I remember when Lark thought I was Ash, with some subtle difference. When her lips came near to mine. I flush in the darkness, and say nothing.

“I’m basically a coward, Rowan,” my brother confesses. Then he adds something that brings tears to my eyes. “You should have been the firstborn. You would have been a benefit to Eden. More than me, anyway.”

What can I say? I reassure him that he is a wonderful person, an asset to the community, that he has no failings, only quirks, that he is loved.

That I, in particular, love him, my other self.

I wonder what I’ll do without him.

I wonder what he’ll do without me.

“Go back to sleep, Ash. We can talk more in the morning.”

There is a melancholy edge to my thoughts, like the grim desert wasteland around Eden. But like the city itself, the center of my thoughts is bright as I drift off to sleep.

I sleep late in my tiny bare chamber. When I wake, Ash is at school and Mom is at work. I feel a twinge of resentment. Shouldn’t they be home with me for my last few days in the family? Who knows when I’ll be able to see them again. I might even live in an entirely different circle, and just be able to see them once a month for fauxchai and chapatis in public.

I hear a noise in the kitchen. My dad is home. I feel my jaw tighten right away, but make myself go in to say good morning. He’s making an algae smoothie—straight algae and water, no synth flavors. Ew.

He doesn’t hear me while the blender’s whirring, but after he pours his green concoction into a tall frosted glass he turns and flinches slightly upon seeing me. As if I shouldn’t be there. A dribble of viscous green slush runs over the edge of his glass, pooling in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

“You’re up,” he says. I don’t know enough about people to determine if this stating of the obvious is a common conversational opener, but my dad does it all the time.

I grab a sweet roll from a basket and take a big bite. “Congratulations on your appointment as vice chancellor,” I say.

“It isn’t official yet.”

“Don’t worry,” I say wryly, unable to resist the jibe. “I won’t tell anyone.” Who could I tell, for the next few days anyway? Except Lark. I decide to tell her tonight, an act of defiance.

“I need to have you squared away before anything is publicly announced.” He wipes the green drips with a pristine white cloth, then tosses the cloth into the reclamation chute.

“Squared away? Is that all I am to you? An issue to be dealt with, a mess to be made neat?” Does my father hate me? I wonder. It’s a question I’ve been shaping in my mind ever since I was old enough to pay attention to the world around me.

“It’s not as simple as that, Rowan,” he says. “You create—difficulties—by your very existence.”

I feel my lip twitch. I want to delve into it more, but I only say bitterly, “You’ll be rid of me in a little while. That will be a relief, I guess.”

He takes another sip of his drink, scowling a bit as if he just realized how disgusting it is. “In a way,” he says evasively.

I look at him evenly. My feelings are mixed, but as before, anger trumps sadness. It’s starting to be a trend with me, I think. “And you and Mom can move on with the perfect life I interrupted sixteen years ago. Pretty soon it will be like I never even existed at all.”

He doesn’t answer, only downs the remainder of his drink and heads out the door.

IT IS A day like any other—almost. Like every day for the past sixteen years of my life, I spend a good portion of the daylight home alone. I have my routines to keep me sane: studying, drawing, running, and exercising until my body is exhausted and my mind is calm.

But today there is a lilac tinge on everything I do.

When I draw, I find myself sketching Lark’s face.

When I run, it’s her I’m running to.

When I pull out my datablocks and vids to study, I turn immediately to all of the things Lark and I talked about. I search for information on the Dominion, but there is precious little. That makes sense, I think, with a new touch of cynicism painted onto my personality by Lark. The people in charge don’t want people to know about that evil cult, even disparaging things. Any information might lure new converts.

So I search for other topics, expanding my knowledge so I’ll have more to talk about with Lark. The thing that interests me most is the earliest days of Eden. I want to find out more concerning what Lark said about the original population of Eden. How were the first residents chosen? Were they just the last straggling survivors of humanity, or were they specially selected? I need a clue about why our population started out so large, only to be trimmed down now. As one of the trimmed, I take it personally.

But there’s almost nothing beyond what I already know. In fact, every source says almost exactly the same thing, in almost identical words, like a mantra or a prayer. The remnants of the human species gathered in Eden, to wait until the Earth was renewed. That’s all, as if people were some migrating animals who coalesced by instinct, going into hibernation to wait out a long winter. I never noticed before how few details there are on our own history. I didn’t question very much until now. I just swallowed down whatever I was fed.

I turn instead to our founding father, Aaron Al-Baz. There’s a ton of information on him, all of it laudatory. It reads more like a legend than pure history. Like every child in Eden I learned this all before, but now that I know I’m living in the great man’s house, it seems closer, more vital.

I read how Al-Baz was mocked as a young man for his radical beliefs in the coming end of the world. Still he attracted many followers, even as others condemned him and found fault in his science. He suffered deep humiliation as he was ostracized from the scientific community, his theories about man’s doomed interaction with the Earth torn to shreds.

Breathless, I read about his self-imposed exile as he heroically dedicated his life to saving the planet. He was so secretive during that time that there are few facts, only anecdotes. He was trying to stop world governments from approving policies that were killing the environment—and from what I can gather, his methods were not 100 percent above the law. When the heads of nations wouldn’t listen, he forced them to listen. In that newly burgeoning digital age when everything on the planet was already well on its way to being linked, a skilled computer scientist could force governments to pay attention.