on West Eighty-Ninth Street, at the headquarters of Ad Astra Incorporated, my parents’ employer. We’re at the launch of the Octavia III expedition. My parents wanted us to understand why they were going. Why we were looking ahead to a year of boarding school, breaks spent stranded with friends. This was about two months before they told Mom she was bumped from the mission.
Before Dad told her he was going without her.
Then as I watch, the trees of Central Park start to grow, shooting up like Jack’s magic beanstalk. In seconds they’re the height of the skyscrapers all around them. Vines leap across to twine around our building in fast-forward. They squeeze like boa constrictors, and the plaster on the walls starts to crack, fine dust drifting from the ceiling.
Blue flakes fall from the sky like snow.
But this part of the memory never happened, and the sight is painful—unwelcome and unpleasant in a way I can’t put my finger on. I shy away from it, shove myself free of it, stumbling back toward consciousness.
Back toward the light.
•••••
The light is bright and the boy is still talking, and as I return to the confines of my body, I remember my name. I am Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley.
No, wait. I’m Auri O’Malley. That’s better. That’s me.
And I definitely have a body. This is good. This is progress.
My senses of taste and smell are back, and I’m immediately wishing they weren’t. Because holy cake, my mouth tastes like two somethings crawled in there, fought a battle to the death, and then decomposed.
There’s a woman’s voice now, from farther away. “Your sister will be here soon, if you’ll just wait.”
The boy again: “Scarlett’s coming? Maker’s breath, is the graduation ceremony over already? How much longer do I have to wait?”
•••••
How much longer do I have to wait?
I’m in a vid chat with my dad, and that’s the question doing laps around my brain. The uplink delay is dragging on my very last nerve, the broadcast system making me wait a couple of minutes before my replies reach him on Octavia, a couple more before his bounce back.
But Dad’s got Patrice sitting beside him, and there’s no reason she’d be here except to break the news herself. I think I’m about to hear that the wait that has dominated my life for two years is nearly over. I think that all the work I’ve put in is about to pay off, that I’m about to be told I’m slated for the third mission to Octavia.
Today’s my seventeenth birthday, and I can’t think of a better present in all of time and space.
Patrice hasn’t spoken yet, though, and Dad’s rambling on about other stuff, grinning like his Megastakes numbers came in. His tent is gone—they’re sitting in front of an actual wall, with a real live window and everything, so I know the colony must really be progressing. Sitting in Dad’s lap is one of the chimpanzees he works with as part of the Octavia bio program. When my sister and I misbehave, he teases us by calling them his favorite children.
“My adopted family are all very well,” he laughs, petting the animal. “But I’m looking forward to having at least one of my girls here in person.”
“So will it be soon?” I ask, unable to hold the question in any longer.
I groan inwardly, tipping my head back and resigning myself to a four-minute wait for a reply. But my heart drops when I see my question finally arrive at their end. Dad’s still smiling, but Patrice looks … nervous? Worried?
“It’ll be soon, Jie-Lin,” my father promises. “But … we’re calling about something else today.”
Wait, did he actually remember my birthday?
He’s still smiling, and he lifts his hand up into view on the screen.
Mothercustard, he’s holding Patrice’s hand. …
“Patrice and I have been spending a lot of time together lately,” he says. “And we’ve decided it’s time to make things a little more official and share quarters. So it’ll be the three of us when you arrive.” He keeps talking, but I’m barely listening. “I thought you could bring rice flour when you come. And tapioca starch. I want us to have just one meal that didn’t come from the synth, to celebrate being together again. I’ll make you rice noodles.”
It takes me a moment to realize he’s done, that he’s waiting for my reply. I’m looking at the pair of them, their hands interlocked, Dad’s hopeful smile and Patrice’s pained grin. Thinking of my mom and