Right now, Mary is at home with Alana’s dad Richard watching her. Alana thinks it has been good for him. He gets to use his old nursing skills. It’s healthier than waiting by the woods for someone who will never return, anyway. Carrie says her mom already likes Richard better than her.

“Is she still…I don’t know, with us? I mean, here? Today?” Alana asks.

“Sometimes,” Carrie says. “Danny built her something to help. He calls it a memory prosthetic. It’s like Alexa, but it reminds you of stuff when you forget. She pitched the first one through the kitchen window, but he’s working on another version.”

Alana looks at Danny, who’s been uncharacteristically quiet all morning. “Is that what you’re going to do now? Just build gadgets in the workshop?”

“Sort of,” Danny says. “I’m starting up Sharp Industries again.”

“Really? You’re going back to making DVD players and computers?”

“Nope,” Danny says. “We’re going to invent batteries that last a hundred years. We’re going to make paint that collects solar energy and turns it into electricity. We’re going to breed plants that suck pollution out of the air, and toxic waste out of the soil. We’re going to make shape-shifting antivirals that mutate faster than diseases. We’re going to solve cold fusion and build flying cars and space hotels. And jetpacks.”

He breaks into a big, idiotic grin, and he looks like a kid again. “You know. The future.”

Alana looks skeptical. “Uh-huh. And how are you going to afford all that?”

Danny’s grin actually gets bigger. “Well,” he says, “I can lose a million dollars a year for 500 years. Then I’ll start to worry.”

Alana looks to Carrie for some kind of moral support, but she’s grinning too. Carrie takes Danny’s hand.

So that’s how it’s going to be, Alana thinks.

“Hey, speaking of money,” Carrie says, with a significant look at Danny.

He nods and pulls out his phone. “Right.” He swipes open an app, and there’s a whooshing noise.

At almost the same instant, Alana hears her own phone bloop with a message.

She takes it from her pocket, opens a notification from her bank. She blinks and wipes the cracked screen, just to make sure she’s seeing it right.

Her checking account just got bigger by a million dollars.

“Congratulations,” Danny says. “You are the recipient of a grant from the Eric Weiss Memorial Foundation. All taxes paid. Go forth and do good with it.”

Alana can only find one thing to say. “What?”

Danny shrugs. “We talked about it. Saving the world ought to pay a little better. And we’ve got the money.”

We. Alana catches that.