“Alright. See you momentarily!” Amethyst replies. When Cat stops looking at the video feed, she switches her armor out for slightly more comfy date-attire: a copy of her normal silvery dress embroidered with Turing machines, with a light purple cardigan overtop that matches the color of the fixity crystal that hovers over her shoulder (and the ones hidden inside her lungs, and in the soles of her shoes — this is still an unknown area).

She keeps her acceleration relatively low, to avoid spooking any of the other ships in the system, and glides smoothly into the shuttle port, dress shoes touching neatly down as she sheds the last of her velocity.

She cycles the airlock in the extremeley-rarely-used bay 5 and lets Amethyst in. There’s no one else around. 

“Woah, you are a LOT taller than you looked on the video. I love your dress. I think I’d like to show you around the station. And maybe take off this headset. Can we really just chat without worrying about the traffic?”

Amethyst smiles at the complement of her dress. “Thank you! I put a lot of work into it,” she remarks. “And I think so? I’m still somewhat new to these powers. But you said there was nothing incoming. If it makes you feel better, I can keep an eye on all the ship traffic and see if anything comes up.”

The readings her forb is showing her about the artificial gravity of the station are fascinating. She wants to figure out how it interacts with her own pet theory of quantum gravity, but Cat deserves her full attention. Luckily, she doesn’t have to choose.

She forks again, the two of her stepping smoothly out of the spot where she stood a moment ago. One of her winks at Cat and then steps away, leaning against the side of the shuttleport and pulling up a window full of charts. The other of her says “I should mention — I can have several bodies. We’re all the same person, our minds synchronized in real time. But I wanted to take a look at how the artificial gravity works, without snubbing you. There’s another of me out in orbit who can watch the ships.”

She feels a kind of safety that she’s never actually felt in her life, when she sees Amethyst casually copy herself to study the AG field. It’s like floating on a warm sea. Whatever happens, this moment of meeting a beautiful girl excited to learn about her world has got to be worth it. The floaty feelings war with a manic, sleep-deprived excitement to show Amethyst everything.

“I’m glad to see that despite how advanced you look, there’s still some surprises I can show you! No one here can just copy themselves like that. Let’s go to the park section, its beautiful.”

...She’s suddenly aware of the VR set digging into her ears. She feels more in-tune with her body, like her subconscious has let her finally feel the aches she’s been accumulating for the last few months. She takes the VR headset off and feels it peel some skin away with it -- blisters where the joint of the plastic has been rubbing the wrong way for months.

“But first, let me drop off this stupid headset in my room.”

“Do you want me to heal that?” she asks, gesturing to the wounds on Cat’s temples. She looks concerned, that Cat would be hurt in this way.

Should she let Amethyst heal her? She’s an alien, right, can she really know how to heal an injury after interacting with her for only a few minutes? No, she already made her choice to just roll with this. If the alien space princess wants to heal her bruise, then that’s an experience she’d like to have. 

“...yeah, please heal me; I’d like to see what it feels like.”

Amethyst runs her fingers along Cat’s temples, sterilizing the wounds, cloning healthy skin over them, and then ensuring that the healthy skin bonds with the underlying tissue by creating extra intercellular medium. She suppresses the pain signals and smooths away the body’s normal inflammatory response, leaving a trailing sensation of coolness following the path of her fingertips.

“The new skin might be a little tender for a while,” she warns. She summons a floating mirror, angled so that Cat can see the healed skin. “Also, you need to eat more. Would you like a smoothie?” she offers, voice tinged with concern. “It’s fine if you don’t — I don’t want to be overbearing. But your body would heal better with more to work with.”

Her skin looks perfectly healed -- there’s no marks to set it apart. She finds herself wishing it left a mark so she could commemorate the experience. 

“I will absolutely drink your smoothie.”

She takes Amethyst’s arm in hers and walks out of the shuttle bay, down the well-lit hallway, towards the pitch blackness of the tunnel leading to her dorm.

The tunnel is lit by small, dim, red structured light emitters spaced 1m apart on the walls. It's entrance beckons. 

Amethyst hands her a smoothie cup with a thick straw. It is cool to the touch, and smells pleasantly of raspberries. It tastes sweet, and is made surprisingly filling by the extra amino acids Amethyst put in it. It is tailored to contain more of the vitamins that Cat is low in, as well, sparking an intense craving after the first few sips.

Amethyst peers down the hallway. She has dynamic light-adaptive vision, but she’s pretty sure that Cat doesn’t. And even with fancy optics, this corridor is pretty dark, presented to her in shades of grey.

“Would you like a light? Why is the corridor so dark?” she asks.

“It’s meant to be navigated with VR, but I don’t want to wear it anymore. I don't really need it anyway.”

Her life, before today, was in fact entirely spent going from work to dorm and back, and the last several days not even that. Sometimes she doesn’t bother with the VR, preferring to put the accursed device on once she’s actually at work. She’s almost never actually run into anyone in the tunnels: the work shifts are scheduled to avoid as much human interaction as possible. She’s also never seen the tunnels illuminated before. She finds herself curious, both to see what the tunnels look like lit-up, and to see just how Amethyst will make light -- if it’s half as impressive as her dress it ought to be something to see.

“I’d be delighted for you to light the place up.”

Amethyst sets the fixity crystal hovering over her shoulder to release a gently shifting light that illuminates the corridor around them, and sets off momentary sparkles across her dress and through her hair.

The light seems, for lack of a better word, healthier than the lights she’s used to, even the simulated daylight topside. She’s appropriately dazzled. 

With everything illuminated, it’s clear how dirty the walls of the tunnel are. And on the walls of the tunnel are written messages on top of messages: 

“HOW WILL DIE TOMORROW”

“PACNA SUCKS ASS”

“ANYTHING YOU WANT FOR SCRIP, rm. 10456-b”

“I WISH THE AFFINI WOULD HURRY UP AND KILL US ALL.”

“Maybe it’s actually better not to bother with the light.”

“I can just blank out the messages?” she offers, blocking them out with some tasteful paintings. She snaps some pictures of the messages to go through later.

...her VR set could have been programed to display art on these walls all along, instead of flashing ads, couldn’t it?

They walk down the hall, 20 steps, left turn, 10 steps, right turn, and they’re at Cat’s dorm room door. She quickly opens it and tosses her headset on the bed.

“Right, let’s go topside. It’s much prettier and there’s so much to talk about!”

“Sure, I’d love to see and hear more,” she agrees. The messages on the walls of the corridor are pretty disturbing, but she’s not sure if it would be polite to press Cat about them right after she asked for them to be covered up. “What do you think are the most important things for me to know?” she asks instead, which will hopefully cover at least some of the horrible circumstances implied by the wall messages.

“Everything here, the Can, the planet, all the ships except I guess the Cosmic Navy ones, is the property of PACNA.”

“It’s a resort world -- PACNA’s whole thing is making places for the super rich to fuck around. Here, you’re either working for the resort and live here:”, she gestures to the (currently) art covered walls, “or you’re an elite -- that’s the people who run the corporations.”

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to just build a hospital and help people. People can’t just.... do that.”

They pass through an archway. Cat’s right hand beeps twice. There’s a sharp right and left turn ahead, leading to a much brighter lit section of hallway leading to an elevator.

Amethyst purses her lips. “That is … concerning,” she remarks. “My society is structured around the idea that people have at least one inalienable right — the right to leave and start over somewhere else. And while I intend to follow most local laws, I also intend to import that principle.”

“What do you think would happen if I build a hospital outside PACNA’s jurisdiction, and then gave people the ability to travel there?” she asks. “Don’t worry about the details of how, I’m just trying to figure out what the possible solution space for collaboration looks like.” 

“What, just leave?!” It’s like if Amethyst had said that her culture was based around people being able to grow a separate head whenever they want. Which, to be fair, Amethyst could probably actually do. “Where would I even go? And besides, I could never afford the Renunciation Fee to leave the Can -- it’s 5 years of income!”  

“Just leaving the tunnels costs me a week of work for each of us. I’ve only done it once before.” She pushes the button to call the elevator with pride.

Fuck. And that, right there, is an example of why lowering the barriers to people leaving is so important. Without that, you get so much possible abuse, because it’s better than the cost of leaving.

“How is currency valued? How much would it cost for me to pay everyone’s renunciation fees?” she asks. She does a bit of sleight of hand and opens her fist to reveal a diamond. “I can afford to sell a lot, for the sake of making everyone free without needing to destroy the good parts of your society.”

She feels a wave of exhaustion hit her as they step into the elevator. How can she possibly explain to the beautiful alien princess that it’s simply not possible to do the things she’s thinking about? PACNA owns EVERYTHING; it doesn’t have to buy her diamonds; it likes things the way they are. The only reality is one where you just work forever until you die, trying to pay back a debt you can never repay, buying everything you need to live on credit, never even checking your bank account because it only ever gets worse and even that costs money too.

But Amethyst is from a different reality, so maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Could Amethyst pay for her to leave? Could she... somehow pay off her debt entirely? The thought of... just leaving the Can, fair and square, seems amazing, but she doubts that even someone like Amethyst could do it.

She slumps against the wall. The elevator begins to ascend topside.

“Woah, there!” Amethyst exclaims, putting her arm around Cat to steady her.