A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Realish,” Jenny said.

  The grass was dewy and soft. The sky overhead was filled with fluffy clouds and sunshine. The ground had that soft spring to it that not even the oxygen garden had managed to replicate. If I hadn’t flown through the dome a few minutes before, I could have been fooled into believing I was on an actual planet instead of on an island floating on the edge of forever.

  DJ held out his hand to help me up, and the three of us crossed the field toward the buildings. I felt safe with DJ. Like I could handle anything.

  “What do we do?” I asked as we left the grass and stepped onto the sidewalk. “Check in at the main office? Do you think we’ll get detention for being late?”

  “We have to be careful,” DJ said. “At the first sign of trouble, we get back to the shuttle and take off, okay?”

  “It’s school, DJ,” I said. “How much trouble can we really get into?”

  As we passed between the buildings and entered a large open quad that was decorated with trees that looked like they were from Earth and had picnic benches arranged in a ring around the center, we were startled by a mechanized voice that spoke with an unplaceable and slightly pretentious accent. “Welcome, new students.”

  I turned around and screamed a little. DJ squeezed my hand. Lurking behind us was a machine. Possibly a robot. In place of legs, its upper body was supported by what appeared to be a gyroscope. Its torso was like plate armor, out of which sprouted four appendages that were probably arms, and the majority of its head consisted of a single, pulsating red eye the size of a grapefruit. It definitely wasn’t creepy or menacing at all.

  “Um, hi?” DJ said. “Could you tell us where we are or what you are?”

  “I am Teacher. You are unregistered students.” Faster than any of us could react, Teacher’s appendages whipped around and stabbed each of us in the shoulder with a pneumatic injector, shooting something under our skin. It was over before I had a chance to protest.

  “You have been registered,” Teacher said. “Congratulations, you are now students of Beta Cephei High School. Your schedules can be accessed by looking at your palms. First period is currently in session. It will end in three minutes. You are expected to attend second period. Absence or tardiness will result in punishment. Profanity, consumption of food during classes, physical violence, or the sharing of bodily fluids will also result in punishment.”

  “What kind of punishment?” Jenny asked.

  “The bad kind,” Teacher said, then rolled away, disappearing into a nearby building.

  I didn’t know what to make of what was happening. I rubbed the lump under my skin on my shoulder through my shirt.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Jenny was holding her hand in front of her face. “This is wild.” I didn’t understand until I held up my own hand. A schedule, superimposed over my palm, appeared before my eyes. Second period was highlighted, indicating where I was supposed to go next. Whatever the robot had injected us with must have made it possible. It was cool in a way that was also incredibly intrusive and disturbing.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” DJ asked, pressing closer to me. He was a reassuring presence. I don’t think I would have handled the situation as well without him.

  I didn’t even want to say it. “My next class.”

  Jenny grimaced. “I’ve got mitochondrial bioenergetics, whatever that is.”

  “Pottery,” DJ said.

  I glared at my hand, checking my schedule again to make sure it hadn’t changed. And, of course, it hadn’t. “PE,” I said. “I’d rather bleed from every orifice.”

  “Maybe that’s what punishment is,” Jenny said.

  DJ squeezed my hand and pulled me into a circle of two. “We don’t have to do this. We can return to the shuttle and fly back to Qriosity.”

  Jenny punched him in the shoulder, and there was nothing playful about it. “Like hell we can.”

  “Jenny—”

  “If you boys want to hide in the shuttle and suck face, you have my blessing, but I need to spend some time with people who aren’t you.” Jenny took off toward the other side of the quad. “We’ll meet up at lunch!”

  “Should we go after her?” DJ asked.

  The idea of being forced to play space dodgeball or whatever made me want to vomit, but DJ and I didn’t have the right to deny Jenny this opportunity. Besides, we were at a high school floating in space, and I was curious to know more.

  “Nah,” I said. “She’ll be fine.”

  “She’s really excited about school, isn’t she?”

  I shook with silent laughter. “I think she’s more excited to spend time with people her own age who are anatomically correct.” When DJ wrinkled his nose, I added, “Don’t ask.”

  “I won’t.”

  A chime sounded, and a few seconds later, students poured out of the classrooms, filling the silence with their discordant symphony of voices. They looked like people I could’ve gone to school with. They also acted like people I could’ve gone to school with in that none of them paid attention to me.

  DJ scanned the crowd. “Robot teachers but human students?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Weird.” DJ was a master of understatement.

  “So I guess we should find our classes?” I said without enthusiasm.

  “You might have fun.”

  “Trade me, then. You go to PE and I’ll make a ceramic vase.”

  DJ kissed me gently on the lips, and I hated that it felt like a goodbye. I knew it wasn’t—I knew I’d see him again—but I didn’t want to spend any time apart from him that I didn’t have to. “Three periods until lunch,” he said. “And if you hate it, we’ll lure Jenny back to the shuttle with Nutreesh.”

  “Deal.”

  DJ took off, leaving me alone.

  I had spent hours and days wishing to be anywhere other than Qriosity, and now that my wish had been granted, Qriosity was the only place I wanted to be.

  “Excuse me,” I said to no one in particular. “Can you tell me where the gym is?” I had kind of shouted my question into the mass of students in the hopes that one of them would answer, but the most they did was side-eye me as they walked on.

  I was about to pick a direction at random when I spied a familiar face. A face that couldn’t exist. “Kayla?” I shoved through the crowd, forcing my way upstream to reach her. “Kayla!” I hadn’t really known her, but I’d spent enough time with her dead and dying body that I’d memorized her face. Her round cheeks and crooked nose. Her black hair and long neck. It had to be her. It couldn’t be her.

  She peeled off from the group she was with and entered one of the buildings. I followed her inside. I jogged to catch up and get her attention. “Kayla?”

  “Sorry,” she said, seeming annoyed at being stopped. “You got the wrong person.”

  But I was so certain. “Is your name Kayla?”

  She shook her head. “Talley.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Do you remember Qriosity? It’s a spaceship.”

  “Uh, pretty positive, and no.” She turned up her nose at me and motioned for me to move, which I did. I didn’t know what to do or think. She wouldn’t have known me because she’d spent the majority of our time together dead. And it couldn’t have been Kayla anyway because the last time I’d seen her was when we’d committed her body to the stars.

  My mind was playing tricks on me. Everyone has a doppelgänger, right?

  The bell chimed again and an alert flashed on my hand, warning me that I had two minutes to get to class or I would be punished. The warning was followed by a map showing me the fastest route to the gym. I ran the entire way, but I couldn’t outrun the doubt that followed me.

  NINE HOURS EARLIER

  ALL THE ROBOTS WERE CALLED Teacher. That was the first thing I learned when I ran, huffing and wheezing, into class as the final bell rang. The second thing I learned was that gym uniforms are u
niversally hideous. The one I was given consisted of blue shorts that were borderline indecent and a mustard-yellow shirt with “Beta Cephei High School Stellar Fragments” printed on the front. I refused to wear it until I was threatened with punishment. After I changed, my class of thirty students was broken into four teams and sent to play volleyball. The only game I hated worse than dodgeball was volleyball.

  I wish I could properly convey how deeply strange it was to be playing indoor volleyball with a group of students I’d never met before, all of whom attended a school with robot teachers on a domed rock floating in the middle of space that I had accidentally traveled to in a spaceship that had torn a hole in the fabric of the universe. At the same time, it was also so aggressively normal. The way the students looked faintly uncomfortable in their ugly gym uniforms while trying to pretend they weren’t; the uncoordinated students flinging eye daggers at the athletic students; the undercurrent of whispered conversations, each student assuming everyone who wasn’t talking to them was talking about them. It was comforting to know that, even on the other side of the universe, high school locker rooms smelled like sweaty crotch and cheap body spray.

  If I ignored the robots with the murdery red eyes, it could have been home.

  “Hey.” It took me a moment to register that the boy standing next to me had spoken. He was long-limbed and gangly, like he’d grown two feet overnight and was still trying to figure out how to move without falling on his face. “I’m Thao.”

  “Noa,” I said. “I’m awful at this game, by the way.”

  “Me too.”

  I heard someone laughing, not like they were having fun but like they were about to make someone else miserable. The sadistic kind of laugh usually heard from psychopaths or children in horror movies. And then a volleyball smashed into Thao’s face. He crumpled to the polished maple floor as blood spurted from his nose.

  “Heads up!” shouted a guy from the other team, probably the same one who’d spiked the ball at Thao’s face. He was tall and fair with messy auburn hair and the kind of grin that said he’d definitely pulled the legs off grasshoppers when he was a kid.

  I scrambled to help Thao stand. “We should get you to the nurse or infirmary or whatever you have here.”

  Thao’s eyes widened in terror, and he tried to use his sleeve to wipe away the blood. “I’m fine.”

  “Your nose could be broken.”

  Teacher rolled toward us, its bulbous red eye fixed on me and Thao. “You are leaking.”

  I hiked my thumb at the guy who’d started this. “I’m pretty sure he did this on purpose. Aren’t you going to punish him?” I hated bullies. I hated them more than dodgeball and only fractionally less than volleyball.

  Thao whipped off his shirt, ignoring the laughter from the other students, and pressed it to his nose. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I need to sit is all. The bleeding will stop on its own.”

  Teacher’s eye pulsed once. “You may be absent this game. If you can’t return at the conclusion, you will report to Nurse.”

  Thao said, “Thank you,” in a way that was too eager to be normal. He turned to go, stopped, and said, “Can the new kid come with me? The teams will be uneven otherwise.”

  Teacher took a moment to process the request. “Yes,” it said, then rolled away.

  I followed Thao to the bleachers.

  “I’m sorry about your nose.”

  “You didn’t do it.” Thao’s voice was nasally, which made sense, seeing as he probably couldn’t breathe well.

  “But I’m benefitting from it,” I said. “I really hate playing volleyball, so you getting hit in the face is the best thing that’s happened to me since class began.”

  Thao laughed, but it was more of a snort that sounded like he was choking. “It’s cool.”

  I looked back at where we’d been playing. The athletic guy who’d started this and some of his friends were scowling in our general direction. “What’s his deal? Did you do something to piss him off or is he just genetically predisposed to being a dick?”

  “Clayton?”

  “Is that his name?”

  Thao nodded. “You’re on the new kid track, right? So you should probably avoid him or you’ll get drawn into his bully nonsense, which sucks unless you’re angling for a revenge or redemption arc.”

  I fully understood, individually, each of the words that had come out of Thao’s mouth, but they didn’t make sense to me as a sentence. “Say what again?”

  “Are you funny?” he asked. “You have a good look for being the funny guy. Where are you from?”

  “Earth.”

  Thao frowned and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but where are you really from?”

  I felt more lost than normal. It’s what I imagined it would’ve been like if I’d been able to travel back in time to when my mom was in high school and everyone wore flannel shirts and listened to grunge and no one had a cell phone.

  “What’s your deal?” I asked. “What’s the deal with this school?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His eyes flicked past me. I followed his gaze to where Teacher was watching us with its big, red eye.

  “Come on. None of this is right. Where are we? Do you know?”

  Thao’s face changed in an instant. Gone was the plucky nerd who’d been bullied by aggressive jocks and was happy to have a new friend. In its place was someone feral and terrified. “Shut up!” His voice was a whisper, but sharp.

  Teacher rolled toward us slowly.

  “Maybe I can help you,” I said. “I came here with friends. We have a ship—”

  Teacher reached us and rested one appendage on Thao’s shoulder. “You are still injured. You must report to Nurse.”

  “He’s fine,” I said. “We were just talking.”

  Thao shook his head. He peeled the shirt away and said, “See? I’m not bleeding anymore. I can play.”

  But he was still bleeding. It was a slow ooze rather than a gush, but the flow ran from his nostrils, down his lips and chin.

  “I’ll take him to the nurse,” I said.

  Teacher pointed at the volleyball court I’d left earlier. “You will return to the game now.” It lifted Thao up, and I wasn’t sure whether the kid would have been able to stand on his own. He was trembling.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked.

  The other students were still playing, but their attention was fully on us.

  “You will go to Nurse,” Teacher said to Thao. “You will return to the game. Obey or face punishment.”

  Thao was crying freely. His shoulders slumped and his head bowed. “I’ll go.”

  Teacher released Thao and then patted his back three times. “There. There. Nurse will correct you.”

  Nothing made sense. I didn’t understand why Thao was so scared to go to the nurse’s office, but I felt like it was at least partially my fault and that I should try to help. “I could—”

  “Leave me alone.” Thao slouched toward the exit, accompanied by Teacher.

  I didn’t see that I had any choice other than to rejoin the game. I moved into the first empty spot. It was near a young woman with blond-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail. I tried to ask her what had just happened, but before I could speak, she said, “Oh my God, do you watch Murder Your Darlings? It’s only my favorite program ever. Anastasia Darling is my idol.”

  It wasn’t what she said that made me suspicious—though it would have been enough, seeing as no person who had seen any other show would have chosen Murder Your Darlings as their favorite—it was the way she said it just loud enough for Teacher to hear.

  Something was going on that I didn’t understand, and until I did, it seemed the best course of action was to play along.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Anastasia’s the best.”

  EIGHT HOURS EARLIER

  I WAS DISGUSTING AND SWEATY by the time Teacher dismissed us to shower and change before our next class. The girl with the encyclopedic knowledge of A
nastasia Darling had been the only person willing to talk to me after Thao had left, and even she had seemed nervous. I hoped my next class, finite element methods for partial differential equations, involved less blood.

  The shower nozzles lined the walls, and steam filled the air. I wasn’t thrilled by public showers, but I also didn’t intend to spend the rest of the day stewing in my own fragrant juices. I grabbed a towel, which I hoped had been boiled in bleach, and went in.

  I didn’t notice the other boys were clustered together on one side of the showers until I was rinsing shampoo from my hair and caught them staring at me. It made me nervous because I was naked and vulnerable, and there was nowhere to run. I considered ignoring them. If they wanted to be weird, I should let them. But I was tired of letting things go.

  “What?!” I said.

  Clayton was already at the front of the group. His cocky swagger had evaporated. In the showers, he looked as scared and defenseless as the rest of the boys. He crossed the space between us, stopping when he was less than a meter away. “Quit asking questions.”

  I was proud of myself for not backing up or flinching. There was something of Billy in Clayton. I’d noticed it when he was laughing after smacking Thao in the face with the ball, but I saw it even clearer without his cloak of arrogance.

  “You do get how creepy this is, right?”

  Clayton moved nearer. I pushed him back.

  “Have you never heard of personal space?”

  “They can’t watch us here,” Clayton said, his voice low. “But Teachers sometimes stand by the door and listen.”

  “Is this a joke? Some kind of hazing thing you do to all the new students? Because it’s not funny.” Even as I said it, I knew none of the kids were talented enough actors to fake the fear radiating off them. “What happened to Thao? Why was he so—”

  “Stop asking questions!” Clayton’s voice was still low, but it was harsh. Strained.

  I’d rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, and had no further reason to stay. “If you’re not going to tell me what the deal is here, then we’re done talking.” I shut off the shower. “Excuse me.”