Once Upon a Star

by Anthea Sharp

  “Proto, my father is docking in three hours. Did you make up the guest bed?”

  “I was just about to,” Proto called, waving for Echo to follow him into a room just off the small square living room.

  He shut the door behind them then pulled open the shuttered doors of a narrow closet nestled between the foot of space between the bed and the wall. There was hardly any room to move about, but still a small luxury to have a spare room at all. With a grunt of annoyance, Proto pulled down a folded blanket and a set of bedsheets he tossed onto the bed.

  “Hey, what’s this?” he said, his voice perking up. He reached up to the top shelf and grabbed a deck of weathered cards tied with string. “Now we’re talking. Let’s play Uranus Eights.”

  They shoved the blankets and sheets aside to make room on the mattress since there was nowhere else to play. Barely a quarter into their game, Matron Bitly wrenched open the door. Her eyes grew wild in her face as her body filled the space between the doorframe.

  “Proto! What in the worlds are you doing?”

  Proto looked up sheepishly from his hand of cards.

  “I found these cards on the shelf and wanted to make sure the deck was complete before Captain Crowby arrives. Imagine how disappointed he’d be if there were any missing cards.”

  Matron Bitly slapped her perspiring forehead and groaned.

  “Never mind the bed, I need you in the kitchen.”

  Echo handed Proto her cards. He tapped them into a neat pile and retied them with string, leaving the deck on the mattress.

  As Proto emerged from the room, Matron Bitly said, “Chop the onion.” She nodded at a large yellow onion on the counter beside a wood cutting board.

  “Chopping onions makes me cry.”

  “It does not!” Matron Bitly snapped.

  Proto pouted and folded his arms.

  “Proto, please, I need you to give me a hand.”

  The smile that appeared on Proto’s face looked like a horseshoe. He unfolded his arms, grabbed his left wrist with his right hand and yanked. Metal wires dangled and sparked from his stump as he gave Matron Bitly his hand.

  Before Proto and Echo could share a hearty laugh, Matron Bitly’s face turned as red as Mars. She looked from the twitching fingers of Proto’s hand in her palm to Proto’s wide smile.

  “That’s it!” Matron Bitly screeched. “I’ve had enough.” She pulled a comm out of her apron pocket and spoke a number into it.

  “Citizen 4829?” a mechanical voice asked.

  “Yes,” Matron Bitly seethed.

  “How may we be of service?”

  “Send jetters. Retrieval, code 119.”

  The smile thinned over Proto’s lips. Echo’s gears ground as she stood beside him.

  Matron Bitly stuffed the comm back into her apron and threw Proto’s hand down on the floor in front of the cleaning bot which banged against it over and over trying to fit the fingers into its tubes.

  “Mother, what have you done?” Proto asked.

  Matron Bitly jammed her hands on her hips. The pan smoked behind her, sending out the smell of burnt garlic.

  “I am not your mother, and you are going back to the bargain basement where I found you—you and your friend.” Matron Bitly glared at Echo.

  “I am not yours to give away,” Echo informed the woman.

  “You spend enough time here egging my AI on. You might as well be. Your owner will be better off without you.”

  Echo mirrored the woman’s pursed lips and stern glare. Below them, Proto crouched over the cleaning bot to retrieve his hand.

  “Hurry up, Proto,” Echo said. “We’ll go to Boomer. He will help you.”

  Once Proto had his hand jammed loosely in place, he followed her out the front door where two jetters were already waiting with laser guns. They aimed and fired. Zap. Fitz. Zap. Fitz.

  As her vision flickered and darkened, she saw Proto’s hand shoot off like a rocket. He fell to the ground where the jetters scooped him up, not bothering to search for his hand.

  This time, they didn’t take her home to barter. They didn’t take them to the cubes either. These crooked drillheads sold them to an underground cyborgs dealer.

  Ten feet beneath the surface of Enyoid, long tubes of fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped desert flies, refusing to die.

  The small group of five cyborgs had been herded into a dingy common room with squeaky floors awaiting weekend buyers.

  Voices rebounded from the hallway as Rambolt, the dealer, led three men down the hall.

  Proto nudged Echo.

  “Second man on the right, shopping for a sex bot. What are the chances I’m correct? Seventy-eight percent?”

  Her gaze flickered over the approaching humans, locking onto the man in question. He was neither clean shaven nor scruffy. The brown hair on the top of his head had been neatly combed. A beige face mask, rather than a scarf, circled his neck. She estimated his age to be approximately forty-three.

  “If that’s what he’s after, he’s come to the wrong bargain basement,” Proto added with a chuckle.

  Echo didn’t so much as crack a smile. She didn’t belong in a bargain basement. She had a home with Boomer. Why hadn’t she listened to him and stayed out of trouble?

  “As you can see, we’ve assembled a fine collection of cyborgs at incredible prices you won’t find anywhere else,” Rambolt announced. “Go ahead and take a closer look.”

  “Fine collection? There are only five borgs down here, and one’s missing a hand,” one of the men muttered.

  The one with the face mask ignored him. He clipped straight up to Echo and said, “How much for this one?”

  Rambolt scurried over with brightening eyes. “Excellent choice, Jayed. She is brand new.”

  “She looks like she was assembled in a scrapyard,” the man said, his thin lip snarling when he stuck his face inches from hers.

  “Those are the sturdiest sort,” Rambolt answered, circling his wrist. “The nozzles who picked her up said her system remained online even after they zapped her, unlike this one.” Rambolt nodded his head at Proto.

  “Hmm,” was all Jayed said, sounding unimpressed.

  “Because this is your fourth purchase from me, I’ll let her go for ten thousand.”

  Jayed laughed without humor. “Five,” he countered.

  “I cannot let her go for less than nine.”

  “Six.”

  Rambolt sighed and scratched the back of his neck.

  “Tell you what, I’ll sell her to you for eight, but only because you’re one of my best customers.”

  “Then sell her to me for seven.”

  “This isn’t a hoverboard we’re haggling over.”

  “And you didn’t buy her to begin with.”

  “I most certainly did. You think the nozzles gave her to me out of the goodness of their dried-up hearts? No, sir. It’s a wonder I can keep the lights on down here at all.” When Jayed pursed his lips, unmoved, Rambolt sighed again. “Very well. Seventy-five-hundred and that’s my final offer.”

  Jayed nodded.

  “She better last longer than the previous borgs,” he said coldly as he pulled out his Halo device and held it against Rambolt’s for the money exchange. Transaction complete, he snapped his fingers at Echo. “Come with me, borg. It’s time for you to begin paying off your debt.”

  If Echo had a heart, it would have sunk deep into the cave of her stomach like a desert mole going underground. Her circuits hissed in warning, sending currents along her wires that buzzed beneath her synthetic arms.

  As Jayed led her away, Proto lifted his stump and waved his arm, a foolish smile on his lips.

  “See you around, Echo. Echo. Echo. Echo.”

  What a dupe she’d been to prefer a fool’s company over her own dear, sweet Boomer with his dimples and kind heart. How worried he would be when he returned home to find her missing. She had to make it back to him. She had to get away from the man who had bought her. But as though sensi
ng her dissent, he pulled a metal collar from inside his coat when they reached the top of the stairs and snapped it around her neck.

  “Try to run and you’ll be shocked with a voltage so strong, you won’t reboot for days,” his voice was colder than the distant stars hidden beneath the planet’s near constant clouds.

  Then he yanked on his face mask, leaving only his stormy gray eyes before he pushed her outside into the raging wind and the awaiting hovercar.

  [ 5 ]

  Jayed lived in a large clay brick home in sector forty-two west. His home had glass windows, but they’d been boarded up. He also had electricity, lots of it illuminating the cubes that lined the back half of his house where he contained his vast array of exotic creatures he poached from surrounding planets and resold to specialty pet shops on Enyoid.

  Thus far, he’d been unsuccessful in breeding the critters, which made him excessively angry.

  “All the jet fuel I could save if these dumb creatures would only do the one thing that should come naturally,” he ranted every time he prepared to take his cruiser into space.

  He spent half his time scouring the universe for alien creatures, and every time he went into space, Echo hoped with every wire of her being that a meteor would crush him in his cruiser. More than that, she wished for Boomer to find her—to kick down the door and take her home, her happy home with sweet, handsome Boomer.

  That was one dream she gave up after four months passed. Boomer would never find her. He wouldn’t know where to look. She wasn’t allowed or able to leave the house. She had space to move about, but she was a prisoner same as the creatures.

  The only hope she had to hold on to was that Jayed would meet disaster in space. But he returned again and again. He kept food for the creatures stored inside a dim walk-in pantry. In there he also left a bin filled with cyborg parts to remind Echo that she would be joining them should she disobey. She was already stuck in the house, she wasn’t about to let the beautiful creatures go hungry or thirsty while Jayed was away.

  Five months into captivity, he headed out as he had a dozen times before, with threats as farewells. A couple hours after his departure, the boards began to creak over the windows as a violent storm blew in.

  Echo continued with her chores. Feeding the creatures took much time, for which she felt grateful. It was her time to visit her friends. She’d named every single one of the wonderous beings, starting with Threlzek with his four legs and four eyes. He was gray and hairless with wide flappy ears that lifted whenever he saw her.

  In a cube beside Threlzek, resided three fuzzy white rodent-sized critters who liked to sit up on their hind legs and swish their long thin tails that fluffed out at the ends. Echo had named them Bondrex, Condrex, and Dondrex.

  Below the Drexes, as she collectively called them, were two gorgeous half-foot yellow-and-orange spotted creatures with long necks and small horns between their ears: Zandis and Votads.

  A long cube at eye level housed the most amount of any one creature, drifting back and forth behind the clear walls. They reminded Echo of bright, floating iridescent scarves. No two were the same. Their eyeless heads lit up white and their tails glowed and swooshed behind them as they drifted around the cube, never stopping.

  There were long-winged, beaked creatures and small reptilian-like ones. Fuzzy four-legged cuties and leathery organisms with big black eyes.

  In the corner, stood the biggest cube of all, one large enough to walk into if Echo were allowed. It contained the most exotic of Jayed’s collection: the blue alien. Echo took her for a she. Although she had no eyelashes or brows above her large, slanted shiny black eyes, her facial features struck Echo as feminine. She was turquoise and stood just under four feet tall with skinny arms, legs, and torso supporting an enlarged head.

  The blue alien studied her through the cubic silicon nitride barrier as though Echo were the one enclosed in a cage.

  We both are, the blue alien had observed telepathically. She was the only creature who could communicate with Echo. You are trapped in this house but also trapped in that shell.

  “Yes!” It had been a relief to have someone understand. “I want to touch and taste and feel things. I want to be a real girl—a woman.”

  Echo did not name the blue alien because she asked her not to. When she asked if she had a name, the blue alien had told her it was a sound no human or cyborg could reproduce, and they’d left it at that.

  The blue alien did share how she’d ended up trapped in Jayed’s house.

  She’d been asleep in her cryogenic sleeping chamber on her journey to Enyoid to meet with engineers at Gere Corps and discuss advancements in AI technology. Along the way, Jayed had intercepted her pod ship, docked, boarded, and carted her asleep in her chamber to his cruiser, then brought her home and awoken her.

  He cannot sell me on Enyoid. He is hoping to come across someone from another planet who would purchase me and find a way to use my knowledge, but there is no such being in all the galaxies who can control me.

  Echo supposed that meant they would be keeping each other company for decades to come. But the blue alien never appeared anxious.

  The storm outside crashed against the walls of the house like a mighty tide at sea, causing the creatures to shriek, warble, and yowl. Some ran in circles around their cube, others rolled into balls.

  “It’s okay, friends,” Echo tried to soothe. “Just a storm passing through.”

  A solar storm, the blue alien communicated in her wise, calm internal voice. Tunneling down through the atmosphere. It’s about to get worse.

  As though she’d commanded it, the wind ripped the boards off the windows and shook the house in its foundation. The front door flew open with a bang. The lights flickered once before going out and plunging them into darkness. Echo felt the hum of her collar go dormant.

  This was her chance to escape! Activating her infrared sight, she looked toward the open doorframe, the old urge racing up her legs to run. Enyoid was accustomed to storms, and the power grids never remained shut down for long. If she didn’t leave soon, she might never get another opportunity. But she couldn’t leave her friends.

  Running to the cubes, Echo opened the doors one after another, urging the creatures out. Some flew out like lightning bolts, while others had to be scooped up and set outside in the wailing windstorm. Threlzek croaked at her, ears lifting one last time in farewell before he scampered across the floor and out the door.

  The lights flickered again but remained off.

  Echo yanked open the door to the long cube with the iridescent floaters. They drifted out, making their way to the open door, lighting up the path to freedom as they went.

  When Echo had freed the last of the creatures, she raced to the blue alien’s cube and threw open the door just as power returned to the house. Lights glared overhead, and electricity sizzled around Echo’s neck.

  The door banged angrily against the wall. There was no stepping outside the house now. The cubes were all open and empty. Jayed would end her for this. But Echo felt a sense of peace.

  “Go,” she told the blue alien who blinked up at her.

  And what about you?

  Echo placed a hand on her neck.

  “The collar will cause me to short-circuit if I leave the house.”

  The blue alien reached out one long finger and touched Echo’s forehead. Energy flared through her. Her stomach fluttered and heart pounded. She had a pulse!

  Pulling her finger back, the alien communicated one last time.

  The collar has no effect on humans.

  With that, the blue alien walked outside into a beam of white light then was gone.

  Echo ran into the storm and threw her arms into the air, yelling with joy. Sand flew into her lungs and she gagged. The fine grains stung her eyes. She went back inside and hurried to find an extra pair of goggles and a scarf before stepping back into the storm. After she did, a laser beam blasted down over Jayed’s house and blew it up.


  Pulling the scarf over her mouth and nose, Echo made her way to Boomer in sector sixty-seven south.

  [ 6 ]

  It took fighting the wind every step of the way to make it to Rusty Lane. By the time she reached the southern sector, the winds had died down and the light was fading across the dusty skies.

  Echo had never been so happy to see the rickety door to Boomer’s shack. She knocked on the door, holding her breath as she waited. Then there was Boomer, shoulders stooped and dark circles beneath his eyes as he opened the door.

  “Boomer!” Echo cried.

  His eyes widened.

  “Echo?”

  “Yes, Boomer. It is me.”

  “But you are—”

  “Human!” Echo finished.

  Boomer beckoned her inside. The shack was as she’d remembered it, a cozy space basking in the glow of Boomer’s single lantern.

  Echo swept inside, heart leaping with joy to be home. But after Boomer closed the door, she noticed that he limped toward her.

  “Boomer, what has happened to you?” she cried.

  “Nothing. Just a small accident at work.” He forced a smile. “But what of you? Where have you been? How did you become human?”

  “Oh, Boomer, it was horrible. Proto’s owner turned us in to jetters, who sold us to an underground cyborg dealer, who then sold me to the worst man on the planet. But I escaped, Boomer, and before I did, I was able to free all the creatures he’d poached from other planets, including a blue alien who turned me into a real live woman.”

  Boomer’s mouth gaped open right before a grin lit up his face and his dimples appeared. He threw his arms around Echo and lifted her before setting her down with a wince.

  “Sit, Boomer,” Echo insisted.

  Not one to let up, Echo made Boomer recount what had occurred during her absence.

  After her disappearance, Boomer had spent every evening searching for her after work. He’d barely slept, which had made him clumsy at work until one day he dropped a hydraulic breaker hammer that landed on his right foot and shattered all of his metatarsal bones and phalangeal joints.