the Tankard, which didn’t have a real sign, just an old beer mug rendered in pink neon shining through the front window. Inside, it looked like a pub, wood paneling everywhere, sticky but warm. Sloane raised an eyebrow at Esther as they walked in; the man sitting on a stool by the door was uninterested in their IDs. Sloane ran both hands through her hair to push it away from her face as she scanned the place for Mox.
“Looks like a movie set,” Esther said with a snort. She was right. The dark alcoves, the stone walls, the tables with candles burning on top of them—it was a scene from a fantasy movie or a place in a theme park. Except here, the magical effects were real: a lemon wedge floating over a gin and tonic, squeezing every time a woman took a sip; a martini with a bouncing, glowing olive; a glass of flaming whiskey whose fire didn’t burn out when a man drank from it.
Esther found a table in the back where they could all huddle together on low wooden benches, and Sloane went to the bar. The bartender wasn’t dressed like the people in the Camel, that much was certain. Her clothes were tight, for one thing, and ripped every which way, artful tatters. Her nose was pierced horizontally with a metal rod that expanded when her nostrils flared.
“Hi,” Sloane said when the bartender came closer. “I’m looking for Mox.”
“Mox, huh?” the woman said. “Who’re you?”
“Sloane,” she said. “He told me I might find him here.”
“I’ll see if he’s around.”
“Can I also—” But the woman was already gone. “Order a drink? No? Okay.” Sloane walked back to the table, where Esther and Kyros were talking.
“So they follow me, which means every time I put up a video or a picture, it shows up in their feed—”
“Feed?”
“Yeah, like a big list of all the people they follow mashed together.”
“And following someone just means you want to see videos of them talking.”
“Yes.”
“Why not just talk to the people around you?”
“An excellent question,” Sloane said, sliding into a chair.
“Because that’s harder,” Esther said, laughing. “You have to do the whole social rigmarole. But on social media, you can be at home in your underwear and still feel like you have a social life.” Esther was wearing Barbie pink lipstick and the standard siphon that Sloane had struggled with earlier that afternoon. It wasn’t decorative enough for Esther; it was at odds with the pale yellow swirl of fabric around her face, which dissolved into a diamond-patterned dress that tapered to her ankles.
“I’m not sure I’d want antisocial, naked people to watch videos of me,” Kyros said.
Sloane glanced at Edda. She was scanning the bar. Her siphon was rudimentary, like the one Esther wore on her hand, but hers was on her ear, giving her a lopsided appearance. She saw Sloane looking at it and arched an eyebrow.
“What? Do I have something on my face?”
“No,” Sloane said. “Just not sure what the ear ones do.”
“Enhanced hearing,” Edda said. “Distant sounds, sounds too quiet for the human ear. Some people use them to interpret a person’s tone better, but I’m no good at that.”
Sloane saw him then, ducking under the low door frame behind the bar, his dark, wavy hair pulled back into a low knot, his eyes finding hers right away, as if drawn by magnetism.
“Hey,” she said when he was close enough to hear her. “Told you I’d escape.”
Mox was so tall that when he sank into a crouch beside her stool, he was almost at eye level. “Welcome.”
“I’m Esther. This is Kyros and Edda,” Esther said, sticking out her hand for Mox to shake. “Heard you helped my girl out of a jam.”
“Unrealist snare,” Mox said.
“Unrealists.” Edda snorted. “Bunch of pretentious art students.”
“They can be brilliant, though,” Mox said. “Even the snare is an advanced working, likely requires an assembly of at least five people with a high level of dissonance. Hard to maintain.”
“Just because something is difficult,” Edda said, “doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.”
“If we’re going to talk about this, I’ll need a drink,” Kyros said. “Or seven.”
“Right.” Mox stood. “What does everybody want?”
“I want that thing with the glowing olive,” Esther said.
“The genie martini,” Mox said. “A fine choice.”
Kyros and Edda both ordered beers that were obviously familiar to them. Mox looked at Sloane.
“I . . . will go up there,” she said. “I want to look at what you’ve got.”