His face is more striking than she recalls. His eyes are medium brown—the color of tea—and his skin a pale golden tone. The longer she is with him, the more her body wants his. She looks away.
They step inside a glass elevator. The black pit of darkness is under her feet. She looks up and sees a glowing square above. The outside.
The elevator shoots up, and the warmth of the late afternoon sun kisses the skin on her face. It’s brighter here than in her city. She squints as her eyes adjust to its glare.
The modern steel-and-glass train station is separated from the desert outside by expansive windows and a flat roof. The sun beats down through the glass walls, bathing the place in light.
They follow the throng of people down a sandy path. The afternoon sun casts an orange glow on the landscape. The arid air blows through her hair, carrying with it a scent of dry sage. A gray lizard pokes its head out of a hole. It slips back in as they pass.
Aris scans the expanse of the barren land. Yellow sand. Bulbous rocks stacked on top of each other like toys for giants. Brittle shrubs that look like they would crumble in her hands. Tall Joshua trees scattered throughout the terrain. The giant forty-foot trees have branches that shoot off like snakes on a Gorgon’s head. It is these trees that set this place apart from the nature preserve she has often visited on the edge of Callisto.
Aris breathes in the clear, cool air. “I can see myself living here.”
“Really?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
He chuckles. “You just seem like the metropolitan type.”
“Because I live in Callisto?”
The Dwelling Council has all the data to determine someone’s preferences. Still, they overlooked the part of her that enjoys the solitude this place offers. She could go for days without seeing another soul if she so chooses. The sky is big here, unlike in her city, where skyscrapers crowd it out.
“I’ve always thought we’re meant to be where we are,” he says.
“You mean like predestination?” she says.
“You don’t think so?”
A romantic. She misses Benja.
“I think it’s a result of data analysis, combining my proclivities and preferences with my career choice,” Aris says.
“But it all started with you. And you were predestined to be who you are.”
“So I don’t have a choice in this at all?”
“Not at all,” he says with a smile and takes her hand.
Their walk ends at a cliff off a mesa. Beyond the edge is a panoramic view of mountains with ridges like the backs of sleeping dragons. The barren land is painted red by the sun.
“It’s beautiful,” Aris says and immediately feels the words cheapening her experience, so she says nothing else.
The crowd stands solemnly, shoulder to shoulder, facing the expanse of the desert. A layer of haze moves in, bleaching the valley below pale yellow. Metis is silent.
He lets go of her hand and passes her a small white box. Then another. And another. She sends them down the line until everyone on her left has one. She keeps one box in her hand. It feels light. All that is left of somebody’s life contained in a tiny carton.
An amplified voice speaks. It is a poem by Henry Scott Holland—the same poem read at every Ceremony of the Dead.
“Death is nothing at all . . .”
Tears run down Aris’s face. She wipes it. She will only remember Benja until the next Tabula Rasa. Then it will be as if they had never met.
“. . . Life means all that it ever meant . . .”
She reaches for Metis’s hand. He holds it with the gentleness of someone cradling an injured bird.
“. . . All is well.”
The last word hangs in the air. She takes her hand back from Metis, opens her container, and sends the gray dust flying down the cliff into the world below. It joins the cloud of ashes from each of the other’s little boxes.
The dust dissipates, becoming one with the sky. Aris turns to Metis and sees that he is already looking at her. No words are exchanged between them, but she finds that she understands him too. She reaches up and kisses him.
The smell of sage permeates the air. They are walking on another sandy path, different from the one they took to the ceremony. Metis is unsure where they are going, but Aris knows.
The sound of sand and gravel crunches beneath his feet. He kicks a rock and it bounces off the path and into a scraggly bush. Something fast dashes away.
The rough, scratchy ruckus of bird calls comes from the top of a tree. A curious one swoops in front of them and lands on a yucca on the other side of the trail. It has the striking spots and stripes of a cactus wren. He wonders where its mate is. The cactus wren is a species that forms a permanent pair-bond.
Down the path, he can see the flat roof of a building. A small sign, “Hotel of the Desert,” points in its direction. The glass structure crouches low on the horizontal line of the land as if apologizing for its existence amid Mother Nature.
Elara stands apart because it was completed after the Last War. Unlike Callisto, Lysithea, and Europa, this city was built with a lot of respect for the natural habitat of the desert. Buildings were put in with minimal disturbance and intrusion on the landscape. Plants and wildlife here are not genetically modified. Seasons follow their own natural courses. The wind that blows and the sky above are the same he would have experienced had the Last War not happened. It was built as if the Planner regretted humanity.
The sun hangs near the horizon, painting the sky in stripes of pale yellow, orange, and pink. Another bird flies from the top of a Joshua tree
