Randoms (5 page)

Dr. Roop was a charming giraffe guy, but even he couldn't make her happy about her son heading into space for a year. Given that my mother didn't know just how many years she had left, I understood that this was hard for her. It was hard for me, too.

They let us have some time alone together in an adjoining room. My mother looked pale, and maybe a few years older than the last time I'd seen her. Her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. Not yet. Or maybe not anymore. Or maybe both.

“I don't know if I can do this,” she said. “I don't know if I
can let you go. We have no idea what's out there, what they are going to ask you to do.”

“They say it'll be safe,” I told her, not liking the whiny tone of my voice.

“They say that, but how do we know?” She shook her head. “We don't.”

Was my mother really going to refuse to let me do this? It wasn't like her to hold me back. She always encouraged me to take risks, but this was a whole new order of risk, and for her the stakes were high.

She stood up. “I'm going home. I need to think.”

“They want an answer soon, Mom.”

“I understand that,” she said quietly. “But I can't figure anything out knowing that the giraffe man is in the next room waiting for my answer. I need time to come to terms with this.”

“When do you think you'll decide?” I asked.

“I don't know!” she snapped. Then she hugged me tight, and I felt her tears against my neck. “I don't know,” she said much more quietly.

Then she left.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
spent much of the rest of that day fending off Ms. Price, who wanted me to call my mother and persuade her to sign. I knew that would be a mistake. She did not respond well to bullies. I had to believe that she would make the right decision and that she simply needed the room to make it on her own.

The next day, when she returned with a large duffel bag in the back of the dark sedan, I knew she had decided to let me go.

Agent Jiminez, carrying the bag, led her into a private room where I was waiting. He set down the bag and left.

My mother hugged me. “This doesn't mean you have to go,” she said when she released me. “It's your decision. What do you really want?”

We sat in two armchairs across from each other. She leaned forward and took my hand.

“I don't want to leave you alone,” I told her, “but I do want to go.”

“Because going off into space seems like a fun adventure or because you want to accomplish whatever tasks they give you and take all our problems away? Do you want to go for yourself, or to search for a cure for me?”

“Both,” I told her, which was the truth.

She let go of my hand and leaned back. “I don't want to spend a year alone,” she said. “You're all I have, Zeke, and I'm
scared. I don't want to watch my days and weeks and months vanish forever. But I also know that's selfish, which is why I decided to let you do this.”

I was relieved, and also a little hurt. Maybe I wanted it to be a harder decision for her. “Are you sure you can get by without me?”

“No, I'm not sure, but this is the most amazing experience you could possibly have, and I would be a monster if I took that away from you. It's also your duty to your country and to your planet—though I can't believe I just said that out loud. I won't be a selfish mother who holds on to her child despite the consequences to the world. The whole world, Zeke, is depending on you to do this, even if they don't know it, and I can't stand in your way.”

I nodded.

“And there's another reason,” she said. She wiped at her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “What's coming for me is going to be bad. We both know it, but what keeps me awake at night is not how bad it will be for me, but what it will be like for you. You're too young to have to deal with taking care of me, how I'm going to become.” She paused to take a breath. “Maybe what you do on this space station will help me, and maybe it won't, but I can't ask you to watch me fall apart knowing you could have helped, could have at least tried to do something, but I wouldn't let you. If I do that, you will come to hate me, and that seems worse than anything.”

I was feeling like I was on the verge of tears now. I knew she wouldn't mind if I cried, but I was a big-boy space adventurer now, and crying seemed like a step backward.

“What are you going to tell people?”

“They'll invent a cover story about boarding school, so you don't need to worry about that,” she said, seeming to take comfort in the discussion of organizational details. “Do you want to see what I packed? There might still be time if I forgot anything important.”

“I wish you hadn't had to go in my room,” I said as I walked over to the duffel bag. “It's kind of a mess.”

“No kidding.”

I looked through the stuff quickly, and by all appearances my mother had done a fine job. She had sent me off with mostly jeans and short-sleeved shirts, but also a few long-sleeved shirts, a sweater, and my favorite Justice League T-shirt. She hadn't packed my ultracool Tenth Doctor coat but she had thrown in my ultracool
Firefly
coat and matching
Firefly
suspenders. She'd also put one of my Martian Manhunter action figures in there. She knew I would want it. It was like taking my father's memory to the stars with me.

“There's one more thing,” she said, and then pressed a little cardboard box into my hand. Inside was a silver locket on a chain. I had never been much for jewelry, even less so for ladies' jewelry, but I decided if I waited patiently, I'd get an explanation.

“No, you don't have to put it on.” She laughed and shook her head. “I never thought I'd have to give this to you.”

“What is it?” I asked. “I've never seen you wear it—I don't think.”

“No,” she said, “but it's been in the family for a long time. When your great-great-grandfather went off to World War One, his mother gave it to him, with her picture and a lock of her hair. And then when your great-grandfather went to fight
in the Second World War,
his
mother gave it to him, with her own picture and her own lock of hair. When your granddad went to Vietnam, he got it, with your great-grandmother's picture and hair. They all came home safe, so maybe the locket is good luck.”

I opened it up. Inside was a little picture of my mom, and a little clasp of her brown hair, with a single gray hair snaking through.

“I'm not going to war,” I told her.

“And thank God for that, but you are going far away. A little extra luck can't hurt.”

I nodded again. We stood and I hugged her as tightly as I could.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said.

She smiled. “For what?”

“For letting me go,” I said. “For being cool about it. For raising me to be the kind of kid who could be randomly selected by aliens to spend a year on a space station.”

She shook her head and then said what we had both been thinking. “Your father would be so insanely jealous of you.”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“He'd be proud, too. But also jealous. I'm just proud.”

“I haven't done anything yet.”

“You will. I know you will.” And then she went over to the table where the release form had been left. She picked up the pen and signed with a trembling hand. I tried to think about what this trip might do for her, not what it would do
to
her.

•   •   •

After we'd said our last good-byes, Agent Jiminez drove me, Ms. Price, and Dr. Roop across Camp David. Of the difficulties
Dr. Roop had in getting comfortable in the back of the car, the less said the better. We passed several checkpoints but were waved through each one. The windows of the car were tinted, and the soldiers never once glanced at the car's interior. I guess they'd been told to see nothing. At last we drove into a hangar, and that was where I saw my first real spaceship.

It was dull gray, with no markings, and sort of rectangular and boxy in the way of TV sci-fi shuttles, but it had two protruding engines toward the back and some truncated shuttle-type wings on the side, no doubt for in-atmosphere flight. The whole thing was about as large as a school bus and, to be honest, about as sleek. I understood it was designed to be functional, not impressive, simply a practical tool for getting from here to there. To me, it was unimaginably beautiful.

Dr. Roop boarded up a ramp and through an opening of double doors as soon as we arrived, but Ms. Price asked me to remain outside for a moment. She then proceeded to ignore me, sending out some last minute e-mails from her phone while I stood there like an idiot, moving my duffel bag from hand to hand for something to do.

After about three tedious minutes, a black car pulled up, and the president emerged. He walked over to me and shook my hand.

“Zeke, I can't thank you enough for representing our nation and our world. I know you will do your very best for us.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was heading off on a suicide mission. I reminded myself I was not. Hopefully.

“This is one of the most important moments in the history of the planet and the country,” the president said. “I wish you
didn't have to make this journey in secret, but if you succeed, you will be a hero to billions.”

“I just don't want to blow it for everyone,” I said, then winced at my words. It was probably not how you spoke to the president.

He laughed. “That was how I felt my first day in office. Actually, it's how I feel every day in office. I think the people who worry about blowing it end up getting the job done. The ones who are sure they're the right person for the job end up making a mess of everything.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“I've made my office available to your mother,” he said. “If she needs anything while you're gone, we'll take care of it.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.”

“It's the least we can do for you. She'll have the best care possible while you're away. And you'll be in good hands as well. Ms. Price will do an excellent job.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

He shook both our hands again. “Good luck,” he said. Then he broke into a huge grin. “You are the luckiest people alive,” he told us, and then walked back to his car.

Ms. Price impatiently jabbed a finger toward the shuttle. That was her special way of telling me it was time to get on an alien craft, depart the planet of my birth, and leave everyone I knew and loved behind.

•   •   •

Despite the shuttle's buslike size, the interior portion was more like a minivan. I had to imagine that the bulk of it went to machinery and engines. Dr. Roop sat near the navigational
controls, which were numerous: switches and levers and screens and buttons. There were flashing readouts and rolling streams of data. I guessed I was copilot, because Dr. Roop invited me to sit beside him. Ms. Price sat three rows back, to better ignore us while she read through more papers. I presumed her phone was about to lose reception.

There were no windows, glass possibly being a bad idea for a vehicle that traveled through the vacuum of space, but there were high-resolution video screens in the front and back, and on the sides, that acted as windows. I sat looking forward, and though I knew there was ten feet of shuttle on the other side of the screen, it sure looked like I was peering through glass.

“The other kids are on the ship already?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I took them up yesterday.”

For some reason, I didn't like that they'd had a whole day on the spaceship without me, but I pushed the thought aside. “You do know how to drive this thing, right?” I asked Dr. Roop.

“For a simple trip like this, the navigational computer will handle the controls,” he said.

“But what if something goes wrong? Shouldn't there be a pilot on board?”

“Things don't go wrong,” he assured me. “But even if, however improbably, something were to happen, the shuttle can be controlled from the main ship, and in an emergency I am able to operate it.”

I didn't love the idea of being flown around by a computer, but I knew I had to do things the Confederation way. You don't get to be a galaxy-spanning civilization without knowing what you are doing. Or so I told myself.

“It will take about fifteen minutes to reach the ship,”
Dr. Roop said. “The navigational computer provides a very smooth ride.”

Everything was happening so quickly, I'd hardly had time to think about it. Now I was suddenly absolutely terrified. I was on a space shuttle of alien design, about to leave Earth and board a starship. This was nuts. I thought I might vomit or pass out or both.

“I have seen enough of human physiology to tell you are anxious,” Dr. Roop said, “but I assure you there is no need for fear. You could not be safer. Now give me your hand.”

I did. He took out one of the cylinders that Ms. Price had used to inject me with nanites, and he pressed it to the back of my hand.

“Sedative?” I asked.

“Certainly not. These are more nanites.”

“For what?”

Suddenly my vision grew fuzzy, but only for a second. I blinked a few times, and the blurring was gone, but things were now just a little different. Dr. Roop had a vague, transparent number floating above his head—a reddish 34. In the lower left of my own vision, I saw a number 1 and below that 0000/1000. The numbers were translucent and easy to ignore entirely, but when I made an effort to see them, they came into sharp focus.

“Uh, what's going on?” I asked. “I'm seeing numbers.”

“That's your heads-up display,” Dr. Roop said.

“You're joking.” I had an HUD now?

“I'm quite serious.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to figure the rest out. “What do the numbers mean, and why do you have one floating over your head? Ms. Price doesn't.”

“Ms. Price is not wired into the Confederation system of personal growth and expansion. You and your fellow delegates are. You asked before how your species' compatibility with the Confederation would be evaluated. In our culture, we believe that learning, striving, expanding your abilities, curiosity, wisdom—all of these things have merit. From the Formers, our great progenitors, we have inherited a system whereby an individual's achievements are recognized and so become the basis for further improvements. The nanites in your system have already quantified your attributes in numerous categories, and they are also capable of measuring how well your actions and accomplishments move you toward achieving certain kinds of goals valued across the Confederation. These successes, based on their complexity and difficulty, are represented as a numerical value. There are certain set values, and when they are reached, you are rewarded by having abilities of your choice augmented through nanotechnology.”

I took a moment to process all of this. “So the zeroes are my experience points,” I said. “The one thousand is how many points I will need to . . . level up?”

“Correct,” he said.

“And when I level up I get . . . skill points I can use?”

“Correct again,” he said. “We have the technology to increase our abilities in ways that exceed our biological limitations, but in order to prevent this technology from being abused, those augmentations must be earned through accomplishments that benefit all of society.”