#short-science-fiction-story

[they-loved-in-2075]

Science fiction. The last tribe (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1402816891-science-fiction-the-last-tribe?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=Javid117&wp_originator=a7sChkoOLFDR%2Frt%2Fc4WJ5Z62fhTv5oJHlj%2FSkIrDtWAuctTxqpXUj7EpJRlx%2F%2Fc7WDvf%2Fula7wAGhFbdk2Vx4jwsm%2FIRrMpKyXQDY%2BBKSOdlRDo49rL87skz08uouWbM This short scifi story is about how a native of a planet saves the last surviving alien female from dying, and then all his life lives secretly with her. But how does he save her? Because her anatomy is different. And how does he live with her when everyone on her planet wants to see both of them dead? How? The answer is simple and explained in a beautifully told science fiction story titled: The last tribe. Please read it and it shall reveal to you the secret that will baffle you!

[microsff]

The patron

The alien came to the library again, shortly before closing time, and quickly found a book.

"May this entity borrow The Complete History of Knitting?"

They always return the book they borrow after five minutes, but the ritual of checking it out seems important to them. 

"Of course. Did you bring your card?"

I looked them up, after the first time I saw them for real. They first registered with us over ninety years ago. The senior librarian who first told me about them said I shouldn't stare, or pry.

"Whatever else they are, they are a patron, and should be treated as such," she said. "If they seek knowledge, it is our duty to help them find it."

There isn't an ancient and secret code of librarians, but that is definitely a core part of it. If such a code existed.

I scan the card and the book. "There you go," I say and hand them over. "Please return it within two weeks."

They tilt their head. "This entity will honour your terms."

"Oh! That reminds me, we have updated the terms since your last visit." I hand them the pamphlet we got from the printers last week. "It's mostly about internet usage, but I'll need you to read them and agree."

They study the pamphlet.

"These are terms this entity can abide by." They pause. "Is there no requirement to keep your existence secret?"

"Of course not," I say, "we always welcome new patrons."

They stand silent, long enough for me to realise the implications of what I have just said. 

"This entity had made an assumption, based on prior experiences on countless worlds, where knowledge is always closely guarded and costly to obtain" they say at last. "You will provide knowledge for free to all who seek it?"

In my mind, I weigh humanity's ignorance of those countless worlds of alien civilisations against the code.

"Yes," I say, "this is a library."

[whereserpentswalk]

People don't realize how liminal it is to be a time traveler. How you don't ever really feel like you're in the time you are. Even when you're in your own time, everything is off, your coat was something you bought in interwar France, the book you're reading on the train is from a bookstore you had to visit in Victorian London, even your necklace was given to you by a Neolithic shaman, from a culture the rest of the world can never know. You find yourself acting strange even when in the present, much less in the past you have to work in.

You remember meeting a eunuch in 10th century China, and having him be one of the only people smart and observant enough to realize you were from a diffrent time. You could talk honestly with him, though still you couldn't reveal too much about your time. And it was still so strange hearing him talk casually about work and mention plotting assassinations. You're not allowed to but you still visit him sometimes.

You remember that the few times you were allowed to tell someone everything it was tragic. You knew a young woman who lived in Pompeii, who you had gotten close to, a few days before she would inevitably die. On your last day there you looked into her eyes, knowing soon they'd be stone and ash, that the beauty of her hair would be washed away by burning magma. And you hugged her, and told her that you wanted her to be safe, and told her she was wonderful and that you wanted her to be comfortable and happy. And you let her tongue know the joy of 21st century chocolate, and her eyes see the beauty of animation, knowing she deserved to have those joys, knowing it wouldn't matter soon. And you hugged her the last time, and told her she deserved happiness. And when you left without taking her it was like you were killing her yourself.

You want to take home everyone you're attached to. There's a college student you befriended in eighteen fifties Boston. And you can't help but see him try to solve problems you know humanity is centuries away from solving. And you just want to tell him. And it's not just that, the way he talked about the books and plays he likes, his sense of humor. There's so many people you want him to meet.

You feel the same way about a young woman you met on a viking age longship. She tells stories to her fellow warriors and traders, stories that will never fully get written down, stories that she tells so uniquely and so well. She has so many great ideas. You want so dearly to take her to somewhere she can share her stories, or where she can take classes with other writers, where she can be somewhere safe instead of being out at sea. She'll talk about wanting to be able to do something, or meet people, and you know you're so close to being able to take her, but you never can, unless she accidently finds out way too much then you can't.

You remember the longship that you met that young storyteller on. You were there before, two years ago for you, ten years later for the people on it. The young woman who told you stories wasn't there ten years later, you had been told why then but you only realize now, her uncle, who ran the ship, had been one of the first people to convert to Christianity in his nation. He killed her, either for not converting or for sleeping with women, you're not sure, but he killed her, and bragged about it when you met him ten years later.

You talk to the storyteller on the longship, ask her about the myths you're there to ask her about, the myths that she loves to tell. You look into her eyes knowing it's probably less then a year until her uncle takes her life. You ask her if you think that those who die of murder go to Valhalla. She tells you she hopes not, she doesn't see Valhalla as a gift but as a duty, she hopes for herself to go to Hel, where she wouldn't have to fight anymore. You slip and admit you're talking about her, telling her that you hope that's where she goes when she's killed. You hope to yourself you'll be forced to take her to the twenty first century, you're tempted even to make it worse, you want to have ruined her enough to be able to save her.

[marlynnofmany]

It’s back!

If you missed it the first time around, the “human are weird” anthology is back for a second printing. (There’s even a new story included: “Black Box” by Dara Brophy.)

Here’s the blurb:

In science fiction, humans are usually boring compared to other races: small, weak, with no claws or tentacles, and no special abilities to speak of. But what if we were the impressive ones, the unsettling ones, the ones talked about by all the other aliens? What if we're weird?

If you’d like a collection of excellent stories about humans inspiring awe, fear, and utter confusion, it’s available everywhere books are sold!

[fae-papercuts]

Originally inspired as a response to some posts by @banrionceallach and @marlynnofmany. Polished it up and decided it would make a good start to my lil story blog. Enjoy!

Not Our Usual Passengers

“What do you mean, there’s something wrong with the engines?” Captain El'ek'tak said incredulously. “You’re not an engineer, none of you humans are. You’re not even crew, you’re passengers! How dare you claim there’s something wrong with my vessel!?”

The outraged captain puffed up her air sacks, the feathery amphibian inflating as she stared down the trio of humans who had been travelling with them for the past week. They were not what she had come to expect when transporting humans, not one bit.

They were quiet, for a start. One of them didn’t even speak at all, just made an occasional tuneless humming sound when they were concentrating particularly hard on something. That was usually accompanied by a rocking back and forth that seemed remarkably similar to the Ke'tek autonomic stimulation ritual of focus.

Humans weren’t supposed to do that, were they?

The second of the human party cleared their throat softly - something they always did before speaking, which was quite a rare occurrence. The captain appreciated this, actually. So many humans she had transported interrupted her, or spoke over each other. The disrespect was really quite remarkable - but these humans waited patiently for others to finish, and this particular human’s throat-clearing was used similarly to the way El'ek'tak’s own species rustled their dorsal feathers to indicate their intent to communicate.

“Captain, apologies if we caused any offence,” at this the non-speaking human’s eyes widened in surprise, and they shook their head, clearly agreeing in a profoundly apologetic manner, without words. Their apologetic companion went on, “We can’t be certain there’s something wrong with the ship, we just thought you should know that it sounds wrong.”

The first human spoke again, nodding as they added to their companion’s statement.

“Yes, I am sorry, I didn’t mean to assert certainty when I should have stated a suspicion,” they gave a short smile, then their face quickly fell back into a neutral expression. The captain was a little taken aback by this, as that particular human seemed to very rarely express facially - quite the opposite to what she was used to with humans. It was a little disconcerting, but mostly because she had put a lot of effort into learning about human non-verbal communication.

She blinked, and stared at the three for a long moment. “It sounds wrong?” she repeated back, surprised. She had heard of some particularly sensitive species being able to diagnose certain engine issues from the vibrational frequencies, but usually this required extremely highly trained specialists.

The silent human nodded, and raised a handheld device, tapping something onto its screen for a few moments. The other two humans turned and waited patiently as their friend worked, and the Captain watched with a raised eyebrow (this wasn’t a natural Girurian expression. She had learnt it from her human studies, enjoyed how it felt, and how it could communicate so many things at once).

The human held up the device, and it emitted a gentle, slightly robotic tone, “Engine pitch changed one point five hours ago. Rising quarter octave every seven minutes. Hurt very bad fifty five minutes ago.”

Captain El'ek'tak stared for a moment at the human, her feathers rustling vaguely, as she tried to figure out a response. She looked between all three of them. “You can hear the engines, from your quarters half way across the ship?” she asked incredulously.

The most vocal of the humans spoke, while the throat-clearer nodded and the non-verbal one tapped on their device. “Oh yes,” they said, “we’re all sensitive to sensory input, at least for humans. Not a patch on Alirians sound sensitivity, or Hynoids electromagnetic spectral range, or the scent capabilities of the Teraxids - did you know they can smell a single smoke particulate in a standard atmospheric volume of 500 cubic metres?”

The human with the device gently put a hand on the speaker’s shoulder and smiled softly at their friend - who turned bright red and looked at the floor. “Sorry, xenobiological sensory discrepancies is my special interest right now,” they said, before taking a slight step back. It was at this point that the captain noticed that they were fiddling with a strange cube in their left hand, suddenly speeding up how they manipulated the piece of plastic, changing its configuration rapidly. It was a fascinating display of manual dexterity, and considered asking about it for a moment.

“Engine makes the whole ship vibrate. Can hear it any place,” spoke the little device, for it’s human, interrupting the captain's curiosity. The human’s head rose, making eye contact with El'ek'tak. The human’s gaze was intense - more so than even the other humans the captain had encountered. Eye contact was so rarely a positive thing, across a wide variety of species, but with humans she had met so far it had always been considered important. So the captain had learned to look them in the eyes. It had been a surprise when this group avoided it so much, rarely meeting her gaze for more than a split second. Early in the voyage, they had politely explained that all of them found it hard, and that they hoped she wouldn’t take offence. Frankly, El'ek'tak had been a little relieved, as all the eye contact with others of the odd little species had been quite exhausting.

But right now, the diminutive human who never spoke and could apparently tell when engines changed pitch, was looking into her eyes, and the Captain could practically feel this little traveller’s distress. It made her ankle feathers itch, and she was surprised to find herself understanding quite so much from just a look.

The captain nodded, and broke eye contact. The human looked down again, reverting back to their usual slightly-bowed stance.

“Let me check with engineering,” she said, and turned to the panel by her side, tapping a screen to raise the engine-room. Slipping comfortably into her own language, she greeted the pair of engineering crew on duty, and asked them about the state of the engines, particularly frequency or oscillation-related issues. She gave them the time to check on it, waiting silently, still as a statue, while the humans figeted, or rocked gently side to side. Their motion made her a little uncomfortable, but she had learnt that with these three, continuous movement wasn’t a sign of impatience, as it has been for many previous human passengers.

After a few minutes, the engineers returned to the screen, and exchanged a few explanatory sentences with the Captain, before tapping fingers to their foreheads respectfully. The Captain returned the gesture, and ended the call.

El'ek'tak turned back to the humans, to see that the non-verbal one was already tapping on their device. She couldn’t help but rustle her feathers, wanting to reassure the humans, but not wanting to interrupt this overt preparation for communication. The throat-clearing human raised a finger briefly, a clear request for a moment of time, and the Captain found herself surprised again at how wide a variety of perception these humans could contain within a single species.

“Pitch dropping rapidly. Expect normal range in four minutes. Thank you, captain,” said the device, as the human beamed a broad smile at her for just a brief moment.

El'ek'tak’s feathers rustled briskly, and then she replied. “Yes, that’s alright, thank you for bringing it to our attention,” she said, pausing to gather her wits. “The interphasic array had become slightly misaligned. It wouldn’t have been detected by our sensors for another hour, and then we would have had to pause the engines to manually readjust it. Catching it this early, we could simply vary the input parameters to re-compensate, and bring it back into synchronisation,” she explained, relaying the gratitude of her engineering crew.

The most vocal human flapped their hands back and forth vigorously, grinning with delight. “Oh, thank goodness, I’m so glad we could help, and that the engine noise will at least be consistent. We were worried it would be horrible for the whole trip, and we’d have to reconfigure our ear protection all the time! Genuinely helping out the engineers is so great!”

The captain’s eyes bulged with happiness, quite unable to resist the infectious joy of the gleeful human. “I am glad your trip will be more comfortable, and I will pass on how helpful you were to Central, once we reach our destination.”

The throat-clearing human, who had so consistently noticed the captain’s non-verbal communication, smiled too. They actually chuckled a little as they said, “More neurodiversity stuff to go in The Guide To Interstellar Travel With Humans,” seeming pleasantly amused.

El'ek'tak winced in embarrassment. She had already sent in three amendments to the guide regarding natural variations in human cognitive capabilities and behavioural norms since they had left Alpha Centauri, the two weeks of travel offering surprise after surprise from these passengers. But as far as she knew, the guide wasn’t acknowledged by humans - she didn’t even know the species was aware of the now rather sizeable volume of collected knowledge. It certainly wasn’t available in any human languages that she knew of - after all, what would be the point?

The human’s chuckle became gentler, and the other vocal one of the group raised a hand in an extremely close mimic of the Girurian comforting gesture - as close as could be with the wrong number of digits, anyway. The Captain couldn’t help but relax, the effort the human put into the gesture only adding to the positive impact. They flashed another brief smile as their companion explained, “Don’t worry captain. Most of us don’t bother with it, but I find it fascinating. It has been wonderful seeing the updates since our trip began. Please, the more human neurodivergency is documented, the easier space travel can be for people like us.”

There were a few more polite exchanges, during which the captain learned  that the strange device she had notice was an 'infinity cube,' which was apparently a kind of 'fidget toy.' Then the humans left her ready room; a quiet, somewhat surreal collection of beings who had rather put a lie to the notion that humans were uniformly capable of being brash and difficult to deal with.

But they certainly didn’t do anything to diminish the captain’s view of humanity as a species eternally full of surprises.

[kittybricks]

Do You Love the Colour of the Sky? (Or: This Must be the Place)

(I apologize for the resolution in advance. Still troubleshooting.)

[super-ion]

The Engineer

I catch a glimpse of the pilot as she is wheeled towards the med bay. Her eyes have that telltale glaze of just having been wrenched out of herself.

I've never spoken a single word to her, but for a brief moment as the gurney slides by, those eyes briefly clear, ice blue pinning me to the spot. She raises an emaciated arm and her hand almost seems to beckon to me before something in the gurney clicks and whirs and she slips back into catatonia.

That brief moment of clarity, that piercing gaze, unsettles me. She recognized me.

It's neural bleed. I know it has to be. She doesn't know me, but Morrigan does.

Good god. In the pilot's present state of post combat haze, she probably doesn't even know where she ends and the machine begins.

Does neural bleed work both ways? Is it her head that I'm about to climb into?

My wrist strap buzzes. I have a job to do and I am late.

The pilot is a problem for the med team and the psychs.

The machine is my problem.

I hurry down the corridor, keeping my head down, avoiding the eyes of every passerby.

I don't like people.

I don't like how their eyes follow me. I don't like the whispered gossip that follows me.

One of the techs is waiting for me at the vestibule.

I don't know his name.

All clear, he says to me. Time to work your magic.

He says it without sarcasm. Others have been less kind.

Even so, he can't quite hide the leer as I strip down to the skinsuit. I don't have the physique of a pilot. My body hasn't been subjected to the stresses that ravage their bodies. Unlike them, I have fat and muscle and the skinsuit clings to every curve of my body.

I force a cursory smile and try to forget him as I walk barefoot to my destination.

The vestibule is small, windowless. It's impossible to assess the scale of the machine from here. The only part visible to me is roughly four square meters of pitted and scarred metal plating framing the access hatch and the pilot's cradle beyond.

B0-987T the stenciled lettering reads. And below, in flowing script, is “The Morrigan”.

She's a Javellin class, medium weapons fire support unit. She isn't meant to be on the front lines in a skirmish, but one-on-one, she can hold her own against a Wraith. Which is exactly what happened only a few hours ago.

I place a bare palm on the bulkhead. She thrums with some distant vibration. Her reactor is still online, still in the early stages of drawdown as she transitions to dock power.

“Hey beautiful,” I say to her.

I think of the pilot. I think of piercing blue eyes and I think of neural bleed.

I flinch my hand away.

The tech looks at me, asks if I'm alright. I'm fine, I tell him.

I climb through the hatch and into the cradle.

I feel like an interloper here. The cradle isn't calibrated for my body. Everything still smells like the pilot. Mingled with the smell of the machine is her sweat and her adrenaline and the particular scented soap that she prefers.

There is a faint whirring as her cameras track my movements from a dozen angles. The access ports open to receive me.

Against my better judgment, I imagine eagerness for this exchange.

This is immediately followed by an all too familiar sense of inadequacy. The engineers’ rig is not nearly as all encompassing as a pilots’. It's only the most basic neural interface. No haptics. No neurotransmitter feedback. No access to the suite of sensors studded throughout her hull.

I can't interface with her the way her pilot can.

My rig is a remnant from basic training. The pilot corps wanted me for my exceptional ratings in synchrony and neuro-elasticity, but after serval training exercises, they determined that I didn't have the temperament for the battlefield. I froze up too easily.

A neural rig is a massive investment and removing one will fuck a person up a hell of a lot more than installing one. The selection process is designed to weed out washouts before we even get to installation, but some of us still slip through the cracks. Most end up reassigned to logistics, operating loader mechs or piloting long haul supply frigates. But my aptitudes made me ideal for the engineering corps, so here I am.

Morrigan senses my mood and the cradle shifts slightly, aligning itself to my dimensions. Her eagerness to connect morphs into a sort of tender reassurance. It's a slippery slope, ascribing human emotions to these machines, but she does seem genuinely happy to see me.

I can never be part of what she and her pilot have, but I can be part of something in my own way.

The pilot knows about me, she would even without neural bleed. Does she envy the relationship I have with her mech? Does she envy that I can exist both together and apart with the machine?

Is she jealous of us?

Morrigan slips her jacks into my rig and my mind enters hers and I feel tension leave my body. Some dull ache that I wasn't even consciously aware of ebbs within me.

My senses dull and my visual cortex is fed a series of diagnostic logs and telemetry streams. The techs have access to the exact same data, but Morrigan highlights particular data points that she and the pilot flagged. I log them in the engineering report.

A wireframe schematic of the battlefield spreads out in my awareness. Green markers for our battlegroup. Red markers for the pack of Wraith interlopers.

I hear the ghost of music, strange and ambient, like whale song. The first time I heard it, I asked the techs about it. They had no idea what I was talking about. One even suggested I get an eval for some psych leave.

Later I realized Morrigan was singing to me. Or rather she was interpreting tightbeam comm links as something my brain could process. A human mind can't possibly interpret the full datastream, but with Morrigans's rendition, I can suss out the basic meanings. The battlegroup is a choir and Morrigan is playing me their song.

I caused quite a stir when I first made that connection and started flagging battle events the analysts had missed.

I survey the battlefield before me, reconstructed from feeds from TacCom and all the individual mechs.

Morrigan and I have done this enough times that she knows my preferred display layout, but she holds back, allowing me to pull off the virtual displays on my peripheral vision. There's an odd sort of intimacy to it, her letting me take charge like this.

God-knows how many tons of metal and ceramic and miles and miles of wire and optic fiber and see waits eagerly for me to start the playback sim. She wants to show off. She wants me to assess the actions of her and her pilot and tell them they did well.

Other engineers, few as we are, have mentioned similar experiences with their assigned machines.

“Alright,” I whisper so that only she can hear. “Show me the dance. Sing me the song.”

[augustyearroundprod]

(UN)LIKEMINDED presents “POTHEAD”

To some people, Louise is too much. She feels too much. She thinks too much. She loves too much. And when her heart is broken, she will do way too much to get back the man who left her.

Written By: Katie Rose Rogers

Narrated By: Katie McGrath

The dream team has done it again! @katierosietoesrogers and Katie McGrath always come together to create such beautiful works of art, and we’re beyond lucky to have them in the (Un)Likeminded family! I continue to be blown away by everything Katie Rogers writes— truly don’t know how so much talent can live in one human. And Katie McGrath’s voice is so soothing and powerful, bringing it all to life in such an incredible way! I’m so excited for you all to listen!! Links in comments!

[maybeelse]

The surgeon is sprawled out on her living room couch when you arrive, flipping through screen after screen of beautiful people on her ancient phone. One of her housemates answered the door and let you inside, their too-perfect smile drying into a polished mask as they realized why you were there. The last words they said to you before they fled were a quiet "good luck."

She's really not much to look at. Chubby and long-limbed, with oily shoulder-length hair. You can see her split ends from the doorway; it's obvious that she's never bothered to put proper care into them. Her clothes show a similar lack of effort, just loose grey sweatpants and a tank-top that barely contains her breasts.

The only part of her that's really noticeable—the part that catches your eyes and makes you hesitate at the enormity of what's about to happen—is the smooth plastic casings covering the ends of segment of her limbs, and the strangely spiky balls connecting them. The hum as she stretches, the faint whir as her fingers swipe left on another profile, a faint frown dancing across her lips—it's almost too much. The house is so quiet.

She yawns and shifts, glances up; sees you watching her.

"Yeah? Who're you?"

"Oh! I'm sorry, I'm, uh, Alex? We talked online?"

"Oh yeah. Was wondering when you'd get here," she shifts from lounging to standing in a way that would dislocate half your limbs if you tried to mimic her, "if you'd wuss out."

"… does that happen a lot?"

"Eighty-twenty. Lots of people online talk big but can't back it up, y'know? Hah," there's something sharp and brittle in her laugh, "sometimes people try to back out when I've already got them on the table. Can't deal with the reality of it. Weak."

"I … I see."

"So. You ready, Alex," she scowls, "or are you just here to gawk at the freak?"

She punctuates the question by rotating one of her hands around, wrist grinding as it completes the full 360-degrees. You're staring, gawking, but you can't help it; it's not like your sleepy little town has many—any?—other augs. They cluster in the cities, in the old world's radioactive junkyards, in the places where baseline biology isn't enough. It was astonishing to find one so near, much less a trained surgeon—her lips are tilting into a frown. She must think you're just a fetishist, a chaser, unworthy—

"No!" you practically shout, "I mean, uh. I'm ready! I'm ready."

"Yeah? Fine. Keep up."

The house looked normal from the outside, just another of the mass-produced mid-western two-story single-family trash-piles with attached two-car garage and optional backyard deck that the Kessler Belt's half-mad corporate agents carpet-bombs across the plains at irregular intervals. A GMO-turf lawn midway through being colonized by herbicide-resistant native plants, sprinkled with the telltale signs of the southwestern swarm's outriders; gnawed leaves, bright-carapaced aphids, and piles of plump rock plants marking the exact point beyond which baseline humans could expect fucking around to lead to finding out.

In short: it was a house like any other.

The illusion fails as you follow the surgeon deeper into her home, beyond the living room's pastel-patterned walls and focus-tested furniture. The interior layout had already struck you as a bit odd—the walls weren't in quite the right places, there shouldn't have been a step three feet inside the front door—but perhaps that could be explained away. Minor variations are normal.

The thick bulkheads and stained metal walls are not minor variations. Nor is the cavernous staircase plunging down where the ground floor restroom should be. A grinding scream echoes up as she leads you past it into what could almost masquerade as a normal garage, if not for the thick plastic sheets draped along its shelves and shrouding its ceiling or the polished metal table standing proudly beneath the garage's single light.

You can't tell what color the stains on the concrete floor are. Could be dark oil, could be dried blood. It's hard to ignore them.

"Here we are. Up on the table, Alex."

"Uh. Aren't there restraints, or, uh. Something? This is a bit …"

"Nah. First thing I'm gonna do is stick an AP filter in your neck." She grabs your neck, twists it; you gasp. "C5-C6 gap, probably, doesn't look like you've got anything weird going on. You don't, do you?" A pointed question. You can't shift your head, can't look her in the eye.

"N-no! My parents wouldn't," she releases you, waits while you rub your neck, "they're hardcore naturalists. Like, most people are, here? But they're …"

"That so? And here you are," she says, a hint of hunger tinting her words, "asking me to ruin daddy's perfect little all-natural—"

"Y-yeah."

"And then, what, you're going to run away?"

"Yeah. I have bus tickets," you pat your pocket, checking that they're still there, safe in your wallet, "for tomorrow. I just. Don't want to arrive with nothing, you know?"

She laughs, abruptly, startling even herself. "Oh, they're just going to eat you up, you know that, Alex?"

"W-what do you—"

"Don't worry about it. Just get on the fucking table already. Oh yeah," she grins, "you should strip first. Don't feel like cutting the clothes off you."

She doesn't seem particularly interested in watching you strip, at least, just leans against the wall and flips through her phone. Doesn't look away, doesn't stare at you, just lets you get on with it. She's being professional, you suppose, and even if she's not kind it's still better than high school locker-rooms. Anything would be better than that.

You still blush.

You're not sure where to put your hands, when you're done. Part of you wants to try to cover yourself up, to hide yourself, to hunch down and keep her from seeing, but … well, she'll see soon enough.

The table is unpleasantly cold under your ass, and you let out an involuntary squeak at the sensation. No doctors-office padding here, no disposable paper covers, just hard, cold, metal. She glances up at the noise, finally taking an interest again.

"Ah? Oh, right …" Her eyes sweep over your body, and you ball your hands in your lap, trying to keep her from seeing. "Well. I've worked with worse."

"I-I'm sorry, I, uh …"

"Don't worry about it, yeah? S'just raw material, who gives a fuck. Anyway," her joints grind as she starts to move, making her steps unpleasantly jerky, "let's get started. Give me a second …"

You flinch away as she pulls your arms away from your crotch, not understanding, but she's strong enough that your resistance hardly matters. Your arms positioned, she wraps her own arms around you. It's a strangely tender motion, but perhaps that's just because it's been so long since someone last touched you; certainly there is nothing except impersonal focus on her face.

"There will be a slight pinch," she says, and then, with a noise like shears closing on meat and bone, a noise that is exactly what it sounds like, there is pain.

You can't feel your body.

You're lying on your back on what must be the same table you were on a moment ago, before you passed out, and you can't feel your body.

The light above is shining directly in your eyes, and your entire head is tingling, and there's still a horrible pain in the middle of your neck, and you can't feel anything below it. There's a sharp smell in the air, and the sound of dripping, and—that's piss. You pissed yourself. Good thing you're naked, huh?

Thinking about that doesn't help with the pain.

Somewhere in the room, outside the narrow scope of your vision, you hear the surgeon tapping on her phone. Dialing a number. Waiting while it rings …

"Hey, hoss. Yeah, just started. Wanted to check the order priorities before I—yeah, I'll send you a picture." The click of a camera's shutter, exactly the same as your own phone made, back when you still dared to use it. "Mhmm, yeah. They breed them strong out here. … yeah. Yeah. I'll see—", a burst of static as the call ends, "—well fuck me for wanting to say goodbye."

The surgeon's feet click against the ground. She leans into your vision, eyes bright and eager, head limned against the light. "Guess what, Alex? You're going to be an assault drone."

[alpaca-clouds]

An Overview Over the Solarpunk Anthologies

I thought, where I am already here, trying to get everyone to engage with Solarpunk as more than just an aesthetic and pretty flowers, I should give a quick overview over the Solarpunk antholigies, that have been released so far.

Note that so far most releases within the genre are in fact short stories. Though if anyone is interested, I can make a list of the novels I am aware of!

Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World is pretty much how the genre got its start. The book was originally released in Brazil and only recently had been translated into the English language. It only covers a few stories, but those are a bit longer than your average short story to make up for it.

Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation has been quoted by many writers in the genre to have been a massive inspiration to them. The stories are very diverse and cover lots of ground.

Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology is probably the weirdest out of this bunch. While all of the other anthologies mostly focus on either SciFi settings or stories set in the here and now, Wings of Renewal mixes Solarpunk with Fantasy elements. At times those stories are SciFi, too, at times they are really mostly fantastical.

Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers explores a wide variety of Solarpunk settings, some hopeful, some less optimistic. It is mostly set in warm and hot scenarios, though those can also vary quite a bit.

Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters then went ahead as a "sequel" of sorts to explore the concept of Solarpunk in colder climates.

Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures has probably to be my favorite one from the anthologies edited by Sarena Udaberri. It explores how humans and animals can live together in Urban settings. And once again, the stories vary from those set in a more futuristic and a more present setting a lot.

Fighting for the Future is the most recent of those anthologies, as it has only released last month. (And yes, this also means: I have not yet read it at all.) It features stories of Cyberpunk and Solarpunk futures - as well as stories where both intertwine!

Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology is exactly what it says on the cover. An anthology featuring Lunarpunk stories. So Solarpunk with a bit more mysticism to go with it. And as this also only has released earlier this year I admittedly also have not gotten around to reading it yet.

This does remind me though: Would anyone be interested in me writing mini reviews to the stories in those anthologies?

[they-loved-in-2075]

Science fiction. The immortal who stole (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1406350402-science-fiction-the-immortal-who-stole?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=Javid117&wp_originator=jo6%2FVgWepvKR78xJE6YRAZbLOiln6wf6oDbPL0SM8N2%2BlHWaD1E1xCIT2c0P2MmGmwW7sguVcHB3lfI1aiRZpmLgOFYl6MEsRNMYA%2BcOHQnJghmYxfRcERcoUP5iPD8Q This short science fiction novel is about the realm of immortals, where one of the immortals happens to steal the purest form of time from the universe. And when that happens, the immortal develops new virtues, new senses and new goals- He wants to subdue the infinite conscience of the universe and rewrite it . He wants to becomes the supreme conscience that spreads everywhere in the universe. And to achieve this goal, he needs something that lies in a different realm. How does he get there? Does he at all get there? Or the conscience of the universe retaliates and the immortal is banished? All possibilities are likely. To know exactly what happens, read this short scifi story.

[microsff]

Treasure hunters

The derelict is enormous, a galaxy-class carrier ship from centuries ago. The captain brings it up on the holoscreen, our ship a tiny dot beside it.

"There are still people there," the client says. "Descendants of the surviving crew, fallen to barbarism."

"Why didn't they leave?" the captain asks.

"That ship carried fighters. Small and nimble, without hyperjump capability. In this system, there are no inhabited planets or stations. With the carrier's engines dead, they couldn't leave."

"And our target?"

"In the main hangar, they bury their kings under large mounds built from debris and fighter parts."

"And?"

"They bury them with treasure," the client says.

The captain frowns. "Like, things they have found in the ship? Do you know what kind of things? Maybe we could try to avoid the people there and look around for-"

"No!" The client shakes his head. "That's just stuff. But what's in the mounds, that's treasure!"

The captain nods. Can't argue with that logic.

[whereserpentswalk]

Every starship always has a few ice people on board. It's just standard safety protocol. The minimum number is three, one ice person for defense, one ice person for repairs, and one ice person for medical.

Ice people are people who are put into suspended animation for the duration of a trip, only to be taken out in emergencies. They're useful because a ship won't have to deal with another passenger just for something that won't useally happen. It also makes it so that the ice person is the least likely to be harmed in emergencies. They used to use robots for these sorts of things but now that the robots have unionized biological life is cheaper for that kind of labor.

It's a pretty nice job. Nine times out of ten it's falling asleep and waking up a few months later. Doing it once or twice can pay off your college debts pretty quickly. Compared to the other jobs you'll get with that kind of skillset it's a pretty good deal. Most medical students are encouraged to take it as their first job to pay off their student loans.

Of course, there is a weirdness to it, not existing for such a long time. Even a few months will make the way things change weird. You'll come back to your home planet and things will be diffrent. A freind will have gotten married. A child that you're used to being a baby will be a toddler. Someone will have moved away. It's not all bad, hype for movies or video games, arguments that need time to calm down, skipping out on a bad time in politics. But still, it always makes you a bit separate from everything else.

Of course, there is always the fear suspended animation won't work as intended, and your mind will be trapped dreaming, or worse, conscious, during the entire affair. Perhaps things will that lurk in hyperspace will begin to speak to you. Or worse you'll just be alone, with nothing but your thoughts, and no way to cry out.

But that's not the worst of it, at least not for most people. For most people it's the much more mundane reality of needing to be an ice person for more than just one or two trips. You'll fall asleep and wake up months later, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred times. And you'll find yourself only seeing the world through snapshots, really only having your other ice people to relate to. You'll be from a diffrent time as everyone the same age as you. It's better pay then any alternative, but there is a greater cost. Soon enough you'll be walking through your homeworld and it'll be alien to you, decades in the future from what you were raised to be in, you'll be wearing a diffrent eras clothing, speaking in a dead dialect, like a ghost from the past.

There was a young engineer who recently returned from being an ice person. Poor thing, she was sent out on an ambassador ship to an alien system thinking it would be about six months, but it turned out she was gone for decades as a war between that ship's nation and the alien homeworld broke out. When she came back all three of her spouses had died of old age, and her son who was an infant when she left was older than her when she returned, and her grandchildren she had never met were her peers.

[tsaomengde]

The Ones Who Found The City

Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a classic short story, and obviously I knew of it, but I'd never actually read it until recently. Well, I finally got around to it, and as many timeless classics do, it got stuck in my brain. This story is my - response? homage? sequel? pale imitation? - to it. I suggest you go and read "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" if you haven't. Not because it's actually required reading for this story - I think it stands on its own more or less okay - but because it is a classic for a reason.

---

Initially, no one is quite certain of what they’ve found when the Animus breaches the next manifold layer.  This is in and of itself expected, of course.  Exploring psychspace is by its very nature an unpredictable venture.  Each of the various infinite layers is unique and bizarre in its own way, reflecting the archetypal underpinnings of an entire species present, past, or future across an infinitude of possible realities.  The crew of the Animus, therefore, has seen things so utterly alien and inexplicable that only the rigors of their training and the care put into their psychic warding saved them from insanity.

It is somewhat disappointing, then, to find that this sub-domain is just a city.  Definitely not Terranic, certainly not, but still following the Terranic modality, with no more than a seven-degree quantum drift.

“Towers,” Thromby says into the recorder as they sit at their post at the nose of the Animus’s command center.  “Following the standard skyscrape pattern.  Unclear if they’re domiciles or business centers or both.  Coastal city, bay appears to be oceanic rather than lake.  Pleasing blend of urbanization with natural setting.”  They glance at Vigil.  “Anything on the lifescope?”

Vigil shakes his head.  “Nothing.  It’s empty.  Totally empty.”

“That’s odd,” Katrina speaks up from the helm.  “The city doesn’t show signs of decay or reclamation by nature.”

“Entropy may not work in the usual way in this sub-domain,” Teasha reminds her.  “The city itself could be the natural growth, reclaiming the artificial countryside.  We’ve seen things like that before.”

Thromby feels Katrina’s unconscious bristling at the subtle reminder that she is the newest member of the crew and thus less experienced in the vagaries of psychspace than everyone else.  Next to Vigil, who is only nineteen, she is also the youngest.  “I would expect,” Katrina says, her voice cool, “that in a sub-domain so obviously based on human archetypes, entropy and nature-versus-civilization tropes would function more or less as usual.”

“I’m certain you would,” Teasha replies, her voice equally cool.  “When you’ve been at this as long as me and Thromby, you’ll learn better.”

“Enough of that,” Thromby says before Katrina can reply.  They love Teasha, but she tends to be too harsh on new crewmembers.  A defense mechanism, they know, to insulate her from the all-too-common pain of losing them.  But Katrina has too much to prove.  The clash is natural and to be expected, and even useful at times, but now is not one of them.  “Vigil, get me readings on atmosphere, microbiome, and psychic radiation, if any.  Katrina, pick a spot on the coast and bring us down there.  I want to see if the ocean is actually an ocean or a liminality representation.  Teasha, get the Animus tuning to this sub-domain’s resonance frequency.  I don’t want any dissociation issues.”

The orders are mostly unnecessary, since everyone already knows what they’re about, but they serve their intended purpose, which is to re-focus everyone on the task at hand and redirect their nervous energies, particularly Katrina’s.  Thromby still isn’t sure she’s going to make the cut after this expedition is over, but there’s potential there.  They would be foolish to ignore someone with Katrina’s strength of identity grounding. 

There are plenty of sub-domains out there where it’s useful to be entirely certain of who you are, and not everyone can be.

---

The first day’s worth of exploration yields more questions than answers, which is normal and expected.  Thromby is indeed certain that Katrina’s initial assumption that this is a human-archetypal sub-domain is correct.  Human atmosphere, human shadow- and ontological concepts, Terranic fish in the very-real ocean.  But the iconography is sparse and mostly nonsensical.  It’s clear that the city was able to actually function as a city, but it feels purposeful, designed, in a way that actual cities outside psychspace rarely do.

“It’s a metaphor,” Vigil says as they sit around a campfire on the beach after the first day.

“Well, obviously,” Katrina agrees, and Vigil lights up – both visibly and psychically – at her concordance.  Thromby knows Vigil has been nursing burgeoning feelings for Katrina since she joined them, and has so far seen no need to make anything of it.  “But a metaphor for what?”

“We don’t have enough data,” Vigil replies.  “But I’m certain of it.  We just need to keep exploring.”

Thromby takes a bite of the fish they’ve been roasting over the fire.  It’s a pleasant change of pace to be able to eat something real, instead of the platonic nourishment suggestions dispensed by the Animus.  “Agreed.  I’m curious to see what the point of this place was.  We have five more days before we have to resurface and the expedition has been quite successful already.  I think we can spare the time.  Teasha?”

Taking a bite of her own fish, Teasha purses her lips as she chews.  “I concur, but I’m uneasy.”

Teasha is their psychometry specialist, so this makes all of them sit up a little straighter.  “Are we in danger?” Katrina asks.

“Of course we’re in danger, we’re in psychspace.  But in this particular sub-domain?  Metaphorical danger, as Vigil says.  Ideological or memetic patterning rather than physical.”

Thromby nods.  “I suspected that might be the axis of it, here.  We will need to split up to cover the necessary ground in the time we have left, so everyone stays in contact while exploring.  Mechanical and psychic.  No exceptions.”

None of them are particularly happy with this pronouncement, but they see the wisdom of it.  It’s distracting and somewhat draining to keep a four-way psychic connection going, especially over distance, but their implanted transceivers sometimes don’t function properly, depending on the sub-domain.  Electromagnetism and causality both seem to be standard here, but such things have been known to change in an instant depending on whether the sub-domain is actively malicious or not.

Thromby doesn’t feel any such malice here, though.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t present; such things are often quite good at hiding themselves.  But they’ve been exploring psychspace for seventy-eight years subjective.  They’ve learned to trust their instincts.

---

Two more days of exploration are frustratingly unrevealing.  The city is the size of a proper metropolis, and they know it will be impossible to actually explore any significant percentage of it in only a few days, but Thromby is still irritated by their lack of progress.  They find evidence of cultural signifiers, rituals, and traditions, but again, the iconography is vague and appears opaque to standard Jungian-Jingweian analysis.

Teasha spends the two days on a different investigative track than the rest of them.  “Psychometrically speaking the city is remarkably healthy,” she said on the morning of their second day.  “Most locations, metaphorical or otherwise, bear the echoes of trauma or strife, but this place seems to have been almost entirely peaceful.  Totally voluntary anarcho-communism or ordnung-socialism, perhaps, without the usual markers of systemic violence inherent to capitalistic or fascistic systems.  But there’s a thread somewhere that I keep detecting the edges of.”

“A thread of what?” Thromby asked.

“Pain, of course.”

It is on the evening of their third day in the city that Teasha calls them to her.  She uses their transceiver link rather than a psychic summons.  “To avoid contamination,” she explains.  “I’ve found the source of the thread.  Double your usual wardings and enter seclusive patterning before you come inside.”

Thromby does so, of course, though they dislike cutting themselves off from their extrasensory perception.  It feels like trying to see with only one eye.  When they arrive at Teasha’s location, however, they immediately understand why she insisted on it.  The possibility of psychic contamination here is very high.

“What is this?” Katrina asks, holding her nose in disgust.

“The point of the metaphor, of course,” Teasha replies.  She indicates the filthy cellar in which they’ve found themselves, the only part of the city so far that has seemed actively decrepit.  “I guarantee you that even if we spent the rest of our lives exploring this city we would find only this one place showing any signs of entropy.”

The cellar stinks of excrement, a combination of ammonia and fetid shit, despite the physical processes creating such smells having terminated long ago.  The floor is dirt.  There are no windows.  In one corner there are two mops, their heads stiff with drying waste, and a bucket, the metal bands around its circumference orange with rust.

“They concentrated all of the city’s entropy into a single space?” Vigil asks.

“Not entropy,” Teasha tells him.  “Cruelty.”

Katrina gapes, her hand falling away from her nose for a moment.  “Come again?”

“Something lived here,” Teasha explains to her.  “Or, more precisely, was forced to live here.  It functioned as a psychic magnet, of sorts.  The functioning of the city relied entirely upon its imprisonment and use as a scapegoat.”

“What was it?” Vigil asks.

“One of the innocence-sacrifice archetypes.  An animal or a child.  I suspect a child; an animal can feel pain and misery, certainly, but it doesn’t conceive of injustice in the same way a child does.”

Thromby feels their stomach turn a little.  “Ah.  I see.”

“See what?” Katrina demands.

“The point of the metaphor indeed,” Thromby replies.  “This entire city and all its inhabitants, predicated on the suffering on a child.  It’s a morality construct, and a good one, too.”

“A good one?” Vigil asks.  “It’s grotesque.”

“Your deontological leanings are showing,” Katrina tells him.  “From a utilitarian perspective it’s perfect.  Nothing exists without imposing an energy burden on the system in which it exists.  Even the nourishment suggestions the Animus feeds us in liminal space between manifolds is distilled from universal krill.  But this?  The concentration of all of a society’s utility burden onto a single individual.  The ultimate maximization principle.”

“And your teleological leanings are showing,” Teasha sniffs.  “You’re missing the point of the metaphor entirely, Katrina.  It isn’t about utility.  It’s about cruelty.  The cruelty is the point.”

Katrina’s nostrils flare and Thromby cuts in before she can start really arguing.  “Enough,” they say.  “A conflict here in this space could be dangerous.  We’re at the focus of the sub-domain and things have a way of rippling.  We’ve discovered the point of the metaphor, so we can go back to the Animus and leave in the morning.”

Both Katrina and Teasha look ready to argue the point with them, but then they master themselves and both nod.

“Do we have to wait until morning?” Vigil asks, looking around the cellar in transparent disgust.  “I would prefer to leave sooner rather than later.”

“You know the rules,” Thromby replies.  “We don’t transit without everyone being rested.  A tired mind is a vulnerable mind.”

Reluctantly, Vigil nods, too.  The four of them walk away from the cellar, their thoughts opaque to one another.

---

Thromby is jolted out of sleep by Teasha screaming.

They sit bolt upright and look down at Teasha in the bed next to them.  She is clutching at her head, shaking, writhing beneath the sheets.  “Teasha!” Thromby snaps.  “Focus!  Center yourself!”  They grab her by the wrists and pry her hands from her face; her nails are leaving bloody marks in her skin.

“Too much, it’s too much!” she shrieks.  “I’m lost!”

Thromby forces their way into her mind.  She previously gave them her consent for this, knowing that it might be necessary in a moment like this one.  What they see there –

“Aquinas,” they say aloud.  The implants in Teasha’s cochlear nerves pick up on the trigger word and activate, sending the kill-signal to other implants deeper within her brain.  She stops screaming and slumps, unconscious, temporarily brain-dead.  When Thromby says the word again she will be switched back on, but for the moment she is safe from the psychic contamination that was attacking her along her psychometric vector.

Which, of course, means that Thromby has to deal with this issue alone.

They dress quickly and exit the Animus into a beautiful summer day.  Pennants and banners wave atop the rigging of ships in the harbor, bells sound from the city, and people, so many people, cavort and revel on the beach, in the waves, in the streets.  There is laughter, merriment, the intoxicating psychic swell of happiness and excitement.  Thromby threads their way through the crowds in the streets – mothers carrying their infants, children running through the streets in elaborate games of some variation of Terran tag, huge parades of horse-drawn carts with animalistic balloon totems floating in the air above them.  Vendors call out to Thromby, offering delicious food, intricately made jewelry, amazing clockwork-mechanical toys, sensory-enhancing drugs, and a thousand other variegated temptations.  Street musicians play upon cunningly crafted instruments – strings, pipes, percussion, keys – and revelers cavort to the tunes.

Thromby can feel the bright sparks of all of these people in their mind.  These are real, thinking, feeling beings.  They belong to the metaphor, certainly, but Thromby could speak to them, touch them, verify their self-consciousness and interiority, even invite them to come and join them onboard the Animus and explore psychspace.  They could bring them up into the real, return home with them, have a life with them.  That is how it has to be, of course.  Thromby knows they themself may belong to a different metaphor of a different order, after all.  The real is only real because enough people agree it is.

But they do none of these things.  They just walk, stolidly, back to where they know they have to go.

Katrina is waiting for them outside the cellar, barring the way in.  Thromby has their wards up at triple strength and has been in seclusive patterning since before leaving the Animus, but they don’t need to be psychic to read her mind.  Everything she is feeling and thinking is there in plain sight – the proud and defiant way her chin is thrust out, the blaze in her eyes, the way she has her arms crossed and feet at shoulder width.  She is ready to fight.

“Let me through,” Thromby says without preamble.

“No.”

Well, that’s their respective positions, Thromby thinks, articulated clearly and easily enough.  “Why not?” they ask.

“Vigil consented.”

“Vigil is in love with you and you know as well as I do that consent is a matter of framing,” Thromby snaps.  “Move.”

“No.  I explained everything to him and he consented.  It has nothing to do with whatever feelings he might have for me.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, but fine.  For the sake of argument, tell me how you explained it.”

Katrina hesitates, and Thromby can tell she wasn’t expecting them to actually offer her a chance to proselytize.  “The point of the metaphor is that no matter how great and beautiful the society, if it’s predicated on cruelty, it’s unjust,” she says.  “Deontological thinking, obviously, but cruelty is by definition nonconsensual.  I explained to Vigil that if he allowed it, we could collaboratively put blocks in his mind, purposefully regress him to a childlike mental state, and put him in the cellar to suffer for a specific length of time.  Then we can pull him back out, remove the blocks, and even erase the memories of the trauma.  The child-Vigil won’t, can’t, consent, but it also won’t exist for more than a day, and pragmatically speaking never will have.”

Thromby massages their temples.  “Congratulations.  Once again, you have missed the point of the metaphor.”

“Damnit, Thromby, I’m not a child!  I have the same training and grounding in theory that you and Teasha do.  Everything I’m doing is teleologically sound, and Vigil agreed that with the steps we’re taking –”

“You’re trying to outsmart it,” Thromby cuts her off.  “That’s how I know you’ve missed the point.  You can’t outsmart this, Katrina.  There is no perfect set of circumstances you can construct to get around the simple fact that this city functions, exists, because of deliberate and terrible cruelty.  That’s the entire point of it, just like Teasha said.  Teasha, who, by the way, is currently in a coma.  I had to put her into it to keep Vigil’s misery from damaging her.”

“It’s a thought experiment,” she argues, obviously not addressing the point about Teasha because she knows she won’t win that argument.  “There’s always a correct answer for them.  The trolley, the Gettier, the –”

“It’s about fucking sin,” Thromby sighs.

“Are you joking right now?  You’re going back to the religious well?”

“Yes, because that’s what’s happening right now.  The city is a sin, Katrina.  The excesses of its beauty, its wonder, its perfection, are obscene precisely because of how and why they function.  It’s rooted in the ideology of disgust and taint.  Utility, teleology, all of these justifications and rationalizations exist and have their use, but at the end of the day, answer me one question: will you trade places with Vigil?”

Katrina hesitates.

It’s only a bare moment, less than a second, even, but it’s there.  And Thromby sees it, and Katrina sees it.

“Yes,” she says, finally.

“I knew that would be your answer.  But you know that the answer doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Katrina lowers her head.  “No.”

“You know why you hesitated.”

“Yes.”  She looks back up at them.  “But – there’s no such thing as absolute morality, any more than there’s a single objective reality.”

“Of course there isn’t.  And yet, you hesitated.”

They just lock eyes for a few seconds.  Then she lowers her gaze again.  “And yet, I did.”

Thromby steps past her and opens the cellar.

[noosphe-re]

[marlynnofmany]

Starseed Apples

“Here you go,” I said, putting down the last box. “Uncut fabric, plumbing supplies, and three cases with a fungus biohazard label. Do I even want to know what’s in those?” I cast a curious look at my fellow human as I handed over the signing pad. She was shorter and rounder than I was, dressed in a crisp uniform of a type I didn’t recognize. Big pockets everywhere.

She signed with a wry grin. “Those are dirt.”

“Dirt?” I repeated, looking around the admittedly spotless loading dock of this particular space station. “Dirt warrants a biohazard here?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she said, handing the pad back. “Organic mulch that could contain anything from decomposed animals to fungus to poop? With uncountable amounts of bacterial life and potential germs? We’re lucky they only focused on the mold aspect!”

“Hm, good point,” I said.

Zhee, who was busy moving boxes off the hover sled, muttered something disparaging. I expected him to complain about how gross it all was, since he was always the first to point out when humans did something to offend his bug-alien sensibilities, but it sounded like he was griping about the strict station rules this time.

The human continued. “We have to keep a clean room between the greenhouse area and everything else. Even there, most things are in pots. We’ve got a great crop from Johnny Starseed right now!”

I’d heard that name before. “Oh, was he the one who sells little potted—”

“Apple trees, yeah,” she said. “Tiny and convenient, but they make an impressive number of apples as long as you feed ‘em quality dirt.” She bent down to pat a box.

Zhee finished freeing the sled. “Reasonable business plan,” he said, sounding almost complimentary.

“The guy named himself after Johnny Appleseed,” I told Zhee. “A human from centuries ago who got famous for traveling around and setting up apple orchards on Earth. Everybody likes a guy who brings food wherever he goes. And drink — I think some of those apples were supposed to be the cider variety.”

Zhee flicked his antennae. “Sounds like a very human thing to do,” he said drily.

“Have you tried the Starseed Reds?” the other human asked. “They’re very good.”

“No I haven’t, but I’d like to!” I said. “I’ve heard good things. I was kind of hoping to cross paths with him at some point. I wouldn’t mind a tiny apple tree in my quarters. Of course, the cat might get at it, and I’d probably have to find a grow lamp…”

She opened a boxy hip pocket, and pulled out the shiniest red apple I’d seen in a while. “Here you go.”

“Thank you!” I said, taking it eagerly. “That’s very generous!”

She waved it off. “Like I said, we’ve got a big crop. And I’ve got a different one that I’m saving for when I get off shift.” From another pocket, she produced a red apple with distinct orange stripes. “Which should be as soon as I get the supplies back to base.”

I laughed. “Is that the booze kind? I didn’t think those were real!”

“Oh yes,” she said with relish, putting it back in the pocket. “Starseed Cider Apples, no fermenting required!”

Zhee cocked his head, faceted eyes looking at both of us. “Poisonous apples?”

“Alcoholic apples,” I corrected, knowing full well that he considered that to be the same thing.

Zhee pushed the hover cart back toward the ship with a dramatic head tilt and antennae swirl. “Now that sounds like a human thing to do.”

“Well, you’re not wrong there,” I said with a smile. I thanked the other human and followed him, taking a bite of my non-alcoholic apple. It really was good.

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come!