Tag: science fiction

prompt: Write a story in the form of diary entries, written by an explorer as they make their way through what they thought was an untouched location.

available at Reedsy

12 Garn

I arrived in orbit around the heavy world. I’m not the first to discover it, of course. Others have placed orbital observers (OOs) around it, but if anyone has sent landers, they haven’t shared what they found. That’s why we decided it’s better to send a person down there.

Because of all the OOs, it took a while to calculate a safe orbit from which I can descend to explore and return to at the end of each day. There’s no way I could survive down there for more than a few days, despite my high-gee training.

Tomorrow, I test out that training, and this new grav lifter. It’s got an impulser stronger than even most heavy freight lifters, with a body light enough to be a racer and strong enough to be a ramming vessel.

We know there’s life down there, but what it’s like, no one’s sure. The exobiologists think they know what life will look like down there. Low plants, broad, squat animals — all small and probably exoskeletal — if there are any, with the possibility of large animals in the oceans. Honestly, I think they’re just assuming life like home with but with twice the gravity.

One thing they probably have right is that the chance for intelligent life to evolve under such extreme conditions is near-enough to non-existent. It isn’t likely to happen for this world any time before the death of their star.

The planet itself is beautiful from orbit. The blue oceans and the play of clouds reminds me of home, but the cloud formations are different, more violent.

13 Garn

One complete rotation of the planet below is equivalent to about two-thirds of a day. I figured it would be a good measure of time while I’m there. I decided to stay for one rotation then return to orbit to sleep and recover. The idea was to cover a lot of ground and gather a great deal of data and samples, while maintaining my health.

I didn’t make it through half a rotation. Just how wrong the exobiologists were was apparent before I even touched down. The “short, ground-hugging plants” were there, of course, but there were also massive, tall plants spreading their light-gathering parts high in the sky.

I took some samples of the low plants, and a dead, fallen part from one of the tall plants. There was no way I could reach it to get to the live parts.

The animals…. I don’t know where to start. Yes, the small, exoskeletal animals were everywhere, and some of them fly! The flying ones bite, and some of the others do as well. I don’t know what sort of venoms they possess, but the suit hit me with a broad-spectrum antivenin the second I got the first bite. It still hurt like fire. How could something so small hurt so bad?

Those annoying little things weren’t the only animals, though. There were tall creatures with four limbs, and a head on a long neck, able to eat the live parts of the tall plants. Knowing how hard my hearts were working even in my exosuit to keep blood to my brain, I thought it must have a chain of hearts to push blood that far against this gravity.

There were animals flying, running, walking, slithering, you name it. All of them were far larger than what I was told to expect outside of the oceans.

The thing that made me quit early for the day was the largest animal I’ve ever seen. Nothing at home even comes close to its bulk. The long-necked animal was taller but looked fragile. Not this.

It had huge flaps on the sides of its head, a thick body, four stout legs, and a tentacle on its face it used to bring things to its mouth. On either side of the tentacle, large, curved horns extended, promising quick death.

I thought that with its size it would be slow and lumbering. When the largest one waved its head-flaps and charged for me I thought I was about to die. They are not slow, and I learned that fear is a good motivator to run even under double gravity.

14 Garn

I stayed on the ship, in orbit, and rested. The few samples I collected have been analyzed and recorded, and the samples themselves disposed. The collection containers have been sterilized and I’ve been through decontamination twice.

Tomorrow, I’ll be landing far away from the giant monster animals. I’ve picked a spot that seems to have more of the tall plants. They probably don’t squeeze themselves in there. Maybe there will be more of the tall animals. They were rather amazing.

The spot I’d initially chosen for tomorrow is being hit with a massive storm. The best guess the ship’s sensors and computer can come up with is winds strong enough to blow the ship about like a mote of dust. The wind force is more than three times higher than any ever recorded at home.

15 Garn

Writing this from the surface of the planet. When I make it back to the ship, I’ll have to head home. I’d hoped for more time, but I fell, and in the heavy gravity injured myself. My leg is broken, I’m sure of it. It’s not a compound fracture at least.

When I stop and rest, like now, the world around me is filled with hoots and howls and whistles and cries. The noise is everywhere and nowhere at once. It’s as if every creature has something it wants to tell every other creature.

I’ve managed to gather a few specimens. One of them was a large, segmented, exoskeletal animal with a pair of legs at each segment. It was kind of cute until it bit me and my suit responded with antivenin again. If I thought the bite of the other creature hurt, this was on a whole different level. It still burns all the way up my arm even though my suit says I’m safe from that.

It was while I was reeling from the pain of that bite that I tripped over the base anchor of one of the tall plants. I heard it as I landed with the lower part of my leg across another one of the base anchors of the plant. It was a clear snap, followed by my howl of pain.

The rest of the creatures fell silent then and stayed that way until I got myself calm and quiet. I had a momentary fear that something was creeping up on me and I was going to become some animal’s dinner until the noises resumed as they had been.

The sheer diversity of life in this extreme gravity well is bound to have an effect on what we think we know about biology. I’ve seen plants with brightly colored organs that small flying animals drink from with long protrusions from their face. There’s one above my head right now as I lay here trying to rest.

The flying animal has a soft covering of some sort, and its wings are vibrating so fast it can hover in place while it drinks. I wish I could get a sample from it.

16 Garn

Yesterday, I had almost made it to the ship when I saw them. They were similar to the other animals, but I knew right away they were intelligent. They wore what could only be described as clothing and carried tools. Not simple sticks, either.

They communicated to others that were nowhere to be seen with small, hand-held devices. One of them made noises at me. I guessed it was trying to talk. It kept its voice soft and pointed at my leg and held up a container it carried.

I was too frightened by their predatory eyes and size to do much. They were bigger than me, bipedal, and social animals. If they wanted to disembowel me and eat me then and there, they’d have a better chance than even the giant creature I’d see the first day.

I froze in place while the creature set the container down next to me and examined my leg. It was gentle as it prodded along it with its bare fingers with no claws. When it touched near the break though, I couldn’t keep silent. It made a hissing noise and then went back to its soft voice.

It opened the container and I saw a myriad of tools I couldn’t begin to comprehend, but it pulled something out, measured it against my lower leg, then pulled out a roll of some sort of cloth. It continued with its soft voice. I couldn’t tell what it was trying to say, but it sounded like it was trying to be soothing.

The creature used the thing it had pulled out as a splint on my leg and wrapped it with the cloth. The cloth was elastic and stuck to itself. When it had finished the splint and closed up the container, it gestured as if to pick me up. The gravity had so worn me out by that point that I couldn’t fight back.

I expected to be carried back to the creature’s lair, but it carried me to my ship. It helped me into my seat and then the creatures began to chatter at each other. The tone was clear, and it seemed the one that had helped me and carried me to the ship disagreed with the other two.

I told the creature I needed to get back to orbit and go home, that the gravity was too much for me. I did my best to use gestures to make my meaning clear. The other two creatures left, and the one that had helped me sat on the floor of the ship and refused to move.

With no other choice, I ascended back into orbit. The relief from the steep gravity well was welcome and I passed out in the presence of the creature that I thought still might eat me. What would intelligent life on this planet be like? When everything else is lethal or harmful, right down to the gravity and the weather, they must be terrible monsters.

That’s what I thought yesterday, anyway. When I awoke, the creature was checking my leg. It had carried my samples on board and figured out how the sample containers fit into the analyzer and had fed them in.

I stripped out of my exosuit, and the creature removed the splint while I removed the legs of the suit. It then re-splinted my leg after checking it. It held up a small round of compressed powder and did some miming. I think it might be a medicine of some sort.

I took the compressed round and fed it into the analyzer. It was a potent analgesic that would bind to certain protein coupled receptors to cause hyperpolarization. This, in turn, would block pain signals on that path. It seems they have a similar nervous structure to our own. When the analyzer told me it was safe, I took it. There was no way I was going to anger the creature.

The pain relief was far beyond what I would’ve expected. Before I became too tired to stay awake any longer, the creature and I mimed back and forth for a while. Its name is Anee and I told it my name. I figured out their head movement behaviors for yes and no.

When I tried to tell Anee that I was going to return it to the planet it moved its head in the “no” gesture, sat on the floor, and crossed its arms. The ship’s sensors are telling me that if I don’t head home within the next day for medical treatment I will be in dire straits.

I’ve set the controls to take me home, and I’m trying to stay awake to see how the creature reacts. Perhaps I can learn

17 Garn

I passed out while writing yesterday’s journal. I woke when the analgesic wore off, and I realized the pain was far worse than I had thought. Anee seems to be worried about me and is showing me the pictures it took on its communication device.

It took several moving and still images of the OOs in orbit around the planet. It was chattering about a large one in particular when I saw it. The markings on the OOs were the same kind of markings as those on the communication device. Those weren’t other stars keeping their secrets from us after all. The creatures had managed to climb out of their hellish gravity well.

The creature also seemed enthralled by the moving image it took out the window in warp space. I see it all the time, so no big deal, but this creature had just gone faster and probably farther than any other of its species.

The creature has been trying to copy our language, and has managed to say a few words already, though its accent is exceedingly thick. It managed to say “food” when it was hungry and even seemed to enjoy the meal ration.

The automed numbed my leg, set it, and filled the area with pain killers and bone growth agents. Throughout the entire procedure, Anee held one of my hands in its own. They were warm and rough, though the touch was gentle.

Someone from the science division sent me a message that they planned to dissect Anee. I told them that if they tried, I’d kill them. I think, however, that they’d have a difficult time even containing Anee. This is the same creature that splinted my leg, then carried me in twice normal gravity to my ship.

I’m closing this out for now, as I, my ship, and Anee are in quarantine. Because of Anee, of course. I no longer feel threatened by it. It does a thing with its voice where the tones and rhythm make a pleasing sound, even though I don’t understand the words at all, and it has been spending most of the time looking after me as though I was a child or invalid…not that I mind.

Anee saw me recording my diary and made the noise Hooman while pointing at itself. I’m not sure if that is its full name, or maybe the name of its people or its species. It seemed important to Anee, so I’ve added it here, so I don’t forget.

prompt: Write a story about a character who wakes up in space.

available at Reedsy

Figures, Clarice thought, the one time I get to sleep in. By all logic and sense, she knew she should be dead. Instead, she was uncomfortable, annoyed and growing more so by the moment.

She could feel the side of her facing the sun heating up, the side in shadow growing colder. The only sound she heard was the beating of her own heart. When she’d opened her mouth, the moisture boiled off in the vacuum right away. High above the Earth, she found herself in an orbit where she saw the space station pass far below her.

Clarice wondered if she could get herself down there and knock on the door of the ISS. Her annoyance was momentarily allayed with the silliness of a tiny woman in pink pajamas knocking on their airlock and freaking out the astronauts.

She looked down at the Power Puff Girls pajamas she wore, compliments of being too small for most adult clothes. She tried to turn herself to change which side was toward the sun, but nothing seemed to help. She tried a swimming motion, but all it accomplished was to make her feel awkward.

A shimmer in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She whipped her head around toward where she’d seen it, and her body began to slowly rotate in the opposite direction. Of course, just when I don’t want it to.

She was still trying to figure out if she had seen something or just imagined it when it appeared in front of her. Clarice could still see the satellites and Earth below, and the moon beyond, but there was a black rectangle, reflecting no light, between her and what was beyond.

She reached a hand out and felt a solid surface. When her hand was touching it, she could hear the sound of machinery, and people. She tried to grasp on to it, find a place to hold on, but only managed to push herself away from it.

The black rectangle was slowly moving away from her, then an opened door rotated into view, as though it was pushing through from another dimension. Inside the door was a person in a space suit, tethered with a thick cable, and kicking off to come to her.

Once she’d been pulled into the airlock and the outer door closed, air began to rush in. Clarice took the first breath she’d had in far too long. She could no longer hear the slow pulse of her heart in her head. Sound filled the volume around her.

“Water,” she tried to say, but her throat was too dry. She pointed to her throat, and mimicked drinking.

The woman in the space suit removed her helmet and answered. “We’ll get you some water right away. I’m afraid you’re stuck with us for a bit.”

The inner door opened. A man floated near the door, holding a pouch with a straw and said, “Come on in.”

Clarice accepted the pouch and sucked at the straw. The soothing feeling of water returning to her mouth and throat was followed by the recognition that her lungs were every bit as dry. She still managed to croak out a “Thank you.”

The two astronauts seemed to know exactly what needed done and did so without any wasted conversation. While the woman got out out of her space suit and secured it in the straps near the airlock door, the man went about pulling medical equipment from a box that had been strapped to the wall.

He took her blood pressure while she finished the pouch of water. The woman took the empty and gave her another. While she worked on it, the man set up an IV and had the needle inserted before she knew he’d even started.

The woman put the blood pressure cuff around the IV bag and began pumping it up. She then turned to Clarice and offered her hand. “Mission Commander Agneta Ekstrand. You can call me Annie.”

Clarice shook her hand. “Clarice Whittaker.”

Annie pointed at the other astronaut, currently busy rechecking the pulse-oximeter he had placed on her finger. “That’s Ethan Valkai. If you hadn’t guessed, he’s the mission doctor.”

“Clarice,” he said with a nod.

“How many others are there on your mission?”

Annie laughed. “It’s just the two of us. We were told a body had launched into orbit, and we had to have a look.”

“A body what?”

Annie raised an eyebrow. “It was you.”

 Clarice shook her head. Nothing made sense. “But what? How did I get here? Why am I still alive?”

Ethan cleared his throat. “I don’t know how you’re still alive, to be honest. You’re a little dehydrated but show no signs of decompression sickness, and nothing indicates that you’ve been without oxygen for over an hour.”

“Probably not the answer you were looking for,” Annie said, “but I’ll fill in the rest as best I can.”

She pulled a tablet from the wall and showed Clarice a blurry video of something bright pink shooting up past a plane. Another showed the bright pink blur emerging from the tops of the clouds, a ring of wakes spreading through them.

“At this point,” Annie said, “you were traveling at just over Mach 7, and had the US government scrambling to call everyone to let them know they did not just fire a hypersonic missile from Idaho.”

“You’re saying, I just flew into space all on my own. And didn’t even wake up until I’d been floating out here for however long. How am I supposed to believe that?”

Annie cleared her throat. “Which one of us was floating barefoot in space in kids’ pajamas?”

“”Don’t knock my pajamas, Agneta the Tall. The adult clothes they make in my size all suck.” Clarice tried to cross her arms but the IV got in the way and she thought better of it.

“Please, just Annie, not Agneta.”

Clarice muttered, “Annie the Tall, then.”

”For all we knew, somebody’s kid shot into high orbit with no visible means of propulsion.” Annie helped Clarice to a seat where she could strap in and gave a couple more pumps to the blood pressure cuff still squeezing on the IV bag.

“What happens now?” Clarice asked.

“That’s a good question.” Ethan strapped into another chair. “When that IV bag is empty, let me know.”

“I will. Should I just pump it up some more when it slows down again?”

“Yeah. Not too much, just one or two pumps.”

“I think what happens now,” Annie said, “is we call home and see if they want us to land for quarantine on Earth or stay up here in quarantine with you until we determine whether you’re dangerous or not.”

Clarice looked at Annie, her disbelief pushed beyond what she thought possible. “Me? Dangerous how?”

“Well, the first thought I had, when I saw you moving in hard vacuum, was that you weren’t a human,” Ethan said. “Maybe an advanced robot, or possibly some sort of alien.”

“And?” she asked.

“You’re human, as far as I can tell,” he said. “Of course, there’s no way to run a DNA analysis up here, so we may be waiting a while for them to make up their mind as to what to do.”

“There’s also the issue that we don’t have a suit for you,” Annie said. “It’s a safety consideration on reentry.”

“However,” Ethan interjected.

“Yeah. However, you already survived insane acceleration and speeds that would tear any non-aerodynamic body apart, not to mention time in hard vacuum, and here you are.”

Clarice broke into a fit of crying laughter. The whole situation was just too much.

“Clarice, what’s wrong, dear?” Annie asked.

“Ethan, Annie, while it’s been nice to make your acquaintance, this was my first day off work in seventeen. All I wanted to do was sleep in, watch some stupid sitcoms, and drink a beer or two. I have to be back at work tomorrow morning, so I can’t quarantine for any amount of time.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I just want to go home.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not going to make it,” Annie said. “I’m sorry.”

Clarice closed her eyes and let herself go limp in the straps. “I just wanted a quiet day off.”

prompt: Write a story in which a conversation takes place where the true subject is only implied.

available at Reedsy

“Jack” walked into the bar as if he owned it. He didn’t pause at the door to adjust to the dim lighting or to suss out the crowd. His broad frame nearly filled the width of the door, while his stained, blue baseball cap with a daisy logo nearly brushed the top of the frame.

As he made his way to a table in the back, he adjusted the leather bomber jacket he wore that matched the brown of his hair. Anyone watching closely enough might have caught a glimpse of the weapon hidden in his waistband at the rear. That didn’t happen, however, as the bar’s patrons were more interested in not catching his attention.

He was the biggest person in the bar — not that big of an accomplishment when he was the only human. The small, flat faced, large eyed, bewhiskered, pale blue aliens that called themselves murins filled the bar.

Jack had to remind himself that this was not Earth, this was Kula, and he was the alien here. He sat across the table from “Jill,” the small, female murin whose pale blue skin was crossed by faint stripes of even paler teal. The size of the table and bench meant that his knees were spread wide and pressed against the table. It felt like sitting a child’s school desk.

“Jill,” he said, “good to see you.”

She pushed a glass full of an amber liquid across to him. Her whiskers moved up and forward from their relaxed position where they had hung parallel to her face with a slight droop. “Good to see you, Jack. How are things going for you?”

“Nothing exciting, but that’s good for a freight pilot.” Jack smiled at Jill’s obvious excitement at seeing him. He took a sip of the warm liquid, letting it coat the inside of his mouth. It was like a cross between Amaretto and maple syrup. Too sweet, but he’d grown accustomed to it.

Jill let her whiskers relax. She focused on her drink, tipping the glass and turning it, letting the liquid coat the glass. She slid a foot under the table until her toe bumped into Jack’s boot and held it there.

Jack knew something was bothering her. “How’s business been?”

Her whiskers pulled back tight against her face and her eyes opened wide enough that the whites showed. Jack put a hand over hers on the table and she got herself under control.

“What’s got you stressed?”

“Ella’s moving to another city. I want to follow, but I don’t know if I can get out of my job here.”

“Just go, then. Ella will be happy to have you, and you can probably work for Ella.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Contract?”

Jill nodded.

“And it covers the new city, too?”

“The contract severely limits my mobility,” she said.

Jack gave her hand a light squeeze. “Tell you what, ma’am. You don’t worry about your contract, I’ll sort that out. I’ll have my lawyer call his lawyer.”

“You’d do that for me? Even if I want to work for you, instead?”

“Of course I would.” Jack cocked his head. “Why is Ella moving, though?”

“One of the stepsisters, again.”

“Snooping around, putting their noses where they don’t belong?” Jack sighed. “Annoying.”

“Speaking of annoying,” Jill said with a slight twitch of her whiskers toward to the door.

Jack looked at the three murins that had entered. Slightly larger than the average, each was dressed in the armor of Enforcers, with their shock sticks held at the ready.

One of them held up a device and swept it around the bar. When the device was silent at the end of the sweep, he said, “Not here. We’re getting closer, though.”

“You!” he barked at the waiter nearest him. “You’re the new squad laborer for the day. Get up and follow us.”

The waiter’s eyes were wide, the whites showing, his whiskers plastered against his face. He set down the tray of drinks he’d been carrying, careful not to make eye contact with any of the Enforcers, and followed them, his head bowed, his legs shaking.

“The Enforcers’ powers were meant to be temporary,” Jill said with a sad droop of her whiskers.

“No power, once gained, is ever relinquished freely. Power corrupts, and all that.” Jack took another sip of the warm, sweet drink. “I get that Ella’s moving and all, but did she leave anything for me? I’d hate to leave with an empty cargo hold.”

Jill took a solid swig from her drink. “Yeah, twelve crates of assorted textiles. I think one might be blankets.”

“It’s good to know her sisters haven’t slowed her down.” He took another sip of the sweet drink. “Do we have the lading bill?”

“We do. The crates, customs paperwork, and bill of lading will be waiting at your ship by the time you get there.”

Jack thought for a moment. “I’m going to stop by my lawyer’s office then come down. Why don’t you meet me at the slip? You know how to open up the ship and settle the cargo.”

“I’ll see you there.” Jill left the bar with the sort of determined walk that advertised places to go and things to do. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was the best way to keep from being picked up by a roving Enforcer squad looking for someone to humiliate.

Jack left the bar with the kind of ambling walk that said he had nowhere in particular he had to be, and no kind of schedule to be there. The Enforcer squads avoided him anyway. He wasn’t a citizen, and the Enforcers weren’t looking to create an interstellar incident.

His wandering took him to a warehouse. He’d been there before, but his business was different then. When his knock on the door was ignored, he kicked it open while drawing his weapon from his waistband.

He reached his ship an hour later, the crates all loaded and pasted with customs stamps and inspection stamps. Jill’s whiskers pointed up and forward. “Here he is,” she said.

“I suppose you need my sign on your paperwork,” he said.

“Yes, please, thank you.” The dockworker was stout for a murin, with a grizzled mien; the politeness felt artificial and more driven by fear to Jack.

“Hey, no problem.” Jack signed with his print, and said, “You can relax around me. Next time just say ‘Hey asshole, hurry up and sign this so I can get back to work.’ I won’t take it personally.”

The dockworker’s whiskers wiggled in the manner of murin laughter and he said, “Good to know, asshole. Now get out of here so I can go home.”

“Even better! Have a good day.” Jack waved at the dockworker before walking up the ramp to the cargo bay of his ship. Jill was there, waiting for him.

“Everything’s secure,” she said. “What did your lawyer say?”

“Your contract is null and void. If you still want to work with me, you can, but I need to get this cargo in space right now.”

“Show me where to strap in.”

After takeoff, clearance to high orbit, clearance to depart orbit, then entry into slip-space, Jack left the cockpit and made his way to the cargo bay. “Jill, we’re in the clear,” he called out.

Jill joined him in unstrapping the crates and opening them up. From each, a murin climbed out from under the piles of cloth in the crates; political dissidents in danger of being “disappeared” by their repressive government. The largest of the crates, marked “blankets,” contained a murin female and her three children.

Jack made sure everyone was safe and healthy, and invited them to make themselves at home in the large galley where a feast awaited them. Once everyone was settled, he told Jill to follow him to the bridge.

They strapped into the chairs in the bridge, and he said, “Tyler Mitchell, pleased to meet you.”

“Inkira sal-Birna, my pleasure.”

“It’ll probably be a long while before you can go back, Inkira.”

“I know. Ella warned me it was getting too dangerous, but without getting rid of —”

“Yeah. I figured he was tracking you. And he would’ve sounded the alarm if he saw you were at the docks.” He removed the pancake holster from the back of his trousers with the revolver. Stamped on the holster was a balance scale. “I don’t like killing, but good riddance. The Enforcers can fight over who wanted him dead more: the Enforcers he was paying off or the drug runners.”

“When are you making your next trip?” she asked.

“We’ll get these folks settled, then I’ll have to get another ship, a new alias, and see where our agents make contact with Ella. It’ll be a couple months, at least.”

“That’s a long time?”

“About sixty Earth days, so around seventy-five of your days.”

“Not too long, then.”

Tyler, a.k.a. Jack, turned toward the small murin woman. “Are you sure Cinderella is safe?”

“She is. Very safe. Last night was the first time I ever met her in person. She scared me half to death.”

“Why’s that?”

“She showed up in her Enforcer uniform. I thought she was there to arrest me.”

“Oh, she made it in. Good to hear.” Tyler smiled.

“You knew she was an Enforcer?”

“I knew we asked her to try, and we provided all the help we could to get her there. For her own safety and for the safety of the people we smuggle out. Plus, it gives her access to places and people she wouldn’t have otherwise.”

“When we finally overthrow the government, and get our democracy, what will you do then? I’ll want to help rebuild, of course. I suppose you aren’t a smuggler by trade.”

“You’re right about that; I’m not. But when the time comes, rebuilding requires a lot of materials and supplies. I’ll go back to hauling normal freight and make Kula my home port. Maybe even buy a house there. I’ve grown fond of it.”

“Just Kula?” she asked.

“Well, you too. Makes it that much better.” He winked.

Her whiskers wiggled. “I do, don’t I? Come on, ‘Jack,’ let’s see if our guests need anything.”

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

available at Reedsy

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m sorry, I—”

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

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

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

“Any pain?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does what?”

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

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

“What does that have to do with—”

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

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

“What did they spend it on?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

available at Reedsy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lunchbox! Where are you?”

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

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

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

“Four minutes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought we lost you,” he said.

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

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

available at Reedsy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, only you monsters.”

“What is your cargo?”

“Medical supplies.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s better,” it said.

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

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

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

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

“What will you do with the medicine?”

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

“Why would you aid your enemies?”

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

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

“The enemy rarely ever is.”

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

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

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

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

“Refugees? Others have left?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

available at Reedsy

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

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

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

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

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

“But what was that quote to the media?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Wills….”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wider impact?”

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

“Uh, the prey takes over.”

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

“We’re the prey?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You too.”

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

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

“Has it really been twenty years?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Three. Orbal, Adumbwe, and Singh.”

“I meant PhDs.”

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

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

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

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

available at Reedsy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Animal, plant or fungus?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Makes sense, I guess.”

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

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

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

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

“Not at all.”

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

“The most unforgettable meal.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But I haven’t checked my ident for—”

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

“No.”

“Perfect. Let’s eat.”

“What are these?”

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

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

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

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

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

“It almost wasn’t,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

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

“What changed?”

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

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

“What are your shipping prices like?”

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

“How much are you paying?”

“Four-thousand credits per week.”

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

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

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

“Really? You like to gamble, huh?”

“I do.”

“Fifty credits again?”

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

“You’re on.”

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

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

“How?”

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

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

His antennae dipped. “My pleasure.”

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

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