Their friendship was a practice in intimacy and vulnerability. If she’d channeled all of her emotional expectations into her and Yahya, she’d be even more alone than she was now. She needed a variety of relationships. Different social roles to meet different emotional needs. Weak ties were another force to bind celestial orbits. The people seen infrequently, familiar near strangers. Not relationships that withered unremarked on. The kind that buoyed human health. Her outer circle. People on the periphery of her life with whom she shared something in common; but part of her rhythm of life. People she saw with some regularity in life, sometimes as a part of her work or simply just familiar faces from when she hit up poetry spots or concerts.

Perhaps she could check in on Dina. See what progress she had made.

“Maya, locate Dina.”

<She’s in the Cypher’s engine room, in the containment unit of the core’s kheprw crystals.>

“Interesting. I did have a rehearsal scheduled.” Stacia palmed her crystal sphere, comforted by its weight. She never canceled her rehearsal. Maybe the Universe was trying to tell her something.

She left for Dina’s station.

When the door opened, a hunched-over Dina assembled her balafon in preparation to warm up. A form of deuterium and lithium, in their processed form, the crystals developed into aligned lattices, a sort of generator strata. Energy was harnessed from the converted sonic energy and the subsequent fusion reaction. Music renewed the decaying kheprw, recrystallizing them, transforming them into more concentrated, more perfectly aligned lattices. That was the purpose of the command performance. Entrusted to those who could perform at the highest levels.

Once she realized Stacia stood in the door, Dina stood at attention. “I see you, Captain.”

“I see you, Dina.” Taking a seat, Stacia set her command sphere into the keyboards at her station, unlocking the vintage clavioline. “And it’s Stacia. Don’t let me interrupt.”

“I was hoping to join you … Stacia?” Dina’s tone tested out how the captain’s name sounded from her lips.

Stacia closed her eyes. Every time she sat down to play, the possibility of music was like a blank canvas. She wondered what she’d bring to it, if she could even string together notes to stir her soul anew, move her in any way. Stacia plinked the first few notes, tentative tickles in slow warm-up. In her mind, the worst textured tan color, a nauseous swell, oppressed her mood. She plucked her keys, feeling her way into the song, not knowing where her journey might take her. The prechorus moved into a melody, blossoming blues and greens, an algal bloom on an ocean wave. Music as color, notes as texture, this way of seeing was her secret. The piece slowly took shape.