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08f0a48
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I told Victria that love is a choice, and I told myself that I didn't have to choose Elder, but I can't forget the way my heart stopped when his did.
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across-the-universe
elder
amy-martin
beth-revis
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Beth Revis |
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ac1a4db
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I've heard that when you're in a life-or-death situation, like a car accident or a gunfight, all your senses shoot up to almost superhuman level, everything slows down, and you're hyper-aware of what's happening around you. As the shuttle careens toward the earth, the exact opposite is true for me. Everything silences, even the screams and shouts from the people on the other side of the metal door, the crashes that I pray aren't bodies, the hissing of rockets, Elder's cursing, my pounding heartbeat. I feel nothing--not the seat belt biting into my flesh, not my clenching jaw, nothing. My whole body is numb. Scent and taste disappear. The only thing about my body that works is my eyes,and they are filled with the image before them. The ground seems to leap up at us as we hurtle toward it. Through the blurry image of the world below us, I see the outline of land--a continent. And at once, my heart lurches with the desire to know this world, to make it our home. My eyes drink up the image of the planet--and my stomach sinks with the knowledge that this is a coastline I've never seen before. I could spin a globe of Earth around and still be able to recognize the way Spain and Portugal reach into the Atlantic, the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, the pointy end of India. But this continent--it dips and curves in ways I don't recognize, swirls into an unknown sea, creating peninsulas in shapes I do not know, scattering out islands in a pattern I cannot connect. And it's not until I see this that I realize: this world may one day become our home,but it will never be the home I left behind.
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earth
travel
discovery
life
godspeed
elder
amy-martin
beth-revis
shades-of-earth
shuttle
planet
mission
crash
home
journey
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Beth Revis |
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e980ccc
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And I know what I told my father was true: let us taste the world, and we'll do whatever it takes to shape it into our home.
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world
truth
centauri-earth
new-place
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
planet
home
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Beth Revis |
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b3a959e
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I would use the same word to describe both my joy and the rain: torrential. This--this--this is all I ever wanted from the world: wide-open spaces and cooling rain and the chance to run.
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universe
stars
rain
cooling
torrential
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
open
run
space
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Beth Revis |
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4ad4428
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More than the sound of my own beating heart, I miss the sound of a ticking clock. Time passes, it must pass, but I have no more assurance of moving through time than I have that I am moving through space. In a way, I'm glad: this means perhaps 300 years and 364 days have passed, and tomorrow I will wake up. Sometimes after a cross-country meet or a long day at school, I'd fall into bed with all my clothes on and be out before I knew it. When I'd finally open my eyes, it would feel like I'd just shut them for a minute, but really, the whole rest of the day and half the night was gone. But. There were other times when I'd collapse onto my mattress, shut my eyes and dream, and it felt like I'd lived a whole lifetime in that dream, but when I woke up, it had only been a few minutes. What if only a year has gone by? What if we haven't even left yet? That is my greatest fear.
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time
dream
fear
beating-heart
clock
amy-martin
clocks
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Beth Revis |
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fb68d84
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"Everyone, this is the new girl. Elder knows her. New girl, this is everyone." A few people look up politely; some actually smile. Most, however, look wary at best, disgusted at worse. The nurse closest to me jabs her finger behind her ear and starts whispering to nobody. "What's wrong with her?" I ask Harley as he leads me to the table he was sitting at. "Oh, don't worry, we're all mad here." I giggle, mostly from nerves. "It's a good thing I read Alice in Wonder-land . I definitely think I've fallen into the rabbit hole." "Read what?" Harley asks. "Never mind." All around me, eyes follow my every move. "Look," I say loudly. "I know I look different. But I'm just a person, like you." I hold my head up high, looking them all in the eyes, trying to hold their stares for as long as possible. "You tell 'em," says Harley with another Cheshire grin."
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mad
alice-in-wonderland
down-the-rabbit-hole
harley
introducing
we-are-all-mad-here
amy-martin
cheshire
nerves
stranger
different
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Beth Revis |
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e654e78
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"What you really want to know," I say, "is how to make sure we all don't just rip each other apart, right?" The fight earlier is way too fresh in our minds. We are a powder keg; just a spark will blow us apart."
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blow
bob-martin
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
apart
fight
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Beth Revis |
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de117c2
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"The President called it the "Epitome of the American dream." Daddy called it the "unholy alliance of business and government." But all it really was, was America giving up. Bailing out in order to join the Financial Resource Exchange. A multinational alliance focused on one thing: profit. Fund global medical care to monopolize vaccines. Back unified currency to collect planet-wide interest. And provide the resources needed for a select group of scientists and military personnel to embark on the first trip across the universe in a quest to find more natural resources--more profit. The answer to my parents' dreams. And my worst nightmare. And I know something about nightmares, seeing as how I've been sleeping longer than I've been alive. I hope. What if this is just a part of a long dream dreamt in the short time between when Ed locked the cryo door and Hassan pushed the button to freeze me? What if? It's a strange sort of sleep, this. Never really waking up, but becoming aware of consciousness inside a too-still body. The dreams weave in and out of memories. The only thing keeping the nightmares from engulfing me is the hope that there couldn't possibly be a hundred more years before I wake up. Not a hundred years. Not three hundred. Not three hundred and one. Please, God, no. Sometimes it feels like a thousand years have passed; sometimes it feels as if I've only been sleeping a few moments. I feel most like I'm in that weird state of half-asleep, half-awake I get when I've tried to sleep past noon, when I know I should get up, but my mind starts wandering and I'm sure I can never get back to sleep. Even if I do slip back into a dream for a few moments, I'm mostly just awake with my eyes shut. Yeah. Cryo sleep is like that. Sometimes I think there's something wrong. I shouldn't be so aware. But then I realize I'm only aware for a moment, and then, as I'm realizing it, I slip into another dream. Mostly, I dream of Earth. I think that's because I didn't want to leave it. A field of flowers; smells of dirt and rain. A breeze ... But not really a breeze, a memory of a breeze, a memory made into a dream that tries to drown out my frozen mind. Earth. I hold on to my thoughts of Earth. I don't like the dreamtime. The dreamtime is too much like dying. They are dreams, but I'm too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I've already lost too much to let them take over. I push the dream-memory down. That happened centuries ago, and it's too late for regrets now. Because all my parents ever wanted was to be a part of the first manned interstellar exploratory mission, and all I ever wanted was to be with them. And I guess it doesn't matter that I had a life on Earth, and that I loved Earth, and that by now, my friends have all lived and gotten old and died, and I've just been lying here in frozen sleep."
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time
earth
reality
dreams
amy-martin
beth-revis
centuries
atu-series
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Beth Revis |