Author: sjan

Trunk Stories

Repair and Replace

prompt: Write about a character who isn’t nostalgic about their past at all, and show readers why.

available at Reedsy

I sat in the waiting room for my name to be called. My body was due for service months ago, but this was the first they could get me in. There wasn’t much that needed to be done, I was sure, but maybe they could find out what was binding in my left shoulder, limiting some movement there.

A technician opened the door, looked at me, back down at the pad she carried, and called out, “Alexis?”

As I was alone in the waiting room, I knew she meant me. I stood. “Alexi,” I said, “no ess on the end.”

“Ah, sorry Alexi, I’m Kendra and I’ll be your body technician today. Right this way.” She kept glancing at me as we walked.

“I know that look,” I said “You’re trying to figure out why I don’t look like a forty-year-old man. The same reason I’m here for a service. I mean — do enough experiments on a kid, he never has a normal puberty, right? He ends up like me with a baby face, so people assume I’m a woman.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t sweat it,” I cut her off. “I’m just in a foul mood today and shouldn’t be taking it out on you. I apologize.”

Kendra instructed me to strip and lie back on the exam table and began plugging in all the diagnostic equipment. “Any specific complaints?” she asked.

“Reduced mobility in my left shoulder…like something is binding in there.”

“Any pain?”

“No more than usual,” I told her. The constant, low-level pains that come from age and wear-and-tear had turned into little more than background noise.

She spent some time going over the readouts of the machines before adjusting the table to where I could sit upright. “You probably already know, but your legs are well past their expected functionality, and long out of production. They’re working for now, but if something would happen, we don’t have any way to repair them. No parts available anymore. I would recommend replacement as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, I figured. Might as well do that now. What about my shoulder?”

“Looks like part of the binding for the AC joint pulled loose at some point. We can pull that out, replace the AC joint binding, and that should restore full motion. Your clavicles, scapulae, and arms are still under extended warranty for another eight months, so we caught that just in time.”

She took a breath, but I already knew what she was about to say, so I said it first. “While we’re doing the left, we might as well do the right, since we know the most likely failure point, now.”

Kendra gave a pleased nod. “It’s nice to see someone take their maintenance seriously.” She did some typing on her tablet then looked up at me. “We don’t have the same model — of course — but we have the same manufacturer, if you wanted to keep things from being too different.”

I shrugged. “Different is fine. How about whatever has the highest rating, longest service life, and best warranty?”

One of her eyebrows raised. “That would be the Nakimara Y-73, combat-rated. Do you still need—”

“I’ve never needed combat-rated, I just get them because they last longer. So, yeah, those.” I couldn’t quite read the expression on her face, but I guess she didn’t expect to hear that.

“I thought, given your overall conditioning and the current limbs…,” she stopped and focused on entering the order in her pad. “It doesn’t say in your record how you — I’m sorry, I should shut up now. Oh, and the pelvis looks fine, no wear. Those Hendriks Titan-Steels seem to last forever, especially with the mil-grade number four standard socket.”

I don’t talk to others without a purpose — ordering at a diner or explaining symptoms to a body tech for instance. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who made me want to. There was something about the way Kendra kept tripping over her own sincere concern and curiosity that made me think she was someone I could open up to.

She was interrupted by an orderly wheeling a cart into the room with a pair of legs and several bags of parts. She thanked them, closed the door, and prepped herself to work.

As the table returned to a flat position, I said, “You’re going to explode from trying to hold the question in. You want to know how I ended up with quad-replacements, including scapulae, clavicles, and pelvis, plus the spine and sternum reinforcements, right?”

She had a momentary flash of stunned shock on her face, then relaxed. “Yeah, but if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. I can start working here, and we can talk about anything or nothing or I can shut up and let you rest. Your call.”

“I wish I could handle memories the way I handle my cybernetics; repair and replace.”

She cleaned all the areas she was going to work on, changing her gloves often. Then, she laid out the hermetically sealed legs and assorted parts in the order she’d need them, along with the tools she’d need. Each of the four areas she’d be working on had their own, sealed tools lined up.

In spite of how much this trip was going to cost me, I found my mood improving. “How do you feel about your childhood? Primary school, secondary school, family. all of that?”

“I had a pretty normal childhood, I guess.” She unplugged the diagnostic leads from the ports on the inside of my thighs, sprayed a topical anesthetic around my hips, then proceeded to wash and glove up yet again.

“Do you ever find yourself thinking back on those times fondly?”

Kendra smiled. “I do. Especially secondary school, but time does that.”

“Does what?”

She made a quick, clean incision where my skin and the synthetic skin met and peeled the synthetic down and away from the hip socket. “Blurs the edges on things; the bad doesn’t seem so bad, and the good seems better than it was, maybe. Rose-tinted glasses and all that.”

I heard my old leg drop onto the disposal cart and shook my head. “I don’t. I mean, I think about those times more than I would like, but never fondly. I don’t think there’re any rose-tinted glasses for me. More like shit-tinted, but even when I take them off and take an impartial look at my past, it was objectively shitty.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“I’m getting there.” I let out a deep sigh. I hadn’t talked about this with anyone in years…ever since my last therapist gave up on me.

“When I was six, my parents signed me up for a medical study being run by ‘Dr. John’ — I don’t know what his real name was. They said the money would be set aside for my college. It didn’t last the week that I was in the study.”

“What did they spend it on?”

“Probably booze and drugs. I know it wasn’t the rent because we got evicted right after that.”

Kendra shook her head. I could tell she was trying to avoid the pity face, as most of us in the shop would have no desire to see that anymore.

“About a month later, we moved into a nicer apartment, and they dropped me off for a month-long study with Dr. John. They didn’t even pretend the money was for me that time. I spent my seventh birthday there.

“Over the course of the next year, I was in study after study, until just before my eighth birthday. I was told that I’d become too difficult to care for, and that my new home would be with Dr. John. It wasn’t so much a home as a cage in a lab. I spent my entire childhood being poked and prodded, injected with questionable substances and hooked up to even more questionable devices.

“By the time I was sixteen, it was obvious that I’d never mature physically. Dr. John pumped me full of hormones, but I’d developed — or always had — an insensitivity to them. This was followed with direct injections of some pale blue liquid into my bones, in an attempt to get them to mature, but they never fully did.

“I had a couple growth spurts, put on a few inches, but my arms and legs, pelvis, scapulae, and so on were so weak and stunted, Dr. John decided I’d be better off having them all replaced, then he beefed up my spine with the same sort of permanent supports you’d use for severe scoliosis, and added a layer of poly-bone to my sternum to help protect my ribs.

“I’ve been outfitted with combat-grade cybernetics since I was seventeen, and Dr. John used to parade me around for defense department types to get them to buy into cybernetics for soldiers. He used to say he had treated me for a ‘rare birth disorder’ that required the extensive work, even though he caused all of it. My only birth disorder was the parents I was born to.”

I looked up to see tears welling in Kendra’s eyes as she was attaching the electronics in my new left leg. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring you down. I just thought that maybe you’d understand.”

“I don’t understand why your parents did that to you, but I think I understand why you don’t put all that in your history when you come in for service.” She wiped her eyes with her arm and chuckled. “Don’t want to get tears in there, the salt would corrode the connections.”

She finished up the second leg and re-glued the skin to the synthetic. It would heal together in a week, long before the glue wore off. She sprayed the anesthetic on my shoulders and asked, “Have you tried to contact your parents since then?”

“Yeah. It was the first thing I did when I left Dr. John’s. Found out my mother OD’ed when I was ten, and my father drank himself to death a couple years after.”

“Watch your eyes. What about Dr. John?” she asked.

“He disappeared shortly after I left. The second thing I did was call the cops. By the time the cops got there, he was gone. Left all the equipment but took his experimental drugs and records.

“I don’t know what happened to the three younger kids that were there, and I wasn’t right in my own head at the time to help them.” I closed my eyes as she used the UV light to cure the new AC joint binding.

We were silent while she finished both shoulders, then had me sit up, move my arms and legs, and go through range of motion exercises.

“I’m sorry all that happened to you,” she said, “and I hope someone catches that so-called doctor.”

I smiled at her. “I hope it’s me,” I said. “To be honest with you, I haven’t kept paying for combat-ready cybernetics just for how long they last.”

Trunk Stories

The Squiggles

prompt: Write a story in which a character is running away from something, literally or metaphorically.

available at Reedsy

The Squiggles sprawled out from the edges of the city; an array of bright colors that covered the hand-built cinderblock, concrete, and wood buildings without making it seem any less dire than it was. Ed felt blind without his collar plugged in, feeding from the net towers that blanketed the city in bandwidth and provided his “inner voice” that had long ago replaced whatever instinct he might have had.

Most people that ended up in the Squiggles never planned it. Those who moved there on purpose, like Ed, only did so because they were avoiding something worse. In Ed’s case, the worse things were the VL — the Virtual Lords — and the cops they had in their digital wallet. Ed had never met a police officer that wasn’t in the VL’s wallet.

The VL were a cartel of hackers, jackers, cybernetic strong-arms, assassins, thieves, spies, pimps, e-stim and drug dealers, and assorted low-life scum. There were very few places one could go to escape their gaze. Ed should know, as he used to jack for them.

Here, Ed was well protected from police, as they were loath to risk their life by wandering into the winding, narrow, dirt roads through the multistory shanties that gave the Squiggles their name. He was not as protected from the VL, though. Many a cartel member would lie low in a place like this when the heat was on them. There were, however, so few net connections and of such poor quality, that the state surveillance the cartel used for their own purposes was of no use here.

The first thing he’d done on arrival was trade his clothes for others that were drying on a line or wall. Not all at the same place, just a piece here, a piece there. He made sure the sleeves were long enough and collars high enough to hide his ports. He finally traded his big suitcase for a backpack, duffle bag, and four of the locally minted brass coins at one of the trade shops.

When all the “official” money is just ones and zeros in a computer, it has no use in a place like the Squiggles. The brass coins, though, were finely made, with an intricate design and unique, off-center balance. The swirling designs and off-kilter feel of them in the hand were a perfect embodiment of the Squiggles.

Even in local clothes, Ed would stand out to a resident. His skin, a pale beige, was unblemished by exposure to the elements. His dishwater-blond hair was close cropped but would grow out to an acceptable length soon enough. The only thing about his countenance that marked him as possibly belonging in the Squiggles was the trauma he suppressed, that showed in the eyes. It always showed in the eyes.

Ed continued deeper in. The heavy bags wore him down, but it was everything important to him. Somewhere in the sixty-odd square kilometers and over four million inhabitants he would find a place to hide for a while. He thought about how nice it would be to rest, but he doubted he’d ever be able to again. When the VL wants someone as much as they wanted Ed, the only end to their hunt is death.

He found himself in an informal square. A restaurant serving food out the missing window of a cinderblock building on one corner of the widened street, a trade shop on the other, surrounded by tall cinderblock and concrete buildings all built around a central well. The square hummed with the sounds and energy of people doing what they needed to in order to survive.

He estimated it to be six kilometers in a straight line to the last net antenna he’d seen, but there might be another closer. The smell of rice in chicken broth drew him to the “restaurant” on the corner.

“How much?” he asked.

“One coin for breakfast and dinner, but you missed breakfast,” the short woman in the window said. Her complexion reminded him of rich, brown silk: vibrant in color, strong as iron, yet — probably — soft to the touch. The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes only added to the image. She had a single streak of yellow-grey making up one of her many small braids of brown hair verging on black.

“How about I give you a coin for dinner and some information?”

Her dark eyes narrowed. “Information’s a dangerous thing,” she said.

Ed laid the coin on the window sill. “What’s the nearest net ’tenna?”

She took the coin, practiced fingers feeling the balance of it. She pointed back the way he’d come. “’Bout nine K’s that way, if you don’t get lost.”

He nodded.

She pushed a bowl of rice out to him. “Simple question like that, you coulda’ just asked. Bring the bowl and spoon back when you’re done.”

He sat on the well’s edge and ate his rice. The ports on his neck itched and he fought the urge to scratch at them. It wasn’t the turtleneck. The itch was deep, not at the surface…withdrawals. Not like coming off drugs or e-stims, but the lack of input to his ports over time would cause the nerves to fire louder and louder. It was only a matter of time before his arms would join in and the itch would turn to burning pain.

Ed carried the empty bowl back to the window. “Thank you, that was delicious.”

Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “You ain’t from around here but you got manners. If you can keep ’em, they’ll serve you well.”

“If I can find a place to stay,” Ed said.

“What’s your name?”

“Ed. Yours?”

“Leeza. Can you push a broom as well as you jack?”

Ed stiffened. “Yeah, I…how did you—”

“Turtleneck in this weather, and I can see you twitchin’. You ain’t jacked in a while, have you?”

“No. Too busy trying to stay alive.”

“Ain’t we all. The only reason you’d be in the Squiggles is to hide out from the VL…which means you musta’ been a decent jacker or they’d’ve ended you before you got this far.”

Ed nodded. “Just good enough to get myself in trouble, I guess.”

Leeza leaned partway out the window. Ed saw the scars on her neck where ports had once been. “I know that song. See that yellow door over there? Ask for Little Meg, she’ll set you up.”

Ed crossed the square to the yellow door and knocked. It opened to reveal a strong-arm; two meters tall, cybernetic limbs exposed, an armor vest over her human torso, with a bright yellow left eye augment and a natural, brown, right eye. Her skin was sun-darkened, the color of terra-cotta, with a black mohawk spiked above, adding a few centimeters to her already impressive height.

“Can I help you, outsider?” she asked, her mellifluous voice incongruous with her looks.

“I’m looking for Little Meg. Ms. Leeza said she might have a rooming situation for me.”

“Mama Lee sent you, huh? I’m Meg.” She scanned him with her cybernetic eye. “Plenty of jacks, but you’re not wearing a collar, not carrying a key-comm, and no weapons. Running from the VL?”

“I am.” He figured at this point, honesty would be the safer bet.

Meg raised her left hand, made a fist, and turned it heel up for him to see. What at first glance were decorative swirls combined to make an eye on a tower…the sign of the Virtual Lords. Ed felt his stomach drop.

“Relax, jacker, I’m persona-non-grata myself.”

Ed took a shaky breath. “I—I’m Ed.”

“Ed?” She looked him over again. “You wouldn’t happen to be Ed ‘The Edge’ Landry, would you?”

He nodded. “I am—was. Now, I’m just Ed.”

She put her hand out. “Hand me the bags.”

He did, and she held them as though they weighed nothing. She turned her back on him and stepped inside. He hesitated for a moment, until she asked, “You coming?”

Ed followed her up eight flights of stairs with some floors not lining up with the landings, as though they hadn’t been planned out. The fifth floor had a low ceiling, with Meg’s mohawk barely brushing against the ceiling.

“Last I heard, your bounty was a million and a half. Probably more by now.”

“What should I—”

“Don’t worry about it. As long you’re with me and Mama Lee, you’re off-limits.” She opened a door in the middle of the hallway. “Here’s your room, bathroom’s at the end of the hall. Cleaning supplies are in the closet by the bathroom. Clean up after yourself. As long as you keep your room, this hallway and bathroom, the stairs all the way down, and your nose clean, you’ve got a bed and two meals a day at Mama Lee’s kitchen.”

Meg ducked in the door and dropped his bags on the small cot. “Any questions?”

“If you’re Little Meg, then who…?”

“Big Meg is parked out back, in a mech dugout. I haven’t needed to pilot her since the corpo wars, but I keep her maintained and ready.”

“A strong-arm and a mech pilot…wow.” He thought for a moment. “But if you fought in the corpo wars, how did you end up in VL?”

“Post-war recruiting program. Not much call for mech pilots or cybernetic soldiers once the state stripped the corporations of their armies.” She shrugged. “I did it until it got even worse than working for the corpos and left. Retired here and fixed up this old building to make it livable.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Meg.”

Within the week, Ed had settled into a routine, and Leeza had become Mama Lee. Breakfast, followed by cleaning everything but the bathroom, then cleaning the bathroom, leaving the shower for last, after he’d showered. That left him most of the day to sit at the window and get used to the comings and goings of the square before grabbing dinner.

Breakfast was eggs from Leeza’s chickens with whatever grain she happened to have that day. Dinner was that same grain with canned chicken broth and bits of meat. She didn’t say what the meat was, but he was fairly certain that he found a rat bone one day. He made sure to tell her how good it was, and not mention — or think too hard about —the bone.

After a month, Ed was making the evening run for Mama Lee, picking up two bags of grain on her trike for a coin a day. The first couple times were nerve-wracking, not knowing who or what he would run into as he followed the byzantine route to the supplier’s truck and back. After a while, it became old hat, though.

It was on one of those runs when something felt off. He wished he had his collar. Not just because the pain still bothered him off and on, but because he felt blind.

The supplier was her usual dour self, though, and the exchange of Mama Lee’s coins for the grain went normally. It was only after he’d set off to return that the alarm bells went off. He’d been hearing faint radio chatter. It couldn’t be the police, because they wouldn’t dare set foot in the Squiggles, but it could be VL coming to call.

He gunned the bike for all it was worth, which wasn’t much, and ran headlong into a roadblock. The state had “disarmed” the corporations, but not entirely. This was a corpo squad with body armor, combat rifles, pistols, and a bullet-proof car.

A tall man stepped out of the car in an elegant, grey suit. He lifted his sunglasses to show the black-brown eyes beneath. “Mister Landry. We need your assistance.”

“I’m just Ed,” he said. He raised his voice, “I live in the Squiggles and I’m with Mama Lee and Little Meg.”

The man looked around at the shuttered windows and empty street. “It doesn’t seem like anyone cares. This isn’t a request you can turn down. Either you do this for us, or we hand your corpse over for the bounty. Either way, we win.”

“And I lose?” Ed leaned forward on the handlebars of the trike. “Screw it, kill me now, save the effort.”

“There is a way you don’t lose,” the man said.

Ed looked up, “What do you want?”

He nodded to one of the goons holding a briefcase. “I’ve got a net repeater in the car. You’ll jack in to the coordinates my associate gives you and open the door for our jackers and hackers that are waiting. That’s it. We don’t care how noisy you are, just give us a little opening and we’ll take it from there.”

“You don’t care how noisy…It’s not your DNA that’ll be registered in the logs, so of course you don’t care. I piss off another corp and how long do you think I’ll live?” Ed shook his head. “At least VL has the decency to not hunt someone that’s retired in the slums.”

The man laughed. “Retired? You’re still ported up. There’re at least a dozen street surgeons that’d pull those out and pay you for the privilege of selling them on to the next person.”

“I haven’t gotten around to it. Been busy.”

“You spend your days staring out the window.”

Ed didn’t know who had been spying for them, but in his mind, he swore he’d sic Little Meg on them when he found out.

The briefcase bearer, indistinguishable from the other goons in heavy black armor and full-face, mirrored black helmet, opened the briefcase to display a collar and portable jack terminal. There were a set of net coordinates on a slip of paper taped to the terminal.

“Mr. Landry, or do you prefer, Edge?”

“Just Ed.”

“Ed.” The man stepped closer. “We know it was you that dumped all the corporate war strategies, deployments, and every bit of militarily useful information, bringing the government down on all our heads and ending the wars.

“I’m not certain whether the Virtual Lords have figured it out yet — your falsified DNA trace was very well done — but they will, just as we have. When they figure out that you cost them billions in weapons sales, they will hunt you here.”

He smiled the cold, unfeeling smile of a predator. “This is your one and only chance. Do this, and we’ll keep you safe from the Virtual Lords.”

“How?”

“Do those coordinates look familiar?”

Ed looked at the sixty-four-character coordinates again. Something niggled at the back of his mind. “I’m not quite sure.”

The briefcase bearer motioned toward him with it. Ed let out a deep sigh and jacked the collar on. There was a moment of vertigo, followed by the kind of information he’d been missing for so long.

The man was Alfonse Worth, COO of Ritter Heavy Industries. The weapons the corporate soldiers carried were Ritter M-74s; 6.5 millimeter, select fire, combat rifles, likely loaded with armor-piercing rounds. The repeater in the car provided him with twenty-four terabits of bandwidth, satellite bounced several times. Not great, but usable. The coordinates were ones he’d seen in the VL. Not that he’d ever accessed it, as it was heavily guarded.

Ed pulled up his sleeves and jacked into the portable terminal. His eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped over the bike.

He started out nearby. A data vault for a defunct gang that the VL had wiped out long ago. He knew he already had bots on his trail, trying to track his location, so he didn’t have a lot of time.

Ed opened the data vault, keyed to his DNA, and attached the stored code to his avatar. If Alfonse Worth wanted noisy, he’d get it.

Rather than trying to run from the bots, he plowed straight through them, setting off alarms everywhere. He just hoped he’d be done before the backtrace was complete.

He found himself at another data vault; this one owned by the VL. Multiple levels of security and cognitive traps. He hoped the payload he had worked. In theory, it should set off the traps, and keep the guardian programs busy while it attempted to brute-force the encryption. Meanwhile, the secondary code would write a backdoor into one of the guardian programs, creating a direct tunnel inside the vault.

As soon as the tunnel was open, Ed saw the corporate jackers stream through. What felt like hours later, he sat up, unplugged, and removed the collar. He was once again blind. “It’s done.”

Alfonse still smiled the same cold, dead smile. “Indeed. By the time you get that grain wherever it’s going, the bounty on your head — every Virtual Lords bounty — will be null and void.”

He stepped back toward the car. “We’re taking over their operations in full, starting with the police. In sixty days, the Virtual Lords will exist in name only, as a private extension of our company. I’m sure you understand what would happen to you if this got out. But, if you ever decide to leave the slums, you’ll find twelve million in an account in your name. Just so we don’t leave you here with nothing for the next sixty days, I’m told a thousand coins is a lot.”

Alfonse reached into the car and pulled out a box, trading it for the briefcase. The briefcase bearer set the heavy box in the basket of the trike with the sacks of grain and gave him a nod.

Once Alfonse Worth was safely back inside the vehicle, the soldiers relaxed their guns and melted through the side passages to a waiting truck somewhere. Ed was left sitting in the middle of the road, his head spinning.

There was no way they’d get every VL member, and the ones that remained would be out to put his head on a pike. He sighed and gunned the trike. He was never leaving the Squiggles.

Trunk Stories

Not Yet

prompt: Write a story about someone whose time is running out.

available at Reedsy

Niri set the auto-injector into a slow spin the air in front of her. She could use it now or wait. Either way, the result would be the same; dead is dead.

She checked the readout on the console. Her orbit was in a steady, slow decay. At the current rate, short of using the injector, it was a toss-up as to which would do her in: gamma radiation from the accretion disk leaking through the shielding, toxic buildup of CO2, or being shredded by passing through the accretion disk.

It was meant to be a simple job; two weeks her time, two and half months to those on the station. Do a fly-by of the black hole and give a boost to the probe on the way by to keep it in orbit outside the accretion disk. She’d just boosted the probe and was in the perigee of the maneuver when an unseen piece of debris slammed into her forward radiation shield, vaporizing itself and enough of her shield to slow her.

The impact damaged multiple systems, including the cameras, and knocked the external main thruster off the ship. Three of the maneuvering thrusters were still operational, and she was using them to keep the most intact part of the radiation shield between herself and the accretion disk while the Geiger counter let her know just how much was leaking through.

She’d watched the probe pass by her twice now, higher the second time. Based on the probe’s speed and orbit parameters, she’d estimated her speed and from there, figured out her orbital decay. Probably not the most encouraging use of her remaining time, but it had kept her mind occupied for a short time.

She’d sent a distress call right away, but with the increasing time dilation the nearer she got to the black hole, she had no way of knowing how long ago it was in their terms. Not that it mattered either way. They all knew this was a possibility every trip…thus the injector.

“This is Niharika ‘Niri’ Cullen. I’m in a declining orbit around 1S-MU4-A2. The Explorer 4 probe has been boosted into a stable orbit above me. As I said in my last transmission, my main thruster is offline — actually, it’s probably in the accretion disk by now — and a large portion of my radiation shield has been vaporized in a collision with a fast-moving meteoroid of approximately three to five millimeters.

“I’m not certain how long it’s been for you, but since my last transmission, it’s been…uh…about an hour. I have the injector out, but I’m not ready to check out just yet.

“I’ll be getting into the vac suit for the added radiation protection, and when the CO2 gets too high, I’ll button up and use up the oxygen from the suit.”

She let out a short laugh. “I’m taking every second I have. I don’t know why I’m prolonging it, I’m just not…I don’t want to die. Just…not yet.”

She keyed in the command that would compress the voice message and transmit it as a burst package. Niri left the injector floating in the cabin and squirmed into the IEVA emergency suit. Once in the suit, she attached the injector to a lanyard. There was no way to inject it through the suit, but she would deal with that issue when it came up.

Niri floated to the command chair and strapped herself in. She called up the specs for the maneuvering thrusters along with how much fuel for them remained. Based on the last positioning burn, she had a good estimate of the craft’s new mass, now that it was minus part of the shield and the external thruster.

“Orbital dynamics,” she said, “I can figure this out.”

She approached it as if it was a university assignment. Trusting the suit for radiation protection, she stopped using the thrusters to keep her shield aligned in order to save every gram of propellant.

At one point, she turned off the Geiger counter as its steady noise was a nuisance. She thought she had come up with a workable plan and had a moment’s jubilation before she reminded herself to double-check her work.

Working through it from back to front gave her a ridiculous result. Once again, she worked the problem front to back and realized that she’d assumed all four thrusters being operational.

She picked up the mic again. “This is Niri again. It’s been a couple hours since my last broadcast. I almost have enough propellant for the three working maneuvering thrusters to put myself into a very long slingshot. Almost.”

Niri sighed. “The best I can do is extend my stay in orbit by another few hours. By that time, the CO2 scrubbers will have failed, I’ll have used up all the ship’s oxygen, and I’ll be running out of oxygen from the suit’s PLSS. I’m going to do it anyway. Every second I can eke from this killing bastard I will.”

She programmed the burn into the positioning computer, set to fire at the perigee of the shallow, elliptical orbit to take advantage of the Oberth effect. “A few more kilos of propellant and I’d be out of here, but you’re not killing me yet,” she said to the black hole, its accretion disk represented by the arc of red at the edge of the navigation screen.

She tried to count down the time to the burn in her head and was surprised when it kicked in while she was at four. The ship spun as the three thrusters worked to both increase its speed and keep it from an inward trajectory.

The spin was more pronounced than she’d expected, but the thrusters sputtered to a stop after only ninety-four seconds. The induced spin gave her a very slight pseudo-gravity toward the port side. She forced herself to look at the display. Part of her wanted to believe that she had done better than hoped for, while another part was worried it was far worse.

The monitor told the story. She had extended her time outside the accretion disk for nine hours and seventeen minutes…give or take. The console notified her that the burn was complete, and her updated trajectory had been sent in burst transmission as it did after every burn.

Niri spent the next hours trying to think of any way to escape her fate. Wild plots of waiting until the door was in just the right position, holding on to it, and blowing the emergency bolts. A quick bit of math on the console told her that wouldn’t be enough.

She began to find it hard to breathe, panting, her heart racing; it was CO2 poisoning. Niri put on her helmet and buttoned up. The fresh oxygen from the suit was a welcome relief. The O2 readout on her sleeve said she had two hours and four minutes oxygen remaining.

She keyed the mic in her suit to record another message. “I’m buttoned up in the IEVA suit and on the PLSS. Ship’s systems are out of oxy, and the CO2 scrubber is done. I have two hours and three minutes of air left. When it gets down to the last, I’ll use the injector. Even if I’m not ready, I’m going out on my terms, not those of this bastard black hole. This will be my second-to-last transmission.”

Niri sent the burst transmission and worked on taking slow breaths. She was surprised how easy it was for her, given the circumstances, to remain calm.

She sat, not focused on anything, the lights from the console a blur. She thought about every happy memory she could dredge up. The unhappy memories came along with them, but she accepted the price.

Finally, she checked the O2 readout on the sleeve of her suit. Six minutes remaining. She keyed the mic. “I guess this is it,” she said, tears hanging in globules on her eyes. “I’ve only got a few minutes of air left, then I’m going to cut open the suit and use the injector. I just wish the cameras still worked so I could look this bastard in the eye when I do. I…uh…I guess I love you all, even if I don’t like you. Funny what it takes for that to sink in.”

She swallowed a sob. “This is Niharika ’Niri’ Cullen, signing off for the last time.” She sent the burst transmission and heard a beep from the terminal.

Niri switched the inbound from the terminal to her suit and keyed in response to the beep.

“Niri, come in. Hess here, on a rescue mission.”

“Lunchbox! Where are you?”

“I’m plotting my fly-by now. I’ve been enroute for the past week. They sent me as soon as they got your initial distress call.”

“The ship’s banged up, and we don’t have enough time to transfer fuel for another burn.”

“I got that. That’s why you’ve got to go EVA and kick off from the ship. I’ll be deploying the DCS for you. How much air does your suit have left?”

“Four minutes.”

“Looks like this is a one-shot trick. You need to get out now. You’ll see me coming. The tethers will wrap you up and drag you in automatically.”

“Wait, you’re using the drone capture system…on me?”

“It’s the best we could come up with in the time we had. It’ll probably hurt, so I apologize in advance.”

“Heading EVA now.” Niri opened the door, hanging on while the stale air rushed out, then climbed out onto the ship.

She positioned herself so the edge of the accretion disk was “down” and kicked hard against the side of the ship to separate herself from it. As she floated away from the ship, she looked down, her face shield darkening as the glow from the accretion disk lit her up.

“It may be a murdering bastard,” she said, “but my god, it’s beautiful.”

“That it is. Coming up on you know. Prepare for impact.”

Niri looked at the O2 readout, that had been flashing a big zero for at least a minute by then. “I’m out of air, you might be too late,” she panted. She saw the tendrils of the drone capture system splayed out behind Hess’s ship. As they neared, she swung her arms to turn her back to it and went limp.

Two of the tendrils made contact and whipped themselves around her, jerking her into motion behind the ship as her world went dark.

She woke inside the ship, with a worried Hess standing over her, holding an oxygen mask to her face. “Lunchbox, you’re still skinny as hell,” she said.

“I thought we lost you,” he said.

Niri coughed and groaned as she sat up. “Not yet.”

Trunk Stories

Being Better

prompt: Write a story in the form of diary entries, written by someone who has set themselves a month-long challenge.

available at Reedsy

Day 1:

Today is the day! In order to be a better person, today, I start my month of careful speech. Rather than be the asshole who says the first thing that comes to mind, I’ll take a moment to think about what I’m about to say. By the end of the month, it should be habit. This is the beginning of the end for my mouth getting me in trouble.

Day 2:

I’m glad it’s still the weekend. I had to catch myself multiple times yesterday and today. It’s not like the TV cares, but I wanted to yell at the talking heads on the news so bad! Grrrr. I was able to calm myself, though.

Day 3:

I got a lot of strange looks at work today. Rather than my usual reaction to things, I was careful with my words. The saying, “bite your tongue” that means to not say what you were going to? Yeah, turns out that doing that for real works. Not hard or anything, just enough to remind myself of the goal.

Day 7:

They actually listened to what I had to say in the meeting today. I wanted to tell them they were so stupid they were lucky they remembered to breathe, but I didn’t. I thought about it carefully, and told them, point by point, what parts of their design were likely to fail, and how to mitigate those risks. Yeah, I might have taught some of them a thing or two. It felt good, even though I think I might be developing an ulcer, and I have a sore spot on my tongue.

Day 9:

The constant pain in my gut has eased up. Probably because I spent the entire weekend in bed reading. No TV, no internet, just a good book. Not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but I’m still doing great on my month.

Day 12:

Hump day, and this week already feels three times too long. I was in line for my coffee and this — cuts in front of me. (See, I’m even censoring myself in my journal.) Anyway, I muttered something about his questionable legitimacy and that his head was in a physically impossible location. I didn’t say it at full volume, though. Still, it slipped out and I realized I needed to do better. So, I tapped the guy on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry I just said something mean about you, I’m trying to do better. I was angry in the moment when you cut in front of me.”

He just looked at me like I was insane and stayed right there in front of me in line. I’m not sure if that’s when the pain in my gut came back, but that’s when I felt it, a knot of fire. I bit my tongue so hard I drew blood. It really hurts to drink anything hot or cold or eat anything at all.

Day 16:

I spent the weekend in agony. My tongue finally stopped hurting enough to eat a bit, and it seemed to help my guts, but only a little. Maybe I just need to let it all out without a target. I mean, I’m still doing great good on my month of being less of an asshole. There was the little thing on Wednesday, and then Friday, when he did it to me again, I told him, “I’m trying not to say the first the terrible thing that comes to mind all the time, but I seriously hope your day is cut short by a tragic accident.”

Day 20:

The knot of fire in my gut has grown a burning spike straight up the center of my chest. Everything I swallow hurts. I guess the sore on my tongue is just the new normal. It won’t heal. My boss noticed something was wrong with me. “You’re clearly stressed about something,” she said. She told me to take a long weekend and de-stress. I couldn’t even think of any comeback, due to feeling so awful. It was only while I was driving home that my mind kicked in and said “Gee, thanks for that, Captain Obvious. I’ll call you the next time I need you to tell me something I already know.”

Day 23:

I’ve lost weight. Had to add a new hole to my belt to make it fit. Probably because I can’t eat, can’t sleep, and everything puts me on edge. I cursed out the TV today because it decided it needed to reboot in the middle of a show. Smart TV my ass. But the TV doesn’t really count, does it? I mean, it’s just an inanimate thing. In that moment, I felt a tiny bit better. Still, I felt like I cheated on my month of not being the instant asshole — which ruined the good feeling.

Day 26:

I’ve decided that the TV, and other inanimate things, don’t count — as long as no one else hears. My computer was being a pain today. I waited until everyone had left for the break room and whispered to it. “You stupid piece of ‘made in China’ shit. Taiwan is a country. Suck on that. If you don’t act right, I’m gonna plug a USB cable into the wall socket.”

That helped a little. Someone saw me and asked what I was doing. “Just a little one-sided conversation with my computer,” I answered. They looked at me like I was contagious or something. I thought terrible things about them but didn’t say anything. My tongue started bleeding again.

Day 28:

I almost ripped the line-cutting jerk a new one today. I wanted so much to tell him he should jump off a cliff instead of jumping the line. The coppery taste of blood in my mouth stopped me, and the pain in my gut made me decide to skip the coffee.

The month is almost over, but I’ve been scheduled to come in Sunday and cover for someone else — in customer support. It’s literally the one job I hate so much that until they promised I wouldn’t ever be scheduled for it, I wouldn’t accept the job. So much for promises.

I think I cursed out everything in my apartment when I got home. I’m sorry, apartment, it’s not your fault. The nerve of this fucking company…. (Companies are inanimate, so they don’t count.)

Day 30:

I almost made it…almost. I gritted my teeth, used my best customer service voice and answered the same five, stupid questions over and over and over. Then it happened.

There were no calls in the queue, so I set my status to offline and went to the break room to get some ice to suck on — trying to get my tongue to stop bleeding. It was lunch time anyway, so no big deal, right? Wrong.

That idiot of a shift leader told me to get back on the lines. I told him it was lunch time, and he had the audacity to say that I obviously wasn’t eating, so I should get back online so someone else could eat.

The fire in my belly finally reached my throat and I gave up on the month. I don’t think I’ve ever so eloquently told anyone how I felt about them in the moment.

First, I called him a “jumped-up, junior-hall-monitor-wannabe.” I told him that if he was that worried about it, he should be online. Then, I let him know that I was well within my rights to take my lunch break, even if all I’m eating is ice. The next thing I said was that for his lunch. he should probably stick to the “paleo diet” since the Paleolithic was the last time there was a branch anywhere in his family tree. I’m sure I said some more after that, but I don’t remember it all.

I almost made it a month, and it almost killed me. There’s got to be something I can to do be better, but this wasn’t it. I saw online that it’s healthier to express your emotions than to hold them in. I believe it. In fact, that’s what I’m doing next month: expressing my true emotions. I’m going to be completely open and honest about how I’m feeling.

I’ll also be looking for a new job, since I got fired today. It seems the junior-hall-monitor-wannabe’s stick of a family tree includes the HR director. If I’d known that, I would’ve let him know how I feel about nepotism and told him to go cry to aunt mommy.

Trunk Stories

Saved by the Monsters

prompt: Write a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky.

available at Reedsy

The signs had been there, annoying, unwanted, a random, occasional nuisance, but the one that was wanted was a nuisance by its absence. Right after leaving the nebula, the first signs were there, then gone, then there again — the ones that foretold disaster. Now, the cameras and antennae swept in slow circles, the AI controlling them looking for the faintest change, looking for the sign that may, despite all hope, not be coming.

The only light in the cockpit was from three small LEDs. The red one that signified the distress call was being sent, the yellow one signifying that environmental controls were operating on emergency battery power, and the blue one that said the twelve cameras and nine antennae were sweeping space in a 360-degree sphere around the ship.

At first, the loss of the light from the monitors and regular lighting systems had left the pilot in what seemed like impenetrable darkness. In a few moments, however, acting on muscle memory to activate emergency systems, there were the three glowing indicators that defined what might be the last light he would ever see.

The pilot wasn’t a warrior, just a cog in a commercial supply chain, but the unmarked light freighter, stranded in the buffer zone after evading the enemy picket was likely to be targeted as hostile. Based on the last burn he’d made before the engine seized, he guessed he was drifting away from his own people he was meant to supply.

He tried to sleep. There wasn’t much else to do to occupy his time until the first to greet him arrived; rescuers, death at the hands of the enemy or death by asphyxiation when the environmental controls failed.

After failing to sleep for what seemed hours, he pulled out the hard copy of the cargo manifest. It was only ever used when the regular systems were down or — as in the case of dropping cargo for the front-line ships — unavailable. It took some time to find the right angle to hold the printed plastic sheet to read it in the feeble light.

Vaccine for the pox that was spreading through the settled worlds, anesthetics, antiseptics, bandages, burn treatments, decompression treatments, artificial blood, surgical tools, assorted other medicines, and body bags. The last made him shudder.

I’ll probably end up in one of those, he thought. Then he thought probably not, unless he crawled in himself before he died from the failure of the environmental systems. The enemy wouldn’t bother. They’d see who was piloting the ship and blow it up.

“Crawl out of the hole and think positive,” he muttered. His voice sounded thunderous in the dead silence of the ship. He let out a loud yell of frustration that echoed back from the far reaches of the ship.

He put his hand on the control for the sensor monitor. Switching it to battery power would allow him to see what the cameras saw and hear any radio signals but would reduce the time he would be able to breathe. He knew he should wait for the blue LED to turn red and blink to turn on the monitor, but the monotony was eating away at his mind.

The monitor flickered to life. At the bottom, the time was displayed. What had felt interminable was less than three hours. He shut the monitor off and tried again to sleep. It would make the air last longer, and the wait seem shorter.

His sleep was filled with visions of the enemy, said to be monsters. They burst into the cockpit, tore him limb from limb and began eating him while he still lived and screamed in terror. Their cruel fangs dripped with his blood as one leaned in to bite his face and he woke screaming.

After getting his breathing and pulse under control, he chided himself, “Panic uses more air than exertion. Slow breaths, steady.”

His hand hovered over the control for the sensor monitor. He didn’t know how many minutes he’d already reduced his survival by his nightmare, but checking the unchanging monitor just to see the time would use up power he couldn’t — or at least shouldn’t — waste.

He closed his eyes and took slow, even breaths. If he was going to survive long enough to be rescued, he’d have to be conservative with his power use. He felt his pulse slow, almost to a trance-like state. This would be the way to prolong his life.

The pilot wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that, relaxed against the straps that held him in the chair, his arms floating freely at his sides, his eyes closed. It felt like forever and no time at all.

He was pulled back to a dim awareness that the light that filtered through his closed eyelids had changed. It was a struggle to open them and focus. The blue light had turned red and was blinking. It took everything he had to turn on the monitor.

The voice on the radio, repeating the same message over and over was heavily accented, almost impossible to understand. “… life-support … weapons … declare … docking … rescue … life-support …”

He tried to focus on the image of the approaching ship. Even though his eyes refused to fully comply, he could tell it was the enemy — the monsters. He must’ve drifted into territory they controlled. They were declaring rescue, but would kill him as soon as they figured out he wasn’t one of them.

He couldn’t find the energy to panic. Instead, he found himself ready to die. It wouldn’t be so bad, now.

The ship rattled as the enemy docked with it. A few moments later, the airlock cycled, and the monsters came in. They wore suits that held their poisonous atmosphere around them and hid their hideous faces with slavering fangs.

One of them came close and began speaking in their guttural language. Another slid a mask over his face, delivering fresh air. The one that had put the mask on him, and the other one stayed there as the fresh air woke him from his daze. He saw that the yellow environmental control light had gone red, but he had no idea how long ago.

The one in front of him raised the visor of its helmet to show its face. He thought they must want him terrified before they eat him.

Rather than show fear, he looked directly into the predatory eyes of the one that showed their face. The face looked softer than he’d expected, ugly but not hideous, just not properly defined. It spoke to him, with a far easier to understand accent.

“Your life-support system failed before we could get here. We were worried you had died. The doctor says you’ll be okay, though.” It angled itself so its predatory eyes were level with his own. “Are there any weapons on this vessel?”

“No, only you monsters.”

“What is your cargo?”

“Medical supplies.”

It spoke in their guttural language again and seemed accepting of the response over the radio in its helmet. “Is the vaccine for the pox that’s been spreading on your worlds?”

“It is. You monsters probably spread it.” The pilot was not going to show any fear.

“We’ll make sure the vaccine gets where it’s needed. You gave us quite the runaround when you blew past the blockade in this old vessel.” The creature bared its teeth.

He’d been expecting fangs, but instead, he saw flat-edged teeth, and no hint of aggression in the expression. If he was reading this creature right, it was happy.

“You’re not going to kill me and eat me, then?” he asked.

The creature’s expression went to one of surprise. “What? Why would we do that? Who does that?”

“They say the monsters — you — tear us with your fangs and eat us alive.”

“No. We do no such thing.” The creature checked the readout on the arm of their suit and removed their helmet. It said something in their language again, and the one it had called the doctor helped it out of the vacuum suit.

Its body was encased in a tight suit, but it looked soft underneath. No claws or stingers or other natural weapons showed. It removed the cloth that was tight around its head and a covering of curly, soft filaments floated out from it.

“That’s better,” it said.

“Your poisonous atmosphere…it’s in here?” he asked.

The creature made the happy face again. “It’s only poisonous if you’re not getting enough…uh…I forgot your word for [guttural sounds].” It tapped on the mask with one of its slender appendages.

“How did you know about the pox?” he asked. “That’s a state secret.”

“We are at war. We would be remiss to not have our spies where we need them.” The creature rotated its orientation some. “My crew has inspected your ship and cargo. We’re going to take you and the cargo on board and jettison your ship. The engine is totaled, and we have no way to tow it.”

“What will you do with the medicine?”

“We’ll drone it across the lines to your people’s medical ships. We’ve already sent six other drones of vaccine and supplies.”

“Why would you aid your enemies?”

“It’s part of the mandate for the picket. Life-saving goods are allowed in, refugees are allowed out. If my hospital ships were cut off from the rear by a picket, I would hope the enemy would at least be that civil.”

The creature helped him out of the seat and through the docking tube to their ship. “You’re not quite the monsters I was told you were.”

“The enemy rarely ever is.”

“What kind of warrior are you?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The creature made a long string of guttural sounds then followed up with, “female. And you? I’m guessing you’re not a warrior by the lack of any weapons.”

“Commercial Pilot Ezan. Empty Sky Cargo Company, male. The company sent me out in that rented ship because I’m the only one that could fly it through the nebula to get past the blockade.”

“Well, you’ve got some [guttural sounds],” she said. “We’ll make sure you’re safe to travel, then you’re free to either return home, or join the refugees in [guttural sound] space.”

“Refugees? Others have left?”

“A couple million so far, that’s why we have everything you need on board.” She pointed at the mask again. “In fact, there are a few doctors on board that are your species that will meet you here and check you out.”

A mechanized voice came over speakers all over the ship in the creature’s language, then followed up with the heavily accented, “Prepare for gravity under going. Prepare for gravity under going.”

“That’s my cue,” the creature said, and left Ezan with a guard in what looked like a medical station.

She rounded the corner and keyed her comms. “Doctors Elim and Oran, civilian patient waiting for you in the med bay. If he can be persuaded to help out with the refugees, he’d be a major asset. He’s one hell of a good pilot. Otherwise, find him a ride back home or wherever he wants to go.”

The ship began accelerating under one-half gravity and she loped down the corridor as she listened to their reply in her earpiece. After they’d replied in the affirmative, she added, “Oh, I think he’s almost there, but could you convince him that humans aren’t monsters? I’d appreciate it. Either way, make sure he has plenty of backup methane on-hand, so he doesn’t feel like we’re restraining him in any way.”

Trunk Stories

The Nature Of

prompt: Set your story on New Year’s Day.

available at Reedsy

Late morning sun streamed through the sliding glass door, shining through the empty bottles, past the abandoned cups, to a large snack tray denuded of cheese, crackers, and dignity. Just past the tray, sprawled on the sofa, that same light stabbed through closed eyelids of Anika, exciting her photoreceptors and waking her mind that desired nothing more than to continue pretending nonexistence.

Why are the curtains open? she wondered. Ah, right, fireworks.

Anika crawled to a semi-seated position, her head throbbing. “I can’t do this anymore. I need new friends…I’m too old for this,” she said to the empty apartment.

A moan from behind the sofa told her she wasn’t as alone as she thought. “Who’s that? I’m too hung over right now to really care, as long as you’re alive.”

“Ugh. Do I have to be alive?” the other voice asked. It was a higher voice than she recognized, almost like that of a child.

“Seriously, who is that? Did somebody’s kid sneak in here last night?” Anika’s head pounded, but she wasn’t nauseated, so at least this wouldn’t be the worst she’d ever had.

“I’m almost as old as you, Dio, now shut up, I think I’m dying.”

Anika forced herself to her feet and turned around to see who was behind the couch. She looked, squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them, then opened them again and waited for them to focus. “What the—”

“You’re not Dio!” The figure wobbled to its feet, barely four feet tall. It looked like a small woman in a light dress of silk with gold-covered goat horns on her head, a slightly flattened nose, light tan skin with a pale tinge of sickness, a small tail with brown and white fur, and brown furred lower legs ending in two-toed hooves also covered in gold.

“What are you and how did you get in my apartment?” Flashes of the previous night swam just behind her consciousness. “Wait, I thought I was hallucinating last night. Your name starts with an M….”

Anika pulled the blinds reducing the light in the apartment to a more manageable level. She moved to the kitchen to grab a large glass of water and a handful of ibuprofen. “Want some?”

“Water, please, I think I’m dying.” The little satyr — satyress? — pulled her light wrap dress tight. She looked around the apartment and lay on the sofa with a groan. “This is a comfortable place to die.”

“You’re not dying.” Anika set down a large glass of water and an ibuprofen. “First time drinking?”

“Of course not. I am Medea, favored of both man and Dionysus.” She moaned. “Maybe I’m no longer favored, though. Why else would he leave me here to perish in the mortal world?”

“Well, I’m Anika, you’re in my apartment although I don’t know how, and you’re not dying. You’ve seriously never had a hangover before?”

“Is that what this is?” Medea gulped down the glass of water. “Now we eat boiled cabbage to treat it? According to Aristotle, anyway.”

“Uh, what? No. Eww.” Anika refilled Medea’s glass and pointed to the pill next to it. “Take that pill — uh, just swallow it whole with some water — and I’ll order some breakfast.”

Anika gathered the bottles and placed them in her glass recycling bin, being careful to do so quietly. She followed that by collecting all the trash in a large garbage bag. Before she’d gotten past the kitchen, Medea was helping from the other end, gathering up the obvious trash, despite the fact that she looked as though she would fall over at any moment.

The apartment still smelled of spilt wine and booze, and could use a vacuum, mop, and carpet cleaner but Anika thought it was good enough for the moment. When breakfast was delivered, she sat on the sofa next to Medea and turned on the television to watch the Rose Parade as they ate their hangover egg sandwiches and hashbrowns.

Anika looked at the woman next to her, and the half-finished breakfast in front of her. “So, this is, uh, real?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dionysus…uh…Greek gods and satyrs and all that.”

Medea laughed. “Dionysus is real, but don’t let him know he’s still thought of as a god. He gets a big head about it.”

“But you said you were almost as old as he is, and he’s got to be at least Ancient Greece — roughly three thousand years old?”

“Closer to twelve thousand. I’m a few hundred away from eleven thousand, myself.”

“So how did he end up being the god of wine?”

Medea shook her head. Her color was returning, and a blush of pink showed under her cheeks. “He is as his nature, as we are all. His nature is that of fermentation. He learned the secret of fermenting grapes in Asia first. When he got tired of their mixed grape and rice wine, he went west, and taught it to others. Every time he got bored of the same wine, he’d move and teach new people.

“The Greeks liked it so much, they gave him his name and called him a god.”

“If you’re not gods, then…what are you?”

“We are our nature. Nothing more, nothing less.” Medea wiped her hands on a napkin. “Our realms are intertwined. Yours gives rise to our natures, our natures give rise to your reality. No one has been able to say which came first or whether one is more real than the other.”

“Does everyone in your realm live as long as you?”

“The oldest is life. She’s also been known as Gaia, but that’s not quite the whole of it. All life is her nature, not just on Earth. The second oldest is death. He has many names, but without his nature, life would not be able to continue. It is in life’s nature to consume death to further life, and it is in death’s nature to consume life.”

“What is your nature?”

“It is in my nature to be domesticated, cared for, and treasured, and to provide wealth.”

“How did you get your name?”

“Dio gave it to me, after he got his. He thought we should all have one. It’s easier than saying, ‘Hey, nature of domestication,’ after all.”

“What about dogs and cats?”

“The nature of Canis is older than myself and Dio…even older than humans, and just happens to have become my friend. The nature of Felis as well, though she tends to consider herself the domesticator of humans rather than the other way around.”

“All the nature spirits or whatever are related to one concept, then?”

Medea nodded. “We are as our natures and can be nothing else.”

“Then how did you end up here, getting hammered at my New Year’s Eve party?”

Medea thought for a moment. “Following is in my nature, but so is being stubborn. As long as I know I’m being taken care of, I can ignore the instinctive fear of the wild.”

“And?”

“I’m getting there. Dio often joins in a human celebration when he can get away with it. You probably didn’t notice him here last night.”

“It was pretty crowded, and I’m sure there was more than one uninvited walk-in.”

“He was here, and I followed him. I stayed hidden until the sky exploded in noise and lights. He returned to our realm, but I was transfixed. Once he was gone, I didn’t know how to get back, so I joined in the party and hoped no one would notice.”

“And I ended sharing a bottle with you on the balcony.”

“I’d never had such wine, but Dio says it is the perfection of his nature.”

“It’s not wine. It’s fermented grain that’s distilled to get the alcohol content high.” Anika turned her head side to side until her neck cracked.

Medea turned back to the television and pointed. “Hua Hsien would enjoy this.”

“What?”

“This celebration. Hua Hsien, the nature of blooming, would find this enticing.”

They watched for a while, until Anika asked, “What about the nature of humans?”

Medea laughed. “Too big for a single being. There are at least a thousand, probably more. And new ones are showing up, and sometimes…rarely…an old one dies.”

“How does a being like yourself die? I mean, you represent a concept.”

“Concepts come and go. Some last longer than others, but those that are directly related to humans…,” Medea shrugged. “We tend to be the youngest and shortest-lived of all.”

A shimmering door appeared in the middle of the room, and an androgynous teen stepped out, scrolling on a phone, never looking up. “Medea, Dio sent me to take you home.”

“Who are you?” Anika asked.

The teen shrugged and continued scrolling.

“Anika, meet Nico,” Madea said, “the nature of artificial socialization. One of the ‘new kids.’”

“You coming, grandma? I don’t have all day, and Dio’s shook. Or I could just yeet you back over the fence.”

“I’m coming, Nico. It was a pleasure to meet you, Anika.”

“You too, Medea.”

The two beings walked through the shimmering door that disappeared as quickly and silently as it had appeared. Anika flopped down on the sofa and took a nap.

When she woke, she was certain it had been a dream, until she saw the settings for two, Medea’s half-eaten sandwich, the loose furs on her couch and shirt, and the clear hoof-print in last night’s spilled wine.

“Shit! It was real!” Anika shook her head. “I should’ve invited her and Dionysus back for next year.”

Her phone chimed, and she checked the new text from no number. “dio sez bet”

“What? Does that mean she’s coming, or—” Anika was cut off by another text.

“yeah duh”

“Thanks, Nico.” Anika knew there would be no more replies, as it wouldn’t be in Nico’s nature.

Trunk Stories

Canned Apes

prompt: Start your story with someone uttering a very strange sentence. (As close to 1000 words as possible.)

available at Reedsy

“A can of apes is a silly basket to put all our eggs in but…here we go.” Maybe not the best quote for the history books, Wills thought, as the outer door closed.

“Cap, that was not the inspiring speech the commission wanted.” Cruz was going through the motions of the preflight checklist, as had been practiced hundreds of times.

Wills strapped in. “Welcome to the last shuttle to Hope’s Deep, fellow apes, where we’ll be leaving Earth forever. I’m your captain, and Cruz is your pilot. We hope we find somewhere fit to land…someday. Please take notice of the fasten seatbelts sign.”

Cruz groaned. “You’re not as funny as you think, Wills.”

Wills laughed. “I’m dead serious. Fourteen on this shuttle, twenty-eight waiting for us up there; we head toward TRAPPIST-1 and go into deep freeze for twenty years give or take — our time — forty-six on Earth. I hope we find somewhere to land.”

“But what was that quote to the media?”

“I started thinking about how this is our one chance, blanked, and something I read online popped up.” Wills shrugged. “Done is done. Assuming we have a place to land I can make it up to them in roughly eighty-six years, their time.”

They lifted to orbit, matched speed with Hope’s Deep, and docked strictly by the book. Once the passengers were secured in their hibernation pods, Wills met up with Cruz in the cramped cockpit where they went through a whole new preflight checklist.

Under one-half g acceleration, the long ship with its kilometer-wide scoop sucking in particles to throw out of the thrusters left the Earth behind. Wills and Cruz would be the last two into hibernation, after the two-week shakedown and course correction period.

“You ever think about the Fermi paradox?” Cruz asked on their last day awake.

“Sure. That’s what made me sign on to this suicide mission.”

“Wills….”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll find a new home, send a message that’ll reach Earth forty years later, then fifty or so of our years later we’ll have new ships coming and we’ll live happily ever after.”

Cruz sighed. “Seriously, how does the Fermi paradox make you decide to leave Earth forever?”

“Think about all the possible solutions. Let’s start with the ones that assume we’re the only technological species out and about in the galaxy. That would be the Firstborn hypothesis, Great Filter, those kinds of arguments.

“In those cases, we’re just doing what intelligent life should do — spreading out and claiming more space to keep our species alive.”

“But what about the ‘Dark Forest’ hypothesis?” Cruz asked.

“Well, in that case, we’re doing what intelligent life shouldn’t do, but what humans have always done.

“It’s dark in that cave and bears might live in there? Let’s go find out. There’re saber-toothed cats that want to hunt us in those hills? Let’s go hunt them, instead.”

Cruz laughed. “You say that like we’re going to exterminate all the galactic threats to humanity.”

Wills frowned. “I say that like I worry we’ll do exactly that, without finding out what the wider impact might be.”

“Wider impact?”

“What happens when the predators in an environment go extinct?”

“Uh, the prey takes over.”

“Overpopulation, over-grazing, conflict over dwindling resources, the ecology collapses, and the prey is likely to go extinct as well.”

“We’re the prey?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.” Cruz readied the hibernation pods. “I’ll see you in about twenty years.”

“As long as nothing goes wrong. I’d hate to be woken up early for an emergency.”

“No kidding, Cap. We know all the drills, and there’s redundancies on redundancies, but if we get woken up early, it means something is terribly wrong.”

Wills shrugged. “We can fix whatever. It’s just the thought that we can’t re-enter hibernation once we come out. If we wake up at the half-way point, I’d have to spend ten years pacing back and forth in this can.”

Cruz took a deep breath. “Good night, Wills. Pleasant dreams.”

“You too.”

Wills came out of hibernation feeling like it had been no time at all. “What happened? What broke?”

Cruz was already awake and standing near the pod. “Nothing broke. We’re entering the TRAPPIST-1 system. I’ll need your help to plot out a fly-by of all the candidate worlds.”

“Has it really been twenty years?”

“It has. We’ll enter orbit around the star in about an hour.”

Wills followed Cruz to the cockpit where hot coffee and a twenty-year-old packaged meal awaited him.

“Figured you’d be hungry, like me. There’s a water bottle near your station, too. You’ll want to hydrate.”

“Thanks.” Wills looked out at the distant planets visible from the ship’s location. “Cruz, does that one look blue to you?”

“It does. That’s TRAPPIST-1e. Looks kind of like Earth at this distance.”

Wills set the computer to figuring the paths of their flybys. With the short planetary orbits, ranging from one-and-a-half to nineteen days, the trick would be to not gain too much momentum moving from one to the next.

Having emptied the coffee, water bottle, and packaged meal, Wills stowed all the debris and strapped in just in time for engine shut-off.

“How long to survey all the habitable zone planets?” Cruz asked.

“We might as well wake everyone up.” Wills projected their path on the main screen. “It’s seventeen days to make three orbits of e, then g, then h, then f. Could do it in less time with higher-g flybys, but it would put too much stress on the cone.”

Cruz typed in the commands to begin waking everyone from hibernation. “How many doctors are we carrying?”

“Three. Orbal, Adumbwe, and Singh.”

“I meant PhDs.”

“Out of the forty-two people on board, I think you and I are the only two without a doctorate.”

“You have four Masters, that has to count for something.”

Wills chuckled. “I just hope it counts for finding a safe place for us to settle down.”

Trunk Stories

Homecoming

prompt: Write about a character who visits their hometown for the holidays and reconnects with a former love interest.

available at Reedsy

It was the first time in ages I’d returned; eight years, one month, and five days. Not that I was keeping count, but the exact date I’d left was seared into my memory. When I was released from the hospital in the city, I stayed rather than go back to my former home.

The fir tree in front of city hall — the one that was lit up every year for Christmas — had grown. The lights were gaudier than they used to be; bright pinks, cyan, chartreuse, and an aggressive shade of orange that somehow clashed with everything else.

They’d added Chanukah and Kwanza decorations. Someone had printed a “Happy Festivus” sign and affixed it to the empty signpost that had stood in the middle of the lawn for some unknown reason since I was a child.

I thought I’d feel fear, or maybe revulsion at seeing the town again, but I felt…empty. Maybe a few years in the city, learning to live and navigate the hazards as a woman had inured me to the danger I used to feel in this town.

I decided I’d spent enough time gawking at the hideous light display and drove the rental to the hotel. It sat on what used to be the Baxter’s corn field. The parking lot at the rear of the hotel gave me a clear line of sight to where their house used to be. It was paved over and replaced with a mini mall. The sporting goods store stood where the barn used to be.

The room I was given faced out the back side to the shopping center. I could still see the barn in my mind — every warped board and peel of paint. I remembered him hoisting me up to the hayloft atop a bale of hay. Probably not safe, but fun.

I remembered him sneaking his dad’s cigarettes. We’d gotten sick after sharing one of them. I remembered him — I remembered him.

I pulled the curtains shut tight and lay on the bed where I cried myself to sleep. At some point in the middle of the night, I showered and went to bed proper. I still woke before dawn.

Dot’s Cafe had been updated. It had been unchanged for my whole life before I left, so the difference was jarring. Dot was still there, seated in her reserved booth she occupied when she was in. Even though her name was on the place, she hadn’t owned it for at least twenty years, but she was treated as royalty.

She had to be close to a hundred. The deepened wrinkles, thinned hair, and paled complexion hurt me to see. Dot was still sharp of eye and mind, though.

Dot waved me over the minute I walked in, stared straight into my eyes, and said, “You were that Williams boy. Greg, right?”

I wasn’t going to jump on a little old lady for deadnaming me, especially since she hadn’t seen me since before I transitioned. “I’m Grace now. It’s good to see you, Dot.”

She laughed. “You look righter as Grace than Greg. You never did fit in your skin but now you do.”

“Thank you, Dot. That’s very kind of you.”

“Ah, nonsense.” She waved a hand. “You should go and get your breakfast, young lady.”

I found a booth away from the door and sat down. A menu appeared from over my shoulder as the waitress approached. She stared for a moment. I knew the look. I’d seen it time and again early in my transition. It was a look that said, “you almost look like what I expect, but not quite.” I also caught sight of the ally pin.

I cleared my throat as I took the menu.

“I-I’m so sorry, Grace,” she said. “I overheard Dot, but how could she tell? You look so different.”

Her voice sent a chill down my spine. I’d been so wrapped in my own head that I didn’t recognize her at first. “Sophie?”

“Yeah.” She seemed to shrink. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m a different person now,” I said. “Maybe you are, too?”

She nodded. “I hope so.” She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and gave a half-hearted laugh. “What can I get you?”

When I’d finished my breakfast, Sophie returned with the check and asked, “Are you going to see Jason today?”

I nodded. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”

“Would it be okay…I mean…can I…?”

I took her hand in mine. “Would you like to join me?” I asked. “I honestly don’t know if I can face him alone.”

Sophie sniffled and nodded. “You going now?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me five minutes.”

She went in the back and came back minus the apron in just a couple minutes. Judging by the yelling, it wasn’t appreciated, but Dot settled it with a single “tut.”

Sophie rode in the rental with me. She was quiet at first, but I could tell she had something to say.

“I…I was terrible to you and Jason.”

“You weren’t the only one,” I said. The taunts and names and bullying we endured were a constant of my high school experience.

“I felt so guilty about it…I drank to drown the guilt. All it got me was two DUIs, a totaled car, a suspended license and a year in lockup.”

“What did you have to feel guilty about? Yeah, you called us names, but that night, even, you stood up for—”

“I should’ve called you — warned you that Stephen was coming.”

“How could you have?”

We walked through the gate. “I…got your number from your dad the day before the dance. He wanted me to ‘talk some sense into you.’”

“I’m not surprised.”

“You haven’t been here yet, have you?”

I shook my head “no” and Sophie led the way to Jason. She’d obviously been here before.

“Jason,” I said, “I miss you. Came back just to talk to you. I told you I’d transition as soon as I left home, and I did. I’m the real me now. I know we can’t get married now, but when I transitioned, I took your last name. I didn’t want to be a Williams anymore. I hope that’s okay.”

The tears rolled down my face as I knelt beside the headstone. “Jason Baxter, gone too soon. He loved with brave ferocity and was loved in equal measure.”

There were fresh flowers in the cup on the headstone, along with a faded pride flag. I let my fingers trace the letters on the stone. “I thought his parents disowned him but…this looks like an expensive headstone.”

Sophie knelt beside me and put her arm around my shoulders. “They did. There was just a little marker here with his name on a plastic card. I bought the headstone. It was the only way I knew to apologize to him.”

She broke down into sobs, and I could no longer hold back my own. We held each other until we were cried out. She kept repeating, “I’m so sorry,” into my shoulder the whole time.

I stood and helped her to her feet. “I get it, Sophie, but you were a kid…we were all kids. You can’t blame yourself for what your brother did.”

“He saw the two of you leaving Homecoming when he picked me up and started saying crazy shit. He couldn’t wait to drop me at home so he could go after you.”

I looked into her eyes and saw someone who was haunted. “You are not to blame, but I forgive you.”

“If you knew he was coming you could’ve gotten away. Maybe if I’d called the police sooner….”

“Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve…you’re not doing yourself any favors. You have to let go of the guilt. Sophie, listen. Your brother’s in prison where he belongs. I was still in the hospital at the time, but I heard your testimony helped put him there. You’ve done everything you can and more than you should.”

As we walked back to the car, I said, “That dance was the first time I wore a dress in public. I was so scared, but Jason was sweet. The jocks taking tickets didn’t want to let us in until you told them off. I think you said something about my dress being pretty, but I don’t remember for sure.”

“I said ‘He has more balls than all of you put together to show up in a pretty dress, so let them in.’ I was already feeling bad for jumping on the bandwagon to bully you two when you looked so happy together. I was jealous that it wasn’t like that for me with my boyfriends.”

“High school romance seems pretty meaningless now, though, doesn’t it?”

She laughed, the first genuine laugh I’d heard from her all day. “It does. Hey, are you in contact with your folks?”

“No. The last time Mom called was six years ago to cry about how I didn’t make any grandkids before I ‘threw away the body God gave me,’ and the last time Dad called was on my birthday four years ago. The first thing he did after saying ‘Happy Birthday’ was deadname and misgender me.

“I told him, ‘Your son, Greg, is dead. If you can’t deal with your daughter Grace as I am, then you’re dead to me, too.’ We haven’t spoken since.”

“That sucks.” Sophie leaned her head on my shoulder. “If you want, I’ll be your sister. My family shunned me after I testified against Stephen. They still won’t answer calls or texts, and anything I mail to them gets sent back. I gave up a couple years ago.”

I gave her a ride back to Dot’s and we exchanged numbers. “I’m glad I ran into you, and I’m glad you turned into the person you are,” I said.

“I’m glad you don’t hate me, and I’m glad I got to finally meet the real you,” she said. “Will you be back?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Either way, keep in touch, right?”

“Right.”

I drove back to the airport feeling a mixture of relief and sorrow at leaving. I wasn’t sure whether I’d make another homecoming trip, but at least I knew it wasn’t as dire as I’d feared.

Trunk Stories

Hawkers

prompt: Start or end your story in a bustling street food market.

available at Reedsy

The din of conversations in dozens of languages and hawkers, the scents of seared meat, vegetables, grains, and unknowable ingredients, together with the vibrant colors and varied body-plans of the multitude of species washed over Mara in a tsunami of sensory overload.

“Well?” Kintari asked. He was a munerin, a small, fuzzy creature with a segmented body, twelve compound eyes, a soft, beak-like mouth, and a pair of expressive anntenae. He stretched to move his head up to her waist level, antennae in a questioning pose.

“You were right, K.” Mara was average height at 165 centimeters, with the kind of long, thin build that came from a childhood spent in dance and gymnastics. Her orangish-red hair was pulled back into a wavy ponytail. She keyed a transaction into her comm device and sent it to his. “I love this. Worth losing a bet over, that’s for sure.”

“I haven’t fulfilled it yet,” he said, his antennae waving. “I promised the most memorable meal, and you haven’t even eaten.”

“Don’t have to. This is already it.” Mara scanned the stalls. She didn’t recognize a single item. “How do I know what’s safe to eat?”

“Follow me.” Kintari wove through the crowd with a grace that didn’t match his stubby legs and round abdomen. Mara found it hard to keep up with him in the crowd where bodies ranged from the size of Kintari up to behemoths that reminded her of feathered dragons, nearly three meters tall.

After working her way through the crowd, she found Kintari standing at one of the stalls. His antennae were swishing about in anticipation. “Mara! Look at these.”

The stall was serving what looked like a white carrot with an orange sea anemone where the greens should be. “Uh, what is it?”

“Riiki-tano. It’s a delicacy from my home world.”

“Animal, plant or fungus?”

“Kind of animal, kind of plant,” Kintari said. “It grows from a seed, sets down the big taproot in the arsenic-rich, hot volcanic mud. The top part is meaty, and what it uses to pull nutrients it can’t get from the mud in, including small creatures.”

“It grows in arsenic, and you eat it?”

“We do. We have an organ specific to filtering out heavy metals. But that’s not why I wanted you to see this. Put your ident chip close to the box there.”

She did as he’d said and the box displayed the menu, consisting of the one item prepared three ways. All three flashed deep red.

“The shorter the wavelength, the safer it is for your physiology. That way you know what’s safe based on the amount of risk you wish to take. This is…possibly fatally toxic for you.”

“That’s too bad,” she lied, “I wanted to try your home world delicacy.”

“If you still want to try something from my home world, I’m getting some tano-lokaro. It’s a plant, and no heavy metals.”

Mara followed Kintari to another stand where he picked up one of the dishes they offered. When the box responded in violet, she ordered two, one with a whitish sauce and the other with a green sauce. From there it was a weaving journey between the stalls, buying things that looked promising, until she realized she already had too much food.

They sat at one of the communal tables. Kintari had even more food than she did. She started with the tano-lokaro. The taste reminded her of kohlrabi and mushrooms with a hint of a peppery aftertaste. The whitish sauce was bland, but the green sauce had an astringent tang to it. “This is really good, but why didn’t you get the other thing?”

“The riiki-tano?” He shuddered. “I ate it once, and I never have to do it again. I think people eat it just for bragging rights or something. I refuse to believe any munerin actually likes it, but they’ll keep buying it and eating it forever.”

Mara noticed a fair bit of attention on her as she tried each dish. As perhaps the first human they’d seen, she was an obvious target of curiosity.

“I noticed that every stand makes only one thing. Is that just a traditional thing or…?”

“Regulations. Limiting each stall to one item spreads sales across more vendors.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

Much to Mara’s surprise, Kintari finished every bite of his pile of food. They dropped the disposables in the recycler and Kintari moved as if to leave, but Mara stopped him.

“I want to wander the entire thing,” she said.

They did, taking their time. Mara made a mental map of the market as they went, taking note of things she wanted to try. When they’d explored the market, they walked back out to the main station, where the quiet felt both comforting and overwhelming after the hubbub.

“Thanks for taking the time, K. You don’t mind me calling you K, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“Not many cargo pilots would take the time to lead a stranger around a station. Not to mention make good on a bet to a species you’ve never seen before about an unforgettable meal.”

“The most unforgettable meal.”

“You delivered.” Mara sighed. “I guess I should get my bags from the bay lockers and find a place to stay.”

“You’ve decided to stay on the station? I thought you said you were exploring — station hopping.”

“I was, but I think I found my new home.” Mara smiled. “I saw some empty stalls in the food market, and I want to set up a chippy.”

“I don’t know what that is, but I wish you luck.”

“When you come back to this station, look for me in the food market. If I’m set up by then, I’ll give you something truly memorable.”

By the time Kintari had returned to the station, Mara’s chip stand was in full swing. With every species that had come by — so far — the box showed anywhere from greenish blue to violet. As such, there were people of every known species stopping by for what had become famous by word-of-mouth.

Mara saw him waiting in the line, his antennae fluttering. She turned to the be-tentacled creature behind her that was operating three fryers and stuffing paper wrappers for two other orders at the same time.

“Hey, Lindl, do you think you can handle the crowd by yourself for a bit?”

“Yeah, boss.” One of her twelve eyestalks turned to look directly at Mara. “I’m in a rhythm now. Is that your pilot friend you were talking about?”

“Sure enough. I’m pulling two orders, one mayo, one red and one green chutney. I’ll be back after we eat.”

She took the paper cones and walked down the line to where Kintari waited. “Come on, let’s get a seat.”

“But I haven’t checked my ident for—”

“I have munerin customers every day. You have any unusual allergies?”

“No.”

“Perfect. Let’s eat.”

“What are these?”

“Potatoes. They’re a tuber — a kind of node that grows on the root of a specific plant.”

He started with a plain chip and squirmed in his seat. He followed up with dipping a chip in the mayo. “This is rich. What is this?”

“Eggs and oil, mostly.” She explained the mayo, then the tamarind chutney and the cilantro chutney, and convinced him to try both together.

His first bite with the mixed chutneys made his antennae stick straight up and a shudder ran down his whole body as evidenced by the wave of fur standing on end and settling back down. He seemed at a loss for words, so Mara encouraged him to continue eating.

He’d finished both orders with no help from her in just a few minutes. “That’s…wow. No wonder your stand is so busy.”

“It almost wasn’t,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The first few days I didn’t get any customers at all. The only chips I made were for myself.”

“What changed?”

“I was ready to call it a bust, so I started frying up chips and offering them free. Before I knew it, I was out of stock and had to close until the next shipment came in. By the time they did, I had a line before I even turned on the fryers.

“Hired Lindl, the tentacle woman — I can’t pronounce her species — that day. She seemed fascinated with the process, so I offered her a job, and she’s rocked it ever since.”

“What are your shipping prices like?”

“Fair, I guess. I go through around a thousand kilos of potatoes a week — 1,644.87 standard cargo weights. And that doesn’t include paper, mayo, chutneys, ketchup, and so on. Call it two thousand every Earth week — so every nine unit cycles. And it’s all coming from Earth.”

“How much are you paying?”

“Four-thousand credits per week.”

Kintari’s antennae spread to the sides. “Hmmm. One of the small carriers?”

“Yeah, same one a lot of the stalls are using.” Mara shrugged. “I mean, there’s just not much call for Earth freight out here…other than me.”

He pulled out his comm and began scrolling through data screens. “I bet I can get your freight here, two-thousand weight, every nine cycles, for under two-thousand credits.”

“Really? You like to gamble, huh?”

“I do.”

“Fifty credits again?”

“No. If I can’t, I’ll pay your entire next cargo fee. If I can, a free order of chips every time I come here.”

“You’re on.”

Mara went back to work, sparing an occasional glance at the munerin pilot talking to several other hawkers. The food market closed for the cycle, and she sent Lindl home while she cleaned up and prepared for the next.

Kintari approached. “If you give me your shipment details, I’ll have your orders here for 1,800 credits every nine cycles.”

“How?”

“Larger ship, and instead of just picking up one order at Earth and delivering, I can pick up orders for twelve other stalls. Means I can run out here with a full ship and return with a full ship of ore every trip.”

Mara laughed. “Once again, I’m glad I lost a bet to you.”

His antennae dipped. “My pleasure.”

“Wait a minute…how many of the other twelve hawkers did you make the same bet with?”

His antennae bobbed up and down. “All of them.”

Trunk Stories

Now Hiring Heroes

prompt: Start your story with someone looking out the window and seeing the first snowfall of the season.

available at Reedsy

Jorge looked up from the envelope to watch the large, fat snow as it fell, sticking on the grass like a blanket but melting on contact with the asphalt. The first snow of the year was like so many others before. It wouldn’t last past noon. With the temperature just above freezing and an expected high ten degrees warmer, it would rain all afternoon.

His one-cup coffee maker finished its cycle, and he took the cup to the small breakfast nook. On a normal day, he’d get into uniform, pour his coffee into a travel mug and drink it on his way to the station. The days hadn’t been normal in a while.

After what he’d done, he’d had no luck finding a job with any police force in the region. As much as he hated the idea of leaving the Pacific Northwest, he began considering returning home to Puerto Rico to find work.

The envelope in his hand pulled his attention. The logo of the International League of Heroes above the words, “Now Hiring Heroes” adorned the envelope, and he thought it might be asking for donations.

Inside, though, was a letter, and Jorge knew it wasn’t boiler-plate, as there were too many details about his search for a department that would hire him. He read the whole thing, turned it over to see if there was something he was missing before he read it again.

Not only was the ILH offering him a job, but the letter also made it sound like they wanted a new super. He’d read a conspiracy theory about a “super serum” that was being used to create superheroes and supervillains but brushed it off as nonsense on the level of the faked moon landing theory.

The letter included strict language about non-disclosure, with the caveat that calling the number meant he agreed to those terms.

Whatever, he thought, I’m not finding any other work, and the pay’s good. I can at least see what the job is. Probably a desk assignment, but better than nothing.

He dialed the number which was answered on the first ring…by StarElla, one of the most powerful supers and current head of the ILH. He recognized her voice and slight Irish lilt from all the media she’d been in. “Good morning, Jorge,” she said. “I’m glad you decided to call. I’m StarElla and I look forward to meeting you.”

“Well, I didn’t expect to talk to you directly, but…uh…I was wondering what kind of job you could want me for? I mean, I’m a cop, and that’s all I’ve ever done. I guess I could work a desk or do detective work—”

She cut him off. “We want you to join the ILH as one of the supers.”

“You…what? I’m not…I’m just a guy. No supers in my family at all.”

“Then you would be the first in your family.”

“But…supers are born, not made. Unless you’re saying….”

StarElla laughed. “Some are born, but only if their parents are both supers, and even then, it’s one-in-four odds. The rest are made, and you have the qualities we’re looking for in a new member.”

“You mean the super serum is real?!”

“Not the way people seem to think.” She took a deep breath on the other end. “Jorge, if you do this, your entire life will change.”

“Will I have to move?”

“Just a couple months for the procedure and training. We could use a super in your neck of the woods, as you Americans say.”

“You know why I can’t find work as a cop anymore, right?”

“I do. No one else in the League knows the details.”

“Maybe I am a traitor, though. I mean, I didn’t even hesitate when Internal Affairs asked for my help. Yeah, I helped IA put away a dozen dirty cops, but now I’m the bad guy.”

“That’s exactly why I want you. Jorge, as privileged as the information I’ve already given you is, I have something even more secret to share with you…if you want to help the League, that is.”

Jorge sighed. “You don’t even have to say it. I know what you’re hinting at, and if bad cops are dangerous, bad supers in the League are a thousand times worse. I’ll help.”

The lab hidden deep under the Alps near Airolo, Switzerland looked like something out of a movie…except for all the medical equipment that would outfit an Intensive Care unit in any hospital in the world.

StarElla was there to walk him through the procedure. She explained it all to him as the doctor attached the EKG, pulse oximeter, and BP monitors to the machines that beeped and hummed.

“The doctor’s already examined your DNA and determined the best changes to make. She’ll inject the nano bots that will edit the DNA in all your cells, beginning in your bone marrow and working out from there. After that, it’s a blast of EMP to shut down the bots, and a few weeks of training while your body clears them out.”

“So, is this how supervillains are made, too?”

“Unfortunately, most of them are made from black market bots that aren’t tuned for an individual’s DNA. There’s an even chance of getting a superpower or ending up disabled, disfigured, or even dead.”

“Fifty-fifty odds? Why take the chance?”

“Desperation, usually.”

“What happens if they don’t have an EMP device to shut down the bots?”

“Usually, they reach a point where the body begins to destroy them faster than they can replicate, but it can be months of illness before they’re cleared. In more rare cases, they don’t stop editing. Remember The Blob?”

“The guy that was a collection of limbs and mouths on a ten-foot ball of flesh? The one that ate his way through a jail wall, and ate four guards while he was at it?”

“That’s the one. She kept mutating, growing, and the constant hunger and pain drove her mad…that and the seven partial brains besides her original all getting and sending signals contradicting each other. The court found her unfit to stand trial, but sided with her sister when she requested euthanasia.”

“Yeesh.”

The injection into the marrow of both femurs was excruciating, even with the anesthetics he’d been shot up with. He sucked air through his teeth and did his best not to complain.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said as she forced the fluid into his bones, “but you have to be awake for this, and there’s no way to give you a spinal since we need to move you around.”

“I get it, doc,” he squeezed out through gritted teeth. “I’m Jorge, what’s your name? Come here often?”

She laughed. “I’m Doctor Singh, but you can call me Annie, it’s short for Ankita.”

“Nice to meet you, Annie. Is…is my butt supposed to feel like it’s burning?”

“Referred pain. You’ll be getting plenty of that over the next few hours while the bots even out. We’ll try to help out as much as we can.” She removed the long needles from his thighs and rolled a cart with a screen over his legs and adjusted the bed to a seated position.

“How long does it usually take for the powers to show up?” he asked.

“Anywhere from six to seventy-eight hours, so far. If you like, you can watch the spread of the bots on the monitor,” she said, pointing at the screen she was watching.

Jorge shook his head. Now that the injections were done, the pain had settled into something like a bad case of sciatica. “I think I’d rather focus on something other than my body right now.”

The pain began to ramp up. It felt like all his bones were on fire. When he could no longer speak from the pain, the doctor injected something into his IV. “This will take the edge off, and should put you right to sleep,” she said.

He felt the cooled liquid from the injection enter his vein, but nothing happened to change how he felt. “How—how long does it take?”

“It should be instant.” She went back and forth between the monitor and his vitals, before injecting a second, and then third dose. When he continued to watch her, she said, “You should be comatose from that much.”

“The pain in my bones seems to be settling down,” he said, glad of the reprieve. He felt as though all his muscles were on fire, and his joints felt as though they’d been sprained. “I feel like I’m being run over by a truck now.”

Ankita nodded to someone he couldn’t see, and they wheeled him into another room where she pulled off all the EKG leads and pads. “Let me help you onto the table. We need to do an MRI right away.”

Moving was difficult, but he made it to the MRI and the bed he’d been on was wheeled out. The machine was claustrophobic, with a steady thumping noise as the table moved him deeper and deeper within, capturing a full-body scan.

The thumping stopped and the table extended back out. Jorge struggled to sit up and look at himself. He hadn’t been in bad shape, but he’d been in better shape when he was younger. Now, though, it seemed he had almost no body fat, instead boasting well-defined, whippy muscle.

“Whoa, feeling dizzy,” he said.

The doctor helped him back to his bed, replaced the EKG pads and leads, and wheeled him back into the other room. “With all the work your body’s doing, your blood sugar is probably low.” She pricked his finger and squeezed. “Huh.” She did it again. Then a third time, before looking at her watch.

“What’s wrong?”

“Forty-three minutes. That’s the new low time for powers to first appear. I thought so from the MRI, but this confirms it,” she said, holding his finger.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t get a blood drop from you, because you heal too fast. Matches what I saw in the scan. Your bones look like they’ve suffered a million hairline fractures and healed back. That means, of course, your bones are a great deal denser than they were. Seems like your body took the bots to be injuries, and with the edited DNA went to work repairing.”

“So, are they all gone, now?” he asked. Aside from the dizzy spell, he was feeling fine, if a little weak.

“It seems so, but we’re still going to EMP you.” She set a tray with orange juice and sandwiches in his lap. “You should eat this on the way.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. The EMP room contained a fine-mesh wire cage. His bed was rolled inside, and a single thump sound echoed through the room. “That’s the fastest we’ve ever processed a super,” Ankita said. “Still hungry?”

After another meal, this one far larger than any he’d eaten before, Jorge felt fine and was released from the doctor’s care. She told him how to get to StarElla’s office and saw him out the door.

The flight on the private jet home was mostly silent. Jorge had settled into a 30,000 calorie per day diet just to keep up. He’d spent six weeks learning the ins and outs of the League, and of detective work. He’d met a few of the “big names” in the League, and many regional heroes he’d never heard of. Like them, he would be stationed at his home, and available for calls in the region.

StarElla woke from her nap and stretched, hard enough for her bioluminescence from which she drew her name to shimmer through her clothes. She turned her seat around to face him. “I know we haven’t talked about it at all since that first call, but it’s time to fill you in.”

“I’m all ears, boss.”

“The League knows El Culebro, the new regional super with enhanced strength, durability, and super-regeneration. They don’t know that Jorge Colón, the man behind the mask, is the start of the League’s own Internal Affairs department.

“I want a full investigation of all the main members, and everyone that works at League headquarters, starting with me and Doctor Singh — the only other person besides you I know isn’t part of what’s going on. I’ll have plenty of assignments and trainings for you to attend that will cover your activities coming and going to HQ.”

“What, exactly, am I looking for?”

“Anything that would compromise a member; make them prone to do something they wouldn’t normally do for money.”

“You still haven’t told me what’s really going on,” Jorge said. “If you continue to not say, I might think you have something to hide.”

The smile that crossed her face was sad. “Four times out of the last nine that I was away from Airolo for more than a day there has been a theft of nanobots from the vault. The last time an EMP generator was stolen as well.”

“How much are we talking?”

“Enough to build an army.”

Jorge sighed. “I guess it’s too late to back out now.”

“Until your cover is blown,” StarElla said, “you’re the best bet I’ve got. It helps that you blew through the process so fast — it has everyone convinced that’s why I brought you in and that you’re my new pet project.”

“Until my cover is blown, I’ll be El Culebro, StarElla’s pet project. After that, though, things might get rough.”

“I’ll have your back when they do, Jorge. And when it’s just us, call me Sinead.”

“Oh. I—I thought your name was Ella.”

She smiled. “So does most everyone else, except the inner circle. Keep it under your hat, though.”

Jorge stuffed his hands into the pockets of his hoody and felt something there. He pulled it out to see envelope that had set him on this journey. “Now Hiring Heroes,” it still said.

He showed her the envelope and said, “I’m here. Now, I just need to live up to it.”

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