“Everyone here has a reason. Or an excuse. A story. I hope you haven’t become like them.” Feng wondered whether he’d just crossed the line with his aunt. He debated apologizing but he said nothing further.

“I’m not some outsider who doesn’t care about Xinjiang. That will always be my home.” Liumei slowed the cadence of her speech. “Even if I never go back.” She appeared to contemplate this.

“Sorry.” Feng examined his sneakers. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

They flew over a deep pothole, and Feng felt his stomach drop. A few feet later the vehicle made a loud thump and found level ground again.

Feng watched his aunt check the rearview, and he glanced out his side mirror. He could see only a cloud of red dust behind them. His aunt spoke again. “Our family always planned to leave Xinjiang. We probably should’ve done it sooner, for your sake. But you’re here now.”

“Uncle should’ve let me go to Beijing.”

“Feng, I don’t think you understand how much things changed for us. In my lifetime, we were free, we practiced our faith, we spoke our language. Now we all speak Mandarin.”

“What’s wrong with Mandarin?”

“Nothing, but we have our own language.”

“Well, we can all speak English now too.” Feng waved his phone, calling attention to its ability to translate the conversation in real time. “So what?”

“It’s just not right,” Liumei said. “The party controls everything you do, where you go, when you can leave the house.”

Feng sighed. “No argument there, believe me.” He turned to look out the window at the countryside. “But why not let me live closer to where the action is, in Beijing, instead of here in the middle of nowhere?”

His aunt ran her hands through her hair. “Anyway, I didn’t mean for this ride to get so intense.” She took a deep breath. “My brother—your uncle—and I just want you to see there’s more to life than…whatever you’re up to online.”

Feng thought of his clanmates. As the red earth and trees flew by, neither he nor his aunt spoke.

Feng stared through his phone to a spot just to their south. The screen lit up and bathed his face in a copper glow. The window his phone offered into the Floraverse showed a fountain of energy shooting up into the sky from a place just beyond the trees. It was an extraordinary sight, like nothing he’d seen before in AR.

“Whoa,” Feng whispered. He tried to make sense of the power source spewing light into the sky behind the forest. Though he hadn’t been aware of it a moment ago, it now consumed Feng’s thoughts.

CHAPTER 14