Monday April 21, 2008:

Nova "Flicker" Madigan did not know how long the rusted hulk of the lake freighter MV Bernie Federco had slouched along the less-reputable stretch of the Cleveland lakefront. To her it had always been a fixture of that part of town, a reminder of the rust-belt heritage of the city, when heavy industry and shipping had been the dominant commerce. She could see that it had once been painted black below the waterline and red above, with black-trimmed red stacks and cranes. Now that paint was faded into dirty grey and rusty pink, where it had not completely peeled away from weathering. To the west the sun was setting behind the glittering Cleveland skyline, towers built with the new money of international commerce and communication.

Nova picked her way across the rusted deck of the freighter, watching for hazards and making her way aft to the superstructure. The lake made tranquil splashing sounds on the smooth boulders of the shore below, and the occasional water bird squawked goodnight to the sun. The ship's bridge was open to the air, all the windows broken out before she'd even been born. She could have teleported directly there, but she enjoyed exploring the old-fashioned way. Nova glanced at her watch: 7:20. In ten minutes' time she hoped to greet Henry "Cain" Yeager, the one-time Utopian, present-day Terat and private detective, and all-around man of intrigue on the ship's bridge. Cain was a dangerous man, she knew, to anything with moving parts and a few things without. A field of entropy followed him which caused the hasty demise of anything more complicated than a stone. She'd chosen this location for its privacy, and the lack of anything worth breaking was an added convenience.

Nova considered her wristwatch, not expensive but also not expendable, and she removed it and hung it from a rusty ship's cleat before entering the darkness of the structure at the aft end of the deck. She'd deliberately not worn her eufiber colony this evening on Cain's advice, and instead sported stretchy yoga pants (no zipper), ballet flats (no laces), and a triple extra-large Emerson High School tee-shirt, which she'd gathered up and tied in a knot just above her navel. The hatch was rusted half-open, so Nova slipped through it and into the darkness of the companionway. At the opposite end she could see the fading daylight filtering down from the bridge. Nova ascended the steep steel steps and into the bridge proper.

Nothing was left of the machinery or fixtures of the bridge. Mangled stumps marked where the chairs had once been bolted to the deck, and the ship's instrument panels were hollowed-out rusty steel boxes, filled with tangled wire and rubbish. Nova looked for a place to sit, and saw no surface clean enough to do so. Nova disappeared abruptly from the bridge, then returned a moment later, carrying four plastic milk crates, still clean and new-looking. The crates were stenciled "Property of Anderson Dairy," and had been swiped from behind the convenience store in Nova's neighborhood. She stacked two crates in front of the wide window in the bridge, making a comfortable makeshift stool for herself, and stacked the other two in preparation for her guest's imminent arrival.

Tuesday April 22, 2008:

At around the same time that Nova Madigan had found herself scaling the precarious cliffs of the MV Bernie Frederico, the nova Henry Jeager had been sitting on a hill somewhere in southern Greece, looking up at the stars overhanging a gloriously clear Greek night, pondering his situation. "What perverse ways the world seems to align in", he said aloud for no one but himself, a commentary on both the events of the evening yet to come and of several years that preceded it. Groping through the madhouse of locked doors that was his psyche, he turned again to the moment's subject of contemplation: a justification for what he would do, in approximately six minutes.

Nova had asked him about the Teragen, and he told her as best as he could, reciting the lines he's repeated scores of times. He wasn't in the Pantheon, but he was part of the Teragen's inner circle, all the same, and a rather clumsily vocal one, at that. You get used to people asking you the same old cliched questions over and over, even the hard ones, the ones that sting when you answer them. Nova wanted to know about the Teragen. She was also a shameless flirt, which he enjoyed in a way, in that way that nearly all men enjoy attention from women, and because being a nova doesn't mean you don't think with your johnson anymore - far from it, in his case, he noted dryly - he found himself entirely too receptive to whatever young Miss Madigan had to say, and before he'd even given it much thought, he'd found himself agreeing to a meeting. She fancied him a man of mystery. A man of mystery! He'd nearly choked himself laughing on the words. How she overestimated him!

Or did she? He didn't even know, himself, anymore. In a way, she was more right than she knew, just not in the manner she probably supposed.

...

So much had been lost in the name of secrecy. So much that, on reflection, had he known, he couldn't have given what was asked. Hindsight was a right fucker, like that.

The alarm on his five-dollar wristwatch chimed twice and promptly died, the energy exerted to sound that it was 0228 pushing the poor little wiring beyond their means as they gave up the ghost. Henry looked at it with a placid, beleaguered sadness, sighed, took it off, and dropped it on the ground. Producing a cigarette from his pocket, he lit it with a match and slung his trench coat over his shoulders, taking one last look skyward.

"Time to get your game face on, sonny-jim", he told himself, and by force, cracked a wry little smile that was arrogance and secrets and perfectly fake. With a snap of his fingers, he tore reality a new one, seeing the last, fading rays of the sun he'd watch set six hours earlier crawling westward.

Monday April 21, 2008:

His loafers hit the ship's deck with a bit of a groan. He'd hopped in from eight feet up, just for the hell of it, landing with his stance wide and his back arched forward a bit. It wasn't just the landing that made the noise; he could feel the metal and wood giving beneath his feet, the little fractures that formed wherever he stepped. Years of living like this told him that he wasn't in any danger of falling through - as if it would matter if he did - but it was novel to see a venue that responded to his presence so noisily.

"Hullo there", he smiled, drawing his head up to see the young woman awaiting his arrival, sitting on a makeshift stool. It was the first time he'd seen her, he realized. She was cute, no doubt about it. And aptly named, too: a fast-strobing assault of there-not-there, an effect so jarring and foreign to the senses that it demands you remind yourself that you're not watching the telly when you first see her. And most curiously of all, he immediately realized that for half the time, she really wasn't there. No scent, no heat, not even a quantum signature. And if she wasn't here, well, then, it sort of makes one wonder where exactly where not here is, doesn't it?

"I do hope I'm not late", he straightened himself out, smoothing the lapel of his coat, speaking in an inherited accent that was some mongrel marriage of American, Cockney and Irish. "Good t'finally meet yeh, love."

When she was younger, Nova would have leapt from her stool and fallen over backwards if someone had suddenly appeared in midair and then landed on the deck in front of her. Without knowing how she did it, Nova processed the sudden event with astonishing quickness. Since she'd erupted, nothing had surprised her anymore. Unconsciously, her mind raced in the background at all times, sizing up the tactical details of every situation everywhere she went, assessing potential threats, mapping exit routes, and suggesting possible avenues of attack.

This new ability had unnerved her at first, but she'd gotten used to it in time and had learned to enjoy it. She could continue to carry on in her usual disarmingly carefree and cheerful manner, secure in the secret knowledge that she could handle almost any threatening situation as it evolved around her. Before Henry Jeager had even alighted on the deck plate, she instinctively knew what she would do if he had been carrying a gun, or had lunged for her, or displayed the aura of a charging quantum-fueled attack. However, he hadn't. Instead he alighted deftly on the rusty steel diamondplate deck and said something utterly charming.

Her immediate impression of Cain was a mixture of foreignness and charm. Even as casually-dressed as he was, he was still better-tailored than the average American man. His middle-lower-class mid-Atlantic accent (which leaned more to the other side of the pond and not so much to her own) seemed to slide straight past her ears and into her spine, where it danced cheerfully, thrilling her. This, she realized, was not some schlomo from around the corner in Cleveland. This man was something different to her; even if he hadn't been a nova, he was already unlike anyone she had ever met in her life. She startled briefly at his use of the appellation "love," but remembered that it was part of the slang of the Queen's English and didn't mean a thing.

"It's good to meet you too," Nova replied quickly, smiling wide. The smile had come unbidden, and was an honest one. For several long seconds there was no force on earth which could have turned down the corners of her mouth. Nova didn't fight the surprised smile; she took ownership of it and made it an integral part of her greeting as she rose and half-curtsied to Henry.

"Welcome aboard the Em Vee Bernie Federco, and welcome to Cleveland. Is it what you expected?" She left the question hanging in the air, open to interpretation. It was a sort of verbal Rorschach test. Would he say what he thought of Cleveland, or the bridge of a hulked lake freighter, or her, or something else entirely, she wondered.

Having not been able to get online save for by the sufferance of a helper going as far back as the days of the "internet", Henry had never quite become accustomed to the disparity between peoples' online demeanors and how they behaved in person, something that had, for most, become a given facet of the technological age. Who he was online was the same person you'd meet; the fact that he did all his web-work via speech recognition software - or conversation with Alex - ensured that. Nova Madigan, conversely, seemed to be a much different young woman in person than she projected. Online, she had been flirtatious, confident, and mature beyond her years. The girl that stood before him was anxious; almost giddy. It would have been embarrassing to both of them to comment on that affair, however, and he was nothing if not able to cope with unexpected events. Besides, truth be told, it was actually, well, cute, and quite against plan, he found himself smiling back rather genuinely.

"Actually", he smirked, "this isn't my first jaunt to the Forest City." His eyes briefly regarded the skyline as though he were searching for something in his head before being drawn back to her. "Though I think this is the first time I've stopped by for something other than business. And thanks to you, it's already the nicest view I've ever had of the area." The statement was deliberately ambiguous, and delivered with an academic certainty. Whether he meant her, the sunset over the lake, or whether he just had a dodgy fetish for environments that were - to his perverse quantum manifestation - "lived in", he'd let her decide, and study her reaction.

At first look, he'd supposed perhaps that Nova was trying to say something specific by dressing like she'd sprung fully-formed from a John Hughes movie, but then, stifling a chuckle, he realized she'd simply heeded his advice as best she could. Simple clothes, things he might not easily shred to moth-bitten tatters simply by being near. Smart. Not a lot of layers, though: if anything does happen to what she's wearing, she won't have a lot left to cover. Judging from what she'd told him previously, maybe that was the idea. He banished the thought from his mind almost as quickly as it struck him, but couldn't shake the impression he'd been looking at her and envisioning a fork and knife in his hand for a tick, there.

Nova found herself involuntarily blushing--blushing!--at Henry's comment about the nice view. With proud stubbornness she refused to shyly look downward, though. Nova held Henry's gaze, using the disconcerting effect of her flickering effect as a kind of emotional shield, similar to the aloof strength one feels when wearing dark sunglasses.

"I'm glad you like it," she said cheerfully but ambiguously, returning to her improvised milk-crate stool. Again, despite Henry's benign demenor, background processes in her subconscious plotted angles of attack, scanned the doorways and the deck below for movement, and played out possible threat scenarios and the best way to handle each one.

"I didn't tell the complete truth over the OpNet," Nova confessed. "I didn't want so much to know about the Teragen as much as one specific nova who I think might be a Terat."

"Oh?" Henry's brow quirked up a bit. "Someone else?"

Inwardly, he heaved with relief, but he wouldn't dare let it show. If he was being perfectly honest with himself, he knew he probably wouldn't have nicked off to bloody Ohio to tell someone what they could find out by scouring a few articles or watching a few interviews unless they were, well, attractive, and while Nova was that - and the sudden rosy hue to her cheeks indicated that she'd taken his meaning exactly as he offered it and hadn't been put off - he was immensely relieved to find that the night's activities weren't going to be consumed by repeating philosophical maxims by rote and watching body language like an obsessive voyeur at a window.

Slipping his jacket off the shoulders of his Forzieri collared shirt, he slung it gently over a nearby railing before unbuttoning his cuffs and doubling them back on themselves twice, revealing the surface of his forearms. "May I sit?", he gestured towards the two stacked crates. "And you may pick my brain at your leisure, miss."

Nova watched Henry with a pleased smile as he made himself comfortable. Further small talk would have been quite awkward, given the obvious disparity between their ages and levels of worldliness.

"It's not my ship," she chuckled, indicating the makeshift seat with a nod and letting a single amused puff escape through her nose as a punctuation mark, signalling a new direction for her thoughts. "I really appreciate your coming out here. I find myself--" she hesitated, "--entangled in the affairs of another nova, against my will. The problem is, I don't know much about him and my attempts at research are going nowhere. I was sort of hoping you'd know him, or know of him, or maybe be able to find out more about him." Nova trailed off uncertainly before continuing.

"His name is James 'Banhammer' Cooper," Nova said more decisively. "He was contracted to Project Utopia to help me as a mentor immediately after I erupted, but I think he's secretly working agaist the goals of the Project, but he's made no public declaration of being a Terat." Nova hesitated and frowned.

"While I was still in the Rashoud, he lied to me and tricked me into coming along on some kind of secret rescue mission in Kyrgyzstan. He killed six men there. Since then, he's been trying to get his hooks into me. Nobody else knows."

"Aw, shite, gi'us a fekin' break, willyeh now?" Henry's jaw clenched. So that's what this is all about. The lass didn't want to talk factions, or gossip, or even just play slap and tickle with an older man (which, on reflection, he probably would have noticed sooner, if not for the aforementioned cognitive gap between people on- and offline, compounded by the fact that he'd very likely let his willy lead him into Hell, if bidden). No, what she wanted was to hire him for a job, she just didn't want to call it that, because to ask a detective to detect while in his place of business under the pretense of hiring him would imply some form of, I don't know, payment, something he was guessing the girl sorely lacked at the moment. Whether she'd realized she had or not, she'd bait-and-switched him perfectly. As canny as she was, she probably did know, at that. Cagey fuckin' lass.

He could already imagine what it would be like getting back to the Blackburn. He had to go to the Blackburn, of course, because Alex was expecting him to return there, and if he didn't, well, then the little digital bastard would really know something was up, and that would just be forestalling and compounding the inevitable. So instead, Henry, the tit, would get to plunk back to New York so Alex could laugh himself fucking sick about what happened, because they're mates, and when you're a bloke, that's what mates do, chiefly, is wallow in the idiotic exploits of their compatriots. He could practically hear him already: "Of course she lied, you fucking dolt! That's what teenage girls do!! Hahahaha! Welcome home, douchebag!"

Whether intended or not, Flicker was apparently trying to play on him, and while he wasn't such a sap that he would let her, he reasoned rightly that there'd be nothing to gain in taking her to task on the matter. She's young, after all, and smart she may be, but it's possible she simply hadn't considered how rude she was being. So he wouldn't get mad. Instead, his face dropped into that uncomfortable expression your boss gives you when he's about to deny your raise or the look you give some long-term friend when you have to tell him you need to stay "just friends", that sort of pitiful regret, and said, "Look, love. Nova. I'd be happy to help yeh, normally. I c'n see that this matter's given yeh no small amount of stress, an' it'd make me glad to know I could 'elp yeh sleep better t'night. But what yer askin' fer, yeh have to understand, this sort of thing is what I do as mah job, and yeh, a lot of it's cack, an' some of it's noble, but even to mah mates in the Tee, I doon't work pro bloody bono. There's always some exchange, even if it's just in favors, eh? An' yeh, yeh're a smart lass, surely yeh considered this before yeh asked me here, aye? Ah'm not sayin' I won't do it, but..." He left his statement hanging there, hoping she'd interject and soothe the moment's bitterness. It was never easy to tell someone "I can't do this thing for you because you cannot afford to pay me", especially when the person asking was young, or possibly in danger, or being torn up inside about information they didn't have. Normally, it wasn't a matter of altruism, and he was thankful for that, because he'd never gotten a tight hold on telling people "Bugger off until you have dosh, would you?", and sitting there on that ship, he'd found his ability to say so more wanting than ever.

His accent's getting thicker, Nova noticed, employing her keen grasp of the obvious. She allowed herself a single moment to congratulate herself in her first attempt at playing on a level field with an experienced nova. I must have really gotten to him just now. Not too shabby.

"Oh, of course it's your job!" Nova said quickly, feigning total innocence. She leaned forward and touched Henry's knee gently, quite intentionally sending mixed signals to her counterpart. "I'm not a charity case, you know, and I'm definitely no freeloader. I don't have money, yeah, but I've come prepared to offer an exchange of services." Nova leaned back, withdrawing her hand and tapping her forehead, emphasizing that she meant node-related services and not the other kind.

Henry raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Oh, aye?" Clearly she wasn't referring to the type of favors that fit little birds usually offer older blokes as an exchange of "services", something he wasn't sure if he felt good about ("Good for you, Henry, lad, you're not one of those guys."), or not-so-good about ("Nae, you're a nice guy, and nice guys, they always come out ahead, right?"). Beating that thought back into some dark, evolutionary closet with a good, stout stick, he turned his perception to the subject of what she did mean, rather than what she did not. Because as it stood, what little hew knew about the girl was that she could do some of the same tricks he could, himself, which made him wonder just how useful this girl could be to him.

"Alright, then", he leaned back somewhat, businesslike. "I'm listening."

Nova nodded and stretched her neck in a cat-like manner, a gesture meant to communicate the intent to get down to business. She locked eyes with Henry and sat up straighter on her milk-crate stool.

"We can both get from point A to point B without difficulty, so that's probably not worth much to you," Nova explained, starting with the obvious before moving on to the less-obvious. "If you want something to disappear forever, that too is as easy for you as it is for me, and if you want something, the same applies.

"However, in your line of business I'm guessing," Nova said modestly. "Sometimes things that need to be gotten are not easily reached, and things that need to be seen are not easy to see. Since we're now negotiating, I will assume that this doesn't leave the room, since I took the trouble to hide these gifts from Project Utopia: when I go somewhere, I leave no trace that I was there. I've walked across sand without leaving footprints. In addition, I can see through concrete, earth, metal, and so on, as plainly as I see you in front of me. In the business of privately investigating, it could come in handy to know someone who can do that, I hope."

The look on Henry's face didn't move a thread. He was scrutinizing her, no doubt, just as much as he was trying to remain inscrutable. He wondered, with renewed confusion, whether Flicker had called him here to hire him or to apply for a job. Now it sounded like she wanted to play his Gal Friday, and that proposition was all knotted up in all sorts of interesting dilemmas. Like, for example - and paramount - was whether or not Flicker could be trusted. Not just to do what she says she will, but with anything, really. She'd already deceived him once, by poor design if not deliberately. Was her word worth anything more than the energy expended speaking it?

Of course, the other side to that was that she was trusting him to find out what she wanted. That was always the private eye's dilemma, and the reason that they don't usually trade in favors: cash can be proffered as a means of mutual exchange, no rabbiting on about "owing you" required. Maybe she thought she was slick enough to evade him if she didn't hold up her end. She'd be wrong, but the thought might still be in her head. You never know.

"Ah'm going t'ask yeh a question", he told her, his face becoming stern. Here he would offer her a chance to show her the kind of person she was. He didn't need her favors. What he really found himself needing most was some affirmation that what he was doing wasn't in vain. If she could give him that, he'd take her deal. A spark of goddamned hope would be enough, and if not from her, than who? "If yeh can tell me the truth, an' if the truth pleases me, ah'll take yer deal. Fair?" He thought of what he'd been thinking on earlier that night, how far he'd come from where he'd ever intended. He knew he was going to take the job either way, but something inside him begged for some kind of validation from outside. Not a Terat, not a Utopian, someone who didn't even know him. He was clutching at straws. What she said wouldn't make or break him, but maybe, hell, maybe a stranger could give him a spark of hope that his entire life wasn't some tragic fucking waste.

He looked at her, and could see that she assented. After a long pause, finally, he asked "Who are weh? As people, ah mean. Are weh what weh do? Our deeds? Are weh what weh say? Or are weh the the ideals weh keep, the secrets weh keep locked in our 'eads? Thass' mah question.

"An doon't lie", he chuckled acidly. "Oor ah'll knoow."

"I'll need a moment," Nova said placidly, stalling for a second to break his question into its component parts.

Multiple choice, easy peasy, she thought. Are we our deeds, words, or the beliefs that we keep? Words can be rolled into deeds as a subset of deeds--the spoken kind of deed--so that narrows it down to deeds and ideals. If your deeds and your ideals are misaligned, like a so-called Christian who hates other people, doesn't heed the values of Christ, and so on, then the deeds define the person, since it's the deeds that affect everyone around them. If the deeds and ideals are aligned because the ideals are informing one's actions, then the deeds still define who they are, but the handy label for that definition is the same thing as their ideal. Someone who has Christian ideals who behaves like a Christian is a Christian.

"Okay," Nova said after a startlingly short pause. Her wristwatch which dangled from a cleat outside had ticked only once since she'd asked for a moment, although the second hand was beginning to tremble, indicating the imminent arrival of second number two.

"We are our deeds. We are what we do. If you bake, you're a baker. If you dream, you're a dreamer, and so on. Words are, by the by, simply verbal deeds, and not a separate category, so I'm not going to talk about words any more.

"One's ideals don't define who a person is, because ideals are not always acted upon. A Christian who acts in opposition to their professed faith is no Christian, for example, and the world will see through their false profession of piety and label them as they really appear to be, whether that label is 'liar,' 'cheat,' or simply 'hypocrite.' In other words, if our ideals don't inform our actions, then our ideals are useless, unseen by the world, and in the end meaningless. If our ideals do inform our actions, then again it is still the actions that the world perceives and responds to.

"No matter what you believe yourself to be, it's what you do and how you affect the world around you that defines your place in reality. It's what you do that writes the checks that you'll have to cash later, whether for good or for bad.

"That said," Nova smiled, "It's a lot easier to sleep at night if your ideals inform your actions."

That good enough, you bloody sphinx? she appended silently.

"Good answer", Henry smiled. And it was. It was well-reasoned, and carefully thought out, and exactly what he had been silently praying she wouldn't say. He wouldn't let her know that. "She's probably right", he bitterly affirmed to himself, considering what it meant if she was. What it meant, of course, was what he already knew: there is no happy ending. Not for him, anyway.

"Alright, Nova, lass, yeh've got yerself a deal. I'll find yer man for yeh." With a small, confirming smile and a nod, he sealed the matter.

So that was that, he told himself, a black spot of disgust welling up in his chest, disgust mostly at himself, for being manipulated, for being stupid. This girl had teased him and conned him and the only person to blame for it, he knew, was Henry Jeager, master fucking detective. And now, Henry Jeager would do the polite thing and fuck off, his business concluded, and go set about the task that he'd been strung along and wound up to do. The lass had gotten her pound of flesh - or at least, had completed the order - and all that was left to him was to deliver.

"If that'll be it, then, love", he smirked and produced a cigarette from his pocket, lighting it. "I guess I've got a job tae do, now, don't I?"

"What's your hurry?" Nova said quickly, rising from her seat, surprised at Henry's abrupt turn. She'd imagined that he would have stayed longer, whether to discuss their business or to socialize. "You don't have to leave just yet do you? We've only just met." Nova took a step closer to Henry.

"There's still other things to talk about, aren't there?"

"Eh?" He found himself momentarily caught disarmed by the young woman's outburst. Stay? What for? She'd gotten what she came here for, hadn't she? His confusion registered on his face for half a second, then subsided, but long enough that it was plain.

His head told him it was time to go. She had him on the hook, by her reckoning, and there was little harm in trying to reel him in a wee bit more. The smart thing to do would be to leave, do the job, post her the findings, and never speak to her again, if at all possible. Few things in the world were more dangerous than a young woman who knew how to charm. Sticking around would be as good as slitting his own neck.

"No exact hurry", he rather blithely commented, taking the first drag from his fresh smoke. "I just supposed that was what yeh came here for, is all, an' that I ought to get started." He looked her over, her nerves growing less Palsied by the second as the acceptance of the situation set in. Maybe there was something more. Her body had a certain trembling, electrical energy, more than the constant strobing lended her form. Her nostrils flared slightly when she spoke, and her pupils were the size of pin heads. She broadcasted a lonesome reluctance with every downy hair and pump of blood.

"Stupid, stupid bloody bastard."

"O'course, if yeh're in no great hurry", he added, shrugging and cracking a friendly bit of smile, "Ah guess ah'm not, either."

Nova felt Henry's friendly smile all the way down to her toes, but shyness prevented her from saying what was really on her mind.

"I'm glad," she said, stalling. "I don't really have any nova friends that I'm close to, and it's not the same talking to my friends at school anymore. There's just so much that's different now, you know?"

Nova sat down once more, but scooted her stool closer to where Henry's stood. The plastic milk crates dragged small powdery furrows into the rusted deck plating.

Henry nodded with an understanding that was genuine, whether Nova knew it was or not. He took another drag and returned to his perch on top of the milk crates, making subtle work of dragging them a bit closer to her, as well.

"That's tae be expected, Nova. Ah mean, ah hear yeh've got more on the ball than yer average bint, an' I hope yeh don't mind me sayin', but knowin' what ah know'a bein' yer age in the states, ah'm guessin' ye probably weren't leadin' the cheerleadin' squad an makin' Prom Queen even before, aye? Sorry if ah pegged y'wrong", he shrugged, "mebbe ah'm jes' projectin'. Ah was a misfit as a bessline, an' now I'm a misfit as a nova. An' ah like tae think I know a little somethin' about what it is to not have anyone who's close."

He stayed! Nova thought, delighted to have forestalled Henry's hasty departure. This, to her, was the more important part of their meeting. Getting Henry's help had only been a pretext, a means to get the two of them in the same place where they could speak in private and not worry about eavesdroppers. James Cooper, the ex-Directive agent, would be exposed and run to ground in due time, but her social problems were important.*

"A misfit," Nova thought out loud. "Well, not necessarily a misfit, but not the same as everyone else either. I mean, I get decent grades--got decent grades, I mean, now I ace everything--and I run track and cross-country and have friends on the teams, but. . ." she trailed off, looking for the right way to phrase her ideas. Intelligent as she was, Nova was still only seventeen, so she lacked experience and perspective.

When Nova wanted something, she worked for it and earned the money herself--or like her outrageous fashions, she made them herself on her beloved and shopworn second-hand sewing machine. Her mother had worked two jobs just to support them for as long as she could remember, and Nova kept their home clean and did the laundry and cooked the few meals that they shared. From an early age she'd taken on a level of responsibility that her more carefree peers had not needed to, and this had shaped her outlook.

Also, certain doors were closed to her as a result of her social status. Her textbooks told her that in America everyone had equality and opportunity, and she believed it because she knew no better. But this conflicted with her life's experience, the time she spent on chores instead of playing, cooking instead of socializing, working instead of partying. So she ran track and cross-country, because nobody could take that away from her. All she needed was a good pair of shoes. The time she spent running was her time, one step at a time, and until she reached the finish line there was nothing more important that could take priority. She escaped for a hour at a time into her own thoughts, alone with the road and the sun and the wind.

"I guess even before I erupted I was different than most of my friends. When they wanted something, it was just there for them," Nova explained thoughtfully. "For me, nothing came easy. I guess I was always jealous of them. Now, I'm the homo sapiens novus and they're not, and I wonder if they're looking at me the same way I looked at them before, do you know what I mean?

"I'm glad you stayed," Nova added with an affectionate smile. "It's easier to talk about nova problems with a nova. I tried talking to some of my friends about this, but they just don't get it, no matter how I try."




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(* Hey, you were 17 once too. Everything that happened seemed like either the greatest thing ever or the end of the world, and don't you deny it.)

"Aye, well, that's sort of the crux of the whole Teragen thing", he nodded in reply, half-consciously regurgitating answers he'd memorized long ago. "Being a nova is a unique condition that one cannae truly understand without living it, same as bein' gay, or poor, or black, only less stigmatized."

His face dropped somewhat, becoming somber, and his eyes glassed over as if in reflection. "Ah bet a lot of yer friends are jealous of yeh now, an' no matter how well yeh connected with 'em in the past, they're bound tae see yeh as diff'rent, now. From their perspective, it's like bein' from Calcutta an' havin' a millionaire livin' next door. They might like yeh fine as a person, as a mate, but that's a mighty big mental mountain tae leap." He was speaking from personal experience in all this, and indeed, he'd known too damn well what it was like on both sides of that fence. But she was the one who needed the guidance, he reminded himself. Even if he felt it was proper to do so, he wouldn't and couldn't burden her with his weight. He barely ever bore it, himself, and wouldn't have, had he not erupted, had he not found love in his life for even the briefest of times.

"So", he concluded, smiling slightly at her as he remembered what he was ostensibly here for. "Is there anything specific y'want tae talk about, then? Any big nova dilemmahs yer turnin' over?"

"Just the two," Nova replied quietly, sliding into the shared mental space of an intimate conversation about a personal matter. "The matter with Cooper, and my general sense of alienation from my friends."

As they talked, the encroaching shadows from the last remnants of the sunset slowly enveloped the room, cloaking the two novas in an increasingly intimate veil of darkness. Nova cherished the warm and familiar feeling that seemed to grow as the shadows made the room seem smaller and smaller. Henry's eyes reflected the last bits of light from the sunset, and Nova found herself gazing into them with newfound fearlessness.

"How do you do it?" Nova asked softly. "I mean, being a nova-- being different from everybody else all the time. How do you make peace with that?"

"Ah don't." He let the answer hang on the air a moment, long enough to erase the promise of some saving grace turnabout. "Ah'm sorry ah don't have an answer fer yeh, there, Flicker. Truth be told, ah've never been like everybody else. Not since ah was wee. So this whole social isolation, 'alien man' thing... Ah've basically been practicin' fer it all m'life.

"O'course", he continued, "Ah watch others, an' ah know a bit about how some o'them handle it. Inna way, s'not all that different from how people deal with the basic human condition, that'a bein' alone in yer own 'ead, of not knowin' shite like whether yer blue is the same as that bloke's blue, an' other such solipsistic nonsense. Some a'them, they fill it wif deeds, an' some wif philosophy, an' some wif money, an' some wif drugs an' drink. Seems y'just find somethin' that makes y'appy, or makes y'fergit, or makes y'numb, an' y'chase it."

Extinguishing his spent cigarette against a piece of oxygen-bitten steel, he flicked it to the ground. "Th'alienation yer describin', it never really passes. Y'kin bullshite yerself well enough t'think it has, if yer really stupid or really smart or really daft, but the best y'kin 'ope for, really..." He trailed off, taking a sudden interest in his shoes, as if he was trying to shove something down. He was still for a moment, silent and grim. When he opened his mouth again, he nearly choked on what came out. "Really, all y'kin do is find someone y'can connect with, someone that understands, someone that cares, an' cleave t'em. Mebbe if yer lucky, y'find more than one."

Nova listened to Henry with increasing fascination, studied his every mannerism and gesture, and watched as the lit end of his cigarette flared in the darkness when he took a drag on it and then diminished again afterwards. Each time that it flared, his face was momentarily revealed in the increasing darkness of the abandoned ship's bridge before fading again into near-obscurity. Outside, the western horizon was beginning to lose its color, and to the east the stars were beginning to emerge. Until the moonrise later that evening, it would remain quite dark in their secret redoubt.

Someone to connect with, who understands, and cares, Nova thought, bewitched by Henry's wearily-delivered advice. Maybe more than one. She guessed that he'd meant his relationship with Slider, which had ended years before. Despite how that had ended, he was looking to do it all again, she realized.

Where some would characterize Henry as an unnaturally resilient moth returning to the flame, Nova instead considered him to be a hopeless romantic, if perhaps a tragic one, and all the more endearing for it.

"You're not like I expected," Nova confessed softly. "I think I've been misled by the news. They make you out to be so . . . well, not like this at all, anyway." A hundred ideas flashed across her mind at once, all different ways to say what she had to say next, what she could not help but to say; it was as inevitable as day following night. Nova chose the most simple delivery of them all:

"I care," she said.