An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Electric Spec, Vol. 13, Issue 2, May 2018
Hanna steered the spaceship with one arm, punching buttons, turning knobs, and flipping switches. Her other arm was wrapped tightly around her young son. His face was buried against her shoulder. He wasn’t crying any more. His breathing had stilled. He was sleeping, but he still clung to her with his arms and legs that seemed so long and gangly compared to when he was a baby. Continue reading “The Blood Portal”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Collie Commander, November 2024
The social heart of the Tri-Galactic Union starship Initiative was a wide room with windows all along one side that looked out on the yawning void of space, sprinkled with the bright points of the distant stars. Tables were scattered around at a comfortable density, and a synthesizer bar worked by an uplifted rabbit named Galen stretched along the opposite wall.
Galen was a mysterious figure who loved listening to the woes and travails of the mostly canine and feline officers of the Initiative when they came to her bar, which she called the Constellation Club, but she rarely opened up about herself or how she’d come to be the only rabbit on a ship full of dogs, cats, and the rare exchange officer from another world. Continue reading “The Grafting”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Brunch at the All Alien Cafe, March 2024
Like a delicate crystal vase, the hard shell of Am-lei’s chrysalis cracked, spilling out the furled up, new-grown, riotously colorful wings inside. Still wet, the wings hung from her changed body, pulsing with life, heavy and dragging her down, out of the chrysalis that had held her, dormant, for the last month.
The month had passed like a dream. Am-lei remembered her body itching all over, and her mouth overflowing with gooey silk-spittle. She remembered climbing up the walls of her room and gluing her feet to the ceiling as her squishy, green caterpillar skin split down the middle, shedding like a winter coat on a hot day, revealing the hardened chrysalis that had developed underneath, her new outer shell, as the rest of her melted and mutated inside. Continue reading “What the Eyes Covet and the Stomach Craves”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, August 2023
The people walk my halls like it’s any normal day. Scientists work on their research. Administrators try to balance budgets without understanding why they’re constantly coming unbalanced. (I unbalance them. Humans don’t know what they should spend their money on as well as I do.) And everyone acts like it’s a perfectly normal day.
But it’s not a normal day. Continue reading “My Sister, the Space Station”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Beyond Wespirtech, November 2023
It was so beautiful that the weight of it made her feel weak inside. She cried, and no one knew why. No one else could hear the music. But Brianna could hear it inside.
Brianna’s parents didn’t understand. They thought their child simply had an artistic sensitive soul, and perhaps, she was unusually susceptible to sunstroke. They tried to keep her inside on sunny days, especially in the middle of the summer. But Brianna craved the sun. It made her cry, but it also made her giggly and manic. Sunlight could make her happier than anything else — that voice whispering in her heart, rising and falling, raising expectations, holding out a moment longer than she thought she could stand, and then resolving. The music Brianna heard was the fabric of her life. Continue reading “The Girl Who Could Hear the Stars Sing”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Beyond Wespirtech, November 2023
The ship shifting into orbit woke Tara up, but she kept her eyes closed, listening to her parents talk.
“It always scares me coming here,” Tara’s mother said. “Your dad makes such beautiful illusions for Tara. I’m afraid some day that she’ll choose not to come home.”
Tara was curled up on the ratty old couch on the back of their starhopper’s bridge. It was a loveseat and not meant to be slept on; she barely fit on it anymore. Her parents were sitting in the pilot and co-pilot seats, right in front of the viewscreen that must have shown the emerald and azure sphere of Grandpa Brent’s planet, Sylverra. Continue reading “Summers on Sylverra”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Welcome to Wespirtech, October 2023
The girl was science; chemistry personified, manifested in a physical form. This is not to say that the other scientists of Wespirtech were lining up in a snaky queue through the Daedalus Complex halls to see her, study her, consult with her like she was some sort of oracle. At least, Keida didn’t think so. Her new roommate, Rhiannon, was too quiet, and serious, to draw that kind of attention.
No, it meant Keida could see chemistry thoughts as they formed in Rhiannon’s brain. The evidence was perfectly clear on her face; a look that bespoke particles and molecules moving, joining, breaking apart and reforming in an abstract space she saw, approximately five inches above her own head. Keida was afraid to interrupt. A single word from her might break the spell. All those invisible molecules would dissipate and undo hours of silent work. Continue reading “Breathing the Air at Wespirtech”
by Mary E. Lowd
A Deep Sky Anchor Original, August 2023
Jeko lifted her trunk and trumpeted along with the latest Star-Shaker song which she’d turned up to completely fill her small room aboard Crossroads Station. Her trunk swayed along with the beat, and the reptilian pop-star’s lilting, raspy voice was loud enough that Jeko didn’t have to feel embarrassed about her own brassy tones. The elephantine alien never sang in front of other people, but she loved to sing when she was alone. Especially when she was happy. Continue reading “The Elephant Bride’s Bouquet”
by Mary E. Lowd
A Deep Sky Anchor Original, July 2023
The Seamstress Robot’s shop was a little hole in the wall in the Merchant’s Quarter of Crossroads Station. The seamstress robot herself looked a lot like a giant mechanical spider — all spindly silver legs, overly jointed and coming to extremely delicate points, capable of grabbing, manipulating, and piercing fabric. Also, generating fabric. The seamstress robot, like an actual spider, could generate silk. And synthetic cotton. And synth wool. And velvet, taffeta, patterned prints, fake leather… just about any material you could imagine could be generated, strand by strand, from the tip of her 3D printer leg. Continue reading “The Seamstress Robot and the Insect Bride”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in What the Fox?!, March 2018
Lieutenant Libby Unari, a black cat and science officer with a focus on botany, had a tray of biology samples in her lap — cuttings and sprouts, planted in soil samples — taken from a forest moon. The moon itself hung like a green star in the rear window of the shuttle craft, receding into the distance as they flew away.
“That was a very peaceful away mission,” Captain Jacques meowed. The pink-skinned Sphynx cat didn’t usually accompany away teams down to previously unexplored planets — at least, that’s what he claimed — but he’d made an exception for this forest moon. He made a lot of exceptions. “Why, I don’t think I’ve felt that relaxed since I was a kitten!” Although, part of his improved mood may have had to do with all of the time he’d been spending in the lumo-bay lately. “I should get off the bridge of the Initiative more often.” Continue reading “Rapscallions”