The best thing that ever happened to shamelessness

It's not a sin to be rich. It's not a sin to have fun, my momma said. She would know. She was living it up until two days ago. Now I'm left here with four spaceships and nowhere to go.

Momma did know how to have a good time. So did her boyfriends. Daddy wasn't that type really, but even he could live it up once he had some liquor in him, provided the boyfriends weren't kissing on Momma too much. But that was before Daddy left for good, taking the bank with him.

It's lonely in space. It's especially lonely when you haven't been able to get a date since Saturday. The party ended on Saturday. Now I call the LaunchPad for more cuties and they all say, "Maybe next week." I know they're just itching to get out of here now that both the money and the power have gone. And I have these four spaceships and I can't even buy fuel for them.

Momma was a killer. Not literally, unless you count indirectly. But figuratively speaking, she was the bomb. She had nails out to here. She had a woman she brought in from China just to organize her four thousand dresses. She had the gravometer set at .5 Gs on the deck of this thing so that she could wear the eight-inch heels she bought off the Princess of Mars. She had class. And she had something nobody else in this corner of the Galaxy would ever have, which was a contract with XFashion Biogene.

She got it as a wedding present from Daddy. Daddy was smitten with her. Momma was smitten with his honor -- he was the only man who ever told her they should wait before doing the horizontal moonwalk -- and with his money. Mostly with his honor. Or his money. I don't know, they hadn't decided to make me yet. When they got married, twenty years ago, Daddy was the heir to the throne of Intervelop Industries and Momma was the queen of celebrity on thirty-five worlds. She'd been a nobody but a nobody with a mushroom cloud personality and teeth that were out of this world, and somehow she was exactly what they were looking for. I've seen broadcasts of her from that era. She was the best thing that ever happened to shamelessness.

Daddy walked her down the aisle in a five-piece suit. Momma wore white. She had to. It was in her BeautyFool contract. The first thing after the wedding, I guess, she had to leave for L.A. to star in one of her boyfriend's films -- Barry Huck, who was always in the top five or at least the top ten. After the ten or so I could count on seeing pretty much every month, I lost track.

But it wasn't the boyfriends or the fashion contracts or even the excess that did Momma in. It was the loneliness. Because it is lonely up here, you know.

"Angel," she used to tell me, "you're the only one I can talk to." And she would tell me everything, all night long -- but it was always night -- she would talk to me about the terrible things her agents signed her up for, and how Daddy was falling out of love with her, and how Frank and Tip used to fight so awful over who got to sleep with her that night. It was always like this. When I was five years old I used to tell her to not be sad, and it'd make her smile. Now I'd tell her she was incredible, she was gorgeous, she was still young, she had more style than anyone ever born, that she had more hair on her head than an eviorg -- and she wouldn't care.

I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand to see Momma cry. Not with all those cameras around all night long. Not with her eyelashes so perfect for once, with the new eyelights. So one night, with my heart wound up like a streed converter, I finally told her the truth.

"Momma, you'll be a hundred soon," I forced out. "I think you should let me take over, just for a while. Just like you and Daddy planned when you made me."

Well that was on Friday, and I haven't spoken with her since. Because after she heard that she turned away from me and clicked up the corridor in her stiletto slippers, and she wouldn't talk to me, not even when I said I took it back and that I never wanted to be a model, I just wanted her to be able to relax for once.

But I did want to be a model, kind of.

Because it's awfully quiet here since Momma opened the airlock, and I may have the Jetter and the Mach 90 and the twin Starliners, but all the staff has disappeared, and now I'm making myself sturkey sandwiches in the echoing galley, and drinking all the champagne... and I can't get a hold of Daddy, whose men say he needs to be alone right now, and I can't get a hold of Momma's agents, whose secretaries say it's for the best, and I can't get a hold of any of those fine things at the LaunchPad because they're spooked. And it's very empty here with Momma gone.

A view from the end

My mother always said despair was a sin. I won't give in to it. We're good people. We believe in tradition and love and justice. But the thing my mother always hated most wasn't cruelty, or greed, or anything like that. It was despair. She said the worst thing a person could do was to give up. That there were a lot of sins against man, but despair was a sin against God.

I know things seem pretty grim now. We've lost contact with the other towns, and Turk says there's no reason to believe they haven't been wiped out. I agree it's unlikely, but it seems they could just be unable to communicate. They could be hunkered down, like we are.

I always thought I'd be a good leader, but it's like I never had any time to prepare... Lupin was killed, and the old colonel, and people started asking me what to do, Mary and her sister and the old colonel's wife. Because I have such a strong voice. People thought I seemed like a leader. I always thought I'd be a pretty good leader. I just never had any practice... the old colonel used to say that to hesitate was the worst thing. So I told everyone we needed to get out and took them up on the mountain.

The air reeks even from here. The cloud of smoke hangs over the town in the February air, just staying in one place, but I can smell it from here. I thought I was going to cry this morning. Everyone else is crying, just about. Mary's little sister is worried about her house and her cat. I'm too busy worrying about my life for that nonsense. I wish everyone would shape up. Maybe I'm a little inexperienced, but they're not making it any easier. I wish people would just use their heads. Nobody cares about your cat when the entire world is being destroyed.

My mother was the strongest woman. When I was young and the invasion was new, she still used to smile a lot, I remember. She made me laugh. She used to say if she ever met one of them she'd give them a piece of her mind. She was angry a lot, but I loved it. She had so much energy for that. When she went on a rant, talking so fast I could hardly follow her, I loved her. I didn't really think she could save the world, but if anyone could, sure it would have been her. She was righteous.

I'm looking at the smoke again when Turk runs up, panting like an idiot. "They're coming," he says. "They're coming up from the town." So I stand up and start yelling. I have everybody get up off the warm rock and go into the forest. I figure we'll go over the pass into the next valley.

I hate these people. A couple middle-aged women are crying and they're slow to get up. God, I'm yelling right in their face. I love my voice though. I wonder if the invaders can hear it, wherever they are.

Finally I just run, right into the trees, getting whacked in the face by branches, and other people start to follow. I'll kill myself running up the side of the mountain. But I'm in better shape than most of these people and I've got to lead. Maybe if they see me doing it they'll do it too.

I feel the lurch in my stomach before I hear the explosion. Chunks of rock and wood the size of cars fly past me in an instant, rocketing against the mountainside and rebounding into snapping tree trunks. I didn't hear anybody cry out. Hopefully whoever got hit didn't feel much. The black smoke blows over me in another minute, and I start coughing as I run.

I really didn't think any of this would happen. I feel like my life went wrong about five years ago. I was supposed to go to college, learn sports medicine. Even while I'm running I have this damn nagging feeling in the back of my mind, like I have to go back, like there's something I forgot to do. It was one thing when the invaders first arrived. I was only a kid. For all a four-year-old knows, stuff like that is normal. And it was normal. It sucked but it was normal. In a little town like Millhoe, it was normal. We saw the deaths on TV and we couldn't travel much but we pretty much went about our lives. I was going to be a physical therapist or something. Turns out the libertarians were right. We were never going to be allowed to live.

It's just... I can't give up. It would be a crime. Anyway my mother would hate me for it if she were still alive. Her hate was a wonderful thing to behold. My stomach drops again and then the mountain disappears in front of me, and I swear I see grey sky and birds for a second but it's just my imagination, I'm seeing powdery dirt and dust, and then I know something's hit me when the trees seem upside-down. It's strange-- I don't know what-- those bastards! I think, I won't give up because to despair is a sin and it might not matter anymore but God my mother raised me better than that.