Convenient, she thought bitterly. It was convenient that her uncle only thought it fit to return for good just as she was preparing to leave forever. Convenient that he was suddenly sick, after years in the field. Convenient that he had such a vested interest in keeping Glenn, when for years he hadn’t given him the time of day; had treated him like some kind of houseplant or reluctantly adopted dog.

“You’re worried about something,” Glenn said. She looked at him, in the flickering green dimness of the bioluminescent streetlights. His face had not physically changed much over the years, of course—but there was a hidden depth to his expressions, beyond the flat, serious look. Watching her watching him, he remarked, “Your heart rate is elevated.”

She reached out and touched his hair. The dark, downy thistle at the nape of his neck. “You need a haircut,” she said. They’d given androids that feature, a few years back, to make them even more lifelike; she imagined the developers arguing about the implications of it. ‘Do we want a way to tell them apart?’ ‘Do we want to make them more like us?’ ‘Why have half-measures when you could go all the way?’ In the end they chose to give the androids hair that grew, synthetic but very life-like. That way users could customize their androids’ appearances in more varied and pleasing ways—though the androids themselves seemed to find this more of a burden than a boon.

Glenn looked unfazed by Park touching him. He stayed where he was, without pulling away. “I have exactly twenty-three days before hair maintenance is due,” he told her.

“Are you going to change it, or keep it at your default?”

“What would you prefer?”

“Let’s shave it bald,” Park said, “and paint your head silver.”

Glenn frowned a little. “The paint would chip,” he said.

“I was just joking.”

“I understand,” he said. “So was I.”

They walked together until they hit the edge of the biodome, staring out at the moon-glinting sea beyond the membrane. It was a strange thing, that wall, Park often thought: rubbery and flimsy to the touch, a semi-living transparent skin that filtered air and water and chemicals and molecules in and out of the city in a kind of constant autopoietic exchange. And yet, if you struck it, the membrane turned as hard and impenetrable as a diamond. There was something to be learned there, Park thought.

She said, watching the silvered waves lap up against the curved wall: “We’ll be out of this place in a month, you know. Things will be different.”

“Yes,” Glenn said. She couldn’t see his expression in the dark. “Some things will be different. Other things will not change.”

—