Something Real Read online

  *~*~*

  If Evan had thought that the lack of light would make Sean less colorful, he was sorely mistaken. It was true he looked less like a sunlit arrangement, but the colors of his hair and his eyes were no less saturated and even more dramatic. Instead of Asiatic lily, Sean's hair was more like a ruby. His pale face was nearly ghostly except where his freckles stood out in stark contrast. The fern of his eyes had darkened to the green of mistletoe illuminated only by Christmas lights. And his grin shone as brightly in the dim tech center as it had in Evan's room.

  He moved like a monkey, all swinging arms and nimble fingers as he folded his legs up on the seat of his chair and reached for his keyboard, absent-mindedly spinning slightly from side to side. Evan smiled a little at how childish Sean looked, earnestly prepared to fix Evan's problem and save the colony from an evacuation for which they were not adequately prepared.

  "So who's supposed to be in charge of keeping your software running?" Sean asked. "It should logically be us, because we're supposed to be the ones looking after everything, but I'm pretty sure I'd know if we even had access to this stuff."

  Evan blew out a breath. "The software was written by a development house back on Earth before the light shields were even constructed here. The ISU wanted to make sure it could be done and that everything worked properly before they spent the money and manpower on building faulty light shields with faulty programming on a planet several years' journey away from Earth."

  "Sounds sensible. So who's in charge now?"

  "The development house."

  Sean stared. "You're shitting me. These things are still being run from Earth?"

  Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Evan tried to explain. "It's all very political. The development house agreed to the project on the grounds that they would retain exclusive access and rights to any software they wrote for the ISU. They wanted the money, they wanted the power, and they wanted to make sure nobody else ripped off their software once it left their hands, because then they wouldn't be needed anymore."

  "In other words, this is not going to be an easy job for me."

  "Sorry." Evan offered a tentative smile, hoping Sean wasn't about to back out and tell him to go take his worthless pile of incompetence elsewhere. To his relief, Sean smirked back. "There was supposed to be a guy from the development house on ISC2 to keep an eye on things, but he found out a week before the shuttle left that he had liver cancer, so he couldn't go. There wasn't time to get anybody else from the dev team cleared to travel—you know what the vetting process is like—and then, by the time the next shuttle left, things had been working smoothly for long enough that the ISU decided they didn't need to pay another person to fix problems they weren't having."

  Sean's forehead hit the desk in front of him with a thunk. "Let me guess: they also didn't think they'd need any kind of software access for their on-site tech team either?" The question was obviously rhetorical, so Evan just shrugged. With a quick drum of his fingers against the edge of the desk, Sean proclaimed, "All right, you're in luck." He pushed himself back upright, wheeling his chair closer to the desk and unfolding one leg to dangle off the edge of the seat. Wiggling his eyebrows, dramatically cracking his knuckles, he said, "Fortunately for you, I am a man of many talents and many resources."

  "What the fuck, Sean? I'm gone for fifteen minutes to get coffee, and you give my desk away?"

  The gravelly voice behind him caused Evan to whirl sharply around in the chair, nearly tipping it over. A giant mass of a man was looming behind him, bald head nearly the only part of him that caught any light. Most of his skin, at least where it emerged from his black t-shirt, appeared to be covered in tattoos. It was too dark for Evan to make out any of the designs, but he had the feeling the man was not one whose bad side he wanted to be on.

  "Sorry," he apologized, hastily standing up and taking a step away from the desk, kicking the chair back. "I didn't know anybody was using this station."

  "Evan, sit back down." Sean rolled his eyes, not taking his gaze from the monitor in front of him and the ... whatever it was he was doing on it. "That break was way more than fifteen minutes, Giz, and we all know you weren't getting coffee. There hasn't been any for two days. Evan's tired, and he needs my help with a project. You are a grump who isn't getting any work done. Just go home, let Evan sit in your chair, and I'll let you know if I desperately need you for anything."

  A soft snicker came from a shorter, thinner man Evan hadn't even noticed standing slightly behind and to the left of the guy whose chair he was apparently occupying. "Yeah, Giz. Geez. Get out already."

  "Ha ha. Yuck it up, you two," Giz grumbled. "Whatever. I don't have any idea what fucking time it is in this god-forsaken colony anymore, anyway. Might as well be quitting time." He reached past Evan to grab a handful of things from the desk, turned around, and walked out.

  Sean tipped back in his chair to make eye contact behind Evan with the other man. "Sedge, can you finish that last bit by yourself? This is going to take a while." He inclined his head toward Evan, who gave an awkward smile in Sedge's direction.

  It was hard to see in the mostly dark, but Sedge's voice was laden with the sound of a massive roll of the eyes. "Yeah, I probably can. If you invite me over for dinner."

  "So you can ogle my sister some more?"

  "The lovely Mallory would be the best part of the dinner invitation, of course." Sedge grinned. "You didn't think I wanted to voluntarily spend more time with you, did you?"

  Sean let out a long-suffering sigh. "Fine. Only because, for some reason I cannot comprehend, she seems to like you. But watch your language around her, okay? She's my baby sister, and I will find a way to kick your ass if I have to." His eyes flicked to Evan. "Okay, time to tell me everything you know about your software: what it's called, how you access it, the name of the developer, or at least the development house, anything you got."

  Evan wheeled his chair closer and proceeded to offer the scanty, probably entirely unhelpful, bits of knowledge he possessed. But Sean seemed to be able to make something out of them; he started to type, and things popped up on the screen. Evan waited for the part with the graphics that would give him some idea of what Sean was doing, but mostly Sean just typed and scrolled through white text against a black background. After nearly half an hour of this, Evan's eyelids were drooping heavily. Trying to shake himself awake, he cleared his throat and asked, voice sounding a little rough, whether there was any coffee.

  "Hasn't been since shortly after the light shields went down," Sedge informed him. ""Assuming you can call that shit they serve in the cantina 'coffee' in the first place."

  "Oh. Sorry." Evan scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling stupid. Of course the coffee makers would have been put out of service. Providing hot coffee for the whole colony at all times required an enormous amount of stellar power, and they weren't getting any as long as his shields were broken. As if stumbling around in the dark for days weren't a bad enough fate to inflict on all of ISC2's inhabitants, Evan had also ensured that they didn't have the few small luxuries they had managed to acquire out in space. Fantastic.

  "Not your fault," Sedge replied. "Just sucks giant, hairy monkey balls to try to stay awake in the dark without it."

  Evan just snorted. Sure. Not his fault. Just the fault of the light shields. That were coincidentally his design, and apparently his responsibility to keep running. But not his fault.

  He looked over at Sean, wondering whether he was going to set Sedge straight, but Sean was still staring at all the plain white text as if it held the answers to every secret in the universe. He hadn't even glanced at Evan in at least twenty minutes. By now Evan was starting to wonder if Sean even remembered he was there. What was he even working on over there?

  "Don't take it personally," Sedge commented, startling Evan. "Sean at the computer is like that chick flick moment when the couple's eyes meet and the rest of the world completely disappears. Sometime in the next half hour or so, our c
urrent conversation will work its way forward in his brain and he'll respond. You just won't remember by then what we're talking about right now."

  There was enough light coming from Sedge's monitor for Evan to see his eyes roll. A tentative smile touched Evan's mouth. "Okay. Thanks." Sedge grinned back before settling in to work.

  "So is this your first time meeting Sean?"

  "No, actually. We met briefly a couple of weeks ago when he heard me practicing the violin and, err, invited himself in to sit and listen."

  Sedge chuckled. "In other words, he barged in on you in your apartment and made himself at home before you knew what was going on?"

  "He knocked first." Evan's lips twitched. "I'll admit it was a bit of a surprise, and not entirely welcome at first, but he was friendly. To be honest, I think he just wanted to listen to some really crappy music. It seemed to make him happy that I don't play very well."

  "Sounds like him. All good intentions and awkward execution." Sedge's voice was full of fond exasperation.

  Silence fell again in the room for a few minutes. Evan found himself tracing Sean's features with his eyes, seeking out the colors in the relentless black and gray of the room. His fingers itched for his sketchpad and his colored pencils, mentally searching for the perfect shade of red to capture Sean's hair. He hardly even noticed when his eyelids closed, lost in thoughts of line and hue. He might even have drifted off to sleep for a moment before Sedge spoke again.

  "What's your big project, anyway? It must be something pretty important for Sean to dump the rest of his work for the day on me."

  Taking a deep breath, Evan debated how much of the truth he wanted to share. He settled on, "We're trying to turn the lights back on."

  Sedge whistled. "That's a project worth yanking to the top of the priority list." His fingers clacked over the keyboard for a few minutes before he added, "Well, you came to the right place. If anybody can debug something that complicated, it's Sean. As much as I make fun of him for being in love with his machine and for lacking normal social skills, he really is amazing when it comes to software. I'm no slouch, but Sean's got some sort of sixth sense for it."

  Feeling a little strange continuing to talk about Sean as if he weren't sitting just a few feet to Evan's right, Evan glanced over to see how he was reacting. Sean was still perched like a monkey on the edge of his chair, legs crossed, twisting a little from side to side as he stared at the screen in front of him with wide, intent eyes.

  "Hmm, what?" he suddenly muttered, blinking. "Oh, no, we don't have any coffee. Sorry."

  Sedge snorted, caught Evan's eye, and shook his head with a long-suffering sigh. Maybe it was just because he was so very, very exhausted, but Evan couldn't quite stop himself from dissolving into helpless laughter.

  "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we'd sorted that out already."

  "Sorry, I zoned out for a while, didn't I?" Sean winced. "I was just trying to figure out how to get access to the back end. I think I may have a way in, but it's going to take some time." He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out in front of him, fingers laced together, twisting side to side until he had managed to wring out a few loud popping noises. With a sigh of satisfaction, he turned to Evan. "Are you wanting to get some sleep while this program runs and I wait for responses to my Earth inquiries? If you want to go back to bed, I can come get you when there's something to be doing. No reason for you to keep lying there drooling on Giz's keyboard when you've got a perfectly lovely bed."

  Evan jerked up, self-consciously wiping the side of his face in case Sean was serious about the drooling—he hadn't been, Evan didn't think, but there were a few indentations on his face that probably weren't terribly attractive and may or may not have looked like the corner of a keyboard. "That … sounds amazing, actually. I don't want to leave everything on you, though; are you sure it's all right?"

  Sean's grin revealed a wide swath of white in the shadows. "Promise. I'll come get you the minute I can do anything useful."

  "You remember where I live?"

  He nodded and tapped the side of his head. "I'm good at remembering that sort of thing."

  Evan hesitated just a moment more, getting slowly to his feet. "You're sure this okay?"

  "Yes," Sean heaved out on a sigh. "Please stop asking."

  Sedge snickered.

  "How long do you think it will be?"

  "Hopefully, if all goes well, not more than an hour or two. But I make no promises. Software can be a bit cantankerous when it's so inclined, and I may not get a lot of cooperation on the Earth end of things."

  Evan nodded. "All right. I'll see you soon, then." He gave a self-conscious little wave goodbye to Sedge and turned away. He scarcely remembered the walk back to his apartment, collapsing into bed and fading out of consciousness the instant he got inside.