Author: marylowd

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 3: A New Direction

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“You found one?” Lys asked. “A hyperspatial slipstream?”

Lt. Diaz stared at the computer console in the engine room, unbelieving.  She’d written the program that had detected the hyperspatial slipstream herself.  She hadn’t been especially careful, but it also hadn’t been especially hard.  She had no reason to doubt the results.

Except for one.

Why in the hell was there a hyperspatial slipstream inside the Tetra Galaxy?

The entire concept of hyperspatial slipstreams had been mostly theoretical or extremely small scale and experimental until the Wanderlust had encountered the Waykeeper which seemed to exude the time-space warping field from its shell like some sort of biological process.  As far as Lt. Diaz knew, there wasn’t a single hyperspatial slipstream large enough to show up on the scan she’d just performed anywhere in the entirety of the three galaxies that had been explored by the Tri-Galactic Union. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 3: A New Direction”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 2: A New Idea

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Discovery of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“I wanted to experience a wider universe than I would have been exposed to under the Waykeeper’s protection,” Lys said.

The most useful thing that Lt. Diaz could think of to do with her time was research every aspect of the engines and computers aboard the Wanderlust that she didn’t already thoroughly understand.  That way, when she did finally get home to the Milky Way, she’d be able to take her knowledge and use it to upgrade technology on Lupinia.  Hopefully, there wasn’t going to be a need for an Anti-Ra force protecting Lupinia anymore, now that the planet was safely located in neutral territory.  But it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

As long as Lt. Diaz was being forced to play the part of a Tri-Galactic Union officer, she might as well make the most of it.  She would become an expert on the latest discoveries and advancements in Tri-Galactic Union technology, and then she could carry that knowledge with her when she was allowed to finally be free from ridiculous union strictures again. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 2: A New Idea”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 1: The Endless Liminal Space

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Discovery of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer to read in e-book or paperback form, learn more here.  Or if you want, skip ahead to the next chapter.

“Once Captain Carroway insisted that everyone had to wear regulation union uniforms while on duty, she made it happen, even if it involved repeatedly mending new tears in Lt. Diaz’s uniform with her own paws.”

A small ship armed to the teeth flew across the Tetra Galaxy, always aimed toward the Milky Way, like an arrow pointing home.  The Wanderlust had been designed for a crew of twelve to eighteen, so theoretically, there was plenty of space for the eleven officers living there.  But no one in the Tri-Galactic Union had ever predicted a crew like this one.

Lieutenant T’lia Diaz didn’t think much of the Tri-Galactic Union.  She’d attended their academy, served on a ship — a different one, back before everything had gone wrong — and risen to the rank of lieutenant before.  Then she’d quit, joined the Anti-Ra, and been labelled a terrorist.  All for the crime of defending her homeworld.  If she had her way, Lt. Diaz would have never worn a Tri-Galactic Union uniform again, but very little had gone her way in the last six months. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 1: The Endless Liminal Space”

Piper Invents Laps

After much research, at the age of 6.5, my cat Piper has invented the concept of sitting on laps. It has been an arduous journey and extremely counterintuitive to her beliefs, and yet, at long last, this innovative thinker of a feline has finally arrived at the inescapable conclusion — after years of study — that the best way to get scritches may in fact be by sitting on a human lap. A previously inconceivable thought.

She sat on Daniel’s lap for seven minutes. An astonishing breakthrough in this weird and vaguely immoral new technology.