Mirem’s place is certainly an upgrade from Lanis’ living arrangement. Her place has windows—actual windows, not pixelated fakes, that face out into the darkly lit megacity from the thirty-second floor of a modern tower. She has furniture too, and a kitchen (stocked full of real, non-pre-fab food, she finds out later), and art, physical art, ostensibly made by a person, hangs on the walls.

  A bit much, really.

  But then there’s the bed. She didn’t know sheets could feel this way. Mirem says they’re “linen,” made from some plant fiber, and Lanis has to laugh out loud, but then they’re kissing, Lanis ravenous, Miren with a heady competence. She’s bigger than Lanis, though not stronger — Lanis’ joints and muscles have been articulated to withstand high gravity accelerations, after all, but Lanis’ breath is still taken away when Miren picks her up and then lays her onto her bed. She watches, absently open-mouthed, as Miren reaches behind herself and gives a gentle pull, and her expensive suit, or whatever the hell it is, falls in a puddle at her feet.

  Lanis has been with a few classmates during Fleet training— brief bouts of stress relief during those hyper competitive years — and has had a crash-course education in bodies over the past few weeks. However, the Fleet trainees and club goers she’s been with have all been strangely uniform: youth-slim, some near cachectic from stims. They almost seemed to be competing in androgyny, mostly flatter-chested girls and angular, clean-shaven boys.

  Miren, however, is something else, and Lanis moans at the heavy press of her naked body against hers.

  She luxuriates on the bed afterward, body sheened with sweat, eyes half closed. There’s been a certain numbness since her breaking. The incident, Fleet called it. It often feels like she’s viewing herself outside of her own body, a puppet performing actions, her mind half-heartedly pulling the strings. Lying next to Mirem she feels more fully present than she has since… it. She smiles, and realizes that it’s the first actual, non-artificial smile she’s made in months, and softly hums as she stares at the dim, orange glow of Mirem’s high-ceilinged globe light.

  “That sounds reassuring. There were moments there where I wasn’t sure if you were fully enjoying yourself,” says Mirem, stroking Lanis’ arm. She’s propped on an elbow, hair billowing over her glistening neck.

  “Oh, I enjoyed every moment. It’s just that, sometimes, I disassociate a bit. Well, more than a bit. More than sometimes. The doctors said it’s a natural response, after… what I went through,” Lanis says. Mirem waits a moment, but Lanis doesn’t expand.

  “Just so you know, I don’t sleep with every prospective client,” Mirem finally says. Lanis barks a laugh. “Is that what I am? I’d almost forgotten about that.” Lanis says. She shakes her head. “I’m afraid I might have just humored you to get you into bed.”

  Mirem gives a look of false outrage. “Or maybe I used the pitch as you for an excuse to get you into bed,” she says, smiling back. Lanis traces the curve of Miren’s thigh, sighing.

  “Ok, but… really,” says Mirem, affecting a tone of seriousness. “I’m so curious about you, it’s honestly a bit embarrassing. Is that rude? That I really want to know what Fleet training was like? Sorry if you’ve been asked that a hundred times. And, you can absolutely tell me you don’t want to talk about it,” she adds, holding up a hand.

  “No, actually, it’s fine. Maybe even good to talk about,” Lanis says, leaning back again, staring at the orange-lit ceiling again. “That’s what the psychologists said. It was, uh, intense. I came into it at fourteen. I was good in school, but not exceptional. Everyone was shocked when I was chosen after mandatories.”

  Mirem raises her eyebrows. The mandatory exams were just that; nearly every Terran child was tested at yearly intervals for Fleet compatibility through a battery of tests. Some were generic problem solving exams, others cognitive compatibility appraisals with advanced AI systems.

  “I thought thirteen was the cutoff?” Mirem asks. She sits up in the bed, her legs crossed, watching Lanis.

  Lanis shakes her head minutely. She feels reckless in the afterglow of the sex, and exhausted too, and so she makes the rash decision to open herself even further up to this stranger, to the oddness of the connection. It feels liberating. She continues.

  “Oh, they make a few exceptions. I guess I was a late bloomer? Anyway, then it’s studying, god, so much studying, then more tests, modifications, more studying, more tests. There were a few thousand in my cohort at first. Some washed out, but most made it to second year where we were reshuffled into service tracks. I,” Lanis smiles lightly again, but with a sourness too, and she can feel her eyes stinging despite herself, “I was put on command track, starting year three. Fleet doesn’t advertise this, but the problem with the ship AIs, with the integrations, with their massive egos, and especially the warp jumping… It breaks people. Just the training. People go a bit mad all the time."

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  She pauses again, and Mirem can hear a small catch in her breathing. "And I did too, in the end, I suppose, even after all the training, and after all the modifications. I wonder if I’m even really human anymore. How much can you replace, and still be human?” She hears herself, hears her voice starting to rise. She takes a deep breath. Mirem’s hand is on her head, just resting there. She shuts her eyes tightly and feels the tears spilling out at the edges.

  She says “I’m sorry,” and then Mirem is softly stroking her, saying it’s ok, that she doesn’t have to keep going, but she wants to, and so she does.

  “It was my first warp jump. The ships, despite what they are, still can’t do what we do. Something with the interdimensionally of the biological imagination, quantum mechanics, all that. I’ll spare you, since I can’t do any justice to the explanation. But.. on my first jump, something went wrong.”

  She leaves out all the details of course. She’s being stupidly reckless, she knows, but she’s not that stupid, even in the half-drunk afterglow of the best sex of her life. She leaves out the heady first touch with the Jupiter-class ship during pre-jump trials, the Demeter’s all encompassing presence, and the subtle horrors of warp-jump training.

  She leaves out the weightlessness of the psychotic break, the screaming, the blood pouring so heavily that she choked and nearly died.

  An Anomaly. That's what they called ‘it’ in the extensive debriefs of the incident, as soon as she was able to string a sentence together. They were unwilling, or perhaps unable, to expand further. But it’s as if she can still feel it, whatever it was in the Warp, eating the enemy Androvan ship, hungry for the Demeter, hungry for her, a shadow that still lingers at the edge of her own.

  Lanis shakes her head.

  “Anyway. I haven’t been the same since. I spent a month in a Fleet hospital, another in psychiatric rehab, then a couple weeks at a convalescent retreat for societal re-integration. And now… here I am. Trying not to think about it.”

  “Shit,” Mirem says, quietly. “I’m sorry. I knew Fleet was… intense. I guess that word doesn’t really do it justice. But like you said, Fleet doesn’t exactly advertise how bad it can get out there, not Terra-side. I can’t believe…”

  Lanis sighs and squeezes Mirem’s hand.

  “I know. Fleet is… opaque,” Lanis says.

  They both know that’s an understatement. The reality is that, at least on Terra, no one outside of Planetary Administration and maybe few corporate leaders have the barest idea of how Fleet truly functions. Even Lanis, a command-track specialist, had the narrowest view possible on a need-to-know basis. Almost all information from Fleet is relayed through propaganda and colonial recruitment drives, and then the overwhelming majority of its veterans resettle on the colonial worlds.

  However, they all know one thing: humanity isn’t alone, and while it’s unclear how crowded it is out there in the galaxy, according to Fleet it’s a fucking mess.

  So, even though they’re all on the same side, the fewer questions the better. No need to freak everyone out unnecessarily, is there? This has naturally raised some hackles over the years, but the apparatus of power ensures that no one makes too much of a fuss. The massive industrial base of Terra and its glittering orbital shipyards keep churning out ships and supplies, the mega-corporations reaping the benefits, while Planetary Administration referees the competing players, trying to keep a lid on the inevitable fratricidic squabbles.

  Lanis continues.

  “Anyway, thanks. I’m ok, sort of, I think. They wanted me to stay at the retreat for another few weeks, but I’d already been medically discharged. I guess I told too many people to go fuck themselves when I regained my sanity. Once the doctors declared me ‘compos mentis’ they technically couldn’t hold me. Didn’t want to send me off-world because of... certain risks.”

  Mirem is quiet, just stroking Lanis’ hair, feeling the cold silver lines that run across her head. Lanis exhales noisily.

  “Right, enough about that. It’s a mess. Your turn. What about you? And what are the Arena Games? I remember hearing about them before I went to Fleet, but I’ve never actually seen a game.”

  Mirem looks stunned for a moment, and then barks a laugh.

  “Are you kidding me? First of all, how do you not know about the Arena Games? Second, you just got out of the hospital. I mean, I’m still not even sure what you went through, but it sounds like hell. I had no idea. I’m sorry I even brought it up. I was drunk, and recruiting someone from Fleet seemed like an outrageously good idea at the time.”

  “No, I’m fine. Really,” Lanis says. She slides out of the bed, stretching, joints popping, turning fluidly with her hands on her hips. “The doctors said that I made a ‘remarkable recovery, motor-sensory systems fully intact only two weeks post-intubation,’ she says, switching to an affected, clipped accent.

  “Look, how about this— I take a shower, and you come with me and tell me all about the Games,” Lanis says, grinning.

  Mirem sheepishly grins back.