Tag: science fiction

prompt: Center your story around an important message that reaches the wrong person.

available at Reedsy

“Greg, come up right away. Oh, and tell the analysts to drop anything they’re working on right now, this takes priority.” She returned the handset to the cradle. The hard-line communication system was older than anything else in the building. In fact, it was older than anything on the moon that wasn’t in a museum or itself a tourist attraction. It was secure, though, and that mattered most.

The swarthy, mustachioed man burst into her office with a harried air and unkempt hair. “What is it, Grace? Did the signal office pick something up?”

Grace turned her monitor around to show Greg. “Not exactly. I got copied on a conversation thread, that I don’t think I was meant to be included in. Sent from the office of Pritnan Antinan.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“If the sound of that name didn’t give it away, he’s from the Nannanan Exclave.”

“I figured that, I just don’t know that name.” Greg studied the message closer and began to point out the other names. “But that’s the Ambassador’s aide, that’s their security chief on the station, and I think that’s their Premier.”

“Right on all. Pritnan Antinan is their Minister of War.” Grace shook her head. “I can’t figure out what this would be about, or why my name would be in the Minister’s contacts. We met here, briefly, at the gala last year. Charming enough for a mass of tentacles, if a little intense, but that’s all I know.”

Greg produced a data crystal and tapped it to the screen. “I’ll get this downstairs to the analysts. We’ll get it decrypted, and then you can figure out what translator to call in, since you’ll have to read them in.”

“The analysts can’t—”

“No. They have one job. Don’t try to confuse them with others.” Greg stopped halfway out the door. “I didn’t know they even had a Minister of War.”

“Seems wholly unlike them, right? They have a Minister for everything they do, and everything they try to avoid at all costs, like the Minister of Disease.”

Greg just grunted and ran back to his underground office. “I’ve got a hot one for you two,” he said.

“Thank you, Greg,” Analyst One said. “We look forward to assisting.”

“How much data do we have?” Analyst Two asked.

“A message thread. Looks like a dozen or so messages, some of them pages long.”

“May I suggest Analyst One begins overall parsing while I start with the shortest messages first?”

“Whatever works best, A-Two,” Greg answered. He tapped the data crystal against the stack of machines in his office, marked ‘A-1’ and ‘A-2’ before sitting at his desk.

“You’ve probably already realized, but the messages are between Nann-Ex members, so I’m unsure what the language will be,” Greg said.

“That’s odd,” Analyst Two said. “These short messages all correspond directly to English and decrypt as such using a simple replacement cipher. There’s really nothing here to challenge us.”

“How do you figure that?” Greg asked. “I’m looking at the encrypted message and the English, but I’m not seeing how it lines up.”

“Does this help?” Analyst-Two asked, displaying the English text written in the symbols of the Nannanan common language.

“The entire message chain is ready for download,” Analyst One said. “If that is all, we shall return to our previous assignments.”

“Thanks,” Greg said, tapping the crystal against his terminal to download the decrypted messages.

He sat beside Grace as they read the decrypted messages together. “Their English is atrocious,” he said.

“It’s not used outside human space. Maybe they figured they’d be able to better hide what they were talking about.” Grace paused. “We don’t have a ship with my name, but that’s what this message says. Is it possible the routing AI passed it on to me when it identified my name?”

“Possible,” Greg answered. “We set up all the infrastructure for the Nann-Ex. Of course, that depends on whether they left it on the default settings.” He paused. “Yeah, that’s probably what happened.”

“I’m more worried about this,” she said, “here. We’re going to war against ourselves?”

“What would make them think that?” he asked.

Grace picked up the handset of the relic and clicked the buttons it rested on a couple times. “Get me General Ochoe.” She listened for a moment. “Good morning, General. We have a worrying message from the Nannanan Exclave. … Sure, come over. I’ll start a fresh pot of coffee.”

As she hung up, Greg was already moving across her office to the coffee pot. “I got this. Extra strong, just like she likes it.”

The general came in as the coffee maker dinged, signifying it was ready to dispense. “Looks like I’m right on time,” she said, putting her Marine Academy mug under the spout. “No cream, no sugar.” The coffee maker filled her mug.

Greg offered her the seat he’d been using, next to Grace. “Something odd’s going on in Nann-Ex.”

“Hello, Greg, Grace,” she said.

Grace took the hint about the niceties. “Hi, Nandi. This message chain is concerning.”

The general sat and sipped her coffee while reading through the messages. “Their English is about on par with half the junior officers.” She chuckled. “This is obviously about the training exercise on Breton. The ship they misidentified as the Grace Alvarez is the Greta Andreesen.”

“How do you figure that?” Grace asked.

“Because the Andreesen is part of the OPFOR for the Breton Resolve exercise, and auto-correct is a thing that will forever haunt us.” Nandi leaned back. “I think we should bring a couple of the Nannanan higher-ups in as observers, including Minister Pritnan.”

“You can do that?” Greg asked. “I know you’ve got some pull, but I didn’t realize—”

“I served with Evan — the SecDef — when we were both butter-bars,” Nandi cut him off. “I’ll send a message and let him know that we should be including them in several training exercises. At least until they get the concept.”

“I don’t understand.” Grace said. “Surely they train.”

“That’s one of those things that was redacted from a number of reports. When the Nannanan were still under Kalari rule, ‘training exercise’ meant something else entirely.” The general sighed. “The Kalari Empire would take the fresh troops along on a sure-win mission in order to get them blooded. It was usually against weak resistance forces, and usually from their own home world.”

“Oh,” Grace closed her eyes. “Damn.”

“Let Ambassador Ritnannan know that we’re inviting his people to the exercise. I’ll call Evan, and we’ll have Minister Pritnan on his way to Breton by this afternoon. Thanks for the coffee.” Nandi stood, downing the last of her coffee, then left the office as though it had been nothing more than a casual chat.

“I’m curious about something,” Greg said. “Can you load up the original message?”

“Why?” she asked, even as she loaded it.

“Examine headers.”

Grace followed his instructions to peer into the formatting of the message.

He chuckled and pointed. “Yep, default settings.”

There, buried in all the metadata from the communication software was the log line, “Contact added to CC; Name found in translation.”

prompt: Center your story around something that doesn’t go according to plan.

available at Reedsy

A gash appeared in space, disgorging hundreds of ships of the Royal Fleet along the edge of an asteroid field. As soon as the last ship had emerged from L-space into real space, the gash faded from local timespace.

“Attention all ships of the Queen’s Expedition: We claim another system in the name of Queen and Empire this day. Let the Empire rejoice, and all others weep, for the presence of the Royal Fleet.” The communication device clicked off. “Scans, full fleet, full sweep. Route concerns to weapons and security, and all planetary and stellar scans to science.”

“Full scans, aye. All scans and telemetry linked.” The combat commander looked bored as she watched data scroll from left to right on her screen. The minutes passed by with the hum of a flagship bridge on another routine mission.

“Scans returning now.”

“Report.”

“Nothing from security or weapons, all flagged possible targets eliminated as false positives,” the combat commander answered.

“And from science?”

The science officer didn’t raise his head from where he studied his screens of text and images. “As expected. Planets one through three ideal for mining, including extensive atmospheric mining on the second and average atmospheric mining opportunities on the third.

“Best colony location is fourth planet, although atmosphere is thin. Gravity wells on two and three are too extreme for extended stay. But….”

“But?” The admiral’s antennae twitched. “Out with it, science.”

“The things weapons and security called false positives — based on the last few minutes of scans, they’re not natural. These signatures inside the asteroid field are moving under their own power, not in phase with orbital physics. These are ships. Two of them have reversed their direction.”

The communications device clicked again. “All fleet, all fleet, shields up, unknown vessels, contact starward inside the asteroid field. Combat stations.” The admiral clicked off the device. “Comms, hail on all channels and patch through any response immediately.”

“Hailing all channels, aye.” The communications officer’s antennae drooped in a way that indicated he was focused on something. “Radio communications, no known language or protocol.”

“Science, report on targets.” The admiral stood tense behind her chair. “We don’t want to start a war with our allies. Any idea who we’re looking at?”

“Negative, Admiral. What little we can scan of them before they hide behind the asteroids matches nothing known to the Empire.”

The admiral took a deep breath she was unaware she’d been needing. “Combat commander, you’re in charge.”

“Combat in command, aye. Helm, full standby power for maneuvers. Weapons ready in Fire On Open configuration, lock on nearest targets flagged by science.”

“Weapons FOO, aye. Obtaining locks … locking … locked on thirty-one targets last known locations. They’re cowering behind the larger asteroids.”

The combat commander’s antennae stood in anticipatory tension. “Comms, patch their radio communications through. Even if we don’t understand the language, we might get the mood.”

“Aye, Commander. Patching now.”

The sound of the radio communications from the unknown ships came over the speakers on the bridge. The science officer closed all eight eyes and focused on the sounds coming from the radio transmissions. The speech was guttural, clipped, and lacking in tonality. He listened to the different voices, and how efficient their messages were despite their vocal limitations. He began to notice certain sounds repeated and thought they might be identifiers for the different speakers. One two-syllable sound was repeated at the end of every message, as if to say, “I’m done talking now, someone else can talk.”

“They can’t multiplex their communications,” he said. “He raised his hand when he heard the sound again. That sound means they’re done talking and someone else can transmit.”

The admiral sighed. “Figures we’d end up in a system with primitives. Anything science can get on them, let me know. If any survive, they’ll be added to the Empire’s labor pool.”

“Aye, Admiral,” the science officer said.

The radio communications went silent. One of the primitive ships maneuvered out from behind an asteroid and turned face-on to the flagship. Lights blinked on the primitive ship, and the flagship sensors picked up pulsed, long-wave laser scanning the ship.

The combat commander gripped her chair. “They’re marking us for targeting. Helm, evasive action! Weapons, full hot now! Fire at will.”

The radio chatter from the primitives started up again as the flagship moved with a speed and grace her size belied. Energy weapons blazed at the ship still sending out its pulsed laser beacon but did very little damage. The ship retreated into the asteroid field once again.

“Science, what kind of shielding is that?” the combat commander asked.

“No energy shield signature, looks like ablative atmospheric shielding.”

The combat commander’s antennae twitched. “They take something that size into atmosphere?”

The combat commander, admiral, weapons officer, and science officer were still pondering their next move when the automated weapons systems began firing as a collision warning blared. The weapons broke the asteroid into pieces just in time for it to tear through the hull in hundreds of pieces.

As one, all seventy-four ships of the Royal Fleet were destroyed in a matter of minutes. A last, desperate L-space message was beamed from the last ship to die. “System held by primitives, they’ve killed us all.”

#

“Lucky, don’t go out there, they look mean. Over.” The voice on the radio belonged to her coworker, Amir.

She laughed and keyed the mic. “Don’t sweat it, man. I’m just going to try to get a read on the size. It looks tiny from here, but you know, it’s hard to tell when they’re outside the belt like that. Over.”

Lucky piloted her mining barge out from behind the asteroid Amir was parked against and fired up her LiDAR. No sooner had it started confirming that the ship was half the size of her barge, than the ship pivoted and squirmed in a way it shouldn’t be able to. Then the rays started.

Her re-entry shield heated up and began sloughing off as she got back behind the asteroid as fast as her tub could go. “They fuckin’ shot up my re-entry shield. Over.”

“So much for non-hostile intents. Q crew, y’all know what to do. Over.” Grayson, the foreperson, was far more subdued on the radio than usual.

“Yeet rocks at the bad guys!” someone yelled on the radio, a moment before keying back in and adding, “Over.”

The assortment of barges, tugs, diggers, and corers went full burn against the asteroids they hid behind, doing a hard ninety-degree burn at the last possible moment to get away from the impact. Within minutes, the alien fleet was an expanding cloud of detritus.

“I’m not going to be able to land,” Lucky said, “will have to put into dock at Mars Orbital for repairs. Over.”

“That’s gonna fuck the wallet,” Grayson said, some of their usual jollity returning. “Alright, folks, gather up all the trash from the broken toys. We’re gonna more than make up for Lucky’s shield with the new tech. Over.”

“Roger, chief. We’re already on it. Over.”

“Thanks, Diggity. Let’s get rich. Over.”

“Grayson, Corporate here. Sending half of P crew along with half of R crew to assist. Over.”

“Corporate, we got it handled. Two, maybe three barge loads from all their ships. Where should we deliver? Over.”

“I’ll cancel the call for assist. They want it straight back to home base. Landing at GSC. Sorry, Lucky, you’ll have to sit this one out. Over.”

Lucky sighed and keyed her mic. “Roger, Corporate, I’m heading for Mars Orbital now before something important breaks. Out.”

“Q Crew,” Grayson called over the radio, “squawk 0011 to vote full share for Lucky. Over.”

The radio chirped dozens of times. “Corporate for Lucky. Over.”

“Lucky, go for Corporate. Over.”

“Unanimous vote from Q Crew, you’re getting a full share from this haul. We’ll see you at MO. Out.”

“Enough ass-grabbin’ already. Let’s get this shit loaded and get it back home. Out.” Grayson sounded gruff, but the hint of playfulness was never far beneath.

Within a matter of hours, the once mighty Royal Fleet was loaded into three mining barges and headed back to Earth at a standard half burn. Grayson piped some music into the comms to entertain most — and annoy a few — of the miners.

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.”