How High We Go in the Dark

It’s been two months since the first plague patients were released from hospitals and overflow centers, and I’ve begun to develop a routine.

There’s a nationwide climate campaign to phase out gas vehicles.

I watch infomercials showing the old elegy hotels, how they’ve been turned into condo communities with names like Vitality Towers.

I walked past dozens of rows of cots in a hospital gown searching for Shelley and Nina, surrounded by confusion and heartbreak.

all the planets that could not harbor us

Kepler-186f–—582 Light-Years from Earth; Travel Time: 6,000 Years

CONSTELLATION: Cygnus. Home

We had been out in deep space for well over five hundred years, though most of us had been together outside of our stasis chambers for only a little over one year.

Trappist-1 System–—40 Light-Years from Earth; Travel Time: 400 Years

CONSTELLATION: Aquarius. I

her best friend was sent to the City of Laughter only a year after her grandfather died in Siberia,

It’s strange how the discovery of an ancient girl in Siberia and viruses we’ve never encountered before can both redefine what we know about being human and at the same time threaten our humanity.