Exist Once More Read online

  Once Booth seemed certain that we had all taken his point, he leaned down to speak our destination into his cuff. It didn’t take a moment for the lights on his cuff to turn from red, to yellow, to green, and then a blue haze surrounded all of us, and the Academy disappeared.

  We arrived in the chilly Alabama evening a moment later. Time in the past went at the same rate as time in our present, which stopped Historians from “stealing time,” which meant that since we would be on Earth Before overnight, we wouldn’t get back to the Academy until tomorrow—I had worried that it was a long time to have to blend in, given that everyone but Booth was white, but as we headed toward the grounds of the church where the marchers would spend one last night on the road, I marveled at how it didn’t seem to matter.

  There were all sorts of people sitting around, laughing together. Eating, singing—there was even a stage where a joyful song rang out in a lovely voice. Men, women, and children who were black and white, and colors in between, clapped and sang along.

  There were more that looked like Booth than looked like us, but no one gave our small group a second glance as we trudged through the rows of tents and up toward the church. The night was cool but not cold, and the stars overhead twinkled like a glittering blanket in the clear sky. Our clothes would have been fun to pick out and model had Analeigh still been at the Academy—she loved dresses, and the fancy, 1960s style complete with short, lacy gloves and hats would have made her squeal with pleasure.

  My heart hung heavy, reminded again of the losses I’d sustained in such a short time. It began with my brother, then continued with Caesarion’s death in Ancient Egypt. Tears stung my eyes at the mere whisper of his name in the recesses of my mind. I missed him with an intensity that didn’t seem possible after such a short time together, but the aching hole in my center didn’t lie.

  I shook my head, pressing my lips into a firm line. Those few days were a precious gift, and more than anyone else got to experience with their True Companion. The hurt should be relished, the pain reveled in, because it was mine and his alone. If those horrible feelings weren’t with me night and day, it would have meant we’d never met.

  They were proof that I had loved him, that he had loved me, and that it was real. But he was gone now. Like Jonah. Like Analeigh, and that one was my fault. I glared over at Oz.

  Well, not just my fault.

  He must have felt the weight of my gaze, shooting a glance my direction that suggested I should be paying attention instead of pointing fingers. Which was rich, considering we didn’t have a set assignment until tomorrow, when we would be present to record one of King’s more famous speeches.

  Oz needn’t have worried. After all, the new Kaia always paid attention to her assignment.

  The music swelled, then faded among hoots and hollers of appreciation from the crowd. It was nice not having to use the invisible feature on my glasses for a change, since the technology was commonplace in this time, and I adjusted them higher on my nose. The lenses displayed information about all of the people I focused on for more than a few seconds.

  Like the woman climbing off the stage, grinning from ear to ear—Joan Baez. The information scrolling in front of my gaze was enough to distract me for several seconds. She’d been quite the activist in her own right, starting a chapter of Amnesty International sometime in the following decade. Also, there was a bunch of stuff about some guy here named Bob Dylan, but then a man took her place on the stage and I focused on him, instead.

  Tony Bennett. The glasses tried to overload me with information about his life and career too, but I flicked the facts away with a quick, practiced eye movement. All I needed to know right then was that his voice was low and smooth, filling my ears and limbs with the desire to sway and to smile.

  My friends had similar reactions, if they took care to hide it. In another world, I wondered if Oz would have asked Sarah to dance. In another world still, maybe he would have asked me. If Analeigh were here, she would be wide-eyed and captured by this whole event—these people from all walks of life and every corner of this nation coming together to stand up to the oppressors of the world.

  The fact that it didn’t work, not really, and that equality between races of humans continued to divide humans until our final days on this planet, dampened my spirits. My knowledge of the future cast a black cloud over the happy scene and I found a seat on the steps of the school, which was connected to the church, and watched in silence.

  Oz kept glancing my direction, like he wanted to say something but didn’t. Sarah ignored me. Levi, never one to give in to melancholy, did join some of the people dancing closer to the stage. I watched him for a while, envying the carefree abandon that had once belonged to me, too, but every instinct in my body said those days were gone.

  They were gone for Levi as well, but he didn’t know it yet.

  Booth wandered over and took his time easing down onto the stoop at my side. “Did you know this is one of my favorite trips?”

  “No.”

  His old head bobbed up and down. “Yes. I don’t make many jaunts these days, and I’m tired of seeing the bad things. Seen enough. Gonna see more, I think.”

  “Yeah?” I wanted to trust Booth but wasn’t sure that I could. I didn’t think that all of the Elders were involved in the plan to return us to Earth Before, but I didn’t see how any of them could still be unaware of it.

  Even if Booth seemed different, and like he was on my side, the idea of jumping to that conclusion and trusting him made my mouth feel like sawdust.

  Analeigh wouldn’t think it was wise, and neither would my brother. Caesarion would tell me to put the people of Genesis before my own selfish desires, but I still hadn’t figured out how to identify which was which. Maybe they were the same?

  “Strange happenings, Miss Vespasian. Don’t you think?” He pursed his lips, rheumy eyes trained on the festivities. He seemed amused by Levi’s gesticulations.

  Not that our classmate was a great dancer to begin with, but the tattoos threaded into his brainstem encouraged his feet and limbs into era-appropriate movements they weren’t near coordinated enough to execute, making him look like a badly programmed robot.

  “You mean other than Levi’s dancing?”

  His lips twitched. “Yes, other than that. You know, your grandfather had a similar penchant for clinging to humor in dark times. You remind me of him.”

  It wasn’t the first time Booth had paid me the compliment. My grandfather was one of the Original settlers of Genesis, instrumental in our escape from Earth Before and the establishment of a reformed society once we landed in our new home. I wasn’t sure what had happened between his generation and mine, but I couldn’t help but imagine he would be sorely disappointed by the conduct of both of his grandchildren. Despite what Booth continued to try to tell me.

  “I think he would be quite proud of the way you keep your eyes open, and how your ears hear beyond the words spoken by others,” he commented, as though he had read my mind.

  My heart struggled to reconcile my actions with his praise, and failed before we were both distracted by Sarah and Oz. They wandered over, maybe to extract themselves from the awkwardness of standing together, just the two of them, and sat with us.

  We passed most of the night there, without a glimpse of Martin Luther King, Jr. I thought that was okay, and that the man himself would have thought so, too. We studied not only the past, but its effects on the future.

  Everything I’d read suggested that Martin Luther King, Jr., considered the people reveling in their imminent success here tonight to be his legacy, so much more important and lasting than his face or even his words.

  They would carry forward his message, and their children and their children, long after his life had met a cruel and abrupt end.

  Sleeping out in the open, under the stars, was a strange experience. Cold, too, as the five of us huddled together under the thin blankets we’d stuffed in our packs before leaving the Academy. I
resolved somewhere around dawn, when my breath plumed in clouds, to make sure to put into my Reflection a note about the weather in March in Alabama so future Historians wouldn’t wake up shivering.

  We decamped in the morning with the other marchers and started walking along the road toward Montgomery. The morning was beautiful, as was the scenery. It was impossible to not have my spirits lifted by theirs as a shared sense of hope and victory infused the air with a tangy sweetness. But even the buoyancy of the morning couldn’t drag my thoughts far from the moments spent talking with Booth the night before, or what his words might mean.

  Did he think I was right for suspecting the Elders were the ones behind the changes in the past? Did he want me to keep looking into it?

  I cast a glance at Oz to find him looking back at me, as I had so many times in the past several weeks. Months, really.

  He took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows in a silent question I couldn’t hear. Didn’t want to, maybe, but the truth was, who else could I go to for help?

  The march ended in town, with everyone spilling into the square in anticipation of finally seeing and hearing from the man they had summoned the courage to follow. My own troubles tumbled from my mind, replaced by focus on recording the thing we’d come here to witness—Dr. King’s How Long, Not Long speech on the capitol steps. I waited, as breathless with anticipation as the crowd around me, as he took the stage.

  My stomach tightened with nerves at the sight of him up there, unprotected. I knew he wouldn’t die today, wouldn’t be shot, but that one day soon, both of those things would happen. And they would change everything.

  I couldn’t stop myself from glancing around at the faces, wondering if any of them harbored murderous hate in their heart even now.

  The speech began, and I fixed my attention on the man of the hour. Gathered behind him were a group of close friends, advocates, and advisors who my eyeglasses informed me would all go on to impact the Civil Rights Movement in their own right.

  Bayard Rustin had been the man to encourage Dr. King to embrace the nonviolence he became noted for, and that had led to many of his successes with the establishment. Rustin and James Bevel would both continue in leadership roles until their deaths.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.’s best friend, Ralph Abernathy, wore a proud smile. His eyes glittered with the determination that would carry him forward after his friend’s death.

  Next to him, Andrew Young—a newcomer and an upstart, but one who would join Georgia’s representatives in Congress for years to come, become the mayor of Atlanta, and represent the United States of America at the United Nations at the behest of a President.

  It was a contingent of men who surely believed, in that moment, that they were on the precipice of seeing the world change forever. In truth, change came slowly, then regressed, then ceased to exist at all. People never stopped fighting for it, though, and maybe their souls—if there was such a thing—could somehow find solace in that.

  The sight of a pretty, rapt white woman at the front of the crowd caught my attention when my glasses pulled up sparse information. Her name was Viola Liuzzo. She would die at the hands of Klansmen on her way home today, as payment for her involvement in Dr. King’s march and mission. Believing in equality was enough to get her killed.

  It was enough to get many thousands of people killed on Earth Before. It had never murdered anyone in Genesis, not on any one of our seven planets. Not yet.

  “How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.”

  Dr. King’s voice was like magic, it seemed, the way it boomed over the masses. It felt weighty, carrying truth with the assistance of nothing but the wind and the speaker’s conviction. The crowd responded, as they had been the entire time, with murmured affirmations of agreement.

  My own head nodded along, almost of its own accord. It could have been the result of the brainstem tattoo forcing me to play along, but it wasn’t. It was him. Dr. King.

  “How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow. How long? Not long.”

  He broke into a few stanzas of song, joined by the crowd, before he paused to continue his speech. I stood, riveted, and sensed my friends in the same riveted state at my sides. Even Booth, from the corner of my eye, stood captured by the moment in history playing out before our eyes.

  It was so nice to be somewhere we didn’t have to try so hard to fit in. We could relax and watch, absorb without being surprised by strange words or customs, without worrying that someone might give us a strange sidelong glance that sent us home early.

  “How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. How long? Not long, because…”

  The singing commenced again—Mine Eyes Have Seen the Coming of the Glory of the Lord—and the Historians reluctantly took our cue to head off. Booth had set the place we would use to travel back home to Genesis, in an empty car a few blocks away.

  Now that I’d seen the scene at the state capitol myself, I thought we could have disappeared right in the middle of the crowd and no one would have noticed. Not while that man was speaking.

  The car was a good idea, though, and as safe as Booth had promised. He paused by the driver’s door and pinned me with an enigmatic dark gaze. It froze my hand on the door handle. The others were inside, waiting for us to join them and for Booth’s cuff to take us back to the Academy.

  “Remember what Dr. King said,” he whispered, gaze locked on my face. “The part about the moral arc of the universe being long is very important.”

  My mind stuttered through the specifics of the speech, helped along by the tattoo threaded into my brainstem. “That it bends toward justice?”

  He nodded, his expression grave. “Imagine how much longer that arc would seem to King now, with our understanding of the universe. Remember that.”

  He opened the unlocked driver’s door and climbed inside without another word, leaving me speechless and honestly, trying to decide if the exchange had happened at all.

  “Kaia, come on,” Levi groused from inside the car. “Are you waiting for a written invitation or what?”

  My fingers fumbled open the door and I slid inside, my hip banging against Sarah’s. Our overseer wasted no time in setting the dials on the travel cuff adorning his wrist, then asking it to take us back to the pods deep in the bowels of the Academy. Then the familiar, bluish hue spread through the car and once it had touched us all, Montgomery, Alabama, disappeared.

  My certainty that what Booth had said was important did not.

  Chapter Four

  Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis - 51 N.E. (New Era)

  The travel pod held us hostage for nearly an hour when we returned, detecting trace elements from Earth Before on all of our skin and clothes. That required decontamination showers for everyone, and the waiting period tested my ability to sit still.

  We’d gotten back early, and without much to do until dinner—which meant I had all day to kill before talking to Oz. I whiled away most of it re-watching the recordings I’d made in Alabama and trying to figure out just what in the System Booth had been trying to tell me with his cryptic message.

  Not being able to ask either of my best friends for their thoughts, or get their help parsing the problem at hand, made me want to scream. I mean, the moral arc of the universe? What in the hell did that even mean?

  Philosophy was more Analeigh’s strong suit than mine, and Sarah would have devised some kind of fancy search into our personal comps to try to sort it out, but me?

  All I had was my brain. And the poor thing was overloaded.

  Finally, it was time to go see Oz, and nerves made my hands shake as I reached for the doorknob of our room. Sarah had been watching me with a hard-to-read expression ever since I’d jumped in the shower for no apparent reason and dropped about eight hundred things while getting ready.

  It wasn’t suspicion, either—that I would have recognized after months of being on the receiving end. This felt more lik
e…uncertainty. As though with all of the weirdness lately, maybe she also wished that we could talk the way we used to, but didn’t know how to backpedal through all of the crap.

  I paused with my trembling hand on the doorknob, wondering whether to say something. Try one more time. Then I remembered that I was sneaking out to go be alone with her boyfriend and figured that now probably wasn’t the best time.

  Maybe after dinner.

  The hallways were empty, and my footsteps echoed off the sleek surfaces. Artificially cooled air washed over me, sending a shiver down my spine, making me wish I’d grabbed one of my jackets. I’d been in too big of a rush to get out from under Sarah’s watchful eye. Especially since she actually had a reason to be suspicious for once.

  At least there was no one—especially not Levi—to witness the trek to my clandestine meeting. The thought, dramatic and ridiculous, made me snort. There were no rules about visiting other rooms as long as it was before lights out at ten, or any rules about being alone with someone of the opposite sex. The Elders trusted us—they were more parents than jailers, and even though they’d been watching me more closely since I’d broken all of those rules running around Ancient Egypt, they hadn’t assigned someone to follow me around in the Academy or anything.

  I took a deep breath outside Oz’s door, then raised a fist, but the door whisked inward before my knuckles made contact with the metal.

  “Come in,” Oz snapped, more of a furtive demand than an invitation.

  I scooted over the threshold, unable to stop a guilty glance down the hall behind me. It was empty, of course, and resulted in a glare that had Oz ripping his hand off my bicep as though it was on fire.

  I rubbed my arm where his fingers had been, dispelling the lingering warmth. It had been too long since someone touched me, obviously.

  “Enough with the manhandling and the furtive crap. We’re not spies.”