“I haven’t selected it yet,” Jane said. “And anyway, that might be premature. I’ve got one more interview left.”
“Oh, the last one’s easy! Alice asks you everything that matters. This is just a formality, really.” She gave Jane a sly smile. “But it’s the most wonderful formality ever. Once I saw campus, I never wanted to leave again. I wanted to go right away, you know. But of course that was impossible.”
“Of course,” Jane said, trying to sound sad.
“So I did the next best thing,” Poppy said. “I moved in!”
“I’m really looking forward to seeing the campus,” Jane said, which was true in its way. She had felt a tremendous pressure of anxiety behind her, building since Alice had congratulated her on becoming a Polaris Novitiate and clearing the way for her to take her final interview and become a member. Within a few days Jane had booked her flight, and Hecuba had sent her to an address deep in Crown Heights. Jane rang the bell of an ordinary-looking brownstone and was handed the envelope through the mail slot by a well-manicured lady’s hand. She never saw a face.
By her last night at home, the pressure was nearly pushing her out of the house. She said good night to her mother and lay awake with a flavor of insomnia different from the one to which she had grown accustomed in the weeks since Jim had died. She rose every now and then to sniff at the envelope a few times — Hecuba said it was totally harmless to unfrozen, full-bodied human beings. It smelled very strongly of cinnamon and paprika. She spent most of the night quietly dressing in the dark, and gave herself a whole half hour just to sneak down the stairs and out the door. Still, Millicent came down before she’d shut the door, standing like a mad shadow in the dark. Jane put a finger to her lips. Millicent put a finger on the side of her nose. Jane met a cab around the corner with sunrise still two hours away.
“Oviedo is lovely,” Jane said in the car, which prompted a snort from Poppy.
“It’s a dump,” she said. “That’s what makes the campus so amazing — you’ll be able to see the pyramid in just a minute.” And soon enough, as they rose up a highway ramp, Jane saw it glinting above the strip malls. “Look at it! We’re still three miles away!” Poppy shouted, rolling down the windows, as if to start savoring the air.
“It’s quite large!” Jane shouted above the wind.
“Exactly as big as Cheops!” Poppy said, something Jane knew already from the brochure, but it really was something to see it in person, glassy and enormous amid the Oviedo sprawl. After they parked, Poppy led her to a sunny terrace where two other applicants were waiting on a stainless-steel bench, a married couple named Sally and Bill. “Greeting and salutations!” Poppy said to the pair. Sally and Bill did the Polaris bow, but Jane could only wave feebly. Her other hand was in her pocket, to make sure of the envelope. She took her hand away only to dry it when she was worried her sweaty palms would compromise the fine particulate nature of the Kiss. “Are you ready to spend a few hours in the future?” Poppy asked them all when she’d brought them around to the main entrance. Bill said he was born ready. Sally said she was so excited she was going to explode. Jane said she might explode too. The giant glass doors slid open.
She supposed it was amazing in there. She still felt the pressure behind her, blowing her toward the dewars, which made it hard to consider very deeply anything that Poppy was saying. Poppy loaded them onto an electric cart and toured the interior of the daylit portion of the pyramid, which receded upward into balconies and catwalks. Poppy was talking about membership services and the R&D section and the Foundation initiatives. The upper pyramid was all about bringing the future into the present, she said, while the inverted lower pyramid (the whole building extended as far under the ground as it did up into the sky) was all about sending the present into the future.
“But when will we see the dewars?” Jane asked, when she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Those amazing dewars,” she added, when Poppy looked at her strangely and didn’t answer.
“I believe those are last on the tour,” Sally said, holding up the itinerary. Jane had wadded her copy in a sweaty fist.
“Don’t worry. They’re not going anywhere… except into the future!” Poppy said. “And I should tell you,” she said, lowering her voice, “that Brian likes to quiz folks a little on the Foundation activities. So pay attention to all the details!” Jane felt a little thrill of nausea at Brian’s name, and the thought of his actual presence in the building.
“Pay attention?” Bill said. “Poppy, my dear, I’ve been waiting all my life to hear about this!”
“Can you believe we’re going to meet Brian?” Sally asked, squeezing Jane’s arm.
“It’s like a dream come true,” Jane replied.
They went toodling along the glass-and-steel runways and catwalks and balconies and causeways, Jane feeling more and more like she was on some combination of very slow roller coaster and living diorama of the future. Futuristically styled, artificial-looking people waved at them from their workstations or work-sponsored recreations, having indoor picnics or doing yoga or playing badminton without a net or racquets. In the future, Poppy told them, Polaris would make Florida the center of the world. Jane, wishing she could say it to Jim, thought very sadly that crazy, ridiculous Florida was already the center of the world.
At last they had gone all the way up, so then they went all the way down, into the basements and subbasements and sub-subbasements, lit at first with skylights and then with snaking optic cables that carried actual sunlight from tens of thousands of collecting nodes (Poppy said ecstatically) in the glass walls of the pyramid. The basement was full of research; Poppy told them about a vigorous twenty-five-year-old mouse named Methuselah, which she’d fed from her own hand.
“I think my ears are popping!” said Sally, just as they came to the first of the three dewar chambers.
“Are you ready?” Poppy whispered reverently, as she keyed a code in the tiny door. “Are you really, really ready for this?” They all nodded hard, even Jane, who, despite the pressure behind her back that she thought might push her right through the steel door before Poppy could open it, suddenly didn’t feel ready at all. “Then… let’s go!” Poppy said, and swept them inside.
1.16
Days or weeks or months later, Jim was ready. He lost track of the hours, and lost track of the others in the house, even his Alice, taking his meals alone and spending the little time when he wasn’t working asleep, or walking through the orchard and beyond. The morning he finished his book, he put his head down to rest and was woken again by the noise of the bus in the yard. He went to the window to see who was going to leave today, and stood a long while before Alice knocked on his door and he understood that the bus was waiting for him.
Alice held his hand the whole way to the city. Except for his book, he brought no luggage. Though the bus had no driver, it seemed to know just where it was going, rolling confidently over the hills on its big moon-buggy tires. Neither he nor Alice said anything for the first hour of the trip. Jim stared out the window at the lovely landscape, pretty streams and tidy woods and stark blue lakes that looked like they belonged high in the mountains somewhere.
“Do you feel ready for your Debut?” Alice asked at last, squeezing his hand.