1

An entire village of people bustled around the various decks of the D.S.T. Athena. Just a little over 200 scientists, engineers, medical doctors, custodial staff, androids, and technical officers all from various countries all over the world. They worked together beneath the sterile lights gleaming against white metallic walls, they dined in a cafeteria bay that easily accommodated everyone and stocked them with more than enough food for the journey, and they slept in bunks so small that it often fit two or three people to a single wall. The sounds of their life, their laughter, hummed through the halls.

Yet to Emmeline Harrington the world was empty. Silent beyond the confines of her sleeper pod. Nothing existed to her except the soft whispers of dreams. Nightmares that dogged her every step. Memories of boarding the ship, heart pounding in her throat, always looking over her shoulder to be sure she’d truly made her escape.

Then, completely out of the blue, a doctor wearing a white coat over a blue jumpsuit released her from her slumber. The doctor, a slender Asian woman with her long hair pulled back into a harsh pony-tail, watched as Emmeline’s eyelids slowly fluttered open and winced against the ungodly white light shining directly into them. She didn’t even have time to ask Emmeline how she was feeling before the sleeping patient threw her legs over the side of the bed and emptied the contents of her stomach all over the floor.

“Hold on, hold on.” The doctor fished a clear plastic bucket from beneath the table and shoved it into Emmeline’s hands just in time to catch another round of harsh vomiting. The doctor stood before her and made some notes on her touch-sensitive clipboard. “Don’t worry, your body is just readjusting. It’s in a bit of shock after having been in cryosleep.”

A bit of shock? Well wasn’t that the understatement of the century? Emmeline felt like her stomach was going to come out of her throat and soak in the bowl of acid and whatever it was she’d eaten for lunch right before being put in the sleeper pod.

At least the doctor was kind enough to pull Emmeline’s hair back from her face.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Em—” vomit. Emmeline wiped away the spiddle with the back of her hand. “Emmeline Harrington.”

The doctor pressed something on her clipboard.

“Age?”

“Twenty-nine.”

More tapping.

“Sex?”

Emmeline looked up at the doctor and quirked an eyebrow. “You can’t tell?”

“I need to know if you know.”

She frowned. “Female.”

The doctor nodded, pressing more things on her clipboard that Emmeline didn’t understand even though she could easily look over and see exactly what was going on. Whatever it was Emmeline surmised by the slight quirk of a smile on the doctor’s full lips that she was doing well.

“What’s—” Emmeline vomited again, though this time nothing came up. The yellow-brown liquid already inside the bucket was joined by nothing more than some spit from a dry heave. “—going on? Why am I awake? Are we almost there?”

“That’s right. We’re only a couple of hours away from Piomia C-4 now. I need to run a few tests before we let you off on the surface.”

“What kind of tests?”

She held out her hand. “Just come with me.”

Emmeline took it, her legs quaking as she stood on them for the first time in four months. She waited to see if her stomach would lurch again but it never did.

“Don’t worry, someone will come and take care of this.”

The doctor led Emmeline over to a closet, which she opened by pressing her hand against what appeared to the naked eye to be a simple pane of glass. Blue shimmers rippled out from her palm and a faint click filled the air in the metallic room. She opened the closet and, inside, were the clothes Emmeline was wearing when she boarded the ship.

“You can get changed in here.” But the doctor didn’t leave.

Well, I guess I’m not getting any privacy. Emmeline thought to herself as she reached into the closet with shaking hands and pulled out her pair of tight black jeans and green plaid button-up tank top. She pulled off the white band of cloth around her breasts and put on her tank-top as quickly as she could. Just before taking off the white band around her crotch, Emmeline stopped to look over her shoulder. The doctor had looked down at the clipboard and was scrolling up and down on the page as if there was something there that deeply interested her. Emmeline smiled and hurried to change into the pair of black and white striped panties in the closet and pull up her jeans to hide it.

The doctor waited long enough for Emmeline to pull on her knee-high boots before escorting her out of the room and down a long, curved hallway awash in the sterile white lights mounted to a track on the ceiling. The walls seemed to curve slightly, as if the hall were more of a tube shape than anything else.

2

“Just sit up there on that table,” the doctor said as they walked into the room and the door shut with a mighty whoosh behind her.

This room—which seemed to Emmeline to be laboratory—was so much brighter and sterile than anything she’d seen thus far. It made the hallway outside seem positively dim in comparison. Huge machines that looked like giant freezers with clear doors lined the left side of the room, the square ones had shiny foil tubes running from the top of the machine to the ceiling and the tall cylinder ones didn’t, while the right side of the room was decorated in transparent computer screens and keyboards that shined blue. Huge appendages holding disk-shaped lights protruded from the ceiling on the far side of the room over a metal slab of table.

Though she was unsure of herself, Emmeline did as the doctor said. She crossed the room and sat down on the table. The frigidness of the metal transcended the denim on her jeans and sent shocks of cold rippling across her skin. She wrapped her arms around herself as she looked around. A large cylindrical container filled with bubbling blue liquid was nestled in the corner beside a long row of windows looking out into the deep darkness of space. Stars dotted the velvet blackness. It was . . . incredible.

To the right of the bed a screen flickered to life showing Emmeline’s skeletal system on the left side of the screen, her muscular system in the middle, and her cardiovascular/nervous system on the right. It was Emmeline, deconstructed.

“All right, now I need to perform a series of tests to determine if your physical health is the same as it was when you went into the sleeper pod.” The doctor sat down on a bar stool with a bend beneath the seat that looked like a grasshopper leg.

“Is it sometimes not?”

“Sometimes. The effects of cryosleep are different from person to person. Most are fine but there are times when it has negative effects on the health of the subject—and for this, you need to be in top condition.”

“And what if I’m not? What then? Do we turn back around and go home?”

The doctor shrugged, but didn’t give an answer. She put on a pair of white latex gloves and pricked Emmeline’s finger with a needle. Emmeline gave a loud yelp of pain as the doctor transferred the blood sample from the needle to a palm-sized pane of glass. She smeared it onto the surface and, within moments, it was absorbed into the otherwise clear object.

A strand of DNA appeared on the screen, twisting and spinning around in to show all its different components. The doctor made that smaller and moved it to the top corner of the glass and went on observing the rest of the pop-ups that appeared before her. Those ones Emmeline didn’t understand. She only knew that was a DNA strand because of all the movies and television shows she’d seen.

“Your bloodwork seems good. No diseases . . . but that’s to be expected. You didn’t have any when we performed the first physical and the sleeper pods don’t tend to do that much damage. But, still, you know how higher ups are. They want to make one hundred percent sure everything is functioning properly, even if there’s no reason it shouldn’t be. Your blood pressure didn’t even go up. Which, actually, is something that does happen sometimes.”

Emmeline nodded, wishing the doctor would just stop talking.

“Okay, now lay back. We’re going to do a brain scan.”

Swallowing at a lump in her throat, Emmeline did as the doctor bid. She scooted up on the table and laid her head down on the flat surface. It was unforgiving on her spine, straightening it to the point that it actually almost hurt. The doctor got off the table and reached up to manipulate what Emmeline first thought was a light on an appendage. As it turned out, that was a scanner. Emmeline’s heart began to pound faster and faster and faster until she thought for sure it was going to blow out on her like a tire.

“Just relax,” the doctor said as if it were that easy. “This won’t even hurt a little bit. The finger prick is a lot worse.”

Emmeline closed her eyes and counted backwards from nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. Something she often did to both calm her frayed nerves and to help herself sleep when it eluded her. The repetition helped. It kept her mind on a one-track focus that wouldn’t allow room for anything else, otherwise she would lose count and have to start all over again.

9,999

She couldn’t breathe.

9,998

The air was caught in her lungs.

9,997

Her nerves tingled.

Her heart raced.

9,996

Jesus fucking Christ she couldn’t breathe—

“There, all done.” The doctor pushed the scanner away from Emmeline’s face. “See? You didn’t feel a thing, did you?”

When Emmeline opened her eyes, and saw that she was, in fact, fine and not in any pain, she released a long and relieved breath.

The screen on her right, which had until that moment been showing Emmeline’s body beneath the skin, shifted to show a picture of her skull and the brain sitting inside of it. Was it a large brain? A small one? She couldn’t tell. It was probably just average. She seriously doubted the actual size of the brain changed depending on how smart someone is. Otherwise, wouldn’t geniuses have huge, bulging craniums with veins popping out beneath the skin like some kind of alien monster from old B-movies?

“I don’t see any damage,” the doctor said, taking each word slowly and turning it over in her mouth to make sure it was correct enough to say. “Looks perfectly normal to me.”

“Well that’s good,” Emmeline said with a nervous, breathy chuckle. “Can I have that in writing? My best friend accuses me of being brain damaged all the time.”

The doctor didn’t laugh. She didn’t even seem to be paying attention.

“I don’t think the sleeper pod had any effect on your health status whatsoever. Everything looks the same as it did during your first physical from what I can tell.” The doctor smiled at Emmeline, clearly sorry about something. “This next part might be kind of unpleasant.”

“Why do I get a feeling that’s a massive understatement?”

As if on cue, the doors whooshed open again and in walked a man with short salt-and-pepper hair wearing a baggier male version of the doctor’s jumpsuit. He carried in a small metal case no bigger than his forearm.

“Is she ready?” he asked, his voice raspy and curt.

The doctor nodded. The man approached Emmeline.

“This is a bit awkward . . . but I’m going to need you to take your shirt off and lay on your chest on the table,” the man said, shuffling his feet and looking away as he did.

A lump formed in Emmeline’s throat. “Why?”

“I need to install your L.I.S.”

“L.I.S?”

“Life force Integration System. A way to monitor your health status while on the planet.”

The urge to argue further, to insist he tell her every tiny detail about what he was about to put onto her back, was overwhelming. But as she opened her mouth to do so she realized how little difference it would make. No matter how hard she might’ve objected to it if she knew more about it, he would still end up putting it on her because it was part of her contract. Part of why she was there in the first place.

So, breathing a defeated sigh, Emmeline unbuttoned her shirt and laid down on the table with her bare back facing up towards the lights. She could feel her nipples hardening against the frigid table.

“This may hurt,” the man said as he came to stand behind her.

“I swear to God, if you stick your dick in my ass—”

He opened the metal case on a nearby rolling table the doctor had brought over for him, and when he clicked the latches free the thing gave a hard gasp of cold, smoky air. He pushed the lid all the way open and produced a long silver needle with a razor-fine edge. Emmeline saw it reflected in the flawless surface of the table. Her throat clenched up tight.

She wanted to make a joke. To diffuse the situation with good humor. But when one struggles to simply breathe, such a thing proves impossible. All she could do was shut her eyes tight and brace herself for the pain to come.

In the end, it wasn’t as bad as she expected. When he began his work she felt a distinct pressure on her back. Painful, but not so bad that she couldn’t endure it. She’d known so much worse before.

The whole process took a long time. How long, she had no way of knowing. There weren’t any clocks where she could see and even if there were what good would it have done in space? She didn’t know if being in space would make time go differently, but she couldn’t imagine it being the same as on Earth. Besides, what difference would it make? It wasn’t as if she could tell them she was done with this for now and come back later. They would be done when they got done and there was little to nothing she could do about it.

Then, without warning, he gave her a pat on the shoulder. “All right. I’m finished. Stand up and look in the mirror so I can explain it to you.”

Mirror? Emmeline didn’t remember there being a mirror when she walked in. But she did what he said anyway. She scooted off the table, wrapped her arms around her exposed breasts, and when she turned around she saw him unrolling a giant stretch of what looked like clear plastic. He let the bottom roll down to the floor and held the top up as far as his arm would reach. When Emmeline stepped in front of it she saw herself reflected in the plastic. It was as if there was a double of her in the room, unobscured in any way.

“Turn around,” the man said.

Emmeline did.

A long green strip of ink rolled down the length of her back in a sort of tube-shape, with mechanical bits drawn on either side to hold it in place. Did they think it was going to slide right off her skin if they didn’t? There must’ve been some reason for it that she wouldn’t understand. It occurred to her to ask, but when she opened her mouth to do so she decided at the last second to just forget it.

“Your L.I.S.,” he began. He drew his finger down the full length of the green strip, hovering just above her skin so that he wasn’t actually touching her. She was grateful for it. “We use specialized ink that will vanish the more you get hurt, and then begin to change color after a certain point. You see, right here,” he pointed to the spot on her back that was just a little bit above the middle. “If the color drops to here, then it will turn yellow. That means you’re in danger and need to proceed with seeking medical help. Once it gets to this point,” he pointed further down, perhaps an index finger’s length above her lower back. “it will turn red. That’s when you’re in the most danger and need to seek medical help. If it drops further than that . . .” he shrugged. “Then you’re dead.”

A sharp pain cut into her heart, as if it was pricked by a needle. “If it gets too bad, is somebody going to come help? MediDroids or something?”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. The waver you signed should’ve mentioned that you’d be one hundred percent on your own. It’s very possible—and likely—that you could die out there.”

Yes, Emmeline remembered that part of the mountain of forms she had to fill out online. Perhaps better than any other. That was one of the only things that gave her legitimate pause. But after having time to reflect on it she realized it didn’t matter. Somethings were worse than death on a foreign planet.

“. . . and medical supplies will be provided, but other than that you’ll be on your own,” the doctor said.

When did the doctor start talking? Emmeline tried to pretend like she hadn’t zoned out and heard everything the doctor said up to that point. It seemed rude to admit she was basically talking to a wall. Emmeline even nodded.

The doctor had Emmeline put her shit back on. Emmeline’s whole body seemed to shake as she did. It got so bad that she couldn’t seem to make the hooks of her bra meet around her back.

You’re being childish, she told herself as her fingers worked with deft precision to hook her bra back before beginning the task of closing the buttons on her shirt. Every second was precious. The sooner she hid her half-nudity the better. Grow the fuck up. You knew what you were doing when you signed up for this. Nobody put a gun to your head—

(Not literally, maybe. Though sometimes literally.)

And Wendy is right. It’s not always like that—

(But I’ve never seen it not be)

Don’t sabotage your chance for a new life—

(God knows you need it.)

The door whooshed open a third time, making Emmeline nearly jump out of her skin. At least the shock rocketed her fingers up the final two buttons and made the act of closing them much quicker.

In the archway stood two silver androids carved in the vague shape of women, bob-hairstyle and breasts and all. Their faces, devoid of any life or soul, remained totally impassive as they stepped into the room in perfect unison.

“Piomia C-4 within range. Subject must board the transport vehicle at once,” the androids said, together, in perfect sync.

The doctor and the man who had administered Emmeline’s L.I.S shared a look. One Emmeline couldn’t quite read. Were they sad to see her go? Were they annoyed that the time had arrived so quickly? Or did neither of them feel anything at all and that ‘look’ was just something Emmeline’s mind invented?

At last the doctor spoke. “Fine, fine. I had some more tests I wanted to run but she seems to be all right. Of course it isn’t as if it matters, once we’re here we’re here.” She turned to Emmeline. “Go with the androids.”

It would’ve helped if she’d given Emmeline a kind word. A small sign of affection. Anything to quell the quickly rising tension that built itself upon her chest brick-by-lead-brick. Maybe then she would’ve been able to move right away, instead of standing in that one spot staring between the doctor and the man and the androids.

The androids spoke again. “Piomia C-4 within range. Subject must board the transport vehicle at once.”

“She’s going,” the doctor snapped, then tucked a lock of hair that had fallen loose from her pony-tail behind her ear. She turned to Emmeline and gestured towards the androids. “Go on. Eventually they’re going to force you out, so unless you want to test out that new L.I.S I suggest you get a move on.”

Emmeline nodded and hurried to the androids. She tried not to make it look like she was running, her mind whispering of terrible things that might happen should the androids feel she was being uncooperative, but instead she probably just made herself look awkward with her half-walk half-running nonsense.

The androids escorted her out of the room, and the last thing she saw was the doctor making notes on her touch clipboard.

3

The transport had flown down until it landed hard on its treads and smashed the grass down flat. It rolled forward almost without stopping. The whole endeavor was much more smooth than anything Emmeline would’ve expected. She sat against the left wall with straps crisscrossing across her chest to keep her in place.

Her luggage was tucked away somewhere inside the transport, put there by the androids or someone in the crew for easy moving. She hoped everything was safe. Tried to tell herself that of course it was. The kind of people who could afford an undertaking this big certainly knew how to move cargo from point A to point B without anything happening to it.

If she turned her neck until the muscles strained to the point of pain, Emmeline could see the scenery of her new world. Rolling mountains painted in wide green treetops. A dull, gray mist rolled between the trees and tinted the whole rest of the world. It looked like something out of a movie she’d seen about New England. Dark, dreary, wet. And green—God, so green she couldn’t believe it. The transport went too fast for her to see any animals and the inside was too soundproof for her to listen for frogs or birds. All she had was the crushing metallic silence. The feeling of being in an oversized coffin and unable to escape.

Then the transport stopped. Gave a shudder. A minute, maybe two, passed before the door unfolded and a ramp stretched down to the grass below.

She heard the twitter of birds.

Felt the slight chill of morning air.

Saw the lush reach of grass.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she had to fight them back. It was a battle hard won, but won nonetheless. Her new home was beautiful. She might stand a chance here.

Both androids, side-by-side as always, appeared in front of the newly opened door. Their metal bodies seemed tarnished in the pale light. They didn’t belong here.

“We have arrived at the drop-off point. Please unload your belongings and proceed to the origin site.”

“No goodbyes?” Emmeline asked, laughing to stave off the dull quaking in her nerves as she undid the straps and hoisted herself up off the seat. “But we had so much between us.”

They didn’t respond. They just waited.

“Fine, give me the silent treatment.”

The androids stepped out of the way when Emmeline got too close. They must’ve sensed her or something.

The side of the transport had opened at some point—maybe when it shuddered—and she saw her bags piled in the side behind the metal doors. Nice, brand-new black leather suitcases with wheels and extending handles and a dial on the front with how many items were packed into that bag.

She pulled them out and was automatically thrown off balance by the weight. This was the first time she’d ever handled her own luggage, aside from the act of packing it. Her butlers moved it from the penthouse to the taxi in the street, then androids took it out of the taxi and loaded it onto the ship, then they loaded it into the transport as well. Now, for the first time in her life, she was on her own.

Emmeline took in a deep breath, steeling herself, then lifted as many of her bags up as she could.

They were off the ground. So far so good.

This moment of elation lasted only seconds. When she tried to turn around and walk she stepped wrong on her feet and her ankle came out from under her. She threw out her arms to catch herself on nothing but air. Just when she thought for sure she would fall back into the pile of black leather luggage and break her ankle in half, something—something psychological, maybe, or just plain dumb luck—saved her at the last second and she instead rolled forward back onto her feet. Her ankle did hurt like hell but she was sure that maybe if she took it slower this time she’d be able to make it.

Eventually she did make it, though it took a lot of effort and her clothes were stuck to her skin from the sweat. Goddamn it was hot. Humid. The air itself was sticky like molasses. One time, when she was a kid, Emmeline went with her nanny to the zoo and they went to see the rainforest exhibit. Of course the rainforest in the exhibit was a replica of something that had been destroyed completely in her grandmother’s generation. Perfectly maintained with dials and gauges and hardcore genetic engineering. Stuff they tried to explain in the information room before the actual exhibit but none of it she really began to get an idea of until she and a few friends in high school went again one hot day in July right before their senior year.

She remembered wiping the sweat from her brow with a pudgy hand so common in five-year-olds, hands that weren’t quite their real shape yet and instead looked like comical versions of their adult versions, and whined to her nanny (An eighteen-year-old named Grace. Her nanny before it came out that her father was fucking her when Emmeline’s mother went to play tennis with her friends and she was replaced by the wicked old hag called Fredricka) about how hot it was.

Grace just laughed and patted Emmeline’s soft dark hair. “That’s because the plants and animals need the humidity to live, sweet pea. If it’s too cold they die.”

“I don’t like it,” Emmeline whined. A truth she held onto even into adulthood. Even as she followed behind the androids who escorted her through the thicket of overgrown trees and fallen logs, in the mire that was more forest than jungle yet still just as hot, marveling over how much like Earth this new planet really was, Emmeline found that familiar distaste for the heat. Though the sprinkling of water falling from the thick gray clouds and settling on her hair and skin like dew was enough to make up for it.

Though the project itself had been in the works for several years before anyone heard anything about it, those in charge didn’t actively start looking for participants until the middle of last year. Compared to how long everything else must’ve taken the whole process felt hurried along somehow. Emmeline’s name had only been in the running for a few months before she got the call congratulating her on being one of two people chosen out of the entire population of the Earth to take part in this “incredible opportunity.”

At first she thought it was a cruel prank. Out of billions and billions and billions of people, all of whom had to be more qualified than her, with skills that could be put to good use for something like this, how was it that a Manhattan housewife who really wasn’t good at anything was the one they picked?

But the voice on the other end promised her that it was, in fact, one hundred percent real. And not an error (the woman on the other end made sure to tell Emmeline that they were very careful about how they made their decision). They were representatives of the Mayman-Ouroboros Corporation, and she’d won!

Everything happened in a whirlwind after that. There were forms to sign, wavers. She had to buy new clothes (because Wendy thought that a girl can’t start a new life on a new planet with the same old things she’s worn forever) and decide what she could and couldn’t live without because there was no way to pack her whole life away in just a few suitcases. She had to say her goodbyes however she could (she wrote goodbye emails to most of her family, waited until the last minute with the others, and never really had friends outside of Wendy so that was easy) and loaded her VidStick up with as many movies and tv shows as it would fit, which was quite a bit considering the brand she had was on the higher end of the spectrum. She even went on a shopping spree on her e-reader to make sure she had plenty to read. That was easily the most important part of her preparation. What kind of new life could she expect to have without an entire library of books to read?

During all of it, her mind danced with fantasies about what it would be like. They said she would be living in a dwelling, but they didn’t say what it would look like. Her mind imagined it as a dome sort of thing that looked like a metallic version of a hobbit hole. Something half built into the ground with no windows and a cold steel inside. A place that looked like it was straight out of an old sci-fi movie.

Though when she saw what it looked like, she was taken aback by just how wrong she was.

With the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable delight pervaded her very soul. She looked upon the scene her me—upon the little house, the lush reach of perfectly manicured grass gleaming with emerald beauty, the great bursts of flowers that decorated the landscape with a menagerie of color—upon the turquoise walls and covered front porch with its cute dowel-rod railing and little swing—upon the vacant windows that winked at her in the sunlight—upon perfection. Yet there was hostility. A trembling in her heart. As if the house itself was rejecting her already.

To push the feeling out of her mind, Emmeline noticed the barn in the back of the property. She was at a bad angle to see much of it but she noticed the circular silo and remembered the old paintings she’d seen that had something like that next to a pretty red barn. Perhaps later she would go investigate.

A white picket fence surrounded the entirety of the property, disappearing past where she could see. Into the trees, the forest.

When she stepped just the right way Emmeline noticed a distinct shimmer in the air. Something like glass—and when she reached out over the top she felt her palm come to rest on something smooth and unmistakably solid. Something warm.

Once their task of delivering her to the “origin point” was completed, the androids’ programming kicked in once more and drew them away from the house back to the transport. Her heart clenched and she had a sudden urge to follow them away from the house. Why? She had no idea. Maybe it had something to do with her innate fear of doing anything real, and nothing would ever be quite as real as this.

But she stayed and watched them march back into the woods. Eventually they disappeared into the trees and Emmeline was left all alone.

She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and opened the gate at the end of the long stone pathway leading up to the porch steps.

4

Inside the door was a trash bag. A big, black, ugly trash bag with red pull ties knotted into a skinny little representation of the worst bow Emmeline had ever seen in her life. Though to be honest the bow was the last thing on her mind as she stood in the small foyer with the staircase following the wall up to the second and third floors. It meant her co-participant was here.

Now she understood the sense of foreboding that had welcomed her as she stood beyond the gate peering at the house. It was as if her primal instincts were warning her against being here. It didn’t matter that she’d known from the get-go that she would be living with a man in what was apparently a house just like any other back home. It didn’t matter that she’d been psychologically preparing for it ever since that undeniable and unavoidable fact was presented to her. Now that it was real she couldn’t do it. She’d gone too far over the line, too far outside the realm of her comfort zone. There was nothing she wouldn’t have given to have been able to go back and—

Not that she had a lot of time to sit with the idea. In the time it took for her to realize everything, a man twice her height, broad and strong without being overly muscular came out from the kitchen dressed in a black t-shirt with the picture of a naked demon woman with wide bat-like wings sitting on top of a pile of skulls. He stopped in his tracks the moment he saw her, as if he were the one who had the right to be terrified. Long brown hair covered his face, and facial hair outlined his mouth and along his jaw.

Somewhere in the middle of being terrified of him (he could probably snap her like a twig without even thinking about it) she took a second, a nanosecond, a breath, to notice that he was actually incredibly handsome. Rugged, mean looking . . . but handsome somehow.

But in the next second it was gone. Vanished like smoke in the wind.

When her first thought was to run away, Emmeline instead decided to reach her hand out to him and smile. It was a slap in the face to the old familiar fears. A scream into the void that it couldn’t control her anymore.

“I’m Emmeline,” she said. “I guess we’re doing this show together.”

Her voice didn’t sound shaky, did it? God she hoped not. If it did . . .

The man stared at her hand for what seemed like a huge slice of eternity. It was as if he couldn’t figure out what she was doing or how to react to it. But just when she considered taking her hand back and sticking it in the pockets of her black skinny jeans to make herself look nonchalant he decided to take it. She was the one that had to give it a shake, though.

“Asher.” That was it. No “hello”s, no “nice to meet you”s, nothing but the blunt affirmation of his name. It didn’t exactly help Emmeline’s prior opinion of him.

Still, she tried to remain friendly. “I guess we’ll be doing the show together.”

“Guess so.”

What an asshole. Thinking of him like that, in such harsh terms mentally stated without the unreasonable fear that he would find out somehow, eased a bit of the tension percolating inside her chest. He could at least try, couldn’t he?

Another voice, metallic and robotic, came from everywhere and nowhere.

“Contestants please report to the common living area. Contestants please report to the common living area.”

The voice drew Emmeline’s and Asher’s attention away from each other and toward the brown-and-vanilla colored living room. Emmeline left her bags sitting by Asher’s trash bag and went with him into the living room covered almost entirely in white—a white corner couch, white walls, a white mantel around the fireplace—with little accents of brown—in the curtains, throw pillows on the sofa, and in the dark wood coffee table—thrown in for good measure. The base on the television flickered right before it turned on. The screen appeared particle-by-particle and in moments the whole thing was a complete picture.

The image of a tree with roots intertwining with the leafy branches with no clear source of ending or beginning, the same tree insignia printed on all the papers Emmeline had to fill out, appearing on the lower-right hand corner of all the official television programs having to do with the experiment. The same insignia she imagined was on everyone’s televisions right now.

The thing spun for a moment as if on both faces of a coin, then vanished. Then in its place appeared the slender face of a man, clean-shaven with long dark hair pulled up into a high top-knot. They could see half of his nice suit, the plume of this purple neckerchief, in the image.

“Welcome to the A&E Experiment!” He said. His voice was the kind of officious sort that one would find in a person destined to go far in the corporate world. The kind of person who not only populated Emmeline’s usual circle, but the kind of person who once put a ring on her finger. “My name is Jack Vincent, and I designed the experiment you two have so graciously agreed to be a part of.

“Let me begin by welcoming you to your new lives. I believe it was the poet T.S. Eliot who said ‘For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.’ That is precisely what you’ll be doing here. Your old lives, for the time being, have ended. This is a beginning. For you two, and for the rest of Earth as well.

“Your job here is simple: Cultivate the land, and help us determine if humans are able to colonize the planet. Our scientists have done decades of research to make this as easy of a task as possible, but its still up to you to complete it. You’ll find all the information you could need on the tablets in the drawers of the coffee table in front of you.

“The moment you both set foot on the planet’s surface, the cameras have been on and televising your every movement. There are fifteen billion cameras placed throughout both the immediate area and in the forest, all intended to give us the most accurate account possible of the experiment.

“We thank you for taking part in what can only be described as one of the most significant achievements in human history, and wish you the best of luck.”

The face disappeared and was replaced by the spinning tree logo. Then even that went out completely.

The silence that followed weighed hundreds of pounds, threatening to crush Emmeline as she stood beside Asher waiting for him to say something. At the same time she tried to think of something to say herself. Words seemed entirely useless, stunted appendages to the moment.

Without warning Asher stepped forward towards the coffee table. He sat on the cream-colored, L-shaped sofa and fished the aforementioned tablets out from the drawer.

He reached one out to Emmeline.

“Go on, take it.” He waved the piece of electronic glass at her when she didn’t immediately move to get it. “Don’t you want to know what we’re in for?”

Of course she did. What kind of idiot wanted to go into this sort of thing blind? She’d gone into things blindly before and that’s how she ended up where she was in the first place. But Asher scared her, the way he barked and sneered.

He’ll just get mad if you don’t take it. She told herself, feeling that familiar pang of being caught in a corner with no way to get free. Just do it real quick, and that’ll be the end of it.

Easy enough to think. A whole other animal to do.

Asher waved it at her again. “What’s your problem? Just fucking take it.”

Riding on a wave of panic, Emmeline reached out and did as he said. The inevitability of what would follow if she didn’t scared her more than his biting tone of voice.

The tablet was like a pane of glass in almost every sense of the word. She could see straight through it to her fingertips and it was about a fingernail’s width thick. The tablet was slightly lighter than glass, easily lifted by someone with even the weakest arms. When Emmeline turned it on, the tree insignia appeared, once again spinning as if on a coin, before a menu screen opened up before her.

It really did have everything they could ever need right there at their fingertips. There were whole sections devoted entirely to hunting, foraging, flora and fauna, animal raising, predators, gardening—so many that Emmeline’s head was spinning just reading all the headings.

A wave of panic about knocked her over, but she caught herself before it had a chance. There was just so much.

“Go ahead and pick whatever room you want. It doesn’t make a difference to me.” Asher said. It took her a minute to realize what he was talking about. Once she did she hurried to obey, leaving with the tablet still in her hands to look over the rooms before deciding on the one upstairs at the end of the landing.