‘So Harmony does have a heart after all.’
Kowalski swept sandy hair back from her face. ‘Honest question, off the record.’
‘Completely off the record?’
‘Completely. Do you think Harmony deserves another chance? To try and rebuild the Common?’
I glanced out the window as I turned the question over. Watching people trickling into streets where tiny eateries and niche shops were nearly hidden under a canopy of silver-flecked ivy. My gaze rose past the tiered balconies and townhouses, all the way up to the parklands and stalwart trees the size of highrises. I turned back to her. ‘In all honesty: no. No, I don’t. Harvest was a monstrosity that needed to be put down, but Harmony doesn’t get much credit from me either. Though the mess both left behind isn’t going to mop itself up.’
‘You’re very honest.’
‘I’m very practical.’
‘Maybe practical is what we need. Like any drug, stormtech hits the little guy the hardest. The poor, the young. The stupid. Have you heard of the Blue Wave?’ I shook my head. ‘It’s part of an underground music festival. Bluesmoke and grimwire is popular enough, but now there’s a concert where the band, the DJ, the audience, everyone has stormtech. They turn the lights off and blast the music, so the only light in the room comes from the stormtech. The audience makes patterns, shapes, Mexican waves. Sometimes, they select half a dozen people and sync the soundtrack to their heartbeat as they dance. You, quite literally, dance to the beat of your own heart. Your body becomes an instrument.’
‘That’s insane.’
‘Yeah. The same alien biomass used to win a war, used to get high, used by drug traffickers, and now used for a night out. I don’t want to imagine what it might be used for in a decade.’
Breakfast arrived and halted our conversation. I hadn’t realised how ravenous I was. I speared a wedge of French toast and smeared it with the butterscotch sauce. I was halfway through the bowl of fruit before Kowalski pulled up the restaurant menu again. ‘Working nights does my head in. Nothing a good breakfast cocktail can’t fix.’
I looked at her. ‘Booze? With breakfast?’
Katherine gave something between a shrug and a nod.
‘And here I thought I was the only one who drank this early in the morning,’ I said.
‘Shall I make it two, then?’
‘By all means.’
Soon, I was trying my first breakfast martini. Didn’t much like it at first, but by the third I was coming around to the taste. We shared knowing grins with each other, happy to have found a kindred spirit. It was our first chance to talk, really talk, and our conversation leaped from alcohol to technology to recent arrivals of alien species to Common politics, to the new Compass floors under construction and soon to open for business. I found I could talk to Kowalski easily. She always had something vital and interesting to contribute, something that would surprise me. I enjoyed the conversation with her, the time flying by. It was good to focus on something so mundane and simple. We both deserved the distraction.
When we were done, Katherine scooped up the bill and we parted ways, with me promising to take her out some other place when we had time. I was sorry to see her go, watching her walk down the steps just a little bit tipsy, her blonde hair flowing in the breeze behind her.
My mood elevated, I went straight to Grim to tell him about the citizenship card. His eyes were wild and happy at the news, grinning wide like a kid who got a dog for his birthday. ‘You did it,’ he breathed out, crushing me in a hug. He was practically shaking with joy. ‘You actually did it, you big, mad bastard.’
I peeled out of his embrace. ‘Take it easy. Drinks on you, by the way.’
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of letting Grim choose where we drank. He dragged me to an underground bar in a subfloor sandwiched between two larger Compass levels. I’ve sat in some rundown bars in my time, but I’ve never been to a place that took pride in being so deliberately shoddy. Sticky purple, turquoise and red lights glistened around the darkened, smoky space. The booths were too small and the low ceiling too close. Subsurface lighting turned faces sinister. Metallic, pulsing membranes throbbed on the wall in tune to the music. One glance at the customers in their heavy, hooded clothing, cheap bioaugs wired into their bodies, exchanging circuitry-laced cards with hands with pulsing colours at their fingertips, and I knew this was where Grim’s hacker friends hung out. Databrokers, system divers, people who knew the digital world inside out. I spotted a scattering of aliens among the mostly human crowd. Had to be one of the many bars that offered food and drink catering to their biology. A collage of tattoos and florescent glyphs adorning cheekbones and necks indicated three, maybe four separate hacker collectives in here. They circled each other like sharks, but left it at that.
Grim was on a rampage. He jabbered non-stop about the eateries he’d take me to, the markets we could shop at. ‘Did I end up telling you how big the genome pay-out was?’ Grim asked as he downed a geometrical glass brimming with spicy rum.
I sipped mine at a more measured pace, shook my head.
My shib chimed with an incoming transmission of currency. ‘That’s your half,’ Grim said.
The stormtech flared like a lightning bolt down my arm as a figure blinked up in my vision. A grin spread across my face. ‘That’s insane.’
‘I know! We don’t ever have to work again.’
‘You? Retire? You’d be bored in a week. At least you can move out of that dump you’re living in.’
‘Yeah, about that.’ Grim fixed me with his best toothy grin as I poured two more shots. A glass should never be empty, as far as I’m concerned. In the background a fight between a human and an alien belonging to a
