“Yeah. Then he went off to school in a whole other galaxy for a while. He still let me show him my projects, and when he got back he would sometimes hang out with me in the workshop, but mostly he was too busy with paying work.” She fell silent, tapping a staccato rhythm against the cabinet with her right hand, and Eva could almost read the thoughts and emotions flashing through her mind, because they weren’t far off from how she’d felt about Mari.
“We’re going to find him,” Eva said.
“Bet your ass we will,” Pink agreed.
Sue’s eyes welled up with tears. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I mean, I know we’ve been looking this whole time, but it feels like it’s really going to happen now.”
Min got up, ostensibly to throw her food wrapper into the recycler, but she veered off-course to give Sue a gentle pat on the arm. Sue smiled, her cheeks rosy as she stared at her feet.
Eva finished sipping her noodle broth and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “At least our next stop isn’t dangerous,” she said. “The worst thing we’ll have to deal with at Evercon is the clouds of sanitizing spray.”
Vakar swallowed the last of his nutrient paste. “Why are there clouds of sanitizing spray?”
Eva shook her head ruefully. “You’ll see when we get there. Or smell, I guess.”
A few hours later they arrived on Charon, the largest moon of Pluto, in the Kuiper Belt of the Sol system. The local star was distant, but still brighter than any other star in the Milky Way, giving enough light at certain times of the cycle to illuminate the icy gray surface. More impressive was Pluto itself, looming in the sky with its snakeskin landscape mottled by orange and blood-red patches.
“Is it strange?” Vakar asked as Eva stood in the bridge, staring at the viewscreens.
“Strange?” Eva repeated.
“To be in the system where your species originated.” He studied her face, his gray-blue eyes hooded slightly by his inner lids.
“A little,” she admitted. “My family left Earth a long time ago, and we didn’t settle on Mars or Titan like some refugees. We kept going.”
“I am given to understand that war had a long reach,” he said.
“Long enough,” Eva said quietly. “And they knew they were never going back. My family, I mean. Some people, some exiles, figured it was a matter of time and they’d be able to pick up where they left off. Pero no fue tan fácil.”
“I never had a home planet,” Vakar said, smelling like jasmine with a hint of rust. “Our oldest histories tell us it was rendered uninhabitable by cataclysms, and its location was lost, perhaps deliberately. There is an old saying: ‘seeking Thadus,’ to mean wasting time on a pointless task.”
“We have a saying like that,” Eva said, sliding her arm around his waist. “Trying to find the Holy Grail.”
“A grail is a vessel of some kind? My translators are unclear.”
“A cup, a bowl, who knows.” Eva rested her head on the side of his chest. “It was supposed to heal people who drank from it, but only the most holy people could even touch it.”
He smelled confused. “What is ‘holy’ in this context?”
Eva grinned. “Virgins.”
“Ah, yes. For a species whose primary stereotypical quality is engaging in sexual intercourse with virtually anything, your various cultural preoccupations with chastity are quite curious.”
Eva bumped him with her hip, and he settled an arm around her shoulder. “Plenty of humans have no interest in sex or romance,” she said. “Probably about the same number who earn the opposite stereotype, maybe even more.”
“How fortunate I am that you are not one of them,” he teased, the smell of licorice taking over everything else he’d been sending out.
“Oye, Papi Chulo,” Eva said. “Our various cultures have changed a lot over the centuries, mostly for the better. But one thing hasn’t changed.”
“What is that?”
“Humans still like pretending to be other people for fun.” She finalized their Evercon ticket purchases through her commlink, grumbling internally at the cost. “And when it comes to making shit up, humans do not fuck around.”
Evercon hadn’t always been a convention. The original settlement on Charon was a standard dome habitat, complete with artificial gravity and garden pods, occupied mainly by scientists. Then the local Gate was discovered, BOFA made first contact according to their protocols for sentient species, and suddenly one habitat became a huge way station for newly minted intergalactic travelers entering and leaving the system. Once humans fully embraced FTL technology, there was less of a need for such a stopover, so the owners of the various hospitality properties rebranded them as a prime location for conferences and corporate retreats and similar functions.
Then one company, Iron Throne Enterprises, bought up the whole damn rock and consolidated.
In retrospect, it seemed obvious that a place with geological features such as Oz Terra, Gallifrey Macula, Mordor Macula, and Vulcan Planum would become host to various fan conventions. And indeed, despite best efforts to attract other species—and their money—to the facilities, it remained a uniquely human artifact. But no one anticipated exactly how wildly popular the place would be for pop-culture and nostalgia-seekers alike, and what started as a handful of separate events evolved into a never-ending morass of competing celebrations of humanity’s fictional accretions.
As Eva had predicted, Vakar took one smell of the place and backed out, claiming he had work to catch up on. It was just as well: nonhumans were more than welcome, but tended to draw more attention because humans assumed they were celebrities. On the other hand, Min was eager to explore, even if she clung to Sue’s hand, unaccustomed to the intensity of the crowds wandering the mazelike halls of the various interconnected buildings. Sue was also excited, mainly because of the dazzling array of technical prowess on display in the various costumes and props. Pink was Pink, and came along mostly to supervise.
Once again, weapons were not allowed, with all props carefully inspected for potential lethality and confiscated accordingly. Eva had left her cane behind this time, opting for a stim and pain meds, so she and her crew were able to make their way to the front more quickly. It still took a solid half hour because the line wound back and forth across the entire length of a room large enough to fit a fleet of short-range starfighters. And this was only one of the dozen possible entrances.
Not everyone wore a costume, but they were common. Eva had been to big parties where dressing up was half the fun, but this was a whole other level. The care and attention to detail, the elaborate layering and stitching and accessorizing, the makeup and prosthetics, the holographic displays and multisensory overlays, even the low-level psychic effects were so impressive that Eva couldn’t help but share in a fraction of the exuberance of the people around her who actually knew what the hell was going on.
It was lying, maybe, all this pretend play, but a kind of lying that felt good. It brought people together, made them feel part of something bigger than themselves. Some fans could be shitty, but pa’l carajo with those people.
That wasn’t to say it was all happy times, because it quickly became apparent that more was going on under the giddy, squealing surface.