Her uncle stayed at home; Park would not allow him to come to the airship port. Standing in the sagging living room, the walls turning damp with seaside summer, Park thought that her uncle looked hatefully old and stubborn; the lines around his mouth were too severe; his once-sharp eyes were dulled behind their smudged glasses. He had come to suit the city in the last few months—he had turned slumped and heavy and sweaty with the rest of it. It was Park’s opinion that his health had improved, and that he might endure like a barnacle, forever. They looked at each other without embracing and Park’s uncle said, “Well, goodbye, Grace. Have a good time.”

“Goodbye,” Park said. There were no promises to call, no remonstrations about visiting on holidays. Once you left a biodome, you were almost never allowed back. There were too many displaced victims of the Comeback already vying for your spot, and too much risk of you bringing back disease, infection. She nodded at him, turned, and began to shut the door.

“Wait,” her uncle said. “If Glenn’s walking with you, I need him to run some errands. Let me pull up the list.”

Glenn looked at Park sidelong. When she nodded, he followed her uncle into the kitchen. Park took one brief and final look around the only home she’d ever known: the table fashioned out of an old door, the mattress stuffed with grass and plastic bags. The airplane bathroom partition that led to her bedroom. All of the old commercial planes were scrap, now; they were considered too wasteful, too inefficient. They’d contributed too much to the scourge that swept the planet. Hence the rigid airship she was taking to Hanson-Skinner, in the Eastern Commonwealth: it would take a few days to get there, but at least the small amount of helium needed wouldn’t contribute to the country’s carbon tax. The only vehicle faster than an airship nowadays was a rocket leaving Earth—a rare and prohibitively expensive journey to make, unless your passage was paid for by the ISF. In exchange for years of conscription.

Park had no need for any of that, of course. She still had her place on Earth. And Glenn. His components hadn’t been optimized for space, so she couldn’t take him there.

He came out of the kitchen again. “I am ready.”

“Me, too,” Park said.

Then, without looking around again, she left.

“Are you sad?” Glenn asked her as they walked down the street. In the end they had decided to alter his appearance after all, to avoid trouble after the gun incident; Park had shaved his hair close and forced him into a rumpled school uniform. No laws against dressing up your android however you wanted, she thought at the time. At least not yet.