by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Prodigy of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.
While Ensign Melbourne, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie, and Lys began circulating around the gaming ship, observing the different games, Ensign Mike pulled out a uni-meter and tried to run a scan to ascertain whether the Wanderlust would still be able to teleport the group directly back from aboard this alien vessel or whether there would be shielding in the way that might interfere. However, before the toadstool could get a clear reading, they found themself receiving quite a few cold, steely glares from various reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids. Given the lack of eyelids and the whole clusters of eyes that some of the aliens had, the toadstool found they hadn’t the fortitude to stand up to such withering expressions and re-holstered the uni-meter on their belt.
Vossie wouldn’t have brought them here if he didn’t think it was a reasonable degree of risk. Mike simply had to hold onto that idea. They just wished it were easier to do… Maybe Mike needed to really work on being more trusting. Perhaps it would help if there were a counselor Mike could visit with regularly, the way that most of the crew visited with Mike. But no, Mike only had themself to lean on.
A lonely toadstool. Stuck on a spaceship when they really belonged in a forest.
Okay, that was ridiculous. Now Mike was just being self-pitying. So, the toadstool rallied and decided if they couldn’t be trusting, they could at least be helpful.
If Vossie wanted to win himself one of the neural implants these reptiles used, then Mike could help by analyzing the various games and figuring out which ones their group would actually have a chance of playing well, let alone winning.
The gaming ship seemed to be about comparable in size to the Wanderlust and shared a similar layout with several rooms branching off of a central corridor that led from the airlock they’d entered down to the bridge. Mike was surprised to find that visitors weren’t barred from entering the ship’s bridge. However, based on the fine layer of dust that had accumulated from static cling on the computer screens and control panels, Mike didn’t think the bridge was used very often. This ship seemed to be more of a legal loophole to allow gambling on Spindle Reef (without technically allowing gambling on Spindle Reef) than an actual spaceship anymore. It had probably been docked here for a very long time.
Refocusing their attention on the games going on in various rooms, Mike drifted from one room to the next, watching the players gathered around different game spaces, trying to work out the rules.
One of the games seemed to involve betting on grape-sized insects navigating their way through a translucent, spherical maze. At first, Mike thought this looked promising. However, the longer the toadstool watched, the more it seemed like players were expected to have brought their own racing insects, and furthermore, if the insects got stuck in the wrong parts of the maze, then players had to eat them. That might have been okay if the insects were safely edible, but Mike didn’t think this crowd would look kindly on any attempts to scan the insects to ensure edibility. Furthermore, eating the insects seemed to be a little bit like playing a drinking game — causing players to get woozy and wobbly — suggesting that much of the point of the game was simply to be able to withstand the insects’ poisonous nature. Not a good idea, after all.
The next most promising game involved throwing dice into a bowl with magnetic patches on its sides, watching the dice tumble about in the free fall, and attempting to predict where and how they’d land. Ensign Melbourne had taken a keen interest in this game. Both Vossie and Lys were crowded close behind the cat, seeming to trust in his instincts when it came to navigating this shady, seedy underbelly realm of Spindle Reef.
After watching the dice for a while, Mike concluded that the cat’s instincts were probably right in this case. The dice game was something the toadstool could predict with a very high degree of accuracy. Seemingly, based on how the various reptiles’ bets were going, an unusually high degree of accuracy. Mike suspected that their history of being part of a spaceship’s computer system gave them an innate advantage at calculating complex physics problems as they happened.
“I could play this game,” Mike offered, floating up beside the others. “I would be good at it. Very good at it.”
The rabbit and white cat both eyed the toadstool warily, trying to measure out exactly what Mike was saying to them. Eventually, Ensign Melbourne nodded and held out a pawful of his figurine trinkets. “Show us what you’ve got,” he meowed.
Mike took the trinkets and approached the large bowl, ready to make a bet, but the toadstool was abruptly stopped by one of the reptiles.
“Nuh-uh,” the reptile grunted. “No augments at this game.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asked, bewildered.
“Every player gets scanned as they enter,” the reptile rasped, “and you have complex electronic components embedded in your body. So, this game is not for you. If you want to play, go to the Spinner Room. That’s the only game you’re allowed to play here, unless you can take that augmentation off.”
With a frown, Mike realized that the reptile was referring to Vossie’s neural implant which was indeed buried deep in their mycelial body. But it could not be removed. It wasn’t an optional upgrade for Mike. It was an integral part of Mike’s consciousness and personality. There would be no Mike without the upgrade.
The toadstool backed away from the dice-and-bowl game, looking at the crowd of players. All the players were amphibian or reptilian and none of them had the neural implants on their brows that Vossie was after.
Turning toward the others in their group, Mike said, “Based on my observations of this game and my knowledge of each of your abilities, I don’t recommend playing this game after all. I don’t think any of you would have a particular affinity for this kind of prediction. You’d merely be guessing, and that’s a poor way to gamble.”
“That’s the concept of gambling,” Ensign Melbourne objected. “That said, why don’t we check out this Spinner Room. If that’s the only game you’re allowed to play, I’m curious to see what it involves.”
From the name, “Spinner Room,” Mike wondered if there was a room here that used centrifugal force to simulate gravity. Perhaps the game in the Spinner Room required gravity to work properly? Although, Mike didn’t see how a ship this size could manage to have a single room rigged up to spin.
“So, which way is this Spinner Room?” Ensign Melbourne meowed at the reptile who’d blocked Mike’s way. The reptile pointed with a scaly talon toward a room Mike had already looked at, filled with spider aliens, and the toadstool realized that “Spinner” in this context meant something entirely different than they’d been thinking.
Mike had dismissed the game in the Spinner Room earlier because it seemed to depend entirely on the arachnids being able to pull gossamer strands of silk out of spinnerets under their chins. None of the Wanderlust officers could do that… unless Lys had abilities that Mike didn’t know about. However, the way that the reptile had singled Mike out made the toadstool realize: they might not be able to spin silk like an arachnid alien, but they could probably simulate the effect well enough for the purposes of the game by drawing out slim strands of their own mycelial flesh from their beard.
The toadstool, rabbit, cat, and caterpillar watched the spiders play for a while, trying to work out all the rules. The central concept was simple — kind of like a fishing game crossed with a variant of marbles or maybe billiards. Spiders cast their gleaming, sticky threads of silk into the game space, trying to knock about and lasso up various game pieces. The pieces were brightly colored and irregularly shaped — some of them were worth negative points and needed to be avoided; others could only be used as tools to knock the other pieces about; and some needed to be claimed by players to gain points.
Like with the magnetic dice game in the other room, there was a lot of physics involved, and Mike was good at that. However, this game didn’t just involve throwing a handful of dice at a bowl, it involved dexterous skill at weaving and casting lassos, made from material inside one’s own body.
Mike handed the figurines back to Melbourne and began testing their own ability to draw out whisper-thin strands of mycelial thread from their beard. With a little practice, Mike found it wasn’t too hard to do or too physically taxing to shed some of their flesh this way. Mike wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, but they imagined that — as long as they ate a good meal when they got back to the Wanderlust — the activity shouldn’t do any real damage to them. And with a little focus, Mike was even able to secrete a bit of sticky mucous on the threads, making it acceptably comparable to the silk being used by the spiders.
However, casting the threads like fishing line or gossamer lassos took a great deal of skill. These spiders had clearly been practicing their whole lives, probably since they’d hatched. And they were probably all far older than Mike who was technically still only a single year old.
Mike was keenly aware of Vossie, Melbourne, and Lys watching as they practiced casting about their mycelial beard threads. In fact, a number of the spiders who’d been watching the game from the sidelines had started watching Mike as well. The toadstool was building up quite an audience, becoming more of a spectacle to watch than the game itself.
Mike tried to keep their slit eyes focused on what they were doing, but it was increasingly hard to tune out the audience watching them. Mike hadn’t wanted to be a spectacle here. Mike had simply wanted to explore Spindle Reef, see some new things, and relax a little while hanging out with Vossie. The toadstool certainly hadn’t wanted to be swept up into an underground gambling den and become the feature attraction in one of the shady back rooms.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Mike mumbled mushily, self-consciously, hoping only to be heard by Vossie. Maybe being heard by Lys and Melbourne would be okay… but really, the toadstool only wanted to talk to their closest friend right now.
Instead, of course, the spiders who’d crowded around Mike heard the words too, and one of them rumbled with a voice like a thunderstorm caught in a teapot, “You’ve never done that before, have you?”
“You don’t know,” Mike said, brashly, trying to cover their embarrassment. “Maybe I’m trying to hustle you.”
“We’re not trying to hustle you,” Ensign Melbourne meowed in a rush. The white cat put an arm chummily around Mike’s narrow shoulders — the toadstool didn’t like that at all. “And does it look like they’ve ever done this before? You’re dealing with a bona fide new player here.”
The spider laughed like an earthquake rumbling through a desert. “You’re trying to hustle me,” the spider said to Ensign Melbourne. Then focusing their cluster of eyes back on Mike, the spider said, “But you’re not. And your friend is right — that’s intriguing.”
“How intriguing?” Vossie asked, entering the conversation. There was a hard, steely look in the rabbit’s brown eyes that Mike didn’t like at all.
If the toadstool had still been nestled on Vossie’s brow, they’d have been whispering sweet, quiet affirmations about how the rabbit didn’t need to prove himself to anyone. The rabbit was good enough, strong enough, and clever enough that he didn’t need anyone else to believe. He could just be himself, and that was more than good enough.
But Mike couldn’t make Vossie believe those things anymore. So when the spider alien offered extremely generous odds for a game, Mike couldn’t stop Vossie from accepting on their behalf.
Mike could have refused to play.
Mike could have tapped the comm-pin on their breast, called the captain, and explained that their shore leave had gone off the rails, and please, please, please order us to come home to the Wanderlust right now.
But Captain Carroway already disliked Mike. Tattling on her favorite officer’s delinquency — a delinquency that was half Mike’s fault anyway for just existing — would just make her and Vossie and probably all the rest of the crew like Mike even less.
So, Mike agreed to play.
Continue on to Chapter 7…