Gen’s unit complex is low and small compared to the scrapers encroaching on every side. It sits behind a market, the neon facades of fruits and veggies dancing across the front of the unit’s worn brick. The parking lot is full. Gen’s unit is in the opposite direction I’m supposed to be headed. Dom lives in Caz, an outskirt town southeast of ‘Cuse, where the lake is swimmable—unlike the one in ‘Cuse. Mercury is a bitch of an element to get rid of, it turns out. They’ve churned the lake so many times, and the damn poison won’t stay buried. The city claims that eating one fish out of the lake per year is safe.

  Yeah, that’s trustworthy.

  I sigh and lean against the orange brick that houses Gen’s unit. Dom and I are going to the Amish lands tonight, but I left early to do this. All I want to do is leave.

  Get it together. Don’t back out. I chew on my lip and rock in place.

  Az blinks a steady hot pink in the crook of my arm. It’s reassuring.

  A masc presenting person in bright red gym clothes stalks out of the unit building, leaving the locked door to close at will behind him. I saunter in like I belong. It’s more of a waddle with Az in one arm and the cane in the other hand. The pain has gotten worse. Spread from my knees and hips to my ribs, neck, and elbows. It won’t deter me. I came here to talk to Gen. There’s one problem.

  Gen has no idea I’m here.

  I hobble up the stairs to the second floor, trying to outrun the bad thoughts plaguing my mind about how stupid this idea is. I’m walking into a great unknown. This could be the perfect time, or Gen could want to fight more. I should leave her to come to me. But I’ve never been good at following my own advice.

  The hallway offers a nice place to pace. To teeter on the idea of knocking on Gen’s door. My footsteps are masked by the worn carpet and the pounding rock music of one of the neighbors. Savory curry permeates the hallway, but it’s not enough to distract me. I should leave. Go straight to Dom’s with Gen none the wiser. Pretend I was never here. Be a coward and never face this. But I came all this way.

  I take a deep breath and knock on Gen’s door.

  There’s a thunder of footsteps and a sharp command that is muffled by the fake wood and plaster walls. Surprising, given the state of things. I figured that the soundproofing here would be worse than at my unit. The rock music goes into a guitar riff. That must be pretty loud. The door is wretched open, and there stands Gen in baggy sweats, her pink hair piled on top of her head in a mess of curls. Her scowl deepens, souring to a snarl.

  “What are you doing here?”

  A dark-haired teen boy with Gen’s curls waves around the corner. The tan wall is dirty from fingerprints, made even more so by his hand cupped around it. And the boots piled inside the unit door do nothing to help the stained carpet. “Hi, Jaqs!”

  “Hi Ben,” I reply, voice hesitant.

  Gen rounds on him. “Ben, I said that you’ve put your homework off long enough. Go!”

  Ben ducks out of sight, shooing a small clone of Gen along with him. Sar. She’s gotten bigger since the last time I saw her.

  “Well?” Gen snaps.

  I straighten, hand tightening on Az to ground the buzz swelling in my chest. My teeth clench, and my shoulders stiffen. Leftovers from the fight. I can do this. Come on. “You never texted me back about work. If I am still employed or not.”

  Gen rolls her eyes. “I don’t have time for this. Show up or not. I don’t care.”

  She moves to reenter the unit.

  “That’s it?” I demand. “You don’t want to talk more?”

  “Why? Not like you’re going to listen. I saw that pic on the Flick feed. You were close and happy with Evangeline. I guess enjoy whatever that brings.”

  “Gen!”

  She closes the door in my face.

  Az blinks red. In anger, or in warning, I’m not sure, since he doesn’t have his little bod to hijack a scene from a movie or song to tell me. My nostrils flare and my hand curls into a fist. There’s nothing for me to do. Knocking on the door again and again, hoping for a different outcome, wouldn’t do anything. Gen is great at ignoring things. And it’d piss off her neighbors.

  With a sigh, I deflate and head towards the stairs. I was a fool. There’s no other way for this to have gone. Tears prick the corner of my eyes, threatening to trace paths down my cheeks. I blink them away and meander down the stairs. With each step, I hope Gen surprises me and calls me to come back. That we’ll talk and work this out.

  There hasn’t been anything worked out between us since before last year.

  When I got sick, Gen’s caretaking aspects came out full force, and our friendship dissolved into nothing until disappointment clouded everything. I was angry at being treated like an invalid. Gen was fuming that I wasn’t taking better care of myself.

  The fight showed how broken the relationship has become. She used to be the one who came with Mel and me to concerts. We’d been on double dates. And Ben and Sar have become like my own siblings.

  But it’s all been shattered under the weight of my illnesses.

  I started the bucket list because of her. Because she wanted to help. However, that help stretched too far, and now? We’re nothing.

  I bite my lip and hold back tears. A rock sits in my chest, threatening to drag me to the bottom of the stairs. This is all my fault. I’d been doing so well, holding my head high. Not letting my sicknesses drag me down. But it’s all crashing down. My resolve breaks, and tears leak from my eyes.

  I’ve ruined everything.

  The cane strikes the pavement leading out to the parking lot a little too hard. It echoes and bounces against the compound of units, slicing through the gathering dusk and disappearing into the cold, bitter air that promises the first frost. Soon, I won’t be able to take Az’s bike form anywhere. But tonight, I climb onto it after reconnecting Az’s core and direct him towards Dom’s place.

  With luck, I’ll spend time with her and not ruin that relationship.

  I won’t be a complete failure.

  It takes us almost an hour to get out to Caz from Gen’s place. The freezing weather has driven more people to cars, making traffic horrendous. We make it, right when I told Dom we would.

  I pull off my helmet and stare at Dom’s house. Sharp angles and a slanted roof are welcoming on the Silicon Age modern contemporary styled home. Large two-story windows make up the front of the house, their tops and bottoms separated by a stretch of bleached wood that surrounds the house. Lights turn on with every step I take up the walkway, illuminating the bushes on either side of the path and the metal of my cane, casting shooting stars to gleam along its length. Az blinks green in time to the lights, something he’s doing on purpose for his own amusement. A final light turns on over the front door, illuminating an ironwork affair of interlocking knots and glass.

  This is way too fancy for the ripped jeans and pilled sweater I’m wearing under my puffy winter coat.

  The door slides open to Dom. She beams at me.

  “I didn’t even ring the doorbell,” I say.

  “Sensors in the steps told me someone was coming, and the camera showed me your face,” Dom replies, pointing to a small camera eye tucked into the corner of the house.

  I whistle. “Fancy. Mel and I have to check through a peephole to make sure it’s not our grandma neighbor trying to get into the wrong unit again.”

  “Again?” Dom asks, ushering me inside.

  “Yeah, we found her on our couch once, petting Mel’s cat.” I shrug. It wasn’t a big deal. She’s harmless and left with an overabundance of apologies.

  Dom laughs, loud and unfiltered, letting it ring in the foyer as she closes the door. “Come on, I’ll show you around. Then we can leave.”

  “Lemme take my shoes off.” When we planned this night, Dom offered the use of her e-car to get us to the Amish lands. No need to get her house dirty when she presents an offer like that. Saves a ton of cost to not rent an e-car for the two-hour round-trip journey. In a last-ditch effort, I brush off the tip of the cane.

  The inside of Dom’s house is even nicer than the outside. Her tele room is all cool tones of blue, highlighted by neon pops of lime and coral in the recessed lighting and pillows strewn about the cream couches. It’s something that shouldn’t be bright but is. Her kitchen is similar. Black granite countertops are bare except for a bright pink vase, and the appliances are hidden behind the smooth white cabinets. And, in a daring move, Dom has put dark faux wood throughout the house, creating a large swath of neutral when most would veer towards color.

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  Upstairs, she shows me a spare bedroom in the same cream and blue as the tele room and jokes that if I need to, I can use it. I may have to take her up on that if we get back too late and a rainstorm pushes through the city. Riding on ice isn’t fun. Her office lies next door to the guest bedroom and is infinitely brighter. Three computers running three different OS are hooked up to mechanical arms, legs, and lungs. A 3D printer hums in the corner, a scattering of organ prototypes scattered around it, and neon lights hang from the ceiling in a wave-like pattern.

  “What are you working on?” I ask. With a sheepish look, I add, “If you can say.”

  Dom leans against the wall and throws a hand up as she explains. “I’m trying to come up with the next software push to better the nerve to machine interface for the prosthetics, and I’m working out if a 3D printer can get tiny enough to replicate the alveolar ducts of the lungs as well as other tiny pieces of organs. Nothing big.”

  “Yeah, of course, real gen pop stuff,” I say dryly.

  Dom laughs. “I admit, my normal may be a bit off.”

  She moves deeper into the room and grabs two things off the nearest desk. Dom turns with a smile. “This is for Az.”

  In one of Dom’s hands is a mechanical bird of bright blue with an orange beak. Each feather on its wing is a delicate slice of metal arching to a fine point. Its feet are joints upon joints so that it can grip like a real bird. And I bet it sings too. It sits lifeless, waiting to be turned on. Az is anything but lifeless. He blinks an ecstatic green, then pink, then yellow in my hands.

  I laugh. “Az is overjoyed. Thank you, Dom.”

  “Don’t mention it. It was something I rigged up when I couldn’t sleep one night. Come on, let’s finish the tour.”

  Her bedroom is spartan compared to the office’s overcrowding. Her cream bed lies made with matching nightstands. A tablet and glass of water sit on one, but the other is empty. Cold and lonely. The room comes across as sterile. A place to complete the human need for sleep and nothing more. It speaks nothing to Dom’s warm nature or any interest. There are no paintings, no outrageously expensive books, or a single trinket. Protection against anyone coming in, hunting for something to use against Dom. Emotional, or physical, it’s damage all the same. The whole house is like that. Blank. A museum on how a human could live. All except the office. The one room that screams that someone lives there. That the person isn’t a bot pumping out products for the gen pop. And she let me in it. Another knife-shaped key to another friend’s heart. One I will never use.

  “Need anything before we go? Water? Bathroom?” Dom asks when we’re back in the entrance.

  I shake my head. “No, I’m good.”

  Dom grabs a cooler out of the fridge regardless. I slip my shoes back on and follow her out to the car. It’s still the same sleek, black car that was sitting outside the night of the party. It’s the only one in a normal-sized garage. Fitting of Dom’s down-to-earth personality.

  A little over an hour later and through a cattle gate manned by a very tall man, we’re in the Mohawk Valley of NY. We’re outside the surrounding towns, their neon lights mere dustings against the horizon. It’s a moonless night. A deep, dark void of space spreads out above us, with the embers of stars as our company. It’s too late in the year for the heady scent of wildflowers or the din of crickets. We’re left with the nip of winter on autumn’s heels and a rush of smoke from another star viewer’s fire. Both are taken care of with the car’s heat and recirculating air.

  Dom turns the music down and flicks a switch. The roof peels back, revealing a glass bubble to the endless black sky overhead.

  I relax into the seat. “Very nice.”

  “Beats sitting out in the cold.” Dom turns the heat up a tick. She hands me a beer from the cooler, the same type I was drinking at trivia. It warms my heart that she was paying attention. Dom pulls out a beer for herself.

  “So, you do drink beer.”

  “Once and a while,” she says with a minute shrug. “It has to be pretty light.”

  “Good to know.” I file the information away. “What’s been going on with you? Been a bit since we’ve seen you.”

  Dom takes a sip of her beer. “We’ve had a bunch of deliverables due to the end of the year coming up, so I’m dealing with endless meetings. You?”

  I drag a finger around Az’s core. He’s gone into sleep mode, his light dim and blinking a slow orchid. “I had a date with Evangeline.”

  “Yeah? How did that go?” Dom asks. There is no judgment in her voice. Polite inquisitiveness threads through the words; a gentle ask if I feel like talking about it.

  “It went well. We went to the neon festival and enjoyed it. Got to understand each other a bit better.”

  “I haven’t been to that in forever.” Dom tilts their chair all the way back.

  I follow suit, careful not to spill the beer. “Next year you’ll have to come with us. Meetings be damned.”

  Dom laughs. “Deal. What’s that one?”

  Her finger shoots out and points to a grouping of stars recognizable to me.

  “That’s Cassiopeia. It’s the first constellation I learned.”

  “Me too, then.”

  “Wait, right now?” I turn to her, brows furrowed.

  She shrugs. “It wasn’t something my parents encouraged. Etiquette classes, coding, machine work, and sports kept me busy.”

  “That last one surprises me.”

  “I have a mean tennis game.”

  A warm smile spills across my lips. This is nice. Something I needed after the last few days. It’s nice to get to know Dom more as a person, too, and not as the tech genius. Become real friends. Not ones in name only.

  “Do you mind if I talk a bit more about Prism?” I check, making sure she’s fine with the topic. Although her trade worked out, it doesn’t mean she wants to be hounded about it.

  She turns to me. “Sure, what’s up?”

  “Did Prism ever do back-to-back trades with you?”

  “No, just the money for friends trade.” She screws up her face. “It sounds bad when I put it like that. Why?”

  “Prism did something weird. They’ve been helping me with the trades, but have been involved in my last two. The first was through another person, but Prism engineered the whole thing. And the one I did the other day, they traded the tickets for the bike I had just gotten.”

  “Have they been involved in others?”

  “I think all of them,” I admit. “I feel like a pawn.”

  “Do you think they want to gain your trust or something?”

  “Yeah. Maybe pull me deeper into the organization?”

  Dom’s brows flash up and down. “Do you want to be pulled in deeper?”

  I shake my head. “I want my ticket to the stars and then I’m done.”

  “I wasn’t sure because of Evangeline.”

  “Nah, she doesn’t speak all that highly of Prism to be honest.” I fall back into my seat and point out another constellation. “See that one?”

  Dom scoots over and follows my finger. “Yeah.”

  “That’s Cygnus, the swan.”

  Dom huffs out a laugh. “I don’t see it at all.”

  I trace it with my finger. “It’s in flight with the bow part being the wings.”

  She returns to her chair, face full of doubt. “May I ask you something?”

  I steel myself and buy time with a large mouthful of beer. Here comes the questions about my illnesses. “Sure.”

  “Why the stars? Why do you want to walk among them? Why does sitting here like this not do it for you?”

  I relax. “Oh, I thought you were going to ask about my sicknesses.”

  Dom shakes her head. “I figure if you want to talk about them, you would.”

  I smile. “Thank you, Dom. I appreciate that.”

  The night sky calls my attention. Pulls at my soul until it’s struggling to remain in my Earthly vessel. I want to be up there so bad that I’m ready to rip atoms from atoms to get there. The deep blackness offers me a place to hide. Dares me to lie. That isn’t fair to Dom. Not when she’s been so understanding and helpful with all my questions about Prism. She isn’t entitled to the real answer, no one is, but I want to open up to her.

  “This doesn’t do it for me because even out here there’s light pollution. ‘Cuse is big enough, it’s a haze in the sky. Add in the smaller towns, the satellites, space junk, and atmosphere, and there are parts of space lost to us. It’s hard enough to make out the space station on a good night. And I could tell you that the stars are neat and run from all responsibility of answering your question. Or give a trite response about how we’re all made of stardust, but those wouldn’t be fair answers to you, when you have been so open.”

  Might as well lay bare all my thoughts to start. I pull in a breath. Hold it until it wraps around the nerves quickening my heart, and strangles them. I breathe it out, letting it take the corpse of my fear.

  I pick at the label on the beer can. “A year ago, I lost my whole life, but it’s not like I belonged in it either. I didn’t fit in within my small town so I went to a larger one to try and find myself. I took a job with bots because I was good at it, but not even that fulfilled me. It wasn’t until I got sick that I understood what I wanted. And that isn’t me saying that my sickness was good or that it saved me or that it was given to me by a higher power. It sucks. It will always suck. And, due to it, I no longer believe in anything.”

  The label rips. I ball up the paper with a heavy sigh.

  “This may be a poor attempt at a gift from life, and, to be honest, I find it to be in poor taste. But it did give me the push I needed. I want to go to the stars because it was the first step in feeling like I had something to live for. I’ve been healing while doing the trades. Each day, I have something to look forward to, and I’m finding hope again that not everything sucks. That my life isn’t over or running out too soon. It led me to you, made me understand Mel and Gen again. Brought me to Evangeline. I want to go to the stars to find what’s next after I get there.”

  Dom lays a hand on mine and squeezes. “That’s a good reason. I’m so happy to have met you, Jaqs.”

  I squeeze her hand back. It ignites the same warmth as a hug. The embers trickle from my veins to my heart, and the icy fortress that was built around it thaws even more.

  She licks her lips. “Jaqs, I could give you the cost for the ticket.”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t want to have to pay you back. It’s not a dire need. Besides, we’re friends, and I don’t want to use you for something that’s not lifesaving.”

  A sly grin inches across Dom’s face. “So you’d use a stranger?”

  “Oh, screw off, that’s not what I meant.”

  She laughs, loud and free. “I’m kidding. But you will have to let me trade you for this ticket.”

  “Deal,” I reply.

  “Good.” Dom leans forward and turns her holo so I can see the screen.

  “What is this?”

  “A round-trip ticket to Hawaii.”

  My mouth drops. “Dom, no. That’s too much.”

  “You know how much these tickets cost, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m paying you for one, plus your knowledge. It’s fair.”

  “Dom—”

  “Take the ticket, Jaqs.”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  Dom transfers the ticket to me. My holo pings. “You’re welcome.”

  She sits back in her seat, a smile slinking across her lips. “What will be next after you walk among the stars?”

  No if in her statement. Dom believes I’ll reach my goal.

  “Not sure yet. I’m trying not to put pressure on myself. I’m letting walking among the stars be my infinite happiness.”

  “You’ve lost me. Logically, that’s not possible.”

  I laugh. “You’re correct. It’s from this author I used to love. He only produced two books.”

  “Two books, huh?” Dom says, taking a sip of beer. “Is that a lot?”

  I shrug. “I guess not. It wasn’t when I was younger and read a ton. I kept hoping for more and searched for the reason why he didn’t write more when I got older. Early Alzheimer’s. Two books were all he was able to do.”

  “Jesus, Jaqs.”

  “I swear it’s not dark.”

  “It sounds dark.”

  I laugh at the stark disbelief on Dom’s face. Beer sloshes down my hand, and I wipe it on my shirt before it falls onto the seat. “There was an interview before he entered a care home. Said that he was glad he got those two books out. It made him happy to have completed something. Gave him infinite happiness to have accomplished writing them. It speaks to me. That even heading towards the end, happiness exists. You don’t have to be miserable.”

  “Do not tell me you are dying; I swear to God.”

  My laugh pierces the sky. “No, no. I’m fine.” I pause, searching for the missing words. The fogginess clears, and I continue. “Completing the biggest item on the bucket list would be infinite happiness. Keep me going through the other, easier ones, and let me find something else to work on to refuel the infinite happiness machine.”

  “Infinite happiness, huh?”

  I nod.

  “All right, let’s try it.” She holds out her beer. “Here’s to infinite happiness.”

  I clink my can against hers.