bring us here, so I owe it to him to make sure we follow his rules. “All right, all right. How should I distract you? My juggling skills are subpar at best.”
She shrugs innocently, a gesture I’ve learned to fear. “How about you explain the whole life-on-other-planets thing?”
I was afraid she’d ask about that. “I can turn my legs into wheels,” I suggest. “Want to see that instead?”
She shakes her head. “I’ll take you up on that sometime, but this probably isn’t the place.”
Good point. That would definitely bring us the type of attention Ty warned us against. My only hope may be to stall her until the sim is over. “Well, what do you know about life on other planets already?”
“Only what my dad’s told me,” she says. “I know astronomers have found lots of planets around other stars, and I know the planets have to be the right distance from their sun so the water doesn’t boil away or freeze. They’d go crazy if they knew about The Realms. Now tell me, who else is out there?”
I hesitate. The people of Earth have only taken the first baby steps toward exploring space and understanding how to use the materials available to them. They are ahead of a lot of civilizations, but really, REALLY far behind others. Some have figured out how to use the natural resources available on their planets, like humans have, but others can harness the entire energy output of their sun, or their entire galaxy, or have left their home planet long ago. “Just so you know,” I finally say, “I’m really not supposed to tell you anything. We can’t interfere too much with primitive civilizations.”
She bristles. “Primitive? It’s not like we’ve only recently invented the wheel! We’ve walked on the moon! We have antibiotics and computer chips as small as a grain of sand! We have video games where your body is the controller! Really! You just stand in front of it and—”
“Okay, okay, maybe primitive was a bad choice of words. You’re more like, not advanced?”
“That’s just saying the same thing, only slightly nicer! And how can you say you don’t interfere too much? You destroyed a perfectly good planet! Sure, we had our problems, but seriously, to pull us out of time? Who does that?”
I hold up my hands. “Again, that was not our fault.” I stop short of saying it was her fault.
“But I don’t understand why it had to happen at all,” she says. “Why does it matter what I saw? No one would have believed me if I told them. They would have thought I had been dreaming, or was making it up.”
It’s no use telling her I’d already argued her case and lost. “My dad would say it’s the natural order of things. An action has a necessary reaction. The planets aren’t supposed to know about The Realms. Maybe the whole universe would come apart if Earth had been allowed to survive.”
“Then why would Gluck be telling you to rebuild it?”
I lean back and shake my head. I’ve been asking myself that, too. I have no answer for her, so I watch the ducks go by in the pond. They’ve sure got it easy. Just bobbing along on the gentle cu
rrent. Float, spread wings, nuzzle another duck, quack, then repeat. Pretty much what my life used to be like, I guess. Minus actually nuzzling any ducks.
“Sounds like the Powers That Be know they made a mistake,” Annika mutters. “And want you to fix it for them.”
I force myself to turn from the calm routine of the ducks. “The PTB don’t make mistakes.”
Annika harrumphs in response. Loudly. A few wedding guests turn to look. She gives them a tiny wave and they move on.
I lower my voice. “Hey, I’m the one who wanted to get Kal back any way possible. I would have done something even if Gluck hadn’t asked me to. If you and I are going to work together, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on whether or not what happened to your planet was necessary.”
“Fine,” she grumbles. “Just tell me about the other planets, then, because that cake is looking really good, and I might just go help myself to some.”
The sound of drumbeats, low and steady and familiar, seems to rise up through the bench. “Kal?” I ask, jumping up and turning in circles. “Is that you? Kal? I’m in the Afterlives! Can you hear me?”
Annika pulls me back down. “Joss! I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to announce where we are.” She looks around to make sure no one heard my outburst. “You said Kal’s trapped somewhere…. Is he trapped here? In my grandfather’s simulation?”
A three-piece band under a white gazebo starts to play a dance tune. Any drumbeats there might have been are drowned out. I don’t answer right away, hoping the drumming will come back. “I’m not sure where he is,” I finally say, “but I know he’s trying to reach me. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Well, between the two things you’re not supposed to talk about, how about you pick one?”
After one last listen, I give up on the drums. If Kal can find me here, he can find me anywhere. “Okay, if you must know, life exists somewhere in almost every galaxy in the universe. The same atoms and elements that made you made the creatures that live on those other planets.”
She absorbs this news, then asks, “So they all look like us, then?”
“You know I don’t really look like you, right?”
She tilts her head at me. “Well, there’s the thing with the head being slightly too big, and those nonexistent pores, and you’re a little squishy, but…”
“Squishy? I’m not squishy!”
She shrugs. “Whatever. Just keep going.”
“I’m not squishy,” I mutter. “Maybe a little softish, but that’s not the same thing. Moving on. Yes, some advanced life-forms look like humans. Most have jointed limbs and hard skeletons. But life takes very different paths on each planet, depending on how close the planet is to its sun or other energy source, what the atmosphere is made of, how weak or strong the gravity is, the size and weight of the planet, how often it gets hit by asteroids, if it has a magnetic field, or a moon that affects its orbit and rotation. And a ton of other factors, like if the liquid on the planet is water or ammonia or methane or sulfuric acid or, well, you get the drift. That’s why it’s going to be so hard to rebuild your planet. There are so many things to get right. Or, more likely in our case, wrong. The interesting thing is, as soon as life could start on any planet, it did.”
Annika shakes her head. “If that’s all true, then how come no aliens have ever come to Earth?”
It feels strange to have someone asking me questions without doubting that I know the answer. I kind of like it. It almost makes me feel useful. “The universe is really huge,” I explain. “I mean, really, really huge. It takes a long time to get anywhere. You’re limited by the speed of light, too. I mean, you might find other planets with life on them, but when you look through your telescope, you’re seeing them like they were hundreds, or even millions, of years earlier, depending on how long it takes light to reach them from where you are. And they’d see your planet the same way. If they were far enough away, they’d see dinosaurs when they looked at Earth, not humans. Here in The Realms, we aren’t restricted by the speed of light. We can’t go faster than it, of course, but we can see things as they actually are, everywhere at once.”
“And then you can just travel anywhere you want with your supermagic wormholes?”
I smile. “They’re not magic. It only seems that way.”
“Have you ever seen an alien?”
“I’m looking at one right now.”
“Where?” She whirls around in her seat.
I laugh. “Right next to me.”
She points to herself. “Me? I’m not an alien!”
“To everyone outside of Earth you are.”
“I never thought of it that way,” she says as we watch the crowd gather to throw rice at the bride and groom. “Hey, how much time do we have left?” Without waiting for my answer, she jumps up. “C’mon!” She grabs my arm and tries to pull me toward the action. I do not budge.
“Suit yourself,” she says, striding away with her dress swishing behind her.
Nice. And after I told her all that stuff about aliens. I’ll remember this. Seeing no choice, I try to look casual as I stride toward the wide tree she is using as cover. I guess I can’t really blame her for wanting a closer look.
“Before you yell at me,” Annika says when I reach her, “you don’t have to worry, I’m not going to bother them. They just look so happy. I wonder how many times he’s relived this day.”
“Eleven hundred and six times,” Ty says, appearing behind us. Annika jumps, but relaxes when it becomes clear he’s not going to yell at her for getting so close.
“No matter what other important events happened in their lives,” he continues, “or amazing trips or accomplishments, it’s the weddings and births they request the most. And the grandchildren. Humans are very taken with their grandchildren.”
Annika smiles at him, and he flashes a quick smile in return, showing his soft side for the first time. We watch as Annika’s grandparents climb into the back of a fancy gray car. They wave out the window as their friends and families shout and hoot. From the safety of the tree, Annika and I wave, too.
“And we’re out,” Ty says. Abruptly, the sim ends. We’re in our regular clothes in a large white room, empty except for the comfortable armchair that Annika’s grandfather—now white-haired and plump—is sitting on. The smile on his face stretches from ear to ear as he, no doubt, recalls his day. Then he sees us, and his jaw drops. He jumps up and hurries over. “Annika! Is that you?”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Hi, Grandpa!” She flings herself into his arms. They hug tight, and then he pulls back to look at her.
“You’re so beautiful! So grown up!” Then he puts his hands to his head like it suddenly hurts. “But wait, if you’re here, does that mean you’re… oh no! Are you… have you passed on? Your parents! They must be beside themselves with grief!” He wobbles, and Annika quickly reaches out to steady him.
“It’s nothing like that,” she assures him. “I’m still totally alive.”
Grandpa Klutzman turns to my brother. “I… I don’t understand. How is this poss—”
He is cut off by a sharp wheezing sound from Annika, followed by two quick gasps as her eyes roll back in her head. I catch her before she hits the floor, then lay her down gently as Ty runs out of the room.
It’s probably a good thing Mom never let us have a plant. We’d always forget to water it.
The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part.
—Richard P. Feynman, physicist
This time it isn’t quite as funny watching Annika cough and sputter as she begins to breathe again. Maybe because it took what seemed like a long time for Ty to bring the water (he had to scoop it out of a fountain in a nearby sim). Or maybe because Annika’s grandfather had faded away as he’d held her hand. His shouts of “Come back to us, Annika! Come back!” still ring in my ears.
Ty shakes his head. “He’s gone for good.”
Annika bursts into tears. “I didn’t get to ask him anything! Or tell him about Sam, who was born the year after Grandpa died. And he probably thought I died just now and he’ll never know that I just needed oxygen and I wanted to warn him that he was going to be pulled out of time and now he’s gone!” She curls into a ball on the armchair and buries her face in her hands.
I look over at Ty, who motions for me to go over to her. “I didn’t do too well the last time she was crying,” I protest.
“I don’t care,” he says, pushing me. “There’s no crying in the Afterlives! This is a happy place! You have to make her stop or it will upset all the people in their sims!”
“Fine,” I snap. “You don’t need to yell at me.”
“Happy place!” he hisses again as I head over to her.
I put my hand on her shoulder, then lift it off, then place it back again. “Um, Annika? If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure your grandfather knew you were going to be okay.”
“Did you tell him?” she asks between sniffles.
I look up at Ty, who glares at me. I really don’t want to lie, but I guess in this case it’s for the greater good. “Um, yeah, he knew, don’t worry.”
She sniffles again, and wipes her nose on her arm before sitting back up. “Thanks, Joss. That does make me feel better.”
I try to steer the topic away from my lie. “And at least he got to see you and hug you. No one else in the history of the Afterlives has ever been able to do that.”
Ty nods in confirmation.
I hold out my hand. “C’mon, let’s go find that scientist.”
She nods, wipes her eyes once more, and takes my hand. As soon as she stands, we quickly let our hands drop apart. I pick up the extra bucket of water my brother had the foresight to bring back with him, glad to have something else to do with my hand. Ty touches the wall and we’re back in the hall again.