Attention: Group Therapy Participants
Subject: Meeting Schedule Adjustments
Due to the increase in participants, the following group meetings are rescheduled:
Grief groups will meet MWF evenings after last meal.
General mental health support will meet TRS evenings after last meal.
Daily support will meet in west gym for the first hour of each shift and in the northern courtyard for drop-ins with an available counselor.
All other ongoing support groups will continue as scheduled.
—Medical Department
I was probably overthinking because of what Dr. Fromme had said. Still, as much as I tried, sleep hadn’t arrived. Neither did Andrek. Not even for my parents’ sendoff before breakfast when they told me that three of our greatest allies on Earth had fallen unexpectedly to the RC.
At work, I stumbled clumsily from one task to the next until Chef sent me to wash up from breakfast with Stephan. The dishwashers were automatic, but Stephan and I scraped and sprayed everything, per Chef’s instructions, before loading the machines. I scraped, and he sprayed, and our shift creeped on.
The kitchen whirred with talk of the RC and rumors about the trust’s options. Arguments broke out between people I thought were the best of friends. The fights started small. Circumstantial accidents, nothings. Then voices rose, dishes fell, and pots and pans clanged onto the countertops we’d spent months babying. Danny’s friends got so heated she ended up hauling one of them out of the cafeteria by his ear.
Nobody was okay. We were all on edge.
I scraped, straining to hear the arguments which spiked in Chef’s office every few minutes. The trust’s plans hadn’t been announced, but everyone knew the RC would be coming for us soon.
Kitchen staff all wanted to know what Chef knew. If we had any allies left on Earth, and if they’d come, and if they didn’t, whether the RC would space us or swallow us into itself. Or would we be living with RC troops, serving them food, and cleaning up after them? Would we be replaced by RC staff and sent home? What if we didn’t have another home to go back to? They spun around words like siege and subbasement shelter and stored supplies.
And though they didn’t outright mention surrender, it was always there behind their questions alongside the basic understanding that even it couldn’t guarantee safety, even if it included some form of survival. Surrender. It was such a curious, slippery word. It started out so soft, like a sweet and secret whisper, then it shifted into something ominous and cold. Like murder or cinder, it ended with a threat. I wondered if whoever made up the word in the first place designed it that way on purpose, to make “giving up” sound better. To make it sound like it was some grand and noble choice when it was really a non-choice.
Stephan was the exception on staff. Of everyone, he seemed the least affected by the news about our allies. He kept saying this was how life worked, holding his spray bottle menacingly as he recounted the horrors of his life on Earth, assuring me how much better off we were, no matter what happened next. “There were forty-six of us when we escaped the group home. Twenty-five boys. Twenty-one girls. Fourteen were still in diapers. Diapers, Lane.”
I was afraid to interrupt, but terrified he’d continue.
He sprayed. “We lost eight the first week. Radiation sickness. They were so little, too weak to manage the trek through the wastes. The youngest, Katia, was just learning to walk. Her mother Luba, she was only fourteen, wasted away nursing little Katia. They died in their sleep at least. The second week we were caught by—I don’t know who. They took—” he choked, emptying his spray bottle onto a helpless handful of silverware. “They stole twelve. Two, right from my arms. They stole them.”
My heart broke. His life had been a nightmare, a grim survival story. Like Andrek’s, it sounded surreal to me. They lived real lives, while mine was as sheltered as they came. Me and my famous family. We had clean water, good food, cars, and homes. We stayed safe behind our gated walls, protected. Pampered.
“Nine of us made it to the outskirts of Masdar,” Stephan continued. “Six girls, two boys, and me. And I’m the only one who made it through selection. The others are still stuck in a tent. Starving, scared. How am I supposed to live with myself?”
He went quiet a while, even made a couple unexpected jokes. The mood lightened by a fraction as I chewed my lip and wracked my brain for words. Anything I had to say would come across as insulting or trivializing. Except he seemed to need me to say something, to have answers, when all I had were my sister’s dreams and a head full of secrets and worries.
“It’s not your fault, you know. What happened to them,” I said. “Or you.”
“What I was saying was,” he grumbled back, his mood pivoting again, “nothing’s guaranteed. Not on Earth, and not on the moon. We can pretend it’s different here, but life is struggle. That’ll never change.”
“What if you came to one of the grief groups?” I asked. “It’s been pretty helpful for me.”
He stopped spraying to study my face. “Has it, though? You don’t look like it’s helping much.”
“So sweet of you. And that’s not why I’m not sleeping. It’s the RC stuff. Makes it hard to—” I caught myself before saying more than I should “—plan a holiday.”
“I bet.”
“You could help with planning, if you want, even if you only want to hang out and watch,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why I felt so compelled to get him involved. He was a nice guy was all, who deserved to feel something besides buckets full of sadness. All he seemed to do on the moon was work.
“I’m doing a flavor taste later. Focus group kind of thing. Could be fun.” I didn’t mention that the tasting was only a ruse for me to narrow down suspects, because that wasn’t for him to know.
“Yeah, those black circles under your eyes look like lots of fun.” Stephan’s laugh bounced through the steamy washroom, but his eyebrows swore he wasn’t convinced.
“Honestly, help with the menu would mean a lot. I’m in way over my head.”
I wondered, not for the first time, how Stephan had landed in food service. He was clever and had a great memory, and he didn’t trip over himself with people like I did. Here in the kitchen, he was everywhere Chef pointed him, anticipating where she wanted him to go next.
“I’ll think about it, but I don’t know.” He ducked around the steamer and pushed the last loaded cart toward me. “I doubt it’s for me. I’ve got enough on my plate.”
“Like what?”
“Are you asking me because you want to know, or so you can convince me to do something I don’t want to?”
I scraped and passed, scraped and passed, chewing on my lip. “Why are you avoiding the question?”
He glanced at me funny. “You tell me why you’re doing this. Why are you bothering when everything your sister tried to do is doomed to fail?”
I stared at him. The gravdrive was said to be an impossible invention too, according to the reporters who came to our house after Faraday’s viral video. They’d said, “To imagine such a thing working requires a fundamental paradigm shift that no one trained in modern science can fathom.”
I remembered because I’d had to have that quote explained to me at least a dozen ways before I could wrap my five-year old head around it. They meant: We’d worked so hard to wire our brains to think one way that we couldn’t understand what was right in front of us. Or something.
They also said the same things about the trust, about Faraday’s goals for it to be an independent refuge for people of all abilities, neurotypes, and skillsets. Whenever she’d been told “You can’t,” she’d replied with “Watch me.”
And maybe they were a little bit right, because not a year into her experiment our independence was trembling like a dry leaf in autumn, but this couldn’t be the end of us, or her. Someone could try again. If the trust fell, blown away by the RC hurricane, then I sure as hell wanted to leave some kind of signpost, like the holiday, a reminder to someone else that trying was worth it.
“Because it’s still hers,” I told Stephan at last. “At first, I wanted to make sure Viveca didn’t fuck it up, but now it’s different. I guess, if the trust fails, I still want us to remember that she tried. That we all gave our best to try.”
He blew out his breath. “That’s fair. I get it.”
Faraday would’ve loved him, I thought then. His freckled cheeks and quick smile, the way his dark curls swung when he skipped around the kitchen for Chef.
He took the tray and sprayed it slowly, then rested it in the washer. As he turned back to me, his mouth twisted with concentration. “But why a holiday? Won’t that be a sick reminder of her failure year after year?”
I shrugged, scraped, passed. “Maybe.” If we were that lucky. “Or maybe it’ll make us remember why we believed her dreams were important enough to try in the first place.”
As I spoke, my brain lit up with an idea for a holiday name at last, something far more suitable and resonant than Faraday Day. It was so perfect, I shivered as the word sank through me, like I could imagine it being as significant a word as “Christmas” used to be, or “Earth Day.”
I wanted to say it aloud, to test it between my tongue and teeth, but Stephan was the wrong person to share it with.
He stayed pretzel-mouthed until Chef walked over, then he took the empty cart to fetch more dishes.
“You made an excellent argument for the memorial, Lane,” Chef said, surprising me into realizing she’d been listening to us. “Don’t worry about whether or not other people see your reasons yet. They will in time.”
I grinned at her, but I didn’t feel so confident anymore. “But what if he’s right, and all it does is make people upset? Wouldn’t that be worse?”
She tsked me. “Scrub that worry from your noggin. Memorials can be an important form of resistance, the way I see it. Daring to be alive and to celebrate that. Oh, and spray that tray again. I see grease on the rim.”
“I’ll get it done.”
Chef looked at me and, for a moment, it was as if she were looking somewhere else. Then her wide, bright smile came up like a sunrise. “I know you will.”
Chef offered to let me use the kitchen for my tasting, but if I’d learned anything cooking for my sister’s crowds it was that civilians in the kitchen could go wrong real fast. Anyway, we weren’t tasting actual food. I gathered my group in the cafeteria, since everyone was at least familiar with that space, even if they weren’t comfortable.
Joule and Halle showed up right before I started, saying V had asked them to join in if they had the time. She was trying to get a hold of her contact today, meanwhile, which had me all in my nerves about what I might say that she hadn’t already tried. I tried not to let my paranoia drive my reactions, but it snuck up a few times. It was all I could do to keep a straight face while mixing new bubble batches.
There were two potential traitors I was supposed to be watching in particular. A middle-aged white man named George Rhodes who worked in entertainment and Lorelei Forrester, an upper twenty-something white woman from security.
Otherwise it was me, Joule, Halle, their mutual friend Xiao Li, Danny Hetzel, and, oddly enough, Vice President Rosamund Barre, who V said was on her own list.
After we got about halfway through the whole shebang, Stephan showed up, dragging his feet. I guessed Chef agreed he needed a push to participate in something too.
“All right, everyone, we’re nearly done.” Public speaking was so not my thing, like, it was light-years from my thing. But I’d seen it all my life coming from voices that sounded a lot like mine, so I pretended as best as I could to keep from freezing. I let my eyes linger on my friends’ faces, taking warmth and encouragement from Halle and Stephan, strength and support from Danny and Joule.
“I’ve got our favorites narrowed down to five taste-courses per meal. Once you’ve all made the rounds and recorded your initial reactions, we’ll have a quick discussion about everyone’s final thoughts.”
I directed them to queue at the breakfast bubbles first, that way they’d go through the day worth of flavors in the right order. It wasn’t totally efficient, and I’d been having them start in different places for the other rounds, but I thought it was important, for this final test, to see how the flavors built through the day.
Joule finished first and came to sit next to me as the others worked their way through. He’d already tasted everything anyway, having been the one to help me mix the vials and print extra bubble machines.
“I can’t thank you enough,” I told him. “None of this would be possible without your bubble invention.”
“I like to help,” he said easily. His long legs stretched under the tabletop as he tried to get comfortable.
“You’re awesome at it.”
We watched the others tasting and tapping into their tablets. I’d been observing Lorelei and George pretty close and had come to a few tentative conclusions.
First, they were both clearly uncomfortable and trying not to show it. So that probably confirmed V’s “they’ve got a secret” theory.
Second, Lorelei did not like being interrupted or hurried, especially by men. After she’d snapped at Stephan, George, and Joule, none of whom were being pushy or anything, I switched up the groups to keep her with Halle, Danny, and Vice President Barre.
Third, George was possibly the most unnoticeable person I’d ever met. Like, if I weren’t supposed to pay special attention to him, I’d have forgotten he was here at least twice.
It wasn’t that he was quiet. He talked plenty. It was more like nothing he said had any flavor to it, as if he were afraid of saying anything off-putting. He was mild in every way I could see.
“Brand prefers to turn people who aren’t confrontational,” V had told me. “Loners. Underdogs. The less personal fortitude they show, the better he can mold them. Leaders are only useful to him if he can make them into puppets once he’s taken over.”
If I were picking Brand’s perfect spy, George would top the list. Fourth, and this was not what I was told to watch for, but it was probably my biggest takeaway so far, Halle was an absolute delight to be around. She talked to everyone, whoever was near her, and with her easy manner and warm smile, she kept her group laughing and light-hearted, at least once I got Lorelei away from the guys. I didn’t know how she did it, but within moments of meeting George and Lorelei, she came up with inside jokes for both of them.
Vice President Barre, Danny, Halle, and Lorelei finished tasting and sat down the table from me and Joule, chatting as they filled out the questionnaire on their tablets. Halle had the VP cackling about who-knew-what, and even Lorelei chuckled along, wiping her cheeks.
I couldn’t hear them well since George and Stephan talked too loudly, but V let me know she’d programmed our tabs to record so long as the questionnaires were open. Sneaky. Maybe not completely ethical, but still smart. We were going to listen to them tomorrow after her shift, unless her contact responded in time, in which case we’d—I’d—be in little sister mode trying to persuade Earth politicians to rejoin the accord.
“Everyone done?” I asked loudly, pushing to my feet. Should I clap? I’d seen people clap, but it didn’t feel natural to me. Regardless, they responded without more prodding.
They scooted down to fill up the seats around Joule and waited for me to lead them. How weird.
“I have a few questions, but mostly I want to hear your thoughts. Does it feel like a holiday menu to you? Special or memorable?”
They chimed in excitedly, talking over each other and making it impossible to hear any one of them. No big deal. V and I could sort it out later, paying extra close attention to George. It was enough for me to know that they were smiling, using broad gestures, laughing a lot.
Positive reactions. What more did I need to hear?
The VP shook my hand enthusiastically, thanking me for allowing her to participate before she left with the rest. Danny hugged me and spun me around, then told me how much she was looking forward to the holiday feast. Even Stephan clapped me on the back and said he was glad he’d come.
Halle stayed behind to help. So did Joule. Together we cleaned up, letting Halle fill us in. She’d learned so much about the others that I might not need to listen to the recordings.
Lorelei had confessed some major drama to her. How she wasn’t Lorelei Forrester. That was her cousin, who died alongside my sister. Our not-Lorelei was actually Karris Jones, but she’d taken her cousin’s place in the launch, using it as her chance to escape the dangers of Earth. Apparently she’d been in panic mode ever since, stuck in a job she never prepared for.
Something about the group, whether Halle’s natural charisma or the opportunity to be open with someone who would really listen, got her to open up. Then Halle convinced her to talk to the VP and Danny.
Rosamund took the confession in stride, promising to help Karris get a different position, one she was suited for, and adjust the paperwork so she didn’t have to carry the burden of her deception along with grieving her cousin. And Danny promised to smooth things over with Commander Han, because she’d been promoted to Han’s personal unit. It would work out for Karris.
It was good, right? One more suspect was eliminated. No thanks to me, other than providing the venue. Still, I’d learned something else that had nothing to do with my sister’s holiday.
Getting the right people together could explode secrets into the open to let in healing and change. This was exactly what we needed for our unhappy hand, which was less like a hand than Andrek and V in a thumb war, with the rest of us flailing to support them. I refused to be in the middle of that anymore when we could be so much better.
If it worked for us, maybe it would for the trust too. We all had far too many secrets to suit Faraday’s ideals, especially with someone plotting our sabotage.