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Dawn was half an hour away when Abot let me out of the house. The door locked behind me, and my perks button would not unlock it. I was no longer Mrs. VanDeer's concern, so I was no longer Abot's. The morning was chilly, the sky a huge, empty blue. Over the slim-skirted dress Nancy had given me (because it was a shade of brown she didn't like), I was clad in a black hand-me-down windbreaker from Jacki, plus my least-worn sneakers, gloves and protectant veil. My breath made small ghosts in the crisp air. A blue nylon bag piped in black plastic had been slung over my shoulder, a few changes of clothes tucked inside.
In my glove-clad hands I clutched my passport, a well-tooled document of superfluous ceremony, leftover from a bygone era, much as the encyclopedia had said that the caps and gowns once worn by medieval university students on a daily basis now appear only at graduations. I opened the stiff back page of the passport to my flat picture: my chin length brown frizz, my off-color skin, my too-wide, muddy green eyes. The photo's placement on the page reminded me of an illuminated manuscript gone comically wrong.
As far as I knew, all I needed was my perks ring to board the plane, to be ushered from one port of entry to the next. Still, I closed the passport with reverence. At that moment, those papers meant nothing of the past and everything of the future. They represented freedom's promise.
I remember early morning couriers scudding through the streets. A trash truck lumbered up the hilly street as I waited. Ah, yes, reader, you do remember trash trucks, do you not, from the days before universal disposal chutes became so widely available? In front of each house, the truck's clamp reached out to the container left at the curb, lifting said container high into the air, shaking its contents into the truck's gaping back, plonking the empty shell back onto the sidewalk. Many of these trash cans, set down off balance, wobbled before flopping to the concrete, rolling until friction or a run-in with a yard made them stop. When the truck collected the rest of the VanDeer's trash, I had to step out of the way. A different kind of truck was coming for me.
I looked left and right, searching for the shuttle that would carry me to my new life. Around the curve to my left came a car too small to be a skyport van. As it came closer, I recognized the dinged yellow paneling, not only because Ranice was behind the wheel, but also because it was the only car with rubber tires and manual controls that ever traversed this neighborhood. I waved at her. She waved back, steered around the trash truck, then pulled up to the VanDeer's curb.
“Jane!” she exclaimed, leaving her door open and rushing to meet me, the wide brim of her hat flapping under her veil's weight. “I thought I'd miss you!”
When Ranice scooped me up into her arms and swung me around, I was too surprised to speak. I quickly defeated my wonder enough to ask, “Do you know how this happened?”
Ranice set me down on the concrete again. “I'm not sure, honey. As soon as they said you were dropped from my caseload, I tried to find out what judge ruled on your case, but for some reason the record has been sealed.”
“Why?”
Ranice shook her head. “I don't know. But this is the first emancipation I've ever handled, so...” She shrugged.
From the opposite direction, I saw a boxy van crest a hill. The dawn reflected hard off of its sleek, midnight blue surface.
“Ranice, do you know where they're sending me?”
Ranice's face had turned a shade of gray in the dim dawn. Shaking her head as the shuttle van came closer, she said. “I don't, honey. I wish I did.”
My heart gave a little shudder at this; I believe that was the moment when my new independence truly hit me, and hit hard. The December breeze whirled around me like an invisible cylinder—like a Nature-borne at-home capsule. Only now, instead of imprisoning me with the VanDeers, it would push me into new prisons in new lands. I tried to remember the promise of finding others like me—of finding myself not quite so alone. The thought was heartening—almost.
The van door opened. A tall girl, fourteen-ish, stepped out. The wind flipped her veil and short, straight, night-black hair out of her gaunt face. She wore an outfit I recognized from Bollywood Online: loose, pegged cotton pants and a long-sleeved dress that fell to mid-calf, all in lavender. She wore a long pair of anti-bacterial/anti-viral black travel gloves. With one hand, she held closed the opening of her ivory cable-knit cardigan. In her other hand was an HR. She lifted it to her face and read it closely. She looked up, and her black, almond-shaped eyes settled on me.
I looked back at the VanDeers' house. The door was still closed. There were no faces in the windows to see me off. No one would miss me. There was no going back, even if I wanted to.
“You're Jane E,” the girl across the street called. Her voice had an adult solidity to it, which lead me to believe she might be older than fourteen. She could have been sixteen or eighteen, sixty or eighty.
“We have to go,” she said.
I curled my lips inwards and chewed them. Ranice must have seen this gesture of fear, because she knelt on the concrete beside me and took my gloved hand in hers.
“I know I haven't told you this, honey,” she began, “but I always thought you were one special kid. So smart, you know?”
Unprofessional tears were brewing in her eyes. She touched my cheek with her other hand. “It's a dangerous world, but it's a small one, too. Be careful, and I'll see you again. God bless, child.”
At ten years of age, I was unequipped to respond any farewell blessing. I was more comfortable with the VanDeers' silent abandonment. All I could do for Ranice was nod my head solemnly and pull my hand from hers. I stepped to the curb, looked both ways, and crossed the street.
The tall girl turned her hand palm-down and waved her fingers. It took me a moment to realize she was beckoning me into the van. I studied her face for one second and noticed what looked like a fat pencil smudge on her right cheekbone. Her eyes narrowed at my stare. She shook her head, and her hair fell over her cheek, obscuring part of her eye.
I clambered into the van. My load lightened for a second when the girl gave my bag a boost. I sat on the frontmost bench and scooted over to the window. The other girl took the bench space beside me. We were the shuttle's only occupants.
“San Diego International, please,” the girl said. The door slid shut, and the van glided off.
I craned my neck around my companion so I could get one last glimpse of Ranice through the van's window tint. She waved once, and then pressed her hand to her cheek. I turned around and faced the untinted windshield and through it, the road ahead.
“Is the temperature of the shuttle comfortable, passengers?” the benign female voice of the van asked us.
I looked to my escort for direction, since I'd never been on a shuttle before; the closest experience I had was riding on school busses, and they never asked if we were comfortable.
The other girl merely looked straight ahead and said nothing. I took a deep, tentative breath and said, “Yes, thank you.”
I looked to my neighbor for approval. She frowned.
The van spoke again: “We are thirty point fourteen minutes from our arrival at San Diego International Skyport—Lindbergh Field. Do you need information about baggage check, visa requirements, or—”
“Thank you. That will be all,” my companion said.
The van's voice broke off. Now all we heard was the soft buzz of the shuttle over asphalt.
I watched as we left the sprawling houses and carbon sucking EnviroLift-brand trees that were popular in the front yards of that region in those days. It was like walking and watching my shadow change, casting its darkness upon objects in its wake but never becoming part of them.
The van slid on to a ramp and waited in line as each vehicle in turn received the municipal network's permission to merge onto the freeway. I heard the faint click signaling said permission, and the shuttle slid into traffic. Clear, crisp advertisements now floated across our windows, exploiting our audience-grade captivity in an attempt to reduce road maintenance costs. “Buying fresh produce? Look for the Tectosphere sticker—and never see spoilage again!” “There's only one... HandRight!” “PetroGlyph Endeavors. New banking. The old-fashioned way. With PetroGlyph.”
The other girl closed her eyes as more glittering script scrolled by. These ads were geared towards business travelers, not towards a ten year-old girl who had just left the only world she'd ever known. Thus, my attentions were not held. Again I studied my co-traveler. Besides that smudge on her cheek, she looked clean, but she smelled like she needed to bathe. I rubbed my nose with the back of my sleeve.
I attempted conversation. “What's your name?”
She kept her eyes closed. “Aidann,” she said.
Other girls like you, Dr. Graying had said. Hope made me eager. “Are you an unclaimed embryo, too?”
“No,” she said, immutably calm. My heart sank a little.
“Aidann,” I said for practice. “Are you coming with me the whole way?”
“Yes,” Aidann said. Then, she asked, “Van, how much longer, please?”
“Fourteen point three minutes.”
“Darken window tint, please.”
The advertisements stood out even more prominently than before against the now opaque windows.
“Thank you. That will be all.”
Aidann turned her shoulder to me in a way that told me to leave her alone. She zipped open an eight-by-ten inch bag that hung at her side from a strap crossing her chest. The bag was of intricately woven, thick beige cotton, nubbed all over with miniscule variations in texture. From the bag, Aidann removed a roll of white fabric woven in a similar style similar. Both the bag and the roll were shadowed heavily on the edges with the grime of frequent use. Aidann closed her eyes and, through the thin protection of her travel gloves, ran her fingertips over the roll. I turned to the window on my left and watched the ads ride by.
When the van glided over to an off-ramp marked “Skyport—Terminal H,” Aidann re-rolled her fabric scroll and zipped it back into her purse. She checked her reflection in the window's darkness and smoothed her hair with her fingers. Turning her head one angle, then another, she nodded to her reflection, as if to say, “This is the best I can do.”
The shuttle reached the drop-off point. The female voice kindly informed us, “One hundred twelve point seven U. S. dollars or equivalent, please. Payment can be made by perks or approved bank credit. No cash payments, please.”
“Give it your perks button,” Aidann instructed.
“But I don't have that much money on it!”
“You do now, from Naomi.”
Doubtful, I made a fist and matched the button on my ring to the gray-green receptor spot on my armrest designed for such transactions. I tensed, waiting for the attempt to be denied. The door of the van opened, and I let go of the breath I had been holding.
“Thank you. And the next time you're in San Diego, don't forget Bell Transport Services!”
Aidann grabbed my wrist and pulled me out into the drive.
“Get off me!” I shouted over the hushed pulse of the terminal's awakening traffic. I pulled my arm from Aidann's gentle grip. “I'm not your girlfriend, you know!”
Aidann frowned at me for a split second then shrugged. “I forgot. You're still American. Just try to keep up, then.”
I didn't have time to wonder what she meant by You're still American. I barely had time to reach back into the shuttle for my bag. I darted through the whirr of cars, limos, and the drowsy, cranky scattering of fellow travelers, to follow Aidann through the smoothly swirling entryway.
The entrance was an carboned glass oval, split in two and constantly rotating in its shell. Aidann was through one half and inside just as I had reached the second half. I found myself sharing my half of the entrance with two men and their six year-old son. All three wore pale orange t-shirts, maroon shorts, and had two black circles sticking out from each of their heads. They reeked of fresh soap.
“When do we get to see Mickey, Papa Jim?”
“Another hour.”
“And this is the real Mickey this time, not the Anaheim Mickey, right?”
The entrance spit us into the terminal foyer, and I did not get to hear Papa Jim's answer. I was too intent on finding Aidann. I craned my neck to look over the loosely milling crowd and caught sight of her stopped at the security checkpoint twenty meters ahead. She had passed under the detector archwire and was flanked by two uniformed guards. I stomped my way across to her, under the vast dome of the foyer.
Midway across, I flicked a glance upwards and took in the sight of the mural on the ceiling. It was an “illustrated living history” of aviation. Above me, the blades of DaVinci's sketched machines came to life. The Wright brothers tinkered intently with bicycle parts. Charles Lindbergh in grayscale leaned on “The Spirit of St. Louis” with one arm and waved with the other. The crisply uniformed pilot of a semi-orbiter cheerily welcomed an endless loop of passengers onto her craft. I was so distracted by the bright display above that I had to collide with an old, wrinkled woman to knock me out of my trance.
I immediately expected her to yell at me, but then I focused enough to see she was clad in a brown nun's habit. I slowly drew a deep breath; I'd never seen a real live Catholic before. She smiled at me between furtive side-to-side glances. I backed away carefully, wondering how soon before one of the security checkpoint officers arrested her for sedition.
On this side of the checkpoint, one encountered other commerce of a more independent nature. Everywhere cart-vendors hawked travel gloves, homespun protein candies, herbal zero-g sickness remedies, questionable health supplements. I thought about buying some antivibac ointment, thought better of it, and stood on tiptoe, again searching for Aidann.
I found her again, still being held. One guard was inspecting her passport, which I saw was covered in a darker blue than mine, almost black.
I reached the archwire, placed my perks ring and passport into the attending guard's gloved hands. I passed beneath the wire, bag in tow, while the guard tapped my perks button into the receptor, comparing the identities. No alarm sounded.
The guard looked at the flat screen above the perks receptor and made a face. “What the—is this some kind of a joke?” he muttered, shaking my ring and tapping it on the receptor again.
“Wha—what's wrong?” I stammered.
“It says you're—” He waited, blinked at the screen, and then sighed in relief.
“It says I'm who?” I asked, leaning towards the security shield, trying to peer over it and see what the screen was calling me. I was too short.
Shrugging sheepishly, the guard handed me my passport and ring. “It says you're you,” he said. Sotto voce he added, “I need coffee.”
Clear of security, I glanced over my shoulder at Aidann's plight. I could not hear the conversation she was having with her inspectors, but one of the guards opened Aidann's purse and removed the white roll of fabric. He asked something, but whatever she answered caused him to wrinkle his lip and shove the roll back at her. She took it with both hands and a slight bow and waited blank faced for them to finish. Finally, the two guards consulted, shrugged at each other, gave Aidann her passport and waved her on, but I lost sight of her immediately thereafter. I replaced my perks ring on my finger and ducked back into the crowd, searching again.
A few meters out, a voice spoke behind me: “Have you ever flown before?”
I whirled around. Aidann. Instead of asking, How did you do that? I replied, “I've never even been in a skyport before.”
Again she beckoned me, palm down. “You'll get used to it.”
Working my short legs double time to keep up with Aidann's confident strides, I followed the path she cut through the crowd of econo-vacationers, drowsy business travelers, and Abot's cousins.
I stopped when Aidann pulled up at the service kiosk for gate H-9: Korean Air Semi-Orbital Flight 76 to Delhi. All but four of the chairs in the waiting area were empty. The baggage claim chute on the side of the kiosk was shut tightly. Aidann still kept one hand firmly clamped on the bag at her side
To my surprise, Aidann fed a paper ticket into the kiosk's slot, dusty with infrequent use.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pointing to another gray-green spot on the kiosk's surface, the surface of which was decorated with a Mercator projection map. “Why don't you just use your perks?”
“Because I don't have one.”
Was she joking? “Why not?”
“Pretty soon you won't have one anymore either.”
She opened her passport and placed it face-down onto the scanning crystal. The pleather cover of her passport was embossed in gold with what looked like a three-headed tiger. There was a short, soft hiss as the kiosk seared the exit stamp into her passport page, then it spit out a paper boarding pass. The kiosk garbled something I was incapable of understanding at that point in my language education, or lack thereof. Aidann briefly garbled something back. It replied with another sentence or two of what to me was nonsense. Aidann took her passport, closed it around the boarding pass, and tucked all of this into her purse.
“Your turn,” she said.
I looked at the kiosk, then at Aidann, then back at the kiosk. Monkey see, monkey do. I opened my passport and started to put it on the scanner, looking to Aidann for approval.
She did not approve. “You can still use your perks. It's not cancelled yet.”
“Oh.” I took the passport off of the scanner and tapped the surface of my ring against the receptor.
“Jane E, will you be checking any bags?” the kiosk asked cheerfully in English.
“Uh, I don't think so.”
There was a pause while the kiosk considered this. “Will you be checking any bags?”
“Well, I just have this one, and it's not very—”
“Will you be checking any bags?”
“Just say, 'No, thank you,'“ Aidann instructed.
“No.” I spoke into the kiosk, probably a little too loudly. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Jane E,” the kiosk sang. “Your fare to Delhi has been collected and your visa inspected. At this time, Korean Air SOF 76 is running approximately seventeen minutes behind schedule. Have a pleasant journey.”
I grinned; I felt like I had just single-handedly vanquished an army with nothing more than a double-wink, but my feelings of victory were short-lived. Aidann was gone again. I scanned the waiting area and spotted her lavender-clad legs sticking out from behind a mobillboard, which was just then switching between another ad for PetroGlyph Endeavors and an enticement to ask one's doctor about Cucumber Delight, North America's favorite anti-optivellicant.
Peeking around the board, I found Aidann seated, her hands resting in her lap, her fingers moving as if she were adding on them very, very slowly. She seemed to be staring at some spot in the air two feet in front of her nose. Her lips moved silently.
There were two empty chairs to her left. I cleared my throat. She did not notice. I made a nano-sized waving gesture. She remained oblivious. Irritated, I threw my bag into the seat directly next to her and threw myself into the seat next to that. Aidann still did not react. I examined her face more closely to see if she had some of those new (at the time) picotrodes on her temples, signifying she was online and not available to invite me to take a seat. Even when I squinted, I saw no telltale dimple in which a PT would have taken root. All I saw was that pencil smudge on her cheek.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
I waited. She did not answer. I waited a full minute. Nothing.
I shouted, “What? Are? You? Do? Ing?”
Still no response. Folding my arms across my chest, I forced a petulant raspberry sound through my loosely pursed lips, but Aidann didn't even flinch. She kept staring and counting. There was a clock projected onto the clerestory running just beneath the high ceiling. My math was bad, but still good enough to help me figure out I still had at least fifteen minutes before our SOF would start boarding.
“Fine,” I said to the unresponsive Aidann. I stood and shouldered my blue bag. “I'm going to take a look around.”
Finally blinking, Aidann nodded towards the other side of the mobillboard. “This isn't going to be your last time in a skyport. You'll have lots of other chances to get to know the lay of the land.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it's not a good idea for you to go off by yourself,” she explained, once again exhibiting her bottomless cup of patience. “That's why Naomi has us travel in pairs. We watch each other's backs.”
“You came here alone,” I said.
She rubbed at her cheek smudge but said nothing.
“And nobody watches out for me,” I added, slinging my bag further onto my shoulder. As proof, I gave Aidann one last irritated look, which went completely unappreciated, and meandered out of the waiting area into the shining mall that was the skyport.
Gone were the shady, scurrying merchants of the pre-checkpoint foyer. Now the walls were lined with neatly spaced “shoppes” offering fine teas, duty free personal radiation units, California wines, souvenirs, a stop-in bio-arts stand. There was a Chez Noodle franchise and a Señorita Dolmade's in the food court.
Down the corridor, closer to the security arch, I saw the undulating marquee I hadn't noticed on our way in: an actie theatre, advertising booths for individuals, couples, families. Glowing letters advertised their guaranteed notification service: you miss your flight because the actie fails to interrupt your participation, your money back! This promise faded to be replaced by an ad for Orabelle, the public version of the home actie Mrs. VanDeer had bought for Nancy. I never had been allowed to try any of the VanDeers acties. My only actie experience had been with the boring, educational, free ones at school, like Cold War and Build Your Own Ziggurat.
I stood frozen then, torn between the mesmerization of the marquee and a chilling of the stomach that I would have been hard-pressed to quantify. It wasn't homesickness. Perhaps it was the sickness of not having a home. I brushed away the tear weighing down my right cheekbone.
I found another clerestory clock and realized I had been standing there like an idiot for approximately ten minutes. I shook the stupor from my head and pivoted on my heel, intending to return to Aidann and just wait—but something felt lighter. I shrugged at the bag on my shoulder. It responded a little too eagerly. I looked down. My bag was flatter. I turned it over. It had been sliced open on the bottom, the contents removed from the wound. In disbelief, I spun around, searching each passing face for signs of guilt, searching each pair of hands for a piece of the clothing the VanDeers had allowed me to remove from their house. Nothing. I could barely breathe. I ran through the crowd, around the mobillboard, stood in front of Aidann and held my bag out to her.
Aidann let her eyes refocus on me. She did not change expression. “You're blessed you're not the one slit open.”
I shuddered. “Come with me to security.”
Finally, she flinched. “Jane, you'll have to get used to not relying on security.”
“What do you mean? I don't understand.”
Aidann reached for my hand, stopped herself, and placed her hand back in her lap. “You will.”
The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and skyport delays. I sat another twenty-five minutes in the waiting area, silent with a silent Aidann, before boarding began. As I followed Aidann to the ramp door that led to the craft, I pulled my empty bag from my shoulder and began molding it into a ball. I was ready to pop it into the disposal at the foot of the entrance ramp, but Aidann stopped me.
“Keep it,” she said. “It can be mended.”
Mended. That meant “fixed.” I protested, “It will show!”
“It will remind you to be careful,” Aidann replied. “Even fixable mistakes leave their scars.”
The best counter I had to this was to pout. “I don't know how to fix it.”
“You will learn how, soon.”
The turbaned man waiting behind us said something that I didn't understand but sounded like he was telling us to move. Aidann gave me a gentle push, and we jogged the rest of the way up the ramp. Inside the craft door and to our left was the pilot. His firm cap of dark blue mesh was perched on his head at a precarious angle. His blue and white striped shirt was rumpled, dirt-scratched and profusely sweated upon. He looked nothing like the fresh-scrubbed, well-coiffed multiracial captain from the foyer ceiling.
“Perks,” Aidann reminded gently, feeding her boarding pass into the machine at the pilot's side. I likewise tapped my ring against the proper spot on the machine.
The pilot muttered something of which Aidann understood enough to mutter back. The pilot waved us impatiently away, then nodded at the turbaned passenger waiting behind us.
Aidann grasped the looseness of my jacket sleeve and compelled me down the aisle. Our shoulders brushed against the faux-pine handles at the sides of the seats. She stopped us at a row towards the middle and steered me left, into the window seat.
“Give me your bag,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because if we don't lock it up overhead, it will float around the cabin after we hit zero-g.”
Embarrassed that I had forgotten something so obvious, I handed it to her. She folded it, rolled the strap around it and placed it inside the cabinet above.
Using the guide handle for leverage, she swung smoothly into the aisle seat. She buckled her shoulder harness. I did likewise. Then, Aidann opened her purse. The zipper was viciously toothed, and it caught the finger of Aidann's travel glove. The fading black knit frayed into a miniature cloud of mist. Aidann's face took on a troubled frown.
She began removing the contents of her purse. First came a small container of a strong antivibac salve—stronger than what I'd wanted to buy earlier, the kind used mostly by the immunosuppressed, available only by prescription. The container was labeled, “A Gift of Healing from Your Friends at Rozbeh-Bedros Pharmaceuticals.”
Next was that roll of white fabric, then another roll of fabric—this one a fresh, clean beige, no wider than my hand—both of which she set in her lap. Also into her lap went the HandRight she had been using earlier.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing at the rolls of fabric.
Aidann pushed my hand down. “Pointing like that's rude in most of the world. If you have to point at something, point with your chin.”
Petulant, I kicked at the bottom of the seat in front of me. “How would you know what's rude in the rest of the world?”
Looking over her shoulders again as her voice lowered to a whisper, Aidann said, “Because that's the kind of thing we learn at Naomi.”
“Oh, like Social Studies?”
Aidan picked up one of the fabric rolls and tucked it just into the base of her sleeve. “Not exactly. But we learn how to act in lots of different cultures, and we learn how to weave.”
I gave Aidann my most skeptical look. “Weave? Like, weaving fabric? Did you make those things?” I pointed with my chin.
Aidann kept silent.
“Why don't they just get nanos to weave stuff for them?”
“Nanobots are expensive and hard to find in most parts of the world still,” Aidann said. “Unwanted girls are cheap and everywhere.”
“But wouldn't Naomi get more money—” I broke off, trying to remember which word to use. Aidann waited patiently for me to continue. “Wouldn't Naomi make more money pimping us?”
“Not for the kind of weaving we do.”
“You mean guys pay more for girls to make cloth than to—”
Aidann interrupted, her usually impassive face suddenly darkened with a glower. “For the Naomi kind of weaving, yes.”
Something in that new look on Aidann's face prompted me to ask, “How would you know?”
She didn't answer, but she needed obvious energy to put her features back into their customary expression of serenity. She brushed the back of her hand against the smudge on her cheek and straightened her spine.
Seeing Aidann even remotely disturbed like that was enough to make me stop asking questions for the time being. I looked out the window, but from of the corner of my eye I saw a woman in a beaded gunmetal gray dress take a seat across the aisle from us. As soon as she was stationary, she pulled a pair of rose-colored travel gloves over her hands.
I thought to ask, “Aidann, can I borrow your antivibac?”
Aidann's eyes widened for a second, and she froze, as if I just had reminded her that we were going to crash. Just as quickly, she recovered, and her eyes returned to their normal size. “Naomi will give you a pair of travel gloves. For now just be careful to keep your hands out of your mouth, don't rub your eyes—”
I interrupted, “But I'm still at increased risk without travel gloves, right? Can't I use some of your antivibac?”
Aidann's expression became distant again. She just shook her head.
“But why not? Nothing spreads through that stuff, right?”
Blank-faced, Aidann said, “It's too strong for you.”
I sighed and began studying the subtle pattern woven into the seat in front of me. I looked out the window at the ground crew. The sun was brightening. I looked up at the miniature lighting units above our heads; mine had a reverse starburst of a black burn in its Plexiglas depths. I looked back across the aisle at the woman in the gray dress. Her hands flit nervously about her skirt, flicking off imaginary lint specks.
Then I saw Aidann stretch her left arm downward into the aisle, as if she were yawning. A second later, the woman in the gray dress reached to the floor and picked up something. Something that looked like a roll of fresh, clean beige cloth. Aidann began picking at the seal on the back of her HandRight as the craft began to move me toward my future with Naomi.
