LINKDING

<blockquote>Infrastructure. It’s all the stuff you don’t think about, the stuff that works until it doesn’t, and then your tube of personal lubricant turns out to be full of toothpaste or you end up knee-deep in chocolate milkshake. That’s not the fun kind of surprise, and it’s not a random example either. I’d had a lively morning, and I was hoping that the afternoon was going to be more on the calm side. At least with the replicator I was working on there was no obvious mess to clean up, though I wouldn’t know for sure until the skeleton key had finished running and I could rummage around inside it and see what it had choked on.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“I want a ridiculously large soft-serve ice cream cone with sprinkles on it,” Russell said, ticking the list off on his fingers. “I want a button with an ironic pop culture reference that I’ll lose before I get home. I want meat on a stick, and I want something deep-fried.” “It’s good to have goals.” Lew ignored a glossy postcard thrust in his direction by a guy in a glittery rainbow T-shirt, and deftly dodged a clump of silver balloons bobbing at the corner of a vendor’s stall. “Ooh, and I want all the free samples.” Russell veered off the street to where a young woman in a polka dot red dress stood in front of a tea place, offering small paper cups from a tray.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jai let his overnight bag bounce on the bed with a careless jingle of souvenir charms as he darted across the room to the wall of windows. “Will you just look at that. Isn’t it spectacular?” Alyxi closed and locked the door and waved a hand over the light holo. Illumination bloomed along the edges of the ceiling, pooled above the table and the easy chairs and the two extravagant heaps of pillows on the bed. The one bed–Brobdingnagian, as everything dirtside was, but still, just one. Alyxi looked at it with resignation. Always ask to see the room. But of course community responsibility had left them no reasonable choice. There would be many rooms more crowded than this one tonight–probably even the two singles, booked months ago, that they’d been prevailed upon to give up in exchange for it.</blockquote>