Attention: ALL
Subject: Evening Menu
Entrees: Golden lentil dal, chickpea enchiladas, beetroot curry
Sides: Cucumber and tomato salad, mashed potatoes, frozen white grapes
Beverages: Apple juice, almond milk, two water tubes
My sister found fame while I was still trying to find my way to the toilet on time. That was in 2042, fifteen years after the United States splintered, and ten years after the United Nations fell too.
Faraday, of the melt generation like me, grew up in a world where whole cities and countries went the way of Atlantis. Coastlines changed, borders shifted, industries imploded or adapted, and nothing, not the sky or the trees or childhood itself, looked like it did in the sitcoms and movies our tightly controlled internet coughed up.
In an era of tragedy and greed, of shredded governments and burning forests, my sister arrived like a glitter bomb. A shiny, splodey, inescapable positive packaged into one unforgettable little girl who only got brighter as she grew. In her comments section, a community took root, branching across language barriers and paradigms until we ended up here. She brought the world hope that the future could be better, that the present wasn’t all bad, and it loved her without restraint.
She made me blueberry pancakes, the one meal she never messed up, and I loved her even more.
The world wanted everything from her, but all I wanted was more time.
As Andrek and I walked through the hallways her dream built, the press of the crowd waiting in line to use the washrooms or milling near their quarters lulled me into a fog of sensory overload.
I was listening but not. Aware but not. My thoughts slipped around the crater in my heart as I fought not to fall in. This blurry-brain moment lasted a little too long, and I forgot where I was. Then Andrek and I were in the central room of our family quarters already.
The front door acted more like a hatch on the ship than a regular door; it slid open with an electric whoosh and sealed shut behind us. Inside, there was a couch, two chairs, a table, and a desk, which was all we had to ourselves besides three tiny bedrooms connecting to the back wall. Andrek would take the room originally assigned to my sister. It didn’t matter that she would have had her own family quarters if she’d lived. Leaving it empty would have been too much for all of us.
It felt nothing like Faraday’s flat with her fiancés—full of sunshine and open flames—where I’d spent most of last year feeding her campaign staff, and it was nothing like our cozy apartment in Masdar either. Where she was happy until she wasn’t. Where I was happy until she died.
“Home sweet home,” I said and tried to hide my inner cringe.
Four crates blocked the couch. Andrek and I had packed ours a week before the invasion and hadn’t seen them in the four very long months since. I snapped alert, suddenly aware of what I’d find within and how perfectly it fit the shape of the hole inside me. An overwhelming need to hold my belongings in my hands and connect to the me I’d been before filled me like hot air in a balloon. The me who’d packed this crate had been a child. Vulnerable, gullible. She’d still thought good things happened to good people, and her big sister would survive to build and launch a hundred ships.
After dropping to the carpet, my fingers tore at the crate. The popping lock was somewhere along the molded indentations around the rim, but I couldn’t find it, and the stupid thing had no markings to tell me which one was right. I turned it round and round, growing so annoyed with it and myself that I was mashing every spot I could fit my thumb into. What was wrong with this thing? Why couldn’t I make it work?
“Wait. Stop,” Andrek said. “Maybe we shouldn’t just open them.”
I froze, my hands an inch above the cover, jutting forward like weak branches loaded with snow. “Why not?”
My voice was oddly breathy and shrill, and Andrek squinted at me with those clever blues for a long, silent moment. Don’t ask if I’m all right, I begged silently. Don’t tell me I’ll feel better if I talk about it.
“Can we make this special somehow?” he asked finally. “Today’s been...” He took a few steps toward his bedroom and winced, stopping to lean against the wall.
“Your leg?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. It was my turn to hold him up. I supported him to the stiff couch. The frame was hard printed plastic, but the cushions weren’t horrible aside from being a sad beige. “But yeah, today’s been so heavy. And the vow,” I managed, thinking how rushed it was, seconds from arrival, how hard it was to say any of those words without her there.
Andrek rubbed his jaw like he was sharpening his chin. “She’s all I could think about too. How are you holding up?” He hiked up his right pant leg, and I tugged off his boot and the cover that reached his thigh.
I wanted to tell him I was fine, that I was handling it, that being here without Faraday was no big deal. He’d see through me no matter what I said.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I admitted. “And it’s so much harder than I—You know.”
He got the locking pin, and I pulled off his prosthetic, setting it on the couch. When my gaze lingered on the scorch mark along the shin, he turned it the other way. Once he unrolled the sleeve and tossed it aside, he sprawled out and patted his hand over his heart. “Please?”
I went to him, laying my head on his warm chest. I let him stroke my hair and kiss my head and whisper obvious things like “I know” and “I’m here.” He held me till my trembling slowed. We shared an easy quiet, and for a second, I forgot the crates.
“Do you think my parents will make it in time for dinner?”
“Not a chance.” He drew his finger across my thigh and slid me a smile. “Unpack later?”
I didn’t need convincing. When he kissed me, I wasn’t missing my sister or worrying about how to exist without her. I wasn’t thinking about the empty spaces where the lost voices should live. Plus, Andrek’s touch was electric. The perfect distraction.
Apparently, sex pre-melt had been this mega big deal. Like, everyone was obsessed with virginity and monogamy and other stuff that made no sense. I didn’t know why they’d been like that, but I did know why they stopped.
The melt hadn’t only changed coastlines on maps; it changed minds, especially when whole high school classes started offing themselves en masse, leaving group suicide notes that said things like, “There’s nothing to live for and no promise of tomorrow anyway.” Pharmacies couldn’t keep up with demands for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicines, and it wasn’t like folks could be told the tired old adages about “going outside for recreation” or “saving themselves for marriage” when outside had pretty much been an off-limits death trap half our lives, and no one, not even the rich, could ensure there’d be enough water to live another week, let alone until some far-flung marriage date. Contraceptives became more common than candy, and the old rules collapsed along with the climate.
I’d had sex for the first time at fourteen, and it was only that, sex. A natural high of hormones and endorphins. Something to do that didn’t cost anything or exhaust resources. My parents knew, and from what I could tell, they were happy I wasn’t falling into the same depression others had. Sex wasn’t, and wouldn’t be, a cure for the sort of rampant existential malaise that rocked humanity. But it was fun that was easy and harmless and loads better than losing a generation to suicide.
Andrek and I raced each other out of our jumpsuits to join the Moon High Club.
Sometime later, Andrek was fast asleep on the couch, and all I had left to unpack were my parents’ crates, which had been filled only days before launch. I used to fall asleep as easily as him, but I couldn’t stop the images playing in my head when I laid down anymore.
I scooped out their belongings little by little, doggedly trying to fill our drab quarters with familiar touches. Rare paper memories—hardcover journals, stuffed with letters and keepsakes—I stacked neatly on the desk in my parents’ bedroom. Our family photos were stored on a digital frame, which activated as I picked it up, showing flour floating like snow over me and Faraday as we were caught in a moment of laughter during another of her failed baking experiments. The flour shower had been Dad’s doing. He always went for the drama shot. I left the frame in their room, collapsed the empty crates, and retreated with a treasure that belonged to us all.
Her urn, a shining ceramic purple sphere.
I settled her onto the couch like she was kicked back on the cushion to cuddle with Andrek’s prosthesis while the rest of him napped. Imaginary Faraday was less articulate than real Faraday, and I was only me, but I did my best to put words in her mouth.
Do you know, she’d have said, your molding and my casing are made of the same molecules? The atomic nature of matter is flexible. So, in fact, the matter that’s you might actually be parts of the matter in me. Here she’d have wiggled closer and whispered, because when we touch, though we can never completely touch, our molecules are engrossed in an atomic conversation.
Andrek’s prosthesis would tip tap the cushion and dare her to bring her urnself closer and find out. Faraday had been funny like that, always flirting.
But the urn wasn’t Faraday, not all of her. Some of her had been donated, to be studied by medical students somewhere on Earth. Her fiancés Khalid and Zara had the rest. I was on the moon, but she was divided like batches of dough. I hoped I had the laughing part and the part that talked in her sleep about pastry crust and spaceships. The part who’d daydream with me about the existence of aliens and always gave good advice.
I set her gingerly on the lone shelf over the built-in table. She looked so small there that I almost packed her back into the crate. She would have wanted to be in a kitchen, trying once again to master anything besides pancakes, but we had no kitchen. Water was precious and controlled, so there wasn’t a dispenser or a bathroom in our quarters. I came around the couch and fell into a chair, heavy with too many thoughts and too much newness.
I wished I could skip to the part where being here felt normal.
Andrek woke and rubbed his face. His gaze lingered on Faraday’s urn then me. “Want to talk about it?”
An involuntary chuckle rocked my shoulders. Where would I start? “About what?”
“Anything.” He collected his jumpsuit and started to dress. “Your job maybe.”
“What’s there to say? I’m looking forward to being a lunch lady. I mean, it’s not glamorous or anything, but…” I struggled for the best words as cozy memories rolled through me—sniffing fragrant steam as I stirred soup on the stove, measuring spices to tip into mixing bowls, taste-testing my sister’s latest experiment. I remembered her baking face, the hope shining in her voice as she’d asked me, “What do you think, dove? Good enough to serve?” No matter how busy she’d been pounding out settlement designs or answering her endless fan mail, she’d always found time to cook with me, though nearly all her attempts were inedible compared to mine.
I hadn’t been in a kitchen since her death, but I’d missed it. Needed it.
“I think it’ll be good. I wouldn’t want to do anything else, even if I were qualified. Which I’m not.” Except now that I considered it, my favorite part about serving food might not prove as pleasant as it had been during my sister’s campaign. I’d always enjoyed talking with people, seeing their faces every day. That would still happen, but now everyone would see me, all of me, with no sister to hide behind.
“Would I sound like an asshole if I said I’m jealous?” He hopped till his foot clicked into place. “Because I am. After meeting Pretty McSnobface, I worry that’s going to be my usual gig, listening to people complain about decisions I don’t get to make, like an unhappiness secretary.”
I heard what he wasn’t saying, that slender space he avoided. Everything should have been different. We were supposed to be safe here. Safe and happy. Departments hand in hand like old friends, like family. Instead we were strangers facing unknowns with uncertainty.
“At least you’re doing something you like,” he said. “And your food’s amazing.”
I shrugged, but I was grateful he was shifting the subject. “They were all Khalid’s mom’s recipes.”
“Which you cooked and plated. Face it, Lane. You’ve got a gift.”
I didn’t answer, but he was talking nonsense, the way smart people liked to do when they thought they understood something not-as-smart people dealt with. Faraday possessed gifts, like engineering world-changing inventions, inspiring people through charismatic presentations, designing a sustainable independent colony, managing a successful campaign. Even challenging our single-minded parents for autonomy. Following a recipe was nothing. Half the time I ignored the measurements and I was forever winging ingredients because I get in my head, but it was still following directions, even the unwritten ones.
“Pretty McSnobface really got to you, huh?” I asked.
“No! I mean, a little. Not as much as she got to you, I think.” He stared at the door to the hallway. “I guess you missed all the rest in there?”
I squinted at the door too, but I didn’t sense what he did beyond. “The rest of what?”
He sat on the arm of my chair and rested his chin on my head. “I envy you so much sometimes.”
“Why? What did I miss?”
“Okay, so.” He settled in with a sigh. “It was like watching rapid mitosis, and not only between the new recruits and old collective but between Marshall’s supporters and Barre’s, plus those like your family. The bereft.”
I thought back to the clumps of people knotting together after the moment of silence and wondered how I hadn’t parsed what he had. “Was it that bad? And obvious?”
“I won’t bore you with the details, but there’s a shitstorm of new problems for admin and ops now that we’re here. And, socially, the rifts are already showing. I was starting to think none of the recruits would cross the divide until your new best friend came over. As much as she stressed me out with the Brand Masters business, I kind of wanted to hug her for talking to us.”
I guessed I had sort of noticed the command crew standing apart stiffly from the other security members, but it hadn’t seemed like anything at the time. “The hugging has nothing to do with her boyfriend then, aka I’ll-queue-for-you Joule?”
“Ohmigod, he was heart-stopping, right? They’ve got to be polyamorous, or he does, don’t you think?” Andrek fake swooned and fell across my lap like a human noodle.
“Probably,” I said. I wanted so badly for big deals to be in our rear view that imagining the opposite clawed at my fragile calm. “Should we be worried, though? About the RC? Viveca wasn’t exaggerating about him. Brand won’t give up.”
“Like I said before, we should let ops handle it. Yes, our security forces are fifty percent less than they’re supposed to be, and the ones we’ve got are strangers. But it’s only the first day. We have to trust your sister’s designs, our allies on Earth, and the other lunar bases, and let them do their jobs.” He cupped my cheek in his palm. “Besides, what difference will worrying make, my sweet lunch lady?”
A soft alert beeped, activating a comm screen that took up most of the front wall by the door. Marshall’s greeting clipped through the speakers, swallowing her first words.
Andrek went to adjust the volume, and as her voice became clear, I scanned the links that popped up. One document title read “Faraday Tanner Memorial Plans.”
What. The. Hell.
I clicked it and read how the Tanner family had answered a petition to “commemorate their daughter’s life and outstanding contributions.” A list of attached documents with titles like “Her Rise to Fame” and “Early Inventions” mixed in with “Beliefs in Action” and “Changing the World One Policy at a Time” was at the bottom.
Was this why my parents were in such a hurry after the vow? We’d agreed to wait a few more months before discussing anything remotely like this, to let ourselves settle in and grieve as a family, especially since we’d had to share her funeral with millions of people.
They’d promised me more time. It was too soon. I wasn’t close to ready.
I snorted in disgust and punched at the screen, but Andrek caught my hand and pulled me toward him. I shuddered in his arms, unable to tear my gaze from my sister’s name. Her memory, reduced to miscellaneous documents.
“Dinner will be served for another hour,” Marshall was saying, “and third shift workers should report to their departments after. Please note that only five of the ten shower rooms are currently operating, so adherence to the posted schedule is paramount.”
The hatch door slid open, and my parents rushed inside.
I twisted free of Andrek so I could point all my anger at them.
Mom’s heart-shaped face, so like Faraday’s, flushed under my burning stare. She hadn’t forgotten to wait before discussing a memorial. She’d decided not to wait, promises to her flunky daughter be damned. She opened her mouth to speak, but I gritted my teeth, nearly growling.
Dad reached for me, his chin quivering with regret.
I moved further away and crossed my arms, hating them for leaving me out.
Hating myself for not being someone worth including. For surviving.
I barely registered Marshall’s closing words. “Thank you and be well.”
The screen went black, but my anger bloomed red hot. I’d make them regret this. “How dare you?” Like a volcano, I erupted, spitting vapor vowels and molten consonants.
My parents shriveled under my rage, but not for long.
“We wanted to tell you about the memorial before the announcement,” Mom said. Not an apology. Never an apology. “It wasn’t supposed to be a surprise.”
“The comm obviously works.”
She squeezed on a smile. “Andrek, dear, I’m pleased you decided to take our extra room, but this is a family matter. Why don’t you go ahead to dinner? We’ll catch up soon.”
“He stays,” I insisted.
Andrek questioned me with a look and laid a hand on my back. “I’m here for Lane.”
Mom’s eyes darted toward Faraday’s urn. “Oh, honey. You didn’t need to unpack for us.”
“Stop. Changing. The subject,” I barked. “You promised to wait.”
“That’s enough, young lady.” She crossed her arms, mirroring me. “The trust has over a thousand people, all with their own opinions and needs. Your sister wasn’t only important to us, and you know this. The other trustees need a memorial, for all she represents to everyone who lost a loved one. It’s selfish for you to—”
“I’m being selfish?” This was such crap. “You’re using her again, like you always have. Like she’s a symbol and not a person. Your daughter. My sister. She would hate this. You promised we would wait till we settle in!”
“What more settling is there to do? We’re here, Lane, and there’s no going back.”
“You don’t understand,” my dad said. “The memorial won’t happen tomorrow. It’ll require planning. Preparation. You’re welcome to get involved, in fact, we encourage you to.”
“So, a month is all the grieving I’m allowed? I’m supposed to move on now?”
“We all have to!” Mom pointed at the screen. “Weren’t you listening to Han? Everything she—we’ve worked for is at stake now.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I refused to ask and let her distract me from their betrayal.
Dad nodded vigorously. “We thought we could count on you. You have to understand. Our family has a duty to see the trust work.”
“You aren’t ready to move on. We get it.” She softened her voice. “But your dad and I don’t have a choice. We still have a community to run, or your sister’s death was for nothing. All those people. This was her dream, their dream. It’s still our dream. You should want to do your part. People need a message to follow or none of this will last.”
Her words bulldozed me back into Andrek. She was right about everything, but that only made me angrier. It wasn’t fair that she could bury herself in her work, in her commitment to the trust, while my own pain got bigger every moment. Even my dad managed to push his sorrow into some quiet pocket inside, somewhere invisible.
Andrek, poor guy, stood caught in our grief tornado as my parents’ eyes forced a floodlight on me. We each loved Faraday most, and we glared at each other with the words “not her” hanging between us.
“I’m sorry we left you out of the discussions,” Dad said. “We didn’t want to hurt you more.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“It was out of my hands,” Dad added. He meant: Blame your mom. You know how she gets.
Mom threw out her palms. “It was for your own good, Lane. You haven’t been ready to talk about these things, so there was no reason to loop you in. Besides, we’re not the ones who introduced the petition. Collin, tell her.”
Dad cleared his throat, letting me know what he said next had been fed to him ready-made. “They’re hoping to do a family tribute along with the memorial, you should know. Your mother and I believe it’s important for you to participate, as a way to carry your sister’s legacy forward and keep her message clear.”
“I can’t carry her legacy!” I didn’t add that having another child in the center of attention was probably what they craved for themselves. Faraday may have sparked to fame like a rocket, but without them pushing and guiding and facilitating her every step of the way, she’d never have gotten so far. “I’m not like her. I’m not—I can’t—and I’m just a lunch lady!”
“Lunch wizard,” Andrek coughed out.
“For now, sure,” Mom said. “But you don’t have to be some great scientist to fill the void in the trust’s heart. You can be you. Quirky, charming, hard-working.”
“Do you hear yourselves?” Of course, they didn’t. I was to be their funny puppet, a clambering clown with their words spilling out to pick up where their last spawn left off. This was the best they imagined for me, filling in as an extension cord for my sister’s legacy.
“You’re overreacting, sweetie,” Mom said, and she waved at my dad to do something else she’d predetermined. “This is all perfectly harmless. Moreover, it’s necessary. If you only understood how the loss of your sister has fractured the trust already. We’re barely holding things together.”
Dad went to the comm and the next thing I knew my face was on the screen, squinting in the morning sun as I boarded the ship. I had to admit that I didn’t look as terrible on camera as I expected. My round cheeks were pinchably cute, and the hesitation in my brown eyes and pursed mouth was more than a little charming. My wild red waves glowed like fire and showed nothing about how shattered I felt inside. As quirky clowns went, I gave myself four out of five stars.
“Adorable, isn’t it?” Mom asked brightly. “Once people get to know the real you, things will change. They’ll remember what brought them to the collective, what keeps us together. You don’t have to be her, just remind them of her. This might be our last chance!”
I saw it clearly then. Maybe they were right about what was at stake, but I couldn’t overlook that they saw me as a tool. Quirky, charming, hard-working. Quirky meant weird, so, like, autistic. And by charming, she meant I was accidentally likeable. But, but, she threw in hard-working as a prize, because the thing I actually did, on purpose, was try. Try. Me doing my very best, that was the most I could achieve in her opinion. Extra points that I was a fuck-up and wouldn’t have ideas of my own to interfere with whatever message they thought the trust needed.
I squared my shoulders. “What you’re saying is it’s time for me to step in as a sister replacement, no matter what I want. No matter what I think.”
Mom’s face sagged. I knew this signal. The droop of her jaw. Had seen it first when Faraday moved out of our apartment, never to return, then when the dust from the invasion settled down and the smoke lifted to a world without her wild genius daughter. It meant she felt like she’d failed all over again. She bit her lip. “Please don’t refuse to help just because you’re mad,” she said.
Dad shifted from leg to leg, avoiding my stare. “We only want you to be happy here. And to have a here to be happy in.”
“What would make you happy?” Mom asked.
“Eating.” My stomach rumbled nice and loud, as if to prove my point. “Without you.”
They froze like I’d slapped them. We faced off, lonely islands separated by an ocean of shared pain.
“We’re coming anyway,” Mom said. Her voice was sticky with unspent tears and too high, like a cartoon. I didn’t know whether it was real emotion or another ploy. I didn’t care anymore.
Andrek and I led the way out the door and down the hall, though, to be completely honest, I didn’t have the first clue which way I was going. Per usual.