“Where’s it going?” Toori asked the others. They stayed away, leaving a wide swath of empty ground in front of the crevice. “What are you afraid of?” Curiosity gripped Toori. After pushing the stone out of the way, she flopped onto her belly to take a look.
Diamond bugs. Thousands. Maybe even millions. The shells lit an underground cave with a blinding glare. It hurt her central eye, which she covered with one hand. By half-shutting her other two eyes she could just make out a surprising fact about the mountain of diamond bugs:
“They’re not moving.” The words came through her upper mouth, muted and somber. She poked in two fingers. The bugs in the cavern did not scatter. She reached farther in, stretching so she could grab a single shell. With great excitement she pulled it out. But then she let her fist clamp shut and with both mouths she shrieked, “Dead! They’re all dead!”
Fear bubbled up like the ocean, filling her lungs and throat with the salty tang of terror. Even her brain felt like it was drowning. All that mattered was fleeing.
So Toori ran. Her big feet slapped painfully against the ground. The living diamond bugs drew zig-zagging blurs all around her. Fortunately the transpod was just arriving. Panting as she took a seat, Toori realized she’d left her satchel in the field.
“Scared again. Not fair,” she grumbled into her lower hands while her upper hands covered her central eye. A hard lump touched her face. Pulling her hand back, she found that she was still clutching the dead diamond bug. She stared into its glow until the pod pulled up at her neighborhood stop.
A surprise waited on the platform: both her mothers, faces frantic, leafy fingers splayed and shaking. They lurched toward her as she stepped off the pod.
“Oh, you’re safe!” wailed Mama.
Mimi wrapped all her arms around Toori. “We didn’t know where you were. We were so afraid.”
The word was like poison on Toori’s skin. She squirmed away, shuddering. “Of course you were afraid,” she growled bitterly. “What else could we ever be?”
Even knowing it would hurt their feelings, she didn’t wait for her moms, but ran ahead and let herself into their dwelling. The metal door slammed behind her, crashing against its metal frame. Toori rushed to her pallet and lay face down. Her skin quivered with stress when she heard her moms enter.
“Don’t want to talk about it,” she called out preemptively.
She recognized Mama’s footfalls, lighter than Mimi’s. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Mama asked. Gently, through only her top mouth. “How can we help?”
The sound of Mama’s voice was so soothing that Toori rolled to face her. Mama squatted next to the pallet. Near the dinner table stood Mimi, wringing all her leafy fingers and shifting her weight back and forth.
Behind Mimi was a string lamp, one of Mama’s old inventions. It captured and agitated light photons near it, making them glow in a trail up to the ceiling.
Toori looked from Mama to Mimi to the string lamp. Her brain raced.
“Please, sweetheart, answer me,” Mama urged.
“Huh?” Toori started at the sensation of Mama’s fingers on her head. “What did you ask me?”
Mimi stepped up and spoke sharply. “We wanted to know where you were, of course. And why you left.”
“Let’s ask one question at a time,” said Mama.
But Toori didn’t care how many questions they asked. The string lamp had given her all the answers. She sat up, talking excitedly. “I went back to the Reppin Meadows, where our class went earlier today. See, I had this dream.” She moved her hands before her eyes, wiping away the dream. “No, never mind that part. The main thing is, I figured out how to make it work.”
“How to make what work?” Mimi asked.
“Us going into space. Without getting scared.” Toori smiled at her astonished parents. “We just need a string of lights, so everyone here on Orpa knows where we are, even when we’re out of comms range.”
Mama and Mimi exchanged the type of glance that said, “How do we break it to her?”
“No, it’ll work,” Toori insisted.
But Mimi bowed her head sadly. “There are no lights for that job,” said her top mouth, while her bottom mouth explained, “We can’t generate power along a wire for thousands of miles. And anyway, all the lights would break. Space is a harsh environment.”
“What if we had lights that don’t break and don’t need electricity?”
“That sounds more like magic than astrophysics.”
“Let our daughter explain,” Mama ordered.
Mimi took a breath. “Okay. Tell us what you mean, Toori.”
Toori opened her hand to show them the diamond bug shell. It gleamed, lighting the corner near her pillow. “They’re indestructible. And they always glow, no matter what.”
“It’s beautiful,” sighed Mama.
When Mimi unfurled the fingers of one hand, Toori placed the shell in her palm. “It’s got an amazing construction,” she admitted, squinting into the glow. “But even if it could withstand space, we’d need millions of these for them to be seen. We’d have to slaughter every single diamond bug on Orpa. Kind of cruel and irresponsible, don’t you think?”
Toori tried to swallow her impatience. “I don’t mean we’d kill them. Obviously.”
“Then tell us what you do mean,” Mama encouraged her, taking the shell from Mimi’s hand. “What do you have in mind?”
Toori told them about the gleaming underground cave beneath the Reppin Meadows. “It’s where they go to die. I bet they always have, since the very first diamond bug.”
Mimi pursed the lips of her lower mouth, the way she did when she was hopeful but skeptical. “Okay. Say there really are a million shells. Say they really will glow forever in space. How would we use them? Attach them to the ship?”
Toori pictured it clearly. She looked at Mama, not Mimi, and answered. “We could make a string of them with your Infinity wire.”
For a few seconds, nobody spoke. Then Mimi put one arm around Mama and another around Toori. “I sometimes don’t even know which of you two is smarter. All I can do is build things that fly. My darling ladies get all the amazing, creative ideas!”
Six big smiles beamed at each other like diamond bugs in a field at night.
The project took half a year. It seemed that every person in Raya City, from kids to senior citizens, helped in some way.
“Exploring without Fear” became the space program’s new slogan.
Backhoes plunged into the hoards of diamond shells, piling them onto transpo-flats to cart away. Since every shell was vital, children helped gather up the ones that fell out and scattered on the ground.
And then there was the unbreakable Infinity wire. The city built a factory at the foot of Mount Gil, just to make the wire. Although she’d been retired for years, Mama returned to oversee the factory. The biggest challenge was figuring out where to coil the wire as it was created. Mile after mile after mile piled up, first on the factory floor, then in its yard, then in the valley below the mountain.
The entire army gathered to tie shells to the wire. Soldiers donned goggles to protect their eyes—one, two, or three lenses, depending on the species—from the blinding sheen. The wire ties had to be made in a newly-designed machine, since there was no way to cut a longer piece into bits.
“This could circle Orpa a hundred times,” Toori heard a soldier say.
“Try two hundred,” said another.
Toori knew the number was more like a thousand.
One day the factory manager said to Mama, “I know we’re drilling one end of the wire through the base of Mount Gil. But how will we get all the rest of the wire into the rocket?”
Toori, working nearby organizing the shell-tying teams, knew the answer. “We’ll attach it to The Reach. That way, when we fly, we’ll uncoil it behind us.” Looking at Mama she admitted, “I don’t know how we get the wire to the rocket.”
Mama’s lower mouth frowned as her upper responded.
“Maybe we leave the pile here, but pull one end to the launch field.”
When Toori pictured that she saw the problem right away. “We’d end up with miles and miles of the world’s strongest wire stretching across the city. We’d wreck whole buildings.”
“True enough,” sighed Mama. “Then I guess we’ll bring the rocket here.
Launch day drew the biggest crowds anyone in Raya City could remember. People of every species stood together, waving hands (or in some cases, claws or flippers) to cheer on Toori’s family. Calls of encouragement wafted through the air to the platform where Toori and her moms waited to board.
“You’re so brave!”
“Learn lots for all of us!”
“Wish I could go with you, but I’d never have the nerve!”
Toori spotted Emto, her teacher, waving at her. She waved back, then turned north, toward the Reppin Meadows. “Thank you,” she said to all the diamond bugs that ever were.
The Reach blasted up through the clouds. They took half an orbit around Orpa before rising just beyond the atmosphere. “We’ll go out of comms range soon,” Mimi warned.
“Oh, my,” said Mama.
Toori fought back against the panic building inside her. “They’ll be able to see us, right?”
“That’s the plan,” replied Mimi, “as you know.”
No one had anything else to say. The broadcast voice from Orpa kept on chattering. That voice was such a comfort! Toori saw in her parents’ faces and in the way their skin quivered that the fear had them just like it had her. The curse of their species.
The Reach roared as they pulled away from Orpa’s gravity. “Central, this is Reach”. Mimi’s double voice shook. “Leaving comms range, Central.”
“No, you’re really not, Reach,” said the voice on comms.
Toori sat up.
Gasping, Mama gripped her armrests. “What does that mean? What’s wrong with the ship?”
“Please explain, Central.” Toori could tell that Mimi struggled to keep her voice even. “Readouts say we’re going out of range.”
There was a pause before Central answered. “We can see the shells glowing, Reach. It’s working. We’ll be able to track you along that wire, even when we can no longer hear you.”
“That’s wonderful news, Central!” Mimi cried. “Keep an eye out for us.”
“We’ve already named it, Reach.”
“Named what, Central?”
“Your wire. It looks like a sweeping line of sparkles in the night sky. We’re calling it Toori’s Constellation. Good luck, Reach. Central out.”
Mama stretched from her harnessed seat to touch Toori’s arm. “Oh, we’re so proud of you.”
Toori was proud, too. And eager to have an adventure, any kind of adventure, even if it only lasted the length of a wire. But mostly she was grateful not to feel afraid.
A dark future overrun with aliens drives a courageous girl into a futuristic retelling of an old fairy tale…but will she survive it?
THE HACK-JACK PROSPECT
Chantal Boudreau
Jaq couldn’t remember a time when the city hadn’t been overshadowed by the platforms. She couldn’t recall a life without poverty either, perpetually in dirt and darkness. Only those turncoats who worked for the sky-giants, sacrificing their own kind to the invaders to save their hides and live a slightly better life, ever saw the light. While she might not be a full-on warrior, she had been raised better than that. She fought the sky-giants in her own way, from the shadows.
Not that she had had much opportunity to do them any damage in her short life, only a teen, but she dreamed of finding a way to avenge her parents someday. The sky-giants had taken her father when she had been hardly old enough to understand what was happening and her mother had struggled to keep herself and Jaq alive from that moment on. The brave woman had done everything but sell herself on the street, taking graveyards shifts that no one else would work in order to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. She had been on her way home from one of her late-night toils when a hack-jack addict had mugged her for what little she had on her, killing her in the process.
That had left poor little Jacqueline on her own. She likely would have either starved or been dragged into the kiddie porn trade had it not been for “Mom”. That was what all of the hack-jackers in her ring called their matron, a broad woman with shoulders like a quarterback, slicked back graying hair, steely gray eyes and a jaw set in a permanent scowl. Nobody messed with Mom if they knew what was good for them. Even the rebellious ones like Jaq did what Mom told them to do for the sake of avoiding her wrath.
The first thing Mom had done after taking Jacqueline in was shorten her name. All the runners had to have a tag and Mom kept them to a single syllable, so they’d be easier to shout. Considering Jacqueline’s actual name and the fact she was a jacker, Jaq made perfect sense as a moniker.
Along with the new tag had come her jack port implant, since she couldn’t run the network without it, as well as the wrist monitor that would keep her from overstaying her time spent jacked in. Those who uplinked for too long became addicts like the man who had killed Jaq’s mother, techno zombies who would do anything to get their next net fix. Mom didn’t want any of her runners lost to addiction and Jaq didn’t want that either, so she always kept within the advisable limits and jacked out when the alarm went off on her monitor.
Jaq hardly spent any time on the legit network anymore, but mainly ran on the underground one Mom had set up. Most of her work was done online, carrying code from one place to another, but there were exceptions. When Mom needed to set up a new client on her network, it wasn’t safe to send the key code over the legit net. There were too many scouts watching for that type of illegal fare there.
Cow, short for Cash Cow, was what Mom called her key code, one that gave security clearance for a new client to establish themselves as a vendor or buyer in her underground network. Once there, a jacker could do anything that wasn’t allowed on the legit network, without having to worry about getting caught by the sky-giant scouts. It was almost like living old-world when they still had a free net.
The problem was getting the code to a new add in the first place. In order to do that, Mom would have to send out one of her runners real-world. That presented a whole new range of dangers, everything from street criminals and hack-jack addicts to policing agents of the sky-giants. Mom saved this task for her stealthiest runners and Jaq was one of her best.
Jaq woke one morning hungrier than usual. It was no surprise considering the civic rations they were given were barely enough to stave off starvation and their delivery of that month’s rations were already two days late. Jaq’s hack-jack friend, Queue, had told her the sky-giants did that on purpose, to keep them weak and docile and to remind them who was boss. Jaq wouldn’t have put that past them, considering what they had done to her family.
Mom had decided she would have to resort to buying some black market MREs to tide them over, but she needed cash to do that, and that meant picking up a new client. She startled Jaq from sleep with her usual bark, shrill and resonating.
“Jaq!”
The thin girl scrambled to her feet, brushing her mop of tangled black hair away from her eyes. Mom gestured at her with one of the carrier bags they used for safe transport of a Cow.
“I need you to bust your ass over to Lower Market Square. There’s a money launderer there willing to pay for access to my network. He needs a Cow. Goes by the name of Remi. If you want to guarantee you eat tonight, you better hop to it. I’ve heard the monthly rations might be delayed for up to another two days.”
That was longer than the sky-giants had ever starved them to date. Mom’s crew had finished the last scraps in the house the night before, leftovers of leftovers that hadn’t made much of a dent in their hunger. Jaq had awoken to a grumbling belly and couldn’t bear the thought that she might have to wait two more days to be fed. She didn’t like seeing the rest of the crew suf
fer either.
“I’ll go,” Jaq acknowledged, taking the Cow carrier from Mom. “But I want the biggest share of supper tonight. Running on an empty stomach when you’re hack-jacking the network is hard enough, running like that real-world sucks the life out of you.”
“As long as there’s no slacking” Mom conceded. “Now get out there.”
Jaq grabbed the carrier and lit off through the slum they called home. The door the runners used to slip out the back was little more than a cat-flap, but if they were caught, Mom didn’t want it to be easy for the sky-giant agents to trace their prisoner back to her rat-hole.
Jaq didn’t fear the outside like some of the hack-jackers did. She was agile and could deftly skirt the shadows until she reached her destination. Her dark hair and complexion made for good camouflage. Hiding was a synch.
Racing through the smog-choked alleyways, Jaq made her way to the Lower Market Square. She was all set to root out this Remi, hand off the Cow and retrieve the pay-off, but fate had other plans for her. She came to a sudden stop as she rounded the corner to the square in question, scenes of chaos meeting her startled gaze. A building was on fire, demolished in places, and the road beneath it was swarming with sky-giant agents.
“Hey–kid! Over here.”
A loud whisper from beside a dumpster drew her attention. She slipped over to it quietly, hoping the stranger who had called to her might be the Remi she had been sent to find.
It wasn’t.
Remi was a businessman, of sorts, but the person who had appealed to her was clearly a hack-jacker like her. He looked to be a couple of years older than she was, half again as big and more street worn, his hair spiked and his skin littered with piercings and tattoos. He bore a port similar to her own.
“I wouldn’t go near that mess if I were you. They’ll drag you in for questioning as a possible ‘eye-witness’ and then they’ll find reasons to hold you indefinitely.”
Jaq hadn’t intended on getting any closer. She knew better. The stranger continued.
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