Read Terra for Free Online

disposition is not quite what they’re looking for to mind a shop.
    I flip my pillow to the cool side and press my face into it, counting my shallow breaths. Had you asked me a week ago, I would have told you that something like this would be a blessing. I never considered how complicated it could be.
    I start to recall how normal the events of That Day felt: scavenging out in the Dead Woods, my friendly conversation with Mal. I am recounting my terse chat with Emery when, suddenly, I realize why I remember the set of his shoulders, the shade of his hair. It’s from watching him walk in and out of my classroom, back when he came to speak to my class about his scholarship. Emery Garren: the first person in 50 years from Genesis X-16 who would be attending school in the sky.
    Technically, the universities up top are open to anyone, citizens of the groundworld and skycities alike. At least that’s what the commercials say. Of course, the kids up there don’t have acid rain that prevents regular attendance, and their teachers actually like being assigned to them. Here in Sixteen, kids with test scores high enough and wallets deep enough to qualify for entrance are pretty much nonexistent. We don’t have access to the technology or the resources that the skydwellers have, so achieving those scores takes a particular kind of brilliance. And even when kids do make the grade, the cost is what really keeps us out.
    Emery was a special case because he managed to land himself one of the exclusive Skyline Scholarships that are reserved for terrestrials who score highly on their tertiary examinations. Most years, nobody from Sixteen even bothers applying. Our chances are already low and the disappointment just isn’t worth the effort. Most years, no scholarships are awarded at all.
    So why is Emery back here doing scavenging work? I think briefly, though my curiosity is soon eclipsed by one glowing thought: Mica. He’s already passed his secondary examinations, an achievement most kids don’t hit until they’re much older. Under the right circumstances, and with the right resources, he might actually have the smarts to make it up top. Our circumstances have never been right, though—not until now.
    I can see Mica shutting the apartment door behind him, bags slung over his shoulders, the two of us marching toward the Skyline Transfer together. I see him, sitting at a tiny table in a tiny room with real, sky-grown food on his plate—the kind of stuff we’ve only ever seen on TV: colorful fruits and vegetables that have actual names instead of coded numbers stamped onto their labels.
    It would be the chance for a real life for Mica—a life in which his potential wouldn’t be wasted as a scav or recycling plant laborer down here. One where he’d have the education to become more than some self-important skydweller’s personal slave once he got up top. And me, well, I’d find something to do down here while he was gone.
    I can only let my imagination run away for so long before I have to shake myself back to reality. How much steel am I honestly talking about here? Skyline Transfer tickets cost hundreds of credits, and who knows how much more he would need once he got up there. I suddenly realize I might have already landed on the reason for Emery’s premature return.
    Even if Mica were able to obtain a scholarship, logic tells me that what it takes to live up there is a hell of a lot more than what it takes to survive down here. For the first time, it occurs to me that even if my payout really were some sort of computer-generated glitch, they might not care enough to fix it. Maybe this much steel is chump change to the Tribunal. The thought puts a sour taste in my mouth.
    If I want even a chance of making this happen for Mica, I need more. We need more.
    I bolt upright. The other scavs will be riotous if they find out that I’ve broken the unwritten rule and tried to collect less than a week after a huge payout. It’s as