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 waited until they were all the way back out of the gambling ship and safely in Spindle Reef to show their acquisition to Vossie and the others. The toadstool almost didn’t want to show them — wanted to hold it back and examine it before turning the device over to Vossie. But the rabbit was so clearly miserable that, ultimately, Mike couldn’t stand keeping the neural implant secret.
Maybe no one else could’ve told how unhappy the Morphican was — the rabbit was well-trained in hiding his emotions. That was a fundamental, core part of Morphican culture — keeping an even keel; controlling your emotions instead of letting them control you. But the toadstool was especially sensitive to Vossie’s emotions — just as trained in reading them as the rabbit was in hiding them. So, to Mike, Vossie simply exuded cold anger from every angle of his soft, round rabbit-like face.
And all of that melted away in an instant, completely replaced with warmth and joy when Mike told Vossie what had happened with the generous tumbleweed alien and presented the rabbit with the alien neural implant.
Of course, to anyone other than Mike, Vossie’s joy probably looked as muted as his despair had. The rabbit’s V-shaped nose twitched faster, and his mouth quirked into an extremely subtle, demure, lopsided smile. Ensign Mike loved that smile.
Ensign Melbourne also brightened at the discovery that the donation of his hearing aids hadn’t turned out to be useless. The white cat went on at length — with a slightly raised voice, since he could no longer hear himself — about how the tumbleweed alien must have been deeply moved by seeing how far their little group was willing to go in trying to win a reptilian neural implant. Why, to hear Melbourne tell the tale, the whole thing had completely hinged on his own selfless sacrifice at the end.
Lys seemed charmed by Ensign Melbourne’s storified version of their experiences. Mike might have been annoyed by how the cat made himself out to be the hero when the toadstool had been forced to actually play the game… except, Lys seemed to be taking the right lesson from the whole thing — that gambling was erratic and dangerous; and in the end, they’d only achieved their goal because of a combination of self-sacrifice and the kindness of a stranger.
All in all, the group’s spirits were much lifted, and the four of them literally floated through Spindle Reef, enjoying the sights and sounds. Well, only the sights for Melbourne, but Mike did their best to translate everything they could into sign language for the deaf white cat. However, really, the sights were more than enough in such a wondrously alien place.
Even without being able to hear, Ensign Melbourne managed to continue leading the group through his sheer enthusiasm and audacity. In fact, it kind of seemed like being unable to hear just made the cat more audacious, because he wasn’t slowed down by having to listen to anyone, unless he felt like it.
The brazen white cat did an amazing job of packing the rest of their day full of fun events — he seemed to have an uncanny knack for sniffing out little museums, parks, gardens, and monuments. Either that or Spindle Reef really was just bursting to the brim with culture, art, and carefully curated nature.
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie seemed most pleased whenever the group found a small museum to float through. The rabbit especially enjoyed the political history museum that contained interactive holographic displays about the various wars that had been fought between the reptilian, amphibian, plant-like, and arachnid aliens in this arm of the Tetra Galaxy before their current era of peaceful coexistence. Vossie remarked that it made him think of how the different species of the Milky Way, Ursa Dentatus, and the Twilight Spiral had been pulled together by the Tri-Galactic Union.
“Perhaps someday, they’ll have their own version of the Tri-Galactic Union,” Vossie said, as the group exited the museum, heading for a coral garden that Ensign Melbourne had somehow learned about while the rabbit had kept the others lingering over political holograms.
Mike translated Vossie’s comment into sign language, and Ensign Melbourne meowed in response, “Yeah, maybe, or maybe it’ll just become the Quadra-Galactic Union, and we’ll all be in it together.”
Vossie’s narrow chest puffed up proudly at Melbourne’s suggestion, almost as if the rabbit considered Tri-Galactic Union membership his own personal purview, and so if all these Tetra Galaxy species joined, then they’d be adding to his own personal success.
Mike had to admit that the feeling — while irrational — tugged at their own mycelial threads as well. As the living personification of a computer that had been programmed with all the rules, regulations, and ideals of the Tri-Galactic Union, it was hard not to take pride in the idea of the union spreading to even more galaxies, growing ever outward like a mycelial body would.
The coral garden was gorgeous but dangerous, as all the bright, colorful formations of the coral-like outcroppings were covered in ragged, sharp edges. Handholds had been placed carefully through the garden, making it possible for even clumsy newcomers to zero gee like the Wanderlust officers to navigate the main paths through without hurting themselves too badly. However, Lys still took a couple of scrapes from the rock-like growths.
Mike felt strangely at home among the coral. There was a deep peacefulness to the way that the outcroppings were alive — were technically animals — but were strong and still like stone. The toadstool felt like they could’ve floated there, among the rainbow-colored growths for days and days on end, simply existing, simply meditating, simply being. But of course, the group moved on, and Mike went with them.
Even if Mike had stayed behind, spending the rest of their time on Spindle Reef among the corals, they still would’ve been disappointed when the time came to leave. So, it was better to face the disappointment earlier and get to tag along to wherever else Ensign Melbourne led the others. Mike didn’t want to be left out. The toadstool wanted to be in on the in-jokes, the references, and simply the shared nature of the experience that came from touring Spindle Reef together.
Though, the memory of that coral garden would haunt Mike. The toadstool knew that. Part of them wanted to leave the Wanderlust and its star-crossed voyage behind. And stay here. Would the Milky Way feel more like home to Mike than that coral garden had felt? The toadstool had doubts.
The next garden, however, was Lys’s favorite stop of the day.
At first, Mike mistook this other garden for simply being a typical garden, albeit in zero gravity and filled with flowering plants from a different galaxy. Even that was fairly entertaining — the plants grew in erratic patterns, favoring vines over shapes that made more sense when restricted by gravity. But the toadstool should have been tipped off by the gauzy curtains that completely enclosed the garden that there was something more going on. Sure, the variegated plants and colorful flowers were part of the appeal, but the real point of this garden was all the species of insects flying about like tiny glittering gems.
Some of the species were familiar from the insect racing game on the gaming ship. But there were so many, many more varieties here. Iridescent wings, faceted eyes, segmented bodies, and skittery little legs were everywhere.
Lys settled in one place, the way that Mike had in the coral garden, and held very, very still. As time passed, the flittering, fluttering insects in the garden started to mistake her green flesh and stubby hands, seemingly, for some kind of strange cactus. More and more of them settled on her, and Lys’s lime green skin flushed the deepest emerald that Mike had seen it become. The caterpillar was very, very happy getting to observe so many tiny friends of species that — in some ways — seemed much more similar to her than the mammals she lived with, even if the mammals were closer to her in size.
When they finally dragged Lys away from the insect garden, she seemed as sad to leave it as Mike had been to leave the coral garden. The caterpillar’s skin dimmed back to a faded version of her usual lime green, and she told Mike, “You know, I’m going to talk to Carroway about whether some of those species of insects might fit into the ecology on Sojourner’s back and whether we could try to acquire some while we’re in this region of the galaxy. Would you like me to talk to her about possibly growing some of those coral reefs on Sojourner’s back too?”
Mike couldn’t imagine it making sense to grow anything vaguely like the coral garden on the young turtle’s back. For one thing, it would be many years before the young world turtle would be large enough to waste the valuable real estate on its back in such a frivolous way. And for another, with the gravity field on Sojourner’s back, it wouldn’t be possible to float in the middle of the reef constellations in the same way.
It simply wouldn’t be the same.
Besides, while Captain Carroway was likely to indulge Lys’s interests, the cat simply didn’t have the same fondness for Mike. If the caterpillar said insects should be introduced to the ecosystem on Sojourner’s back, Captain Carroway would listen. If the caterpillar said that Mike seemed to like some useless coral… Well, the toadstool could picture the Norwegian Forest cat’s reaction, and it would involve flattened ears and stricken whiskers.
“Thank you,” Mike said politely, their voice taking on the whispering quality of a breeze whistling through a forest at midnight. “But I don’t think so. It was nice to visit it though.”
Whatever had come over Mike in the coral garden felt mysterious — spiritual and otherworldly, somehow. And the toadstool didn’t want to face the frustration of chasing such an overwhelming feeling, only to find that they could — at best — capture only pale shadows of it in the future. Better to leave the one moment be, perfect and over.
The final cultural site that the four Wanderlust officers visited before returning to their ship, ending their day of mischief and fun, was a statue that everyone they asked told them was the ultimate symbol of Spindle Reef station and everything it stood for. They had to float their way through a long, winding path down one of the actual spindle branches of the station to get to it, and when they finally arrived, the group wondered if they’d taken a wrong turn.
“Is this it?” Melbourne asked, his voice still modulated poorly due to his current lack of hearing but clearly carrying a great deal of disappointment.
The statue was bronze and approximately the same size as any of them, maybe a little shorter, and it looked like it had been worn smooth, possibly by having been touched by too many talons, claws, leaves, and hands over the years. According to everyone on the station, visiting this statue was a very important pilgrimage.
“It’s… one of the arachnids,” Vossie observed, drily. “But with only four limbs.” The rabbit seemed profoundly unimpressed. Perhaps more limbs would have impressed him more?
“Like all of you,” Lys said.
“Like the reptiles and amphibians,” Mike corrected, because that was clearly the more relevant comparison.
This was a statue of a spider who had been disabled — either from birth or injury, Mike didn’t know which — in a way that had made it, if only superficially, more like the other apex species from its sector of space.
The statue itself may have been disappointing, but Mike found themself deeply moved by the story it must represent. Unfortunately, they’d run out of time to learn more. Their day of excitement on Spindle Reef was over, and it was time to return to the Wanderlust and the interminable, ever-continuing, one-way voyage home.
Mike felt a profound sense of loss mixed confusingly with a relieved contentment as the golden quantum sparkles of teleportation energy swept their body away from Spindle Reef and across the void back to the Wanderlust.
Were they going home? Were they already home? Or had they somehow just left home behind without ever quite having had the chance to fully experience it?
Everyone else knew their answers to those questions. Only Mike was unsure. Only the toadstool wrestled with simple concepts like home and personhood.
Continue on to Chapter 9…