‘They think it’d do away with the Oxomoco backlog. Sort through everything we’ve been trying to, get it recycled faster, have it done in a fraction of the time, keep it from happening again.’

Tessa laughed. ‘We don’t have the infrastructure for that. Do you have any idea the . . . the heavy duty gear you need to run one of those?’ Her brother had one on his ship, and it was one of the most expensive things he had to maintain. Had to hire a separate tech to look after it and everything. AIs were long-haul stuff, big-creds stuff. There were AIs in the Fleet, sure, but they weren’t the thinking kind. Just public safety systems, the kind who could recognise fire or turn off gravity if you fell a long way. Not the kind that watched everything and were programmed to sound like people. Not the kind that could do a Human job.

Eloy stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged tersely. ‘Yeah, well, apparently labour oversight has been on their ass about our processing times, and the idea’s been floated that the cost of building a . . . I don’t know what the terminology is here – building the shit you’d need to run a bunch of AIs – is less of a pain in the ass than doing things like we do them now. So they say.’

‘That’s . . .’ Tessa shook her head. It was insulting, to say the least. ‘They’re not serious, are they?’

‘I don’t know,’ Eloy said. The words indicated nothing, but the look on his face said he’d be worrying about it.

‘They can’t be,’ Sahil said. ‘There are so many higher-priority projects floating around. They’d never tag the resources for it.’

Tessa stared off into the cargo bay. She remembered, when she’d been in her teens, how M Lok next door had left one morning to go test the oxygen mix and came home that afternoon having been told that, thanks to the new monitoring systems his supervisors were going to install, he wouldn’t need to do it anymore. The job office got him new training and a new profession, of course, but it was a hard switch for a man of forty-five, and all the harder because he didn’t like his new career in aeroponics the way he had his old one. He was still at it, to this day. She wondered if he still thought about taking air samples in life support.

‘Sahil, go home,’ Tessa said. ‘Get some rest.’

‘I had plenty of that already,’ Sahil said with a grim smile.

She laughed. ‘Some real rest.’ She looked to Eloy. ‘And if it’s all the same to you, boss’ – she looked out to the overflowing racks of things people needed, the dormant liftbots awaiting her command – ‘I need to get to work.’

Kip

Kip remembered how to speak, but it took him a minute or two to get there. ‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly.

Ras placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Aw, come on,’ he said. ‘Don’t be nervous.’

In front of them stood a doorway like any other. A panel. A frame. Plants and globulbs arcing up around it. But the sign on the door . . . that made all the difference.

THE NOVA ROOM

Age 20 and over

Kip swallowed. His palms started to sweat. This was Ras’ grand plan, why he’d saved up those creds, why he’d found some random modder to help him hack his patch. Ras wanted to go to a tryst club. And being the good dude that he was, he’d brought his best friend along. Kip should’ve felt grateful. He should’ve felt excited – and he did, maybe? But it wasn’t excited like finding a plate of jam cakes in the kitchen or trading in your old clothes for some crisp new ones. This was the other kind of excited. Broken artigrav excited. Rattle in the shuttlecraft wall excited. The kind of excited that occurred when the chances were good that everything would be okay, but you were still going to hold your breath until said okayness was a done deal.

‘I don’t know,’ Kip said again. ‘I— I haven’t showered, I—’

‘They’ve got places you can clean up,’ Ras said.

‘How do you know?’

‘Omar told me. He goes to the one in our district, like, every day.’

Kip looked at his friend, all confidence and smile (and fresh shirt, too). His hair still had too much goo in it, but he at least looked like he belonged in a place like this. Ras’d had sex before – once with Britta, who he couldn’t even be in the same room with now, and lots with Zi before her family moved to Coriol and Ras moped around for, like, ever. Kip had . . . well, Alex had kissed him at that party that one time, and he’d . . . um . . .

He hadn’t.

Ras gave him a friendly slap on the chest. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna have a good time.’ He strolled through the door, hands in his pockets, looking like he’d done this a million times.

Kip stood frozen. ‘Shit,’ he whispered, and hurried after.

The hallway beyond the door was nice – like, really nice. Little lights, big flowers, and something that smelled awesome. He’d seen places like this in vids and sims and stuff, but this was the real thing, and . . . and stars, he felt out of place. He could feel every stray hair on his chin, every zit on his face. He knew the clubs were a public service and all, but would anybody even want to have sex with him? He thought about the guy he’d seen staring back in the bathroom mirror that morning. That skinny torso. That beard that wasn’t. Nobody would have sex with that.