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  In memory of my dog Mahati, who sat at my feet for every book I’ve written—except this one.

  For my mother-in-law, Tanya V. Beck, who would go to the moon and back for the people she loves, including (and especially) for her dogs.

  Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.

  —DarkShikari via Y Combinator.com, circa 2010ish

  Most likely falsely attributed to René Descartes by a community of idiots on the Internet

  It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

  —René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Part 1, 1637

  TIME STAMP

  MOON

  DAY 28, MONTH 6, MUSC YEAR 94

  EARTH

  JUNE 17, 2XXX

  UMA JEMISON

  MOON UTILITARIAN SURVIVAL COLONY

  HOLOGRAM OR REAL? I think-text to Kepler, who’s scrunched in the seat beside me as usual, his limbs folded like telescoping landing legs to fit in the cramped space of the small MUSC auditorium.

  Hologram, duh. He shifts, trying to get comfortable. The designers of the Moon survival colony didn’t account for humans getting taller as they evolved off Earth. If anything, they thought our species would get smaller. But none of this is a problem for me. I’m a short terrestrial transplant on the Moon, and my legs fit just fine.

  “Greetings, Cohort 54! This is the final Moon Utilitarian Survival Colony lab assessment for G3C54!” MUSC president Dr. Valentine Fornax announces from the center stage, where she is surrounded by forty-eight kids I grew up with here. Her voice reverberates through the auditorium, making the event feel strangely hallowed, since it’s in real time and not on our Streams.

  I squint past Kep’s thotz on my Lenz to study Dr. Fornax, who paces the stage, surrounded by our entire cohort in this circular mini arena. As always, she is stunning. Tall and strong with a square jaw and nearly black eyes under her thick shock of steel-colored hair. Although she’s at least twelve years older than my mother, she looks younger. Something in the way she holds herself, shoulders down and back, head high, and a mischievous twinkle in those eyes, as if she perpetually has a great idea she can’t wait to unleash. She’s my hero for all of those reasons, but also because, like my family, Dr. Fornax was born on Earth and emigrated to the Moon.

  As Dr. Fornax moves across the stage, I look for the telltale holo shimmer, but she looks solid from every angle.

  Real, I think to Kep.

  We’re not important enough for the president/CEO to show up IRL.

  “You are the best and the brightest of the human race,” Dr. Fornax proclaims. “You have worked diligently through the last decade of superior education. You are the future of our colony.”

  I raise both eyebrows at Kep. We are the future.

  Gad help us all. He blinks me an image of Gemini Chen-Ning, sitting across the auditorium from us, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed, most likely blasting alien Viking serpent creatures in some Torrent VRPG on his Stream.

  I snort a quiet laugh, barely audible, but of course, Micra whips around from her seat in front of me to give us an evil side-eye glare. The kind lizardlike aliens give their next victim in the archived 2-D Earthling sci-fi movies Kep and I watch from our hacked Earth connection.

  “Shush,” she hisses as if spitting acid that will melt my skin. Then she tucks a silver strand of hair behind her ear and turns away with an expert eye roll, no doubt thotzing something horrible about me to Cassio and Alma, her satellites sitting on either side, forever in her orbit.

  When my parents and I moved to MUSC ten years ago, those three made my life a living hell. You would think Third Gen Moonlings who are the children of the greatest living scientists in the universe would master compassion, but Micra and her minions are just as mean as any earthly primate troupe threatened by an interloper.

  It doesn’t help that on top of my hereditary skin pigmentation, gravity-defying curls, and prominent facial features, my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a communication implant, and for some reason—maybe the dry MUSC air—I’m prone to ear and eye infections so I can’t use an iEye or HearEar, which means I’m the only person in my cohort with an external communication device strapped to my head. I might as well be sporting a centuries-old plastic prosthetic leg. Needless to say, those girls have been merciless since the moment I showed up on the Moon.

  The only saving grace of my cohort placement was having a last name that starts with J. Since children are always arranged in alphabetical order, I have been smack-dab in the middle of Kepler Jackson on my right and Fermi Kaku on my left since the day I showed up. Lucky for me, Fermi is intensely introverted and Kepler is the nicest person in our cohort. Even luckier, Kep and I both have the same goofball sense of humor and taste for bad Earth Streams.

  Without missing a beat, Kep sends a scribble to my Lenz of Micra standing on Mars, alone. I swallow another laugh and add the Dark Overlord from our favorite Earth sci-fi movie, Howard the Duck, sneaking up behind her, its toothy maw open and crab claws ready to attack. Kep puts me in a space pod, ray guns blasting toward Micra as she’s being chased by the Overlord. We pass the doodle back and forth from his mind to my Lenz, each adding more stupid details until we’re both shaking from trying not to laugh while Dr. Fornax yammers on about how we are standing on the precipice of our futures.

  Then Dr. Fornax proclaims, “Childhood is behind you, and a Life’s Work Assignment is on the horizon!”

  I gulp and stop doodling. Is space rodeo clown an option for my life’s work? I thotz Kep. Maybe evil quark hunter?

  A little muscle in his jaw twitches. A happy little dance. The one part of his body that won’t obey the no-laughing edict his brain has issued. Kepler knows as well as I do that there are very few job options here that fit my “skill set.” Other than creating beautiful bacteria colonies for fun, I haven’t exactly excelled at much on MUSC.

  How about comet badminton diva? Kep thinks. I snort. Micra glares.

  Kep and I exchange a glance. He’s also the only person in G3C54 who finds Micra as annoying as I do. When we were twelve, I plucked a hair from her head and convinced him to help me sequence her genome in his mother’s immunology lab. I was determined to find out what accounted for her moon-dust-colored hair and bright yellow eyes blinking like two suns, spaghetti arms and itty-bitty bump of a nearly nonexistent nose. I thought if I could scientifically prove she was the anomaly, not me, people would be nicer.

  But it didn’t matter because genetics are only half the story. Experience and perception are the other half. No matter how many anomalies I could locate on her genome, Micra remains the standard for Moon beauty, and I will always be the freak of nature up here.

  “Tomorrow is Leap Day, when each of you will embark on a twenty-eight-day personal journey during the month of Sol,” Dr. Fornax says. “This is a time for you to e
xplore new worlds of experience before you settle into your young adult life.”

  My stomach burbles with excitement. Only three things have made my life at MUSC bearable the past ten years: 1) knowing that as long as I’m here, my mother will be safe, 2) being friends with Kepler, and 3) holding out for Sol of my sixteenth year, when I can go back to Earth for twenty-eight days, which will happen in approximately twelve hours, forty-eight minutes, and nineteen seconds. Not that I’m counting or anything.

  “At the end of Sol, you will return to MUSC as young adult members of our colony,” Dr. Fornax reminds us, as if we could forget. “At that time, you will receive your Life’s Work Assignment, which will support the MUSC corporate mission of interstellar colonization!”

  Everyone breaks into wild applause.

  Except for me. My stomach turns sour, and I have to swallow down a nasty taste. There is nothing I dread more than receiving my LWA. Everyone else believes that’s when life starts, but for me, it will be the end. No more watching banned Earth Streams with Kep. No more time to work on my bacteria botanical garden. No more dreaming of the day when I return to Earth, because that day will have come and gone. From the moment I receive my LWA, my life will be all work, all the time, and there’s not a job up here that could make me happy.

  “The future of our species depends on each of us. So work hard and make us proud!” Dr. Fornax says.

  No pressure there, I thotz Kep. In return, he sends me an image of the moon exploding.

  “And remember, Cohort 54…” She waits as we all inhale and sit up straight, ready to proclaim our colony’s motto.

  “Science will see us through!” we all recite in unison. Then Dr. Fornax’s image blips off the stage.

  TALITHA NEVA

  ALPHAZONIA, EARTH

  A QUICK WHISTLE and clap is all it takes for the lantana bush to rustle and Quasar to appear on the buckled sidewalk beside me. One perky little ear is turned inside out, so he looks to be wearing a jaunty pink cap on the side of his small furry head.

  “Look at you! Sleeping on the job,” I say. He yawns and shakes away his dreams, flipping the ear back to brown fur again. “Castor and I are doing all the work here,” I tell him as I drop to one knee. Quasar trots over, pointy snout going straight into my hair to snuffle around my ear. I give him a good long scratch between the shoulder blades, then pat him on the side. His belly tumps like the ripe watermelons in my mother’s greenhouse garden.

  “You have any food for him?” my brother asks.

  I search my pockets. “Just some Mango Bango Oink Oink Jerky I found inside an old SelfServ on Santa Monica Avenue.” Quasar stands on hind legs and whines as I tear off a piece of the jerky, which he snarffles straight from my palm. “This stuff lasts forever.” I try to take a bite, but it’s too tough for me, so I give the rest to the dog.

  “This place is desolate,” Castor says as he surveys the altered coastline below the empty promenade. Sometimes when the tide is out, we catch a glimpse of the sunken Ferris wheel caught on pilings in the shallow ocean water, but no such luck tonight. “We had some of our best finds down here but now … nothing.”

  Castor’s right. When we first arrived, the followers on our Stream loved to see what we’d find in Santa Monica Basin. But that was before everything was picked clean. Our best hauls included a seaweed-covered fishing boat with a beer-filled cooler still intact, slatted wooden tables floating like rafts, wicker chairs with waterlogged cushions tied on, a giant mirror that somehow hadn’t cracked, an entire leather sofa crusted with salt and bright green barnacles, deck chairs, glass bottle lamps, slabs of cork flooring, slate roof tiles, sink basins, an electric guitar, a swing set and slide, countless car tires, coach cushions, and mattresses. Plus lots of useless stuff like buoys, soccer balls, mismatched shoes, and empty plastic bottles no one needs.

  “Remember that day we were on the beach and a bunch of body parts floated up like a dismembered parade and you freaked out?” Castor laughs.

  “They looked real washing up on the sand,” I insist, and shudder at the memory. “How was I supposed to know they were from mannequins?”

  “It was too late for bodies,” Castor says, like I’m stupid.

  After all the big finds were gone, we still came back to scavenge through the tiny, personal reminders of daily life—a tarnished bracelet engraved with Happy 50th Wedding Anniversary, Dreama; a shell-encrusted brass owl with one missing jeweled eye; a weird one-legged metal chicken standing on an arrow; and once, a small diamond ring that had roiled up through the sand—everything ripped away by the Great Tsunami, then washed ashore for illegals like us to find.

  I throw a rock over the promenade edge and listen to it thud on the sand below. “Let’s leave,” I say. “Your Yoobie isn’t coming.”

  “Don’t use that word!” Castor snaps.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, sarcasm clear. “Let me rephrase. The universal-basic-income-receiving brain-chipped zombie from AlphaZonia who wants your mind-melting drug isn’t going to show.” I pause and stare at him. “Better?”

  “They’re called citizen shareholders.” Castor rolls his eyes at me. “And she’ll be here. She pinged me.”

  “I wish you’d stop,” I say. “Hacking the dopamine regulators in TouchyFeelyTech implants is so against the law.”

  “Our entire existence in AlphaZonia is against the law.”

  “Yeah, but as long as we stay under the radar…”

  Castor pulls the straps of his red knapsack tighter and walks away, impatient with my worry. He’s carried that bag since the day he found it in the remains of a tsunami relief center at the Emergency Operations building on the west side. The logo on its front—a white circle with a red cross in the center—has almost faded away, but the bag itself is nearly indestructible.

  From behind, he and I look just alike. We have the same long legs, broad shoulders, and narrow waist. We move alike, too. We lope rather than walk, more the way wolves move, loose-limbed and easy, as if they could go for miles without a rest.

  We even dress alike in slim-fit pants, loose shirts, and comfy sneakers, all lifted from gutted warehouses and abandoned shops. With hoods up, we’re dead ringers for each other. When we were little, we went back and forth. Sometimes girls. Sometimes boys. Sometimes I was Castor. Sometimes he was me. But as we got older, that changed. I sprouted small breasts when he got wisps of chin hair and a slightly lower voice. Castor’s the boy. I’m the girl. Unless of course, that’s inconvenient, and then we switch.

  The only obvious way to distinguish me from my twin is our hair. Castor keeps his shaved close to his skull. Mine is long. The color, though, is the same burnt orange of ripe persimmons, which is striking against our brown skin, smattering of dark freckles, and bright green eyes. We look alike and yet unlike anyone else, although in the correct clothing, we can pass for Yoobies who have the credentials to live inside the borders of this privatized city.

  Quasar whines as Castor gets farther from us.

  “I have a bad feeling about tonight,” I call. “You’ve been pushing things too far lately. Taking more risks than you need to.” He continues to ignore me. “Sometimes I think you’re an adrenaline junkie, always looking for the next big rush.”

  He whips around. “Or maybe you’re just too cautious, rywor tar.”

  “I’m not a worry rat!” I huff and stamp my foot because I hate it when he insults me in our twin language. It feels like such a betrayal. We stare at each other across the empty street. This is how it’s always been. Him on one side of a line, and me on the other.

  “Your dopamine hacks make me more nervous than our thieving. It’s one thing to take stuff that used to belong to people. It’s another to rearrange the circuitry of a Yoobie’s cerebral implant.”

  “It’s fine!” he insists. “They come to me. They ask for it.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll be the one to pay the price if they get caught. Remember what Mom says, ‘Whatever a Yoobie asks you for, there’
s always more in it for them.’”

  “We need the money,” he barks. “So, if it makes you uncomfortable, go wait for me somewhere else. I’ll ping you when I’m done.”

  “Fine, you toidi,” I grouse.

  “You’re the idiot,” he gripes back at me.

  “I’ll be over there.” I point up the block to an abandoned church with a walled-off garden. Quasar stands between us, looking from me to Castor and back to me. He is a herding dog at heart and doesn’t like his flock separated. “It’s okay, Quasar,” I tell him. “We’ll stay close by.”

  Up ahead, lights sweep the sides of the deserted buildings. “There she is,” Castor says as an AutoPod crests the hill. “Go!”

  Quasar and I jog away as the car makes its way slowly toward Castor. We hop over the caved-in stone fence surrounding the persistent garden of the church—a good place to hide. Quasar sniffs around, peeing on the plants while I trample over pine-needle-covered rubble. My toe catches something solid, and I fall onto all fours, face-to-face with a literal fallen angel made of stone, eyes weeping mildew, wings broken on the ground. Oh, city of lost angels for sure!

  I look up to see where it came from and catch sight of an empty alcove on the top of the white bell tower that juts up from tangles of ivy and climbing roses. Broken half-moon windows beneath a crooked cross gaze out like sad eyes. Quasar trots to my side.

  “See those flowers?” I whisper to my dog. “They may look pretty and delicate, but someday their vines will bring down that tower, something even the earthquake and tsunami couldn’t do.”

  Above the church, the Moon—a waxing silver lightbulb three quarters full—peers down from between two tall palms. When I was little, six or seven years old, I stood on the tallest trash heap in the Wasteland Dumps and waved to my father on the Moon.

  That’s dumb, Castor told me when he found out what I was doing.