Eva looked to the sky, searching in vain for the invisible hand of death. For now, it was one shining pinprick of light among the heavens. But it was moving fast, and in a few decades it would be the brightest thing in the night sky, a doom hanging over humanity’s head. A few years after that and the sky would glow at midnight with apocalyptic fire. A few hours later and the stars would be blotted out, and the thousand years’ twilight, the millennia’s winter would begin. For all its invisibility, the comet was the only thing she saw.

From infancy, every child in the world had been pushed to excel, to inhuman perfection. Only a few would have a place on the ships. Miraculous discoveries had abounded, as people tried to do deeds great enough to secure a spot.

She remembered coming home from school, at age perhaps nine, with the first test she had received less than a hundred on. Her mother had sobbed over the paper, with the damning red ninety-nine.

Personalities had been shaped as well. The ships would take geniuses but not artists, thinkers, but not dissidents.

Her mother had spared no expense in making sure she was dressed exactly like the other children. She spoke as they did, liked what they did, thought as they did. She was a perfect personification of western culture. A perfect addition the small-scale replica of all humanity that was being sent out.

And she was accepted. Five hundred out of thirteen billion souls were to live, and she was one. It was the ultimate honor.

She and her fiancée, Adam, had both been accepted. This was a feat so astounding it had been national news. They would be allowed a suite instead of two tiny rooms, twenty personal items together instead of ten each. They were truly blessed. She turned away from the deceptive sky and walked off the balcony into their apartment.

The first items had been easy: her violin- she played classical only, even the Romantic period was uncomfortably expressive to her-, Adam’s guitar, a photo album, their embroidered quilt, a HoloTV. Now they were trying to pick programs for the TV. Adam sat on the floor, flipping through CDs that had their favorite shows, movies, songs, and books. He frowned, trying to choose between two, eventually discarding both. He reached a packet with three discs in it and brightened. It was the first three seasons of the TV show Polara. It was an amazingly popular show. Not only was it Adam and Eva’s favorite, it was the favorite of almost everyone in the world. It was estimated that only five thousand people in the world did not watch every week. It was tragic and funny and meaningful, and absolutely impossible to get tired of.

Adam put it in the small pile of things to take. The rest of the items piled up quickly, mostly literature CDs. Finally Eva found the last thing she wanted to bring, a sketchbook. She started to put it in the pile, but Adam stopped her.

“Eves, there’s already twenty.”

“Can’t we take something out? I really want this.”

“But it’s such an…artistic thing to bring,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“Please?”

He sighed. “Well, what are we going to take out? Your violin? The Polara CDs? We need everything we’ve picked. And you don’t even draw, I don’t know why you bought it. It was such a risky thing to do, too, it could have lost us our spots! You’ve got to focus, Eves, it’s only a month until takeoff and they have to know you’re stable.”

“What about…,” she looked through the pile, “the Polara CDs?”

“That’s our favorite show!”

Eva came to a sudden realization. “No, it isn’t. I hate it. I’ve never liked it. And I always wanted to learn to draw.”

“Eves, you’re acting unstable!”

“I don’t care! Dear god, is unstable the worst insult you can think of?”

Adam looked stunned. “Eva, you’ve dreamed of this all your life. You have what everyone’s been dreaming of since the day they were born, and together we have something that nobody else in the world has: a future, together.”

“No, I haven’t. How can you dream the day you are born? How could I know what to dream when I’ve always been told what my dreams are? No, Adam. We don’t have a future together. I’m staying on Earth.”

“You’ll die!”

“But I’ll learn to draw first.”

Eva strode out into the thick night air, feeling freer than she ever had. She was going to die soon, that was true, but everyone dies soon enough, and at least she would live before she died. She walked through the gates of the ship-goers’ compound, through the clean streets of the wealthy district. She kept walking until the streets became darker and more narrow, the building old and odd. She slept on a marble bench, watched over by an old stone gargoyle.

She awoke, slightly before dawn, to something small and hard jabbing relentlessly into the small of her back. She rolled over and blearily opened her eyes. The thing that was now poking her in the stomach was the tip of a gnarled wooden cane, wielded by a little old lady in a floral skirt and paint-spattered cardigan.

“Up up! Young people these days, lazybones! Falling asleep all over the place!” barked the old lady. She looked disdainfully over Eva’s designer jeans and cashmere sweater set. “You ought to be up in the professional district, A1 Transit line’s over there, now up!”

Eva pulled her legs to her chest, but the cane continued to rap painfully against her shins.

“No, I’m not going back to the compound,” she said firmly, “Do you know anywhere in this neighborhood that has rooms to let?”

The lady simply looked at her scornfully and continued whacking her shins with the cane, with more and more irritation as dawn drew closer. Finally a burly man with tattooed arms stepped out from the shadows, and simply picked Eva up and set her down on the pavement next to the bench.

“Thank you, Snake,” the old lady said. Snake merely nodded.

The lady picked a small tin box up off the ground next to the bench and opened it. She pulled out a small canvas, covered in a half finished painting, and a tray of watercolor paints. The odd trio sat in silence, not moving, until the sun was halfway up the horizon, when the old lady suddenly grabbed the canvas and began painting the gargoyle.

Snake pulled a dented wooden box from some pocket inside his vest and set up a tiny chessboard, setting the pieces from memory to the middle of an unfinished game. He stared at it in concentration, finally moving a black piece and hitting the timer. He whipped the board around, and triumphantly moved a white piece, striking the timer with a smug flourish, then turned the board around and began to ponder the losing side again.

Eva found this tableau incredibly fascinating. The way the old lady slapped down random lines of color, some of which did not seem to appear anywhere in the scene, then blended them and magically produced a perfect replica of the gargoyle, almost realer than the original, was amazing.

As full light swept over the street, the old lady put her paints back in the tin, and Snake swept the chess pieces into the box and slipped it into his vest.

“I’m in the mood for some of Liz’s nice homemade waffles, aren’t you?” the old lady said to Snake.

“Alright,” he said.

“And you,” the old lady said to Eva, “You said compound? As in the ship-goers’ compound? You’ll actually want the A2 line, but it’s in the same direction. I suggest you get out of here before your resume gets too muddy.”

“No! I can’t go back, I can’t stand that place! I’m not a shipgoer anymore, but could you tell me of somewhere around here that has rooms to let?”

“Giving up a place on the ships? Choosing death with the rest of us?” the lady said, with a bit of condescending amusement in her voice.

“Yes!” Eva exclaimed.

“Well, this story’s worth a coffee, maybe a muffin if I think Angel would want you for her collage. Would you care to come to breakfast with Snake and myself?”

“Yes, thank you,” replied Eva.

She followed the lady and Snake to a little restaurant slightly below street level, called Liz’s Diner. The three of them slid into a booth in a corner. The old lady and Snake ordered giant plates of chocolate chip waffles and mugs of black coffee, while Eva sipped a coffee almost white with cream.

“I’m Lucy, and this is Snake,” the old lady offered, “and you owe us a story.”

“I’m Eva. Until yesterday, I was a shipgoer. My fiancé- exfiance, I suppose- Adam, and I were both accepted, so I guess you could say we were celebrities of a sort. Then last night we were packing our items and I realized I wanted to learn how to draw, and I hate Polara. And here I am. I can’t go back, I just can’t, so do you know anywhere I can stay?”

The old lady- Lucy- cackled gleefully. “You’re that Eva? Angel will be dying to meet you now, she’ll love you! She’s been burning you in effigy for a month now! I think you could stay with her, if she takes to you like I think she will.” Through some mysterious gesturing on the part of Lucy, the waitress placed a muffin in front of Eva.

Later that day, the three of them went to a park, so Lucy could paint some wildflowers she had discovered the day before. She sat on her tin box, painting, while Snake won and lost his chess game and started another. Eva merely lay on the ground, staring up at the sky.

All of a sudden, a girl pounced on top of her, kissed her passionately, then rolled off her and began to giggle madly. Eva was too shocked even to wonder what had just happened. The girl’s giggles eventually quieted, and she rolled onto her side to face Eva and said dramatically, “Hello, I’m a fallen Angel. May I lead you into temptation?”

“What?” stuttered Eva.

“Oh, I heard from Liz that one of the Chosen Ones was falling into the morass of sin that is bohemia and waffles, and I thought you might want a little help. As I said, I’m Angel.”

Eva sat up and took a closer look at the girl. She was short, slender, and appeared to be about seventeen, somehow seeming ridiculously younger, and yet more experienced, than Eva’s twenty-one. She was extremely pale, with deep brown eyes framed with heavy, smudgy eyeliner and glittery red eyeshadow. Her messy black hair was piled on top of her head, speared with ebony chopsticks, and liberally scattered with small silk flowers and brightly colored child’s barrettes. She wore a tight black tee shirt, a red vinyl miniskirt, fishnets, and huge combat boots. She was overall the strangest looking person Eva had ever seen.

“Oh, yes,” Eva said, trying not to show how disconcerted she was, “Lucy mentioned you. Do you- would you mind terribly much if- can I stay with you?”

“I do, I wouldn’t, you can,” laughed Angel.

“Thank you,” said Eva, not sure what else to say.

“C’mon, I’ll show you my place, I’ve got to meet a friend there soon anyway.”

Angel led Eva through twisted, brightly painted streets, completely unlike the regular blocks and mirrored blocks of Eva’s world. Adam’s world now, she reminded herself, not hers. Finally they reached an old brick building with laundry, banners and flowers trailing from the windows. Eva headed for the door but Angel tugged her arm and led her to a dark alley beside the building, where she began to climb the fire escape. Eva nervously followed her up to the third floor, where Angel tumbled recklessly but with great aplomb through the window. Eva carefully stepped through after her.

“Is- is this your apartment?” she asked.

“Home sweet home!” Angel answered.

“Then why didn’t we use the stairs?”

“Drummer Jimmy sleeps in the staircase on Thursdays. Boy’s skinny as a rail but has a way of taking up half a flight of stairs so you can’t get up without stepping on him.”

It was a mark of Eva’s confusion that she almost found this a perfectly reasonable answer.

“So let’s get down to business, you need to pay your rent,” said Angel seriously.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Eva, flustered, “when I left Adam last night, I didn’t think to take any money! If you’ll just let me stay here tonight, I can get back into my apartment and get my wallet-”

Angel’s deadpan dissolved into laughter. “No, you’re a guest! I ain’t paid rent in years now anyway. The only rent you have to pay is telling me your story for my collage.”

“Collage?”

“Lucy calls it my Four Dimensional Collage of the Art District. I call it my Portrait of Miss Lucy. Truth be told, Lucy is the Art District. I collected her story, and Snake’s, and now I’m collecting the stories of everyone around here, myself included. Lucy’s always involved somehow.”

So Eva told the whole story again, while Angel scribbled down notes, looking slightly gleeful. As the story finished, a knock came at the window, and a young woman in a gauzy dress, festooned with jewelry climbed through the window, holding her skirts up, the turned around to hoist a little girl, perhaps three, through behind her.

“Monique, my love!” Angel exclaimed.

“Nice to see you, Angel, who’s she?” Monique asked.

“Miss Lucy’s new castaway, a stray shipgoer, if you can believe it!”

“You two must be getting along fabulously then.”

“I couldn’t be happier! Unless I had a unicorn,” she added thoughtfully, “But how’s violin business?”

“Good, good…I got twenty five bucks and a couple diagram-of-a-model citizen pamphlets.”

“Oh goodie. It’s ridiculous, they forget the conformity drive was all to get a place on the ships, and now they’ve picked them all they might as well give up. Well, except for the one lucky winner that Evie here has made room for- but I think all of us in the District have pretty much blown our chances by now,” Angel laughed.

“You think?”

The next few weeks passed in a blur of new faces and strange sights. She slept on Angel’s floor, and each day was taken around by Angel or Lucy to meet new people. Many of them were willing to give her a quick lesson in whatever art they practiced, ballet or poetry or improvising music on the violin. Lucy even gave her a few lessons on watercolor. Eventually it became a strange sort of routine, although everything Angel did seemed to be haphazard, on fleeting whims and often at all hours of the night.

One night, lying on Angel’s floor, Eva mused at how much her life had changed. Here she was, with one of the parasitic artists she had scorned painting poems and jokes onto her torn, once-pristine designer jeans.

Although Angel was one of the strangest people she had ever met, she couldn’t help feeling closer than a sister to the girl. She was in some ways like a controlled explosion, but she had a kind heart, and was always ready to help residents of the District. She and Eva had eaten nothing but pasta for the past week to give money to the residents of Greenapple Street, whose stolen power had been cut off. A thought struck Eva.

“Angel?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t work. Where does our food come from? Where did you get the money to give to everyone over on Greenapple?”

Angel sighed. “Even living with me these past couple weeks, there’s still a lot about me you don’t know. I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t know, maybe it’s best if you just hear my part of the collage.” She looked at the ceiling and began to recite from memory.

“My name is Angel, and I am both the artist and a shred of paper in this collage. Let me start from the beginning. I used to be a good girl. I used to look just like the little girl on the cover of Parenting for a Future. That was my mother’s bible. Her one wish, not a bad wish, was for me to get a space on those Holy Ships. And I was close. At age thirteen, I was in the running, in the top thousand candidates. But I couldn’t stand it, even when I was from all outward appearances the picture of a future shipgoer, I felt like I was never good enough. Perfection wasn’t good enough, I need to surpass perfection to win a spot. And one day I snapped. I couldn’t do it. Everything I had worked so hard for was meaningless. Why would I work to get on the ships and live? I wanted to die. I tried.

“Then I met Danny. He gave me the Miracle. He gave me a little white pill, just like the ones I had swallowed by the handful, but this pill made me want to live. It illuminated everything. It painted over the world in new colors, colors that can’t be mixed with pigment or likened to any others. I awoke to find I had written- filled a notebook, written on my arms, scrawled across the walls. My mother despaired, I failed every class, I had no chance left of making those ships, but I was a devotee of the Miracle.

“Eventually Danny left. I left home after that, searching for someone else to sell me a Miracle. I ended up here, where there were enough Miracles to save me, where there was Ecstasy and a thousand other pills.

“Things were getting bad. I didn’t want Miracles anymore, I wanted smack. I lived on the street, don’t remember what I did to buy my drugs, don’t think I care to. Then I met Miss Lucy. She took me in, helped me quit, found me this place.

“But I deal. That’s where the money comes from, that’s why I sometimes have unexpected visitors looking slightly crazy in the middle of the night. I’m not proud of it, or how I’m not completely clean. When I get upset I need a fix. But I remember who I am most days, all because of Miss Lucy.”

“Christ,” Eva said, stunned. They sat in silence a few minutes, Angel uncharacteristically silent, staring at the floor.

“So Lucy saved you from the drugs?”

“Yeah,” Angel said quietly, “Lucy’s not the type to pass judgment or tell anyone they should be totally clean, but she’s got a heart of gold, and I’m not the only one she’s taken care of until they controlled that habit instead of it controlling them. Almost everyone in this district has got reason to be grateful to her.”

“Who is Lucy?” Eva asked for the first time.

“She’s the heart and soul of the District. She may look like a little old lady now, but in her day she was all the artistic vices embodied. She had long red hair and a thousand friends and almost as many lovers. They called her the Queen of the Art District and the reincarnation of Edna St. Vincent Millay. In her younger days she was famous around the world for her painting. That was a different era, before we knew about the comet. Before they announced they would monitor all schoolchildren, and select the ones that belonged on the ships. I wasn’t born yet when the announcement came out. How old were you?” Angel said, with a touch of nostalgia for a time she couldn’t remember.

“I was four. I don’t really remember, except the day my mother realized what it all meant and threw my crayons and paints away,” Eva said. She had forgotten that day. She had cried for hours.

The next few weeks passed quickly. She discovered the talent for violin that had once made her feel like a china doll in a music box now allowed her to create her own songs. They were filled with more anger than she would expect. Her favorite activity, however, just as when she was a little girl, was watercolor. Perhaps because of her awe of Lucy’s talent on her first morning in the District, simply holding the plain pine box where she kept her paints filled her with exhilarating joy.

On the day of takeoff, she went to see the ships. She felt light, and free, and she knew that watching them fly away would seal upon her the fact that she was free with her own dreams, and could say and feel whatever she liked now.

She jostled to the front of the crowd, right beside the walkway, half disgusted and half reveling in the way people dropped any notion of common courtesy the moment they saw the skull tee shirt she had borrowed from Angel and her ripped and written-on jeans.

But as she saw the ships, shining silver and white, doubts grew in her mind. Death. She was condemning herself to death if she stayed, committing passive suicide.

And wasn’t all this about choosing life? She felt alive now, more alive than she ever had, but she would assuredly feel quite less alive were she to die.

The crowd was glowing with worship for the ship-goers, for the few that had earned what everyone had worked so hard for, had sold their souls for. The search for what Eva had won had broken Angel. It had sent her into a hell of drugs and escape, and only Lucy had been able to bring her back.

So who was she to choose death, to give up now after she had run the race? This was what the world had been reduced to, what was ingrained in every human brain at the most basic level: live!

And when life was a few inches away and death in the crowd surrounding her, where else could she turn?

As Adam walked by, she called to him, “I was being spiteful! I always loved the show!”

He turned to her in surprise, and smiled.

“I know. Everyone loves the show.”

She never did. It’s so…no. She liked it, everyone likes it.

Adam pulled her up onto the ship-goers walkway. She tossed her paintbox out of her pocket, and watched Lucy catch it sadly.

She walked onto the ship to the fanfare of trumpets.

Everyone likes it.

She watched the artist and the gargoyle and the green earth fade away.