Tag: Humor

Short story: How typical

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Sean O’Leery was a typical middle-school-aged middle-child. Nothing in his appearance nor manners put him out of place in a crowd. All the same, he attracted the ire of his peers as if a quasi-magnetic force drew it toward him from them– what he’d come to refer to as “Jerks.” In fact, if middle-school taught him anything, everyone was a jerk most of the time. The only break was the times he hid away during lunch or after class-work and punching the buttons on his game-pad.

Other times, the taunts of “O’Leery the Queery” were too prevalent to focus on much. Even the few jerks he might’ve called friends on good days, preferred to call him “Queery” rather than Sean. However unable to put it into words, he sensed it was to keep him at arm’s length. Lots of people did that for lots of reasons; his “friends,” random other jerks (people), his parents. For a while he wondered if he smelled bad. Nope, he was just that unremarkable.

Middle-child syndrome meant being too young for independence, but responsibilities; too old to be coddled but free of most childhood oversight. He occupied a curious middle ground in a quasi-bizzaro-land of raging hormones, rabid ignorance, and ineffable urges. In other words; a typical middle-schooler.

And while all things considered, life was going well, something was different.

Like most kids, Sean hated life some days– hated it with the enraged passion of a billion charging wildebeests– but he knew it could be worse. For the most part, he was healthy, clothed, fed, sheltered when needed, maybe even loved (if his parents’ distant words were in earnest.) Moreover, television and internet ads with sickly-looking African kids said there were parts of the world where even that stuff wasn’t guaranteed. So, if he felt things were getting too bad, he tilted his head down, and immerse himself in the mindless repetition of a game.

To say things were going well though, would miss the profound, emotional, nose-dive of modern life amid the teenage years. The roller-coaster of puberty had only just begun for Sean. Soon enough, he’d be screaming his head off through its dips, hoping and praying to any deities that might exist or not, that the restraints held. Such was life. He might’ve known that, but he wasn’t sure enough of anything enough to be sure of it.

That attitude was probably for the best. Especially when in walked Jacob Cartwright and all that came with him.

Jacob was another, scrawny middle-child. Completely unremarkable in the most literal interpretation of the word, he had a face that would blend in any crowd and the shaky mannerisms often accompanying such obscurity. Both boys would come to remember their meeting well:

Just outside the lunchroom’s back-door, lunch-recess; that glorious time of freedom between periods four and five that split the day between, pre-lunch (nap time) and post-lunch, (almost-home nap-time.)

Sean ambled from the door, face down-turned and hands rhythmically button-mashing to a tempo audible only to his ear-bud headphones. The three-headed dragon hydra needed slaying, and he was just the controller warrior to do it.

Until he smacked straight into a group of jerks of the jock-variety– in other words, half the 7th grade football team. His headphones were yanked from his ears with all the scolding pain typical of that action. The running back, or some such nonsense, gave a stiff one-handed shove.

“Watch where you’re going, Queery!”

Sean’s ass hit the ground, his ears burning in and out and his face red over the distant screams of a slain warrior and a triumphant tri-headed dragon. The jerks laughed and hollared, the offender gesturing his group to follow him from the door.

Jacob watched– had watched– from the doorway, blocking it until a line formed behind him. He was fixated on the exchange, headphones and gamepad intact where they were meant to be. He’d watched from the angle of one precisely capable of making the same mistake, but fortunate enough to be stopped short by Sean’s enactment of his own, possible future.

The line shoved him forward and time and the world began to move again. Still, Sean stared up, ass-to-ground, stunned. Jacob stooped beside him, picked up Sean’s handheld, its earbuds dangling like a death-dungeon’s swinging pendulum axe.

He helped Sean up, examining the handheld. The boy allowed it, slow to recover. “Looks alright. No scratches or cracks.” He handed it back, “Why’d they call you that? You ask a lot of questions or something?”

Sean took the game. “Thanks… Wait, huh?”

“They called you “Query,” like a question, right?” He asked, oblivious to his mental misspelling.

Sean’s face was a portrait of confusion. He blinked to make his mind work, but it stayed stuck. Jacob motioned him away from the door as a pair of girls stepped out and almost smacked into them.

A curious magnetism drew Sean along as he took a few, large steps away. “Anyway, I’m Jacob.”

They angled around the outer, rear wall of the lunchroom for a bench there and Sean’s wits finally returned. “Sean O’Leery. And they call me that ’cause it rhymes with my name… and they think I’m queer or something.”

Jake’s eyes bulged, “Oh, that kind of Queery.” Sean nodded. “So are you?”

“Huh?”

“Queer or whatever?”

Sean’s eyes bulged, “What!? No.” He hesitated, then scowled, “I mean, I don’t know. Probably not. People are just jerks.”

Jake shrugged, “Well, sorry. I’m not really in on people’s sayings. I’m new. And I read the dictionary a lot. Guess that’s why I was confused.”

Sean wasn’t sure what to address first, settled on the greatest of the three atrocities. “You read the dictionary!?” Jake nodded smartly. Sean gave him a deranged eye, “Uh… why?”

He shrugged, “It’s fun. There’s always new words to learn! Anyway, query means question. So, maybe next time they make fun of you, try to hear that word instead, it’s not so mean that way.”

“I’ll do my best,” he mumbled. He stiffened up a little, “So, you’re new?”

“Mhmm.”

“Got any friends yet?” He shook his head. “I guess we could be friends then.”

Jake’s eyes lit up, “Okay.”

That was all either of them would come to remember. One conversation drifted into another, then another. It was a typical meeting between two typical kids amid a typical day at a typical school. So much was typical that the word sort of lost its meaning.

Something changed though, and O’Leery the Queery suddenly wasn’t so strange anymore. He was one-half of a crime-fighting duo, sans the crime-fighting. When later it turned out both boys were, in fact, queerier than most, they became two halves of something greater than friendship. Their “tying the knot” was an even more typical affair.

All of that from a simple, mental misspelling; how utterly unremarkable and typical.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: My Box

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t left my box,
much at all this year.
Some say it’s a bad thing,
that I live in constant fear.

But the truth is,
my box is really quite large,
when my imagination descends,
and it takes charge.

Some people say that,
my box’s walls are uncouth.
I disagree,
but ’cause I know the truth:

That boxes,
ones both bigs and smalls,
are around us all each day,
most with invisible walls.

I like my box and keep it cool,
or in the winter cozy and warm.
But some still say my box,
does me lots of harm.

But I don’t believe it,
and I think I know why;
just between you and me,
my box has better views of the sky.

And ones of the beyond if I choose,
past the stars and the moon,
the sun and solar system,
to places so far, I can’t return soon.

Cause its out there I’m soaring,
while my hands remain here, writing.
And though my mind’s in the clouds,
it’s my box that keeps me here, safe

from fighting–
from crying,
from sighing,
or even white-lying.
‘Cause my box is like yours,
but different,
for it is ever,
adventure-supplying.

Short Story: Nothing Better to Do

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Snow plummeted at odd angles, reducing visibility to near-zero. Even if she’d had a car, Elizabeth Arnold would’ve never driven to or from school in such a blizzard. She’d rather take her chances on frost-bite getting through three layers of clothes, rather than risk totaling what would be the only set of wheels she’d have for a decade. So, she was stuck walking home.

Another day, another pile of shit, she’d say. Today that was at least half-true, given how oil darkened and grit covered the snow was. In Bacatta– and most snow-afflicted areas– snow wasn’t white or even gray most times. It was black, or brown, caked with mud, sand, salt, oil, anything the roads picked up between winters. And it was always ugly.

White snow was reserved for lavish places that could as easily afford to import it as choose to live in it. Those sub-human morons could keep their white snow, Elizabeth decided, even if human snow one ice, one part old beef stew without the carrots. All she cared about at the moment though was putting one foot in front of the other, and hoping the effort wasn’t in vain and that she’d get home more or less whole.

For all she knew, the whole city had disappeared beyond the few feet of continuous sidewalk and piled snow that peered in from either side of her hood. Bacatta could be little more than an endless void of white particulates where humanity sound as if it were hiding, but wasn’t. She guessed the answer to that would remain a mystery for some time to come. The forecast for the next few days was, to utterly no-one’s surprise, snow, snow, and more snow. The walk-home white-out was just the start of it. Seventeen years of living in Michigan, Bacatta in particular, had taught her one thing if nothing else; Winter was long and it came early, like the most teasing and disappointing sex partner ever.

Of course it was going to snow. It always did. A lot. So much so the first white-outs closed up the town with a collective “fuck it” that intended to wait out the coming storm. After a few days, and a few feet of snow, the city dug itself out and started up again.

If it weren’t for her foresight, Liz would’ve been forced to trudge home, freezing all the way. Truth was, she expected to get to school only to be turned away. That they’d managed to hold a few classes was as surprising as it was pointless. Half-days were as much snow days as exercises in futility. Especially for high-school students, whom usually weren’t alert until their third or fourth class, all a half day meant was waking up early for no reason or having a free ditch-day.

But Liz had never been one to ditch. She wasn’t sure why. There was no moral obligation compelling her to attend school. The only explanation she’d been able to manifest was “having nothing better to do.”

That apathy was largely prevalent in her life, regardless of venue. Between school, homework, getting older, more cynical, and the trials of recurrent menstruation, too many emotions had bludgeoned her since childhood had ended. So, rather than get angry like some people, she just sort of switched off.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care about people, or even things, just that a once easy-going organism had evolved into one comfortable wherever it found itself. Or, if not comfortable, then indifferent. School was no different. Neither was snow. Even the half-hour walk that should’ve taken ten minutes didn’t really bother her.

She pushed into the house to find it still empty. No surprise; big sister was usually gone and Mom was always working. Most times she had the house to herself. Apart from the day’s excess mental energy, nothing was all that different.

She headed to the basement. It hadn’t use until Liz had moved into it. Since then, she’d entirely taken it over. Apart from laundry and utility rooms, there was nothing anyone had used or needed otherwise. Having an extra bathroom she wasn’t forced to share was nice too, and she’d done her best to decorate the place.

Noon was lunch time. Always. At school, at home, at any other place she could think to go. No matter what she’d eaten for breakfast, too, or what she was doing, as soon as the clock hit noon, her stomach growled and grumbled for sustenance or recompense– usually in the form of fainting. Funny, even her gut seemed to have a do or die attitude despite her otherwise total indifference.

She slapped together a sandwich from provisions she’d squirreled away in a mini-fridge in her room, then sank into a chair in front of her computer. The screen faded on to a web-browser and her open email account. To one side, a message app flashed an alert. Above it read, “Sam Ellery,” in alternating green and white with black text. Below was “Hey Chickie, U round?”

If Liz had to guess, Sam was eating lunch and praying she’d suss out a way to spend the day with her. Liz’s charteristic indifference struck again;she had no strong feelings, one way or the other. Then again, logic begged the question, “what else did she have to do?”

Nothing. Ab-so-lutely nothing.

The next three or four days would be boring as hell unless she rectified the problem now. Sam was probably thinking ahead as much as she was caught in the moment.It didn’t make her any less on target.

Sup?

Liz scarfed down her sandwich, sucked down some soda, and read the next message.

Shit. U?

Same.

Wanna chill?

Liz shrugged to herself. My place or urs?

Urs. Rents r home. Fightin agn. Mind if I stay 2nite?

Another pointless shrug. If u want.

Coo. C u in 10.

With that, at the very least, the next few days had been secured against boredom. Sam always had a heavy bag of grass and at least a handful of ideas to offer to pass time. Liz had plenty of ideas herself. Seeing as no-one ever entered the basement either, incense could cover the smell of even a few bags of lit grass.

Ten minutes passed quicker than Liz expected. Sam entered without knocking. Even had she, Liz would’ve never heard it. It was just easier this way. She shook snow off herself, dropped a heavy backpack just beyond the closed, basement door, and dug out a separate pair of shoes to change from her snowy ones.

Liz watched with something like envy; Sam was always stunning, even in spite of a little pudge around the love-handles. Perhaps it was just her confidence– her small build made the pudge more noticeable but she seemed ever the force of nature. Her larger cups and the petite hourglass they hung on couldn’t hurt, Liz knew.

Liz was the opposite in almost every way; a hair taller than average, lumpy in all the wrong places, flat in most others. If it weren’t for the aloof personality she’d cultivated, she’d have probably been a neurotic mess of insecurities. Weed helped too.

Sam settled onto the small couch beside Liz, pack beside her feet. She broke out a bag of grass and a few cigars and rolling papers, set them on a book atop the coffee table.

“What’chu been up to?”

“Had lunch. Now this,” she said, focused on the TV.

“Wha’s it?”

She shrugged, “Some movie. Started just before you came in. Dunno know what about yet.”

Sam poured weed onto the book, put one half onto another book, and handed it over with the cigars and a knife. “Roll the blunts. I’ve got more weed if you need it. I’ll do the joints.”

The pair worked autonomously, eyes focused intently on the screen ahead. The idiot box had claimed two more victims for their foreseeable future. By the time the pair were done rolling their respective smokeables, they were on the edge of their seats.

The movie, it turned out, was about two young girls, both friendless and alone with great responsibility riding on them. All that usual mumbo-jumbo about strength and companionship and how greatness was a measure of someone’s birthstone or something.

As they sparked their first round of grass, the pair derided the movie. It wasn’t for lack of enjoyment, but rather to mask the awkwardness of the increasingly misplaced sexual tension between the two, female leads. The weed descended and the awkwardness disintegrated into its own, self-derision with giddy glee. Everything was suddenly hilarious. Especially when the two women ended the movie with a cliched, triumphant-victory kiss.

The pair fell about in stitches, their second joint burning down in the ashtray.

Liz laughed through tears, “Jesus, that was the worst kiss I’ve ever seen.”

Sam giggled with screeching breaths, fighting to open her mouth and stick out her tongue, flick it around with exaggerated movements.

Liz gasped for air, “You look… like a cow!”

Sam managed to lock herself into a rhythm of the movements. Between it and the tearful laughter, she found it nearly impossible to stop. It only fueled the already maniacal fires of laughter.

By the end of it, both girls feared for their lives from airless lungs and watery eyes. The laughter settled enough for breath to return as credits faded to commercials began, separating the end of one movie from the start of another.

“I mean, really,” Liz said, laughs still bubbling out here and there. “Who kisses like that?”

Sam’s laughs were lighter, arguably more under control now, “I honestly don’t know.”

“Oh jeeze, what the hell were they thinking?” She forced laughter away with a wide grin.

“I know. Such a lame ass ending.”

“And such a bad kiss.”

Sam chuckled with a roll of her eyes, “Not like you could’a done better.”

“Oh I so could,” Liz balked with a smarmy smile.

“Prove it,” Sam challenged with a raised eyebrow.

“What? You want me to kiss you?” She asked, her eyes gigantic.

“Put your money where my mouth is,” Sam giggled. “I bet you’re all wet and sloppy.”

Liz’s mouth hung open, “I dunno’ which is worse, your insult or that you wanna’ kiss me!”

“Oh c’mon.” She hissed playfully, “Wussss”

Their eyes met for a moment: the simple challenge in Sam’s, and the deranged question of sanity in Liz’s. Sam’s raised brow said putting her money where her mouth was– or rather, where Sam’s mouth was– was the only way out of the challenge without a forfeit. Whether from Sam’s confidence that she was, in fact, a terrible kisser, or something else entirely, Liz couldn’t back down. She stiffened her face, finally not indifferent toward something; and that was that she wasn’t about to back down.

She grabbed Sam’s face almost sarcastically, hesitated, then stuck her tongue in with fast movements. The sarcasm suddenly slipped away. Her body flared with heat. It slowed her tongue, Sam’s with it. Almost a full minute passed before the girls parted.

Sam’s eyes nearly closed, her voice soft, “That was really good.”

Liz nearly panted, “Agreed.”

Before either one realized it, Sam was straddling Liz, their hands roving and tongues dancing. For the first time, Liz’s indifference was nowhere to be found. In fact, the only thing she could find was a certain, undeniable lust to continue running the bases.

Likewise, Sam didn’t want her to her stop. One thing was already leading to another, and being teenagers with home plate never far off, she didn’t see a reason for it not to keep leading there. By the end of the night, a lot of things were in limbo but one thing was certain; even if they’d had nothing better to do before, their few snow days were now full, and they’d be anything but boring.

Sam rolled over and kissed Liz’s neck. Then, as if to confirm their shared thoughts, Liz giggled and pulled the blanket over their heads.

Back in Sol Again: Part 8

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

8.

Packed Like Guinea Pigs in a Beer Can

Simon’s cabin intercom screeched with incomprehensible sounds, tearing him from sleep beneath Lina. She awoke with such a start she nearly leapt to her feet. The sound soon dissipated to Niala’s voice.

“I assume you’re up now. Good. Get dressed and meet us in the shuttle bay. Bring your suit,” Niala said, then added, “You too, Lina.”

Simon and Lina reeled from the jarring wake-up call, no doubt Niala’s idea of a practical joke. Rearden would’ve been in on it too. He’d have used the ship’s internal sensors to locate them, then once realizing where they were, why, allowed her to enact her scheme. Lina gathered what remained of her clothing and wrapped herself tightly in her robe.

“I’ll meet you there,” she said, yawning.

“This… doesn’t have to mean anything i-if you don’t want it to.”

She patted his head, “If I didn’t want it to, I would’ve left last night.”

His brow furrowed confusion, but she kissed his cheek then sauntered away, deliberately throwing him off-track.

The cabin door shut and he snapped into action; showered, dressed still-wet, and grabbed up his gear for EVA. Niala’s call could only mean the outpost was ready for activation. He ensured he had everything necessary for an extended stay, then made for the shuttle bay in the ship’s lowest aft section. Like him, Lina had prepped in record time. They met at the elevator, rode downward for the long walk to the bay, away-bags shouldered.

Unlike before, this activation required an extended stay. Given Gliese’s true outpost was on the far-side of the system, Niala and Ingstrom had decided to release EVA-1 for recon while the backup team followed Homer on its mission. The reasons were two-fold: the ship and its crew still had a job to do, and the fewer people in orbit, the less likely it was an incident would occur.

First contact was assigned to Niala and her team on the basis that they were the foremost experts on tech and EVA aboard Homer. As such, it was assumed they were also the foremost experts on making that tech seem less magical, more mundane. EVA-1 was also designated the foremost recon unit aboard Homer as a result of all but Lina’s presence during the investigation into the ISC theft. Somehow, that bit of Solsian detective work made them qualified for first contact duty; supposedly, as a result of their ability to decode and discover things.

In other words, no-one else wanted the job for fear of starting another interstellar war. So EVA-1 drew the short straw, or rather, was given the short straw.

Simon and the others entered the shuttle to launch. Behind them, all manner of supplies and gear, was packed and secured for flight. The shuttle itself looked like a cross between a beer can with its face cut to an angle, and a 747 fuselage compressed to the size of an angle-cut beer can.

That angle as a true-to-life viewport made of something resembling glass with an external repulsion field and an internal holographic display. The latter allowed for the pilot to view various informatics streams, while the former was purported to be a means of avoiding micro-asteroid ruptures, and thus explosive decompression.

Purported being the operative word, of course. As Simon knew, the tech was new, had never been shown to hinder nor hasten explosive decompression. It was all theoretical. So many things regarding Homer and its tech were. Being that EVA-1 were considered a front-line team for all matters, Simon couldn’t help feeling more like a space-fairing guinea-pig than anything.

He could see himself, as if from on high: encased in glass. On all fours. Fat and stupid. Features smushed into the cute, fat-headed shape of a guinea pig. Jaws chattering like pistons alternating on ludicrous-speed. Dullard eyes gleaming. Fur-covered cheeks puffed euphorically.

Then, Simon vaguely recalled the creatures most used in experimentation were albino mice.

Nonetheless, his mental imagery began a slow zoom-out. It widened beyond him to encompass the other, thick-headed, unsuspecting guinea-pigs beside him, chewing as he was. Super-imposing the image of Niala’s Feline face onto a guinea-pig might’ve given him a laugh if he weren’t so consumed with what was being built to.

Soon enough, his mental imager was looking at him through the viewport of his high-tech, angle-cut beer-can as it hung in the emptiness of space. It seemed to speak thousands of words, as images were wont to do, but none coherent. Certainly, none were of any import. Why it was there, no-one would know, its furry inhabitants least of all.

In a way, they were glorious. Beautiful. A picture of perfection. The perfection of ignorance. The perfection of gleaming, dull-eyed complacence. The perfection… of idiots.

Simon snapped from his mental wanderings. The shuttle’s comm sounded with a voice Simon wasn’t familiar with. It was nonetheless soft, soothing, formal in its way but nowhere near harsh. Simon suspected the woman had been chosen to (wo)man the comm for those very reasons.

“EVA-1, you are free of the bay. We have you on external sensors. Proceed to bearing eight-eight-point five-nine and accelerate to ten meters a second.”

Niala confirmed the instruction. A compass with 360 degree markings appeared near the viewport’s bottom. The stars outside hung motionless above and beyond it, a frosted-glass effect only slightly visible directly beneath. As she angled the ship around with minimal thrust, the stars pivoted along the horizon.

The shuttle slowly came about to match bearings. A flicked switch subdivided whole numbers into decimals between one and nine, then further again with another flick. As it did, Niala’s movements became less refined.

Simon knew, though he’d largely ignored the memory, that with finer compass settings came a finer shift in the maneuvering system. The thrusters fired differently. Otherwise mouth-sized plasma jets along the shuttle’s hull engaged their telescopic nozzles. The nozzles tightened, their plasma streams narrowing to allow finer control of the ship’s heading.

The system was capable of going from fist and head-sized openings to pinhead sized ones in micro-seconds. With it of course, the shuttle went from angling between planets to angling between flea’s tits just as quickly. Currently, it was set somewhere between those two extremes and rotating to view the nearby outpost.

Unlike the other outpost, this was meant to be a temporary fixture, thus was much smaller than the others. It was also more modular, in the event that it needed to become permanent. As a result, it looked like a series of interlocked cylinders and rectangles. Stylistically, it appeared more like inflated descendants of the original ISS and Mir Modules than the “true” outposts. Those were much less modular, much larger, and much more like the Jacks of their eponymous game.

True outposts were also more accommodating for more people. Indeed, the trio were sure to have enough room to roam and survive, but the temporary station lacked many of its bigger sisters’ luxuries. Its essential systems too, were scaled down versions. Like most things in astronautics, the reason was as much space-saving as mobility and ease of use.

A true outpost may take only a few people to activate, as EVA-1 knew first-hand, but it took over a hundred people to keep running over each day-night cycle. That was, if no-one on the team was given time off. Then, it was two to three times that. That was part of the reason Homer had so many people aboard, and had disgorged so many in Proxima Centauri. Traveling and visiting space were one thing, living there for extended periods was another entirely.

The shuttle crossed the void of nothingness between Homer and Gliese-Beta, the unnecessarily official name of the outpost. Provided it became permanent, the name would remain in an official capacity, with a more colloquial name in quotes. Had he’d been bothered to think about it, Simon would’ve found it a bit of bureaucracy as colloquially “pointless” as the bureaucrats demanding the moniker in the first place. Solsian life was like that; packed with redundancies and unnecessary speed bumps on roads to progress.

Simon unconsciously gripped his seat. The top-side, or rather, one of the circular faces of the station came into view ahead. The whole cylinder rolled sideways, its top-side perpendicular to the shuttle’s path. Just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared. The shuttle had angled to face away from it. A live feed from a stern cam appeared, centered in the viewport with a variety of information.

Ahead, Homer and its massive rear-end were only just visible. The majority of its nearly 2 Kilometer length was still hidden to the right, but it remained a sight to behold.

Simon suddenly felt small. Immensely small.

Lists of facts and figures concerning the ship bubble from somewhere in his mind. That he’d designed most of the colossus’ engines and drive systems was overshadowed by something greater; Homer and its ilk might end up his Magnum Opus, but even that behemoth of scientific and engineering prowess; that symbol of Solsian progress from primordial ooze to star-fairing genius; was barely a speck in the infinite immensity of the universe itself.

It made him marvel and shudder in fear, awe.

Niala made a move that re-focused his attention. He suddenly realized he’d missed their docking. Evidently, only part of him though, as his fingers still clutched his armrests like a cinema-goer at a too-real horror-flick. He wasn’t as afraid of their docking as he was acutely aware of his current, guinea-pig role for unproven tech. That it had been tested and rated didn’t matter. Each part could pass all the tests it wanted, he was just as much a frozen, floating corpse if it didn’t work together right.

Niala reported back to Homer. “Comms, we’ve made connection. Beginning ingress to activate the station. Will radio again on full power-up.”

Ingstrom’s gravel begrudged them an affirmation. “Sky’s blessings. See you on the other side.”

The mention of another side didn’t help Simon’s floating-corpse fears, but it did remind him to double-check the seals on his space-suit. He lifted his helmet from his lap, examined and patted its seals and latches, then fitted and locked it. He rose for his air tank with his female companions doing likewise, and fitted and checked them. With thumbs up, they formed up beside the rear door.

Niala radioed over their short-range helmet comms, “Equalizing in 3… 2… 1…”

Blasting air gave way to a minute loss of gravity marking the millisecond shift between Earth-Normal and the activation of their magnetic boots. Immediately after, the lights in the rear-cargo section winked on and off, then glowed red. The rear-door unsealed, then sank. Their head and chest lamps switched on, illuminating the freshly constructed interior.

“Control should be just ahead,” Simon reminded.

Unlike the other outposts, this one was controlled by a single room running off battery-power charged by solar panels hidden within the station’s rounded faces. They stepped forward in slow-motion, every breath echoing over the comms. Rearden led the way, its flexible lamp and optical sensor throwing its beaming gaze along the corridors.

The eerie terror Simon had during the first activation returned. Along with it came an undeniable fear of something more lurking beyond. He didn’t fear the station, nor the darkness. This time, he feared the outpost’s activation; as if Homer leaving were a trigger to something larger. It might well be, he knew.

With Ingstrom and the ship out of reach, they’d be utterly alone. Anything, good or bad, was on them. The good was just as likely as the bad. While the shuttle was stocked with emergency provisions, if something happened to it there was nothing they could do. Even if they managed to alert Homer of any distress, they might not return in time to save them.

A million things could go wrong, but a million more would if he worried too much.

He steeled himself as best he could and followed Lina to the control room. Ahead of them, Rearden’s light fell over a doorway ahead of Niala. It proceeded inward, the room rather more average than Simon had expected, despite the various monitoring and control devices, it was hardly cramped. No doubt the space spared here would’ve been taken from elsewhere.

Rearden led Niala to one of the consoles while the other two awaited instructions. With the turn of a knob and the flick of a switch, the station came to life. Gravity returned, automatically disengaging their mag-boots. It would take a few minutes, but soon enough the station would have air too. For now, Niala reported in to Homer.

“Homer, this is E-V-A-one; happy to report we’re in the green. Oh-two rising steadily, and station otherwise fully-functional.”

The soothing-voiced woman sounded again. “We read, E-V-A one. Will contact you again in seventy-two hours. Until then, keep yourselves safe.”

“Will do, Homer, same to you,” Niala replied, giving herself a crooked smile. Their communication ended with Homer’s sign-off. She turned toward the others. “Alright, we’ve got a job to do. Rearden, send the bots to scour for any possible issues. Meanwhile, I’ll get the water running. Lina; solar station. Deploy the panels and check the batteries. Simon, start an inventory of all food and medical supplies aboard, make sure nothing is damaged or missing. Keep in contact and report anything out of place.”

With that they broke for their various duties. Simon had, again, pulled a short straw somewhere. He figured it his lot in life. He’d done it so many times he was no longer sure if the game was even rigged. Nonetheless, he began his long, tedious, boring job. Still, it kept the nagging fears away.

Perhaps, had he trusted his instincts slightly more, he’d have realized what was going horribly wrong. All the same, he soon found himself face-to-face with it. Or rather, a mirror image of it.

He’d long since become utterly bored with his job, but tedium had a hint of meditation to it. One he found enjoyable in the absence of anything else. Inventory seemed pointless the more he did it, but he knew it could become crucial later on. Having an accurate count of food and medicine might save their lives. How, he wasn’t sure, but he guessed it had to do with being stranded. He didn’t like the idea, even less when it wouldn’t go away.

He took a break to use the bathroom, found himself parched from still-dry air. The O2 was flowing nominally, but the humidifier would take time to fully saturate the station.

He bent to drink from the faucet with a cupped hand and splashed water at his face. He rose with just enough time to swallow, then caught the one-eyed face of a Feline behind him. A flash of swift movement preceded sudden, persistent blackness.