Page 14 of Bound By Stars

It’s amazing she doesn’t starve or suffocate through the endless stream of thoughts that flow out of her mouth.

Slouching lazily in my chair, I hold my stomach and watch porters carry away the last of the half-full trays. Never in my life have I been so fantastically full.

Asha stands. “Ready?”

“For a nap.” I breathe slowly around the oversize meal settling in my belly, eyelids heavy as I exhale.

She yanks me out of my cushioned chair. “Let’s go!”

I pathetically reach back for the last little cake on my plate as she drags me away from the table. At least I thought to stash a roll in my pocket mid-meal.

Asha tows me behind her with no sign of it being an obvious effort, walking and talking at hyper-speed.

Her tour starts by hauling me past the door to the stairs the porter guided me up when I first boarded and through unfamiliar winding hallways. Her feet and mouth don’t slow as we passcrew onlypainted in giant black letters across the closed doors. Her dad is the captain, a fact that prompts the history of her father’s career and the story of how her parents met, something to do with her mom’s Earth Experience Mission, but I’ve already zoned out.

We practically run by the door to the gym, then the pool. I barely catch a glimpse through the little round window in the door. Dark blue water reflecting overhead light. Toward the back of the ship, we head up a brightly lit staircase and loop through the escape pod bay.

This part I like. I don’t want to get trapped in one of these pods, but the walkway is cool, dark, quiet, and best of all—people-free.

Back in the white halls, she tows me through the maze of first-class living quarters halls and down the curving grand staircase depositing us back in front of the dining room. A completed loop.

Thank the universe.

I pause at the clock halfway down the stairs. Even at Asha-speed, the tour took nearly two hours. “Well, maybe I’ll head back to my room.”

“No way. I’ve saved the best parts for last.” She drags me down the rest of the steps, turning toward the center of the ship, the opposite direction we took on our last loop. At the end of a long hall, she pulls me through an oversize archway that opens to a world that almost feels like home.

On my left, eucalyptus trees stretch at least fifty feet high. Their woody scent mingles with the fresh sweetness of the tall pines to my right, nearly covering the sterile, artificial smell permeating the hallways of the ship.

I squeeze her arm and force her to pause on a green mosaic in the center of the massive room.

Aside from the four exits in each direction, I can’t see where the circular room ends. Above the arched doorways, the wall seems to dissolve into sky. Paths weave through thick foliage to picnic-perfect patches of grass in forested quadrants. Ahead, birch and maple trees fill the other two sections, separated by species. These Elysians have to group everything, people and trees alike. I wonder if they even realize that’s not how they grow in nature.

My gaze darts up at the familiar song of a robin as an orange belly flies overhead. “Birds in space?”

“They do look real, don’t they? Projections. Like the ceiling.”

Beyond the branches, the ceiling glows white and soft gray, like an overcast day.

She grabs my arm and we’re off again. Through a wide corridor past another set of stairs and then starboard down another hall. She crashes through a set of doors, hauling me inside.

“Andthis…is my favorite room.” Asha’s eyes travel up dark wood shelves that stretch to the high ceiling.

I’m already out of breath from keeping up with her pace, but if I weren’t, this room would definitely steal the air from my lungs. “Incredible.”

Her grip on my forearm tightens. “Isn’t it?” she says through an awed breath.

A blue-haired woman with wide-framed glasses, not much older than us, raises her eyes from the front desk, face brightening. “Asha, I think I figured out the book you were describing yesterday.”

She releases me for the first time since lunch and skips over to the desk.

I wander into the stacks, pushing a rolling ladder along with me. Turning down a quiet row, I scan the titles, brushing my hand along the tightly packed spines, but only swipe empty air. The projection transforms into blocks of titles with instructions running across the shelf above them:Tap title. Scan palm to borrow.

Is anything on this ship real?

Drawing my hand back, I hold onto the shelf and lean to see the rows of illusions reaching up to the ceiling. I could swear I smell the musky-sweetness of old book pages.

Chair legs scrape against the floor at the end of the aisle. Beyond the shelves, in front of a circular window full of stars, Jupiter is hunched over a heavy wood table, sketching with one of the pencils I helped him collect before class. He rotates the loose paper in front of him and draws back to get a wider view, ruffling his hair with graphite-stained fingers.

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