Alyssa can now speak to Niamh and to Deepa when they’re alone. They’ve found the name for her silence — selective mutism — and got an app on her (salvaged, repaired) pad that helps synthesise a voice for her. We reckon she will be able to talk to everyone without it eventually, but this is a good step in the meantime. Anyway, she found the programmed voices too old and too American, so she hacked it to record her own voice saying the various words. Turns out she’s got quite a talent with computers. So she’s going to help me set up an e-learning network with the other schools; if we take shifts with other teachers elsewhere, we can focus on education, not just supervision. When I was at school e-learning used to be quite normal, but so many of the structures were left to disintegrate. There’s work to do.
It’s not just about lessons, though.
We won’t change the world, even this half abandoned shell of a world, with a few chairs and ramps. But they’re blueprints. Once we get together, who knows what we can create. For us.
Anna Caro lives and writes in Wellington, New Zealand. Her short fiction has been published in M-Brane SF, Dark Valentine, Antipodean SF, and Khimairal Ink, and she is the co-editor of two anthologies, A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction and Tales for Canterbury. Her blog is at http://blog.annacaro.org.
Lift
by Pete "Patch" Alberti
* * *
“Too much weight,” Ricky said. “You have to get out.”
Suzy giggled.
Mary Beth rolled her eyes. “This is a Mark III Mercury Nullifier you’ve got installed, right?” she said. “Too much weight my ass.”
“Yeah, it’s your ass that’s the problem.” Ricky said. “We can’t get off the ground. You have to get out!”
Mary Beth was going to cry, and she didn’t want to let either of them see her cry. So she opened the hatch and got out.
“Sorry,” Suzy said loudly, and in a tone that suggested the opposite.
“Yeah,” Ricky said, “Sorry.”
Suzy reached up and closed the hatch. Mary Beth stepped back as the little spaceship’s anti-grav kicked in and the field effect made her hair stand on end. The Ricky’s Rebellion drifted slowly up until it was floating a few feet from the ground. Then, engines humming more determinedly, it rose further and further upward, making for a washed out moon, hanging in the blue summer sky.
Mary Beth trudged home. Her parents were still at work. There was week-old ice cream in the fridge; a little freezer burned, but it would do. She plopped on the couch. Petted the cat. Hated herself.
Later, she got to researching.
* * *
They were at Ricky’s house. Suzy had come back with two scoopfuls of moon dust. Ricky had a black, glossy moon rock. Relics of ancient impacts.
“Hey,” said Mary Beth. “I’ve got an idea about your engine.” She held out the sheaf of printouts she had brought. “See,” she said, “you’ve got it adjusted all wrong.”
Ricky grabbed the printouts. They were a little bit crinkled, and some were stained with ice cream. He wrinkled his nose. “You aren’t touching my spaceship!” he said.
“Let’s play a video game,” Suzy said, “You got Slaughterkitten II, right?”
“Yeah,” Ricky said. “It’s pretty cool.” He tossed the printouts aside. They played Slaughterkitten II for a while. And that was that.
* * *
Next weekend, Suzy and Ricky went to see the annual comet impact (deliberate — they were terraforming) on Mars. They came back with rock samples and gas samples and Spacer hats.
“And we went into a really high orbit, and watched the ice tail sparkle, and he wanted me to touch his penis!” Suzy giggled.
“I’m sure that was special for you,” Mary Beth said diplomatically.
Mary Beth tried a few more times to get Ricky to let her make some tweaks to his ship. Not because she had any particular interest in bits of his anatomy, but because she thought that the issues his ship had accommodating crew were mainly due to Ricky’s somewhat slapdash understanding of differential calculus, rather than limitations inherent in a Mark III Mercury Nullifier. Ricky would have none of it.
“Fix your fat self,” he said, poking at her belly. “My spaceship is fine.”
* * *
Mary Beth had experimented with dieting. The mathematics were as cruel as they were inevitable; she had just wound up bigger, and more miserable.
“That’s a good lesson to learn quickly,” her mother had said. “Some people never figure that one out.”
Better plan: build her own damn spaceship. Slight problem: money.
* * *
Mary Beth assembled the report, and put the printouts in a clear plastic binder. She settled on the couch, to wait for her parents to come home. They were late. This was unsurprising.
“I’m sorry, darling,” her mother said when they both arrived home, much, much later. “Your father managed to convince Mr. Jensen to give us some paid overtime!” She looked happy, though tired.
Her father just looked tired. “There was a time when all overtime was paid,” he said. “Remember those days?”
“Hush, dear,” her mother said.
“Hey,” said Mary Beth. “I’ve got a proposal for you.”
By this time, her mother was rummaging through the refrigerator for leftovers, and her father had poured himself a scotch, to which he was adding two over-the-counter sleeping pills.
“Later bumpkin,” he said, rubbing her hair. “Your parents are very tired tonight.”
Mary Beth sighed. Thought about being angry. Went to her room and flopped onto her bed with the cat.
The good news was that a remarkable amount of the plan could be accomplished on allowance level funds, without seeking additional venture capital from her parents. The local junkyard had been offloading some very useful parts online lately, for nicely low prices, and she had already planned to take advantage of this. Mary Beth texted them to set up a time to pick up, and broke out the math and the CAD.
* * *
Ellie Trip, proprietor and primary employee of Trip’s Trash, was a tall woman, her comfortably wide body clad in blue overalls, her gray hair tied up in a bun. She smiled when Mary Beth arrived, and Mary Beth liked her.
“Hi kid,” she said, “Welcome to my little domain. Glad to get a note from a ‘Mary’. We get more ‘Marks’ around here.”
Ellie helped Mary pick through parts of discarded hovercraft, old wheeled buses, and the odd orbital shuttle or two. They found the shielding that she needed, an old pilot’s seat, plus a lot of electronics that could be fixed “with a bit of spit and solder,” as Ellie said.
But Ellie shook her head when Mary Beth asked about the small row of Nullifiers in a cage in the office.
“Too expensive to just give them to ya, no matter how much I like you,” she said. “I’m a businesswoman. I’m not running a charity.”
* * *
Several days later, her father and mother firmly turned down the funding request.
“They just cut wages again,” her father said. “I can’t afford to buy you a nullifier.”
“No,” her mother said. “Not even a used Mark I. We have to pay for your school, kiddo. And for us to eat.”
By this time, it was really too late to back out on the project. Plans had been drawn up. Parts were strewn about the garage.
Mary built the frame. Added the shielding. Wired up what she could. Programmed a flight simulator into the nav computer. Spent an afternoon defiantly painting the ship pink and adding sparkles.
The flight sim was nice, but it wasn’t a spaceship. It was time for plan B.
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “I could use a hand around here. I’ll pay you shit and I’ll work you hard. Maybe violate a child labor law or two. But that’s capitalism for ya.”
Mary Beth spent a lot of time just hauling junk. It was not particularly interesting labor, but the physicality felt good, and her available funds started to go up at a much faster rate
than on allowance alone. She got strong. She didn’t get thin — that simply wasn’t her genetics — but she got fit.
Summer ended. Fall came and classes started back up. Mary Beth went to school, went to work, did homework. It took a couple of weeks for her parents to notice her stretched schedule, and then they put the kibosh on work until next summer.
“Sorry kid,” Ellie said, in response to one more plea to bring down the price. “Business is business.”
Mary Beth was really mad for a week or two. Then she got over it, and went back to hanging out at the junk yard when she could. She knew a lot of math, but Ellie taught her some useful things about actually putting physical stuff together. Even slipped her a few extra dollars for some surreptitious soldering.
Ricky and Suzy ditched class and took a dip into the upper atmo of Venus. Suzy giggled and filled Mary Beth in on some details that Mary Beth felt she might have been better off not hearing. She decided that she hated both of them.
“Teenager stuff,” Ellie said when Mary Beth confided her troubles. “I remember that stuff. You’ll grow out of it.”
* * *
The school year passed. Ricky and Suzy got together. Officially. Broke up. Officially.
Ricky crashed the Rebellion. He survived, but got in trouble with his parents. Mary Beth was mad at him, too: he had thoroughly wrecked his Mark III Mercury Nullifier core. She had a cathartic moment, bashing the rest of the ship into parts one weekend.
She visited him in the hospital after. Said some wonderfully cutting things about his tenuous relationship to higher level math, and enjoyed that he was smart enough to be hurt. After that, she decided she was done with Ricky.
Summer came again. Mary Beth threw herself into working at the junkyard. Ellie gave her a raise.
And one day, she had the money. She paid Ellie. Ellie handed the part over the counter, along with a receipt.
“Nice doing business with you,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Mary Beth. She looked at the nullifier. Looked at Ellie. “I guess this is it?”
“I’m not firing you,” Ellie said. “But I have a feeling you’re not going to have much time for this old place now that you have a spaceship.”
* * *
The nullifier was an old Jade Bird model. Not as nice as a Mercury Mark whatever, but serviceable. Mary Beth wired it up. Rolled the ship into the yard.
She texted Suzy, asking if she wanted a ride.
“I get space sick,” said Suzy, via text.
Mary Beth rolled her eyes. She decided that she could be done with Suzy, too.
The old pilot’s seat was nice and squishy. She settled into it, closed the hatch, and fired up the engines. The ship rose a few feet off the ground, then fell back to earth with a thunk. It did the same thing when she tried again.
“Ha ha. Fat girl is too fat!” Ricky said, inside her head.
Mary Beth managed to get herself out of the spaceship, though it was hard to see through the crying.
It took some time and ice cream to exhaust the tears. She went back to the garage. Picked up a large hammer. The printouts were on the workbench. She thought about tearing them up in a fit of rage. Then she noticed it.
“Oh,” she said aloud.
She went back to her computer. Computers were great at helping with the numbers. Saved you a lot of time. Did calculations for you that would take years to do by yourself. But computers could not save you if you told them to calculate the wrong thing.
The adjustments, with revised equations, took a few days to complete, plus one more trip to the junkyard, to get a converter. Engines designed to push against the fabric of space-time itself were finicky things. They didn’t like it when you got something off by an order of magnitude. She was lucky, she supposed, that she hadn’t been off in the other direction and blown up the neighborhood.
* * *
Take two. Mary Beth rolled the spaceship out into the yard. Ellie was standing there, in her overalls. She had deep crow’s feet around her eyes. They crinkled in a kindly way, even when she was being hard. They were especially crinkled today.
Something heavy and silvery hung from Ellie’s arm. She held it out. An offering.
Mary Beth took it. It was a pressure suit. Older design. A patch here and there. It looked to be in generally good shape, though.
“It was mine,” Ellie said. “It’s a little dated, but it will probably fit. And it wouldn’t do to have you stuck in the ship, if you land it someplace interesting.”
“I don’t have any more money.” Mary Beth said.
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “Life isn’t all business.”
Mary Beth pulled on the spacesuit, and donned the helmet. She ran a pressure diagnostic, which came up green. She flipped up the visor, and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Good luck,” Ellie said.
Mary Beth climbed into her space ship. Closed the hatch. Settled into the chair. Fired up the engines. The ship rose smoothly into the sky. The world stretched out around her, then fell away.
Mary Beth thought about where she would go. The ice caverns of Pluto sounded interesting. Sparkly, if you shone a light on them. It was a bit of a trip, but this was a fast ship. She ran some numbers, plotted a course slightly above the plane of the ecliptic. The suit was comfortable. She pulled her hair back into a pony tail, to keep it out of her eyes. She felt a touch space sick, but she could deal.
Earth shrank to a dot behind. The stars beckoned. The little pink spaceship fell toward them. Mary Beth let out a single whoop, and settled in for the trip.
Pete "Patch" Alberti shares a small but decidedly interesting apartment in Southern California with two cats and two humans. Who owns who is a subject of much debate, and always in flux.
When not writing fiction, Pete writes computer code. The two are remarkably similar, though he recommends careful compartmentalizing. (There was an incident with a sword of be-spelling and a server which is best left untold.)
Pete enjoys playing games, baking cookies, critiquing the politics of fantasy novels, and hiding under the bed with his cat when guests arrive.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
La Gorda and the City of Silver
The Tradeoff
Cartography, and the Death of Shoes
Survivor
The Right Stuffed
Tangwystl the Unwanted
Flesh of My Flesh
How Do You Want To Die?
Nemesis
Davey
Sharks & Seals
Marilee and the S.O.B.
Blueprints
Lift
Fat Girl in a Strange Land Page 18
