Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

“Just got to wipe all this down,” Lottie said. “Then we’re done.”

“All this?” Hazel said, a creeping despair in her voice. Lottie knew how she felt. The room was nothing but giant consoles, with racks of buttons, dials and display screens. Switches stuck out from tiny shelves. Anything that wasn’t a gadget was a window facing into the dark of the Space Barn.

“Grab a cleaning pad,” Lottie said. “Sooner we start—”

“I can’t stand it in here,” Hazel said. She stared up through the windows.

Lottie didn’t know what to say. Her joints ached and a fiery pain flashed through her back. She was dying to sit down.

“How come you don’t you retire?” Hazel asked.

“Usual reason,” Lottie said. “Money.” Admitting it to this girl was especially discouraging. She eased herself into a command seat, her legs slick with sweat.

“My Mom wants me to go to the Moon,” Hazel said.

“Every Indian wants their kid to go to the Moon,” Lottie said.

“I’m too tired to h,” Hazel said. She sat in the other command seat and crossed her arms.

In the sleep section, a cluster of sleep fasteners clanked together, followed by a quiet flop.

Hazel grabbed Lottie’s arm.

“It’s more afraid of you than you are of it,” Lottie said. That’s what her Daddy had always told her about bears. And it was mostly true.

“What is?” Hazel whispered.

“That’s not our worry,” Lottie said.

Hazel stood and peeked out the opening. “I’ll be right back.” Before Lottie could stop her she sprinted out to the main hatch. Her boots clomped down the ramp.

“No safer out there,” Lottie called. She wondered if she should chase after the fool. Clem would probably let her out and Lottie was stuck with walls of tiny doodads to be cleaned.

The smell flared up again with a rhythmic, liquid noise, like a tiny fountain.

“Settle down, you,” she called. She grabbed a cleaning pad in each hand and worked the panels at a brisk pace. Hazel didn’t return and Lottie’s head baked in fury. No doubt, she had Clem holding her hand, and utilising his good looks to ensure she remained calm and the centre of attention.

Lottie hed the control room, her poor arms like limp noodles. She made her way back to the main work section. A long, black tail snaked into a floor vent and disappeared. The grey goo was back, possibly thicker and more syrupy.

“That’s enough,” Lottie hissed. “Old woman trying to get a job done. Leave it alone.”

Her boots stuck to the floor. She could barely lift her feet. She yanked a few last pads from their packaging, tossed them down and wiped up the last of the fluid. Then she sat on the floor, hed. She wondered how long it would be before someone came looking for her. She would have cheerfully strangled Hazel at that moment, though she doubted she had the strength.

She closed her eyes and counted to three. When she opened them, she saw the compost bin. She crawled to the floor switch and, after a couple of tries, the thing came open with a mighty SHUCK.

She tossed the gunky pads in and used the sides of the bin to climb back to her feet. She took her time getting down the ramp.

Hazel’s Hazmat suit was wadded up on the floor. She had her purse out and she brushed her hair.

“I thought you’d be rubbing against that security guard by now,” Lottie said.

“He wouldn’t let me in without you,” Hazel said. “Did you see that thing?”

“What thing?” Lottie asked.

Hazel tossed her hairbrush into her bag. “I don’t think I’ll ever get that smell off me,” she said.

“No,” Lottie agreed. “I don’t think you will.”

Leigh Kimmellives in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she is a bookseller and web designer. She has degrees in history and in Russian language and literature. Her stories have been published in Black October , Beyond the Last Star , and Every Day Fiction . You can see more information about her current projects at her website: www.leighkimmel.com/.

I HAVE ONLY a little time. I must get this warning out for all mining outposts throughout the Asteroid Belt.

Two weeks ago, Urtukansk acquired a companion. From the moment the smaller asteroid became enmeshed in Urtukansk’s gravity well, it aroused our profound distaste. With each passing day, we found it harder to maintain our work schedule. Crossing the asteroid’s surface from our habitat to the uranium pits and the breeder reactor meant seeing that scabrous lump rising and setting in its rapid orbit overhead.

We started finding excuses to stay inside. There is always more maintenance than a single pod of miners can keep up with and still make its production quota. Fix the balky valve in the ‘fresher, lay new circulator lines in the algae ponds, run tests on the electronics in the life-support monitors—all legitimate tasks, but also all ways to avoid making that trek across the surface and having to see that horrid thing sweep across the starlit sky.

But there is only so long the mind can avoid a matter, however unpleasant, that remains in close proximity. There was the issue of our unmet quota of refined plutonium to drive us forth to extract the radioactive ores and prepare them for the breeder reactor. But that foul body orbiting overhead exerted its own pull upon our minds, relentless as gravity. Like an itch under a spacesuit, it grew more intense the harder we tried to ignore it.

Alyosha was the first to investigate what we all had agreed to ignore. When I confronted him, he responded that he had done nothing more than the gravimetric and spectroscopic observations that are standard whenever a body of substantial mass approaches an occupied asteroid. However, his demeanor—a direct challenge to my authority as pod leader—was at such marked variance with his usual disposition that I felt no inclination to examine his data. Instead I bawled him out, a punishment he took with a display of resentment atypical of his character.

Three days later, we received a hail from an approaching spacecraft. It belonged to Sally Nguyen, an independent sutler we’d done business with before.

I don’t know why I didn’t follow my initial urge to order her to pass us by. At least I won’t have long to regret my decision to tell her to note our new satellite when laying in her approach.

We welcomed her with the traditional bread and salt. I was as happy as my pod-brothers to see a new face. Although we could’ve traded and sent her on her way, none of us wanted to lose the opportunity to socialise.

Over vodka, we talked and, as it loosened our tongues, the conversation turned to our unwelcome companion. Sally had done her own analysis of the satellite asteroid during her approach and believed its peculiarities indicated the presence of valuable materials. However, by her people’s law, it became our property when our asteroid’s gravity captured it and she could not explore it, except as our business partner.

The vodka had clouded our judgement, as well, for we agreed without a second thought. We spent the next two hours planning our venture before turning in to sleep off our drunk.

The next day, we ate a hasty breakfast before suiting up and piling into Sally’s ship. Our asteroid’s escape velocity is so low that a layer of padding on an empty cargo hold sufficed for acceleration couches. It actually took longer to lay in the course and get our launch window than to make the trip, since the satellite asteroid’s orbit fluctuated in response to Urtukansk’s local mass variations.