On the second week, I was allowed to go to the school.

Aunt Amalia led the way down a wide gravel-lined path I had never seen before, chirping blithely about the various buildings we were passing: "There's the power station I told you about. The solar panels are hidden on top of the trees in the woods. And the brownwater purification plant. Of course, that mostly happens underground. Did you want to see the hydrofarm?"

"No, thank you," I answered, my voice measured. "Just the school."

"Of course," Amalia said. "You're going to love it here, Marina. I know it's a lot to take in at first. But it really is just like, well..."

"Paradise," I answered for her.

"You see it, don't you?" she asked. "The potential of this place. Did you know we don't have crime? When somebody makes a mistake, they confess it immediately."

"They don't have a choice," I reminded her, feeling my sensor whir as it processed all the new sights and sounds that encased us here in this cocoon.

"Well, no," she agreed. "People used to have choice and look what they did with it."

I nodded, but I was already tuning her out. I couldn't help but feel like she was manipulating me, showing off all the technology that she must have known I would love. It was everything I had wanted: self-sustainable communities. No carbon emissions. People who were honest. But it was that key element that was missing, the element that separates free people from slaves:

Choice.

If you have no choices, are you not free. No matter how impressive the infrastructure.

I wondered suddenly what Adam would have thought of this place. Would he have been impressed? Or would he have seen it for what it was immediately: a beautiful prison? If Adam were here, would we have already escaped? If Adam were here...

If Adam were here...

"This is the school," Amalia said as we made it to the end of our long walk.

The structure was all glass panels and mismatched bolted metal slabs that looked like they were recycled from old buildings—maybe skyscrapers? But it was beautifully integrated into the surrounding trees, with a garden in front and green vines dripping off the roof, hinting at another garden on top.

"We have no waste here," Amalia explained. "Everything is reused. All surface is farmed if possible. Except the trees, of course. That's for the wildlife."

"How big is this place?" I asked.

"Pangaea is one of the smaller colonies. We're only about twenty square miles."

"One of?"

"Oh," she caught herself, her delicate cheeks darkening to a deep blush, like she wasn't supposed to tell me that. "Well, I guess now that you're here, you might as well know."

"Know what?" I asked, though I could hear the fear in my own voice.

"Come on," she smiled. "You can sit in with the little ones today."

She took my hand, and I let her. We walked that way into the building and down a long, clean hallway, lit from above with skylights that provided a peripheral view of some of the roof garden she had mentioned. Her hand felt warm and familiar, and by the time I realized it was because it felt so much like my mother's, we had already reached the classroom.

I sidled into the back, but no one noticed me as the lights were dimmed. The children were sitting on the floor, cross-legged, making a large circle with a clearing in the middle. And in that space, there was a film playing—a projection, really, in 3D. I laughed at how much it reminded me of Princess Leia's hologram in Star Wars.

A warm, salty man's voice filled the room as he narrated the film, and images of the colony—Pangaea—floated before us in those holograms. People were working side by side in the video; farmers in tented labs grew tomatoes the size of pumpkins. The children were playing in the woods, their red monitors happily glowing at their temples.

Finally, a satellite image showed Pangaea from space—a beautiful green and blue bubble. But what was beyond it? The hologram didn't show.

The narrator talked a lot about harmony, about balance. How in order to put good things in, bad things had to be left out.

And I thought of the portals. Like everything in nature, they demanded a balance.

If this was what was happening on the inside of the dome, what was happening on the outside? The part where Adam had apparently landed?

"We were one people once," intoned the narrator, "one land. One purpose—to live in harmony with the earth. Through the dream of our founders, we will be one again."

And now the hologram did pull back to show other colonies at a distance, about half a dozen of them—some big, some small—but it was careful to edit out anything that lay in between them. It was like they were blue diamonds spread out on a brown soccer ball, and you could almost feel them reaching for each other.

"The colonies will unite," the narrator concluded. "And the earth will finally be healed. Will you be the one to make it happen? How will you be part of New Pangaea?"

Swelling music overtook the room as the hologram domes of the colonies grew larger and larger and, finally, touched.

The lights came on in the room then. The film was over. And my eyes fell on the familiar face of the little girl I had first encountered in the woods. Remedios, just like my grandmother and me. I smiled at her, and she shyly buried her face into her chest.

"Ten minutes of free play," cooed a teacher in the corner, her hands busy knitting a giant sweater.

The children all scattered to find toys and playmates, and I sat down next to Remedios.

"Do you remember me?" I asked.

"You're our visitor, from the woods the other night."

"That's right."

"My mom told me you were coming. And she said you'd look just like that scientist lady, but I think you're a lot prettier." Remedios smiled, her face turning bright.

"What scientist lady?"

She nodded to the side of the room, where a collage of the children's artwork adorned the wall. They were all hand-painted pictures of famous scientists—I recognized Marie Curie and Jonas Salk. And several of the children had drawn what I assumed was a version of me at about forty-five years old. The resemblance to my mother was uncanny.

It was a strange feeling, staring at my own older face, feeling time fold in on itself. But then a thought occurred to me: they had called me and my partner the Dynamic Duo. But the pictures the children had drawn were only of me.

Where was my partner?

I forced my eyes away from the pictures and turned back to Remedios, wondering what else I could get her to tell me. "Have you lived here your whole life?"

"Yes, but sometimes my brother and I stay with our grandma. She lives in New Ohio, and we get to take the train all by ourselves. That's my picture, by the way," she said, pointing to one of the portraits of me. "I drew her in a yellow shirt because yellow is my favorite."

"I love yellow," I smiled. I picked up several blocks from the floor and started making a tower, nodding to Remedios that she should help me. She chewed on her lip for a second, then balanced a block onto mine. "So there's a train, huh?"

"Yeah, it goes through the dead zone, but Roberto says it's okay since it doesn't stop. It takes an hour to get to my grandma's. She always picks us up at the station with cookies."

"Oh, I love that. My abuela used to make us cookies too," I said, looking over my shoulder to see if the teacher was listening. But she was wrapped up with her knitting. "And where is this train station?"

"In the garden sector, behind the hydrofarm."

I placed another block on top of hers, and the tower started to wobble.

"I see."

"I have to go to class now," Remedios said.

"I thought this was your class."

"No, silly, my private study time. Will you be here tomorrow?"

"Maybe," I said, but the chip in my brain overruled me and made me add on the words, "or not."

Remedios smiled at me one more time, then turned away. Her eyes drifted to a soft, distant place, and she touched the sensor on the side of her temple. The red light pulsated slightly, then faded to a muted green.

A quick glance around the room revealed that all the little children were doing the same thing, while the teacher continued knitting at the desk.

"What's happening?" I asked, not knowing whether to be amused or frightened.

"I'm learning," Remedios said. "My ICD is teaching me now."

"Teaching you what?"

Her finger touched the sensor again, as though pressing pause on a video. Then her eyes returned to me, warm and eager, and as big as two moons. "It's teaching me Swedish."

The air whooshed out of my lungs. Remedios went back to her program and I could only sit and watch her shiny little face in the cool blue wash from the overhead skylight. I looked up and saw that Amalia was waiting for me in the door to the classroom.

But I was frozen in place, the realization striking with the force of an oncoming train:

My partner had been Jin.

***

Okay, who guessed it? Raise your hands. XO, Rebecca