In 1991 I was a skinny kid working at a filling station out on the edge of a hard and merciless pan called the Aeolis Plateau. biding my time until I could find a ride away from the hellish boredom that was my life. When up rode a stunning youg lady in a wedding veil and a white leather jacket. Her motorcycle was long and low and viciously red, shimmering with its own heat and repulsers in the dusty light of the too distant sun. She eyes me up and down with a sideways grin below her button nose and cool gray eyes. "Full charge" she says and flicks the cash from her dash to my pad. I put everything I had into my chest to hold my heart from pounding down the street and managed, "I'll reverse the charge if you take me with you." She just looked straight on, eyes on the horizon. The deep thrum of the turbine beneath her and the soft ripple of the thin Martian air the only hints of movement. And then, just a crack of that grin reappears at the corner of her mouth, as the passenger pegs hiss and slide out into position. Well, that's how I remember it.