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.

“PACNA already owns everything, I don’t think it would want your diamonds. I don’t think it’s possible to just sell things and make money that way?”

Amethyst gives her a look of confusion. “... I think maybe we mean different things by ‘money’,” she finally concludes. “And probably also by ‘own’. To be clear, I believe that everyone has a right to leave. I am willing to provide material goods, services, or labor so that someone choosing to leave does not cause undue harm to your existing society. But if PACNA won’t take anything I offer at a fair price … then I will facilitate people exercising their right to leave with force. If you tell me right now that you want to leave, we can turn around and walk out the airlock and figure out what to tell PACNA about it later.”

She wants to launch into a lecture on where the concept of ownership comes from, and the idea of states deriving authority from the consent of the governed, but Cat looks so tired. She doesn’t think it would land well.

Amethyst acts like the most bedrock certainties of her life are just polite fictions that you can forget about if you aren’t happy with them. As if you could one day just “wake up” from your own life, your debts dissolved into dream because you don’t feel like scrip is a game you want to play. 

Maybe for Amethyst that really is how it works. She doesn’t even have a bank account yet she seems fine. 

But what was the point of suffering for years if it can all be brushed aside on a whim? Maybe that’s the most cruel part of the suffering, that it’s ultimately pointless. She certainly can’t see any point to what she’s been doing -- PACNA’s capable of handling traffic on it’s own, without her, after all. It’s only the threat of not having food or a dorm that’s kept her doing her job, because however bad her situation is now it can always get worse. It feels painful to even contemplate. If she takes one more step, if she says she wants to leave, then she will be walking past the end of her own story into something unknown. 

And maybe it’s reckless, to just throw her entire existence away like this, but... she’s sort of an emissary for humanity, right? And she decided when Amethyst healed her that she would roll with this wherever it led. Whatever she does reflects on humanity too, doesn’t it? 

From that perspective, it would be... profane to turn away from whatever ends up happening down this path to go hide in her dorm in the dark. A humanity like that wouldn’t even be worth Amethyst’s attention.   

“You know what, I totally do want to leave!” 

Just as she says it, she feels like a psychic weight has been removed. The giddiness overtakes the exhaustion again and she laughs.

But she did pay rather a lot to go topside, and it is rather beautiful, and that too is something Amethyst should see, so she can understand that PACNA can make beautiful things, instead of just dark tunnels, when it wants to. It’s not all bad. 

“I don’t even care where we go. If you say you can do it, then let’s just do it!”

“But I still want to show you topside. I think I wouldn’t be being a good ambassador if all you got to see were a bunch of dark tunnels. So let’s go right after.” 

Amethyst smiles at her. “Sounds like a plan,” she agrees.

The elevator doors open onto a sidewalk made of white marble. After they step out, the elevator retracts back into the ground and disappears behind a golden aperture.

Before them is a 35 lane superhighway, surfaced with a gleaming white, marble-like material and red painted lane markers. It’s rush hour; a single car is visible on the highway. 

The air is crisp, with not a cloud in sight.  Around the highway is a slick, polished white wall 5 meters high, and beyond that wall is a vast forest with 50 meter tall trees, which together form an interlinked canopy shading the earth below. Ten meters down the sidewalk is an elaborate fountain with benches. The sidewalk ends after another 10 meters, running straight into the highway wall. 

In the central spin axis of Canopy, there’s a string of islands, mostly floating on their own with artificial gravity both keeping them in place and generating gravity for the islands themselves.

Stretching up the horizon, the highway splits and twists to reach hundreds of gleaming white and gold palatial houses each with an empty swimming pool.

The highway appears to abruptly end about three miles towards the minor axis. Past the highway is a series of small roads that grid through several tall buildings with signs advertising hotels and entertainment. Further towards the center is a massive golden temple playing music over loudspeakers. 

Amethyst can see around 5 people in total among the buildings, counting the person driving the car. 

She takes Amethyst’s hand and leads her down the highway towards a roadside fountain with benches.

“What do you think?”

It is beautiful, with its wide-open terrain. She has always loved trees. It is also, for someone who has seen what free, happy humans can make, unutterably sad.

She has seen the rings of Saturn lit up with a lightshow to celebrate the launch of a new spaceship built by hand. She has seen the rolling hills of a green planet, the core made of diamond for the sole purpose of ensuring that there is more surface area for people to share. She has looked out her apartment window, and seen a million people on the surface of the moon — not working, not celebrating, but merely living, their lives a testament to what it looks like to build a good life for everyone, one step at a time.

And so when she looks at the interior spaces of DeBeer’s station, she sees the things that aren’t there. The places where lightwells to the lower decks aren’t. The terraces not full of ordinary people enjoying their time in the sun. The buildings which don’t incorporate any of the clever tricks for letting more people enjoy the surface which inventive people discover when anyone can make space station architecture their hobby.

She looks at the empty highways winding through the land, going nowhere, and the empty mansions, housing no one. And she looks at Cat — excited to show her something amazing. She had come here once before, and probably it was the best day of her life, to see these stone benches where no one sits.

And yes, the landscape is beautiful. It is the dream of what a good world could look like. Not a dream she shares, but a dream nonetheless. A beautiful thing gilded in gold so that people can forge knives from the hope of seeing it again, and bury those knives in their own guts, to distract them from the pain of its absence.

“I’m glad you showed me this,” she tells her.