Fang hadn’t talked to her cousin Liu Jilin since the man took up a more traditional line of work—well, traditional by his standards. These days, he was stationed on Kepler-9c, a planet in the star system adjacent to Earth, where he worked as a Neural Terrain Architect.

  An elite fusion of neuroscience, AI engineering, and planetary development, it was a job that only existed in this era. Kepler-9c was a barely habitable rock, with an atmosphere still in the process of being stabilized. Instead of manually building cities, Jilin’s team designed cognitive terraforming networks—massive, AI-driven constructs that shaped the land and climate based on human neurofeedback. Settlers were implanted with light neural interfaces, allowing their collective subconscious desires to influence the planet’s structure over time. If enough people wanted a river, tectonic shapers and water synthesis modules would make it happen, albeit across at least decades. If they longed for warm, stable weather, the system would adjust air currents and greenhouse balances accordingly.

  It was cutting-edge, expensive, and wildly experimental. Some people loved it. Others feared the idea of an entire planet responding to the whims of human minds. Fang, of course, thought it was completely ridiculous.

  “You’re telling me you build planets based on vibes now?” she had scoffed the last time they spoke.

  “Not vibes,” Jilin had corrected. “Aggregated neural intent mapped to planetary-scale synthesis protocols.”

  It still sounded like vibes to Fang, even though she’d been thoroughly walked over the concept in her own studies.

  Today, however, she was calling Liu Jilin for a different reason.

  Fang flicked through her holo-interface, accessing a turbo-speed cross-system comm relay—the expensive kind. She didn’t hesitate before authorizing the absurd charge. The signal bounced through relay stations at near-lightspeed, punching through security filters and lag-reduction protocols until it finally reached Kepler-9c’s comm grid.

  It took a while. Not because the tech was slow, but because Jilin was probably busy. He was always the busier one.

  She sighed, leaned back, and waited.

  A full minute passed before the call finally connected. Jilin’s face, a good twenty years older than Fang looked, formulated onto her screen, and his tired eyes daggered at her like she’d just interrupted something important.

  “Fang,” he said in Mandarin, which had become the 3rd most widely-spoken language across the galaxy, sandwiched between the two most widespread Zvevan languages. “Do you have any idea how much your call just cost? And you dialed in credit-sharing mode!”

  “More than your salary, probably,” she replied. “Hey, Linlin.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Jilin groaned, rubbing his temples. “What are you calling for? You need me to falsify records that you can’t hack your way into, or break into a restricted zone?”

  Fang grinned. “Aw. You do know me.”

  “Unfortunately.” He leaned back in his chair, exhaling. “And here I thought you’d finally turned to a respectable life. Where are you now? What do you want?”

  She stretched, letting the silence hang for a second before finally answering. “Nothing illegal. Just a chat. How’s sis doing?” ‘Sis’ referred to his wife, Liang Yuwei.

  Jilin blinked, as if surprised by the question. “Yuwei’s fine. Busy with her research, as always. She’s been working on some next-gen cryo tech, and keeps saying she’s this close to a breakthrough.”

  Fang hummed. “Still overworking herself, huh? Tell her to take a break before she turns into one of her own test subjects.”

  Jilin quickly narrowed his eyes. “That’s sweet and all, but this call costs a thousand ducats a minute. Get to the point, Fang.”

  Fang turned her gaze to the sky beyond the cockpit, where a flock of bizarre birds with excessively elongated wings glided. “Do you still keep in touch with brother Jiye?”

  “Jiye?” He repeated, like he was testing the name out loud. Then he leaned back on his chair, pressing it way too far behind. “We exchanged a few messages last year about visiting mother during Lunar, but you know what he’s become. We don’t see eye-to-eye anymore.”

  “I don’t know what he’s become,” Fang sneered. “That’s why I’m asking.”

  Jilin let out a slow breath, staring past the screen like he was searching for the right words—or debating if he even wanted to answer. Fang knew he would choose not to think about Jiye if he could. There was too much history there, too many choices neither of them could take back. “Hard to say. He’s deep in something, but I don’t ask.” His chair creaked as he shifted. “The last time we actually saw each other, he looked . . . different. Like he’s been high on some neuro-spike every day. But it’s not my place to worry about him, like how it’s not my place worrying about you.” He let the words simmer for a good second. “Are you still with the same escort crew?”

  “Yeah.” She left out the part where their escort activities had teetered into the realm of criminal activtities.

  “Your mom keeps asking me why you never call.”

  Fang stiffened. Her heels kept rubbing against one another, and she had no way to stop them. “Did . . . did you tell her . . .”

  “I didn’t say anything. Told her you’ve been doing well, got yourself a new craft and everything. Do you still use the same virtual wallet on the Sye network?”

  “Yeah.” There wasn’t anything good to tell mom about. Fang hadn’t contacted her family in so long, and it would be too awkward to do so now. She wasn’t sure if she could look at her in the eyes, but she was dead sure she would never be able to look at her dad anymore.

  She was such a failure.

  “I’ll send you the ducats you spent on this call, so don’t worry about it. Don’t be a stranger and don’t send the creds back.”

  “I—ugh.” She buried her face in her palms. “Thank you.”

  Jilin huffed a quiet laugh. “You say that like it physically pains you.”

  Fang peeked at him through her fingers. “It does physically pain me.”

  “Good. Maybe next time you’ll call before you need something.” His voice was light, unnaturally so. “But you haven’t told me where you are now.”

  “Tau Serpentis d,” she said.

  “Oh.” Jilin straightened himself as he leaned toward the screen. “I think Jiye might be close by.”