At some point he found some headphones. They might have been delivered by a deckhand, or they might have been in his pocket. They were on his head now, and the clockwork bee-people danced across the deck, their legs slaves to the rhythm of the bass-a-tron, their arms and heads swaying with the wavtar. Music was almost non-existent on B-4. It was there, but it was always in the background, always light and airy. There were never percussive rhythms or the warping and layering of instruments he was hearing now.

Eventually, he would have to use the restroom. The internal reminder system was polite and patient, but he knew it would be too humble and it would let him ignore it indefinitely, which would ultimately lead to some other discomfort. If he tried to psych himself up for the journey across the deck to the facilities, the anxiety would overwhelm him. The best course of action was to pretend it wasn’t going to happen, then simply surprise himself by standing up and walking. A few steps in, once the surprise had faded, he had to regulate his speed. The temptation to run was strong, but he knew to run would mean to fall.

“Do you know what it’s like to run? Do you know what it’s like to live in fear?” The attendant-bot didn’t answer his question, but instead offered him a towel. He took it, and cleared his throat. “I accept this gift on behalf of all humans in the galaxy. This is a momentous step forward for robo-human relations.” He hugged the thing, but it was not exactly receptive.

There was a well-known D-G rule about being in the bathroom: never look in the mirror. If you happened to look in the mirror, for fuck’s sake, do not make eye contact with yourself. There’s a very good chance that you won’t recognize the person staring back at you.

Jax looked in the mirror.

“Murderer,” he said, maybe out loud, maybe in his head. “Fugitive. That’s not me. That’s the body I have to occupy because I didn’t play their game. I didn’t fulfill my potential. I didn’t grow up to be anyone important, so I got to be a pawn in someone else’s game.” He looked at the attendant-bot. “I was like you, you know? Instead of handing out towels in a small bathroom, I handed out oxygen in a small residential block. People lived there, you know. Thirty or forty real, live people. They were just restroom patrons to me.”

He grabbed the bot by the towel-arm. “What happens when you don’t give someone a towel?” He shook the arm, to little effect. “What happens, huh? Do they die? Do they fucking die? Because that’s what happens when you don’t hand out oxygen. People fucking die.”

Jax looked back at the mirror. “You killed thirty-two fucking people, you sonova bitch. You worthless sonova bitch. You held the gun while someone else pulled the trigger. You pawn. Run, pawn, run. Run one square at a time, like the pathetic pawn you are.”

He found himself at the bar. The D-G was starting to fade away, bit by bit. He sent a drink into his system to try to throw it off. “Here, work on this. Keep the D-G around for another hour.” Then he had another drink because this was a superliner and the drinks were goddamn fantastic.

“Maybe you’re better off this way,” he said, back in the bathroom, looking in the mirror. It was either the same visit or a return visit, he wasn’t sure. Maybe he was just remembering it. His reflection stared at him expectantly. He felt older. His baby-face had finally begun to age properly, and staring at himself now, his features reminded him of his father. “You disappoint me, Jax,” he said through his father’s mouth. “This never would have happened to you if you’d gone back to engineering school; if you’d come to live with us on B-3 and got out of the sub-domes. If you’d done something with your life, besides waste it.” The word “waste” was a tearing sound, like the jagged whoosh of someone ripping paper.

It was the nose and mouth that were his father’s, so he began to look elsewhere, searching for his mother. Did he have his mother’s eyes? He looked at his own eyes, into the pale-gray irises that he shared with almost all other B-foureans, searching for his mother there among those listless clouds. He felt lost and sad, and the clouds grew darker, thicker. His eyes watered and he blinked briefly, and then suddenly she was there. She did share his eyes, and he could see her seeing him. She had no mouth and no voice, but she could see him. She couldn’t tell him what to do. She could only watch.

He wanted her to tell him what to do. He wanted to hear her voice come out of his mouth. But she could not. And he knew that she would not have if she could. She never told him what to do. Even when she knew he was doing something wrong – she just watched.

He blinked again and she was gone. He looked at his mouth, but his father was gone too. He felt very alone. No father to tell him what to do, always disappointed. No mother to watch over him, always proud, abstaining from offering guidance. Was this what he wanted, to be on his own, to make his own decisions, to guide his own fate?

He looked away from the mirror. Whether or not he wanted it, his parents weren’t there. No more wallowing in pity or self-doubt. If he had any chance of getting out of the mess he was in, he was going to have to grow the fuck up.

Runstom found him later in a rain room, sitting soberly in a plain, white, plastic chair at a small, white, plastic table underneath a canopy, rain drizzling down on three sides.

“I never understood this,” muttered the officer, taking in the scene. “There are beautiful views of the stars from all over this ship. Now the sun rooms, I can understand. The little fake beaches and the little green parks with the blue-sky domes. Sure, stars are beautiful, but feeling like it’s night every hour of the day – yeah, I can see why people would want sun rooms. But a rain room?”

“Back in Gretel,” Jax started, staring outward. A small, thin cluster of trees surrounded the canopied area, rain pattering against their leaves. “In Gretel, we make rain in our blocks. Remember, the RAIN command? And its stupid warning requirement? Hard to get spontaneous rain in dome cities. Air scrubbers regulate the amount of water in the controlled atmosphere. We can’t have people getting wet in their perfect little bubbles. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like on a planet with a real atmosphere.”

Runstom sat down next to the operator. “I’ve been to a few. Only moons, though.” Jax turned and looked at him, a tiny hint of expectation on his face. “It rains more often than you’d think, in some places. And you have to get all kinds of rain-gear, to keep from getting soaked, and to keep your equipment safe. Sometimes it’s damn cold, and instead of rain you get snow or hail. You have to wrap up, or get into a heated suit.” He looked out into the rain, thoughtfully. “Sure does break up the monotony, though. Real weather is good at keeping you on your toes.”

“I come here sometimes,” Jax said. “I’d like to say, I come here to think, but everywhere I go on this ship, I go to think. But sometimes I come here, and I try not to plan it. I try to get up in the morning and tell myself I’m in for something unexpected today. And then I find myself in a rain room, and I go stand in the rain for a minute and pretend that the weather changed without warning, and I’m caught in it.” He laughed suddenly. “They don’t like it when you do that, you know. They don’t want you to go out there,” he said, gesturing toward the trees. “The walls start beeping at you and if you stay too long, some security guys will show up and tell you to ‘get the hell outta the scenery’.”

“Mm,” Runstom murmured, letting a bit of quiet time pass before continuing. “One time I lived in a jungle for a couple weeks, on a moon in the Sirius system. Rained all the time, without warning, then it would be sun again. Rain, sun, rain, sun, nothing in between. It was hot there, though, so hot that the rain felt like a warm shower. People didn’t run around hysterically when it came, like they do in other places. They just kept on living. If you had any equipment that wasn’t waterproof, you knew you better protect it before taking it outside. Other than that, people didn’t even use umbrellas. The rain would come, and we’d just walk around in it. Just another fact of life, like the need to breathe oxygen or the laws of gravity.”