The shuttle doors closed, plunging me from the bright, sunny morning into low artificial lighting. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, trying to force out the light and adjust to the dim.

"Hello, Mr. Miles! My apologies," said Ralph, walking towards me from across the room. He swiped three fingers up something in his palm, and the lights overhead immediately brightened. "Better?"

"Yes, much better. Thank you, Ralph."

I looked around the room, trying to analyze my surroundings quickly. The room was square, slightly bigger than my bedroom. Metallic walls, as smooth on the inside as they were outside, now enclosed us. Directly in front of me was an angular silver coffee table standing on a snow-white rug that covered most of the floor, with two stools on either side, and behind it was a huge, one-panel picture window with rounded corners. Through it, I could see more crowds, waving posters wildly as they roared.

Ralph handed me a small, thin sheet of what felt like a sturdy glass. It was transparent, about an inch thick, and the corners were rounded just like the giant window in front of me. "Tap the center."

I obeyed Ralph's instruction, and the machine came alive. A layout of the room I stood in suddenly formed above the glass, including all the furnishings, in a rainbow of colors. Experimentally putting my finger through the on-screen window that corresponded to the one in the shuttle, I grinned as a list of options appeared. I pressed darken, and the real-life window across from me complied, shielding me from the eyes of the crowd.

Although I didn't even feel the shuttle begin to move, I realized that the spectacle was growing quieter, then silent. Now, the mass of people was far below, on the planet I had previously called home.

"This is amazing," I told Ralph, focusing my attention back on the transparent electronic device. "How does it work?"

"Sit down," he said, motioning to one of the stools as we both took a seat. I looked over his shoulder as he tapped his own handheld display a few times, and then the floor beside him shifted. A panel slid back, and a piece of polished metal that matched the rest of the room's decor rose, and was placed onto the back of Ralph's stool by a thin, silvery arm. "Bad back," he explained with a smile, as I realized that he had added a piece to transform his stool into an oddly shaped chair.

Marveling at the orderly way in which the furniture had appeared and positioned itself, I tapped my device and copied his actions: stool, edit, add, and back. "I probably seem primitive, but I've never been around this kind of technology before. I never knew something this complex even existed."

Ralph smiled at me kindly. "Perfectly understandable." He gestured towards his own transparent screen. "This remarkable device is called a prism."

I understood immediately: that's how the display worked, through a prism! The dazzling rainbow of colors dancing across the screen was actually light reflected into precise, recognizable patterns like words and shapes. I turned the machine around in my hands, looking for the source of the reflections.

"Here," said Ralph, showing me his prism, tapping settings, display, and reveal. Multicolored light scattered across the room as I saw hundreds of tiny diamonds appear between the two main layers of reinforced glass, all grouped systematically around a larger, central diamond. "They're hidden by reversible mirrors. The end pattern is determined by the actions you ask the prism to perform on the screen. A super-microprocessor inside the central node -- see that big diamond? -- determines how to turn each one of the system nodes to produce the end pattern."

"That's amazing," I said, pressing the sequence to reveal all of the nodes on my prism as well. Seeing the complexity of those components for myself, I suddenly felt the need to handle the device very gingerly.

"Yes," Ralph agreed. "And, the best part is, they're nearly indestructible. They're even safe for our first-grade students to use."

"Little kids get to use these?" I could hardly keep the shock out of my voice.

"Every student on each of the stations receives his or her own prism."

"I'm going to get one, then?" A grin spread across my face.

"Of course, Mr. Miles."

In that moment, I realized how exciting the change of living on Alpha was going to be.

Ralph excused himself to check on the pilot while I explored the shuttle via my prism. Apparently, there were two floors: the machinery floor, and the passenger floor. Below where I was standing was a sizable compartment containing the engine and supporting parts that, among other things, propelled, navigated, and provided oxygen for the shuttle. The room I was standing in was the center of the passenger floor, the sitting room. It was settled between the pilot's quarters in front and a small kitchenette behind, all separated by closed doors.

Room, edit, add. Furniture. Armchair... Enlarge, move.

Immediately, the floor came alive again. Several parts flew out, carried by those skinny robotic arms, to assemble the chair that I had requested. This time, I studied the process, guessing that the furniture parts were stored in the machinery floor below me.

I settled into the huge armchair I had pulled up next to the giant picture window. Looking out, I could see Earth getting smaller and smaller, which surprised me because I hadn't even felt the G-forces traditionally associated with leaving Earth's atmosphere.

My planet had been beautiful once, or so I'd been told, but as I looked out at it all I could see was a brownish haze around a dull blue-green sphere. Looking at it, I could see why Asia Breaker had wanted to build cleaner, more efficient space stations all those years ago.

Reality finally set in. I was gone, and I could have a new beginning in a place full of opportunities for me to do what I loved: to learn, to invent, to make a difference!

But, that reality came with the realization that I was miles away from Amber, and would possibly never see her again.

I expected the usual grief, but all I felt inside of me was a bubbling, burning heat. No one could take my sister away from me; someday, I would see her again.

Other than the few people I'd miss, though, the gross-looking brownish planet behind me no longer held any appeal. I shifted my view to the quickly appearing shape of Alpha, its silver edges reflecting starlight brighter than morning sunshine.