"I need something that makes the world look better than it actually is," Elias said, only half-joking.

He thought about his father, sitting in the dark, squinting through that green line. His dad didn't travel anymore; the world came to him through that glass box. For five years, that green line had been a bars-and-stripes reminder of things breaking down.

"Five years," Jax said. "Covers everything but a baseball through the screen."

"Does it come with a warranty?" Elias asked, his voice steady.

Outside, the city was gray and drizzling, but in the trunk of his car lay a box filled with ten million tiny lights, waiting to turn his father’s living room into a nebula.