Ninth Grade
(age fourteen)
Am had stopped crying. She still felt as bad as before, a hole torn through her entire heart—but it was easier to bear that pain when there was something to do.
She led Kelli through the maze of corridors that held the Callisto colony together, through tangles of pipes and into hidden storage rooms. In a few trips back and forth, they assembled what they’d need.
Gloves and other protective coverings, so their fingerprints wouldn’t get all over everything and the fuel wouldn’t splash on their clothes.
A hammer and a long, thin nail. A pair of very sharp scissors.
A permanent marker, which had been Kelli’s biggest contribution; she wanted to write something.
And, most frightening and forbidden of all, a box of matches.
Am flicked the match head against the striking strip, to demonstrate, and it burst into a tiny glowing-orange flower, which she let burn for a few seconds for show, then licked her fingers and pinched out.
“Some of the maintenance engineers smoke,” she confided, “secretly, on their breaks. Away from the fuel lines, of course.”
Kelli wrinkled her nose in disgust and admiration.
What would Am ever have done without Kelli? Am was good at mischief; Am could make things happen if you asked. But Kelli had vision. Kelli had purpose. With Kelli, Am became something bigger than she would have been alone.
The Callisto Center for Mental Illness and Addiction, where Elaine had been going for therapy, sat on the edge of one of Callisto’s domed parks.
Like many large buildings on Callisto, it protruded slightly into its own miniature enclosure, through a small hallway and atrium, painted a cheerful white-gold and lined with leaves.
Am and Kelli crept through the tunnels beside that hallway and waited until there was no one going past. The atrium had an AI reception desk where people would check in and be directed to one of the offices.
Patients went in and came out hourly. In between those times, there should be long stretches with no humans at all—but there was still a security camera.
Am had a plan for that. Hunting through the cracks in the wall between the maintenance tunnel and the main hallway, she found the electric wire that connected the camera to power, and the thicker wire that sent its data to a security room somewhere.
“Once we take out the camera,” she whispered, “we have to move fast. I don’t know how fast someone will come out to see what happened, but we have to be out of here before that.
You write whatever you’re going to write, but make it quick.
Also there’s safety doors that might come down to seal the fire off.
That’s one right there.” She pointed to a hatchway a few feet back from where they were, at the spot where the hallway protruded out from the park.
“The second you drop the match, we gotta run, and I mean run.”
Kelli nodded solemnly. They both understood how risky this was.
If they ended up on the wrong side of the safety door they might get caught in the fire and die, or breathe smoke and die, or run out of air.
The biggest danger from fire in a contained colony wasn’t the fire itself—although that was bad enough—but its effect on the air.
Fire ate up oxygen at rates that no plant and no CO2 scrubber worked fast enough to replenish.
If not for the safety doors, an unchecked fire in one sector might slowly suffocate the whole colony.
And in the unlikely event that Am and Kelli got caught on the wrong side of the door and didn’t die, the firefighters would find them and it would be obvious what they’d been doing there.
There were people in the building, of course.
Therapy clients, but also the professionals who ran the whole thing, working at computers in little plush offices at the top of the building, skimming the conversations that the clients had with the language model, and making sure it was all in order.
Those people probably wouldn’t die. Am and Kelli had agreed, sotto voce on the way here, that they didn’t want to kill people—especially not people like Elaine, who hadn’t hurt anybody.
But, like any proper building of its type, the therapy center had emergency exits and safe rooms. It had procedures for what to do if there was a fire.
What Am and Kelli wanted was for those people at the top, farthest away from the emergency exits, to have to think about dying.
Then the firefighters would save them, but they’d always remember feeling that way.
They’d know what it was like to be alone and afraid.
To shout for help and not know if a human could hear them.
Justice, Kelli had whispered, and Am wasn’t sure if she cared about justice, or if it was enough to just watch this place burn.
A minute went by without anyone entering the corridor. Two minutes. Five.
“You ready?” Am whispered.
Kelli nodded once, grim.
Am reached up with her sharp scissors—they were both already wearing their gloves—and cut the wire to the security camera. The wires sparked as the two blades snipped through them.
“Now,” Am whispered.
Kelli opened the maintenance hatch and stepped out into the main hall. On the door to the therapy center, there was a pretty logo that said:
Callisto Center for Mental Illness Kelli was here.
But for some reason, once she’d cleared the door, Kelli had stopped running.
Now she stood, hands over her ears because of the klaxon, staring at the door with an expression Am couldn’t understand.
Eyes wide, mouth trembling. Like she’d seen something terrible on the other side of that door—something that had shocked her, even in her vengeance-goddess mood, even knowing she’d just set a fuel-line fire on purpose. Something she could never unsee.
Which, okay, they could debrief about whatever that was later, but they couldn’t stop here. Community standards enforcement—and the firefighters—would be here any minute.
“Come on,” said Am, tugging Kelli by the shoulder—even though she technically wasn’t supposed to touch Kelli that way without asking—and Kelli seemed to snap back into the present moment. They both turned and ran as fast as they could.