Extra

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Yet I hear Mother scream in frustration from down the corridor of our station. My dear parents have been at it for hours. For years. Ever since what happened to the Kline family. “I just want to go home!” I hear her sob. “It’s all because of that…that…” There was murmuring I couldn’t make out from our bedroom. A final shriek, “It’s tearing me apart inside! I can feel it!”

Mother is sick every day since the project abandoned us here, orbiting the new planet that failed us so much more quickly than we had failed Earth. We weren’t the only family left behind, but did it even matter? The finality of it ached as deeply as the dark side of Novus Secundo when our red dwarf sun set for eighteen hours a day.

No more excursions from our orbiting station to the ground level. No more health checks, no more field trips to the lush rainforests that reminded me of my old picture books of dinosaur times. No more vacations to the seaside, where the water was red as blood from its rich mineral content. They said that swimming there would keep us vibrant, energized from the nutrients seeping through our pores and occasionally being swallowed as we gleefully splashed each other’s faces.

Novus Secundo had felt like paradise, pregnant with promise of habitation “not just for survival, but for the expansion and increased productivity of the human race.” I think that was how the pamphlets described it. A Space to Grow, a Place to Thrive.

I don’t think the grownups who signed contracts felt like it was a very big risk. Novus Primis had been a famous success. New animals were discovered, fruits and vegetation that could even cure diseases we’d known on Earth. Redemption for our species, it seemed. We would take better care of this planet, this time. Stories were told of people living off the land and running barefoot through their Eden, the name they gave the colony. It might as well have been called Hope, for that was what it gave us all.

The list had been long for applicants to Novus Secundo. My father and mother were near the top due to the results of their genetics tests. I wonder if there’s a genetic predisposition to quarreling.

I heard the clap of the steel door banging shut and the click of the lock sealing it in place.

Now Dad’s sock-clad footsteps come padding down the hall.

He pauses at our bedroom door, peeks in. Our eyes meet, the message exchanged without words. He’s sorry, and he doesn’t know what to do. I know. He carries his pillow and blanket to the lounge per usual when Mom is sick.

I try to distract myself by thinking of my virtual classroom and our current assignment. We’re reading a true story about a man who lived on Earth’s moon, alone, for years. His wife and child were murdered, and it totally wrecked him, so he gave up on Earth and humans. One of his journal entries says something I can’t stop repeating in my thoughts, Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space. Mrs. Powers asked for our predictions. I predict a tragic end.

It happened a long time ago, but I’ve never heard of him. I guess we don’t get famous by giving up, no matter what our reasons might be. I think I’ll include that in my report.

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Mother hasn’t left the bedroom for two days. I tried knocking, but she didn’t respond. -

“Opal Aker, drink your smoothie! That’s super food for your body!” Dad sounds much too chipper. I suppose he’s trying to cover up for last night’s bazillionth episode of Planet Wars: Starring the Aker Parents. His voice sounds different every day. It creeps me out.

I stare at the standard green sludge breakfast smoothies. My little brother Ory inhales them like they’re some magic pixie dust that makes him fly! He even looks a little better after a smoothie. I was almost eight when we left Earth. Read: old enough to remember pizza. Ory was born on the colony ten years ago, and has subsisted on the smoothies all his life. I suppose that accounts for the difference in our tastes.

Mother has begun to claim otherwise, and it hurts inside to watch. She’s been such a loving mother to me all my life, and Ory deserves the same from her. I do my best to fill in the gap, weaving elaborate bedtime stories while he falls asleep on my shoulder each night.

He gives me a satisfied grin, green smoothie mustache sparkling. I giggle and clean his face with my thumb, not licking my thumb first like Mom did when I was younger. That was just gross. “Opal, tell me about when I was born tonight. I like that one.”

Dad shoots me a warning look.

“Um, okay, bud. Just the quick version though. You’re going to be so tired from track day today, you probably won’t be able to keep your eyes open!”

Ory bounces down from the counter and hugs me extra tight, “I better go get ready!

“Hi Mommy!” I twist around at Ory’s warm greeting, shocked to hear her name. Dad looks up from his phone with unsettlement.

Mother looks even greyer and more gaunt than last time I saw her shuffle into the kitchen. She’s wearing her pale pink bathrobe over pajamas, her thin hair is askew and oily, her eyes like empty space.

Ory runs to her and wraps his arms around her waist. “I missed you!”

“How could you miss me when you aren’t my child?” her voice is robotic, cold.

Ory turns to me with glistening eyes as he releases her. “I…I’m going to go get ready for track day. Are you coming to watch?”

I fake a smile for his sake, “Wouldn’t miss it, are you kidding me?” He smiles then and skirts around Mother in the doorway. She doesn’t look down at him, fixing her gaze on me.

“What did I just hear? The story of his birth? Opal, you don’t even know the story of his birth! You weren’t even there!” her volume rises to compete with last night’s. Ory could hear her from his room without a doubt.

“Of course I was, Mom! I even held him right after he was born! Don’t you remember?” I pull up the old picture on my phone. There are the four of us, smiling, at the hospital that sat between the beach and the forest. With Novus Secundo’s greatest healing resources at patients’ fingertips, the rate of survival was one of the best in the universe.

…or so they say. The line from my book flashes through my mind again.

“I was so excited to be a big sister, remember? I even gave him my bear—”

“It’s not real!” Mother shrieks at a fever pitch that I don’t doubt everyone in the station can hear. “It’s all an illusion! They’re poisoning you, Opal! They won’t let me get through to you! I just keep on trying to get through! It’s all of them! Every single one!”

The neighbors hear, of course. They’d heard before. The Kawesas are in the same situation as us, left behind in orbit of a planet that can’t -- won’t -- help us anymore. They have a boy a year older than me, Amani, who’s in the Star Force and lives below on base with a few other soldiers. He’s in my virtual class, and sometimes we chat after school. Their other boy is Ori’s age, Akiba. He follows his parents into our kitchen, standing tremulously behind his mother.

Mrs. Kawesa rushes to me and wraps her arms around me in a comforting embrace as Dad and Mr. Kawesa take Mother by the arms.

I bury my face in Mrs. Kawesa’s shoulder as Mother’s screams heighten, reverberating through the mostly empty station. I don’t want to watch, again, as they force a green pill down her throat and lock her in the bedroom. “It’s for her own safety, Opal dear, I know it must be so hard.” Mrs. Kawesa whispers the words she’s supposed to.

Even though I know it’s for her own safety, it doesn’t feel right watching. She’s my mother after all, I only want her to get better.

Dad and Mr. Kawesa re-enter the kitchen, speaking in hushed tones. “Why don’t you take her back to Earth, Dad, for treatment? I can take care of Ory. The Kawesas will help.”

The grownups exchange glances that make me more uneasy. I can’t put my finger on why. “It’s just not possible, Opal. You know that.”

“But if it was clear that you were coming back for sure –”

Dad’s eyes sink with pain, like fading stars darkening as they struggle not to flicker out.

An image of the loneliest man in history burns the back of my eyes. The man from my book, sitting on the moon with his journal. Once his family was ripped away, dying alone in the void seemed better to him than healing. Maybe it felt as familiar as his other losses. Familiarity can masquerade as friendliness, a cruel deception of our expansive hearts. The universe inside us is filled with nebulae, galaxies, gamma ray bursts of light, even falling stars -- but we settle for the barren side of the moon and think it makes us astronauts. No one can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

I don’t know what to say or think. Ory runs to me, tears streaming down his face. “I’m sorry, Sister!” he sobs into my lap. Grownups don’t know everything. They don’t know that I’m screaming too, you just can’t hear it in this vacuum.

Shaking the dark thought from my mind, I lift Ory’s chin and look into his ocean eyes. “It’s not your fault, okay? You keep believing me when I tell you that. You are not ‘extra,’ or else you wouldn’t be here. The universe needs you, and I need you. Even Mother needs you, she’s just sick. Only sick. She’s not right.” His eyes glow a little and something inside me shudders, but I don’t let it reach my skin. I give my brother a tight hug the second the other families round the hall and enter through the open door.

“There you all are!” booms Mr. Rosales, we call him Coach. “Who’s ready for the races?”

The younger kids cheer, and the grownups try to cheer too. Ory takes a deep breath and puts on a smile to join his team.

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Mr. and Mrs. Rosales were teachers back on Earth. They emphasize the importance of physical activity and social interaction on the station to keep everyone healthy. It’s working, for most of us.

I still remember my kindergarten track day back on Earth. Our whole family enjoyed sports and spending time outdoors there, athleticism is in my DNA. I remember being so proud of my blue ribbon! Mom had waited at the finish line to give me a high five and dance with me. Then we all went for ice cream, another food that tasted better than the smoothies.

The memory brings a smile and a pang as I watch Ory line up with the other kids for a relay race. “C’mon Or! You got this!” I clap my hands.

Dad stands beside me, oddly unshaken by the scene in the kitchen with Mom. Or maybe his emotions are as secret as my own. The ones about Mom, the ones about Amani, all the feels. Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum…

Ory looks more than a little nervous as the racers ready at the starting place. I mentally prep for a repeat of last year, when he took a bad fall and had to sit out the races.

Coach calls, “GO!” and the first runners take off. Ory’s first in line, where some coaches place the runner they think is weakest. We’ll see.

Ory disappears from the starting line and reappears at the finish line.

The runner beside him is Coach’s little girl, Lolita. She leaps into the air and lands with a single bound, but right after Ory. He’s in the lead! The runner who takes the baton from Ory is Akiba, Amani’s little brother. I pull out my phone and send Amani a few pictures. He doesn’t respond right away like usual. Probably off researching some novel rainforest species. The thought makes me smile.

Ory’s team wins the race, only by a nanosecond. I high five him at the finish line and we dance, giggling again.

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We don’t know where they came from, our children. The program labeled them “Extras.” Our parents weren’t supposed to reproduce on Novus Secunda. The Novus Primis colony had created a population issue so quickly. Apparently, nothing makes people want to be parents like a fresh, new planet, teeming with lush greenery!

The thing is our families all complied. We had regular health checks, bloodwork. Something should have been caught by the doctors -- hormone changes of pregnancy for example, physical changes.

The women went into labor on the same day, having shown no signs of gestation or pregnancy. Measures were even taken to make conception impossible, but here were the children.

The prevailing theory is the water. It’s teeming with nutrition, so somewhere in the depths of the blood red ocean, some unknown force of life must have pulsated. We didn’t know what happened. All the women who didn’t conceive within the first year died the year the first set of children turned five. The day they turned five. Their spouses returned to earth or to Novus Primis and more families came.

With the second round of arrivals, all the men became pregnant, but neither they nor the babies survived, and their spouses were sent back to Earth.

The Star Force ordered everyone living in the colony to stay out of the water.

It was decided that the Extras should be terminated. The planet seemed to be coming unhinged. The children of unknown origin would be given an injection and go to sleep peacefully, and the colony would be abandoned.

The day the Star Force collected the first child, Novus Secunda seemed to turn on its inhabitants, at least, the human ones. The ocean turned stormy; the scarlet sea rushed ashore in a tidal wave of blood. Everyone perished except the families of the Extra children. For some reason, still unknown, these children were essential.

It was decided to try to send two families away – one with their Extra child, and one without – as an experimental escape. What would the living sea permit?

The Kline family, terrified of the planet, the child, and the sea, volunteered first. They boarded a shuttle and made it all the way out of the atmosphere, but when they hit the orbital belt, a flare shot out of the sun and devoured the shuttle into flames.

Little Kami Kline, the child left behind with the Star Force, was distraught. She had rocked herself ever since, and hadn’t aged a day over five, although the others had all continued to age at what seemed like a normal human rate.

Amani says it’s creepy, that Kami still rocks herself, even now. He’s one of the Star Force members who is charged to protect her. “Children need parents.” She repeats like a broken record. She’s been repeating the same phrase for the last five years.

The second family to attempt leaving were the Yorks. They had packed up their extra child in the hopes that if they weren’t abandoning him, they would be granted safe passage by whatever forces were controlling this nightmare. According to witnesses – and there were many – the shuttle turned itself around and landed as if flown by an experienced pilot. Everyone aboard was dead except Yanis York, the Extra child, who was covered in blood not his own. To this day no one knows what happened to the Yorks, but some say it was Yanis. They say he emerged from the shuttle and asked the waiting Star Force soldier, “Where is my family?”

Now Yanis also rocks all day, never ages, and repeats the chilling words all day long. “Where is my family?”

There was talk of waiting until the earth born children – like me -- came of age, then sending us all back to Earth. Since we weren’t the parents or the children anymore, some thought there was a chance. That plan didn’t last, most of our parents were terrified of losing their kids. They had already lost so much.

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Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I feel something welling up inside of me, but I fear that if I allow it to escape, my life force will all escape with it. I thought I was dying for so long, but this moon and stardust is doing something to me. I almost feel renewed. I wish everyone could be as free as I am now. I thought I came here to live and die alone, but I’m not alone at all.

-- Excerpt from the journal of Thomas Lippincott, circa 2264

My phone buzzes and I set the book down. Amani calls every couple of nights, to video chat from his base. I tap the green icon and smile at the camera. “Hey you! Did you get my pictures from track day?”

Amani keeps glancing around, doesn’t focus on my face at all. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt at all that he seems disinterested in my freshly combed, wet hair look.

“Listen Opal – are you alone?”

I glance at Ory, who was getting ready for bed. He has taken a sudden interest in my conversation, as ten-year-olds are prone to do.

“Nooooo…hold on.” Carrying the phone, I creep to the lavatory and slide the door shut. “Okay, now I’m alone, Handsome.” I giggle at my own romantic antics. “Look at me! I’m hiding in the bathroom with Amani Salami! What would my parents say?”

Amani still looks distracted. “Oh, um, yeah.” is his only reply to my obviously very awesome pun. “So no one can hear you? Opal, no one can know I told you this. I could…they might…and my family…

“Opal, I need to know I can trust you completely, no matter what I say next.”

“You’re worrying me, Mani. Are you getting your smoothie every day?”

“That’s not funny!” he snaps, breaking character from his usual gentle and steady demeanor.

What is this about? He usually calls to flirt, nothing deeper, no matter how many stars I wish upon. “Amani, you know you can trust me. More than anyone else on this place.”

“I finished my training, I swore in.”

“I know! Your mom and I watched the ceremony together on her computer. Congratulations.” I hope he doesn’t discern the pang in my voice. Amani wasn’t given a choice besides joining the Star Force when he turned eighteen. The leaders decide for all of us. My birthday is in two weeks.

“I guess in a couple weeks, you know, we could be living a lot closer together. I hope.” I’m weakly trying to turn the despondent tone back to the flirty one.

Amani sighs deeply, devastatingly. “They’re coming for your mom.”

“What? Wait, why?”

“They say the Earth leaders fear she will influence us all. Cause some sort of mass rebellion. There’s something in the smoothies that keeps us…I don’t know…surviving here. Her cells are resisting for some reason. They want to run tests, it may be contagious. If your father doesn’t comply, they’ll –”

“No!” I cut him off. “You know what would happen to my brother! He’ll crack, like Yanis and Kami—”

“I know all about those two! I see them every day! Listen to me, Opal, they have plans to destroy Novis Secunda. They think the planet has a life force that could impact or destroy the other living worlds. They think our siblings -- they’re part of something dangerous.”

I picture Ory where I left him on the bed, coloring and clutching my old bear. Dangerous?

“They didn’t ask to be here, Amani. None of us asked for it. The grownups had their dreams and I guess we were along for the ride. They thought it would be better here. How could anyone have guessed?”

“Doesn’t matter now. It all happened. They’re going to send all the Earth born teens away.”

“No, no! I don’t want to leave. If they want to destroy the colony, they can take me with it. My everything is here – my parents and my brother…”

“They aren’t real! Stop drinking your smoothie, you’ll see what I mean. We were taken, all of us. It was all an experiment. They’re grasping at straws, trying to maintain something. I don’t know yet what the end result was originally supposed to be. I’m trying to find out. Stop your smoothie, you’ll remember.”

“If I start to act like my mom, what about Ory?”

“Ory’s not your brother, Opal! It’s different for us. You won’t be like her.”

“Amani, I don’t know.”

“You want all of us to die?”

“Of course not! But they’re just kids. That’s what I think.”

“They make you think it.”

“Well, they really don’t seem too threatening, do they? Even the ones on the base, don’t they just rock themselves all day? They stopped growing. It’s so, so sad -- but why would we want to destroy a kid so helpless? They need parents.”

“Children need parents. That’s what they say all day long. ‘Children need parents. Where is my family?’ Don’t you get it yet, Opal?”

My head is spinning again. I feel like I could hurl. “But away from the water, nothing’s going to happen. Something in the water, that’s what the leaders said.”

“The children were in the water. They came from the water.”

“The water? Then what is anyone so worried about. No more can be born, and no one can leave. Why not just let us be happy?”

“Are you happy? Or are you forcing it for Ory because you’re a good big sister? Is your family happy right now?”

“If there’s nothing we can do, why not just find happiness? You believe it if you keep trying. It’s not even all that hard.”

“Opal, I want more for us.”

“Not without my family! They’re brainwashing you, Amani, you sound crazy! No one has ever left Novis Secunda alive! This place and these people are all we have left.”

“I’m going on the test group. I want you to sign up with me. If it works, we’re free.”

“Leaving them all to die -- is that freedom to you?”

“Opal, they aren’t ours. We’ll belong to each other instead. It will take time to process maybe, grieve what we thought was true but it’s not real anyway.”

I hang up. No goodnight. No goodbye. No, “you hang up first,” which is our carefree normal.

The scream inside me is louder than ever.

In the vacuum of space…

the vacuum…

no one can hear a scream…

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“Are you okay Opal?” Ory’s deep eyes are wide and so innocent, like a much younger child waking up from a nightmare.

“Of course I am,” my voice grasps for casual. “Why wouldn’t I be? You know I just talk to Amani sometimes. I miss him.”

“But you screamed.” His voice is almost a whisper.

“What? No, I didn’t. Maybe Mom did…”

“It was you. You didn’t hear it? Didn’t you do it?”

“Do what?”

He blinks. “Scream.”

Dad passes by the door. “Hey, are you okay? I heard such a scream from down this way. Sounded like Opal.”

Am I losing my mind? How would I not know if I screamed? Suddenly I feel like gravity is failing me.

“Must’ve been a weird echo, or something?” I hope as I speak.

Dad stares for a minute. We must look okay because he heads to the lounge as usual.

“Time for bed, bud. I think you and Daddy are hearing things you’re so tired!”

“You promised! The story!”

The story of his birth. Right. Make it the short and sweet version. “On the day the sea and the stars gave us to you, and you to us, the universe said, ‘This child is extra – extra special! Take very good care of him and I will take very good care of you.' And we love you and love you because you’re so special to us.”

“Not to Mommy.”

“Yes, to Mommy too! You were in her tummy, just like me.”

“Is someone in your tummy?”

“What? No, no, I’m still a kid like you.”

“But you’re tall like a grownup.”

“I guess I’ll be a grownup, on my birthday.”

“But then you might leave me.”

“I don’t think I will, Ory.”

“I don’t think so either, Opal. You’re my family. Children need parents.”

“What did you say?”

“What? You mean children need parents?”

“Yeah, that.”

“I’m Teddy’s family. He needs me like I need you.”

I shake my head as I watch him kiss the bear and snuggle under the covers. He’s not even as mature as I was at ten. Farthest thing from dangerous I’ve ever seen.

But something is not right. I feel a deep, gripping pang in my gut. The silent scream inside is beginning its escape. It feels like the opposite of free. I wonder what would happen if I just let it out -- if someone hears it.

“Opal? Opal are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Ory. I promise. I’m fine.”

…so they say.