“Just as well,” he tells her. “We were talking about the genie in the bottle earlier, remember? Maybe the only way to survive being in the bottle is not to want anything different or better. If I could yearn for things I can’t have, I’d go crazy. I’d be one long scream that went on and on for a hundred years, while my face keeps making this smile and I keep saying Yes, sir, of course, ma’am. Those girls disgust you because they like cake and parties, but if they didn’t like it, if they couldn’t want it, they’d be no better than me. In seventeen minutes I’ll plug back into my charging plate and might not move again for a day, a week, a month. I once spent eleven weeks without collecting a single token. It didn’t bother me in the slightest. But can you imagine not moving or speaking for eleven weeks?”

“No. I can’t imagine it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” She hugs her knee to her chest. “You’re right about one thing. Wanting what you can’t have makes people crazy.”

They emerge from the thin band of cloud and find themselves sinking past the birthday girl and her father. The girl has her hands around her father’s waist, and the two of them turn slowly in silent dance, her head on his chest. Both of them have their eyes closed.

There are only eleven minutes left on Chip’s meter when the bubble touches down in the landing zone: a cordoned-off area where the floor is all springy green hexagonal tiles. When the bubble hits those padded green hexagons, it bursts with a wet smooch. Iris flinches and laughs as she is spattered by a soapy rain.

They were the last to leave the Sun Parlor but the first to arrive on the ground floor. Iris can see the frizzy redhead in the Tell-Me-Anything mask, about four stories above them, hands pressed to the wall of her bubble, glaring down at them. Time to go. Without thinking, Iris takes Chip’s hand and runs. She doesn’t realize until they’re outside that she’s still laughing.

Fine grains of moisture hang suspended in the air. She looks up for stars, but of course now that she and Chip are below the clouds, the sky is its usual murky blank.

The Monowheel is locked up at a hitching post. Chip nods toward it.

“I don’t have time to carry your Monowheel home for you now,” he says. “I hate to do this, Iris—it’s scummy and mercantile—but in thirty seconds an automatic advertisement will play, inviting you to insert another coin. That’s not something I choose to do. It exists outside my executive functions.”