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years, it’s a weird feeling to know the name. Of what you are. You’ve heard that term before, but without understanding the context or what it stands for (you still aren’t sure—although your awareness, like a spreading gas, is starting to creep around the edges of the term and you feel that soon it may come to you, all at once). Now this CENTCOM officer from twenty thousand light-years away has come all this way. And for you. For you!
    —
    It works. You get a promotion, then a gun. They start sending you out on missions. You get stats, a profile, a backstory. You get
hit points
. Just a few, at first. People know your name. Oona Bantu knows your name. Sometimes she flirts with you in the elevator. You level up, then you level up again. With every mission you can feel it more and more. You don’t know how it happened. Actually, you do. You finally took control of your own actions. You’re free. No more of that iridium-collection bullshit. No more Lean Cuisines in the break room. No more…
    Carla.
    Hmm.
    Well, you can get Carla. Right? You’re
you
now. If she liked you before, of course she’s gonna like you know. You just need to know how to keep this going. So far, it’s worked. Just do the worst possible thing you can think of doing. And then do something worse. Something you would never imagine anyone doing in any situation.
    You go on missions. You level up. Up and up and up you go. Your armor looks great. You catch sight of yourself in the reflection of your pod craft and, you hate to say it, but you kinda look like a badass. How did this happen? You hover over the grunts in the iridium fields. Poor suckers. If only they could see what you see, the world from up here.
    —
    There are just a couple of things that bug you.
    You used to be stuck down there, with those losers. And your life was the same every day. Wake up, brush teeth, put on the bio-suit. Get the thingy, use the thingy to collect iridium. At the end of the day, detach the basin, load it into the spectrometer. The number pops up, you get your chits for the day, and that’s that. Every day the same. Every single crap day the same.
    Now you’re a player. You get to do what you want, when you want. When you’re not doing what you want, you get to chill out here, in this air-conditioned lounge with couches and free snacks and a cappuccino maker, waiting for the next mission. The music is a little repetitive, but the people are cool, if a little aloof. You’re you now. That’s something. It
means
something. It’s just that—how do you say this—to keep this going, you can’t help but feel as if your days aren’t any more free than they were before. They might even be, and you can’t believe you’re saying this, less free. How is that possible? You don’t know. But it is.
    That’s the first thing that bothers you. The second thing is Carla.
    —
    You don’t know if she doesn’t recognize you now that you’re kind of a badass or what. Whatever it is, when you wave at her, from a pod craft or if you’re doing a perimeter sweep of moon base six, she doesn’t wave back. She sometimes gives a little smile, but you can’t tell if it’s because she still remembers your lunch chats or if maybe she’s just smiling because a second grade lieutenant is waving at her. Plus, the smile she gives you is one of those sad smiles.
    All of which is to sort of make it a little more understandable that when Oona Bantu comes to your quarters wearing just her under-skin armor, you don’t turn her away. She comes to sit on your bunk, and things get a little kissy for a hot and sweaty five minutes, and you feel really terrible the whole time and confused but also you are
kissing Oona Bantu
, so you don’t stop right away but then Carla’s sad little smile face keeps inserting itself into your head and you break off the kissing and Oona can’t believe it. She just laughs, gathers her underthings, and walks out of your room.
    —
    You don’t know if