LITMIR.BIZ

      Benny Love was three-quarters of the way to the Moon when he discovered his holographic spider was missing.

      “Aw, man,” he murmured into his open rucksack, “I had such big plans for you!”

      He’d been practising with the spider for the better part of a year. Or, more specifically, mastering the controls of the tiny hover-mech that flew around projecting the arachnid onto whatever surface Benny saw fit – most of the time someone’s shoulder or the ceiling of his family’s RV in the middle of the night. He was good at it, and had hoped to show off his skills by pranking some of the other scholarship winners. So much for that idea. He wondered which of his little brothers had swiped the spider from his bag the night before, because he definitely remembered packing such vital gear. They were probably playing around with it now, getting sand in the hover-mech’s delicate parts. He made a mental note to figure out a way to repay them when he got back to Earth. Maybe with a terrifying story about the three-headed child-eating aliens he encountered at the Taj, or by infecting them with an incredibly contagious case of imaginary lunar flu.

      He tried not to dwell on the spider and instead looked out of the passenger window just in time to see a satellite fly by – a shining speck against the black backdrop of space that quickly disappeared among the pinpricks of stars located light-years away. He glanced at the readouts on the dashboard. His Space Runner was travelling at just under fifty thousand miles per hour.

      Benny was a very long way from home.

      He hadn’t quite wrapped his head around the fact that he was riding in a car capable of blasting off from Earth and travelling to the Moon. A luxury vehicle sleeker than any sports coupé ever imagined, crammed full of next-generation artificial environment systems and touch-operated holoscreens and powered by one explosive gravity-manipulating fission hyperdrive under the hood. A total beast of a machine. It was the type of car Benny had seen in ads and news stories on his HoloTek datapad but never in person. At least, not until today. Certainly it wasn’t the type of vehicle he’d thought he’d ever have a chance to ride in. His caravan back on Earth – like every other roaming pack of cars and mobile homes in the Drylands – was made up of sand-battered rust-buckets cobbled together from bits and pieces of old wrecks and whatever salvageable parts the members of his group had come across in their travels. The RV that he and his brothers and grandmother lived in was so old that it ran partially on fossil fuels.

      And yet, here he was. Not only was he riding in a Space Runner, but he’d probably get the chance to meet the person who’d invented them eight years ago. Elijah West. Benny had read all about him online. The man was an adventurer who’d redefined space exploration. Who drag raced across Mars on weekends. Eccentric, certainly, and maybe even a little crazy (he did live full-time on the Moon and, according to some reports, spent millions of dollars a year having cargo ships full of his favourite fizzy drink shipped to the Taj).

      But he was also the world’s biggest philanthropist. The fact that Benny was currently shooting through space and would have an unfathomable amount of money waiting for him when he came back to Earth was proof enough of that. Benny had never met Elijah, but the man had already shaped his future. The EW-SCAB trust fund he’d come home to in two weeks represented more than just the latest datapads and hologram tech. A million dollars wouldn’t make him rich compared to a lot of people, but it was the promise of a real home, a way out of the Drylands and all the dangers and struggles he and his family faced in the desert wastes that had once been the West Coast of the United States.

      In fact, Elijah’s very existence was kind of comforting to Benny. Every biography or profile of the trillionaire mentioned that he’d been born with nothing and became the mogul he was today because he simply refused to believe in limitations. That anything was impossible. Late at night, when Benny told his little brothers that they wouldn’t have to live in the Drylands forever, it was Elijah he was thinking about.

      Benny tossed his rucksack to the floor and dragged his hands across the front of his space suit a few times, trying to wipe off the dust and grit he’d got on him while rummaging through it – nothing from the caravan was ever really clean, no matter how often you washed it. Eventually he just accepted that he’d be a little dirty when he got to the Taj, and propped his feet on the dashboard. The shiny black surface under his boots lit up in a flurry of colours and holograms. He realised his mistake a split second before a mixture of drums and instruments that sounded like laser pistols blared through the cabin. He bolted forward and tapped at what he thought might be an off-button, but that just caused the lights inside the vehicle to pulse along with the thumping bass.

      All the noise woke Drue, the kid in the seat next to him. The first thing Drue had done when he met Benny was claim the pilot’s chair, even though the trip to the Moon was completely automated by an onboard guidance system. Then he’d fallen asleep before their Space Runner took off. He’d stayed that way, mouth open and head lolling back and forth, for the past few hours. Not that Benny really minded. It gave him a chance to quietly stare out at the stars and the forty-nine other gleaming Space Runners holding the rest of the scholarship winners that were all heading towards the Moon like a fleet moving in for invasion.

      “Aren’t we there yet?” Drue asked, blinking sleep away. He didn’t wait for Benny to respond. “Ugh, why aren’t we moving faster? What’s the point of having a hyperdrive if they aren’t going to push it?” He leaned forward and drew a half-circle anticlockwise on the dashboard in front of him, the blinking lights reflecting off the gold buttons on the cuff of his space suit. The music died down to a faint pulse.

      Benny watched this carefully. He wasn’t sure what Drue’s deal was, but there was something about him that seemed off. Maybe it was the way his brown hair was so perfectly slicked over to one side, unlike his own black hair that usually stuck out in all directions thanks to a mixture of sweat and dust. Or maybe it was Drue’s space suit. Benny’s had been made for him by the people at EW-SCAB – close-fitting, dark blue coveralls made out of some rubbery, radiation-blocking substance. A thick band around the collar contained an emergency force-field helmet and oxygen supply, should he find himself outside of the artificial atmosphere of the Taj. His last name was stitched in silver over his heart. It was the first brand-new piece of clothing he could remember getting in years – not counting the stuff his grandmother made for him – and the same suit everyone else had been wearing before take-off. Except Drue’s. His suit was just a little bit shinier, and his last name, Lincoln, was spelled out in gold on his left chest pocket. It looked expensive. Like something Benny would be thrilled to find in an abandoned farm or town back on Earth because he could probably trade it for a decent hover-scooter, or at least new tyres for his dune buggy.

      Drue looked at the dirt smudged across Benny’s space suit and crinkled his nose.

      “What have you been doing while I was asleep?” he asked.

      That’s when it clicked – Drue looked at him like a lot of people did on the rare occasions when the members of his caravan would buy supplies in the cities bordering the Drylands. Such places had grown more and more overcrowded and expensive as the ongoing drought forced people to abandon their homes and move further east. Those who could afford

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