Attention: ALL
Subject: Water Rations
Per MCO Ruling 23.4, water rations have been raised by twenty percent for all LC1 citizens. Drink up!
—President Marshall
I searched the faces around me for something, some answer to why Brand Masters was being allowed to hijack our loudspeakers, but I saw fear everywhere I looked, panic and silent rage that he wouldn’t see, wouldn’t care about if he could.
I was of three minds as he spoke, this man, this murderer, who talked as if he were everyone’s favorite uncle. One mind heard and replayed each word, chewing on them over and over as they echoed into the cavern of me.
“Colonists,” he said, knowing full well that was a dirty word and why we called ourselves trustees. “Your project,” he said, like it was a macaroni necklace. “First step,” as if we hadn’t taken a thousand already in order to get this far.
The second me listened in real time, continuing to study faces, trying to interpret every shifting wrinkle.
My third mind screamed and screamed, and it was a miracle that it didn’t drown out the others. I wished it would drown him out at least.
“...I hope you’ll pardon the interruption. I wanted to send my good wishes to each of you on this momentous occasion,” he went on in that oily, pampered voice. “As our goal of sending manned ships into the beyond is equally dear to me, I offer these wise words from one we all revere: ‘Success is measured not by the lack of failure but by which steps we take forward after failure blocks one path.’ Press forward, brave colonists, and we will surely meet again.”
“Our goal”—How dare he!—then he quoted, or rather misquoted, my sister?
The volume of my internal screams rose impossibly. I was so angry I couldn’t think.
Meanwhile, my parents moved in fast-forward, abandoning their trays, spouting some kind of apology and solemn we’ll-talk-laters, and rushed toward the closest exit. Straight to business.
My hands still covered my ears like they were cemented in place, and I was not the only one frozen this way. Joule mirrored me with a horrified expression. Viveca, who I’d thought was long gone, stood in the far doorway, her own hands fixed over her ears, her eyes trained on the empty space my parents left behind.
The cafeteria sprang into motion, but I was too dumbstruck to process. Andrek held me, but he felt far away. I didn’t know how long I sat there, waiting for the pain to pass or my silent screaming to stop.
“Attention, trustees,” President Marshall said over the same speakers, familiar and welcome, though the waver in her voice made it obvious she too was rattled. “Please remain calm as we assess the situation. As a precaution, communications with Earth will be restricted to authorized department heads only and subject to security review in order to prevent more unwelcome intrusions.
“Any messages to Earth should henceforth be sent to your department leaders for review and packaging for delivery through the remaining Masdar Collective. Furthermore, the distribution of personal tablets will be left to the purview of department leaders on a needs only basis. I apologize for any inconvenience and discomfort this will cause and assure you it is a necessary measure for the ongoing safety and well-being of us all. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
“That was unexpectedly entertaining,” Joule said, forcing his hands to his lap. “I mean you and V before, not… The rest was a nightmare. Yeah, I—Nope. I can’t talk about that yet. Are you two all right? I hope that doesn’t kill my chances.”
Andrek checked in with me by kicking my foot. He wanted to go, if only to shake Brand’s voice from center stage. Sweet Andrek.
A buzzing in my belly sang out an alarm. Keep it inside, Lane. Distract, deny.
“Your questionable taste in girlfriends aside,” I said, rising and lifting my tray, “I think your chances are still good for tonight.” Except I stood too fast, and the buzzing spun to my head, sending me wavering. My breath came out stretched and tight as if my throat was mimicking the tube from the ship. Today had been too long, too much. I grabbed Andrek’s shoulder to steady myself. “Without me though, sorry. I need today to be over.”
I lay half-conscious for hours, trying to force the ceiling’s stipple into faces. The bed didn’t feel like mine yet, but the quiet of the rooms beyond, their empty beds, was more familiar than I wanted to admit.
Eventually sleep must have taken me, because I came to, bleary-eyed and not sure how long my parents had been back, except that it was long enough for them to be waist deep into an argument I was definitely not supposed to hear.
“What could she have been thinking, Collin? After fighting us tooth and nail to delay the memorial, she jumps headfirst into planning it herself? She can barely talk about Faraday without bursting into tears, but somehow she’s going to be rifling through all her sister’s messages and work now?”
Mom’s voice scratched at the too-thin walls like sandpaper, her pitch rising higher and higher as she got riled up. “And why in the world did that girl agree to be equal partners? She’s so out of Lane’s league, we’ll have to build a ship to span the distance. It’s too much! It’s not at all what we wanted for her.”
I sank deeper into the bed, covering my face with the heavy blanket which did little to muffle their voices. This was the soundtrack of my life, my parents’ doubts beating steadily against my unformed, half-awake thoughts.
How many mornings had begun exactly like this? Too many to number. Too many for it to still hurt as much as it did.
I could have saved myself this headache by posting in a dorm instead of with family, but the idea of living with strangers was even more upsetting than dealing with my parents babying me. I’d rather be hurt in their familiar ways than face too much newness at once alone.
“Shhh,” my dad said, and I imagined him putting an arm around my mom. “We don’t want to wake her with our worries. She’s had so much trouble sleeping, and today was a lot for anyone.”
“But I do!” Mom cried. “I want to yank her out of bed right now and shake some sense into her before it’s too late!”
“Come now.”
“Stop hushing me!” she yelled, then she lowered her voice anyway, and I pulled my blanket down to hear better. “This is serious. Dangerous, Collin. Brand proved it today. His message wasn’t a warning. It was an attack all its own. You know it. We have no idea how long we have before he attacks again, and with the accord in pieces, we don’t have nearly the support we expected to protect us.”
An attack all its own. I decided to ask Andrek what she meant by that as soon as I saw him. I remembered the war crimes accord she was talking about, though. It was one of Faraday’s last unfinished projects, which was supposed to redefine war crimes to include corporate attacks like the RC’s, and could have, Faraday hoped, resurrected the UN.
“And telling Lane that will do what?” my dad asked. “She’s hurting and holding herself together by threads. We can let her choose which threads. We shouldn’t worry her about things none of us can control.”
“Don’t you see that’s why she can’t take on more now? Let alone planning a whole memorial? She was only supposed to participate, maybe bake something or introduce family photos. Nothing this big. She didn’t even finish high school! She doesn’t have what it takes to take on responsibility like this.”
Dad grumbled a sound I usually took to mean So what? “Neither did I, remember? Graduate. Neither did half our generation after the pandemics. She’ll be fine.”
“She won’t have the support you had. Let alone your luck. You had an entire planet going through everything with you. I tried to make things easier by getting her the kitchen position, but that could be a stretch even without adding this monumental, and very personal, project. I didn’t want it this way.”
Her words stabbed me—she doesn’t have what it takes—along with a realization so cold I feared I’d never be warm again. Mom “got” me my assignment? I had figured they must have done something to squeeze me past selections, but I thought, wrongly, that I’d earned the kitchen position on my own merit at least.
Maybe I couldn’t do it. Mom was usually right about things. It was her job to be right about such things. And if I couldn’t handle it, then what?
“What is it you want to do? Rub that in her face?” Dad was heated now too, and I pictured the red rising in his cheeks. “You’re doing it again, Catherine, pushing your fears onto them. That’s not our role! Ours is to love them and offer the support they need.”
“Her. You mean ‘her.’”
“Yes, her. We need to give her support and step out of her way.”
“What if I can’t?” Mom’s voice broke, followed by a long moment of silence.
I clamped my hands around my mouth to quiet my breath and stared at the door, willing it not to open. I imagined them close together on the couch, looking into each other’s sad eyes.
“Then we talk about it and figure out how to carry each other better. She’ll understand,” Dad finally answered.
“She doesn’t understand anything! She may as well be a toddler—impulsive, rash—she’s a tornado and doesn’t even… She needs—She needs—I need…”
“Oh, Catherine,” Dad said, as Mom sobbed loudly. Maybe she’d been crying all along. “You don’t mean that. We both know you don’t. And remember you’re the one who said Viveca would be an excellent peer role model for Lane. That’s still true. Plus, for now this is the only safe place we have.”
“But how can we keep it that way? How can we keep pretending it’s possible? There’s nowhere left to run!”
“First we breathe, my love. Breathe. And I believe you were right to begin with, wanting her to help with the memorial. Even if it’s in a different way than you meant. This will help everyone heal, even her.”
I imagined another daughter of different parents climbing out of bed and going to the couch to share their tears. That young woman, brimming with feelings and fears, would spill those out on the carpet like a sack full of beans for them to sort through together. She didn’t have anything to prove to anyone, and she didn’t have to grow up all the way, not yet. Not ever. She trusted her parents to have all the answers. She hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew with a project that would likely scour at her fresh wounds while being mocked by someone “leagues” beyond her.
I, however, hid under the covers and prayed the too-thin walls didn’t give me away. Goodnight, room that was almost my room. Goodnight, moon.