REACH FOR THE STARS

摘要

The holes widen into craters while I sleep. The day is a blur-but that's school. No one pays attention anyway. "No time for dinner," I say, my toes cold where they touch the linoleum. Mother looks at me, wielding her spoon as the soup bubbles over. "I don't like this. Why can't you go natural?" Unaugmented reflexes. The team would drop me. The schools wouldn't like that. Career suicide. "I have to make captain." She goes to eat and I go to the Chamber. Sit. Pincers lift my scalp away, layer by layer until the air hits my brain. I feel nothing. No pain. Wires seep in, reinforcing my sensorimotor cortex. Brodmann's areas 3 and 4-neurobiology was last year. Every detail is at the tip of my fingers, fresh as the day I learned it. When the plate comes down to secure the electrodes, my foot twitches. The device locks, then my skull is replaced. Back to normal. No, not normal. The only parts of the Moon we've explored are its impact craters.