He kicks back, alone at a corner table in low-g. He nurses a high gravity beer for the alcoholic irony. It’s his fourth, and the faces around him are blurred. Funny thing, though: with his glasses on, the faces would have been blurred even if he’d been sober.

The spaceport bar is like a truck stop, circa last-century Earth: Most everyone is a pilot, in between arcs of long haul relativistic cargo flights. He’ll never see anyone from this crowd again – at least, not at mutually relevant life stages. In other words, that woman with the tinkling laugh at the bar will be all wrinkles or dead when he’s here next. Or, vice versa.

So, though depressing at times, his glasses keep faces obscured. It could be worse: Some guys change the voices to the same girl, too. His only exception is when the network finds that future flight plans synch up with someone else for more than a subjective decade – he’s got the filter set high.

Staring off across the room, he suddenly finds his eyes locked with a clear-faced stranger.