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way I feel, Topaz. I can't just turn it off," RJ said.
     
    "How do you know? You haven't even tried. I'm not asking you to turn it off, just turn something else on. Open yourself back up." Topaz drew a deep breath and released it slowly. "Listen to me. I know how you feel. Don't you think I've had grief? Here's a simple, inescapable fact – they're all mortal; you and I and your metal brother are not. Unless a meteor drops on us we will probably go on living forever. I've been doing it longer than you have; I know what it's like to watch everyone you love die. Realize this, you would have lost him eventually anyway. Best-case scenario you would have watched him grow old and sick and die. Let them go. Start to live again. You can't grieve forever."
     
    "Have you ever had your beating heart ripped from your chest?" RJ turned to face him, her expression a mask of rage. "No, you haven't. So don't tell me you know how I feel, because you don't. No two people feel things in quite the same way, and as you have just so carefully reminded me, I am very capable of grieving forever." She turned on her heal and stomped towards the building.
     
    "That doesn't mean you should!" Topaz yelled after her. He looked out at the mainland and mumbled. "Damn hard-headed girl. Sometimes she reminds me of myself."
     
    * * *
     
     
    It was a Reliance trans-mat station located deep within the bounds of Reliance-held territory, far away from the rebels in their starving, disease-riddled state. It was run by the military as were most things Reliance, but they were not a military installation, and most of the personnel were common class two labor units.
     
    They did a valuable service for the Reliance. They transported items from the planet's surface to the moon to be shipped to the outer worlds. They also received from the moon goods that had been transported from the outer planets.
     
    Lately they'd mostly been shipping crates of cotton and wool fabrics, simple metal farm equipment, and cooking utensils. They'd been receiving hundreds of brown colored humanoids from the planet Beta 4. These humanoids were to be trained briefly and used as shock troops in the event of any new attacks by the rebels.
     
    The new free state was a total failure. All military personnel had been warned and placed on alert. The Reliance felt that it was only a matter of time till the rebels, driven by hunger and out of hope, would attack other Reliance held zones in the hope of securing much needed food and medical supplies.
     
    But this far from the front Jake wasn't worried about the rebels. Jake wasn't worried about anything. He watched as the truck backed in and the forklift took the crate off the back and brought it towards the trans-mat loading area. He knew what was in the crate before he even looked at the manifest the truck driver handed him. More cotton. All morning it had been cotton. He nodded his head, and the forklift put the box down in the trans-mat loading area. He pushed a button and watched as it disappeared before his eyes. As many times as he did this in a day you would have thought it would have become routine, but he still marveled at the process. Something that big and that heavy just vanishing only to reappear thousands of kilometers away on the moon! Several people had tried to explain to him how it worked, but he still didn't have a clue. So for him the moment when something disappeared, or appeared was still magical. He signed the trucker's manifest and handed it back to him.
     
    * * *
    Just when Janad was sure she couldn't make it one more day the soldiers came back, and the metal rolling things went away. Relieved, she found a locker she had used to hide in before and crawled in. Her arm throbbed in pain, and her head pounded. She was fevered, so sleep was a long time coming. Finally exhaustion took over, and she fell into a fitful sleep.
     
    * * *
    "Hey!" Thomas said. "Look at this data from the robot."
     
    "Looks like we have a