Tag: science fiction

prompt: Situate your character in a hostile or dangerous environment.

available at Reedsy

The haze blocking out the morning sky was the color of infectious decay. The weak sun, faint behind the fetid smog was an omen — of what, Zeke couldn’t tell.

Mask secure and seals checked, Ezekiel “Zeke” Rankin, self-appointed scout, let himself out through the airlock to the cool, damp morning air. The silent alien city extended endlessly. What used to be a thriving ecumenopolis had been turned into a graveyard. Continent sized chunks of the city had been flattened, while others stood with no visible damage beyond the poisoned sky.

The mission, including Zeke’s family, had set up in a hospital in one of those “undamaged” sections. His mother came to help any survivors and care for the other volunteers, his sister came to help clean up the chemical weapons fallout. At fifteen years of age, Zeke wasn’t given much choice.

He climbed down the access ladder to the tunnels beneath the city. A nearby area had lost power, and he was determined to find the hospital’s power source before it sputtered to a stop as well.

Aside from three doctors at the hospital, all the aliens Zeke had seen had been dead. He’d come across hundreds, if not a thousand, so far. Conventional wisdom said there were likely no other survivors that hadn’t been evacuated from the planet. Which made the sound in the tunnel more concerning.

He thought about giving up the search for the day. The thought of his mother treating the volunteers who’d been exposed, and his sister in her lightweight flyer, piercing through the smog itself to test various neutralizers in the atmosphere firmed his resolve.

“Hello?” he called out. He continued on toward the sound he’d heard.

He turned the corner and felt something hard against his ribs. He didn’t speak much of the alien’s language, but enough to understand the words “stop” and “alien.”

He raised his hands to show them empty. In his best attempt at their language, broken and halting, he said, “Good morning. My name Zeke. Mission, me…here, uh, today.”

The alien switched to Interstellar Trade Language. At least it was a required subject in school, and he was almost as proficient as he was in English. “Where did you come from? You are not the aliens that attacked us, what are you?”

“I’m human, from the Sol Federation. I’m here with my mother and sister who are helping with the recovery mission.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry I messed up your language. My name is Zeke, what’s yours?”

“Abref.” The hard object was removed from his ribs and the bearer stepped in front of him. In the dim lights, at a distance, it would be easy to mistake the alien for a tall, slender person with a long tail.

Zeke caught his thoughts and corrected them. That is a person, and I’m the alien here.

The hard thing that had been pressed against his ribs turned on. It was a torch. In the wash of light, the creature — person — holding it had grey-blue skin with a disheveled mane of muddy orange that began between its eyes and lengthened at the crest of its head. He knew that the mane continued down the center of the back to join in the fur on the tail. The mane said male, but the coloration said female, at least as far as Zeke knew.

Abref’s nostril slits flared, then relaxed. “You’ve been on the surface.”

Zeke nodded. “I have. Is the air in here safe?”

“It is. For my kind at least. What do you aliens breathe?”

“Oxygen, same as you.” He lifted the mask off, and the smell of something rotting hit him like a wall. “What is that smell?”

“The farm. You get used to it.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Sorry, but I have to ask, are you male or female?” Zeke was about to apologize for his rudeness, but Abref stopped him.

“I’m a maned female. Never seen one? You’re pretty new here, huh?”

“We’ve been here for eighteen local days,” he said. “How long have you been surviving down here? Why didn’t you evacuate?”

“Those of us at the farm closed up tight when the sirens went off the first time,” she said. “That was sixty-one days ago. Some of us braved the surface to evacuate, but with the reports of bombardment, the rest of us decided to stay put.”

“The city right above you is still untouched,” Zeke said, “except for the poison. The mission is set up in the hospital.”

“How are you set for food up there?” she asked.

“We’ve got emergency rations for about ninety days, with more coming whenever the next supply run happens.”

“Any fresh food?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Follow me.” She walked off without waiting for him. The torch provided something to follow in the dim tunnels that often turned completely dark as they went further from the main utility access.

The farm was a well-lit chamber the size of which would embarrass a stadium. Water flowed in from one side, trickled through fields the size of football pitches, and out the other side to continue on somewhere.

Those fields were rich with what could best be described as mutant mushrooms with different fruits and vegetables sprouting from the same base mycelium. Half a dozen others worked fields, stopping when they realized their compatriot had not returned alone.

After filling the other workers in on who Zeke was, and what was going on with the mission, one of them asked him, “Which hospital?”

Zeke thought for a moment, “It’s Pabor-something.”

“Paborabal?” one asked.

“No, that’s not it.”

“Porablorial?” another asked.

“No, no.”

“Probiraporo?” Abref asked.

“That’s the one!”

They talked among themselves in their language, before Abref tapped him on the shoulder.

“Yes?”

“Would you help us deliver some food to Probiraporo?” she asked.

“How will you get it there? Do you have gas masks?”

Abref pointed at a cart loaded with produce. “You grab that one. The farms all have delivery shafts to the nearest markets and hospitals.”

Zeke pushed the cart, following the workers and the six carts they pushed. “I meant to find out where the power for the hospital is generated. The power’s out a short distance away.”

“We turned off the power there,” Abref said. “One of the filters failed and it was pulling the poison into the undercity.”

“Oh. How long can we expect the power to stay on here?”

“Without regular maintenance, probably sixty or seventy local orbits.”

They pushed the carts into an open-sided lift that started to rise. “That’s good to know,” Zeke said, “since they say they’ll have the air clean within the next two orbits, and people can start coming home.”

“Won’t the gurgrons just attack again?” she asked as the floor of the receiving bay opened above them.

“We won’t let them.” The man that answered her question relaxed, dropping the aim of the rifle he’d had pointed at the lift. “We’re glad to see there’s still survivors.”

“Abref, this is Clint. He’s the head of security for the mission.” Zeke gestured to the others with him. “Clint, Abref and the others are from a farm beneath the city.”

“I’ll alert the other missions to keep a look out for more survivors in the farms,” Clint said.

“You said you won’t let them attack again. How can you stop them?” Abref asked.

“Major Clint Collins, Sol Federation Forces, here with the Interstellar Trade Union Peacekeeping Task Force.” He moved to grab one of the carts. “The Task Force, along with Sol military, is chasing down the remaining gurgron fleets. Their home world is already in a blockade until they unilaterally disarm.”

“Why would you do that?” Abref cocked her head. “We aren’t even members of the Union yet.”

“Ah, but you’ve applied and there are already trade deals in the making.” Clint pushed the cart toward the kitchens. “That’s close enough as to make no difference.”

As they unloaded the carts in the kitchen, Abref paused and looked at Zeke. “I understand why the Major’s here — military orders and all, but what about the rest of you?”

“Well, my mother’s a doctor, so she’s here to do that, and my older sister is an atmospheric pilot with the ITU Disaster Relief Association.”

“And you?” she asked.

“I’m only fifteen, and I graduated two years early. I’m too young to be allowed to be on my own for an entire year, and it was either take a gap year here with my mom before University or start right away with a state-appointed guardian.”

“You’re not an adult yet, and you chose to do something so dangerous?”

Zeke shrugged. “It’s not the worst thing ever, getting to spend time with my sister that I rarely see. Besides, I’ve been looking forward to my gap year since I was seven.”

Clint laughed. “Good kid. What’re you planning on going to school for?”

“I still haven’t decided.” Zeke began emptying the next cart. “That’s what a gap year is for, yeah?”

prompt: Write a story in which the first and last sentence are the same.

available at Reedsy

Adrian poured the clear liquid over the ice in the shallow glass, watching it turn white in swirls and eddies. He turned off the lights and carried the glowing glass to the mirror. Rather than the mysterious, cool image he was hoping for, the sickly blue glow left him looking pallid and cadaverous.

With the overhead lights back on and the black light off, the liquid had the appearance of skim milk over ice. Adrian checked his appearance in the mirror. Even dressed as he was in his best, he knew he wouldn’t fit in. The word ‘poor’ might as well have been tattooed across his forehead in bold letters.

The party was less than twenty-four hours away. He wondered if he should skip it. It wasn’t like they’d pick him, anyway. He looked at the refrigerator and the invitation hanging there under a magnet advertisement for the day labor office.

He gulped down his drink without thinking. The ice cubes in the glass brought him back to the moment. He hadn’t even tasted it. Perhaps another? No, that was his one a day he allowed himself. Instead, he took his time sucking on the ice cubes, getting every last bit of flavor.

When the last of the ice was gone, Adrian undressed, folding his trousers with care and hanging them under the jacket, next to the shirt. Those two hangars, a second-hand pair of sneakers, and his battered work boots defined the contents of his small closet. The dresser beside it contained every other garment he owned.

He grabbed the first t-shirt his hand touched and paired it with work jeans chosen with the same lack of care. It was too early to sleep, long past dinner, and he felt he might explode if he tried to sit still. He left the small apartment, checking that the door was locked, or at least as locked as it could be.

Wandering around the neighborhood was his entertainment on those evenings where he couldn’t sit still enough to read a book. The blue glow of TVs illuminated windows throughout the brownstones. No doubt, they were all watching the latest news about the aliens.

He’d watched on the TV at the day labor waiting room when they first showed up a month earlier. When they turned out to look like elves from fantasy, speculations ran wild. Without a job for him that day, the news station in the waiting room was as good as it got.

The aliens asked for humans that were willing to return to their planet as ambassadors or something. They even had a website set up to apply. Adrian had used one of the computers at the day labor office to apply. Not that he expected to be chosen, with billionaires, stars, and politicians all saying they’d applied.

Last week, he’d gotten an invitation to a party for final selection of those that would be chosen He thought about it as he wandered past the bodega. Would he have to get a passport? Could he even afford one? Maybe the aliens would pay for it. What would customs look like?

A rat startled him, rushing to return to its hiding place under the stairs of a brownstone. It dropped something as it ran by, and he picked it up. It was a ten-dollar bill. A little chewed on one corner, but good enough.

Adrian turned around and walked with purpose to the bodega. He waved at the cashier as he entered and made his way to the back. There, next to the beer cooler stood his target. Nestled between boxes of wine on one side, and bottles of liquor on the other, stood a rotating shelf of used paperbacks.

Relying on the cover art to determine the genre, he picked out three by authors he’d never heard of. He avoided the romance novels with bare-chested, long-haired men on the cover, that were churned out by the hundreds each month. He chose a science fiction novel, a mystery, and one that was likely a drama.

He had enough for the three books and a day-old, plain bagel. Purchases in hand, he returned to his apartment. Without a key but just a wiggle and twist, his “locked” door opened. The promise of new reading material made sitting still worth it.

Adrian put a chipped coffee cup with half an inch of water in the toaster over next to the stale bagel and turned it on. He wandered back and forth between the kitchenette and his bed until the bagel was warm.

Nibbling on the warm, somewhat softened bagel, he sat on the single chair in his apartment and began reading the drama. Somewhere in the middle of chapter four, he fell asleep.

It was still the middle of the night when a rap on the door woke him. He crossed the apartment to the door and peeked through the peephole. It was one of the space elves!

He opened the door, and the five-foot-nothing, grey-skinned, pointy-eared alien asked, “Are you Adrian Keller?”

“That’s me,” he answered.

“I’m Cruit,” the alien said, and hoisted a six-pack of beer. “Can I come in?”

“Sure, sure.” Adrian motioned the alien in and gestured to the chair. “Have a seat.”

“Where will you—?” Cruit trailed off as Adrian sat cross-legged on the floor. “Oh.”

 Adrian accepted a beer from the visitor. “Sorry about the apartment. It’s not much, but it’s home.”

“A place to sleep is a place to sleep.” The alien took a deep drink of the beer. “Guys like us — except I’m a female, is that still a guy? What was I saying? Yeah, workers like us have to be happy with what we can get.”

“You’re a laborer?” Adrian asked.

“Much like yourself,” she answered. “I’m a manager now.”

Adrian raised his beer. “Congratulations. Better paycheck?”

“Better accommodations.”

“That’s not nothing.”

Cruit leaned forward. “Why did you apply for a position with us?”

Adrian chuckled. “Hard to find work. A steady job would be nice.”

“I talked to the people at Reddy Labor. They say you’re not afraid of hard work, and you pick up power tools and equipment operation quickly.”

“True enough, I suppose.”

“Would you be opposed to working on the ship?”

“Doing labor?”

“Yes.”

“If it’s a steady position, I’m in.” Adrian carried the empties to the kitchenette, put ice in two glasses, and grabbed the bottle of Ouzo. “What about the party tomorrow?”

“That’s for the fancy people,” Cruit said. “I’m guessing that’s as much not you as it’s not me.”

“True enough.” Adrian returned with the glasses and bottle.

“If you want it, I’ve got a position for you. It’s permanent.”

“Sure. When do I start?”

“I could use your help getting the ship ready tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’m there.” He held up the bottle. “Care for something a little stronger?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Adrian poured the clear liquid over the ice in the shallow glass, watching it turn white in swirls and eddies.

prompt: Center your story around someone who realizes they’ve left something behind.

available at Reedsy

The bed I lay on was comfortable enough, but not plush. The walls were a pale blue with no windows. An IV ran into my arm, and a tangle of cables connected me to a device that quietly monitored my vitals. There was a white corridor outside the open door. The closed door on the wall opposite my head had a toilet sign. Hospital.

I sat up, putting my feet on the floor. I felt weak. At first, I wasn’t sure I was feeling it, but a faint thrum carried through the floor — deck, my mind corrected. Hospital ship.

I’d no sooner deduced that than a nurse — or what I assumed was a nurse — walked in. She was short, no more than 150 centimeters, covered in a fine, taupe fur with delicate limbs and graceful fingers. Large eyes set aside her head gave her a field of vision far beyond 180 degrees. A striped tail swished behind her as she walked, and she put on a smile that could melt the coldest of hearts. Something about her felt familiar.

“You mustn’t try to get up yet.” Her voice was somewhere between a purr and a growl. One of her eyes focused on me while the other seemed to be watching the device. “I’m Joxi, the night nurse. Now that you’re awake, the doctor and physical therapist will be in to go over your next steps — little joke for you.”

People of her species were called Gortian but called themselves anushi, in the same way we call ourselves human, but others call us Earthian. I wasn’t sure how I knew that — I just did. Just like I knew that this ship was a human design.

My voice was weak and raspy, and it took far too much energy to make a simple inquiry. “You … anushi … ship … human?”

“Exactly.” She helped me get my legs back on the bed and tucked me back in.

“How …?” I didn’t have the energy to get the words out. How did I end up here? What happened? The more I thought about it, the more I realized how little I knew. 

I am human. I am a man … I think. My right hand went by instinct to my chest where I traced scars on both sides with a patch of hair between. I am a man. I am a human. My name is … is … I don’t know. My job is … I worked in a pizza place in high school.

Memories newer than that elude me. I try to get the nurse’s attention before she leaves. Even with her back turned to me, she sees the slight raise of my hand and turns back around.

“I can’t …” I point at my head. “Who am I?”

“I’ll let the doctor explain, but it’ll come back to you, Mr. Jacobs.” She left without another word.

Jacobs, I wondered, is that right? It felt familiar, but something felt off, something missing.

The doctor entered. Her uniform designated her as a Captain in the United Federation of Sol Navy. Equivalent to a Colonel in the other services. I considered that I might have been in the military with how easily I picked that up.

“Ma’am,” I said with as much gusto as I could muster, which wasn’t much at all.

“It’s good to see you awake,” she said. “Can you tell me your name, rank, and serial number?”

“I, uh … no, ma’am. I know some things, like I’m human, the nurse is anushi, this is a human hospital ship, and you’re a Navy Captain, same rank as a ground-pounder Colonel, but I don’t know how I know them. She said my name is Jacobs, but I’m not sure.”

The doctor wrote some things on her pad, then looked up at me. “Your name is Ryan Jacobs, you’re a Corporal — at the moment — in the UFS Marine Corps, and you’ve been in a coma for forty-three days. We’re still a month out from home, but when we get there, you’ve got an award, a promotion, and an early retirement waiting.

“I’m Dr. Wells, and I’m the primary physician on your case. You suffered some serious head trauma, along with your arm,” she said, nodding toward my left hand.

I flexed my left hand. It felt half-numb. I looked at it … or tried to. It wasn’t there. My arm stopped at a bandage just past my elbow.

“My … where?” How had I not noticed? How bad did I mess my head up? What had happened to me?

“We’ve found that replaying your helmet cam footage can help bring back memories faster.” She looked grim. “It’s not pretty, it’s likely to be traumatizing, but it can help. Do you want to try?”

“I do … yes, ma’am, Captain Wells.”

“You don’t have to be formal here, Ryan. You can just call me Doc.”

“Thanks, Doc. How soon can I—”

“Tomorrow morning. You need a good night of non-comatose sleep, first.”

I nodded and let my head rest back on the pillow. After she left, I watched the hallway for a bit. Mostly humans in Navy uniforms, but at least ten percent of the traffic were anushis in civilian clothes. Something about that caused an ache in my chest.

Exhaustion overtook me and I let it, before the ache could become sobbing. It didn’t help. My own weeping woke me in the morning. A pair of warm hands held my right hand, a comfort when I didn’t know I needed it. I turned to see a rough-and-tumble looking Petty Officer, tears pooled in his dark brown eyes. “You’re not alone,” he said.

I looked at his name tag. “Thanks, Masoe.” I went to wipe my eyes with my left hand, and its absence made the tears start again, this time from frustration.

Masoe helped me pull myself together and eat the light breakfast he’d brought. He said two more meals and they could remove the feeding tube that went up my nose and down my throat.

After breakfast came the part I was both dreading and excited for. A chance to figure out what had happened, and maybe, just maybe, get my memories back.

In the reflection of the goggles for the immersion viewer I saw my bandaged, shaved head. I felt at the edge of the bandage with my hand, and Dr. Wells told me to be careful of it. Part of my skull was still out until the brain swelling was completely gone.

I won’t recount the nightmare I relived. It involved an attack on an anushi colony by an unknown enemy. We were evacuating civilians, including a hospital. That’s where I recognized Joxi. We were just getting going when the bombing started.

While the other squads began working their way up, I led my squad to the third floor to work our way down. The entire third floor was the children’s ward. Anushi kids are all eyes, teeth, and tails, and cute as hell because of it. They grow into them, eventually, but a ball of fluff with huge eyes and buck teeth… well, we got most of them out. The ones that could walk, and those that could be carried in our arms.

It was an incubator, the first of nine, running on battery power that I was lugging down the stairs when the bomb hit the wall next to me. My helmet recorded it all, even after the shockwave knocked me unconscious. My hand and wrist were mangled along with the incubator and the fragile infant inside. Then the third floor collapsed on me and the recording cut out until I was dug out of the rubble fifty-six minutes later.

The incubators! I had dragged them all close to the stairwell to speed things up. Had I doomed nine anushi children? What about the other side of the third floor? Would they have survived there?

I didn’t realize the questions I was asking myself, I was asking out loud. The voice I heard was that of Joxi. “You saved sixty-six out of sixty-seven children that day. The incubators were lucky. A bomb on the roof destroyed the other half of the third floor, and only the area above the stairwell collapsed. The incubators were sitting there in the open, dusty, but safe.”

I felt the fur of her hands as she lifted the immersion viewer off my head. “You Marines saved almost everyone in the hospital.” Her smile was bright, but I could see the sadness she tried to hide.

“Almost,” I said, “isn’t everyone.”

She held me as I wept for loss, hers and mine. The loss of innocent lives, the loss of friends and loved ones, the loss of her home. But what had I lost? What had I left behind, other than my arm? I knew, somehow, that I would never be whole. My memories would never fully return. I’d left a huge chunk of my past in the rubble of that hospital on a foreign world. I’d lost a part of me.

prompt: Write a story that keeps a key detail hidden from the reader until the very end.

available at Reedsy

They’d been found in a parallel universe of sorts. While working towards wormhole generation, scientists had accidentally punched a hole into a universe that was almost indistinguishable from ours.

The creatures they found traversing the stars there were unimaginable horrors. Smaller ships, but far more numerous, crewed by behemoth abominations.

The science ship had been seen, and one of the ships of the Other followed it through from their universe. Had it not been for the Navy standing by, no one knows what kind of hell they could’ve unleashed on us.

As it was, that one small ship took out nine vessels of our fleet before it was disabled and opened to vacuum. Crewed by only three of the giants, it boasted more armament than a standard destroyer.

The huge, misshapen bodies were secreted away by Military Intelligence for dissection and some insight into what we faced. The ship, itself, was crude in design with the exception of its weapon systems.

It could easily be outrun by anything in our fleet. The most telling, though, was the lack of any way to generate faster-than-light travel. It was decided that with a crew of only three, the ship was a fighter. Although a small ship, it was far larger than would be expected of a light fighter, likely due to the size of its occupants. As a fighter, it undoubtedly had a mothership to return to, and the search for it would expand as time went on.

The argument between the military and government came soon after. The next actions we would take depended on the answer to a few questions.

Did they have the capability to cross into our universe as we had accidentally crossed into theirs? If that ship was a simple fighter craft, what chance did we have against a fleet? Do we build up our fleet while hoping that they stay in their own universe and leave us alone — or do we attempt to bring the fight to them?

In the end, the military minds won out, and we declared war on the Others. Fleets from everywhere joined in, while production ramped up in every star system to build new fleets made up of whole new classes of ships.

The first sortie we made into their universe was a textbook success. Using the intelligence we’d taken from the fighter, we sent fast, nimble ships to outrun them and their weapons. Short FTL hops were a key maneuver that kept our losses to a minimum while we wore down and destroyed dozens of their ships.

The Other was a ragtag fleet of patchwork ships; crude but deadly. They all carried far more weapons than reasonable, but none seemed to have their ammo or other stores full, as most had large, empty compartments.

After that first victory, the next mission was meant to be for gathering intelligence. Still, four fleets were dispatched to guard the gate and keep any of the Other from crossing into our universe again.

None of the four fleets boasted any of the new class of ships designed to stand up to what we imagined the Other capable of. That on its own wouldn’t have been a problem, except that the gateway opened in the middle of a system swarmed with the Other.

No sooner had they passed into the “normal space” of the other universe than the firefight started. Whatever we’d imagined their motherships to be, what we encountered was so far beyond that as to make our imaginings laughable.

This was not the ragtag fleet we’d destroyed in our first mission. These monstrous creations were, for lack of a better term, eldritch horrors. In visible light, radio, and microwave, they disappeared, more detectable by the absence of light and their gravitational signature. The fighters that swarmed out of them by the hundreds were smaller, faster, more maneuverable, and better coordinated. On top of that, they were every bit as ephemeral as the big ships, detectable most by their slight gravity.

The biggest of the ships outmassed an entire fleet, and yet were so maneuverable as to keep withering fire aimed at our ships even through our short FTL hops. When the flagship of the first fleet — the pride of the Navy and command center for the mission — was ripped in half by a ship that was more like a giant gun with engines, the order to retreat was called.

Four fleets went into their universe, and two partial fleets came back. We gathered intelligence, but not of the sort we’d hoped for. Whatever we first encountered must’ve been far on their frontiers, manned by only a token force of scrap.

In addition to that, we learned that where the gate opened in their universe was more to chance than expected. The fleets had been expected to appear in a space between star clusters. Instead, the gate opened a few thousand light years distant of the selected point.

Attempts to open a gate to the other universe in other locations failed. Some quirk of the local fabric of spacetime in the original gate’s position left it best suited for that. It was not long before the new fleets came online and gathered at what became the most heavily guarded spot in the galaxy at least, if not the entire universe.

While the politicians were still busy trying to spin the defeat as anything but, and the military was still licking its wounds, the first incursion into our universe by the Other happened. From the gate, a single drone emerged and was vaporized by one of the new destroyers in fractions of a second.

That was all the impetus needed for the politicians to back another attack, and for the Admirals to set forth against the Other again. Nine fleets, composed of whole new classes of destroyers and battle cruisers and carriers, poured through the rip in the fabric of spacetime into the other universe.

This time, they emerged somewhere unpopulated. They found themselves in a void between stars and star clusters. There, in a relative nowhere, someone voiced the opinion that they were lucky they hadn’t appeared inside a star or a black hole.

While that crew member was still being dressed down by their Captain, gravity alarms went off throughout the fleets. The Other had arrived in moments from wormholes that appeared for only a fraction of a second. The Other had the wormhole technology our own scientists had been trying to achieve.

The massive ships of the Other had nine fleets surrounded in a sphere of death. Any ship that fired or moved was obliterated. When the Admirals finally stood down to accept their fate, a transmission was sent to all the remaining ships before they were forced back through the rift into our own universe.

The war effort ground to a halt while the message was deciphered. Not that production slowed any, as six more fleets were completed in that time.

The new argument between the politicians and military became what to do with the message. Share it with the populace? Bury it in the deepest vault? Call their bluff — assuming it is a bluff?

One of the creatures stood, hideous to the point it triggered some deep, primal part of the brain that makes one want to evacuate their bowels and flee. It spoke their eldritch language, all gurgles and gasps.

“We’ve been looking for intelligent life for a while, and it would be nice to have a friend. We see that you cannot be that friend to us — you’re not ready.

“When your home planet has orbited your home star 100 more times, you may come back and try again in peace. Until then, any intrusion into our space with more than an unarmed, goodwill delegation of twelve individuals, maximum, will be met with swift retribution, including the take-over of your worlds and the total disarmament of your military. This is your first and only warning.

“Your first incursions into our space, we were willing to forgive and forget. Hunting pirates is a time-honored tradition, after all.

“Your actions during our annual Naval exercise, however, are unforgivable at this point. Any further armed entrance to our space will be taken as an explicit declaration of war against the Terran Alliance. Vice-Admiral Grace Evans, TA Navy, signing off.”

prompt: Your character comes across a stray (dog, cat, human — any kind of animal!). What happens next?

available at Reedsy

Sara followed the trail. Droplets of what she was certain was blood. Something small, she guessed. If it turned out to be somebody with a little cut or bloody nose walking slow, she’d be embarrassed, but that wasn’t likely.

The trail led into an upturned cardboard box at the end of the alley. There was half of a strange footprint, paw-print really, on the flap of the cardboard that lay outside the box. She couldn’t identify it. Not dog or cat or rat or raccoon or opossum.

Sara waited for a minute, listening for sounds of life from the box. She heard a small rustle in the box. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m just gonna sit here and share my cupcake with you.”

She found the least nasty spot on the ground near the box to sit with her back to it. It would stain her jeans, but they were washable and at worst replaceable.

Humming a soft lullaby, she pulled a small bite off the over-sized cupcake and put it on the flap of the box. “I’ll share with you since I can’t eat one of these by myself,” she sang.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a furred hand reach out a snatch back the piece of cupcake. Maybe it was a raccoon with a deformed foot? She continued to hum and put another piece on the edge of the box.

With each one, she put the piece closer to herself. When the little things legs weren’t long enough to reach it, it stretched itself out of the box to grab the bite before retreating. Each time, the delay between grabbing and retreating grew in tiny increments.

What she saw wasn’t any animal she could identify. It looked a bit like a long-legged ferret the color of an orange tabby cat with a puffy tail and almost monkey-like hands.

She held a piece of the cupcake out for the creature, hoping it wouldn’t switch to biting and nip her fingers. Instead, the tiny hand grabbed it, and she could feel how it had opposable thumbs on both sides of its hand. One of the three fingers rested on her thumb before it took the piece.

Sara put a piece on her palm and laid her hand on the ground. The creature stepped up and grabbed her thumb with one of its hands while the other took the proffered cake. Instead of backing off, it ate the piece with the needle-like teeth in its short snout, then held the empty hand open, palm up.

Six digits, two of them opposable, and a palm that reminded her of a toddler’s hand, with none of the small lines that hands acquire over time. She set a piece of frosting on the outstretched hand.

The creature was visibly frightened but warming up to her. It stood on its hind legs and took a wobbly step toward her before stumbling. Sara wasn’t thinking about maintaining the calm at the moment her instincts took over.

She caught the falling creature and scooped it into her lap. “Are you okay, little one?” Its fur was silken and softer than anything she’d felt. It was damp, despite the lack of rain for days.

It stiffened for a moment. Sara thought she’d just messed up and the little critter would run away to never trust her again. Her fears were unfounded, however, as the creature relaxed, grabbing her shirt with three of its monkey-handed feet.

The fourth had a cut on the palm. “Oh, you poor baby. That must hurt. Will you let me take care of you?”

The creature turned its large, brown eyes to hers. When she looked into them, she could tell there was intelligence behind them. The creature curled its tail over itself like a blanket and she felt its racing heart slow, and its breathing relax.

It still had a death grip on her shirt, but was sound asleep. She rose to her feet as smoothly as she could, trying not to jostle the sleeping creature. It had a faint scent of cinnamon she’d first assumed was something her clothes had picked up in the bakery.

By the time she reached her apartment, she’d figured out that she didn’t need to be so careful. Cream, as she began calling the critter, was dead to the world. The poor thing was probably exhausted from fear, cold, and hunger. In its sleep, the creature suckled on her shirt.

“You’re not completely weaned, are you, little one?” she cooed.

Once in her apartment, she dug through the “stuff” drawer in the kitchen to find the puppy bottles and nipples she’d once used for fostering. From a lower cupboard she pulled out an unopened can of puppy formula powder.

Sara got a bottle of formula ready just in time, as Cream woke with a weak, high-pitched cry. The cry was punctuated with what sounded like baby talk, just not in English. The word-like sounds most repeated were “gehgeh” and “looloo.”

It took a few tries, but Sara got Cream to latch on. The puppy formula seemed to be a big hit. She cooed at the little creature as she cradled it like a baby. As it drank, it finally relaxed its grip on her shirt and settled into the crook of her arm.

Cream started to drift off again and dribbled some milk. Sara pulled the bottle away and wiped at the little face. Cream reached for the bottle, “Looloo! Looloo!”

Sara held the bottle. “Looloo? Milk?” She gave it back to Cream, who held on to it with three hands and made soft coos while drinking.

After the furry child emptied the bottle and fell into a boneless sleep, Sara pulled the first aid kit from the drawer of the coffee table beside her. She cleaned the wound on Cream’s paw with a cotton ball. Cream’s eyes opened.

“I’m sorry, Cream. I’m sorry, little guy.” Sara decided that the creature, whether female or male, was a ‘little guy.’ “Sara’s here. I’ll take care of you. You’re going to be okay.”

Cream grabbed Sara’s sleeve and babbled some, ending with, “Sara.”

“Yes, Cream. I’m Sara.” She placed the smallest bandaid she had over the wound and gave it a little kiss. “All done.”

Cream crawled up to grab Sara’s shirt again, laid its head on Sara’s chest, and cried. “Gehgeh, gehgeh, gehgeh, Sara.”

Sara rocked the poor creature back to sleep. Rather than risking waking the sleeping Cream, she lay on her bed without undressing. A few hours later, she woke with the crying creature begging again for “looloo.”

She prepared a new bottle and fed the hungry, tired creature and rocked it back to sleep. The armchair was comfortable enough, and Sara drifted off herself.

The sound of something scrabbling at her window woke her. She turned on the lamp to see a larger version of Cream standing on the flower box outside the third-story window. It looked like an adult version of Cream, wearing a utility belt around a baggy jumpsuit, out of the back of which a tail at least three times fluffier than Cream’s twitched.

Cream woke and screamed out, “Gehgeh! Gehgeh! Sara, gehgeh!”

Sara opened the window, and the creature stepped in. Despite the obvious terror in its eyes, the concern for the child was obvious as well.

“Oh, is ‘gehgeh’ your mama?” Sara asked. She sat down on the floor to put herself on eye level with the standing creature, and Cream climbed down and into the arms of the waiting creature.

“Dren!” The creature dressed the child in a similar garment to its own. It held the child and pressed a button on a box on the belt. The creature’s voice was high and was repeated from the box in English. “Where did you find my child?!”

“I followed a trail of blood droplets and found this poor little guy hiding in a box in an alley.”

“You didn’t eat him,” the creature said through the translator.

“Eat…what?! Why would I do that?”

Cream began babbling again, and the translator picked up parts of it. Sara recognized the sound log ‘gehgeh’ behind the translation of mama and ‘looloo’ behind yummy. “Mama! Mama! Sara … ouch,” He held up his bandaged foot for her inspection. “… yummy … Sara.”

“You — you tended his wound and fed him?”

“Of course. I wasn’t gonna let the little guy suffer.” Sara leaned back. “Why would you think I would eat him?”

“I have studied how you eat other creatures. You are eaters of meat. You also keep companion animals that are eaters of meat, some of which will kill animals for you and bring them to you.” As she started to relax, Cream let go of her and returned to Sara to sit in her lap. She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed again as Sara cooed at the child.

“No one could eat you,” she said, “you’re too cute. Besides, it’s not like we just eat any meat. We’ve been breeding animals for thousands of years to get the temperament and meat or milk quality we want. As far as animals hunting for or with us, yeah, in some places that still happens, but if you’re talking about cats, they do that because they think they’re helping somehow.”

The creature walked closer, staying in its upright posture. Sara noticed what looked like tough gloves on the hand-feet it walked on. “I am Rusna, and my boy is Dren.”

“Nice to meet you, Rusna, and you, Dren. I’m Sara, and I’ve been calling him ‘Cream’ since he’s the color of a creamsicle cat.” Sara stroked the top of Dren’s head, and he snuggled for a few more seconds before rushing back to his mother.

“Would you like something to eat?” Sara asked. “Or drink?”

“Not meat,” Rusna said, “but yes. I am hungry, and fond of the drink you call tea.”

Sara made tea for both of them and brought it out with a package of cookies. They ate and sipped their tea in silence for a few minutes, while Dren drifted back off to sleep.

“I was warned not to come here, because of the danger from humans and their companion animals,” Rusna said.

“Why did you, then?”

“I’m a xeno-sociologist. I’m here to find out everything I can about human society. I brought Dren along because I couldn’t be apart from him for so long. I had just given him a bath and turned to get a fresh towel and—”

“And he ran off.” Sara chuckled. “Sounds like your children aren’t that different from our own. Where are you from?”

“You can’t see our star from here without a telescope,” Rusna said, “but it’s toward the galactic center.”

“Did you and Dren come alone?”

“No. There are thirty-four on our expedition, now.” Her gaze dropped and she sniffed at Dren’s head. “We lost three to illness and accident in the first thirteen planetary rotations but have maintained our number since then.”

“I’m sorry,” Sara said.

Rusna took another sip of her tea. “We’ll survive. I’ll have to adjust some of my starting assumptions about the behavior of societies of omnivores, though.”

“Aren’t there others?” Sara asked.

“None besides yours that show promise to become space bound.”

“Well, if you’re around for a while, you’re welcome to visit any time.” Sara smiled at the sleeping child clinging to his mother’s jumpsuit. “I’d love to see the little guy again.”

prompt: Set your story in a place where the weather never changes.

available at Reedsy

The more technologically advanced a shelter, the more disconnected it was from nature. In the case of Travers Station, that was a necessity. Outside the station, nature was nothing other than lethal to all the inhabitants of the station.

The sapient creatures that inhabited the station came from multiple stars. All of them had their own evolutionary history that drove them to innovate. They all had their own social evolution that drove that innovation to push them out among the stars. Still, none of them had evolved in an environment like the one outside the station.

Nature outside the station was the vacuum of space, bathed in the intense ultraviolet radiation of the O4 class star it was here to study. The closest thing to nature inside the rotating station was the garden. Comprising one quarter of the highest ring, with the lowest apparent gravity, the garden boasted shielded windows which allowed precise amounts of light and UVB from the deadly star. Still, warning signs about possible dermal damage were posted outside and throughout the garden, along its well-tended walking paths.

Just inside the spinward entrance of the garden was a picnic table and a collection of chairs in different sizes and shapes to accommodate the many different body plans on the station. It was there that the self-proclaimed “Lunch Club” met once a week.

“Easy,” the crab-like creature said around mandibles that worked at a walnut shell, “the scora — I mean the artificial is okay, but it’s nothing like the real thing, fresh from the ground at home.” His carapace was a dull yellow with pale green spots. His manipulator limbs ended with segmented fingers tipped with a claw made from the endoskeleton that extended outside the exoskeleton. Each of his eight walking limbs ended with a single such skeletal claw.

The orange furred creature seated next to him twiddled with a distraction toy with the middle two of her six multiuse limbs, the lower two grasped like folded hands, while the upper two deftly stacked a sandwich with deli-sliced meats and cheeses, interleaved with lettuce and pickles. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I miss a lot from home, but it’s hard to say which I miss the most. Maybe it’s my family.”

“The same family that you complain about?” the crab-like alien asked.

“Hurtur, be nice,” the bronze-skinned human woman interjected.

“Just because they make me mad sometimes doesn’t mean I don’t miss them.”

“Apologies, Gexna,” Hurtur said around the crunches of the walnut shells he was busy stuffing himself with.

She took a bite of the sandwich that seemed as tall as her head, but her jaws opened wide to accommodate with teeth well-suited to shred and crush. With her mouth full as she chewed, she said “You’re fine. But maybe I miss my boat on the lake more than my family, or—”

“Let Marina answer,” Hurtur cut her off. “It’s her question, after all. What do you miss most from your home?”

Marina sighed. “Weather. I miss weather. Rain, wind, hot days, cold days, snow, fog, all of it.”

Gexna’s large, pink eyes grew wide. “Ooh, that’s a good one. I sometimes take a cool shower, close my eyes, and pretend it’s raining.”

“Don’t spend too long doing that, though,” Hurtur said, “or you’ll exceed your water allowance.”

“Says the guy with a hundred-liter exotic fishtank in his office.” Marina laughed. “I do that sometimes, too, Gexna.”

“Hey, that tank and those fish were gifts from the Terran ambassador.” Hurtur clicked his mandibles. “Besides, it belongs to the office, not me.”

“But you are the ambassador, it is your office, and,” Gexna leaned closer to him, “the gift was addressed to you by name.”

“Fine, it’s mine, but I still stay within my allowance.”

“We all do,” Marina said.

Gexna closed her eyes. “I wish I could walk in the mist once in a while.”

“Mist?” Marina asked.

“Back home, we didn’t get rain often, but we would get a fine mist every morning.” She ran her fingers down the fur of her arm. “It would bead up on my fur and drip off. Such a refreshing feeling.”

Marina smiled. “We used to get misty rain like that in the autumn at home, too. I might have an idea.”

“You’re not going to do something crazy, are you?” Hurtur asked.

“No, nothing crazy. Just, meet me at the anti-spinward entrance to the garden right after the third shift start.”

“That’s so far, though,” Hurtur said.

“It’s literally only four kilometers from here.” Marina shook her head.

“But there’s no tram through the garden,” he complained.

“Take the tram the other direction, then. It’s twenty minutes on the express,” Gexna said. “We won’t get in trouble for being in here late, will we?”

“Nah,” Marina gave the furry creature a hug. “My brother works in a special section of the garden. I’ll clear it with him this afternoon.”

“I’ll be on the first express tram after the end of second shift,” Hurtur said. “Until then, I’ve got paperwork to see to.”

“See you then.” Gexna waved with the distraction toy. “I should get back to work myself.”

“See you this evening.” Marina made sure to police up the table area to make sure they left nothing behind before she exited the garden.

Hours later, when she re-entered the spinward door of the garden to walk to the far end, she found Gexna waiting for her. “Are you walking with me to the other end?”

“Yes. I could use the exercise.”

“Nonsense. You’re in fabulous shape.”

“I have just been spending too much time sitting in one place.” Gexna moved in an undulating gait on all six limbs beside the human woman.

“It’s too easy to do that here,” Marina said.

“What is it your brother does?”

“You’ll see.”

They reached the other end of the garden just in time for Hurtur to enter from that door. “Ugh. That tram ride was interminable.”

“Twenty minutes is interminable?” Marina asked.

“It is when there’s a wailing child three seats away.”

“Why didn’t you—”

“The tram was full,” he cut Marina off.

“Well, follow me. I think you’ll like this.” She led them down a side path that led into ever-denser foliage. The scent of moisture greeted them a few hundred meters in. A wall of flexible slats hung in front of them, painted in a color that disappeared in the trees.

Moving aside the slats, she motioned them in. “Welcome to the moss garden.”

Inside, they were greeted by a cool mist, with soft moss underfoot, and dozens of types of moss growing on every surface. Hurtur made a sound the other two had never heard, a sort of grumbling purr. “Oh, this is marvelous,” he said.

Gexna stretched her body out to nearly double her normal length. Water droplets formed on her fur, and she shivered with a giggle, causing them to run off in rivulets. “This feels like home.”

Marina smiled. “The misters run every day for the entire third shift. We can stay as long as you like. Or at least until we’re all soaked.”

Hurtur stepped farther down the mossy path, then lay down. He flattened himself out until gaps appeared along the edges of his carapace and let out what could only be a heavy sigh. “Can we come back?” he asked.

“Every day if you want,” Marina answered, “if you can deal with screaming toddlers on the tram.”

Hurtur spread himself out as far as his legs would stretch on the mossy path. “Worth it.”

prompt: Write a story about someone who must fit their entire life in a single suitcase.

available at Reedsy

Time shuddered to a stop, slipped back a few seconds, then started back up. At first, there was a woman in the center of the room clutching a suitcase against her chest, then two of her, interposed on top of and within each other, then none. She left only a hole in the air behind, that filled with a bang and the rustle of papers swept up by the air that rushed to fill the sudden vacuum.

Her arrival was quieter, a soft whoosh as the pressure in the room where she materialized increased a bit. Her heavy, orange, cable-knit sweater and cap, blue jeans, boots, and heavily used suitcase clashed with the sterile environment in which she found herself.

A light breeze from the air handlers nudged the light brown curls of hair that stuck out from beneath the knit cap. Awareness returned to amber eyes edged with crow’s feet in a face the color of dark honey. She relaxed her grip on the suitcase, setting it down as color returned to knuckles that had gone white.

“Welcome home, Christa.” The tenor voice that came through the speaker near the door was mellifluous, though lacking any emotive quality. “We are ensuring that no dangerous pathogens have come with you. You may notice a slight astringent smell. That is an antiseptic, completely harmless.”

“Uh, ok.” Christa looked for a camera near the speaker but didn’t see one. “Hi?” The smell of the antiseptic was so faint as to be unnoticed, had it not been mentioned.

The voice came back over the speaker. “All clear.”

The door opened and a woman in a loose-fitting jumpsuit walked in. Deep brown eyes shone above a bright smile in a pale face with cool undertones. “Are you feeling altogether well?” she asked.

“It was a little weird at first, but I think I’m okay now.”

“Fantastic! I’m Adria, and the voice you heard earlier was Clyde.” Adria stepped closer to Christa.

“Is Clyde an AI?”

Adria laughed. “No, he’s just…different.”

Christa nodded. “Ah. Neurodivergent.”

Adria pursed her lips. “Um, that’s possible. Not sure, though. Can I grab your bag?”

“I’ve got it.” Christa picked up the suitcase, careful to not hold the whole weight with the handle. “It’s falling apart.”

“We can get you a new one. If you prefer, however, I’m sure Clyde could help you repair that one. Some things are precious. I understand.” Adria gestured to the door. “Shall we? I’ll show you to your room.”

The room was furnished the same as the room she’d just left. The desk looked like wood, but didn’t have the same warmth, the mattress on the bed was firmer than the lumpy one she’d left behind, the blankets softer and lighter.

In the closet hung more than half a dozen jumpsuits like the one Adria wore. Christa removed her boots and found the carpet to be softer and more inviting than what she’d left behind.

“We tried to recreate your room to the best of our abilities. If you want to change anything, feel free. If you need anything just let us know.” Adria gestured toward a door on the opposite side of the room. “There’s a washroom and shower through there. Get some rest, and when you feel up to it, put on a uniform and join us in the galley. Just follow the signs in the hallway.”

Christa showered, discovered underclothes in the drawers of the desk, the same place she’d kept them in her original room, and put on one of the soft jumpsuits. She felt a wave of déjà vu in the fit of it.

The woman in the mirror was familiar, if older than she felt. Besides the crow’s feet around her eyes, the absence of the knit cap left the grey around her temples visible, and the beginnings of permanent wrinkles on her forehead.

She sighed and turned to leave when a knock came at her door. “It’s open, come in,” she said.

A small man with deep brown skin, close-cropped, curly, black hair, and striking green eyes entered. “Hello, Christa,” he said in the dulcet, but emotionless tenor she’d heard earlier.

On a second look, she noticed that part of his head was covered with a metal plate that had some sort of port in the middle. “Oh, hi. You must be Clyde?”

“Yes, I am Clyde,” he said. “It is pleasant to make your acquaintance. I have heard much about you, with the larger proportion being positive.”

“That’s uh, good? I guess.”

“It is a positive position for us to be in,” Clyde said. “This would normally be Adria’s duty, but she is busy with other things. Can you show me what you brought with you and tell me about your life before your other memories cloud the details?”

“Other memories?” she asked.

“I should not have mentioned that,” he said. “Please show me what you brought with you.”

Christa opened the suitcase then paused. She pointed at the cable-knit sweater and matching cap. “Those are the last things my mother knitted before she passed.” She chuckled even as tears filled her eyes.

“I hated orange, but she always wanted me to wear it. ‘It looks so good on you,’ she’d say. Anyway, I wore them every time I visited her in the hospital. Now, I wear it to remember her smile.”

Clyde nodded. “What else?”

She lifted out a dog-eared paperback. “My favorite book. I’ve read it thirty or more times.” She carefully unwrapped a padding of pillow-filling, in which rested a porcelain figurine which she set in place of pride on the desk.

“This was a gift from my grandmother on my tenth birthday. She’d gotten it new when she was ten.”

After that came a photo album with a worn spine. “130 years of photos of my family in there.” Beneath that was a charger and a tablet. “It’s probably not going to last the rest of my life, but there are three hundred books and four thousand songs in here.”

The unpacking continued, a collar from a long-gone, furry friend, a stuffed toy from infancy, a knitted scarf in alpaca, a favorite sleep shirt, her diplomas, and dozens of trinkets from fifty-eight years of life, condensed into a single suitcase.

When she finished emptying the suitcase and putting everything in its place, she said, “It all seems so trivial. Even this suitcase, which my mother used when she first moved out of my grandmother’s house.”

“Nothing is trivial when it comes to your pre-agency life.” Clyde’s eyes closed for a moment then opened wide. “Adria is waiting for us in the galley. It is time for your induction into the Temporal Anomaly Agency, which will be your physical re-vitalization, memory unlocking, and agency training memory upload.”

Christa took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, let’s do this.”

As they walked to the galley, Clyde asked, “Why did you accept the invitation to join the agency?”

Christa shrugged. “I’m the last of my family and was unable to have kids. I’ve got a doctorate in Physics that got me jobs from flipping burgers to doing data analysis for a Wall Street firm to make rich people richer, with no hope for retirement. My life never went anywhere important.”

“That is a logical assessment.”

She stopped and looked at Clyde. “Wait. What was it you were talking about ‘other memories’ earlier?”

“You were first approached about joining the agency one year after earning your doctorate and agreed then. That meeting, and the subsequent meetings and check-ups were blocked from your memory in order to not impact the rest of your life. We find that most who agree once when they are young, are still accepting decades later.”

“And if I hadn’t agreed?”

Clyde looked at her. “That is unknown. All we know is that you were listed as missing two days after you were transported to this time and never found. Perhaps you would have gone on to live under an alias somewhere else, or perhaps you would have been abducted and killed and your body never found.”

“That’s a little dark, Clyde.” Christa chuckled in spite of it and resumed walking to the galley with him.

“It is simply a logical conclusion for a person who went missing in in the vicinity of three known serial killers who were active at that same time.”

“Known serial killers?” she asked.

“One was suspected at the time you left, one was not known until months later, and the third only came to light six years later.” Despite the subject, his voice maintained the same fluid tone and flat affect.

“Were you always like this?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“So…unemotional.”

“I am unaware of whether I was or not,” he said, “but since my injury on an assignment in 1543, I have lost the urge to sing.”

“I’m sorry, that sounds awful.” Christa patted his shoulder.

“It’s just as well,” Adria said as they entered the galley. “I got tired of hearing the same songs over and over.” She handed Christa a drink.

“Oh? How many songs do you know? Three? Five?” Christa asked before drinking the cool, sweet beverage.

“972,” Clyde answered.

“That’s….” Christa shook her head. “How long have you two been doing this?”

“711 years, our relative time,” Clyde answered.

“You’re over 700 years old?!”

“That is just the time we have worked together. Prior to that, I was with another team for 309 relative years,” Clyde said. “I am unsure of my actual age, but I have rejuvenated fifty-one times.”

“Seventy-four for me,” Adria said. “I stopped counting years around the twentieth rejuve. If you’re curious, that drink is your rejuvenation dose. Over the next few hours, it’ll feel like a fever, then you’re in for a couple rough days. After that, you’ll look and feel like you’re in your early twenties again.”

 “How far in the future are we?” Christa asked.

“Oh, we’re not. We’re in the current, the now. The point where at which we are unable to travel forward any faster than just waiting for tomorrow.” Adria grinned. “But if you’re wondering what the year would be in your calendar, it’s 4319, if I remember correctly.”

“I think there’s some physics I might be missing,” Christa said. “Is that part of the agent training that gets uploaded to my brain?”

“We figured out a couple hundred years ago that complex topics like that don’t work well for neural uploading,” Adria said, “but if you want to learn it, you’ll have time.”

“We learned that 184 years ago, in 2213 Post Singularity,” Clyde said, “in the Jiang and Carter study.”

“Post Singularity? As in uploading our consciousness to computers?” Christa asked.

“That, and a lot more.” Adria pointed at the glass. “Finish that up and we’ll get you caught up as much as we can before your rejuvenation kicks in.”

“I want to see it all,” Christa said, downing the rest of the drink. “Let’s get started.”

prompt: Write a story with a character or the narrator saying “I remember…”

The prompt further states:
Our official contest guidelines are still 1,000 to 3,000 words per story, but we hope to see more stories than usual embracing the concise spirit of flash fiction. Return to a time of cultural maximalism — while keeping your word count to a minimum.

word count: 1000

available at Reedsy

“I remember….” The grizzled veteran rubbed the white fur along her muzzle, tracing the path of a scar with a clawed hand missing two digits. “I was a young lieutenant then; thought I knew everything.”

“Grenan, don’t start getting maudlin now.” Next to the warrior covered in white and grey fur sat another bipedal tetrapod. The similarities ended there, however. 

Grenan stood over two meters with clawed hands that better served slashing than grasping, a muzzle that extended the size of both her mouth and nose, large, low-set ears that hung above sloped shoulders, and large, gold-rimmed eyes that were almost entirely pupil. The woman next to her, though, was one-and-a-half meters tall, brown eyes surrounded with visible, white sclera, an orthognathic rather than prognathic face, long, straight, dark brown hair with streaks of grey above golden-brown skin, and slender hands with grasping fingers capped with nails that served only as protection for the nailbed.

“Do you even listen to yourself?” Grenan gulped down her drink and signaled for a refill. “Determined to be the shining daystar always, Mei? Do I need to remind you that life is not always light and happiness?”

Mei downed her shot and rapped the empty glass against both of her prosthetic legs. “Nope, I’ve got plenty of reminders. But tonight isn’t about getting all weepy, you hear me?”

“What’s it about then?” Grenan took her refilled cup and sipped. “You call me and say rush down here to meet you at the bar and then ask if I remember when we met.”

“Well, I promised you something then, before we were so rudely interrupted by the war.” Mei chuckled at some internal joke.

“We met just in time to become siblings in arms,” the big veteran said.

“Not often a training exercise gets skipped for jumping into the shit, but god damn if I would want any other unit by my side in combat.”

Grenan sniffed on instinct and knew that Mei was hiding something she considered good. “I don’t like surprises.”

“Between your sniffer and how well you know me, it doesn’t matter what happens, it won’t be much of a surprise.” Mei picked up her chaser and took a swig of the cold beer.

Grenan looked down to where she could smell the plastics and electronics of Mei’s legs and guilt washed over her. Mei had never assigned blame, but Grenan blamed herself and had never been able to forgive herself.

Mei laid a gentle hand on the sloped shoulder of her furred friend. “Hey, Gren, it’s not your fault. Please, stop blaming yourself.”

“My brain knows,” Grenan said, “but I still feel guilty about it. If I hadn’t turned the safeties off—”

“We’d both be dead,” Mei cut her off. “You did exactly what you were meant to in the situation. If I’d been in proper uniform….”

“What? You’ve never mentioned that. But what does it have to do with anything?”

Mei let out an exaggerated sigh. “In the six years before the…,” she knocked her knuckles against her leg, “ …before this, how many times did you beat me to battle stations? In all the drills and actual emergencies, how many times?”

“Well, I… just that time.”

“Exactly.” Mei smiled. “I’d been dangling my bare feet in the hydroponics pond. I figured having my boots in hand was close enough to in uniform.

“When the alarm went off, I knew it wasn’t a drill. I shoved my wet feet into my boots and took off for stations. Just before the hull was breached, I stepped on my loose shoelace and face planted. I was just lucky that all my important bits were on the safe side of the blast door when it dropped.”

“Mei, it wasn’t your fault, it was—”

“A stupid accident caused by me not being in proper uniform in an unsafe area.” Mei smiled. “I’m over it, and I’ve had these prostheses longer than I had legs.”

“If anyone had known the whole story, you would’ve been called ‘Laces’ instead of ’Stumpy.’ Or would that have been even more cruel?” Grenan asked.

“Eh, if your nickname isn’t at least a little cruel or embarrassing, then your comrades don’t like you. It’s still better than—”

“Hershey,” Grenan cut her off. “When you explained what the name meant I thought maybe everyone hated him, but he seemed to take it in stride.”

“Well, yeah. He probably still wished he had a better nickname already. Still, when you’re piloting a fighter mid-combat, a stomach bug strikes and you fill your flight suit, you gotta’ know a name’s coming.” Mei snorted. “I talked to him at Whitman’s memorial. He’s still not retired; running the new pilot training program.”

“Oh, Whitman…. If Whitman hadn’t been on station, you wouldn’t have made it.” Grenan raised her glass. “To Marcus ‘Aftershock’ Whitman, may he rest in peace.”

Mei touched her glass to Grenan’s. “To Doc Aftershock.” She took a sip, then asked, “Now that he’s gone, are you allowed to tell me why that became his nickname?”

Grenan’s lip raised above her needle-like teeth, her species’ equivalent of a smile. “After he put the tourniquets on, pumped you full of synth-blood, and put you into a medically induced coma, he took care of you until you were in pre-op on the hospital ship.

“For eleven hours, he was calm, efficient, and meticulous. After he handed you off to the surgical team, and was no longer responsible, he began to shake. He couldn’t stop shaking for hours, breaking into gasping sobs every few minutes. He kept it cool until he didn’t have to, then went into shock. Aftershock.”

“What about you?” Mei asked. “How did you handle it?”

“When Whitman told me not to look, I didn’t. I didn’t see you until after you came out of surgery. Cowardly, huh?”

“Nah, smart.” Mei stood. “I once promised you a human-style birthday party, now you’ve got one at your house to get to. Pretend to be surprised.”

prompt: Write a story about two characters who surprisingly end up spending a holiday or event together.

available at Reedsy

The woman who piloted the ship was in her mid-thirties, close to two meters tall, with broad, strong features, jet hair, deep brown eyes, and warm, golden-brown skin. Despite being human, the ship she piloted was of a sort no other human had ever seen. Sleek, with no visible seams or joins, no hint of door or portal, it tore its way across light years through an artificial wormhole.

#

The woman who watched the customers coming and going from the cafe was fifty-four, 149 centimeters tall, with soft features in a pale, ivory face. Salt and pepper curls were carefully styled above pale, blue eyes. The plate in front of her sat half-finished, while she nursed her coffee. “It’s bullshit, you know,” she said.

The young waiter raised the coffee pot in question and his eyebrows in surprise. “What?”

“You asked how Reeve’s Day was going for me. I just said it’s bullshit.” She moved her coffee cup over to hint at a refill. “Instead of celebrating Howard Reeve’s birthday, we should be celebrating ‘Kahananui Day’ instead.”

He refilled her cup, no room for cream or sugar as she’d indicated on his first round. “What’s that?”

“Patricia Kahananui. She’s the technician that picked up the signal and convinced Captain Reeve to investigate.” She took the refilled cup and wrapped her hands around it as if to warm them. “It’s really too sad nobody remembers her sacrifice.”

“Did she — I mean, um — what happened to her?”

“She readied a relativistic probe to send toward the signal. Not that anyone on the ship would live long enough to see what the response would be, but they were going to send it anyway.” She took a sip of her coffee.

“Then what happened?”

“The official story is that she climbed into the probe to make some sort of adjustment, and there was a communications error. Whether that’s true or not, she was in the probe when it launched at a steady three gees acceleration for the next year according to the probe’s time, with another year of three gee reverse acceleration. And a theoretical maximum of twenty hours oxygen on board.”

“Oh.” The waiter seemed at a loss for words, mumbled an apology and moved on.

The alien ship exited the wormhole that closed behind it. One second there was nothing there, then a bright flash and a strange ship in low Earth orbit. The pilot waved her hand and lights on the smooth console shifted and flashed. She piloted this ship with subtle gestures, landing in the grassy patch behind a cafe. The ship set down amidst wildflowers and gawking stares of passersby.

#

The pilot exited a door that seemed to materialize from the smooth side of the ship. She walked into the cafe and looked at the crowd. There were a few stools at the bar, but all the tables were occupied, one by only one woman. She made a beeline for that table, and asked the woman there, “May I sit here?”

“Sure. You look familiar.”

The pilot sat. “I do?”

The woman across the table from her nodded. “You from around here?”

The pilot smirked. “Yeah, but — that was a long time ago.”

“Sorry,” the woman said, setting down her coffee and extending a hand to shake. “Myra Jenkins.”

The pilot shook Myra’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Myra. Pat Kahananui.”

Myra laughed. “Right, right. Did the waiter put you up to this?”

“Who?”

Just then, the waiter came back to the table. “Would you like to order, ma’am?” he asked Pat.

“Three eggs, over easy, steak, rare, whole-wheat toast with lots of butter, and a pot of coffee, please,” she answered.

Myra eyed the pilot with suspicion until the waiter had poured her coffee and left. “Really, what’s your name?”

“Pat Kahananui. Patricia, actually, but I don’t go by that.”

“You were named after the technician?”

“No, I was named after my mother’s neighbor, but I am — or was — a technician on a research vessel.”

“Which one?”

“UHS Aurum.”

“While I appreciate the attempt at humor, Reeve’s Day pisses me off enough. Seriously, now who—”

“Reeve’s Day? What’s that?”

“Birthday of Captain Howard Reeve,” Myra said with a sneer.

“Why does he get a day?”

“My thoughts exactly.” Myra raised her coffee cup in salute and took another sip.

“I’m serious. Wait, what year is it?”

“What year? It’s 572.”

“Shit,” Pat muttered. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t consider the relativistic effects of my little joy ride.”

“Your what?”

“It’s been long enough that it should all be declassified by now. Alien signals from hundreds of light-years away, then signals from far closer. I picked up on them, then convinced Howie to send a probe. He didn’t know I aimed it at the closer signal and packed enough oxygen and CO2 scrubbers to last me for a few days. I snuck in with the hope that the aliens would pick me up, and they did.” She stopped briefly, as the waiter delivered her heaping plate of food. “Of course, he wouldn’t know about that part.”

“The un-redacted story was the same as the official one. You crawled in to make an adjustment at the last minute, and there was a communications error that was undetected until after you’d launched. It was classified as an accident.”

“Huh,” Pat said. “I guess Howie didn’t want that on his record. I left him a note and told him he could declare me insane if he wanted.”

“Yeah, well, the official story is always just that. Anyway, relativistic effects would account for why you look so good for a hundred and seventeen, but if your story is true, how did you get back?”

Pat removed a disk from her jumpsuit and placed it on the table. “Security view of the Arrow, please.”

A holographic image of the sleek ship parked behind the cafe filled the air between the women. The crowd around it took pictures and video, and at least two law enforcement officers were on-scene trying to maintain order.

“You—you’re really her!”

“I’m, uh, just me,” Pat said around a mouthful of steak and eggs. “God, I missed this so much.”

“So, how come it took so long? Was it tens of light-years away?” Myra asked.

“Oh, no. The relativistic effects were entirely from the probe, and the fact that I aimed for the signal, which had been deflected around a black hole. When the aliens finally picked me up after three days, I don’t know how long that had been.”

Pat sipped at the coffee, savoring it with a soft hum. “I spent about ten years on their planet — learned their language, their version of calculus, and the physics of artificial worm-hole generation, and spent the last year building the Arrow — then took off for home three hours ago and got here just before I walked in. So, rough guess, I spent eighty-seven years your time around that damned black hole.”

“Three hours? So, they’re somewhere close?” Myra asked.

“Six-hundred-five light years away, give or take.”

“In three hours?”

“Wormhole.”

“And no relativistic effects from travel in the wormhole?”

“Negligible. About the same as the difference between being on Earth and being in orbit.”

Myra shifted in her seat, pushing her half-emptied plate to the end of the table. “You brought back the physics of faster-than-light travel, and a working prototype? Now, maybe they’ll listen and give you your own day.”

“Don’t want it. But if today is Howie’s birthday, it’s the twenty-eighth of December?”

“No, that was Saturday, but the holiday is always the Monday nearest. It’s the thirtieth.”

Pat ate three quarters of her meal before slowing down. “You never answered me, though.”

“Answered what?”

“Why did Howie get his own day?”

“Using the signal you picked up, he came up with a way to compress data for transmission. At first, it was just used for space exploration, but in time, it was applied to everything, everywhere. The one that gets trotted out the most is that stock trades happen in less than one percent of the time they used to take. Like gambling in nanoseconds is something to cheer.”

Pat looked at the small woman across from her. “What do you do?”

Myra sighed. “I teach middle school science. Not my first choice, but options for astrophysicists have been limited lately.”

A smile crossed Pat’s face. “Wanna take a ride in my ship? We can swing by Jupiter for a bit, then we’ll go set down at JPL and see if they have an opening.” She laid a hundred-year-old fifty-dollar bill on the table.

“That won’t work,” Myra said. She pulled out some North American Credits and laid them on the table. “I got your bill, in exchange for a ride.”