I plan to wander the city randomly until my appointment at the recruitment center. There are many restaurants and public spaces open through the night, staffed by robots, frequented by misfits and outliers like me. I jump on a transport pod and hit a destination at random. The first restaurant I walk into is empty. That's okay, all I'm looking for is a patch, a burger, an hour of silence to myself. It doesn't help. I'm still restless. The next restaurant serves ramen. One old guy is playing on his datapad, and a beautiful woman is sitting at the bar. I don't want to sit at a table alone, so I take a seat near the woman. She's wearing a shirt with "Janus" on the shoulders. Her name, I guess.
I'm still hungry. The need is more than physical. I'm lost, searching for something to put me at ease. I doubt that something is ramen. I order it, anyway.
"Any kind," I tell the waiterbot. "And a Tipsy."
The Tipsy will wear off in an hour, but that should be enough.
I glance at Janus. She's beautiful. Red hair. Bright blue eyes. A well‑shaped nose. Out of my league. Exactly my type.
She catches me staring.
"What?" she asks.
I look away. My ramen and Tipsy arrive. I place the patch on my neck. The ramen is okay. Not great. Not what I'm looking for. I eat it, anyway. The waiter bot brings Janus a fresh bowl of ramen, too. The bar in front of her is already covered in bowls of ramen, each a different type, all barely touched. She stares at them with disapproval. A waiterbot places a new bowl in front of her. She tastes it once, frowns, pushes it aside.
The Tipsy kicks in.
It's my last night on Earth.
I try my luck.
"Are you a food critic?" I ask, pointing at the bowls.
Janus stares at me for a moment. She shakes her head as if she can't believe what an idiot I am.
"No."
"Oh. Then you must like ramen."
"Not this stuff."
She looks away. It's not the first time I've been rebuffed at a bar. Perhaps she just wants to be alone. Perhaps I just need to try again. Or not. The best solution I can think of is another Tipsy. I ask a waiterbot to turn the holocaster channel to the news. There's been another attack, out there among the stars. A city belonging to the race we call the Green Sleepers. An explosion. A whole neighborhood reduced to rubble and blood. Revenge, the analysts say. Retaliation for supporting the Avari, for daring to act against the Genocide Seed. I watch as the Green Sleepers pull each other from their city's burning ruins. Their bodies are slug‑like tubes with tentacles instead of arms. Their blood is red, though.
I'm glad I've joined the infantry. I'm going to stop attacks like this.
Janus also stares at the news.
"Another one," she says.
She's talking to herself, but the Tipsy takes over my mouth.
"Yeah. Terrible, isn't it? Things like this … they're like the precursors to Armageddon or something."
She shakes her head.
"Don't be naive; Armageddon has started, it just hasn't reached your house yet. And wait, here comes the worst part."
The news channel moves on to sport, races, games. Entertainment news. Famous people doing ordinary things. Ordinary people doing strange things. The same stuff the news has ended with for years to dull the impact of war and suffering. We watch in silence.
"Sports and entertainment are such pleasant suffocation for the soul. People would rather hear about celebrities than realities," she complains.
That's human nature. Knowledge is a responsibility. People want to be entertained, not challenged. We want to be happy.
"Anything could be happening in the war," she mutters. "We'd never know."
"I'll know soon."
My tipsy is wearing off. Ordering another is a bad idea. I do it anyway, place it on my arm. Janus frowns at me.
"I'm joining the Interstellar Infantry tomorrow," I say, showing her the triangular card with the timer ticking down.
"Huh! I knew it!"
"You did not!
"I did, you look the type. Eager. Stupid. You're really going to travel halfway across the universe to protect Earth?"
I shrug. "That's where Earth's enemies are."
"You must be as naive as you look!"
I had hoped my news would impress her. Instead it's causing an argument.
"You're just a cynic," I tell her. "That's lazy. It's much easier to find problems than fix them."
She glares. "I'm fixing them. I'm going to be Earth's first interstellar reporter. I'll be seeking the truth while you're killing whoever the Avari tell you to."
"Whatever."
I look at my bowl of ramen, still half full. I'm no longer hungry. That second Tipsy was a mistake. They always are. I never learn. Stupid. This is my last night on Earth, I'm sitting beside a beautiful woman, and all I can do is argue? Sam's right; I'm hopeless at this stuff. What would he do? Three more Tipsy patches, probably. Then hit a bar in the Bliss, where he could find a willing girl, real or not.
But the patches part sounds good.
"Two patches of Happiness," I say loudly.
Janus raises an eyebrow. Happiness is expensive. The two patches will clear out my bank account. The waiterbot brings me the patches. I make a show of putting the first on my neck, the second on my hand. Janus smiles, slightly. My anger fades. I know only goodwill to Janus. It doesn't matter that we're different, that we have clashing views. All that matters is that I like her, and that I want her to like me.
"I prefer to be called 'idealistic' rather than 'naive'," I say.
Janus orders her own Happiness.
"I prefer 'skeptic' to 'cynic'," she replies.
We smile at each other.
"Are you really a reporter?"
"Yes. It's taken me three years to convince the infantry to allow me to embed in their units. They gave me a thousand reasons why I couldn't do it; I gave them ten thousand reasons why I could."
I order a round of Relax.
"To the skeptics!" I say, raising my patch.
"To the idealists!"
I could be doing well here. Its hard to tell. I've been wrong before. Luckily for me, the beautiful skeptic takes the lead.
"My name's Janus," she says. "That's my new name, anyway. The Avari assigned it."
"It's a tradition for the Interstellar Infantry," I say. "It helps recruits adapt to their new lives. To disconnect from Earth."
Janus laughs.
"I'm already disconnected. Janus is the Greek god with two faces, one looking to the future, one looking to the past. Stuck between the two."
"It's a good name for a reporter."
"Nah, it's their way of calling me a two‑faced bitch."
"This could be fate," I say suddenly. "You're a journalist, I'm a new recruit. You could do a story on me …"
I trail off at the blank look on her face. She isn't interested.
"I want to write about the big stuff. The battles. The alliances. What the Avari are really trying to do," she says. "Not human interest stories."
"Oh," I reply, deflated. "I guess that makes sense."
She smiles.
"Sorry," she says. "It's taken me so long to get this far. Years of always pushing, pushing. I need to make the most of this."
"I'm sure you will. Maybe I'll even see you out there."
"It's a big universe."
We sit in silence for several minutes. Janus looks at me as if weighing me up. I must make the grade. She calls the waiterbot over.
"We'll have a round of Drift," she says. "Followed by a round of Vertigo in five minutes."
I hate Vertigo, but I don't say anything. The waiterbot brings our patches. The Drift kicks in. The world spins pleasantly.
"What's with all the bowls of ramen?" I ask.
"I just felt like it. I was hoping to order something extraordinary for my last night on Earth, but none of these are any good."
"Yeah, know what you mean. I should have just stayed at home and made my own. It always tastes better."
"You cook?" she asks in surprise.
"I do. For special occasions."
"Like our last night on Earth? That's pretty special."
"I suppose it is."
"So let's go then."
Janus stands and grabs my hand. We arrived lost and alone.
But we found each other.