“The Atlas,” says Mrs. Flowers, “is a bit dated, I’m afraid. I introduce it to all the children on their Library Day, but after that they tend to prefer slicker, more immersive things. Go on.”

Konstance pokes a finger into the page, pulls it back. Then a foot. Mrs. Flowers takes her hand and Konstance shuts her eyes and braces herself and they step through together.

They don’t fall: they hang suspended in the black. In all directions, pinpricks of light perforate the dark. Over Konstance’s shoulder floats the frame of the Atlas, a lit rectangle through which she can still glimpse shelves back inside the Library.

“Sybil,” says Mrs. Flowers, “take us to Istanbul.”

In the blackness far below a speck enlarges into a dot, then a blue-green sphere, growing larger; one blue hemisphere, aswirl with vapor, rotates through sunlight, while the other passes through an ultramarine darkness, latticed with electric light. “Is that—?” Konstance asks, but now they are dropping feet-first toward the sphere, or else it’s hurtling toward them: it pivots, grows enormous, fills her entire field of vision. She holds her breath as a peninsula expands beneath them—jade-green mottled with beiges and reds, the richness of color overloading her eyes; what rushes toward her is more lavish, more complex, and more intricate than anything she has ever imagined or thought to imagine, a billion Farm 4s all in one place, and now she and Mrs. Flowers are falling through air that is somehow both transparent and aglow, descending over a dense circuitry of roads and rooftops, and finally her feet touch the Earth.

They’re in an empty lot. The sky is jewel blue and cloudless. Huge white stones lie among weeds like the lost molars of giants. Off to their left, undulating alongside a crowded road for as far as she can see in both directions, runs a massive and derelict stone wall, tufted everywhere with grasses and punctuated every fifty meters or so by a broad, time-battered tower.

Konstance feels as though every neuron inside her head has been set on fire. They said Earth was a ruin.

“As you know,” says Mrs. Flowers, “we’re traveling too fast to receive any new data, so depending on when this imaging was done, this is Istanbul as it looked six or seven decades ago, before the Argos departed low Earth orbit.”

The weeds! Weeds with leaves like the blades of Mother’s sewing scissors, weeds with leaves shaped like Jessi Ko’s eyes, weeds with tiny purple flowers on tiny green stems—how many times has Father reminisced about the glories of weeds? A stone beside her foot is mottled with black—is that lichen? Father is always talking about lichen! She reaches to touch it but her hand passes right through.