by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Prodigy 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.
Ensign Mike didn’t know how to be a person. They had watched a lot of other people be people. They had a literal computer brain full of literature and data about how other people managed to be people — often very badly. But being able to look at someone else and tell that person was making poor choices wasn’t the same as knowing how to be a person yourself, and Ensign Mike felt more and more keenly aware of that difference. But they didn’t know what to do about it.
To be fair, by one measure — a very reasonable measure — Ensign Mike was only about a year old. So the toadstool-like being composed from a mass of mycelial material clustered around a computer implant tried not to be too hard on themself. That seemed like the right thing to do. It was what Ensign Mike would have told someone else who was like them… But no one else was like them. And no one else was telling Ensign Mike what to do. At least, not about deep, psychological things like personhood. At a practical level, Ensign Mike had superior officers aboard the Tri-Galactic Union starship Wanderlust ordering them around almost all the time, telling them to get out of the way or assist with tasks. Mostly to get out of the way, even though there wasn’t any particular place for Ensign Mike to get out of the way to.
The Wanderlust was a small ship, designed for short-term missions. It had never been meant to fly across a distant galaxy for months leading into years on end, far away from any Tri-Galactic Union ports or known safe havens. Much as Ensign Mike had never been meant to exist as a person. Yet here they were. Flying across the Tetra Galaxy, trying to be a person.
The Norwegian Forest cat captain and golden-mantled squirrel commander each had their own quarters. Ensign Mike couldn’t fault them for insisting on having their own private space. The toadstool-being held regular counseling sessions with Commander Chestnut, and it was very clear to them from those conversations with the squirrel that the demands of command — keeping control and composure in front of your crew at all times — definitely called for those private spaces. A place to collapse, let down the facade, and just be yourself. And the two barracks rooms were already full to the brim each with bristling, complicated personalities.
Captain Carroway had neglected to officially assign Ensign Mike to either of those barracks rooms… And the toadstool-being didn’t exactly want to force their way into the complicated interpersonal dynamics playing out in either of those spaces. It was easier to simply slip away into a crawlspace behind the engine room where the zephyr drive coil thrummed comfortingly whenever they needed to sleep or find some privacy of their own. Ensign Mike’s fleshy mycelial components had originally been part of the Wanderlust’s shipboard computers anyway, so nestling into the crawlspace felt like going back to their childhood bedroom anyway. At least, it felt like Ensign Mike imagined that would feel. Obviously, they’d never had a childhood bedroom of their own. Although, they did have extensive memories of being Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s neural implant way back when the Morphican had been just a little bunny.
Ensign Mike had sung lullabies in Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s head when the alien rabbit had been a child. As a Morphican neural implant, Ensign Mike had expected to live out the rest of their artificial, digital life connected directly to Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s brain, experiencing life only vicariously. Becoming a being of their own had been a massive gift from the universe. But sometimes, it was a gift that Ensign Mike didn’t know how to handle.
They knew how to soothe Vossie. And extending their knowledge with all the information that had come along with their mycelial flesh, they knew a great deal about how to soothe all the other members of the crew.
However, Ensign Mike knew very little about how to soothe themself, except by soothing others. Unfortunately, they lived aboard a ship filled with animals who were desperately unhappy at a deep level, living in a transitory state, always focused on escaping the galaxy they’d been thrown into and placing all their hopes on returning to their homes in the Milky Way. They were impossible to soothe. Yet, Ensign Mike kept trying.
There were two other animals in the crew who actually saw the wandering path of the Wanderlust as their home, the way Mike did. The caterpillar-like alien, Lys, and the hedgehog-like alien, Korvax, who’d been her nursemaid had joined the Wanderlust’s crew voluntarily as hitchhikers. Korvax had become the crew’s chef and unofficial morale officer. Whereas Lys had taken over tending the shipboard garden and flirted with learning a little bit about every trade she could aboard the Wanderlust, up until the ship had taken on a satellite — a baby world turtle named Sojourner — who now took up all of the caterpillar’s time.
Lys’s people were native inhabitants of Sojourner’s species — butterfly-like aliens who lived on the back of planet-sized turtles. For now, though, Lys and Sojourner were children together — a caterpillar bonded to an asteroid-sized turtle. And most of Lys’s attention had turned to tending her baby world and its one full-time inhabitant, a tardigrade-like being who’d been accidentally enlarged to person-sized. The tardigrade called itself Solace, and it had been keeping house on the turtle’s back with Lys for about half a year now. They were expecting Solace’s first batch of eggs to hatch soon, and then their hands would really be full. Fortunately, both Lys and Solace had entire rows of hands along their bodies.
Ensign Mike could have grown more hands too, if they’d wanted to. Their mycelial body was flexible enough that they could alter their form somewhat at will. But mostly, it seemed easier to fit in aboard the crew if they stuck to a stable, vaguely familiar form — mushroom cap head, row of slitted eyes along the underside, thick bushy mycelial beard, and otherwise the standard bipedal structure that the cats, rabbits, canine, hedgehog and squirrel in the crew all shared. For one thing, it meant Mike was able to wear a Tri-Galactic Uniform like the rest of the crew, and in fact, their uniform had required fewer alterations than the ones that had been designed to handle Lys’s caterpillar body with her two rows of hands and Korvax’s hedgehog shape with all the prickles sprouting out of his back.
So, Ensign Mike was sitting in a chair on the Wanderlust’s bridge, watching stars stream by on the main viewscreen, doing their best impression of a person. Monitoring the upcoming scans, fulfilling their role as a member of a small crew, where every member had to take a turn babysitting the ship’s controls as it flew like a dart on autopilot back toward the far-off Milky Way. Back when Ensign Mike’s mycelial flesh had actually been part of the ship’s computers, they’d have played a much more active role in the ship’s autopilot. Ensign Mike only had dim memories of that time, when flying the ship had been as automatic as breathing or keeping your heart beating for a mammal.
Ensign Mike didn’t like their shifts on the bridge. It made them think about what they’d used to be, and how it hadn’t involved thinking deep questions like, “Am I doing enough?” or “Why does the captain always seem angry with me?” or simply, “Is Vossie getting enough sleep without me there to sing him to sleep?”
There are advantages to individuality, personhood, and self-awareness… but there are also disadvantages. Getting caught in loops of self-reflection to the point where you start doubting the nature of reality and your place in it was one of the big ones.
Mike could hear a number of the off-duty officers talking and laughing in the multi-purpose room at the back of the ship. Korvax usually had some sort of brunch bar set up at this hour, and Mike could smell the sweet and savory particles from the hedgehog’s cooking in the air. The scents made the mycelial strands of Mike’s beard restless and twitchy. So far as the toadstool being could tell, they were the only member of the crew other than Lys who actually enjoyed Korvax’s cooking.
Ensign Mike had a couple of counseling sessions scheduled later with Cmdr. Chestnut and Lt. Diaz. The toadstool was looking forward to those — not as much as they always looked forward to sessions with Lt. Cmdr. Vossie, but still, it would be a chance to forget themself and focus on someone else. Ensign Mike always felt better when they did that.
Mike looked down from the overwhelming screen of streaming stars and focused on the computer panels at their current station. The Wanderlust’s sensors were adjusted to their maximum settings — reaching out as far in front of the ship and to the sides of the ship as they could, checking for rare elements and radio signals that might imply planets with useful resources or civilizations. Habitable but empty planets were the ideal, allowing the Wanderlust to stop briefly, stock up on supplies, and let the crew members stretch their legs on an actual full-sized world. Baby Sojourner’s shell wasn’t big enough to fully scratch that itch yet — just large enough for a small, simple house that the crew had helped Solace build so that the tardigrade would have somewhere to live, lay its eggs, and tend to them.
Ensign Mike wondered if Sojourner’s back was going to start feeling really crowded once the clutch of eggs hatched and a whole family of tardigrade toddlers started toddling about on the turtle’s shell. The toadstool being’s slit of a mouth twisted into a lopsided smile imagining all those future baby tardigrades. What a crazy thing Sojourner was attempting — to start an entire civilization, raising the whole first generation itself. But what other choice was there? Sojourner was essentially the only member of its species in the universe, as all its kin were still microscopic beings sloshing about in the oceans of a planet the Wanderlust had left behind half a year ago. Far, far behind them now.
A burst of activity on the ship’s scans drew Mike’s attention. They examined the readout, thinking how much easier it would be to simply experience the scan directly. Mike was tempted to see if they could open up the display panel and hook up some of their mycelial beard strands directly into the computer… but the times they’d tried that before, it had been such an overwhelming experience, like sliding into warm water and falling asleep. Comforting, cozy, and eventually the same as drowning. Mike knew better than to try it again for something as petty as not wanting to have to read and decipher the scan results from the outside of the computer panel.
Mike blinked their row of eyes, closing each eye separately in a sequence that chased along the underside of their mushroom cap head. If they were understanding the scan correctly, then the absolute profusion of signals bouncing around in an upcoming star system implied far more than a simple inhabited planet. It looked like an interstellar hub. A sort of space age crossroads. They needed to alert the captain, because this was exactly the kind of place that she’d want to have the Wanderlust check out. Though, of course, it could also be exactly the kind of place that could be extremely dangerous.
During the first six months on this journey, the Wanderlust’s crew had spent a great deal of time and energy avoiding the dangerously aggressive Zakonraptors who inhabited much of the Tetra Galaxy. As far as they could tell, at this point, the Zakonraptors were behind them, but who knew what kind of dangerous species might be ahead…
Ensign Mike hesitated, confused by the profusion of feelings that the profusion of signals inspired in them. They wanted their crewmates to get the chance to interact with interesting alien species and possibly learn useful information. But also, the Wanderlust crew was the entirety of Mike’s world — the only friends or family they’d ever known, except for Vossie’s family back in the Milky Way. However, Mike knew that Vossie’s Morphican family wouldn’t have any idea of what to do with Vossie’s neural implant walking around being a separate person from Vossie.
Vossie himself didn’t seem to know how to deal with it half of the time. Sometimes, he acted like Mike’s brother. Sometimes, he almost seemed like he was trying to ignore Mike, like the wayward neural implant who knew too much about him was the equivalent of a childhood blankie — beloved but outgrown and kind of embarrassing.
In the end, though, Ensign Mike didn’t hesitate for too long before keying in the command to send the information about the scan to the Captain, because the very fabric of half of their being — the mycelial half — had the Tri-Galactic Union’s core beliefs and directives practically imprinted on their DNA. And the Tri-Galactic Union was all about exploration, discovery, and connection. Even if those things carried an inherent risk. There’s an intrinsic danger to exploring the unknown, but just about everything worth doing comes with some degree of risk attached.
The talking and laughter at the far end of the ship changed tone almost immediately after Mike keyed in the command to pass the data along to the captain. The Norwegian Forest cat must have been awake and part of the jovial brunch crowd, because only moments later, she padded her way onto the bridge, followed by several other officers — the white cat Melbourne, the canine Diaz, and the hedgehog Korvax who was wearing a chef’s hat and still carrying a frying pan that smelled like it was full of fried tammas leaves which had a salty, savory taste apparently akin to bacon.
“Show me the readings,” Captain Carroway meowed, leaning over Ensign Mike without actually looking at the mushroom.
Mike pointed with a slender mycelial finger at the display, gesturing at the various relevant readouts. They felt a strange sense of dread — like the captain was going to be angry with them or blame them somehow for having not sent the readings along sooner, faster, more clearly. Ensign Mike didn’t know what she might decide they’d done wrong, because they didn’t think they’d done anything wrong… But the captain always made them feel like they were failing anyway.
The Norwegian Forest cat grunted, considering the display, still leaning into Mike’s personal space without seeming to notice her intrusion. Finally she stepped back, cleared her voice with a harrumphing cough, and intoned, “It looks like we’ll be making a little stop soon.”
“What did Mike find?” Ensign Melbourne meowed, crowding up closer to the front of the bridge.
“Well, it’s hard to tell for certain from the readings,” Captain Carroway meowed back, the touch of a purr coloring her tone. “But it looks like it could be a very lively space station.”
“Well done, Mike!” Melbourne meowed, excitedly. “It’s about time for a little more excitement around here!”
Ensign Mike’s thin line of a mouth quirked, trying to smile at the white cat’s praise, but they couldn’t help but feel like the kind words were overshadowed by Captain Carroway’s complete dismissal. Sometimes, when Captain Carroway was around, Ensign Mike didn’t feel like they existed at all. They certainly didn’t feel like a person.
Continue on to Chapter 2…