A woman. The front seat of a car. The smell of soft black eco-leather and old-world tobacco-flavored vapor. The radio is on, tuned to Nivahl's favorite station: Oldies but Goldies FM. The song is Blue Velvet, by Bobby Vinton.

Nivahl's cheek rests against the driver's seat. Her eyes are closed as she slowly strokes the shoulder of the person behind the wheel with her hand.

Morton smiles and doesn't say a word. They take a puff from the cybernetic pipette, a vaporette that should be at least twenty years old. Nivahl gave it to them after finding it still packed in a junk shop in Mal Air.

"Do you think we will really find him?" Morton asks, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

Everything has changed, the topography of their memories has undergone drastic transformations. Only ruins remain of their first kiss,  buried under gleaming skyscrapers, and only a milky-white sea remains of their sighs under the moon - kept at a safe distance from passers-by with a high electric fence. Nowadays the water is toxic. Mortal.

“If he's still on this Plane, this is the place to look for him. Listen ... "

Nivahl sighs.

“I know you don't want to see him. And I know at that time you and I ... we had our problems. And I assure you, I don't want to see him as much as you do. But it could really help us. "

It's night. Illuminated by the neon lights of the shops on the side of the streets, Morton's face looks more and more like a painting. Nivahl can read "Fast Food" on their forehead and "Peep Show" in hot pink on their jaw.

"Coffee?" Morton asks, ignoring her words, as the electric blue light carves a "Diner" on their chest and a "Gas Station" slides, in acid yellow, down their neck.

“Uh, yeah… coffee. Not extracted from Corziga, for all the Deities. " she replies, raising her face. The skin on her cheek is still warm, the streaks of the fabric imprinted on her skin. She finally sits down with her back against the seat, her eyes still closed as the car reaches the outskirts.

“Wait,” Nivahl says in a whisper, opening her eyes with a snap. “Finally. There he is, he is here. "

"Here where, hun?" Morton sighs "We're in the middle of nowhere."

Outside the car, the desolation of the industrial area of ​​the city. All the factories are now abandoned, replaced by massive production regulated by the Intranet Cooperative. Nivahl remembers the distant nights when she sat in the old Chevy Impala with Morton and watched the black smoke rise to the skies from the chimneys, while they smoked a joint and thought about the future.

And here it is, the future. Decadent monsters on the sides of an empty road, skies deep as wells for corpses and full, full of stars.

Underground, the Intranet quarries. She almost felt the sparkling new civilization that was about to take shape swarming under her feet: digitally modified anthills, able to recreate any scenario present in the Old World. The only difference? No acid rain, or UV rays so strong as to burn anybody that dares to venture into the streets without the cream and protective eyewear provided by the Cooperative.

"Here." she says confidently, pointing to an abandoned honky-tonk.

Morton does not speak, they park the car in a muddy clearing.

"Do you want to go look for him?" they ask her.

She asserts, her eyes ablaze in the dark. The air is hot and humid, and their sweat glistens when it collides with the dim light from the streetlamp across the street.

"If it weren't for the fact that there are far more dangerous weapons here, I'd think someone just dropped another hydrogen bomb," Morton mumbles, wiping the drops of sweat on their forehead "my hair got puffy."

Nivahl doesn't listen to them. She approaches the rotten wooden door of the room, her hand resting and her eyes half-closed.

“Do you really think he wants to see us? I mean, if it's really... " Morton asks, suddenly serious again.

“I tell you it's really him. And I don't give a shit about what he wants” Nivahl replies, shrugging.

Morton glances up at the sky and follows her into the darkness behind the door. In the blackness, not even a light shines. The infinite shade embraces their bodies, cutting and dismembering them, depriving them of limbs and hearts, and making the two only breaths.

In the silence of abandonment, resounds the echo of a falling coin.

And then a metallic sound. A buzz. A vivid red light glows on the edge of what now appears to be a dance floor.

A voice. A juke-box.

There he is, against the peeling wall. Multicolored neons delineate the room. Nivahl is in the middle, she looks around and looks for Morton. Her hair, in a dreamlike play of colours, seems so long that it raises the dust on the ground and her dress flutters around her body as she twists and turns until she sees him emerging from the dark sides of the ballroom.

"Suspicious love," Morton says in a low voice, then takes a puff from their pipette. The song echoes in their burning ears.

"Listen Nì, I'm going to wait for you outside." they blurt out, retracing their steps. But they don't have time to leave the dusty room.

"I'm inexplicably jealous of you, Morton," a voice decrees.

A figure appears next to the jukebox. Their leather jacket shines like a black diamond as they walk towards Nivahl to the beat of the music. Their body finally takes shape. A geometric jaw, a pronounced chin, a waxed tuft. And then, their eyes.

“You always have been, Elvis. And you know it." Morton replies, exhaling the smoke contemptuously.

Elvis does not look at them, he turns his eyes towards Nivahl and bows briefly.

“It is a privilege to see you again, my dear. After all these years! More than a millennium, I would say. The last time was on Lamentis, if I'm not mistaken? "

Nivahl seems to be holding back a smile. The shadow has now disappeared, and the room shines as if in flames with infernal lights.

“No, I'm not wrong. I was the king, "Elvis says, grabbing Nivahl's white hand." And you were my queen. "

The two start dancing, the jukebox music getting louder as well as the red light that outlines their bodies.

Morton leans against the door jamb, their arms crossed. It is not that they are jealous, mind you: they want to repeat it to themself. After all, both Morton and Nivahl love to hang out with others, whether alone or together. The problem is Elvis. The usual di-

"Everything's changed," Elvis says, stopping the music with a snap of his fingers.

Nivahl has stopped dancing, she looks for Morton in the shadows, but the red spotlights blind his eyes. Elvis takes off his jacket and throws it on the jukebox. His muscular arms stand out under the rolled-up sleeves of his white t-shirt.

“It's so weird,” he says hoarsely as he lights an old-world cigarette. “We once were happy and beautiful. We were dancing at the Atreus Rockabilly festival, remember?"

A slight smile lights up Elvis's face.

“Of course I remember. We had fucked in that Motel with the vibrating bed all night ” she recalls, laughing “And I had terrible back pain. The song was by Johnny Cash. The one we were dancing when it happened, I mean. "

Nivahl sits on a barstool at the side of the dance floor and Elvis fumbles with the glasses, in a clink that rings endlessly in their ears. Finally, he pours an amber liquid into three glasses.

“Here, old-world whiskey. A glass for you too, Morton. I know you're still there. "

Morton snorts, emerges from the shadows.

"Thank you" they reply dryly, sitting down next to Nivahl.

The three remain silent, holding the glasses to their noses. The intense, almost unbearable smell of century-old whiskey infuses itself into their nostrils.

"Now, tell me why you got here" Elvis snaps, savoring a first sip “I know very well that Morton is never particularly happy to see me. And you, Nivahl ... "

Nivahl glares at him.

"I what?"

“You everything. Ah… " Elvis laughs " Come on, I don't want to fight. Being cursed to live forever is frustrating enough, the people around me are aging and dying and those who, like you, could be by my side… have better things to do. Who wants to listen to the glorious old deeds of a star who had to fake suicide? Let's cut it short. What do you want from me? "

Morton swallows the entire contents of the glass. Shit, it burns.

Nivahl looks at them encouragingly.

“Okay. Okay. In my dreams, I dissolve into fine dust ... "