Little Space [Act One Complete: The Skippers and the Burning Sky/Act Two Soon!]

[Pudding]

Hi everyone!

You probably know me as the one half of Sophie & Pudding, and if you do it means you've probably read some our work we've done together. You've also probably read some of Sophie's solo works, too, and if you haven't, you really ought to, she's great! And I'm not just saying that 'cuz she's my best friend, she writes some of the best fiction in this field.

Enough preample-ramble, though.

Today I'd like to start sharing with you one of my solo works, something I've been working on these past few weeks; a space opera sci-fi featuring little themes. This is going to be a slow build up and release, and all that I ask is that if you get bored early on, please consider checking back in when more is posted and see if it hooks you then. To say this isn't the usual affair to be found on DD or in this community in general would be a massive understatement >//<

Um...

So anyway, please like, comment, give thoughts or feedback, even if it's not that much to say, and otherwise enjoy the ride and I hope you all find something you like. I'm gonna do my best bestest to update this daily, hopefully not this late tho!

Special thanks to Sophie, Kimmy, Chloe, Selphie, Ana, Ruka, Kerry, Ollie, Trip, and all of my other supporters that have read along with this so far as I've written and given valuable insight and love and support, I couldn't write without you!! 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Chapter 1

 

There are things you bring with you, there are things you leave behind, there are things that chase you, and those that slip your mind.

-Lt. S. B. Danyka, Accounts of the Third Revolutionary War, Vol. II

***

 

I would always remember the smell of blackcurrants.

On the day the sky fell dark and rained fire from the clouds, the fields lit up and burned in solidarity to the end of the world. We - both the collective, and the personal - had never seen anything so dreadful, not during our fiercest atrocities we bandied upon one another at the end turn of the century, and not during the sixteen major revolutionary wars that followed. Conflicts so fierce and awful, so passionate and important, that they dissolved borders and governments alike, wars that burned away what had brought us upon ruin’s doorstep and left behind only the scarcest beauty left to rise from the ashes.

We were the children of global revolution. We wouldn’t make the same mistakes. We wouldn’t turn on one another, we wouldn’t squabble over land disputes, or taxation. For the first time, the planet earth saw eye to eye.

If only we’d known we should have been watching the sky, instead.

Irony would have had it, then, that if we were still at war we very likely would have seen them coming in our global state of paranoia. We may have stood a chance.

I would always remember the smell of blackcurrants.

It had been 2:18 Global Time when the sky darkened, and it had been 2:21g when the fields had burned, licking flames and the sickening scent of fruit boiling with never the chance to leave the branch. It had been 2:46g when I ran through the fire without the courage to steal a glance behind me, knowing to myself that anything left of my life had burned with the berries, caught in the brimstone that swept the surface and cleansed what was left behind.

At 3:01g and at ten years old, I became an orphan of the human race.

The ragged crimson edges to the thick dark ichor that had once been all there was in the world, land that had once been homes, lives, countries, futures, was oddly beautiful from above. Back then you might have been born in one town and lived there your entire life, existing only to further a bloodline, the very definition of a pointless futility, and yet in those days we clung to our ephemeral existences like they were the most important thing in the world.

The screen hissed a microsecond of staticky protest as I fumbled for the kill switch and the image of our scorched Earth disappeared like a long-forgotten ghost. 

Those fires would burn forever, but my tea was growing cold.

***

 

My feet swung three inches above the floor when I was sitting, even though Skippers were supposed to be appointed quarters and furniture sized proportionately, so when I stood up the cold steel of the floor caught me by surprise the way it always seemed to. I didn’t think many other people would have felt the chill of the metal; conduits beneath the floor kept the entire station at a Comfortable-as-Designated-by-Committee™ temperature. I felt it, though. I felt the cold of the steel, I felt the warmth of the conduits, I felt the warm pleasant buzz of RF interference from the endless bundles of wires that crisscrossed the station like some approximation of a nervous system. I felt us moving, too, despite the fact the inertial dampeners should have suppressed that sensation.

That wasn’t to say that anybody else felt it.

But we were moving.

“Have they found us?” I asked, hoping the answer would be no. One thing the architects had gotten right were the height of the comm panels on the wall - although the prefabricated nature of the station was obvious from the mismatched steel that filled in the hole where the screen should have been, to the overly shiny nature of the screens bezel where it was at eye-level to me. Not much was new around here.

“It’s only a routine maneuver, Cadence. Are you poking around in systems you shouldn’t be? You should have known it was routine.” Laurent replied teasingly. He couldn’t help the way he looked down on me, but his face wore the memories of his story in scars that crawled up one cheek giving him the almost comforting appearance of rich mahogany tree bark, and a glassy, contrastingly white eye that served only to fill the hole. He’d paid his price, like I’d paid mine, so I didn’t hold it against him.

“I can feel it, Laurent.”

“I’m telling you, Cadence, the dampeners are working fine. There is just no way you can feel the station moving, Skipper or not,” he assured me, exasperated. I grinned at him, and he caught himself, either from the sight of my angelic little smile or the fact that it highlighted certain facets about how I looked. Where he resembled chocolate taken halfway to the grater to garnish a birthday cake, I more closely compared to the birthday girl. Porcelain skin so pure it might have looked like a doll to a distance observer, eyes that were violet with inner machinations within their irises that moved the way that clouds did on the stillest of days.

Side effects of the fact I was inherently his commanding officer.

“You forget yourself, Special Technician Laurent Larson.”

“Oh no no, Cadence, don’t even pretend you like that. Are you dressed?” He could only have seen my head and shoulders, making the question one of validity and not perversion.

“Should I be?” I shrugged. “We don’t have any Runs today, I double checked the roster, I was going to visit the pool.”

“The pool? Well that’s just perfect, Cadence. You’re vetting a new recruit for the Skippers today - you can take them along with you.” I groaned, fingertips running down my cheeks and pulling down the bottom of my eye lids like an overly dramatic child as I breathed out in annoyance, a gesture that only made my honey strawberry hair decide to rebel from its station in much the way I wanted to. I huffed and blew strands of hair back out of my eyes, muttering to myself first, and then to the man on my screen.

“Can’t someone else do it? Like Caesen? Or Kisnus? They both love interviewing, and they don’t do anything on their down days except for Skipper things. I want to go to the pool, Laurent. I want to feel the water on my skin,” I cut him off with a finger.

“Don’t even start with me, Mister.”

His barky cheek folded in on itself as he smiled, and his laugh made me feel like I’d just drank a long glass of warm hot chocolate instead of the blackcurrant tea that now pooled in small cold puddles in the bottom of my glass.

“I’m afraid this one’s just for you, Cadence. Special request.” Special request? From who?

“There’s something you’re not telling me, I can see it in your eyes, Special Technician.” I called him by rank the same way that parents call wayward children by middle name. I wasn’t sure it had the desired effect coming from a girl who needed a stepping stool to brush her teeth.

“It’s classified, Skipper Cadence Cassandra.” Wow, that actually didn’t feel so good thrown back at me. “An order straight from the top of Skipper Command.” I was sure he could see the defiance of my face falling to reluctant acceptance, the dreams of my downtime day at the pool being pulled down the drain hole as though the pool itself was emptying and filling in with standardized questions and personality probing lines of conversation. I knew six languages, and there weren’t words in any of them… wait, maybe German… mm, no. No, there weren’t even words in that dead tongue to represent how crestfallen I felt.

So, I just pouted.

“Whateveerrrrr,” I sighed dramatically. “7:30g?”

“6:30g, actually,” he responded, pointedly not amused.

“Argh!! Really?! Laurent!” I cried. “That’s in like half an hour, are you for real right now?” “Have fun, Skipper.”

The screen flickered from color to greyscale to one central line and then nothing. A gesture I vastly wished I could replicate.

***

 

I’d been a Skipper for twenty-five years, with some of my uniforms old enough to prove it, and although I could never wear the older models on an actual Run because they wouldn’t be up to code in today's safety charter, they made nice keepsakes all the same. In the old wars, the ones before we learned to know better, pilots would decorate their aircraft with tallies of death that they’d inflicted upon their enemies.

Conversely, I kept my old uniforms as a much more somber reminder of how many deaths I’d cheated.

The third-generation style was so cute, with the solid boning around the hips, as though deliberately weaving a shape into the fabric was enough to preserve the dignity of the Skipper when the entire populace knew what we were trying to hide. I pushed it aside to seek something newer. It would still fit - I’d not grown since becoming a Skipper and I’d never grow again - but it wouldn’t have been professional.

Who would ask for me by name, anyway? I simply wasn’t that special.

I got into my underwear, then pulled the lilac colored uniform up over my body, snapping the buckles together in place between my legs and wriggling to make sure the neural interfaces running all throughout the fabric had good clear connectivity with my skin. I didn’t know why I bothered to wear clothing - the air felt the same to me once I was dressed, I always felt naked. I guess that’s why I liked being barefoot on the station.

And how else would people see that my toenails matched my fingers?

I smirked to nobody but myself as I stepped onto the stool to brush my hair in the mirror, and made some final adjustments to my uniform, before I left my quarters for the foul air that the masses were forced to breathe. In fairness, only a Skipper could have told the difference, which I always figured was why they didn’t invest the additional energy into further purifying the air for the rest of the station - if they couldn’t tell the difference, and it was considered safe, then why waste the energy?

It was a pragmatic approach, if not a particularly nice one.

[kerry]

Pudding, you know how much I like this story; I'm so happy to see it posted. And one of the things I admire most about it is the fact that it is not like anything else here: you are a complete original. Cadence is a very interesting character even in this first section.

15 minutes ago, Pudding said:

I smirked to nobody but myself as I stepped onto the stool to brush my hair in the mirror

This sounds so much like something I would do.

 

16 minutes ago, Pudding said:

The third-generation style was so cute, with the solid boning around the hips, as though deliberately weaving a shape into the fabric was enough to preserve the dignity of the Skipper when the entire populace knew what we were trying to hide. I pushed it aside to seek something newer. It would still fit - I’d not grown since becoming a Skipper and I’d never grow again - but it wouldn’t have been professional.

I love how you plant information here for us to find without making it too obvious. 

 

18 minutes ago, Pudding said:

The ragged crimson edges to the thick dark ichor that had once been all there was in the world, land that had once been homes, lives, countries, futures, was oddly beautiful from above. Back then you might have been born in one town and lived there your entire life, existing only to further a bloodline, the very definition of a pointless futility, and yet in those days we clung to our ephemeral existences like they were the most important thing in the world.

The screen hissed a microsecond of staticky protest as I fumbled for the kill switch and the image of our scorched Earth disappeared like a long-forgotten ghost. 

Wow. Just wow. Great writing here. ? I love the imagery and the sense of "pointless futility" you imbue these lines with.

[Sophie ♥]

PUDDING WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!   If you start posting your solo stories everyone is going to realize that you're the true creative mastermind in our writing duo!!  

Honestly, I've only read three chapters of this so far and let me say.  If the first chapter doesn't grip you, PLEASE KEEP READING.  Sci-fi isn't really my thing, but it only gets better from here.  

[RukaP]

So excited to see this shared! This story is so much fun to read.

[bbykimmy]

I'm so so so glad you're sharing this story.

4 hours ago, Pudding said:

It had been 2:18 Global Time when the sky darkened, and it had been 2:21g when the fields had burned, licking flames and the sickening scent of fruit boiling with never the chance to leave the branch. It had been 2:46g when I ran through the fire without the courage to steal a glance behind me, knowing to myself that anything left of my life had burned with the berries, caught in the brimstone that swept the surface and cleansed what was left behind.

The visual of the fruit bursting on the vine was visceral.  I LOVE the entire intro to this story, it evokes this very somber tone right from the get go... and then you meet cute, serious little Cadence.

4 hours ago, Pudding said:

Those fires would burn forever, but my tea was growing cold.

This is my favorite line in the whole chapter.

It's so stark.  The juxtaposition of the horrors of the fires of Earth burning eternally against the tea.  It illustrates just how matter-of-fact Cadence is despite that severe nature of reality.  This one line says SO MUCH about the world you're building.

I love it.

[Pudding]

@kerry Thank you so much for your encouragement and support on this, and the stellar editing advice and feedback. I'm super thrilled that you're enjoying it so much, and I look forward to your thoughts going forward, too, little pretty one~

@Sophie ♥ I build worlds, darling, but you capture hearts. I'm weaker for this being a solo project, but stronger for challenging myself  I know it's not your usual jam, but I hope hope hope you do read along and find something that hooks you; be it a character or a plot point or a piece of technology you love. SciFi is definitely not easy for first time readers, but I have so much faith and hope and trust in you, plus it is a little story, so fingers crossed for you to fall in love!

@RukaP Did you know there's another Ruka and I almost tagged them? ;__;

@bbykimmy Thank you for the encouragement, thank you for pushing me, thank you for always being so forthcoming and honest with your thoughts ~ even if they do involve me rewriting a bit. And also that quote, the tea one? I think everyone has commented their love for that one o_o I didn't even realize it was such a good line until others started to say so - first Sophie, then Chloe, then you, and everyone. I'm still pretty nervous about sharing this, but you go a long way to giving me confidence.

Gonna post chapter II shortly <3 

[Pudding]

Chapter 2

 

How far is too far? How far would you go to save a world you’ve already lost? What sins would you commit? Would you give up your lives? Would you sacrifice your children? Would you send away your future in the hopes of saving it? At what point does the end justify the means?

-Skipper Noble Killa Mittone, On Combat, Tactics, and the Burning Sky, pg 17.

***

 

The steel halls that defined us weren’t warm; they didn’t nurture; they weren’t home. Home was big open spaces. Home was fresh smells and bright skies and crisp winds.

I grew up amongst berries and wheat, I’d make imaginary paths through the fields as the afternoons drew on, grinning maniacally and proudly while mapping out every single twist and turn I wrote in, feeling so exceedingly clever when I found my way back home. For all the clinical utilitarianism of the world as it was now, at least that was one skill I could still use.

I padded down three flights of stairs to the recreation deck, and pushed out the heavy bulkhead door with my shoulder because my hands certainly couldn’t have managed it. There were joys beyond this bulkhead that drew such a smile to my youthful face.

And I loved the smell of bromine.

Rationally, I knew that I shouldn’t have, it was just a chemical in the water to keep it pure and associations like that were foolish at best and childish at worst. Foolish as it may have been though, the pool was one of my favorite parts of the station; I loved every single thing about it; I loved the water on my skin; I loved the heat exchanges above that felt as close as we ever got to sunlight; I loved that even with several hundred people here at any one time, it never felt crowded owing to the cavernous size of the space.

There wasn’t all that much left of humanity, but when the pool filled up, it was easy to forget that.

I glanced over the tables for anybody obviously waiting for a Skipper to appraise them, but my search came up empty. What would that even look like, anyway? What did a Skipper candidate look like? I knew how they acted - I saw no overly eager teenagers looking to save the world, for example. There were no stodgily pragmatic students sneaking their way into the vetting process just to criticize the work we did - and we did have to deal with those sorts of protests, disgustingly. But I had no idea what someone like this was supposed to look like. I should have asked Laurent.

But I guess I’d get my swim, after all.

For a time.

***

 

“Cadence?” I didn’t recognize the voice, and I only even heard it in the first place from the far end of the lap pool because I was a Skipper. My violet eyes scanned the artificial horizon, the far end of the gigantic pool hazed from the fumes of the chemicals rising off the warmed surface. Tattered plastic deck chairs and the relaxed and weary masses peppered the view and for a moment I couldn’t pinpoint the source of my name. Then I saw her. A figure that bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. She wasn’t dressed to swim; she was wearing a figure-hugging black dress that told me two things very certainly.

i.)         She wanted to impress someone

ii.)        She had no idea what job she was applying for if she came dressed that way.

I disappeared beneath the surface of the water and emerged only once I was at the edge of the swirling liquid closest to where she was standing. Up close, she was definitely attractive; she had a piercing through her lip and one through her eyebrow - there was nobody on this station that could have installed those, but that didn’t mean self-expression didn’t exist - and her cherry red hair fell down one side of her face, circling round to a semi-circular pixie cut, with the opposite side of her head completely shaved. Maybe she’d had an implant recently, but I didn’t see the scar. Maybe she was just very cute.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she professed awkwardly, her voice in a strange and warbly pitch, like maybe I intimidated her. I pulled myself up out of the water as she talked, drips of communal water running down from my hair to my chest to my very swollen hip area and down my legs, gathering in a puddle at my feet.

“Towel please.” I looked up at her with an expression I wanted to be serious and professional, but given the two-and-a-half-foot difference in our stature, I probably sounded less ‘adult warrior of the human race’ and more ‘please help, Mom.’ She looked like she’d been dazzled for a moment but caught herself impressively quick. Clearly, she’d never seen a Skipper in person before.

I toweled off and we sat together. She introduced herself as Lilt, and we talked about the pool, because I was the last person on this station to be qualified to interview new recruits. We were so lucky to have the space, honestly; most stations wouldn’t have been so accommodating - what we called the pool really only had a function for recreation as secondary.

“Well the main reactors have three banks of coolant,” I explained, happy to focus on it rather than me, “one in active use, one bank being purified, and the third bank waiting to be moved into place on weekly rotation - and that’s this, that’s our pool.” I gestured, as if she hadn’t grown up on this station in the first place. She had to be forty-five, which was certainly not the age range of our recruiting stock.

Not that it mattered for a Skipper.

“I guess we make the best of it,” I mused. “The pool? Or the situation, I guess. We just seem to be entirely unwilling to have our spark go out.” Her head cocked to one side, falls of scarlet hair tipping accordingly like water running over a smooth stone.

“I know you, Cadence,” she said, sure but cautious.

“Well, I’d think so,” I shrugged. “The Skipper rosters are made public, and-“

 “No-no,” she cut me off and shook her head, waggling a finger from one side to the other. “I asked for you by name when I saw you on the roster. I thought it had to be a coincidence at first because it doesn’t seem possible. But I know you!”

My eyes narrowed and the little clouds in the violet focused in her face. She knew me, but I didn’t know her - I’d have remembered someone named Lilt. And she was forty-five and I was clearly not.

“Your Mom and Dad’s names were Billie and Jane. Your Dad was Jane, and your Mom was Billie, and I used to think that was the most incredible thing. You sat three rows in front of me on prac days, and on remote days, you wouldn’t be able to have your picture anywhere but the bottom left quadrant, one up from the last row.”

What’s that feeling where your entire body is regulated and it’s literally impossible for you to sweat, but you feel the prickling pinch of perspiration anyway? Oh. Cold sweat. Right. I mean, she could have known that information from anywhere; there were detailed files on all of us because the public had to trust in who we were. But that was so specific.

“Who are you, Lilt? I don’t know anybody by that name; I didn’t know anybody by that name even when I was in school.”

“How’s that even possible?” Lilt mused under her breath, like she hadn’t heard a word I said. “How is it possible that you’re here? You died, Cadence. You burned when the sky fell. Your whole family did. And you haven’t aged a day either, if anything you look younger. How is that possible?”

Oh boy.
Oh boy indeed.
“There’s a lot you don’t know, Lilt, and this can’t be the place to talk about it. Come with me.” It wasn’t a request.

I stood up from my chair and set the towel down on the table, stretching my arms up above me to work out the cramps and kinks from swimming. Little movements happened in the exposed joints of my elbows, channels and sockets that were disconcertingly visible to the naked eye, like those on a child’s doll. Her eyes tracked everything I did. Curious, maybe? Or analytical. Working things out?

The right thing to do would be to take her to Skipper Command and see her educated on the dangers of espionage… even the unwilling type. Loose lips and all.

What I did was take her to my room. Who the heck was this woman?

[YourFNF]

This is some really cool imagery and world building. I'm curious to know just what are the skippers? Are they cyborgs? why are they so important?

[little Georg]

I'm sooo happy that you decided to share this! I like it a lot so far and I'm totally sure there is fan base for Sci-Fi diaper content. 

This is in fact a nice written story with interesting characters and an amount of detail I really appreciate! 

Pudding, please continue this!!

[kerry]

8 hours ago, Pudding said:

How far is too far? How far would you go to save a world you’ve already lost? What sins would you commit? Would you give up your lives? Would you sacrifice your children? Would you send away your future in the hopes of saving it? At what point does the end justify the means?

-Skipper Noble Killa Mittone, On Combat, Tactics, and the Burning Sky, pg 17.

Love this. All of these invented epigraphs set up the chapters beautifully.

8 hours ago, Pudding said:

I grew up amongst berries and wheat, I’d make imaginary paths through the fields as the afternoons drew on, grinning maniacally and proudly while mapping out every single twist and turn I wrote in, feeling so exceedingly clever when I found my way back home

Nice character touch. It speaks so clearly to childhood memories.

8 hours ago, Pudding said:

There wasn’t all that much left of humanity, but when the pool filled up, it was easy to forget that.

So matter-of-fact and so stark! This one line helps build a world full (station full) of survivors trying to recapture some semblance of normal

8 hours ago, Pudding said:

“Well the main reactors have three banks of coolant,” I explained, happy to focus on it rather than me, “one in active use, one bank being purified, and the third bank waiting to be moved into place on weekly rotation - and that’s this, that’s our pool.” 

Ouch! Again, speaks volumes about this world.

8 hours ago, Pudding said:

Your Mom and Dad’s names were Billie and Jane.

Cue Michael Jackson song...

8 hours ago, Pudding said:

You died, Cadence. You burned when the sky fell. Your whole family did. And you haven’t aged a day either, if anything you look younger. How is that possible?...Little movements happened in the exposed joints of my elbows, channels and sockets that were disconcertingly visible to the naked eye, like those on a child’s doll. Her eyes tracked everything I did.

AHA! Much more specific info about Cadence than we had before.

Anyone disregarding this due to SF element, think again. It is really good and worth the read!

 

[LilLadyLexi]

I second what people are saying. Me and My Mummy have both read this. And Sci-Fi isn't normally my thing. But by God I enjoy this. ?

[Pudding]

@little Georg It's because of feedback like yours that I'm confident enough to post it!

@kerry your endorsements and feedback are one of the things I look forward to most when I post a new chapter; you have an appreciation for my style that makes me proud to write it! Cadence is a really difficult character to write, so I hope I continue to live up to your expectations and hopes going forward.

@AngelicObstacle I can't wait for you to start reading Act II when I get around to it!

Going to post Chapter 3 a little later this morning!

[Pudding]

Chapter 3

 

Never expect more from your crown, your parliament, your state, or your God, than you would expect from a friend. Contrary to idealization, the truth can be as much a cage as it is a freedom.

-G. L. Nwendon, In Protest of the Criminalization of State Secrecy, pg 188.

***

 

“These are your quarters?” Her tone rang dry with disappointment, as though her mind’s eye had drawn a much more impressive picture. Lilt ran her fingertips over the seams in the wall where panel met patchwork cut-out, her eyes seeking out the details of my living space… that curious gaze falling over my desk with the teacup and pot from the not-so-distant past, then my kitchenette with the top cupboards empty due to my inability to reach and use them, and finally through the open door to my bed, spartan, utilitarian, bars on three sides with the forth side lowered to touch the floor.

“Not what you’re expecting?” I asked cynically. What was Lilt expecting? She had to know that I was supposed to bring her into Skipper Command, that she was a literal walking security breach, and that this was a favor, a kindness, a stay of execution as it were.

“I’m just like everyone else on the station, Lilt, why would I have any special treatment? We’ve all given up things we’d prefer not to have. It wouldn’t be fair for me to have anything else.”

“Because!” she started, her voice raising in excitement, in passion. She wasn’t a groupie, was she? Oh, heavens me. “Because you’re a Skipper, because you swore your life to protect every single person on this station, Cadence. You should be living in luxury!”

I would have been - I used to, too - but there were sensory complications with certain smells, sensations, touches. This was the best way to handle things, because the very things about me that made me a hero were the same things that made me frail and fragile.  We were getting off topic, though; we were drifting, and Laurent was going to wonder where the frick I was if I didn’t draw this shipwreck into port.

“Lilt. You said you knew who I was?” I guided the conversation back to more productive topics. “I need you to think very carefully about that, about the information you had, the things that you told me. The Skipper program has a lot of public facing facets, but our ability to operate safely rests in our ability to control the flow of information, too.”

“Was I wrong?” She was smirking like she’d figured out a puzzle, like she was ready to spin the wheel one more time before solving, even though her hubris may have lost her everything.

I watched her, but she was watching me, she was staring at me, gazing into my clouded purple eyes, eyes that caught every detail of her motions in return. The way she looked at me, from too-young face to too-small body to disconcertingly visible joints in my elbows and knees and the thick area around my waist where my uniform pulled in through the center of my thighs.

“You weren’t wrong,” I confirmed. Why was she looking at me like that, “and knowing what you know could get you in a lot of trouble, Lilt. I can try and use the fact you were honest and passed on your sources to get you a lenient sentencing, but you need to think very quickly about th-“

“I asked you to the dance. The BerryWalk Barndance. Remember? You were nine, the dance was just before your birthday.” Beneath her asymmetrical tuft of crimson hair, she smiled, her eyes lit up, she watched me with the same level of attention I’d been putting into her. Lilt analyzed me like a good Skipper should, watching the confusion on my face, watching cogwheels turn. It was a pity she was never going to be a Skipper.

“Pulse Wesley Jackson asked me to the BerryWalk…” She had some of the details wrong, and I didn’t blame her - Pulse was an androgynous boy with an androgynous name. Whatever intel she’d been working from could have easily gotten that wrong.

“Hi, I’m Lilt Jackson.” Lilt? Pulse didn’t have any siblings, his parents lived in the center of tainted soil, and… Oh.

“Wow.” Wow? “You look… different.”

“And you look exactly the same. Well. More-or-less. How the shit is that even possible?”

I had to focus on what she said, I had to focus on her without staring, without making it entirely obvious that I hadn’t aged a day and she’d still been the one to blow my mind. Life as a Skipper in the remnant economy didn’t exactly leave a lot of time for social graces, decorum, or political correctness, and I was afraid I was going to say something offensive.

“I’m a Skipper, Lilt.” I sat on the edge of my bed before locking my gaze right into the center of hers, our conversation and her curiosity having led us from living room to bedroom.

“I think you’re in the wrong place. I think you don’t understand this. I think you made a mistake coming here, and I don’t think you realize what it means to be a Skipper. What you leave behind, what you give up.”

“You give up your social life, Cadence,” she said gravely, somberly. “You give up your social life, your love life, your future, your freedom, your right to choose anything at all. You become public domain, property of the station, a beacon of hope at the cost of everything you are, even your humanity! You give up your humanity to save everyone else’s right to preserve it.”

“You should go, Lilt. I’m going to tell Skipper Command that you no-showed. It was nice seeing you…” Was it? I didn’t even know this girl - I just knew a person she once was in another life. I knew a memory and that was all she knew of me. Time changed everything. War changed it more. And annihilation flipped the whole Etch-a-Sketch over and back again.

“I want to be a Skipper.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“I know you think you do,” I sighed “but you don’t, alright? You don’t. And you’re too old anyway.”

“Oh, I am?” she replied cynically.

“You are.”

“Huh,” she smiled - it was just a little bit lopsided, a little bit off-kilter, unconventional and uniquely charming. I felt like I could see it even when she turned away from me and leaned over to take away at the communication panel. I both loved and hated that darn smile and I’d only seen it once, I hated that it reminded me of that dumb country youth that asked me to the stupid barn dance. Horns and trumpets and celebratory fireworks broke me out of the wistful memory, and a familiar voice announcing something I’d grown quite sick of hearing brought me fully back to reality.

“…celebrating her twenty-fifth year of protecting your humanity, join Skipper Cadence Cassandra Collins and her Skipper Colleagues at 11g this Friday!”

What did she want me to say? Was I supposed to be impressed?

“Oh no, you played a commercial vid that everybody on the fricking station has heard sixteen times a day since last shift change. Why are you still here, Lilt?” I didn’t mean to be catty, but I didn’t have time in the present for phantoms of the past, however cute those ghosts might have glowed up to be.

“Twenty-fifth year of service, right?”

“So?” I asked, irritated. She wasn’t getting to the point. This whole meeting was a mistake.

“That means you were twenty when you became a Skipper. Funny how there is literally nothing in Centra about that.”

“So?” I repeated flatly.

“So why did Skipper Command order you to interview me if I’m too old?” Her smile said check and her tone said mate. Centra said we were all children and left it at that, without the details, without the truth. The idea was romantic, the idea was sacrificial in the way that inspired the resistant soul of humanity, the notion burned a fire in us all.

Selling our future to save it.

It was a nice thought, but…

“Skipper Anjel was thirty-six,” she insisted, “Skipper Caesen was thirty-nine!”

“And you’re forty-five and you don’t even know what this means, you idiot! It’s obvious we’re not kids, it’s obvious we’re processed into being the perfect set of variables, alright, everyone knows it, nobody talks about it, because if you stopped to fricking think about it, you’d never be able to live with your damn selves!”

My right arm fell to the floor and bounced in front of my feet when I stood up to tell her off. In the echo of the freakish moment the both of us stood there, saying nothing. The split was clean, the ball and socket detached, there wasn’t blood, there wasn’t an injury - I was designed this way.

“What the fuck are you, Cadence?” Her voice was shock and condemnation.

“I’m a Skipper,” I replied coldly. “You can leave now.”

“But…”

“NOW!”

I didn’t mean to yell. I didn’t want to scare her. I didn’t want her to see me this way, either, even if it was my own fault for not keeping up on my maintenance. There was a lot that the public was allowed to know about us. We were child-like. Our bodies were altered. We saved their lives, and we paid a price in flesh and freedom to do that. But for everything they knew, there was so much they could never be allowed to find out.

And as for Lilt, I just didn’t know what else to say to her - she had a life ahead of her, she’d made someone of herself, she’d obviously found what made her happy. Why would she want to be a Skipper?

When she left, I collapsed on the floor and picked up my arm, waving the doll-like hand in front of my face with a deep sigh.

You really screwed up this time, Cadence.

[Wannatripbaby]

I know it was supposed to be a serious scene, but I totally laughed when Cadence's arm fell off. 

[YourFNF]

Wow that was I don't even, I'm so curious to know the dark secret.

[Sophie ♥]

4 hours ago, Wannatripbaby said:

I know it was supposed to be a serious scene, but I totally laughed when Cadence's arm fell off. 

I definitely didn't! O_O I thought it was kinda sad..

[Pudding]

@Wannatripbaby && @Sophie ♥ yes the intent is for it to be sad and tragic!

[LilLadyLexi]

4 hours ago, Wannatripbaby said:

I know it was supposed to be a serious scene, but I totally laughed when Cadence's arm fell off. 

You're not the only one, Believe me.

[kerry]

16 hours ago, Pudding said:

I would have been - I used to, too - but there were sensory complications with certain smells, sensations, touches. This was the best way to handle things, because the very things about me that made me a hero were the same things that made me frail and fragile.

Once more sneaking valuable info in right under our noses.

16 hours ago, Pudding said:

“You give up your social life, Cadence,” she said gravely, somberly. “You give up your social life, your love life, your future, your freedom, your right to choose anything at all. You become public domain, property of the station, a beacon of hope at the cost of everything you are, even your humanity! You give up your humanity to save everyone else’s right to preserve it.”

Sounds like Captain America or something. These Skippers are pretty cool!

16 hours ago, Pudding said:

Time changed everything. War changed it more. And annihilation flipped the whole Etch-a-Sketch over and back again.

This image, like the Wheel of Fortune one, suggests some long-lasting cultural memories have indeed survived.

16 hours ago, Pudding said:

I didn’t mean to be catty, but I didn’t have time in the present for phantoms of the past, however cute those ghosts might have glowed up to be.

"glowed up"?

16 hours ago, Pudding said:

Centra said we were all children and left it at that, without the details, without the truth. The idea was romantic, the idea was sacrificial in the way that inspired the resistant soul of humanity, the notion burned a fire in us all

Here we are again, getting a few more tidbits. They were not children, so what is going on?

16 hours ago, Pudding said:

t’s obvious we’re not kids, it’s obvious we’re processed into being the perfect set of variables, alright, everyone knows it, nobody talks about it, because if you stopped to fricking think about it, you’d never be able to live with your damn selves!”

My right arm fell to the floor and bounced in front of my feet when I stood up to tell her off.

Well...that happened. ?

I don't think it was funny at all. I think it was a shocking revelation of just how much these Skippers had sacrificed. You had mentioned the exposed joints several times, but I didn't fully comprehend until now; it's terribly sad what they have had to go through to save humanity.

[Pudding]

12 hours ago, kerry said:

I don't think it was funny at all. I think it was a shocking revelation of just how much these Skippers had sacrificed. You had mentioned the exposed joints several times, but I didn't fully comprehend until now; it's terribly sad what they have had to go through to save humanity.

See!! SEE!! Kerry gets it, yall who laughed are awful D:

[Pudding]

Chapter 4

 

In the early days, it didn’t matter what happened tomorrow because we had no tomorrow, so when our heroes began to die there was no-one to take the blame - it was on every single one of us.

-Dr. Amelia Hansen, Speak No Evil: A Compendium of Freed Information.

***

 

Laurent had been doing his best to contact me when he hadn’t heard back in a reasonable length of time, inciting chirping beeps that harmonized from the wall panel and the monitor on my desk, and making abundantly clear his intent. But what was I supposed to say to him? What did I even have to report?

Oh, Lilt turned out to be a ghost from my past who by the way now thinks I’m a freakish subhuman monster as a result of my own failure to keep up on my basic maintenance.

I’m sure he would have taken that about as well as the station would have taken a volley right now. When I did get to my feet and had a chance to think about it, I realized that the station wasn’t moving anymore. Had I been so absorbed into all this that I didn’t notice it stop? Or had it just stopped? I felt distracted, fuzzy-headed, and the idea of not being able to recall something so simple was one that bothered me the way that bug bites used to back home.

Feeling the station move, or not move, that was just a part of being a Skipper. Just in the same way that I felt the way the air flowing in from the vent in the top left of my bedroom, the way my skin tingled as it passed through the space, diffused in my living room, and exited out the vent in my bathroom on the opposite side of the quarters.

Skippers could feel some things that other people simply couldn’t, but the feeling of Lilt’s disgust was something entirely more universal.

***

 

“You should have checked in four days ago to have this realigned, Skipper.” The pencil pusher scolded me in the receiving lobby, not even giving me the dignity of looking up at my face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” I did, I’d been notified a half a dozen times by Centra, I’d just been… busy.

“We notified you four times in the past week,” he turned over one form to another, stamped the first, and looked at his next project as though I wasn’t even there. “And yet when something goes wrong, now you feel fit to grace us with your presence, Skipper?”

“Right...” I couldn’t look up at him, now, even though he still hadn’t looked away from his papers.

When I was a child, when I was very young and the sky had been blue and we’d been full of optimism, daydreaming about what we’d do the day after tomorrow and the year after next, my Mom had talked to me about her faith; she told me it was important to her, but it had been six years since she’d gone back to her church. When I’d questioned why, her explanation had been simple: she was ashamed. Once she’d missed a single Sunday, she was anxious the following week and so she missed another, and another, until she got in her own head and talked herself out of going back for fear of having to explain her continued absence.

She called the feeling Church Shame in the years that followed, and I really did believe it was the only factor in why I’d been avoiding my maintenance. Believing something doesn’t make it true, though, because If it did, we’d all just believe that humanity would make it, and we’d end this awful war.

I was glad my Mom never had to see the days beyond the fire.

“I was worried about being needed for a Run, I’m always on call an-”
“There are other Skippers.”
He cut me off. I pouted.

I couldn’t remember his name, and he still refused to look up from the paperwork he was filling out in triplicate. Even upside down and from across the desk, I could clearly make out what he was writing, though: ‘Negligence.’ ‘Non-compliance.’ The last thing I needed was another administrative reprimand, so I really needed to turn this one around - the situation with Lilt had been bad enough.

“I know, I know, it’s just…” I started, dropping my tone from defiant into cute.

“It’s just that you didn’t take your responsibilities as a Skipper seriously.” Came his retort, with a hint of something on the side. Bitterness, maybe? What right did he have to be bitter with me? This had nothing to do with him!

“I…listen…” Stay chipper, Skipper.

“Listen? Madam, what if your joint had become damaged on account of the unscheduled delinking? You wouldn’t have been able to dock with your Faering, for a start, and if you’d been needed to go on a Run during a Crisis Drop, people may have died and it would have been your fault. Or what if this unscheduled delinking had happened in a public setting? Have you considered the consequences? Skipper, focus on a better future, and less on defending the poor choices of your past.”

Wow. Ouch. I didn’t need the lecture, certainly not after the day that had unfolded already, but the way he talked to me was severe and his words were well selected, his points valid. It made me feel so much smaller than even my diminutive forty-five inches from tip to toe. His words made me feel… guilty, like I’d done something inherently wrong. Fine, I got it, I mumbled under my breath and he looked up from his papers.

“Excuse me, Skipper? Was there something you wanted to say?” He queried, smugly.

“No Sir. I’m just here to get my maintenance.” I muttered.

“Then take a seat, and the technician will be with you as soon as their schedule allows. Until then, you’re decommissioned from duty.”

My cheeks puffed out like an emergency vest expanding, and I crossed one arm over my chest with the other clutched in hand with a little huff, somewhat annoyedly, somewhat to hide my own contrition. Why even make that distinction? Why even try to make the point? I was already here, so why try to shame me more?

“You don’t have to be a jerk, I save your life y’know?”

“Not today, you don’t. Please take a seat, Skipper.”

I sat, fuming and ruminating on all the ways I wanted to inflict minor annoyance and inconvenience on this man - I would put exactly one pebble in every one of his left shoes! I would gently crease his note paper! I would… I would swap out his blue pens for black ones, and swap his toilet paper roll from back facing to front facing, and I’d put his newer teabags in front of his older ones so in two weeks all his tea would be minorly stale and he wouldn’t even know why. I was that cross.

***

 

“Cadence? Come on back.”

I recognized that chipper voice! It was a melody that could only belong to the owner of the most marvelous set of blonde curls ever to frame a face. And let me be clear here, because I say the term framed as the world’s most intense understatement - at least 50% of Perry Maple was blonde tresses and pouty smiles. She’d always been my favorite technician.

“Perry!” My fuming gave way to a smile and it showed in my voice. Finally, something was going my way today. All my thoughts and notions of history’s pettiest and most minor retribution followed the air out the vent by my feet when I followed the technician into her workshop.

“I was hoping I’d get to see you today, that’s why I waited, see? I waited to see you.” I’d have twirled my hair cutely and playfully, if I weren’t also holding my own hand.

“You’re cute, Cadie, but there’s no fooling me today, little duck.” Oh but when she called me that - and only she ever did - I fell still and quiet every single time. “Let’s have a look here. What were you doing when the delinkage happened?”

What was I doing? I sighed inwardly. If I could tell anybody about my encounter with Lilt today, it was Periwinkle Maple.

“Well, um… friend of mine turned up at the pool today, and she wants to be a Skipper. I was trying to convince her that she shouldn’t be, so I guess I got distracted and didn’t notice the connection warning.” Hadn’t I noticed it? I couldn’t remember, and that should have worried me a lot more than it did.

Had I been so rapt in Lilt’s attention that I blanked out that badly?

“So why shouldn’t she?” Perry asked, smiling, as she went through her tools with all the delicacy of a surgeon - an apt comparison.

“Why shouldn’t she what?”

“Be a Skipper, Cadie. What’s so bad if she wants to help out?” There weren’t that many non-Skippers on the station that I wouldn’t have gotten cross with for asking that question, but Perry lucked out in being a part of that demographic.

“Because she has a life. Because she has people she loves, she has people who look up to her, friends and family, a life and dreams.” I didn’t expect to be getting so worked up over this.

“Skippers can have all of those things, though.” Her words were angelic, and her motions were gentle. She eased a yellow and a red probe into the open joint at my elbow and mused over the diagnostic results while we talked. “Can’t they?”

“It just means a lot of danger, Perry…” My voice caught and trailed like a thread from a cute sweater caught on an errant doorframe. Was that my only reason? Was there really nothing deeper?

“You’ve been doing it a long time,” She retorted, playfully.

“That’s why it’s okay for me! And… and Perry, I have nothing to lose.”

“Don’t you?” She was so precious, she was so tender, I looked like a living doll and she was probably more beautiful still. The Skipper program talked about mankind’s Rally Round Response in depth, a core tenant of our success, and while everybody on this station felt that pertaining to me, I think I felt it for Perry. She pressed something inside my arm and initiated the reaffirmation sequence that immediately made my skin light up like a Christmas tree. It was like every single nerve in every single part of my body sparkled and tingled, firing like a billion supernovas, recalibrating in preparation to accept the appendage back into place.

“I’ve done this all my life. I’ve been… this… for my whole life.” I countered, finally, the moment of pending reconnection bringing my thoughts back into focus.

“And you don’t think she’s thought about it? Here, hold still, okay?” Her touch was all-but-maternal as she lined up the arm and eased it back into place, guiding the ball and socket together until the two formed a single joint once again. She used her slender fingers to press directly into the seams and guide the mechanism from closed to open and back to closed.

There were parts of me that were artificial, but the way Perry touched me made me feel so darn real.

“She was horrified when she saw this happen, when she saw my arm come off… I can’t imagine what she must think of me, now. Or if she has any idea what happens when we go out on a Run in a Faering. She’s just a dreamer, Perry,” I babbled to her, “she doesn’t know what she wants, and she’s in over her head and it was better that she saw this happen because obviously she hadn’t thought it through at all!”

“And you had so much time to think it through, didn’t you, Cadie?” There was that same Perry smile, that gotcha smile! She was as infuriating as she was cute, sometimes.

“That’s not even halfway the same!”

“Isn’t it?” Gosh I hated when she did that, I hated that she was so smug and beautiful, I hated that she used this upward inflection that made her sound like she was just so certain, I hated that at times it sounded like she was just playing off her darling and divine charm, and more than anything else, I hated that she was right.

Click.

“There we go. Good as Newborn.” Oh, I bet she thought she was so cute with jokes like that, but the fact was that she knew what I needed to hear. Come to think of it, Perry always seemed to know the right things to say.

“Hey Perry, how come you’re working here in maintenance and not on the Skipper Human Health team?” Human Health was how they described the collective that was supposed to keep us mentally sound - like the term mental health was just too dirty to apply to people as pure as we were, or like this was just another in a long list of ways we were othered.

“Because I like to help.”

“You don’t think that would be helping?” I queried, actually a little baffled by her response.

“This work makes sense to me, Cadie. You come in and I put your arm back on, or I fix a stubborn knee joint, I recalibrate a drive sensor, I block a faulty nerve. I see results here. And that makes me feel like what I’m doing matters.” Her smile was given to me as a gift, adorable but weary, and I offered her angelic in return - it seemed to help.  “Tell me more about the girl who wants to be a Skipper?”

I pulled on my arm, flexed it, watched the fluid grace of the ball joint working as intended with a sense of distraction owing to my contemplation. What did she want me to say?

“She knew me when we were kids. She was different back then, though, though…”

“So were you.”

“So was I,” I concurred, nodding my head, continuing the narrative after a moment of thought. “She thought I’d died, the day the sky burned. I just don’t get how she’s been on the station all this time and she chooses now to try and seek me out?” I mused over that, talking the mystery through out-loud. “She said she found me based on name, but I’ve been a Skipper for as long as the station’s existed, Perry. Why now?”

“Maybe she’s from another station? Or a ship? We’ve had some contact these past few days.” Perry suggested off-handedly, testing the reflex on each one of my tiny little fingers with an electrode while she did.

“What?” I didn’t mean for my tone to be incredulous, I didn’t mean to jerk my hand away, but I’d have known about something like that, like a Rendezvous. There was no way I wouldn’t have been told, and even if I’d missed a report or been left out, I was a Skipper! I would totally have felt…

Motherfricker!

“I felt the station move this morning, Perry!” I got to my feet, excitedly, annoyedly, “before this, before Laurent called me and told me to meet this stranger. But he told me it was just a routine maneuverer.” I paused there, and when I found my voice again it was much quieter. “Why would he lie to me?”

“Why would he?” Perry affirmed the question, patiently taking my hand back again.

“He knows I like to be there during Rendezvous events! There should be three Skippers present the entire time!” I lectured, like I was reading directly from Skipper Standard Ops, “what if something had happened?”

“What if it had?” She smiled.

“Why wouldn’t he tell me, Perry? I’m…”

“The best?”

“The best!”

“Are you?” The blonde let go off my fingers, obviously done with the calibrations, or else just certain that I was going to snatch my hand back anyway.

“Yes!” Both my hands shot to my sides in frustration, and I stomped my bare foot on the steel floor, “my record is spotless, my Faering harmonization is always top of the fleet, so why…?” I needed a second to collect my thoughts. “Why keep that from me? I should have been there…”

“Cadie, how long do Skippers run during a Rendezvous?” She had this smile that said this question was asked as a friend.

“For the entire duration.” Obviously.

“The entire duration?”

“Yes! Perry, I,” I rubbed at my temples and took a deep breath in, “what are you getting at?”

“Just now you told me that she asked for you by name?”

“Okay?”

“How could she see you if you were on a run the entire time?” I felt the penny drop with a metallic twang in the deepest parts of my mind.

Laurent had… kept this from me intentionally? He kept it from me so I wouldn’t be out on the run, because I needed to be available during the duration for something else.

Like an interview, requested by name, and dictated by the Skipper Command.

“Lilt…” Perry smiled while I spoke, like she’d figured this out long before I did, and like all her smiles she balanced pretty with non-judgmental, she balanced observing with listening to all I had to say.

“Lilt came from the other ship?” I phrased it like a question, as if I didn’t already know the answer, and like Perry did.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you really should be in Skipper Human Health, Perry. Geez. I…” Realization flashed on my expression. “It means I gotta go find Lilt before she goes back, before the Rendezvous ends!”

[kerry]

2 hours ago, Pudding said:

When I was a child, when I was very young and the sky had been blue and we’d been full of optimism, daydreaming about what we’d do the day after tomorrow and the year after next, my Mom had talked to me about her faith; she told me it was important to her, but it had been six years since she’d gone back to her church. When I’d questioned why, her explanation had been simple: she was ashamed. Once she’d missed a single Sunday, she was anxious the following week and so she missed another, and another, until she got in her own head and talked herself out of going back for fear of having to explain her continued absence.

I think this might be something pretty universal. I know it happens with me...not about church but other things.

2 hours ago, Pudding said:

I sat, fuming and ruminating on all the ways I wanted to inflict minor annoyance and inconvenience on this man - I would put exactly one pebble in every one of his left shoes! I would gently crease his note paper! I would… I would swap out his blue pens for black ones, and swap his toilet paper roll from back facing to front facing, and I’d put his newer teabags in front of his older ones so in two weeks all his tea would be minorly stale and he wouldn’t even know why. I was that cross.

 

LOL!

2 hours ago, Pudding said:

“Isn’t it?” Gosh I hated when she did that, I hated that she was so smug and beautiful, I hated that she used this upward inflection that made her sound like she was just so certain, I hated that at times it sounded like she was just playing off her darling and divine charm, and more than anything else, I hated that she was right.

Some people just have that effect on you.

This one fills in more of the mystery of Skippers, and now is beginning to fill in some of the mystery of Lilt. And goddess I love Perry!

[Wannatripbaby]

I know I said this when I first read the chapter, but I absolutely LOVED the "Minor Inconvenience" monologue! ♡♡♡♡♡

[Pudding]

@Wannatripbaby I remember how much you loved that!

@kerry I love writing Perry, canonically she turned down being a Skipper because it meant she'd have to give up helping them and she felt more useful in that role ~ bit of trivia for you  I'm glad you got the church shame thing; it applies to all sorts of life circumstances, like when you miss a class, or miss a dentist appointment >.< !! 

[little Georg]

17 hours ago, Pudding said:

I sat, fuming and ruminating on all the ways I wanted to inflict minor annoyance and inconvenience on this man - I would put exactly one pebble in every one of his left shoes! I would gently crease his note paper! I would… I would swap out his blue pens for black ones, and swap his toilet paper roll from back facing to front facing, and I’d put his newer teabags in front of his older ones so in two weeks all his tea would be minorly stale and he wouldn’t even know why. I was that cross.

As Kerry already mentioned this part is great! I love everything about it and it just show how "little" Cadence is in real! This is gonna be such a wonderful character!