Seventeen Crimes

Four

"What was with you tonight?" Dylas asked, removing one of their dangling earrings from their lobe.

"I didn't feel much for the topic of conversation tonight," Brie said, kicking off her heels. "Brent and Deshawn seemed incredibly happy in the new place."

"May all their marital problems evaporate like the smoke of the water," Dylan said. They clung to the Asian style room divider. "Shall I get the Pinot and you and I make a go of it?"

"I know you want to," Brie said. She shook her head. "My head is just not in it."

"Yeah, Bae," Dylan said, sitting on the bed. "What is this? Its not like we are even on the same planet as each other."

"I don't know. I've just been thinking and ruminating and researching," Brie said, sitting on the bed.

She sighed, hunching her shoulders before reaching up under the hem of her dress and starting to slide down her pantyhose.

"What to hear something?" Dylan got on their knees, rocking on the bed with a child-like eagerness.

"What?"

"This will be really interesting to see, if it happens. Okay."

"No – wait a minute, wait a minute," Brie said. "This better not be something classified that you are going to tell me about."

"I don't think it is," Dylan said, stretching out on the bed. They got a smile on their face that Brie rarely saw. "So, rumor has it that the UN is going to put before its members a rule that any serious violators of Climate regulation or tax laws or something of that effect – they want to deport them to Mars and start a penal colony."

"A penal colony," Brie said. "What, like how Georgia started out."

"Georgia wasn't a penal colony – was it?" Dylan asked.

"Yeah – and I think I remember reading somewhere that the founders were actually trying to propagate and grow the plants to feed Chinese silk-worms in order to make silk cheaper."

"Well, obviously it didn't work, because to this day you still see cotton blooms in the field," Dylan said. "I was actually thinking more along the lines of the nineteen crimes that got you deported to Australia."

"What, like pick-pocking?"

"Only worse. I don't know – I don't think Mars is just going to open their doors up to receive people like we sent them there years ago."

"What makes you think the UN will have any say about what goes on Mars?"

"What do you mean?" Dylan asked.

"They have essentially declared independence from Earth. From the United States. From China. When was the last time you heard of a supply ship being launched. Mars Expeditions went out of business."

"No, they got bought out."

Brie looked at Dylan. "By who?"

"Mars Trading. But whose keeping track of who?"

"You can bet Mars is," Brie said. She stood and leaned over Dylan. "They broke warp speed."

"I don't think that's warp speed."

"No, you're right. It's probably more like the jump mechanism used in Battlestar: Galactica; and I am thinking about the 2003 reboot with Katee Sackoff and that hot, hot hottie Apollo."

Dylan smirked and a small chortle. "That's one epic fight scene. Certainly, better than any Disney could come up with for Star Wars."

Brie sighed and slid out of her sheath dress, letting it drop to the floor.