Marce’s triage was helped by certain factors. With regard to clothing, Marce was already packed; he had enough clothes at home in Claremont that he didn’t need any from his apartment in Opole. The only thing his apartment had to offer in that regard were some casual shirts with clever astrophysics comments silkscreened on them. Marce was reasonably sure he could leave those behind. The clothing he did pack was mostly neutral in color and design. His father pointed out that fashion on Hub would be so dramatically different that he would have to restock anyway.

All the music, books, pictures, entertainment, and much of the personal communication that Marce treasured was stored in a thumb-sized data crypt, along with what appeared to be close to one hundred thousand marks of spending money, the latter accessible only through Marce’s biometrics, theoretically. Marce wouldn’t have to waste space on any of those.

That left things—objects of sentimental value. The large majority of these sorts of objects also resided in Claremont Palace, both because that’s where Marce had lived most of his life, and also because the apartment in graduate housing was ridiculously small. Of the objects that were at the apartment, Marce chose four. Two were books, given to him by his father, one on his thirteenth standard birthday, and one when he received his doctorate.

The third was an obsolete music player given to him by Vrenna, who took the player to a Green Gods concert and managed to get it signed by three of the four members of the band. The player didn’t work anymore and the Green Gods had broken up years ago, members dispersing into oblivion and/or ill-advised solo careers. But he kept it to remember that time in his life, and to remind him that Vrenna, despite often being a pain in his ass as they grew up, was occasionally capable of being thoughtful and kind.

The final object was a threadbare stuffed pig named Giggy, bought for Marce on his first birthday by his mother, who had given Vrenna a stuffed bear named Howie at the same time. Howie had disappeared years before—there was reason to believe Vrenna may have launched him into the sky using a homemade rocket—but Giggy survived and accompanied Marce to every new home. Fiction would dictate that Giggy was the sole remaining gift Marce had from his now-departed mother, but in real life Marce had many gifts and owned many things that were either from her or reminded him of her. Giggy was simply his good-luck charm.