I met Amu under the covers.

In summer, the crack on the windowpane would align perfectly with the horizon, right around 2 p.m. I mean, it wasn’t that the horizon was moving, but the play of sun and shadow across the landscape created a line between light and dark that followed the crack exactly for those looking in from the net. It was funny, it even looked like one of Ool’s drawings on the other windows in the house: birds flying, trees fitting into the landscape from a certain angle, witty phrases. The difference was that the crack was a straight line, a division, quite different from the many curves that Amu’s partner scribbled all over the place.

Afternoons were periods of reflection in Ganga Zumba. After lunch, all over the commune, people would set aside a few hours to think about life. Amu liked to lie in the hammock, facing the cracked window, and play at dividing the world outside in two, below and above the horizon. At the top, only flying beings, living or not, birds, butterflies, drones, insects—which they imagined, since they were too small to see from that distance. At the bottom, earth beings, mechanical harvesters, plants, and animals of all kinds, including humans. Plants especially became channels of communication between the two worlds, the ones that were big enough to cross the crack from the bottom to the top. Sometimes Amu thought of writing about it, short stories, novels, or romances about the world broken in two, cracked, divided, but they always ended up sleeping.

Outside the window, things were different. Nothing in the commune was divided or cracked. Nobody used those words in Ganga Zumba. They thought of things as shared, belonging to everyone and therefore to no one—in other words, common. Ool liked this idea more than Amu, who did not understand why they could not have something of their own outside the house. Restricting the idea of privacy to objects for personal use seemed an exaggeration, but they did not dare question the rules of the commune; they knew by heart the sermon they would hear, the past, the wars, the horror of private property. They preferred to keep their questions inside, in the house and in their mind, and left their venting to the window. The crack gave no answer—nor did it understand about territory, property, and collectivity.

Things got even more confusing for Amu when the subject was love. Ool and Amu had been partners for years, but from the beginning they had different perspectives. Ool did not believe in exclusivity. Love, for her, was a synonym of freedom, of coming and going, of finding and losing oneself. Amu, on the other hand ... they said this was also what they wanted, but it wasn’t quite like that. Ool either didn’t see or pretended not to care, because if I, an outsider, noticed it right away, there was no way the most observant person I met in Freedom would not have known.

Amu didn’t say what they wanted or didn’t want. But the changes in their behavior, and even their tone of voice, were clear to anyone paying attention. Whenever Ool would go out with someone else, Amu would shut down. I noticed this even before I got into a relationship with them, and maybe my noticing was why they decided to have a relationship with me. I never asked, but Amu didn’t like sharing their partner’s affection with anyone else. And I became their outlet.

On LuaNova-1, Amu arrived home to find not only Ool, but two other people, who were measuring the cracked glass. Amu dropped their purse on the armchair and addressed the trio:

—What is going on?

—They came to change the glass—replied Ool.

—But ... why?

—Because of the crack.

Amu felt something close to a sense of loss, but not quite. They tried not to show anything, as usual.

—But do you need to? Isn’t it too much of an aesthetic whim?

—No—answered one of the glaziers. —With the opening and closing of the window, this glass could come loose and fall down on someone’s head.

Amu laughed with some nonchalance.

—Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration? The crack has been there for months, and the glass is still as sturdy as ever.

Ool thought it was strange.

—Amu ... I don’t understand. Why so many questions?

—I ... I like it—replied Amu, embarrassed to say why in the presence of strangers.—I’m used to it.

—You may like it, but no personal taste can be above collective care, you know. Besides, the cracked glass is no longer functional.— Ool’s tone signaled a close to the conversation.

—I am not being careless, you are the one exaggerating. And I really admire how even an artist can be so concerned with functionality.

Ool crossed her arms.

—Don’t give me that artist stereotype again, Amu. I don’t want to fight over so little.

—Neither do I—replied Amu, walking briskly into the kitchen. Leaving was the way they knew how to end conversations they no longer wanted to have.

The glaziers, who had stopped their service to follow the discussion, asked if they should continue. Ool said yes. For the rest of the afternoon Ool didn’t touch the subject, but before going to bed, she decided to poke Amu.

—My love ... explain your attachment to the cracked glass.

—It’s not attachment, it’s just ... it makes me think.

—Think about what?

—About life, about the world ... about possibilities.

—Really? A crack?

Amu took a deep breath. Just as they did during the commune assemblies, they would always think before engaging in discussions with Ool, even more so before going to sleep. They considered the possible directions for the conversation and, just as they had that afternoon, thought it was best to end it there.

—Let it go, Ool. It’s my thing, it’s no big deal.

Ool pretended to believe them, or maybe she was also out of patience for arguing. From the next room, through the thin walls, I could hear the couple following their nightly ritual, snuggling, kissing and cuddling, and falling asleep.

My relationship with Amu did not start right away. When I arrived in Ganga Zumba after months crossing the entire territory of Freedom, connecting with someone didn’t really cross my mind. I was at the peak of doubt about which way to go. Continuing in Freedom was tempting, and I had already accumulated enough experience to be able to choose where and how to live. For the first time since I had arrived, I understood, or rather, I felt with every cell in my body what it meant to live without hating work. I still kept a lot of the proprietary feelings typical of where I came from, but I could already identify when they manifested themselves and how to deal with them. In those eleven months, I learned to do more things than in all my previous life: cooking, cleaning, growing plants, taking care of children, mediating conflicts. All these tasks were seen as work in Freedom, and all the work was considered collective. Tequio, they called it. The word “work” did not exist, or rather, it was not used to designate the things necessary for daily life, nor for everything else that one could or wanted to produce in Freedom. Everything was tequio, and tequio was above all a pleasure, even when it involved an uncomfortable task, like cleaning toilets. In such cases, the satisfaction lay in the after-work—which is when I discovered how good a clean toilet feels.

Solidarity and courtesy were non-negotiable values in Freedom. Travellers were welcomed in every commune. Those who did not like or were not well enough to receive guests could appeal to the Council, who would grant their request as long as the ban was temporary or there was some compensation in return—for example, cooking for the outsiders. Visitors, for their part, needed to be involved in the tequio as soon as they had settled in, even on short trips.

Amu and Ool felt differently about hosting people, but when I arrived in Ganga Zumba, Amu had just agreed to an open period for receiving guests. Ool, diplomatic as always, offered a room as soon as I introduced myself to the Council. Amu merely nodded their head. I spent almost two weeks barely hearing Amu’s voice while I observed every detail of their relationship with Ool. When I finally felt at ease with the couple, I surprised Amu by preparing lunch for them.

It was the first time Amu smiled at me.

The day after the glass change, Amu got up early for work. Working helped them forget their feelings about Ool. Amu spent hours telling me about the lab, the research on the bioplastic, the hundreds of possible applications. After the scientists at Freedom were able to stabilize the formula, a small revolution had taken place. The dependence on mineral materials, scarce in the free territory, forced the Council to organize risky expeditions to get aluminum, copper, and other ores. Several times, the location of Freedom was almost revealed to the world. Bioplastic put an end to this danger.

An advantageous substitute for almost everything in the construction industry, the synthetic material produced from baobá sap had become ubiquitous in every commune. In Ganga Zumba, there was a special feeling: it was Ibá, Amu’s parent, who led the team that produced the first version of the material. The inhabitants of the commune were proud, almost overstepping the bounds of homage into idolatry of Ibá. Even though the commune held no nuclear families, Amu had a very strong bond with "their" father. Sometimes they called him that, and said it was a vice of language, but I knew it was a way to affirm their relationship with him, since in Ganga Zumba all the children called the older people “father” or “mother.”

Amu’s way to the laboratory was short and almost solitary. They avoided contact with other people even more on that day, thinking about the crack, the window, and all the worlds they could never create again. They spent the morning talking little, even less than usual, and no one dared to ask what was going on. Everyone respected them both for their bond with Ibá and for their dedication to improving the bioplastic. No one in the lab questioned when they wanted distance. Even more so now, when they were strengthening the formula of the bioplastic; if it could withstand higher temperatures, it could be used in solar power plants. Everyone around Amu interpreted their bad moods as concentration.

From the window of the lab’s janitorial room, I watched Amu during the final minutes of my cleaning shift. By now we were exchanging words here and there during meals, but we didn’t know each other. I was a guest and they were a person in a constant state of doubt, about the world, about relationships, about the rules of Freedom. Our relationship changed a few nights after that.

It was LuaNova-6 when Ool left the house for a dinner date with someone else. With a smile, Amu wished Ool a good date, but then shut themselves in their room. I listened to them crying softly for more than thirty minutes, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like crying along.

Instead, I knocked on the door. I listened as they wiped away their tears before answering. As soon as they opened the door, I said nothing, just hugged Amu as carefully as I could. Their eyes filled with tears again, and they returned the hug. It was the first night we spent together—Ool, as expected, did not return home.

In a way, I think Amu and I found each other because we were two lonely people. Though I was getting used to life in Freedom, I was a foreigner, an alien, a person who found a place but knew he was far from home. Amu was home but felt more and more out of place. Even though guilt was not a very present feeling in Freedom, they were more and more certain every day that they were wrong, that they were a bad person for thinking and wishing and wanting to have things that no one else in Freedom would consider having. In our disagreement with the world, we found each other. And from our meeting, feelings were born that I never knew how to express with words.

Amu and Ool had been together for over a decade when I met them. In all that time, Amu said Ool was enough, even though Ool kept repeating that this was not about being enough, but about limiting themselves. Amu would retort that it was not limiting because they would go out with other people when they felt like it. I was the first person outside the relationship that Amu had sex with, in all that time. The first with whom they exchanged kisses, and hugs, and caresses, and secrets.

Now, knowing Amu, I venture to say that I may have been the last—I don’t know if anyone else in Freedom would put themselves in the same position.

Two days after our first date, Amu and their team came up with an improved version of the bioplastic. Although the formula wasn’t final, and they would now enter a testing phase, the success was enough for a celebration in the central cafeteria. After lunch, Amu considered not going home. I wouldn’t be there, and they would have to face the new glass, without a crack, and all the stories and tales they never wrote. They thought about resting in one of the collective hammocks next to the cafeteria, but there was too much conversation. Without a third option, they followed their routine.

Amu returned home and couldn’t find Ool, who, as usual, was working her shift at the collective work center in the afternoon—she hated waking up early. They put their bag down on the armchair and walked without much excitement to the living room. They thought about the cracked glass, and missed it. They became irritated at having to deal with such big feelings for something so small, and bowed their head in self-reproach as they entered the room.

When they looked up, Amu saw the new glass, clear and unbroken, so clean that it looked as if it wasn’t even there. The sun illuminated Ool’s desk next to the window, shining on their partner’s pot of pens. Amu was surprised to see one of them without a cap, since Ool was so careful with her materials. They moved closer to replace the cap and only then noticed a thin line on the glass, in the exact place of the crack—right there where, in a little over an hour, the sun’s shadow on the horizon would align perfectly with the line, dividing the world again in two, light and dark, air and earth, concrete and imaginary.

Below the extreme left of the very small line, they could read, in Ool’s handwriting, a small declaration: "I love you."

Amu lay in the hammock, smiling, and began to imagine another story that would never be written. They didn’t have to: may those outside of the window like it or not, that world was theirs, and only theirs.

The one time Amu and I lay together in the hammock, after the glass had been changed, they told me the whole crack story. This was before Ool’s scribble, with the little declaration of love. There, I finally understood our relationship: I was the limit, the forbidden, the thin line that made possible a secret intersection between light and dark, illumination and shadows, Freedom and ownership. Amu had me, when before they had nothing and no one, and found in our moments of intimacy two bodies where before only one fit, what they always knew they needed but never allowed themselves to assume.

After the first night, Amu and I met a little more than a dozen times. Our relationship was as much carnal as spiritual: we talked with our bodies and dreamed with our words. At none of these times did I try to dissuade Amu from feeling possessive. Not because I felt possessive of them, too, but because I had never been possessed by anyone. I liked the feeling. It was not a problem for me; being with Amu only when they wanted me wasn’t either. I thought about this many times between our nights, and I came to no conclusion. There wasn’t a conclusion. In this absence was an answer: life in Freedom had taught me to accept contradictions. We are walking conflicts, anywhere in the world, and that is the only reason we can move through it. If we had certainty and nothing else, nothing like Freedom could exist.

When I left Ganga Zumba, I took no resentment, sadness or regret with me. Ool gave me a long, tight hug, as she had never done before. It wasn’t just a goodbye, but maybe also relief, for recognizing in my relationship with Amu a competition that her principles would never allow her to act upon. Or maybe it was gratitude, that I could be an outlet for desires of Amu’s she didn’t know how to satisfy. Maybe even apprehension, an expectation of change in her relationship with Amu, which she wasn’t sure would be for the better or worse—but which, she suspected, would be inevitable.

None of that was said to me, but I felt it all in that hug.

All I know for sure is that I left Ganga Zumba carrying Amu with me inside my chest, their scent deep in my brain, their taste on my tongue. I found out later they had hidden a message inside my backpack, written on a piece of bioplastic. It was not a mere memory, nor a declaration of love, but a declaration of the future: a reminder that wherever we are, light and dark will continue to meet on the horizon.

Editor: Kat Weaver

First Reader: Morgan Braid

Copy Editors: Copy Editing Department

Accessibility: Accessibility Editors