A duster bot was stuck again.
It happened every so often, either from gear malfunction, clumps of leaves, or an errant branch. The bots dedicated to cleaning the solar panels needed a clear path up and down the columns, and, if they picked up too much debris or, worse, dragged malfunctioning parts behind them, they could damage multiple panels. And then everyone in Pod North would really be fucked.
Alone in her room, solar lights dimmed, Kelle grooved to her space jams, minimally dancing in her desk chair as she watched her monitor. The mix was her go-to when she was anxious, bored, or claustrophobic — something about listening to songs about floating in space made her feel rebellious and free. Probably because she, like every other survivor, lived underground, and most, like Kelle, were born in the pods, never knowing life under the Sun. Only a handful of founders who had lived on the surface were still alive, their grandchildren now adults.
Kelle longed to see the sky — the real sky, the blueness of it. Stories from elders about the wide expanse, the horizon, the infinite blue told her that photos, videos, and simulations on visi-screens didn’t cut it. So, she downloaded classic songs from the Intranet, many with lyrics she and her friends couldn’t relate to. Rainbows and bluebirds, cavemen on Mars, space cowboys — songs written by people who lived an unconstrained superterranean life.
“Come on, you little fucker,” Kelle murmured as she guided the camera for a closer look.
There … she had a visual. The bot’s rear left gear was broken, dangling at an awkward angle. She flagged the bot for maintenance, then sat back and watched as the rest of the bots dust busted, as the maintenance bot retrieved the busted duster to be examined by a human.
It was summer now, no snow to worry about, only ash. And the ash was minimal, lately.
Kelle’s line beeped. She reached for the handset, laid her thumb then a finger down for each beep until it reached the count of five. The audio crackled as she pressed the handset to her ear.
“Mother-Duster Kelle of Pod North, at your service.” She grinned and wound the coiled cord around her forefinger.
“Guess. What.”
Kelle rolled her eyes. Arjun, always the drama king, with a voice both deep and theatrical. Her best friend — if someone from a different pod she’d never met in person could be her best friend. He was assistant to the head solar engineer of Pod West, specializing in expanding the lifespan of solar panels.
“What now?” she asked.
“What do you mean ‘What now?’”
“You’re always guess what-ing me. And it’s always bunk. If it was something worth knowing, they’d blast it over the coms, or at least over the subcoms.”
“Not if it’s” — he paused — “secret.”
“Why would anyone tell you a secret?”
“Cute.”
To break the drawn-out silence, Kelle asked through a sigh, “Hokay, I’m game. What’s up?”
“This is gonna blow your nerd brain: They’re. Connecting. The Pods.”
“What do you mean? Like, physically?”
“Yes.”
Oh … oh shit. The various city-sized pods had never been connected — that was the whole point of the pods: quarantine, maintainability, civility. No possibility of interaction aside from interconnected landlines.
“Are … are you sure?” she asked. “Why would you know this?”
“That question is hurtful,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.
“I’m serious. Who told you? Did they say why? Who did they hear it from?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me,” Arjun said. “You don’t know them. They’re someone who knows. You’re just going to have to trust me on this.”
“Okay, fine. But … how? How are they connecting pods? Tunnels? Or were there already tunnels? Are they …” She exhaled sharply. “Are they opening the pods?”
“Not to the surface, not yet. Tests show the radiation is still too high.”
“So, tunnels.”
“I don’t know the details. But, yeah, interpod travel, Kelle.”
Arjun fell quiet. Kelle was speechless.
“Interpod travel,” Arjun repeated. More silence. “Kelle?”
“Yeah.” She looked at her monitor, watched as a replacement duster was placed upon the solar panel column by a robotic arm. “Yeah, I’m here.” The replacement duster came online, and she set it to work.
“We could meet, Kelle,” Arjun said, his voice soft.
Down the duster went, cleaning the panels of minimal debris.
Meet.
Kelle froze, all her faculties concentrated on the duster which had since powered down and tucked into rest position like all the others, its daily duties performed. Her daily duties performed. She tugged at her grey uniform sleeve and looked at the projected sundial. It was almost time for her Solar Meet.
“Kelle?”
“I’m here.” She reclined into her chair, rested her feet on her small desk. The plastic phone cord coiled so tightly around her wrist that it cut off circulation. “Meet,” she said.
“We could. If you wanted to. I thought, I mean, it’s been so long …”
Four years. It started as conference calls, meetings of all engineers and people in related fields. Then chit-chatting after the meetings. Then private conversations.
Kelle wished for an old tech called the Internet that she’d learned about in history class — text messages sent instantly, documents shared across the world, video chat — but it required equipment and power they just didn’t have. Each pod had the Intranet, but access hours were limited to save on power consumption. So she and Arjun, like anyone else in different pods, were limited to the telephone.
Four years. And she’d had a crush on Arjun for three.
Her heart fluttered. She put her fingertips to her throat, catching its pace. Fast, but okay. She breathed deep, slow, willing herself to calm.
Did she want to meet Arjun? Should she?
PODS WERE SEPARATE FOR A REASON. Cross-contamination could mean the spread of disease, errant plant-eating mites, or the toxin …
“It’s fine,” Arjun said. “It might not happen for a while, anyway. I just wanted to — it’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, Arji!” Kelle threw her legs off her desk to sit up straight. “Ninety-nine percent!”
“What —?”
“Ninety-nine percent of us!” She shot to her feet. “We nearly destroyed ourselves, our planet! It’s been generations, right? Is that enough to recover? What if it’s not enough? Are we sure we can meet without finishing what the war started? THE PODS ARE MEANT TO BE SEPARATE!”
Kelle fell into her chair, spent. She rested her forehead in her palm, kept the handset pressed to her ear. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Arji. I want to. You know I do. And I know it’s not my job to worry about the bigger picture beyond these bots, but what if I’m the only one worrying about the bigger picture?”
“You’re not the only one,” he said, voice so subdued Kelle wondered if he was crying.
Fuck. I’m a monster.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s pretend it’s safe. They’ve run the tests and all is perfect.” He breathed deep in great huffs. “You’d meet me?”
Kelle’s heart was pounding now. Maybe not from fear so much anymore. This adrenaline came from excitement.
“Of course I’d meet you, Arji.” Why was she crying? She wiped her cheeks dry. “Even if we had to wear those bulky yellow suits.”
“We probably would,” he said through a laugh, “if it was early on.”
A tingle ran up Kelle’s right arm. She leaned back against the chair, closed her eyes, letting her psychosomatic reaction to Arjun’s imagined touch overtake her.
Touch. She could touch someone, like that. There’d never been anyone she’d wanted to, aside from Arjun, and she didn’t even know what he looked like beyond a description — brown skin, black hair, dark eyes, a beard now that he was older. The same as her. Minus the beard.
“Did they say when?” she asked him.
“Hm? Oh, no. No timeline. Not that my friend knows of, anyway.”
A loud BEEEEEP echoed over the line.
“I gotta go,” she said. “Solar Meet.”
“Yeah. Me too. Call you tomorrow?”
“Okay.” She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to move. “Arji?”
His line crackled. “Yeah?”
She felt that shiver again, this time traveling from elbow to neck. It passed, her body unclenched, and she finally said the words: “You’re my person. You know that, right?”
Arjun made a sound that made Kelle think he was smiling. “You’re my person, too.”
• • •
Arjun sat in the middle of the broad, round, low-ceiling Solar Meet room, nude save for his plaincloth wrap, soaking up his daily dose of filtered sunlight. The ceiling above him glowed a translucent off-white. Today was violently sunny, if the brightness of the room was any indication.
There was a piece of apparel Arjun had learned of — sunglasses. Tinted plastic worn over the eyes. He wished for these, but the eyes were major absorbers of sunlight. And he needed a lot of sunlight.
“Please remain seated and silent for the daily announcements,” a pleasant, realistic robot voice sounded over the speaker system. Arjun mouthed along to the rest of the preprogrammed message: “Once completed, you may mingle for the remaining hour.”
The news neglected to mention anything about pod connections. Perhaps his friend Hodge, who lived in Pod South, had lied to him. Though Hodge had no reason to lie. Perhaps he did know something no one else was meant to know. Perhaps someone had lied to him.
“There has been a reduction in average daily ashfall of 97%,” the computer announcer said.
Arjun opened his eyes and shot his gaze to his colleague, Tink, who sat beside him, her dayglo pink hair alight from the illuminated ceiling. Her expression said exactly what he was thinking.
The nuclear winter was ending. It might have already ended, given there were more sunny days than not lately. And now the reduced ashfall.
If the air was safe to breathe again, if the radiation had faded, if the ozone layer had healed, if the toxins ejected by dirty bombs had also died out … They would open the pods. Not just connect them, open them.
But Kelle was right, it was years too soon. No, they wouldn’t open the pods, couldn’t. The best they could hope for was interpod travel. If it was safe. And Hodge seemed to think it was safe. Or, whoever told Hodge. Or whoever told whoever told Hodge …
“The remaining satellites have recorded images indicating a regrowth of polar ice caps by 200% beyond pre-crisis diameters.”
“Oh wow,” Tink said quietly, and Arjun had to hold in his excited laughter.
They did it. They fucking did it.
Well, global warming, the virus, the meteor, the war and nuclear fallout, and the bioweapons did it. Saving the planet from ecological disaster was an unintended aftereffect of unmitigated tragedy.
At least Pod South saved a handful of honeybee colonies and staple crops, and random animal species. Pod North saved some mammal species and fodder to support them. Pod West saved a mix of flora and fauna, and boasted the biggest underground greenhouse of all American pods.
Unfortunate, what happened to Pod East …
“Our final announcement: there will be a graduation ceremony today during the evening meal. Please congratulate our future geneticists now.”
The solarbathers’ applause was interrupted by, “This concludes our daily announcements. Please have fun. Goodday.”
“Two-hundred percent!” Tink squealed in Arjun’s ear.
“Yes, I heard.”
“As long as it doesn’t grow too much beyond that, we’ll remain in an interglacial, which would be better, to not always be cold enough to snow.”
“Many glacial periods are drier than interglacials, so it might snow less often.”
“It can still snow when it’s dry,” she chimed. “Just ask my — well, you can’t, he’s dead, but my grandad’s dad lived in Wyoming and it was so dry people had to bathe in cream, but it snowed for like three-quarters of the entire year.”
“That … doesn’t sound right.”
Tink shrugged. “That’s what I heard. Anyway, what do you think? With the ashfall and ice caps all remedied …” Her lips quirked up, and she looked like she was about to hop in place. “Surface missions?”
“I’ll leave the speculation up to those who know the details.” He didn’t mention the rumored tunnels. That was different from surface missions, anyway.
“I gotta go talk to my auntie,” Tink said as she walked backward away from him. “See you.”
“See you.”
Arjun scanned the room, looking for people he knew. He wasn’t supposed to do that, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to talk to family. He was meant to meet new people. People he might want to share a room with. People he wasn’t related to.
He wasn’t expected to have children. That would be a constitutional violation. In fact, wanton conception was vehemently discouraged, even with the population of Pod West lingering at replacement-rate levels, which, given the diverse founding genetic pool, had been deemed healthy decades ago. Room sharing was encouraged because there were indeed children being born, and those children grew up, needing their own rooms. But there were only so many single rooms, and those were assigned under limited circumstances. Arjun very much needed to move out of his parent’s room. And he very much wanted to have children.
And it hit him — gene flow. There wasn’t much Arjun remembered from biology, but he remembered the very basics. Bottleneck, founder effect, gene pool, gene flow. Were they connecting the pods to allow for gene flow between bottlenecked populations?
He clenched his fists in the anticipation of — and deliberation about — telling Kelle.
Did Kelle want children? They were both in their twenties, but she never mentioned having any partners. Would she want to be his partner?
Could he switch pods? Could she?
Arjun began to sweat, and not from the Solar Meet room’s dry heat.
“Hello?” came a deep voice behind him.
Arjun turned to see a handsome man with pale skin and stark white-blond hair, a scratch of golden stubble across his jaw. “I’m Jair, Tink’s brother. We’re usually on a different Solar Meet schedule, but this time ours aligned. She said I should talk to you …” The man looked away at nothing, down at nothing, then at his toes, at Arjun’s toes. “I’m in genetics,” he said, finally looking at Arjun again. “You’re in engineering?”
Arjun smiled. “Yeah. Solar engineering.”
Despite his annoyance at Tink for very clearly setting him up, and nerves at the very raw reality of meeting someone new who was also wearing nothing but a cloth wrap, Arjun offered his arm, as was the custom, and he and Jair walked over to the area with floor cushions where they could chat.
• • •
“A roommate,” Kelle said, tugging at the phone cord. A lump in her throat grew and swirled then snaked its way down to her stomach until she reminded herself that a roommate was not the same as a partner, but it could be a slippery slope if there was an attraction. And it had been a week since she’d last spoken to Arjun. A lot could happen in a week. “I’m sure your parents are ecstatic.”
“You have no idea,” Arjun said, laughing. “Jair’s a nice guy. You’d like him. Genetics nerd.”
But is he your PERSON? Kelle wanted to yell, but didn’t, because that would be crazy, and selfish, and against everything that was expected of someone from society.
“What’s he look like?” she asked instead. “Gimme the rundown.”
“I wish I could send you a picture of his smile. It’s like if you took both your fingers and hooked them into the corners of your mouth and pulled. Pretty lips.”
Kelle didn’t want to imagine Arjun pressing his lush lips — because that’s what she imagined them to be — to another person’s. Why was she being so possessive?
“As long as he treats you right,” she said, “then I’m really happy for you. I, on the other hand, am still happily roomed with my platonic partner.”
“How is Cyb?”
“Still snoring like a broken gear, but I trust her. She trusts me. It works.”
“That’s what matters.”
Kelle hummed, examined her stubby fingernails, checked her monitor. Today was so boring. At least she had this phone call.
Arjun had a roommate …
“So, you heard the announcements,” Arjun said, a statement of fact stated excitedly.
“Ice caps and ashfall,” she said.
“Yeah, and I had a thought about the pod connection rumor.”
Kelle waited.
“Gene flow,” he said.
“Gene flow?”
“I talked it over with Jair. He wasn’t supposed to tell me, but it just came out. He says I’m right — that there are rumors of pod connections because there have been movements toward exactly that. They’re doing it for gene flow, Kelle, to transfer genetics between pods. It makes sense. And maybe it won’t be a totally open thing, more like a directed transfer. Just a few people to deepen the gene pool.”
“I guess that makes more sense than a potential contaminant free fall. Is that the only thing they’d let people transfer for?”
“I don’t think so. They probably want to trade supplies as well as people, either for their genes or their profession. Apparently the tunnels were there the whole time, just sealed off, secret. Do you think you would do it? Transfer? Or …”
“Or what?”
Kelle heard the smallest sounds on Arjun’s end, as if the man’s mouth began various words without finishing them.
“I thought,” he finally said, “maybe, if you wanted to, we could, you know, see if we get along, if we meet. And we could … Well, I’ve always wanted children of my own. I’m not asking — fuck, sorry, this is so weird of me. Forget I said anything. I just got to thinking of gene flow and obsessed all night over it. I’m sorry.”
Kelle’s heart fluttered from a mix of different anxieties.
Arji wants to have children with me?
The Solar Meet alarm beeped, and Arjun spat an emphatic “Fuck,” which relaxed Kelle into a smile.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “I told you — you’re my person. And if the opportunity to meet happens, if we can room together …” If Jair wouldn’t mind, or if they could get a larger room, or a suite … “I’m not saying no, okay? I’m saying let’s —”
“Circle back to it at a later date?” Arjun sputtered in laughter.
Ugh, that phrase.
Kelle pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ay, I hate you.”
“Talk to you later, my dust buster from another cluster.”
• • •
Kelle stared at the visi-ceiling as she lay in bed, fingers winding around the phone cord. A starscape video slowly rotated above her. Occasionally, a meteor would dart across the illusion.
“I can’t believe you’ll be here soon,” she said to Arjun and Jair. “It doesn’t seem real. How do your families feel about it?”
“Talking to your imaginary boyfriends?” Cyb asked as she walked on the treadmill that charged their room’s auxiliary power.
“They’re not imaginary,” Kelle protested. “They live in another pod. And they’re not my boyfriends, they’re each other’s boyfriend.”
“Mhmm.” Cyb put her earbuds back in and chuckled at whatever she was watching on the treadmill’s little screen.
“How do you know we’re not imaginary?” Jair teased. “We could be digitally constructed personalities.”
“I think you mean AIs,” Kelle said.
“I’m an AI,” Arjun said. “Always Intelligent.”
Kelle rolled her eyes.
“Always Interesting,” he added, then laughed in the way one laughs when being tickled. “Always Impressive.”
“Always Incorrigible,” Jair said.
“You’re both incorrigible,” Kelle said.
Their conversation lulled, and she could hear the men share a kiss.
“They bled us dry for tests,” Jair said, “so it better be real. And to answer your question, we’re telling our families today. We didn’t want to say anything earlier only to learn that our tests showed something that prevented us from leaving.”
“What did they test for?”
“Communicable diseases,” Arjun said, “and for the virus. I was wondering if they’d do genetics testing, but apparently that’s illegal.”
“It’s not illegal,” Jair said. “Eugenics is illegal, with good reason. But they still require testing to make sure people aren’t closely related before having children.”
Children. The more Kelle had thought about it, the more she wanted to be a mother. As crazy as it sounded, to want to bring a child into this, this underground world of filtered and artificial sunlight, of hydroponic gardens, water so heavily treated you could taste the chemicals and maybe-just-maybe a hint of the recycled urine, of cows and chickens living and breeding in bunker barns … She wanted this, but only because of Arjun. She wanted to look down at an infant in her arms and see herself, see Arjun. And if anyone changed their mind, fine. She wouldn’t wither and die without a child. But she might wither and die without Arjun, in her life, in any capacity that he wanted.
“We can worry about all that later,” Kelle said, gripping her abdomen out of anticipation. She looked at beautiful dark Cyb, all curves, purple braids down to her waist that flicked with every step. “For all I know, you’ll meet Cyb on her way to Pod South, become absolutely smitten, and follow her there.”
“I don’t do relationships!” Cyb hollered. Murmuring, she added, “Or children.”
Kelle smirked, but her mood dimmed when the line went quiet. “You there?”
“We’re here,” Arjun said. “Just smiling.”
“He’s really excited,” Jair said.
Heat rushed to Kelle’s face.
“Pod South will be lucky to have Cyb,” Arjun said.
“Maybe if we meet in the tunnels she’ll autograph my uniform,” Jair said. The Solar Meet alarm beeeeeeped on his end of the line. Kelle’s and Cyb’s was earlier.
“Showtime,” Jair said.
“Break it to them gently.”
“That’s the plan,” Arjun said.
Kelle hung the handset on the wall and sat on the edge of her bed. She couldn’t stop grinning.
The treadmill slowed to a stop, and Cyb stepped off. “Your turn,” she said.
Kelle switched off the visi-ceiling, slid on her exercise boots, and climbed onto the machine.
“You know Arjun’s in love with you, right?” Cyb said before shedding her clothes and slipping into the shower.
“I thought he was imaginary!” Kelle called back.
Cyb laughed, then started to sing one of her hit songs.
• • •
Jair squeezed Arjun’s hand as they walked side by side, hand in hand, down the subterranean grey plastic tunnel dimly illuminated by the occasional solar light. Walked, because there was no other way to reach Pod North. The dim tunnels were narrow, creating a long line of the thirty transfers and four guards. The journey would take approximately three weeks, depending on how long the group rested and slept between episodes of walking.
They had to move as a group, as they all carried the group’s burden. Some could carry more, others less. Water was heavy, so Arjun, being strong, carried quite a lot for the whole group. One woman, in a wheelchair, was able to attach a small cart behind her to tow bulky, but lightweight, supplies. Small children carried nothing but their favorite toy — heirlooms made of plastic or motley things newly forged from recycled heirlooms.
The guards, differentiated from the others only by a bright orange band sewn onto their grey uniform and the gear they carried, marched at the front and rear of the line. Only they knew the way, and they prevented any deviations down the various branching corridors.
Kelle was expecting them, of course. She hadn’t applied for a large room yet — they would worry about that later. First, Arjun and Jair, and the other transfers, would have to live in quarantine for two weeks. During this time, they could meet Pod North inhabitants, but it would be through a barrier.
A child began to sing a children’s song.
“It’s the Solar Meet, meet
I see your feet, feet
Hold on to your sheet, sheet
Ew, what did you eat, eat!”
Jair snorted. “You want one of those?”
Arjun grinned. “Several, if that happens.”
Jair patted his chiseled abdomen. “But, Arjun, my figure!”
“You would, wouldn’t you. If you could.”
Jair grinned, but then frowned and fell quiet for a few steps. “Do you really think Kelle will like me?” he asked, somehow looking worried and hopeful at the same time. Even after months of talking to Kelle on the phone, Jair still felt nervous.
Arjun smiled, and he hoped his confidence showed. “She already likes you,” Arjun said. “I know what you mean. In person, it might be different. But Kelle and I are so alike we might as well be the same person. So I would assume she’ll love you.”
“Are you going to tell her that you love her?”
A minute, a mile, a sum of distances Arjun couldn’t measure passed inside this infinite tunnel as he deliberated Jair’s question. He’d had months between announcement and departure to figure out his answer.
Arjun was in love with Kelle. He was also in love with Jair. And Arjun was still Kelle’s person, and she, his. Jair said he didn’t mind, and truly didn’t seem to mind. If Jair was at all jealous of the bond Arjun and Kelle had, he was good at pretending he wasn’t. But none of this meant Kelle thought of Arjun as anything but a friend.
“Should I?” Arjun asked Jair. “I should. Of course I should. I have to. Maybe not immediately. In quarantine, that would be awkward.”
Jair squeezed Arjun’s hand. “Just say it when it feels right.”
They shared a quick kiss, and a child behind them giggled before singing a rhyme about k-i-s-s-i-n-g.
A figure in the distance took form, dimmed, then shined again under a light. Two guards, followed by a handful of people, one of whom with bright purple hair, were heading toward them.
“Cyb?” Jair strained on his toes to look ahead of the line of transfers. “Hey, Arjun, look!”
• • •
Kelle recognized Arjun the instant she saw him. Tall, thick, dark. Black eyes. Luscious lips. He must have shaved his beard before the journey because it was shorter than he’d described. And beside him, a small thin man, pale and blonde, pretty. Jair.
She ran to the barrier at the same time Arjun did. They each pressed their hands, fingers splayed, against the clear plastic, mirroring. She felt that tingle again — that impossible tingle, because they weren’t touching, couldn’t even feel his warmth. Her heart was fluttering, but she didn’t monitor her pulse. She breathed through the nerves, through the tingle, the excitement, and the dread.
Is she what he imagined? Did that even matter anymore? Who was she to him, beyond friend? Beyond potential coparent of his potential children?
Now that Arjun was here, right here, standing before her only a centimeter apart, Kelle couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again and a sob burst out of her lips. Arjun’s muffled voice rumbled the plastic barrier. When she looked up, he was holding a phone handset and pointing to hers. She slowly brought it to her ear.
Jair hung back in the shadows, selflessly giving them this moment.
“I’m here,” Arjun said, voice unsteady. “I’m here.”
Kelle looked up at him, so tall, and blinked because it was all so blurry from tears. She pressed her forehead to the plastic, then felt a dull thud when Arjun did the same.
“You’re here,” she said. “You’re here, you’re here.” She felt it then, his fingers linking with hers, felt it in her mind, the barrier between them the thinnest it had ever been.
Others in the dim wide room greeted transfers from behind the plastic. Some sobbed heavily; some jumped with joy. Perhaps they, too, had met via telephone. Out of the corner of her eye, Kelle saw Arjun reach behind him for Jair. They clasped hands.
“This is Jair,” Arjun said into the phone.
Jair took the offered handset. “Hello, Kelle.” He truly did have a wide, hooked smile. “Goodness, you’re beautiful.” He frowned, then. “I hope those are happy tears.”
Beautiful. Beautiful. “They are. Happy tears. Hi, Jair. Hello.” She laughed. “It’s so good to meet you both. Are you okay? Need food, water, anything?”
“We’re being taken care of,” Arjun said. “Don’t worry about that.” His palm was still against the plastic, still mirroring hers. “Kelle,” he whispered, looking directly at her, seeming on the verge of tears himself. “I love you. I should have said it before making this journey, but now I can’t not say it. I love you. And I am so glad I’m here.”
Kelle glanced at Jair and saw that he, too, was crying. And smiling.
“I love you, too, Arji,” she said, crying still, but grinning so much it hurt. “You’re more than just my person. I think I fell in love with you a long time ago.”
Arjun jostled with a light laugh, eyes smiling, and let his tears roll down his cheeks.
• • •
“Guess what?” Arjun said, whispering into Kelle’s ear from behind as he wrapped his arms around her.
“They discovered the moon actually is made of cheese?”
He dropped his smile. “Huh?”
She laughed and turned around. “Never mind. Tell me.”
Arjun held her upper arms as he regained his smile. He couldn’t believe what he was about to say aloud. Words he’d been waiting for all these years:
“They’re opening the pods.”
Kelle’s smile faded slowly. “Really? No joking?”
“The harmful radiation is gone. The toxins are gone.” He slid his palms over her shoulders. “There hasn’t been ashfall in five years.” He traced her curves from shoulder to neck. “The ice caps are holding, the ozone layer has healed, the climate is wonderfully boring.” He cupped her cheeks. “We can finally feel true sunlight, darling. Our children can feel sunlight.” He kissed her, pulled back, and smiled at Jair, finally home from work.
“I see you told her,” Jair said, shucking off his shoes.
“Secrets!” Kelle said.
“Don’t worry, love,” Jair said. “He only told me over lunch today. Couldn’t contain the excitement breech. He was supposed to wait until I came home to tell you …” Jair kissed Kelle’s cheek as she kissed the air next to his. “So? Excited?”
Kelle shook her head. “I’m terrified. Excited, and terrified.”
• • •
Kelle held her children’s hands as they and Arjun and Jair walked out into the sunlight — real sunlight — out of the pod entrance that had nearly been overgrown by shortgrass.
Others joined them until dozens of people, for the first time in their lives, stood under the Sun.
The sky was the exact color known as ‘sky blue’. Not the sickly yellow of nuclear winter, not overcast by white clouds, not grey from storms. Blue, blue, blue to the horizon.
In the distance, a herd of what Kelle thought were bison blackened the otherwise pale brown-green prairie. In another direction, green shrubs broke up the dun monochrome. A herd of something different from bison — horses? — flew across the plains. The brown plastic wall around the field of solar panels blocked the rest of her view.
“Somehow they survived,” Jair said.
Kelle turned to him. “Those aren’t the animals from the pod?”
Jair shook his head. “Those will be released soon, slowly, controlled. The biologists are still working out a plan.”
“But the toxins. The radiation?”
“The toxin was human-targeted,” Jair said, then screwed his lips. “Also monkeys.”
“Radiation may be a problem,” Arjun said. “They might not produce viable offspring.”
“They look fine to me,” Kelle said. “Look at them all.”
Hundreds of bison. Dozens of horses.
“Can we run?” Gear asked, looking up at Kelle with big eyes that looked just like Arjun’s.
“Yeah mama, can we?” Jak mimicked her brother’s pleas, giving Kelle Jair’s same hooked grin.
“I want to run,” Jair said. “Like the horses.” He looked at the children. “I bet I’m faster than you!”
“Are not!” they yelled.
With that, Jair and the children took off running, as did others, mainly young ones. They frolicked as guards stood watch.
Arjun reached for Kelle’s hand and wove their fingers tightly. “Well,” he said. “I’m certainly glad we took those courses on natural engineering.”
“It will be a slow process, building what we need with what we can get. We might be able to scavenge some materials.”
“Remolded plastic will be of great use.”
“Thankfully the pod can still feed and house us.”
Arjun brought Kelle’s hand to his lips, and they shared a broad smile before watching all the children and several adults run and jump and squeal and laugh.
“It feels different,” Kelle said. “The sunlight.”
“Yes. And the air, it’s …”
“Natural.” She took a deep breath.
Natural. Not filtered, not recycled, not smelling of plastic. Organic, raw, and carrying the scents of the world around her.
Kelle closed her eyes and leaned her head back, spread her arms, hands palm up. An eruption of warm shivers ran from finger to neck and around her shoulders, as sensational as a lover’s caress.
“It feels like I’m being kissed,” she said. “Real sunlight. Real sky.” She stood straight and looked at Arjun.
He gazed at her, love written across his smile. And before she knew what was happening, he whipped his uniform top off and flung it away. In his excitement, he threw his head back and made a long whoop!
“Sir,” a guard said sternly. “Please do not remove your clothing. Physician’s orders.”
“Oh, right,” he said, grimacing sheepishly. “Solar radiation isn’t filtered outside.”
“That’s time!” said the other guard before blowing a whistle. “Everyone back inside. The next group is waiting.”
Kelle tapped Arjun’s butt as they returned to the pod hatch, children and Jair following.
“It’s the Solar Meet, meet,” Gear sang.
Jak answered with, “I see your feet, feet!”
And together they said, “Hold on to your sheet, sheet …”
Jair murmured to Kelle and Arjun, “They’re gonna need a new song.”