It took Rin so much energy to send a message to Andrade about not wanting to meet again. He phrased it carefully, rewritten it twice, made sure it didn’t sound hostile so as to not cause extra violent retaliation. He felt good for exactly twenty two minutes after sending it. And then, Andrade replied: “What DO you want to do then?”

Well, fuck.

So instead of going to bed, he spent over an hour browsing passenger boards with all the information about available services on Hopestar. In the year he was the Third Pilot, Rin didn’t really explore much. The library was more than enough. If he wanted to go out with Devon, they would usually go to a media theatre. Turns out, passengers needed more than that. When one lived on a spaceship, one got used to not being constantly hooked up to the outnet. When it was a couple-of-weeks inconvenience, however, many passengers would want more distraction than seemed reasonable.

Hopestar had 4 specialised media theatres, 2 restaurants in addition to basic cafeterias, a spa, an interactive entertainment hub, a gym, a sports arena for team games and dancing, 3 differently themed bars, a VR/AR room, and a casino (it wasn’t called that on the public boards because in SOI casinos could only be run by government companies. It operated only in subspace because of a loophole – subspace was not SOI territory). In addition to that, Hopestar offered cloud services, including a couple of dozen gaming servers, media streaming collection, and a limited snapshot of three general knowledge databases, updated each time the ship was back in outnet range. Finally, all of these places and servers constantly had events, watchalongs, contests, and performances, organised and run by an army of stewards, who made up 70% of the crew.

At first, Rin’s head almost spun from the amount of possibilities. But the longer he looked at them, the more he realised he couldn’t go anywhere else. Whatever the reason, the stewards at the casino kept silent about seeing Rin and Andrade together, he was sure of it. Mikey would not have been able to stay silent about this if he knew. But it’s been over a week – and nothing.

Yet, he really, really, didn’t want to play cards. Txint sounded like a perfectly fine game but not against Andrade who was weirdly competitive about it.

Luckily, the casino had more than one type of a table available. 

There were cards, dice, and coin flip games that humans played since the dawn of civilization. Txint itself evolved from an old regional game from the 15th century, while something like poker had whole organisations dedicated to keeping its rules unchanged for over a millenia. (Yes, Rin read this in a book he found after his first visit to the casino.) But there were also constant attempts to invent something new, be it a ruleset, a playing instrument, or the very way in which the game was played.

InterCards was made by a company of the same name that wanted to ‘reinvent the game-of-chance experience’, whatever that meant. It was a booth at the far end of the Hopestar casino with seats for six; every surface inside, including the table and the walls, could be used as a screen. There was a deck of cards and a box of dice, and their surfaces would change depending on the game chosen and the current gaming situation. It was both exciting and disorienting.

It took them almost half an hour to figure out the basic rules for something called ‘Falange’ and Rin was honestly enjoying it. This put him and Andrade into the same boat; they both didn’t know the game, they both were bad at it, and it meant there were no tricks the Chief Pilot could pull out of his sleeve (literally, the man could hide cards in the sleeve like some kind of magician).

As Andrade had to take another card from the pile, he complained: “I just don’t get it. What’s even the point?”

Rin suppressed a sigh. Focused Andrade was silent, and Rin preferred him this way. “We need to build a row of cards before the cards in this area reach point maximum.”

“Yes, but what’s the point? Nobody wins.”

“We win if we can do it. Or we lose.” Rin pursed his lips and looked up at the Chief Pilot sitting opposite of him. “Not everything has to be competitive. Cooperative games are also nice.”

“Yeah. And boring.” Andrade dropped his hand of cards and they immediately turned dark, the system counting them as discarded. A chime sounded, indicating Game Over state, and the lights dimmed. “There has to be something better.” He pulled up his sleeve and started scrolling through the booth database on his forearm.

Rin couldn’t help but stare. He had never seen such an interface. It didn’t look like a screen implanted into the arm; instead, the light came from the skin itself, forming words and UI elements in thin lines. There was no scarring, no sign of how this implantation was done. It had to be something much more advanced than what was currently available on the market.

Andrade must have noticed that, because he stopped scrolling and let out a chuckle. “It’s not as useful as it is cool looking.”

Rin blushed and looked up. There was that strange smile on Andrade’s face that was hard to decipher. At least, he looked open to conversation. “Is this… military tech then?”

“Yeah. It can interface with boards and stuff but it isn’t its main purpose. It is an external access point for my brain implant.”

The surprise made Rin forget how to breathe for a moment. His eyes moved to Andrade’s forehead but once again there were no signs of scars, old or new. “But you don’t…”

Andrade smirked and raised both hands to part his hair on the right side. “I actually have a ridge here, running all around the scalp. But it’s old. And they know how to do their job in the army.” He looked at his reflection on the table and brushed the hair back. “But also implants don’t need to leave scars. You just have to pay extra for that. I have more stuff under my skin than visible to the eye.”

Without explaining, he turned his right forearm and made a complicated gesture with his left hand over it. Where the fingers touched the skin, it lit up, the glow grew brighter, until an activation message appeared. The rectangle of the interface filled with graphs and lists of data, and Rin couldn’t suppress a gasp. The light spread from the forearm, lighting up strips across Andrade’s visible skin. A thick strip ran the length of each arm, disappearing under the shirt, but still glowing through the thin fabric, then dove out to line the collarbones and go up the neck to the sides of the jaw and cheeks. Two glowing circles appeared on each temple, and a halo of light circled the scalp under the hair. Judging by the glow under the shirt, the strips followed the sides of the body down to the hips and possibly legs.

As the initialisation concluded, the white light changed to a fluid mix of green and yellow with a short patch of red near the left wrist. Almost in a daze, Rin reached for the red line. “Is that…?” And jerked back immediately. What the hell was he doing?!

“It’s okay, you can touch it.” Andrade murmured in an uncharacteristically soft voice. He was watching Rin with interest, as if he wasn’t the one glowing. “These are just lights, they won’t hurt you.” The walls and the table reflected the strips again and again, creating a kaleidoscope of glowing bars inside the booth. 

An unpleasant sucking sensation spread under Rin’s jawbone and he swallowed. Before he had time to think too hard about it, he reached out and trailed the red line with his index and middle fingers. They felt the same under the touch as the skin around. “You broke your arm last year, right?”

“Yeah. It’s healed but must have displaced the nanoweave. And nobody here has means to adjust it or reset the system.”

Rin stopped his fingers near the base of the thumb when he noticed goosebumps on Andrade’s skin. He pulled away and tucked his hands under his armpits. He knew he was blushing, and blushing hard. He hated it. He didn’t want Andrade to see it and get ideas. He didn’t want his own brain to get ideas either.

“Can’t you reset it from your implant?” Rin finally asked, his voice hoarse. He didn’t look up so as not to see Andrade’s reaction.

“No, it’s deactivated.” The Chief Pilot replied after a pause. His tone changed, so Rin dared to glance at his face. The smile turned into a frown, but not angry. This was a serious topic but not out of limits. Yet.

“Why?”

“Because it’s military tech, and they own it. When I got discharged, I had to return all the equipment. The brain implant had to be shut down.”

“They didn’t extract it?”

Andrade snorted. “Fucking hell, what do you think the implants are? It’s not a chip between your skull and your grey matter, it’s weaved through several parts of the brain. Extracting all the nanoweave would most definitely kill me.” He paused and sneered. “It would probably kill me if reactivated, too.”

Rin frowned. “Kill you? Is that part of the design or…?”

“How many people with brain implants do you know?” Andrade locked his eyes with him. 

“Uhm… just you?”

“And why do you think there are so few of us?”

Rin didn’t have an answer. He never thought about that. A large number of people had implants for controlling hormone levels, like insulin, or injecting medications. You could also implant data storage nodes and use them with wearable interfaces, but it wasn’t actually enhancing any biological capabilities. Brain implants were things from movies and futuristic books, but not something you saw in daily life. Honestly, he just assumed they were expensive.

Andrade spread his fingers on the table and turned his arms around, revealing a second set of stripes on the other side. “Despite how hard humanity tries to create the next evolutionary step of Homo Sapiens, we are not there yet. Companies create new tech and the military happily buys all of it, providing wonderful test data in return. And this data says that these implants are piles of buggy shit that has to be patched constantly to prevent owners from frying their brains while interfacing with other tech. 

“When you are a soldier, you are constantly connected to the local network. And they can deploy a patch at any time. If you are lucky, you’ll get a short seizure and a headache for the rest of the day. If not, you’ll hit your head on something or shit yourself or bleed all over your uniform from your nose and get a punishment from the sergeant for being a weak mess.

“But without these patches, you’ll eventually develop a tick or your limbs will twitch at the worst of times, and you will start losing minutes of your life because your brain decides to mess with your nervous system. And then you do something unexpected during flying exercises, and the implant just kills a good chunk of your brain. And you are lucky if you die.”

Rin felt sick. He stared at the strips of light and didn’t find them beautiful anymore. This wasn’t fantasy tech. This was experimentation on living humans.

After Andrade decided the pause was dramatic enough, he added in an even tone: “My last patch was almost 16 years ago.”

Rin swallowed. “Could you have refused the implantation?”

“Sure. And they would have said ‘fuck off, we don’t need you in the military. Good luck paying for school that would let you enrol in the Flight Academy.’” Andrade sneered. “Not everyone is from Earth.”

Rin shook his head. “This is so horrible. I’m sorry.”

Andrade shifted. His frown turned into a scowl, his eyes narrowed; he was back to being the spiteful and petty First Pilot. He gestured above the interface again and turned off the lights. It was now too dark in the booth without them. 

“I don’t need your pity, Richard.” He spat out.

“I wasn’t-” Rin sighed, exhausted. Whatever moment they were having, it was gone. The guilt still bubbled in his stomach.

“I’m done playing for today.” Andrade pushed the cards into their storage slot and got up. The lighting in the booth changed as it switched into stand-by mode.

Following an impulse, Rin straightened and mumbled. “We could play txint next time?” He felt guilty. He wanted to apologise. And this was the only thing he could think of.

Andrade paused, his frown replaced with surprise. Then he slowly smirked again and murmured. “Well, since you offered, I can’t say ‘no’.”