How to Save the Planet

Hey readers! This is part two of a larger series, and probably won’t make much sense without reading the first part. There’s a lot of exposition in this chapter, but there’s a little ‘action’ in it too. Be patient and you will be rewarded! There’s a whole lot more to come.

“Get up,” Lace said. It felt like about fifteen minutes after I’d fallen asleep, right up until she threw the curtains open and sunrise stabbed into my eyes.

“Ow,” Justine complained, pulling the sheets over her head.

I squinted, looking at the athletic woman. She was wearing yoga pants and a sports bra that showed off her solid build. She wasn’t bodybuilder ripped, or anything, but she spent as much time lifting weights as she did running and it showed. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a bun, and sweat beaded her forehead.

“Is it ten already?” I asked groggily. I hadn’t set an alarm. A stab of pain through my head reminded me that I hadn’t gotten any water last night, either. Justine had ridden me to an incredible mutual climax, and we’d both followed it closely with sleep.

“Not even close,” Lace said grimly. “Not quite eight, but Kate’s been up talking to that thing for a while.”

“Let her talk,” Justine moaned. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Plenty,” Lace said. I thought I saw her roll her eyes. “Come on, Evan’s headed our way. Get out of bed.”

Justine peered out from beneath the edge of the covers. “Put a shirt on.”

Lace snorted, smiling despite herself. “You put a shirt on.”

She left, closing the door behind her. Justine lifted the covers, looking down at both of us naked beneath them. “Oops.”

Her little unabashed grin made me laugh, which made her laugh in turn, until both of us were gasping for breath and wiping tears from our eyes.

“Come on,” I said at last. “Lace was pretty impatient.”

Justine complained, but she got up as I did, stretching in the sunlight in a way that I found very intriguing.

“Go on,” she said as she caught me staring. She said it with a smile. “You wanted to go, let’s go.”

“I’m starting to change my mind,” I growled, stepping back towards her and the bed.

Justine stood, flowing up off the bed into my arms and meeting my lips with hers. Her breath was truly awful, just as I’m sure mine was, but I didn’t care. We kissed, passionately, bare bodies pressed hard together in the light of morning.

“Put that away,” she said, running her fingers over my rising erection. “Naughty boy.”

I snorted, but dressed. Justine continued to distract me, bending over enticingly to grab her underwear. If I hadn’t seen her peeking up, watching to see my reaction, I might have thought it was accidental.

“Come on,” she said, throwing on a clean shirt. She’d skipped a bra, which she could just about get away with, but she’d also chosen a small, tight pair of shorts to wear.

“Should you dress more seriously? I mean… for something this important?”

Justine’s expression didn’t change, but I still felt the mood drop a little bit. I immediately regretted bringing her mind back to the flower. Lace could do that well enough. It probably would have been fine for me to bring it up once we were out there in the living room. But for a moment, there in her room, I hadn’t been anything but her boyfriend. I hadn’t been a part of the weirdness. And I had the strangest sinking feeling that I’d broken some delightful illusion that couldn’t be repaired.

“It’ll be fine,” she said after a moment. She smiled, and it didn’t seem forced, but it was different than it had been a moment ago. Less relaxed, maybe. “Everyone’s seen me in weekend clothes before, and I can’t see any reason the alien robot would care.”

I shrugged. It felt vaguely wrong, but I wasn’t going to argue about it. I didn’t have anything but yesterday’s clothes, myself. Wasn’t first contact supposed to be made by astronauts, or people in white lab coats, or politicians in suits? Certainly not by hungover college kids in sweatpants.

We were the last ones up. Kate was sitting on the odd armchair next to the TV — the HDMI cable was running out from behind it and over to the coffee table. After a moment, I realized it had actually been ziptied to the metal flower. The plug on the end wasn’t touching anything, but I wondered how much of an obstacle that really was for a high-tech device like that.

Kate herself looked terrible. There were deep bags under her eyes, and an entire empty coffeepot sitting next to the flower. She’d never changed her clothes, and her auburn hair had somehow gotten messier overnight. But there was a glow to her freckled face nonetheless. It was a hard expression to name. The closest I can come is saying that she looked exultant.

Lace had thrown on a loose workout tee, and was leaning against the wall beside the couch. Rosemary was sitting there, as far from Kate as she could get, and her face was tense with emotion. At the other end of the couch was Evan, looking way more cheery than I would have expected. He smiled when he saw me, waggling his eyebrows. “Have a good night?”

I grunted, and elbowed him over to make room. He laughed and handed me a mug of coffee, earning instant forgiveness for his mockery. “They put the yelling on hold just for you two. Aren’t you glad?”

Justine sank into the beanbag that nobody else liked — it was beat up and mostly deflated, and I’m pretty sure one of her cats peed on it at one point before she moved out for college. The rest of us would have been happy to toss it, but she’d had it for years and years. One of those comfort things.

And there wouldn’t quite have been enough seats in the room without it. College apartments are made to be just roomy enough, and no more.

“Kate,” Lace said, barely waiting for Justine and I to settle in. “Want to let us know what you’ve been doing?”

She had her stern voice on, the one she’d discovered as a teaching assistant this semester. I wouldn’t have enjoyed being on the other end of that, but Kate seemed totally unfazed.

“I was talking to Cybeline,” she said. “Say hi, Cybeline.”

There was a pause.

“Oh, right,” Kate said. “They’re awake now. Stop using the earbuds and talk to the whole room, okay?”

“Okay. Can you hear me now?” asked the same voice we’d heard the night before. At least, it was almost the same.

It was smoother now, I was sure of it. The words flowed like an actual sentence, not a voice-to-text program reading off a string of unconnected noises. The inflection had changed, too, and it took me a second before I realized that it was starting to sound more and more like Kate. That put a shiver down my spine.

Oh, and there was another thing. Despite the unplugged HDMI cable, the voice came through the TV speakers.

“And what was Cybeline saying?” Lace sounded totally unamused. Sure, Kate had broken the agreement we made, but I was still surprised at how Lace was taking it.

“A lot,” Kate said, rubbing her eyes. They were bloodshot enough that I started to wonder if she’d slept at all last night. When had she started talking to the flower?

“Care to share?” Rosemary asked. Lace’s voice had been chilly. Rosemary’s was frigid.

Kate didn’t notice, or at least pretended not to. “I don’t even know where to start.” She held up a hand, heading off both Lace and Rosemary before they could object. “Just… let me get my thoughts in order.”

Lace looked annoyed. Rosemary just looked away. Justine looked as if she were trying to sink even deeper into the beanbag, which would have been difficult. Its long-used stuffing was so worn down that she couldn’t have been more than an inch or two off the floor.

I knew how she felt. I hadn’t really meant to sleep over, and I certainly hadn’t planned on having wild sex with Justine when I did. But it had happened, and even if the others hadn’t heard us fucking, I was sure Rosemary wasn’t going to enjoy having a satisfied, flirty couple rubbing her face in the trouble she was having with Kate.

So I took the courageous route and retreated to the kitchen to make another pot of coffee. By the time I was done, Kate had begun muttering to herself, scribbling notes on her tablet, and making cryptic asides to Cybeline to remind her of this or that.

I passed around the mugs. Justine rolled her eyes back in mock ecstasy, Evan politely declined, and the other girls offered distracted thanks. I didn’t make a mug for myself — Evan has a real passion for coffee, and what he brought me was much better than anything I could make with the girls’ cheap machine. Grinding whole beans and boiling a kettle for pour-over is more effort than I want to make in the morning, but you can’t argue with the results.

“Okay,” Kate said as I settled in again. “I think I’ve got the basics in order.”

Lace frowned. “We want more than just the basics, you owe us –”

Kate held up a hand. “Guys, I haven’t gotten any further than that. Cybeline’s not… she’s a computer, not a person. She can’t hold a real conversation, she can’t volunteer information, she’s bad at figuring out what I don’t know. The… programming, the artificial intelligence, it’s all way more advanced than anything on earth, but it’s also set up completely differently. I tried to get Cybeline to make some kind of interface, a file browser or searchable text file, but we’re not getting anywhere yet.”

She paused to take a huge gulp of coffee. I was starting to worry about how much she’d already had. Did I need to ask Cybeline if she had a defibrillator function? How much caffeine could you have before getting heart palpitations?

“But I talked through it with her, and I learned some stuff.” She swiped through her notes, frowning at the tablet’s screen. “Where did I put…”

“Kate.” Justine was clearly out of patience. I couldn’t blame her. Kate was tired and unfocused enough to remind me of the very worst group presentations back in high school.

Kate looked at her, though her eyes took a moment to focus.

Justine spoke slowly and clearly. “Why is Cybeline here?”

Kate nodded. “Yes. Um. That’s probably where I should have started.” She peered at her notes. “It’s like she told us last night. She’s here to help us — she’s not allowed to act alone, not allowed to fix our problems, but she’s meant to give us the tools and the information to do it ourselves.”

“What tools?” I asked, at the same time as Lace piped up with, “What problems?”

Kate wavered for a second, then addressed me first. “Actually, most of the tools are information. Cybeline came with a certain number of nanomachines, but her fabrication tools are sharply limited, the way she can use them is even more limited, and the rest of her cargo is some kind of ultradense memory drive. But from what she says, that drive holds the kind of scientific knowledge that would let humanity take a huge leap forward.”

She turned to Lace. “Your question’s a little trickier.”

“Why?” Evan asked. He spread his hands, looking between Kate and the flower on the coffee table. “It said it’s here because our civilization’s in danger, maybe even our species. That’s gotta be, what, global warming? Nuclear weapons? Or is this thing a good alien, come to warn us the bad aliens are invading?”

“Hang on,” I said. “How does it even know? Has it been, what, monitoring us?” Something struck me. “Are UFOs real?”

Kate held up a hand to stop us. “Cybeline,” she said, “can you explain how you got here? Just the way we talked about.”

“Certainly,” the voice said at once. The blank image on the TV wobbled slightly, sprayed a faint rainbow of distortion across the surface, and then became the same face that the flower had shown us last night.

On a larger screen, I could make out the figure much more easily. It was a human face, feminine and oddly generic looking. It wasn’t quite lifelike enough to look like a recording of an actual person, at least now that I knew what this Cybeline was, but somehow it managed to dodge the uncanny valley. After a moment, I decided that it looked more like a really good painting than any computer rendering I’d seen, just stylized enough to appeal to the eye. I couldn’t deny that it was effective. Just having a face to put to Cybeline soothed some killer-robot fears I hadn’t realized I was feeling.

Although that was just what a killer robot would want. I reminded myself not to get too complacent, even if I really wasn’t sure what I could do if this thing went all Skynet on me. I didn’t want to end up peeled apart like that drill.

“I can only tell you a little about where I came from,” Cybeline said calmly. Her voice was still faintly artificial, but in fact a perfectly natural voice might not have suited the imperfect face. In a way, they complemented each other.

“In the same way, I can tell you little about who made me,” the face on screen continued. “I know only that my creators wish to help you.”

“What the hell?” I asked the room in general.

Apparently that was direct enough for Cybeline to respond to. “I am not aware of my origins, either the processes that made me or where they occurred. The knowledge was not given to me before I was sent to you.”

“That’s suspicious,” I said.

“What the hell can you tell us?” Rosemary asked at the same time.

Cybeline’s avatar nodded. “I can tell you a story.”

The graphic of the face faded, and a dense starfield replaced it. “On another world, life arose. It grew and evolved, becoming more and more complex until some of the life there developed intelligence, and technology, and began to ask questions.”

One star near the center pulsed blue, and a number of little points of light began to move outward from it.

“The Questioners were explorers. They were curious. And they began to travel out into space beyond the reaches of their own star. They sought life, and they found it.” An image of plants, strange in their colors and proportions, under an alien sky. “Then they sought intelligence like their own. This they did not find.”

Another image appeared. A city, shockingly similar to what might have been built on earth in the last century or two. Concrete buildings, rows of windows, roadways and treelike plants. The wide, low doorways and oddly placed streetlights hinted at alien design, but even that didn’t quite ruin the illusion.

Which made the broken roads, mountains of rubble, and long drifts of sand running through the place deeply disturbing.

“On some worlds, intelligence had arisen before the Questioners. It took different forms, developed in different ways, but showed again and again a single prevailing trend.”

Cybeline’s face appeared again, with a serious expression. “Self-destruction.”

Justine wasn’t watching the screen anymore. I couldn’t look away.

“The paths to annihilation were many. Fission weaponry, engineered plagues, orbital strikes. Less deliberately, there were environmental collapses and resource depletion, nihilistic cultural frenzies and repressive spirals of technological decline.”

Mercifully, there were no pictures for these. The images my brain conjured were horrible enough.

“The story is long,” Cybeline said after a brief pause. “Upon Kate’s request, the version I offer is abbreviated. The Questioners studied these dead species, as well as the very few living sapients they encountered as their travels spread more widely. There were conflicts, missteps, and loss. From these things, the Questioners resolved in the end that they must protect life where they could, for they found that intelligence in this universe is vanishingly rare.”

A ship appeared, against a black background as though floating in the void of space. It wasn’t like anything I’d seen in movies or video games. The shape was strange, sprawling out in oddly organic convolutions. It reminded me of a whale, and of a knotted tree, and of blown glass. There was nothing in the image to give it a sense of scale, and yet I was sure the ship was huge, vast beyond easy understanding.

And it was indescribably beautiful.

“They built messengers, to seek living worlds far beyond their own travels. The journeys would last forever, seeking life for as long as life might last. And when a world with intelligent life was found, the messengers would offer it a chance.”

Cybeline returned to the screen. “This is the message. I am here to help.”

It was a while before any of us spoke. Justine had retreated into herself again. I was worried, but it seemed impossible to say anything, impossible to reach out to reassure her, as if I was sitting very far away. Rosemary had been crying.

“I had to stay up with her,” Kate said in the end. Her voice was quiet. “She said last night that humanity might go extinct. That this might be the end. And I had to find out more.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure how this ended up on us. As far as Cybeline can tell me, her mothership decided where to send her. If that means that we were chosen, or that it was random, or that we intercepted this message when it was meant for someone else… I’m not sure it matters. What matters is that we have it.”

Kate looked at us. I understood the expression on her face, now that I knew why it was there. She was overwhelmed. She was flush with knowledge, excited by secrets and the promise of many more. And she was terrified.

I felt the same way.

“The message came to us,” Kate said. “And that means we’re the ones who’ve got to save the world.”

– – – – –

Evan blew a raspberry.

“Jesus Christ,” Lace said, disgusted.

I spread my hands, disbelieving. “Come on, man.”

“Sorry,” he said with a shaky grin. “Getting a little serious in here.”

“Some things should be serious,” said Lace. “We’re talking about the end of the world.”

“We’re also talking about the six of us, dumb hungover college students, being the ones to save it.” He laughed, high-pitched and nervous. “Come on, man. That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked. That seemed to cut through the panic. Evan turned to me, eyes wide and grin too fixed.

“What should we do?” I repeated. “Pretend it didn’t happen? Call the cops?” I was starting to smile, now. Evan was right. The whole situation was beyond ridiculous. But I couldn’t let myself loose my grip. “Should we ask our favorite professors for help?”

“And why not?” He looked around at all of us. “Maybe not Kearny police, but we could let NASA know. Get it to the government somehow, it’s not like this thing can’t prove it’s real.”

“If it goes to NASA tomorrow, it’ll be in the military’s hands the day after,” Lace said. “If the information becomes public, same thing.”

“Professors,” he said desperately. “This university’s filled with smart people, way smarter than us.”

“Hey,” Kate cut in, smiling. “Speak for yourself.”

Evan goggled at her.

“We don’t know what a professor would do,” Kate said. “The six of us? We know each other. We can work together. What if we bring somebody in and they want to… I don’t know, become a trillionaire? Get elected president? Stalk their high school crush?”

“We’re going from breaking down drills to becoming president?” Rosemary objected. But it didn’t sound like her heart was in it. Cybeline’s little presentation seemed to have deflated her anger completely.

Kate shook her head. To her credit, tired as she was, she was diplomatic. Understanding, not condescending, which for Kate was not exactly a given.

“There’s a lot more Cybeline can do with those things,” she said. “Spying, for example. Imagine a camera and a microphone that you can sneak into anywhere, totally undetectable. And there’s no reason they couldn’t rewire electronics. Crack passwords, hack voting machines, go anywhere and do anything.”

“Fuck,” I whispered. Kate had thought way further into this than I had.

She nodded. “And with Cybeline’s other info, there’s even more. She described something to me that sounded a lot like a quantum computer, a new kind of superconductor, the principles of fusion reactors, improvements to carbon fiber production…”

“Why?” It was the first thing Justine had said in quite some time. I looked over at her and saw with a shock that she was crying, the tears running down her face and onto her shirt collar.

“Hey,” Kate began, reaching out a comforting hand.

Justine didn’t let her get into it. “Why us? Why — why give us all of this?” The wild sweep of her hand seemed to include everything Kate had been describing and more.

“To save the world, apparently.” I couldn’t tell if Evan was amused, scared, or both.

Justine shook her head, tears flying. “With this fucking sci-fi magic? What’s nuclear war compared to — to that?” She flung her hand out, pointing at the flower in accusation.

I was lost. What should a supportive boyfriend do? Back her up and echo her concerns? Try to reassure her that everything was going to be fine?

And was any of that as important as the apparently apocalyptic threat we were facing?

“Is that what you’re supposed to do?” Lace asked the flower. “Help us get political power, money?”

Cybeline’s on-screen avatar frowned slightly. “I cannot say. The things I know were meant to help you, but I don’t know what their exact purpose is.”

“You don’t have some kind of mission statement?” My voice sounded a little wild to my ears, a little desperate. I still couldn’t believe the conversation we were having, talking about the design choices behind a flower-shaped alien AI. “Some kind of note from your designers?”

“I’m sorry,” Cybeline said. Her programming must have been really sophisticated. It sounded like she meant it. “My creators left no message that I am aware of. However, I have some general data about my mission that could help.”

Kate leaned forward. Apparently she hadn’t heard this yet. “Cybeline, we’d be interested to hear about that.”

“All right,” she said. “Give me a moment to find it.”

I frowned, as the image on screen fell into a simple loop. “Isn’t she a computer? She’s never had to take a moment to dig up a memory before.”

“She did a few times, last night,” Kate said absently. She was rubbing Justine’s shoulder, though my girlfriend didn’t seem to be reacting. “Most of the stuff she knows, especially lower priority stuff like this, is stored in that ultradense memory I mentioned. I dunno what the medium is exactly, but its capacity is way higher than anything on earth. She says it’s durable, too, especially against radiation. But accessing it is really slow, even by our standards.”

“What else does she have in there?” I asked. Justine seemed like she was listening. I was hoping that giving her something to think about would stop another breakdown.

Kate shrugged. “We didn’t talk about it much. Some of the technical stuff I told you about, the history she read off to us, some advice and guidelines for — well, us. Her users, or hosts, or whatever.” She frowned. “It didn’t seem like she knew much about herself, though, and even less about her creators. I don’t know why.”

“Operational security,” Lace suggested. “If someone greedy and ambitious got their hands on Cybeline, they can’t be any threat to her makers this way.”

“Could they ever be a threat?” Rosemary asked. “To someone with technology like this?”

Lace shrugged. “Maybe they’re just being cautious. Or maybe they’re thinking long-term, and they’re afraid of what we might do in another few centuries.”

“Hey,” I said. Lace had given me an idea, something that might help Justine. “Nothing says that the danger Cybeline’s talking about is immediate, right? She could be warning us about stuff that’s coming a hundred years from now.”

Justine didn’t look comforted, and Kate was shaking her head. “I doubt it, Alex. If…”

She paused. Cybeline had broken out of her screensaver loop.

“I’ve found the information you wanted,” she said.

Kate motioned with her hands, a ‘go on’ kind of gesture. Surprisingly, Cybeline seemed to understand.

“The messengers I told you about were intended to interfere with sapient life as little as possible. Their goal was not to decide what form a species’ development might take, but to alter its course just enough to allow it to survive existential crisis. Unfortunately, there is a narrow window where this is possible. Interfering with a species long before it reaches a crisis point is unpredictable at best, and counterproductive at worst. Species which become aware of outside interference are more likely to fall into religious mania and other self-destructive patterns.”

“At and shortly after the point when sapient life becomes aware that its future could be threatened, that extinction is a possibility, small changes can be very effective. Arranging for scientific breakthroughs into safer technologies, interfering with research into dangerous ones, and in rare cases engineering small-scale disasters to warn of greater ones to come.”

“Jesus,” whispered Rosemary. I couldn’t help but agree. This thing could have engineered a disaster if it thought that would help? It was terrifying.

Cybeline continued. “However, as the crisis point draws closer, small changes become less effective. Many species grow accustomed to the idea of existential threats, and find ways to assure themselves that they are not in danger.”

Evan snorted. “Ouch.”

“Additionally,” Cybeline said as though Evan hadn’t spoken, “the path to crisis and self-destruction usually involves population increases. Small changes are less likely to be effective as the number of individuals grows large. Near the crisis point, two main strategies are considered effective — if only one major threat exists, such as a natural hazard or single repressive social structure, that threat can sometimes be removed. This intervention, even when obvious, can be the least intrusive path.”

I was starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Whatever Cybeline was leading into did not bode well for us.

“In cases where a number of existential threats are present, or where simple intervention is otherwise impossible, the best solution is usually to increase the likelihood that a portion of the population survives. This is the most disruptive path, and involves providing the knowledge –”

“No,” Rosemary whispered.

“– and tools –”

Justine shook her head, wordlessly. The tears had stopped.

“– they need to survive the crisis, preserve what they can, and rebuild when it becomes possible to do so.”

We sat in stunned silence.

“It seems likely,” Cybeline blundered on, “that this last scenario is the one I was designed for.”

“Thank you,” Kate said. She didn’t quite snap at the oh-so-helpful alien robot, but it was a near thing. “We’d actually guessed that.”

“Wonderful,” Cybeline said. “I’m glad you’re coming to understand the situation so well.”

Kate hit the remote, and the TV turned off.

Nobody said a word.

Surprisingly, it was Justine who broke the silence. Her voice was a little shaky, but clear. “Well. It doesn’t get much worse than that.”

I wound my way across the room, sinking down into the ancient beanbag to put my arm around her. She leaned into it, resting her head on my shoulder.

“I need a break,” Evan said. He held up a hand. “I know, I know, we basically just started. But –”

“No,” Rosemary agreed. “This is some heavy stuff.” She looked over at Kate sympathetically. “And you need some sleep.”

Kate yawned. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Lace nodded. “But, guys… we can’t take too long.”

“Come on,” I said. Absurdly, I found myself turning slightly as if to shield Justine from her words.

She looked over at us, and her voice softened. “Look… I know. It’s a lot. It’s way too much. But this is beyond important. We’ve got to start making plans.”

“Tonight?” Justine asked quietly. “Is tonight soon enough?”

Lace looked like she might have pushed back, until I glared at her. Which changed her mind because I am very intimidating, and not at all because she felt sorry for Justine.

“Okay,” Lace said. “Tonight.”

– – – – –

Justine and I went out for brunch. Unsurprisingly, it was a quiet one. Both of us were recovering from last night’s drinking, and the unrelenting series of revelations Cybeline had brought us.

Greasy food and even more coffee sped along our recovery. At least, it sped mine along. Justine was still withdrawn, but I thought that was probably from worry and not from a hangover. As I scraped up the last of my hash browns, she finally broke the silence.

“Let’s get some homework done.”

“Um,” I said. I struggled for words. The question ‘how can you possibly care about homework when we’ve just made first contact and learned about the impending apocalypse’ seemed a little insensitive, not to mention indiscreet. The restaurant was crowded with people, and though there was no way they’d think we were being literal, I wasn’t sure I wanted them to remember the young couple discussing Armageddon over bacon and eggs.

“I know,” Justine said, saving me the effort. “I know, but… I just want to have a normal weekend, okay? At least… between conversations with the robot.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s just swing by my dorm.”

It was, inappropriately enough, a lovely day. We took the long way to the library, passing through the quad and greeting friends and classmates. High Plains U was a state school, with enough people enrolled that it traded the top spot in the state with the University of Wyoming every year or two. But Wyoming’s a pretty empty state, and that left the school with barely more than 10,000 undergrads. After a year and a half, you start recognizing a lot of people.

I watched Justine as we walked along, trying not to be too obvious. She was smiling, laughing with people along the way, and generally acting like her usual self. But it had only been an hour since her outburst this morning, crying and protesting against Cybeline’s dire predictions.

That wasn’t like her at all. She was steady, strong. I’d seen her cry a few times, at touching movies or while finishing a good book, but even then she’d been pretty much in control. I was only realizing now that I’d never seen her run into anything really, deeply upsetting — as far as I knew, she hadn’t even bombed a test since starting college.

I wracked my brain. Justine’s parents and even grandparents were all around. She came from a good family — not rich, but comfortable. She’d managed, somehow, to enjoy her lame high school job. She hadn’t even lost a childhood pet. I’d met her old, cantankerous cat when I visited her over summer break.

My stomach sank. Justine might be facing the first serious trial in her life, and it was a big one. She was struggling because she had no idea what to do. And neither of us could even guess how she might end up reacting to this kind of stress.

I mean, it wasn’t like breaking my arm at age eight or losing my abuela when I was fourteen had really prepared me for this. I was pretty sure no human experience could have. But those times had shaken me deeply, changed the way I looked at the world, and even as Cybeline shook things up again, I could remember that I’d done this before. I’d adapted. And Justine had never needed to adapt that way until now.

“Alex?” I came back to my senses with a start. Justine was looking up at me, and I realized I was holding her hand too tightly. “Something wrong?”

I shrugged. “You know.”

Her lips tightened, but she nodded calmly. “Yeah.”

The mood dropped a bit, and I wished I hadn’t let my thoughts show. “Come on,” I said. “That paper of yours will take your mind off it.”

She groaned. Did it sound forced? “I’ve got a week for that,” she said. “I can’t even get into it until I’m ready for my math test.”

“Nothing’s as distracting as math,” I said. “Sometimes it distracts me so much I forget to keep my eyes open.”

She laughed, harder than the dumb joke deserved, and leaned into my shoulder. We were both making an effort. We were both trying. Was it going to be enough?

– – – – –

The library was a big, flat-fronted mass of concrete, just barely saved from looking like an upended parking lot by a series of tall windows that ran all the way to the roof. I wasn’t sure I could call the barcode effect beautiful, but the natural light made it quite nice on the inside. It was the first really warm weekend of the year, which was unusual for March, but it meant that the library was mostly empty. Everyone wanted to be outside, except a few California transplants who thought 60 degrees was more or less subarctic.

There were plenty of study spaces in the library, which was probably oversized for the High Plains campus as a whole. It had been built right around the time computers stopped being the size of a whole room, and hadn’t anticipated the rise of digital media. It still had a sizable collection, and it might still have been the best place on campus to work on a group project, but it wasn’t nearly as high-traffic as it would have been a few decades ago.

Surprisingly, Justine led me to the stacks, the windowless, low-ceilinged part of the library where most of the physical collection lived. There were tables along the walls, and it was usually even more empty than the more open spaces towards the front of the building, but I rarely went there to study. It was so still it felt almost like a tomb.

“Wouldn’t you rather –”

“Shhhh!” Justine did her best librarian impression. “Young man, people are trying to learn.”

I rolled my eyes. “There were plenty of open tables out there.”

She tutted. I’m pretty sure I’d never heard someone do that in real life before. “There’s fewer distractions in here,” she said primly. “Come on.”

She led us through the shelves, winding back deeper into the cavelike warren. Finally, she picked a table that looked pretty much like all the others we’d seen, and we spread out and got to work.

I had to admit, Justine had been right about the lack of distractions. We took each other away from the work now and then, joking and teasing and stealing quick kisses, but we didn’t see or hear a single other person passing by. I made better progress on my various bits and pieces than I had expected, and as far as I could tell Justine did too. After a while, we switched to running through questions for each other, preparing for the tests and quizzes we had coming up.

“Hey,” Justine said suddenly. “There’s a book I’ve been using for my paper. Can you go get it?”

“Why don’t you go? I can fill up our water.”

“Please?” She made an exaggerated puppy dog face. “It’s just down this row. I’m good on water for a while yet.”

I sighed, standing up. “Fine, fine. What’s the book?”

“‘Caesar’s Legacy,’ by Osgood.” She gave me a winning smile. “You’re the best.”

I grumbled vaguely, tracing my way down the shelf. I stopped. “Hang on. This section’s all biology.”

Then I was being pushed, gently, up against the shelf. Justine had followed, silently, and now she was stepping in very close and kissing me. Slowly, deeply, her lips danced with mine and her hand ran up my leg and underneath my shirt.

“Sneaky,” I gasped, before her mouth covered mine again.

“Shhhh,” she breathed in my ear. She met my eyes, looking at me for a long moment. I nodded my agreement.

Then she sank smoothly to her knees and started to undo my belt.

I didn’t say a word. I was afraid to. But I bent over, hands reaching for hers, trying to pull her off. Was she really trying to do this in the school library?

She swatted my hands away, insistent and sure. One hand pushed against my midriff, the other continued its work. I tried to get away again, but my feet were under her. I couldn’t move them to get my weight under me, and I couldn’t push forward against her from my awkward position.

And then her hand dipped into my briefs, cradling my balls briefly before she drew me out into the open air.

My heart was pounding. I was scared, I was excited, and the fear was making the excitement all the more intense. I was stiffening fast, and then Justine lowered her mouth around my cock all the way to the base.

It was a struggle not to groan aloud. I bit down on my fist, fighting hard not to make a sound. Justine looked up, eyes twinkling, delighted at the reaction she was getting. And then, just as I was starting to decide that I should make her stop, really, and take her back to my dorm or something, she started to use her tongue.

Her lips stayed fastened around my shaft, maybe midway down, while her hand played across the last bit of the length. But inside her mouth, her tongue slid and flicked and teased at my head, circling and wrapping around it in ways that I would have sworn were actually impossible to do. I was hard now, almost painfully hard, and when Justine started to bob her head up and down I almost gasped.

I couldn’t. The stacks were almost empty, we hadn’t seen anyone all day, but we were totally exposed here. Both ends of the aisle were open, and if there was even the slightest bit of noise, someone could hear it right back from the doorway. What if someone else had come here for the quiet? What if some librarian was restocking in the next floor up? It was so perfectly still that it would be easy for the sound to carry that far.

Justine was being restrained, herself. She was cautious not to make any noise, not to produce the sliding wet sounds that would give us away, careful not to go deep enough to gag on my cock. If she hadn’t been going slow, I would have exploded already, overcome by the fear and excitement of getting a blowjob in the middle of the school library. I was right on the edge as it was.

“I think it’s on the other side of the shelf,” she said, and I almost jumped out of my skin. Her mouth was less than an inch off my cock, her hand working slowly, tauntingly over the full length of my shaft. Her tone was perfect, conversational, not giving away what we were doing. She planted a little kiss on the head of my cock, and I had to bite down harder on my fist.

“Do you see it?” she persisted. Her smile was absolutely wicked.

It was clear she wanted me to join in the game. “Oh yeah,” I said weakly. Restraining myself was impossible. I was almost lightheaded from the effort. “There it is.”

She grinned. “Great! Can you reach down and grab it for me?” Her lips parted, sliding slowly down towards the base of my cock as she took her hands away completely. They took hold of the hem of her shirt, drawing it upwards and steadily revealing more and more of her perfect body. Her eyes never left mine as she pulled her shirt up to her neck, letting her bare breasts fall into view.

Justine didn’t have to explain the subtext to me. I reached down, bending sideways a little awkwardly, groping at her. My fingers found her nipple and tweaked, and I felt her jump. It made her sink a little deeper, and her lips and tongue tighten ever so slightly, and in my excited and sensitive state that was all it took.

I came, pumping into Justine’s mouth while she stroked my shaft and stared into my eyes. It was intense, crazy, thrilling, and the only reason I didn’t give the whole thing away was because I was breathless from pleasure.

Slowly, I came down from it, and I let out a nearly silent sigh of satisfaction. I saw it mirrored on Justine’s face, delighted by the naughtiness, and she eased slowly up my oversensitive cock, cleaning away the last drop of cum and making me jump. She grinned, and made a show of swallowing it all away before she tucked me back inside my pants. When she stood, her shirt fell back into place, and it was as if nothing untoward had ever happened.