It sounded more like curiosity than judgment, so I nodded but was quick to add, “I’m from the Rurals.”

Then he looked at me. It was the first time he met my face and it made me realize he’d been looking just to the left of my eyes the whole time.

“Are you?” he said.

And for some reason I wanted to tell him the truth. That I wasn’t faithful, or worthy. That I was a liar from the concrete that everyone feared. It felt like he already knew. So I shrugged and looked down, which is the closest I’ve ever come to telling someone the truth before or since.

“It doesn’t matter. You’re doing great. We’re all rooting for you,” he said before he walked away. Dell resumed lecturing me after that, but the words rolled right off.

That last part turned out to be a lie, but I don’t hold it against him. I’m not sure I could ever hold anything against Adam Bosch. Caramenta kept the letter offering her employment in a keepsake box I haven’t bothered to throw away. Every time I reread it, I trace his hand-signed name at the bottom, and I feel the same deliverance and gratitude she must have felt. I could never be attracted to him, not the way I want Dell like my next breath. But I feel about Adam Bosch the way people in the Rurals feel about Moses or my stepfather.

    When the lights dim for the meeting, my stomach drops. Adam Bosch is excited and it makes the air a little excited too. He’s talking about impending breakthroughs, and while he doesn’t name the project, we all know it’s remote downloads. The analysts are celebrating because the technology is so close he can promise it is months, not years, off. And sure, they’re excited because now data retrieval will be instantaneous and not monthly. But they’re also excited because traversers will be gone. And what are pigeons but an infestation, at the end of the day?

Instead of the pride I usually feel to be part of a real company in the city, I just feel ashamed, the weight of my 68-percent score hanging over my head like an ax.

The last part of Adam’s speech is cryptic. He’s hinting at some coming change that will transform the nature of the company. Everyone else is excited. We are all keenly aware of how much of our funding relies upon the city, and if some new product can make us independent so we’re no longer reliant on a government’s annual budget, I should be cheering for it. But I’ve already stopped listening. Whatever it is, I probably won’t be around when it happens anyway.

After we’re dismissed, I grab an armful of free food to go with the rations I’ve already brought from home. I’m going to 319 today, and I always take extra when I go there.

Dell doesn’t quite meet my eyes as she readies me, just like everyone looked away from me in the hall. I’m Eldridge’s dead girl walking.

I grab my backpack after she loads me up and sighs.

“Are you smuggling extra food again?” she asks. “I saw you shoving danishes in there.”

“Consider it my severance package.”

    “Cara…”

“What? Are you going to tell me my job’s not on its way out? There were maybe six traversers in there, Dell. Six. For the whole sector. They’re scaling us back.”

“Them. They’re scaling them back. You’re more valuable than all the rest. You’ll outlast them all.”

“The last of a species still dies, Dell. Just a matter of time.”

“It will be okay.”

Such a Wiley thing to say. Such a Wiley thing to even get to believe.

“How? Will you make it okay? Take me in when I get my slip? Marry me when my residency is void?”

Her breath comes up short at that, like I said something offensive. And it must be, to her. I want to remember this, this borderline disgust at the idea of me, but for some reason I can never keep it long enough to stop wanting her. I reach into my pocket and pull out the Eldridge sample bag containing her earring. Not the one she lost, but its otherworld cousin so she’ll never know the difference.

“I found this on my way home yesterday.”

She snatches it like a child and holds it to her chest. The reaction is rare and human, and I let myself stare, because it’s the closest I’ll ever get to her holding me like that on this world. She looks up, and catches me staring.

There’s a moment between us. It’s like a snap into focus where all at once she sees me, she finally understands that all my flirting is just hiding in plain sight, just being so obvious she’d never guess she is the one thing on this world that I know and all I want. But then it happens. She looks, for just that first moment, afraid.

The universe is brimming with stars and life, but there is a section of sky that is utterly dead and empty. They call it a cold spot, a supervoid, and they say it got that way because two parallel universes got too close to touching. That’s us. That’s me and Dell. We coexist, parallel but never touching, and if one of us goes too far, if I ever get too close, the Eridanus Void opens between us. We both withdraw and leave a cold darkness in the space where we almost touched that three suns couldn’t light.

    “I tried to sell it, but I guess it’s worthless without the other one.”

She half smiles, but it’s really a negative smile. It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Of course,” she says. “And I suppose it is in an Eldridge specimen bag because…?”

“What? Like you’ve never snuck office supplies home? I told you. Severance package.”

I start climbing the ladder into the hatch before she can say anything else, because if I stare at her much longer, this woman who wants me but is too afraid of where I’m from to do anything about it, I might finally find a way to hate her. And I don’t want to. Not really. Not yet.

* * *

ALL KINDS OF refugees—that’s what Ashtown is made of. Those fleeing religious persecution came with a little money and a lot of faith, and generally settled on the edge where the sand was more white than gray so they could pretend it was the promised land. A hundred years after that, those who fled from poverty and drought followed rumors of water and work, building the city. Maybe they believed that once the last shining skyscraper was finished and there were still plenty of vacancies, they’d be let in. I doubt they would have built the wall so high and sure if they’d known which side of it they’d be on. The builders’ descendants became factory workers, less proud but just as efficient, until the factory was no more. Now, the factory workers’ children work for Eldridge’s industrial hatch, transferring materials from one world they’ll never see to another.

A couple centuries after the building boom faded, those seeking refuge from war found Ashtown. They went to the city, wanting a place with walls and defenses. They insisted they’d been promised aid. But the progressive Wiley City only keeps the promises it makes to itself. It is loving and nurturing and socialized…but only within its own borders.

    So those hiding from war were left outside the walls, and war followed. Nik Nik’s father was one of the most brutal fighters, and the infighting continued for a generation until Nik Senior stopped it, in the way a lion stops infighting among gazelle. When the dust settled, the new emperor was on top, challengers dead or exiled. He opened his mouth, blood still dripping from his jaw, and declared peace.

* * *

WHEN I LAND on 319, I see Dell has stopped playing with me. She left me no more than a quarter of a mile from the port. It doesn’t matter, because this is 319 so I have an errand to run. I adjust the pack on my shoulder and walk into Ashtown.

If I figured anything out in these last six years, it is this: human beings are unknowable. You can never know a single person fully, not even yourself. Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don’t know yourself in the dirt. Even if you hustle and make it in the rough, you have no idea if you would thrive or die in the light of real riches, if your cleverness would outlive your desperation.

This is a lesson I learned here, on 319, because there is one person in the world I thought was consistent, and I was wrong.

She’s standing in the doorway of her concrete rectangle. She reaches for the pack without any pleasantries, because she’s a garbage git through and through.

“Given me more this time,” she says, then looks up. “Lots more.”

She’s not sad, but she knows what it means.

“Might not be able to make it back, wanted to make sure you were covered.”

She brushes her black hair, waist long here instead of her usual severe bob, over her shoulder.

“Dust’s high. Better come in.”

    Her name here is Aria, and I’m the one who got to tell her it means music. She pours me a glass of water that tastes half-iron.

“I can’t stay. I’ve got—”

“You’re an angel, yeah?”

“What?”