Caleb and Zara left Briskin's office and headed for the cafeteria.  The furor of the meeting had left them hungry.

"We'll have a last meal together," Caleb said angrily as they strode down the drab, purely utilitarian hall.  "God.  I still can't believe how they screwed us!"

"We can't spiral out of control on this. We have to think things out." Zara's even voice was meant to calm him.

But there was no calming Caleb down.  "Yeah. We can easily decide on this one.  Yeah, over burgers and milkshakes, we can figure out what's going to happen to the rest of our damned lives!"

They rounded the corner and reached the door of the cafeteria.  A small, digital sign mounted there spelled out, in both Hebrew and English, the word: CLOSED.

Caleb charged the door and hammered the sign repeatedly with his fist until it broke free, emitting a tiny fury of sparks and smoke before it hit the tiled floor.

Zara shook her head.  "You finished?"

"I... I need some time.....I just... I dunno....I gotta get out of here."  Caleb jogged past her and broke into a full sprint down the hall.

"Caleb?" 

He reached the door to the stairwell, yanked it open, and started a double-time ascent.

Caleb burst onto the roof, wholly out of breath.  His temples throbbed and it seemed he'd lost control of his hands:  his fists refused to unlock.  He ran through a row of tiny, meter-high satellite dishes, then slowed to a stop a short distance from the edge of the complex.  A wall about knee-high ran along the perimeter of the roof.  Still panting, Caleb wandered to the wall and looked down at the lot below.

The ground traffic was heavy.  Techs, engineers, colonists, administrators, and policemen came to and from the complex.  The monorail that shuttled people out to the launch pad was just coming into the station.

Caleb imagined what it would feel like to let himself fall from the building, soaring through the air, and be at peace for a brief moment, knowing that the decision had been made and there was no turning back.  From the moment his feet would leave the rooftop, gravity---not the deputies nor the council of mayors---would be in command of his fate.

He remembered when he was a kid and had jumped off the roof of Kibbutz Eron Uki's only farmhouse, thinking an umbrella would float him safely to the earth.  Caleb wondered how many other kids the world over had attempted similar stunts.

Turning away from the ledge, Caleb withdrew from the breast pocket of his jumpsuit, a journal the size of an old paperback book.  He opened the journal, took up the pen he used as a bookmark, and wrote the date at the top of the blank page.  He moved the pen to the next line.

And all he could hear was that voice in his head.  Give. Give. Give.  Take. Take. Take.  Work hard.  Dream.  Get laid.

Reaching for anything to replace his bad mood, he turned back to his previous entry and read:

Caleb clapped shut the journal.  He sighed, then lifted his eyes to the stars.

Then, at that moment, it was as if he were wiped out of existence by a supernova and reborn with a clear, invigorated mind.  Toggles were thrown, connections were made, and sunrise was not far off.  He thought of his relationship to Zara in terms of the solar system.  Yes, it sounded way out at first, but then he saw the link.  Quickly, almost frantically, he opened his journal.

Caleb wrote furiously for maybe fifteen minutes.  At the sound of the rooftop door opening behind him, he shoved his pen into the journal, then closed and pocketed it.  He looked over his shoulder to regard Zara.

"Thanks for....the time."

"You okay?"

He faced her. "I'm sorry about that back there."

"Hey."

Zara ran her thumbs along the chain holding her photo tags.  They were not unlike old-style military dog tags but were unofficial and had digital images of Zara and himself upon them.   Her picture was perfect.  His was of some monster who only slightly resembled him.  Usually, Zara kept them tucked into her bra, but now she had them out.  She'd been looking at them. She let one hand fall away, then held the tags with the other.

Caleb frowned.  "What do we do now?"

"Everyone is down there saying goodbye to their families."

He nodded absently.

She took his hand.  "I never thought we'd be saying goodbye to each other."

"Then let's run away...."

She dropped his hand.  "To a life of what?  If we break the contract nobody will employ us.  We'll be indentured servants to the colonial program for twenty years."

Caleb gritted his teeth and cocked a thumb over his shoulder.  "Did they keep their word to us?  The program was all I ever believed in.  And now there's nothing."

He wasn't sure why, but she seemed more hurt than she should have been by his previous remark.  He repeated the words to himself, and then he realized that it sounded as if he had never believed in her, just the program.  That was simply not true!

"Zara, I didn't mean to...."

"You believed in equal rights for Ao Primes," she said, sidestepping his apology.

"Not at the expense of our rights. We've trained.  We've sacrificed.  We've dreamed....together.  They're stealing that."  He jerked away from her.  "Our lives are over."

She stepped closer to him.  "Caleb....we're not dying.  Maybe we just have to find another dream."

Moving to the ledge, Caleb paused to stare at the rocket.  He wanted to be aboard so badly that not only could he taste the desire, but every other sense was wired to the notion and blistering from an overload.  "Caleb, there are 12 billion people in the world.  Less than a thousand have the honor of going off into space.  In 3 hours, one of us will leave---forever----on the most powerful and complex machine devised by Man.  One of us will travel faster than light, farther than most people will ever go, to a planet with eight moons, with a waterfall six times the width of Niagra, and a tropical rainforest the size of Africa.  It's a place with a better life."  Slowly, he faced her.  "And because of what they've done, one of us will be left behind to always wonder.  Would my life have been extraordinary if I had gone?"

Zara bit her lip, and for a moment looked like a wounded little girl.  Then she straightened and showed nothing but her business side.  "We can't spend the last hours we've got together as victims. We've got to-----somehow---take control."

Caleb felt his brow lift, almost involuntarily, but not quite.  He'd spent so much time being pissed off at the system that it hadn't occurred to him until now that there might be a way to bypass it.

No, there was a way to bypass it.  Any lock can be picked, and any code broken.  The trick would be to get help.  And Caleb knew just where to start.

"What are you thinking, Caleb?"

"Nothing."261Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnABFsb4pvl