Trazin Spaceport, Tau Ceti Gamma. At this busy port of call along the Tralfamadorian trade lane, a growing limb of human influence in the Canopus Sector, the teeming masses hustle and bustle. And dead center of the port's swelling Economic Zone is Sirius's Pub. There, famed ex-flier Zebulon Sirius and his apprentices have made a tradition of mixing the finest human cocktails for spacers, fortune seekers and aimless nomads alike.

Sirius also makes the dubious claim of serving "the last cherry pie in the universe." Meaning the last along the shipping lane, the last before reaching non-human space devoid of our delicacies. But locals will tell you, the pie's only worth it during the first few weeks of the polar summer, when the port city's grove of cherry trees fruit naturally.

Amber Keogh is minding her business, pulling on a lifelike papery cigarette that in fact contains a vaporizer. Yesterday, she quit her job running HVAC for the port terminal. Tonight she's feeling a bit lonely and wondering what the fates will bring. As if in answer, Zeb calls her name.

She meets his eyes and casually reaches out as the levitating tumbler of midori sour glides down the bar, smacks into the palm of her right hand, ricochets, and nearly sails off the edge before she can recover it. She's off her game. She straightens up and purses her lips.

Zeb nods in the general direction of the bar's entrance. She can hardly believe it. There, silhouetted by the golden evening sun and giving a little wave, is a vision of a woman. She has long brown braided hair, cute freckles on light brown skin. In her faux suede captain's jacket she looks devastatingly dapper. And here she is, favoring Amber with a smile that could teach stars to shine.

She resists the urge to giggle like a dorkus as the newfound center of her attention steps closer. Instead she quickly smooths her dress and adjusts her tits. Tall, lanky Amber at her barstool and the spacing woman on her feet are just about at eye level.

"Hello, angel," says the spacer.

Amber's eyes go wide for a moment before she can collect herself. Rosy pink spreads in her cheeks. A man could never get away with such absurd flattery, but coming from this woman, it lands. Perhaps it’s because there is something uncannily familiar about her, something unnameable.

"Hi. And how many have you had this evening?"

"One, but that’s worth about three here," the woman says with a sheepish smile. "I'm Carina."

"Amber. Please, sit. Let me return the favor—what are you drinking tonight?"

"Oh, ah, it's one of those antique recipes Zeb loves. Something called a Harvey Wallbanger."

Amber shakes her head. Old Earth bartending conventions were absolutely preposterous. Still, she shouts over the din of the bar to Zeb. Soon the women are ensconced each with her froofy drink of choice; the Sour is a radioactive apple green, the Wallbanger as clouded and yellow as the Venutian sky.

Carina Brown is a seasoned courier, and has been just about everywhere between here and homeworld. She and Amber pick each other's brains about any- and everything, from Helion Union trade policies (awful) to music (Carina loves pre-space oldies, whereas Amber listens only to Spacethump), to dealing with racists and misogynists (careful application of a fist usually works), to the plan to augment Trazin's culinary scene with stasis-packed produce (promising, but not yet trusted). They try Zeb's new pumpkin pie, with his assurance that it is in fact in season. It's quite tasty.

Then they're careening off across the Economic Zone, stopping twice at gacha machines, ultimately finding themselves among the carnival games. Carina's a crackshot with the skill cranes, but it is Amber who annihilates the High Striker game with one swing of the mallet.

Her prize? A giant stuffed tralf-bear, cute as hell despite the seven creepy eyes.

“I jumped a shuttle off Ohio at 16 so I could get care,” she says as they schlep their winnings up the road towards the Res Zone, orienting themselves by Gamma’s tiny moon on the western horizon. “The feminizers reduce muscle mass a bit”—nodding at her raised left biceps—“but they didn’t do nothing about the length of this lever arm.”

Carina thinks about this for a moment. “Well,” she finally says, “I’m glad you made it off that backwater planetoid, and I'm glad I met you.”

“Me, too. Fuckin Ohio.”

On a whim from Carina, Claire de Lune begins to play off her little omnicomm, spilling softly from little roadside speakers that have nothing better to do at 1am than take requests. The women look at each other and smile; here is a genre on which they agree.

Upstairs in her modest room, Amber is breathless and flushed as Carina fondles her tits with enthusiasm. But she's still too stuck in her own head when it comes time to lose the panties and accept pleasure.

“Just so you know, hon—”

“I know.”

“—on girls who got modded young, with the implant, it’s totally seamless. Compared to that, plastic surgery is a hatchet job for twice the price.”

"Sweetie," says Carina as she gently grasps Amber’s chin, "have you ever bedded a Tralfamadorian? Men, women, they've all got two dicks! I mean technically one branch is a dick, and one is an ovipositor. I have a rubber one I could use to demonstrate.”

She trails a finger slowly down Amber’s lithe little belly as she continues:

“My point is… space is mind-bogglingly big, and filled with beings and bodies we can scarcely fathom. What’s a little designer pussy between gal pals? I want to touch it.”

Soothed and delighted by the kisses that follow the finger down her abdomen, Amber lets her head fall back. And notices a familiar song is playing. Some farce about a man cheating on his wife over piña coladas.

“And I have a tendency to get what I want, princess—” Having said this, Carina stops. Her eyes open wider and her mouth falls open mid sentence, as though she’s realized something terribly important.

Static. Pshhhhhhhhhhht.

And so on. Every year, right in front of the bar, someone meets someone. Not necessarily sex. Not necessarily the love of a lifetime. But something ineffible, something compelling.

One year it is an admiral meeting a merchant. The next, a pilot meeting the daughter of the director of the port. The next, it's two pilots. Not altogether surprising given the clientele.

A dockworker and a naval technician. A lounge singer and an air traffic controller. A smuggler and a spaceliner stewardess.

Static. Pshhhhhhhhhhht.