Gently, he folded his mother’s prayer rug and laid it on the blank space. On top he placed the printed photo of him and his brothers. Before his AR chip was fried, a holographic display would leap out of it, and his oldest brother Ehsan’s hand would appear behind his head with rabbit ears. They had gone on vacation to Xi’an Station, just the four of them, learning to surf at the wave pools and watching artificial sunsets beamed live from the remnants of Navagio Beach.

Ehsan had gotten fall-down drunk and proposed to a waitress at one of the floating bars, but neither of his brothers snitched. Smirking, Rayan would put his forefinger on Ehsan’s face. That waitress still sent the occasional poke over VIT Chat.

He pulled the shreds of handkerchief from his cargo pocket and laid them reverently next to the photo.

So verily, with the hardship, there is relief, verily with the hardship there is relief.

Last, he put down a handwritten Valentine’s Day card from his first and only girlfriend, Maya. They had met in undergrad, then dated on and off until Rayan got serious about his dissertation and things evaporated. Even Rayan’s mother begrudgingly liked Maya. She was short and plump and always wore dresses that would be hip six months in the future.

“Everything but her eyeballs is pierced,” his mother had complained. But nobody could resist Maya’s crooked smile.

To my perfect cinnamon roll: You’re going to crush this shit. See you on the other side.

Maya had gone into chemical engineering. Both of them were born and raised on Tokyo Bliss, and when they were still furtively bringing up marriage, they both wanted to have the ceremony on Earth. Something so serious, so important, should be done on solid ground, they both agreed, even if it would cost a small fortune and take months to get clearance.

He heard a footstep behind him at the entrance to the lab. That was strange. He usually sensed anyone coming before they arrived. That narrowed down his visitor nicely.

“Rosalyn?” he asked, turning and finding himself face to chest with Piero. “Oh. What did you . . . what did you do to yourself?”

Rayan wasn’t foolish enough to think his own grievous flesh wound, covered in a protective layer of Foxfire growth, was anything pretty to look at, but this was something different. Something ghastly.

Piero’s skin hung off his face and neck in chunks, pulsing blue light spearing out from between the tears. There was almost no flesh left around his eyes, making them protrude, bulbous and unnatural.

But his old friend—his old lover—smiled. His teeth looked whiter and more threatening with no lips to define the grin. “It’s only flesh. Flesh is not really part of us. The cluster, the connection, we’re her children and we should reflect her.”

Rayan swallowed with difficulty, choking back the urge to vomit.