‘Ah,’ she said with understanding. She clicked her beak together, looking at the table. ‘Hence the distraction.’

‘Indeed.’

Speaker turned the suit so she could get a better look at the projection walls. ‘Is this one of yours?’ she asked, watching the digitally rendered water tumble down.

Roveg curled his legs proudly. ‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘And I’m not too modest to say that it’s a favourite. Though, of course, this is just the visual playback, not the whole experience.’

‘I’ve always thought sims sounded a bit overwhelming. I don’t know how I feel about plugging something into my brain.’

‘Nothing’s plugged in, it’s all wireless,’ Roveg said. ‘The patch you wear doesn’t hurt, and it’s not invasive. But you’re right, the actual sensory experience can take some getting used to. Work like mine is a nice entry point. You can get accustomed to the concept of feeling and seeing something that isn’t there without being asked to do anything.’

Speaker took that in. She nodded at the wall. ‘This isn’t a real place, right? You didn’t model this after somewhere that exists?’

‘No, this one’s made up. Sometimes I do real-world environments, but it depends on the mood I’m in.’

‘Can you show me one?’

‘Certainly,’ he said. He was always pleased when someone took an interest in his work. ‘Friend, can you display Reskit, unpopulated version?’

Friend obliged. The fountain vanished, and the Aandrisk capital was summoned in its place. Roveg and Speaker now sat in Reskit’s famous Old Marketplace, surrounded by ancient doorless buildings adorned with flags and banners of every colour waving merrily in the bone-dry breeze.

‘Wow,’ Speaker said. ‘Wow, it looks just like it.’

‘You’ve been?’

‘Yeah, Reskit’s a fairly regular stop for us. The market there is … well, friendly.’ She did not elaborate on what friendly meant, but Roveg could guess. ‘It looks funny, without the people.’

‘You can add people in if you wish, but being able to admire the scenery without all the hustle and bustle is nice, too.’

‘I suppose it is,’ she said. She observed quietly, deep in thought. ‘Do you have any of Vemereng?’

The question hit Roveg beneath the shell, but he did not let this show. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve never made a sim based anywhere on my planet. Not since, I mean.’

Speaker’s pensiveness became heavier. ‘Can you tell me what that’s like?’

‘You mean Vemereng? Well, it rather depends on which continent we’re talking about, just like anywhere. I was born in the eastern islands, which are cool but temperate—’

The Akarak cut him off. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I want to know what it’s like to have a planet. You’ve visited many, and so have I. Tell me what you feel when you say that one is yours.’

Roveg stared out at the projection, the spiracles along his back rising and falling with each breath. ‘My planet,’ he said, but not to her. He spoke the words to himself, experimentally, studying them from an angle he had never thought to consider. He looked at the Old Marketplace, and it was a marvel, truly, but not his, not at all his. ‘You know how it feels when you hop between worlds? How you begin surrounded, in a place like this—’ he gestured at the screen with his legs ‘—and it’s everywhere, it’s everything. It appears flat and endless. But then you push away with as much engine thrust as you can muster, and it all zooms out at once, and quickly begins to curve. And once you’re above, you see it’s just a sphere like all the others, a giant ball that becomes a marble that becomes a speck. And then you approach another marble, which becomes another ball, and when you land on that, it becomes that flat endlessness once more. There’s no centre to it. There’s no up or down, there’s only close and far. You know this feeling?’

‘I do,’ Speaker said.

‘Well … to have your own planet means that despite knowing the universe is edgeless, that everything is relative to everything else, you feel there’s one place that’s the true centre of it. I don’t mean the true centre in an astronomical way, or a topographical way. I mean the true centre. It’s the anchor, the … the weight that holds the weaving together. It’s not the true centre for everyone, but it is for you. And that knowledge reframes all that zooming in and out. You’re not drifting. You’re attached, somewhere. It may be far, but you can always feel it. And it reminds you, when you go back, that it’s yours. We travellers, we move through so many artificial environments – so many combinations of air pressure, humidity, temperature, gravity – that we forget how achingly good it feels to step into the natural environment your body spent millions of years evolving for. Everything in you settles instantly, as if you are water and the world is the cup. When you look to the horizon, even though you’ve been above it, even though you know better, you can fully believe in the flatness, the endlessness. You wrap yourself in that illusion, and you will never feel safer.’

The Akarak looked him in the eye. ‘Even if you can’t go back?’

Another cut below the shell, but perversely, he welcomed it. Nothing about the question felt like a challenge, merely a desire to get to the crux of things. It made him feel quite vulnerable, but paradoxically at ease. ‘Even if you can’t go back,’ he said. He angled his body toward her. If she could be blunt, so could he. ‘Does it hurt you, not having a place to call your own?’