It was a good day to risk one’s life and sanity in the pursuit of happiness.

  The impenetrable smog had parted, and a warm summer rain blanketed the road between Nagia and the city. The store was in the town over from where she lived, so that meant she had to take the train. It was, unfortunately for everyone, a nightmare. The passengers were annoyed when she took too long getting on and off, since they only had 10 seconds before the doors slammed shut. The narrow footpaths were dangerously slick, and it was all she could do to keep herself on the path, make room for everyone else, while protecting her face from the buffet of debris kicked up by passing trucks.

  Then, there were the stares. Always with the stares. From beneath sunglasses and wire-rimmed caps, every few pairs of eyes she passed, some would linger on Nagia, on her face, chair, or her short hair. She knew what they were looking at, had been on the butt-end of too many jokes in school to be oblivious. She kept her head down and stayed under the shadows that stretched overhead, hiding like the summer sun behind the bellies of passing airships.

  Even before that, the day had been rough. Nagia had to take the first train of the day to try and get there before the shop opened, which was at 8 in the morning. The train she was aiming for was at 5. She had to do this because part of her morning routine involved a roulette of pills and compression stockings and at least 20 minutes of insane exercises that apparently kept her body from killing her.

  It then took exactly that long for the rusted deathtrap of a lift to shudder up the 305 floors of their building, and then more for a private taxi with capacity for a wheelchair to come and take her to the train station.

  The driver hadn’t wanted to take her, claiming that he didn’t have the space or the time. This prompted an argument from Nagia’s mother. She pointed to the website that said they had bigger vehicles for this specific purpose. The driver told her that this was an old website, that they no longer could afford to rent those bigger cars. He only gave in when Sara started climbing in on her own and started pulling at the leather seats to make room.

  When Nagia was safely wedged into the back seat, Sara poked her head in the window. ‘I’m sorry I have to work today,’ she said. ‘Will you be alright on your own?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have organized this if you’re worried,’ Nagia told her.

  Her mother sighed. ‘You just make it so hard not to, Nagi.’

  Nagia fell asleep on the ride to the station, and then again when the train was moving. It did not help that she had spent the previous night mostly awake with Brianna. The two dragons kept each other up with stories and gossip, finding each other’s company surprisingly comforting. Nagia recounted the tales of the celestials, from their birth among the cosmos, their uplifting of countless smaller races, among which the Terrans were the last.

  ‘So you just brought up your own worst enemies,’ Brianna had concluded.

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Nagia.

  ‘Now the universe is theirs, and we are just oversized worms to them.’

  ‘Yes. Do you not know this? Have you lived under an asteroid belt for the last fifty years?’

  ‘I am not that old.’ Brianna swiped playfully at Nagia. ‘If anything, you’re the hermit.’

  ‘Am not!’ Nagia flicked back with her tail. They tussled a little and ended up drifting in each other’s arms under the soft warmth of a nearby dying star. They watched the light trail into the swirling void of the distant black hole.

  This is good, Nagia remembered thinking. If only I had this earlier.

  As dawn broke, Nagia made it to the shop in the neighbouring town. She could see the sign from where she was. It said the shop was called ‘Antique Sound.’

  She was too tired to care about what that was supposed to mean.

  An older man was at the shop entrance. He heard the squeaking of wheels, turned around, and watched Nagia for a bit before turning back. He put a strange key in the barrier arms that blocked the sliding doors, and with a twist, commanded those lanky appendages to open.

  Nagia hurried so she could follow him in. The ramp, she realized, was what happened when those robotic arms folded from the door and down to the ground. They rested on either side of the staircase, forming perfect ramps.

  Inside the store, rows of curved tables held vigilance across a checkered floor. Hollowed-out shelves held stacks of CDs and tapes. Guitars and drum cymbals dotted the walls all the way towards the counter. Nagia wheeled past mirror-faced pianos and glossy saxophones. She watched her reflection scatter within an armada of flutes, stacked in circles like a metallic fountain.

  Now this is different.

  Someone cleared their throat. Nagia retracted her hand from one of the flutes. It was the man at the counter. It was hard to tell if he was the same man who had opened the store, because he had his face hidden behind a magazine.

  ‘We go by strip club rules here.’ His deep voice was directed clearly at Nagia.

  ‘What rules are those?’ she asked.

  ‘You touch it, you bring it home.’

  ‘After you pay, I’m assuming?’

  The man grunted in confirmation.

  Nagia wheeled up to the counter. She said, ‘I am going to work here,’ as if it were already decided.

  The response was lacklustre. It was even less than that, actually, because the man said nothing.

  Nagia tried again. ‘I would like to work here.’

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The magazine shifted a little. The man gazed down at Nagia. ‘I don’t hire brats,’ he said.

  Of the many names Nagia had been called, pre- and post-accident, a brat was never one. She placed her hands on the counter. ‘Alright, mister. I didn’t want to resort to this tactic, but you know, my mom asked about this job for me.’

  The man placed his magazine down. A look of astonishment came over his face, which looked to have seen forty-odd years under the smog-filled sky. ‘Your mother, you said? I didn’t… my apologies, m’lady. I had no idea you commanded such authority in the plebeian masses such as I.’ He dusted his hands and shook hers, then directed her towards the front of the shop. ‘Why don’t you start immediately?’

  Nagia was delighted, but didn’t want to seem it. She held her head up and started wheeling herself towards where the man was pointing.

  ‘A bit more,’ he said.

  Nagia went to the front door.

  ‘And a bit more.’

  She inched further, over the threshold.

  ‘Almost there.’

  Nagia did as she was told, and then she was outside.

  A moment passed.

  The shop owner put out his hands, catching the flute Nagia was using as a lance. He yanked it out of her grasp and set it aside. She glared at him. He turned to the cash register. ‘Bag costs extra,’ he told her.

  ‘I don’t want the flute,’ she snapped.

  ‘You shouldn’t have touched it then.’

  ‘I don’t have any money.’

  ‘Steal your mother’s credit card then. That’s what brats do, isn’t it?’

  Nagia’s jaw fell open. Heat flooded her eyes. Realizing she’d been played, she suddenly wanted nothing more than to escape and cry somewhere. She spun around and wheeled herself towards the exit again, but the more seconds that passed, the angrier she became, and it was impossible to ignore the pure hatred that had consumed her at that moment. As she passed the flute stand, she slapped it over, letting the cacophony of twenty metallic instruments follow her out.

  She didn’t used to be like this. So… Angry, all the time. She tried to remember the time before now, which felt easier, a time when there were three pairs of chopsticks at the dining table. She even remembered walking on her own two legs, jumping on the bed, or being swung around in Daddy’s arms. The memories came back, but with them was the pain. It was the pain that stopped her from remembering. Sometimes it would happen at her ankles, sometimes at the tips of her toes. They were brief, but stung past flesh and bone into dead nerves, stirring up a dormant rage that drowned out everything else. When it started, the only thing that helped was drifting inside that other world, surrounded by dead stars and a dying universe that had it worse.

  The rain had stopped, and the smog rolled back across the sweltering streets, sticking to the back of Nagia’s neck. She headed for the train station. It was a while away, and she made slow progress. One would think the advantage of wheels would increase her distance traveled, but that was not the case when everything was either uphill or at the edge of the road. Nagia found herself running out of strength. It was ridiculous. Was this some sort of punishment her mom had set up for that argument yesterday? Some sick plan to get her to leave the house?

  Nagia had been given some money for lunch, but she decided at that moment to treat herself. She was too angry to go home anyway. Spotting a sign that pointed to an internet cafe, she went in.

  A young man with a metal spike in his mouth greeted her. He took her cash and age. Nagia lied and said she was eighteen. The young man didn’t look to be convinced, but Nagia shuffled her wheelchair and looked a little more pathetic than she was, and he gave her a pass. He jutted his chin towards the hallway. The spike between his lips quivered. ‘Number four-B,’ he said, and then, ‘Yo, hold up. You no lizard, right?’

  Nagia paused by the hallway entrance. She could smell the musk already and was trying not to gag. ‘A what?’

  ‘Legion only,’ the young man said. ‘Not a rule. The regs don’t like sharing the floor with celestial players.’

  It was the first time Nadia had ever been in an internet cafe, so she had no clue if this was normal or not. She promised that she was Terran anyway.

  The young man sucked on his lip piercing. ‘Well, I warned you.’

  The hallway split into a maze of corridors and rooms. Each one had a pod inside, visible through the tinted window slit in the face of every door. Most of these pods were filled. Nadia could tell this by the sign above that said so, and because it was pitch black inside, save for the periodic flashing of monitoring lights along the screens of each VR setup.

  Despite her best efforts, she still got lost. She could not find 4-B. Heck, she was somewhere with a completely different naming system somehow.

  ‘Twelve-point-one,’ she read the sign above the door she was currently at. ‘Where the hell…?’ She tried going further down, but the hallway ended in a glassy wall that had a skeleton embedded behind it. Going back was equally disconcerting. Not really liking the idea of spending the rest of her way here, she decided to try her luck and knocked on the door to 12.1.

  Amazingly, it opened.

  A girl stepped out, blonde and tall. She wore a striped hoodie decorated with neon paw prints, leather pants, and heeled boots with metal rings running down the front. She had rainbow colored nails, and the pair of neon headphones around her neck painted sleek rainbows onto her diamond features. She looked up at first, probably expecting someone looming above, but did a double-take when she realized the person who knocked was in a chair, and quite a ways shorter than she was.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hi,’ said Nagia.

  There was a pause. ‘Cute dress,’ the girl said, moving her words around the lollipop in her mouth. ‘You look like a fruit salad.’

  Nagia turned into a puddle at the unexpected compliment (at least she had decided to take it as a compliment). It never happened like this. It wasn’t supposed to.

  ‘You are lost,’ the girl said.

  ‘Well, actually, I…’ Nagia struggled for an excuse that didn’t make her look like an idiot.

  ‘You’re knocking on the door to the technician,’ The girl pointed out. ‘So either your pod is broken, in which case you’ll be bleeding out your ears about now, or you don’t know where the pod is.’

  Checkmate. Nagia felt a mix of shame, embarrassment, and something hot and yucky, but there was also something else, something like… excitement? No. She just liked the way this girl was looking at her, and how she looked and talked, that was all. ‘It’s my first time here,’ Nagia admitted.

  The girl rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not you. This place sucks. I’m pretty sure it was designed as some sex dungeon in the beginning, hence all the secret rooms and whatever.’ She paused, scanning Nagia from head to toe, to chair. ‘You sure about this? You don’t look like a Terran player.’

  ‘I’m in Four-B,’ Nagia said.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ the girl said, ‘and funny.’

  The way she said it made Nagia hesitate. She’d met this girl before, she thought. Before she could ask, the girl was making shooing motions with her hands, and so Nagia inched back to give her some space, then followed her down the way they came.

  The girl looked around Nagia’s age, but there was something about the way she carried herself that stretched the gap between them. This girl was a stark slice of color in the hot, dreary world. Her steps were accented by the clinking of metal rings. Her hair, as they passed under changing lights, took on shades that mesmerised Nagia’s imagination.

  She was so enamored by this girl that she almost ran her over when they got to the room.

  ‘Here’s your tomb,’ the girl said, holding the door open. ‘You’ll feel a pin prick on your leg when your time is up.’

  Nagia went cautiously into this forest of technology. It was a damp, square room with mirrors on three walls. A harsh red light blinked from the ceiling, carving out all the curved edges of the VR machine. An array of wires draped from one corner to the next, making it impossible not to run over them. Nagia turned to the girl, suddenly remembering. ‘I can’t actually feel anything in…’ She started to say, but the door had already closed. The light above her turned from red to blue, and there was nowhere else to go but upward to space.