Daniel Rogers was born on March 22, 2012 at 6:23 a.m. at St. Andrews hospital in Rochester, Minnessota. All the papers had reported it accurately. A picture of the Baby Rogers was on the cover of every local, national, and foreign newspaper, under large headings that read “Wonder Baby” or “Lone Rogers” or, according to translations of the foreign papers, something like “Miracle Baby.”

In the year 142,304, the original human star called “Sun” finally burned itself out, becoming the white dwarf it was always destined to become. Life on the original planet persisted for almost two millennia, adapting as it were to the cold, harsh climate of the planet they still called Earth. But finally, in Cosmological Decade 18, two full space decades earlier than expected for the Degenerative Era’s birth, the Sun’s dwindling energy had completely defused, and the original planet called Earth became uninhabitable.

Invisible Dan drove the car, a green Volkswagen Jetta that hurtled along I-80 in the middle of the night. We’d just coaxed him into fifth gear—he’d never driven a stick before—and now allowed ourselves to drowse, drifting on the edge of sleep as we whisked through central Pennsylvania. The Promised Land was still two hundred miles away. Columbus, Columbus, Columbus. Was there a word more beautiful in all the language than this one, which bespoke whole worlds of firstness, freshness, discovery? Westward we flew, as the word made a rosary under my breath, the engine’s hum and the seat’s vibration lulling me deeper. Then a truck slid past on the left and Dan panicked. He ground the gearbox and stomped on the brake.

Kendra immediately shot up and turned back to the Home. The man from the day before in the Eating Hall—the one in the long coat, turning his head about the Homers, with the strange, transparent contraption resting on his nose, making his eyes appear double large—stood now in front of the Home’s entrance.

The Fall made me willing. Not just for him but for all of it. For the giggling and the grabbing and the colors we kicked all over the park. And for the chit chat at the kitchen table when five o’clock lingered into evening like the disappearing smoke of a snuffed-out match. Bobby watched the drop of fire on the candlewick flicker and interrupted me when it held still. How strange, he said, look. Look at that. The flame looks smooth like water… Like water running over a worn-out stone. He leaned toward me to light a cigarette on the candle and blew smoke in my eyes. Cut the shit, Bobby, I said. You know my Daddy used to do that before he’d burn me. His five o’clock shadow stood on end like an angry porcupine’s quills. “Don’t bring your lousy life in here,” he said.