F@nService Diner: Chapter 04 Hiro Academia

Chapter 04: Hiro Academia

Adam could see the fire station just down the street. He signaled a split second before he knifed his hover car into the right lane. The light up ahead turned yellow. He could make the turn if he didn’t slow down. It was just as the thought crossed his mind that one of the cars up ahead began to passively drift into the right lane without bothering to signal. Adam slammed on his brakes, barely avoiding a collision. He watched in helpless frustration as the car rolled up to the stoplight and waited. Apparently the decision to change lanes was not based on any pragmatic need to make right a turn but had rather been nothing more than the whim of a driver completely oblivious to those around them.

“No, no, no!” Adam shouted at no one in particular as he tried to strangle his steering wheel. “Come on, come on, come on.” Adam tapped his feet as he willed the light to turn green. Eventually it did, but not before the fire station’s bay doors had opened and Engine 512 and its Mini-Me, Rescue Truck 512, pulled into the street, sirens blaring and red lights flashing. Adam’s eyes did their best impression of Tom Hardy’s Bane from the Batman Dark Knight Rises myth as he attempted to hate the driver in front of him to death through their rear view mirror. Failing to make eye contact with the checked-out motorist he then proceeded to feed his rage by reading the car’s numerous bumper stickers. In the 3.5 seconds it took for the driver to start moving after the light had finally turned green Adam had sworn enmity against the driver’s rescue dog, veganism and even the act of coexistence.

The distracted driver slowly rolled away, completely oblivious to the galactic history altering chain of events the decision to block a right turn lane had just set into motion. To be fair, Adam was also unaware of the pivotal role that red light had played as he whipped into the parking lot. Adam leapt out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him. He shot the wireless key-fob over his shoulder to lock the car as he sprinted towards the closing bay doors. By the time he reached them they were already too low to walk, run or even slide under. He stopped mid-stride and aimed himself at the human-sized side door.

This was bad. Those were the last two trucks. He had heard the other four leave shortly before the radio went silent. In a situation like this one would expect the emergency channels to be buzzing with chatter. Instead there was only silence. Whoever was responsible for that drone strike must also be jamming communications. It would explain why the last two fire engines had left the station with the department kinetic. They must all think he was on one of the other trucks. Adam felt his stomach flip. What if something happened because he wasn’t there? Maybe when they all arrive on scene and learn he’s not there they’ll send one of the smaller rescue trucks back to the station to get him. He just needed to change into his turnouts so he’d be ready when they did. Or maybe the radios would come back up. Then he could get the incident address from the dispatcher. It was against the rules to respond to the scene in your personal vehicle but these were unusual circumstances. Adam hoped they sent somebody back to the station before that. He dreaded talking on the radio. Crap! If only he’d paid closer attention. He was counting on someone else driving the truck and he had let his mind wander at a crucial moment.

He pulled out his OmniPhone and thumbed through menus to get to the keychain app that would unlock the door. Adam noticed his phone displayed an X where he usually got four bars. Were the phones down too? He was about to type in the passcode when a pearlescent bluish-white Omni-Motors Catalyst pulled up to the intersection. Adam admired the futuristic sports car’s sleek yet subtly elegant lines. ‘Someday.’ Adam thought. He was about to return to unlocking the station door when he noticed the driver’s face and did a double take. You know that feeling you get when you think you recognize someone from years ago but you’re not quite sure it’s them, so you stare to try to make sure it is actually the person you think it is before you say ‘hi’, but then they catch you staring and then you realize they look nothing like the person you thought they were? — Well that’s not what happened here.

“Hiro?” Adam squinted.

At the same moment, as if directed by the finger of God, Hiro Nishimoto turned his annoyingly handsome head to look at the fire station and saw the disbelieving Adam squinting at him. Hiro mirrored Adam’s double-take.

“Adam?” His skeptical squint turned into a wide grin. “Adam you crazy bastard! I haven’t seen you since Psi-School! How have you been?”

“I’m good, you know, fire fighting and stuff.” Adam pointed a thumb at the station behind him. “How’s life treating you?”

“I’m fantastic! Living the Omni-life.

“Oh cool. — What’s that?”

“Oh you know, traveling the universe, having adventures, discovering strange new worlds and civilizations.”

“Sounds fun. — This sucks but I really need to get going.” Adam pointed again at the fire station.

“I’ll say!”

“Huh?” Adam raised an eyebrow.

“My car’s virtual assistant sorts through all the emergency channels and tells me if anything interesting comes up.” Hiro explained.

“Oh.”

“Looks like Union drone strikes took out all the skyramps leading to the spaceport.”

“You sure it was Union?” Adam furrowed his brow skeptically.

“Pretty sure. This is a little too sophisticated for Golden Jihad. Besides, if terrorists had been able to smuggle swarms of combat drones passed orbital defenses they would have gone for a body-count.”

“Wait, you mean nobody’s been hurt? With the size of that explosion…”

“A few people have been hurt, but nobody’s been killed so far as we know. Communications and early warning systems on the other hand…”

Adam’s eyes widened.

“It’s an invasion.”

“I thought so at first too, but Esther is saying that’s unlikely.”

“Esther? Who’s Es… Oh, right. — The Omni AI.” Adam remembered.

“Yeah, she’s pretty awesome. Most advanced artificial intelligence in the known universe. But with sensors and coms down all over the planet her vision is a bit limited at the moment. So corporate is recalling everyone back to the Initiative just to play it safe. Which is going to be difficult seeing all the skyramps down.”

“Wait, how do you know all this Esther stuff if the coms are down?”

“The OmniNet is a bit more resilient than the local network. The Initiative has excellent point defenses. Those trash Union drones aren't getting anywhere near it. But the downside is, without a network of satellites a megalith needs direct line of sight to transmit.”

“So it can only reach people on this side of the planet.”

“Right, and without access to the spaceport it’s going to be slow going evacuating everyone.

“Yeah, about that, you didn’t happen to get the address for the skyramp the fire department got paiged out to, did you?” Adam asked awkwardly.

“I did. I’m actually heading that way right now. Esther messaged me saying I should lend them a hand since they’re missing their kinetic.”

Adam breathed a sigh of relief. It was nice to know somebody around here knew what they were doing.

“Wait!” Hiro pointed at Adam. “You’re the kinetic they’re missing.”

“So uh — what was that address again?” Adam blushed.

“You don’t know where you’re supposed to go?” Hiro looked like he didn’t understand what he had just heard.

Adam blurted out his rambling explanation.

“Well I was listening to the radio and the dispatcher said something that made me think of something else and while I was thinking about something else she said the address and there’s no rewind button on the radio.”

“Oh, ADD. It’s cool. We all have it.” Hiro was referring to kinetics in general. Having trouble paying attention to things was a side effect of a brain that bent gravity.

Adam continued to vomit his explanation.

“I figured I would be riding on one of the fire engines anyway so I wouldn’t have to know the address but they all left before I got here.”

“Hey, say no more. You can ride with me.” Hiro hit a button and the Catalyst’s passenger door opened out and up like the wing of a metal angel.

“Wow.”

“Pretty sweet right?”

“Yeah. Just give me a sec. I need to grab my turnouts.”

An angry driver honked behind Hiro. Apparently the light was green. Hiro flipped on his hazards and the driver went around him , honking again for emphasis.

“Don’t worry, you won’t need them.” Hiro dismissed.

“But I can’t respond to a scene without my nomex.”

“Nomex is so last century. You can borrow one of my hazard-suits.”

“Hazard suit?”

“Yeah, it’s powered-armor, like what our troopers wear, but lighter.”

“I’m not sure…”

“There’s actually plans to pitch this to fire departments as a replacement for current gear. It was designed with first responders in mind. Trust me, it can do everything your turnouts can do and more.” Another car honked as it drove around Hiro. “We’re wasting time.”

“Ok, you win.” Adam jogged up to the spaceship-looking sports car and jumped in to the passenger seat.

After scanning the door like a confused cat he asked. “Um, how do you close this?”

“I got it.” Hiro tapped the console and the wing-like door closed in.

Adam tucked himself in; afraid he might lose an arm or leg.

The car took off like a rocket; pushing him back into the headrest. Back in high school Adam had driven a rusty but powerful muscle car from the 80’s, until he wrecked it. This felt like that, only more so. The Catalyst was incredibly responsive. Hiro tapped something into the holographic heads-up display that projected from his steering wheel. The console in front of Adam opened to reveal a glowing, blue translucent portal that looked very similar to the ones in used in OmniBags. Behind the portal’s watery surface was a neatly folded white body suit similar to the one Hiro was wearing. The suit’s shoulders and chest were encased in shiny armor plates that matched the car. Each of the three plates was embossed with an upside-down power symbol OmniStellar logo that glowed an electro-luminescent blueish-white as soon as Adam touched the suit. Though the plates seemed incredibly strong they had a lot of flex to them. Adam played with one of the shoulder plates, bending it with his fingers.

Hiro noticed this and explained.

“The armor’s light and flexible but don’t let that fool you. It can stop up to a fifty cal.”

“Wow.”

“It works just like minkan skin. The material bends slowly so it can move with you but any impact fast enough to cause physical damage essentially hits a brick wall, although this is actually way stronger than a brick wall but it’s just a figure of speech.”

Adam turned the suit over in his hands. He noticed the back, elbows, knees and groin were also covered in the flexible, pearlescent armor plate segments. The unarmored portions of the suit were stitched out of flattened, white rubbery cables, the flow of which reminded Adam of muscle fibers.

“Normally you would strip out of your clothes before you put one of these on.” Hiro said.

Adam frantically looked around the car’s cramped interior for a place to change. Hiro laughed.

“Don’t worry, you can wear it over your normal clothes. It’s just not as comfortable — and the suit might have some trouble reading your DNA.”

“Why would a suit need to read my DNA?”

“It won’t. It’s for identification, a security thing.”

Adam thought he was going to have to take off his shoes to get his feet through the suit’s legs but then he noticed the zippered slits starting at the ankles that made this unnecessary. Those Omni engineers really had thought of everything. The car’s virtual assistant chirped disapprovingly at Adam when he removed his seatbelt to pull the suit the rest of the way on but that could not be helped. Once he had the suit on up to his neck and zipped up he quickly re-buckled his seatbelt. The suit fit a little looser than he had hoped.

“Um, not to sound ungrateful but do you have one that’s a size smaller?” Adam waved a sleeve that extended well passed his finger tips. “I’m not as tall as you.”

Hiro laughed.

“Don’t worry, it’s as designed. Just press the hexagonal button on the wrist.” Hiro pointed to the one on his own wrist.

Adam did. There was a hissing sound as the air was rapidly pumped out and the suit shrink-wrapped itself to Adam’s body. This was followed by an electric hum and a rubbery stretching sound as the artificial muscle fibers swelled to life. To Adam it felt like being trapped in a full-body version of one of those pressure cuff machines they use to check your blood pressure.

“Ahhh, whoa whoa whoa.” Adam voiced his discomfort.

“Yeah, that part feels a little weird.” Hiro admitted. “But it goes away pretty quickly.”

He was right. The uncomfortable sensation passed as soon as the artificial muscle reached a predetermined size. Then it felt like wearing nothing at all. Now that the suit had relaxed Adam tried moving his arm. The suit flexed with him. Adam expected their to be some sort of lag he would have to push through but was surprised to find none. The suit moved as though it were a natural part of him.

“The suit reads the electrical pulses that move your muscles and mirrors them. The earlier versions needed direct skin contact to work and even those were a little buggy. Now the sensors are so good you can wear your regular clothes underneath and the suit still works flawlessly. Pretty sweet, right?” Hiro grinned.

“That is pretty sweet.” Adam agreed as he continued waving his arm around.

“Oh, almost forgot.” After rummaging through his center console Hiro placed what looked like a plastic OmniCoin in Adam’s open hand.

“Wuh, what’s this?” Adam asked.

The upside down power symbol was thinner than any hardware wallet Adam had seen. Traditionally OmniCoins had a little more heft to them and were made of precious metals, mined from asteroids. This was made of plastic no thicker than an old school credit card.

“It’s a business card.” Hiro explained. “Just press the dot on the ‘i’ in the center and it’ll do its thing”.

Adam pressed his index fingertip to the dot at the center of the power-symbol logo and the card chirped pleasantly. This coincided with a ripple of blue-white light that traveled out from the center. The logo’s ring, bar and dot collected the light; glowing brighter even after the ripple faded away. Sun-beams of multi-colored light projected out from the card as a holographic video began to play, partially obscured by Adam’s finger which he quickly pulled away to give the hologram projector a clear path. Inspiring retro synth-music sprinkled with chimes that made Adam think of the twinkling stars that served as the logo’s background played as the words:

‘OmniStellar Industries

Building the Future.’

materialized beneath the floating 3D logo.

The logo grew brighter and brighter. The hologram faded to white before displaying another starfield. The camera zoomed out to reveal a dark-hooded figure with his back to the viewer looking out a large, circular viewport into the star-speckled void of space. The figure sat behind a massive, rectangular obelisk of a desk. The desk was dark gray with swirls of metallic sheen that suggested it was either raw asteroid iron or an imitation. Adam guessed at the identity of the hooded figure and judged imitation asteroid iron was unlikely. The chair swiveled so the hooded figure faced Adam. Adam smiled when he saw he had guessed correctly. The figure was a pasty-looking blond man in his late thirties to early forties. He probably could have passed for younger were it not for the rings under his eyes characteristic of people who never stopped working. In classic Bond villain style the man, was petting a wrinkly, shark/dog creature the size of a large cat.

Adam recognized the black and white striped species from a nature documentary. It was a badger wawg. Although smaller than the hammer wawgs most people were familiar with, badger wawgs were highly aggressive and absolutely fearless. It was as though the little guys shipped with a defective ‘Fight or Flight’ switch, in which the ‘Flight’ option was also ‘Fight’ but spelled wrong. For a badger wawg violence is always the answer. If violence doesn’t solve the problem, clearly the little bugger wasn’t violent enough, a mistake that will be corrected in the rematch. They are notoriously difficult to keep in captivity but they are also as loyal as they are fearless if you hand-feed them as pups.

“Oh, hello there.” The figure spoke. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. Really is a hell of a view isn’t it? — Well I should probably introduce myself.”

The man drew back his hood.

“I’m Leon, Leon Omni — as in the founder and CEO of the evil, interplanetary corporation that is going to conquer the stars. Mwahahaha!”

Leon’s over the top megalomaniacal, villain laugh was interrupted by a tinny ‘DING’ that came from a chrome cylinder on his desk.

“But first coffee.”

As if in agreement the sleepy badger wawg stretched; uttering a high-pitched yawn that showed off its many rows of sharp, white teeth. Leon removed the chrome tumbler from its dock and took a long sip as he scratched the wrinkly folds of skin that protected the badger wawg’s neck.

“Ahhh, that’s the stuff.” Leon stopped and looked at the camera as though he was forgetting something.

“Oh right, silly me. If you were here in person I’d offer you some coffee but since you’re not we’ll just have to make due with a little work around. I hope you have an OmniCoin or this is gonna be awkward.”

The holographic Leon removed a platinum logo-shaped coin from his pocket. Adam realized what he was supposed to do but then realized that his coin was currently trapped under several layers of artificial nano-muscle.

“Ah crap!” Adam fumbled for the zipper at his back.

“Oh sorry, I totally forgot about that.” Hiro laughed.

Adam frantically struggled with the zipper as the holographic Leon explained that he would transfer over enough coin for a coffee of your choice.

“I think the zipper’s stuck.” Adam strained.

“Yeah, it’s not stuck. It’s welded.” Hiro explained.

“What?”

“No don’t worry. It’s supposed to do that. It’s nanotech, a safety thing. You know, since we are technically in a combat zone. You have to put in the password to take it off.”

“What’s the password?”

“Uh, lemme see. It’s written on the card that came with it. — Don’t worry, we’ll find it when we get there. You can always replay the holo later to get the coffee.”

Adam forced himself to relax as the Leon hologram initiated an Omnicoin transfer with no destination.

“Feel free to pause this so you can get a coffee. I’ll be right here when you get back.” Said the hologram.

Adam waited for the holo to proceed.

With some effort Leon managed to shoo the stubborn shark/dog off his lap. The wawg grumbled in annoyance as it search the office for a new spot to curl up and go to sleep. Leon stood up and the camera followed him as he strolled about his office.

The walls were pearlescent white, the same color as Hiro’s car. Subtle white lights glowed and dimmed in and out of existence like fireflies beneath the wall panels’ translucent surface. The shimmering panels were framed by sturdy-looking obtuse triangles of brushed steel. The triangles sat back to back, forming rectangles divided by diagonal slashes that started at the ceiling and ended at the floor. The direction of the steel diagonals was alternated to form a |\|/|\|/| pattern. All along the wall were mounted various iconic inventions that formed an evolutionary timeline of OmniStellar’s achievements from the company’s inception to the current day.

“Now that we’ve both had our coffee let’s get down to biddness. If you’re watching this it probably means one of our team members thinks that you would be a valuable addition to my interstellar, and if things go according to plan, very soon to be intergalactic company.”

Leon stopped as though he had just said something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Oh no — I’ve said too much. The shareholders are going to kill me. Oh wait — no they won’t.”

Leon’s look of false panic turned into a mischievous grin.

“OmniStellar is a private company, which means we don’t have any shareholders; no worrying about maximizing profit at the expense of our employees or customers. No cutting corners, sacrificing the quality of our products to try to save a fraction of a cent here and there, hoping our compromises don’t come back to bite our reputation later. We don’t have to worry about short-sellers slandering us on their blogs; trying make every speed bump look like the death of the company in the hopes of making a quick cred.”

Leon took a second to recompose himself. Clearly he had some firsthand experience dealing with unscrupulous short-sellers and their slanderous blogs. Adam remembered hearing that OmniStellar had not been Leon’s first company. The CEO took a long sip of coffee like it were meditative breathing exercise and continued his pitch.

“Now if you’re a person who knows something about biddness…”

Adam didn’t know much about biddness and he knew even less about business.

“…you might ask something like, ‘Mr. Omni, with access to the galactic stock market how are you gonna make billions?’. And in the past I would say, ‘We’re not, millions are just fine. It’s the price we pay for freedom and sustainability. It’s the price we pay for being able to do quality work and take care of our people.’ — But this is not the past. Asteroid mining, artificial intelligence and robotics have changed the game. We no longer have to choose one or the other. We no longer have to rely on the stock market. We venture out into the cosmos and mine its infinite resources.

What we don’t forge into massive construction projects, starships or our other state-of-the-art products, we refine into ingot cubes and store in our quantum-crypto vaults. There the ingots cubes are phased between dimensions, out of the normal flow of time, inaccessible to anyone who does not have the matching quantum entanglement token needed to bring the ingot back into the normal flow of time. These quantum entanglement tokens are what are known as OmniCoins.”

Leon flipped the platinum power symbol in his palm.

“But you probably knew that already.”

Adam knew some of that already. The main concepts made sense to him. As a Christian he was used to accepting realities beyond what he could see, so quantum physics didn’t upset him the way it did some people who were arguably smarter than him. But he also didn’t think he would ever be smart enough to do the science necessary for phasing a cube of refined iron in and out of the normal flow of time. He was just grateful there were people smart enough to do it so he could reap the benefits.

“The point is,” Leon continued. “OmniStellar has gone post-scarcity. We have way more than we could ever need and because we’re a private company we’re not forced to constantly become more and more profitable until we have to start cutting corners and eventually hit a wall. It also means we can afford to take care of our people and the communities we do business in. All our employees and their families get free access to our state-of-the-art educational, healthcare, childcare and eldercare services. In the past the kind of social safety net we offer, free of charge, would bankrupt most nations. It’s amazing what you can do with the right application of VR, AI, robotics and molecular printing if you are willing to think outside the box. It also helps when you don’t have small-minded government bureaucrats breathing down your neck. One of the benefits to keeping our Megaliths in space is we get to make our own rules.

In addition to our unrivaled social safety net we also host a robust third party market complete with an AI assisted patent filing and licensing system and automated manufacturing and shipping facilities. It was our goal to make it easy as possible for anyone with a dream and a little grit and determination to make be able to make a living off that dream.

I try to make sure that everything my company does is done with goal of not only making money but also of leaving the universe a little better, a little fairer, a little freer than it was before. And to that end I have taken great steps to surrounded myself with good people. Good people who are the best at what they do. That’s where you come in.”

The holographic CEO pointed and Adam suddenly felt a wave of impostor syndrome wash over him. He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat wondering what the actual interview would be like. Kinetics were still relatively rare but Omni could afford to hire the only best ones. Adam knew he wasn’t the worst kinetic but he was also pretty sure he wasn’t the best, maybe slightly above average. Would that be good enough for them?

He had other questions too. Could he really quit the fire department so soon after he had just become useful? No, he would stand by what he told Sexy-Dream-Tevera. He would stay with the department another year, maybe two if he got a raise between now and then. Sure Adam liked money, just like any honest person who had to work for a living did, but the pursuit of it was not his sole motivation. Right now he had enough to do most of what wanted, except for Tevera. He really wanted to do Tevera, long-term. That’s what really motivated him. He wanted to start a family with her and have little, blue telekinetic babies, but supporting a family took money. If he worked for Omni he’d have plenty of that. There was just one problem.

“Hey Hiro?” Adam asked.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“If I got the job could I stay on Neon Phoenix?”

“What, why?” Hiro looked like he didn’t understand what he just heard.

“Well, my friends and family are here.”

“Oh, well the company tries to put you where you want to go but in the end they send you where you’re needed.”

“I see.”

“It’s not as disorienting as it sounds. All employees get their own cabin aboard a megalith. So when you move, the planet changes but your room stays the same. It’s actually a really nice way to travel. All the fun with less of the stress.”

“Would I be able to take someone with me?”

“Like a wife or girlfriend?”

“Something like that.”

“Oh — boyfriend?” Hiro lowered his voice.

“What? — No.” Adam blushed.

“I’m not judging.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Okay, you’re just getting a little defensive is all.”

“Old habits. — I went to high school before being gay was fashionable. Back then everything weird was gay. So if you were weird like me you had to constantly defend your masculinity. Weird people probably got called gay more often than gay people did.”

“Haha! I remember that. Well it’s okay now. You can be gay if you want. No one will judge you.”

“I’m not gay! I’m weird!”

“Okay dude.” Hiro chuckled. “So who’s this mystery girl?”

“Well, she’s a friend.”

“A sexy friend?”

“Oh the sexiest. It’s just, I haven’t asked her out yet.”

“How come? You gotta move fast with sexy friends. You don’t want to get zoned.”

“Zoned?”

“Friend-zoned. I’ve seen it happen. It’s not pretty.”

“Okay. I will, I just want to make sure I have my life together before I do that.”

“You should ask soon before she zones you, if she hasn’t already, or she finds someone else. — Hey — you know a quick way to get your life together?”

Adam could already guess what Hiro was about to say.

“ You should apply to work at Omni. There’s a huge demand for kinetics right now. Imagine how impressed your sexy friend would be if you show up to take her out driving one of these.” Hiro ran his open palm along the car’s dashboard.

“Hmm.” Adam rubbed his chin thoughtfully.”

“So does your sexy friend have a name?”

“Tevera, Tevera Suloqa — she’s a minkan.” Adam explained the exotic name.

“Kinky and ambitious.” Hiro smiled. “Say no more, I’ve been working with this purple one for a special project. They do have a certain scary hotness to them. Not really my type — massages aside, but I can see the appeal.”

“Massages?”

“Yeah another one of the perks of working on a megalith is we get free massages.”

“Huh, I’ve never had one of those.”

“You should try it. And no one gives better massages than the minkans, well except maybe star-sirens but that’s a whole other thing. Shiranaksu I think they call it. Minkans do that freaky nerve-link thing with their tail so they know exactly where and how to touch you.”

“Adam gulped.”

“Invite this Tevera to the rooftop pool.”

“Rooftop pool?”

“You heard me. You know the tower that makes up the power-symbol bar on each megalith?”

“Yeah.”

“Well the end facing out from the control sphere has a swimming pool on the roof.”

“What like, open to space and everything?”

“Yup, the view’s incredible.”

“How do they keep the air in?”

“Artificial gravity field and a nanite-crystal cloud. It blocks out cosmic radiation too.”

“That sounds awesome.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Girls love it up there, trust me. Even if you don’t decide to apply the card gives you a temporary pass so you can check the facilities out for yourself. The pass also lets you bring one guest. Invite her to come check it out. Then take her up to the pool, have a couple drinks and ask her out there. If asking her out looking down at a romantic view of your planet surrounded by stars doesn’t work then nothing will.”

Meanwhile in Adam’s head. Adam and Tevera reclined on the Baja shelf of a mood-lit swimming pool under a nebulous sky pregnant with stars.

“Ohmahgosh! It’s so romantic up here!” Exclaimed fantasy sequence Tevera as she gazed up at the ring of the spiral galaxy. “Gasp! I just got a crazy idea.”

“Tell me your crazy idea Tevy.” Said fantasy sequence Adam while wearing a smoking jacket and swirling a gin martini. Adam’s not even sure why he’s drinking a martini. He hates green olives but it seemed like the thing to do in this scenario.

“We should totally get married.” Tevera said giddily, her large eyes glowed ruby in the low light.

“That’s not crazy.” Adam encouraged her, speaking more slowly and confidently then he would in real life, given the situation. “That’s not crazy at all. We’ve known each other since we were kids, you’re really fun to be around and you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in real life.”

“Aww!”

Adam took a detached sip of his drink and made a face.

“Does the drink taste funny to you?” He asked her.

“Well now that you mention it.”

Tevera raised her glass and squinted. She saw a distorted shape that didn’t look like it belonged. She made tweezers with her fingers and craned out an ice cube — with a wedding ring inside it. Tevera gasped.

“It’s nice to know we both have the same ‘crazy’ ideas.” Adam smiled.

“Oh I’m so happy!” Tevera clawed at the ice-cube like a cat, trying to extricate the ring from its cold, slippery packaging, to no avail. Seeing this as a fruitless endeavor, Tevera changed tactics and popped the cube into her mouth to melt the ice off the ring. “Kiss me you little honey badger!” She mumbled through a mouthful of ice.

Fantasy sequence Tevera bent over him, leaning in for the kiss.

“I’m so happy too, mmmfff!” Tevera’s lips and tongue silenced Adam with a sloppy, ice-infused kiss. She embraced him while continuing to lean forward, pushing his head underwater. His feet thrashed as he started to drown.”

Adam snapped back to reality with a shudder.

“Safe words don’t work underwater.” He said cryptically.

“What?” Hiro squinted.

“Uh nothing, ADD daydream.” Adam explained.

“Say no more. Hey we’re here.” Hiro announced.