Indigenous Women
After his exile Edwin travels to Canada where he encounters the indigenous tribes occupying the land. The first encounter with the indigenous culture is through two women speaking in their local language. The narrator offers a vivid description from the perspective of the foreigner:
“On a sunny morning in September, he’s out for a walk when he comes upon two indigenous women laughing on the beach. Sisters? Good friends? They speak in a rapid language unlike anything he’s ever heard, a language punctuated by sounds he can’t imagine being able to replicate, let alone render in the Roman alphabet. Their hair is long and dark, and when one of them turns her head, light glances off a pair of enormous shell earrings. The women are wrapped in blankets against a cold wind.”
Last Book Tour
As a resident of the second moon colony, Olive travels to Earth to promote his book in the year 2203. New York City exudes the same essence but this is the future and technology has altered the landscape. While the scene describes a futuristic city it entails the same spirit of New York City:
“The first stop on the book tour was New York City, where Olive did signing events at two bookstores and then found an hour to walk in Central Park before the bookseller dinner. The Sheep Meadow at twilight: silvery light, wet leaves on the grass. The sky was crowded with low-altitude airships, and in the distance the falling-star lights of commuter aircraft streaked upward toward the colonies. Olive paused for a moment to orient herself, then walked toward the ancient double silhouette of the Dakota. Hundred-story towers rose up behind it.”
Colony Two
Overcrowding on Earth forced humans to build three more colonies in space to accommodate the influx. Colony One was built to perfection because there was enough time to construct the structure without too many flaws. However, Colony Two was built in a hurry as the narrator paints a clear description of its atmosphere:
“But Colony Two was built a little too hastily, and within a century the lighting system on the main dome had failed. The lighting system was meant to mimic the appearance of the sky as viewed from Earth—it was nice to look up and see blue, as opposed to looking up into the void—and when it failed there was no more false atmosphere, no more shifting pixelations to give the impression of clouds, no more carefully calibrated preprogrammed sunrises and sunsets, no more blue. Which is not to suggest that there wasn’t light, but that light was extremely un-Earthlike: on a bright day, the colonists looked up into space.”
Departure
The narrator describes the world after the pandemic where health precautions have become part of daily life. When it comes to space travel—from Earth to the three colonies and vice versa—the concern of infecting the residents is heightened. This imagery illustrates what it is like to leave Earth in this reality:
“Six hours to the moon. Olive had bought a package of surgical masks at the airport—sold to travelers who’d picked up colds on the road—and she was wearing three of them, which made it difficult to breathe. She had a window seat and was all but curled around her armrest, trying to stay as far from other people as possible. The surface of the moon rose out of blackness, bright from a distance and gray up close, the opaque bubbles of Colonies One, Two, and Three gleaming in the sunlight.”
