Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Everywhere she looked there were people, their voices slipping into a white-noise of urgent clamour. Sweaty fingers tugged at her blazer and the strap of her messenger bag. She pictured her own face, petrified in black and white on the cover of a newspaper. In a moment of panic, she kicked over a large plastic bin, which crashed to the ground with a heavy thud, the contents flying out. The crowd dilated, giving Poppy enough time to scramble over the fence into the darkness of someone’s garden.

She raced around the unlit house and into a narrow alleyway between the buildings. Hid in the shadow of the high walls. As she unhitched her bag and dropped it on the ground, Poppy noticed a ladder ripped into her tights. Nettles bit her ankles and she waited for the blood to stop crashing through her ears before she considered her next move. Through the bushes she saw the lights of the news vans, reflected off the black windows of the house. The thought of facing that crowd again, of trudging back through them to get to her flat, filled her with dread. She was trapped, and the realization made her heart sink. But the idea of squatting in the gloom of the alleyway until the drifters left the street and the vans drove away made her skin crawl. The cracks in the fence were fluffy with cobwebs, cigarette butts yellowing amongst the leaves and the silvered edges of condom packets.

Poppy spotted another escape. She could run through the alleys and into her own back garden, as she had done with her friends in the past, during humid summers. Just the sight of the overgrown passages reminded her of following the neighbourhood girls as they clambered over fences and marched through bramble, sweeping away cobwebs like the intrepid explorers they thought they were before finally scrambling back over the picket fence and into their shared back yard, rolling into the house filled with laughter.

Poppy lifted her bag and took a route behind the houses that she remembered, creeping through the thorns until her foot struck pavement on the other side of the alley. The street behind her house was quiet, so she climbed over rubbish bins and slipped into the pool of yellow light that illuminated their back yard. Dashing to the door, she stabbed the key into the lock and, finally, she was home.

The only light in their little kitchen was the flickering of the television screen. Poppy’s head spun as she recognized her own face smiling back at her over the ticker-tape headlines – Names of the Beta, the students chosen for controversial interstellar mission, released today. Like her own, the names of the other students selected had been kept top secret. Poppy’s gaze was drawn to the screen as their faces appeared: Juno Juma, the scholar, the prefect, and her twin sister. Ara, who never seemed like she had to cram for exams, as if she was born understanding mathematical constructs like quaternions. Her stomach flipped with joy and relief when she saw Harry’s handsome face on the screen. ‘He’s going too…’ she said out loud.

When she turned to her mother she noticed the tears in her eyes, then the faded lipstick on a mouth that had begun to sag. A halo of silver hair had appeared at her temples and Poppy wondered when her mother had become an old woman. Maybe it had happened suddenly, between trips to and from Dalton, or maybe an old woman had consumed her mother slowly in the solitude of their flat. Her mother’s first words when Poppy entered were, ‘Don’t go. Please. Don’t go.’

Poppy winced at the request.

Their family friend, Claire, sat on the other side of the table nursing a chipped mug of tea.

‘How can you do this?’ she asked. ‘You didn’t even tell your poor mam.’ Poppy didn’t have the energy for an argument, and so she turned on her heel and headed quickly out of the room, but Claire’s voice trailed down the corridor after her: ‘How can you leave her alone like this, when you’re all she has? The ungratefulness of the child who…’

Poppy was out of breath when she reached her room and flung the door shut behind her. She slid down it. There were footsteps coming down the hall. Poppy turned the lock.

Poppy Lane. They had chosen her.

In the silence of her bedroom, her heart was pounding. Some part of her had not believed it was really true until the reporter said her name on the news. Some part of her was certain that a mistake had been made, that she would be passed over in favour of some more deserving girl. She had always believed that she would live and die in this council flat.

Poppy Lane. She let herself believe it now. Mirabile visu, she thought, wonderful to see. Her entire body buzzed with fear and excitement. Muscles tensed around her mouth, lips dawned into a smile she could not hold back, spilled over with laughter that came out thick and fast as quicksilver.