Sue lay stretched out on the floor of the small lab. From her prone position she could see the battered calendar on the wall. August 13th, 2014. Three months to the day after the impact. There’d been a remembrance ceremony a few hours ago. The governor had shown up, along with a lot of crying people. Halting speeches had been made, fruity drinks had been drunk, and much over-frosted cake had been consumed. These sort of occasions always made people hungry.

Sue appreciated the free food, even the cake. But she was eager to get back to work. The company wanted mining projections soon, and Sue’s team needed to do more drilling. They would start again early Monday morning. For now the team was just waiting for the stragglers from the ceremony to clear out and leave them alone.

Vanny wandered in.

“Wh’up, Sue.”

“Nothing. You?”

“Nada. No results yet from G-36.”

Sue rolled onto her stomach, facing her colleague. She picked up the plast-organic fork and dabbed at the drying frosting on the plate. “Company will want a report by the end of the week. A good report.”

“I can’t guarantee that, but I’ll keep the teams working. We’ve still got some quadrants left.”

“Most are already played out. We get paid for results, not for coming up empty.”

“Yeah, boss.” Vacant look on the chiseled face. It was thinking, probably calculating the probability of finding valuable ore in six days. Vanny always looked vacant when it was thinking.

“Just hurry up the drilling if you can.”

“Yeah, boss,” Vanny repeated. He turned abruptly and walked off. Vanny wasn’t too bad for a synthclone. It did have a tendency to wear lace underwear and wasn’t too strong on conversational gambits, but it worked hard and didn’t complain. Couldn’t ask for more from a coworker.

Sue heard faint shouting outside and grimaced. One of the voices sounded like Burke. He’d probably had too much to drink again and was going off at somebody about his second cousin twice removed who’d died in the aftershocks from the collision. She should probably go out there and calm him down.

Pushing herself up and away from the floor with a sigh, Sue left the lab and walked out of the team’s complex. The impact crater stretched out before her, a huge red pockmark on the earth’s surface. It seemed to form a perfect circle with the summer-blue, deceptive sky above.

The shouting was clearer out here. Sue looked around for the source. Sure enough, there was Burke a few hundred feet below her, yelling at the petite Tian Yua. Sue caught a few snippets of the argument—Burke saying something about “the deaths” and “are you even human” and Yua snarking back “caveman” and “company profit,” and there was Patton, always the peacemaker, trying to separate them with “let’s just calm down and feel the energy of this place” and Burke coming back with “Ageist freak” and Yua countering with “intolerant bastard,” and now it was getting ugly, right next to the newly erected monument to those who had lost their lives in the impact.

They don’t pay me enough, Sue thought, and began to descend the side of the crater.

You will be sitting on the hard floor, concrete chilly against your jeans. You will be holding two cardboard-jacketed styrofoam cups of coffee. The half-empty one in your right hand will be yours, as you will have used the hot liquid to ward off the cold. The cup in your left hand will be hers. It will still be full because she will be playing her cello.

The rich dark sound of the cello will make you think of the coffee she ordered—black, no sugar, no cream, no flavor shots, no nothing. You will look at your five-dollar drink, more sugar than coffee, and grimace slightly.

Shelly’s voice will mix with the cello, bouncing off the concrete walls of her apartment’s basement. She will have taken you down here because Mrs. Tolliver in 7A hates loud music, especially classical. Mrs. Tolliver only listens to the Voice and to Keely Smith; she will have no others intrude upon her musical stasis.

You hate classical music too, but you will not say anything. You will be trying to impress Shelly, so you will fake a smile and nod brightly when she asks you if you want to hear her play.

Now you will be here, trying very hard to seem interested in the music rather than in Shelly’s too-tight T-shirt. Looking for another place to rest your eyes, you will watch her arm move back and forth, holding the bow deftly. She will close her eyes, let her head fall back a little, and sing along with her music. She will put her heart into it.

Gradually you will stop feeling the cold being leached from your body. You will begin to set aside thoughts of credit card bills, your job, even your plans to get Shelly into bed tonight. She will sound so different from your favorite sullen rappers. You will not know what she is playing—she told you, but you forgot already—but you will become fascinated by the emotion in her face, her voice, and her cello.

She will stop playing eventually. You will glance at your watch and realize fifteen minutes have passed without a trace, swallowed by Shelly’s throaty voice and smooth cello.

“Well?” she will ask shyly, showing the dimples that made you approach her in line at the Qwik Stop one week ago.

For the first time in a long time, you will give a sincere compliment to a woman without trying to get her into bed.

“Awesome,” you will say. “Keep going.”