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  Evan loves his work on International Space Colony 2, but he misses the colors of his life on Earth. Drawing the flowers he remembers from his mother's greenhouse provides a pale substitute for authentic living color, but it's the best he can find.

  Sean spends his days lost in his software while listening to the same songs on the same radio stations day after day. He would give almost anything to hear the mistakes of a live performance, but a space colony is hardly an ideal place to find an amateur musician.

  A chance meeting shows Evan a glimpse of real color and Sean a taste of real music, but neither expects to see the other again. Then Evan's greatest accomplishment fails, endangering the entire colony, and Sean becomes his last chance at fixing it.

  Something Real

  By Julia Alaric

  Published by Julia Alaric

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by M. Hendershot

  Cover designed by Megan Derr

  This book is a work of fiction and as such all characters and situations are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition July 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by Julia Alaric

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Evie Kiels, who is wonderful, and generous, and patient. I hope it's everything you wanted. 

  SOMETHING Real

  JULIA ALARIC

  It was the colors he missed the most. He had expected to be lonely, for homesickness to strike from time to time when birthdays, weddings, and babies came and went without him. It never snowed here, but he had known that before he came. ISC2 had no large bodies of water, either, but that was hardly a secret. The trees were all artificially imported, chosen for maximum respiration with minimum hydration, and kept in restricted areas to protect them from clumsy, malicious, or even sentimental fingers. But these were all things he had anticipated, deprivations for which he had steeled himself before he even signed up to join the crew. What he hadn't expected was to miss the colors of Earth: the pristine white of snowflakes glinting blindingly bright against the deep, dusty green of evergreen boughs and the rich browns of their scaly trunks; the sapphire blue of the Pacific beneath a robin's egg sky, the pale gold wedge of sand darkening where the silvery foam beat in steady pulses; the cherry red of his brother's Mustang vivid in the nearly neon grass of new spring.

  On ISC2, everything came in shades of brown or gray. Everyone's clothes were the same standard issue hypoallergenic, dye-free synthetic fabric. The expense of building and maintaining a space colony was vast enough that no funds had been set aside for aesthetic luxuries like various shades of exterior paint. Structures were fabricated, primed, and sealed to protect against the demands of the unique atmosphere, but their surfaces were all left dully gleaming metallic gray except where the occasional streak of brown oxidation indicated the sealant needed to be reapplied. Transports were gray; meals were brown relieved only by the pale, tired hue of dehydrated vegetable matter; the planet's soil was grayish brown; the atmospheric layers held no color at all except where the protective shield reflected the grays and browns of the colony it contained. Even a glance in the mirror provided no relief. Evan's skin was a shade lighter than the tan uniform he'd been given when he arrived, his hair nearly as dark as the heavy leather boots he'd been told to keep on at all times outside his pod, his eyes the same deep brown as the shit coffee they always served in the cantina.

  Evan did not regret joining the engineering squad on ISC2. He was proud to be part of Earth's first successful off-planet settlement, and every day as he watched the giant atmospheric light shields slowly open and close, he experienced a rush of satisfaction that he'd had a part in designing something so beautiful, efficient, and effective. Back home in Los Angeles, his parents were proud too, bragging to all of their friends and showing off the photograph of him in his uniform, standing just beyond the giant sign proclaiming, "Welcome to International Space Colony 2", looking slightly shell-shocked but beaming with the excitement of his first minutes inside the dome. At least once a day, he still felt that same smile break out across his face. ISC2 was just such an amazing place to live.

  If only it had colors.

  At the end of a long shift, sometimes Evan went back to his pod, lay on his bed, closed his eyes, and imagined his parents' greenhouse: steamy, fragrant with the scents of fecund soil and blooming plants, full of more shades of green than any art kit he had ever found. He pictured crimson poppies, pale blue hydrangeas and deeper periwinkle delphiniums, flaming orange Asiatic lilies and the white-edged pink petals of the stargazers, the vivid yellow sunflowers his grandfather favored and the paler, buttery peace roses his grandmother had loved. But most of all, he called up his memories of his mother's beloved orchids.

  On the worst days, the days he was so homesick that he felt as if the weight of the memories alone might crush his chest and clog his throat, he drew them.