THE FORESTS OF MONTANA are familiar to me. I look at the trees, and my hands and feet relive the sensation of climbing. The jagged bark of Douglas firs, the fine sandpaper of aspens, the twisted trunks of the whitebark pines, ancient and full of secrets.
The rumble of our idling bikes barely disturbs the silence as we creep down the shadowy hillside, all brakes, no throttle. I know Julie could go a lot faster, but she holds back, letting me set the pace, so we proceed like kids on training wheels until we emerge onto the gravel road, then the country road, then the highway. I breathe a sigh of relief as I crank the throttle and the bike lunges away from those haunted woods.
By the time we get back to the airport, the sun has vanished, leaving only a murky pink streak on the flat horizon. Nora and M are leaning against the plane’s front wheel, arms crossed, frowning.
“What the fuck, Jules?” Nora says, her hands springing out like question marks.
Apparently Abram beat us here by more than a few minutes, because the cargo ramp is down and his bike is secured inside. Julie gives Nora a weary don’t ask head shake and drives up the ramp. I follow her in and we begin fastening the tie-downs.
“We thought he was trying to take the plane,” Nora says as she and M march up the ramp. “I almost shot him.”
“The plane’s worthless without him,” Julie mutters.
“Just in the leg. Maybe the dick.”
The four massive engines whir to life, filling the cargo bay with swirling dust. Julie slams a fist against the door-close button.
“So what happened?” Nora asks as we climb the stairs to the upper deck.
“He . . . changed his mind,” Julie says, and the dazed uncertainty in her voice tells Nora enough to let it go.
? ? ?
Our second takeoff is significantly less harrowing than our first. The only sign that we’re not on a real flight by a real airline is the lack of calming platitudes from the captain. We even have a flight attendant. Once we reach cruising altitude, Sprout walks down the aisle with a tray of Carbtein cubes.
“Do you want a snack?” she asks Nora in the row across from us.
“No thanks,” Nora says.
“Do you want a snack?” Sprout asks M.
M takes one and rotates it in his hand, studying it like a Rubik’s cube, then takes a bite.
“Do you want a snack?” Sprout asks Julie.
Julie takes a cube. “Thank you, Sprout. Excellent service.”
“Daddy said I should do it.”
Julie looks at me. “Really. Well, that was nice of him.”
“I think he feels bad,” Sprout says. “For being mean. Do you want a snack?” She shoves the tray toward me.
I take a cube. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She turns and continues down the aisle.
“Where’s she going?” Julie wonders, then I hear a door slide open and Sprout’s voice from the rear of the plane:
“Do you want a snack?”
I jump to my feet, tensing to run—
“You’re welcome.”
Sprout reappears, striding up the aisle like a seasoned professional, her tray empty, a big smile on her face. She returns to the cockpit to resume her copilot duties.
I sit down. Julie takes a bite of her cube. “What do you think, R?” she muses while she chews. “She can do this a few more years to save for college, then get her degree and move into architecture. Maybe Joan and Alex can be her apprentices.”
I peer into my cube’s chalky white lunar landscape and feel a localized hunger pang, as if just a few inches of my stomach have woken up. I take a bite and chew, grimacing at the dry texture and inscrutable flavor, like a four-course meal blended into a smoothie.
“I know,” Julie mumbles. “It’s not funny.”
I shrug, still chewing. “It’s kind of funny.”
“It’s a dead baby joke.”
I hear something in her voice that makes me stop chewing. That note of disquiet I heard back in the cabin, of disturbed sediment clouding the ocean floor. “Harsh assessment,” I say to the back of her head as she presses her nose to the window. “You don’t think they have a future?”
She’s quiet for a moment, peering into the darkness. “I do. I just wish it didn’t have to be in a world like this.”
“Maybe it won’t be,” I offer, but I’m unable to give the sentiment much weight. It passes through her and out the window like a feeble ghost.
She pulls an in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of her and leans back. She studies the model on the cover, a woman of a species no longer found on Earth, coiffed and painted, nourished and toned, beautiful in a way that’s no longer recognizable as human.
“I used to read everything I could find about the old world,” Julie says, and begins to flip through the brittle pages. “I studied it like mythology. And I always wondered what people I knew would’ve been like back then, when life was just a bunch of choices. Your beliefs, your priorities, where you live and what you do . . .” She pauses on an ad for a garish Broadway musical and smiles bitterly. “Can you imagine having all those options? Being surrounded by that cloud of potential just waiting for your decision?”