Ana: Arch! Are you there?

  Arch: Yeah. I mean, am I ever not?

  Ana: You are often absent!

  Ana: You were asleep for fourteen hours yesterday.

  Ana: I know, because you forgot to log off.

  Arch: Are you saying you watched me sleep that whole time?

  Ana: Not the whole time. I had work to do.

  Ana: I mostly just kept the feed in the background of my screen.

  Ana: Like using a picture of your pet as wallpaper.

  Arch: I...don't know how to respond to that.

  Arch: Hey, wait, are you already doing work?

  Arch: It's the first week of classes!

  Arch: You're such a nerd.

  Ana: As if you are not a nerd!

  Ana: And after all, RCC has been in session for weeks.

  Ana: Not all worlds operate on your Alexandrian schedule!

  Ana: Typical brainwashed imperial ;)

  Arch: I'll pretend I didn't hear that.

  Arch: So, are you working on your thesis now?

  Ana: As well as I can.

  Ana: My thesis advisor is as yet unassigned.

  Ana: Typical RCC incompetence!

  Ana: To mitigate my rage, I'm working on an article.

  Ana: I plan to submit it to Inner Ring Anthropology Quarterly.

  Arch: Oooh, you're going to be published?! That's awesome!

  Ana: Well, that remains to be seen.

  Ana: Inner Ring Anthropology Quarterly is more exclusive than the RCC student journal.

  Ana: And much more exclusive than my blog…

  Arch: Well, good luck! <3

  Ana: Thanks. <3

  Ana: The paper is about Beyonce.

  Ana: Many argue that there was a long line of priestesses who all took that name for religious reasons,

  Ana: And some even argue that she was one artist with many distinct creative phases,

  Ana: but I support the more recent theory that "Beyonce" was simply a very common name.

  Arch: Huh. Cool!

  Arch: That’s great that you’re getting your writing out there!

  Ana: I will be glad to finally get the recognition I deserve.

  Ana: After all, I am here to produce groundbreaking scholarship, and chew bubble gum.

  Ana: And I am all out of bubble gum.

  Arch: Classic Ana.

  Ana: That's Late Modern Classical Ana to you ;).

  Ana: And academics publish under their military rank,

  Ana: so instead it's, unfortunately, Cadet Kepler.

  Arch: Aw. You'll pass that fitness test soon.

  Arch: And you know it's just a technicality!

  Ana: That makes it more irksome.

  Arch: Well, it's still good that your field is like, interesting to you,

  Arch: And like a coherent thing you've decided to study, and stuff...

  Arch: Must be nice :/

  Ana: Ah. You are dispirited by your aimlessness?

  Arch: Tactful as always, Ana.

  Ana: Well, perhaps your, ahem, lovely friend from class last year can help ;)

  Ana: Join her little club!

  Ana: It sounded like she really wanted to sell you on a career in politics!

  Ana: Get it? Because your politicians are for-profit,

  Ana: and your planet is a feudal-capitalist oligarchy—

  Arch: Yeah, yeah, Kepler. You don’t live in a dystopia, we get it.

  Ana: Well. I still need a life support suit to go outside; I am hardly living the dream.

  Arch: True. At least I have “knowing what fresh air smells like” under my belt.

  Arch: That’s one thing I’ve got going for me…

  Arch: Okay, so I know that was a joke just now,

  Arch: But Group Project Girl has made...a reappearance.

  Ana: Oh really?

  Arch: She got assigned as my roommate this year.

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  Ana: Really.

  Ana: Hmm. Unusual.

  Ana: Don't you get to choose your roommates?

  Ana: Aren't you still allowed some false choices to mask your utter submission to the state?

  Arch: I wouldn't say it masks the utter submission, but yes, most people choose.

  Arch: I just didn't know anyone I would want to choose, or who would choose me.

  Arch: But that's the weird thing.

  Arch: She's a Political Business major, so she would have wanted to live with someone she could network with.

  Arch: I would think?!

  Ana: Maybe she thinks you could be a profitable business connection.

  Ana: Your parents are prominent in the monopoly that rules your province, yes?

  Arch: Ssh, around here it’s the business that manages my province.

  Arch: And they’re not a monopoly, they’re just very good at business.

  Ana: Ah, of course.

  Ana: I shall avoid any talk that could get me investigated by your planet’s secret police.

  Arch: Sssssh, around here, they're not the secret police, they’re nothing because they don't exist.

  Ana: How could I have forgotten.

  Ana: I must say, I’m glad to be here in the Inner Ring, out of your planet’s military reach…

  Arch: Our “peacekeeping influence.”

  Ana: Right, yes.

  Arch: But yeah, you’re right.

  Arch: It's just that...I mostly sleep in my room or talk to you.

  Arch: Wouldn't think I'd be a desirable connection.

  Ana: Maybe she desires you in other ways.

  Arch: What?!?!

  Arch: Hahaha, Kepler, I didn't know you made jokes!

  Ana: ;)

  Ana: The probability of this room assignment must have been very low.

  Arch: Yeah.

  Arch: Probably around the odds of life randomly evolving on a big wet rock orbiting Sol—really low, but apparently not zero.

  Ana: Mm. What I mean is--could she have pulled strings to get placed with you?

  Ana: You mentioned she was impressed with your performance on the group project.

  Arch: I think you might have been studying the American Imperialism period a little too long.

  Arch: Alexandrian politics isn't Machiavellian cunning and deft diplomacy.

  Arch: It's kind of a shitshow.

  Arch: Mostly there's just a bunch of cliques of rich people,

  Arch: And they yell at each other every Senate session until they do...nothing,

  Arch: Then they get re-elected because they buy their elections,

  Arch: And soon we'll all die.

  Ana: Hm. Well.

  Ana: Speaking of my work though, I have some news.

  Arch: What is it?

  Ana: Your part-time therapist duties during my master’s applications have paid off.

  Ana: I got accepted to the Pluto grad program. I’m going to Sol System!

  Arch: Holy shit! Ana, that’s insane!

  Arch: That’s…20 light years away.

  Ana: Only 12 from me.

  Ana: Well.

  Ana: 12.5.

  Ana: I start mid-year because of that.

  Arch: Oh.

  Ana: Their library is unparallelled.

  Ana: I’ll have access to so much information!

  Ana: And they have one of the most prestigious archaeology journals in the galaxy;

  Ana: It’s the Inner Ring Anthropology Quarterly of archaeology journals.

  Arch: Um, that’s great…

  Ana: I know what you’re thinking: why would an anthropologist write for an archaeology journal?

  Ana: Well, they have a lot of overlap:

  Arch: Ana, wait.

  Ana: After all, anthroplogists do archaeology—

  Ana: Oh! I forgot to mention!

  Ana: I’ll get to go on research expeditions, on Earth itself!

  Ana: And I’m already so used to life-support suits; I bet my findings will be better than everyone else’s as a result!

  Arch: Wait!

  Arch: …what about us?

  Ana: Hm?

  Arch: What about both of us moving to Tau Ceti after graduation?

  Arch: The algae farm, and the chickens, and the freaky real eggs from the chickens?

  Ana: Oh.

  Ana: Well…maybe Sol can be the new Tau Ceti!

  Arch: What do you mean?!

  Ana: Well, there are very few anthropology opportunities on a distant military outpost with no relevant history.

  Ana: And no opportunities for you to…er…find yourself, or something.

  Ana: So, what if we changed the plan?

  Arch: That’s a lot to ask.

  Ana: …

  Ana: Is that a refusal?

  [Arch is typing]

  [Arch is typing]

  Arch: It’s just a lot.

  [Arch is typing]

  [Arch is typing]

  [Arch is typing]

  Ana: Stop typing things out and deleting them.

  Ana: Just talk to me.

  Ana: What is more important to you in this universe than us?

  [Arch is typing]

  Arch: You’re asking me to uproot my whole life.

  Arch: That’s…a lot!

  Arch: I can’t just say yes, I need to think.

  Ana: What is keeping you from saying yes?!

  Ana: You once told me you didn’t even have that much to keep you…

  you know.

  Ana: In the universe.

  Ana: So what is there to keep you on Alexandria specifically?

  Arch: My entire life!

  [Arch is typing]

  [Arch is typing]

  Arch: And that was an awful thing to say.

  Ana: I’m sorry.

  [Ana is typing]

  [Ana is typing]

  Ana: You just tell me you hate Alexandria, and AU, every time we talk.

  Ana: And you tell me you love me, every time we talk.

  Ana: That makes me think this decision should be easy for you.

  Ana: If you meant it.

  Arch: ……..

  Arch: That’s also an awful thing to say.

  Ana: Well.

  Ana: Did you mean it?

  Arch: Of course. I don’t think you understand what you’re asking.

  Arch: Instead of going 5 ly each way to a place that doesn’t have anything for either of us there, Arch: you want me to come 20 ly for a place that will only be convenient for you?

  Arch: I mean, what if I asked you to come here to live with me?

  Ana: I’d say: since I have so many plans based on where I want to go, what is stopping you from coming with me instead?

  Arch: So you wouldn’t do for me, what you’re asking me to do for you.

  Ana: Again—is this a refusal?

  Arch: It’s not anything. You just asked me this two seconds ago. I don’t have a decision yet.

  Ana: Well.

  Ana: I’m leaving in a year.

  Ana: So I guess you have a while to make your decision.

  Arch: Okay.

  Arch: …

  Arch: Cool.

  Arch: Thanks.

  Arch: …I’m glad you get it.

  Arch: For a second there, I thought you were, like,

  Arch: I don’t know,

  Ana: Talk to me when you’ve decided.

  [Ana has disconnected]

  Arch…oh.