DAY 100, 10:33 A.M.

Aboard Genesis 11

Meals are unpredictable on Sabbaths. Everyone’s schedule changes so drastically. People eat late or early or not at all. Once, Katsu slept through the entire day. He woke up just in time to start another week of Babel’s endless grind.

So it’s only by dumb luck that I bump into Bilal on the way to breakfast. We exchange good mornings and stumble downstairs together. Naturally, Longwei’s the only other person awake this early. Our annoying leader doesn’t even look up as Bilal and I walk the length of the buffet. It feels so normal to joke with Bilal and sit down for a meal that I almost don’t notice how weird he’s acting. He’s always been a little awkward, but today he’s straight jumpy. His normally tidy hair looks chaotic. As I chew on a piece of bacon, I realize he’s blushing. Sweating too.

I point at him with my fork. “Hey, the hell’s wrong with you today?”

His eyes flick over to the other end of the table, in Longwei’s direction. He’s standing at the buffet, back to us, picking through the deviled eggs. Bilal turns back, content knowing that whatever he wants to share won’t be overheard.

“Last night, Azima kissed me.”

I stare at him. “Sorry, I think your mask’s broken, Bilal. It sounded like you said that Azima kissed you last night.”

His face goes a deeper shade of red. “I did.”

“Azima? Kissed you?”

He nods. “On the lips.”

The widest smile splits my face. No wonder he looks like the world’s ending. Bilal’s probably the nicest kid in the world, but it’s not hard to imagine this was his first kiss. Laughing, I reach out for dap. Bilal pounds my fist, half laughing himself, but then he shakes his head.

“I should not laugh. It is not honorable.”

“Kissing?” I ask. “Dude, nothing wrong with a little kissing.”

Bilal shakes his head again. “But I must ask her parents for their approval.”

“Good luck.” I thumb back. “He’s a few million kilometers that way.”

“Exactly,” Bilal replies, face lined with concern. “It’s not right to—”

The sound of a crashing plate cuts him off. We both look up like startled birds. Longwei’s standing by the edge of the table, his deviled eggs a smash of white and yellow on the floor. But he’s not looking at the fallen plate or the mess. His eyes are locked on Bilal. It takes a second to realize that he’s blushing too.

“Can we help you, Longwei?” I ask.

His fists are clenching and unclenching.

“But I kissed Azima.”

All the color drains from Bilal’s face. The two of them stare daggers at each other as I burst into laughter. It’s too funny not to laugh. All this time Longwei’s built himself up as the untouchable competitor. He works harder and smarter and faster than any of us, but with just four words he’s shattered all my illusions. It’s hard to even imagine him kissing someone. He doesn’t usually do anything that won’t earn points on the scoreboard.

But a glance at Bilal cuts my laughter off. The stare he’s leveling Longwei with is a furious one. It’s not even the presence of anger, really. It’s the absence of his normal smile.

“Look, guys,” I say, trying to play peacemaker. “I’m sure it’s an honest mistake.”

Longwei ignores me. “I kissed her first.”

Before Bilal can answer, Longwei storms out of the room. I have to fight back the laughter because, seriously? He kissed Azima first? That’s his argument? Bilal’s taking deep breaths as I scramble for the right words. Thankfully, he finds them first.

“How could she?” he asks.

I shrug. “It’s not 2020 anymore, man. Girl’s got the right to kiss who she wants.”

“No, not that,” Bilal replies. “I agree that it is her right. But Longwei? How could she ever kiss Longwei? I have to take a shower. I do not feel clean.”

He starts walking off in the wrong direction.

“Bilal.” My voice pulls his attention. “That way. You have to go that way.”

He nods once and changes direction. “Longwei, of all people…”

I wait until he rounds a corner before dying from laughter. I’ll have to thank Azima later. This might have been my favorite moment aboard Genesis 11. I still remember her giving a speech about finding a man worthy of her, but I didn’t realize she’d been conducting interviews. Neither of her choices surprises me. Longwei’s name has been first or second on the scoreboard since the beginning, and Bilal’s the nicest person I’ve ever met. It doesn’t hurt that he’s competed well too. Both of them are worthy, in their own ways, but I have a hard time imagining Azima settling for either one.

Sighing, I make a mental note to talk to Bilal later. Knowing him, he’d never actually take revenge on Longwei, but I’m sure he’ll run circles in his own head about all of it. I start in on a second helping of breakfast when Vandemeer tracks me down.

“Ready to go down to the Contact Room?”

We walk the halls together. Vandemeer gets Sabbaths off too, but sometimes he spends them working with us anyway. I couldn’t have asked for a more determined medic. He’s always preaching to me about not checking scoreboards, but as we walk down to the Contact Room, he’s eyeing every single one.

“It’s a Sabbath, Vandemeer. The scores aren’t changing anytime soon.”

“I know,” he says, smiling. “Just proud of your progress.”

“Yeah, well, let’s not freak just yet. There’s a long way to go.”

“How positive.”

Vandemeer swipes us into the Contact Room. A handful of techies sit in front of glowing screens. I catch glimpses of lunar alignments, solar charts, the works. I’ve been escorted through a couple of times now to make calls home and I still can’t make heads or tails of any of it.

Vandemeer nods me toward the feed room and strikes up a conversation with one of the techies. But as I open the door, I realize there’s already a call in progress. Jazzy sits in the reception seat. A woman fills the screen in front of her. She’s strikingly thin, and her entire head’s been clean-shaved. Cancer couldn’t take the bright blue from her eyes, though. Both of them look my way, and it’s not hard to see where Jazzy gets her looks.

“My fault, Jazzy. Didn’t realize I was early.”

I start to leave, but Jazzy waves me in. “Emmett! Come meet Mama!”

Something about her excited smile pulls me forward. She’s only got one minute left on her call home, and she’s inviting me into it? Jazzy slides over to make room and throws an arm around me as I sit. “Mama, this is my friend Emmett!” she says.

The woman flashes a pageant smile. “You takin’ care of my girl up there?”

I can’t help smiling at the familiar southern drawl. “Yes, ma’am.”

“He’s one of the good ones, Mama,” Jazzy says, surprising me.

Before Jazzy’s mother can ask another question, I quietly excuse myself to let them say goodbye. Heat’s crawling up my neck and down my back as I hover by the doorway and wait for their call to finish. I’ve never thought of Jazzy as a friend, but I guess she’s not like Roathy or Longwei. She’s always been kind to me. The only thing I have to hold against her is that she might be the one who takes what’s mine. I’ve never thought of her as a friend because I’ve kept both hands gripped on the idea that she’s competition, nothing more.

Her call cuts off and she stands. I watch her take a quiet moment to collect herself. That’s something I’ve always noticed about Jazzy. She knows how to take her deep breaths offstage. It’s the reason she can always be so composed and ready for whatever’s next. As she leaves the room, she gives my arm a passing squeeze. “Glad you got to meet her,” she whispers.

Her departure leaves me feeling guilty. I hate that she’s just a name on a scoreboard.

Vandemeer appears at my side. “One minute until they feed through.”

I nod and take a seat as he closes the door. We’ve had five or six calls now. Sometimes the signals are too weak to establish a connection. Moms hasn’t shown up for one of them, because she’s started treatment. Babel’s kept their word, they’ve fast-tracked everything, but that means she’s fighting hard now to get better. It means she’s too sick and exhausted to make the long-distance trips to Babel’s comm center. That doesn’t make her absence any easier. Every time the screen turns on, I hope she’ll be sitting there next to Pops. Hope’s a funny thing that way. No matter how many times she’s not there, I always have more for the next time.

When the screen loads, though, it’s just Pops.

“My boy,” he says. “You look great, Emmett.”

It must be summer in Detroit. He’s wearing a classic black tank and has his hair cut short. I can picture him in the barbershop chair, telling Terry summer’s coming and he’s got to look good if his wife’s about to be back in dresses.

“Last time you said you were in grind mode,” he says. “Work paying off?”

I forget the details I’ve given to him and the details I’ve kept hidden. He knows someone got stabbed by accident. He doesn’t know it was me. He knows Babel’s offering us lottery tickets. He doesn’t know how much fine print there is. I’m not sure if it’s childish or grown-up, this fear of mine. A fear of telling him the full, unfiltered truth. I just think it’s time I shouldered my own burdens instead of letting him do the heavy lifting.

“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “I’ve been climbing back up the scoreboard. Doing well.”

He nods, tells me to keep going, always pushing me to be better. Sometimes I get so caught up in what’s going on aboard Genesis 11 that I forget there’s someone Earthside, praying and hoping and dreaming of what might happen if I pull this off. He told me to do it for me, to fight for my future, but he has no clue how badly I want it for him, for Moms.

“So everything’s okay?” he asks.

“Still have work ahead of me, but I’m healthy and I like my chances.”

Pops smiles at me like we’re not a billion kilometers away. He looks ready to ask more, about the ship or about me or about space. But I’m tired of this place. Far too tired to waste our precious minutes on any of it. “How’s Moms?” I ask. “I miss her. I miss you both.”

“Good. Real good, son. The treatments seem like they’re working.”

We never say the words. Chronic, failure, death. We talk about her sickness without talking about it. I was still little when Moms first found out about her kidney disease, when she first started spiraling down. Pops shouldered the load after she lost her job, after the insurance money ran dry. It was all so hard for me to understand. I’d get mad that she was so tired. I thought it meant she didn’t care about me. The older I got, the more I understood, but sometimes you hold those strikes against people in the darkest corners of your heart.

I nod. “She’s not working, is she?”

“Not yet, but she misses that desk job she had in Moore Square. She’s trying to get back to it, you know? It made her feel normal. For a while there, she’d come back home and talk about it. You know how she usually is about work.”

“Work ain’t for home,” I say, smiling.

He laughs. “Exactly. So she’s better, but still no traveling. That’s why she’s not here. Babel’s station is about a six-hour drive. I don’t think she can handle that kind of distance, you know? But the other day she asked if I’d take her to the store, Emmett. That’s when I knew she was turning a corner on all of this.”

“The store?”

“She wanted to buy work clothes. Man, she looks some kind of fine in business casual.”

I cock an eyebrow at that. He’s right. That is a good sign. At some of the lowest points, she’d talk about giving clothes away. Acted like she didn’t have much use for them, not the direction she was heading. The idea of her buying clothes is a great sign.

“There’s this one dress,” Pops is saying. “Whoo…It takes me back….”

I groan. “Pops. Really?”

“Hey, it’s the reason you’re here in the first place.”

“Five minutes,” I remind him. “We get five minutes, and this is what you talk about? There’s something wrong with you—you know that, right?”

He laughs again. “You’ll see what it’s like one day, trust me. Anyway, she’s getting better every day. I’m doing fine. She couldn’t come today, but I do have a surprise for you.”

I watch him lean over and rap his knuckles on a side door. A few seconds later it gasps open and PJ McQueen steps into the room, his grin wider than the screen, his eyes darting and excited.

“My due! Look at this guy!” PJ sits down next to Pops, still grinning. “Hey, Emmett. I know that you were getting tired of me domming you in pickup games, but you didn’t have to leave the solar system out of shame, man.”

Laughter shakes my whole body. “Please, PJ. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”

“Right, right. Guy goes to space, gets a big head, acts like I don’t rain j’s for days.”

I laugh again and glance over at Pops. “What were you thinking, bringing this clown in? He’s supposed to be on a strict training program, Pops. Scholarships start next year. Have you taken your two thousand free throws today, PJ?”

PJ makes a face. “Come on, I could take off one day to talk to the celebrity.”

“Celebrity? I don’t know what Pops has been telling you, but I’m not a celebrity.”

“Course you are,” PJ says. “Whole world’s going nuts. Babel went viral last week.”

I frown. “Viral? What?”

“The Babel Files,” he says. “Everyone at school’s talking about it, man. All these girls started claiming they had things with you too. Don’t worry—I shut down the rumor mill and set you up nice for when you come back.”

I shake my head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

PJ grins, giving his shoulder a dust-off. “Well, I told most of the girls to get lost. But I think Shae Westwood’s down to date. Just call me your intergalactic wingman.”

“Not that, PJ,” I say. “The other thing. What are the Babel Files?”

“An article,” Pops answers. “Haven’t they shown you the article?”

“No.” I shrug. “We’re in space.”

“Oh man,” he says, clapping his hands together excitedly. “It’s pretty cool. There’s a whole page about you. They snagged your last yearbook photo and interviewed some teachers.”

My mind’s spinning. “There’s an article about me?”

“Yeah, you and all the other recruits. It was kind of cool. You always talk about these kids, and now I know what they look like, you know? Gave me a face to go with the stories you always tell. I see what you mean about that Longwei kid.”

“But,” PJ interrupts, “not one mention of the Most Excellent Brothers? For shame, man. That was our time to shine. I expect name drops in future interviews.”

I laugh again. “But who published it?”

Pops opens his mouth to respond, but as his lips move, the sound cuts. I hear a bass vibration and then a little high-pitched whine. His voice patches back, scrambles, and mutes a second time. After thirty seconds of interference, I jump up and open the door.

“Hey,” I call to the nearest techie. “Sound isn’t working.”

The woman frowns at her glowing screen before detaching from her station. With another frown, she crosses over to the doorway. As she reaches the entrance, the screen flickers twice, and when the image returns, the sound does too.

“…morning or something like that. But like I said, they’re going nuts over it.” There’s a pause. “Emmett? You there, Emmett?”

“Seems to be working now,” the techie says.

I scramble back into my seat. “Yeah. Sorry. You were cutting out some.”

“Oh, okay. Well, like I was saying, Vegas is taking bets on you guys. They have no idea what they’re betting on, but it’s kind of cool. And you won’t believe—”

The screen vanishes. In the corner, I see that the five minutes has elapsed. In the mirrored dark of the screen, I look exhausted. Sighing, I push myself up and move back through the Contact Room. Vandemeer’s waiting outside. I almost share my suspicions, but I remember that even trustworthy Vandemeer is being watched. He still wears Babel’s watch and needs Babel’s paychecks. He’s at their mercy as much as I am. So I tell him that Moms is getting better and list off a few of PJ’s stat lines from playing varsity as a freshman last year, but I don’t mention the glitch or my suspicions.

I don’t tell him that I noticed how the sound cut when Pops went into details about the Babel Files article. I don’t tell him that I think the glitch happened on purpose, because nothing on this ship ever breaks or malfunctions. If Babel wants something to work, it works. So what was he saying that they don’t want me to know? Whatever it is, I brace myself. Just one more thing to keep an eye out for, one more change waiting on the horizon.