He sits at the bar, gaze unfocused, maybe getting some sort of cerebral stream-feed, maybe just trying to sort things out. He signals the bartender for another round. She emerges from a dark corner behind the bar like a hermit crab leaving the shell. Her arms stretch out, fingertips undulating, making him think of underwater plants in a tidal current. She feels the space in front of her, orienting on him without the aid of her rag wrapped eyes.

“Another, please,” he feels the need to be polite to strangers, even when he knows he’ll likely never see them, or anyone else again. _Enough of that kinda crap. _He tries to steer his thoughts away from work and into the present.

No luck. His mind slips back to the last jump. He hears the throbbing warble of re-entry into a world of life and feeling. They look around, standing on a rough surface obscured by gloom and shadows. The nearest star shines feebly a long way away. They activate their celestial trackers and begin to explore…

The bartender places a canister in front of him, sweat rolls down its side while she waits for him to pay. He hands her 3 disks and she drifts back into her murky space behind the bar. He slugs down a third of the drink before she returns with his change. He has no idea how she counted it.

Uninvited memories flash in his mind, taking him away from the bar. He steps on a ridge of crusty soil, and the ground begins to shift beneath his feet angling downward. He leaps the moment he feels his feet start to slide, just managing to avoid whatever lurks in the dark hole at the center of the avalanching vortex…

He feels a bump from behind, controls his kill reflex when he realizes he’s sitting at the bar, not on the jump. He looks up and into the grimy mirror behind the bar, sees someone looking back at him over his shoulder. She locks eyes and smiles. He smiles back. She takes the stool next to him.

“Is that a Ranger insignia?” Her eyes point at the patch on his shoulder.

“It is…” Oh, boy. Here we go again.

“Which type?” Her eyes reconvene with his.

Lie! Just lie! This might be your last chance, you never know.

She looks down into her clutch bag and pulls out a thin, black cylinder.

“You fume?” She offers the stick to him.

He thinks about the taste the jump gas will leave in his mouth tomorrow and shakes his head.

“Ok if I do?” He shrugs and she lets a cloud of fume drift into her face. It sparkles on her skin for a while the micro particles absorb. Her eyes glaze over and then seconds later, her head snaps at him, “So which type?”

“What?” Something about that detached look on her face drags him back to the last jump again. The expression reminds him of the way his seekmate looked while tumbling through the air to her death. Maybe it was death, maybe not. Hard to say from his perspective. Something claws out of the space to his right, stretching whatever keeps it out of his dimension. The force of its strike travels through the membrane and splits another team member into multiple living, disconnected slices of his former self. The accompanying chorus of screams still haunt him.

Her voice drops him back into the current state of affairs, “What. Type. Of. Ranger?”

“What type do you think?”, not a lie anyway…

“Well, since you won’t give me a straight answer, I’m guessing the answer is Long.”

He doesn’t answer. She gets up and leaves. He drinks more and sulks. No one in this area seems to be interested in ephemeral relations. Unlike the Long Rangers, Shorts tend to stick around their home base. They only jump far enough to appreciate where they came from. Longs, well, they’re lucky if they come back to anywhere at all. Some Longs survive to hit the jackpot, though. While Shorts squabble over local scraps, Longs can discover recourse troves so abundant that a fraction of the profits retires them in style.

Most of them die or go crazy first.

He gets up, waves to the eyeless bartender. She waves back. He heads home to get ready for tomorrow’s jump.