Just Out of Jupiter's Reach
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Date: 2023-06-26 00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2023 by Africanfuturism Productions

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle
www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781662516788 (digital)

Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson

Cover image: ©Artur Debat / Getty; ©Witthaya Prasongsin / Getty

I am one of the first, but it’s been five years, so I doubt anyone is really thinking about this anymore. That’s how people are. Long-term memory is a thing of the past. Maybe after the ten years are up and we’ve returned to the Earth, that will change. We’ll each be multimillionaires, and people do love money.

Fact is, I wasn’t famous on social media. I wasn’t a billionaire. I didn’t wear makeup or hairpieces or implant things into my breasts, face, or ass. I didn’t sing songs or rap. I wasn’t a great dancer. I didn’t have a doctorate. I didn’t make trouble for anyone. I just loved space travel, had studied it on my own time, wasn’t afraid of leaving the planet alone. And I was a perfect match. Some equated it to winning the lottery, but when you have to sacrifice a decade of your life for it, when you are basically risking your life because what’s asked of you has never ever been done in human history, when you have to earn it, it’s actually not at all like winning the lottery.

Now we’d reached the five-year mark. We were halfway through. It was time.

My Miri ship had slowed down so that I would arrive last. There were seven of us. A good number. What a beautiful thing that we’d all survived . . . so far. Thrived, even. We weren’t together, but we could keep in touch, as long as we stayed “at least twenty-five hundred miles away from one another” for the sake of the research.

Nevertheless, this meeting had been planned before we’d launched; it was authorized. Kármán Corp. had agreed not to monitor our interactions for the week, but they expected us to write and record reports afterward . . . which they’d probably use for research. I was fine with that; we all were. Plus, our Miri ships would make sure Kármán kept its word.

I wasn’t ready to meet the others. I could already see their ships from where I was. The location we’d chosen was just outside Jupiter’s gravitational pull, yet close enough to have a nice view of the glorious planet. My cat Five was asleep on my lap. I looked down and stroked her back. She was sleek and black like the vacuum of space all around us.

“See all those ships, Five? There are people in them. Actual people.”

As so many millions of people had, I’d applied. I’d allowed Kármán to take samples of my blood and skin. I’d signed their contracts that legally made it so I could not back out if chosen. Everyone I knew did, too. Sixty percent of the human population did. It was free, and they made it so easy. Given the odds, the shock of learning that I was a match was surreal. They said only seven people on Earth might have the proper combination of genes and microbes. Kármán scientists had discovered how to cultivate and grow these amazing living ships, but they didn’t have all the answers. And when you don’t have all the answers, you have to go with the flow. In this case, that flow meant they didn’t get to choose who flew in the ships—nature did. Kármán hadn’t expected to find even one match.

Once I was deemed a match and signed the agreement (and came to terms with the fact that I was trading ten years of my life for a total of twenty million euros—two million every year I survived)—I took the medications that altered my DNA. They made me able to withstand the radiation, fortified my bones and muscles, and made me able to produce certain nutrients.

It wasn’t easy. My first experience with 4 g’s, I’d passed out. The medications for all the DNA changes caused strange quirks in us; for instance, I developed a taste for olives, when I’d hated them all my life, and I could no longer stand drinking coffee or eating french fries. My blood pressure became very low, even when I was exercising. I had dreams and nightmares that were vivid and new. But that last one’s why they were so confident that it would work: I was seeing my ship’s mind in my sleep even before the official imprinting.

The day I finally met my Miri was two days after I’d returned to Kármán from visiting my village. I’d been crying all day because some of my family can be cruel and greedy. Not my parents and brothers, just everyone else. And what I was doing had brought out their deepest cruelty. Honestly, I couldn’t blame them. It was a lot to handle. To protect myself, I made it so that 75 percent of all my earnings would go to my parents, whom I could trust. I left it to them to figure out which relatives got what. This didn’t stop my cousins, aunts, and uncles from showing up at my home to ask me for money in person, though.

So they saw the money, but at the same time, it was hard for them to see me as important. Even my parents and brothers had a hard time with this part of it. I was the only girl in my family—and the youngest—and up to now, I’d earned the least. It was hard for them to process the idea that Kármán had built an entire building for me in Ibadan that stretched a half mile long and a quarter mile wide. I’d been telling them about it for two years, but no one took me seriously. They didn’t watch the news streams or bother driving out there to see the behemoth of a building, which was now the biggest building in the city. When I told my friends about it, they acted like I was exaggerating things.

“Man, I wish I could complain about being given an insane amount of money,” my friend Abiola said when I ventured to bring it up.

The night before, when I’d mentioned to my parents and brothers my nervousness about what I was about to do, they just didn’t get its importance, either. “It’ll be fine” was all my father said. “The scientists know what they’re doing.” He paused and added, “And you’ll be fine. You’re best under pressure, right?” He tapped his forehead. “Clear.” My brothers said they weren’t the least bit worried, that obviously I’d handled worse and that I was being melodramatic when all I had to do was keep doing what Kármán told me to do. As if it were all so easy and effortless. As if everything were already a success and I already had the money and was just coasting. I went to my small apartment and stressed out alone the entire night.

So I’d arrived at Kármán’s Miri Center 3 in bad shape. I was wearing a weather-treated oversize T-shirt with a sun on it, green cargo pants, and brown leather sandals—basically as casual as I could get. But when I walked into the meeting room the security guard guided me to, it was full of politicians, investors, scientists, and journalists wearing expensive buba and sokoto, aso ebi lace dresses, or European-style business and power suits. I was glad to be quickly escorted to the control room beside the vacuum chamber. Below I could see all the people from the meeting room filing into the observation room to watch.

I undressed and put on my skintight liquid cooling and ventilation garment. It was a fiery red, my favorite color.

“You ready?” Adeyemi asked. She was the chief engineer for the Miri chamber. I’d been meeting with her here for the last six months.

“Yeah,” I said, looking into the chamber. My Miri had grown so much since I’d first come here so many months ago. He was about the size of a house now and looked sort of like a giant shrimp.

He had been genetically modified in more ways than I could understand. They’d used tardigrade, jellyfish, algae, and spider DNA; nanotechnology; and parts of him were some form of metal. Yet his DNA was 100 percent compatible with mine. Not one gap in the sequence. This thing was somehow related to me, very directly. I’d stopped trying to understand the science because no matter how many times Adeyemi explained it to me and no matter what books I read, it didn’t stick.

I’d had three chances to touch him while in my space suit, but on that day, I was going to go inside and take my suit off, where I’d be able to breathe unassisted. The launch was in a month. This had to go well. There were four of us in the room: me, Adeyemi, and her two assistants. But since this would be something I had to do on my own after launch, I was to get into the suit myself. I did so with little difficulty, and next thing I knew, I was walking slowly to the air lock.

“You clear on what to do?” Adeyemi asked, walking beside me. Her assistants were on my other side and in front of me, checking over my suit, which was the same fiery red. I wished they’d all leave. They were making me nervous when I had no reason to be. I’d done this several times by then. This next part was all on me.

“I’m fine,” I said. “You can leave me.”

Adeyemi chuckled. “Already so independent. The others have been like this, too.”

I hadn’t met any of them. I only knew their names. Kármán said it was better this way.

“Maybe it’s in our DNA,” I said.

Adeyemi and her assistants laughed. But I wasn’t kidding. I shrugged them off and placed my hand on the latch. I entered the air lock and shut the door behind me. There was a soft hiss as the room adjusted to the environment before me, basically a giant warehouse-size space simulation chamber. There were only seven in the world, and they were created for this reason.

I’d been an overseer for a section of Nigeria’s most popular autonomous train, a construction worker, an elephant caretaker, a hotel welcomer, a food tester, and a glitch assistant to a repair super-bot. None of that could compare to that moment, easily the most nerve-racking in my life. I had a huge audience of influential, wealthy people with strong opinions watching my every move. Most had invested millions, even billions, in Kármán’s Miri Project. If anything went wrong—if the Miri rejected me, for example—it would be bad for many. For me, too, since my payments wouldn’t begin until after takeoff.

From what I was told, I was the first of the seven choices to attempt an imprint. This was a moment of truth.

I entered the chamber and stood about four hundred meters from the ship. I could see the door on the Miri’s side. Circular and right on the bottom, outlined in the bioluminescent blue of a deep-sea creature. His red flesh was soft, but tough. I’d been fascinated by this when I’d first touched him. Interesting how we tend to associate strength with something hard like diamond, tungsten, stone. Never with something that is flesh, something that yields. Touching the Miri had changed this for me.

“Just go pet it,” Adeyemi said in my ear mic. “Like a cat or dog, some animal you’re friendly with. It’ll be a greeting.”

“Yeah,” I said. Inside my suit I was sweaty, despite the fact that it was freezing.

“Relax,” Adeyemi said.

My heart rate must have been spiking. I took a deep breath. I touched the privacy button. I’d been told not to use it too often. The donors and press wanted to hear everything, be as close to my experience as possible. “This has to go right,” I said. “I’m so scared.” I touched the button to go back to public mode.

“Deep breaths” was all Adeyemi said in response.

If the hatch didn’t open for me, then this would all have been a failure. It was that simple. It would mean the Miri had not imprinted on me and I’d never be able to enter the ship at all, let alone get him to go anywhere. But I was nearly there. “Shit,” I whispered. How’s that for realness and authenticity, I thought, imagining the donors, press, and politicians in the observation room laughing. Movement in the suit wasn’t difficult, but I walked slowly anyway.

My family had thrown a party for me the day after the news was made public. Everyone I’d ever known was excited for me: my friends, all the schools I’d been to as a child, my hometown and current neighborhood. Over ten years, two million euros every year.

But not yet. I was twenty meters away now. I held up my hand. The glove had a pea-size slot built into the index finger. I would slip it open to expose the flesh of my finger, and in a quick motion, I was to swipe the door. The DNA of the few skin cells from my finger’s contact would be enough for the imprint. If I were the one for this Miri.

The patterns on his flesh seemed to glow more brightly in my presence. He had definitely been watching me, probably from the moment I’d entered the vacuum chamber room. He was capable of moving. Even now. Young Miris had whips near their backsides that helped them steer. They could also be used for clearing the area around them. Three people who’d gotten too close had been critically injured by this one.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Adeyemi urged.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I snapped, then I sighed. “Sorry.”

“No worries. Take your time.”

I stood there for a full minute. Then when I couldn’t weigh all the possibilities anymore, I touched the button to expose the spot on my finger. I could feel it beginning to burn from the exposure. I swiped and then pressed the button for it to close. I waited. If nothing happened, I’d swipe again.

I didn’t have to. The door opened.

I heard Adeyemi shriek with joy; I heard her assistants clapping and shouting behind her. In the observation room there were probably yells of triumph, fist bumps, dancing, messages sent.

I laughed to myself. Why was I so worried? I thought. It’s all in the DNA.

I went inside.

I launched a month later, leaving my family, friends, and Earth itself behind to explore the cosmos. I remember thinking, What the hell have I done? But my Miri, whom I’d named Chi (because it was the personification of my fate, my guardian spirit), made me understand that I would never be alone again. From the moment I stepped through Chi’s door, the moment he inspected every aspect of me and deemed me worthy, I felt like so much more.

Miri ships were the most revolutionary thing human beings had ever created. They would make us an interstellar species. They were powerful, even sentient creatures, and they were our freedom . . . in a way. Each one imprinted on only one human being, if Kármán could find that one.

My first few weeks traveling were strange. I spent much of it figuring out what Chi would be, for it was mainly up to me and him. By the end of the year, he was the size of three houses. His breathing rooms were a jungle of plants. The huge dome-like space was where I spent most of my time, a world of grasses, trees, and benches.

His healing room was the size of a closet, and he grew plants that treated whatever was bothering me. There were a variety of tiny leaves for my cramps, stomachaches, or anxiety; there were juicy stalks whose sap cured rashes; there was even some powdery stuff that grew on the wall that cured a fever I had.

And then there was what I called “the gaze box.” This was a sphere big enough for me to fit in where I could get a 360-degree view. I wondered if it was supposed to be an eye-stalk that Chi decided to make into a sort of lookout point.

I hadn’t laid eyes on a fellow human since launch day. All I knew about each of the others were their names, ages, nationalities, places of birth. Now here we were at year five, and I’d finally get to meet them.

Jamal was a fifty-five-year-old man, born and raised in London, England.

Ravi was a thirty-year-old man, born in Mumbai, India, raised in Dublin, Ireland.

Kisha was a forty-one-year-old woman, from New York, United States.

Anthony was a twenty-five-year-old man, from Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago.

Gracious was a thirty-year-old woman, born and raised in Douala, Cameroon.

Dawud was a sixty-two-year-old man, born and raised in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

We weren’t allowed to speak to each other. Contact would pollute the research, according to Kármán. There was some truth to this, I guess. If we talked, the longing would have become unbearable.

But Kármán said this one meeting of seven days would be fine. After that, we were to be alone for the rest of the five years before returning to Earth, if we chose to. If any of us broke this rule and traveled together, we’d forfeit the remaining millions we would earn in that time. Always the threat of losing what we were owed. Typical capitalism.

Chi slowed down, and I was glad. It was amazing how he read my mind like this more often than not. The last five years, we’d traveled the solar system. We’d seen Venus, then swung back and traveled to Mars, just coasted in the blackness as Chi grew and developed. I read many books, finally had the chance to master Yoruba and Twi, though I had only the ship’s AI, whom I’d named Mami Data, to speak with. I learned tai chi. I spacewalked onto Chi’s back to help remove a large flake of dead skin that was stuck in one of his vents. I received videos from my family and friends every week.

I went to the dome and sat in the grass, the false sunshine warming my upturned face. Beyond it, I could see the void of space. As usual, it comforted me. My cat walked circles around me before deciding to sprawl out.

“Dock with the six in an hour?” Mami Data asked in its always enthusiastic male voice. “They have seen you and are anxious for your arrival. You are the last to arrive.”

I sighed, massaging my temples. “Have they met each other yet?”

“No. They cannot until you arrive. Their entryways remain shut.”

“Shit.” Once I arrived and the Miris linked up, only then would they each allow others aboard. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Chi was moving before I finished speaking. He was excited for the meeting, too. I got up, bathed, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a red-and-purple Ankara top. I picked a periwinkle grass flower from the gaze box, where they grew copiously.

I crushed and rolled the flower in my hands and then rubbed the oil on my neck. Periwinkle grass yielded the most delicious grains with a single shake of each stalk (which was why it had replaced rice back on Earth decades ago), and its flowers smelled like paradise. I’d had perfume made from the flowers, but I’d used it up in the first year.

I looked at myself in the mirror and decided to apply some thick red eyeliner. I took out my silver septum ring and replaced it with my favorite shiny metallic red one. I went back to the gaze box and watched as we got closer and closer to the rotating (as yet unfinished) ring of Miris. The space for Chi would turn the current C shape into a completed O. Behind the ships loomed Jupiter, large even at this distance. I could see its infamous eye—the Great Red Spot that was a centuries-old great storm—so much smaller than when humans had first discovered it.

“Hi, I’m Tornado Onwubiko,” I said aloud. Five came up and sat on my feet. I spoke again: “Hi, I’m Tornado Onwubiko.” I smiled and chuckled. It felt forced and fake.

From within the gaze box, I watched as we docked and began to rotate with the other ships. Where mine still had its shrimplike shape and glowed with bioluminescent blue on the outside, its windows an intense yellow orange from the artificial light, the others were . . . different. One didn’t glow at all, one glowed far more than the others, and none of them were shaped like shrimp anymore. One looked more like a whale, another was a cube, another was a sphere, one looked like an asteroid, one was a narrow oval, and the weirdest one was flat and long. Different-colored flesh; rough, smooth, jagged surfaces. Our Miris had all started off stock, but now, after five years, they were anything but.

“Incoming call,” Mami Data announced through my comms. “Are you ready?”

“Okay,” I said, not feeling ready at all. “Yeah.”

“Tornado,” the voice said.

“Hi,” I said, my voice way too high-pitched. I paused. He’d pronounced my name with a bit of an Irish accent. I took a guess. “Ravi?”

“Yes. Welcome to the Gathering.”

We both laughed. I paused and then asked something that hadn’t crossed my mind until now. “Does everyone speak—”

“Gaelic? Yes,” he said. Then he started speaking it . . . I think.

“Oh, I meant—”

He was laughing hard, and it was a few seconds before he said, “We all can speak English. Both Dawud and Gracious learned it after launch. Lucky for us all.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“In an hour, we’ll be meeting in Jamal’s Miri. That’s right beside you, so it’ll be easy.”

“And his ship won’t—”

“No. They’re all joined up, exchanging all our information. The connected Miris will function like one big organism until they separate. They are such amazing science.”

“They truly are,” I said. “Do I need to bring anything?”

“Just yourself. See you soon!”

Then he was gone. I went down to the lower hatch; it was solidly aligned and locked to the side of Jamal’s strange, flat ship. I could literally walk from my ship to his without a suit. I went back to my gaze box and stared at all the other ships for the next hour.

My heart was pounding like crazy as I stood at the entryway. It had been a strange hour. Chi kept randomly shuddering, the sound of it a deep rumble. Maybe the shudders were laughter. I could sense his delight, though I could never know the details of it. Five was on the sill of the long window of the gaze box meowing and meowing at what looked like either a cat or a small dog in one of the other Miris.

Someone might open Chi’s other entryway soon. I looked over my shoulder, in the other direction. Whose Miri was that? It would take them a while to get to me if they came through there, which they would, since it was the shortest route. But Chi would have alerted me if anyone had come on board, and Five certainly would go to check them out when she heard unfamiliar footsteps. Mami Data would have said something, too. All the entryways would be open. Our Miris, for one week, would be open to each other, these places that had been each of ours—and ours alone—for five years. Private would temporarily become public.

My hand hovered inches from Chi’s flesh. He vibrated with glee again, and I hesitated.

“Someone has entered the entryway,” Mami Data announced.

I shuddered. “Who?” I asked.

“Kisha Richardson and Gracious Ngo.”

“Where are they now?”

Chi gave another shudder and all the lights suddenly shone brighter.

“In the dome.”

I turned and went there. I quickened my step as I walked down the lush hallway that only Five and I had ever walked down. I dodged tree branches and leapt over the low-growing bush that refused to be trained to grow sideways. When I reached the dome, I paused and took in the sight. Two humans walking through Chi’s grasses, touching Chi’s tree that grew in the center, where I had spent so much time reading books or using my tablet, learning martial arts, gazing beyond the artificial sunshine into space.

One of them was a tall black woman with bright-pink braids wearing wide-legged fuchsia pants and a T-shirt. The second was a black woman wearing an orange summer dress, a fuzzy sweater, and black boots. The one with the pink braids was doing a twirl and laughing hard as the other bent down to pet Five. “Aren’t you the sweetest,” she was saying. “Look at you.” She scratched behind Five’s ears, and Five leaned against her as if she’d known her all her life. Then the woman petting Five began to sing a song to my cat about how beautiful she was. She had a really good voice.

“This is quite nice!” the one with the pink braids said, still twirling.

“Um . . . hi!” I said, stepping into view.

“Tornado!” the one with the pink braids said as I walked toward them. “I’m Kisha, and this is Gracious.”

Kisha was from New York and still somehow acted like it, straightforward and confident. Gracious was from Cameroon, and I considered testing my French with her but then decided against it. After the initial pleasantries, we fell into an awkward silence for several moments.

“Heart rate above 140,” Mami Data announced. “Sit down and take ten deep, mindful breaths.”

The three of us laughed. Gracious held out a hand. “I’ve known of you for years, but . . .”

I took her hand, and she yanked me into a hug. I hated it and wanted to push her away. But I kind of liked it, too, so I didn’t. Then Kisha was hugging me, and we were laughing, and then we were crying. Kisha smelled like cooking oil and soap, and Gracious smelled like curry. I pushed my face into Kisha’s pink braids and inhaled. Gracious squeezed the both of us tightly, and we laugh-cried some more. “I’m a trans woman in space hugging my beautiful black sisters in a living ship! I don’t even care how weird this is,” Gracious announced.

We finally let go of each other. “So what kind of name is Tornado?” Kisha asked. She giggled. “That can’t be your real name. Tornado. It’s too cool.”

I frowned and took a step back, the smile on my face petrifying. Ah, that question, how I hated answering it. Gracious looked uncomfortable. Suddenly, Kisha sneezed hard and then sneezed again. “Shit,” she said, bringing a handkerchief from her pocket and rubbing her nose. “Allergies. All this grass, I guess.”

“Sorry. Yeah, this place is probably full of pollen. We should probably get going,” I said. “This way.” I led them to the entryway of Jamal’s ship. I touched the thick door; Chi shuddered and the door slid open to reveal another door that was clearly a different flesh, being a light brown. “Will it respond to me if I touch it?”

“Yours did,” Kisha said. “Your ship’s door looked so different, man. So glowy.”

“Chi is all about the bioluminescence,” I said.

“I kinda like it,” Kisha said.

“Mine likes to change his surface,” Gracious said. “One minute, it’ll look all rough; then I’ll look outside and it’ll be smooth as marble. Like an octopus.”

“So cool,” I said, touching the door. It slid open, slowly—not from right to left but from top to bottom.

“They may be connected, but every Miri is their own person,” Kisha said as we walked through.

Jamal’s ship was eerie, and I was sure the three of us felt the same chills. He’d somehow built a stone path that led all the way through his long, flat ship. There were maple and oak trees, a gazebo in the center, and a virtual screen that showed London Bridge. Gray and brown-white pigeons cooed, flew, and strutted about. The ceiling was transparent, but the ship’s lens made it look like Earth’s evening-blue sky.

“Damn, so much like . . . home,” Kisha said as we slowly walked up the path. “Doesn’t feel like a ship at all.”

“Yeah,” I said. The place filled me with such deep yearning for Earth that I wanted to leave. Instead, I focused on the four people standing in the gazebo. Jamal, Ravi, Dawud, and Anthony. Two black men, one Indian man, and one Arab man. When we approached, no one said anything and I was glad. Sometimes, talking ruins the moment. I’d gone over the other names and read their bios so many times that I’d memorized everyone in words. To put the words to the person was like having the final pieces of a thousand-piece puzzle fall together.

Ravi was short and plump, with a thick braid so long that it nearly reached the ground. He wore a beaten-up but clean purple T-shirt and patched-up, tight black pants that may have fit him better five years ago. Dawud wore a blue business suit. His gray-white hair was perfectly parted to the side, and even from where I stood, I could smell his scented oil—spicy, warm, smoky. Jamal looked like he’d been in London yesterday, which went well with the way his ship had grown. And Anthony . . . now he didn’t look the way I’d imagined.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, breaking our weird silence.

“Did you do those . . . to yourself?” I blurted.

He scowled at me and rolled his eyes. He wore jeans and a green T-shirt that showed his arms, which were covered with inky birds, plants, and planets. The tattoos looked new and bright even on his dark-brown skin. His bio said he was “a college dropout” born and raised in rural Trinidad and that he’d been studying to become a priest when he was chosen. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d cover himself in tattoos after five years in space.

“Why don’t we do some introductions,” Dawud said. “Then let’s tour each other’s Miris.”

By the time I got back to Chi to get some sleep, my head was buzzing. We were all on different sleep schedules, but we’d agreed to try and stay on the same one while together. For me, this meant that I wouldn’t feel like going to bed for another twelve hours, but that was all right. I needed the time alone. The hours with them had been overwhelming. We all probably wanted space.

We’d first moved through Jamal’s ship, which was so Earthlike. He’d been happy to show us around and explain every tree choice. He also told us all about the stones he’d laid in his path; the stones were actually salt deposits produced by his ship after it took in some interstellar dust they’d encountered near Mars. It took him months to build the gazebo from wood he’d brought from Earth.

Then we stepped onto Ravi’s ship, which was shaped like an asteroid. It was vaguely spherical, the outside like jagged stone. Inside was just as fascinating. Ravi slept on a stonelike bed, surrounded by a stonelike couch, table, and his wide comms screen embedded in the stonelike wall. I say “stonelike” because though it mimicked stone, it was actually the dark-purplish flesh of his ship. This space was built inside a cliff that overlooked the huge dome that was the ship. And this wasn’t even the weird part! The weird part was that most of Ravi’s ship was a series of small caves with coconut palms growing out of some of the flatter regions. Inside five of those caves lived giant coconut crabs! Ravi had found them hitchhiking in the crown of one of the palm trees imported onto his ship. All of them had lived and all of them had definitely grown . . . a lot.

“Coconut crabs live sixty years,” he said proudly. They were enormous! Each was about four feet in diameter. They were friendly, but not exactly social. You could touch them; they didn’t respond to your touch, but they didn’t attack you, either. Ravi spoke of them like they were the sweetest, most sacred beings in the universe. We exited his ship through its breathing room on the lower deck.

That brought us to Dawud’s Miri. It was shaped like a sleek cube. How he had convinced his Miri to cube itself was beyond me. He claimed that he’d read books to his Miri about the stability and permanence of cubes and Plato’s ideas about cubes, and gradually, as his Miri adjusted and reflected on Dawud’s teachings, it took this shape.

Although purely organic like the others, Dawud’s ship was the most inorganic-looking of all the Miris. The ship had developed veins that looked like wires, circuitry, buttons, or screens. Things pulsed blue and had a rigid logic that was as predictable and refreshing as it was sterile. His ship had grown in a way that meant it sectioned itself into three separate levels inside, and each level had shiny, hard, flat floors. Dawud was an engineer, so he’d made sure to bring his own necessary mechanical parts and robots, many of which he’d programmed to keep his ship spotless. His ship smelled like incense and the scented oil he liked to wear, which he called “Oud Malaki.”

“I wish my colleagues could see what I have built here,” he said. “They would be amazed. And I can teach them so much.”

Despite how much Anthony had annoyed me initially, his ship made me smile. Somehow, it had shifted from its original shrimp shape to that of a whale. Not that much of a stretch compared to a cube, asteroid, or whatever long, flat thing Jamal’s was inspired by. We walked down an uneven, soft path and came into what I thought of as the “belly of the whale.” A vast open area that you couldn’t see the end of from where we all stood. I fell instantly in love with this place. It was bright with artificial light from what looked like a sun way up on the ship’s ceiling. And across the entire space was periwinkle grass as far as the eye could see. So much of it that I gasped. Green green green!

“You grew all this?” I asked, unable to hide my delight. A strong wind blew across the field, and above there were actual clouds. His ship had developed a weather system!

“Of course,” he said. “I grew up on a periwinkle grass farm in Trinidad; my parents imported it from Nigeria. So I knew how to—”

Suddenly Kisha was sneezing and sneezing and sneezing. Her eyes began swelling up and growing red. Then she started wheezing. Anthony grabbed her and was rushing back to the entryway to Dawud’s ship before any of us could process what was happening. We ran after them.

Once on Dawud’s ship, Anthony ran with her a ways in, and then they both collapsed on the shiny floor. Kisha was still wheezing, but not as badly. “I don’t . . . know what . . . happened,” she sputtered.

“Just breathe,” Dawud said.

She sneezed a few more times, and Dawud came back with a cup of water and a handkerchief. She drank some, wiped her face, and then blew and blew her nose. “Fuck,” she said.

“It’s rare, but some people are allergic to the pollen,” Anthony finally said.

“I’ve heard of that,” Gracious said. “The grass can cause . . . I think it’s called ‘pollen tsunamis’? It’s the downside to periwinkle grass.”

“True, but not on a ship,” Jamal said. “You need acres and acres of it to get those.”

“Well, I’m allergic to everything,” Kisha said, blowing her nose again. “Peanuts, soy, gluten, chocolate, and all kinds of pollen.”

“Sorry,” Anthony said. “It’s been so long that I didn’t consider—”

“You should have said something before we all went in there,” she said.

“Agreed,” Gracious said. “It’s always been my issue with periwinkle grass. And it’s all over West Africa. People are getting sick.”

Anthony scoffed, putting his arms across his chest.

“That’s not very fair,” Jamal snapped. “Just be glad he knew to get you out of there.”

“Plus, it’s rare,” Anthony said quietly.

“I’d have figured out how to save myself, anyway,” Kisha muttered.

“You were okay on my ship,” I said. “Kinda.”

“You have that nasty GMO grass on your ship, too?”

“Some,” I said, stung. “It’s not ‘nasty.’” She didn’t need to know that I’d used a periwinkle flower as perfume.

“That’s why I was sneezing. Got it. Won’t be spending time in either of your ships.”

After that, we decided to take a break from each other. I wanted to get away from Kisha and Gracious both. I liked the periwinkle grass. It had its issues, but it made Nigeria clean again; it freed it of its dependency on oil, so I wasn’t complaining. We still had Gracious’s, Kisha’s, and my ship to walk through, but that could wait.

I lay in my bed looking up at the stars and hearing everyone’s voices in my head. Kisha’s entitled irritation—who was she to judge anyone’s Miri? Gracious’s singing—she sang whenever and whatever she could. It must have been how she kept herself company, since she didn’t have any pets. Dawud’s obsessing with machinery—he was so obsessed that he’d forced his ship to be like one. Jamal’s soothing, levelheaded, calculating attitude that made everything normal and calm.

But what got under my skin most was Anthony’s ship. I lay there, thinking and thinking about it. I had my grasses and trees and bushes, and even a small patch of periwinkle grass in my gaze box, but I didn’t have a gigantic open field of it. With its tough, beautiful, sweet-smelling flowers. With the wind blowing across it. I could still hear the sound of it, a sound that said, “Everything is going to be great.” For a few hours, I tried to sleep. When I couldn’t, I considered going to the healing room and seeing if Chi had grown any sleep-aid leaves. He usually knew when I needed them. Instead, I just gave up. I dressed and went to Anthony’s ship.

The entryways were all open, and we’d all told our AIs to let us roam without alerting each other. I put on gym shoes because the way to Anthony’s was a long way from my ship. The shortest way was through Kisha’s ship, then Gracious’s. Kisha’s ship was oval shaped and reminded me a bit of Jamal’s in its urbanness. It didn’t have stone paths, but it had soft, fleshy pink paths flanked by trees and bushes. I could see an area that had grown into a sort of house, and in it I could hear Kisha talking to her AI, though I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I also heard the high-pitched bark of dogs. Maybe one of these dogs was who Five had been meowing at. Thankfully, both her AI and dogs were focused on Kisha, so I was able to sneak by without being seen or heard and found the entryway to Gracious’s ship pretty easily.

Her ship was a giant sphere with soft bronze flesh. When it opened, I was met with the curious eyes of two very large pointy-eared cats with rich, luxurious gray fur. “Uh, hi,” I said, grinning, as I slipped past them. They followed me up the path, which lit up with each of my steps. The path led through a narrow corridor that split into two. I chose the one that grew narrower (the cats decided to go the other way) and was rewarded ten minutes later with the entryway to Anthony’s ship. More than likely, if I had followed the cats, I’d have run into Gracious as I entered the main part of her ship.

I stepped directly into Anthony’s periwinkle field. I’ll bet Gracious hates how close it is, I thought. More than likely, this was what most of Anthony’s ship looked like—field upon field of periwinkle grass. I looked around and noted that he was nowhere nearby. There was a spiral staircase about a half mile away that led to a structure growing from the ship’s flesh. Anthony’s “home.” Funny how we’d all built one, even though the entire ships were our homes.

There was a light on in one of the windows, so I took the chance to walk out into the field. It was like being in daylight, the wind blowing all around me, the shhhhhh of the grass so refreshing and mysterious. I walked far out and then lay in the grass. It was high all around me, and the flowers smelled so good. I sighed, shutting my eyes, listening. I drifted in the wind. Then I drifted into a gentle sleep.

Anthony was standing over me when I opened my eyes. “Oh!” I said, sitting up. “S-sorry! I was just . . . I dunno.” I laughed sheepishly.

“Saw you when you came in,” he said. He sat down beside me. “I figured I’d leave you be. Then I looked out my window two hours later, and I got a little scared. Thought maybe you passed out like Kisha.”

But I wasn’t listening. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and all I saw was lean muscle and flowers and birds and planets. In the center of his chest, he’d inked what looked like a complicated compass. He chuckled to himself and shook his head.

He squinted at me, skeptical. “What kind of name is Tornado, anyway?”

I rolled my eyes. “Must you all keep asking that?”

“I know a bunch of Nigerians in Trinidad; that’s not a typical Naija name.”

“I’m out here just out of reach of Jupiter,” I said. “What makes you think I’m typical?”

“Point taken.”

“Tornado is . . . is just my name, though.” I looked away.

We sat for a bit. Ah, how I loved the feel of the wind. Then I spotted the huge black dog running at us. I was on my feet and fleeing before I knew I was doing it. “Yaaaah!” I screamed. After some strides I looked back. The dog ran right past Anthony.

“Stop!” Anthony yelled. But who would stop when a huge black dog was chasing you? “Tornado! He won’t hurt you! Stop!” he shouted. “He’s playing!”

The dog caught up and then shot past me, running in a half circle to come back. I slowed down. Confused. Then understanding. Then I felt a little pissed. More at myself than at Anthony, though. “Fuck!” I screamed, out of breath as Anthony came jogging up to me, laughing so hard he could barely breathe. Panting gleefully, the dog trotted around me, bowed down, and then shot past me. The damn thing wanted me to run some more.

“His name’s Roti. Just tell him to stop,” Anthony managed before going into more gales of laughter.

“Roti! Stop!” I shouted, and immediately Roti stopped romping. He trotted to me and pushed his soft head against my shaky hand. “Goddamn it,” I breathed, petting him. He was cute.

“Sorry about that,” Anthony said. “You’re fast!”

I cut my eyes at him, bending down to pet the dog some more. He was sweet, now that he didn’t look like a monster coming to take off my leg.

The next agreed “evening,” we all had dinner after touring Kisha’s, Gracious’s, and then my ship. After all everyone had seen, no one was that impressed with my ship. I was okay with this—less to explain. My Miri looked the most like what it had looked like when we left Earth. I liked the shrimp look. Five was a hit with everyone, though, especially Gracious. We had dinner on Kisha’s ship because she bragged so much about having a table that could fit everyone.

Anthony cooked a Trini feast of callaloo, which he’d grown plenty of, with dumplings made from periwinkle grass flour. Dawud brought a bottle of wine he’d made from grapes grown in what he called his “blocked vineyard,” which was, of course, shaped like a cube. And I baked a flourless yellow cake. Kisha made it a point to announce that she could not eat the dumplings or my cake.

As we ate, we shared stories of the last five years. Stories of discovery, ingenuity, awe, and of course loneliness.

“The first week, I was so full of regret,” Dawud said. “I’m not going to see my daughters for ten years. I’m in my sixties; it is a different thing for me than for you all. And my God, I didn’t realize how attached I was to the Earth until that moment after takeoff when everything settled and Kármán mission control stopped talking to me for a bit.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d kill myself,” Jamal said with a laugh. “I remember playing very loud rap music and looking through photos my boyfriend took just before we left.”

Dawud nodded. “What do you all think, now that we are halfway through and have seen what it is like? Was it worth it? Twenty million for ten years of your life?”

No one responded immediately. I didn’t know what I’d say or even how I felt.

“Definitely,” Kisha said. “I’ve seen things I never could have imagined, in a state of being that didn’t exist until now.”

“Depends on the day for me,” Anthony said. “Sometimes, I want to just go home; other times I feel like this epic explorer and I love what I see. I love Space Mango.” He laughed. “That’s my ship’s name. She’s family to me now. But it’s complicated.”

Gracious nodded and shrugged. “I made my decision, and I don’t look back.”

“I don’t know,” Jamal said. “I miss my boyfriend, my family. But they all agreed that I should go. I would make this huge mark for black people, for all of them, I’ll be able to give back . . . but damn, it’s hard. It’s looooong.”

“You ever think of just turning your Miri around and going back?” I asked him.

“And be a failure? And forfeit millions for my family? Not an option. I’d never live that down. I’ve gone too far now.”

We all agreed. We all had.

“I just want my full twenty million, with which I will do whatever I want,” Ravi said. “And that won’t include further space travel.”

“You don’t want to travel more on your Miri?” Kisha asked.

“And see what?” Ravi said. “No. I will bring my crabs home and live my life rich with my family. That’s all I need.”

“I think I want to see more,” Kisha said.

“Me too,” Gracious said, grinning at her. They slapped and grasped hands.

I didn’t feel like answering the question, and I was glad when no one noticed that I hadn’t. My first days had been hellish, my most painful memories aggressively harassing me like ghosts. And my time alone had been a journey of breaking and then healing . . . all alone.

For the next three days, we just lived together. It was glorious. Our pets roamed from one ship to the next. Well, Ravi’s crabs did not, but the cats and dogs and even a few birds did . . . though they always returned to their home ships. The Miris allowed it, connected as they were. We slept in and spent time in each other’s ships as if they were our own. It was a really nice bit of normality.

I wondered briefly if we’d be able to go back to our solitary lives when the seven days were up. Even our Miris were happy with the company. Chi bellowed and rumbled often, and the other ships did, too. There was even an entire day when the ships were in deep conversation, each rumbling intermittently, Chi and Space Mango flashing their bioluminescent lights at each other. But no, we’d be fine. We’d left behind everything we’d ever known on Earth after being there all our lives; we’d also be able to leave behind a few days of companionship with our people (for that’s what we were, a People) when the time came.

Then came day five, when one of Ravi’s beloved crabs went missing. We’d come to know his crabs well. All of us were enamored of the strange creatures. At first, they were terrifying to look at—gigantic crabs with thick claws and rough-and-tough dark-reddish-brown shells, beady eyes, and darting antennae. Then you started to understand what Ravi saw in the creatures. All you had to do was spend a little time around them. They had a peaceful vibe that was hard to explain. You just felt good in their presence—happy, kind, peaceful. I took a book with me one day to go and sit in front of one of the caves while I read. When I got there, I found Kisha meditating in front of another cave and Gracious singing in another on the other side of Ravi’s ship.

I was in Dawud’s ship playing a game of warri with him when Ravi came rushing up to us.

“One of my crabs is missing! Have you seen her?” he shouted.

“You sure?” I asked. “Maybe you just—”

“I’m positive! They never go far from their caves and Chandra is not there! She doesn’t answer to her name, but I know she knows it. You haven’t seen her, Dawud?”

“Picasso,” Dawud called to his AI. “Have you seen any of Ravi’s crabs walk through either of your entryways?”

“No,” Picasso said. “Only Tornado, Anthony, and Dawud have walked through today.”

Ravi frowned. “I didn’t think to check with my AI.” He turned and ran back to his ship, still frowning. A minute later, we saw him go running past us in a rage.

“Ravi! What’s going on?” I shouted. Dawud and I got to our feet.

“Anthony!” he growled. “I’m going to kill him!”

We ran after him, but Ravi was faster, fueled by fury. We stepped into Anthony’s ship just in time to see him rushing through the periwinkle grass field toward the staircase that led to Anthony’s home.

“Ravi!” I called.

“You guys . . . slow . . . down!” Dawud said from far behind me, huffing and puffing.

Ravi ran the entire way, which had to be nearly a mile. And he started right up the stairs. I wasn’t far behind, but I was getting winded, too. Plus, the actual wind was blowing about, making the going harder. I was at the bottom of the stairs when Ravi reached the top. “Anthony!” he shouted.

“What are you doing?” I heard Anthony ask from inside. Ravi rushed in, and I ran up the stairs. I paused a moment; Dawud was only halfway across the field. “Shit,” I hissed, taking the steps two at a time. I have three brothers. Each is an engineer who works at a water treatment plant, and each loves to fight—each other and other people. They’re tall and athletic and they love boxing, weight lifting, and wrestling. I’ve been at plenty of their brawls, and trying to break up their fights was a great way to get hurt.

I reached the top of the stairs, which happened to be the kitchen. Which happened to be right where Ravi could see the empty shells of his beloved Chandra. “Ooooh shit,” I said again. “Ooooh noooooo.”

“I knew it!” Ravi screamed, tears in his eyes.

And there was Anthony standing in the doorway to the rest of his home. His hands up. “I’m so sorry. C-c-crab and callaloo. I just missed it so much!”

Ravi launched himself at Anthony and down they went, punching and rolling and growling. “Stop it!” I screamed. The two of them slammed against the wall. Anthony was on top of Ravi. It was not an even match. Ravi was plump but small, whereas Anthony was lean yet muscular and was someone who clearly had fought before. He held Ravi down as Ravi tried to scratch and punch him.

“Kill you! Barbarian! Fuck!” Ravi screeched. He spat in Anthony’s face, and I saw Anthony get a look on his face that I’d seen before.

“Anthony!” I screamed. “Don’t hurt him!” There was a pitcher of water on the counter, beside a pot full of probably crab and callaloo. I grabbed the pitcher and threw water on them. Both men seemed to snap out of it. Anthony let go of Ravi and jumped back. I rushed forward and got in front of Ravi before he could go at Anthony again. “Ravi,” I said into his face. “Stop!” Then I said, “I’m sorry.” I threw my arms around him. He was tense as a rail, but then he relaxed, embracing me as he wept. I turned him slightly to the right, away from the pot of callaloo.

“They’re my people. Kinder than anyone,” he said into my shoulder. “Chandra didn’t deserve . . .” He wheezed and sobbed.

I glanced angrily at Anthony. “What is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t think he’d miss one,” he whispered.

“Seriously?” I asked, frowning. Not for the first time, I wondered just how much the five years alone had eroded our social skills.

Dawud finally came in, but by then it was all over. Ravi had a bloody nose; Anthony looked guilty and flustered. Dawud looked at the empty shells, and I saw a smirk of amusement spread on his face. I gave him a glare and shook my head, and he quickly dropped the smirk. I hugged Ravi closer to me.

Later, when Ravi had retreated with Dawud to his ship, I stayed back to talk to Anthony. “What in God’s name were you thinking?”

He shrugged. “That I wouldn’t have the chance to eat crab and callaloo for the next five years.”

I paused and then just asked what I was dying to know. “How was it?”

“Oh man, best I ever had,” he said. “You, uh . . . you want to try some?”

“No,” I said. But I was lying.

Two more days to go. Unsurprisingly, Ravi refused to speak to Anthony. The rest of us had gotten together with him to honor Chandra. He’d projected an image of her on the ceiling above all the caves as he played music he claimed the crabs loved. After that, though he wouldn’t talk to Anthony, he would at least attend the lunches and dinners we had each day. Gracious and Kisha seemed to have become close. They were always together, sometimes knitting, singing, debating the state of the Earth, dreaming of the universe. Dawud gave us an insane light show in his ship, and it included a dragon that looked like it was swooping down on us. Jamal nearly had a panic attack. “I hate dragons!” he’d shouted from under the table.

And then there was Anthony and me. We liked spending time on each other’s ships. I spent an entire night in his field. We found his dog Roti and my cat Five stargazing in my gaze box. I didn’t know cats and dogs could be friends, but those two were inseparable. Anthony began hanging out in my gaze box; he loved the view. On day six, I was standing with him in the gaze box when he asked me again, “Why do they call you Tornado?”

I groaned. “Can’t we just have a nice two days? No drama? No memories? Let’s just be here, at Jupiter’s doorstep.”

I knew he’d insist again. Over the week, I’d come to understand a bit about Anthony. He was deeply curious, and he was not one to hold it back.

“Please just tell me,” he said. He motioned ahead, through the tough, clear flesh of my ship to the mysterious planet. “Or if you don’t want to tell me, tell Jupiter.”

I groaned again and then sighed, resigned. “Fine. I guess it’s okay to tell a goddess. She won’t judge me by the usual standards, and she’s riddled with tornadoes and storms.” I took a deep breath, sitting on the periwinkle grass. I dropped my head into my hands as Anthony sat in front of me. I looked at him, past him, at Jupiter. “Okay, Jupiter, listen up,” I said. “So . . . my parents were both mechanical engineers. They helped build traffic robots and drones. That drone Anthony likes to play with in the periwinkle grass field was probably designed by them. My parents are so cool. I have three older brothers, and my parents expected them to protect me, but mainly they let us all do whatever we wanted. We were good children, and we respected the hell out of them. My childhood was upper middle class by Nigerian standards. It was good, happy, kind of rosy . . . except for that one night when I got my name.

“We were visiting my mother’s ancestral lands in southeast Nigeria, Imo State. Much of that area has been developed, but not all of it. My mother’s village, to this day, is still farmland. It’s beautiful. I love going there. We have a nice house surrounded by yam farms and bush. You can see the stars so clearly at night. The air is so fresh. The food you buy in the market is locally grown. Even the chicken is unaltered; though the meat is tough and so lean that a drumstick is barely a snack, the meat tastes wonderfully flavorful. No GMOs anywhere; the people refuse to buy it even when corporations try to sell it for cheap. I’m at peace and happy when I’m there.” I paused and took a deep breath. Anthony was hanging on my words and maybe Jupiter was, too. Earth tales had to have been hard for her to come by.

“I was ten years old. We’d arrived two days before. My brothers, who were in their late teens, were downstairs, already surrounded by local girls fawning over them as if they were kings. My parents had settled into their rooms after being visited by relatives and friends and handing out the gifts they brought. I was on my cell phone watching dance videos and imitating the moves. The sun was going down, and I could hear the bats who lived in the roof leaving to start their night’s forage.

“Suddenly, I heard commotion downstairs. The sound of girls shrieking, running. Lots of voices. Deep voices. Men. Armed robbers had stormed our home. Word must have gotten around, which we expected. But our hired security was nowhere to be found! I ran from my bedroom and looked down over the railing and saw the robbers. There were six of them, and they all had guns. I rushed to my window and looked outside, where I saw two men running around the house. These men were there for my parents. They would come upstairs soon.

“Anthony, to this day, I don’t know what came over me.” I rubbed my face, seeing it all so clearly in my mind’s eye. Ah, this memory never faded. It was never far. It was always on my shoulders. Even out here in space. There was no running from it. I’d realized this in that first year on Chi, when the nightmares flared up to plague me even after I’d left the entire planet behind.

“I don’t know what came over me, Anthony. You have to understand that.”

He nodded. “I do.”

“My father kept two guns in my bedroom closet. He wanted them close, but not too close. I waited. I waited for my father to come rushing in. But instead, I heard the robbers clamoring up the stairs. I hid under my bed just as someone peeked into my room. As expected, they were there for my parents. I could hear the men shouting and making demands. This is when I felt myself leave my body. I hovered just above myself as I watched myself act.

“My eyes were clear. My face was blank, relaxed. I was unafraid. Because I knew what I was going to do. It was like I’d dropped into something, and from that place, I could do no wrong. I knew all that would happen before it did happen. I was in full control. I had no doubts. There would be no missteps. I moved to the closet where my father kept the guns. He’d shown us all how to load and shoot them. Yes, even me, the only girl. And I’d liked the way it felt to shoot. The noise didn’t bother me. And my aim was remarkably good. ‘It worries me,’ my father had said when he first taught me. And he’d said it again the next time he took us all to the gun range. He didn’t say it the third or any of the times after that. It was just normal by then. My brothers thought it was hilarious. My mother had no opinion on the matter because she hated guns.

“These men, they brought my parents outside to make a show of it all in front of the village. They were a big, powerful gang terrorizing the area, and they were showing everyone that they could target and extort whomever they wanted. They even said as much as they shoved my parents around, and people came out to watch in horror.

“By this time, all of the robbers were out in plain sight in front of the house. Meanwhile, I’d jumped down from my bedroom window and was hiding in the bushes.”

I paused, sighing, again. Anthony pressed a warm palm to my thigh. “Continue, dear. Jupiter is listening. So am I.”

I looked him dead in the eye, speaking to him, not the planet. “I shot the man holding my mother first. I was close, and he was perfectly positioned. Then I shot the one holding my father. My parents were running. The robbers started shooting in my direction, but I was already gone from where I’d been. I shot the man who’d let go of my brother to try and shoot where I’d been seconds ago. I . . . I shot all of them, all six men. As I ran from bush to bush. To save my family. I made every bullet I fired find its target. I was shooting to kill. My mind was clear, yet simultaneously clouded with fear and chaos. Three of those men died.

“When it was all said and done, the police arrived and took their report. My father had to insist three times—at our house, at the police station, and to reporters—that it was me who saved the family, a ten-year-old girl.

“When we were finally back home and alone in the house, we were all stunned, shell-shocked. Later that night, my father took me outside for a walk. It’s funny—neither of us was afraid to be outside, even after that. People peeked out of windows and doorways, but they left us alone to walk.

“‘Are you all right, daughter?’ my father asked.

“‘No,’ I said. He nodded and we walked in silence for a while longer.

“‘You are amazing. You saved your family. You are chief. I could not be prouder of you. At ten years old, you have amazed me more than a child usually amazes his parents in ten decades!’ He took me by the shoulders. ‘You were our tornado tonight. Beautiful, swift, lethal, a force of nature.’ He hugged me. ‘Thank you, daughter. Thank you.’

“Ever since, I’ve been Tornado. First, my dad started calling me that. Then my mother. Then my brothers. Then the entire village. Then the media, after my father spoke the name further into existence in a perfect pull quote: ‘It got dark here because our Tornado had arrived to save us. I am the proudest father on Earth.’”

I finally stopped talking, the feeling of shame falling on me yet again. There was no escaping it. I’d killed three men, shot six. When I was ten years old.

“That’s . . . not what I was expecting,” Anthony said.

“No one does. That’s why I hate telling it.”

“But you saved your family.”

I only shook my head. It didn’t help.

“Come here,” he said, and pulled me into a hug. “Tornado, embrace your name. Look at the giant planet outside. Look at this creature who loves you for you. Everything a Miri becomes is a reflection of how it views itself and you. Look at the beautiful place this has become. That’s why I love coming here. That’s why Roti enjoys it here.” He smiled. “With your cat. What is that all about?”

We both laughed.

“I have no idea,” I said, wiping my tears. After a moment, I said, “Ah, it’s so strange. There is nothing else in my life like that. That dark. I’ve had various jobs, gotten to travel, partied at each of my brother’s weddings, and I know my parents love me, even though I never went to university, as it was expected in my family—”

“Yet when you got a chance to come out here and leave it all behind, you took it,” he said.

I nodded.

“Well, I’m glad. Because how else would I have come to know you?”

He didn’t kiss me then. He did later, after the seven of us had met for an awkward and sad dinner where we’d all admitted we didn’t want to part ways. Gracious and Kisha had even broken the news that they were deciding to forfeit the rest of their money to travel together the next five years. “Maybe more,” Kisha added.

“After a stop on Earth first,” Gracious said. “We can come and go. Kármán will still get more research from what we do and where we go, and they’ll save ten million euros on each of us.”

We were all happy for them, despite our overall sadness. Ravi still would not speak to Anthony, though he ate several bowls of the corn soup and dumplings Anthony had made. Afterward, we all parted ways, knowing that we’d see each other for only one more day. I went with Anthony to his ship, where we walked into his field of periwinkle grass and exchanged a kiss. It was sweet, our connection like a drink of pure, cool water. It had been so long. He’d grasped and gently squeezed my arms as he kissed me, and I just melted.

Anthony and I made love three times out there in his field.

When we finished, I touched the planet on his chest and said, “I want one of these.”

He grinned. “I know what I want to ink you with. It’s perfect.” He ran off to get his tools. When he came back, he told me, and I was delighted by the idea. I told him to put it on my left shoulder, where I could see it and where it could be seen. It was about seven centimeters in diameter. A spiral. It meant “journey” in nsibidi, a southeastern Nigerian writing script that my brother had actually taken a class on in university. I was shocked that Anthony knew of it.

“A Nigerian lady taught me how to do tattoos, and she told me about it,” he said.

It didn’t take long and it didn’t hurt much. “It’s also like a tornado. Embrace your name,” he said as he drew it on me. When he finished, he put a leaf over it from a neem tree he had growing near his home. Afterward, we went to his home to get something to eat and drink, and then we made love again. It all felt so urgent. Tomorrow was the last day. He was gentle, strong, hungry, and refreshing. He was good. We were good. After the fourth time, I told him that I wanted to return to my ship for a little while. He came with me, and I was glad. And there, we slept for hours, Five sleeping on the bed with us, Roti on the floor at Anthony’s side. I dreamed of nothing and maybe everything. I remembered none of it.

When I awoke, Anthony and Roti were gone. I smiled and sprawled out on my bed, which still smelled like him. Five came into my room and meowed. I got up to get her something to eat. As I walked to my kitchen area, I remembered it was the last day. I felt a shiver go up my spine, but that was it. I kept moving.

We met for breakfast on Jamal’s ship. The table in his gazebo was loaded with croissants and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Gracious and Kisha were sitting beside each other, and for the first time I wondered if they might be more than friends. Gracious had a husband and so did Kisha. But they looked so happy and sat so close. They ate and drank, but no one else did.

“In five years, Dubai won’t be shit compared to all that I will build on my ship,” Dawud said. “What’s the point, though? I’m sixty-two years old. All they will expect me to do is retire.” He grabbed a croissant and looked at it. “In five years, maybe I’ll be dead.”

“Stop,” Ravi snapped. “If any of us cared that much about death, we wouldn’t be here. Including you.”

“Eh, maybe. Maybe back when I left,” he said. “I feel different now. And I like you guys.”

We all smiled. “We like you, too,” I said.

“Yeah,” Anthony said. “Your cube is crazy amazing.”

Everyone agreed.

“At the same time,” Dawud added, “I’m ready to be gone.”

We were all quiet at this. It was bizarre, but I also understood. Maybe it was from living on my ship for years, all alone except for my cat Five and Mami Data. Acclimating and even loving the solitude, even though I hated it sometimes, even though I was lonely and missed my family.

“We will never be ‘normal’ again,” Anthony said. He took a croissant and bit into it.

Jamal said nothing the entire breakfast. We all noticed it. He would nod and smile a bit here and there, but he said nothing.

“You and Anthony,” Kisha said, grinning at me. “We see your new . . . tattoo, girl.”

I immediately felt hot in the face, and Anthony grabbed his glass of orange juice and drank.

“I saw that coming from a mile away,” Dawud said.

“I’d think you had better taste, Tornado,” Ravi muttered.

We decided to meet back up right before our ships disconnected and headed our separate ways. Anthony and I made love one more time and then just slowly walked his field of grass in silence, enjoying each other’s company, Roti and Five behind us playing in the grass. We were still walking when Gracious came running onto the field.

Anthony and I didn’t say goodbye. We kissed, hugged, and that was it, promising to meet each other on Earth in five years. I had his address, he had mine. Though neither of us would need it. We would be famous. Kármán would make sure we found each other for media moments, no doubt. I started crying as I hugged Kisha and Gracious. By the time I hugged Ravi, I could barely stand. Dawud hugged me and gave me a warm kiss on the cheek.

He took the moment to give each of us small devices he’d built even before we’d met up. Palm-size cubes that changed colors: green for Anthony, pink for Kisha, orange for Gracious, blue for Dawud, purple for Ravi, and red for me. Whatever color the cube was meant that that person had touched their cube; it meant they were thinking of you. It would communicate with the other cubes as long as we stayed in the solar system. “I couldn’t figure out how to extend it beyond that,” Dawud said. “Maybe someday I will.”

“Thank you,” I said, hugging him.

Jamal’s cube was brown, and it was already in his ship . . . with Jamal’s body. I shuddered in Dawud’s arms as I thought about Jamal’s brown cube and his soft voice. Dawud held me a bit tighter.

“I know, dear,” he murmured. “I know.”

Only hours ago, Jamal had decided to take his life. Ravi found him hanging in his gazebo. He had left a note for all of us. “I cannot return home, yet I cannot go on. I have sent messages to my family. Do not worry about them. My spirit will return to Earth, where I belong. I could not bear to die alone in this evil void. In nothing. Thank you for bearing witness to my transition. I love you all. Best of luck. Sincerely, Jamal.”

I started sobbing in Dawud’s arms, and Anthony came over and put his arms around us. Then Gracious. Then Kisha. Then Ravi. For a long time, we all cried for our brother Jamal, the kind, sweet man we’d known for only seven days but who was the closest human to all of us for millions of miles. We all had dark thoughts. But none of us voiced them. Just as Jamal had chosen not to voice his. I imagined he was there with us, finally hugging us, finally allowing himself to be hugged, no expectations.

Jamal had instructed his Miri to take him back to Earth, and so when we shut our entryway doors and disconnected from each other, none of us remained in that place just outside Jupiter’s reach. I went one way and Anthony went another and Ravi went another and Dawud went another and Gracious and Kisha went another (their Miri ships still connected) . . . and Jamal went another.

I held Five and I wept. Chi did not shudder with glee; my ship was silent as he went along our way.

Months later, I wobbled into Chi’s dome. Anthony’s first message had come in just hours ago. I had not heard from him since we’d parted. After Jamal’s death, Kármán decided to allow us to communicate, albeit every six months. To communicate too often, they believed, would be unhealthy. They were kind of right. As soon as Anthony’s message came in, the peaceful bliss I’d felt from tending to Chi, playing with Five, and weeding my garden became anxiety. I would read the message in a few more hours. Then I would respond to him and he would get my message in a week. For the moment, I just wanted to be in this space. I’d told myself that I’d tell him about the pregnancy only after he messaged me first . . . also depending on what he said. And now here was the moment.

“I’ll deal with it later,” I said, sitting down on the chair I’d brought out here. The cube beside me turned green, and I smiled. Five climbed into my lap as I tilted my head up to look into the void of space. I was not far from Mars. Maybe this time, I’d take a closer look. Or maybe I’ll just stay here until after I give birth. Then go see Mars.

I don’t know how this will go, but I will find out. What’s strange is that Chi has started to grow a patch of mint-flavored leaves in the healing room corner. I didn’t tell him to do this. And when I feel nauseous, I eat one of the leaves and instantly feel much better. And the walls of the healing room now flush red and pulse to the beat of my own heart. Maybe all this means nothing, but I suspect it means something amazing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2021 Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor is the New York Times bestselling author of the Binti novels and the Nsibidi Scripts trilogy. She is the recipient of the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Eisner Award, multiple Hugo Awards, and the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature for her debut novel, Zahrah the Windseeker.

Table of Contents

- TITLE PAGE
- COPYRIGHT PAGE
- JUST OUT OF JUPITER'S REACH
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR