Ana: Arch! Are you there?

Arch: Yeah. I mean, am I ever not?

Ana: You are often absent!

Ana: You were asleep for fourteen hours yesterday.

Ana: I know, because you forgot to log off.

Arch: Are you saying you watched me sleep that whole time?

Ana: Not the whole time. I had work to do.

Ana: I mostly just kept the feed in the background of my screen.

Ana: Like using a picture of your pet as wallpaper.

Arch: I...don't know how to respond to that.

Arch: Hey, wait, are you already doing work?

Arch: It's the first week of classes!

Arch: You're such a nerd.

Ana: As if you are not a nerd!

Ana: And after all, RCC has been in session for weeks.

Ana: Not all worlds operate on your Alexandrian schedule!

Ana: Typical brainwashed imperial ;)

Arch: I'll pretend I didn't hear that.

Arch: So, are you working on your thesis now?

Ana: As well as I can.

Ana: My thesis advisor is as yet unassigned.

Ana: Typical RCC incompetence!

Ana: To mitigate my rage, I'm working on an article.

Ana: I plan to submit it to Inner Ring Anthropology Quarterly.

Arch: Oooh, you're going to be published?! That's awesome!

Ana: Well, that remains to be seen.

Ana: Inner Ring Anthropology Quarterly is more exclusive than the RCC student journal.

Ana: And much more exclusive than my blog…

Arch: Well, good luck! <3

Ana: Thanks. <3

Ana: The paper is about Beyonce.

Ana: Many argue that there was a long line of priestesses who all took that name for religious reasons,

Ana: And some even argue that she was one artist with many distinct creative phases,

Ana: but I support the more recent theory that "Beyonce" was simply a very common name.

Arch: Huh. Cool!

Arch: That’s great that you’re getting your writing out there!

Ana: I will be glad to finally get the recognition I deserve.

Ana: After all, I am here to produce groundbreaking scholarship, and chew bubble gum.

Ana: And I am all out of bubble gum.

Arch: Classic Ana.

Ana: That's Late Modern Classical Ana to you ;).

Ana: And academics publish under their military rank,

Ana: so instead it's, unfortunately, Cadet Kepler.

Arch: Aw. You'll pass that fitness test soon.

Arch: And you know it's just a technicality!

Ana: That makes it more irksome.

Arch: Well, it's still good that your field is like, interesting to you,

Arch: And like a coherent thing you've decided to study, and stuff...

Arch: Must be nice :/

Ana: Ah. You are dispirited by your aimlessness?

Arch: Tactful as always, Ana.

Ana: Well, perhaps your, ahem, lovely friend from class last year can help ;)

Ana: Join her little club!

Ana: It sounded like she really wanted to sell you on a career in politics!

Ana: Get it? Because your politicians are for-profit,

Ana: and your planet is a feudal-capitalist oligarchy—

Arch: Yeah, yeah, Kepler. You don’t live in a dystopia, we get it.

Ana: Well. I still need a life support suit to go outside; I am hardly living the dream.

Arch: True. At least I have “knowing what fresh air smells like” under my belt.

Arch: That’s one thing I’ve got going for me…

Arch: Okay, so I know that was a joke just now,

Arch: But Group Project Girl has made...a reappearance.

Ana: Oh really?

Arch: She got assigned as my roommate this year.

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Ana: Really.

Ana: Hmm. Unusual.

Ana: Don't you get to choose your roommates?

Ana: Aren't you still allowed some false choices to mask your utter submission to the state?

Arch: I wouldn't say it masks the utter submission, but yes, most people choose.

Arch: I just didn't know anyone I would want to choose, or who would choose me.

Arch: But that's the weird thing.

Arch: She's a Political Business major, so she would have wanted to live with someone she could network with.

Arch: I would think?!

Ana: Maybe she thinks you could be a profitable business connection.

Ana: Your parents are prominent in the monopoly that rules your province, yes?

Arch: Ssh, around here it’s the business that manages my province.

Arch: And they’re not a monopoly, they’re just very good at business.

Ana: Ah, of course.

Ana: I shall avoid any talk that could get me investigated by your planet’s secret police.

Arch: Sssssh, around here, they're not the secret police, they’re nothing because they don't exist.

Ana: How could I have forgotten.

Ana: I must say, I’m glad to be here in the Inner Ring, out of your planet’s military reach…

Arch: Our “peacekeeping influence.”

Ana: Right, yes.

Arch: But yeah, you’re right.

Arch: It's just that...I mostly sleep in my room or talk to you.

Arch: Wouldn't think I'd be a desirable connection.

Ana: Maybe she desires you in other ways.

Arch: What?!?!

Arch: Hahaha, Kepler, I didn't know you made jokes!

Ana: ;)

Ana: The probability of this room assignment must have been very low.

Arch: Yeah.

Arch: Probably around the odds of life randomly evolving on a big wet rock orbiting Sol—really low, but apparently not zero.

Ana: Mm. What I mean is--could she have pulled strings to get placed with you?

Ana: You mentioned she was impressed with your performance on the group project.

Arch: I think you might have been studying the American Imperialism period a little too long.

Arch: Alexandrian politics isn't Machiavellian cunning and deft diplomacy.

Arch: It's kind of a shitshow.

Arch: Mostly there's just a bunch of cliques of rich people,

Arch: And they yell at each other every Senate session until they do...nothing,

Arch: Then they get re-elected because they buy their elections,

Arch: And soon we'll all die.

Ana: Hm. Well.

Ana: Speaking of my work though, I have some news.

Arch: What is it?

Ana: Your part-time therapist duties during my master’s applications have paid off.

Ana: I got accepted to the Pluto grad program. I’m going to Sol System!

Arch: Holy shit! Ana, that’s insane!

Arch: That’s…20 light years away.

Ana: Only 12 from me.

Ana: Well.

Ana: 12.5.

Ana: I start mid-year because of that.

Arch: Oh.

Ana: Their library is unparallelled.

Ana: I’ll have access to so much information!

Ana: And they have one of the most prestigious archaeology journals in the galaxy;

Ana: It’s the Inner Ring Anthropology Quarterly of archaeology journals.

Arch: Um, that’s great…

Ana: I know what you’re thinking: why would an anthropologist write for an archaeology journal?

Ana: Well, they have a lot of overlap:

Arch: Ana, wait.

Ana: After all, anthroplogists do archaeology—

Ana: Oh! I forgot to mention!

Ana: I’ll get to go on research expeditions, on Earth itself!

Ana: And I’m already so used to life-support suits; I bet my findings will be better than everyone else’s as a result!

Arch: Wait!

Arch: …what about us?

Ana: Hm?

Arch: What about both of us moving to Tau Ceti after graduation?

Arch: The algae farm, and the chickens, and the freaky real eggs from the chickens?

Ana: Oh.

Ana: Well…maybe Sol can be the new Tau Ceti!

Arch: What do you mean?!

Ana: Well, there are very few anthropology opportunities on a distant military outpost with no relevant history.

Ana: And no opportunities for you to…er…find yourself, or something.

Ana: So, what if we changed the plan?

Arch: That’s a lot to ask.

Ana: …

Ana: Is that a refusal?

[Arch is typing]

[Arch is typing]

Arch: It’s just a lot.

[Arch is typing]

[Arch is typing]

[Arch is typing]

Ana: Stop typing things out and deleting them.

Ana: Just talk to me.

Ana: What is more important to you in this universe than us?

[Arch is typing]

Arch: You’re asking me to uproot my whole life.

Arch: That’s…a lot!

Arch: I can’t just say yes, I need to think.

Ana: What is keeping you from saying yes?!

Ana: You once told me you didn’t even have that much to keep you…

you know.

Ana: In the universe.

Ana: So what is there to keep you on Alexandria specifically?

Arch: My entire life!

[Arch is typing]

[Arch is typing]

Arch: And that was an awful thing to say.

Ana: I’m sorry.

[Ana is typing]

[Ana is typing]

Ana: You just tell me you hate Alexandria, and AU, every time we talk.

Ana: And you tell me you love me, every time we talk.

Ana: That makes me think this decision should be easy for you.

Ana: If you meant it.

Arch: ……..

Arch: That’s also an awful thing to say.

Ana: Well.

Ana: Did you mean it?

Arch: Of course. I don’t think you understand what you’re asking.

Arch: Instead of going 5 ly each way to a place that doesn’t have anything for either of us there, Arch: you want me to come 20 ly for a place that will only be convenient for you?

Arch: I mean, what if I asked you to come here to live with me?

Ana: I’d say: since I have so many plans based on where I want to go, what is stopping you from coming with me instead?

Arch: So you wouldn’t do for me, what you’re asking me to do for you.

Ana: Again—is this a refusal?

Arch: It’s not anything. You just asked me this two seconds ago. I don’t have a decision yet.

Ana: Well.

Ana: I’m leaving in a year.

Ana: So I guess you have a while to make your decision.

Arch: Okay.

Arch: …

Arch: Cool.

Arch: Thanks.

Arch: …I’m glad you get it.

Arch: For a second there, I thought you were, like,

Arch: I don’t know,

Ana: Talk to me when you’ve decided.

[Ana has disconnected]

Arch…oh.