Odyssey leaned against the wall as she pulled on her boots. The armor of an Officer pressed against her throat as she leaned over, making it nearly impossible to breathe – the irony of it produced a tiny bubble of laughter in Odyssey’s throat.

Trying so hard to keep us alive that they kill us, she thought with a smirk. Irony was one of her best friends. Somehow, it always seemed to work in her favor.

The helmet was a rainfall of diamond metal plates on her skull. She had to attach them each, separately. It had taken her a full hour when she’d first started as a guard – now she had it down to fifteen minutes. Odyssey began to clip them on, one by one. They told the Nightline Constables that guarding Nightline was a duty of honor, of valor, of justice. Now, five years later – a veteran fifteen-year-old – she knew that it was basically their job to defend the palace from a bunch of scary, scary birds. There was no valor, only the smoke and mirrors of appearance.

Nightline, the Church of Freethinkers. Even the name was an oxymoron. Freethinkers didn’t have churches. It was against the whole concept – Nightline and its “priestesses” were basically a college. A huge college, maybe, a disk of pathways and classes and tubes that split Gaia in two, but a college nonetheless.

Her wrist began to beep. As far as Odyssey knew, wrist panels were been one of those things that so many people loved in science fiction books that they had to be invented. They sucked, in reality. You can turn off a cell phone, but not a wrist. If she didn’t answer, what was she supposed to say? Sorry, I wasn’t there?

Not exactly a plausible excuse.

The panel on her wrist opened and Crea’s face appeared. “Odyssey! Hey!”

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Late for Chiron’s class again… Damn younglings are always late for class, you know? I had to keep them after and now I’m gonna be late! Plus the damn Tubes are over-crowded this time of day. Can you cover for me?” As a Warden of Learning, Crea was forced to teach some of the younger priestesses in place of some of her own classes. When she graduated to an Officer of Learning, she’d be teaching full-time, and she wouldn’t have to worry about being late.

For now, she’d have to get in trouble.

“I was just about to go on duty, Crea. I can’t…”

“Please! Chiron threatened to send me to a weekend at Maxwell, Odyssey!”

Odyssey paled. A weekend at Maxwell was the worst punishment that a girl could receive. Maxwell was the tower in the center of Selena – Nightline’s brother “Church of Freethinkers”. It was part of how the two schools kept up members.

Granted, there were more priestesses at Nightline than priests at Maxwell. Girls were the lesser-loved children of Selena, and when a mother had a girl that she didn’t want Nightline usually took her in. They were a sanctuary as well as a college, and Odyssey knew that well. She was one of their refugees. Here, women were cherished, not hated.

But not all of the women were refugees. Odyssey knew a few that were products of Maxwell. They considered themselves upper-class, and they tended to get higher positions.

But it didn’t really matter. Every place had its bad points. Odyssey could bear those women if she needed to.

Nightline was all that stood between Selena and Apollo, after all. No man was considered cunning enough to keep the monsters of Apollo away.

“I’ll get the same if I’m late for my shift, Crea.”

“Odyssey! Come on, don’t leave me…”

“Ask Andromeda!”

“She’s sick.”

“Beep him.”

“Don’t know his code.”

“Then why are you talking to me? Run, girl!”

“I just got on the second tube, Odyssey!” Crea’s face was exasperated. “Nocta mia, Odyssey! I’ve got like fifteen minutes to go and class is in two and…”

Odyssey glanced at her eyewatch. Nine-ninety-eight FH glowed blue at the bottom of her eyescreen. Eyescreens had never been in any archaic science fiction novels, and Odyssey loved them. It was a simple idea; two plastic, porous sheets of clear paper over your eyes with wires threaded into them. A laptop in your vision. Small buttons wired into her mouth, so she could change anything at any time and hardly anyone would know but her. They made eyes even more incredible, too – the oceanic rim that lined her vision also lined her eyeballs.

Nine-ninety-eight FH. Crap. Her watch started in two minutes, too.

“Crea, I’m sorry. I have to go.”

“No! Don’t leave me!”

“Sorry…” Odyssey’s wrist panel closed and Odyssey looked at it guiltily. There were other methods of punishment, not just staying after class. Crea was her friend, but Odyssey had covered for her often enough. It was Crea’s problem, not hers.

Odyssey sighed and returned to putting together her helmet, moving a little faster than usual.

Crea glared at her wrist. “She hung up on me,” she grumbled as she floated quickly to the surface of the planet. A red glow faded away beneath her – the glow of the Tube station at the center of the world.

Crea, unlike her friend, didn’t read archaic science fiction. She didn’t know who Issac Asimov or Ray Bradbury or George Orwell were. She honestly couldn’t care less. Crea lived in the here and now. Who needed fake realities when she had a perfectly good one right here?

Crea reached out a hand and touched the frictionless side of the tube, almost not-feeling the plastic on her fingers. You weren’t supposed to do that; they tried to keep the tubes frictionless and smooth, but rocks were always falling out of people’s shoe soles or spare change from their pockets. For some reason, small items stuck to the sides of the tubes. You could lose a finger that way.

The surface loomed closer.

“You’re late.” Chiron didn’t even need to look as Crea came in. He knew who she was. “Again.”

“I’m not…” Crea glanced at her eyeclock. “It’s only been ten minutes. Where is everyone?”

“Everyone but you remembered that today is a Midday, and therefore you have your apprenticeships to go to.” He sighed. “Everyone was assigned a master to learn from and has dispersed.”

“In ten minutes?”

“In the past hour. You were supposed to get a sub, Crea. Didn’t you listen at all last class?”

Crea sighed and leaned against the doorway. Chiron’s namesake, a centaur, was carved in miniatures all across the woodwork. She traced an outline on the centaur’s face, wishing that they could remember more of the stories. Their ancestors had remembered so much about their past, and now they knew so little. Since the Second Closing, they’d forgotten everything.

“So… Who’s my mentor?”

Chiron smiled. “You got lucky, Crea.”

“How lucky?”

Chiron grinned. “I’ve got some research papers for you to grade. Make yourself useful, eh?” He tossed her a stack of papers tied with string. Crea caught it, smiling in relief. Chiron was her favorite teacher in memory. He didn’t teach memorization and dates like every other teacher seemed to – he taught in accordance with reality, and Crea loved that.

Male teachers were rare in Nightline, and Chiron was the only one she’d ever had, but he was one of the best by far. Male students were nonexistent. Since Crea had grown up in the palace, he was the closest thing to a boy she’d ever known. Secretly, Crea was a little bit in love with Chiron.

But not that way. He was the closest thing to what she’d read a father was. He was about 216 ‘dreds old, fat, and graying – and wasn’t that what fathers were supposed to look like, after all?

She’d never known her father. None of those who had been born in Nightline did. Even if they wanted to, they weren’t allowed to find out.

“Thanks, Chiron,” Crea said with a smile.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he replied with a warning grin. “You were late. I had to give you washing duty after you’re done today.”

“So… I don’t have to go to Maxwell?”

“Not today, anyways.” He sighed. “What will I do with you, Crea, huh? You need to get yourself together. You need to…”

“Organize. I know.” She sighed. “I’m not a kid anymore, right?”

“Right. Crea, you have to…”

“I want to be a teacher, Chiron. I know what I want to do. I just have to… Get used to it.”

He smiled. “Well, then, get used to it. But hurry up, okay?”

“Kay.”

Crea got started on the papers, and that was that.

Crea had gotten washing duty a billion trillion times. Possibly more. In fact, she’d started planning her day with the assumption that she had washing duty. On the rare occasion that she didn’t have washing duty, she suddenly had a few hours where she had nothing to do. It threw her entire schedule off.

In other words, she had washing duty a lot.

Didn’t mean she liked it.

Crea felt the water in her mop bucket slosh as it followed her up the stairs. It wasn’t supposed to slosh. Wasn’t that the point of magnetizing the bucket so that it floated in the first place? So that incompetent fools like herself wouldn’t spill it?

Like so many things, that only worked in theory.

As she reached her assigned platform, Crea dumped the mop in the bucket and sloshed it even more, all over the floor. Not like it mattered, right? She was gonna get it all wet anyways, so why bother with being neat?

The sunrise was beautiful, as always. Sometimes Crea wondered what the rest of it was like. She’d been looking at sunrise all her life. It would be nice to see what lay behind it for once.

Crea leaned on the railing, looking at the forest of Apollo around her. Her platform was one of the highest in the area, and she had a great view.

She also had a great fall if, for instance, she slipped on the mop water and tumbled over the railing.

Which she did, stopping only briefly to reach out at Odyssey, on the platform below, and take the Ofr down with her.