“What I did? I’ve said before and so have the courts. What happened, whatever happened wasn’t my fault. If anything, one of those girls…” said Merphie.

“Girls? No, you did something to him. You talked to him for fifteen minutes before he went to the top deck,” said Sibina. “Other than having a drink made, why waste time talking to you?”

“We didn’t talk about anything important. Same as always and honestly, the conversation was shorter than you.” Annoyance immediately creased her own brow, both at seeing Sibina at all and her own weak retort. Though, she thought, twenty minutes into a circular argument rarely helped anyone. Merphie scanned across Sibina, the action a practiced calming technique. As usual, her gaze outlined color and focused detail to an extreme degree. 

It painted the curly hair that spilled over Sibina’s narrow shoulders a silvery-white ombre. An untrained eye might believe it salon-dyed and newly styled, but she knew better. She saw better. The blush tone of Sibina’s one-button blazer and matching skirt, highlighted her low-cut, white silk undershirt and accented the cream hued pointed toe pumps which hid petite feet and strapped to surprisingly strong ankles. In the distant past, Merphie may have tested them a few times trying to knock her over. In the present, Merphie blinked and focused back on Sibina’s face, where a doe-eyed stare returned natural falsity. Their grey glass reflection, which easily fooled any of the otherwise uninitiated, instead burrowed deep into Merphie’s sight. There she identified within Sibina the warring sides of intimated decorum and an almost animalistic instinct to tear into her with the sharpened incisors unique to Lake Kelvina’s prima socialite. The latter soon won out.

“Nothing important…nothing important. You keep saying that, but why would he even talk to you in the first place unless you did something?”

“And you keep saying everything else. So, if you aren’t here to eat, leave.”

From the blood rush just beneath the caramel color of her bare crossed arms, to the quickness her CrossFit frame afforded her, Merphie darted from behind the bar. It altogether conveyed ‘staying and eating’ wasn’t (eh hmm) on the table as an option. Everything tensed. Even her high, clear voice was pulled taut, muted to a sandpapery whisper and forced through perfectly straight clenched teeth. This variety of frustration, sturdy and wholly Sibina-based, was like a familiar ancient loom. Every interaction wove together more of an already extensive tapestry far into her own memory, which she’d carried since their childhood, not together exactly, but together adjacent. 

“He…he won’t wake up. My brother is just lying there in the hospital and he won’t wake up.” An uncharacteristic shakiness crept in and out of Sibina’s voice, her small hands tremored on the counter where they rested. 

At that, Merphie’s sure next step faltered. Perhaps it was the years of conversations with crumbling visitors attempting and failing to reassemble their own brokenness. Impulsively, Merphie turned back and pulled a fistful of napkins from the dark red polished holder a foot away and reached out. Sibina’s routine confidence wiped away along with them. 

“They’ll figure out what happened. They will,” said Merphie.

“No.” Sibina slammed her hand down, but the word escaped as a quiet breath.

“No?”

“I don’t need or want pity from you. He’s only like this because of how you manage this place. Anybody gets in. You probably took his ring too.” The natural fullness of Sibina’s lips was interrupted as she pursed them on the last word.  

“And back to that then. I don’t have it and you’re not getting anything else from me.” She pointed at the napkins. “So, again order or leave.”

“We’ll see. Shouldn’t be hard to ensure someone better runs Thursday’s Soul or at least Club Aquarius.” She bit hard on each name like a curse and pointed in a wide circle at the space around them. At that, she lifted her chin, snatched another handful of napkins, and rushed out the automatic door.

Merphie’s half up half down black hair was punctuated with a top knot, which stayed still as she slowly shook her head. She felt her own face grimace and a dry swallow writhe past the long hollow of her throat. Her stare continued silently through the entrance after Sibina, who by then was already slamming the driver’s door of a sleek yellow coupe with heavily tinted windows. For ten more minutes, the car remained off in its double-parked position until obscured by four entering guests. Then a low growl–a setting added purely for effect since all vehicles were quiet eco-friendly electrics–told Merphie of the parking lot’s latest vacancy. 

For everyone else who’d grown up around Sibina Tilor, few were ever surprised by her behavior and even fewer paid enough attention to notice things beneath the surface. “Around” being the opportune word, since she permitted almost no one to accompany her anywhere, specific wealth brackets notwithstanding. In early grade school, she actually went by, “Sibina Queena” and her classmates didn’t give her the nickname. To them, it all just tracked with her constant, alluded to royalty. As they’d gotten older, not much changed in the way she interacted with others. Though, she acknowledged Terra Minor, like 99% of Earth’s nations in 2264, only had a president. She dropped the “Queena” part after senior year, though only in name, not from how she carried herself. In its 75 years as a machine-made planet, there had been no other kind of leader. Merphie often saw these minor changes and partial truths everywhere, a skill she’d tuned daily since she could remember.

Growing up as Merphie did was an uncommon experience–100 yards from the largest semi-virtual aquarium, in the largest freshwater lake in the solar system–aboard the largest customized glass-bottom riverboat restaurant. It gave daytime water tours around Lake Kelvina. Though the direct quote from their site, even for its countless fans and visitors, was always too clunky and awkward of a description. Simply put, the boat and restaurant were called Thursday’s Soul, but the attraction they became at night, which Merphie had created and opened, was Club Aquarius. 

The club was decadent down-to-earthism at its core, to use the off-world phrase. Visually appealing was its gilded ceilings and modern art gallery-esque furniture. Effortlessly united with cutting-edge conveniences like Bio-Band, the premiere connectivity for wireless body-network notifications and integrations with a rotating interstellar menu, it offered extravagant views of the aquarium from most angles indoors or outdoors. As Sibina said, “anybody gets in,” if they’re at least 18 years old. Yet the cost for admission stayed at $5, which covered both entry and a weekly donation to the aquarium. 

Near the middle of Lake Kelvina, the aquarium’s two enormous hexagonal saltwater tanks rise 65 feet into the air. Their contents remain separate from the lake water, which allows for hundreds of thousands of aquatic animals that otherwise could not live as neighbors. Semi-virt technology, skeletal machinations/robots with concealed cameras and projectors, perfected decades ago as a safer means of bringing modern animals and their more predatorial family members to the same ecosystem. At any moment, visitors might see 1 of 3 megalodons carve silently through the warmer water alongside Great White sharks in the east tank. The much colder west tank comparatively holds animals better adapted to arctic life. Fan favorites include the pod of 12 Beluga whales, 2 of the oldest bowhead whales around and 7 narwhals, the latter exclusively semi-vert, of course, since they have never done well in captivity. To account for the bowheads’ ice-breaking ability, the west tank’s walls are an amalgamation of thick acrylic and rubies crushed to powder, which when sunbeams catch bathe everything around in a radiant scarlet glow. Several real animals were few in population within the aquarium but supplemented with semi-virt to pad their numbers. It was those differences that dialed in Merphie’s ability.

It taught her how to quickly look past the surface of things to tell the difference between real and fake. It was no simple task either. The quality of semi-vert is so high even the marine biologists consulted for designs struggle to differentiate.

#

Without effort, Merphie replayed the previous interaction in her head, volume diminished for sanity sake. Something about it read wrong to her. She saw the same smooth makeup on Sibina’s diamond-shaped face, which hinted at wholly unblemished, glowing skin, but was really multiple tattoos strategically layered there on each other. Sibina’s afro-Asian ancestry did do naturally what top surgical-grade skin tightening procedures could ever only reinforce, if Sibina’s elderly parents were any indication of skin’s longevity. Though Merphie hadn’t seen them on Terra since childhood. Still, there were other false features. That tightly curled hair was more like rigid springs than anything. Its ends split at slightly off angles and shone duller than they had in two weeks, fraying and fading like an old blanket. It wasn’t that either, of course, since the timing lined up with what happened. The thought pushed Merphie’s gaze upward as if she could see through the ceiling, to the top deck three floors above. She couldn’t really, but the amount of time she’d spent in the restaurant was nearly equivalent to the twenty-eight years she’d been alive.

A majority felt to know a single Tilor was plenty. Only a handful of them lived on all of Terra Minor, the rest having remained on other planets to quite unnecessarily build on their family fortunes by mining local resources. Since their birthdate, Sibina and her hardly older brother, Werner often came as a pair. For most people, Werner’s association to Sibina was enough to equate the two. Her harshness was somehow his. Her sense of entitlement, his also. Of course, Merphie’s perspective surpassed that. Werner had a much different depth than he projected. Outwardly calm and carefree to the extent of occasional reckless abandon, but inwardly his measured focus would bear down upon any topic or thing to which he set his deceptively intelligent mind. 

Even after their investigation, the police could only speculate on what had happened–that he had fallen from a section on the top level where no one else had been around for bookend hours that day. He was curiously in a restricted section, beyond both the reach of every security camera in the nearby area and the safety railing. The sole certainty of his actions rested on the bottom level, against which he hit his head. His left hand never showed as it landed beneath his crumpled body. The incredulity of it all just didn’t fit for Merphie. She thought back to when she’d last spoken to him, the causal event to Sibina’s latest berating.

His dark suit, like all the clothes in his extensive wardrobe, was expensive, slim fitted and with understated patterning. The off-planet embellishments of various fluorescent mineral dusts were also a mainstay. Merphie was the woman behind the bar barely monitoring his approach who would have struggled had she even tried across the tightly packed floor. The lighting inside the room was entirely and intentionally unnatural, expertly augmenting shape and shifting color. Even she needed a break from her ability sometimes, so the design had it built in. She would identify neither category when later prompted by those same police officers.

In present day, she knew the only jewelry Werner wore was a polished platinum ring with a large inset ruby, on his left pointer finger, received in their final year of high school. Although his was an heirloom passed down on his 18th birthday. The gemstone was his family’s first ever found in their mine just an hour from the dock. It was nothing like hers, a senior class synthetic one, significantly smaller atop the middle finger of her right hand. As was habit, her eyes always slid close at the thought of receiving it.

The same notion had made her temporarily lose sight of Werner’s position that night. Her own much older father had insisted on getting it for her, a vital experience he’d missed due to constant travel for his family’s interplanetary restaurants. Inhaling deeply, her consequential steadying breath was greeted by the familiar sweat-laced intoxication she knew she’d have to fumigate by night’s end in time for the main restaurant’s 11am opening. She exhaled and her eyelids twitched open again beneath the bright orange of heavy eyeshadow.

“Werner,” she said. It came out as an inaudible sigh as his tall, easily recognizable form manifested a short distance in front of her.

She remembered thinking Werner Tilor wasn’t out of place that night or any other at Club Aquarius but nearing the bar himself wasn’t entirely in character for him. 

“Hey Merphie.”  He yelled it and pounded a large fist down on the massive black counter between them.

“Too loud?” mouthed Merphie, pointing to her ear.

“Oops.” His long index finger reached up and appeared to trace the question mark which followed Merphie’s words on his own neck. 

The gesture was a common one on Terra, even moreso in Club Aquarius. He was lowering the volume of music that played throughout his body. Bone induction audio implants were assumed by 16 but mandatory at 18. The majority of the residence were in their late 20’s and mid 30’s, so it was habit for every club attendee. The dermal slider controls nestled just below either ear, dealer’s choice. 

“Wow, you’re here.” The fingers of Merphie’s right hand stretched out, as she waived toward the main floor. “a Night Special for gracing the counter?”

“Sure. Why not? Guess I chose poorly this time, anyways. Two girls I invited…they’re killing the VIP vibe. Otherwise, I would’ve had someone else come get the drinks.”

“Oh?” She gathered modified Nightshade to muddle, simple syrup and a few other secret ingredients.

“Yeah, don’t ask. I just met them walking the shoreline earlier. Completely different mood though. They’re the bad kind of intense for my section. Figured I would dodge them and the whole VIP area for a few hours. At least they’ll get free stuff over there.” 

“I’ll make this a triple. You want the top deck though. Mainly couples up there. Too distracted by each other or views of the aquarium.”

As club owner, she thought it very big of her letting his “my section” comment slide. Besides, as she saw it, Werner was too nice to ever ask those girls to leave directly.

“Thanks. See you around, Merph.” He toasted the air with the chilled glass. His smile came easy, freely as always and though it never affected her in the way it did many others, it glowed until it disappeared for good at the top of one floating, spiraling staircase in the far-right corner.

The room around vibrated with recognizable excitement rather than amplified soundwaves. Merphie had committed to a contractual stipulation when she’d been granted unique permission for the club. It stands that nothing from within the boat negatively impacts the water life around it. The typical sound systems of the past were rendered unnecessary as everyone used their implants and logged into the Club’s secure audio net. 

Except for slow-pulsating LED strips nestled behind the bar and in front of the bathrooms, everything else on each level was done in a version of near darkness. The bottom of every glass had an inlaid white token with “Club Aquarius” in slick, black lettering. Combined with the matte finish of the counter, drinks usually looked like they were floating.  By design, normal overhead lighting remained off between 10pm and 3am. In their place, neon crystals embed in all the walls and ceilings, which reacted with several disguised blacklights throughout all 4 decks, though the top had a retracting ceiling for open-air viewing on clear nights. Atmosphere on Terra Minor was continuously regulated. The planet’s weather, normally ranging between a clear 70 and barely humid 80 degrees, was also manipulated and like much of the terrain comprising it man-made. Although, a portion of the ground where the ruby mines were began as the framework for building upon. During the day, things certainly sounded and looked different. 

#

Back in the present, four days had lapsed without a Sibina sighting and Merphie was quite fine with that. The people that did come in primarily included middle to bottom shelf imbibers, but that was usually the way Merphie liked it. She saw them clearer and oftentimes they had more to share and a willingness with which to do it.

When she was just old enough to serve it, but not consume it, on the days she started later, Merphie’s parents used to joke about it through screen notes behind the bar. Her favorites were ‘Hey, it’s not “day drinking” if it’s a fine establishment” or ‘Drink down, class up’. With their constant working schedules, much of their communication used the medium. From there, a thought crossed her mind a few hundred times a day, Pay attention. Don’t miss the message. 

She did wish she had asked more about those girls Werner mentioned then though. Below the bar, away from customers’ view, was the same thin message screen she’d obsessively taken to watching video on whenever she had a free moment. Even Merphie’s Bio-Band admin access wouldn’t allow her to decrypt all audio conversations near the cameras, though it didn’t prevent her from trying. Instead, videos cycled on-screen, gathered from numerous backup copies she kept for auditing purposes. She herself had scoured other security footage from the same time as the accident. The picture quality was superb, but it didn’t matter. The girls’ faces mostly stayed away from the cameras; when they were visible, Merphie failed to identify them beneath multi-colored, thick makeup, bright wigs and enough body glitter for the night vision sensors to pick it up.

Even her perceptive eyes barely noticed anything else other than the bouncy way one of the girls walked. Her choppy strides exaggerated in dangerously high heels. They stood out only in comparison to the loping inconsistency of her friend’s longer, inebriated gait. Neither appeared to be regulars. She knew that wouldn’t provide much else in the way of useful evidence. Nonetheless, she scrubbed the video back to the beginning to queue up for her next available moment.

Just as Merphie started left toward the packed, mirrored wall behind her, she heard the familiar slide of the front doors meet with the hastened very real click clack of expensive shoes on polished wood of the club’s dance floor. The sounds paused her rubied hand on the lowest shelf. They then blended with Sibina’s audible self-absorption to a bitter mixed drink of which Merphie wanted no further taste. Sibina threw an irritated and impatient, “Excuse me” at many other guests she hurried past, none of which were remotely in her way. By design the primary walkway stayed clear of partitions, dining tables or chairs. 

Each step increased in volume and merged with her sing-songy voice, more harbinger than herald of her arrival. Not a single genuine greeting went to the couple dozen guests seated at the packed tables nearest the entrance. Black leather booths sat up front beside floor-to-ceiling windows treated by multiple anti-glare coatings. With their segmental digital magnification capabilities, they served as prime real estate for visitors of all heights. 

The discordance of sound continued, changed across the wider cement floor until stopping altogether a few feet on the other side of the counter. Throughout the full encroachment, Merphie made a point to not turn around, she opted instead to watch Sibina from the wall’s reflection but listened hard for any changes around her.

So, when a throat cleared further down the bar, though low and weak, Merphie followed the noise, welcoming the distance. Her back remained the barrier between her own rolling eyes and Sibina’s intensifying glower.

“You…you know, you Marks sure do things differently out here…” The name was an abbreviation borrowed from off world speech. The remnant came from the gradual shift from the original “Terra Minorian” to “TM” to “Trademark” in some ironic version of “telephone,” since Light Lynk was the only communication efficient enough to cross worlds. 

“Do tell,” said Merphie.

“Take that one. Seems like she’s got a whole lotta extra of what we’re missing.” He nodded past her towards Sibina. An oldie, but a goodie. The left corner of Merphie’s mouth turned up minutely. Outright air jokes or better still, air-related wit with even a smidge of cleverness always hit her differently, maybe because she’d grown up near the aquarium. In preparation for dealing with Sibina, she thought she’d savor a bit of humor.

“Well, thanks for coming in. Neptunian, right?” Merphie had watched his chest swell and heard a heavy wheeze before his smile spread. She noticed it read as pleasantly authentic.

“Friend of mine caught a party here some years ago, said I had to come out when I could.” The man blinked slowly, looked down as he swirled his black straw through the thickening concoction in his glass. His Breakfast Temple, essentially a Shirley Temple with frozen orange juice and emulsified egg whites on top, was always a favorite of daytime visitors. Even with a non-alcoholic drink, the atmosphere did funny things to non-Terra Minorians.

“Always nice to hear people loving Club Aquarius.”

“Exactly. You got Neptune right too! Though I also did a couple years of ice mining on Pluto.” 

“Hmm…shows.” Sunlight filtered through the window and hit the man’s vaguely bluish skin. “Happy to have you.” Technically, there weren’t aliens, just Earthers that spread out to other planets.

The man inclined his head and smiled again. In sync with the movement, the doors slid open again. Merphie glimpsed the aquarium beyond the new visitor. It traded her attention for a minor wave of serenity, which failed to smother the palpable boiling indignation that emanated from the other end of the counter.

“What can I get for you, ma’am,” asked Merphie.

“I believe that young lady was here before me,” she replied, pointing towards Sibina.

“No, no, no. She and I are…friends. I know she doesn’t mind waiting. She’d insist even,” said Merphie.

“Oh? Okay then yes, I would like to order now.” The other woman’s voice is much lower registered. 

“Wonderful! What can I get you? Best say it twice, just to make sure we’re on the same page,” said Merphie. Her fractional smile revealed a hidden laugh line.

The woman listed a takeout order large enough for 10 people, mumbling their assumed originators along the way. When she was halfway through repeating it, Sibina cut in. 

“Bar Girl? Oh Baarr Girl?” Sibina’s voice had always been high-registered, but this time hit Merphie like fathomless, salted wounds traveling the length of her ear canals. She admitted a bit of discomfort may have been warranted. Sibina used the title as an insult only for her, presumably never noticing any of the other twenty odd bartenders employed there. 

Merphie put her finger up to stop her then read the entire order back before completing the transaction and sending the Bio-Band receipt to her. No one else was waiting.

“So, you’re free now?” Sibina’s sarcasm throttled the question. “

“Guess so. We’re not busy. I could go to the back and rearrange the supplies, or maybe I’ll recheck inventory,” said Merphie.

“No you won’t. Look, Bar Girl. Hear me. I said I’d get this death trap of a place shut down.” The increase in shrillness pulled the scrutiny of multiple visitors. 

“Stop lying, Sibina. For once, just try.” Merphie’s teeth ground together, her left hand clenched of its own volition, tighter and tighter around the glass she’d picked up for the fifth time in as many minutes. To clean, to clean. She told herself. Not to throw, not to throw. She only ever fought for composure like this with Sibina. Patience tested; endurance bested. Involuntary spasm.       

“Lying?” asked Sibina. 

“Yes, lying. You pretend. You pretend to whoever you think matters. Not many by the way. You pretend when it’s convenient for you. Your brother is going to be okay. You already know you have the top doctors helping him. Yet, you pretend whatever happened to him was my fault. Why keep blaming me?”

“But it is your fault. You let in anyone here, from anywhere. Security is a joke, especially for the Club. And look at this place. Nothing classy about it.” Sibina’s grey glass eyes swept cursory over the other customers. “These Day Drinkers are bad for this city’s image.” 

“Image. Of course that’s what it’s about. You haven’t even come to the Club before, so what would you know of anything related to security.”

“Ummm…so? Why would I? Werner came home plenty of times gushing about all the different people he met. What business do I have being there though? Day Drinkers are lo-stat, so lo-stat they add nothing useful to the aquarium or surrounding area. If the Club didn’t bring in everyone, people wouldn’t be so motivated to trash up the city during the day,” disgust and something unplaceable wrote themselves across her face. 

“Don’t ever use that word around me. What’s wrong with you?” Merphie bristled at the term short for “low status,” which only a fraction of rich people ever felt the need to throw around. 

“I’ll say what I want, when I want.”

“Get out. You won’t be allowed back. Know I feel for Werner. He’ll wake up for sure, but you’ll be this nightmare of a person no matter what”. For Merphie, it also wasn’t okay Sibina used her parents’ joke. She stole it, manipulated it into some grotesque other thing that was all else Merphie could see of it. 

Business cards sat in a tray disguised by multiple pieces of overlapped black coral reef. Sibina made no effort to avoid it as she hiked her purse higher onto her shoulder and again rushed through the door. It nearly hit the ground, but the Neptunian caught it in time. His speed surprised both he and Merphie.

“Won’t know until you try, right?” His breath was a shaky wheeze. 

“Guess not,” replied Merphie. 

“This Werner must be pretty important to you both.” His thumb and pointer finger slowly peeled off the last card as he dropped it into the reoriented tray. “I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

“I didn’t think you were. What are inside voices, really?”

“Exactly. Looks like I was right too. Air excess.”

“You were,” Merphie returned the disarming smile. “I’d say he’s more ‘important-adjacent’ than anything but wouldn’t want to be insensitive.”

“Been to the hospital?”

“Been pretty busy.”

“Been avoiding.”

“Been avoiding.” Merphie looked around at the other employees. Nobody was busy and there were still a few hours before the evening’s changeover to Club Aquarius. She grabbed her keys.

#

In front of her was the digital wall plate for Room 2167. She’d known for weeks what the correct number was but been unable to visit Werner even with the judge’s approval. Besides lacking the courage to do so, Sibina had been adamant and persistent in her denial of visitation.  

She was about to breach the doorway when she froze. Sibina’s form had leaned forward and clasped Werner’s uncharacteristically bare hand. She patted the back of it for a solid ten minutes and muttered nonsense seemingly to the dark skin there. When she repositioned his hand, a gleaming red shown plainly even from Merphie’s vantage.