“Do you ever try to figure out what year it is?” Alex asked.

“It’s 2113,” Zhan said.

“No, he means Earth year, and it’s…2081, I think?” Nick said.

“You’re both wrong. I mean…there’s gravel roads, the Lethior Motorcoach is like a souped-up model T, we’ve got electric lights and phones, but everything’s wired for holograms, and the military has jet fighters with EMPs. Are we in 1942? 1997?”

“1903, but steampunk,” Nick said.

“Oh, nice call! I’m gonna get me a zeppelin with a laser gun,” Alex said. “And then I’m gonna learn how to fly a zeppelin. And then I’m going to get rid of it, because there’s a 100-percent chance that if I don’t, Ryan will steal it and fly it somewhere.”

“Well, I’m not taking it. If Ryan doesn’t steal it Manto will.”

“What, exactly, is a zeppelin?” Zhan asked. “Also, what the heck is ‘steampunk?'”

Nest wasn’t really following the conversation between the men. He didn’t care much about hydrogen air ships or whether anyone else had seen “Wild Wild West” in reruns, the show, not the movie, which was awful. He was trudging toward the train station, feeling worse and worse with every step.

He hadn’t meant to be a jerk. He hadn’t even been aware of it, not consciously, not until after the fact.

But that didn’t change the fact that he had been. He’d been rude to Liss, cruel, even. All because it was safer to reject her than to wait for her to reject him.

He wasn’t sure if he would start the date over if he could. It was easier this way. Liss would move on to find someone her size, and he…he would find someone his size. It was the way it was supposed to be, right?

And yet…he couldn’t quite lose the sensation of seeing her looming like a goddess incarnate, the feeling of being plucked from the ground and lifted up to the heavens, the warm, pillowy-soft landing place of her breasts….

He’d been an idiot. A complete fool. He’d had a chance at something amazing, and his fear had stolen it from him. And he would never be able to make it up to her.

All he could do is trudge on toward the train station, feeling worse with every step.

* * *

Rixie and Brinn had headed down to the train station, and Xele and Liss had retired to their rooms. Liss tried to write an apology to Nest – something that really demonstrated she was sorry, that she got it, that he was a person and she understood it. She didn’t think it would make it up to him, but she wanted him…no, she didn’t want him to ever question whether he was worth it. She was the fool, not him.

But the words wouldn’t come to her, no matter how she sorted them. To be fair, Archavian wasn’t her first language, but even when she tried to write it out in Jotnar first, it didn’t sound right. Too much of it was about her. She didn’t want it to be about her.

There was a chime at the door.

Liss gave serious consideration to ignoring it, but it rang again, and she realized that the only people likely to be ringing it would know with certainty that she was inside. So she got up, and opened it.

“Liss, do you have friends?”

This was not exactly what Liss was expecting Xele to ask, which is why she spat out, “Not…really, I guess. I have people I like, but….”

“Me either,” Xele said. “When I was young, a lot of people wanted to be my friend, ‘cause I was Jota Cesil’s daughter. But then they’d start trying to get me to talk about how dumb the Avartle were, and I was like, you realize the Avartle were responsible for the tech infrastructure underlying the net, right? Anyhow, they didn’t want to be friends with me, and I didn’t want to be friends with them. And then I left home, and I mean…I suppose there are people who wanted to befriend Dizmona, but Dizmona isn’t me, you know?”

“Karral’s your friend.”

“No, he’s my…I guess he’s probably my boyfriend now. We’ve been seeing enough of each other. But I’d like a friend, you know? Someone I wasn’t looking to frak, just…someone to hang out with. Talk about things. Tell me when I was being stupid.”

Liss smiled in spite of herself. “Kid, I don’t know if we’ve known each other long enough to count, but if you want me to be your friend…I’d kinda like a friend, too.”

“Great! Liss, you’re being stupid.”

* * *

“One for the four-thirty to Gla, guard rate,” Nest said, pushing his guard identification and a twenty-silver note to the bored cashier. Alex, Nick, and Zhan had departed underground for the tram, which was still a good half-hour from departure, but all three of them said they weren’t in the mood for brewleaf. So all there was for Nest to do was to buy a ticket and wait.

“Lesse…change is ₽7 ₣9, last signal has it arriving in about fifteen minutes late, so it’s about an hour or so before boarding.”

“Thanks. Anything open?” Nest asked

“Perist Pikzlup, that’s about it.”

“Thanks.” Nest headed over to the small brewleaf counter in the corner of the station. During the day, there were several stands open, but at this time of night, just a tired-looking woman boiling water while a tired-looking man made sandwiches. They looked a bit sickly, but then, everything looked sickly under the mercury lights that lit up the building.

As he approached the counter, he heard something he wasn’t really expecting. Music. The sound of a baklama, or something similar, being played while a man sang along with it. The singing didn’t make much sense at first, until Nest realized it was not Archavian. It was slow and aching, the way he was playing it, with a little bit of hope peeking through the cracks.

“And I’ve gotta be with her/On that midnight train to Georgia./I’d rather live in her world/Than be without her in mine.”

Nest didn’t understand the words, but he felt like the song fit his mood perfectly.

“Thanks,” Mak said, as the song drew to a close, and three people clapped half-heartedly. “I’m Mak Paktozh, safe travels everyone. Hey Nest, how’s it going? Told you I’d see you later.”

“Uh…okay?” Nest said, as the musician got up and came over to greet him.

“No you aren’t, but that’s okay. Lotta people aren’t okay, right? Hey, Japyx, I’ve got this guy’s brewleaf,” he called to the man at the counter.

“Really, it’s okay,” Nest said. “I kinda want to just sit and stare into nothing.”

“Too bad. You know how these stories go, you’re about to make a bad mistake, and so the handsome stranger has to drop some wisdom that makes you reconsider everything. Classic trope, a bit overused, but what are you gonna do, huh?”

“I…don’t follow,” Nest said. “Wait a second…how did you know you’d see me later?”

“Told ya,” Mak said, “it’s a cheap narrative device. So, you’ve decided to just give up, have you?”

* * *

“So tell me again what we’re doing?”

“You’re going into the holosuite, and I’m turning it on. Then you’ll pop out in the train station, and you go try to find Nest.”

“Yeah…I’m not doing that, kid.”

Xele rubbed a hand across her brow. “So what are you gonna do? Go back to your room, sit there, mope?”

“I was trying to write a letter to Nest,” Liss said.

“Oh, a letter! How quaint! I’m saving you time, you can tell him in person.”

“I don’t want to tell him in person!” Liss shouted.

Xele folded her arms across her chest. She said nothing. Indeed, she said nothing for so long that Liss felt she needed to say something. “Look…I already wrecked his night. What’s this gonna do? I basically called him a pet, it’s not like I’m gonna convince him I was kidding, right?”

Liss sighed. “I…I can’t face him again. Not after being as big an idiot as I was, and compared to him, I’m ginormous. A ginormous idiot. I’d be wasting my time.”

“So?” Xele said. “Is your time so valuable? You were gonna sit in your room and be grumpy! Go apologize to him directly. You were brave enough to let him kill us, remember? Brave enough to tell him how. Are you really gonna be a coward now that you just have to tell him you frakked up?”

“And when he tells me he still doesn’t want to see me?” Liss said.

“Then it’s over. And you move on. Then it’s over, and you can move on, and that ain’t happening if you just sit on your bed rewriting a letter all night!”

* * *

“You know that song I was singing earlier tonight? That was about a guy who lost his girl. She left him, and he wasn’t over it. So he was pouring his heart out to the bartender, trying to make it all better.”

“I know, I was listening when you sang it,” Nest said.

“I’m just recapping for those who might have forgotten it.”

“You’re a strange man, Mak.”

“Nah,” Mak said, sipping his brewleaf, “I’ve just got an acute case of Medium Awareness. Anyhow, it seems to me that if you really didn’t want to be talked into going after this woman, you wouldn’t have spent so much time letting people try to talk you into going after her.”

“Look, Mak…have you ever dated a titan?”

Mak got a far-away, dreamy look, and said, “No. No, but hope springs eternal.”

“Look, she could crush me in an instant. She could smother me with those breasts if she wanted to. I could drown inside of her!”

“And that’s exactly why you want to be with her, isn’t it?”

Nest looked into his teacup. He looked for a very long time, before he said, “Yes. It is.”

Mak smiled, gently. “There are millions of men and women who’d love to have the shot you do.”

“What shot? I pissed it away.”

“Have you? Maybe most of it. Maybe it’s a one-in-a-million chance you’ve got to fix it. But you’ve still got that chance. It isn’t impossible. So you can get on the 4:30 to Gla and go see your family, and all the way there and all the way back to your base you’ll be thinking about what would have happened if you’d gone to see her. Or you can go see her, and you can find out. Which is it gonna be?”

* * *

“Ready?”

“No,” Liss said. “And I’m serious, Xele, fifteen minutes. I’m gonna go up to the train, and if he isn’t there, that’s it. I’m not going to search Atlantis at human size on a whim.”

“Okay,” Xele said through the speaker. “Simulation commencing.”

The gray of the holosuite turned into a nondescript room, one that looked somewhat old-fashioned, but otherwise normal. It was lit with old-fashioned incandescent bulbs – well, probably not old-fashioned as far as the Avalonians were concerned.

Liss walked to the door. This room was designed as the rezpoint for Titans in the station, a place for the holos to click on safely and unobtrusively. It opened onto a landing halfway between the subway below and the station above. Once she walked out, she just had to go up the stairs, look long enough to not see Nest, and then go back. Simple. That would get Xele off her back.

Simple.

She opened the door.

She could hear the echoes of conversation from down the stairs, but she ignored it – that would be Rixie’s and Brinn’s husbands heading back to the mountain. She turned, and looked up the stairs, and taking a deep breath, she headed up.

She reached the top, and turned off, and brushed by a tall man in a blue shirt. “Sorry,” she muttered, and took a few steps.

Just a few.

She turned around.

He had taken just a few steps down the stairs, and had himself stopped. He looked up the stairs at her, and she down at him.

For a long moment, they just looked at each other, disbelieving. Liss had expected to have a good long moment to seek him out, to work up the nerve, Nest had been counting on the trip to the mountain, but….

“I’m sorry,” Liss said. “I just…I wanted to tell you…I’m sorry.”

Nest blinked a couple of times, trying to register what he was seeing. You could tell a hologram from reality, if you knew what to look for, knew where the differences would appear. But even though Nest could catch the very slight pixelization…what he saw was a pretty woman. She was tall, but not quite as tall as he was. She looked sad, vulnerable, tired. She looked how he felt.

“You…you used a hologram to come find me…how did you know….”

“I didn’t,” Liss said. “I was hoping you were going to Gla – Brinn said you might be taking the train there. I thought, maybe…look, I said some really stupid things. But I didn’t want you to go away thinking…I don’t want you ever thinking you’re anything other than a person. Whatever my screw-ups are…this is coming out stupid, but….”

“Liss,” Nest said, walking back up the stairs, to her, “I’m sorry too. I wasn’t fair to you. You were right. You’re trying. I got a damn scorpion in my boot about things.”

“I…don’t know what that means,” Liss said, with a nervous chuckle.

“It means,” Nest said, “that I got all angry about things before you really gave me any reason to. You don’t want me to think I’m not a person, and I don’t. I don’t want you to think you’re foolish, or a bigot, or evil. Because you’re not.”

“But I am,” Liss said, looking down at her shoes. “I am a bigot, and I am foolish, and I have done things that are wrong. You deserve…you deserve a lot better than I can give you.”

Nest had nearly closed the gap between them; now he took two steps closer. Goddess, she was beautiful. Even at his size, she was beautiful. “You’re not the one who got all mouthy and stormed out. That was me. As for the rest…you’re definitely not foolish, Liss. If you’re bigoted…well, given how I was acting, I don’t think you’re any more bigoted than I am. And the things you’ve done that are wrong…I would like to hear about them, to be honest. Some time, if you’re willing to talk to me again.”

Liss blinked. She was used to seeing him as the tiny, brave man he was, compared to her. Now he stood taller than her, athletic and broad-shouldered, brown-black eyes that seemed to swallow the pupil within them. She could see he was handsome before, of course, but….

“I’m surprised you’re willing to talk to me again. I’d like that,” she said. She took a deep breath. “You know, I…I think we both may have been a bit…messed up earlier. Maybe…I mean….”

She took one step closer to him. “Maybe we could both forget that what happened earlier happened…and give it another try someday?”

Nest smiled, and cautiously leaned down toward her. He paused, just before he did it, to give her a chance to pull back.

She closed the gap between them, pressing her lips to his.

They held the kiss for but a few seconds and forever, before breaking. “I don’t want to forget all of what happened earlier,” Nest said, softly. “As indignant as I was…there was a part toward the end that was rather…amazing.”

Liss grinned. “One part? Or a pair?”

“Good point,” he said, kissing her once more. “We…we probably need to head downstairs to catch the train. I mean, I do, you’re up on the mountain, right?”

“Right,” Liss said. “But don’t rush up. You’ve probably been up like twenty hours at this point, right?”

“Yeah, probably,” Nest said.

“So get a hotel in town, get some sleep, I’ll get a nap in, and you can come up tomorrow – your tomorrow. And we’ll try again. And this time, I promise, I’ll try not to say anything stupid.”

“And I will try not to be a jerk,” Nest said. “So until tomorrow?”

Liss was about to agree, when a thought took hold. “You know,” she said, “I haven’t seen Avalon at this size. I’d kind of like to…walk you to your hotel, if you didn’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Nest said. He then paused, for just a moment. “You know, you said you wanted to take a nap. If you wanted to…I mean, it would be holographic, but….”

“I think,” Liss said, “that we’re both thinking the same thing. And I think it’s a good idea. Oh, just one moment…vox, Xele?”

“Hey, Liss,” a voice said.

“I found Nest,” Liss said. “I’m going to spend some time in the city with him.”

“Spend some…are you going to shag him holograpically?!”

“Maybe,” Liss said, grateful that Nest couldn’t hear Xele. “Can you give me, like, eight hours or so?”

“Eight hours!? Liss Peten, you really are bad.”

“It’s true,” Liss said, with a grin, as she offered Nest her arm, “but you know, I think that we’re both okay with it. Good night…and thanks.”

Xele switched off the monitors, leaving Liss to her machinations. Just for security, she code-locked the holodeck, before she headed back up to her suite, giggling all the way.