Obscenities clutter my head when I realize where we’ve dropped. The noises in the Box whir like a propeller shutting down until finally, like a breath escaping, we’re silent. I deactivate the cell with my handprint and the roof opens. The same hand shakes as I disembark, you can almost hear the rattle of the bones inside my skin. It’s almost like being home. But we are so so far from there.
Luckily, there’s no one in sight. Of course it doesn’t matter. If the human mind glimpses something it deems impossible, it tends to blame one of the gods. The same gods they credit with the soft carpets of chartreuse and green and yellow rape for accent, dotted with white cloud gusts of sheep. About a mile off is the heavy peak of a steeple, rending the landscape with its sharp angle. I’ve calculated it’s a Sunday - you can imagine all the parishioners, their wide hats and somber skirts, exhaling up enough hot air to keep the roof aloft. I’ve never been to England. But I’ve read so much, it’s almost like visiting a notorious uncle. All the machinations of my dreams, blurring like a mirage in front of my weary view.
The Box is in surprisingly good shape after such a violent journey; it too shimmers in the afternoon light, threatening to disappear if I allow myself several moments of sleep. But my heart, full and heavy, is cantering the Downs ahead of me. My eyes close and again breathe deep the air, unsullied by decades of human decay. Now we begin again.
I select the right supplies and clothing, plan a route to descend the hill undetected based on the map in my head; I load up and activate the Box’s shield and watch it fade to nothing in the long grass, recording horizon points while tearing through the special rations packed for this point in the assignment. Again I gulp in the fresh air as though it might evaporate. After years indoors the shock of feeling each atom on my skin makes me want to weep. Instead, I reach and rend some sweet grass, then let it fly in the breeze. It spirals downward, catching in breaths the breeze, its path to the bottom inescapable. I follow.
YOU ARE READING
As a Girl
Science FictionWith time travel necessary for the continuation of life on earth, a teenage girl undertakes her first assignment, leaving the comforts of the midwest for the Institute through a closed timelike curve to a musical adventure in Victorian England. Can...
