Date Night

After Grac Au Mao removed the tracking chip they lodged into my neck, it left a small scar. It was a little thing, but they didn’t bother to hit it with any kind of dermal patching or fibrin therapies, so it tended to catch the light. A teardrop of raised skin, with a shadow of pigment beneath it, surface stippled pink and white. On Polity’s neck it had its mirror, same side, but flipped whenever we spoke eye-to-eye. We looked at each other's scars more than our own, finding greater interest in the blemish of the other than the blemish of the self. They shared the same history. Where the gunshots to Polity’s abdomen divided, these little welts did the opposite. We could look into a cosmetic treatment down the road, but for now--matching marks. Friendship bracelets of that protein, collagen.

“What do you want to do today?” Polity asked me on the third day of our conditional freedom, as my feet slapped the tile, wet from a skin tingling shower.

“I think,” I said, scratching at the scar on my neck, feeling the vapor blanket of Therevatti’s ever present humidity.

“I think we can do whatever we want.”

I’m Oscar Yasui, formerly a professional food critic, currently an independent food journalist, and you’re listening to Gastronaut.

It was a strange thing, doing whatever we wanted. For nearly two days we didn’t do much of anything; morning to evening we worked on personal projects, trawled the buffer, stretched, a lot of activities that didn’t require us to leave the small apartment Grac Au Mao had provided us. I couldn’t really chart why the organization had made that call, considering our history. In an anxious fit, I asked Polity about it on the first day.

“Mmf,” they said, trying to work vowels around a mouthful of brightly-colored chewies. Stars and planets, slightly translucent, and colored like a child’s box of markers. When they managed to work that lump of masticated worlds aside, they said.

“I mean, you’re right to not take it at face value,” they shook a few more candies from their foil pouch before sealing the bag into the waste bin, where it mingled with a growing pile of junk food detritus. They considered having a few more before gently setting them aside. A single planet rolled beneath the couch and they cursed.

“It’s political, but it is a thank you. Kinda. Grac Au Mao probably owns this building one way or another, they’re stowing us in here because we’re in a hierarchical gray area,” their face screwed up in thought with a flash of a shrug, “at least I think.”

“But who knows, right?” They chewed again, “I mean, maybe they’re just tired of getting woken up at night by me pretending to be a fish.”

“Hardy har,” I said. Polity had been improving, but back then, every week or so they tended to lurch out of unconsciousness with an inhaling moan. It was a sound that was equally sudden, frightening, and sad. Tended to ruin their sleep too.

“So… we’re not done?” I asked, hope grappling a heavy heart.

Polity shook their head, “No. Sort of? Not really.”

I gripped my skull by the temples, “Dain said we would be done.”

“Well…” Polity sighed. Their thumb flicked at their handheld, and I could see news reports. Checkpoint raids, hit-and-runs on colony officials, discussions of curfews and sanctions. They were doomscrolling. Again.

“Dain lied,” I finished the thought.

“Yeah. Dain lied.” Polity said. Their voice wasn’t unsympathetic.

Outside, the rain was a mist, a bank of rolling fog that ebbed like a nebula in the coiling jungle, and from that nacreous mist rose the smell of water and earth. Out of the corner of my field of vision, I saw Polity watching me instead of their handheld. They pulled a foot back, and playfully kicked at my hip.

“Hey, relax,” they said.

“Why?” I asked, “Or… how? How would that even be possible?” Polity looked up at me, and a breeze of sadness swept through their facade of carved jade. They set their handheld down on the coffee table, screen down, and swung their legs so their knees pointed to mine.

“Because we made it through all the rest of the bullshit, and we deserve a break,” they said. They tucked a bolt of blonde hair over their ear. “You deserve a break, I deserve a break. And it’s our apartment, for now. Nobody’s going to kick us out for a credit sweep or politics at the dinner table.”

“I don’t want to take a break,” I said, mock pouting. I switched to a particular accent, “I’m having a fit, and being very unreasonable.”

Polity pushed me, and I rocked back against the couch, cackling. “Glad to see you’re getting some value out of my teenage crises,” they snorted.

I looked out across the fog, saw how it climbed the vines and crept in creamy tendrils up to the sky, towards the murky light of the cloud covered Therevattin sun. Dotter, it’s called, with two ts. Our own star’s distant twin.

“What do we do next?” I asked. Polity paused in the middle of reaching for their handheld, arm outstretched, fingertips inches from its surface. They set their hand back down before they spoke.

“Hm, I dunno. Maybe see more of the planet? I barely left the area around Pacheco, so…” they ran the nail of their thumb across their index finger, “there are some seas I’ve always wanted to see up close,” their eyes widened, “but uh, I’ll pass on scuba, thank you very much,” “Oh yeah, the megafauna,” I said.

“The sea monsters,” Polity replied.

“I’d like to see Felix Valley,” I said, watching Polity’s fingers, “I’d love to see the bloom migration.”

“Nerd,” Polity said, and I smiled back, “Felix Valley is too dry, man. Why do you think the flowers are always walking around? If you’re so homesick for scrubland and brushfire, why not just take a Rail back to Earth?”

I hadn’t thought of Earth. I hadn’t even thought of what I’d do after Therevatti. None of it seemed real. When I prompted my brain for a response, to what Polity was talking about, all it sent back was memories. The Duke’s bounty on my head. The terrible cost in planning and Nu that a return by Rail would require. Infiltrating Henry’s Cross. Polity’s body jerking involuntarily as they were shot. The feeling of rain shimmying through my hair.

In my peripheral vision, I got the impression that the humor had run out of Polity’s face like the pigment in an old photograph.

“Hey,” their voice was low. When I didn’t respond they nudged me gently, with their knuckles. “Oscar, I have an idea.”

“Yeah?” I asked, still gone, but able to respond.

“What if tonight we just… did something? Just the two of us? Went outside and did something together.”

“That would be…” I said, the present warring with the past inside my head, “I think that would be great.” I focused enough on their words to turn my attention to Polity’s face. They had managed to push a smile through their concern. Their hand shielded the fidgeting of its opposite.

“Do you have any plans?” I said. Polity shook their head.

“No, this is kind of spur of the moment.”

“What about dinner together?” I said. Polity nodded.

“Dinner?” They considered, we both looked to the kitchen with some trepidation. “Yeah,” Polity said, making, sorry Polity, a face like a duck. “We could do dinner.”

“Cool,” I said. Both our heads bowed, in unison, as we returned to our separate devices. Polity raised their handheld, throwing blue tinged shadows over their features, finger set to fling image after image up and out of the frame. I rolled a few gunshot pops from my shoulders and reopened my Twinnon Peregrine. Glaring at the voidblack gap between a pair of consonants. I was wondering if I could get away with fusing two takes into one, making a kind of frankentake that would prevent me from having to record a botched delivery, when the thought hit.

I let my Twinnon drop forward from my grip. It dinged off my kneecap. Beside me, Polity had brought their own device down on the couch cushion like a loaded fist.

We turned to each other in unison, our words collided against each other, mirrored like our scars, a jumble between us.

“Sorry, sorry” I said, embarrassed.

“It’s fine! You go.” Polity said, beaming.

“I want to have a night out, just the two of us,”

“Yeah!” Polity cried out, “A date! That’s what I was going to say!”

And so we did.

A few hours later, after a lot of hurried bustling on both our parts, we stood outside the starry glass exterior of Solei danc Tritai. We couldn’t go to Welcome Ways, our first choice, because of the threat of running into mercenaries spending their pay stubs at the nearby clubs and foodstands. I mourned the loss of a good bowl of tapioca noodles, but at least I wouldn’t be arrested and shipped off-world. We make do, listeners.

Solei danc Tritai was a small eatery on Brilliance Street, known for a breezy atmosphere and delicious poke bowls. The shrouded sun of Therevatti was dipping towards the horizon, and its rays bent into a dozen scattering rainbows, woven through the air like polychromatic threads. Cast and recast by the surrounding Pacheco skyline, by five hundred tons of black, armored glass.

We didn’t approach the restaurant straight away. Instead, Polity sat us down in a cafe across the street, grabbed us a pair of coffees and a few hard cookies, chocolate dipped and in the shape of raindrops. Polity barely touched theirs. Instead, they furrowed their brow and silently opened some sort of listening software, operating the program with thought alone. I can’t shake the feeling that we must have looked a bit silly back there, focusing so hard and trying not to seem like we were up to no good. Polity in their knee high yellow boots and sleeveless satin jumpsuit. Me in my oversized morning gray and tarnished gold suit.

Polity had to loan me something fancy to wear. Everything I owned was either back on Earth or in a consumer support center after being dumped from my cabin in the Singular Devotion. I hadn’t had much chance or reason to broaden my wardrobe since. Thank you again, Mister Duke of New Caledonia.

I munched my cookie. Admired the crunch of the crumb between my teeth. Overhead a great mass of purple algae crept into view, just below the mountain of clouds above us. A living lace through which a few kaja birds hunted, chasing insects between bulbs and fronds. I asked Polity if we should get going.

“Mmmm, soon,” they said. They had a hand cupped to one of their ears. On their screen was a series of numeric code.

“Do you hear anything?” I said, keeping my voice low.

“I can hear you talking,” they said with some strain, “and maybe something on the scanner. It’s hard to tell, all the towers keep bouncing chatter from five blocks over.”

A few streets down, a few low-set security cars raced to the intersection, sirens blaring, followed seconds later by an armored vehicle, back blistered with swiveling turrets. Lightning before thunder. Each took the turn at a drift, ball treads reorienting to maintain heading and momentum, before acceleration took over and propelled them away from us, up the street. I watched their tail lights streak away. Military vehicles had always seemed like fortifications before, huddled sullenly near charging stations, commercial centers, and Brightsail holdings. Now a day didn’t pass without seeing one or two weaving past civilian traffic.

Polity closed their eyes and held their breath, ears nearly trembling from the effort of listening. Then they clapped the clamshell of their portable down and disconnected the bud from their ear, all in one practiced, fluid motion.

“Okay!” Polity said with a whole lot of cheer, “We’re good to go! Ohhhh, let’s get some bowls!”

“All quiet?” I asked. They beamed.

“Saints no, never quiet, cities are always loud with comm noise, but there’s nobody around thirsting for our bounties. I think. So, that’s gotta be good enough.”

“Good enough!” I repeated, standing and extending a hand to help Polity up, “shall we?”

“Oh we shall!” Polity said, taking my hand, and we crossed the street together.

When we arrived inside, the interior of Solei danci Tritai was close but not cramped. An open roof revealed the building’s innards, rafters like crossed bones, HVAC glinting silver in the light of hanging string lights. No tables, no booths, just one long high stooled bar counter where everyone was seated in a line.

“Oh cool, fish,” Polity said, gazing up at a great fish tank that occupied the back wall. Inside swam a dozen examples of local aquatic life, glimmering and flapping and sailing round one another, or scuttling from cover to cover amongst the sunken rocks.

“Hey, what’s that?” I asked, pointing to a twirling mass of orange light, with a trailing body within it. It looked a bit like faerie fire, spheres of color orbiting each other ever forwards.

Polity craned their neck to one side, long earrings glittering, obscuring the scar on their neck. They shifted to get a better glance, the light of the creature dancing in their eyes. Whatever it was in the tank flattened, blossomed out, blooming into fingers of light, before collapsing and surging downwards.

“I have no fucking idea,” Polity said, wonder clear in their expression. They lifted their handheld and snapped a photo. “When we get a seat, let’s go look it up together. I’d like to know what I’m eating.”

“It could be for decoration?” I said. Polity winked.

“Tritai is Therevattin, Yasui. I’d bet you like, half my bounty that the fireball worm is on the menu,”

I stooped forward for a better look at the creature. Later research would reveal it was less a worm and more in the family of ctenophora. Or as near in the family as an alien lifeform could be.

“How would that even work?” I asked. The fireball worm twisted and looped through itself, like cursive set ablaze.

“I dunno, you’re the food guy,” Polity said, “maybe they make sashimi out of it,” Polity framed the creature with their forefingers and thumbs, capturing it in an imagined aspect ratio, “They say that starvation will do that to a cookbook.”

We found our seats at the counter, sank into their plush tops. Threw little pebbles of witticism back and forth across the gap between us. A few staff bustled between registers. Gimbaled arms swung plates from kitchen to customer in easy arcs. Patrons eyed each of them like balls in a tennis match, trying to steal a glimpse of each plate, cheering when one would descend to their spot on the bar. A few screens played the news, overhead shots of mercenaries on maneuver, self-organizing munitions touching down in a deep jungle shanty. It reminded me of the same sort of ruin that Polity recovered in. I watched it consumed in an explosion. Polity looked around the interior of Solei danc Tritai, with it’s casually expensive modernity, harkening back to an age that knew spaceflight only by satellites and flag on the moon.

“Huh. I didn’t even know this place existed.”

“You’ve been gone from Therevatti for awhile, so it stands to reason new restaurants would pop up eventually.”

Polity traced their nail over a few menu items, then swung their head back and batted their neon blonde eyelashes, “so, Palladium hired you because you’re a walking food bible?”

I laughed, “Palladium hired me due to a complex series of calculations that determined my demographic viability in the broader market sphere. And I interview extremely well… and also I’m a walking food bible.”

“So humble,” Polity teased.

“It’s my mental illness, I get to choose the coping mechanism,” I replied.

Polity busied themselves shuffling our order around so the system would lose track of it. A shell game of such complexity that I somehow understood it less with each explanation. Still, I had barely skimmed the drink menu by the time they were done.

“If we’re paying with our own money, do we really have to tap their network?” I asked.

“I’m just being safe,” Polity said, “or paranoid, either/or, really. Even if we’re footing the bill, I’d prefer for that bill to get lost somewhere complicated,” they considered, before leaning in my direction, tucking their bangs back a bit.

“You sure you don’t want to learn how to do this?” Polity asked.

“Hack?” I said, hissing the word, “no! I mean… sorry, I um, don’t think I’d be any good at it.”

“It’s a restaurant network, that automated out the waiting staff,” they motioned to the empty bar counter and its hundred arms, “breaching it isn’t that hard if you have the right equipment, and hey, here I am.” Polity bumped me with their shoulder, “seriously, I can get you some training wheels and you can get us a free dessert,” their urging wasn’t aggressive. In fact, Polity kept their voice soft, “no issue if you still don’t want to, but c’mon, I think it might be fun for you. Imagine--personal betterment and sugar. Two great tastes that taste great together”

“Maybe, maybe,” I said. Why did Polity suddenly feel the need to teach me this? It had never been a problem before. “You planning on going somewhere?” I asked. I sipped my water. It was lukewarm already.

“Yeah, well,” Polity said, grinning. Their voice fell for a moment. “It’s hard to plan for a future you can’t see.”

Polity’s hand flitted to their abdomen. They held two fingers to where Ungerson’s third bullet had struck them, months ago. There were the smallest flecks of paint gathered around their cuticles, highlighting the whorls of their fingerprints.

Paint. I hadn’t seen Polity make art in ages. Their hands looked strong now. They had trembled almost constantly during the worst of the infection. Ashy with weakness.

“You know, on second thought,” I said, “I’ll give a whirl.”

Polity did not smile in return. They were aware of the awkwardness of my expression.

“Yeah?” Polity replied.

“Sure!” I said, spinning round on my high stool. “It would be like learning a new language! We could trade off, share the effort a bit between the two of us, split the difference in work.”

“But we don’t have to,” Polity replied, slowly, “I just thought it would be fun.” I took another sip of water.

“Yeah, yeah it would be. Like, tell you what--I’ll learn to hack if you let me order tonight.”

Polity considered, and for one moment, relaxed, “twist my arm, Yasui,” they exhaled, “that works for me! I’ll see if I can find somewhere to get you started.”

“Totally,” I said, “That sounds wonderful. It would be a chance for me not to be a… burden.” I didn’t want to say that last part, but it happened anyway. As surely as a glass falls when you tip it off a countertop. Polity looked confused, then alarmed.

“Who said you were a burden?” They asked.

“Nobody,” I said, “you didn’t say I was a burden.”

“But you’re not a burden.”

“Of course not.”

“Oscar, you’re not a burden.”

“Well, no, not really, I’m not exactly-”

“Oscar, you saved my life.” Polity interrupted.

“And you saved mine,” I said, feeling uncomfortable.

“How could you be a burden if you saved my life?”

“Look, I just-” I said, when my eye caught an arm carrying a pair of menus. “Oh, fantastic!” I said, urging Polity to turn their large eyes away from me and to the menus, to anything else in the room, “the menus! Let me see what they have available.”

“Okay,” Polity said. They turned away, looked at the fish. I pretended to scan through a menu I had been staring at for hours before we even had left the apartment, my nose nearly flush against the plastic. I could see Polity scratching their thumb against that same hand’s forefinger, trying to dislodge the paint.

Only twenty minutes later, an arm unfolded from the rafters, slid into the kitchen, and emerged with a pair of stainless steel bowls, each with a rippling rim. As if the bowls had splashed into being, then hardened on contact with the air. And inside those bowls were a brightly colored arrangement of sliced, sauced, and spiraled… Therevatti abalone.

Poke is a wonderful dish. Raw, fresh fish atop a bed of rice, under an umami sauce, like sesame seed or soy paste, served at room temperature. It has never poisoned me like carpaccio or blinded me like nigiri. It’s both lighter and more refreshing than you could imagine-- a quintessentially summer dish that fed and cooled me many times in the salt flooded concrete of the Californian flats. Preparation is all in the sharpness of a knife, in the chef’s eye for ingredients, and in the adventurousness of the patron.

But that brings us back to Therevatti Abalone, my substitution and special request for our evening. “It’s… yellow?” Polity said, gently sticking a fork into a slice of abalone. They were right. Over the white flesh of the abalone, a creamy yellow pattern of round blotches raced up and down its length. Polity turned to me.

“Why is it yellow?” Their excitement for Poke Bowls had faded.

“Well the… the abalone isn’t yellow.” I said, “that would be the algae that lives with it symbiotically. It normally can’t be seen, it just glows in the dark, but the cooking process makes it uh… yellow!”

“I thought Poke was like…” Polity squinted at the small portion they had speared on the end of their fork, “fish?” Sea lettuce was woven between their tines, peppered with togarashi sauce and fennel.

“Poke can be anything!” I answered, waiting for Polity before I took my first bite. “It can even be abalone. Sometimes things in yellow… can surprise you.”

Polity stared, dead faced, before their composure slowly cracked.

“Yasui. Are you saying I’m a funny little slug?” They could barely stop themselves from laughing.

“I’m saying that I’ve never seen anyone like you in my life,” I replied. Polity crooked an eyebrow.

“How’s that?”

“Abalone is completely extinct on earth, the acid in our oceans is way too high, and nothing like them has really been replicated. Therevatti has the only other version that we’ve discovered, but on Earth it’s been so long since we’ve had abalone as an option that it’s fallen out of favor commercially… nobody’s given it a real shot.”

“Oscar, I…” Polity paused, grinning, “Wow. I get to be an exotic funny slug that you can eat.”

I winced. It was a good answer. “They’re uh… not really a slug, they’re a kind of univalve.”

Polity’s face broke into an open smile.

Polity lifted their fork.

“Then here’s to a fellow univalve.”

Polity winked, and took a bite.

I popped my own forkfull into my mouth at the same time. It was buttery, salty, enhanced by the flavor of the sesame sauce, the firm bite of the sea lettuce, the citrus sweetness of the rice. They had cooked the grains with ginger in the water, and they had grown fluffy on that flavor. Local fruits added further zest, pop, and body to the dish.

“Holy shit,” Polity said,

“I know, right?” I said.

“This is raw?” Polity struggled, around a mouthful of abalone and rice.

“No,” I said, exhaling between chews. “Poke traditionally is, but this abalone is cooked. You can do whatever for poke, whether it’s raw or, in this case, simmered for a while.”

“Huh,” Polity chewed thoughtfully. “It’s really great though. It’s so tender, and the ginger brings up the flavor of the meat, and the abalone spirals are so nice… and these fruits…”

“Hey, well said, Polity,” I took a break from devouring my bowl. “I guess if I’m learning hacking later then it’s only fair you learn some food critic tech.”

“Lifelong student, that’s me” Polity squeezed their eyes shut in rapture, “oh wow--wow, wow, wow.

I lifted my glass for a toast, “to continuing education!”

“To surviving the week!” Polity said. Our glasses clinked together.

“A lot better than “Uncle Dain’s” cooking,” Polity said, “or at least eating his cooking every day for a month.

“To Uncle Dain’s cooking!” we shouted together, and toasted again.

Eventually, we wrapped up, shoved our empty bowls ahead of us for the armatures to scoop up. While we sat digesting, Polity ordered dessert and guided me through a series of command executions on their portable. Before I knew it, I had stolen dessert. It wasn’t even particularly hard.

“This is what hacking’s like?” I asked Polity, in more than a bit of shock.

“This is pushing buttons with an experienced criminal over your shoulder. Actual hacking is about 15% harder. And that’s if you prepare and know the system you’re going for--and you’re lucky.”

“Keys and locks, right?” I said.

“Keys and locks,” Polity agreed. “But, if you can put the exact right key into just the right lock. you can get…”

An armature waiter swung out to present Polity and I with a plate… of butter mochi. Little rectangles of glutinous cakes. Butter mochi is the rich answer to classical mochi, with that “Q” quality. Chewy, flavorful, either dish would be lovely to eat even if your sense of taste was gone. The southeastern answer to the italian “al dente.” On our plate had tropical flavors from my home combined with Therevatti varietals. Pomperri juice in a thankfully stable gelatin matrix, blended with coconut, and cassana rind gratings mixed with pineapple. Red and gold, sour sweet and caramel mellow.

“Polity, these are delicious,” I said, resting half a square against my plate.

“First, you found the restaurant, and second, if you’re comparing me to abalone, I thought I’d have to find something to compare you to.”

I paused, butter mochi poised to enter my mouth. “Huh?”

“It’s about first impressions. A stretch, soft (metaphorically) obviously bad for me…” they ticked off their fingers as they spoke.

“And just impossibly cute.” They poked down on the top of their mochi, watching their finger sink into it, and then they ate another bite, “makes me feel all squishy inside.”

I was speechless. All I could do was smile back.

“Thank you so much for this, Oscar,” Polity said, looking into my eyes.

“Yeah, Polity,” I said, meeting their gaze, “you too.”

We left Solei danc Tritai heavy with appropriated butter mochi, our first order snugly in our bellies, and our second secured in takeout containers. They say crime doesn’t pay, but I’ve always considered that more of a… karmic observation. I’ve seen crime pay in many ways. In money, in success, and today, in a wobbly box of delicious butter mochi.

Go. Go out and eat butter mochi. If you’re allergic to coconut, try to make time to get the gene therapy--it’ll be worth it, I promise.

We were heading back through the tower walls of Pacheco, where buildings pressed together with barely a seam to distinguish one from the other. Beneath the clouds, the sky was a dark ceilinged room. Lit by ultraviolet trails from the spectrum beams of watchtowers and checkpoints. You could see indigo crackle across the sky algae, shimmering off of the lining of nimbi, leaving stormclouds stained as if by luminol fingerpaint.

Polity was looking up beside me, but they were searching the air for something. I couldn’t quite follow their view to what. But they must have found it, because a moment later Polity caught my hand and pulled me away from the intersection.

“There’s something I want to show you,” Polity said, “it’s just a little out of our way.”

I began to speak, but a few mercenaries in full armor came into view, exiting an apartment complex towards an unmarked sedan. I fell into a light footed walk--the gait of a man devoid of guilt and replete with butter mochi.

“Oscar, are you alright?” Polity asked.

“Yeah, why?” I said. I felt one of Polity’s knuckles pop in my grip. I looked down to see a carmine tint gathering at their fingertips, lightly dusted with gray and orange pigment.

“Oh,” I said. I was crushing their fingers.

“It’s no big deal.” Polity said, their grin had gone brittle. I let their hand go.

“Look I--I trust you,” I said, “but we do need to get back. I don’t want to miss our window to return to the skirts.” The mercenaries hadn’t pursued us, but the crowds were beginning to thicken, with more pedestrians emerging from drone buses, or stepping out from shops and eateries. Therevattins clocking out from work, Spacers swiping their chits and filling their checks. A rush of rain jackets and boots, all headed towards Fennec Park. Ad stands projected bursts of color and light, directing the travel of passerby.

“Fireworks? You want to show me fireworks?” I asked Polity. Their eyes were ablaze with mischief.

“No, not fireworks. You’ll see. It’s gonna to be great.” They paused, scanning the crowd. A few bored mercenaries walked the street corners in gleaming triads, military armament standing out even through the crowd.

“And dangerous,” Polity added, “great and dangerous. I can’t miss this, I can’t see it through a camera or on the buffer. I want to watch it happen with my own eyes. But, if you want to stay behind, get a head start on the apartment…” they smiled, but their eyes were sad. “I would understand, seriously.”

I filled my lungs with the night air, pushed it out through involuntarily clenched teeth. What was a little more danger between friends? Besides, if some part of Polity didn’t think I could handle it, they wouldn’t have offered.

“Alright,” I said, “I want to see.”

We pushed through the crowds, but past the park. Swerving where people were densest and around where patrols swept the streets with their optical arrays. There had been no announcement of my minting as a three time fugitive, at least not publicly, but we were taking no chances. If one managed to catch sight of Polity and I, if they clocked our identities for a bounty or for our previous crimes, then…

At this point, I had seen mercenaries stand, seen them aim their weapons, seen them shout and threaten and coerce. I’d seen them make arrests. I had never once seen one pull the trigger. But one evening, I saw one late for their ride. There was an armored vehicle gunning the accelerator, sixty kilometers per hour, weaving past drone buses, roaring at pedestrians. And there was this one mercenary that had been left behind. They entered a sprint, long blurred strides, sounding like a car passing as they rushed past me. Before I knew it, they had overtaken the transport, clambered up the side, and slipped down into an open hatch at the top.

You can’t outrun that. You can’t exhaust that. And lately Brightsail’s mercenary forces had discarded their lighter armor en masse. The new fashion was powered dress, all concealing, the kind of equipment I used to only see outside the city walls. So Polity and I, as surreptitiously as we could, gave every three eyed helmet a wide berth. Until we came to an apartment building and Polity pulled me inside.

“Wait, where exactly are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see, we’re almost there,” Polity said, kneeling at a service door, “try to block me with your body so nobody can see me from the road.”

I spread my arms out, remaining built like a street light with a dead bulb. Polity looked at me, then the two of us collapsed into close mouthed, snorting giggles.

“I said, ‘try’ Yasui, maybe you can break up my outline or something.”

“Maybe you could work faster?” I said, eyeing the street.

“Maybe you could try not to distract--” there was a click and a hiss. The door slid open, cold and dry air rushing out.

“Okay, that’s that.”

I thought for a moment as Polity bent down to enter the passageway. “Wait, how did you get that open so fast?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh! I’ve got…” Polity produced a small plastic keycard with a glowering thirty year old on it.

“I’ve got a keycard!”

“Is that where you went this afternoon?” I asked, “to get your hands on a keycard?

“It was an honest trade!” Polity said, mockingly affronted. When I raised an eyebrow, they put a hand to their heart, “I swear, favor for a favor, purely transactional.”

I didn’t have any argument for that. Polity opened a panel on the wall and yanked a heavy switch down, cutting an electrical hum I wasn’t even aware I had heard. We clambered up a ladder to the top of the roof, past honeycomb cradles that held a number of utility and service drones for the building. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual gopherbots for takeout and low volume courier work.

Ahead of me, Polity slid a maintenance door to the side, and crawled out through the wall. There was a grace in their scrabbling, a grace that I failed to imitate when I realized that the chamber opened into thin air.

“You can watch from the ladder if you want!” Polity called out, shouting over the distant roar of the crowd, over the wind that always wraps the upper stories of towers. I took a steadying breath, resolved to keep my eyes forward, and pushed a leg out the gap, feeling around with my foot until I found a ledge to sit on. I settled in beside Polity, whose face was aglow with surprise and pride.

“I’d rather join you, I think. Polity this is probably one of the most intense things I’ve…”

The view. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people assembled, buses still delivering latecomers. Military vehicles in every direction, casting high powered beams towards traffic. There were countless lights from cellphones, from portables, from head mounted cameras. Winking, glittering, whirling and shining. Casting blue-white rays up into the night sky.

Fireworks set the evening aglow, sending down cascading showers of sparks that illuminated drones wove and danced through. A white and blue sailboat of light rolled down that shimmering wave of pyrotechnics, coasting along a dune of light. The drones formed the constellation Cassiopeia, with each star winking out in sequence, ending with the piercing gaze of yellow old Sol burning bright overhead. I felt each explosive burst in the small hairs of my arm, and they forged daylight in the park, sent every shadow skittering for sanctuary. The light caught the scar on Polity’s neck, lent it a haze of color, a new saturated beauty. It was like they wore an opal on their skin. Did mine look like that?

We sat together on that ledge, legs dangling over a death drop, behinds barely supported by what little concrete was provided. Polity’s expression carried a look of expectation, as if they couldn’t be bothered with the display above us. I doubt Brightsail’s choreography of progress and exploration held much interest for them.

We sat in silence, watching color battle rain.

“This is nice,” I said.

“Yeah?” Polity said, “you’re taking the risk of death by falling pretty well,”

“Shush,” I said, keeping my chin up and my view forward. “Really, I’m happy we went out like this. I’m happy we’re together.”

“Good,” Polity said, watching me. “It is,” I said. “It is good. We needed this, I think. Something just… nice.”

“Saints, yes,” Polity said, nearly vibrating, “this has been just-”

“-terrible!” I said, “This has been terrible! Polity, you got shot! You were shot three times!”

“No, twice! Once was just a graze! Oscar, you fought off a Baiheytu in the jungle!”

“No, I didn’t fight it, I just yelled at it! Shah was there. You coded twelve hours a day for like a month!”

“Not even the worst crunch I’ve done! You infiltrated a mercenary base!”

“I made fondue and pushed random buttons on a keypad! You smashed a sociopath’s arm with a pipe!”

“Unsuccessfully! I was aiming for his head!”

“Saints!” We yelled in unison, our voices carrying out and over the Pacheco City Bluezone. Competing with near success against the roar-crack of the pyrotechnics, with the clamor of the crowd.

When we had finished catching our breath, Polity said, “I’m happy we’re together for this too, Oscar. I really wanted to show you this.”

“The fireworks?” I asked. “Thank you so much. Earth is so dry that… I mean I’ve never seen fireworks. They’re too much of a hazard.”

“No, not the fireworks, silly” Polity said, sounding almost… bashful, head bowed towards the street, barely murmuring their reply.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Look,” Polity said, pointing with their chin.

Below, someone was giving a speech, projecting through a network of loudspeakers, but between the explosions and our altitude, they sounded like a collection of beaten vowels. I looked up the speech after and eh, I won’t include it here. All you need to know was that the officiary was some governmental representative. A local on the face of it, but with significant ties to Brightsail Colonial. Still not an executive. Some kind of upper-middle management. They gestured to a great structure that was lit by spotlights from below and fire from above. It was covered in a cloth so immense, that a pair of houses might have snuggled beneath it.

The speaker’s volume rose and rose, carrying through the cheering crowd. Music trickled in, the fireworks intensified, the drones spun faster and faster. The sky no longer held images but instead anticipation, supportive shapes and colors. The spotlights whirled round the sky.

“Polity?” I questioned.

“Almost, Oscar,” Polity said. “Could you…” they trailed off.

“Could I…” I began, but I felt their fingers brushing against my knuckles. Saw the hungry anticipation on their face, their brown eyes directed towards the park.

“Okay, Polity,” I said, and took their hand. They squeezed back, hard, and I couldn’t help but hold my breath.

The fireworks were an aimless rocket barrage now, the crowd was nearly silent, the speaker was finishing on a high note. Then a number of explosive charges detonated, each in sequence after the other. Cables snapped loose and the great fabric covering descended. A ballroom gown with severed straps, fluttering down to coil in a tangle of itself on the floor.

Behind it was this towering fresco, freestanding, multiple stories. It cast a shadow over the park, and every firework darkened that shadow so completely that it felt as if city blocks had slipped into lightless space. On the fresco were Therevattin men and women, standing in a great crowd, each with proud and perfect jawlines. They held in their hands the tools of a hundred trades. Gloves for waldo units, surveyor tripods slung over shoulders, spanners, dirty rags, even sledgehammers. Their gaze was raised as one, the line of their vision carried up into a great split in the sky, a brilliant fissure through the shimmering haze of a Therevatti rainstorm.

Above them, hurling rainbows like they were five for one, a burst of light had parted the clouds. But where a viewer would expect a sun, instead there was a three and a half meter light fixture, which some architect had wired up with a starship grade signal light. It blazed with such luminous ferocity that made it hard to stare at directly from where we were sitting on the balcony. A solar pinhole that drew attention as much as it burned retinas. This solar stand in probably could have been comfortably viewed from the distant mountain peaks to the south, much less across the street. But the sun’s shade was, unmistakably, not the shade of Therevatti’s sun. It was my sun. It was the exact white-yellow of Sol.

And yet, despite the artist’s every effort, that wasn’t what had the crowds gasping and shouting. Because someone had used the fresco as a canvas for another artwork altogether.

“Phew,” Polity muttered, “glad I got it done in time.”

Painted over the Fresco was a stand of Savorflame mushrooms. Towering higher than any of the fungus that had ever lived. They rose over the heads of the pictured workers, they climbed high into the sky, casting the surrounding terrain into shadow. Every stalk was mighty, every cap was expansive and swollen. Living paint stirred and swam over their surface, making every Savorflame look as if it held molten fire inside of its heart. Holographic streaks down the image gave the impression of glittering spores raining down from each fold of orange gill. But the greatest Savorflame, the one on the painting’s far right, was so tall that it appeared to have swallowed the sun.

Polity had drawn that Savorflame as nearly spherical, gravid with explosive spores. Illustrated smoke poured off its surface in great clouds that filled the rent in the rainstorm. I had only seen a Savorflame like that once before--when Earnest had burst in the door lock.

Polity closed one eye, and lifted their fingers up in the universal sign of peace and victory. The starship light inside the monument grew brighter, brighter, brighter still. I watched the crowd turn away. There were some shouts of fear, a few screams of exhilaration. Soon, the entire park was smeared with light so bright that it didn’t allow shadows. I watched mercenaries rushing forward, scanning the surrounding windows for shapes, for snipers. I managed to see one of them gesture at the light.

It exploded, glass blooming outwards in a shower of glittering shards. Blue sparks falling like a waterfall, setting fire to the massive cloth cover that had been obscuring it moments before. Screams carried up on the wind. Again of fear, but also, of anger and laughter. Thrilled cheers rose above the fear. Howls of rage carried on the wind. Mercenaries strode with menace into a crowd caught between fleeing, freezing, and rioting.

Polity threw their hands up over their head, fingers curled into fists.

“That's it! That’s what you fucking get! That’s for shooting me you world killing motherfuckers! That’s for putting a bullet in my guts!”

I watched Polity’s face, watched the fire flickering, reflected in their eyes. Realized their hand had carried mine up into the air.

Polity turned to me as if they were going to say something. They retreated slightly. Shyly. Their eyes flicked down to my lips. Then they leaned forward, just a few inches. Lifted their free hand and thumbed some of their bright blonde hair, as naturally as they would clear raindrops.

“Hey Oscar,” they said, voice low, “would you like to kiss me-”

I kissed them.