Eros at Nadir

Screenwriter and novelist Nate Page arrives aboard the empty Velvet Comet twenty-three years after it is decommissioned by the Vainmill Syndicate. The light-topic musical holographic production that Nate is writing is based on the Velvet Comet in its prime, and requires research available only through Cupid, the ship's still-functioning and nearly-self-aware onboard computer.

As the cynical screenwriter and the unemotionally truthful computer struggle to create a work of fiction true to the reality of life aboard the Comet, Nate's agent makes it clear that prostituting your art is not any different from prostituting your body.