Day One #3
But the Good Dog itself was cozy and nice.
Small and not too loud, with a floor plan like a sitcom living room: faux wooden floor, big couches, beige walls lined with framed art.
Every picture was a dog, of course. People weren’t allowed to have pets on Callisto, but Kelli knew about them from television, and the dogs in the pictures looked happy and sweet.
The biggest couches had been subdivided: extra arms separated them into semi-enclosed booths where two average-sized adults could sprawl, or four could squeeze in.
A glass divider hung over each of these arms to baffle sound, and on top of the dividers, drinks and baked goods slid down conveyor tracks on their way to customers.
In the booth nearest the door lounged a young man who was certainly Rowan.
He wore jeans and a brown shirt, nondescript but flatteringly cut.
He was nursing a tawny-colored drink in one of the Good Dog’s signature mugs, with a happy, slobbery dog face printed on the side.
His hair was dark and wavy; his skin an olive tone; his eyes were expressive and large.
He looked just like he’d looked in his message that morning.
He looked up at her when she walked in.
Kelli walked forward robotically, barely feeling her feet, and sank onto the couch opposite him.
“You’re real,” she said. Until she walked in, she’d still half-expected that it was a deepfake. She didn’t know if she was relieved to see him for real, after all this time, or unnerved.
He smiled, relieved. “So I’ve been told. Didn’t know if you’d make it.”
“Yes, you did know. Now, what do you need my help with? What is it that only I can do?”
“Whew,” said Rowan, raising his eyebrows. “No hello, no good to see you, Rowan, no how have you been?”
“I thought you said I didn’t have to jump through those hoops with you.”
That brought him up short. He’d said that when they were younger—but it wasn’t quite fair.
Kelli wasn’t just habitually tactless; she was angry.
She didn’t like the feeling that she was here despite her better judgment, despite everything that had happened before, curious and guilty enough to listen.
So if being the angry, tactless, unreasonable autistic woman gave her a little more armor, so be it.
“You’re right; I did say that,” he said after a pause. “And I do need your help. It’s sort of complicated. If I tell you part of the story right now, will you stay and listen?”
“Part of it?” Kelli asked.
Like at most cafés, the menu was a touchscreen set into a slightly recessed panel in the middle of the table.
Rowan tapped it and it brightened for him.
His hands looked bigger than Kelli remembered, the knuckles more prominent.
He scrolled through the list of drinks, hovering around the sugary, flavor-shotted ones.
Kelli had always had a sweet tooth. “What’ll you have? On me.”
Kelli glared at him.
Rowan shrugged and poked a drink at random. The menu made a ding sound. A little circle timer appeared on the screen and counted down the estimated minute or two until the drink was ready.
“All right,” said Rowan. “So, I would have started with hey, I’ve missed you, how have you been, not merely out of social convention but because I actually have missed you.
But if you want the short version, here’s the short version.
Through no fault of my own, I have racked up a few debts, and I’m needing to do people a few favors to pay them off in time.
As one of those favors, a fan of your work heard that we used to be friends and asked if I could set up a meeting.
Private and discreet, strictly gray-market, nothing that directly violates your Inspiration contract.
It’d take one weekend—this one. You’d be paid well just for showing up and having a friendly conversation; I’d get paid too; and someone who loves Ship of Fools very much would be made a very happy person.
Don’t answer now. Think about it, have a nice drink, then see how you feel. ”
Kelli thought about storming off right then, before the coffee arrived. Or throwing the drink in his face. She had not had a nice drink or thought about it yet, but she did understand four things.
First: a ball of chaos like Rowan might have gotten in debt for all sorts of reasons, but the most obvious one was here in plain sight.
Medical transition wasn’t legal on Callisto.
Basic Healthcare wouldn’t pay for it because it wasn’t, well, basic; and the hormones involved, especially for trans men, were a controlled substance.
If you wanted them, and if you were brave enough, then you got them from the same people who sold all the other drugs.
And that was to say nothing of the surgeries, if he’d had surgeries.
It was none of her business, but judging from the way that brown shirt fit his flat chest, Kelli was pretty sure he’d had surgeries.
She couldn’t even comprehend how much unsanctioned, under-the-table money that was.
Second: if Rowan had owed that kind of money to normal people, or a bank or something, then he would not have the option of paying them off with weird little gray-market favors. Rowan had borrowed his money from someone very bad indeed. Kelli had seen crime shows. She knew how this worked.
Third: his offer wasn’t implausible on its face.
In theory, it might only be a friendly conversation.
It still might require weird favors and intermediaries like this, on account of how script supervisors weren’t supposed to speak directly to fans.
Writers and other creatives, in the old days, had let their egos get out of control.
They’d let the whole world fawn on them.
That led to abuses of power and it ruined their art.
So Inspiration had strict policies. A fan of Ship of Fools could only meet Kelli in two ways.
Through mutual friends, or through backdoor shenanigans like these.
And plenty of people, including probably criminals, honestly wished that they could.
But, fourth: on crime shows, it was never just a friendly conversation.
The menu pinged. A saucer zipped down the conveyor track, carrying a cup of something tawny and frothy. It clicked into place on a small circular platform, which then lowered itself to the table, right in front of Kelli.
She stared into the froth.
Inspiration’s official policy on queer issues was that consenting adults could do what they wanted, in private—but that they shouldn’t need dangerous medical treatment in order to do so.
Kelli knew that wasn’t always the whole story.
She’d read about this stuff, illicitly, back when she and Rowan were still close.
Some trans people got by just fine without medical treatment, but some couldn’t live without it.
Kelli had seen firsthand what happened when people like that weren’t affirmed in the ways that they needed.
If Rowan was doing random, risky gray-market stuff to pay off his medical debts, a part of her could hardly blame him.
She wanted to—because, ugh, argh, criminals? —but couldn’t.
She sat back against the squishy couch and squared her shoulders. “Well. How have you been?”
Rowan smiled widely, like he’d scored a point. “I’ve been doing pretty well for myself, for the most part.”
That was so vague that Kelli didn’t even know how to ask any follow-up questions. She scowled down at her drink. “What flavor is this?”
“Vanilla hazelnut.”
“Hmm,” said Kelli. She picked it up and took a cautious sip. It was warm but not too warm; sweet in a slightly off-kilter way. It was the kind of drink she liked, mostly. She sipped again.
Rowan picked his own drink back up. His gaze didn’t leave her, but he smiled.
“I’ve been watching Ship of Fools,” he said. “Great stuff.”
“Thank you,” she said automatically—and with a little suspicion. Rowan had always hated the Inspiration AdventureVerse. He’d said it was soulless garbage churned out by an algorithm that could never make anything good. Was he flattering her on purpose now, or what?
“You know I watched your episode of Rising Adventurers before I knew it was you?” said Rowan.
“It was the damnedest thing. Tahmina runs into a tricky pirate named Orlando who turns out to have a good heart in the end, and I’m thinking, why does that sound so much like Kelli, right down to the name; only the gender changed.
And then the credits rolled, and there you were. ”
Kelli looked down into her coffee, a little flustered. “You remember Orlande?”
“Of course I remember Orlande.” He took a long, savoring sip of his own drink. “I never thought the algorithm worked that way. I mean, that episode still had all the formulas, all the ways the language model rambles on—it still only felt partway like you. But it did feel partway like you.”