Nick smiled as he watched the drone's battery pack explode into a greenish ball of flame. A pyrodrone launched from some nearby stoop, its hoses aiming toward the flames.

He felt a little tinge of guilt as the nannydrone's plastic skin began to melt into the pine needles. This one had lasted the longest, three weeks at least, but he consoled himself knowing Lifedrone would send over a replacement by this time tomorrow. Pappy's Pudding Fingers won't sell themselves, after all.

The Rones lie about their true intent. They enter the city of Huron at the peril of us all.

"Seriously!' Nick yelled at the wall. "Who is that? I don't have time for this. I'm trying to get some work done here."

Nick wasn't usually this grumpy, but he hadn't slept for forty-eight hours, had drunk his weight in chocolate syrup and Pepto-Bismol, and was on his last chance to get off this planet. Now wasn't the time for hallucinations. He had to give every ounce of his focus to the machine.

Nick looked down to the scuba diving goggles, which served as a sort of viewer into the machine. He started to wonder if, in fact, it was his machine, the Prometheus 10,000, that was speaking to him. Maybe it was picking up one of those old-timey radio signals? Which was weird since they were banned in the late 21st century.

He crouched down to Prometheus 10,000 to see if there were any exposed wires. The machine's skin had been stitched together from a theater spotlight, an unwary antique television, and three different game consoles. One could see lights blinking deep within its belly, while cables escaped from various holes only to be dragged back in. His brother, Tim, often referred to it as the greatest abuse of technology. To Nick, it was the machine that would finally get him and his friends off this planet.

Earth.

He wanted to go to Moon. He'd never been there himself. But still, he knew that it was home. He'd watched every holoexplorer video and collected every single movie about it. The shed's walls were lined with screen posters that showed real time views of Moon's craters and outposts. He could imagine roaming around the craters for miles on the Moonbuggy without being tracked by every drone in the area. He heard that Moon teachers actually taught you useful stuff, like how to fix a leaking space suit, or how to filter your own water using Moondust and old oxygen masks. And people shared everything. Food. Clothes. Land. You had to. It was the frontier of space after all. He couldn't think of a better place for him and his friends to start a new life.

Especially after his family's last Christmas vacation.

They were deboarding one of the sonicplanes, returning from a ski trip in the Himalayas. Gate F10 dumped them out into a horde of shoppers, all clutching their newly purchased merchandise. At first Nick didn't know what he was looking at. He assumed someone had unknowingly dropped clothes out of their luggage until he saw those brown eyes and dark skin. A teenage boy from the refugee camp was hemorrhaging. It was his best friend:

Jermaine Coltman.

Nick had met Jermaine Coltman at one of Weaver High's track meets. Jermaine smoked him, no question. Nick admired that a refugee, who was clearly malnourished and underfed, kicked his tail. They'd been friends ever since. Now, he lay on the airport carpet, shaking and sweating.

From nowhere, an ambudrone flew past Nick, announcing, "Geneva virus detected. Geneva virus detected." It aimed a hose at Jermaine and smothered him in quarantine jelly, leaving him there like some dying cocoon. The shoppers, with their department store bags and eyes in perfect balance, stepped beside him, around him, over him. But their eyes never fell on him.

Nick dropped his backpack, tore through the crowd and kneeled down to Jermaine. He didn't know it was the Geneva virus at the time. All he knew was that he needed medical attention now. He screamed at the top of his lungs, "Help! Somebody help him! Call 911!" The course of shoppers slowed as they searched for the teenage boy's call for help. When the source was found, they glared at him, glowered at him, a few even shushed him, but no one helped him. A few did mumble, "Ugh. Why they let refugees in here I do not know." "All those kids are diseased." "You can't help them, anyway."

Not knowing what to do next, Nick reached out to the jelly. Suddenly, there was a flash of light, and he found himself laying ten feet from Jermaine, stiff as a board.

He'd been tazed by the ambudrone, and it now floated above him. The white, orbish body, held up a wagging finger, "Please keep your voice down. You are disturbing the shoppers. Besides, he's just a refugee, you know."

They didn't shut down the shopping center—that would be ridiculous after all

They didn't shut down the shopping center—that would be ridiculous after all. I mean, how could one rob the businesses and consumers of their goods and services for one sick refugee kid? Nick knew that the ambudrone, run by its large corporate servers, assessed the value of a dying refugee in light of the financial loss of the businesses in the airport, and chose the businesses. The drone simply roped off Nick's family and shoppers from the quarantined area so they could continue on with their shopping.

Still frozen by the tazer, Nick couldn't move his head, not even his eyes. All he could do was lie there and, at the edge of his vision, watch his best friend shake fitfully, and then intermittently, and then not at all.

Jermaine died in Nick's peripheral vision.

Looking up at the plastic outline of the ambudrone, he had only one thought from that day forward: I'm getting off this planet. And I'm taking my friends with me.

Nick sighed. He wanted to get away. It wasn't crazy there, on Moon. If someone is dying, you help them. Why is that so complicated? Everything there was black and white. Everything there was . . .

"Simple." Nick blinked and shook his head. "Talking to myself now."

So when the wealthy philanthropist, Rick Killings, announced that he would award one billion dollars to the person who could build a machine to return solar radiation to Earth's surface, Nick had found a way to get his refugee friends off this planet. Like some global cataract, a thin cloud covered the Earth, blocking the sunlight for nearly one hundred years. All he had to do was build his solar transference machine, the Prometheus 10,000, and win the "Light The World" cash prize. Then he could afford to buy one-way transworld shuttle tickets for him and his friends to the Trafalgar Lunar outpost. And maybe even purchase a plot of colonial land at Sector 9. Southside of Moon. Easy.

Just like the movies.

Some might call Nick naïve, simple, even a delusional fourteen-year-old—they usually did—but he didn't care. He believed with all his heart that this machine would save his friends. Speaking of, he needed to get his butt in gear if he was going to be ready for the demonstration at two o'clock that afternoon.

The Rones lie about their true intent. They enter the city of Huron at the peril of us all.

"Tim? Is that you? Seriously. I'm gonna punch you in the mouth if you don't knock it off . . . Tim??"

Come to think of it, Nick hadn't seen his brother all afternoon. He walked to the window overlooking Hiker's Canyon, scanning for any signs of his brother.

A hoverbus swept past their house and toward the refugee camps. The sound of the anti-grav engines made him drop his gaze down to the bottom of Hiker's Canyon. There lay a blond, curly-headed boy, clutching his stomach while trying to cough up a spleen or two. A large teenager hovered over the curly-headed boy, taunting and laughing.

"Oh boy," Nick said. He had found his brother, Tim.

And so had Rocky the She-Bully.

"You should know better, Tim." Nick bolted out the door. "Never go down to the canyon by yourself . . . Back off, Rocky!"

Can you hear me, Steward? The woman pleaded. The Rones lie about their true intent! They enter the city of Huron at the peril of us all! Can you hear me, Nikolas?