Category: Story

Bravery Lessons

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Ursine Exchange Officer, August 2025

“Only Ensign Mewly continued fighting his honey golem without any apparent progress.”

Most weeks, Grawf taught her Ursine martial arts class in one of the starship Initiative’s exercise rooms which had tumbling mats for a floor and a full-wall mirror where her students could watch their forms.  But this week’s class was special.  This week, the bear was holding her class in the lumo-bay where a grid of blue, glowing hexagons covered the walls, floor, and ceiling.  Her students — who were mostly uplifted cats and dogs from Earth — filed in and took their places standing around the much larger bear expectantly. Continue reading “Bravery Lessons”

The Trouble with a Glorious Legacy – Part 1

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Ursine Exchange Officer, August 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“It was a point of pride among Ursines that they’d evolved sentience entirely on their own while the far more technologically advanced Earth mammals had needed to be uplifted by some furless primates in their distant past.”

Grawf sharpened her ceremonial knife until it gleamed like a crescent moon.  Then holding the curved blade lightly in her heavy ursine paws, the bear-like alien slowly, carefully sliced off a wafer-thin edge of honeycomb from the bustling, buzzing hive of bee-like insects in the corner of her quarters.  She placed the deliciously thin, sticky wafer atop a steaming slice of crusty bread, fresh from the real, clay oven in the other corner of her quarters.  She’d had to get special permissions to keep a clay oven onboard the starship Initiative, but it was essential to these weekly religious rites. Continue reading “The Trouble with a Glorious Legacy – Part 1”

The Trouble with a Glorious Legacy – Part 2

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Ursine Exchange Officer, August 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“Grawf was surprised, in the end, that any of her zumble-bees took pity on the imposter bear and chose to join his new hive.”

Bear brains don’t zip and race from one idea to the next, constantly hurrying and bouncing around like shiny metal spheres in a pinball machine like cat brains do.  And they’re not relentlessly, doggedly focused like canine minds, unwilling to let go of an idea like it’s a particularly enticing stick that needs to be chewed on once they get ahold of it.  So, Grawf walked with Braklaw to her quarters in silence, simply focusing on the task ahead of her:  dividing her zumble-bee hive and grafting a branch of her zinzinar shrub without damaging either precious being. Continue reading “The Trouble with a Glorious Legacy – Part 2”

The Trouble with a Glorious Legacy – Part 3

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Ursine Exchange Officer, August 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“At first, the vine cooperated… but when it realized that Fact was trying to break part of it off, the bracken fought back…”

Grawf was largely able to return to her usual duties while Braklaw was confined to his quarters by the pain and fatigue of his gene therapy treatments.  Though, she did check in on him twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening — to see if he needed anything.  She felt a strange sense of loss with her role as a teacher of Ursine studies suddenly suspended.  So, it was with a certain twisted delight that she heard from Lt. LeGuin that the ship’s engines were struggling against unexplained interference with their power and they’d have to decrease their speed, drawing out the length of the voyage to Ursa Minuet by an additional week or two. Continue reading “The Trouble with a Glorious Legacy – Part 3”

In Practice

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

“Once again, Melody stood very still, not wanting to be distracted by her own physicality as she sifted through the information stored in her brain, slicing through it at the right angle to think specifically about the ideas her parent had just highlighted for her.”

The android arctic fox, Fact, drew back the privacy screen zhe’d placed around zir portion of the engineering laboratory where zhe had been diligently working away for months on a secret project.  Inside the cubicle-sized space, a second, slightly smaller android stood, looking markedly similar to Fact with its snowy white silicon fur, dressed in a simple yet tastefully neutral outfit.  However, this android had longer ears, a more rounded muzzle, and larger back legs with longer feet than Fact.  Instead of a fox, this smaller android was a rabbit.  An arctic hare to match the arctic fox.

Fact looked immensely proud of the long-eared android which stood with its head tilted at a slightly awkward angle.  It hadn’t been activated yet. Continue reading “In Practice”

Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 3

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“The tools I would need to move the other end of the wormhole back to our own time would be available on the starship Initiative,” Fact said, “and the knowledge I need would require — at least — several decades of processing power for me to calculate.”

For all that the wormhole had looked impressive, Fact’s experience of stepping through it felt like nothing more than stepping through an open doorway.  One moment, zhe was in a dimly lit cave with stale, musty air; the next moment, golden sunlight constricted zir pupils and fresh, green-smelling air tousled zir silicon fur with playful zephyrs.

Fact looked around in surprise, having expected to find zirself in another cave, albeit in an entirely different set of time-space coordinates within the universe.  Instead, the fox seemed to have found zirself in a field of wildflowers, beside a copse of deciduous trees.  Birds sang among the trees, and happy children’s voices shouted in the distance. Continue reading “Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 3”

Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 2

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“I used to tell stories about the… other timeline,” Galen said. “When I was little, my parents praised me for my creativity, and their friends said I made the days of work go by more lightly with my fanciful tales. But as I got older…”

Stealing a shuttlecraft from a Tri-Galactic Union starship isn’t easy under normal circumstances.  It’s a lot harder during wartime in a highly militarized timeline.  However, Fact and Consul Tor had some unusual advantages on their side.  Between the arctic fox android’s ability to think faster than anything else aboard the Initiative — including the ship’s computer itself — and the photosynthetic green otteroid’s ability to sense and even mildly affect the emotions of everyone around her, the two-man team made surprisingly quick work of freeing a small shuttlecraft from the shuttle bay and zipping away from the Initiative as fast as they could, concealed by a burst of cogiton particles to scramble the ship’s sensor readings. Continue reading “Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 2”

Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 1

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“It felt to Fact as if zir crewmates wanted zir to be upset by the discovery of zir defunct, disembodied head. Like they were looking for a performance of grief that Fact simply didn’t feel and didn’t want to provide for the benefit of others.”

Gold-flecked yellow eyes stared into gold-flecked yellow eyes.  The gold flakes were real, twenty-four karat.  The yellow eyes, artificial.  Even so, one pair of eyes was animated with a simulation of life so perfect that it raised deep, philosophical questions about the nature of life itself.  For if an arctic fox android with snowy white silicon fur and a protonic brain can narrow zir eyes in concern at the discovery that zhe too will die someday, causing all the uplifted cats and dogs watching zir reaction to fight back tears, what more is required of a simulation before it becomes the thing itself? Continue reading “Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 1”

Dancing with Zirself

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“Unlike the chameleon body’s relatively simple goal of moving and matching colors, programming the Van Dyke’s kernel was more complex.”

Rariel 77 had entire closets of different bodies zhe’d built for zirself, and zhe liked switching between them.  Sometimes, you want a classic robot body — boxy, straight lines, gleaming metal.  You know, that whole deal.  But sometimes, an AI simply needs to be able to go incognito and blend in with all the biological sentients around.  The most common species on Crossroads Station were the Heffen (a sort of canine alien, kind of like anthro red wolves) and after that humans.  Rariel 77 had very nice android bodies in both of those flavors.  Zhe also had some much more abstract choices for when zhe was feeling whimsical or wanted to go on a spacewalk or do some other more exotic activity. Continue reading “Dancing with Zirself”

Goin’ Turtle

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“Why waste time on this weird turtle shell thing when you could be revolutionizing racing?”

Cobalt Starstrong charged right in, grabbed a stool at the bar, and then looked back to see Delvin balking in the doorway.  There was a strange look on the younger man’s face.  Cobalt gestured to the empty barstool beside him; it was a plain, simple stool, suitable to all kinds of physiologies.  That was important.  For they were in the All Alien Cafe.

Reluctantly, Delvin darted into the bar and took the empty seat beside Cobalt.  “Why did you bring me here?” he asked. Continue reading “Goin’ Turtle”