The Last Song Beneath Paris
Destined Meeting
2 June 2300 — Pioneer-12, Culture and Civic Ring Public Recreation Lounge
On her first night aboard Pioneer-12, Evie barely sleeps. Her cabin is small but far cleaner than any dressing room in Underground Paris — soft white walls, a small observation window beside the bed, and nothing outside but deep space. The cleanliness unsettles her. The messiness of underground cities at least felt human. This place is too quiet, too new, too much like somewhere that has not yet formed memories.
Anaïs sends a short message: “Sleep first. If you stare out the window for another three hours, Mars will not arrive any sooner.” Evie smiles and replies: “I only stared for two hours.”
The next day, Anaïs brings her to the ship’s oval recreation lounge — a wide space lined with curved transparent observation windows looking out onto the Earth-Moon L1 Gateway Dock, Earth, and the Moon hanging quietly in space beyond. Mechanical arms and maintenance drones move slowly in the distance. Final supply craft detach from the outer hull.
There they meet Vera, a woman with easy energy and a sharp sense of humor. Vera mentions an old friend named Firo — someone she met four years ago in Geneva, when both Firo and Seb worked for the United Nations. “Firo doesn’t talk much,” Vera says, “but his saxophone is more honest than he is.”
Then Firo himself appears. He opens his saxophone case and plays a short test note — low, with a strange warmth in it. Without thinking, Evie hums a soft melody. Firo pauses briefly, then naturally continues the melody, as if it is the instinctive breathing of two musicians who have always played this way. For a moment Evie forgets the passengers around her. She has performed with many musicians, but no one has ever answered her voice so gently on the very first breath. The warmth of his saxophone settles somewhere too private to name, and it makes her nervous in a way music alone should not. Vera immediately turns to Anaïs and whispers: “Things are getting interesting.”