“At least when I tell the fucking machine I don’t want pickles, it remembers that I don’t want pickles. Now, what goes on behind the counter is another story. They hire people who can barely read. But at least I’m trusting my order to something intelligent.” The man was talking into his phone, but the four people working in the kitchen could hear him. POS141 could hear him, too. All three of them had heard versions of this speech every day since the ordering kiosks had been installed. Quickly and quietly, the staff made his food. It was hot, fresh, safe, and contained no pickles.

The best way to hide a red mouth is to know exactly when your gums start to bleed. If you check your teeth every so often with a quick swipe of the tongue, and you get a bit of that saltiness, you’ll learn to take a swig from a canteen and rinse before anyone else notices. The weeps are a little harder. Most of us wear tinted goggles when we ride at the barrier. They keep solar glare low, of course, but they also let you feel when your tear ducts leak, because the blood collects at the bottom of the rims. That and a dark handkerchief, and you can clean yourself up as needed, no problem.

Olive feared she might vomit which would be a really dumb and dangerous thing to do since her mouth was sealed off (along with the rest of her skin) against the vacuum of space. Basically, her insides had nowhere to go. She swallowed hard. Only little kids got space sick and she wasn’t a little kid, she was fourteen. As soon as the hatch had opened and she went rushing out into the empty, Olive’s skin crystalized—just like it was supposed to.

Rivera had been weaving dreamscapes at Ibsen Spa for twelve hours when a new videolog came in, a back-of-the-neck buzz. Two blinks opened the message: Urgent work, it said, followed by a telephone number. Rivera had been about to go home, but this message changed everything. Finally, after a whole year gone: a new job. Here at Ibsen Spa, the work was easy, with no risk of being stuck in the vicious aftermath of mind-manipulation; but neither did the Spa offer any chance of exercising skill or talent.