“Fashion should be bold and it should be bright. In these troubled times, we need that.”- quote attributed to Annoush Ashalan, 2034, model, 2001-2040.

Editor’s note: the Riot of Colors is still extant, with outlets in close to a third of the world’s arcologies.

Martin stared at the jacket. “It’s purple.”

“You’re beginning to look a little purple.”

He ignored that.”It’s not just my color, Isla.”

“Yeah, do tell me; what is your color? Dark, black and I don’t know- oily?”

“Not purple,” he stubbornly defended.

She sighed.”You’re never getting laid wearing black.”

He raised an eyebrow.”What makes you think that’s an issue?”

Isla touched a blue jacket patterned with white bursts.”Have you tried that with anyone from the arcology yet?”

She removed the jacket and held it up to her chest.”This one, then?”

“Better than purple.But no, I haven’t tried anything. No time.” Did he sound defensive? He sounded defensive.

They went to a clerk, paying credits for their respective purchases,; Martin for the jacket, Isla for a couple of ribbons for her hair. He had credits to spend these days. The basic stipend given to all denizens of the world was universal, but there were degrees. An Access 3 got more than a mere camper.

“Puh,” she remarked, staring down at her digital pad. Over her shoulder he could make out the balance.”This Proxy business sure pays better than being a mechanic or butcher.”

Martin translated that stamentent.”Your parents, they’re Access 2?”

Isla removed her Chassis with a burst of light, spinning the ribbons through her hair.”Barely. More like Access 1.”

Martin shrugged with a casual indifference that he didn’t really feel. “I didn’t have an Access until I got here. I..I’m from one of the camps.”

The mud. The grey metallic cubes, painted with graffiti and covered in homegrown vine. The vitality. The bleak afternoon that could be understood only by those who lived there.

He held her within the confines of his sight, and so he noticed the slight widening of her eyes, the way she missed a step.

She turned to him then. Her eyes burned with quiet fire and she stood as straight as an arcology-wall.

“It doesn’t matter where we come from. Only where we end. I don’t know about you, but one day they’re going to put my name next to the likes of Serena Smiler, Aamod Gharsanja and Sage,” she announced, and it sounded neither like a curse or promise.

It was the truth of Isla Calix, and it resonated with his own wish to matter.

“…yes. I think I’d like that too,” he answered.

The solemn aura of the moment could have lasted forever.

“…you stupid piece of trash!”

The two of them turned in the direction of the words.

Isla and Martin walked out of the store and into the crowd that had gathered around two men, standing at opposite ends of a chalked circle. One was a bulky man in overalls, with a spanner in his hand. The other, Guo Hong.

Rather than that traditional sage-outfit, he now wore sweats and a tank top. While Martin had never had more than a passing interest in a man…he could tell that several women and few men differed in that opinion.

Hong had the sort of body that wouldn’t just stop traffic, it’d stop hearts too.

The Chinese Proxy raised one leg over his at at an angle

-and stepped down in a quick staccato rythm.

The other man raised the spanner against his left wrist - where he wore a thick band - and knocked out a complicated rhythm that rose, only to fall. He ended the beat to stamping.

Hong spread his arms, arcing them high above his head, rising as he did, one leg splayed up and twirled. The arms bent, he flowed through the space between the two of them, no motion wasted. As he flipped, he snatched the spanner from the other man and the dance-off was a fact.

Isla had raised her pad to film the whole thing. “This is great,” she said,”I’m definitely taking this with me to the others.”

“I..” in the camps, the tension in the air, the way a crowd had gathered, it would have heralded a fight.

“I will never have to pay for drinks,” Isla crooned.

Martin just stared, feeling that invisible abyss that separated someone who grown up in a arcology from someone who had grown up in a camp. A spontaneous gathering like this would draw attention in the camps. At best, they’d be watched. At worst…

There was an old, pre-Devastation story about a redheaded girl, orphaned, left to live on a farm with people who didn’t know her. In it, she had said something about how she had never been as lonely as when she was surrounded by people.

Martin had never understood that remark. Not until now.