Guinevere sat stomach-down on the semicircular sofa, legs bent at the knee, feet up in the air, propping her facial cheeks on her palms while she read a book.

Lee counted off the steps of a “paddle” dance.

The soft sound of filtered air tickled their ears, overcoming the pure silence of the near vacuum of space.

Lee blinked his eyes twice in rapid succession to turn on the comm system between the two of them.

“Whatcha readin’?”

Guinevere batted her eyes to turn on the voice simulator in her head.  “A book.”

“I can see that.  What is it?”

“Well, I was tired of mentally flipping through raw data.  I wanted something different, something that activated my tactile sensations.”

“Oh, I get it.  It’s a book.  But what is it?”

“The…what did they used to call it?  A 3D printer or replicator or something?  Anyone, the State Changer read my thoughts and reproduced a book, with real rough pages!, about a period of time and the mix of subcultures during that historic period.”

“You mean, before the Change?”

“Well, yes, of course.  What else did you mean?”

“So, what’s the title?”

“‘Globish.'”

“Huh?  Glibberish?”

“No.  ‘Globish.'”

“Glow fish?  I thought they were banned?”

“Artificial insertion of glow material was banned for a time, but glow fish which were genetically modified to emit low levels of lights have been perfectly acceptable for decades.”

“Yes, yes.  You and your constant attachment to the ISSA Net.  You know, there was a time when…”

Guinevere stood up and pretended to play an air violin.  “You were saying…?”

They both laughed.

“Oh, never mind.  Me and my old man speech.  So, what’s the book about?”

Guinevere shook her head.  “You’ve got dance practice, don’t you?  Why don’t you continue to practice and I’ll read my summary of the book, so far, into one of your memories for later retrieval?”

“Fantastic idea.  By the way, that’s a great outfit you have.  Where did you get it?”

“It’s what they call retro Star Trek — beige tunic and black slacks — all the rage in the colonies right now.”

As Guinevere rotated out of view in the toroid low-gravity inflatable “Bigelow Donut” of their tourist pod, Lee kept practicing the paddle moves in the zero-gravity dance sphere.

He wanted to show off his new moves at the charity ball in a few days, where funds were being raised to benefit people whose in-flight cyborg fusion surgeries had failed and were no longer considered viable members of Colony D#F3’s replacement crew, slated for recycling when they arrived at the docking station unless they had the labour/investment credits to pay for another attempt for a successful surgical procedure.

Although everyone knew someone who had been recycled and eventually found its reconstituted way back into society, there were more people who had been recycled whom no one had heard from again.

Meanwhile, in the adjoining tourist pod, Kathryn secretly practiced a new dance form never seen in public…