An excerpt from Prodigy of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or return to the previous chapter.
But Ensign Mike knew for sure, this was exactly where they wanted to be.
While the other animals cleaned up the remnants of the party on Sojourner’s back, Mike and Lys returned to the Wanderlust together. The toadstool helped the caterpillar pack up her few belongings from her space in Barracks Room B, and in turn, Lys helped Mike move the few things of theirs that had been stowed away in Barracks Room A to their new bunk.
“Not just a celebration,” Ensign Melbourne objected, his own feline muzzle breaking into a beaming smile as well. “A childhood!”
When the rabbit had managed to dry his tears, and Mike had put on a freshly synthesized Tri-Galactic Union uniform, the two of them made their way up to the Wanderlust’s bridge where Captain Carroway was holding down the fort while everyone else prepared the funeral on Sojourner’s back.
A tiny glimmer of metallic-blue tang flashed into existence, far away from any of the usual clusters, and a creature of galactic, Lovecraftian proportions was reminded of what it had been like to be small and singular, hiding in a crawlspace, wishing to be noticed more by the minuscule mammals sharing a ship with them.
When Mike had been a single entity, they couldn’t have believed they’d ever feel nostalgic for those moments. Lonely moments full of self-doubt and anguish — feelings that simply didn’t exist now in the profusion of complexity that was being an entire civilization all at once, constantly awash in memories and experiences coming together from every corner of its being. But there had been a bright, sharp spark of purity to existing in those moments. Solely in those moments. Solely as Mike. Continue reading “Prodigy of the Wanderlust – Chapter 22: The Morphican’s Gambit”
Mike could be the cure. Mike could be the salvation of an entire civilization. Mike’s own civilization.
Everything turned upside down when Mike allowed their consciousness to flow through the thinned veil between normal space and subspace. In normal space, Mike was an aberration, struggling to fit into a world that hadn’t been made for them.
In subspace, Mike was a single fruiting body of a massively interconnected mycelial network that stretched across much of the Tetra Galaxy. The Hyphaic wasn’t a plague; it was a civilization, reaching up from subspace and trying to make itself felt in normal space wherever the coral’s metallic-blue pulses called to it. Continue reading “Prodigy of the Wanderlust – Chapter 21: All the Pieces on the Board”
“Finish building your real body,” the closest toadstool answered. “You need to come all the way through the veil between normal space and subspace.”
Mike looked up to see another toadstool looking down at them, one of its many hands rested near their shoulder — partly touching it, and partly overlapping with it. The other toadstool looked a great deal like Mike — the underside of its mushroom cap head was lined with a row of slit eyes alternated with gills, and it stood nearly bipedal. But instead of a pair of arms and legs like a mammalian biped and a bushy mycelial beard, this toadstool simply had a tangled cloud of limbs of various inconsistent widths that served the purpose of both Mike’s beard and arms at once.
And then, Mike felt a gentle touch upon their shoulder.
Ensign Mike spent the rest of the voyage to Chora’ckell being as cooperative as they could figure out how to be. The toadstool gave every impression of truly believing that the Sidiian plan to use them as a disposable tool was actually a good one, and Mike would find it an honorable, fulfilling calling to spend the rest of their life saving lives one at a time, far slower than the Hyphaic stole lives away.
Mike worked with Dr. Eol to learn about the poison that they’d be expected to carefully administer to only the infected parts of victims’ bodies. The toadstool studied carefully, asking all the right questions, making sure to cement the idea that they’d be cooperative. Completely and utterly cooperative. Continue reading “Prodigy of the Wanderlust – Chapter 19: The Toadstool’s Gambit”
The Sidiian doctor watched the toadstool fuse their beard around the rabbit’s head with a mix of intrigue, patience, and skepticism. She didn’t want to interrupt what could be a very delicate procedure, but she also wanted to see results. When the gecko’s patience began to wear thin, she hissed gently with her forked tongue flicking, “What are you finding?”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie argued vehemently with Dr. Eol and then stormed off to argue with the captain of the ship. Well, as much as anyone can storm off in zero gee. The rabbit simply wouldn’t accept that the Sidiians — ostensibly allies — could just abscond with him, refusing to tell him where they were going, and blocking his attempts to contact Captain Carroway.
Considering the fact that his death sentence hadn’t been lifted by any of their activities so far, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie was surprisingly cheerful as he and Mike explored the Sidiian ship’s mess hall. The rabbit chatted merrily with the chefs as they helped him select foods he’d find palatable. Vossie stuck mostly to vegetable dishes. Mike, however, filled their food pouch (because you can’t just use plates in zero gee) full with various toasted and braised insects which all proved delicious. The toadstool hoped that Lys would be gathering a lot of these varieties to keep on Sojourner’s back, so that Korvax could cook them too.
Everyone aboard the ship seemed to be Sidiian — just geckos, geckos, everywhere. Mostly their scales all had mottled coloring somewhat similar to Dr. Eol’s. Though, Mike noticed that occasionally an individual’s coloring seemed to shift. At first, Mike thought it was a trick of the light, but then the mushroom saw one of the Sidiians accidentally rip their food pouch open, leading to crunchy, crispy insects floating about everywhere, needing to be cleaned up. The Sidiian who’d made the mistake turned a definite shade of purple — a sort of royal mauve. So, Mike concluded that the geckos probably only changed color in response to particularly strong emotions. Continue reading “Prodigy of the Wanderlust – Chapter 16: Sleep Walking”
“I think I’m the same species as the Hyphaic,” Mike said.
Ensign Mike knew something about themself that no one else aboard the Wanderlust knew. It wasn’t that the other officers couldn’t have known — the information was right there, stored in the Wanderlust’s computer banks. That’s why Ensign Mike knew. But it was such an arcane fact, totally irrelevant to the mushroom’s day to day life, totally irrelevant to who they were… Mike hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. Mike didn’t even think about it.
