"Call if there's anything wrong," Mom said. "And don't forget I want you both back in time for dinner."

I shook my head, grabbing my empty drawstring backpack as I stepped out of the car.

"I'm only heading to Peter's school. Not like someone's going to jump me on my way there."

"Alright, but I still want you home in time for dinner."

"Bye, mom," I stressed, waving as I backed away.

"Have a safe flight!" Mom called out her window. I stopped at the doors and waved as she drove off. Then, I shouldered my empty bag and entered the station.

The inside of the terminal was very bland, no different than any other shuttle port I'd seen. The floor was made of ceramic tile laid in a diamond pattern, and portable grilled dividers split up the waiting line into a long and winding curve, though nobody stood in line at the moment. The roof was shaped like an elongated dome, with doric columns positioned in wide intervals to support the vaulted ceiling.

I jogged down the waiting line, hopping over the last few dividers when I got tired of running.

The security guard at the scanner raised an eyebrow at me.

"What's the matter, woke up late?" he asked. "The regular shuttle for commuter students left hours ago."

"I'm not a commuter student," I said, holding up my travel documents. "Just visiting."

He nodded, taking the pass from me. The scanner beeped once and he handed it back, motioning for me to put my bag on the conveyor belt. I complied and stepped through the body scanner.

"Your bag is empty?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Yeah," I said, shrugging. "Not really much to carry."

"Alright then. You have a nice day."
I nodded, shouldering my pack and stepping into the waiting area. It was a relatively simple room with long benches with black cushions, and a single potted plant in the corner. Nothing particularly fancy. Several sliding double doors on the far wall of the room opened directly into the shuttle docked there.

Since the next shuttle was leaving in a few minutes, I made a beeline for the nearest loading dock. Surprisingly, there were no stewards around to guide me to a dock, and when I stepped onto the shuttle, none appeared to guide me to my seat either.

"Huh," I muttered to myself. I'd forgotten this was just a school shuttle.

It was depressingly empty, with most of the seats vacant. A group of men and women were clustered near the back, wearing badges around their necks. Press passes. Probably Media Moguls sent to cover some student's research project. I took a seat as far away from them as possible, and since it didn't seem to matter where I sat, I opted for a window seat.

For now, the view outside was the inside of the shuttle bay, so I settled into my seat and took out my mobile.

On shuttle. Mom at work, I sent.

A few moments later, my mobile vibrated. Peter had attached a digital file to a message, and when I opened it, I found a map of the school campus, with a line drawn in blue leading to what looked like the physical science department. I blinked in surprise; the school must be huge. There were tram lines running all over, and lots of green space seemed wedged between each department.

My mobile vibrated again.

Today wasn't a half day.

I winced. I left early.

Before Peter could text me again, I shoved the mobile into my pocket, waiting for the shuttle to take off.

A few minutes later, a chime came from an overhead loudspeaker and an announcement came on to tell us we were about to take off. I leaned back into my seat, watching as the shuttle pulled out, then shot skyward, leaving the city of New Olympus behind. The city beneath grew smaller and smaller, the cars turning into dots and streets into lines, until New Olympus had grown so small, I could just barely make out the neighboring cities in the distance.

Then, the land beneath disappeared, turning into waves in a flurry of pixels. Imaging technology. To the Outside world, the nation of Kingsfield nor its capital city, New Olympus, didn't exist. Geographically speaking, Kingsfield was found on Terra, but it had retreated from the rest of planet almost two and a half thousand years ago, when the Kinetic humans of Terra learned the hard way that we weren't alone in the universe.

As the clouds turned to stars, I rested my head on the window, watching the traffic coming in and out of Kingsfield. Some were personal crafts heading out for travel, and others were freights, bearing cargo. A few Skyrunner jets flew past my window, flying in formation and dipping their wings in synchronized unity. I turned my head to watch those fly past, staring after them in envy.

The shuttle finally reached the Terran Space Station, but unlike the other ships flying to and from Terra, the shuttle didn't pass through the station for customs and clearance-it simply flew past it, headed for the moon.

My mobile vibrated in my pocket again and I dug it back out. It was a new map, drawn with a line pointing to the biology department.

Since you're coming up early, might as well meet me here.

Why are you in the biology department??? I asked.

Appointment.

I frowned, wondering what he meant, but since he obviously wasn't elaborating, I decided not to ask. I had half an hour to kill, so I stuck my headset on, hit my favorite playlist, and settled in for the ride.

* * *

"The last stop is: Leforte Station. This station is: Leforte Station. All passengers must exit the shuttle upon arrival."

I lifted my head groggily at the sound of the automatic conductor's voice. Leforte Station. That was my stop.

I snatched up my bag and slung it over my shoulder, then began making my way over to the doors while keeping a careful grip on the overhead rails. Magnetic docks made the descent smoother, but the deceleration alone could still sweep you off your feet.

As the shuttle settled into the station, I reached into my pocket and fiddled with my mobile, setting the map of the Cadmus Institute as my lock screen. This was going to be my first visit on campus, so I'd need that map on hand to avoid getting lost.

The doors slid open with a hiss, and the automated voice started telling people to mind the gap. I stepped off the shuttle onto the platform, staring at the station in awe.

Marble tiles covered every inch of the floor, framing expensive bas relief carvings that depicted figures from the school's history along with their names. Interactive plasma screens lined the walls with help kiosks and announcements, and the vaulted ceiling was held up with arches of pure granite. It must have cost a fortune to send this much marble and granite to the moon, but the Institute was well funded. I took a moment to sniff the air, appreciating the scent of spices and fried food wafting from a nearby food court. I definitely needed to stop by for a bite.

Someone jostled my shoulder as they squeezed by, glaring at me as they passed. After a quick glance behind me, I moved out of the doorway to let the rest of the passengers get off. One of them, a kid with messy hair and a leather vest, gave me a curious look.

A nearby billboard was lit up with a full map of the campus, and I made my way through the crowd to compare the view with that on my mobile. Peter's directions lined up perfectly, starting with a line of green arrows that began somewhere toward the top of the stairs. The colored arrows on the floor lead to different areas of the campus, sorted by specialty. Green arrows represented the biology department.

Seeing the map in front of me made the school seem even larger than before. Each department was like a small town, separated from the next department by a vast expanse of parks, entertainment lanes and gardens. Exploring this entire place could take years, if not lifetimes. Suddenly, I had the urge to take an hour or so to myself to go sightseeing, but Peter would be waiting for me. I didn't really have the time to dawdle now.

I exited the shuttle terminal, climbing the stairs to the second floor of the station. There was a green tram in the station, already crowded full of geeks. I glanced at my watch, then back at the timetable; the next one was in ten minutes. Slinging my backpack off my shoulders, I pressed up against the rest of the passengers uncomfortably as the tram doors slid shut behind me.

Other than a few jostles, the ride was surprisingly smooth for a packed car. Maybe they used magnetic suspension for their trams too, I thought.

Then, the tram left the tunnel and I stopped thinking about the suspension.

Wide green spaces and an expansive blue sky stretched as far as the eye could see, projecting the illusion of endless open ground. The campus was a combination of garden and metropolis, and each of the buildings were shaped like works of art, some like antiquated castles of stone and ramparts, others like towers of steel and glass. Every once in a while, we passed a fountain gushing water a meter or so into the air, or a pop art sculpture that looked like a different animal with every angle you viewed it at. Parts of the greenery were broken by coordinated flower patches and sand gardens or artificial ponds and spiraling trees.

When I glanced up, I saw the dome, the massive barrier between the Institute and open space. This was one thing Peter had actually talked about, back when he first enrolled at the Institute. It projected an image of a real sky, complete with the occasional bad weather day and a sun that rose and set with the one back home. It hardly seemed artificial, unless you looked a little closer.

As the tram made its way across the campus, I craned my neck for a better view out the window, watching the land flash by. Not surprisingly, most of the Institute students weren't even Kingsfielders. I spotted a cluster of winged Tranduscan students gliding above the walkways, and in one of the small parks, I saw a group of lanky Rindarens playing with spyro-discs in a playing court. The Cadmus Institute may have been hosted in Kingsfield, but its admissions exam was administered internationally, in the form of a series of logic tests and literary skill assessments. Its students came from all over the universe, and only a fraction of the students here would even be Kingsfielders.

The tram's speakers crackled to life, announcing that the central terminal was fast approaching. I reluctantly peeled my eyes away from the window and started looking for a seat. Some of the passengers would be exiting the vehicle, so some of the seats would be opening up.

Soon, the tram entered the central terminal, decelerating on another magnetic rail. A moment later, the doors hissed open, and the automated voice began prompting passengers to mind the gap. As passengers on the tram filed out, I stepped to the side, snatching up a seat just as the previous occupant vacated it.

As the tram idled in the station, I reached down and pulled out my mobile.

On my way. Ten minutes.

I waited a few moments, hoping Peter would see my message and reply, but nothing came. Not surprising.

As I slipped the mobile back into my pocket, I cast secretive glances at the other occupants of the car. Foreigners were forbidden from setting foot on Terra, but here on the moon, almost everyone was an alien. Apart from family visits to Mars, I'd never seen so many foreigners all in the same place. Of course, the ones here were anything but normal; its rigorous academic standards ensured that only the best attended. That meant that while I was here, I was literally surrounded by geniuses.

Minutes later, the tram was pulling out of the central station, and from the window across from me, I could see the open campus rolling by. Soon, the greenery gave away to a new set of buildings, indicating we were entering the biology department.

The biology department took up only a small portion of the main campus, but just about every structure in it looked like it was built by an artist's hand. I saw one that looked like a miniature forest, glass and steel built to resemble trees, interconnected by a series of crystal bridges stretching every direction between, and another that looked like a bunch of metal bubbles fused together. It'd probably be fun to visit, but maybe later, when I had the time. The streets below were covered in trellises that grew strange flowers and twisting vines, and the vines continued growing up the sides of most buildings so that the entire place looked like one big wild garden that just happened to have a few buildings in the middle of it.

As the shuttle approached the terminal, I glanced one last time out the window, trying to catch a final glimpse of the campus. Then, the strange buildings disappeared in a flash, replaced by the walls of the tram station, and I sighed reluctantly as I got up and moved closer to the doors.

Soon, the doors were whooshing open, and the overhead announcer started reading off the timetable for the next trams. I stepped off, glancing around the station to catch my bearings. This one was much smaller than the central station I'd been in earlier, with a lower ceiling and fewer tracks, but it was still grand in its own right. The floor looked to be one giant plasma screen, displaying multicolored bubbles that bobbed around and followed peoples' movements. Holographic androids wandered amid the crowd, offering their services as a guide or translator. The ceiling above me was a large dome, made of thousands of blocks of carved stone, depicting strange humanoid figures battling hulking aliens with six arms each.

"You lost?" someone asked.

I started, glancing around me for the speaker. A thin Terran boy with disheveled red hair and pale skin stared back at me, his eyes unblinking. Despite the warm temperature in the dome, he wore a rumpled jacket and light brown pants with doodles all over them.

"Uh, no, not really," I said. "No wait, I meant, which way to the Croft Center?"

"Down to the first floor onto Delta Avenue, then down the street. Fourth building on the left."

"Thanks," I muttered, watching him shamble away.

Following the directions, I made my way down the street, eyeing the buildings around me. They were even stranger close up, more like a massive art gallery rather than a science department. This place didn't have the rich smells of food and travellers like the central station had, but it did smell very strongly of the flowers on the trellises.

The Croft Center turned out to be the building made of metal bubbles, the one I'd seen earlier while on the tram, but it looked more like a giant had blown a bunch of bubbles and then turned them into metal. Some of the bubbles weren't even connected to the main building and just hung suspended in the air on their own. It was a strange sight, but not completely out of place among the rest of the Institute's architecture.

After spending a few moments gaping like an idiot, I gathered my wits and shouldered my pack, pushing through the glass doors into the lobby.

The lobby itself was a single, enormous bubble, with three elevators, a handful of benches, and a help desk run by another holographic android. Near the help desk, free downloadable holographic maps were being offered via a kiosk. I pulled out my mobile and glanced at the directions Peter had sent me, entering the information into the pad. When it finished mapping my route, I tapped my mobile against the data transfer pad, downloading the information into it.

Fifteen minutes later, I found myself standing in front of a closed door, staring at the note scribbled in elegant cursive on the door's interactive display. It read:

DO NOT ENTER: Appointment in progress.

-Helen

Then, in a smaller, messier scrawl:

@Charlie: Knock.

Why was Peter in a biology lab room? This one was actually large enough to have an entire bubble to itself, so I was really standing at the top of a flight of stairs that led into the next bubble. I tried peeking through the door's window, but it was tinted.

I glanced back at the note and raised an eyebrow. Who was this Helen? I dug out my mobile and sent Peter a text, asking when he'd be out. No response. I waited another minute just to be sure, then sighed. No point in waiting around. I knocked lightly on the door three times.

A moment later, the door was opened by a slim, Terran girl clutching a notepad in one hand. She was dressed in a stereotypical lab coat and flats, and her light brown hair was held in a tight bun that she kept pinned slightly to one side with a pen stuck through it. Her olive-toned skin was clear, and her large brown eyes were slightly canted. I stared at her, wondering what to say as she examined me with one fine eyebrow slightly arched.

Suddenly, she beamed at me, revealing perfect teeth.

"You must be Charlie," she said. "Come on in; Peter's inside."

She stepped aside and pulled the door open wider to let me in. The room beyond was large enough to fit my bedroom six times over, and it was filled with machinery, most of which I didn't recognize. Some parts I could recognize, such as the large electron microscope in the corner and a centrifuge filled with vials of what looked like blood sitting on a table. There were no pipettes and test tubes, or petri dishes and beakers. Just computers and plasma screens, lining the wall and covering tables. I stepped in and glanced around, but I couldn't find Peter anywhere.

I turned back to the girl to ask about my brother, but she flashed me a dazzling smile and the words immediately died on my lips.

"Uh, hi," I said stupidly, pawing after my scrambled thoughts. "Do I know you?"

Of course you don't, idiot.

The girl closed the door and entered a code into a panel nearby, eliciting a click from the door's lock.

"No, but I'm Helen," she said, sticking out her free hand. "Undergraduate student at the College of Biomedical Engineering. Your brother and I met through my capstone project last year. He's quite brilliant."

"Oh," I muttered, shaking her hand. Her skin was soft. "Wait, undergraduate?"

"Yes, I skipped a few years," she said, shoving her notepad at me. "Hold this, please; I need to fetch the scan readouts."

I bit off my next words, glad for the excuse not to talk, and followed her to a nearby plasma screen. This Helen, whoever she was, looked somewhere around my age, although she could have been a year or two older. I shook my head, trying to imagine what it must be like to attend college at my age. She was obviously a Kingsfielder, making her only the second Terran student I'd seen in the Institute all day.

I watched her pull a portable plasma projector out of her pocket and tap it against the plasma screen, opening a download window. Then, she activated the projector, peering at the screens hovering in the air. I tried to offer her the notebook back, but she waved me off, pressing a button on the wall.

"Peter, come out here. Visitor. Bring the rest of the scans, please."

While she waited, she turned back to me and frowned, looking at me as if I were an interesting puzzle. I found myself shifting uncomfortably under her gaze.

"So, Charlie," she mused, sounding out my name as if it had a strange taste.

"What? Yes?" I asked. I bit my tongue quickly, cursing my overeagerness.

"Your name. Isn't it a little strange?" she asked. "I've never heard of anything like it, not even in the colonies."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," I muttered. "My dad picked it."

"Oh," Helen said. "The dad that died."

I looked up sharply, surprised at the casualness of her tone, but she didn't seem to register what she'd said. Instead, she continued working on her project, completely ignoring me. As the silence stretched into awkwardness, I coughed and spat out the first thing that came to mind.

"So," I coughed. "Peter's scans? Are you his doctor or something?"

Helen tore her eyes from the screen to spare me a look.

"Yes and no," she said. "I'm a fellow student, but he agreed to let me study his conditions as a favor."

"Conditions?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. Her eyes shone brightly at my question, as if she was glad I asked. "Your brother has a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders that work very strangely in concert, which results in his heightened mental capacity, obstructed growth, and reduced-"

"I get the picture," I said quickly. "I was just...surprised he told you."

"Oh, that," she said. "He didn't. I stumbled onto his condition and approached him directly."

Before I could reply, the door to the back room swung open and a little kid strolled out, tapping at a tablet as he walked past. He didn't look up.

"All the readings look fine to me," he said as he passed us. "Hello Charlie. Helen, I don't see the incremental cerebral deterioration you were insisting on earlier. According to the scans, my mental capacity has been altered by less than a thousandth, and that's hardly a significant figure. It's not cyclical either, and I know this because I checked."

I grinned, relieved at seeing a familiar face. My little brother Peter was already ten, but his slight frame made him look more like six. His head came up to just a little over my waist and today he was wearing one of my old sweatshirts, which fell to around his knees. He might've looked adorable, too, except his face was fixed into a near-permanent scowl.

"Oh, look," Helen said, turning her attention away from me. She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes at the child tottering our way. "Peter, you barely acknowledged your brother."

Peter stopped in front of her, handing her his tablet.

"But I did," he said curtly. "I'll need you to dig into the scans from the previous months. Notify me if you find any patterns."

I caught a glance at the scans, which was a mess of colors. It looked like the results of a brain scan, and the image displayed on the scans was almost entirely red.

"Whose brain is that?" I asked.

It must've been a stupid question, because both Helen and Peter gave me a look that said the answer was obvious.

"Mine," Peter said.

"This is an electroencephalograph," Helen said, placing the tablet on a nearby table. "The red stands for intense brain activity-"

"-and the blue stands for inactivity," I completed. "Yeah, I know."

"It's actually rather interesting," Helen muttered, turning away from us both. "There's heightened activity in both the temporal and frontal lobes, but I haven't yet figured out which condition of yours is affecting the hippocampus. Or, more aptly, which ones aren't."

The girl, Helen, sounded like an older female version of Peter. If the rest of the school talked like this, Peter probably fit right in.

My brother vanished behind the counters, only to reappear a few moments later with a stack of tablets in his arms. He handed them off to me as he passed, snatching a hard drive from one of the computers near the door.

"You've catalogued my numerous symptoms already," he said, one hand on the door. "I'll leave it to you. Charlie, let's go."

I took my pack off my shoulder and slipped the tablets into it as I moved to join him at the door. I didn't want to leave so soon after arriving, but Peter was like a force of nature. It was hard to say no.

"Alright then," Helen said, already turning back to her work. "I'll send the scans to your doctor and you can pick up your new prescription back on the surface. It should be ready in two hours. Oh, one more thing: can I expect you at the science fair?"

"No," Peter said.

She sighed. "It was worth a try. Well, it was nice meeting you, Charlie. I'll see you two around."

______________________________________________

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