“No,” Park answered. And she really wasn’t sad. There was nothing for her to miss in New Diego. No friends, no favored little shops or particular hangouts: everything was ordered digitally or prepared by androids, it seemed. You could get that anywhere. The only thing she couldn’t replace was Glenn, and she was supremely confident that she could take him aboard with her if she paid the last-minute luggage fee at the airship port kiosk. It wasn’t even a full flight—she’d checked—so no one would object to her paying extra money for an android that wouldn’t even need his own room.

She hadn’t told him, yet. She’d lived the past weeks in fear that her uncle might catch wind of her plans and force it out of him. She said now, half-teasing: “Will you miss me, I wonder?”

Glenn gave it careful consideration. “Yes,” he said. “Adjustments will have to be made.”

She didn’t know why she smiled, at something so simple. They walked together for a long while, killing time—the airship wouldn’t leave for another hour, and the port wasn’t crowded. Park and Glenn made a circuitous route along their routine haunts: the avenue by the school where she would sometimes meet him for lunch, with its holographic trees bearing small wrinkled apricots; the robot maintenance center with the old technician who sometimes smiled at them tentatively; the alleyway where Park had once seen a rare cat, and had always come back to search for it again. The curve of clear biodome wall that looked out at the sea. The bench where they sometimes liked to sit quietly and browse the cyberstream together. Just backdrops, Park thought, looking at it all. Nothing that was the crux of the scene. Nothing that she couldn’t swap out.

Finally the time came for them to head to the airship port and begin the boarding process. Park had already shipped her belongings ahead of her; she had only a small compression cube with a few days’ worth of clothes and toiletries on her person. She realized suddenly that she hadn’t packed or sent anything for Glenn.

But what would he even need? she thought then, almost laughing at herself. All they needed was each other.

They checked in at the humid front counter: the airship port was on a kind of open dock that jutted out into the sea, beyond an opening that took them past the biodome walls. The robotic clerk told Park that she could pay for extra baggage in her airship hangar—hangar six. Glenn gave no indication that he knew what she was up to; when she glanced back at him, he only regarded her with his usual grave expression.