“The trouble with problem solving,” Aldrin often complained, “is that too many people are making money off the problems.”
Aldrin was forty now. He wore his gray mane like an ocean wave, curling backward and breaking around his neck. His surgeon’s hands were machines the way a flute is a machine. He was the sort of man da Vinci might have imagined.
Milo considered Aldrin the greatest human alive.
They were working, in those days, on the Nowhere Computer. It was a computer that existed only in cyberspace and worked like a vacuum: pulling in functions and data that were already “out there.” It was immeasurably powerful, according to Aldrin, for something that didn’t actually exist. When the Disappearances began, they hadn’t gotten it to work yet.
Milo didn’t let this bother him. To be honest, his attention was elsewhere. Not on the voices but on his fellow info-cruncher, Kim. The torch he carried for her was the lab’s worst-kept secret. Someday he was going to ask her out. When he wasn’t so busy.
One quiet Friday, Kim leaned over his desk and said, “I wonder if you could do me a favor.”
“Sure,” he said.
“I have a date,” she said, “but no babysitter. I don’t think anyone even does babysitting anymore. I wonder if you could come over and watch Libby for me.”
She should have just shot him. All around the office, eavesdroppers winced. Ouch, ouch, ouch…
(No way! said some of his voices.)
Shit. Really? Fuck!
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.” Fuck.
“Seven?” she said.
“Okay.”
—
He rang the doorbell at Kim’s ground-level apartment, and she answered wearing a long, sheer dress that left one shoulder exposed. One tanned, smooth shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, stepping in. “You look great.”
“Why, thanks.”
“Hey,” he said to Libby (Kim’s six-year-old), who was parked in front of the TV. It was a good TV night, meaning the TV stations were broadcasting.
Libby didn’t answer.
“What time are you expecting the lucky fellow?” Milo asked. Maybe he could manage to be in the bathroom when the doorbell rang.
“He’s here,” said Kim, opening a bottle of white wine.
Here? Already? Shit. Where?
“Didn’t I tell you, Milo? It’s you. I’m going on a date with you tonight. If that’s okay. It’ll just have to be here, because, like I said, the babysitter thing.”
She blinked at him with wide, sunny eyes.
Oh, wow!
“I…well, of course,” he said.
“I was getting old,” said Kim, “waiting for you to ask.”
He felt silly for waiting and decided to balance it with an act of spontaneous courage. He slipped an arm around her waist, drew her to him, and kissed her on the lips. She returned the kiss, and they released each other.
Libby watched them over the back of the couch.
“Are you guys getting married?” she asked.
(Are you guys getting married? asked some of the voices.)
—
They had dinner, the three of them, by candlelight. Milo found himself having a kind of double date.
“I have one of the lab computers here at home,” Kim told him, over roast beef. “I’ve been working on the satellite problem.”
“I hate spiders,” Libby told him.
That’s how it went. Two conversations, two dates, at once.
“It’s been three years,” answered Milo, “since anyone launched a new satellite. It’s going to be like a new Dark Ages if we don’t find a new way to transmit. I don’t care for spiders, either. Aren’t you glad they don’t fly?”
“What if we teach data packets to ignore the existing systems? What if we could get info to just, I don’t know, bounce off the magnetosphere?”
“Did you know some cockroaches can fly?”
Milo was stunned. That was frigging brilliant. It was the kind of thing Aldrin would get excited about.
“We should call the Doc,” he said. “I heard about flying cockroaches!” he added. “Gross!”
“They’re called palmetto bugs. I have to go number one.”
There was lemon meringue pie for dessert, in front of the TV. They watched an old Batman movie and fell asleep on the couch together, all three of them.
The next morning, an hour before daycare opened, they took Libby along when they sped over to the university, hoping to catch Aldrin at his customary cafeteria table, with his tablet and his orange and his orange juice.
But he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t in his office, either, although his door was open. And he wasn’t in the lab. Neither was any of his stuff.
Milo and Kim shared the same unbelieving look.
“Disappeared,” they whispered together.
“What’s that mean?” asked Libby.
Before they could answer, two scary guys in black suits marched into the lab.
“Milo Osgood?” they asked. “Kimberly Dodd and”—one of them checked a handheld tablet—“Libby?”
Ah, shit, thought Milo.
“Yeah,” all three of them said, and, just like that, they were disappeared, too.
—
First they were driven to the airport. Then they were rushed aboard a small jet and flown east. On landing, they were driven down a bunch of farm roads, through golden morning light and corn, to a white building with no windows, surrounded by military tents and military people. They were escorted inside, down a long, spotless white hallway, and left before a spotless, featureless door.
The door opened before Milo could knock, and there stood Wayne Aldrin. He looked ruffled, if unharmed, and had a haunted look in his eye that hadn’t been there before.
“First of all,” he said, “I’m sorry. Second of all, come in and sit down.”
Libby was about to say something, but at that precise moment a bright-looking teenager in a jumpsuit and ponytail came hurrying up, saying, “Are you Libby?”
Fifteen seconds later she and Libby were off, down the hall, hand in hand. “I’ll get her breakfast!” promised the teen, “and have her back to you in an hour!”
Milo gave Kim’s waist a squeeze as Aldrin ushered them into his new office. A cheap desk, a table, coffee machine, filing cabinets, computers, and some folding chairs. Aldrin, plainly, hadn’t disappeared; he’d been transplanted.
“It’ll be best,” said Aldrin, “if I just explain, without interruption. Then you can ask questions or yell and scream, if you want.
“A year ago, some amateur astronomers sighted an anomaly in the night sky. The professionals took a look at it, and it’s bad news. In October of 2025, a comet the size of Ireland is going to hit the planet Earth like a big, fat musket ball and probably kill every living thing. So they—let me finish, Milo—so they had a big conference to decide what we should do, and what they decided was this: to collect the right scientists and nuts-and-bolts people and have them build spaceships to carry humanity away from Earth. One ship for Venus, one for Earth orbit, one for Mars, and one for Jupiter’s moons. The ships will serve as habitats and carry materials to build more habitats.”