by Wendy Mass
I force myself to let that go without comment, although it’s difficult. “Thank you,” I say instead. “Let’s start at the beginning. What would we do first?”
The professor begins to pace the small room, a bounce in his step. I think he’s happy to have students again.
“All right, first we need to establish what you mean by the beginning. Is it when primordial dust and gas left over from the sun first clumped together to form Earth? Or once the first microorganisms filled the oceans of our water-covered planet? Or once the growth of blue-green algae created enough oxygen to fill the air and give rise to more complex life?”
Annika and I exchange a look. “Those are a lot of long words,” she replies. “But actually it’s more like the whole solar system. Where we have to start from, I mean.”
His brows rise. “That’s certainly an ambitious project. Your friend here must need a lot of extra credit.”
“But it’s possible?” Annika asks with a hopeful tilt of her head.
Professor Sagan begins to pace again. “Let’s see. So your goal is to rebuild our solar system so that life arises and evolves exactly the same way that it did the first time—your new planet will be the same size and weight, be the same exact distance from the sun, with a moon the size and location of ours, correct?”
We nod.
“And of course you’d put Jupiter in exactly the right place to protect the young Earth from constant bombardment by comets and asteroids?”
“Of course,” Annika replies. “Can’t forget something as important as Jupiter.”
He continues pacing. “And every single one of your direct ancestors will live long enough to have a child, until eventually, four and a half billion years after the planet formed into a sphere capable of one day supporting life, Annika Klutzman, the apple of her parents’ eyes, will be born in the small midwestern town of Richford, Ohio?”
Annika looks a little less confident. “Um, yes?”
“Well, in that case…” Professor Sagan shakes his head. “Nope, sorry, totally impossible. If I were you, I’d ask your teacher if you could do something on a smaller scale. Turning a potato into a clock always wins big at school science fairs.”
When neither of us replies, he says, “I could show you how to make a tiny volcano erupt using baking soda and vinegar. A little messy, but educational and fun at the same time.”
“Thanks,” I say, “but we really need to try this one first. The volcano can be plan B.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “I admire your ambition, young Realms dweller, but there are so many steps to follow. First of all, you’d have to create the sun, and to do that you’d have to create the earlier stars, the ones that went supernova so the heavier elements they ejected into space will get absorbed into our sun. Without those, no rocky planet, no life. Only hydrogen and helium. You can’t make people out of the primordial elements.”
I clear my throat.
“Oh, sorry!” he says. “Present company excluded, of course.”
“So we make the sun,” Annika says. “Then what?”
“Well, then you’d take the dust and gas left over, allow it to clump together for about two hundred million years, until it makes one giant rock with an iron core. Then hurl another really big rock into your new planet so the pieces can fly off to form the moon. Without the moon, Earth would be unstable and its climates too severe for any complex life to survive. And make sure to tilt your planet’s axis exactly twenty-three and a half degrees so you’ll get the seasons.”
“Seasons, got it. What’s next?” Annika prompts.
He shakes his head at her, clearly amused by her unwillingness to give up, but continues. “You’ll need movable tectonic plates, of course, to keep a steady supply of nutrients at the surface. And don’t forget the oceans. You’d have to fill them. Take some water-bearing comets, add some volcanoes, and the atmosphere will start to fill with water vapor. Then here come the rains! And once you have water, and much later breathable oxygen, then—”
I know time is relative and all that, but his is surely running out. “Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m sure you’ve seen all the galaxies and planets now that you’ve been in The Realms awhile, right?”
“Indeed I have,” he says, his eyes glowing again. “The wonder of it all! The sheer number of planets harboring life. More than I ever would have guessed.” He lowers his voice and whispers to Annika, “You should see some of the folks here in the Afterlives. Pretty bizarre.”
“Really?” Annika asks, lowering her own voice.
“Can we focus, please?” I ask. “You can tell her about the purple-toed, three-eyed, five-armed Gordomorph later, okay?”
“Of course, of course.” He winks at Annika and gestures with his hands like he’s making an elephant’s trunk from his nose.
Annika giggles.
Forging ahead, I say, “Even though my grade was less than stellar, I did learn a few things in Planet Building class. What you just told us could describe how almost all the terrestrial planets out there are made. What I really need to know are the specifics—the exact chemicals that are in the ground, in the air, in the people. How far exactly Earth and the other planets are from the sun. How and when life began there. Basically the details that make Earth different from all the other planets. I had this information, and then, well, I lost it.” I can’t bring myself to admit the data dots were stolen. It’s still hard for me to accept.
As I wait for his answer, I notice a subtle shift in his appearance. He doesn’t seem as solid. I glance at Annika, but her expression hasn’t changed. She can’t see it. I turn back to the professor. The colors have now leeched from his clothes, his eyes, his skin. This is how it happened with Annika’s grandfather. Sagan and I lock eyes. He knows something is wrong. His eyes flicker from panic to surprise, to understanding, to determination.
He digs into the pockets of his trousers and pulls out a small black tape recorder. It looks so old-fashioned and primitive, but it was probably the height of technology in his day. He also pulls out a small notebook held together by a rubber band. He hands the notebook to Annika, along with a pen. “Here, sweetheart. Why don’t you number each page from one to twenty.” He motions for her to sit in his folding chair. “Then I’ll tell you and your friend what you need to know, okay?”
“Great,” she says, undoing the rubber band.
He watches her wistfully, like a proud grandparent. “I’m really glad I got to know you,” he tells her, his now-almost-colorless eyes shiny with more than just his usual enthusiasm.
She smiles up at him. “We named our cat after you.”
The professor turns away to wipe his eye as she begins to write in the notebook. He beckons for me to follow him to the other side of the room. I know he is trying to keep her busy so she won’t notice what’s happening to him. His kindness at protecting her forms a knot in my throat. I don’t know what to do. I want to get the information from him, but this is all happening so fast.
“I don’t have long, do I?” he asks me, his voice low.
I shake my head. No use keeping it from him now.
“You’re not really doing this for extra credit, are you?”
I shake my head again. He is now not much more solid than one of our hologram projections.
“Get it back, okay?” He reaches for my arm. His grip feels no stronger than a breeze. “Earth’s atmosphere is seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen, and a pinch of argon, carbon dioxide, and water vapor.” He says this firmly, as though focusing on facts and figures will ground him here in the Afterlives. I glance at Annika. She is still hunched over, still dutifully numbering the pages. She can’t hear him anymore. His voice has faded to a range humans can’t pick up.
“The outer layer of Earth,” he continues, balling up his fists in determination, “is mostly made of only eight of the ninety-two naturally occurring elements. Sixty-two percent oxygen, twenty-two percent silicon, six point five p
ercent aluminum, and less than ten percent iron, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. It took half of Earth’s history before one-celled animals evolved.”
He is now no more than a shadow. He tries to grip my arm again, but his hand goes right through. “Joss!” he says, his voice raspy and urgent. “I’ve seen amazing things here. Creatures from environments totally unlike Earth’s in almost every way. But they all fight for life, they fight to be. The Wipporsims on Angus Beta have barely any gravity to hold them in place. But what good is it to graze the treetops if no one is able to sing about it?”
I want to comfort him. I want to tell him I’ll do my best.
With his last breaths, he says, “What humans have achieved in such a short time—our courage, our capacity for love, for joy, for knowledge—you can’t let that go. We’ve taken metals from the ground, forged them into spaceships, and sent them to every planet in our solar system. We are worth saving.”
I nod and reach for him, knowing it won’t do any good.
He is only a wisp as he gives me a final salute. “When you set out on your journey to Ithaka, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of discovery….”
His voice fades into nothing. I watch the spot where he had stood, afraid to turn around and face Annika. The sound of the metal chair hitting the floor leaves me no choice. I turn to find Annika standing beside the toppled chair, tears streaming silently down her face. The notebook and pen lay at her feet.
With a shaky hand, she reaches into her dress pocket and pulls out the white ski cap she wore when she first arrived in The Realms. Still crying, she sticks it on her head, then pulls it down as far as it will go, covering her hair, her eyes, and most of her ears.
For some reason, the image of her vision board flashes before me. I wonder if she’s thinking about how much of that stuff might not come true.
She turns to face me, although I don’t know how she can see through her hat. “Joss?” she asks, her voice full of sadness.
I step toward her. “I’m here.”
She reaches out for my hand. “I want to go home.”
The present is the only thing that has no end.
—Erwin Schrödinger, physicist
We run, leaving the Afterlives far behind. We run past the statues of creatures from planets all over the universe. We run past PTB headquarters, now in the shape of a giant ear of corn. We run under a sky the color of nothing. I can’t take Annika to her real home, but I can bring her as close as possible. And if I know Aunt Rae, she’s already worried about her new houseguest and getting antsy to feed her.
Annika finally stops to rest, panting and gasping. She’s still wet from Ty’s drenching back in the Afterlives, so I’m not too worried. And the running seems to have dried up her tears. I wait until she catches her breath to ask her the question that’s been on my mind since we made our hasty good-byes to Ty.
“Um, Annika?” I begin. “Don’t take this the wrong way…”
“That’s never a good way to start a conversation,” she warns, sitting down on a curb. She yanks off her ski cap and shoves it into her pocket.
All sorts of comments about how funny her hair looks right now fly through my mind, but I force myself to leave them unsaid. Instead, I say, “Well, I just wanted to ask you… on Earth, humans live such a short time. If the history of the universe were compressed into one day, humans would have arrived like, one second till midnight.”
“And your point is?”
“Well, your lives are over in a blink of an eye, in the scheme of things. And it’s not just you guys, most species in the universe are like that. I mean, sure, there are some who have figured out a better way to repair their cells and live a long time, but I guess what I’m wondering is…”
“Just spit it out, Joss,” she says, sounding tired. “You’re not going to offend me.”
“Okay. My question is, if you knew you were going to the Afterlives, would it make losing people hurt less?”
Annika doesn’t answer at first. I hope I haven’t upset her by pointing out her ridiculously short life span. But seriously, it’s barely enough time to improve your bowling score by more than a point or two.
She stands up and we start walking. A block away from Kal’s house, she finally says, “It would probably make it easier to know that a part of your loved ones gets to live on, yes. But somehow it would take away from the actual living we’re supposed to be doing. And what if someone didn’t have any days they wanted to relive? Ty wouldn’t tell us what the other alternative is. What made you ask that?”
“It was a thought I had when we were leaving. Like maybe people from the planets can’t know about The Realms because of the Afterlives. What if that’s why any planet that spots us gets destroyed?”
“You mean, not that whole ‘against the laws of physics’ thing you keep saying?”
Even as I nod, though, I’m reconsidering it. Why kill off a planet to protect it from knowing what happens to them after they die? Then they’d all know when they wound up here. Doesn’t make sense, even for the PTB, who often don’t make sense to anyone but themselves.
“Seems pretty extreme,” she says.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“If you don’t believe what your father told you, why don’t you just ask him for the truth? Isn’t he like, the grand pooh-bah, or the great and powerful Oz, or something?”
“Okay, I don’t know who those people are, but if you’re trying to say Supreme Overlord of the Universe, then yes, he is. And I tried talking to him, but he was practicing his golf swing and wouldn’t let me in.”
She stops to peer closely at my face, probably to see if I’m joking. Then her mouth quivers at the corners and she smiles again for the first time since she told Carl Sagan she named her cat after him. She jabs me on the arm and says, “Man, your family is not an easy bunch.”
“Wait’ll you meet the rest of them.”
She jabs me again. “Are you inviting me home, Joss Whatever-your-last-name-is? Guess I’m growing on you, huh?”
“Yeah, like mold.”
“Hey, don’t go dissing mold. Didn’t Carl Sagan say mold was responsible for making the oxygen that allowed more advanced life on Earth?”
I shake my head. “I think that was algae. I could be wrong, though.”
She sighs. “We’re probably not the best people for this project.”
“Ya think?”
“What is your last name, anyway?”
“I don’t have one,” I reply. “No need in The Realms. Everyone knows me. I’m Joss, the seventh son.”
“But what about all the other kids named Joss? Without, you know, whatever number son they are.”
“Others? Why would there be another Joss?” Sometimes Annika has very strange ideas.
We turn the last corner, and I’m relieved to see I’ll no longer be squeezing through Lincoln’s nostril. I still have scratches on my arms from the rough stone.
Annika stops short. “Is Aunt Rae’s house a pie now, or have I gone batty from lack of air?”
“It’s a pie.”
“That’s a relief.”
Aunt Rae runs out and meets us as we start up the path. She’s holding what looks like a bunch of leaves and twigs. She scrunches up her nose when she sees Annika. “What happened to your hair, young lady?”
“What’s wrong with it?” Annika asks, trying to smooth down the result of wet hair meeting a wool ski cap.
Aunt Rae just shakes her head. “Why don’t I get my scissors? A little trim might take some of the fluff right out.”
Annika smooths faster. “Um, didn’t you cut Joss’s hair recently?”
“I certainly did,” she says, leaning forward to rumple my hair affectionately.
“Then I think I’ll pass. Thanks, though.”
“Hey!” I say, smoothing down my own hair now. I shouldn’t have told Annika about Aunt Rae cutting my hair. That’s it, tonight I’m growing it out.
&nbs
p; “Well, this will cover the messy bits,” Aunt Rae says, and places what looks like a hat made of leaves on Annika’s head. I look closer. It IS a hat made of leaves. Held together by thin twigs, the hat has leaves that tumble over her ears in various shades of green and black. We don’t grow plants here, and they are very rare. The few we have were brought back by OnWorlders and always become treasured possessions.
“What is it for?” Annika asks, touching it cautiously.
“It’s so you don’t have to be wet all the time,” Aunt Rae explains. “I traded two of my famous cherry pies to my neighbor down the street in exchange for the branch. He’s bragged about owning this plant for the last billion or so years. I think he’s grown tired of looking at it, since, honestly, it doesn’t do much. He was happy to trade. I twisted the branches into the round shape so hopefully it will stay. As long as you wear it, it will give off all the oxygen you need.”
“I have to sleep with this thing?”
“Just rest it next to your head on the pillow, and you’ll be fine.”
Annika turns her head slowly from side to side and asks me, “How do I look?”
I pause. I don’t have much experience with girls, but I’m pretty sure you never answer that question truthfully if the answer is anything along the lines of weird, strange, odd, or like a tree. I settle on something harmless. “Um, you look fine.”
“Fine? That’s it? That’s all you can say?”
I look to Aunt Rae for help. She says, “You look lovely, Annika.”
“Right,” I chime in. “That’s the word. Lovely.”
She rolls her eyes at me and storms into the house.
Girls!
I only have to follow my nose to the kitchen to see I was right about Aunt Rae cooking. The kitchen table is laid out with enough food to feed the whole block for a year. Our food isn’t like the food on any of the terrestrial planets. It’s more blobby and squishy and bland. Everything except for the pies, and the occasional special treat that someone replicates from a recipe an OnWorlder brings back. Still, Aunt Rae has done an amazing job of making everything look very appealing.