Mom glances at me like she’s expecting me to be in shock at being outside for the first time in my life, so I do my best to look awestruck, to gawk at everything from what she imagines is a new perspective. She leads me to the small arched outbuilding that holds our tiny car. I’ve read that back before the Ecofail, cars were huge monsters that ate fossil fuels with a gluttonous appetite. They actually burned gasoline, with engines that ran by caging explosions. They were violent juggernauts that thundered through the world by the billions like vast migrating herds of some destructive creature. We still use the word “car,” but the few that exist in Eden (almost all in the inner circles) are nothing like their namesake. Our water-fueled vehicle is an elegant deep-pink egg with a shell so thin we can see the world around us in a rose-colored haze. It reminds me of Lark’s glasses. We sit in comfort in the center, as Mom switches the controls to manual. Usually, you tell it where you want to go, close your eyes, and listen to music until you’re there.
