“It’s all right. Remember, it was just in your mind,” I said, repeating his own empty words back to him.
“I’m … OK,” he said as he got his breathing under control. “Jesus, fuck,” he said quietly. “I wish I could explain to y’all what that’s like, but fuck FUCK!”
“Was it any different that time?” Sippy asked.
“Yeah, it was. Not better. But different, yeah. I don’t really want to tell you about it, though.”
“That took a lot, to go back in,” I said. “We don’t think any less of you …”
“Yeah, I fuckin’ get it!” He bit off the words. I lurched away from him. I listened back to my own words in my head. Even I, someone who literally didn’t use the Space, sounded like I was pitying him.
Immediately, he backtracked. “I’m sorry … I’m sorry I yelled.”
“No, it’s OK, I understand. I sounded like an asshole. I get it.”
He started crying then. The shock was wearing off, and now it was just the desperation of not being able to experience this amazing thing that no one else could stop talking about. I was honestly amazed he was brave enough to just sob in front of us both. I squeezed his hand and held my breath and felt my own tears coming down in sympathy.
“I think,” he said, “I think I just want to go to sleep. Can the three of us hang tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Sippy and I said at the same moment.
“Yeah, of course,” I added.
“I’m still going to take this, though,” I said, touching the hat I was still wearing.
He laughed, though it wasn’t really funny.
I said my goodbyes—there wasn’t a lot of energy left for easy banter. I went by the rec room and saw that it was entirely empty. People were in the Space. Why wouldn’t they be? I grabbed the soda carbonator and a handful of condoms and went to my room, where I began the process of destroying poor Peanut’s hand-knitted wool hat. I tried not to think about the fact that his mom probably made it for him while I cut and picked until I got a loose thread that I could yank on. The entire hat was gone in a matter of minutes, reduced to two very long pieces of yarn that I then tied together. Next, I started unpacking and unrolling condoms. Unfortunately (for me anyway) they were lubricated. I screwed the hydrogen canister into the SodaStream and began the long, slow, boring, careful, dangerous work of filling fifteen condoms with hydrogen.
I had tested it, and the phone tried to send a text message for about a minute after I hit send. I also knew that there was a town just on the other side of the mountain from us—I’d seen it on the flight in. My hope, and it was only a hope, was that the balloons, in the course of one minute, would be able to lift the cell phone high enough to overcome the interference from the mountain (and/or whatever jammers Altus was using) and send a single text.
It was 2:30 a.m. when I finished. I had tied Peanut’s yarn around each of the condom balloons, making a big, long jumble. Then I tied the cell phone just below the balloons and typed out a message, designed to be under 160 characters, just in case this dumb phone couldn’t get more than one packet out.
Im OK. Texting is hard. Altus Tech relies on reactivating the Dream/using it for their own. Not in PR, Val Verde. Please reply now.
I assumed that Andy and Miranda would be asleep on the East Coast, but there was a chance that Robin or Professor Lundgren would still be awake. But the odds of that were going down every moment. Just for safety, I put Maya, Andy, Robin, and Professor Lundgren in the “to” field, shoved all of the balloons out the window, pushed send, let go.
Hydrogen is half the density of helium, so it’s twice as good at yanking things into the air. The yarn started burning as it moved through my hands, so I just dropped it, putting my foot on the end. It probably wasn’t much more than three hundred feet, and I felt like the mountain was much higher than that.
I kept my eye on the Altus-issue alarm clock on my nightstand. It would take one minute max for the text to go out, but I wanted to give my friends as much time as possible to write out a reply.
I have never been fishing, but this must be what fishing is like, right? Except with condoms and text messages instead of bait and fish.
I let an excruciating half an hour go by before I started reeling in the balloons. It took way longer than I expected. Eventually I figured out that if I wrapped the yarn around my pillow as it came down it sped the process up substantially. I also wrapped one of my T-shirts around my hand because I was starting to get a blister.
Eventually, I yanked all my still happily inflated condoms into the tiny dorm room and checked the phone. My heart leapt when it saw the screen. Two new messages on the group chat, TWO!
Professor Lundgren: Miranda! Well done! I don’t know how you did it but I’m sure it wasn’t easy. Altus’s tech has already been released, so we know about the Open Access Space. I looked up Val Verde and it’s in the middle of nowhere! Do you have any more specifics on where the lab is? Google Earth doesn’t show anything, but it hasn’t updated that part of the world in several years. Thank you for this information and keep in touch. You are doing a great job.
Maya: You’re not the only one who’s had a weird week. I want very badly to tell you my news, but I’ve been told I can’t. Stay strong. We know exactly where you are. Send word if ever you need us. Code word Americium, OK?
I typed out another 160-character message.
Final txt. no clinical trials before launch. Broken Bad Ethics. PP is watching me. Fairly large town just over a mountain from us. Confirm Code word Am.
I left it up for another half hour and pulled it down again to find my message had sent and I’d received a ton of messages in the group chat.
Andy: Maya! You’re back! Congrats, Miranda. Everyone was saying it wasn’t in Puerto Rico. But this is the first anyone’s heard about Val Verde. You scooped that one. Have you been to the Premium Space yet?
Robin: Andy said it, freakin’ proud of you. Can’t wait to hear this full story.
Professor Lundgren: Your friends are cool, Miranda.
Andy: Duh.
Maya: You guys are really bad at appreciating the severity of situations. Miranda, don’t take any risks. Please. I can’t tell you all our news yet, but I wonder if you brought your little green dress with you to Val Verde?
That was a weird message. The green dress? The only little green dress I had was one I had worn literally one time, to a movie premiere with April. Maybe Maya had seen a picture?
Andy: Jesus, are you really talking about clothes right now?
Robin: I’m just happy it isn’t just me and Andy in the group chat anymore.
Maya: Or maybe the gray one with the maroon stripes. Less appropriate, but you gotta show those nerds how to look good.
The messages continued from there, but I couldn’t read them. I just read Maya’s last two messages over and over again. There was no reason for her to bring up those two dresses. There was no way that she could even know about the second one. But there it was, on my phone, staring at me. The two dresses I’d worn the night I had sex with April.
Christ.
She’s with April, I thought. She asked April what she could say to let me know that April is alive, and that’s what April chose?!
I like to think only nice things about people, especially people I love, most especially people I love who have been missing and presumed dead. But I will admit that among the jumble of very intense emotions I experienced in that moment, there were a couple unkind words that came to mind.