Docking Bay Confessions

The coffee pot on burner three has been there so long it's basically a fossil. Marlene dumps it, rinses it, refills it. Same as Tuesday. Same as every Tuesday on Oculus-7.

She was married at 29. Divorced at 33. Two years now, and she still catches herself setting two cups out of habit before catching herself. Old habits. Dumb ones.

"Table six wants more napkins," Ann says from the register. She's 41, been here longer than the carpet, which is saying something. "Also table six wants to complain about the gravity. I told him the gravity's the same everywhere on the station."

"He's from Mars Belt," Marlene says. "They complain about gravity."

"Everything's the complaint when the money's the same."

Marlene laughs and goes to table six. Wipes it down. Replaces the napkins. Outside the viewport, the gas giant's aurora rolls green and violet over the south pole, the same show every shift. Pretty the first week. Wallpaper by the second month.

She's 35 now. Waitress. The Jump-Off diner, ring two, next to the passenger docks. Recycled air and burnt coffee. The entire station is captured in two smells.

Except last night something happened. Last night she was lying in her bunk with her socks on, scrolling through the dating app she downloaded on a bad night in March, and a profile popped up.

Neil. 39. Architect. From Earth. Tourist. His bio said, quote, here for one week, up for coffee or better. She'd snorted at that. Then she'd swiped right. He'd already swiped right. They matched at 11:47 PM and talked until 1:30.

So now she's got a text from him sitting in her pocket and a coffee pot that needs changing and a shift that ends at four.

"You're smiling at the coffee pot," Ann says.

"I am not."

"You are. Who is he."

"Nobody."

"Nobody makes you smile at coffee pots?"

Marlene pours table two's refill and doesn't answer. Ann follows her to the counter anyway, arms crossed, waiting. Ann can wait like furniture. It's her superpower.

"His name's Neil," Marlene finally says. "He's a tourist. Architect from Earth."

"One week."

"One week."

"And you're smiling about this because."

"Because it's been a while, Ann."

Ann looks at her. Not a long look. Just a look. "Good," she says. "About time. What's he look like?"

"Tall. Bald, sorta. Nice forearms in his profile picture."

"Forearms. You're 35, not 19."

"35-year-olds have eyes too."

Ann snorts and rings up table nine. Marlene goes back to wiping. Her pocket buzzes. She waits a full minute, all professional, then reads it in the back by the dish pit.

*Still on for after your shift? I can meet you at the diner. I don't know where anything is.*

She types back: *I know. I'll find you wandering. 4:15.*

She puts the phone away and feels kind of stupid about how pleased she is. It's one week. He said it himself, on the app, in those words. One week, no strings, she'd said the same thing back. Adults being adults. She's done this once before, a cargo pilot, last year, and it went exactly nowhere, which was the point, and she'd been fine about it. Mostly fine.

The lunch rush comes and goes. Pancakes, eggs, a kid at table four who isn't a kid, he's 26 and a dockhand and he orders his eggs the same way every day. She likes the regulars. That's the trap of this place. You start liking it.

Kai from maintenance sticks his head in around two, grabbing a to-go coffee. Kai's 28, been on the station three years, talks to everybody because the corridors are empty and somebody has to.

"You look chipper," he says.

"I always look chipper."

"You look chipper plus one. New boyfriend?"

"No boyfriend. Go fix a vent!"

"There's no vents broken. That's the problem with this job. Everything works." He salutes with the coffee cup and leaves. The whole station's like that. Too small to hide anything in.

At 4:00 she clocks out. Ann gives her a look on the way past.

"Go on," Ann says. "Wipe that smirk off before you meet him."

"Bye, Ann."

"Text me if he's got a weird tattoo."

Marlene steps out into ring two's main corridor and scans for a lost-looking tourist. It takes about eight seconds. There's a tall bald man standing at the directory board, turning it like the map might change if he rotates it. Forearms. Yep. Nice ones.

"Neil?"

He turns. Up close he's got laugh lines and reading glasses pushed up on his head, which nobody needs in real life but everybody wears anyway. "Marlene. Hi. Okay, I was going to pretend I wasn't lost, but I'm lost."

"You're standing three doors from your own passenger dock."

"I know. The ring layout makes no sense. It's a torus, it should be the simplest geometry in existence, and I keep ending up in hydroponics."

She laughs before she can stop it. "Come on. There's a viewport bench two modules down. Quieter than the diner."

They walk. Their hands brush once and don't hold, and that's fine, that's the pace. The bench has a good angle on the aurora. Green light washes over his face.

"So," he says. "Coffee or better."

"Wow. Straight into it."

"Sorry. That came out worse spoken than written." He rubs his jaw. "Look, I'm bad at this. I've been on a date app for four days and my last actual relationship was two years ago and it ended fine and then I just... worked."

"Same, sorta. Minus the architect part. Divorce two years ago. It's why I work at a diner on a gas station in space."

"This isn't a gas station."

"It's exactly a gas station. With beds."

He laughs. Good laugh. Real one. "Okay. Fair."

They sit a minute. The aurora rolls. Somewhere down the ring a bot hums past on its rounds, a little flat maintenance unit with a blue status light. It pauses near them, like it's considering the bench, then rolls on.

"So here's my situation," Neil says. "I'm here seven days. I fly back next Wednesday. I like you already and I've known you an hour. I don't want to pretend this is going to turn into anything, because it can't. I'm in Seattle, you're in orbit."

"I know what a week is, Neil."

"Right. Right. I just wanted to say it out loud so we're standing on the same floor."

"That's actually kind of nice. Most guys would rather charm first and disclose never."

He winces. "Was I disclosing or charming?"

"Both. Weird combo. Keep it."

She looks at him sideways. He's nervous. His thumb is going over his knuckles like he's counting them. She finds she likes that. Divorce teaches you things. One of them is that confident men are boring and nervous ones are honest.

"Okay," she says. "Same floor. One week. No strings. What do you actually want to do with your evening, tourist?"

"Well." He stops. Starts again. "I was going to save this for later, but you should know my cabin has a weird feature."

"Weird how."

"The cabin class I'm in is running an experimental thing. A haptic interface. It's rigged into the station's maintenance bots. I can, uh. Control one. Feel what it feels, through a glove rig."

Marlene sets her coffee down. "You're telling me you can puppet a cleaning bot."

"More or less. It's marketed as entertainment for long trips. It's silly. I haven't really used it. But it's there, and I figured, if tonight goes well, maybe you'd want to see it. Try it."

"Try it how."

"Just the bot. It's about knee high. It does this little wave thing." He demonstrates with one hand, awkward, and she laughs. "It sounds dumber out loud."

"No, it sounds weird. Weird's better than charming, remember. I said keep the combo."

The bot comes back around the corner. It must run a loop. It slows near the bench again, blue light pulsing, and if she didn't know better she'd say it was listening.

"That one's not yours," Neil says. "Mine's in the cabin. They all look the same."

"How do you know it's not yours?"

"Mine's named. The interface named it. It's called Juniper."

"You named your bot Juniper."

"The interface named it. I want that on the record."

She grins into her coffee. Okay. He's strange. He's a 39-year-old architect with a named robot and nice forearms and seven days. Last night she was in her bunk in her socks and now she's on a bench with an actual plan for the evening. That's more than the last two years gave her.

"Fine," she says. "Show me Juniper."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight. After I eat something that isn't diner eggs." She stands, brushes off her apron. "But Neil. It's still just a robot and just a week. Don't get weird about it."

"No weird," he says. He holds up three fingers. "Scout's honor."

"Were you a scout?"

"Not even a little."

"Then stop doing the fingers!" She's laughing when she says it, and the aurora's green on his face, and down the ring the loop bot hums on its rounds like nothing at all is about to be any different.

"Tonight when?" he says. "What's good?"

"Seven. Meet me at the diner. Don't get lost."

"No promises."

He walks off toward the passenger dock and only takes one wrong turn, which she counts as a win for both of them.

She goes home first. Changes out of the apron. Stands in front of her closet in a sports bra and socks and hates every piece of clothing she owns.

"Two years," she tells the closet. The closet says nothing.

She picks the blue top. It's the one that always worked, back when things worked. She puts on real boots, not the diner ones, and texts Ann: *not coming to staff dinner. Have plans.*

Ann texts back in four seconds. *plans or a man.*

*yes.*

*use the good condom not the one in your wallet from last year.*

Marlene puts the phone face down and laughs at the ceiling. Ann Jacobsen, 41 years old, mother hen of ring two.

* * *

Seven o'clock. The diner. He's early, sitting in her section at table two like he owns it. He's changed shirts. His reading glasses are on his nose now, and she decides she likes that even more than on his head.

"You found the diner."

"Took two tries. Kai gave me directions in the corridor. Nice guy. Very invested in whether you were working tonight."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes. He asked me three separate questions about you while pointing at a ceiling panel."

Marlene sits across from him instead of serving. She's off the clock and she means it. They eat real food, not eggs. He tells her about the station's architecture, how the ring is held together by tension cables and stubbornness. She tells him about table six and his gravity complaints. He laughs twice, both real.

Then it's eight and her stomach is doing something that isn't hunger.

"Okay," she says. "Show me the robot."

* * *

The passenger cabins are tiny. She forgot how tiny. His is a box with a bed folded into the wall and a viewport along one side, and the viewport is doing all the heavy lifting. The aurora is out, green and violet over the south pole, spilling across the floor like paint.

The bot is in the corner. Knee high, boxy, blue status light.

"Hello, Juniper," she says.

"That's it. That's the whole show."

She crouches down. The bot does a little wave thing with its gripper arm. It is exactly as dumb as promised and somehow it makes her chest hurt a little.

"Okay. He's cute. Where's the glove."

Neil pulls a rig out from under the bunk. It looks like something a hobbyist builds in a garage, which she supposes it is. A padded glove with wires, a strap, a little screen.

"So you wear this. And you feel what it feels. Pressure, heat, texture." He holds it out. "It's calibrated weird. Watch."

He puts the glove on, flexes his hand. The bot's arm rises and flexes with it. He drags the bot's gripper along the edge of the bunk, and Marlene can see his face change. A small flinch. Like the bunk edge is rough under his actual fingers.

"It goes both ways," he says. "The bot's sensors feed back. Touch, pressure. It's a feedback loop." He takes the glove off, shakes his hand out. "Rough bunk edge feels like a rough bunk edge. Stupid, right."

"Stupid," she agrees. "Give it here."

She straps it on. It's heavier than it looks. The screen on the wrist says JUNIPER in cheerful block letters. When she flexes her fingers, the bot's arm rises in the corner of her eye, and there's a lag of maybe nothing, and then she feels the air of the cabin on her own palm. Cool. Dry. Recycled.

"Oh," she says. "Oh, that's strange."

"Right?"

She waves. The bot waves. She touches the viewport glass and feels glass, smooth and cold, cold in a way her real hand isn't, because her real hand isn't on the glass. Her real hand is holding nothing. It's like touching a memory.

The aurora rolls green across the pane under the bot's gripper. She drags the bot's arm through the light and feels warmth that isn't there.

"This is the entertainment they sell to long-haul passengers," she says. "Touching windows."

"There's more. It's got a mode for... companionship. Loneliness mitigation. That's the brochure term." He sits on the edge of the bunk. He looks at the floor, not at her. "Pressure mapping. It adapts. Learns what touch the user responds to. I built some of the calibration layer myself, actually. Hobby project. It's why I got the cabin class."

"You programmed a robot to be good at touching people."

"Programmed is strong. I tuned it. There's a difference and it mostly doesn't matter."

Marlene laughs. Then she stops laughing, because she touches the bot's arm with her bare hand, idle, and the gripper turns and presses back. Gentle. Deliberate. Like a