Pi in the Sky Read online

  “I’m coming with you,” Kal calls out, catching up to me on the street. Kal has transformed his legs into wheels, which was very smart of him. Even though all of us in The Realms can quickly rearrange the cells in our bodies to create new patterns, I usually don’t think of it. It takes a lot of mental effort, and I prefer to save that effort for school so I don’t fail out. Plus, with wheels, you wind up with all sorts of bruises, and you have to pick pieces of dirt and random tiny objects from your skin long after you’ve turned them back into legs.

  “You should go home, Kal. My dad didn’t sound happy. You don’t want to be around when he’s not happy. Remember that time he turned you into a cow pie because you wouldn’t stop drumming with your fork and spoon when you came over for dinner?”

  Kal shudders at the smelly memory but squares his shoulders and says, “It was my fault we didn’t hear the sirens sooner. You shouldn’t have to take the blame.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” I reply. I’m lying and we both know it. I’ve been taking the fall for Kal since we were in diapers. As a son of the Supreme Overlord, I do get special treatment. The PTB often look the other way if one of my brothers or I bend the rules every now and then. Bren (the brother closest to my age and the one I like the best) and I once broke into the Department of Gravity to see if we could find some gravitons to take us to a neighboring universe. We’d heard rumors of other universes that waves of gravity could travel between. It didn’t matter to us that in billions of years no one had ever found these universes, supposedly full of their own stars and planets and galaxies. We got caught, of course, because there’s no way to sneak around here without everyone knowing your business.

  Since everyone’s afraid of our father, all we got was a warning. (The next person who got caught breaking in there was turned into an ear mite. He was last seen living inside the ear of a particularly smelly Plumpadorus in the Cygnus Galaxy.) But what happened today will likely result in more than a slap on the wrist and a lecture.

  Kal and I come to a stop in front of PTB headquarters. No longer a giant boot, the building has been transformed into a flagpole, with a black flag flying at half-mast in honor of the recently destroyed planet.

  The shape of the building makes it so we have to enter single file. Kal converts his wheels back to legs, and we hurry up the elevator to the inner sanctum of the PTB. After recent events, I expect to find the place a madhouse, with committee members running to and fro, arms full of reports to file. If nothing else, the department that oversees the Afterlives must surely be gearing up for an extremely busy afternoon. Instead, the place has a quiet hush to it. The few people I do see are speaking in whispers. Kal and I exchange a worried look.

  The door to my father’s office swings open to reveal the top members of the Powers That Be gathered around the huge round table, grim expressions on their faces. I notice that half of them are wearing their ceremonial robes, and are all men. If I had to guess, the female leaders were not happy with the decision to destroy the planet and stormed out in protest. My mother—an honorary member due to marrying my father—reports this happens fairly regularly.

  My father glances away from the holographic view screen hovering slightly above his head. An odd look crosses his face when he sees Kal beside me. Dad’s not a huge fan. He doesn’t think Kal has enough “drive.” Kal actually has plenty of drive. It’s just usually not in the right direction.

  My father waves us in. “I’m glad Kal’s here.”

  Kal’s face pales and I shiver involuntarily. My father is never glad to see Kal.

  I place the pie on the table, where it sits, ignored. “Don’t blame Kal, Dad. It’s my fault we didn’t get to warn Aunt Rae in time.”

  “This isn’t about placing blame,” Dad says. “We have a much bigger issue to deal with.”

  “That’s a relief,” Kal says, color returning to his cheeks.

  “Not really,” one of the suited men around the table mutters. I can never tell the suited guys apart. Well, that’s not really true. I’ve never actually tried. This one—short, with green hair—hands Kal a holographic screen that hovers in his palm. “We saved this for you,” he says.

  “For me?” Kal asks. “Why? What is it?”

  “It is a log of your parents’ last report,” the green-haired guy replies. “They sent it only two days ago from a planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. From Earth. We assume they haven’t left the planet.”

  Kal gives the report a quick glance. “They go to Earth pretty regularly. Am I missing something?”

  “I’m sorry, Kal,” my father says, when no one else replies. “We had no choice. Earth is gone.”

  [When I look up at the sky,] I think about all the things I don’t see up there.

  —Kip Thorne, physicist

  A deafening silence fills the room as everyone watches Kal. As virtually immortal life-forms, we don’t have to breathe unless we want to, and at this moment no one is.

  My hand on his shoulder, I can feel Kal trembling. His knees are locked in place, which is probably the only thing keeping him standing. He refuses to turn away from the transparent wall of my father’s office. We are high up in The Realms here, with the whole universe spread out around us. Usually the sight of billions of galaxies swirling like glittering diamonds is mesmerizing. Today, though, we cannot see its beauty. Today the distant clusters of stars only serve to remind us how, in a universe teeming with energy and drama, one small planet in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way barely counts for anything (no matter how much fun it is to watch their football games on our view screens). We have been raised to believe that in the grand scheme of things, one planet doesn’t matter. Can’t matter.

  Unless your best friend’s parents are on it when it’s destroyed.

  “But I don’t understand,” Kal says, his voice sadder than I’ve ever heard it. (And I’ve heard him sing the blues—badly, but he’s sung them.) “My parents are immortal, like all of us. Wouldn’t they have survived the destruction of Earth?”

  “That was our assumption, too,” my father says. “But we have not found any trace of them.”

  Kal still won’t turn away from the window. It’s like he’s searching the vastness of space for some sign of his parents. Through gritted teeth, he asks, “Did you know they were there? Before?”

  “Of course not,” says my father’s second-in-command, striding into the room. His name is Gluck the Yuck, a nickname my brothers and I gave him because he refuses to rearrange his facial features to be even the slightest bit pleasing. He’s not a bad guy, just a little hard to look at.

  “Well, we didn’t exactly check,” admits the green-haired suit. I really should learn their names.

  “There wasn’t time to check,” insists another. “The destruction has to be instantaneous. And what would be the odds of your parents working on that particular planet at the exact time someone from there would view The Realms? The odds are astronomical, that’s what they are.”

  A nice try to deflect blame, but we all know that the odds of anything existing in the universe at all is astronomical, so the man’s argument falls short.

  “I know!” Kal exclaims, whirling around to face the PTB. “The Afterlives will be flooded with all the new arrivals. I’m sure I’ll be called into work. My parents will still show up there with all the Earth people, right? So they’ll be back after all!”

  The committee members exchange uneasy glances. They look to Gluck to reply. Gluck then looks pointedly at my father. For the first time in my (very long) memory, my father hesitates before answering. “No one will be coming to the Afterlives.”

  Kal scrunches his brows. “I don’t understand. There were billions of people on that planet.”

  Dad looks uncomfortable, which is not a good look on the Supreme Overlord of the Universe. “We didn’t exactly destroy the planet. Per se.”

  “So my parents are still alive!” Kal shouts. He grabs my father’s arm, then immediately lets go when my father glares down