Page 56

Blastoff!

Marsh has no idea where Talia has sent her. She and Alexis were wrestling over the Show Bible so fiercely as that last episode ended, both struggling to flip to different parts of the book, there’s no telling where Talia’s finger randomly landed in the nearly endless stack of pages. Marsh doesn’t know what to expect, and so is trying to expect nothing.

But even so, out of everything it could have been, total silence is the last thing she was ready for.

Slowly, she looks around as the scene brightens.

If her Mexico telenovela star trailer was small, the room she’s now in is low and narrow to the point of being claustrophobic. The walls are white, and covered in screens, keypads, and other serious-looking equipment. There are rope tethers, tubes, cubbies, LED bulbs, and buttons everywhere, and there seems to be no natural light at all. Everything is bathed in a sickly fluorescent, artificial glow.

Is she in an underground bunker? A submarine?

But then Marsh notices a tiny porthole window in the wall, and catches sight of the view.

It’s black out there.

Blacker black than she’s ever seen.

And there are tiny pinpricks of white amid the darkness.

Is she...

In space?

JesterG: Marsh is an ASTRONAUT????

StrikeF0rce: I can’t believe they can do this! I’m back on board with the show now!

SharpTruth99: Don’t any of you see what’s happening??!?

The comments have gone completely haywire, clogging up her view until all she can see are spaceship emojis and hearts.

Vadasz123: Felháborító!!

Mochiko5283: いや、このエピソードが今までで1番いい !!!!

Moms4Marsh: Omg, do you think they’ll do zero-gravity sex?

Marsh’s heart is still racing, from the last jump or from her new environment, she’s not sure. She didn’t really have much of a plan at the end of that last episode beyond trying to get out of Mexico as quickly as possible. But now that she’s here, she’s not actually sure what to do. Alexis wanted her to find Chrysalis, but how can she do that if she doesn’t even know what it is?

She supposes she could find out, she thinks as her eyes drift to the little window again. In the cosmic distance, something glitters, a faraway comet or planet beckoning.

Or not.

At least, not yet .

She’s so far away, Chrysalis won’t find her here. Not for a while. Instead of chasing it, she could just take a breath. She could briefly enjoy how beautiful, how exhilarating, how impossible, being an astronaut on the International Space Station would be.

After all, as Talia’s been insisting to her all along, there are infinite lives here in the Bubble for Marsh to enjoy. If something isn’t quite right in one of them, like her career or her city—or Chrysalis—she can just choose another one.

She floats from room to room, giddy at her weightlessness. She does backflips, she swims, she spends an entire day doing everything “upside down,” and marvels at how it makes no difference. She takes pictures of herself in every room of the ISS, to email back to Harper on Earth. She laughs at how whenever she’s not taking a bite of something, she can just let go of it and it hangs suspended in midair. She gets lost for hours looking out of portholes at the great, mysterious expanse of the universe, awed by the magnitude of what the Bubble can do.

Finally, their crew captain Victor puts them to work, and together with him, Jo, and Ren, Marsh prepares to complete a daring space walk that will upgrade the ISS’s satellite system—and she discovers that she’s somehow proficient in mechanical engineering, advanced mathematics, and astronomy all at once.

Ordinarily, she’d be embarrassed by how unrealistic that is, but she’s having too much fun to care. Obviously, she’s not going to make this path her permanent one and really become an astronaut, but to see herself succeed even at this life makes her giddily proud. She’s gone from lonely, sad background character who was convinced she was too late to change her life to finding love again with Ren, reigniting her professional passions, and proving to herself that she can not only survive, but flourish, in places like Iceland and Mexico... hell, even in space! She hasn’t found her perfect forever path yet, but she’s starting to believe that when she finally does, she’s going to be brave enough to actually seize it.

As Marsh creeps out into the desolate, terrifying, beautiful obsidian vacuum in her poofy white suit and bulbous helmet, she’s breathless with wonder. For as long as she lives, she knows that without a doubt, this will be the most magnificent thing she’ll ever see.

Ren, on the other hand, is the nerdiest version he’s been so far in any of the episodes, to fit with his new character here, she supposes. He’s pale, and very slender—convenient for life on the ISS—his hair is thinning on top, and his glasses are twice as thick, so that they make his eyes seem giant at some angles. He looks more like a stereotype of a scientist than a real one, Marsh thinks, and rolls her eyes at the show.

But on the bedroom front, he’s just as eagerly, nearly frantically, diligent as always—even with zero gravity. All This and More is smart enough to know not to tweak that detail.

Marsh has been doing everything she can to avoid it, but now that their mission is completed, and a shuttle is heading to the ISS from Earth to pick Marsh and her crew up, she knows she can’t procrastinate any longer.

She has to talk to Talia at some point.

Even though they’re in space, Marsh’s team tries to keep pace with Earth, and all the clocks are set to US Central Time, where the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, is. On their last night before the shuttle arrives to dock, she takes the late shift at their comms desk. She waits until the rest of the crew is strapped into their sleeping bags and all the lights are out. Finally, with a sigh, she opens up the long-distance satellite channel.

Houston— Talia —has called fourteen times and sent fifty emergency pings over the course of this episode.

“Uh, hi,” she finally says, as a nearly hysterical Talia Cruz appears on the grainy screen.

“ Marsh! ” she shouts, gripping the sides of whatever JSC headquarters computer she’s looking at Marsh from. “Thank goodness! I’ve been trying to reach you since Mexico! Are you all right? Is everyone else all right? Is anyone hurt? Do—”

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Marsh interrupts gently. “Everyone is okay.”

“Oh, thank God. Whew!”

Talia, in rare form, sinks into her chair for a relieved moment before springing back to exquisite posture. Even dressed as a government administrator, and at four o’clock in the morning, she looks like a movie star.

“I can’t believe Alexis!” she continues furiously. “That was so dangerous! Flipping through the Show Bible like that, trying to send you somewhere without a plan. Anything could have happened!” She balls her delicate fingers into charming little fists. “I’m just glad I could get you away from her, to somewhere safe!”

Notamackerel: How far is far enough, she sent her to literal SPACE!

“How did it even happen?” Marsh asks. “What is Alexis doing in the Bubble?”

“No idea,” Talia says. “She’s not part of your crew, that’s for sure. Believe me, I’m definitely going to have a word with the team that runs our security. That kind of tampering is unacceptable. It’s sabotage!”

“I don’t know what she was doing, but it really didn’t seem like sabotage,” Marsh replies. “It almost seemed like she was trying to help.”

“How?” Talia asks. “By trying to fling you through the quantum universe completely at random, without a clue as to where you’d land? Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t managed to reach you in time? She risked your life, and your loved ones’ lives, carelessly.”

Marsh frowns at that. Talia does have a good point. What Alexis did was risky.

But she also knows that Talia didn’t hear what her old producer said, before she sent Marsh here. That she has to find the source of Chrysalis. She was so desperate, she put them all in danger to give Marsh the chance to do it.

Just what does Alexis think Chrysalis could be?

And why does Talia seem so unconcerned?

“Whatever Alexis was trying to achieve, it doesn’t matter,” Talia continues. “I promised you at the beginning that I’d do everything I could to make your life as perfect as mine is by your finale, and I’m going to keep that promise.”

The words are so comforting. Even with so many unanswered questions, Marsh just wants to sink into them. To forget the strange things that hap pened in Iceland and Mexico, to forget what Alexis said. She didn’t join the show to track down whatever this Chrysalis thing is—she came here to fix her life! It’s already hard enough to do that without trying to solve a mystery on the side that’s not even hers to begin with.

She’s spent so much of her life doing what everyone else wants, she almost forgot she doesn’t have to.

Especially not on All This and More .

“This is your season. Not hers,” Talia says, like she can read her mind. “This is about what you want.”

“Yes,” Marsh echoes. “This is my season. And what I want.”

“That’s it, Marsh!” Talia replies, with double the verve. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to be concerned about Alexis. There are so many paths left for us to choose from, I doubt she’ll ever end up in the same place as us again.”

She bends down, reaching for something out of the frame.

“And,” she says, as she sits back up with effort, and pulls the Show Bible into her lap. “Most importantly, the Show Bible is safe. We have it.”

The book is, as usual, even more monstrous than the last time Marsh has seen it. It’s so gigantic now that it’s nearly as tall as Talia is, as it sits there on her thighs. It takes up more of the little video screen than her host does.

“So, outer space was a fun diversion—can we just pause for a second to say, Wow! How incredible! ?” She continues as she opens the cover, struggling to keep her voice bubbly and easy as the weight of the pages nearly overwhelms her. “But it’s time to get you back on track. Let me send you somewhere else. After all, we don’t have much time left, and there’s so much more for you to do!”

Despite her lingering unease, just the mention of a new life makes Marsh’s pulse quicken with excitement. It’s still a thrill—all the possible things she could try, all the possible places she could go.

“Are you ready?” Talia asks over the feed, her finger hovering just above some new future, some new life. “You could have All This ...”

Marsh smiles.

“ And More, ” she replies.