Tiago, like his father, hated thinking of himself as a businessman. He viewed the word as a person - a mound of sweating, scowling flesh squeezed into a bleak, gray three-piece suit. He’d seen them marching out into the warm Brazilian sun, rushing between skyscrapers and airports and shouting into their stupid little earpieces.

Of course, Tiago respected business and people who could do it. It was a part of life, after all. His family owned a theater, but they weren’t businesspeople. They were artists, musicians, performers, and adoring fans of anyone coming through their doors wanting a place to show everyone what they were best at. Business was the means, but the ends were the toasts, the applause, and the tears shared afterwards.

Neither he or his father were businessmen. Businessmen were the people who got in their way. They were the people who’d scrub away the toasts, applause, and tears if it meant even one more miserable digit lit up on their screen. Tiago wished he could grab them by their sweat-soaked collars and scream at them, ‘take that thing out of your ear and listen!’ But he knew they never would; more talented people than him had been trying since the first time a stick hit a drum.

Then, one beautiful day after a grueling trek of terrible days, the message from the Roddenberry Project went out. Tiago still remembered the pit in his stomach as he sat in the bank just before he saw the advertisement on the lobby’s television. He couldn’t remember all the details announced; his brain broke them down into the only ones that mattered - ‘let us take you away from all the businessmen.’

Three years later, Tiago found himself playing piano in his own music shop, serenading his four customers with his best rendition of David Bowie’s ‘Changes.’ He barely cared that he ran the first music shop of his new world; he only cared that his neighbors listened. It was enough to make him almost forget the heartache of missing that little theater in Salvador.

It helped knowing that his father would’ve also chosen Roddenberry.

He finished up his performance with a short, improvised set of flourished notes, earning him as loud an applause as he could hope for from an audience of four. Even the teenager in the back, determined not to be distracted from his browsing, looked up with wide, impressed eyes. Tiago stood up and took a small bow. He then grinned at his audience and said, “don’t tell the boss.” They all laughed and returned to their browsing, their smiles lingering all the while.

Tiago heard a bell ring and his body instinctively swerved to face the door.

“Louis!” Tiago threw his arms up at the sight of him. “Olá, my friend. How are you today?”

The two shared a quick hug.

“Good, Tiago,” Louis said, smiling as they parted. Tiago thought he had such honest eyes.

“Terra, this is my friend, Tiago.”

Tiago tried to keep his jaw shut as he looked over Louis’s shoulder. He found Roddenberry’s visitor peering at his vast stock of boxed records. The sight of her terrified him; she looked like a monster from the old horror films he used to download in school, crawled out of the screen of his mind’s eye. He also thought she was beautiful like a rare museum specimen; a blood-red sculpture wrapped in a charity bin hoodie.

“Pleased to meet you, Terra,” Tiago said, pushing through his fear and offering her a handshake.

Terra looked up at him; her poison green eyes scrutinized him, as if he were the more interesting specimen of the two. Tiago quickly realized that, on a world full of reptiles on two legs, a long-haired, dark-skinned, scaleless music shop owner would stand out to anyone.

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She accepted his handshake with a surprisingly firm grip. It reminded Tiago of some of the worst of the businessmen back on Earth. His father once told him that a firm handshake meant firm convictions, but too firm meant that they almost certainly intended to hurt you.

Yet Terra didn’t seem to him like a businessman; their eyes were always much more poisonous. He gently rested his other hand on hers.

“No need to squeeze so tight,” he said with a smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Terra’s eyes lit up with an embarrassed flash. “I’m sorry… That’s just how we do it on my world.”

“No worries, my friend. It’s so exciting for me to have new customers for the first time in three years. I’m not sure what sort of music you have at home, but I’ll try my best to help you find something you’ll enjoy.”

Terra glanced around at the shop’s rustic wooden interior as if lost in the forest that the walls once called home.

“Music…” Terra muttered. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Of course,” Tiago said. “Forgive me; you might have a different word for it. It’s something like…”

He leaned over his piano and strummed a simple rendition of ‘Ode to Joy.’ He grinned, waiting for Terra’s face to light up with recognition, or for her to offer a piece from her world’s storied history, but she offered nothing but more confusion.

“We don’t have anything like that on my planet,” she said.

Tiago didn’t register the sentence straight away. It sank like fangs into his mind and soul. He tried to picture Terra’s planet and failed; what kind of world had no music? Any trace of fear he had for Terra vanished, leaving only pity for someone forced to grow up on a world without melody.

Perhaps the businessmen got to it.

“Well…” Tiago said, struggling to maintain his smile. “I’d love to introduce you, if you like.”

Terra gave a bemused, delayed shrug. “If you want.”

She was a cynic for sure. Tiago knew cynics made for both extraordinary artists and efficient businessmen, but he wasn’t about to let the businessmen have her.

“Then try this one on and see if it fits.” He struck up his piano with a few wandering, descending notes - like falling stars, he thought.

“It’s a god-awful small affair…”

These words were his time capsule. They were his youth’s friday nights spent controlling the lights in his family’s theater. They were his arms around his college friends’ shoulders as they stumbled drunkenly back to campus before dawn. They were his lullabye as he settled into cryosleep for the Roddenberry Project’s month-long voyage. They were his, they were Louis’ as he sang along, and 123 years ago, they were David’s. Now, they would be Terra’s. In another 123 years, he and all the others would be dust on a mantle or in a plot somewhere, but some part of them would hitch a ride on these words and carry on soaring into eternity.

But first things first.

“Is there life on Mars?”

After another gentle round of descending notes, he turned to Terra with a hopeful grin. She tilted her head, her squinting eyes reminding Tiago of the iguanas in his childhood community pet shop, scrutinizing every new piece of food that entered their enclosures.

“What’s this machine for?” She asked, placing a clawed hand on the piano’s wooden lid, searching beneath and behind it.

“It’s for making music,” Tiago said.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. It’s called a piano.”

“… How does it work?”

“Here; have a seat and I’ll show you.” Tiago sat up from his stool, offering it to Terra. Sitting down, Tiago could finally see her eye-to-eye.

“You start with your right thumb on middle C.” Tiago pointed the key out. Once Terra had it, the first bar of Life on Mars followed instantly. Tiago blinked, shutting his agape jaw before speaking again.

“No music whatsoever back home, you say?”

“No,” Terra said. “But it’s easy enough to learn how to use a machine, especially if I’ve seen someone else use it already.”

She played another bar, but it was hurried, mechanical, businessman-like.

“There’s much more to music than just hitting the right buttons.”

Tiago glanced at Louis, midway through his usual browsing tour, somewhere between Queen and Radiohead. He seemed less focused than usual, focused half on the rows of record crates and half on smiling at the sight of his new 7-foot friend playing the piano.

“Tell you what,” Tiago said, turning back to Terra. “Why don’t you come back for a few lessons? Anytime that works for you.”

“It won’t take me long,” Terra said. There wasn’t a hint of ego in her tone; it was a deadpan statement of fact.

“Then when we’re done, you’ll have the satisfaction of saying to me, ‘Tiago, playing the piano is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.’”

At last, he saw the faintest of smiles crawl onto Terra’s maw. If he could manage that, then he’d make an artist out of her yet.