Year 174 P.E.D. (Post Earth Destruction)
15 years after the Purge
Bud lay in a corner of the piano bar scratching at his ear and watching his owner make a fool of himself. Again.
Laz twirled the umbrella-topped stir of his appletini, the drink illuminated green by glowing plastic cubes. The dark-haired woman beside him was drinking an ale and Laz was trying to explain to her why beer tasted so much better here on Mars.
“Oxidation!” Laz exclaimed. Bud whined and rolled onto his side, covering his face with a paw. “Less oxygen in the air here, so yeast doesn’t go bad as quickly.”
“Very interesting,” the woman said without enthusiasm.
Bud wondered how long it’d be until Laz realized the chair to the woman’s left had a sport coat draped over it. Probably not soon enough to avoid a controversy, and that was hardly something Bud had the patience for. The only thing that might save them was how crowded the Rusty Airlock was. It would take forever for the woman’s date to fight his way through the crowd. The Lock was the lowest of low bars in Gale City, but once a year it always benefited from the huge spike in business brought on by the Carnival.
“What’s your name?” Laz was saying to the woman. “I swear I’ve seen you before.” The return look she gave him suggested they might not need to wait for her boyfriend for trouble to start.
“Let’s go, Lazarus,” Bud said. The light on his collar—concealed beneath his dark fur—went from green to yellow as the L.A.N.G. processor translated his growls to Earth Standard and into Laz’s neuro-auditory receptors. Laz frowned, waving a dismissive hand.
“Not now, Bud,” Laz muttered. “I think she’s starting to—”
“Who’s this?”
The voice had a quality to it like that of a cracked biodome. Bud looked up into the man’s face. Juvenile, actually. Surprising. Bud wouldn’t have expected a kid hardly old enough for the Academy to speak with such disdain. The youth’s expression was a mask impenetrable as an event horizon.
“No one, Trip,” the woman said. She appeared at least ten years older than the boy, but showed surprising deference toward the young man. “Just a local drunk. Let’s go. We’ll be late.”
“I’m not from around here,” Laz said, pointing the drink stir at the woman. “And this is only my fourth martini.”
“Appletini,” Bud said. Laz ignored him.
“He doesn’t look drunk to me,” Trip said, voice still unfriendly. “Come on. We’ll miss the robots at the Carnival.”
“Off to see the main event?” Laz asked. “Been a couple decades since I saw the androids waltz.”
“You shouldn’t call them that,” Bud said. Laz gave no indication he’d heard.
Trip looked Laz up and down, expression opaque. “Why don’t we bring him with us?”
“Bring him with us?” the woman asked as if he’d suddenly spoken in Martian rather than Earth Standard.
“Of course,” Trip said. “Feel free to bring your mutt as well.”
“I’m no mutt,” Bud snapped. Of course, to Trip’s ears it was just a bark. And, as he so often did, Laz ignored him once more.
“Why not?” He raised his glass by the stem and toward Trip, then downed the contents. “By the way, have you tried sassafras for that rash?” He motioned at a red irritation on Trip’s neck. “Old Earth remedy. Any greenhouse in the dome ought to be able to replicate you some.”
Trip’s smile matched his tone.
“Let’s be going.” He took his coat from the chair, offered his arm to the dark-haired woman, and left the bar.
Laz rose and went to the corner where Bud had been laying. He bent over the dog bed there and pressed a red button on its side. It vacuumed down into a slender cylinder that he slung over his shoulder. Then he made for the exit.
“You’re actually thinking of going with him?”
Laz shrugged, glancing back. He didn’t need to do that. The collar meant Bud could understand him perfectly well without seeing him. But it was considered polite. Or, at least it had been, before the Purge.
“Consider it the scientific method.” Laz turned back around. “There’s just something in her eyes.”
He exited the bar. Bud growled. It was always one foolish choice after another with Laz. But of course he had no choice but to follow.
Click here for the next chapter!
Note: I wrote this story with the assistance of AI. To read about my process, see the following post:
buymeacoffee.com/dtkane/mars-174-years-after-earth-destruction.
