“… And don’t forget that next Friday is the due date for the approval of your final recital pieces. If you haven’t gotten a go-ahead from your musical supervisor by that point, you’re going to be in serious trouble when it comes to getting ready for the Performative Final, which, I don’t think I have to mention, but I am going to anyway, is fifty per cent of your final Master’s grade. Alright, that’s it for me today, have a good weekend everyone.”

Professor Joshua Zhong, the academic head of the QMMU Classical Soloist Graduate Degree, Taught (GDT), turned off the stuffy auditorium’s hovering drone projector, and the fifty odd classical music soloist students started to pack up their things, stuffing ‘pads into backpacks or bags, many chatting excitedly about their choice of pieces for their finals, some about their weekend plans.

“Just because Monarch Week is coming up,” Professor Zhong hurried to add as he overheard some of the conversations, “doesn’t mean you can slack off from your work for an entire week. Remember there is also the Finals Orchestral Evaluation coming right on the heels of the Performative, so you should really be practicing a number of different pieces at once if you want a good final grade.”

Some of the previously more exuberant planners lowered their heads a little and nodded in the affirmative, before huddling back together and started discussing again, only a little more quiet this time around. Edward was definitely not one of those. He heaved a heavy sigh and closed his musical notes folder, snapping the simple strap-closing mechanism absentmindedly, before tucking it into his shoulder bag, making sure it didn’t get squished between the other books, folders, and miscellanea he had in there. He stared at the folder as it lay inside his faux-leather bag for a long, protracted moment.

“Hey, Ed,” a high voice called out, and he turned his head around quickly in surprise, his dark locks swishing around. In fact, he turned around so fast that the cream-and-amaranthine flag pin on his grey blazer lapel went flying off and clattered to the wooden auditorium floor. Noticing, Edward started to reach down, but a pale and delicate hand beat him to it, picked it up and offered the pin back to him, palm up.

“Hi, there,” Siobhan de Céile said with an unsure smile on her face, pin in her hand, “do you have any plans for the rest of the afternoon? I know its Friday and the weekend, but do you think we maybe could practise a bit together? I’m sort of in need of an accompanist for the revised Hoffmeister Sonata in C Major, and if you’re free, I mean, if you have a few hours open… Could you help me out a bit? I’ll pay you back with a couple of rounds at the Humble Boatsman. Oh, ah, and you dropped this!”

Siobhan hailed from Avalon, the world in the Auroran kingdom with the most eccentric orbital trajectory around its parent star. Avalon circled around the red giant Dyfed in a slanted, elliptical orbit, leading to extremely cold winters and extremely warm summers, which in turn meant that large parts of the planet was practically uninhabitable for parts of the year. In an inverse of what had happened to the inhabitants of Amaranth over the centuries, the people of Avalon had become paler and rather stockier than the average Auroran. Siobhan was thus shorter than both Arvind and Edward, the latter especially, and her skin was a pasty pale colour. She had shaved one side of her head while wearing her coloured ruby hair very long on the other side, creating a very contrasting style that most who knew her had to admit suited Siobhan’s strikingly heart-shaped face, and her moss-green eyes usually shone with an earnest energy.

Arvind, standing a few paces behind the pair of them and a row of seats further up, knew what the answer to Siobhan’s query would be before Edward opened his mouth, and he felt bad for her. The trio usually hung out together in their soloist classes, despite the awkward combination of concert harp for Siobhan and grand piano for the two lads which didn’t share many pieces, apart from the odd sonata or two. She was not part of the usual crew, but she had tagged along more than a few times to the Boatsman, and was on pretty friendly terms with both Peter and David as well, making her an honorary member of the “Boatsmen Four”. But Arvind knew what sort of mood Edward had been in since coming home from Amaranth a month ago, and it wasn’t a very pleasant one.

“I’m sorry Siobhan,” Edward answered with a quick but tired smile, “I have to pick up my recital piece, and have a few words before Professor Winton before I leave campus.”

He accepted the pin back, but instead of pinning it back onto his lapel, he put it in his blazer chest pocket.

“Oh, I see,” Siobhan said, looking a bit crestfallen, and her now-empty hand awkwardly tried to hide its presence by scrunching the hem of her long grey woollen frock.

“Well, hope to see you at the Boatsman tonight then?”

“I wouldn’t count on it, to be honest, I will probably spend the rest of the day practicing. But you all have fun without me.”

“Won’t be as much fun, but hopefully we’ll manage,” Siobhan answered with a quick grin, before quickly turning on the heels of her black suede boots and started to walk quickly towards the auditorium exit. Arvind grunted in annoyance.

“Look, mate, all work and no play makes Ed a very dull- actually, it makes him a total boor, since he’s already so turned so damn dull,” he said when he was fairly sure Siobhan was out of earshot, “you don’t have to use poor Siobhan as a dartboard to vent your shitty mood out on.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s the truth,” Edward responded deadpan and started to head for the exit as well, his black monkstrap shoes clacking on the mahogany-coloured ironwood floor. They were new, Arvind noted, and were finely polished. Edward’s grey suit was also looking sharper and more pressed than usual, and once back from Amaranth he’d acquired a black ulsterette winter coat as well. Edward had never looked like a slob, but he had never stood out either in terms of choice of fashion, unlike now.

“I have to concentrate on my recital piece, Professor Winton has made it very clear she has very high demands for me, especially if I am to retain my Honours for my final grade. So I have to choose an exceedingly technically hard sonata or etude to perform, and then work on my musical expression as well. You of all people should know how hard this is going to be.”

They exited the auditorium and started to walk down the hallways of Countess Montroy Conservatoire, the walls on one side dominated by arched windows that turned towards the inner yard of the main Queen Marie Metropolitan campus. The opposite walls had large floral tapestries and were interspersed with pictures or paintings of famous musicians, composers, and full orchestras from all over history and Human Space. Dozens of students in the customary QMMU grey uniforms and outerwear of varying colours, walked or jogged past them, some in groups and some alone, headed to lectures, practises, student convent gatherings, late lunch, or simply hung around talking. Just another day at Queen Marie’s Metropolitan University, students milling about doing their daily routines, making plans for the coming Monarch Week holiday, getting anxious about approaching tests, paper evaluations, and group projects. A dozen different languages could be heard, with students hailing from sixty different worlds, an eighth of all settled planets in Human Space represented in Countess Montroy Conservatoire alone. Yet a few students stood out from among the normal throng, keeping to themselves, and sometimes getting ugly looks or glares from other students when they passed. They wore the green and cream with a golden star of the Independent Systems Alliance on their lapels or jacket cuffs. Edward and Arvind passed a short girl looking at her ‘com for where the room for her next lecture was located, and when he caught sight of the ISA pin on the collar of her outer shirt, Edward shot the girl an icy glare. She looked up right at the moment they passed, and took a few unsure steps backwards and clutched the ‘com protectively to her chest, clearly intimidated by the Amaranthine who towered over her. Just as quickly as Edward’s angry expression had materialised, it disappeared, and he walked on, Arvind a step behind, leaving the shocked girl behind.

“What the hell was that?” Arvind asked after a few more strides, pretty sure they had left her in the proverbial dust. “Does she owe you money or anything?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Edward replied in a neutral tone as they exited a set of open doors and started to walk down the short set of stairs to reach the inner campus yard. It was Galactic Relative March, but the northern half of Aurora was still in the midst of winter, and there was a thin layer of snow covering the grass of the courtyards of QMMU, and the clouds in the sky were dark and low. Hundreds of students and some staff milled about the courtyards, the columned esplanades, and the cobblestone paths and the small parks with their pavilions. Edward looked up and considered the skyline of Cordelia in the distance, the architecturally jarring between the Neo-Georgian and –Victorian brick buildings and the skytowers and Hyperist ziggurats. Arvind stopped and followed Edward’s gaze, wondering what his friend was seeing that he wasn’t.

“Hey Arvind,” Edward said at length, running a hand through his dark hair, “do you believe in teleology?”

Arvind blinked in confusion a few times.

“No, I’m a Hindu. Why are you being so weird?”

Edward smiled, but didn’t laugh at the quip.

“I’m serious, Arvy, do you believe that the purpose of any object is to undergo a certain set of changes to reach a determined end point?”

Small flakes of snow started to trickle down from the sky. Arvind looked at Edward. His hair was longer than it had been before, and more curled, and his skin had darkened further while home on sunny Amaranth. He also had large dark rings under his eyes, Arvind was sure they hadn’t been there two months ago.

“There was a certain theory back on Earth about a thousand years ago, that posterity dubbed ‘Whig History’,” Edward continued, “which saw the march of history and societies as a long road that ultimately ended with parliamentary democracy. All the wars, despots, famines, civil strife, injustices and malfeasances over the course of a society’s history would finally, the adherents of this theory believed, culminate with a society’s end-state of a stable democratic society which was headed by technocrats elected from the general population, the state ruled by the people for the people. A teleological worldview, the natural end of human history, neatly tied with a bow.”

One of Arvind’s eyebrows rose up as he squinted.

“That sounds really naïve to me.”

“Oh, I agree, but I think there’s something awfully romantic about it.”

Edward started to walk across the courtyard along one of the paths and Arvind followed suit, passing a few other students out on their own errands.

“Where’s this coming from? Are you feeling okay?” Arvind’s voice was tinged with concern.

“To be honest, I don’t know,” Edward answered in that same neutral tone as they passed a pair of Maltese students taking pictures of themselves in front of a partially snow-covered bronze statue of King Henry II with their handcoms.

“Physically I feel fine, but I have had a lot on my mind ever since I came back from Amaranth. There are a few things that I can’t explain, and I’m not sure how to feel about it.”

“Is it the do you want to talk about it?-kind, or the should you perhaps make an appointment with your GP-kind?” Arvind felt slightly bad that he wasn’t able to not make a half-joke about it, but to be completely honest he was feeling a bit out of his depth and weird about the whole conversation so far.

“I think it’s the let’s see what happens-kind,” Edward replied with the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I was just thinking it would have been lovely if human history could be explained so easily and rationally as the Whig historians tried to do. That all the wars and strife was just necessary evils Humanity had to go through on their way to a true enlightened society. It would make it so much easier to understand what was going on with the ISA right now.”

He stopped suddenly, and the sudden motion made him almost slip on the snow-slick cobblestones. He flailed with his arms and managed to regain balance before landing on his behind, ending up standing wide-legged, all of his upper body weight concentrating downwards. It was a ridiculous pose.

“Holy fucking shit,” he said in a completely different tone, “that was so close, I could have broken my fucking spine!”

He gingerly stepped over the next few cobblestones to reach the veritable safety of the grass, which despite being covered by snow, seemed to provide the Amaranthine with more gravitational comfort.

“God damn it, I can’t tell you how much I hate snow. I’ve seen the stuff before, and now it’s fucking everywhere!”

Arvind burst out laughing, his guffaws drawing attention from some of the surrounding students, but they quickly returned to their own business.

“Sucks to be you, Sunny Boy,” he managed between fits of laughter, “guess growing up on a tropical archipelago have its drawbacks when you have to experience what the rest of the universe’s weather has to throw at you.”

“I’ll throw something at you if you don’t stop laughing soon,” Edward growled as he started to walk parallel to the path, but staying firmly on the grass.

“Promises, oppo. Besides, I’ve seen you try to throw before, you can’t aim for shit, and that’s with your glasses on.”

“I can still throw hands, you horrible hill cretin.”

“Again, promises.”

The friendly heckling was interrupted by the ringing of the five o’clock by the large Main Assembly Hall clock tower, and Edward’s smile disappeared from his face as he quickly looked at his wristwatch.

“Ah crap, I’m supposed to be seeing Professor Winton right now. You go on home without me, I need to run and afterwards I’m going to hit up the Conservatoire library.”

Arvind shrugged and made to walk the opposite direction across the yard.

“None of us will be home when you get back,” he said over his shoulder, “we’re all going to the Boatsman at seven, Siobhan included. Just know that if you change your mind and decide that a little recreation is not the sum of all evils after all, come hit us up later; we’ll probably be there ‘til closing time, it’s the start weekend of Monarch’s Week after all.”

Edward smiled reassuringly.

“I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”

That mild smile which was Edward’s usual way of smiling, a slightly lopsided one which comforted Arvind’s concern, disappeared as soon as Edward turned his back towards his friend, and he started to walk back towards the Conservatoire, walking with quick and brisk steps on the slick cobblestones.

Two weeks prior.

It was one of the larger practice rooms in Countess Montroy Conservatoire’s third floor, one that could fit not only the grand piano which was already there, but also had sufficient room for enough extra seats to complete the ensemble needed for most multi-instrument sonatas, plus three rows of seat at the back. Like nearly all rooms in the Conservatoire, the walls were tapestried, and the floor of ironwood panelling, but two of the walls and the roof had pads of aeroplast to absorb sound so it didn’t carry outside the environs of the room. Edward, the sole student in the room, was sitting in front of the large black grand piano and stretched his back after a solid thirty minutes of playing the piano half of Junpei Takahashi’s Piano Concerto No.6 in F, Op.44. The seated trio of professors at the back giving each other puzzled looks.

“Heatherland, can I ask how long have been practising this piece?” Professor Ryder asked, scratching his unruly black beard. Edward shrugged, rubbing his slightly sore right shoulder.

“About six days or so, five hours a day, give or take.”

The professors looked at each other again, puzzlement surrendering to astonishment or disbelief.

“You’re not taking the mick, right?” Professor Cranach asked incredulously, an eyebrow hiking up in unbelieving surprise.

“No, sir,” Edward answered nonplussed, “there might have a few more hours of simply looking at the notes and trying to sound them out in my head, but no more than that.”

Edward’s main academic supervisor, Professor Chantelle Winton, looked at the other two professors and nodded knowingly.

“Thank you for your honesty, Edward,” she said in a mild tone, “it’s just simply miraculous that you’re able to play such a complicated piece so well after such a short a period of practice is all. Mind you, it’s not perfect, you did skip a few note-shifts and there were a few bars where your tempo was off, but nothing major.”

“Complicated, ma’am? Granted, it looks daunting on paper, but it’s relatively simple to put to the keys.”

That provoked another bout of the professors looking at each other, the unspoken question on their collective minds being if the student in front of them was lying or in actuality being completely honest.

“Have you heard this piece before, or seen it performed, Heatherland?” Ryder asked, taking notes on his ‘com. Edward shook his head.

“No, sir, first time I’ve come across it was when Professor Winton gave it to me last month, and asked if I was up to the challenge. I have to admit, I did put off practicing it until last week, since I had to complete a paper due for my elective of Comparative Interstellar Politics.”

Professor Cranach was not yet done.

“You’ve evidently mastered the playing of the concerto in a very short time span, young Heatherland, and well done to you for managing that. I can think of only a handful of other pianists being able to learn it so fast, and none of them are even close to your age.”

“Yes,” Ryder said halfway under his breath, “which makes this whole display seem miraculous.”

“Nevertheless,” Cranach continued, seemingly not hearing what his colleague had commented, “I wonder if you can tell me a bit about the piece itself. That marked transition in the Allegro from the ABAD scheme to ADBD, what stands out to you in that part?”

Edward, to his credit, and to the continued amazement from his interlocutors, didn’t even turn to consider the score sheet before answering, only requiring a few moments to think, a hand absentmindedly running through his hair.

“It is a transition of more than scheme and tonality, sir; it jumps to cut out a seventh, and inserts a truncated half-chord at the end of each bar. But what I think what you’re referring to is that it shifts to a dissonant F Major key, which in combination with the schematic shift creates an unbalanced sound that produces the musical emotional notes normally associated with an sequence played in F Minor key.”

There was a sort of stunned silence for a long, pregnant, moment.

“I say, Chantelle,” Cranach said at length, “you have been blessed with a once-in-a-generation student in young Heatherland here. How much of his evident abilities are your influence and teaching, and how much is innate?”

“It hurts my professional pride to say this, John,” Winton said, trying very hard to not let her pride in her student show, “but the vast majority is his own doing. We’ve had multiple sessions regarding composer comprehension, musical evocative theory, and practicing rapid score reading, but all honour goes to him for the end result. When he first arrived at Montroy three years ago, I would have classified him as a middling musician technically and emotionally, but I and a lot of the Year One and Two staff agreed he had near unlimited untapped potential. It is to Heatherland’s enormous credit that he has not only tapped into this, but flourished and in my opinion reached the very height of his entire soloist cohort. Not that you’re allowed to tell any of your classmates that, Edward.”

Edward had, while Winton was speaking, turned from a slight pink flush in his bronzed face, to an aggressive shade of brownish-red and the tips of his ears were burning, and he was very focused on the tips of his suede boots, hands wringing uncomfortably in his lap.

“Well, I’m convinced,” Professor Cranach said with a smile, “you’ll have no problem getting an Honours endorsement from me, provided you keep this up towards the tail-end of the semester and the Performative Final, young man.”

Professor Ryder didn’t outwardly seem like he was about to sing Edward’s praises, but after giving Cranach’s his turn to speak, he grinned.

“Any orchestra worth their salt would be standing in line for your services, Heatherland, if what you’ve shown us is your true abilities. Your seemingly perfect marriage of technical skill, emotional comprehension, and physical performance is something very special indeed, and few musicians can truly be said to possess it in the way that you do.”

Then why have I been rejected by every orchestra I’ve auditioned for, sir?

“Thank you, professors, for being so kind. But I don’t think I’m all that special really, it’s just all about feeling the emotions behind the notes and letting the music take control once the fingers hit the tangents.”

Edward wasn’t entirely sure what made him say that, but an inner voice told him every word was true.

Winton gave him a large smile, before rising from the chair and clapped her hands together.

“Now then, I believe we’ve taken up more than enough of your time, Heatherland. Go off and enjoy the winter’s day. But I want you back in my office in two weeks with at least a semi-tangible idea of what piece you’re going to be doing for your Performative Final and what precisely you will be playing at the Student Baroque Orchestra’s Final Orchestral Evaluation. Now, off you go!”

Present day, only an hour later.

Edward had trooped up in front of Professor Winton’s office door nine minutes too late to their five o’clock appointment, but his supervisor had taken it in stride, despite the fact that her work day was technically over and she too wished to go home for the long Monarch Week holiday. Nevertheless, she was all smiles as they sat down in the lounge chairs around the small coffee table in a corner of the professor’s second story office. Office spaces in old academic buildings like Countess Montroy’s was always at somewhat of a premium, but Chantelle Winton was not only senior faculty staff; she had also been a grand piano soloist with the Royal Cordelia Opera for nearly two decades, the very highest level a pianist in the Kingdom of Aurora could hope to aspire, and as such was almost to be considered Auroran classical music royalty. That had landed her an office which several centuries before had been the QMMU’s Vice Principal’s on-campus apartment, back in the day when Cordelia was a much smaller city and not even the capital, and the QMMU was in its embryonic stage. Winton’s smile gave away to a quizzical expression once Edward had told her what he wanted to perform for his Final Evaluation.

“Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, Chaminade’s Piano Sonata in C Minor, and Schumann’s Liebeslied, Op. 25? Are you quite sure about that selection, Edward? I can appreciate a love for the romantic classics, but not choosing a single composer from the current millennium is a very all-or-nothing choice that might come to haunt you in the evaluation process. You surely remember that there are several axes of evaluation; you are going to be graded by technical performance, musical evocation, composer comprehension, and, the most pressing in this case, ability to display mastery of different genres of classical music.”

Professor Winton sat back in the lounge chair and crossed her legs, brushing a lock of dark and grey hair over one ear as she regarded her young student over the rim of her eyes. She too, like Edward, wore glasses, despite the fact that no one in the Auroran kingdom actually needed them unless they were somehow fundamentally opposed to the extremely non-intrusive eye-corrective surgery that was covered by every citizen’s health service insurance.

“I have thought long and hard about this, believe me Professor.” Edward countered and in contrast to Winton, leaned forward in his seat and looked her straight in the eyes.

“I thank you again for the praise you heaped upon me after the Takahashi recital and your words of encouragement is partially why I chose this set of pieces. Rachmaninoff’s 2nd is the lesser known of his three piano concertos, and is always overshadowed by the much more technically demanding 3rd. However, I believe it is a much more emotional piece, which requires a much higher degree of musical expression from the soloist than his other works. Chaminade is proverbially forgotten, but her works were firmly placed in the French romance while the rest of the composing world around her was moving firmly into the First Phase of Modernism and Expressionism. I find her works are exactly what grabs the zeitgeist of what is going on in our society today: the fine arts and culture are being promoted and even encouraged by the upper strata of our Auroran society, whilst, to use an operatic turn of phrase, the wolves are gathering at our gates. The largest nations in Human Space, no, Human history are locked in a mutual arms race and events outside the control of anyone in actual power is threatening to send our collective civilisation to the brink of all-out war. Yet never before has artistic performances been as highly sought after and praised as now, it is hard for graduating classical music, opera and ballet students to find steady employment, because there are so many choosing such professions. And never before has there been such an appetite for these kinds of performances, all the while we all carry on in the shadow of overhanging all-consuming war. In feel that Chaminade’s wistful romantic works are the perfect vessel to communicate those feelings.”

Edward stopped speaking as he realised he had been so animated he was on the verge of panting slightly, that was the level of passion he had unwittingly allowed himself to put on display. After a moment, Professor Winton crossed her arms over her chest and smiled.

“And the Liebeslied, does that have a societal message behind it as well?”

Despite himself, Edward smiled lopsidedly and leaned back in the lounge chair.

“No, it is simply a declaration of love, made manifest in music.”

Edward was pretty sure Professor Winton had tears in the corners of her eyes as she declared her wholehearted support for his choice of pieces to round out his formal education as a pianist.

It wasn’t even six o’clock yet when Edward stepped into a liquor store on De Valera Street. Despite being a ground floor shop, it had a perceptively large interior with floor-to-roof shelves stocked with a dizzying array of types of alcohols, brands, and vintages, representing all of the Royal Union, and many other polities and worlds besides. Edward looked around for a bit before heading to the whisky shelves. There he didn’t browse too long before finding what he was looking for, grabbing a bottle and headed towards the roundabout-style cashier desks. He put the 0,75l bottle of Persephone Aquamarine on the desk and a relatively young woman came up to him. She evidently took notice of his crisp, grey QMMU uniform and his new Kitezh trex-wool ulsterette coat, his curly black locks, bronzed skin, and reddened a little as she scanned the expensive bottle of alcohol. A liquor store that was operated completely by humans was a sure sign that it was a professional (and by extension, expensive) locale, and Edward seemingly paid no mind as the register showed the sum of £85 for that single bottle. Bottle of expensive malt whisky stuffed into his school bag, he walked back out onto the piedway, heading towards Albany Square. Groundcar traffic swished underneath his feet on the ground-level carrumways, but he paid it no mind. As he exited De Valera Street and entered the crossing of Cornwallis and Alfredus Pictor streets, he made a slight detour that cut through Beauchamp Park, and ended up in the ward of Roccham. From there it was only a few blocks before he reached Bellweather Street 28.

Edward keyed his way inside, the electronic lock giving off a happy blirp as it recognised his key’s signature. He went up the two flights of stairs to reach the entrance to the apartment he shared with Arvind, Peter, and David. A repetition of what had happened at the outer door later, and Edward was busy hanging up his new and expensive coat on the coatracks near the entrance. Their apartment wasn’t the largest, but it certainly served its purpose well enough. In the middle was the common living room with its large HD-screen, audio system, sofa and lounge chairs; behind the multi-media part of the common room was a dining table in faux-pine that had seating for eight and ten spinal chairs in the same material (“in case we have a party and more than we invite shows up,” Arvind had argued when they had collectively ordered/paid for the furniture over the webnet), and the rear wall had two large windows that showed a view into the rear yard of the apartment block, which meant a completely nondescript view of allotments, sheds, small flecks of greenery, and the backs of the other apartment buildings of the same Bellweather Street block. Each intercardinal corner of the apartment was given over to the bedrooms/study rooms of each of those who lived there. Every one of them decorated theirs a bit differently; Edward’s had a south-eastern facing wall with a window, a bed underneath that, a desk with integrated shelves to the “west” of the bed, and the rest of the room was given over to a piano and a set of closet cupboards. Storage was invariably where he could find space, so under his bed, underneath his piano, on shelves stacked close to the roof, or simply on the floor, the latter of which was ambulated about quite a lot. The kitchen and bathroom was located in between the “eastern” and “western” spaces between the bedrooms, Edward was happy that the kitchen was closest to him, considering he was the one of the four who did the most cooking. The kitchen was just above the bare minimum expected for civilised citizens of Aurora to survive by; a combined fridge/freezer, a titanium-plate induction topped oven, laser-washer, and organic combustion trash station in addition to relatively ample counter space. The bathroom didn’t have a bath, but it did have two showers in addition to a large dual-sink, and it had self-absorbing spongemarble tiles from Sogdiana, which sent water directly from the tiles above to the water-recollection underneath.

None of this was on Edward’s mind as he flicked on the HD-screen with a snap of his fingers that the apartment’s central DAI recognised.

“… and that the Auroran government must agree to pull back its forward-deployed Royal Navy assets if any meaningful talks of appeasement is to be made in good faith.”

Edward grimaced whilst unbuttoning his shirt, having already tossed his grey blazer over the back of the common room sofa. The house DAI had settled on showing the stream from the New Guardian since the algorithms of the four young males who lived there were generally left-leaning, and as such the Dumb Artificial Intelligence in charge of Bellweather Street 28 H301 thought that was what its human masters wanted to watch.

“Change channel,” Edward said angrily while still stripping out of his uniform, “something more neutral, please.”

He didn’t wait to listen to the change of stream-channel before heading for the shower. Well there, Edward let the warm water wash over his naked body. He soaped up his bronzed skin, making especial care to finish his shower not only with a hair shampoo, but also with a mild soap that he slathered onto his hands, which was the last to rinse away as he asked the apartment DAI to shut off the tap. Once out of the shower, he looked at himself in the mirror, letting the water drip off of him instead of drying it up with a towel; the floor was spongemarble after all.

Quite tall, check.

Dark-haired, with curly locks, check.

Plays a classical instrument, and is damn good at it, check.

Has improved his wardrobe considerably over these few months, check.

A cowardly piece of shit, check.

Single, check.

A fair bit of time passed after finishing his shower and Edward stepping out and heading for his room. But he had experiments to do, and it all started with him uncorking that bottle of Persephone Aquamarine. It loosened with a very satisfying pop, the cork made of the real stuff, which was exceedingly rare, even on extremely opulent Aurora, Amaranth, or Angevin. Edward produced a wide-rimmed glass and poured a good measure of the mahogany liquid into it. He brought the glass up to his nose and took a long whiff. The Aquamarine smelled of smoke, cedar, shellfish, kombu, and worked leather. If anyone had asked Edward in that moment how he was able to recognise and differentiate all those smells, he would have been completely perplexed. Instead he downed the glass in a single gulp-

It burns, everything burns, why has Humanity cultivated this type of alcohol for over a thousand years…

As soon as the burn began, it was gone. Edward’s breath came quick and hard in and out of his nose, but his reptilian brain soon realised he was out of physical danger.

“Alright,” he murmured to himself, “time to put this theory to the test.”

Two glasses of the same alcohol later, Edward was starting to feel the emerging disassociation that strong alcohol brings after only a few drinks. He smiled mischievously, and fished a score sheet out from his bag, somewhat clumsily extracting the score for Louise Farrenc’s Etude, Book No.1. This was a piece he had never played before, he had only read the score sheet twice, and as he sat it on the sheet stand on the piano, Edward allowed himself a small smile once again. He read the score once, twice, and halfway through the third time he started to play it from the beginning. By the time he realised he’d played it nine times, he sat back with a surprised gasp.

“28,” he asked the apartment DAI out loud, “can you do me a favour and record the next, oh I don’t know, six sessions that I am about to play?”

“Of course, Master Heatherland,” the androgynous voice of the apartment DAI responded.

But Edward was not done. He filled a further three glasses of heavy-duty whisky and downed them all while sitting in the living room looking at news feeds from a multitude of Royal Union stream-channels.

“In the Lucidia Sector, Vice Admiral Kuznetsova had vowed to meet aggression with aggression, especially since the Euphoria Incident, and she has assured to commit several more heavy combatants to patrol the border zones that cross the Royal Union, the ISA, the Lucidia Sector, and the nominally independent Lorelei Sector. Tonight we invite you viewers to discuss the question if Royal Navy officers, raised and trained…” Evening Telegraph.

“Novorosyian Grand Ducal Naval Forces keep clashing with Coma Berenice Naval units in the vicinity of the Three Sisters, the site of so much bloodshed and serious conflict merely forty years back, although no sailors from any of the nominal sides have yet to be hurt, the civilian populace is caught…” Der Sternspiegel.

“The system of Concord, with its capital world of Neuemarsche has for the last month been the focal point of the disagreement between the navy of the Independent Systems Alliance, and the navies of the Royal Union, spearheaded by the Republic of Corinthian Navy and –quite paradoxically– the Royal Dionysian Navy. Trade to and fro this system has tried up completely as the major interstellar powers in the region have all engaged in a political tug of war, stalling exports and imports to this system completely…”

Edward kept all of that in the background as he kept open the door to his bedroom, letting himself be bombarded with all sorts of news and talking heads’ commentary. He put Chaminade’s sonata on the sheet holder of his piano, and then set about playing the nineteen-minute long sonata in one sitting. But he put a sound-cancelling headset over his ears as soon as he started. And close to twenty minutes later, he veritably threw the expensive headset into a corner of his bedroom, his pulse elevated. The DAI had confirmed his tangent-movements were 98.9% accurate.

“One last experiment,” he slurred to himself, downing another glass of expensive Amaranthine whisky, “if I finish this with a good percentage, then the system is fucked, and I am just a normal person that has had a bit of good luck while showing off what some would call skill.”

Edward sat down in front of the piano once more, put on the a set of music mini-pods that literally could not carry music outside the ears they were stuffed into; if they did anything more intrusive than Lisjonera Inc. guaranteed against, said company would be bankrupt within moments. In other words, they were not only noise-cancelling, they were legally obligated to be noise-neutralising.

The initial dulcet tunes of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto started to veritably waft out over the now-empty apartment of Edward, Arvind, Peter, and David. But soon enough the Adagio gave way to the Allegro scherzo, and Edward was thrown out of his musical trance as the concerto came to its natural end, simply because of musical reasons, not because of outside interference. And that scares me.

He sat for close to half an hour with his head in his hands. He had completed the whole piano-part of the concerto, without hearing, almost without reading, and still had gotten over 99% correct on his first and initial recital.

“Haha, what the fuck is happening to me,” he half-slurred.

“This shouldn’t be possible for mere human beings.”

Mouràki mou, his mother Theodora Doukas-Heatherland seemed to be chanting over- and over again in the back of his mind. It had been seven weeks since he had left his mother and Amaranth behind once again...

Remember archê koi omegôn, Edward, you are our son.

He recollected that Arvind (and Siobhan for that matter) had invited him to join them at the Humble Boatsman. Stumbling into their collective bathroom, Edward found a set of detox-pills, downed two of them, and then went looking for that shirt he and Arvind had went out to buy that time Ed had been invited to join Adea and the rest at the Pale Peacock.

An hour later, Edward stepped out from the drone-skycar onto piedway in front of the Humble Boatsman, feeling prepped. He had showered, wearing that nice, heavy white shirt he’d looked for earlier, black trousers, a cream outershirt, and the monkstraps he had worn earlier that day at Uni. The security officer at the Boatsman’s door didn’t even look at Edward twice before admitting him. Clothes makes a man, eh?

He only had to step inside before David spotted him and drunkenly waved in his general direction.

“Oi, Eddie, over here mate!”

This will be a very interesting night, Edward thought as an actually genuine grin crossed his face.

He crossed over the ironwood floor how the hell did the Boatsman afford that? to reach the seats Arvind had reserved. After depositing his extravagant cream outershirt at the class-pub’s wardrobe, whilst wearing a white high-collar shirt and black dress trousers decorated with faux-gold stripes, Edward for once felt like he comfortably belonged. That sensation would, however, not last long.