CHAPTER EIGHT

Video Logs

Pixie Swap made my brain hurt. Cute little fairies danced on the screen, teasing me. Each one balanced on a leaf, and you had to solve a math problem to get them to the other side of the pond. These weren’t two plus two equations, either. Little Pell was doing long division, complicated multiplication, and even some algebra.

“How old are you?”

Pell clicked the remote with her fingers and squealed when she got it right. “I’m seven.”

I looked behind me at Len, who dropped cubes into a gurgling food processor to make dinner. “She’s only seven?”

“We start them on math early, nowadays. You really need to excel to get a job in the upper levels of the high-rises. Granted, Pell is ahead of the game for her age.”

She smiled at her daughter, “Keep trying, Pell. You might make it to level nine tonight.”

I couldn’t imagine what level nine would be. Geometry? Physics?

She handed me the controls. “Your turn.”

I sighed. “Let’s put me on level one.”

Behind me, Valex unpacked some of the containers we brought home from BMC. “Looks like you have a bunch of DVDs here, Jennifer. The discs are old, but I think I can hook up some software to decode them.”

A pang hit me straight in the heart. I didn’t want to think about home. “I’ll watch them later.”

“Certainly. I’ll hook them up to the wallscreen in your room.” “Great. Thank you.” I calculated forty-five plus thirty-two divided by three. My pixie flew across the pond, spreading glitter dust. Pell clapped. “Very good!”

Although the math stretched my brain thin, I was thankful for the distraction. I’d compartmentalized my life before I woke up and locked my memories in a box in my mind. I’d deal with it later once things sank in. If I didn’t think about it, maybe Timmy, Mom and Dad could still be alive somewhere in the turn of time, thinking about me, too.

“Dinner’s ready,” Len announced behind us.

“Aw. She’s only figured out one.”

Pell looked so cute when she pouted, I almost argued in her favor, but I wanted to show Len and Valex I was thankful. I stood up, setting the example. “It’s okay, Pell. We’ll play again later.”

“You promise?”

“Of course, I promise.” I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I was stuck in 2314 playing Pixie Swap with a seven-year-old. None of it made sense.

We sat at an oblong table with strange glowing lights overhead. I sat next to Pell, and Valex and Len sat across from us. Len heaped two piles of greenish mush on my plate along with a few cubes of white stuff.

“The flavor tonight is garden delight.” She looked so proud to tell me. I had to try it.

I picked up a spork—who knew they’d eat with sporks in the future? The mush dribbled off, and I had to dig in to get a good helping. Everyone watched while I stuck it in my mouth.

The paste tasted like vegetables and spice. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t Mom’s good old meat loaf and potatoes, either.

“I like it.” I forced a smile as it trickled down my throat.

“Wonderful.” Valex squeezed Len’s shoulder.

Len smiled.

“She saved the best night for you.”

What were all the other nights going to taste like? Dread rose up in my throat, and I swallowed it down. No, I couldn’t make a scene at the dinner table. Not in front of Pell. I had to be strong. I spooned up another bite.

“What’s it made out of?”

Len popped a white cube in her mouth like a chip. “Soybeans. The majority of our food is manufactured from soybeans and vegetables. Soy is incredibly versatile. They’ve even perfected an allergy-free strain.”

“You mean you’re vegetarians?”

Valex laughed. “You make it sound like we’ve got a computer virus. Everyone is vegetarian. It’s better for you, and we simply don’t have enough room for livestock anymore.”

“Where are all the animals?” My voice squeaked. An imaginary coil suffocated my throat, and I struggled to breathe. My worst nightmare was coming true and I couldn’t wake up. I was already awake.

“They’re extinct.” Pell said it like a fact she learned in school. “Everyone knows that, dumb-bot.”

“Pell,” Valex gave her a stern look. “Jennifer isn’t from our time. Where she grew up, they had tons of animals.”

Thunderbolt’s glassy eye staring at me stuck in my mind. I winced and shook my head, but the memory was permanent.

Pell gasped and dropped her spork. “You got to touch real animals?”

Tears brimmed. A maelstrom of emotion swirled in my stomach and the room blurred through my tears. I was doing so well hiding the pain, and now it poured out of me. I could barely speak. “I did.”

“Oh, Jennifer.” Len reached for me across the table. “I’m so sorry. We shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Everyone gawked at me. The table pushed into my stomach and my plate of food had coalesced into gel. All at once I felt sick. The lives of all the dogs, kittens, polar bears, whales, moose, doves, turtles…every animal I could think of flashed before my eyes, blinking out of existence in a silent scream.

“What happened to the animals?”

Everyone fell silent like none of them wanted to talk about it. But they’d already told me the horrible news and broken my heart. I had to know why.

“Well?”

Valex placed his spork on the table. As the head of the family, I guess it was his job to explain. “Little by little, humans took up more space, and we had to make decisions. Big animals consumed too many resources. Livestock were fed more than three times the human-edible grain than what their bodies produced in meat.”

“So what did they do to all the animals? Kill them?”

“Over time it cost too much to breed them, so they died off naturally.”

I dropped my spork on the table. “There’s nothing natural about it.”

Pell froze as if unsure who to believe.

Len glanced at me, and then at Pell. “Jenny, please. You’re scaring

Pell.”

I stared at her in disbelief. She was calling me out for scaring Pell? Sure, Pell was too young to understand, but Valex and Len could have more sympathy. I may have expected the cold response from Len, with her “everything’s perfect” attitude, but from Valex? I had to remind myself that Valex hadn’t killed all of the animals; he was simply a product of his generation. Most likely, when he was born they were already all dead or goners to be sure. Still, his laid-back manner about everything hit a sour chord with this. How could he be so okay with it?

What I couldn’t fathom was how humans didn’t stand up for the animals. Guess we had picked our own kind over theirs.

Disgust brought up bile from my stomach. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.” I stood up and my chair screeched backward.

Len moved to rise, but Valex waved her down. “Your room is the first door panel down that hall. Take all the time you need.”

“Thank you.”

I stumbled down the hall and dull blue lights flickered on, sensing my presence. I wanted to run away from the world, but I settled for my new room. I pushed the door panel, like I’d seen Valex do earlier, and the wall fizzled out, revealing a small bed like the one in the hospital. Great, no sheets. A stark white desk protruded from the wall. Valex had stacked my containers on top of it. He’d opened the DVD cases and flipped through them. They were numbered one to thirty-one. Dread settled like a cold rock in my stomach. What had happened to make them stop? I’d have to watch each one to find out.

The first one was already hooked up to a cord plugged into the wall. I pressed the panel and hit the play button with my finger. The screen blinked on, casting my room in a white glow. I sat down, rocking back and forth and hugged myself, trying to calm down. Angela’s face shone in front of me, and my insides almost melted into that soybean slush I tried for dinner.

Oh, Angela, where are you now when I need you the most?

She walked in front of the maple trees planted in perfect rows leading to Ridgewood Prep. “Your parents let me bring the video camera to school. I’m supposed to document what you’re missing so when you wake up, you can get all caught up.”

She turned the camera on three boys kicking a hacky sack. Behind them, Chad flirted with one of the cheerleaders. Turning the camera back to her, she shook her head. “So far, you’re not missing much.”

I laughed out loud, surprising myself. Who knew I’d get her joke three hundred years later? What did it matter? Seeing the video made me feel normal, like my life wasn’t some fairy tale I made up before I got to futuristic hell.

Angela kept the video on until she got to first period and clicked it off just as Ms. Dayton wrote a trigonometry problem on the board. Thank goodness she didn’t make me sit through that. The video flicked to gym class. The volleyball nets were still up in the same place as when I broke my leg. Seeing them again sent a shiver across my shoulders.

Angela turned the camera on her face. “You’re never going to believe this, but Chad wants to talk to you.” She focused the camera on Chad as he jogged from the sidelines in his red jersey.

Angela’s voice, like a voiceover in some movie, said, “Okay, Chad, now’s the time to come clean.”

Chad’s perfect face fell into a serious frown. “Hey, Jenny.” His voice was so somber I almost didn’t recognize it. He flicked back his perfect swirl of hair and took a deep breath. “About gym class the other day. I didn’t mean to make light of your broken leg.” His lips twisted into a mischievous smile. “Not that you’re going to care when you wake up in the future and they have all kinds of cool stuff like laser swords, spaceships, robots—”

“That’s enough. Jenny’s not going to be asleep that long. You watch, I bet she comes back in time for prom.” Angela’s voice seemed so defensive, I could tell how hurt she was that I wasn’t there. My chest tightened. Poor Angela.

“Whatever.” Chad shrugged and jogged back to the volleyball net. “My serve!”

Angela turned the camera back on her face. “See, he’s not a complete jerkwad. Just a small one.”

I watched the video for the next few hours until she forgot she’d left it on in the car, and I fell asleep watching the oaks on the side of the windshield fly by in a blur.

Trees. I miss them, too.