Compete (4 page)

Here we are once again scanned by crew officials, and our token ID data is matched to our luggage. So we spend about three more stupendously dull hours waiting in this shuttle bay as robot vehicles ferry our stuff from newly docked freight shuttles. Everything is bundled in pallets, which then get unpacked before our eyes, sorted out, and distributed.

Apparently, while we were all sleeping last night and then hanging out in our barracks half the day, our things were being located and delivered across ships to the proper places.

At some point in the first hour of waiting, I recognize my familiar duffel bag and backpack unloaded by a hovering robot, and I feel a surge of ridiculous tears at the sight. I eagerly take my things—the last familiar things of Earth—and I rummage through them, touching precious books, trinkets, while Gracie and Gordie wait nervously for their own stuff to be delivered.

Eventually we all have our possessions. Which means we have a fresh change of clothing and clean underwear.

Which means we can get properly cleaned up at last.

For the remainder of day one, we and the rest of the Qualified, take showers, eat in Atlantean meal halls, which unsurprisingly resemble Earth cafeterias except for the weird food (about which I will comment later), receive medical attention for injuries acquired during the Finals, and then keel over and sleep in our temporary bunks.

W
e are awakened the next day at 7:00 AM, UTC, by daylight illumination and Atlantean officers coming to the barracks chambers to give us an hour’s notice warning—our departure from Earth orbit will begin shortly.

“There are large observation decks all along the perimeter of this ship, and you may stand and watch out of the windows as the Earth recedes,” an Atlantean tells us gently. And then he explains how to get there.

Immediately there is general tumult. Naturally everyone is interested in seeing Earth for the last time, and there is a stampede of sorts. But another Atlantean blows a harsh whistle and we are told to line up in orderly fashion and be ready to go in half an hour, at which point there is a bathroom rush instead.

I vaguely remember holding Gracie’s clammy hand as thirty minutes later we race in a big crowd of strangers through the great ship.

“Okay, where are we going?” international voices sound all around us as we jostle.

“
Pao, pao! Kuai! Zai na?”

“Where exactly is this observation deck? What time is it?”

“
Ta bu zhi dao! Ni zhi dao ma? Shuo shen ma?”

“
¿Qué dice? ¡No importa, ahorita, muévete!”

“How much longer? This place is a maze!”

We move in a fast jog for at least fifteen minutes, going through endless deck levels and corridors past sections of the ship for which we still have no words, until we arrive at the outermost perimeter. The narrow corridor opens suddenly into a vast panorama.

Here we grow silent and stop.

The outer hull of the ship is bathed in shadowy twilight on the interior, dimly lit with strips of violet plasma glow near the floor, while the ceiling is cast in darkness. The hull walls are fitted with large, floor-to-ceiling rectangular sections of unbreakable transparent material that looks like glass, spaced regularly every few feet. Through it we see a grand vista of black space sprinkled with crystal clear dots of stars . . . all around, hundreds of silver disks of the Atlantean fleet hover like blossoms in the sea of vacuum . . . and directly below, lies the hemispheric shape of a large bluish planet. . . .

Earth.

Gordie sucks in his breath. And Gracie clutches my fingers tighter, as we all stare.

Logan stands directly behind me, looking grimly at the sight. Everywhere teenagers crowd near the display panels, looking out and beyond. There is mostly hushed silence and occasional reverent whispers.

Minutes later, an androgynous machine
voice
sounds from the hull walls all around us. It is speaking Atlantean, then English, then repeating in other major languages of Earth in a delayed echo of seconds, like a strange linguistic chord.

“
Commencing Departure Countdown in ten seconds.”

The Atlantean officers and crew standing with us at the observation deck give us silent sympathetic looks.

“
Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

Is it really happening? I glance around me suddenly, desperately, at the other young people all around the darkly lit deck.

“
. . . Seven . . . six . . .”

The Earth—it is heartrendingly beautiful. Great swirls of white clouds float softly, and the continents pass directly below us.

“
. . . Five . . . four . . .”

There’s the Atlantic Ocean, a deep inky blue. And to the left, the shoreline of North America, still cast in night’s shadow at 4:00 AM Eastern Time, and sprinkled with golden lights of populated areas . . . the United States. Just there, the northeastern tip, near the Great Lakes and slightly over, but just below Canada, is the tiny triangle that’s Vermont . . . Mom and Dad and George are right there, contained within that tiny dot of space, my home.

“
. . . Three . . . two . . .”

I stare at the spot hungrily, wishing with all my soul to rush toward it, like a speeding bird, a morning lark. My lips part as I whisper silently, gripping my little sister’s cold fingers, tight.

“
. . . One . . .”

“
Commence Departure.”

And suddenly, there is a deep rumble. It builds somewhere all around the hull of the ship, like an immense chord of plural notes, a grand C Major chord.

And as it builds, the ark-ship starts to tremble. . . . Soon we can feel the vibration all the way to our bones, the buildup of immense unspeakable forces through the floor underneath our feet, the hull walls, the ceiling.

As we look out through the windows, the other ark-ship disks scattered all around us in orbit start to
glow
. Their silver outsides emit a faint violet plasma radiance, so that the metallic orichalcum surfaces begin to “dissolve” visually. In seconds all they seem to be are molten discs of lavender light.

And then it happens.

Gracie makes a stifled sound and squeezes my hand painfully. Because the hemisphere shape of the Earth outside the windows begins to
float away
.

It is so gradual, that at first you experience it as a brief lurch of vertigo, a sudden disorientation in regard to what exactly is moving, you or the world. But in seconds it becomes clear—the movement is external to the self and very
real
.

You perceive that subtle motion in the way the entirety of the Earth begins to fill the view as it slowly
rises
in the window. Soon the partial view transforms into the full shape of the entire planet, as it simultaneously shrinks softly and retreats from us like a balloon lifting skyward, and eventually stabilizes and keeps its relative position in the window.

With each passing minute the planet grows smaller, gently, softly.

There is no urgency in this departure, the visual changes microscopic. And yet, it is an optical illusion, because the speed must be incredible.

In a few more minutes we see the much smaller ball that is the Moon as it emerges from the other side of the Earth, and we pass its orbit, the perspective of distance finally allowing us to see it at that wider angle.

“Oh God . . .” someone whispers behind us in the dark.

“Mom! Daddy!” Gracie says. “I want Mom!
Mommy, Daddy!
No!
”

And then she is bawling silently, shoving her face against me, no longer holding back.

She is not the only one. I tremble, holding Gracie against my chest, as the lump inside my own throat pushes at me, but somehow I keep it at bay.

Next to me, Gordie’s eyes are a blur. I can see the wet glimmer past his smudged glasses. He sniffles with his nose, shifts from foot to foot, bumping my shoulder with his own.

“Good-bye . . .” teen voices sound in awe and mourning and helpless wonder. Minutes tick away. Half an hour passes, then an hour, and few of us notice.

I continue to watch the retreating sphere of Earth. It is now the size of a penny, so that you can just barely see the white dot that is the Moon—the Earth’s satellite’s albedo is beginning to match in size just any other star sprinkled in the cosmic background.

The other major reference point is now the Sun, a ball of yellow fire the size of a coin. At some point in the last half hour it has entered the scope of our view and taken up permanent residence in the spacescape. We are told not to look at it directly for more than a few minutes at a time, even though the observation windows are equipped with protective anti-glare shields.

I blink and stare at all of it—the Sun, the Earth, the stars, the black vacuum—allowing myself to consume the grand picture, imprinting it upon my mind’s eye. . . .

It is then that I notice that the ship disks of the rest of the Atlantean Fleet outside the window are
lining up
in regular fixed intervals all around us—or maybe they have lined up a while ago, for many long minutes now, and I simply haven’t noticed, haven’t been paying attention—and we are flying in some kind of formation.

In fact, does it seem that the
motion
itself is leaving a
physical trail?

And then I am absolutely sure of it,
yes
.

The ark-ships stretch out in a long illusion of a comet-tail behind us and off to the side all around us . . . and, I am guessing, just as many are far ahead of us. And it seems that all beyond our formation the stars too acquire an optical illusion of tails, as everything, the entire universe, is being pulled and elongated slightly, from the velocity of our movement.

What did Commander Manakteon Resoi call it?

We are entering a physical state called the Quantum Stream.

Chapter Two

T
hat was three days ago. For three days all we did was watch the Earth and Sun recede outside the observation deck windows. Whenever I went there, the observation decks were always packed with teens staring out at the cosmos—mesmerized, dazed, drunk with the view, blinking at the tiny little blue marble of Earth as it was at some point silhouetted against, and then reflecting the light of the bright spot of pale yellow fire that was our Sun. As for the Sun, wow . . . it was still holding out its relative size and position for the most part, though I know it was microscopically shrinking every time I returned for a gazing session, which was at least every few hours.

And when we got tired of the panorama of space, we would return to our temporary barracks. Since even now we’re discouraged from simply wandering the ship aimlessly until we know our duties and place in it, there was nothing else to do. There in the barracks we would sit around and think, often out loud, about the tough choice ahead of us. I remember it in vague snatches—people talking, reminiscing about life on Earth, their families, the current events, the pending destruction.

My sister and brother and Logan, the only people I know who made it here with me on this particular ark-ship—I see their stressed intense faces etched in the unreliable memory of those days, as we go over, point by point, the advantages and disadvantages of each choice.

Meanwhile, how is Earth dealing with our departure? Are there new wars now, more horrible chaos? Does the despair overwhelm our loved ones, now that we are gone?

“Oh God . . . are they okay?” Gracie asks me constantly.

“Yeah, they are,” I say. “You know how Dad said, the worst of the unrest is mostly in large urban centers, you know, big cities? So, I am sure they are perfectly fine.”

Gracie’s expression is unconvinced. Yet again she sits with her feet up on my bunk, fiddling with a cheap bangle bracelet that she took out from her jewelry pouch. It gives her comfort, I guess, like handling the beads of a rosary.

“So, Civilian, right?” I ask, changing the subject.

Gracie scrunches her face. “I guess. Okay, maybe . . . I don’t know!” she whines. I knew it would take her mind off the sad thoughts of home. For these past three days Gracie has been changing her mind back and forth on the Cadet or Civilian choice.

“Gracie, seriously. Do you really want to train to be a soldier? To put your life on the line for Atlantis? To potentially kill other people?” I tell her.

Gordie on the other hand is solidly decided, but for some reason won’t tell us his choice. My little brother can be so annoyingly stubborn sometimes, so withdrawn into the artistic echo chamber of his own head that I want to shake him and slap him around. I am terrified he is going to make a dangerous wrong choice, but then, who am I to judge what choice is best? And so again, for maybe the millionth time, I wish that George was here to give his smart perspective, his big brother advice.

Because, honestly, even after all the information and reference materials we’ve been given, we only have a very general idea of what it means to be a Cadet or a Civilian. The former involves joining their military, and rigid discipline and training. The latter, well, basically it’s the default position in society.