Something Real Read online

  *~*~*

  Sean ran his hands through his hair as his feet carried him through the dark streets and corridors toward Evan's apartment. Mallory had been after him to get the thick mess on his head cut, but it gave him something to do with his fingers when he was thinking at his work station that didn't make noise and drive the other guys crazy.

  This thing about turning the lights on was the most complicated project he'd ever undertaken, no doubt about it. Nobody seemed to have all of the pieces, and whoever had written the back end had written some of the most inefficient—and completely undocumented—code Sean had ever encountered. He knew twelve year olds who wrote better programs than that. It had taken him forever just to figure out what pieces he had and which he was still missing. And now he had to go wake Evan, who had looked like he needed a whole lot more than five hours of sleep to become even semi-functional again.

  It was a shame, really. He was nice looking when he was awake, all smooth brown skin with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes that were nearly black, angular chin, neatly trimmed hair Sean hadn't had a chance to investigate closely enough to determine whether it was a shade of black or brown, expressive eyebrows in an otherwise contained face, kind of a pretty smile when he actually let one slip. In the lab earlier, though, he'd just been one big blob of exhausted, anxious darkness. Sean was sort of looking forward to seeing him again in the light. If they could figure out how to get the lights on again.

  Stopping in front of Evan's door, he knocked lightly, then decided that probably wasn't enough to wake Evan up and gave five hearty raps that left his knuckles a little sore. A few moments later, the door slid open to reveal Evan blinking at him sleepily, his hair fluffed up on one side, pillow creases in his face, clothes wrinkled. Sean grinned. Nothing said "adorable" like the rumpled, straight out of bed look.

  "Oh, hi." Evan's voice came out scratchy; he cleared his throat before continuing. "Time to get back to work?"

  "Sure thing, sleepyhead. But we've got time for you to change your clothes or whatever else you might want to do before we jump back onboard."

  Evan's face relaxed as his eyes closed for a moment. "I'd love a shower if there's time, even if I do have to use cold water."

  "Not a problem," Sean laughed. "In the grand scheme of things, fifteen minutes is not going to make much of a difference. It's going to take hours for me to unravel everything and figure out where the problem is."

  "Assuming the problem is even with the software." Evan sighed. "Come on in while I get ready."

  While Evan grabbed a few things from his dresser and headed for the bathroom, Sean poked around a bit. It was hard to see things clearly by the narrow electric light of the emergency lantern Evan had set on top of the dresser, but it was enough to remind Sean of what he'd seen the last time he had been in the room. Flopping down on the unmade bed, he inhaled the unfamiliar scent of someone else's sheets, idly contemplating how much was the scent of Evan's laundry detergent and how much was just Evan himself. They were all issued to the same boring capsules of unscented, allergen-free detergent as part of their rations, but a few inhabitants had brought their own. Sean particularly envied those who'd squeezed in a little fabric softener. Somehow, though, he couldn't imagine Evan as the kind of person who would have used up what little space their duffels allotted on something as frivolous as fabric softener.

  Rolling over, Sean's gaze caught on something sticking out from underneath the bed. All he could see was a few inches of sharp corner, made out of heavy cardboard or something similar, clearly shoved haphazardly under the bed by somebody who didn't want to bother getting back out of bed to put it away properly. Never inclined to put up much of a fight against his curiosity, Sean reached down and pulled it out.

  It was a sketchbook, clearly well used and nearly full. Flipping open the cover, Sean angled his body to catch as much light from the emergency lantern as possible on the pages as he perused them. The sketches were full of flowers, sometimes just a single blossom delineated in sweeping strokes, sometimes intricate bouquets portrayed with near photographic precision, some shaded with pale hints of color and others filled to bursting with bold hues. Each was beautiful. Some part of Sean was soothed and satisfied by the drawings, a part he hadn't even realized had been chafing and restless. It reminded him of first hearing Evan's violin squawking away down the hall when he was hungry for an authentic sound.

  Then he turned the page, and suddenly he was staring at his own face. He was drawn in the same style as the flowers, an almost floral quality gifted to his normally plain and boyish features. Even in the dim light, he looked so bright, so colorful, that it felt like seeing someone brand new. He smiled.

  When he finally flipped to the next sketch, he found another drawing of himself, but a much more abstracted version created entirely out of flowers. Three of those bright orange lilies Mallory loved so much made up his hair, two leaves his eyes, different varieties of pale orchids his cheeks and mouth. He was just bending closer to get a better look when the bathroom door opened.

  "Oh," Evan gasped, halting awkwardly in the doorway. "Umm ..." He blinked a few times, looking incredibly uncomfortable.

  Sean beamed. "These are awesome! Did you draw them all yourself?"

  "Err, yes?" Evan shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  "I really like how you got the freckles from the orchids." Sean turned back to the sketch he had braced against his knee. "This is so cool!"

  Evan released a slow breath. "I'm glad you like it." There was a beat of silence, then, "You're not mad?"

  "Mad?" Sean laughed. "About what?"

  "That I …" Evan gestured to the sketchbook. "That doesn't make you uncomfortable?"

  "No way! It's cool as hell."

  A little smile touched the corner of Evan's lips. "You think so?"

  Sean nodded enthusiastically. "Do more!"

  Evan laughed. "Don't we have an international space colony to save?" He finally came fully into the room, tugging on a pair of shoes. "Let's get to work."

  "If we must." Sean sighed dramatically before optimistically suggesting, "But you could draw while I fix your crappy software."

  Evan rocked his head back and forth a few times, then shrugged, and picked up the sketchbook and a box of colored pencils still hidden under the bed. "Maybe, though it's a little dark to do much. Are we going back to the lab?"

  Sean nodded. "I could remote in from my place, but there's more room in the lab, and it's not quite such a mess." He grinned. "It'll also save you from my sister's harping about the state of the place. Mal's always getting on my case about my inability to remember where I put things once they're out of my hand."

  "My mother's a bit like that," Evan confessed shyly, eyes flicking up to Sean's face momentarily. "Once she starts thinking about something related to the shop, everything else sort of disappears. Drives my father crazy."

  They chatted easily as they made their way back to the lab, which was unsurprisingly empty. Sean wondered for a moment if Sedge had finished the front end of their project before going home, but he shrugged it off. There was a much more important, much more interesting problem to be solved awaiting him.

  He had no idea how much time had passed by the time Evan hesitantly broke the silence in the room with, "Umm, how much longer will it be until you actually start fixing things?"

  Astonished, Sean turned to him, eyebrow raised. "What exactly do you think I've been doing? Or at least, trying to do?"

  "Sending emails?" Evan bit his lip. "I don't know. But you're just typing and scrolling through that text box. Don't you have to, I don't know, solve algorithms or something? Fit the shapes back together?"

  Sean stared at him in confusion. "What on earth are you talking about? Shapes? And what do you think algorithms look like?"

  "Uh …" He ran his hand through his hair nervously. "Like a number pad with lines connecting things, maybe? Shapes that represent the pieces you have to reconnect or reconfigure?"


  "What—that's not how—" Sean broke off as insight struck. "You've been watching a few too many vids, my friend. The hocus pocus hackers do on screen is all for show. Nobody wants to watch a real hack, because it would just look like this:  ninety percent plain text, no fancy graphics, nothing to see but lines of code. Sorry; this is all you're going to get."

  "Well, I feel dumb." Evan slumped back in his chair, eyes dropping back to the sketchpad in his lap but the pencil in his hand motionless.

  Sean shrugged. "Not your fault. Nobody's ever told you otherwise, have they? Though I don't know how you made it through an engineering program without learning a bit about how to write software."

  "I was more interested in the drawing and the architecture classes," Evan mumbled. "I probably should have taken more computer courses, but I didn't think I would use them. I assumed the math and physics were more important."

  Hating to see Evan looking so mortified, Sean rolled his chair over until their knees bumped. "Now show me what you've been working on over here."

  Evan passed over the sketchbook, apologizing as he did so. "It's not much. I mean, I can hardly see, much less concentrate on coming up with anything good."

  He was right, it was hard to see in the lab, but there was enough light from the monitor to get a sense of the line of Sean's profile. He didn't look so floral this time, more of his usual self, but it was still pretty cool to see himself on paper. "Looks all right to me. Wish I could draw. Even my stick figures are terrible. One of my teachers actually laughed out loud at me when I attempted to draw something as part of a presentation and it came out looking more like a well-endowed stallion being crushed by a blob than a horse pulling a chariot. Don't think I've ever felt more embarrassed." He passed it back and rolled over to his station.

  Evan regarded him silently for a moment. "Well-endowed stallion?"

  Sean grinned. "Thing looked nearly like a fifth leg."

  "You intentionally drew the horse's …?"

  "Nah. It was supposed to be running, so I tried to draw the leg in motion, you know? Except it didn't look so much like a straightening leg as like a straight leg and a giant dick. And then the weird leg positions combined with the tail, which may have borne a bit of resemblance to a blast of fire shooting out of the rear end, made it look rocket-propelled."

  "Can't imagine why the teacher laughed," Evan commented. Sean was gratified to see one corner of his mouth twitch a little.

  "It was a masterpiece," he added loftily. "You would have been amazed."

  Evan grinned a little, pencil starting to scratch across the page again. "Sorry to interrupt with such a stupid question," he said without looking up.

  "It's all right," Sean assured him. "It's hardly the worst I've ever gotten. You had no reason to know better. I used to work with a man on Earth who freaked out every time his antivirus software updated, thought he was being hacked. Made me wipe his whole machine and issue him a new password every time, no matter how often I assured him it was a routine update. The only time he had a real issue, it was just because …" He trailed off. To himself, he murmured, "It wouldn't … No … but it was Tuesday …" He thought he might have heard Evan say something, but he needed to finish his thought before it escaped, so he let it go.