“I’m from Earth,” Elena said. “Originally.”

The bartender whistled. “Not too many of you come all the way out here except on business. You for business?”

She sighed. “Would you believe I was in cryosleep for five hundred years and just woke up, I guess yesterday? If it was yesterday. I don’t even know how days work here. I was adjusted to a twenty-seven hour cycle, because we were pretty sure that was the length of the day on the planet we were traveling to.”

“Ah.” The bartender blinked. “A day out here is a set of shifts. Six-hour shifts, set of four shifts a day, so it’s not too bad if you have to pull a double sometimes.”

“Ha. You have a twenty-four hour day, this far from Earth? I guess humans did evolve to live that way.”

“It’s not so bad, and anyway, the station doesn’t sleep. I come from Triton. A day on Triton runs a hundred and forty hours, which is not so good. We break it up there too.”

“Neptune’s only sixteen hours. I remember that from school.”

The bartender poured a small glass of something dark brown into a glass and took a slow sip. “Nobody much lives on Neptune. Mostly AI, tending the wind farms. Are you really a past person? No jokes?”

“No jokes. I was on a goldilocks ship. We… didn’t get where we were going. We were stranded, far from our destination. I was the only survivor.”

The bartender winced. “Sorry to hear. I’m Jana, by the byway.”

“Elena.”

“Welcome to the now and now, Elena. Drinks on me, OK?”

Elena smiled, touched by the kindness. “Thank you. I expected to wake up in orbit around a distant planet. I didn’t expect to wake up here, but in a way, it’s even stranger.”

“Five hundred years,” Jana ruminated. “Bad times back then, before the Liars, and the wilding and the opening-up. There are some other past people here and there, I hear. They get to their planets, sometimes, they wake up, they find a colony already there, because we got ahead of them, through the bridges. You know the bridges?”

“I’ve heard about them, yeah.”

“Maybe there’s somebody you know, even? Could check the Tangle, find some friends, feel less lonely maybe?”

That hadn’t occurred to Elena, but she had met many of the other goldilocks crews, at least in passing, during training. “That’s a good idea. Thank you.”

“Nassa prob.”

Elena decided to parse that as “no problem.”

“What ship found you?” Jana asked.

“The White Raven?”

“Ah ha ha, you crewed up with Callie then? She’s tough and tough but she’ll take good care. Won’t cheat you.”

“She’s been very kind. Do you know her well?”