Diggers: The Sharp Edge of the Universe

by Shannon Heather

  On Saturday evening, a group of the meatiest kids ever—and Finn—were crammed into his kitchen waiting to leave for the Amusement Park Deck. If Finn had his way, Reggie would’ve been the only friend coming, but Diggers were like parasites. His mom had made him invite every kid from his class, and—of course—they’d all said yes. Diggers might not be the smartest people on Vortex, but they knew the word “free.”

  “You’re so lucky to have Quinn for a brother.” Alesha McGovern, known as Gibraltar, goggled over at Quinn, who stood in the middle of the group laughing and joking with everyone.

  “Lucky.” Finn had a sudden desire to crush a chair over his brother’s head, or even better, pull out old baby holopictures of him running around in nothing but dad’s work boots.

  “Hey, Noodle,” Quinn called from the center of his groupies. “How old are you gonna be? Nine?”

  Giggles raced around the group.

  “I’m twelve today, Bear,” Finn said. “But you wouldn’t know because you can’t count that high.”

  Quinn started to say something else, but apparently decided against it when their mom came rushing into the room and began herding everyone out the door.

  They headed to the hover in a huge mass of bodies, Finn trailing behind, as usual. The group forced anyone walking down the hallway to slam up against the wall just to make room for them to pass.

  Finn didn’t care about any of these kids. All he wanted to do was ride the Mach 1, the fastest roller coaster on the Amusement Park Deck. The roller coaster couldn’t actually accelerate to Mach 1 because of the interference breaking the sound barrier would cause the Space Station, but it came close. Finn had passed out the first time he’d ridden because he’d barely managed to breathe in the compression suit everyone had to wear in order to go on the colossal ride.

  Over a hundred decks and dozens of clear, walled corridors lay between the pods that connected to form the space station. As they walked through the glass corridors, everyone could see into the inky galaxy, but no one, not even Finn, glanced at the planet they orbited. They were all too excited for their day of fun.

  Twenty minutes later, the mass of Diggers pushed through the ticket line and headed in every direction. The amusement park ran a close second on Finn’s list of cool places on Vortex, but the Science Lab always held first prize.

  “There's Mach 1.” His mouth dropped open, and Finn stared upward at the goliath of all roller coasters on Vortex.

  Reggie began to violently shake his head. “Not doing it.”

  “Come on!” Finn yanked Reggie toward the line.

  The moment the Diggers showed up, the smaller kids left. Usually, it bothered Finn when the other kids shying away from them, but not today. The thinned-out line meant it only took two runs before he and Reggie were suited up and ready for their turn. Sliding into the two-person pod, they strapped in.

  Finn could barely contain his excitement when ELAINA started to speak. “Please keep all heads, hands, feet, flippers, tentacles, and other extremities inside the roller coaster pod at all times to avoid possible loss of limbs or heads. All exoskeleton beings require an upgraded compression suit. Please make sure that every head you possess has a helmet securely strapped onto it.”

  ELAINA's warnings lasted another three minutes, but Finn didn't bother to listen. He ignored Reggie whimpering next to him as he waited for the countdown.

  “Countdown commencing,” ELAINA’s smooth voice announced at the end of her long list of warnings. “Ten. Nine. Eight….”

  Reggie squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the safety bar. Finn elbowed him, but he wouldn’t look. This was Finn’s favorite part of the ride—the ten seconds sitting in the starting zone, the highest spot in the entire amusement park. Well, technically, the top of the coaster rose higher, but they’d be going way too fast to see anything up there.

  The people below looked like bugs and he could see every single ride. The water park at the other end of the amusement park bustled with people, and a long line snaked out the door for the old-fashioned movie theatre with the big, flat screen.

  “…Two, One. Ignition,” ELAINA cooed.

  “Nnnnoooo!” Reggie screamed as the coaster blasted fifteen stories straight up. As the coaster took a hairpin turn and started its windy decent, Reggie’s screams became lost somewhere behind them.

  Finn held on and might have screamed, but he didn’t know for sure. The compression suit did its job—when he remembered to breathe. They weaved and swirled up and up, then down and down. He couldn’t tell if Reggie was still conscious. It would be the first time Reggie hadn’t passed out.

  “Thank you for riding the Mach 1.” ELAINA’s voice marked the end of thirty-three seconds of pure adrenaline rush. “Please come back soon.”

  Finn had to shove Reggie back, unstrap him, and drag him out of the seat before his friend finally started to come around.

  “Not doing it again,” Reggie said when he could finally form words.

  “Come on, Reg!” Finn pulled him to his feet. “Let’s find something to eat.”

  Reggie’s face had turned an oozing shade of green, and he didn’t seem too excited about food, but he followed Finn to the snack area anyway.

  They sat under the fake sun and ate a double scoop of real ice cream each, so far, a good birthday.

  “What are you nasty Diggers doing over here?” A massive, round boy wearing the green uniform of the arboretum and greenhouse caretakers, stood in front of them. One fat hand resting on his round belly, the boy stared at Finn and Reggie.

  “Eating,” Reggie said.

  Finn stifled a laugh.

  “Oh, you think your friend is funny?” the boy said. “You both know we don’t want your kind around here.” The boy waved his hand around to indicate all the other tables.

  A few people nodded. Some looked away. The rest whispered.

  “Leave.” Reggie stood up. He loomed a full head and shoulders taller than the boy, but Finn guessed they weighed about the same.

  “Leave,” the boy mimicked. A few snickers echoed back.

  “You heard my friend.” Finn stood up too, half a head shorter than the kid, but he didn’t care. “Leave us alone.”

  Ignoring him, Finn and Reggie sat back down and started working on their ice cream again while the mean boy stood at their table trying to decide what to do next. No one else had joined him in the bullying because no one else was that stupid.

  “What ride do you want to do next?” Finn forced himself not to look at the boy’s enormous belly poking out at them.

  “Dunno.” Reggie kept his eyes on his own ice cream.

  Without warning, the boy grabbed Finn’s head and shoved it into his ice cream.

  A moment later, the boy rolled around on the ground, screaming and grabbing at his neck. “AHAHAEEEEEAHAH!”

  Bullying was strictly prohibited—so much so that every person received a bully sensor implanted in their neck when they were born. The moment children, or even adults, went too far, they received a jolt of electricity that left them twitching on the ground for at least ten minutes.

  Finn wiped off his face and looked around at all the people beginning to gather around the pudgy boy. “Serves him right,” Finn said a little louder than he needed to.

  “Yep,” Reggie nodded.

  They stepped over the twitching boy and headed for the next ride.

  Chapter 4: Lectures

  The silence at the dinner table, and the three pairs of glaring eyes attached to the biggest people on the Space Station, made for a rotten start to the evening.

  The awesome birthday party yesterday, already a distant memory, didn't seem so amazing at the moment. After the fat-green-boy incident, Reggie seemed more in the mood for rides. They’d managed to ride everything at least once and even squeeze in a movie.

  None of it mattered now.

  “So?” Gus O’Reilly, Finn’s dad, said.

  A massive man with disheveled, blazing-red hair that made
him look like his head had caught fire, Finn's dad had a natural knack for making everything around him seem ready to be crushed just by his presence. Gus's long, red eyebrows lent his blue eyes an extra bit of fury. Like Quinn’s, his arms were thicker than Finn’s waist. Actually, Quinn and their dad could have been twins—another thing Finn didn’t have in common with them.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I just…I lost track of time. Then I forgot my stuff, and when I came back here…Jasper was…gone. So, I…I thought I’d try to help Mom and find him myself. Yeah. By the time I found him, it was too late to go to class.” He hoped his lie would fly under the radar.

  Gus studied Finn for a long moment, then sighed.

  “Ah, Dad! You believe him?” Quinn threw his massive weight back onto two legs of the chair, which creaked against his weight.

  “Look, Noodle—”

  “Tsk! Fergus…” Finn’s mom said from the sanitizer, where she stood cleaning the dinner dishes—the same place she could always be found after a meal.

  “Sorry, Maggie.” Gus shuddered a little under Maggie’s glare. Digger nicknames were off limits at their home—at least while Maggie was there. “Look…Finn,” Gus continued, “this is your last chance. You’ve got to pass this time. You’ve got nothing else to fill your future with if you don’t. Do you understand?”

  “Finn,” Maggie added as she finished up the dishes and took a seat at the table, “it’s your responsibility to do your best, even with the things you don’t like to do. Classes might be boring, but when you pass, you’ll be able to start the training and that’s a blast. You already know how to do most of the stuff they teach in class. You aced all the mechanical and electrical engineering classes. Just…get through this…okay?”

  “Okay,” Finn said slowly, hunching his shoulders.

  He didn’t wait for a response before he pushed away from the table and headed for his room, putting his door into privacy mode. He found Jasper curled up in his usual place in the middle of the mound of blankets on his bed. Just as he started to pull his slides out from their hiding place, ELAINA announced, “Mrs. Margaret O’Reilly is at the door.”

  “’Kay.” Finn covered his hiding place and tried to paste on a smile, but Maggie standing beyond the door could only mean one thing—the lecture wasn’t over.

  When the door whooshed open, his mom stood at the entrance and looked around for a place to sit. She finally settled on the desk chair filled with miscellaneous articles of clothing.

  “Finn, what’s going on with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” Finn chose the automatic answer over the truth.

  Maggie ignored his auto-response. “Look, I just want you to know that you do have other choices for Journeymen positions. You don’t have to be a Digger.”

  Finn looked up without smiling. “Mom, I don’t want to go into Janitorial Training.”

  “Well, it wasn’t what I wanted to do, either.” Maggie pushed the pile of clothes on the floor and leaned back in the chair. “Just know it’s there for you if you change your mind.”

  Finn gave a little gasp at the revelation.

  Maggie had spent the last eleven years telling him to clean his room and lecturing him about how much mold and junk grew in his used spaceball gear. She’d made him clean his room until it glowed so bright it actually hurt his eyes. When Maggie wasn’t cleaning the entire Space Station to a high gloss, she was telling Finn, Quinn, and his dad to clean up their messes.

  “Mom?” Finn asked. “If you could have done any job on the entire space station, what would it have been?”

  Maggie sat for a moment and stared at the luminaries in the ceiling. “When I was your age, I wanted to be a Space Station captain, or maybe a captain of a scout ship.” She smiled at the memory.

  “Well, why didn’t you go for it?” Finn sat forward.

  Maggie leaned over and massaged the spot in her back that always gave her trouble. Her demeanor might come across as severe to people who didn’t know her, but not to Finn. Most people just assumed she was no fun from her tight bun of auburn hair, or maybe the boring beige uniform she made sure never had a wrinkle. She came from Digger heritage, like Gus, so her thick waist and shoulders didn’t help, either.

  Finn loved her light blue eyes most, because even if she didn’t say the words, he could always tell she loved him. Then, too, she’d been known to give a look that made ice melt when her anger flared. An angry look from Maggie could make a person want to hide. But the blue color made them Finn’s favorite feature. He was glad he’d inherited her subtle hair and eyes and not the various shades of orange or flaming red hair most of the Diggers possessed.

  “Finn, you know very well we all continue the careers our first ancestors took aboard the Vortex,” Maggie said. “It’s tradition.”

  “Why didn’t you become a captain anyway?” Finn pressed for the answer he’d hope she would give. "Some people try new things. Well, one or two people, at least."

  Maggie laughed. “It was a just dream, Finn. Nana McGee worked in Food Services, and Papa worked as a Digger. My Nana Gwenevere was a Janitor. Me wanting to be a captain didn’t even register as a possibility to them.”

  She was the only person in the family who tried to understand Finn, and yet she still didn’t seem to grasp his true nature. He wondered for the hundredth time if he should just tell her about his dream of being a scientist.

  Just as Finn started to muster up the courage to tell Maggie about his dreams, she pushed out of the chair, walked the few steps to his bed, and kissed him on the head. “Remember, Finn, you made a promise. You aren’t going to miss anymore Digger classes. O’Reillys don’t go back on their promises.”

  As Maggie walked out of the room and the door whooshed shut, Finn fell back onto his bed, pierced in the chest by her words. He’d just been hit with the worst weapon in his parents’ arsenal, the “O’Reillys don’t go back on their promises” guilt trip.

  He’d have to keep his promise and make it to class every night, which meant he’d have to make some alterations to his nightly trips to the Science Lab. If he hurried, he could be in and out in fifteen minutes, which would give him more than enough time to make it to the hover and get to class on time. The SS Vortex had just made orbit around a new planet, called Takkaur, and the Diggers would be setting up their equipment soon. Finn had a couple of days before the Science Lab began processing their discoveries.

  He leaned over and scratched Jasper on the neck. “Well, Jas, you’re on your own exploring for a few days.”

  Jasper opened one eye and closed it.

  “Come here, Quigley,” Finn said.

  A fish bowl holding the gigantic goldfish rose up off the cluttered night stand and hovered its way over to Finn. The bowl slowly raised and lowered in mid-air like a balloon without a string, and Quigley moved in and out of his plastic castle, completely unaware that his home was also floating.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Quig,” Finn said. “Mom only said I have to be in Digger class every night. She didn’t say anything about the new discoveries or going into the Science Lab.”

  Quigley flipped around the perimeters of his small home, staring at the top of his bowl. Finn leaned over to the other side of his bed, grabbed the food flakes, and gave Quigley a couple shakes of food. Quigley’s lips popped out of the water over and over, sucking in the flakes.

  “Okay, go back to your spot.” Quigley’s bowl floated back to the night stand and made a perfect landing.

  Chapter 5: The Science Lab Invader

  Finn heard the last “whoosh” of the front door and headed out of his room, checking quickly to make sure no one in his family had stayed behind. Grabbing the dust-covered backpack sitting in the corner of the closet, he headed for his meeting spot with Reg in front of the Science Lab window.

  When he reached the lab, he pushed his nose flat against the window. The new metal, Mikaylimide, still sat like a glorious trophy under the only light in the room. A stupid name for
such cool metal discovery.

  “So you’re the one leaving the greasy nose marks and finger prints all over the window every night.”

  Finn hit his forehead hard on the window and flipped around.

  Mikayla Fishborne stood next to him staring at the greasy smudge his nose had just made. A mixture of nauseous disgust and curiosity crossed her face, the same look Diggers received from everyone. Mikayla wore her crimson Science Training suit, and her hair fell in golden ringlets down to the middle of her back. She stood about the same height as Finn. She and Reggie were both thirteen, but she acted like a know-it-all adult. Her blue eyes bored holes into the nose smudge, and then she turned on Finn to take a long slow look at him. Her gaze paused on a massive food stain he’d just made on his brown Digger suit during dinner. She also took an extra moment to survey his massive knot of hair, and then she crinkled her nose.

  “No, this is my first night here,” Finn lied.

  Mikayla gave a high, helium laugh. “No, it’s not. I see you here all the time.”

  “Oh…what? Are you spying on me or something?” Finn quizzed.

  “Why would I spy on you?” She huffed and flicked her hair over her shoulder, just like Jasper flicked his tail when he became irritated.

  “Jealousy.” Finn returned her disgusted expression.

  “You’re kidding, right? Why in the Milky Way would I be jealous of you?”

  Finn felt the snobby bite in her words.

  “Oh, I don’t know…maybe because Scientists couldn’t find a thing without Diggers.” Finn had no idea why he yelled, or why he defended Diggers, but he wasn’t going to let this prissy girl act like she was better. No way.

  “Hey,” Reggie’s voice came from behind him. Finn wondered how long Reggie had been standing there listening before he’d decided to say something. “We going?”

  “Yeah,” Finn tried to sound as disgusted as Mikayla looked. “Let’s go.”

  Before Finn could make a grand departure, Mikayla flipped around and headed for the Science Lab door. Finn watched with jealous rage as Mikayla slipped into the room, made her way over to the box of lab slides, and began looking at each slide under the microscope. After she studied a slide, she either put it in the box marked “trash” or put it back into the slide box.