17

“Jack,” Ari says. “Will you pass me that Pencil over there?”

“Ari? What—what happened? How did we get back here?”

We’re on the PSS 118, sitting in our regular seats in history class. The lights are dimmer than usual and the only desks in the room are mine and Ari’s. But everything else seems totally normal.

“Back here?” Ari asks. “What do you mean? And will you please pass me that Pencil over there?”

He gestures toward a shelf behind me, where a Pencil leans against a few textbooks.

“Sure,” I say, handing him the nanoprinter and looking around. “Where’s Becka?”

He smiles and sighs. “She is just perfect.”

“Right. Not my question.”

“But she is,” he insists, fiddling with the Pencil, clicking and writing in the air. “Absolutely, perfectly, perfect. Can you even believe how incredible she is?”

“I know, I know. She’s great.”

Typical.

He grins as he continues coding. “I’m going to make a picture of her!”

“Aha.” On second thought, maybe Ari is acting a little weirder than usual.

“It won’t do her justice,” he goes on. “She’s so beautiful. Her eyes. Her face. And that voice! Have you ever heard anything so angelic?”

“Angelic?”

The man has lost it.

That’s when the door to the classroom swings wide open and Becka charges into the room.

“Isn’t she perfect?” Ari asks, smiling up at Becka.

Oh man. I want to look away. It’s like watching a space wreck happen in slow motion.

“Perfect,” Becka agrees. “She is just perfect.”

Wait, who are they talking about?

“Guys,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“She’s perfect,” Becka and Ari creepily say at the exact same time, like possessed twins in a horror movie. “An angel.”

“Who?” I shout—but before the question leaves my lips, I realize that I already know the answer. I don’t remember what happened during Orientation. One second, I was walking into the mist, and the next, I’m back here. But Becka and Ari must have been brainwashed.

“The Minister,” they answer dreamily, their voices in total sync.

“You’re not thinking straight,” I say, hoping that I can break whatever spell they’re under. “The Elvidians did something to you. You don’t really think that the Minister is perfect. We’ve never even met the Minister.”

Ari gasps and Becka starts cracking her knuckles.

“Not . . . perfect . . . ?” Becka asks, grinding her teeth. “Take it back!”

As she marches toward me, I jump up from my chair and back away. She pauses under a bright light that casts a long shadow over the classroom.

“Hold on, Becka. Relax. This isn’t you.” I look at her red face and tightly closed fists. “Well, okay, this is kind of you. But not really.”

“How dare you insult the Minister!” She raises a fist and moves to punch me into the face.

“Whoa!” I shout, ducking just in time.

Her fist connects with the wall behind me, making a hand-shaped dent in the plaster. She spins around to face me, her eyes wild with hate. That alien mysterious voice wasn’t kidding. Orientation really does a number on you. But how did they get affected so badly while I got out okay?

“No!” Ari shouts to Becka, squeezing between her and me. I’m glad that he’s coming to his senses—until I watch him clench his fists with the same rage. “Let me.”

What?

“Take it back,” he commands. “Tells us that you love her.”

“What? No! Listen, they did something to you. You’ve got to snap out of it. We’ve got to refuel that engine. The Minister—”

“The Minister!” Becka interrupts.

“The Minister!” Ari repeats. “Long live the Minister! Long live the Minister!”

He clicks the Pencil, still in his hand, and out pops a large picture in a fancy frame, with brush strokes like a museum oil painting. The picture is of an Elvidian woman—red eyes, white hair, sharp nails—holding a scepter made of lasers and sitting on a shimmering black throne. Now that’s an alien queen. It’s like she knows that Elvidians already kind of look like fairy tale monsters and has decided to embrace it. As soon as the image appears, Ari and Becka bow down to the floor.

“Long live the Minister,” they say over and over. “Long live the Minister.”

“Stop it!” I shout, staring down at Ari. “Please. I’m your friend, remember? Your best friend. You have to listen to me. We—we need to do something.”

He slowly rises up, squinting at me with flared nostrils.

“You’re right,” he says.

But the way he says it . . . it’s all wrong.

Becka gets up and stands next to him, the floating picture of the Minister hovering between their shoulders.

“Yes,” she says. “We need to do something.”

The two of them step closer to me.

“Something needs to change,” Ari says. “If you don’t love her—if you don’t believe in her—we can’t be friends anymore.” He says it as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. “In fact, we’ve never really been friends.”

“What? You can’t think that’s true.”

“I think all sorts of things now,” he says. “Like how you’ve always made fun of me for liking Becka.” I look over at her, waiting for some reaction. But nothing. Not even a blink. They’re both total zombies. “For thinking that I’m not good enough for her.”

“That’s not—”

“No!” he barks.

Becka sidesteps over to him and grabs his hand. They interlock their fingers.

“No,” he says again. “You don’t believe in me. You think I’m a joke. But I’m not listening to you anymore. You’re not smarter than me. Not more important than me. No one likes you.”

“Not me,” Becka volunteers.

“And not me,” Ari says. “I’ve felt bad for you. Because your mom left and your dad went nuts being around you. But just because you’re a loser doesn’t mean we have to be friends. I deserve better. Better than you.”

“Ari,” I choke. “Think about what you’re saying. Please.”

He laughs and it gives me goosebumps. How am I going to fix this? I know he doesn’t mean it. But still . . . maybe he’s not totally off base. I’ve always made fun of him for his crush on Becka (which is ridiculous, isn’t it?). I’ve barely paid attention to him lately (but I had an excuse, didn’t I?). And Doctor Shrew . . . I mean . . . I was under a lot of stress and . . .

No. That was unforgiveable.

And maybe everything else was too.

“Good-bye,” Ari says, wrapping his arm around Becka. “See ya never.”

They leave the room and I’m left by myself, clueless and terrified and sad. I don’t even call out after them. I just stand there, staring into the red-eyed face of the Minister in the floating picture in front of me.

What do I do?

I close my eyes and reopen them a second later.

***

“Jack,” Ari says. “Will you pass me that Pencil over there?”

Wait. What?

We’re back in the history room. The books are stacked neatly on the shelf, Becka is nowhere in sight, and the floating image of the Minister is gone.

“Ari?” I ask.

“That’s me,” he says. “Now will you please pass me that Pencil over there?”

I look behind me and, sure enough, the Pencil is exactly where it was a few minutes ago. My mind is racing. What’s happening? Where did Becka go? Why are we here again? It’s like life just rewound itself.

And it hits me.

I thought that the brainwashing hadn’t worked on me. That I had come out of Orientation fine and that Ari and Becka had been reprogrammed. But I was wrong. I haven’t come out of Orientation at all.

This is Orientation.

It must be some sort of . . . simulation. Not real, just like the voice said. I’m a little relieved, and a little afraid, and really don’t want to experience all that again. But I don’t have a choice. And it goes almost as it did before, except this time, it ends with me on the floor, having been tripped by Orientation Becka, while Orientation Ari does a clumsy slow dance with the painting of the Minister. Becka’s cackling like a madwoman, Ari looks like he’s about to plant one on the canvas Minister, and I squeeze my eyes shut again. And again. And again.

***

Sometimes it ends with me getting made fun of. Once or twice, they beat me up. There’s this one version where I poke a hole in the painting, which makes them both cry. And sometimes, when I’m too mentally exhausted to resist, I pretend to agree. Tell them what they want to hear. That the Minister is perfect. That I love her and believe in her. By the twentieth or thirtieth or fortieth time, I forget—for a few seconds—that this is a simulation and that I’m not talking to the real Ari and Becka. Maybe I should consider trusting and loving the Minister. If they like her so much, she can’t be all that bad, right?

I blink.

***

“Jack? Jack!”

It’s Ari’s voice.

“Come on, Jack, wake up.”

That’s Becka.

“You don’t want me to pour water on you again, do you?”

My mind clears and I force my eyes open. We’re back on the bridge of the ship and I’m sitting in the captain’s chair, just as I was before Orientation. But are we really back? How do I know this isn’t just another trick?

I look over at Ari, who seems absolutely exhausted. I can see it in his eyes.

“You okay?” I ask him.

He squints in my direction and bites the inside of his cheek.

“Yeah,” he says, like he’s scared of me. I wonder what Orientation Jack was like. Not great, I assume. “You?”

“Yeah, fine. What about you, Becka? You all right?”

It’s weird. Toward the end, I could feel myself giving in. Getting lost. But now . . . now, it’s different. It’s like remembering a movie you saw a long time ago. A terrible movie. But a movie, not a memory.

Becka stares at me without blinking—and tilts her head weirdly, straining her neck as far as it’ll bend.

“Long live the Minister,” she says robotically. “Long live the Minister.”

“No,” Ari whispers.

She looks at him and smiles coldly.

“I don’t understand,” Ari says, turning to me in a panic. “Why is she still like this? Are we . . . am I . . . still inside?”

Oh no. If the brainwashing worked on her—if Becka still believes all the things it made her believe—I don’t know how we’ll ever win her back. And if we’re still inside Orientation . . . I’m not sure how much more I can take.

“Long live the . . . gotcha!”

Ari and I look at each other. “What?” I yell.

Becka lets out a snort of laughter. “You should’ve seen your faces.”

Ari’s hyperventilating. He slumps down into his chair.

“That wasn’t funny,” I tell her. “How could you . . .”

And that’s when I look at her. Really look. She’s smiling and her hands are resting confidently on her waist. But in and around her eyes, that telltale Becka strength is sapped. She’s as shaken as Ari and I. Maybe more. She isn’t messing with us for fun. She’s coping.

“Let’s just focus,” I say. Yelling more at Becka doesn’t seem right. We need to put this behind us. It’s over. “What time is it?”

I look at my reflection in the glass of the window in front of me and then back at Ari and Becka. I don’t look any different. Neither do they. We aren’t older. At least, I don’t think we are. But my Orientation lasted a long time. And I have a feeling that theirs did too.

“How much time passed while we were in there?” I ask Ari.

Ari looks down at his screen. “Four,” he mumbles.

“Four what?” I ask. “Days?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Weeks?”

Did it all happen in real time?

He looks up at me, all the color gone from his face.

“Four seconds,” he answers. “Just four seconds.”