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  For my son Griffin, who loves to ask questions about the universe. May the stars continue to shine through you, all the days of your life.

  And in memory of the great astronomer Carl Sagan, who taught a generation not only to wonder at the universe, but to seek to understand it. He inspired the scientific leaders of today to carry on that task, many of whose words shape this story.

  “Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.”

  —H. L. Mencken, journalist

  “If the atoms that make up the world around us could tell their stories, each and every one of them would sing a tale to dwarf the greatest epics of literature.”

  —Marcus Chown, physicist

  WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

  Okay, first off, the quotes that start each chapter are from real people who know a lot of really cool things. You’ll probably recognize some of their names. Second, you should know that this story takes place completely in The Realms (pronounced like relms, not reelms, which would just be weird). What are The Realms, you ask? Where are The Realms? Well, those are tricky questions. I have a theory, but it’s a guess, at best, and I hope you won’t hold me to it. Come closer and I’ll tell you.

  The Realms aren’t so much somewhere as they are everywhere. And to explain that, I’ll need to start by explaining the discovery of a mysterious substance called dark matter.

  Hang in there now. This won’t hurt a bit.

  Basically, a lot of supersmart scientists who have spent a REALLY LONG TIME in school tell us that most of the “stuff” in our universe (96 percent) is invisible. Even though dark matter is all around us, we can’t see it. Not even with the help of those enormous telescopes that see so far out into space that they are really seeing back in time.

  And why can’t we see dark matter? Well, those same smart scientists will tell you it’s because dark matter doesn’t give off, or reflect, or absorb any light that we can see or measure. But we know it’s there because it attracts regular matter, the stuff we CAN see. Dark matter allows gravity to spin gas and dust into stars and planets and galaxies. It gives structure to the cosmos, like the scaffolding of a building.

  Yes, that’s what your science teacher would tell you. But that’s hardly the whole story. The real reason we can’t see dark matter is because that’s where The Realms are located and they have EXCELLENT cloaking devices. Truly, the universe is a much stranger place than most people give it credit for, teeming with life and full of secrets.

  Now you might be wondering what goes on in The Realms. And what this has to do with us, tucked away on our comfortable little planet, a safe twenty-seven thousand light-years away from the massive black hole asleep at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Well, who better to answer those questions than someone who has lived in The Realms his whole life? Someone around your age, with the same kinds of dreams, desires, and hopes for the future. Someone who thinks that nothing very exciting happens in his life. He doesn’t know it yet, but that’s about to change. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. Because in about seven pages, the gravity that keeps your feet glued to the ground will be gone.

  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

  —Carl Sagan, astronomer

  If you think it’s tough being the Supreme Overlord of the Universe, try being his son.

  Or, more precisely, his seventh son. That whole thing about the seventh son being special in some way? Just a rumor spread by a few disgruntled seventh sons trying to make a name for themselves. In my experience, being the seventh son only means that by the time I got here, my brothers had taken all the cool gigs. They spend their days creating new species, choreographing sunrises and sunsets, composing the music of the spheres by keeping planets in their orbits, inspiring great artists, over-seeing the Afterlives, and testing new, state-of-the-art video games on the planets whose inhabitants haven’t yet discovered how to access most of their brain cells. Me? I deliver pies.

  That’s right. I. Deliver. Pies.

  Cherry pies. Apple pies. Strawberry-rhubarb pies. True, my pies happen to be the glue that holds the very fabric of the universe together, but have no illusion—they are still pies. I guess you could say they’re pretty big pies, but size—like time—is relative. To a creature living on one of the millions of inhabited planets that it is our job to oversee, the pies might be as big as a moon or as small as, well, a pie. Hard to say for sure, since I’ve never been out of The Realms. But that’s a whole other gripe.

  The point is, a long time ago, the Powers That Be (known simply as the PTB) decided it was getting messy trying to control the forces that keep the stars and planets and galaxies from crashing into each other. So they decided to combine the fundamental forces of nature and somehow shape them into a nice, sweet-smelling pie. Why a pie? Why not a pie! Who doesn’t like pie?

  It’s my job to pick up the pies fresh from the oven, box them up, and deliver them to the correct department at the Powers That Be headquarters, which currently looks like a giant boot but can change regularly.

  Anyway, when I pick up the empty pie tins at the end of my shift, only crumbs are left. Somehow the Powers That Be distribute the pies to the far reaches of the universe, wherever new star systems are forming. Since the universe is constantly expanding, this means my job is never done. I don’t actually know the nitty-gritty of what happens to the pies once they reach their destinations, which is unfortunate because I have this big report due for school next week on what my job entails, and that’s the kind of detail teachers eat right up.

  Yes, even immortal sons of Supreme Overlords have to go to school, which doesn’t really seem fair. I mean, I might have only begun my teen years, but years here last forever, so really, I’ve been in school since before the Sombrero Galaxy took its first siesta billions of years ago. It’s enough already.

  Anyway, right now I’m heading to my last pickup of the day and then I have to go home and write the annoying report. At least the pickup is at my best friend Kal’s house. Kal’s parents are OnWorlders, which means they live most of the time on different terrestrial planets, doing research and writing reports. As a rule, we never interfere with the planets’ natural evolution. That said, I’ve heard rumors. After all, there’s only so much one can take of watching dinosaurs stomp around aimlessly for a few hundred million years before you need to send an asteroid their way.

  No matter how many times I walk this same path, I never get bored of it. The central Realms—home to most of the residents and buildings—are set up like a grid, with walking paths crisscrossing each other at even intervals. On either side of the paths trees loom high and streams weave their way between them. When I was younger, before I started delivering the pies, I could usually be found in one of the distant fields with Kal or Bren, watching the clouds change color. The sky here is without color, but the clouds more than make up for it. I learned in school that on the planets, clouds and trees and water are solid objects, providing some sort of purpose in nature. In The Realms, they are more like suggestions of such things, until someone wants to use them. A lake becomes a lake when someone wants to go fishing.
A flower becomes a flower when someone wants to water it, or admire it, or put it in a vase. Even then it’s not a “real” flower, like the type that grows in the soil of many of the terrestrial planets. But that doesn’t make it any less beautiful.

  Aunt Rae’s front lawn is full of flowers growing from nowhere and rootless trees. She’s very proud of her garden, and when she’s not making pies, I usually find her gardening out here.

  “Took you long enough,” Kal says, swinging the door open. Kal—whose after-school job is to welcome new arrivals to the Afterlives—has a greater sense of time than most of us here in The Realms. Since he deals with life-forms whose lives actually have beginnings and endings, the whole thing sort of rubs off on him and he gets impatient easily.

  I plop down on the couch and say, “I’m here the same time I always am.”

  He mutters something that I choose to ignore. I put up my feet and breathe in deep. Their house smells soooo good. Aunt Rae is one of the best pie makers in all The Realms, but she is also the slowest. Can’t rush perfection is her motto. I never mind waiting. Any time I get to put my feet up and do nothing works fine for me.

  “Is that you, Joss?” Aunt Rae calls out from the kitchen. She always knows when I’m here, even though she’s nearly completely deaf. She sticks her head out from the kitchen, apple pie juice running down the front of her apron.

  “Hi, Aunt Rae,” I yell. “How are you today?”

  Kal’s aunt is one of the Old Ones. All the pie makers are from the first wave of immortals. It’s not like their bodies are breaking down or anything, but they don’t self-repair as well as the rest of us. Of course, Aunt Rae could get her hearing fixed instantly instead of wearing an adjustable ear volumizer, but she says the silence helps her focus on baking her pies. Personally, I think she likes not having to hear Kal’s music blaring all the time. He has terrible taste in music, even with all the music in the universe to choose from. He’s been working on his own “masterpiece,” which is even worse.

  “Can’t complain,” Aunt Rae replies cheerily, wiping her forehead and leaving a smear of flour behind.

  “Wanna hear my latest and greatest?” Kal asks me, picking up his drumsticks without waiting for an answer.

  Aunt Rae switches her volumizer to the off position and ducks back into the kitchen. I cover my ears with my hands. As usual, this is the point where I get even more jealous that my oldest brother, Thade, gets to hear the Music of the Spheres—that melodic tune made by the planetary bodies as they go around their orbits—while I get to hear Kal doing things to the drums that should never, ever be described as music. Kal claims he learned this latest piece from a drummer in a band he recently escorted to the Afterlives. The guy had come from Earth, which is a particularly well-liked planet around here due to its being one of the few where the inhabitants developed a sense of humor.

  It’s only when Kal pauses to flip his drumsticks dramatically in the air that we hear the sirens. He drops the drumsticks, and one hits the cymbal with a tszing! The sirens mean only one thing—someone on one of the inhabited planets is zeroing in on our location with whatever technology they’ve developed to peer into their night sky. Normally, The Realms can’t be seen from anywhere in the universe. But every once in a while a rip occurs in the fabric of the space-time continuum. Quantum entanglement becomes untangled. If someone happened to be looking at exactly the right spot, they could catch a glimpse of us. And just the tiniest glimpse is catastrophic.

  I was only a billion or two years old, a baby really, when the sirens last blared. Intelligent life in the first batch of planets had just started peering into the skies. The viewer at the other end of the primitive piece of equipment spotted a garden party at one of the fancier estates in The Realms. The old guy was so shocked at what he saw that he dropped dead of a heart attack on the spot. Dying in this way was actually a bit of luck for everyone else on his planet, since the penalty for laying eyes on any of the beings living in The Realms is the immediate disintegration of the entire planet. Under the circumstances, in an uncharacteristically charitable move, the Powers That Be allowed the planet to continue existing. A dead man tells no tales, as the saying goes. But I doubt they will be so forgiving again. No one knows exactly why the punishment is so harsh, but since this almost never happens, the whole issue doesn’t get much attention.

  “DUCK!” Kal screams, throwing himself to the floor. Between the intermittent wails of the siren, I can still hear Aunt Rae humming.

  “Aunt Rae!” I yell. “You have to duck!”

  But she doesn’t hear me. Even the sirens don’t get through when her volumizer is off.

  I half-slither, half-crawl on my elbows and knees to the opening of the kitchen. Kal follows close on my heels. Aunt Rae is reaching into the oven, pulling out a perfect, steaming-hot apple pie. I reach up to grab the hem of her apron just as she turns around.

  But I’m too late. The area around her vibrates and shudders, almost imperceptibly, then settles back into place. No doubt about it, she has been spotted. Someone has broken (or at least bent really far) the laws of physics and has laid eyes on Aunt Rae and her famous apple pie. It is the last thing he will ever see. He will not get the chance to tell anyone on his planet of his discovery. There will no longer be anyone to tell.

  The wail of the siren now becomes one long keening cry. No one likes to think of any of the worlds ending. We’ve watched them grow from grains of dust, so it’s quite heartbreaking. The siren fades out. I roll over onto my back and stare up at the ceiling.

  “Joss?” Aunt Rae asks, leaning over me with obvious concern. She flips her volumizer back on. “What is it?”

  But I can only shake my head, a tear sliding down my nose. I know new planets are being formed constantly, new civilizations rising and falling and rising again, but still, it’s a huge loss.

  “I hope it wasn’t Earth,” Kal says, his expression grim.

  I nod in agreement. Besides the fact that the people of Earth understand that flatulence can be funny, they have the tastiest enchiladas. Actually, those two things are most likely connected. While there are millions of planets in the universe with some form of life, they are all in vastly different stages of development and intelligence. Many never develop technology at all, never learn how to harness the elements and forces around them. But if they do, and if they can’t control it, they usually destroy themselves pretty soon after. This leaves only a narrow window when the inhabitants are using their knowledge to educate themselves, to look out at the universe and seek answers. Earth is in this zone right now.

  A voice booms through the house. “Joss! Are you still there?”

  I jump up from the floor so quickly my brain spins. Kal and I stare at each other. My father NEVER uses the communication network himself. As Supreme Overlord, he has a whole staff for that. The fact that he is calling me now can’t be a good sign.

  “Answer him,” Kal hisses.

  I clear my throat. “Yes, Dad, I’m here.”

  “Report immediately to PTB headquarters.”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply, halfway out of the kitchen.

  But he isn’t finished. “And bring the pie!”

  Dark matter holds the key to the universe.

  —Paul Davies, physicist

  I weave my way in and out of the busy streets, the steaming pie tin burning my hands. I hadn’t even given Aunt Rae a chance to put it in a box. As always, when I first picked up the pie, I felt a sort of current go through me, like my body was getting heavier. It must be something in the pies that causes it. The feeling is not entirely unpleasant, and I like to linger before it fades. But I couldn’t do that this time. As relative as time is in The Realms, my father does not like to be kept waiting. And when he does not like something, you do your best to avoid it.

  The streets are usually not this crowded. With so much space in The Realms, there is rarely a reason for people to gather. But the blare of the sirens got everyone out and talking. I push through a gr
oup of kids I go to school with, which is made easier by the fact that they part slightly when they see me coming. This is one of the downsides to having a really important father—the other kids keep their distance from me. All except Kal, who I can always count on to remind me that I may have a famous family, but my hair grows in lopsided and no girl has ever gone on a date with me twice.

  In the olden days, we used to be able to travel instantaneously, winking in and out of places like the smallest of elementary particles. Those were the days. Everything was so easy then. Took me a tenth of the time to complete my daily pie-delivering, leaving endless opportunities to clown around with Kal or bowl down at Thunder Lanes. But the Powers That Be fixed it so our bodies can no longer vibrate at a high-enough frequency to achieve this state. We also feel pain now, which is bothersome. They decided we needed to live more like our mortal kinsmen in order to better serve their needs. The PTB are strange that way. Their main job is to oversee the various species who populate the universe, but a lot of the time they seem not to care much. Suns explode in fiery supernovas, wiping out any life-forms unfortunate enough to be within fifty light-years, sending their atoms spewing forth into the void of space, and do the PTB do anything to stop it?

  No. No, they do not.

  Civilizations destroy themselves (and others) over and over again, and the PTB watch on the planet view screens and place bets on what the last survivor’s final words will be. (They’re usually something like, “Oh, crud.”) This is not quite as cruel as it sounds, since the bylaws of the Powers That Be strictly forbid interfering or choosing sides in planetary squabbles. This is widely agreed to be the best course of action. Might they turn their backs occasionally and allow someone to steer a meteorite embedded with amino acids toward a recently cooled planet in a new solar system? Sure. Prevent nuclear destruction of an advanced civilization? No.