Category: Trunk Stories

prompt: A court or disciplinary hearing is taking place — but the person accused does not know what they’re apologizing for.

available at Reedsy

“Allow me to make the facts of the case clear.” The newly elected prosecutor, Hiratha of clan Ororos, stood at her designated spot, addressing the panel of judges. Like her, they were covered in a fine layer of fur, wearing stylish sashes. Hiratha extended one of her six upper tentacles, spreading the six small, grasper tentacles at the end, pointing in the manner of her people at the dock.

Maxwell sat in a cage in the dock. He was meant to be standing, but it wasn’t built for someone as tall as him. He was the only human in the chamber, surrounded by the fluffy oraxans. Max was made uncomfortable by the confines of the dock, the chilly temperature of the room, and the prospect of being found a criminal without being told what he was suspected of.

Hiratha swayed all six of her upper tentacles. “Maxwell of clan Martinez, did the Department of Genetics provide you with a suitable match?”

“Who … what?!” Max looked at Hiratha, smaller than her campaign ads made her seem, trying to determine if this was all an elaborate prank or she was serious and insane.

“Answer the question.” Hiratha’s tentacles stiffened at her sides, pointing straight down. “Did the Department of Genetics provide you with a suitable match?”

Max wanted to stand, but the cage was too small. “I don’t understand what you are asking.”

Hiratha extended a tentacle behind herself without looking and picked up the sheet of processed cellulose on the table behind her. She held it out where it could be seen by the judges and the accused. “Did you receive this notice of genetic suitability?”

Max looked at the paper she held. “Yes, but—”

“A simple yes or no will suffice.” She put the paper back on the desk behind her.

“But I’m—”

“Hold your comments while I am questioning you.” Hiratha gestured at the judges. “Please forgive me, honorable judges, but his continued outbursts point to his disrespect and disdain for cultural norms.”

Max groaned. This was ridiculous.

“Maxwell of clan Martinez—”

“My name is Maxwell Luis Martinez-Orwell,” Max cut her off. “No clans, just family names. But please, just call me Max.”

A shudder ran down all Hiratha’s tentacles, the oraxan equivalent of a sigh. “Very well. Max, when did you become of citizen of the Slimark Republic of Planets?”

“Day 382 of period 854. It was my seventeenth birthday in Earth years, and I’m thirty-four now.”

“You have had more than nine periods since then.” Hiratha waved her tentacles in an inquisitive gesture that Max was certain was acting and not sincere. “Would you consider nine periods a reasonable amount of time to acclimate to a culture and its laws? That is, after passing the citizenship tests and proving your knowledge of that culture and those laws, is nine periods long enough to acclimate?”

“I grew up here,” he said. “I was born here, since my folks were ambassadors.”

“Answer the question, Maxwell Luis Martinez-Orwell. Is nine periods long enough to acclimate?”

“Sure. I guess.” Max sighed.

“When did you learn about reproduction — specifically oraxan reproductive cycles and customs?” she asked.

“I guess I was still a young kid,” he said. “I was a bit precocious in my curiosity about where babies come from, whether it was humans, puppies, or oraxans.”

“So that was before you became a citizen?”

“Yes.” Max leaned against the side of the cage. “Where are you going with this?”

“I’m asking the questions here.” She snapped her tentacles as his teachers had done, creating the sound of six whips simultaneously cracking.

Max sat up straight and folded his hands in his lap. He chuckled at himself internally for becoming a schoolboy at the sound.

“What,” she asked, “happens during the thirteen days beginning on day 211 of the period?”

“Life festival,” Max answered.

“And what does the Festival of Life celebrate?”

“When oraxans enter their fertile cycle.” Max leaned back. “This is youngling school stuff.”

“Exactly.” Hiratha paused a moment before continuing. “Do you know what the Department of Genetics does?”

“I guess they find suitable matches for reproduction?” Max cocked his head. “I know oraxans don’t do the whole family for love thing.”

“Your guess is good, but it goes further. The Department of Genetics finds the matches in a given geographical area with the most diverse genetics; those who are most dissimilar and most distantly related.” She extended a tentacle with spread graspers toward him. “Do you know why they do that?”

“Oh, I remember this from school,” he said. “During the era of the First Republic, people didn’t travel very far, and the unmanaged fertility cycles led to in-breeding and the propagation of genetic illnesses.”

“Maxwell Luis Martinez-Orwell, you have admitted to knowing oraxan culture, the reasons for the Festival of Life, and the importance of the work of the Department of Genetics. Despite knowing all that, though, you failed to follow the instructions given to you for the most recent Festival of Life. I hereby request that the judges find you culpable and award punitive damages in the amount of 190,000 regals.” Hiratha whipped her tentacles again and moved behind the table to sit.

The lead judge said, “The accused may now speak on their own behalf.”

Max heaved a sigh. “Okay, first of all, I’m not a suitable genetic match for anyone on this planet. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m human, not oraxan, and the other humans in the embassy are all related to me.”

He gestured toward the prosecutor’s table where the decree still sat. “Yeah, I got that. I figured it had to be a clerical error. One thing the Republic is very good at is bureaucracy. I figured it would get straightened around, no problem, once they figured out they matched a human for breeding.”

Max looked around the chamber. “I still don’t know what law I’ve been charged with breaking, and I have no representation, nor was I asked if I wanted any. I can afford an attorney, so please, can we put this trial on hold long enough that I can hire one?”

When no answer was forthcoming, he continued. “Look, I’m not sure what the crime is, but the guilty party is the Department of Genetics, or whoever in that department made the error. Why the prosecutor is coming after me so hard makes no sense.”

One of the judge panel members spoke up. “This is not a criminal court, this is a civil matter, and there is no prosecutor here, just the aggrieved, and you, the accused.”

Max closed his eyes and shook his head. “Wait, wait wait wait. I got bundled into a van, stashed in a cell, then locked into a literal cage in the courtroom for a civil case?!” He took a deep breath and did his best not to scream.

“Okay, if this is civil court, why all that and why am I locked in this cage?” he asked.

“This is standard procedure for any case which could lead to the aggrieved being injured by the accused or vice versa.” The lead judge swayed his tentacles in an apologetic manner. “Seeing that this case does not include any sort of violence, you may exit the protective chamber, assuming you and the aggrieved both promise not to injure each other?”

“Of course, your honors,” Max said.

Hiratha agreed with a gesture and the door to the cage opened.

“May I speak directly to the prosec—the aggrieved?” he asked the judges after exiting the cage and stretching.

“You may speak to and question the aggrieved. This is your time to do so.”

“Hiratha of clan Ororos, can you admit this isn’t about me? You’ve never seen me before today. It’s not even about the fact I didn’t show up to meet you. You’re upset that you missed a chance to breed, because the Department of Genetics assigned you to someone that shouldn’t even be in consideration due to being a different species.” Max let his shoulders droop and softened his gaze.

“I’m very sorry you missed out on a chance to reproduce this cycle. You seem like a driven woman … uh, oraxan, and there’s bound to be a good choice for you on the next go-round. I wish you all the luck in that, and if you choose to bring a case against the Department of Genetics, I will back you all the way. What they did by matching you with me wasn’t right at all.”

Hiratha pulled her tentacles in tight. “When you didn’t show up at the appointed time to the coupling center, I thought maybe my match had seen me and run away. I know I’m not the most attractive. It wasn’t until I dug into it that I found out I’d been matched to the only human citizen of the Republic in thirty light years distance.”

“But you still chose to take me to court, to hold someone accountable for your hurt.” Max smiled at her with a sad smile. “I understand. You’re a prosecutor, so that’s what you know. We have a saying, ‘When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.’ You just did what you know how to do.”

He straightened up. “That said, I can now see that I’ve caused you pain, though it was never my intention. Hiratha, I beg your forgiveness for my insensitivity. I’m not sure how money will heal the hurt, but 190,000 regals is far more than I make in an entire period.”

Max looked at Hiratha. “If it is amenable to you, I would like to offer my sincerest apologies in the form of a dinner at my home. Any human or oraxan dish you would like, to be prepared and served by me, using the skills I’ve acquired working in the embassy kitchen.”

The judges conferred for a moment, before the lead judge said, “We have a counteroffer of a meal. As the harm inflicted was not physical in nature, and was not intentional, we are reluctant to hold the accused to account. Will the aggrieved accept the counteroffer?”

Hiratha stood and walked to the front of the table. “I—I will … on the condition that Max agrees to testify when I charge the Department of Genetics with malpractice and dereliction of duty.”

“I will, Hiratha. I’ll help you hammer that particular nail.”

prompt: Start or end your story with two friends who become enemies/rivals, or vice versa.

available at Reedsy

Saying that the war was going poorly would be a massive understatement. If one were to say that the war was a horrifying shit-show, they would be closer to the mark, but still underselling it. We were losing, simple as that.

My entire shake, except me, were killed as soon as our dropship made landfall and opened to deploy. Three branches of eighteen warriors each gone in an instant. I was still in shock, covered in the purple slick of my fellows’ blood and bits of destroyed armor when they came into the dropship and captured me.

They were efficient in their movements, disarming and securing me before I could gather myself enough to fight back. Beneath the shock, shame began to build. This wasn’t my first battle, but I froze like a fresh recruit. Me, a decorated warrior, officer, and veteran. I thought I’d been through everything in battle that could happen. I’d just never seen such devastation in less than time than a single breath.

I spoke their language a little bit. It was expected of an officer like myself. It turned out that at least half the enemy shake spoke my language. We would never allow that, as the threat of enemy propaganda grows exponentially with every new possible target. At least, that’s what our military doctrine said.

With half their troops as possible targets, though, our steady propaganda barrage should’ve turned them all if that was true. That realization made me wonder what else we had wrong. If we could correct our mistaken assumptions, we could turn the war around.

These creatures were like nothing we’d ever fought. They wore armor on their heads and torsos, but left their limbs exposed. Of course, hitting a limb would injure them, but they could often still fight.

At the same time, their weaponry, though crude, smashed through our armor, and even punctured the hulls of our dropships. If that wasn’t bad enough, they had hyper-maneuverable flying craft that could attack our dropships in the atmosphere and hit them with chemical explosives.

After securing all four of my graspers with self-locking, polymer bands, they loaded me into a ground vehicle. With no viewports in the section of the vehicle I was in, it was a disorienting, bumpy ride for what seemed like an entire day with three of the infant-skinned creatures guarding me.

I was unloaded at a prison. At least these creatures had the same sort of ideas about a prison as we did; high walls, guard towers, and I guessed the strands of wire coiled along the top were their equivalent of our stun beams that kept prisoners in.

That’s when I met him. His skin was a deep brown, and he had some lines around his eyes. Maybe they just don’t come into their adult skin until later in life. If that’s the case, though, then we’re losing a war against children.

He cut the polymer bands off my limbs and offered his grasper. “I’m Captain Jerome Morse, but you can just call me J,” he said.

I looked at the grasper, unsure what to do. I extended one of my graspers the same way and said, “Grisshk ix Pikshis, Commander of the Red-Sky-Over-Green-Water Shake … or at least I used to be.”

He grabbed my grasper in his own and shook it up and down a couple times. “Welcome, Commander. If you don’t mind, I’ll have one of my troops take you to the medics to get checked out, then off to the showers to clean up.”

The creature that checked my health knew enough about our anatomy to pick out that my fourth heart-segment had a murmur in the second chamber. I’d had that since hatching. It wasn’t a threat to my health, but I’d had actual doctors miss it in the past.

After washing the blood of my compatriots off, I was given a drab outfit to wear. My jailers had whisked away my uniform and armor.

Captain Morse joined me after that in a sitting lounge my cell shared with several others. It didn’t feel nearly as much like prison as I expected. “I suspect the accommodations are due to my rank?”

“Well, there are perks to being an officer, yes,” Morse said, “but the enlisted have all the same amenities. The only difference is that the officer’s cells are mostly empty.”

“Not surprising.” I sat in one of the available seats and took in the room around me. There was a way to escape, I just needed to find it.

“We sent a message to your people, to let them know you’re alive and well. We also put your soldiers on a drone ship with instructions on where to pick them up so they can be returned home for interment.” He leaned on the armrest of the seat he occupied. “I don’t know long it will be before we’re sure that messages are getting through, but once we are, we’ll allow you to send recorded messages home to your family.”

“Heavily redacted, I suppose,” I said.

“If we think you’re trying to sneak information out, yes.” He sat up straight and leaned forward. “Look, Commander. I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you yet, but that’s no reason for me to be a dick.”

“Trust?” I asked. “You speak of trust with an enemy?”

“I do,” he said. “Trust is earned, regardless of allegiance or flag. I will do my best to earn your trust, and I hope you’ll do the same.”

“By telling you about our military disposition and plan, I suppose?”

He laughed. “Hardly. If M.I. thought you had valuable intel, you wouldn’t be here.” He stood and stretched. “I’ll let you get settled in. Don’t try too hard to escape, I’d hate to see you hurt yourself on your first day.”

I tried to escape. That was my first of dozens of attempts, none of which got me far, and most of which went unnoticed — or at least unmentioned — by the guards and Captain Morse.

He came in every day, and even though I could feel his animosity, he did his best to be professional and not let it show. We settled into a routine after a few day cycles: the latest news on the war from my people, then from his, a meal, record a message to send home and play any messages received, then talk about everything and nothing.

“It’s all propaganda, you know,” I said.

“What is?” he asked.

“The news about the war. That’s why my people say we’re winning, your people say you’re winning.”

Instead of disagreeing or arguing about it, he turned the news of his own people back on. Rather than talking about the state of the war, they were covering protests against the government, along with government officials trying to mollify the crowds. Not the sort of thing a state propaganda machine would report so openly on.

After that day, I ignored the propaganda from my world, and we spent more time watching news and entertainment from J’s world. It gave me more insight into these creatures. They still looked weird with their baby skin and missing arms, but they were just people like us.

We discovered that certain fruits of this world were intoxicating to me. There were some days that we would close out with intoxicating drinks, his some sort of poison, mine an orange or yellow fruit juice.

The war was getting closer to my home world with every passing day. One day, J came in and sat down with a serious look on his face. It was still early in the day, but he broke out the intoxicants and poured us both drinks.

“What’s on your mind, J?” I asked.

“Good news and bad news,” he said.

“My home world has fallen, and the war is over,” I guessed. “But that’s not bad news for you, I’d think.”

“Well, G, it actually is, because it means you’re going home. No more escape attempts, although the one with the cleaning cart was enjoyable.” He poured us both another drink. “Here’s to hoping to see you again under better circumstances.”

“You say that as if I’m leaving right away.”

He nodded. “The property sergeant is getting your uniform and armor packed up, and we’ve converted one of your dropships into a shuttle that will take you all back to your transport ship in orbit.”

“We have a transport ship in orbit?”

“Yeah, ever since they surrendered last month,” he said. “About the same time your escape attempts became more a matter of habit than real attempts to get away. I get the feeling that you might enjoy my company.”

“I might, J, I might. How long will we have to vacate our home world?” I asked.

“What?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve won. Will you not take over our worlds?”

The look of confusion on his face was clear. “No. What? We don’t do that. If anything, we’ll help you rebuild and make sure you’re not left in a position where your only option is to start another war.”

Originally written for HFY, then tied to prompt: Write about an encounter with someone new to you who changed your life forever.

Not all who wander are lost, but I am. The thought echoed through my mind like a mantra, telling myself over and over again how completely fucked I was. Lost in every sense of the word. I didn’t know where I was on the planet geographically, which planet I was on or even if I was still in the Milky Way galaxy. My emotions were a jumbled, indecipherable mess made all the worse by the realization that I was likely stuck here for a long time. I’d lost my cell phone and purse, meaning I was flat broke, as if this planet would even accept Visa or MasterCard.

The city around me was large and bustling, filled with alien creatures of all descriptions. I couldn’t understand a word anyone said in any of the dozens of languages I heard, and the five or possibly six different writing systems I saw displayed were just as foreign to me.

At first, I’d thought maybe I was in the middle of some sort of massive cosplay gathering, until I realized that the strange creatures were not humans in costumes. This was a poor situation for first contact, and there had to be someone more qualified for it than I.

I still kept wandering, hoping to overhear some English — or anything that sounded human. There was a small part of my mind that kept telling me I would survive this, that I’m the final girl. Not that it felt like a horror movie, more like a fever dream.

What little I could remember of getting here was broken, distorted, vague. I had followed the girl in the android cosplay out the back door of the club. It was almost disturbing how much her skin looked artificial. She hadn’t stayed longer than it took for me to ask where she was going to or coming from in her cosplay.

With the way she bolted out, I thought I’d insulted her somehow. I followed her out the door to the alley to apologize. She turned and saw me and just said, “No.” Then it felt like I was run over by a train, and I woke up in a park or public garden of some sort, dressed in this tunic gown I wouldn’t be caught dead in back home.

I have no way of determining how long I was out. Along with my purse and everything in it, all my clothes, and my shoes, I was missing all my jewelry, including my watch.

Regardless, I was parched. I heard the sound of running water and followed it around the corner of a building to a fountain. I wouldn’t normally deign to drink from a public decorative fountain in the middle of a city, but thirst won out.

I tried to be casual about it, sitting on the edge of the fountain, dipping a hand in when I wasn’t being watched. After the first couple single handfuls of water, I decided to go for it. I cupped both hands together and drank three of the double-handfuls without care about who might see me.

As I sat for a while longer, I realized my bare feet ached. With the advent of hydration, I began to feel the pangs of hunger. I wondered if there was anything here I could even eat.

A scent not dissimilar to fry-bread caught my attention. I followed it to a lane with food vendors on both sides of the uncannily smooth road. A few customers lined up in queues, but it seemed like I had either missed or beat the rush. When some of the customers began to be served and sat at the empty benches in the road, I realized I had beat the rush.

It wasn’t difficult to locate the trash receptacles, but I wasn’t ready to go picking trash to eat. While I tried not to stare, I watched the creatures that ate. One of them left their mess on the bench.

I sat where they had been and looked at the trash. There was a half-eaten something, with a texture between gelatin and mashed potatoes. It smelled like boiled cabbage and some sort of spice. I took a tentative taste.

The flavor was how I imagined rotten cabbage, not fermented like kraut or kimchi, but rotten, together with enough black pepper and fake cinnamon to choke a goat. It made me gag but I managed to swallow it, but one tiny bite was all I could handle.

I picked up the slob’s trash to take it to the waste bin and there was a small device left under it on the bench. Old habits die hard, and I picked up the device and began scanning the crowd for the short, orange, beetle-like creature that had left it.

Not seeing them anywhere, I dropped the trash into the receptacle and examined the device. It was a disk, about the size of a quarter, maybe three times as thick, and one side felt sticky. The odd thing about it was that it would stick to my skin, but not to the gown I wore.

I stuck it to my arm, under the sleeve, to keep it safe. Whether the creature that left it would come back to look for it or not, it seemed important.

The smell of something vaguely bread-like frying caught my attention again. I followed it through the various stalls to where a deep pan of boiling oil was being put through its paces.

The creature that was cooking had at least eight tentacles going every which way, handling multiple tasks at once like a cartoon octopus. One tentacle plucked small, green, puckered fruits from a bush and dropped them in the oil. Another wielded a strainer ladle, fishing out the crispy, plump, brown results of frying the fruits.

They looked a bit like large donut holes, even though the raw fruits were unappetizing. The wind shifted and the smell hit me hard. The smell of fried bread and sugar was overwhelming.

I watched as the creature served dozens of customers. The variety of creatures that lined up for what I guessed was a sweet treat was mind-boggling.

There was one that looked like a cross between a turtle and bird that wore a tunic gown that looked very similar to the one I wore. They also had one of those devices, stuck to their beak. They got two of the treats and swallowed them down whole as they walked away.

I must’ve been too obvious in my watching of the vendor. It put three of the treats in a small bag and moved faster than I could track to be standing next to me. It held out the offering and made chirping noises at me.

I took the bag and said, “Thank you. I—I’ll help you out to pay it back.”

It chirped something else and was back behind the fryer before I knew it. The closest I could describe the fried treats would be a sweet mushroom, with a crunchy skin like a super thin chicharron.

When I finished the surprisingly filling meal, I joined the creature behind the fryer. I’d been watching long enough to know that despite all the tentacles, some tasks required time away from the main task of cooking and serving.

I separated the bags and opened them up, making lines of opened bags on the counter behind as the creature had. When the side of the bush closest to the creature was bare, I rotated it to keep the fruit in reach.

Whenever I saw one of the creature’s bags left empty on a bench or the ground, I ran out, picked it up, and dropped it into a bin. At one point, the creature pointed at a canister, then at the bush.

I picked up the canister and felt the liquid inside slosh around. As I brought the canister closer, the creature pointed at the bush.

I figured it wanted me to water the bush, but just to be certain, I began slowly. It came as a surprise when one of its tentacles took a soft grasp of my wrist and turned the canister over to dump the entire contents on the bush.

The bush began to rustle, and new fruits sprouted on the bush in seconds, growing at a rate that would make them mature in a few hours at most. The crowds died down, and the lane became still and silent as the food stalls shut down.

My feet ached and I felt tired after rushing about. I sat on the nearest bench, then lay down. Sleep was not far behind.

The cold of night woke me. I was stiff from sleeping on the bench, but felt otherwise energized, though thirsty. I walked through the silent, dark city back to the fountain and drank my fill.

That’s when I saw her again, the girl in the android cosplay. Or was she a real android? She stood stock still, watching me.

I walked toward her and stopped a few feet away. She looked at my face as though she was looking for something.

“I didn’t mean to insult you last night,” I said, “if it was you at the Hap ’n’ Stan’s bar.”

She raised her arm, and the forearm opened up. Either a hyper-advanced prosthetic or she was a real android.

She lifted one of the round devices out of the space in her arm and showed it to me. I took the one off my arm and showed it to her. She mimed putting it on her temple, so I did the same.

“Very good. You’re doing well,” she said, then walked away.

At least, I was sure that was what she said, even though the sounds she made all sounded like variations on the word no. I sat back down on the edge of the fountain and wondered what I could do to stay warm until morning.

Three of the beetle-like creatures came around the corner, wearing official-looking clothing. They stopped in front of me. “What is your business here at this hour?” one of them asked. I was surprised that I could understand the word behind the mandible clicks and purrs that made up their speech.

“No business, just trying to stay warm until morning, then trying to figure out how to get out of here.”

One of the beetles extended a limb with a pincer-like grasper. “If you would follow us, we can show you where to find accommodations.”

“I don’t have any money,” I said. “Is it a shelter or something?”

All three looked at me as though I’d grown another head. “Yes,” the one with the still-extended limb said, “we’ll show you where to find shelter.”

I figured something had been lost in translation, so I gave up and followed them. I wouldn’t have guessed that the building they led me to was a shelter, or hotel even.

They led me to a wall that looked like maps of the building’s many floors, with some rooms in orange, and most in blue. The beetle explained that each map corresponded to a floor, and the rooms marked in orange were available.

When I reiterated that I had no money, the beetle just ignored me and continued on. By selecting a room, it would be locked to my DNA for the night and only I could open the door.

I picked what I guessed was the lowest available floor and touched the map at a room that looked close to the elevator, if that’s what it was. I studied the symbol for the floor, and the beetle led me to what looked like an elevator without the niceties like walls or doors. It was a platform directly under a hole in each of the floors above.

There was a control panel that rose up, with all the symbols from the map on it. I selected the one that matched the floor I’d chosen, and we were whisked up at breakneck speed, while I didn’t feel so much as a whisper of movement.

I lost count of floors somewhere around thirty-four, but we finally came to a stop. The beetle walked me down the hall to a wall with the room symbol on it. He motioned me to the wall.

I stepped closer, and the wall opened to reveal a room on the other side with a soft, mattress-like floor. I was too tired to care and lay down on the floor to sleep.

That was the first day of my first month on what I learned was called Tukraz … at least as close as I can pronounce it. I also learned to whistle the name of the fried fruit vendor, but I also call her Octavia as it seems fitting.

I’ve gotten over worrying about money, as the concept doesn’t exist here, or in the coalition formed by all these different species. Octavia and the other vendors cook because they like to.

I’ve been working with one of the beetles, Kikrizik, at his shop where he makes clothes. I’ve shared designs for Earth clothes, and he’s converted them for other species. Thanks to him, I’m learning how to sew and how to read Tukra common.

I say my first month because the android visited me again last night. She said I was here to test how well humans could adapt to the coalition. Given that my translator was taken before I woke, and I didn’t know what to do with the one the agent left behind, she said I passed with flying colors. We’re adaptable, after all, and that’s a big part of what makes a species “fit” for inclusion.

Last night, she offered to take me back home, which I have learned is “only” eighteen-thousand light-years away. Just a short warp translation to get there.

My initial reaction was, “Yes! Let’s go!” The second reaction, less than a second later, though, was, “Can we wait a bit?”

She looked at me as if calculating something. “How long would you like to wait?”

I thought about it. So far, I’d seen this city, but not much else. “Is there a way I can contact you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, removing another little disk device from her forearm. “You have represented humans well, and there will be more brought for evaluation before the coalition decides to uplift or not. Is there something you wish to accomplish?”

“I haven’t seen much of Tukraz. I think I’d like to wander a bit and see more.” I smiled at her and tied my new shoes Kikrizik made for me. “I’ll contact you when I’m ready to go home.”

prompt: Write a story inspired by the saying “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

available at Reedsy

The stranger sat under a gelfim tree, shielded from the patchy rain and harsh sunlight, enjoying a mixed berry shave ice. Outside the gelfim’s shade, rising heat from the baked ground evaporated the rainwater as fast as it hit, turning the park into a giant sauna.

Those brave souls that ventured into the chaotic summer weather didn’t spare more than a glance at the stranger. It was obvious she didn’t belong here, and they didn’t want to catch her attention. For some it was fear, but most simply had no desire to be begged for a few credits by yet another war veteran from another world.

The stranger watched those that ignored her. From a distance, they seemed almost normal. She found it amusing how many of them stopped at the small pushcart for a shave ice. Something that, like her, came from another world. Unlike her, though, it had been readily adopted and assimilated as local.

One of the locals crossed the park, headed straight for where the stranger sat under the gelfim. The local’s antennae twitched nervously on the sides of her face, her ear slits open wide. She kept her head on a swivel as she approached, watching for what the stranger couldn’t guess. With a four-digit hand, she held out a bottle of water for the stranger.

“It’s dangerous out here you know, and with this heat you need to stay hydrated.”

“Thank you,” the stranger said. She took the bottle in her sun-darkened, olive-brown hand, enjoying the cold of it. “You’re too kind.”

“It’s the least I could do,” she said. “I’m Brithelt. I work in the War Veterans’ Assistance Bureau, in the main square off the other side of the park. If there’s anything I can do to help, stop by.”

“Thanks again, Brithelt. I’d tell you my name, but I don’t know what it was, and I hate the name Jane Doe.”

Brithelt waggled her antennae in assent. “I hope to see you again soon, Stranger.” She left the area under the gelfim walking so fast as to almost be running, only slowing down once she had reached the area where the shave ice vendor sat under an umbrella.

The stranger picked up her arm where it lay next to her and reattached it to the stump below her left shoulder. After flexing the robotic hand a couple times, she picked up her leg and attached it to the stump above where her left knee used to be.

She stood and picked up her heavy pack, slinging it over her shoulder. She’d have to find somewhere to sleep, and she hoped she could find something with air conditioning. Despite the technical nature of her arm, her prosthetic leg was basic, resulting in a rolling gait as she was forced to raise that hip to get the foot to clear the ground.

 The main square was busy for how miserable the weather was, but her destination was beyond that. She walked toward the industrial area. Cheaper accommodations could be found in the dirtier, noisier parts of cities. That was the same everywhere.

The stranger finally found a small boarding house behind a factory. She decided the cool, dry air in the room made up for the noise of the non-stop machines a scant fifty meters away that made, in all likelihood, more machines. The boarding house also didn’t require identification, accepted paper credits, and the room included an ensuite washroom.

She looked at herself in the dingy mirror of the washroom. Her close-cropped, light brown hair was sun-bleached to a straw blonde, her dark brown eyes looked black in the dim light of the room, and the scar that crossed from the bridge of her narrow nose across her left cheek, ending at her jaw stood out in sun-burned pink.

She took off her shirt, washed it in the sink, wrung it out, and hung it on the mirror to dry. She followed up by removing her leg and washing the sweat-soaked, padded sock and liner she wore under her prosthetic leg. After that, she did the same for the sock and liner for her arm.

The stranger filled the shallow tub with tepid water and climbed in. She scrubbed with soap and a rag, turning the water brown, then drained and refilled the tub to rinse as much of the residue off as she could.

She patted herself dry with a towel, grabbed her arm and leg, and hopped out to the room. She put the prosthetics where they got plenty of direct air from the vents, then lay on the hard bed to cool herself and drifted off to sleep.

The morning dawned heavily overcast with scattered showers, though the temperature remained high all through the night. The stranger walked out of the boarding house into a wall of damp heat.

She returned to the main square of the city and began searching for an address she had in her obsolete comm device. Spotting the address, she put the comm away and crossed the square to an office building. The doors opened with a blast of cool air and she walked in.

“Dr. Agellia?” she asked the receptionist.

“Take the lift to seven, his office is second to the right.”

The stranger nodded and took the elevator to the designated floor. She stopped just outside the elevator and set her pack on the floor. From her pack, she carefully unwrapped a small device. It was a box connected by wires to a metal halo. She pulled out two cylinders and screwed them into the halo.

Device in hand, she walked into the doctor’s office, under the sign that said, “Memory Treatments.”

She didn’t recognize him from anywhere other than the pictures she’d managed to find, but she saw his shocked recognition. His antennae twitched for a moment until he managed to get himself under control.

“I see you remember me,” she said. “Must be nice, I don’t remember you at all.”

“Where did you get that?” he asked, looking at the device she carried.

“Not your concern.” The stranger set the device on his desk. “This is the same thing you used on me, right?”

She leaned on the desk. “Don’t bother with an answer, I can see I’m right.”

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said, “because I knew it was a risk. You’d just been blown up in a covert op, for all the gods’ sake, but they made me.”

“They made you?” The stranger pulled out her comm device and played an audio recording. In it, Dr. Agellia could be heard saying, “We don’t know. We haven’t tried it on a human. Let’s test it on the Jane Doe. This could be valuable data. It’s not like she’s going to live much longer anyway. I’ll start small and erase just the mission.”

Agellia’s antennae flattened against his face, his ear slits opened wide. “But you’re here, so some memory must’ve come back.”

“No, doctor, it didn’t.” She pointed at the halo. “Put it on.”

“Now—now, this is not—this is a bad idea….”

“I said PUT IT ON!” She slammed her robotic hand on the desk, causing him to jump.

He sat frozen. The stranger picked up the halo and put it on his head. She flipped a switch on the device it was attached to and turned the dial all the way up.

“Can you fix my brain?” she asked.

“Wha—what?”

“My brain,” she said, pointing at her head. “Can you fix it? Can you get my memories back? I don’t even know my own goddamned name!”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she asked.

“It’s not something I can do,” he said, his entire body trembling.

“It’s your choice. You either fix my brain, or I turn this on and those needles go into your brain, and I see how much of you I can erase.”

“But I—”

“Can it be done?!” She slammed her hand on the desk again for emphasis, making him jump once more.

“Theoretically, but I don’t know—”

“Good enough,” she said. She typed something into the device and turned the dial down. “I won’t erase your education. Just the last — say — six years. Everything that happened since just before you mangled my brain.”

“No, please! You’re being rash. Think this through!” he pleaded.

“I’ve been thinking this through for six years. Ever since I woke from a coma up in a military hospital ship, missing an arm and a leg, and filled with enough shrapnel to give a scrapyard operator a hard-on.”

She sighed. “Between surgeries, I had to learn all over how to talk, read, write, walk — with only one leg, mind you — and even tie my shoes one-handed. You. Took. My. Life.

“The only clues I had were that my DNA and prints were tied to a completely redacted military identity, and this recording on a burner comm. If anything, I’ve been patient.” She flipped the switch that sent the needles deep into his brain and started up the machine.

“I’ll see you when you wake up, stranger.”