Céline puts a gentle hand to the back of Ify’s neck. “Come. Let me show you the rest of my kingdom.” After a beat, she starts giggling.

And Ify does too.

“Spend too much time around those whites in Alabast and you’ll forget who you are.” Céline says it with a smile to soften the rebuke.

Together, they leave the shuttle-receiving station behind. The deeper they walk into Porte Nouveau, past the communities that have sprouted up around the massive, shimmering, raised pentagram-shaped prism that somehow manages to accommodate traffic from railway trains, maglev matatus, and space shuttles, the less the city seems like chaos and the more it feels like something familiar. Something ordered. A feeling of recognition hums in Ify’s bones, and a single word whispers in her head.

Home.

■  ■  ■  ■  ■

The lights are off in the room that is to be Céline’s new office. For now, the room is barren, a white box cast in shadows so deep that her skin and Ify’s both glow blue. Behind Ify, Céline paces its length, fingers tapping her chin. With a thought, Ify adjusts the temperature of her bodysuit a few degrees warmer than the room’s temperature. Ease floods into her and loosens muscles tensed against the soft chill of the central air conditioning.

“I think my desk will go here.” Céline stands in the room’s center. “With two chairs here in front of it. And a chaise longue by the wall there. And plants! Plenty of plants.” She turns to see Ify staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the stars outside. “Ah, Ify. Never one for interior decoration, eh?”

Ify’s mind jolts back to the room with a start. She throws a smirk over her shoulder, then returns her gaze to the inky jewel-studded black outside. “There’s no Refuse Ring.”

Céline joins her. “We’re not like Alabast,” she says with pride. “Outer space, ce n’est pas une poubelle.” Pride fills her face. “It’s insulting to treat space like our waste basket. Our compost is harvested into energy that powers the Colony. In case the sun were ever to die, we’d be safe. And, well, you know how I feel about plastics.”

Ify remembers the horror that had stricken Céline upon watching their classmates at the Institute in Alabast drink from one-use plastic bottles, toss away their plastic iFlexs as soon as an upgrade was available, even seal their dead in metal coffins lined with a special plastic supposedly meant for preservation before being shot out into space to join the rest of the Refuse Ring that circled the Colony. They never finish what’s on their plates, Céline had said to Ify, over and over with a mournful shake of her head as they walked from class to class. Even the campus transports were riddled with plastics.