WORLD 4: AWAKENING

I gulped as the transport took off for Food Lev. Most likely, there was a more official-sounding name for the place, but if there was, nobody ever used it. It was just as big as Science and Tech, but ten times less pleasant. My heart dropped a little every time I stepped foot in there, even before I saw what they were going to serve us.

Right away I spotted one of my best friends, Sirone, waving from across the room and looking beautiful as always. We had only become close in the last couple of years. Although my age, she acted about ten years older. Her deeply dark hair was always worn in a beautiful style, her gorgeous dark bronze skin always glowing. She had a way with people; getting a quiet person to talk, or a loud person to stop speaking and focus only on her. Men were also a strength of hers, which wasn’t doing great things for her reputation.

“Hey, you!” I said as I walked over to her. She’d found a table in the corner of the room. “What are you doing today?”

Sirone’s smile was just as beautiful as her dark skin. “Oh, I just finished lunch and was about to check on the meal guys.”

“Meal guys?”

She rolled her eyes and played with her red, flowy blouse. “Meal supervisors, whatever they’re called.”

“Ah! I see. Well, don’t let me keep you,” I said and took a seat.

She waved her hand dismissively and flipped her long, flowing hair. “Oh please, they can wait.”

It was hard not to be amused by her irresponsibility. Sirone held a nicer-than-average job for someone so young and flaky. She was the assistant to the director of Meal Services, who worked just under the top position in Food Lev. Something not usually reserved for a boy-crazy teen.

Her mother had helped to develop Beyond Light Speed, which was the only thing allowing the Colonies to travel so far. Before the world leaders found out about the asteroids, the space program wasn’t all that spectacular. It’s incredible the kind of magnificence genius minds can come up with when death is on the line. More technology and productivity came about during the five years leading to A-Day than the entire century before that.

“If your mom hadn’t been so important during The Five Years, you’d be fired by now, you know,” I said.

She dropped her jaw, aghast in fake surprise. “What are you talking about, Mayla? I’m super responsible.” I looked down at her and she laughed. “Yeah I know, whatever, I use my family to get special treatment. So do you.”

“What?!”

Sirone slapped the table. “Oh, please! You really can sit there and say you haven’t used your position as Commander’s daughter to get something you wanted? I can name three things right away.”

“Like what?!”

She stuck her face out at me. “Like starting Med Lev training early before you actually turned sixteen.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“And that stupid chair you stuffed into your room, and then —”

“You know what, Sirone, let’s just stop,” I cut in. She broke out in a proud smirk. “You’re right, okay, I’ve used my father’s status to my advantage.”

“It pays to have important parents, huh?” she whispered.

My face twisted up into a guilty grimace. I hated that she was right. I’d used my position more than once to get things I wanted, like the chair she’d mentioned. My mother had a large armchair in her room back home. It was soft, worn, and smelled like a mixture of her perfume and old laundry. Every time I thought about that clunky chair, comforting feelings automatically flooded into me. The memory of sinking down into it as I watched her get dressed, the texture of the old fabric — they were some of the most vivid memories I had of her.

As soon as I moved into my tiny officer quarters, I wanted a chair for myself. My father commanded the red shirts to look the other way as I very clumsily stole one out of the government lounge. It took up way more space in my room than any chair should have, but I loved it all the same. It was soft, deep blue, and something tangible that reminded me of my mother.

“Mayla!”

My cousin, Kasley, hurried over to our table. Her innocent, heart-shaped face beamed happily as she handed me a food tray. I rose to greet her, pulling her in for a quick embrace.

“You’re so sweet to get that for me, Kas!”

Her full cheeks flushed. “I saw you when I was in line and didn’t want you to have to wait.”

Kasley had light brown hair like her father, Maxx, but gray-to-blue eyes like me. At twelve years old, she’d spent more years of her life on board than on land. She was so young when it happened that the memory of what normal life had been like was completely gone. Part of me felt bad for her, and part of me envied the ignorance.

“So what is it today?” I asked.

My throat constricted with the first glimpse. I groaned while Sirone snickered at me. Another fabricated meal. The Colonies had copied Kai’s Drug Fabrication Machine and developed something that could create food. It was resourceful and easy, but incredibly revolting. Why they couldn’t program the fabricators to put actual flavor into things was beyond me.

“Why do they keep making us eat this stuff?!” I shouted. Using my spoon, I played with the greenish soup and almost gagged. “My sweet tooth is dying a miserable death.”

“It’s not so bad!” said Kasley. She took in a huge spoonful and grinned extra wide to convince me.

I looked at her sideways. “I swear a piece of my soul dies every time I have to force this stuff down.”

“Food Lev talked about switching to fabricated meals six days a week,” Sirone told us in a low voice. It was probably information she wasn’t supposed to be sharing.

“What? No!” I burst out. Sirone shushed me as people at the next table began giving us odd looks.

“Stop it, May! It’s only happening if planet four ends up bad, that’s all.”

Very hesitantly, I forced myself to swallow a mouthful of the thick green liquid. The warm, grimy texture slid down my throat and left a bitter aftertaste.

Kasley took another spoonful of hers and smiled. “So we don’t have anything to worry about, right? Everyone knows this world is going to be fine.”

I rested my elbow on the table. “Really?” I asked in a very negative tone. “And you know that how?”

“I just have a good feeling about it! It’s world number four, and we’re Colony Four, so it’s good luck, right?”

“Planet,” I corrected her loudly. Sirone and Kasley shot me a puzzled expression. “You can’t call it a world, not yet at least. A world is where we have a home, which we don’t have. Right now that planet is just a floating blob of dirt.”

“Uh…okay,” said Kasley. “Anyway, I’m sure this planet will work out just fine.”

“Oh, how I wish I had some of your silly optimism,” I said and she glared at me. I changed the subject back to food. “I’d probably be willing to eat this stuff if I could just have dessert every meal.”

I missed sugar more than anything. Food Lev had slowly been rationing it and now we were down to only one dessert a week. Even then, it was small and not nearly as satisfying.

“Can you believe they get dessert whenever they want?” Sirone said, gesturing discreetly to the opposite corner of the room. President Banner sat on an armchair, short black hair messy, screen in hand, reading a book with her dead-looking eyes. Her Second President, Daman, dozed off next to her. His unkempt white hair made a dramatic contrast with his dark skin and only made him seem all the more odd.

My nostrils flared as I immediately got fired up. “Is that why they’ve gotten so fat over the years?! Those lazy little…” I shook my head. “Ugh, please let me into the kitchens and I’ll poison their next meal. Then you can give all their dessert to me, okay?”

Sirone seemed pleased at my outburst and leaned in. “The meal supervisors told me that Banner and her other government has-beens demand stuff all the time. I don’t know why they get it, it’s not like they’re in power anymore. They pretty much gave up on life after planet three.”

“They think they have power, to them we’re still their citizens,” Kasey said and took another mouthful of soup. I copied her and slurped down a spoon’s worth with a huge frown.

“They’re not leaders, they’re a joke.” Sirone eyed them menacingly. “All those people they killed during The Five Years of Secrecy, the things they demand here on board —”

“Wait, what? People were killed?” Kasley interrupted. She looked horrified.

“Oh you sweet, innocent little Kas,” said Sirone. “If only your precious mind knew the truth about our messed-up world here.”

Kasley pouted out her lip slightly. “What are you talking about?”

“The whole A-Day planning was top secret, it had to be. How is it that you don’t know this stuff?”

I came to Kasley’s defense. “She was only four, remember?”

“Yeah, but I thought everyone knew about it now,” said Sirone.

Kasley threw her hands up. “Well, so why all the secrecy back then? They could have found a way to warn people about everything, I’m sure.”

“That’s why we call it The Five Years of Secrecy, Kasley, because it had to be a secret!” said Sirone. “How could you possibly evacuate an entire planet’s worth of people? They barely finished the eight Colonies in time, and that was for like what — twenty thousand people total? How would they have saved billions?”

“They could have warned people, let everyone say goodbye at least.”

“If the public had known about it, there would’ve been rioting, hysteria — the Colony ships would have been found and destroyed. Then nobody would have survived, and you wouldn’t be here, alive, eating this amazing green soup, would you?”

Kasley bored into me with an ugly, pleading stare, expecting me to offer up something in her defense again.

“Uh, I mean, unfortunately Sirone’s right.” I cringed a little. “As much as I hate it, they could have either kept everything a secret and guaranteed saving thousands, or leaked it to the public and risked saving nobody.”

“Why didn’t they do a lottery or something to let regular people on board?” said Kasley.

Sirone looked down at her. “You mean regular people, like you?”

“Commander Archauus is my uncle!” she exclaimed and crossed her arms. “I’m talking about normal people with no family involved in this.”

I put my hand on Kasley’s shoulder. “Okay first of all, you’re right — I think a lottery would have been a great idea. But then you’d have to tell the public which was too risky.” She shrugged, knowing I was right. “Second of all, even though you and your family are related to a Colony Commander, you still shouldn’t even be here right now.”

Kasley did a double take. “What? Why?”

“Only immediate family were allowed,” said Sirone.

My hand went to Kasley’s arm. “Even as Commander, my dad had to pull some serious strings to get you guys on board.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Oh wow, I never knew that.”

I rubbed her back. “Hey, don’t worry about it. We can’t change the past, let’s just all be happy we’re alive no matter how we got here.”

I kind of meant it — I definitely was happy to be alive, just not stuck inside a cramped, cold prison of a Colony.

“But you said the government killed people?” said Kasley.

“Oh, yeah!” Sirone brightened as she remembered why our conversation had started in the first place. Gossip was what she lived for. “So, when you have to build eight gigantic ships, there’s going to be a lot of people involved, right?”

“I guess.”

“Think of how many scientists, engineers, military people and whatever else it took to build these things. I mean, my mom worked in a lab for three years developing technology before they even started building the Colonies. There were hundreds of scientists around the world just like her. Thousands more working on other stuff. It would be almost impossible to prevent at least one person from leaking out information.” She leaned in some more. “The governments around the world had every single worker’s communication tracked, and if they breathed a word of it to anyone…BAM!” Sirone clapped her hands and Kasley and I both jumped. “Dead. Them and whoever they told. I heard they had a special task force just for that reason.”

“I heard they tracked amateur astronomers, too,” I added in. “People mostly kept quiet because they were promised they could bring their families along if they did, but still, there are stories of people who opened their big mouths and were never heard from again.”

Kasley’s face had frozen in shock. “I guess it worked if they were able to keep it a secret for so long but…I can’t believe they’d actually kill people.”

Sirone scoffed loudly and cupped a hand around her mouth, turning toward the government leaders. “Ha, those idiots are capable of anything!”

Luckily, if they’d heard her they didn’t show it.

“Whoa, maybe don’t actually shout that directly to them,” I chuckled and forced down the last bit of grainy soup. “I don’t want them to silence you for your big mouth. You never know, Sirone.”

“Whatever. Hey!” She popped up as her man-of-the-moment walked in. I didn’t recognize him, so he must have been brand new. “Good thing I’m not wearing that ugly uniform, see you guys!”

Sirone refused to wear the green Food Lev shirt, apparently because the color went horribly with her dark skin. I didn’t agree with that, necessarily, but could only laugh — she did her own thing, as usual.

“I thought you were supposed to be checking in with the meal supervisors!” I called after her. She shrugged it off without looking back. She was definitely quirky and I loved her, but was also pretty much guaranteed to get fired someday if she kept up her usual irresponsibility.

Taking a last drink of water to wash away the wretched soup taste, I stood and kissed Kasley’s head. “Bye, baby girl.”

“See you, and stop calling me baby!”

The clean-up station was located against the other side of the room; I stuffed my tray and its disgusting food remnants inside the wall compartment, then turned and groaned. Tarin was hurrying up to me.

“Hi, Mayla,” she greeted with a nervous smile.

“Hey Tarin, how are you?”

“Good! I’m good, so…”

I stared at her, my mind a complete blank. She didn’t seem to have much to offer in terms of conversation, either. “Well, it was nice to see —”

“So, how’s Baylen doing?” she asked, twirling her dark hair innocently through her fingers. Like always, it was obvious she was trying very hard to come off as casual.

“He’s good, just the same old guy, I guess.”

“Great! Great, and you’re still with Ty, right?”

I had to stop my eyes from rolling back. “That’s right.”

“Of course you are,” she said with a breathless laugh. “I mean, why wouldn’t you be? Ty is definitely your type, right? Not anyone else.”

Tarin and Baylen had been together for a year, but had broken up a couple months earlier when he called it quits. It had been quite a shock to her; apparently she thought they were practically engaged. She hadn’t quite gotten over her sorrow and took any opportunity to talk about him with whoever would listen.

“I’ll tell Baylen you said hi!” I said, trying to suppress an offensive snicker. I needed to end the conversation as soon as possible.

“Yeah, sure! Tell him I said hello. Thanks, Mayla!” Quickly turning on her heel, Tarin escaped away from me as fast as she could without actually running.

She hadn’t ever seemed to like me all that much, especially when she and Baylen were together. I could always tell she hated the fact that we were such close friends, which was ridiculous. Of course we were close. Our fathers worked together every single day; most of my youth on board was spent with Baylen. It wasn’t until Tarin that our time together became less frequent, but I understood — my attention had been taken by someone else, too.

My early shift in Med Lev had left me exhausted and all I wanted to do was go back to my room and sleep. Sleep off the fatigue, but also the worry. The moment I’d feared for five long years was finally upon us and I would have to face it the very next day.

There were several outcomes possible from what we’d find: either planet four was perfect and we finally had a new home, it was perfect but full of creatures that shot the Colonies out of the sky, or it was completely worthless, unusable just like the other three had been.

Two-thirds. There was two-thirds of a chance that the planet wouldn’t work out, which didn’t give me much hope. Kasley would have latched on to that hopeful one-third of a chance, she was so positive. But I’d learned to think much differently, learned that hope wasn’t always something you could count on.

I knew that it could save me and bring me happiness even if it didn’t seem possible. But hope could also do the opposite. If I held onto it and we ended up with bad news, the hope that was supposed to give me peace, would instead have destroyed me completely.