A story I wrote like an hour ago. Enjoy.
John looked up and saw Ellen swaying toward him through the smoke-filled twilight. She was clad in lavender, crowned with a wide-brimmed hat with a white feather in the band; her dress was one of those shapeless flapper affairs. He hated the things, they never did justice to a woman’s figure, but Ellen had probably worn it for the exact purpose of teasing him, he thought, seeing the smirk on her face as she came closer, augmented by the dark lipstick and thick eye makeup she wore.
“Right on time,” he said. “Five minutes more and you would have missed the opening set.” Just as he finished, the band jumped into play, the drum set pounding and the trumpets wailing. Ellen slid into the booth next to him as everyone in the small, dark club turned their attention to the stage.
“As if you wouldn’t have held it for me,” she scoffed; but then she sidled up to him and took his arm, pulled off her hat and put it down on the seat beside her, and leaned in to kiss him on the side of his neck. He smiled, wondering how much of her makeup he was wearing now. “But I know you’re even more old-fashioned than I am, in some ways,” she continued. “Not willing to disrupt the continuity of the simulation even that much.”
“We both work too hard and too long not to deserve an escape once in a while,” he said softly. His eyes were on the stage. Louis Armstrong was lowering his trumpet, stepping up to the mic. John closed his eyes as the first growling words of **A Kiss To Build A Dream On** rolled across the room. God he loved that song.
“Song’s wrong for the era, Mister Escapist,” Ellen teased, breaking his concentration.
“I know,” he replied mildly. “It’s my favorite.” She didn’t reply, just snuggled closer and put her head on his shoulder.
“You’ve got a mission soon,” she said, after a minute of quiet listening.
“Yeah. Mars this time. Haven’t been this far down-system in quite a while.”
“I was surprised to find you anywhere inside Circum-Jove.”
“If it didn’t mean working, I’d rather be down here more often. Closer to you.”
“That’s sweet. We haven’t had an actual face-to-face in…God, what? A century?”
“No, there was that one time, back in Eighty-Five…”
“That can’t count. We were…working, then.”
John remembered it too well. **Falling toward criss-crossed brown scars in a dirty sheet of ice, the lights of a city growing brighter and closer, flares of missile launches and the creeping awareness in his head of the incoming warheads, Ellen’s thrusters blazing as she made evasive maneuvers, the warmth moving up his arm telling him that the coil-gun’s capacitor was charged. He took aim...**
Ellen sighed. “How much time do you have?”
“Not much. I can stay for another five minutes. I just wanted to see you for a little while, before I have to…”
“I know how it is. I’m sorry.”
John put his arm around her. “I wonder if they’ll ever let us retire.” She buried her face in his chest.
“I’ll wait as long as it takes,” she said, her words slightly muffled in his suit jacket. He pulled her away from him, put his hand under her chin, lifted her face up so he could look in her eyes. Up on the stage, Satchmo brought it home.
**“Give me yo chops fo’ juss a moment,
and my imagination will make that moment live;
give me what you alone can give:
a kiss to build a dream on!”**
“I’ll call you as soon as I’m done,” he promised her. Then they kissed. He could feel her fading away; she would be compressed back into the data-pack she’d arrived in, and his communications gear would transmit her in a data-squirt to the corporate network as soon as he could afford to break radio silence. Eventually she would reach the “real” Ellen, as she streaked through the space between worlds, a humanoid death machine with the mind of a gentle, jazz-loving old lady trapped inside. And the digital copy of her personality would merge with her again, its memories becoming hers; and when she got a chance between missions, she’d unpack his own copy of himself that he’d send along, to continue the bizarre form of correspondence they’d kept up for over two hundred years.
It was what kept them sane.
He opened his eyes, and she was gone. The band was still playing, Satchmo wailing on the trumpet. This was John’s favorite place to go, when he had the time. He wished he could stay here forever. Or better yet, be there for real. It was so long since he’d had a body, or even seen a real human face.
He got up and walked out of the room, and then he was back to the only reality he could ever touch, the dark freeze of space swathing his armored frame, the stars casting their long, cold beams around him, and the great red planet’s surface stretching far beneath him. He was just over the night-line, distant Sol burning just above the horizon in front of him. He glanced at the StarCon Corporation’s mission briefing again, dispassionately.
**Inspector 4032KA-Alpha, there is a Human Resources situation in Equator City on Mars which needs immediate managerial response. Several thousand StarCon employees, while strongly voicing concerns over pay and working hours, have circumvented normal Union Representative channels and have begun an unauthorized strike. They have been amply warned of the consequences of such unauthorized action and have responded in a disrespectful manner unacceptable for employees of the StarCon Corporation. They are unarmed but nevertheless pose a significant threat to StarCon operations on Mars due to disruption of logistics and of corporate profit margins. You are authorized to use deadly force in the resolution of this situation. Initial casualties of up to 25% are acceptable, but the optimal outcome is the return to duties of as many employees as possible, with monetary and/or physical punitive measures to be considered by local management after the crisis is contained. Given your record, we are confident you can end the strike cleanly, decisively, and thriftily. Posted pay as per usual; and we are required by StarCon Corporate By-Law 34-B.2 to remind you that failure in your duties as Inspector will result in immediate termination with no possibility of review. Good luck.**
Below him, the morning sun was glimmering on the sides of metal domes and towers in Equator City as the metropolis emerged from the Martian night. It looked peaceful, prosperous, like some kind of Utopia from a hopeful vision of the future.
John shrugged his shoulders, felt the missile pods next to his head slide open, focused his targeting system on apartments, schools, parks.
“I don’t like my job any more than you folks down there do,” he said helplessly, and fired.