by A. K. DuBoff
As I boarded The J. M. Barrie and set out for Level E, my knee twinged, but not even that prevented my smile.
It wasn’t gravity that made me feel truly weightless. Perhaps there was hope for space travel after all!
THE END
— — —
About the Author
Multi-international award-winning speculative fiction author Raven Oak is best known for Amaskan’s Blood (2016 Ozma Fantasy Award Winner, Epic Awards Finalist, & Reader’s Choice Award Winner), Amaskan’s War (2018 UK Wishing Award YA Finalist), and Class-M Exile. She also has many published short stories in anthologies and magazines. She’s even published on the moon! (No, really!)
Raven spent most of her K-12 education doodling stories and 500-page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet. When she’s not writing, she’s getting her game on with tabletop games, indulging in cartography and art, or staring at the ocean. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach.
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IMPROBABLE MEAT
by Richard Fife
Stardate 3721.10.2 – Captain Zedara Clement
The crew’s morale is low today. After Jenkins revealed we lost part of our stores, there was… ah screw it. No one back home is gonna read this anyway. I hate being so damn formal, blast the regs.
Guess I should still transcribe something, for “historical and poster…ical purposes,” as the pin heads back home would say. Try to keep up, computer.
Anywho, Jenkins came up from the icebox, hollerin’ like a polecat in heat. Couldn’t have the good grace to keep it to hisself, no sirree. Had to scream the whole blasted length of the ship. “We’re all gonna starve!” in that high-pitched nasal wheeze.
Like a good captain, I smacked him upside the head, and when he came back around, I had him strapped down and gagged, and I gave him my most winning of pleasant smiles.
“Jenkins,” I said, leaning over and batting my big pretty eyes. “I do declare, you have caused quite a right stir with your making about. Might you be able to calm yourself a spell and explain exactly what’s wrong to little ol’ me?”
He said something through the gag, but he nodded, so I took it out.
“Cap’n,” he said back. “Cap’n, I went down to check the icebox, and I noticed the stock pens were awfully quiet. I mean, they can get that way, but this just felt too quiet. So I poked my head in, and… and…”
He just stopped there, so I opened my eyes real large, in that way that seems to make folk want to talk. “And?”
“And they’s was all dead, cap’n. The stock for the new world. I think they killed themselves, got all tied up in some rope.”
“And how did they do that, exactly?” I asked. Livestock can be difficult, I know, but we weren’t exactly amateurs.
“There’s more,” Jenkins said. “Brett was in there, too, his head all smashed in. I think he might have been trying to sneak one off, have himself a meal off the books.”
I let out a heavy sigh, but I can’t say as I was surprised. Brett was one of the loudest babies about having all this livestock on board and not getting to use any of it. He just didn’t have a head for the bigger picture, and now, well, I guess he doesn’t have a head at all.
And, we don’t have any livestock.
So, to Jenkins I said, “Well, normally I’d say to keep this to ourselves until I can figure out how to let the rest of the crew know, but that cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it? I’d be surprised if they didn’t hear you all the way back on Earth, the cold vacuum of space be damned.”
Jenkins had the good grace to at least look down in shame.
“So instead, whenever someone comes up and askes you about it, you just send them along to me. And now you go find Tina, and you see if there’s anything worth salvaging from the stock. Might as well not let that go to waste if we can help it.”
And that was how the third anniversary of this God-man be praised five-year trip started. Why did I agree to this mission?
—
Stardate 3721.10.18 – Captain Zedara Clement
I’m not even trying, pin heads. Deal with it.
We’ve returned to some resemblance of normalcy since the stock massacre. After all, we’d been eating nothing but this blasted “Improbable Meat” for the last three years. The little treat we got from salvaging the livestock was almost a right holiday. And I can’t say there was much in way of tears for Brett. Engineering actually seems happier without him.
I sent a formal message back to Earth, as per your stuffy regs, but it’ll be years before they get it, provided Marty aimed the damn laser right. I wonder if Brett even had any family back home. Not many of us did, truth told. S’why they picked us for this mission.
I wonder at that, though. I mean, your world’s dying, and the pin heads have managed to build a ship that can go find a new world, so you fill it with mostly unconnected, lost folk? I mean, I get that it’s pretty much a one-way trip, but still, what’s to say we don’t find a great new world and decide we don’t want to share?
After all, it was people that ruined Earth in the first place. I might not have paid too much attention to my history lessons, but I got that much, at least. Back in the day, back when the moon-halves were whole, before the rock started falling, the people were doing every damn thing they could to ruin the place.
And not just war, no. They poisoned their water in new and increasingly stupid ways in the name of ease and money. They kept doing things quick and dirty because they couldn’t be bothered to learn to do it clean. And they never did get over hating each other. And not the way me and Bobby Ray hate each other. Oh no, they’d scream to their god-men and their goats and whatever else about how the others were the cause of all the problems, never able to just look in the damn mirror.
And by ‘they’, I do mostly mean men. Us womenfolk had some part, I won’t lie, but boy was it so much the boys. Whipping it out and measuring, until one of them whipped it a little too hard.
At least, that’s what the history books say happened to make the moon-halves. My old nan said it was the God-man getting tired of all their screaming and hollering that did it. That he split the moon and broke the world and spared only the good and righteous folk, like us.
Little good that did, leaving us a broke-ass planet. Billions dead, and plenty enough problems that didn’t just go away with all those assholes. Sea levels rose, the sun beat down, a zombie plague, not to mention all those nuclear reactors that had to get scuttled safe-like before they ruined the world further.
We kept going, though. Gotta learn to adapt, change with the world.
At least, until the world just done gives up.
And somehow, that ends with my ass in a tin can full of well-meaning but blazingly idiotic folk without a brain between them trying to find a new world.
We are so screwed.
—
Stardate 3722.1.12 – Captain Zedara Clement
Been a while, pin heads. How ya doing? You still even kicking?
We haven’t gotten a transmission from Earth in a year. They said that might happen, that we’d get to be going so fast that even the ansible couldn’t find us. I can’t say as I even know what that means. They put me in charge because I’m good at keeping folk in line, not because I understood any of this techno-jargon.
And that was why, for the most part, I just got to smile and nod today as Conroy came up blathering about the Feynman-Drive showing signs of degradation in its Pulse Cycle. At least, I think that’s what he said. I just batted my eyes at him again, and he coughed and put it in terms anyone could understand.
The goat-be-eaten thing is on its way out. Way to go, pin heads
. Your fancy ship is breaking down, and I don’t think there’s a service station anywhere nearby to take it in for a tune up.
Now, I know there was a lot of debate over putting a woman in charge of this. Some old-folk blather about not being assertive enough, not being fit to lead, getting moody.
Well, I’ll have you know that I’m the only competent person in this whole damn tin can.
Conroy just stood there with a dumb look on his face, so I asked, “Can you fix it?”
“Well, maybe, cap’n,” he said. “I’d need some things.”
I’ll note, he didn’t actually say ‘things’. It was a list of things. A long list that he prattled off from his data pad.
“Well,” I said. “Do we have those things on board?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “At least, enough that I can limp us along.”
“And will it break anything else if we take those things?” I asked, sweet as tea.
“Just the livestock pens,” he said.
“Well, we aren’t exactly using those since Brett’s tragic brush with idiocy, now, are we?”
“Well, I suppose not,” Conroy said.
We stood there a moment, looking at each other.
“Well,” I said. “Get to it.”
God-man above, do I get why they sent me. It seems the better a person is at a thing, the worse they are at everything else. And the first damn thing that goes is common sense.
Back on the farm, Da used to say those city folk didn’t have no common sense. They could be standing out in the field while it’s raining rock, and they wouldn’t think to get in under cover if you didn’t holler at them. They’d just stare up at it.
And, when you finally get them in, if you go and ask them what they were doing, just standing out there looking up at the moon halves like a two headed sow, they’d say something like, “I was just thinking maybe we could build a net to catch the rock,” or “I wonder how much more is up there, and if we can measure it.”
I mean, I guess the city folk have their uses. Wouldn’t be this tin can without them. We’d all just be sitting on a smoldering, wet, mostly dead rock waiting for it to be all dead, and then where would we be? Can’t exactly keep going if we’re all dead. Even Improbable Meat can’t fix that, for all it claims to be able to fix everything else.
And I say that as someone who has been eating Improbable Meat every day for the last three some years. Well, except for that one time a few months ago. Brett, bless his stupid heart, probably did save us with that.
Because, truth is, we’d already lost a few folk that the Meat just wasn’t cutting it for. And I know you pin heads knew that was going to happen. It’ll supplement, it’ll help us stretch things out, but a body can’t last on that alone. We need the real thing, at least a little—preferably a lot.
But here we are without any. We all are thinking it, goat knows. This planet, it better not just be a desolate rock you’ve sent us to. It needs to be ready to provide from the start, or we’re all boned, and no pretty smiles or battings of eyes will fix that.
And when I finally succumb, I swear to all there is, moon-halves and God-man and goat, that I’ll die with a smile knowing that you pin heads who sent us up here are going to suffer the same fate, too, if just a little drawn out.
Unless you already have, I suppose. Have you?
—
Stardate 3722.5.27 – Captain Zedara Clement
I still remember the first time I had Improbable Meat. The company that made it had been building it up as the answer to all our troubles for a year before they even did a limited release in ‘select markets’. That only lasted a month, and was mostly a novelty where it was. Which, I might add, was nowhere near my humble farm deep in the Appalachian-Piedmont Unified Alliance.
No, by the time I was able to get Improbable Meat, it was a year later. I can’t say I was eager to try it. I mean, we all understood that we needed something, that our current consumption was untenable, and no amount of smarter farming or even selective breeding was going to fill the gap. We also knew that folk weren’t going to just stop eating, either.
We knew all that, but that still didn’t matter. Improbable Meat was the enemy in our minds, here to put the good and honest working folk out on their ears, do away with farms, and turn us all into beggar-slaves to the pin heads in the cities.
So, on that fateful July afternoon, when Da came back from the store with a pack of Improbable Meat, we weren’t trying something new. We were meeting the enemy.
Oh… I suppose I should take a second to actually make some sort of report. Conroy has the engine limping along just like he said. No, it didn’t take him four blasted months. He had it fixed in about a week. I just didn’t feel like turning this blasted transcriber on before that.
Now what was I saying?
Oh, yeah. Da bought a few pounds of this Improbable Meat. The packaging was sleek, all bright colors and bold statements. Someone in their marketing team had to think they were really damn clever, though. In big green letters on one corner, it proudly proclaimed: “100% guaranteed to not be made of people.”
Over a thousand years and that old joke is still floating around. Some things just never die, I guess.
Nan was none too pleased when she saw the package, but Da told her to do something with it, and so she did. Made a casserole, just like she would if Da had come back from the butcher with something proper instead.
And, well, we all hated to admit it, but it was pretty damn good. Not just that, it also hit the spot. The packaging also had the word ‘Filling’ written in large rainbow letters, and the God-man strike me down if it wasn’t.
It was another month or two before Da started buying it on the regular. Improbable Fridays became a thing, and then Improbable Lunches. Another year, and it was everywhere. Our savior, our answer, our salvation: Improbable Meat.
Yeah, someone in their marketing team must have been pretty damn proud of themselves. The thing about marketing, though, is that it only sets you up to fail all the worse when you can’t deliver on those big promises.
By the goat herself, I am so damn sick of Improbable Meat.
—
Stardate 3722.10.2 – Captain Zedara Clement
Year four of our five-year journey.
That was a party popper, you stupid box. Meg found some in Brett’s things. Why by the God-man’s pointy beard he had those is anyone’s guess, but hell if I care.
Four years. I know, logically, it isn’t that long, at least not anymore. Hell, Da was pushing three hundred when I left, and I’m no spring chicken myself. I heard the old stories, how back before the moon-halves happened, folk were lucky to hit a hundred. So, I guess we haven’t completely been stuck in the hole in some ways.
Of course, all that keepin’ on might be what got us in this mess in the first place. Just means there are more and more mouths to feed.
But that wasn’t even what I wanted to talk about. No, see, while I know back on Earth, four years is a blink to anyone nowadays, up here, it definitely feels longer.
Especially when all you have to eat is the same Improbable Meat day in, day out, meal after meal.
The cooks, they’re good at dressing it up. Casseroles, tacos, spaghetti. I hear they’ve even figured out how to make a cake out of the stuff for today’s celebration.
But, well, can’t say I much feel like celebrating. It’s been a year since we had the real stuff, and we’ve lost more crew. I keep lasering it back at you, and I keep wondering if you’re even getting it. Earth has been silent for so long, and I am down to seventy percent of the crew I started with.
It isn’t pretty, when folk start to succumb. I have to wonder if these pin heads that made Improbable Meat actually tested, tried to see what it would do to someone who actually did switch completely over.
When I first heard of potential side effects to the stuff, we’d been eating it ourselves for nearly five years. The farm was still
doing well enough, and the farmer’s bounty was that we probably got more of the real deal than folk up in the cities or wherever it was we were selling our herds to. But when the news first came of regression, well, I won’t lie. Every last one of us at the table looked at each other, wondering who was going to say it first.
“I knew it was no good.” Nan took the honor. “It just isn’t right.”
Da, though, being Da, had to be pragmatic, even if he agreed with her.
“It’s the folk what are eating only the fake stuff. It isn’t the eating of it that’s hurting them, it’s the not eating real vittles that’s doing them ill.”
“Except they swore it was just as good as the real stuff,” Nan said. “Someone needs to hold them accountable!”
She went on for the rest of the meal, but that didn’t stop her from still clearing her plate, despite it being “The Devil’s Work” we were eating.
Regression is most certainly a thing I wish I had only ever heard of and not seen firsthand. They say no one is immune, everyone has a trace of it, back from when the rock first started falling. The rock may have given us a lot, but it sure as hell can take a lot, too.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to put them down, you know. The regressed. They’re in the hold, with the load of rock we brought. It calms down them down, at least a little bit. I heard stories of regressed being able to come back, after they started eating right again. And yes, I know it was only stories, but the God-man strike me down if I don’t try. It’s what a good and decent person should do.
Isn’t that why we’re up here to begin with? To try and bring us all back from the brink?
Is there even anyone left to bring back, though? Why can’t you figure out how to send something back? Yell at me for not keeping these logs all stuffy and official like you want, or for calling you pin heads all the time. I’ll take it back. I’ll say I’m sorry.