Ragnarok

Chapter 2 - Mia

Mia was part of the Earth diaspora as well, though she had come from an entirely different part of the world: the area of Southwest Asia formally known as Lebanon. Most of it was in ruins now, what wasn't under water from the worldwide rise in sea levels, and most of its former inhabitants had fled or been wiped out in the last days of the Final Israeli War.

Thankfully, Mia's family had emigrated to Greece before she was born, and she herself had been shipped up to the colonies well before the nuclear assault had begun. She'd grown up a Moonie, orphaned from her home planet. Despite that, she remained one of the most cheerful people Micah had ever met.Mia was sitting by herself at one of the small tables, poking at her food (mostly 3D-printed pseudo-eggs and something that was supposed to be bacon but wasn't) and chatting with her small robotic pet, Draco. His scaly body resembled that of a Smaug giganteus, or Giant Dragon Lizard, a now-extinct species from southern Africa, with thick, armored scales and a wise-looking reptilian face, save that its scales were lightweight emerald-green plastic and had a vocalizer capable of human speech.

They seemed to be deep in discussion over the Spica event. It figured that Mia's VI would be particularly interested in the supernova, since Spica was also called the Horn of the Dragon by the Chinese that now ruled over most of Mars, where Draco and most of their V.I.s had been manufactured.

Mia herself was in her mid-20s, like Micah himself, and though she spoke fluent English she had also studied her native language, what she could vaguely recall her parents speaking before she had to adapt to a life in the strange integrated culture of the Moon. The founders of the colony had been the remnants of the United Nations and European Union, and had seen enough of what the squabbles of different cultural groups could develop into. A fair amount of the damage caused to the homeworld had been nuclear, after all. When Earth first settled the colonies, they tried to keep families together as much as possible, but intentionally mixed as many different cultures together as they could along with them.

Mia was speaking to Draco in her own unique dialect, a strange pidgin of English, Japanese, several Arabic tongues, and a bit of Celtic for flavor. She was a bit of a language scholar, so she enjoyed inventing her own hybrid tongues. Made her shorthand nearly indecipherable, though. Which may have been the whole point. She paused when she noticed Micah had arrived, smiled up at him, and switched to English, Micah's own native tongue. "Continue that analysis," she said, adjusting her black-frame glasses. "Morning, babe. How's it going? Been checking out the fireworks, I bet?"

The glasses were an affectation, of course. All the Moonies who required it had been given basic Lasik surgery upon arrival, in addition to the suite of visual and haptic implants and a variety of vaccinations and genetic tinkering. But Mia liked how they looked on her face, so that was how she customized her real-world look. In AR, she had quite a larger wardrobe at her disposal, but as far as the base materials went, the standard jumpsuits and undershirts were pretty much ubiquitous.

Still, though Micah was hardly an unbiased judge, she made even the reality look quite good. She was one of the more athletic Moonies, considering a fit body a good way to a sound mind, and she and Micah had known each other for quite some time. They had first met playing Valhalla, and had hit it off in both the VR and the physical plane.

Micah was still thinking about what he had seen in the light of Spica's supernova. He was an amateur astronomer, but had already located and named a few features on the outer planetoids himself, and he was excited about what the Overminds would make of the Nemesis twins. He gave her a quick run-down while an androgynous robot server walked over, providing a touch-screen menu that Micah glanced at and selected from without pausing, and dispensing a glass of reconstituted juice.

By the time he finished his conclusions, it had returned with a plate of shaped rations, most likely reconstituted organic material printed into strange pseudo-meats. He gave one deliberate, two-second blink, engaging his AR inputs. He couldn't completely make himself forget he was eating 3D-printed food, but the AR helped him substitute the feedback he got from the fairly basic rations as whatever he desired, and it was certainly better than eating it without any technological seasoning.