Part 11 (2/2)

”Yeah,” Lilly agreed.

We all watched and waited. There was one more flash, and that was it.

”Hey, Owen.” It was Marco. ”Do you guys still have holotech out there in the Hub?”

”Yeah,” I said. ”Just, like, at the rec center, though. Not in our houses like I heard it used to be.”

”I heard they still have full-on holotech communities up north,” said Evan. ”Even the p.o.r.n ones.”

”Pervert,” said Lilly.

”You bet.” Evan grinned.

”What's it like?” Aliah asked.

”The p.o.r.n?”

”No, yuck! I was talking to Owen. What's it like living out there, in the present? Like, the real world, not our little bubble here.”

”I don't know,” I said. ”It probably stinks, I guess, compared to here, or what you guys remember the world being like.”

”Eden is way better than what the world was like b-freeze,” said Evan. ”Everything was going to h.e.l.l, if it wasn't there already.”

”Yeah, but at least it was real,” said Lilly.

Evan made a sound like he was maybe laughing to himself, but he didn't say anything.

”Well,” I said, ”out at Yellowstone, I mean, it's not that that bad, but we are underground most of the time, and you can't really go anywhere. I feel like I live in a world right after the big party. Like, everything was amazing and alive and people were having the time of their lives way back when, and now when I live is like the next morning, and everything is broken and trashed, technology and ideas just lying around empty, and it's like we missed it.” bad, but we are underground most of the time, and you can't really go anywhere. I feel like I live in a world right after the big party. Like, everything was amazing and alive and people were having the time of their lives way back when, and now when I live is like the next morning, and everything is broken and trashed, technology and ideas just lying around empty, and it's like we missed it.”

”Yeah,” said Aliah, ”and what about how I heard there's a garbage patch out in the Pacific that's so big that people live on it?”

”The Flotilla,” said Marco. ”It sounds pretty cool, actually. Hey, we'd be rock stars out there, with our gills.”

”Come on,” said Evan. ”They'd probably make us slaves for catching their food. At least here we get to do what we want.”

”Yeah, but, should we?” said Lilly.

”What do you mean?” asked Evan.

”I mean: Should we get to do what we want? Isn't that how the whole planet got screwed? Because we thought we should be able to be, like, in holotech with our me-friends in Dubai, and eating sus.h.i.+ at a Mexican chain restaurant at the same time, while clothes we bought from bed were getting delivered to our front door? I mean, you know?”

”So you're saying it's bad to want things?” asked Evan. ”It's wrong to try to make things as good as they can be?”

”I don't know, Eden boy,” Lilly snapped. The truce was over. ”Why don't you ask the six billion dead people?”

”It's human nature,” said Evan.

”Part of it,” Lilly spat, ”but not all of it. Some of it is selfish and reckless.”

”Honestly,” said Evan, ”you're a hypocrite. You live here in Eden. If you think it's so wrong wrong, why don't you just leave?”

Lilly bolted up. ”It wasn't my choice to be here! It was my parents', and they were just trying to protect me. Believe me, if I could get out of here, I would.”

”And do what?” said Evan.

Marco and Aliah giggled quietly to each other and then toppled back into the water. They'd apparently had enough of the argument.

”Something,” Lilly said, glaring at Evan. ”More than the nothing you're doing.”

”Whatever,” Evan muttered.

Lilly jumped up to her feet and started bouncing in the center of the raft. She looked at me. ”Wanna swim? There's a s.h.i.+pwreck.” She held out her hand.

”You're taking him to the wreck?” Evan asked, clearly annoyed.

”Sure,” I said. I got up and took her hand and kept my gaze away from Evan as we bounced high and shot off into the deep.

It was a relief to be back in the water. The dark and cold pulled me into an embrace that seemed to make my skin irrelevant, like I was just a concentration of energy within a medium, and one with the world around me. I shoved air out of my lungs, a rebellion in bubbles, then flexed my throat and felt it seal off, felt my gills opening like windows slipping up, fresh breezes fluttering curtains.

Sinking through layers of deepening cold, losing sight. I arced back up to midlevel, the world of silhouettes where the MoonGlow died. I saw Lilly do the same. This was the depth, about five meters below the surface, where the primitive sinuses in our ears barely ached. I was dolphin kicking, just like in the b.u.t.terfly stroke that drowned me, except not awkward at all when you were subsurface. It actually made my body a smooth wave within the fluid. It was the opposite of what you thought: muscles not taut and rigid, but loose, not fighting.

I swam toward Lilly and she darted left and spun a ring around me, a blur of trailing hair. I threw myself in a wild spin, trying to keep up with her, heard the chirps and vibrations of her strange fish laughter.

Then she was gone.

I looked around. Strained to see further in the dark. Behind me, I spied Marco and Aliah, floating in a tangle of each other beneath the raft.

Arms around my abdomen. Yanking me back. 'Gotcha!' My body pressing against Lilly's. I felt an electric charge burn through me. Just as fast, she shoved me away, then swam around in front of me again. 'The wreck is this way,' she said.

I nodded. She took off ahead and I followed, working hard to keep up. She was fast, but I had been getting faster too, hour by hour, night by night.

Leaving the raft, we lost all contact with the earthly world. There was only black in all directions, and the fluid form of Lilly. As we swam, I spun onto my back, looking up through the s.h.i.+mmering gla.s.s surface at the projection of the moon and stars, here and there fractured by the geodesic superstructure of the dome.

I thought about what Lilly had said, how if we were something new, a new species, then there were thousands of miles of ocean where we could swim. Sure, there were the dead zones, the garbage gyres, the algae tides, and the gel-oil-plastics slick that made most of the coastlines useless.... But the ocean was ma.s.sive. We could swim beneath the destruction until we found clean water, search the seas until we discovered the one archipelago where the surface was clear, the water blue, the coral still multicolored and the fish still the work of a fanciful G.o.d, not the gloom-and-doom G.o.ds that seemed to be in charge now. Lilly and I could find that place and start over. Maybe even raise a gill family.

'Hey, daydreamer, over here.' Lilly was back behind me. She'd taken a sharp turn in a different direction.

I caught up and saw the lake bottom rising beneath us. Ahead, Lilly stood. I joined her, emerging from the embrace of the water into the harsh night breeze. I s.h.i.+vered in the cool as I pressed my lungs back open.

”Where's the s.h.i.+pwreck?” I asked as she waded ash.o.r.e, toward a solid black wall of pine trees.

”It's close, but we need light.”

I followed her into the trees, feet wincing at the unwelcoming textures: pine needles, roots, rock spines.

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