pizza.’ Which kind of makes sense.”
“That doesn’t make sense at all,” Lambert said. “Not even a little bit.”
“Sure it does,” Salcido said. “There’s that old song. ‘When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.’ ‘Lunes’ comes from ‘luna,’ which is moon. So there you go.”
“I have never once heard of this song,” Powell said. “You just made it up. This is a thing you just made up to win an argument.”
“Agreed,” Lambert said.
“I did not.”
“It’s complete bullshit.”
“No.”
“Vote,” Lambert said. His hand went up. So did Powell’s. “The motion passes. It’s bullshit.”
“I said it was an old song,” Salcido protested.
“Lieutenant,” Lambert said, “you’ve never heard of this pizza moon song, have you?”
“I am not being drawn into your stupid argument,” I said. “Or more accurately, another of your stupid arguments.”
“The lieutenant has never heard of your pizza moon song either,” Lambert said to Salcido. “And she was a musician. She would know.”
“There are a lot of different types of musicians,” Salcido said, only a little defensively.
A notification pinged in my view. “They’re done talking,” I said, to my squad. “We’re on. Forty-five seconds. Suit up.” I grabbed my gear, which in this case included a nanobot pack, a drone, and my Empee rifle.
“When we get back to the Tubingen I’m going to find that song,” Salcido said, grabbing his own gear. “I’m going to find it and I’m going to make all of you listen to it. You’ll see. You’ll all see.”
“Masks,” I said. I signaled my combat unitard to create a mask, covering my face. It crept up my head, obscuring my view until my BrainPal offered up a visual feed.
“What’s for lunch today?” Lambert asked, through his BrainPal, because his mouth was now snugly covered, like everyone else’s.
“Hamburgers,” Salcido said. “Because it’s Tuesday.”
The shuttle door opened, exposing us to the frigid temperatures of the upper atmosphere of Franklin.
“Out you go,” I said to the three. They jumped out of the shuttle without further prompting. I counted off thirty and then jumped out of the shuttle myself.
Franklin was close to the size and mass of the Earth, basically perfect for human life, and was one of the first few planets colonized, back in the early days of the Colonial Union. It was densely populated, with citizens whose ancestry ranged from first-wave North American colonists to recent refugees from the Indonesian civil war, most of them on the large, thin continent of Pennsylvania, which dominated the northern hemisphere. There were a number of provinces and sub-provinces, but New Philadelphia, the city above which I now found myself, was the home of the planet’s global government.
The global government which was, in a matter of minutes, about to vote on a bill to declare independence from the Colonial Union.
My BrainPal alerted me to the location of the other three members of my squad, some thousands of meters below me. They had a different mission objective than I did, although we were all headed for the same place: the global capitol building, affectionately (or perhaps not so affectionately) called “the glass slipper.” It was named so because the architect gave it a swooping, rising profile that vaguely resembled a shoe— very vaguely in my opinion—and because the building was clad in a transparent, glass-like material, designed, or so the architect said, to be a metaphor for the transparency of the Franklin government itself.
The primary entrance to the Franklin capitol was a large, open arch that led into a rotunda, from which, if you looked up, you could see the shoes of the global representatives, because on the highest level of the “slipper” was the legislative chamber, which boasted a lovely, sloping roof and a transparent floor which looked down into the rotunda. It was my
“That doesn’t make sense at all,” Lambert said. “Not even a little bit.”
“Sure it does,” Salcido said. “There’s that old song. ‘When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.’ ‘Lunes’ comes from ‘luna,’ which is moon. So there you go.”
“I have never once heard of this song,” Powell said. “You just made it up. This is a thing you just made up to win an argument.”
“Agreed,” Lambert said.
“I did not.”
“It’s complete bullshit.”
“No.”
“Vote,” Lambert said. His hand went up. So did Powell’s. “The motion passes. It’s bullshit.”
“I said it was an old song,” Salcido protested.
“Lieutenant,” Lambert said, “you’ve never heard of this pizza moon song, have you?”
“I am not being drawn into your stupid argument,” I said. “Or more accurately, another of your stupid arguments.”
“The lieutenant has never heard of your pizza moon song either,” Lambert said to Salcido. “And she was a musician. She would know.”
“There are a lot of different types of musicians,” Salcido said, only a little defensively.
A notification pinged in my view. “They’re done talking,” I said, to my squad. “We’re on. Forty-five seconds. Suit up.” I grabbed my gear, which in this case included a nanobot pack, a drone, and my Empee rifle.
“When we get back to the Tubingen I’m going to find that song,” Salcido said, grabbing his own gear. “I’m going to find it and I’m going to make all of you listen to it. You’ll see. You’ll all see.”
“Masks,” I said. I signaled my combat unitard to create a mask, covering my face. It crept up my head, obscuring my view until my BrainPal offered up a visual feed.
“What’s for lunch today?” Lambert asked, through his BrainPal, because his mouth was now snugly covered, like everyone else’s.
“Hamburgers,” Salcido said. “Because it’s Tuesday.”
The shuttle door opened, exposing us to the frigid temperatures of the upper atmosphere of Franklin.
“Out you go,” I said to the three. They jumped out of the shuttle without further prompting. I counted off thirty and then jumped out of the shuttle myself.
Franklin was close to the size and mass of the Earth, basically perfect for human life, and was one of the first few planets colonized, back in the early days of the Colonial Union. It was densely populated, with citizens whose ancestry ranged from first-wave North American colonists to recent refugees from the Indonesian civil war, most of them on the large, thin continent of Pennsylvania, which dominated the northern hemisphere. There were a number of provinces and sub-provinces, but New Philadelphia, the city above which I now found myself, was the home of the planet’s global government.
The global government which was, in a matter of minutes, about to vote on a bill to declare independence from the Colonial Union.
My BrainPal alerted me to the location of the other three members of my squad, some thousands of meters below me. They had a different mission objective than I did, although we were all headed for the same place: the global capitol building, affectionately (or perhaps not so affectionately) called “the glass slipper.” It was named so because the architect gave it a swooping, rising profile that vaguely resembled a shoe— very vaguely in my opinion—and because the building was clad in a transparent, glass-like material, designed, or so the architect said, to be a metaphor for the transparency of the Franklin government itself.
The primary entrance to the Franklin capitol was a large, open arch that led into a rotunda, from which, if you looked up, you could see the shoes of the global representatives, because on the highest level of the “slipper” was the legislative chamber, which boasted a lovely, sloping roof and a transparent floor which looked down into the rotunda. It was my
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