15 Too Good for This World
Too Good for This World
S pie crossed the expansive bedroom of what was to serve as her pseudo-prison during Love Galaxy ’s eight weeks of filming.
She sank onto her plush bed. How many Expani before her had slept there, sacrificing their romantic life on the altar of empire?
Had this very room been her mother’s once?
Had Gracelin Expani first slept with Spie’s father there?
Had she loved him despite the unorthodox nature of Love Galaxy ?
A pointless rhetorical question: Spie already knew her mother hadn’t loved her father.
Spie had never known her father, Emperor-Consort Ambassador Rigeni Robertson of Old Terra.
He’d died tragically while enroute to his home planet for an official visit before Spie was born.
A rare jumpgate malfunction, his entire ship shredded by the pressure of condensed spacetime.
There had been no survivors. Spie, being in utero at the time (with Nicky, naturally) had never grieved his death.
But that didn’t stop her from yearning for what she’d never had: a parent who might’ve possessed the capacity to love her.
If indeed Rigeni Robertson truly was her father.
Spie had long harbored her doubts (had once even sent out for a DNA test after swiping a used champagne flute from her alleged paternal aunt at a political function.
But, naturally, the results of the test had never come back—it was nearly impossible to do anything without Gracelin finding out.)
Once, years past, Spie had hired a hacker to access the footage from her mother’s season of Love Galaxy .
Only to find the files had been permanently deleted.
No pirated copies on black-market servers, no solitary clips of big moments.
It was as though Gracelin Expani’s season had never existed.
She must’ve shelled out some real money to delete every trace of that footage.
But why? Grief? Embarrassment? Spie would never know.
Her CB vibrated. Reclining on a pile of pillows, she tapped the screen.
A string of unread messages populated. Most were from Kalvin, all reminding her of the day’s event sequence.
Costume, hair, and makeup would be there within the hour, after which she’d have to endure an exclusive, live-streamed interview alongside Nix, followed by the contestant intros and kickoff ball.
One message was from Nicky saying he was more or less hyperventilating and could he barge into her room?
(Okay, he didn’t say that, exactly; she was simply interpreting his “Can I come over?” ).
And the last message was from...A smile spread across Spie’s face.
Five perfectly cultivated words, practically poetic:
Who the fuck is this?
Classic Trash Girl.
Spie drafted a response.
Spie: Where did you get such a filthy mouth? Not that I’m complaining.
While waiting for Trash Girl to bridge back (or for Nicky to make his way through the camouflaged closet that conjoined their rooms), she snapped her fingers to turn on her bedroom’s holo.
She’d much rather be outside, catching the late-afternoon waves off the coast, or hitting tennis balls on the court in the manor’s sporting yard, but the whole place was crawling with cameras and producers. She was better off holing up.
She flipped through the available channels.
Every public broadcast pertained to the show.
Last night, as soon as their cruiser reached Expan’s orbit, Blessing Stone had ordered the release of the official promo announcing all twenty-four contestants.
Now talk show hosts broke down the promo, detailing everything they could gather on the contestants and debating who was most likely to get sent home first. Presently, Artemis Ialan was tied with the other two fringe-planet dwellers, Petra Corran from the Outerbelt and Rosaria Yune from the Underbelt, as the favorite night-one losers.
One host commented on the show’s unprecedented decision to include such distant territories in the cast of this year’s season.
The X System, along with the Belts, including both the Outerbelt and the Underbelt, were all historically marginalized (read: oppressed ) regions of the empire.
Including them in the lottery had been more about propaganda to calm growing anti-imperial sentiment than inclusivity.
It provided the empire with the opportunity to run sanitized commercials on each territory, painting them in a positive, happy, empire-loving light.
And it helped distract from a growing fear about the Uiyoni’s return.
One of the aliens’ ships had somehow managed to break through the blockade last month, slaughtering everyone on a refueling station not far from Ncklogui.
Gracelin had silenced the press on the incident, but rumors abounded regardless.
Spie switched the channel. Milea Har Kwan, the contestant from Hittia, an Outer Expanese planet best known for its military contributions, was in the middle of her arrival interview.
She stood on a landing pad outside Elsidor dressed starchy in a military-grade blue blazer and matching skirt.
Though not personally acquainted with Milea, Spie knew of her.
She was the eldest niece of Annie Har Kwan, the master sergeant who’d sacrificed her life to turn the tide of the Uiyoni Conflict in Expan’s favor some thirty years earlier.
As the story went, Annie Har Kwan had, alone, infiltrated the prime Uiyoni warship and singlehandedly destroyed the technology that allowed the aliens to usurp control of Expan’s ships.
But in so doing, she was caught by the enemy and killed.
How anyone actually knew what had happened when Annie sneaked aboard the Uiyoni warship was a point of contention—after all, she was dead, and her comms had never been recovered.
Truth was, no one actually knew what had happened after she sneaked aboard, only that the conflict ended shortly thereafter.
Still, time and again, her bravery and sacrifice had been depicted in books and holodramas.
A story that grew and morphed, becoming bigger than itself.
A statue of Annie Har Kwan had been erected in Elsidor City; she was memorialized forever a hero.
Resultingly, Milea, due to her relation to her aunt, had been a minor celebrity her entire life.
In her mid-thirties, she was this season’s oldest contestant.
Pretty enough, with chin-length dark hair and a round face.
One of the twelve contestants here for both Spie and Nix.
However, based on every interview she’d ever done, Spie thought the woman uptight.
Spie couldn’t do uptight. Milea’s being cast was an intentional and heavy-handed reminder of Expan’s military strength.
On the holo, Milea spoke with the vigor of a campaigning senator:
“My Auntie Annie was a hero. To save her fellow soldiers, she volunteered herself for a suicide mission. Prevented all of us from becoming slaves to the Uiyoni. If not for her efforts, your children might be living on food farms, awaiting the moment they become an alien’s dinner!
To this day, the valiant soldiers in Expan’s Fleet protect our borders, ensuring that my aunt’s sacrifice never goes forgotten.
I’m honored to be here on Love Galaxy to keep my aunt’s memory alive. ”
When Spie next switched the channel, she was confronted with an image of Arbora VinVanxin stepping from an austere silver transport with the Moons’ tri-circle insignia glinting in the sunlight. Spie sat up straighter.
Arbora winked at the camera. The years had served her well, gifting her generous curves, a sensual layer of fat hugging her athletic build. She was a woman now. Spie bit her bottom lip.
She’d loved Arbora once. A puppy love, maybe, but not an insignificant one.
The unexpected severing of an insignificant love wouldn’t have buckled Spie’s knees, wouldn’t have left her wrung out and empty, her still-developing heart rendered into a two-dimensional piece of flimsy in her chest. Wouldn’t have caused her to spend hours alone, composing sad violin sonatas.
In the eight years since their breakup, Spie had closed herself off to the potential of anything real.
And that was the true crux of her nerves, wasn’t it?
Not just that Arbora was coming—was there—but that, for the first time in her adult life, Spie was going to try for something genuine.
Holy nebulas, the absolute terror of that statement.
The question now arose: could she peel back the thick layer of protection she’d wrapped around her heart and love Arbora again? Or, equally important, could Arbora love her ? Or had she moved on since they were children, since Spie hadn’t fought hard enough to stay with her?
But if Arbora had moved on, then why would she have asked to come back?
Confidently, Arbora wove through the press gauntlet to rescue an adorably overwhelmed Trash Girl. But Spie’s attention was stolen by a knock from the closet door joining her room with her brother’s.
“Come in!”
The door opened, shush ing over the high carpet.
Nicky entered, freshly clean-shaven. His normal leather gloves had been replaced with a more ceremonial pair inlaid with burgundy trim to match his suit.
Handsome as he was (he was her twin, after all), Spie couldn’t help but notice the way his trousers hung slightly loose around his thighs.
The costume designer would take in the seam to hide the evidence of Nicky’s weight loss, the toll these last months had taken.
But Spie would know. She always knew when Nicky was struggling. Even if he never told her why.
“We’re really here.” He paused to glance around her room. “The Diplomacy Manor.”