I laughed at first, thinking she was joking, but the angry glint in her eye told me she was not. “Wait. I have so many questions.”
“There we were, me and Marco, in his room. His parents were gone, and I was ready to get some. But when I took off his pants, do you know what I found?”
I shook my head.
“Another pair of pants. Khakis, actually.”
“Seriously?”
Jenny looked like she was going to flip a table, thinking about it. “And when I took those off, more pants. Pants, shorts, pajama bottoms, capri pants. It was pants all the way down, Noa.”
“Maybe it’s just a glitch with Marco’s program.”
Jenny flared her nostrils. “Obviously, I hooked up with Anastasia, too. She’s a better kisser than Marco, but it was the same situation. Dresses under pantsuits under cute skirts and blouses. There’s just no way to get to the center of that Tootsie Pop.”
I really did have questions, but I was afraid of the answers. Thankfully, Jenny kept talking. “I dug into the Mind’s Eye software and found the templates for the character models. They’re all rated ‘I’ for ‘I’m never getting past second base again.’ ”
“Sex isn’t everything,” I said. “You could enjoy cuddling with Marco or Anastasia.”
Jenny wound her hair around her finger. “I love a good cuddle, don’t get me wrong, but I also love sex. I get and appreciate that it isn’t always necessary for a healthy, fulfilling relationship, but it is for me.”
This was quite possibly the strangest conversation Jenny and I had ever had, and the last thing we’d discussed had been aliens. “Maybe you can ask DJ to make changes to the models so that you can…” I couldn’t finish the sentence because there were so many things wrong with the suggestion. It wasn’t the idea of Jenny having sex with a simulation, though I tried to keep the mental image of Jenny having sex with anyone far from my mind. It was everything else. They might have been virtual characters, but they were virtual underage characters who were based on real people. How virtual were the characters? Could they consent? Did they have any type of free will? The characters populating Bell’s Cove were digital assets in a computer program, but that didn’t mean we could or should treat them like objects. It was possible that the actors had made the deliberate choice to prevent Mind’s Eye users from having sex with their characters, and I didn’t think I could allow DJ or Jenny to alter those parameters. Fortunately, Jenny didn’t seem keen on reprogramming the characters either.
“Or,” Jenny said, “you and DJ could hurry up and get it on and then describe the entire encounter to me without omitting a single detail.”
“That’s never going to happen, Jenny.”
“But why?” she whined. “What if you let me watch you make out? I’ll sit quietly in a corner. You won’t even know I’m there.”
It was bad enough knowing Qriosity and its ubiquitous cameras were there. And Jenny’s suggestion earned her a down-the-nose glare. Sometimes I didn’t know if I would have been friends with Jenny if we weren’t trapped on a spaceship together. Yet, I couldn’t imagine life aboard Qriosity without her.
“Were you with anyone back on Earth?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
Jenny shrugged. “I didn’t really do relationships. It was easier to not get attached, seeing as my parents kept us moving around all the time. Besides, people are messy, and I hate messy.”
“Sex isn’t messy?”
A slow grin spread across Jenny’s face. “It can be if that’s your thing.” Her smile faded. “I’m not saying I wish I was home, but I do miss parts of it. Other parts, not so much.” She laughed ruefully. “I certainly never thought this was what I’d be doing with my life.”
“What did you think you’d be doing?”
“I figured I’d graduate high school—become an assassin or go to college and apply to the FBI.”
Of the many career paths Jenny might have taken, FBI was not the one I would have guessed. Assassin felt like a better fit. “You really wanted to be an FBI agent?”
“I like solving puzzles.”
“Then maybe you’re exactly where you belong.” I motioned around us. “Qriosity is one giant puzzle.”
The ship began to vibrate, cutting short our conversation. The countdown clock on our screens hit two minutes, and Jenny and I slipped on our seat belts.
There was something hauntingly beautiful about watching Qriosity tear a hole in the fabric of space and time. It shouldn’t have been possible, yet we did it every nineteen hours. The process was like getting on a bus in Seattle, sitting down, driving ten feet, and exiting in London or Portugal or the Antarctic. Jenny Perez had attempted to explain the science behind the fold drive to me, but it still looked like magic.
When the countdown hit zero, a brief flash filled the viewport. It was over. The stars had changed position, but everything else looked the same. Just like always.
“Um, Noa?” Jenny was staring at her console, her nostrils flared. “There’s something out there.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The computer says there’s something out there.” Even Jenny sounded like she didn’t quite believe it. “It’s small and shaped like a dome, but it’s there.”
“Can you put it on the viewport?”
Jenny zoomed in on the object, allowing Qriosity’s sensors to resolve the image before enlarging it again. At first, I didn’t see anything. But as the unknown object grew in the center of the viewport, I realized Jenny was right. Whatever was out there looked sort of like a snow globe. There was green under the dome. And buildings.
“Does that look like a football field?” Jenny asked.
“Zoom in more,” I said, pointing at a section. “There’s something written on the side of that building.”
Jenny continued enlarging the image, zeroing in on the writing. When it was finally large enough to read, I sat silently for a while, unable to process it.
“I’m hallucinating, right?” Jenny asked.
“If you are, then I am too.” I scrubbed my face with my hands. “We’d better wake DJ. He’s going to want to see this.”
Though it defied explanation, written on the building in block letters were the words: BETA CEPHEI HIGH SCHOOL.
TWELVE HOURS EARLIER
“WHY IS THERE A HIGH school in the middle of space?” DJ must have jumped out of bed and sprinted to Ops the second Jenny and I had called him on the comms and told him we’d discovered something strange. When he’d arrived, his face was flushed and he was breathing heavily and he was only wearing his boxers. I’m not saying I wished he’d taken the time to get dressed, because I did enjoy looking at him, but it was distracting.
Jenny shrugged. “Hell if I know. But we’re going to check it out, right?”
“We have to,” I said. “There might be people down there who can tell us where we are. We could go home.” The idea of home no longer felt as distant as it used to. I still missed my mom and my friends and Mrs. Blum, but home was here, on board Qriosity too.