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I do think that we need more stories in this vein, not so that we can pretend that the world’s a better place than it really is, but because we need to remind ourselves that the human spirit in an indomitable thing. We are capable of greatness—great compassion, great innovation, great courage. We need some of that inspiration if we are to take on the challenges of the day and overcome them. The better world only begins when we come together and build it ourselves, brick by brick.

I hope you this pulpy little sci-fi romp. The second and final part will be published in due course. If you’d like to purchase the entire anthology, it can be found here.

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The alarms went off just as the druidess was preparing to dive into the lake. Red lights flashed in the sky and sirens belted out a shrill warning from somewhere beyond the clouds. The druidess grimaced, contemplating whether to ignore it—at least long enough to jump in and feel the icy bite against her skin—but retreated from the precipice. Roberta would not be pleased if she was late to take up her post. The druidess cast a forlorn glance around the rocks, the forest, the crystalline water, then reached a hand up to her eyes and pried away an invisible blindfold.

The bare metallic walls of the ship’s interior flashed into view. Kelly had to blink a few times to adjust to the glare of the fluorescent lights. Her ears thrummed with the guttural vibrations of the engine, buried somewhere below her feet under layers of plasteel armastructure and hyperfiber cables. She peeled the visigoggles from her face and straightened her back. Shame none of that in-world exercise transferred over to her real joints and muscles. Her limbs had gone stiff after sitting inert for so long, so she took a moment to shake herself loose. Then she set the visigoggles on the mantle beside the hoverchair, triggering the immersion chamber’s sliding door.

Kelly tugged impatiently at her hair as she tied it back into a slipshod ponytail. This time, she’d come closer to bona fide swimming than ever before. It thrilled her as much as terrified her. She’d given up trying to wade in from the shore because it was too unnerving her to see the water level slowly increase, swallowing her ankles, then her knees, then her waist. Throwing herself in was her new strategy, one she was almost sure was going to work. It wasn’t like she would drown if it went badly—the simulation would shut down before any mortal harm befell her. Of course, just when she’d worked up the nerve to jump, Roberta had to interrupt her. She would have to conquer her fear all over again when her next break came.

Kelly ducked her head as she made her way down the catwalk toward the mess hall, dodging steam expulsions and shorting electric circuits. There were burn marks all along the corridor from the fire they’d had a month ago. They’d nearly lost the whole C-Deck that day. What would that have left them with? The maintenance wing and the freezer. She clucked her tongue as she hefted herself up the narrow ladder and up to the main deck. Would’ve hardly been worth salvaging if that’s all that was left.

Roberta was waiting by the monitoring station they’d rigged up across from the food processor. They hadn’t had much choice about where to set up their base of operations—the galley was the largest area that hadn’t been contaminated besides the maintenance wing, but it was far more comfortable. Couches and a few tables lined one side of the room, the other the cooking area. Not that either of them had used the stove or anything else besides the processor. Danny had been the chef, and his brains were splattered across the observation deck window. She sighed as she sat down in one of the swivel chairs across from Roberta. Danny had been cute. Maybe there could have been something there. Maybe he would have made her that spicy jambalaya he was perfecting, if she’s asked. He was always going on about the virtues of fresh ingredients over synthetic. Would soil-grown chili peppers still have the same kick? She’d never find out—the hydroponics lab had been the first to be overrun.

“What’s the latest? Any movement?” she asked the back of Roberta’s head.

“Nothing to worry about. Did you have a nice swim?”

“Didn’t get a chance, actually.”

“Hm. Waste of time anyway.”

“Is it? Excuse me for trying to learn something new. I’m challenging myself, Roberta. Trying to keep my mind occupied. So what if I can’t use it outside the simulation?”

“I mean that—simulations, that’s the waste of time. You want to learn to swim, you need lessons. Practical ones.”

“Yeah, well, are you gonna teach me?”

“I’m a little busy keeping this wreck afloat, as it happens.”

Kelly gave a stiff nod. “Right. So, if there’s nothing to worry about, why’d you flip the emergency switch instead of just knocking on the door?”

“You know what time it is, don’t you?”

“Uh—” She felt an icy stab of guilt as she glimpsed Walton’s novelty cat-clock hanging above the water recycler. “Oh, damn. Sorry. Guess I was really in the zone.”

Kelly chewed aimlessly on the end of her ponytail until Roberta turned herself around from the monitors. The woman’s face was creased in a deep-set frown, as always. Her head appeared freshly shaved. Her arm muscles rippled as she leaned forward, folding her hands together and resting her elbows on her knees.

“Kelly,” she said. “We need to talk.”

“You sure now’s a good time?” Kelly motioned to the grainy image on the rightmost screen. “That Sludge pile looks like it’s on the move.”

Roberta didn’t flinch. “It’s not a problem. You being late is.”

Kelly nodded, but the shifting image on the display distracted her. The Sludge pile—a particularly large one—was oozing along the transport bay ceiling, pushing wiry tendrils ahead of itself as it probed its way around loose tubing and pipework. Kelly could trace its path easily enough. It was encroaching on a ventilation duct. The fan blades were still spinning, but the Sludge wouldn’t mind having a few of its tendrils sliced off; it would gum up the machinery and then slide through the gaps like gelatin pressing itself through a meat grinder. The same thing had happened all over the ship.

“Do you have an explanation?” Roberta said.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. That simulation Jefferson programmed—you know, ‘Ancient Island’ or whatever he called it. It’s amazing. Like he made it from memory, or something. There’s this lake—the water’s so clear, it reflects the sky like a mirror. It feels like you’re swimming in the sky. And—it’s the weirdest thing—it’s so quiet there. It’s only ever you. Alone. Total isolation. It sounds awful, I know, but when you’re there, walking in the woods, climbing the rocks, it’s so peaceful. Makes you lose track of time. Makes you feel like time doesn’t exist, even.”

Through all of this, Roberta kept staring at her, stonelike, while the Sludge inched closer to the duct. Kelly had been tracking it as she talked, waiting for Roberta to do something, and now she pointed a finger at the screen.

“Roberta, seriously, it’s almost at the vent.”

“I said it’s not a problem.”

Before Kelly could respond, the Sludge pile reached the duct. It stretched out several probing fronds toward the fan blades. Kelly was about to give a cry of alarm when a fiery blast consumed the screen, then disappeared a second later. She caught a glimpse of the Sludge in the corner of the screen, creeping its way back across the pipes as fast as its mess of appendages would allow.

“The hell was that?” Kelly said, leaning across the table. The incinerated Sludge lost its grip, dropped from the ceiling and banged off the hull of one of the abandoned all-terrain vehicles left in the bay.

“A booby-trap I rigged up.”

“Oh. Is that what you were doing on your shift?”

“Didn’t take that long. Only needed to open up some gas valves, build a little device capable of producing a spark. I placed them around some of the critical junctions.” She pointed behind her own head, where a boxy device was affixed over the kitchen doorway. Kelly could see a few others on the monitors screens—the engineering level, the hydraulics system chamber, the maintenance deck. “Once the Sludge trips the sensor, boom.”

“Knock knock, who’s there. Fireball,” Kelly said. “Nice. Where’d the explosives come from?”

“No explosives. Just rerouted a couple of the fuel channels.”

“Wait, fuel channels? You’re siphong fuel for this?”

Roberta shrugged. “So what? We’re not using the superdrive for much else.”

“What about if we need to set a new course?”

“This is dead space. New course to where? Deader space?”

“We don’t know what’s out there, that’s the point. Rogue planets. Flyby comets. Search parties!”

“How about another asteroid carrying a hostile alien lifeform?”

Kelly ignored her cynicism. “If the scanners pick up an outpost or a hospitable world within jump distance, it’s not like we can just drift there. Might be lightyears away. Don’t you think we’re better off conserving fuel for when we need it?” She gestured to the screen. “I mean, booby-traps are cool and all, but we’ve been getting by just fine with zapping the Sludge when it gets too close.”

Instead of answering, Roberta bowed her head and rubbed her eye sockets with her thumbs.

“See, Kelly, this is why we need to talk,” she said without looking up. “There isn’t going to be any hospitable planet. No friendly little outpost to take us in.”

“You can’t know that for sure. We’ve been broadcasting our distress beacon for months now. You know how far radio waves travel in that amount of time?” Roberta lifted a weary eye. “Okay, I don’t either, but it’s pretty damn far. Wayne told me that much.”

“Wayne’s dead, Kelly.”

“I mean, he could just be in some kind of coma—”

“He’s shambling around the engineering level with Sludge coming out his eyes. He’s dead, alright? For all intents and purposes. And we’re gonna be next. That is, unless we…”

Abruptly, Roberta stood and paced across the galley. Kelly tracked her movement, a tiny tremor of dread shooting down her spine.

“Unless we what?”

Roberta turned to face her. Her expression seemed carved from granite.

“Freeze ourselves.”

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Anyway, I thought this story deserved something better than eternal consignment to the digital purgatory of my old laptop’s hard drive. Please leave a like or comment if you enjoyed it. And if you’re a children’s book illustrator, or you know of one, hey—don’t be a stranger.

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Artwork entitled If I Had a Tail… by Chris Macias, published in 2016 on Behance.

I was five when I first noticed that I had a tail. Don’t know how I never saw it before, but that’s life for you. Mum says it’s always full of surprises.

I was a little surprised to begin with, of course. I mean, not everybody has a tail. Nobody that I knew, anyway. But then I got to thinking. Having a tail could be a pretty great thing. I mean, kangaroos have tails. It helps them to hop really well, or something like that. Monkeys have tails, and they use them to hang from trees. Heck, even fish have tails, and they can swim like nobody’s business. My tail isn’t exactly like those tails, but it is furry, it is strong, and it is long. I could use it for things, too.

So I figured that having a tail was all around pretty good. I used it to hop around my house. I used it to climb the tree in my backyard. I even used it to swim around in the bathtub, although I didn’t get very far. Still, it was better than swimming in a bathtub with no tail. I mean, most humans don’t have tails, right? They just have butts. And butts aren’t good for much except sitting. If you can have a butt and a tail, well, then you can hop, climb, and swim as well as sit around. That’s how I figure it, anyway.

I’m not saying having a tail is for everybody. It gets caught in things more often than I like. Those automatic sliding doors at the grocery store are the worst. I have to just stand there and wait until someone else comes for the door to open again. Sometimes it drags in the grass or the mud, and Mum makes me wash and comb it. I don’t even like combing my own hair—imagine how bad it is having to comb an entire tail!

It also isn’t so good for when I go to church. Being in the pew is hard because there’s nowhere for my tail to go, so the three people beside me have to put it on their shoulders. Most people are really nice about it, but still. Having a tail on your shoulder for a whole church service can be distracting. Plus, Mr. McLarry always has to sit on the right side of the church now, when he used to always sit on the left, close to where we sit. He said he was allergic to the fur on my tail, I think. We offered to move for him, but he said not to worry about it. But I don’t think he really likes sitting on the right side so much. The Pattersons sit on the right, and everybody knows their son smells like cheese. Which is fine if you like how cheese smells, but Mr. McLarry doesn’t. He says he’s allergic to that, too. But he must be less allergic to cheese than to the fur of my tail, because he still sits on the right every Sunday.

What’s really strange is that my teacher says all humans used to have tails. Not just in olden times, when we were monkeys. Baby humans have them, too, at least for a while. She showed me a picture of a tiny little baby inside its mum’s tummy and pointed to a tiny little bump. ‘That’s a tail’ she said, smiling at me. But I wasn’t so sure. It didn’t really look like a tail to me, and the baby didn’t really look like a human to me, either. Sometimes grown-ups just say things to make you feel better.

But, the way I figure it, having a tail when you’re a kid is definitely something special—that’s for sure. Whenever I get new pants, the first thing Mum does is cut a hole in the seat for me to poke my tail through. That’s pretty special. I also get a bedroom all to myself. That’s pretty special, too. I used to share a room with my brother, but I had to move because my tail kept waking him up while we slept. It wasn’t a problem when I was small, but when I grew big, my tail was so long that it would flick all the way across his bed and hit him in the face! Mum said that enough was enough—it was time for my tail and I to get our own space.

Sometimes I think that my tail has a mind of its own. It chased me around the schoolyard once. Everyone laughed because they thought that I should have been chasing my tail, not the other way around, but I didn’t think it was very funny. Another time, it kept knocking the books off the shelves at the library. Every time I turned around it would hit the books and they would all fall down. It happened so much that I thought my tail was doing it on purpose. It got so bad that the librarian had to give me a big roll of tape so that I could stick my tail to my back!

But even when it’s causing trouble, I know that my tail is my friend. It keeps me warm while I sleep. It helps me through my day with all kinds of things—painting, writing, lifting, reaching, dusting, sweeping, catching, throwing, and even tickling. Best of all, whenever I need a hug, there’s always something soft and cuddly close by.

If I’m honest, it can be a bit lonely having a tail. I mean, not many other humans have tails. Not anymore, anyway, if my teacher is right about babies. So, in a way, nobody really understands what it’s like to be me. Nobody understands what it’s like to be a kid with a tail. People are nice, people are kind, and people say, “Oh, wow! Look at that tail!” but they never seem to want to have tails of their own.

Once, I made these tails out of long ropes. I brought them to school to show everyone. I made enough for everybody in my class to take one home and wear it. I showed them how to put it on, how to play with it, how to make it dance, and how to keep it from getting caught in automatic sliding doors. Everybody thought that it was really fun. But, the next day, no one showed up to school with their tail still on. They had all left them at home because, as much as they liked having tails, they liked having just plain old butts even more. It made me a little bit sad when that happened. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but still. It felt like nobody could ever quite understand what’s special about having a tail. Maybe it wasn’t so special after all.

That’s why I’m so happy that I met Kim. Kim is a new student at our school, and I think she’s great. She doesn’t have a tail, but she does have a really, really, really long tongue. When she sticks it out, she can shoot it all the way across the classroom and stick it to the other wall! I’ve never met anybody who could do that before. The kids in the other class hadn’t either. When they heard about it, they said, ‘You’re lying!’ They said their teacher said humans don’t have long sticky tongues. They said it would be disgusting if they did. Kim didn’t say anything. She just stuck her tongue out at them. Boy, did they get a surprise.

Not too many kids talked to Kim after that. But I did. The first day she was there, we played together for our first recess, ate lunch together at lunch, and played together again at second recess. I think that we get along great. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have a tail, and I don’t know what it’s like to have a long tongue, so we decided to teach each other. The second day she was there, I brought another one of the rope tails I made to school, and she brought a big party noisemaker—the longest one I’d ever seen! We traded and tried them out. I put the noisemaker to my mouth and blew it so it looked like I had a big long tongue, and she put the rope in her belt loops so it looked like she had a big long tail. We played like that all day.

Then it was time to go home. I brought the noisemaker back with me to my house, and she brought the rope back with her to her house. I can’t wait to see if she wears her tail tomorrow.

Mum says it’s going to be a surprise.

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