Kirsten thinks about the two Dr. Eleven comics Arthur Leander gave her: Station Eleven (Vol. 1, No. 1) and The Pursuit (Vol. 1, No. 2). By Year Twenty, Kirsten has memorized them, and no one else in the Traveling Symphony has heard of the series.

Kirsten considers how unusually expensive the comics seem, with bright images and archival paper. A Symphony member who played contrabassoon before the collapse and worked in printing suggests they may not have been mass-produced at all, possibly a vanity project.

Kirsten notices the lack of biographical information: the creator is credited only as “M. C.” Pencil notes on the inside covers read “Copy 2 of 10” and “Copy 3 of 10,” leading Kirsten to wonder if as few as ten copies of each issue exist.

Kirsten has protected the comics as best she can, but they are now dog-eared and softened at the edges. The first issue falls open to a two-page spread showing Dr. Eleven, a physicist, standing on dark rocks above an indigo sea on a planet-like space station, with boats between islands and wind turbines on the horizon.

In the illustration, Dr. Eleven holds his fedora while a small white animal named Luli stands beside him; older Symphony members insist Luli is a dog, though it looks unlike any dog Kirsten has known. The page’s caption reads: “I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.”