Planetfall by Emma Newman

my stomach whenever I tried to leave her bed. Her skin is slightly lighter than my father’s was, her hair a wild afro explosion pulled back into a tight ponytail now that she’s on duty. She doesn’t hide her delight when meeting Sung-Soo and shakes his hand warmly with both of hers. That smile has a predictable effect upon him and I see him relax in moments. That’s why I took him to her instead of Dr. Lincoln.
    â€œYou look like your grandmother,” she says to him as she leads him over to a chair. “Did Ren tell you that?”
    Sung-Soo shakes his head. Once seated he looks around the room at the minimalist equipment and the three empty beds. His gaze lingers over some of the covered trays next to one of them, no doubt the swabs and other things Kay will use in the tests.
    â€œNo need to be nervous,” Kay says, sitting opposite him. “All I’m going to do is take a few samples from you so we can map your secondary genome and take a look inside you to make sure everything looks tickety-boo.”
    Sung-Soo’s hands slap over his stomach protectively. “Inside me?”
    Kay’s glance at me reveals her brief discomfort. She’s realizing just how divorced his life has been from ours. “I don’t need to do anything invasive. There’s a scanner, over there. You’ll just lie down and relax; you’ll feel a slight tingling in your skin, that’s all.”
    He nods and after a beat says, “Secondary genome? I thought Ren already did all that genetic stuff.”
    â€œI’ll take swabs from your skin, inside your mouth, and a stool and urine sample.” Kay’s voice is light and pitched exactly right to put him at ease. “From those, I’ll be able to identify your microbiome—the bacteria that lives in and on you. We all have it—in fact that bacteria keeps us healthy—we just think yours will be different from ours because you grew up somewhere else.”
    I’ve already sent the first findings to her and told her about the nuts, so she must be desperate to get started. She’s hiding it well though. Lincoln would have had him swabbed by now, not giving a shit about putting the boy at ease. After a brief stab of paranoia I check on his location and he’s at the Dome. I can’t imagine the meeting lasting much longer and wonderif he’ll already know that I’ve brought Sung-Soo to the other doctor. I’m not looking forward to the next time I see him.
    â€œWill you stay, Ren?” Sung-Soo asks and I nod.
    â€œOf course.”
    Another look from Kay. She can see he trusts me. She doesn’t know how little I deserve that. I pull over another chair so I don’t have to hide that from my face.
    She takes the swabs first and the only time Sung-Soo will let me out of his sight is when he has to go to the bathroom with a sample cup and reddening cheeks. Once the samples are loaded for processing and the extraction started, Kay has Sung-Soo lie down to start the scan.
    â€œDoes everything look okay?” he asks. “Where can I see my insides?”
    â€œTry to keep still,” Kay replies and returns her attention to the scan.
    When Sung-Soo looks to me, I smile. “Only Dr. Reed can see the scan. It’s supposed to be that way. Anything to do with your health remains confidential between the doctor and you.”
    If he were chipped, Kay could share what she sees overlaid across his body, if she considered it a risk worth taking. There have been times when patients have demanded to have the scan’s results shared to their vision through the cloud, only to freak out at the sight of something perfectly normal. There aren’t any physical screens in here to show Sung-Soo what’s going on and I feel the gulf between our experiences widen. It must seem bizarre to him.
    â€œMy father could see things that weren’t there,” he says. “And a couple of the