[b]Nai Kolkata, Eight Months before Present Time[/b]

"Don't talk." She brooded, her auburn hair falling over her shoulders like a wave crashing against the shore as she faced away from him to put on her bra. Once it was on, she snapped back around, looking at him as if it were entirely his fault that they fucked.

"You told me not to talk, Marissa" Laz replied with a smirk. She looked more distraught than angry. "I don't know." she said, slipping into a slim green shirt. It formed to her in a way that was somehow looked sexier than the nudity beneath. "It's just... your brother is so cold. I want to love him. I am supposed to love him. We live in the same house, We have..." She paused, "But he's just... I don't think he knows what love is." she embraced him, laying her head against his shoulders.

"He's a cold fish." Laz assured her. It was true. Marcus Paladino was a Special Agent under the intelligence wing of the Interplanetary Union. That was not only his job; it was also his identity. Before he joined the IU, when they were still children, Marcus had been just as dull. He never joked, nor did he laugh. He never really even had friends. Back then, he spent his days reading and exploring virtual recreations of the most incredibly dull subjects. Whereas Laz had enjoyed seeing the classic recreates - Lindisfarne, D-Day, the Martian Gambit - Marcus had insisted on loading into headier, academic things. He liked the Library of Alexandria, or the Inauguration of John F. Kennedy. He liked them, but they never made him smile. How he had managed to marry anybody at all, let alone a nest of emotions like Marissa, was nothing short of amazing.

Portraits of both brothers hung on the wall. Seeing Marcus, it wasn't as confusing why Marissa had fallen for him at first. He was tall, handsome, with shoulders like an athlete and a jaw chiseled from stone. In grey-blue dress uniform, with the moody greatcoat of Interplanetary Union Intelligence, he looked like more than a great catch. And with a career like his, he certainly could afford to take her to places that covered up the utter lack of personality that dwelled beneath that well-groomed body.

Laz was a grinning fool by comparison. He couldn't help but smirk for photos, and he had made the same face for every one of them since he was a kid. With a head of thick, well-combed black hair on his head and the bony face that looked like, as his mother used to say, "A Comedian", he had always been taken as the flippant brother. Today, however, everybody was here to celebrate his career.

"When we go out there, no eye contact." she said sternly. "I don't want anybody expecting a thing. They think I slept in Marcus's old room."

"I'll go in and ruffle the bed." he joked. She ignored him and walked out

Laz examined the room one more time, making sure there was no evidence of what they had done here. It was, like the rest of the apartment, the typical Nai Kolkata design. The walls where a pastel blue, as was the artificially warmed floor. The ceiling was an integrated LED panel so that the lighting in the room could be adjusted. It was dimmed now, to fit the mood of what they been doing. Though the trim was decorated in the playful, serpentine way that Kolkatan design was known for, the furniture decoration of the room didn't necessarily match. Most striking among it all was an empty desk whose design and scuffed condition suggested it was an antique. Earth-made. Likely IKEA.

He slipped his padded dress shirt over his head and quickly straightened it in the mirror. IU Uniforms were a light grey-blue and streamlined in such a way where the only seams were two thick lines running up the front of the shirt and opening outward like the top of a pitcher. He wasn't sure if he looked proud or ridiculous in this get up. Really, it was a mix of both. He straightened the stiffened collar and left the room, walking briskly through his parents home until he reached the balcony.

The smell of roasting pork and vegetables. Friends and relatives had gathered to congratulate him, and they all cheered as he stood there smiling like a fool. The balcony was decorated with streamers, helium balloons, dyed paper windsocks hanging from the dragon heads that topped the ornately carved soapstone railing, and tiny robots danced on every table, popping and locking, sliding, twerking, and shimmying as they shot holographic fireworks so lifelike that it looked like a miniature arrival display show. Even now that he was in his twenties, his mother could not help but treat every celebration as if it was a child's birthday party.

"There he is." he heard his father shout. "Our spaceman!"

"Hows it feel, not having to escort tourist ships across the safe-zone anymore?" his uncle Stieg chuckled. Standing in the shadow of his bear-sized uncle, Laz could see his cousin hovering, looking away from him. She had never spoke more than two words to him after what they learned together when they were thirteen.

"I'm going to miss it." he grinned, "There aren't as many girls in space."

"Lazarus, behave" his mother giggled, waddling over to him and slapping him lightly on the cheek. "If you talk like that i'm going to have to come with you as a chaperone."

"Uncle Laz" a little girl came pattering across the deck, a crunchy candy crust lining her mouth. "Uncle Laz, I'm sorry daddy couldn't be here. He had to work." she was young, approaching her fifth birthday. "I know about space, if you want to know what I know."

"What do you know?" He stooped, looking her in the eye. Behind her he could see her mother, Marissa, watching uncomfortably. 

"I know that Broomerpurey is a gas planet" she said, pointing up at Brahmapura; an sphere of pink-brown swirls that accompanied - and often dominated - the dull-orange sun in the sky. "It's big like this, see." She blew up her cheeks and stretched out her arms as if she was hugging a tree. Laughing, Laz mussed her hair and stood up at the same moment a Guardian Patroller whizzed overhead.

He watched it go, disappearing toward the business district that perfectly centered Nai Kolkata. Most of the buildings were obscured by the long, copy-pasted rows of apartment complexes that differed only in color and in the statues and gargoyles that decorated them. Many of the buildings were further differentiated from the others by complex murals that covered most of the wall surface. The urban sprawl was broken up by dozens of monuments, parks, statuaries, and fountains. From it's inception, Nai Kolkata had done it's best to keep from being as soulless as the overpopulated cities of Earth. 

At the center of it all, dwarfing the the city that surrounded it, the City Center with its government and business districts glowed on the horizon

Skyscrapers on Earth had once been cold buildings with edifices of steel, glass, and concrete. Nai Kolkata had avoided this all together. The city center, rather than looking grey and imposing, had the color an design that one would expect to see in the window of a dessert shop. The buildings were colorful, ranging from soft pastels to harsher, brighter colors. There were few flat lines on them as well, as most had been designed to look geometric or serpentine, and those that weren't were instead trimmed with friezes and statues. The Capital Building itself, with its soft orange-red color, its walls that tapered inward as it rose, or it's rounded, arching top, and layers constantly trimmed with complex rows of jagged statues, made it look like a tall, sugary wedding cake from far away.

"So, the Shiva road, eh?" his uncle Stieg clasped him on the shoulder. "That's a long route. Two hundred billion kilometers away through mostly black."

Laz nodded. "I'll have to bring a book." he joked.

Stieg nodded. "Space is a bitch. You can't imagine how big it is until you are there, and it scares you how far everything really is." he thought for a moment. "I think we stopped at Shiva when we came here, after..." The mood between them grew suddenly sad.

"Dad doesn't remember earth." Laz said.

"He was still an infant." Stieg said, "I don't remember much. Just flashes. I remember the lights. The explosions. I remember being scared, and seeing those things behind us, pouncing on those who were lagging behind. That was all in space. I really don't remember Earth."

"I guess that is good." Laz suggested.

Stieg shook his head. "I think it is much worse."

"Bacon is ready" Laz's father called out, breaking his uncle's mood. The older generations held earth as a tender subject, but by the time Laz had been born their home planet had been gone for more than twenty years. It was his history, but Brahma was his home. 

In his childhood, they had mostly eaten synthetic meat. The real thing, however, was becoming available as agriculture grew across the safe zone. Most farms were still kept in glass domes, protecting crops and livestock from the dwindling differences between the safezone and old Earth. Some, however, we starting to venture out into the open air. Laz had flew over the safe zone many times in his old job as an escort pilot. Sprawling farmland was replacing the old swampy plain that filled so much of the Safe Zone Valley. The number of Mayura had dwindled as well. Attacks by the jet-sized native monsters had been an every-other-day occurrence when he had first taken the job just seven years ago. Now it was weekly at most. 

"Lazo" a familiar grainy voice greeted him. Laz looked to the side to see his grandfather sitting himself down beside him. 

Caesar Paladino, the patriarch of the family, was the only one left alive who had truly grown up on their home planet. He had been in his twenties when the Listeners had arrived, and he had participated in the failed battle to drive them off. It had left him scarred, with a burn scar that ran like a triangle from his nose across the breadth of his chin. Old age had hidden it in wrinkles, but the discolored skin and blinded white eye was still clearly visible.

"Yes, Nonno." Laz answered politely.

"You will be the first Paladino in space since we made landfall here." he said. "Don't worry about what people say. The IU is important. Without the Guardian Fleet, [i]they[/i] could have came back at any time." He shuddered for a moment, his eyes wandering wistfully toward the sky above them. "Anymore, you young people don't understand what we lost back then. What we could have had. That feeling of... of thinking that everything in front of you, everything as far as man can see, will eventually be ours. We had the universe, and things were going to be better than they were before..."

Laz paused. His grandfather hadn't liked talking about the days before. Unsure what to say, Laz sat silent and slack-jawed.

"I want you to have this."

From his pocket, he produced a pistol. It was sleek and silver, ending in a long hard-rubber cup shaped like the top of a wine glass. The handle of the weapon had been worn down, polished down to the black-grey dullness beneath. Laz took it in his hands, fascinated.

"My UP-L4" the old man said, a twinkle of nostalgia in the back of his tired voice. "Ultrasonic Pistol - Lethal 4. This is what they issued back before those rail-driven short arms became popular with all the kids. No feeling, no respect. They just want to see gore when the shoot something."

"Ultrasonic?" Laz asked. "I didn't know you had this." he toyed with it in his hands, tossing it from palm to palm like a heavy metal ball. "We used ultrasonic arrays to scare off Mayura." he said, "But i've never actually seen a lethal before."

"Bring it with you." Caesar said. "It's something to remind you of your family. Even in space, we will be protecting you."

He felt a chill travel down his spine and his nerves went warm. He had never spent any more than a couple of weeks outside Nai Kolkata, away from his friends and family and everyone he had ever known.