Young Writers Society

Way to make everything like four-hundred percent more dramatic, Focci. Raising her hands in a shrug, Ellipse squinted at the boys and frowned like she had just gotten too close to a methane-breather. “Okay, whatever. You are working on big important things. Why does it matter who makes this mini fold generator first?”

Tejal lunged to answer, flinging out his arms and almost hitting Focci with the device. “Because if the specifus make it, they’ll continue to have a total monopoly on all fold-related systems! They created the fold stations, and it’s their architects who design all stations, and their computers that run all the logistics.”

“I know that the gato and my own people would be exceptionally pleased to see the specifus taken down a notch,” Focci added. He grinned, showing his canines, and Ellipse wanted to back away and flee from the techno-political nonsense. She had dealt with enough intergalactic competition before her janitor stint, thank you very much.

Instead she just nodded and pretended she cared. “I see.”

“Do you though?” Tejal asked, pinching a loose piece from the air and fitting it back into his device. “Like, this is pretty heavy stuff, and you’re all flippant and whatever-ey, like it’s not going to affect you.”

Ellipse rolled her eyes. “Aside from having internet access in empty space, how is this all-important invention going to change my life?”

Tejal almost snorted, a challenging smirk stretching his lips. “Identification cross referencing will be totally revolutionized out in space. It’ll be more like Earth and other on-planet systems and less of a big free-for-all where you can go wherever you want, entirely under the radar.”

“And you think that would change things for me?” Ellipse fired back, a smirk of her own growing on her chin. She had nothing to fear from increased security, regardless of how similar she looked to any famous runaways.

Focci glanced between the pair of earthlings, snout wrinkling. He seemed confused by where Tejal had led the conversation. “Earthling boy,” he said, letting Mouthbot translate for him, “why security when there are far more interesting applications? For one, shipping logistics would be made much much easier, and emergency response times could be cut in half. You could also stream movies during down time, have real-time updates on news and personal accounts, and maybe even take on freelance drafting work while flying.”

Thank the big bang for that siren. As Mouthbot finished translating for Tejal, Ellipse shot the kid a smug, lopsided grin. “Yeah, Tejal, what is the deal with security? Have you not gotten into my passports yet? Figured out who I am?”

Tejal scowled. “Well I was going to, but Focci had stuff to finish up here, and then we got to talking about engineering, and I showed him my generator, and then you barged in.”

“I would be happy to answer any questions and dispel any concerns,” Ellipse said, voice as sweet as high fructose corn syrup. She laced her fingers together and leaned forward, only sort of managing to get into Tejal’s space bubble. “Go on, try me. You will find that my identity is foolproof.”

“I think I liked talking about the fold generator more,” Focci sang, voice quivering, before Tejal could get in any kind of statement. Ellipse let her smug look turn downright taunting, and Tejal shot her and Focci twin snarls. Then he made the little I-am-watching-you sign.

Batting her eyes, Ellipse schooled herself into wide-eyed, flirtatious begging and clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “Oh yes, Tejal. We should go back to your little nerdfest. Leave this poor victim of mistaken identity alone.”

Tejal hauled himself away like Ellipse was some kind of boogeyman, a horrified grimace reaching into every just-forming wrinkle on his face. “Please never do that again,” he squeaked from his hiding place behind Focci. Then he hissed something about girls and terror and different species, which Mouthbot conveniently translated over the ship’s speakers.

After a moment, Ellipse broke into snickering and Focci shrugged. “I cannot relate,” he said. “We sirens have very little in the way of traditional gender roles.”

At this, Ellipse snickered louder, and Tejal flushed dark pink the moment he heard Mouthbot’s translation. This time he muttered a curse word and some nonsense about finding a kindred soul. Then, once the grumbling passed out of his system, Tejal turned to Focci again and quirked an eyebrow. “By the way, what exactly do you know about Spec-Corp’s attempt at the miniature fold generator?”

Focci’s fins fanned in surprise at the question. “Eh? It is not much, just the same tragedy your parents must have told you after it happened.”

“What?” Ellipse asked. “There was a tragedy?” That sounded a lot more exciting than intergalactic corporate battles and monopolies.

Shaking his head, Tejal pulled himself back to his original spot between the other crew members. “My parents didn’t really tell me anything. I knew there were deaths, but that’s it.”

Oh, so it was a real tragedy, not just some epic specifus failure. Ellipse frowned, trying to think up a way to excuse herself, but by the time she opened her mouth, Focci had begun to set the scene.

“It was a little less than three years ago,” he sang, and something in his tone shifted. Focci sounded almost like a French horn or a trombone, something resonant and classic, and Ellipse called mayday in her head. No one left or interrupted a ballad session; it was one of the basic rules of siren courtesy. It was the equivalent of not saying please and thank you or abandoning a campfire because someone was telling ghost stories.

“A specifus ship, the RV Impending, drifted out into open space beyond the fold generator in the Tubai system. They traveled for nearly half a year, to ensure that no harm would befall the Tubai residents.”

A year on the specifus home planet was maybe nine months on Earth, if Ellipse correctly remembered Universal Biology’s brief table on planetary years. For Sirena, a year took only seven months.

“When at last the Impending reached a suitable distance,” Focci continued, “its crew began their tests. They had brought fold generators the size of houses down to generators that might fit inside one of our cargo crates, and began their tests from largest to smallest.”

Ellipse glanced over at Tejal, and he fidgeted, like he wanted to add something. She drew a finger across her lips and hoped he got the message.

“The specifus found that as they forced the folds to be smaller and smaller, the generators spent more and more energy to contain the fold and prevent it from vibrating and cutting in and out of connection. Only weeks into their tests, the generators began to fail. First, it was little failures. A plug might spew a few sparks into empty space, or an arc of particle connectors might give out. But nonetheless, all of the generators worked. However, for the idea of a vast network of folds to work, it had to be safe to pass one fold through another.”

Tejal sucked in a breath, eyes blazing. He bit his lip, just itching to speak, and Ellipse shushed him again before he could speak.

“So the specifus fired up their biggest and smallest folds, and sent half of their crew into a little shuttle to drag the smallest fold. The shuttle passed through the larger fold easily, and so did the chain hauling the small fold. But as the folds neared each other, they began to spark and move. The bend of space-time forced them to circle each other, like a star and a gas giant too close for comfort, and then the folds collided.

“Like a supernova, the ships and folds and generators condensed into each other, and then everything expelled outward, in a distorted sphere of dust and gas and ribbons of metal. The night-gliders of Tubai say the explosion was like a second moon in the sky. No one ever heard from the Impending crew again.”

Ellipse shivered as Focci lingered on his last notes. Ballads were like twenty-first century brass solos, all haunting notes and rhythms and intervals, and she wished popular music would take after the sound a little more. Her fingers pressed trumpet fingerings into her right thigh, as if trying to replicate the music.

When Mouthbot finally finished translating and tried to ask Ellipse questions about ship names and similes, Tejal pinched his nose and sighed.

“What?” Ellipse asked him, ignoring the computer.

“It’s just… the specifus went about it all wrong,” Tejal explained, picking at the device in his hands. “If you want a miniature fold generator to work, you have to start from the quarks and go bigger, not start from what we’ve got and go smaller. Plus you don’t even need to stop the flicker. It’s like the vibrating quartz in wristwatches; it’s constant and can be worked into the programming.”

If only that made any kind of sense. Focci seemed to understand despite Mouthbot fumbling around the word ‘quark,’ but Ellipse felt like she had been left in deep space.