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Chapter 1: Pickles.

There's a hiss, a pop, and a rush of air slaps me in the face. The circular pressure door wheezes then grinds to a halt. I step forwards, trotting along in Abby's wake as she cuts a pathway through the crowd ahead of us using nothing but sheer force of presence.

'I'm just saying,' I continue, jogging slightly to keep up 'only psychopaths and murderers put gherkins in a ham salad sandwich. I mean who even pickles things anymore? Its 2148 man, we've had fridges for like 200 years.'

'Brakeman, you eat peanut butter and cheese sandwiches, and yet you judge me?' Abby laughed, shaking her shaved head. 'Pickles are Gods gift to mankind in an otherwise cruel and uncaring universe.'

The crowd starts to thin as we put distance between ourselves and the airlock. 'Firstly, Gods gift to mankind is beer, as we've already established.' Abby nods her head reluctantly and concedes the point as I finally catch up with her and the two of us walk in step beneath the rocky ceiling festooned with hanging yellow bulbs. 'Secondly, you've yet to try one of my creations' I wave a stern finger under her nose 'artists are seldom recognized in their own time.'

Abby rolls her eyes and shoves my hand away as I utter the words. 'You? An artist? Brakeman...' She stops mid-sentence, her eyes wide, the purple irises fixed ahead of her. I follow the line of her gaze. Just another bunch of people. I turn back to Abby, but Abby's gone.

'Abs?' I turn around the narrow street, but she's nowhere in sight. All I can see are bustling people, neon shop sighs blazing above shop doorways, and the rocky ceiling of the asteroids heart above me. Stratton Station always made me feel claustrophobic.

'Brakeman,' a voice hissed. Abby poked her head out of an alleyway and beckoned with her hand urgently. 'Get over here!'

I frown, confused, but followed her anyway. 'Yea? What?'

'Tina!' Abby whispered urgently 'she's over there talking to the cute girl in a tank top.'

After two months on a spaceship, every woman I laid my hungry eyes on looked cute. But I looked obligingly anyway, pretended I saw who she was on about and nodded. 'Ah, yea... so what's wrong with this one? I thought you liked her...' I sniffed indignantly as the thought triggered its associated memory. 'I liked her.'

'Look we can argue about your inability to woo women after she's gone okay? For now just, shhhhhhh.'

I leaned on the wall beside her and folded my arms. 'She only chose you because you've got purple eyes okay? I mean how's a guy to compete with that? My eyes look like...'

'Shit. Yeah I get it, woe is Brakeman for his unsexy brown eyes.' Abby wasn't looking at me, she was peering around the side of the alleyway.

'I was going to say a pebble or something but, yeah, sure, thanks for that.'

'Look I think your cute so its all good right?'

'You're a lesbian!'

'Yea, shhhhh, I get that... aw shit!' Abby put her back to the wall beside me, and looked up and grimaced.

'She saw you?'

Abby made a pained expression and nodded. For a second, I almost let her scorned lover find her. I sighed. 'This way man, geese.
I know an escape route.' I turned and lead the way down the alleyway.

'Brakeman, I love you.' Abby hurried in my wake.

'Will you try one of my sandwiches?'

'Ew, no. I'll never love anyone that much.'

I suppose that's fair.