by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Prodigy of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
Ensign Mike asked Captain Carroway and Lt. Cmdr. Vossie if the three of them could meet together privately, and of course, the cat and rabbit complied. That was standard Tri-Galactic Union protocol. Within reason, any Tri-Galactic Union officer could request a private audience with their superior officers.
The Norwegian Forest cat hosted the meeting in her private quarters. Mike noted when they entered that while the cat’s quarters had a veneer of cleanliness appropriate to the situation, it looked like she’d hurriedly shoved various changes of clothes and supplies for her sewing hobby just out of sight. Even though the captain and the first commander of the Wanderlust both had private quarters, those rooms also doubled as meeting spaces whenever there was need for private consultations (such as the therapy sessions Mike held in Chestnut’s quarters), putting a limit on how much privacy either of them really had.
For a year there, Mike may have had the most privacy of anyone on the entire ship.
Once the Norwegian Forest cat captain and Morphican lieutenant commander were settled, Ensign Mike carefully went over every detail of their analysis as to how Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s health had been declining. The cat and rabbit asked pertinent questions but otherwise didn’t interrupt. Neither of them showed any signs of doubting anything the mushroom had to say. In fact, each of them — fluffy cat and cyborg-rabbit — looked increasingly stricken and distressed as Mike’s presentation went along.
“I’d ask if you’re sure,” Captain Carroway meowed at the end, “but your carefully organized data doesn’t really leave any room for uncertainty, does it?”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie didn’t say anything, but the lights on his implant twinkled in shades of blue and white. The rabbit merely stared out the window that stretched across the outer wall of the cat’s quarters, possibly looking at the stars streaming by or possibly looking at his own ghostly reflection in the glass.
The Norwegian Forest cat and the toadstool watched the rabbit as he stared at the window, until finally Captain Carroway said, “We don’t have another doctor, so… what do you recommend? Should Vossie take the implant out? Should we see if there’s a way to–” The cat gestured helplessly with her paws. “–tweak the device?”
“I think we should find another doctor,” Ensign Mike said, emphatically. The toadstool had put a lot of thought into this suggestion and didn’t make it lightly. Mike knew how disruptive such a suggestion could be to the Wanderlust’s flight path, but they just didn’t see another way.
“There aren’t any Morphican doctors — or doctors who’ve ever seen Morphicans before — in this galaxy,” Captain Carroway countered.
“No,” Mike agreed, “but there will be doctors who have experience with neural implants like the one Lt. Cmdr. Vossie is using. I know a lot about Morphican health and physiology, but I’m not an engineer. And I don’t know anything about the differences between Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s current implant and–” The mushroom stumbled over their next words, realizing they’d been about to say, ‘me,’ and they really didn’t want to say that. “–and, well, a standard Morphican neural implant.”
Suddenly Lt. Cmdr. Vossie turned away from the window and looked straight at Mike. The rabbit’s face looked gaunt and tired in an entirely new way, as if he’d been abandoned by a higher power that he’d been praying to his entire life. “You can’t help me?” he asked.
“I am helping you,” Mike said, mushily. “I’m helping you by trying to get better help for you.” There were a million anecdotes from Vossie’s childhood that Mike wanted to call on as a comparison, and the toadstool knew that doing so would make the rabbit feel safer, feel loved. But Mike didn’t want to pretend to be Vossie’s old implant right now. In fact, Mike didn’t think they wanted to play that game ever again.
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie was still the most important person in Mike’s life — like a sibling, parent, child, and friend all rolled into one. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe Mike needed to figure out how to be a complete, individual person, separate from Vossie.
“Very well,” Captain Carroway conceded. “I’ll reach out to our contacts in this system and see if I can track down a doctor with expertise in…”
“Sidiian neural implants,” Vossie provided. “The race of the reptile who had my implant before me was Sidiian.”
“Thank you,” Captain Carroway meowed. “That’s very helpful. Is there anything else you know from the memories stored in the implant that might be helpful?”
Vossie stared out the window again, his eyes going all distant, and when the rabbit finally spoke, he sounded like his mind had traveled far away, into a distant past of memories. “J’vis got very sick before he died. His early symptoms were the same as mine. Whatever I have… He had it too, and it killed him.”
Captain Carroway’s voice became a hushed whisper, “How long did it take?”
Vossie looked back from the window. His long ears drooped straight down past his shoulders as he shrugged. “A few weeks from when he noticed the symptoms, but…” Now Vossie looked at Mike, and there was a little of the rabbit’s usual sparkle in his eyes again. “…he didn’t have someone like Mike tracking his health so closely. So, he didn’t notice his symptoms this early.”
“Even so,” Captain Carroway breathed between sharp feline teeth, “we should be prepared to work with a limited timeline. We’ll find you help, Vossie. I promise.”
The rabbit smiled in a stricken way and touched a paw to the electronic device on his brow, a source of both great comfort and apparently also sickness. “It never occurred to me that J’vis’s illness could have been carried to me by his device. Or have been caused by it… Or that I’d even be susceptible to whatever killed him. I didn’t even know that I was sick…” The rabbit frowned now at where his musings had led him. “And now I’m faced with a death sentence. That’s a lot to process.”
“No one’s dying on my watch,” Captain Carroway hissed fiercely, her ears skewing to the sides.
Mike hadn’t been a person yet when two members of Cmdr. Chestnut’s Anti-Ra crew had died because of a choice Captain Carroway made, but the toadstool couldn’t help but feel that much of the cat’s vehemence in this moment came from the weight of experience, from having carried the responsibility for those deaths ever since they’d happened and knowing she’d keep carrying that weight forever.
The captain dismissed Mike and Vossie from her quarters so that she could focus on her new task — locating a Sidiian doctor to work with Mike.
Since the rabbit and toadstool were both off-duty, Vossie returned to their barracks room, but Mike didn’t follow. The toadstool knew that if they went into the barracks room too, they’d only end up comforting Vossie, reminiscing about the past and reassuring the rabbit about the future.
Mike didn’t want to do that. Mike didn’t want to let Vossie retreat into a faux-childhood and have to play the part of the rabbit’s faux-parent. Lt. Cmdr. Vossie had already had a childhood, and a version of Mike had already comforted and coaxed him through it.
Mike had never had a childhood.
The toadstool had memories of Vossie’s childhood, but that wasn’t the same. A vicarious childhood isn’t the same as a childhood of your own. Mike had been less than a full, self-aware person during Vossie’s childhood, and also, as the rabbit’s neural implant, they’d had a parent-like role.
The more Mike thought about it, the more troubled the toadstool became at how they’d woken up on the bridge of the Wanderlust for the very first time and almost immediately been conscripted into the crew, gifted the rank of ensign, and expected to perform as a fully functioning adult with a great many responsibilities.
No wonder Mike didn’t know how to be a person. People begin as children, and Mike had never been allowed to be a child.
In a daze, the toadstool walked into the multi-purpose room where Korvax was bustling about cooking and Lys was bustling about tending to the potted plants that filled every corner of the Wanderlust these days. Ensign Melbourne and Lt. Lee were sitting at one of the tables together, poking skeptically at plates of food in front of them.
“What did you say this dish was again?” Ensign Melbourne meowed. The white cat glared at the pile of food like it might jump up and scurry away if he didn’t watch it closely enough.
“Errgonish rice-curd pudding!” the hedgehog squeaked enthusiastically. “It’s a traditional Sidiian dish. I got the recipe while we were at Spindle Reef, and Lys has been helping collect and breed the necessary ingredients!”
“Breed the necessary ingredients?” Lt. Lee woofed with concern, his butterfly-like ears spreading wide. The Papillon’s gaze darted around the multi-purpose room as if he was expecting to suddenly discover an enclosure of sub-sentient cows or pigs hidden behind all the potted plants.
“That’s right,” Korvax said, putting his cooking utensils aside so that he could scurry over and point closely at the plates of food now being contemplated with concern by the white cat and pretty little dog. “Those long blue bits–” The hedgehog extended a pinkish finger and pointed; the fur on the hedgehog’s paws was thinner than elsewhere, exposing the skin underneath. “–here and here. See those? Those are legs pulled off some of the gigapedes that we picked up at the last planet we visited!”
“Solace and I have been breeding them on Sojourner’s back,” Lys added helpfully, still watering the various potted plants. “They’re very nutritious.”
“And they add so much flavor!” Korvax clapped his pinkish paws together delightedly.
Ensign Melbourne sighed and took a bite of the food. Lt. Lee followed suit. But neither the cat nor the dog looked terribly happy about it. Noses wrinkled and ears skewed backward, but both of them kept eating. Mike wondered if the two of them were saving their synthesizer rations for anything in particular if they were willing to eat food they so clearly disliked.
Korvax didn’t seem troubled by the cat and dog’s reactions at all — merely delighted that they were eating his food. The hedgehog clapped his paws again merrily before returning to cooking more of his atrocities.
Through all of this, Mike simply stood in the mouth of the main hallway, watching the multi-purpose room but not actually committing to going all the way inside and sitting down at a table. The toadstool swayed a little, exhausted by the emotional strain of their meeting with Vossie and the captain. More than anything, Mike simply wanted to creep away and hide in the crawlway again. But they didn’t know if Lt. Diaz was currently on duty — meaning she’d be in the engine room and would notice them creeping by — or if she was asleep in Barracks Room B.
Eventually, the four officers in the multi-purpose room noticed the toadstool standing there, looking lost, even though the Wanderlust was far too small a ship for someone to actually get lost on it.
“Are you okay?” Lys asked, mouth parts wriggling nervously, as if she could taste the toadstool’s distress floating through the air.
Mike noted internally that the caterpillar’s choice to ask about their emotions subtly drew attention away from the fact that she was probably already perfectly aware of what everyone in the room was feeling. Maybe Lys should have been the ship’s therapist, instead of Mike.
“I don’t know,” Mike said, not feeling up to working out a more palatable answer that would staunch the worry suddenly expressed on every face looking at them.
Korvax bustled over and guided Mike to a chair, pulled the chair out for them, and made sure the mushroom actually sat down in it. Next the hedgehog put together a plate of foods — heavily favoring the faux-lasagna that he knew Mike liked — and placed it in front of the toadstool. “Eat, eat,” Korvax pressed. “I always feel better with a full belly.”
Mike didn’t feel like eating. Mike felt like talking about what was upsetting them.
But Mike knew it wasn’t their place to tell everyone else aboard the ship yet that Vossie might be dying. It was a small ship. News would get around fast. But it was Vossie’s news, not Mike’s.
So, Mike told the four crewmates looking expectantly at them the only thing they could think of, “I’ve just realized that I never actually had a childhood.” It sounded so petty and small. Much too petty and small for the toadstool to look this distraught.
However, Korvax squeaked in dismay, throwing his paws up to cover his pointy snout, as if this were the worst news the hedgehog had ever heard. The other three — white cat, small dog, and caterpillar — frowned at the mushroom and hedgehog thoughtfully, taking a little more time to process the information.
Lys, almost certainly, knew from her telepathy that there was more to Mike’s distress than the realization the mushroom had chosen to share. The realization that Mike had deemed safe and small enough to share.
If the cat or dog had any similar sense that there was more going on, neither of them let on.
Ensign Melbourne meowed, “Well, that’s just not right. We should do something about that.”
“Everyone should get to have a childhood,” Lt. Lee woofed in agreement, looking terribly serious about something Mike still thought of as frivolous. “I suppose it’s kind of all of our fault, isn’t it?” the Papillon dog asked. “We were all kind of distracted when you were… um… born? And then once things got more stable, you just seemed like one of us.”
Mike felt their metaphorical heart warm at Lt. Lee’s simple words: you just seemed like one of us. The toadstool rarely felt that way, so it was heartening to hear that, at least, others saw them that way.
“It’s definitely our fault,” Lt. Melbourne meowed. “And so we’re gonna be the ones to fix it.”
Korvax started clapping his paws excitedly again. “Oh, yes, good! Everyone should make a list of the most important parts of childhood, and we should figure out how we can make them happen for Mike!”
“I don’t know if this is the most appropriate time,” Mike said, mushily. “I have a new project I’m going to need to be working on soon…” The mushroom didn’t want to say too much, but also, they did worry that letting themself become the center of attention when Vossie was struggling with something so frightening might be insensitive.
“Nonsense,” Ensign Melbourne meowed, “you won’t have to do a thing. That’s the whole point, right? You’re going to get to be as useless as a kitten, and the rest of us will find ways to help you properly experience the magic and wonder of kittenhood. Or whatever baby versions of toadstools are called.”
“Spores?” Lt. Lee woofed in suggestion, a puzzled expression on his prettily freckled muzzle.
“Sporehood doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as kittenhood…” The white cat’s whiskers turned down in a pensive frown. “There just isn’t the same bounce to it. But I suppose it’ll do.”
“Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” Korvax was practically hopping up and down now, along with clapping his paws. The quills on the hedgehog’s back had flared out in excitement, turning him into even more of a pin cushion than usual.
Lys, however, gazed steadily at Mike. The caterpillar’s brown eyespots had darkened almost to black, like she was gazing intently at the toadstool, trying to read their mind or possibly even communicate something to them telepathically. If she was, Mike didn’t know what she was thinking.
The toadstool supposed other members of the crew — based on the things they whispered about Lys, ever since she’d come out as telepathic — would’ve been creeped out if any of them had been the subject of the caterpillar’s intense gaze in that moment. Mike, however, found it strangely comforting. It made Mike feel like, in the middle of this chaos, at least one person understood them — truly understood them — even if they didn’t say a single word.
Continue on to Chapter 14…