The Letter

by Jim Livingston

“The Letter” was a submission from Jim Livingston in the “A Letter Home” writing contest.

2226 CE. Will Steel, Chief Engineer

On board the Forlorn Hope

Somewhere in the Veda Quadrant.

Hey Harvey,

I recently signed onto a cargo freighter running routes between the outer colonies and the inner core worlds. I’m the chief engineer, assisted by one overworked maintenance droid on an old rustbucket of a ship held together by recycled wiring and wishful thinking.

My work backlog was finally thinning out when our assistant navigator, a male Veccatorian named Clacker—you know, the crab-like species with giant lobster claws—decided to show off a purchase he picked up on shore leave at Thelos Prime.

He proudly announced he’d bought “the strongest aphrodisiac in the known galaxy.”

That should have been my warning that karma was about to rip a hole in space time.

Clacker planned to use it on Chief Officer Vrix, a female Trixtian who looks like a seven-foot praying mantis with anger-management issues. Apparently his claw-flexing courtship routine hadn’t impressed her much and he’d gotten rather desperate.

Sadly, lobster claws are not precision jar-opening tools. The bottle slipped out of his claws, shattered on the deck, and exploded in a cloud of pink fairy dust, quite pretty actually.

Normally anything sold on a station concourse is fake, diluted, or radioactive, but I still grabbed my respirator and put it on just in case.

Unfortunately, I had just repaired the life-support system and it worked perfectly. Within seconds, the entire system was circulating concentrated, extra-strength alien sex pollen shipwide.

At first I thought, Great. Now I have to clean the filters again. Then everything went catastrophically sideways. When I say sideways I mean a complete shift into the forth dimension.

First, a strange noise behind me caught my attention. I turned around and saw Vrix pinning Clacker to a mess table while making noises like industrial machinery destroying itself.

Meanwhile cargo handler Croble—our half-machine, half-bird female cyborg—started whispering sweet nothings to my maintenance droid. And that crazy droid whispered back.

Then Second Officer Chirp Nexus, a blue-skinned female Wexlian with pointed ears, silky silver hair, and serious emotional issues screamed out my name.

A moment later the captain roared. Captain Zeta Sharpclaw is a tiger-like, female Felonsian with claws capable of opening canned food without the can opener. She came charging down the corridor yelling my name like I owed her money, my right arm, and all future progeny.

At that moment I realized I was the only sane person left onboard, which was deeply disturbing. So I ripped out the contaminated filters and sprinted for the nearest airlock while the rest of the crew collectively lost their freaking minds.

Doc Snerd ran past right then screaming while Bubbles, our twelve-tentacled chief purser, chased after him blurping romantic whooping noises and drooling all over the floor.

Dammit, I almost made it.

Captain Sharpclaw and Chirp tackled me outside the airlock. My mask flew off during the struggle, which was the exact moment my life took a sharp left turn into the twilight zone.

I managed to space the contaminated filters. After that, my memory becomes extremely unreliable. I won’t attempt to reconstruct what might be prosecutable crimes in most systems.

Long story short, Vrix and Clacker are now engaged, Croble and my maintenance droid are apparently dating, and Dr. Snerd has barricaded himself inside his quarters while Bubbles waits outside grunting love songs. I woke up the next morning covered in scratches and bite marks with both the captain and Chirp asleep in my bed. The captain was purring.

I’m now seriously considering a transfer to a mining colony entirely populated by rocks.

Best wishes your slightly damaged and deranged friend,

            Will Steel