She read the results—again and again—until the words disintegrated into letters, the letters into meaningless light. Eliot wasn’t just a hologram, but a ghost. She did not exist. Well, obviously she existed; her spit was on a spoon. The phantom status was digital and, according to previous suspicions, logical. Eliot was either black ops or a citizen of the future. Erased or unwritten.
“What’s the verdict?” Far had rooted through couch cushions, finding nothing but a Beats on Blast holo-paper zine Priya hadn’t realized was lost. Its battery was almost drained, review of a 1969 Woodstock datastream in the throes of death. A clip of Jimi Hendrix’s legendary “Star-Spangled Banner” performance flickered between his fingers. In and out, in and… gone. Far’s expression was the same when he read the screen. “Dead end?”
“Detour,” she said, determined. “Just because Eliot is MIA in the system doesn’t mean we can’t dig up some leads. Ever heard of the Ancestral Archives?”
“The program where you shell out credits to get a pedigree?”
“That’s one application.” Certainly the most popular. The program was established for learning more about hereditary diseases, but like everything else in the world, it evolved at the eve of time travel. With history forever blasting through people’s ears and eyes and hearts, it was natural they’d want to know their place in it. Discovering your many-times-great-grandfather was Albert Einstein did wonders for the ego—never mind that thousands of others could make the same claim. “It cross-references DNA databases for all sorts of things. Estate settlements, medical research, lineage mapping. This program could help us. People don’t appear out of nowhere—even future ones. Depending on the types of genetic matches we get, we might be able to figure out what year Eliot’s from.”
“Great! Let’s run it!”
“We don’t have the software or the hardware. This two-bit piece of shazm is at its limit.” Priya gave the diagnostics machine a healthy thwack with her fist. It snarled back. “We have to jump back to Central for answers.”
Central, where Lux was waiting for a book they didn’t have. A prospect Far summed up with a single syllable: “Ugh.”
“Ugh is right.” Priya moved to the common area, surveying the mess they’d made. Uneven floor panels, dislodged cushions, Eliot’s bunk in shambles—so much to clean up and nothing to show for it. She flopped onto the couch. “Seems this trip was a waste. I’m sorry, Far.”
“Sorry?” He settled beside her, curl-to-cheek close. “What’ve you got to be sorry for? I mean, except for getting a banana split when you clearly should’ve ordered gelato. That’s tantamount to a criminal act in Imogen’s eyes.”
It wasn’t quite a laugh-aloud joke, but it did make Priya smile. She rested her hand on Far’s, taking a moment to marvel at their physicality. Knuckles, knicks, calluses. Veins, tendons, pores. All touching, not a shadow to be found.
“I know what I want.” This, the resonance, a connection past flesh. “How about you—what did you wish for?”
“Wishes have the same weight as luck in my palmdrive. You want something, you make it happen. No need to go spitting on a perfectly nice dessert.”
“Play the cynic all you want with the rest of the crew, but I know you made that wish.” She’d seen it in his eyes, the way they caught the sparkler, drinking its brilliance spark by spark. It was the look Far got when he honed in on something—intense, fixed, as if nothing in all of time or space could stop him. But what did a boy like Farway McCarthy wish for? There were so many possibilities: amassing a fortune, trumping Eliot, making his mark, finding the Ab Aeterno…
Priya could only guess, and that was why she wanted to know. For as many touches and glances and whispers as they’d exchanged, there was still a part of her boyfriend that felt distant. A side of himself he either didn’t share… or couldn’t. Sometimes it seemed to her like an emptiness. Other times, a hunger.
Love should be all, but all was always growing.
“You’re right.” He smiled at her—there was no sparkler glow in his face now but sunlight. A slant of it reached through the Invictus’s vistaport, wrapping around their shoulders. “But if I tell you, it won’t come true. Isn’t that how the old legends go?”
Priya had no idea, though it did sound like the ragged remnant of a fairy tale, something twenty-first-century people might cling to. That or Far was making the whole thing up. She’d have to quiz Imogen on birthday lore when they reunited.
Which should be soon…. Three hours had sounded like an age when she’d cited it, but time passed faster when Priya and Far were alone together. There was never enough—every second, every breath felt stolen.
“The others will be waiting for us.” Priya hated to say it. How many moments like this had she wanted to press Pause? To rest her head against his shoulder as long as she possibly could? Instead, their lives felt stuck on Fast-Forward. Flying here and there, caught up in capers, rushing, rushing, rushing…
… to what, exactly?
“Someone’s always waiting for something. Imogen and Gram are at the biggest grown-up playground in the world. I think they can manage to keep Eliot distracted for a few more hours.” Far smiled. “If you wanted to pick up where we left off.”
Oh did she.
Plastic spoons, the missing Rubaiyat, the unsettled rush—all this faded when Far’s fingers trailed up her arm, along the garment’s green gauze, over the bare skin of her shoulder. This was the pause, the beat, the shiver…. Something worthy of a snapshot. Priya could command her interface to take an actual photograph, but she preferred collecting the details of Far through memory alone. His eyelashes, thick as ink. The sun spiraling off his curls. The many degrees of emotion caught in the angle of his lips. Herself—far away in the center of his eyes—another world of details and memories made.
It was a still point. A perfect moment.
She let it stretch on as long as she could.
18
IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS
SO MUCH WASTE.
It was impossible not to think this, sitting in the Garden of the Gods. There were seven different swimming pools in Caesars Palace, most named after the expected gods: Bacchus, Apollo, Venus. It wasn’t the imitation of grandeur that bothered Eliot, though it was underwhelming after standing in the shadows of real Roman columns. It was the assuredness of excess: fountains gushing in the desert, middle finger to Mother Nature, partygoers reveling while a few miles away Lake Mead shrank to critical levels.
It was ironic. No, that wasn’t the right word. Tragic? Smacking of poetic justice? Maybe she was being too critical. Eliot’s mother had always teased her for being a glass-half-empty kind of person.
It’s the one thing I can count on, she used to say in her lilt of a voice.
The memory was faint—an echo, really—but it caught Eliot like a blade between the ribs. She sat up in her lounge chair, breath sharp, borrowed sunglasses sliding down her nose.
“Everything okay?” Imogen propped herself up in the next chair.