I fell in love with a falling star

Hear well, for this tale of mine is the dust left in the wake of a comet.

On the day I met him, it was the night-fête to celebrate the coming of a famous movie star, that had starred in all the holos ever worth watching for any real value. I had come not out of any personal interest, though I had watched all the holos (who hasn't, really?) and had appreciated the special effects more than the lead's pretty face. I was there to pick up a new 'friend', the more staid people would say. At that point in my life, I was going through love-partners one or two to a day, the typical thing to do if you were my age and subject to all the hormonal urges. My brain-implant was still new, only two years, and that meant I was still totally subject to the rules of the Senate, and so I could not stand on the rim of a float-platform and lean over just as the flyer was coming, then pull back just before I was swept away by the vacuum suction of its passage. The best time to do these things are in the last years of the implant, guaranteed for ten years. The certification is a fake, though. After about five to six years, anyone with even a marginally strong will-or enough emotional motivation can override most of the compulsions to follow the adamant-bound rules placed in your head with the metal-plated chip.

I was, to repeat myself, in the first two years of the implant, and that meant I could not even lean dangerously over the balcony of the Glitz's rooftop ballroom floor, but looking down from high places has always held a strange attraction for me. The Senate calls the roof 'open-air', but that is really a joke. It is still covered by a dome, and while the dome is transparent and you can feel acrophobic by looking over the side, the air-system's hardly fresher than outside, and if you chanced to wish actual fresh air, you have to commission a private flyer, zip outside of the city's dome-bubble and turn down the window-screens.

Since I could not even get near the edge of the balcony, I found a ledge near the stair, high enough I could look over the edge of the balustrade and down at the buildings, with their needle-spires catching the sunset and all their glittering lights like shiny sticks of diamante. All the buildings around the Glitz are sharp-angled commerce brain-centers, except the spherical form of the Senate's assembly-globe, made all of panes of adamant-glass, set at minute angles to each other, so they reflected any light from it and trebled its brilliance. The glass is made of tiny grains of adamant, the world's hardest material. The adamant-grains, too small for use as jewels, are melted at unbelievable temperatures and poured into molds of force-planes, all at terrible expense. Nothing but non-matter can withstand the temperatures at which it will melt, and nothing can break the glass so made. It reflected the sunset perfectly, since the assembly-globe is never lighted, so all within can look out, but to all without, the globe is a mirror, a cold hard mirror, yielding nothing but your own reflection. And that is its name, Reflections. I think that was the only ever point the Senate was ever poetic, even by accident.

The sunset projected on the dome-bubble of the sky was deep-blue, dashed with long streaks of lavender and orangey-red, all swirled into one another as the clouds streamed overhead.