“Act Three merchandise is available in the lobby. The sweater is a faithful reproduction, ethically sourced and screen-accurate. The commemorative bag is sold separately.”— Luna’aras Playhouse, Patron Services
The sand came home with me.
It was in my shoes and it was in the cuffs of my pants and it was, somehow, in my hair, and it had ridden the Circle Line all the way back across the city and it was now, I was fairly sure, getting into the couch.
Comma was already on the couch. She had one leg folded under her and her band up in front of her face and she did not look away from it when I sat down, which was the greeting.
I put my own band up and scrolled.
The feed did what it always did. Somebody’s cousin had dived a shard. A tinkerer I followed had posted a four-thousand-word teardown of a suspension coupling, and I saved it to read later, but I would not read it later.
Two minutes in, Comma’s nose twitched.
She didn’t look over. She just tilted her head in my direction, and her band came down a little, and her nostrils went once, twice.
“What is that?”
“What’s what.”
“You.” She lowered the band the rest of the way. “You smell weird.”
“Thanks.”
“No, seriously.” She leaned in, which meant leaning her whole upper body across the couch cushion until her shoulder hit my arm, and she smelled me the way you’d smell milk. “It’s not workshop. The workshop is hot metal and the burny plastic thing. And it’s not the Eddy one, because that one’s just bad. This is—” she stopped. She went again. “Why do you smell like a mineral?”
I kept scrolling.
“Dachshund.”
“I went to the beach,” I said.
She sat back. She looked at me for a while with her band dark in her lap, working it over. “With who.”
“Omar.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, in a tone that could haggle with Eddy and win. “You went to the beach. With Omar. And it made you like this.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve been smiling.” She narrowed her eyes. “You came in and you sat down and you have been sitting there smiling at your band for four minutes like an idiot, and I checked, and you weren’t even scrolling anything, the feed hasn’t moved, you’ve been looking at the same suspension thing—”
My band lit up in my hand.
It was a holo-photo. It was Alice’s, obviously, because the framing was terrible and there was a thumb in the corner of it. It had been taken through a doorway.
Cecilia was sitting on the end of the bed with an enormous blue polyester octopus in her lap and both arms wrapped around it. She wasn’t looking at the camera. She was looking down at the little embroidered tie.
She was smiling.
AliceOnFire_real: She doesn’t know we can see her!
I had gotten maybe half a laugh out before Comma’s head came around like a gun turret.
“Who is that?”
“Nobody.”
“That is a girl, Dash and not Erika—”
“There were two of them,” I said, and gave up, because she was going to get it out of me in ninety seconds anyway and the only thing I could still control was the manner of my death. “Twins. Alice and Cecilia. They’re friends. They came out to Barani, and Omar was there, and we ate hotdogs and got in the water, and I won that octopus at a shooting gallery with a gun that had a bent barrel, and it cost me seventy sols.”
Comma absorbed all of this without blinking.
“Seventy,” she said.
“The gun was rigged.”
“You went on a date.”
“I went to the beach.”
“With two girls.” She flopped backwards into the arm of the couch with her hands over her face. “Ugh. Ugh. Mom is going to be so happy and I’m going to have to live in this house—”
“It wasn’t a—”
And then I remembered, and I stopped, and I dug into my cargo pocket.
The wrapper came out first.
It was crushed flat, and it was pink and it was the strawberry one, and it sat in my open palm in front of my sister with the little cartoon strawberry looking up at both of us, and there was no version of the next four seconds in which I came out ahead.
Comma’s hands came away from her face very slowly.
“That’s mine.”
“It’s evidence,” I said, and put my other hand in and got the real thing out, and held it out to her.
The shell was the size of my thumbnail, pale on the outside, and pink down inside the curl where the light had to work to get in.
Comma looked at it in my palm, and then she looked up at me.
“Is it real?”
“It was in the water an hour ago.”
“Did something live in it?”
“Probably.”
“Is it dead?”
“Comma.”
She picked it up with two fingers, and she held it up between us and turned it, and the light from the ceiling went down into the pink part and came back out.
She remained silent for a while.
Then she closed her hand around it, and put her band back up, and said to the band, “You can keep the wrapper.”
We scrolled.
The tinkerer had gotten into an argument in his own comments. #tagoDeals went past, which was a group I had joined and it was mostly people posting furniture.
@raviv_ok: LUNA. ORBIT SHUTTLE. 189 SOLS RETURN. this is not a scam i have flown it, it is 189 sols because there are no windows and they turn the gravity off. book it NOW
It was Friday.
Dewi wanted me back Monday afternoon, and between here and Monday afternoon there was nothing but a rune I could learn. Probably?
Asti was on the Moon.
This was an opportunity to shore up my rune knowledge!
I got up.
Comma did not look away from her band. “You got up too fast.”
“I’m going to make a call.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, and turned her hand over, and looked at the shell in it again, and put it in the pocket of the oversized shirt.
I sat down on my bed and pulled the listing back up.
@raviv_ok had not been lying, exactly. He had been lying by omission, which on #tagoDeals is the house style.
[LUNA—ECONOMY (INTERIOR)]Departs Tago 09:00 or Departs Luna 21:00.¢189 return — Saturday/Sunday departures only. (Weekday equivalent: ¢640.)No viewport. Gravity is not provided on this fare. See FAQ.
[FAQ: You will be fine.]
So it was a weekend fare because it was a weekend flight, and it was cheap because they had taken out the windows and turned off the gravity, and somewhere in a Schwarzstahl office a man had looked at a shuttle full of people who could not see out and could not sit down and decided that this was a product.
It was Friday. Tomorrow was Saturday or I could go on Sunday. There was a nine o’clock out of Luna, and Dewi wanted me Monday afternoon.
I looked at the numbers for a while.
Then I pulled up Asti’s contact and started the call, and almost instantly, her face came up over my wrist and she was moving.
“Dash!” She was half-turned away from the pickup, doing something to the back of her own head with both hands. There were two pins in her mouth, which did not slow her down at all. “You called! Hold on. Hold on—”
She walked out of frame. The holo held on an empty stretch of pale wall and a corner of a mirror.
“I can call back—”
“Don’t you dare.” Her voice came from somewhere off to the left, muffled. There was a long zip. There was a short silence. There was a second, more determined zip. “Ha. Okay.”
She came back into frame with her chin up and her shoulders bare and a smile on. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry. Theater night.”
I looked her over. “You look nice.”
“I know.” She leaned in toward the pickup, which made her huge. “What’s happened? You’ve got a grin-face.” I dropped my smile, but she quickly added. “It’s a good face, it’s not the last one—”
“There’s a shuttle.” I pushed the listing on TV and turned the band, and I watched her read it upside down through two hundred thousand kilometers. “A hundred and eighty-nine sols. Return.”
Asti’s hands came up over her mouth. “You’re coming up,” she said, into her fingers. “You’re coming up. Dash, that’s—we have to, we for sure have to, I’m not letting you look at the warehouse on a screen again, I’ll show you the floor, the real floor, and there’s a place on the ring road that does noodles that would ruin you for Tago—” She stopped. She narrowed her eyes at me, and her face changed gears with an audible clunk. “Okay. What else.”
“What?”
“You didn’t call me because of noodles.” She folded her arms. “What are you doing on the Moon, cousin?”
I looked at the wall of my room, which had nothing useful on it. “The library,” I said. “I want to learn another enchanting... thing.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know yet.” She waited, and I felt the whole thing sound stupid on its way out of my mouth. “I’ll know when I touch the book. It’s—it doesn’t work if I decide first. I think? I don’t know. I just want to try.”
Asti nodded slowly. She reached off-frame and came back with an earring and put it in without looking at it, and her eyes stayed on me the whole time.
“I looked into this,” she said. “After last time. I felt bad about the reading room thing, so I actually went and read the terms like a normal person, and it turns out I’ve been quoting you half a menu.” She held up a finger. “There’s two ways to do it. One: you book the secured room. Ten thousand, twenty-four hours, and inside those twenty-four hours the book is yours and you can learn as much out of it as your head can hold.”
She held up the second finger.
“Or. Five thousand, and they give you a tutor. Twelve hours across two days, six and six, and at the end of the twelve you have it. Or they call you stupid and give your money back.” Her mouth twisted. “But only one technique, that’s the deal. One technique, or enchanting thing, or whatever it is for you, you pick it, and if you’re quick and you finish in eight hours, they shake your hand and walk you to the lift.“
I sat there on the end of my bed with my mouth slightly open.
“I didn’t know it was a thing,” Asti said, entirely unbothered. “Apparently, it’s very popular. Apparently there’s a waiting list, which—hang on—” She glanced down, and her fingers moved on something I couldn’t see. “There isn’t for you. Obviously.”
“Have you ever done it? Either?”
Asti stopped with her hand halfway to her ear. “There’s nothing in there for me,” she said lightly and put the earring in. “Thirty. At level twenty-five, something opens up that apparently fits me. I checked what, and they wouldn’t tell me, which I think is rude, but—” and she grinned, “—I’m going to find out.”
“You’ll get there.”
“I’ll get there. Anyway.” She waved it off, both hands. “So.” She looked back up and grinned. “Are you a fast learner?”
I thought about the Rune of Piercing. I thought about the wooden figurine of Erika, and Dr. Hoffman explaining basic things to me, and Mr. Kavish putting me through a wall to make a point about the gap between what I owned and what I actually was.
“No,” I said.
“Cool,” she said. “Five thousand. Tutor. I’m booking it.”
“You’re—”
“Twelve to six, both days.” She was already doing it, head down, both hands going, and she talked while she worked the way she probably did all day at that job. “Which is perfect, actually, because the nine o’clock puts you down mid-morning and you’ll be useless for an hour anyway; everyone is. Twelve to six Saturday, twelve to six Sunday, and then the nine o’clock home. Yes. Fine. Done.”
Somewhere on the Moon a booking closed… and it landed on me all at once, the way it always does about ninety seconds too late.
Saturday to Sunday.
That was a night. That was a night up there, on a rock, three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers from my mother, who did not currently know that any of this existed.
“I have to tell my mom,” I said.
Asti looked up, and her face went soft, and she nodded at me with total seriousness. “You do. That’s important. Tell her properly, not a one-liner.” She went back to whatever she was doing. “I’ve booked you for tomorrow anyway.”
“Asti—”
“She’ll say yes.” She didn’t look up. “And if she says no, I’ll cancel it and nobody’s hurt. Go on.”
I let out a breath. “Okay. I’ll be there at nine—I mean, I’ll be on the nine.”
“You will not be on anything,” Asti said, “because there’s a car.”
“There’s a what?”
“A car. It picks you up at arrivals, and it brings you to my place, and you drop your bag, and it takes you to the library for twelve.” She said it in one breath, like a worker reading a manifest. “And then I'll collect you at six and you'll stay at mine, and I do not want to hear a single—”
“Asti, I can’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t ask.” She stopped moving. She turned and stepped in close to the pickup, and the top half of her filled the frame, one earring in and one still in her hand. “Dash. You didn’t ask. You never ask. That’s the entire problem with you.”
“It’s not—”
“You called me.” She was looking straight down the connection at me. “And whatever you did, it worked. You’ve done more for me than anyone with our name has done in about six years, so I am sending a car, and you are sleeping in the good room, and that is the last we’re saying about it.”
She was beaming. She was fully beaming, and I had absolutely nowhere to go.
“...Thank you,” I said.
“Anytime, cousin.” She checked something past the edge of the frame, and her posture changed. “Ugh. I have to go, the curtain’s at eight and Luna traffic is... UGH!“
“What are you seeing?”
Asti lit up. “The First Touch. It’s the best play.” She got closer to the pickup again. “It’s ancient Earth 1.0. Pre-Alliance, pre-everything, back when there were still separate countries, and it’s about a company called Pear, and they make a phone that you can touch. With your hand. That’s the whole thing, that’s the plot. Before that, you had to press a button. Apparently in the play they have a big black button they press; it is hilarious! Dash, they had to press buttons—”
“I know what a button is.”
“The third act is the launch.” She wasn’t listening. Her hands were up. “He walks out on the stage, the founder, and he’s got it in his pocket the whole time, and the whole theater—three thousand people, Dash—goes quiet, and he takes it out, and he touches it, and it—” She made a small, helpless gesture. “I’ve seen it twice. I cried both times. It’s very embarrassing.”
I looked at her.
“You’re crying,” I said, “about a product launch.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the most corpo thing I have ever heard in my life.”
“Yes,“ she said, delighted. “Also the lobby sells the sweater.”
“The what?”
“The black sweater. The one he wears in act three. They sell it, it’s two hundred and ten sols, and it is the nicest thing I own and it doesn’t come with a bag.” She pulled a face of genuine grievance. “The bag is forty. Separately. Forty sols for the bag.”
“Did you buy the bag?”
“Obviously I bought the bag.” She was already backing away from the pickup, gathering something off a chair. “Nine o’clock. Tomorrow. Tell your mother.“
The call cut, and my room came back, and it was silent in it.
It took an hour.
Mom didn’t say no. Mom said a long series of things that were not no, and looked like questions, and were actually all the same question wearing different coats: alone?
Alone on a shuttle. Alone at a Luna port. I told her about the car. I told her about Asti. I told her twice, because she asked twice.
Mom: Who is meeting you Mom: Dash. Who is meeting you at the port Me: A car. Asti’s sending a car. It takes me to her place. Mom: And she’s there Me: She’s at work until six. I think. Mom, I go into shards and come back fine. Mom: That is not the reassurance you think it is
She went quiet for eleven minutes. I watched the three little dots come up and go away four times.
Mom: Fine Mom: Call me when you land.
I said I would, and I booked the flight before she could think about it any further.
[LUNA RETURN — ECONOMY (INTERIOR) — ¢189]
[CHECK-IN IS OPEN. CHECK IN NOW.][Baggage: 0 items, 0kg.]
[CARRIAGE OF ARMAMENTS]Licensed Divers may carry bladed, ballistic, and electromagnetic armaments on their person or in cabin storage.
I read it three times.
Then I went and got the coilgun, and I put it on the bed next to the sword and the revolver and the hoodie, and I stood there looking at all of it, laid out on my blanket, going up.
“Huh. So I can carry all my weapons.”
Then I set an alarm for six, and lay down on top of the blanket with the light still on, and stared at the ceiling of my room, and thought about a woman on the Moon crying in a dark theater at a man taking a phone out of his pocket.
Author's note: Thanks for reading and sorry for being a bit later today >_<