Eventually, however, the conversation turned to more dour subjects. 

“Have you heard about the new weapon tests from New Vakalos?” asked Johnson, somberly. “They say their new vaporizers are twice as powerful as the previous ones. An entire solar system gone, boom, like that.”

“That can’t be right, not an entire solar system,” said Evans. “That’s got to be propaganda. I bet the real bombs aren’t half as powerful as all that.”

“I don’t know,” edged a corporal that Chuck didn’t know all that well. “Remember when FREE tested their own vaporizers last winter? A whole double star system disappeared from the sky, I mean you can’t really hide something like that. The supernova lasted for like, two minutes but it was bright enough that my grandma back on Ariesta said you could see like in the middle of the day but it was like, midnight. Almost gave her a heart attack, she really thought the aliens were coming for her for a hot minute there.”

Everyone shifted in discomfort, and Chuck suddenly regretted eating quite so much banana ham Jell-o. 

Then someone snorted. “Your nana believes in aliens?”

“Hey, shut up, okay!”

The conversation continued on from there, but Chuck’s heart wasn’t in it anymore. He hated it when people talked about the war, because it was a big damned bummer. Chuck hated thinking about problems that he couldn’t solve, and what could a guy like him do about a cold war? A cold war that wasn’t even his own country’s fault, at that.

The Vaporizers, the bunkers, and even Chuck’s posting on Trout were all happening because the Free Radiant Empire of Elunar (also known as FREE) had somehow managed to piss off New Vakalos, and now the two giant superpowers were threatening each other with world-destroying weapons. What did that have to do with Castula? Chuck didn’t know, but somehow by virtue of being allied with FREE — and also being their closest neighbour, insofar as anything in space could be described as close — they were now also in danger of dying via rocket to the face. It was kind of unfair.

He’d been suffering bunker-related insomnia ever since he’d transferred to Trout, on top of his regular insomnia, all because of this cold war. To be constantly reminded that somewhere out there were people with the power to stop it that just weren’t taking any steps to do that was demoralizing to say the least. Did no one care about the quality of his sleep?

And they were doing new weapons testing, to boot. As if that was going to help matters. The weapon testing from FREE and New Vakalos was basically the thing that had kick-started the damned cold war in the first place. The two galactic superpowers had never liked each other much, but they had always been prevented from entering into an actual conflict by the technical challenges involved in large-scale space warfare. But then some years ago, they’d started doing some very unsubtle weapon tests on uninhabited solar systems where they knew that the other side could see, like a deadly radioactive game of I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I do bite my thumb, sir.

Some of these weapons… well, they weren’t called vaporizers for nothing. When fired at the centre of a solar system, they basically vaporized the sun and all of the rocky planets that had the misfortune of being close to it. Then, without the star to hold the system together, the remaining planets just sort of hurled themselves into empty space. Which is why bunkers like theirs were built around gaz giants and on asteroids very, very far away from their respective suns. If and when those suns got vaporized, then those planets with slow orbits would take the longest time to fuck off into wild space, and therefore the people living in these bunkers would have more time to figure out their next steps and / or evacuate.

Which was another problem in and of itself. Space travel was only possible via established hyperlanes, and a rocky planet that orbited its star in a matter of months would, without its gravitational centre, move out of reach of these lanes way too quickly to allow its inhabitants to evac. Especially considering that after the weapon was discharged and destroyed a sun, the entire space around it would be blasted with an incredible amount of solar radiation. Which meant that you had to wait at minimum a year, maybe two, before you could even think about evacuating from a space bunker. Unless you wanted to die from radiation poisoning, that is.

None of that seemed like such a fun prospect to Chuck, considering that such solar wind would probably also obliterate their force field and strip their little moonlet from any sign of civilization aside from the Bunker. Even Bee’s vacuum-proof communication tower would eat it rough.

If New Vakalos ever fired on their particular solar system, the desolation would be indescribable. They’d only have minutes to react and bring as many civilians into the bunker as possible. Then for a year or more, their outside doors would give directly out onto the vacuum of space, provided that their several layers of titanium, Kevlar, lead, polyethylene and who knew what else actually did their jobs and kept the air inside and the radiation outside. Not to mention what esoteric thing all of those solar particles would do to their gentle gaz giant.

As he crossed the tiny hall in between the two bedrooms, he happened to glance inside one of them. This one didn’t have the same dizzying wallpaper that he’d stared at before. In fact, all of the decorations here were more subtle and earth-toned, with large wooden panels on the walls and an arsenic green carpet. 

 The maroon curtains were half-closed, creating a small oasis of darkness. On this side of the house, the chatter and music coming from the living room sounded muffled, as if Chuck had stepped inside of a little bubble of silent stillness. And in the middle of that bubble, in all of it’s perfect cushy glory, was a bed.

This bed was about to change his life.

It was made with a beautiful tie dye patterned duvet and lush fur pillows, with the stark white hue of soft linens poking out like a shock of color from where the sheets had been folded back. Most importantly, said bed looked very, very, very large. 

“Is that a double?” Chuck whispered to himself, entranced. It looked so soft, so comfortable, so… sleep-able.

Chuck stood rooted to the spot for a few minutes, speechless. The gears in his head started turning slowly, then with more speed, until he had the impression that an old-fashioned light bulb had suddenly turned on in his brain. He turned right around and hurried back into the living room to find Bee.

“Huh, you peed fast,” she commented when he grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. 

“Huh? What, no, I forgot,” he said. “Anyway, listen, I had a great idea. Like, the best. You’re not gonna believe it, I think I just fixed all of our problems, Bee!” He spread his hands in a large gesture, bouncing on his feet and smiling with all of his teeth. 

“Okay…?” she said. She put down her empty crudité plate on a side table with the deliberate slowness of someone who expected to have to find a way to urgently exit the conversation in the next few minutes, which Chuck did his best not to notice. He wasn’t going to let her put a damper on his enthusiasm before he even had the time to tell her all about his brilliant, splendid, genius idea. 

“We have problems?”, she continued, which wasn’t the point, Bee, jeez.

“How did the Fourniers qualify for this house again?” he asked, punctuating his question by pointing at her with both hands. “By getting married, right? That’s it, no other requirements, just marriage?”

“… Yeeees? The answer is yes but I have a feeling I won’t like where this is going.”

Chuck flapped his hands at her, the excitement momentarily overcoming him.

“Then we should get married too!” he blurted. “Free house!”

Bee blinked at him, then picked her plate back up and turned to go back to the kitchen. Chuck grabbed her arm. 

“Bee! Bee, come on, it’s a great idea!”

He felt like maybe he hadn’t properly expressed the finer points of his incredibly clever plan in the initial rush of excitement brought about by thinking of the plan in the first place, so he tried to rectify it by talking very fast at her, repeating the salient points of why it was totally a really great idea, to wit:

Free house.

That’s it, that was the entire point of his fake marriage plan.

Bee, however, continued to be unimpressed with his proposed clever ruse of conning the Castula military establishment out of a sweet free house via fake best friend wedding. 

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.” She crossed her arms at him, conveying with her entire body language how much she was not going to give in to his pleading.

“But whyyyyy!” he whined. “We wouldn’t have to sleep in the bunker anymore!”

“That sounds like a benefit for you. What would I get out of it, huh?”

“Absolute control over your environment?” he suggested, deploying on her the most pitiful, pleading eyes in his arsenal. “I’d let you decide everything about the house Bee, I just want the one bed. I know how much you hate other people touching your things. You wouldn’t have to share your mattress with two other people every day. Think about it. You’d get to make your own dent in the pillow that’s just you. No more changing the sheets every day because you don’t want to sleep in someone else’s sweat. And the plates! The cutlery! You could have your own forks that only you get to touch. Forks for me and forks for you. Colour-coded.”

Her lips thinned, which meant that he had scored a point. But then she volleyed back with “We’re both gay, Chuck. Everyone knows it.”

He thought about that. “Johnson’s gay. If he married a girl though, I wouldn’t, like, question him about it. It would seem rude. I’m pretty sure the brass would give us the same consideration, right? Like, seems like if they do ask then it’s a HR problem, you know?”

She gave a half-shrug, as if she conceded the point but wasn’t happy about it. 

“Your mom would stop calling you every week to ask if you have a date and when you’re getting married,” he said, thinking for some reason that it would be a definitive argument in his favour. 

But then her eyes narrowed and he realized that he’d made a mistake. Yikes. He should have remembered that her mother was a touchy subject. He grimaced and braced himself for her reaction, but only got a long, tense silence. 

Finally, she flexed her jaw and took a deep breath. “No. Forget it, Chuck,” she said. “This is a ridiculous idea. I will not marry you for a sweet free house.”