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.
Mike didn’t have a lot of experience playing games of any sort, really. As Vossie’s neural implant, of course, they’d participated in the Morphican playing a few games, way back when he was a young rabbit. All children play some games. But Vossie hadn’t been the most playful kit.
As part of the Wanderlust’s computer system, Mike’s mycelial flesh could have been used for playing games. Perhaps if the Wanderlust had spent years exploring the universe before the accident that created Mike, then they’d have had more experience with officers playing games on the computers. But the Wanderlust was fresh out of manufacturing when it was assigned to the suicide mission that led to the whole vessel being thrown to a faraway galaxy. There’d been no time for games.
Perhaps if Mike had had more experience with games, then the toadstool might have been excited or exhilarated by the chance to play something new and alien. But as it was, Mike was just scared, confused, and self-conscious. They did their best to shove all those feelings aside and focus on throwing their mycelial threads with as much accuracy as possible, pretending this wasn’t a game at all but instead some sort of life or death space maneuver scenario from back when they’d been a computer, unburdened by self-awareness. But that strategy seemed to backfire as the mushroom being’s hands shook and quavered from the stress, causing their gossamer lassos to miss and tangle with the wrong game pieces.
One figurine after another was handed over to spiders who chuckled at their wins like ice sheets cracking in a glacier.
The spiders seemed to love Ensign Melbourne’s colorful little baubles, and a few of them started replacing game pieces with their new treasures, which added a new, surprising element of difficulty for the long-time players, since these improvised pieces didn’t necessarily tumble and move the way the spiders were used to. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to even out the playing field for Mike, and soon, the Wanderlust away team was down to only one figurine left — the one of Breanna Schweitzer, which had been deemed the most valuable by the spiders playing for them, partly based on Ensign Melbourne’s description of how important a role the scientist had played in Earth history.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Mike objected, overwhelmed by their failures so far. At least, they hadn’t been playing for anything truly valuable — just baubles that Ensign Melbourne had wasted synthesizer rations to make. Still, that was cold comfort to Mike. The toadstool didn’t like letting Vossie down, and while they still didn’t believe it would be a good idea for the Morphican to actually try wearing one of the neural implant-like devices worn by some of the reptiles here, it could still be useful to analyze one. “I’m sorry I’ve let you down.” Mike’s voice sounded like collected rainwater dripping from forest leaves like teardrops.
A quiet uproar broke out amongst the spiders who had clearly been enjoying playing against Mike. The spiders liked beating Mike, but they also liked chuckling at the toadstool’s clumsy attempts at the game. And furthermore, several of the spiders had their eye clusters on winning that final figurine.
The arachnids weren’t ready for their amusing, new opponent to quit. So, after the hubbub quieted, one of the spiders spoke up saying, “We’ll sweeten the deal. What do you want? What can we offer you to make you play one more round?”
“We want one of the neural implants that we’ve seen some of the reptiles wearing,” Vossie said, gesturing with a paw to the bare place on his own brow where Mike had once lived, back in their previous life as a neural implant.
The spiders began conferring again, rumbling like hail falling against frozen, ice-coated tree branches. After a while, the clattering of the spider voices quieted down, and the spider who had been running the games scurried out of the room. When the game-master spider came back, it was holding a neural implant in one of its fuzzy talons. “You will play for this, yes? Your final figurine–” The spider’s cluster of eyes gleamed greedily at the figurine in Ensign Melbourne’s paw. “–staked against one neural implant.”
The Wanderlust officers had been hoping to win enough at these games to make a black market trade for a neural implant, but now, they were being offered exactly what they wanted for the price of one more game.
Mike still didn’t want to play. The toadstool felt frozen by all the eyes looking at them — pleading eyes from Vossie and Melbourne, and glittering, calculating clusters of eyes from the group of fuzzy spiders all around.
Lys was the only one looking away. The caterpillar was closely examining the game board, and when she did look back, she said to Mike, “When my species is very young — just after we’ve hatched from our eggs — we can spit silk strands, and we use them to play games. I believe they must have served an evolutionary purpose originally, but now, it’s just a playful phase we go through. If you used your mycelia to reach inside of me — like you did to stave off my early chrysalis transformation back when I first came aboard the Wanderlust — maybe you could do that thing again… where you palpitated my lymph glands? And temporarily altered their hormone production? Maybe you could make it so I could spit silk again, just for a little bit, and then I could play instead of you. It’s been a long time since I’ve played any of those childhood games, but I was quite good back in my day. It would probably come back to me fast.”
Mike’s whole body ached at the kindness, sweetness, and generosity of the caterpillar’s words. Why did Lys even care about helping Vossie win the neural implant? Had she just been swept up in the excitement of the games? Gambling could be addictive that way.
No matter what, though, Mike couldn’t in good conscience help Lys to alter her very body so that she could play a silly game. “Your body would be flooded with the wrong hormones. Even if your skills did come back to you quickly, there could be all kinds of side-effects that might inhibit your ability to play,” the toadstool warned, trying to scare the caterpillar away from her crazy, reckless idea.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m willing to risk it.”
Mike wasn’t willing to risk it though. “If I did it all wrong, I could accidentally trigger your chrysalis phase for real this time. You’d have no choice but to prematurely age into a butterfly.”
“You won’t get it wrong,” Lys said, her wriggling mouth parts twisting into her version of an encouraging smile. “I trust you.”
That was too much for Mike to bear. The caterpillar’s optimism and over-cooperativeness shamed the toadstool.
Mike could play one more round. Worst case, they would lose a worthless figurine, making the spiders happy. Mike could handle the shame and disappointment of that. It was better than arguing with Lys about why it’s a bad idea to play with your hormones for something as frivolous as gambling. Though, perhaps later, Mike should talk to her about the possibility of gambling addiction.
“I’ll play a final round,” Mike said unhappily, floating back toward the game space and preparing a gossamer lasso of mycelial beard hair.
The toadstool tested the lasso’s weight, swinging it through the air. Light caught the mycelial thread, gleaming off of its curves, but when the light missed it, the ethereal lasso disappeared from sight, too thin to see.
Mike could feel the tips of all their mycelial beard strands tightening, expressing the stress they felt. In a way, Mike’s beard was more like Lys’s wriggling mouth parts than the kind of beard a mammal would have, made from dead hair.
“Alright, let’s get this over with,” Mike said, signaling to the spiders that they were ready to begin their final game. At least, it was a relief to Mike that they couldn’t be pressured into playing any more rounds, because Melbourne couldn’t finance them.
Freed from the fear of having to keep playing, Mike found it was actually easier to play well. The toadstool fell into a rhythm, swinging the lasso to the beat of a Morphican children’s song that they’d sung to Vossie so many times as a kit that it still got stuck in Mike’s head, now that they had a head of their own. One piece after another tumbled through the game space, knocking into other pieces just as Mike predicted, clearing the board and racking up points. It almost looked like Mike would win…
Until one of the spiders pulled off an unthinkably complex move, knocking a single piece into a zigzag through the game space, ricocheting off of five other pieces before it came to a spinning halt. Mike couldn’t top that, and Melbourne was forced to hand over the Breanna Schweitzer figurine to a spider that happily danced through the room, waving it in front of all the other spiders’ jealous eye clusters.
Mike was crestfallen. The toadstool had really thought they were about to win. “I’m so sorry,” Mike muttered mushily.
“Don’t give it a second thought,” Melbourne meowed. “I have an ace up my sleeve. I always do.” The white cat smirked, reaching up to pull his own hearing aids out of his triangular ears. Like most blue-eyed white cats, Ensign Melbourne was essentially deaf and needed the hearing aids.
“You can’t gamble those!” Mike objected.
“I can make a new pair,” Ensign Melbourne meowed, almost as if he was actually answering the toadstool’s objection. Of course, he couldn’t really be, because he couldn’t hear anymore.
Mike couldn’t believe this was happening. “We can’t do this,” the toadstool objected, pleadingly to Vossie.
The rabbit frowned and took the pair of hearing aids out of Melbourne’s paws. The rabbit turned them over, examining the devices.
The white cat was watching everything happening very closely and said, “My hearing aids aren’t Tri-Galactic Union design, so they’re not covered by Tri-Galactic Union regulations. We won’t be breaking any rules by betting them, and if you do lose…” Melbourne shrugged, his blue eyes sparkling. “Well, I’ll just be deaf until we get back home, and I have time to make new ones. Do either of you know Standard Swimmer’s Sign?”
Ensign Melbourne addressed the question to Lt. Cmdr. Vossie and Ensign Mike, because the cat knew that Lys — being from the Tetra Galaxy — wouldn’t have had a chance to be exposed to an ancient Earth language, designed ages ago for otters to use when they needed to communicate underwater. Despite the origin and the name, Standard Swimmer’s Sign had become the dominant sign language on Earth, so even deaf cats who didn’t care much for swimming used it.
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie shook his head, regretfully. As a Morphican, he had limited exposure to arcane Earth languages.
But Mike signed back, “Yes, Standard Swimmer’s Sign is stored in the Wanderlust computer banks, so I have a working memory of it. I still don’t think we should do this.”
“Hey, if I’m okay with this,” Melbourne meowed, “then what business do you have objecting? I said we were going to have fun, and losing big in an underground gambling den is fun. I mean, winning would be more fun, but either way, it’s exciting. And you can’t have a really big win without also risking a really big loss.”
The white cat winked at Lys whose lime green skin had flushed emerald with all the excitement. Mike was definitely going to have to talk to her about the dangers of gambling. The caterpillar may not have even heard of gambling before this outing. Mike didn’t know if gambling had been a part of Ollallan culture.
Ensign Melbourne could be an irritatingly troublesome cat.
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie shrugged and handed the hearing aids back to Ensign Melbourne. “If Melbourne doesn’t mind, then I don’t see a problem with it.”
Ensign Mike felt a tangled knot of umbrage and outrage tighten inside themself. Lt. Cmdr. Vossie was their superior officer, and that made the Morphican the final authority on most pressing issues right now. That’s how hierarchy worked in the Tri-Galactic Union, and half of Mike’s core being was essentially a Tri-Galactic Union training manual. Also, Vossie was Mike’s closest friend — closer than a mere friend, almost a brother. But also… more than that. Vossie had practically been Mike’s own sense of self for a full lifetime. If Vossie, said this was okay… Then it was okay. Period.
Except, not period. It wasn’t that simple. Because deep down, Mike believed that the rabbit was making choices compromised by his own myopic desire for a replacement neural implant which made Mike feel guilty and infuriated in equal measure. Because, of course, it was Mike’s fault that Vossie didn’t have a neural implant anymore, but also… Mike was right here. Mike was Vossie’s neural implant, and Mike didn’t think Vossie should be doing this, but Vossie wasn’t listening to their concerns.
Vossie didn’t seem to care that Mike didn’t think this was a good idea, didn’t want to be doing this, and absolutely was judging Vossie for his behavior.
It all made Mike feel invisible and knotted up, twisting their thoughts into circular ouroboroses of shame and anger.
So, Mike pushed their own thoughts and feelings aside, swallowing them down as deep as they could, and said, “Fine. One more round.”
Of course, the round did not go well.
Mike was too rattled to play well — the complexity of feeling invisible while all these eyes were upon them just made the toadstool feel fake and unreal. Like maybe they weren’t a person after all, and if they weren’t a person, how could they play a game.
Ensign Melbourne handed his hearing aids over to the smug spider who’d won the round. As far as Mike could tell, the spiders didn’t have ears, so they had no idea what this arachnid wanted with such a weird trophy. For that matter, none of the reptiles or amphibians really had ears either. However they managed to hear, it wasn’t in a way that could be aided by sticking Ensign Melbourne’s hearing aids in. So, winning the highly personal devices off the cat seemed more motivated by cruelty than genuine desire for the hearing aids.
Ensign Mike was feeling as bitter as Captain Carroway’s coffee right now. The toadstool turned to look at Vossie, shaking with an almost savage schadenfreude… But it all melted away when they saw the stunned look on the rabbit’s face.
Vossie had really expected Mike to win.
The rabbit had thought his neural implant would do its job and protect him, give him what he wanted, even from outside of his body. The Morphican looked truly disappointed, and Mike couldn’t differentiate themself from their ex-ward well enough to stop that disappointment from stabbing straight to their core.
Mike had let Vossie down.
Ensign Melbourne slapped the rabbit on the back and said, “Buck up, Lieutenant Commander. I’m sure there are other ways to get ahold of one of those things. We’ll be flying through this sector for a while, and surely, there will be more opportunities.”
The rabbit’s face had frozen into a mask of emotionlessness. Lys kept looking back and forth between the other members of the away team, seemingly trying to figure out how to read this situation. But Ensign Melbourne simply shrugged and said, “I guess I’m going to be relying on Mike here to translate if either of you have anything to say back to me, until we get back. But should we get out of here and see what else there is to see before our time runs out?”
Ensign Mike was still quivering from all the emotions that were knotted up inside themself, as if the very mycelial threads of their body had gotten tangled. If they’d had to be standing up, then they’d have needed to sit down. But of course, in zero gravity, they just floated there, unsure of how to handle all these feelings.
The toadstool did know one thing for sure: they wanted to get off of this shady gaming ship. So, speaking and signing with their hands at the same time, Mike said, “Yes, let’s get out of here.”
The four Wanderlust officers headed back toward the airlock between the ship and Spindle Reef. Mike dragged behind, still processing so many feelings that it felt like their emotional weight was actually slowing them down. Before Mike caught up with the others at the airlock, one of the leafy plant-like aliens who’d watched the entire spectacle in the gaming room floated up to Mike and stopped the toadstool with a gently placed branch.
“Wait, I saw what happened back there…” the plant said in a voice like an orchestra of tiny violins playing. Bell-like flowers mixed in with the alien’s leaves vibrated to create the sound of its voice, and it seemed to look at Mike with photosensitive flowers shaped like daisies.
Mike was fascinated to see one of these leafy tumbleweed-like aliens so close up. Even though Mike had noticed this alien back in the gaming room, while the toadstool had been busy playing games they didn’t want to play, there hadn’t been time to appreciate how nice it felt to see another being as truly alien as themself.
Sometimes, the rest of the Wanderlust crew seemed to think that Lys and even Korvax were more alien than Mike, because the toadstool was at least originally from the Milky Way. (Although, Mike had never truly been Mike in the Milky Way… just ingredients for the being who would someday exist as Mike.) But Korvax was a mammal, and even Lys was at least an animal. Mike wasn’t even part of that kingdom of life.
Mike didn’t have to be a bipedal toadstool. They could have reformed themself to look more like this tumbleweed-alien — centralized with a higher level of symmetry than bipeds; rotational instead of merely bilateral. Sure, it would have taken Mike a lot of energy to reform themself that way, and they’d have to completely relearn how to move around and exist in their own body… but they could do it. And the mammals of the Wanderlust crew didn’t seem to appreciate that aspect of Mike.
But Mike thought about it a lot.
Even so, this wasn’t exactly the circumstances that Mike would have picked for connecting with an alien from a different branch of the taxonomic tree of life.
“I am sorry you had to see that,” Mike said mushily. “I was not at my best.”
“Do not worry about that,” the tumbleweed said. “I have something for you.” The alien reached the tip of one of its tentacle-like branches inside its own leafy center and drew out an electronic device, gripped with the tip of the branch.
The tumbleweed foisted the device at Mike, clearly expecting the mushroom to take it. So Mike did.
With wonder, the toadstool said, “This is one of the neural implants we were trying to win. Why are you showing this to me?”
“I’m giving it to you,” the tumbleweed said.
“Why?” Mike asked, reluctantly taking the device.
“It belonged to my friend…” The tumbleweed’s leaves quivered, and daisy-eyes twisted up, closing their petals tight. “He got sick and died… and… he can’t use it anymore. It does me no good. Someone should have it.”
Ensign Mike was profoundly torn between gratitude and wariness. Something seemed wrong to the toadstool about this offer. But maybe that was just because all the spiders in the gaming room had preferred to withhold their treasures for the chance to make a visitor play the fool for them, and Mike’s own companions had played along. Uncomplicated generosity was too much of a sudden change, and it gave the poor toadstool emotional whiplash.
“Thank you,” Mike said, not knowing how to feel but still knowing how to be polite. “This will mean a lot to my friend.”
“From my friend to yours then,” the tumbleweed agreed, daisy eyes opening again and bellflowers widening in what Mike chose to interpret as a smile.
Continue on to Chapter 8…