How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu

I push forward, half searching for an orb of my own, weaving through the crowds congregating around tiny planets of memory. Excuse me, excuse me. Have you seen my childhood?

“Opportunities are like little seeds floating in the wind. Your life is there. Some people have a big net to collect them all. Other people need to pray that the right seeds, the best ones, make their way to them with just enough bad ones to appreciate the good.”

Dear Yumi, I can’t wait to show you how far we’ve come. We could have done better, certainly—your mother, us, the world. For a long time, I felt like I failed you. I wished you could have had a full life with all the heartbreak and college drama and shitty jobs we took for granted. But over the past few centuries, I realized I don’t want that for you anymore. Sure, I want you to understand what the world was, but you’re young enough to make this new world your life. A start without regrets and mistakes. A start that will be better because you know how much we used to hurt. Looking at you through your chamber glass, I can see your mother and grandfather in you. And you’ll be bringing the best of them on your journey—their drive and curiosity and quest to unlock the mysteries, to do what’s right. You’ll cry and be uncertain at first. That’s okay. But there’s a whole universe waiting for you. I’ve helped you this far, little one. We helped each other get here. But now, now is your time. It’s time to lead me into the red grass and tell me the story of how we get to be. It’s time to wake up.

Other world builders might have left them to their struggle, but how could I when my humans crawled toward the precipice of possibility?

“It’s not entirely up to you,” my husband explained to Nuri. “We plant potential realities. What we see through our scopes may or may not happen—at least in this universe.” “So, who decides?” Nuri asked. “Some of it is chance,” I explained. “Hope, love, ingenuity. Possibility is more than what runs through our veins, little one.”