“I need to visit a chemist to pick up supplies for my next holy day. I don’t have the right precursors on board to produce the sacrament myself – in fact, I had to use some of my personal stores to synthesize Doctor Oh’s medications. A lot of her therapy is about properly rebalancing her brain chemistry. I’ll go now, if you can watch over her, in case she wakes up earlier than expected. I’d ask Drake and Janice to keep an eye on her, but they might be a bit much for Elena to take in. Her visit to the future hasn’t been all that disorienting yet, but if she sees them, or Ashok, without proper preparation, she might be alarmed. The definition of ‘human’ wasn’t quite as broad in her era as it is in ours.”

Callie nodded, though personally she thought Elena would be more interested than frightened. “Fair enough. When’s your next holy day, anyway?”

“Just a few days from now. Any idea where we’ll be then? It’s always better if I can spend it with the congregation here.”

“I’m not entirely sure, but I’ll try not to schedule any medical emergencies while you’re in the throes of your sacred ecstasies.”

“That’s probably for the best. If you get hurt, Ashok will have to sew you up, and you might end up with a robotic elbow or a flamethrower for a foot.” Stephen took a last look at Elena’s vitals, then headed off for the lower markets of Meditreme Station. His church believed in the use of psychedelic drugs to induce entheogenic and entactogenic states – a sense of connection with the divine, and a sense of connection with other living beings, respectively. Apparently the experience was very moving and meaningful, and could be made even more so in a cuddle pile of co-religionists. Stephen said knowing the feelings were induced chemically didn’t detract from the profundity of the devotions: “Everything we feel is chemicals anyway. Isn’t that miracle enough?”

His faith didn’t appeal to Callie, though. She felt either apathy or hostility toward almost everyone, and she was happy that way. Every once in a while she met someone she felt connected to, without the necessity of psychedelics. Her gaze fell upon Elena, who was Sleeping Beauty once again, and she looked deliberately away.

Callie sat on the stool Stephen had vacated and scrolled through her handheld, taking half an hour to catch up on the news in the Tangle. A new colony world had been established near bridgehead twelve; another expedition had vanished without a trace investigating the reclusive settlers beyond bridgehead twenty-nine; another group of Liars claimed to possess technology that could communicate instantaneously even across vast distances, but as usual, “technical problems” made a demonstration impossible; Io was having another doomed referendum on declaring independence from the rest of the Jovian Imperative.