For an hour, on a stage built for four hundred performers, Aria sang to her. She became Juliet or Isolde or Joan of Arc, singing about doomed love and grand purpose and resilience in the face of death. Aria let their stories soar on her dark falcon soprano voice, across gilded columns and crimson curtains, up to a fresco of angels. She performed every week for Lumina because her mother was there for that hour, and that was more time than Aria got from her all week.
She did it, though she hated opera. She hated everything about it. The overblown sense of drama. The violence and lewdness. No one had ever died of heartbreak in Reverie. Betrayal never led to murder. Those things didn’t happen anymore. They had the Realms now. They could experience anything without taking risks. Now, life was Better than Real.
Her last Singing Sunday with Lumina had been different from the start. Lumina’s cool hand on Aria’s bare shoulder had jarred her awake.
“What is it?” Aria had asked. Her Smartscreen read 5 A. M. “What’s wrong?”
Lumina was perched at the edge of the bed. She wore a gray traveling jumpsuit with reflective stripes along the arms, not her usual doctor’s smock. Somehow she still looked elegant. “The transport team wants to avoid some weather. I need to leave earlier than planned. ”
Aria swallowed the tight feeling in her throat. She didn’t want to say good-bye. They’d planned to meet every day in the Realms, but Lumina would be far. They wouldn’t be in the same Pod anymore.
“Will you sing to me now?”
“Mom, now?”
“I look forward to this all week,” Lumina said. “Don’t make me wait until next Sunday. ”
Aria flopped facedown on her pillow. Opera first thing in the morning? It seemed criminal. “Why do you have to leave? Why can’t you just do your research in the Realms?”
“I need to be in Bliss for this assignment. ”
“Why can’t I go with you?” Aria asked.
“You know I can’t tell you why. ”
Aria pressed her face deeper into the pillow. How could her mother sound so calm? She made it seem so easy to keep things from Aria.
“Please,” Lumina said. “I don’t have much time. ”
“Fine. ” Aria rolled over and glared at the ceiling. “Let’s just get it over with. ” She found the Opera Realm on her Smartscreen. The icon should’ve showed the columned front facade of the opera house, but Aria had changed it to an image of her pretending to choke herself. She chose it and fractioned, her mind easily opening to another world. She was in two places now. There, in her cramped little room, and in the extravagant, cavernous opera hall.
Aria had chosen to appear behind the main curtain. She glared at the heavy swath of red velvet. Lumina could wait a few more seconds. That would irritate her. When she stepped through, she didn’t see Lumina in her usual front row seat. The opera house was empty.
In Aria’s bedroom, Lumina leaned forward, resting her hand on Aria’s arm. “Songbird. Will you sing to me here?”
Aria yanked herself out of the Realm and sat up, stunned. “Here? In my room?”
“I won’t be able to hear your real voice once I’m in Bliss. ”
Aria pushed her hair behind her ears, panic coiling in her gut. She looked around the tiny room, at the neat drawers built into the walls and the mirror above her sink. She knew her voice. She knew its power. Her voice would shake the walls in such a confined space. It might carry beyond the small living room outside and make it out to the Panop.
What if everyone heard her?
Her heart began to race. This had never happened before. It was too strange. Too big a change from their routine. “You know it’s the same as in the Realms, Mom. ”
Lumina?
?s gray eyes bored into her, urgent and pleading. “I want to hear the gift you have. ”
“It’s not a gift!” Aria cried. It was genetics. Lumina loved opera, so she’d crafted Aria’s DNA with enhanced vocal traits to create a daughter who could sing to her. If it was a gift Aria had, then it was a gift Lumina had given to herself. Her own personal songbird, Lumina’s pet name for her. Aria had never seen any sense in her upgrade. No one sang outside of the Realms—at least Soren’s tan made him look good in the real—but that’s what she got for being a geneticist’s daughter.
“Please do this for me,” Lumina said.
She wanted to ask why again. Why, when Lumina only seemed to care about work or opera. Why should she do anything for her mother, who was leaving her? Instead she rolled her eyes and threw back the covers.
Lumina held out grays for her, but Aria shook her head. If this was going to be different, then it would be really different. She waved a hand over her scant underclothes. “I’ll sing like this. ”
Lumina pursed her lips, unamused. “Will you perform my aria?”