By Kara Hodo
Saturday, April 12, 2352
Dear Diary (or however you’re supposed to begin these things),
Birthdays have never much appealed to me, and neither have Ms Quigley’s presents. When both come on the same day, that’s when I know things have really taken a turn for the worse. To be clear, today is my birthday, and the present is this book that I am writing in now. If writing books could be offended, I suppose you would have every right to be.
It was this morning and I was seated at the work table in the kitchen leaning on my elbow for no reason in particular. A book I had closed some time ago was at my elbow. Ms Estella sat across from me at the table paying bills. I’m sure Ms Quigley could do it herself because Ms Quigley can do everything (except for being a pleasant person).
I think letting Ms Estella take on the task herself is only a matter of letting the woman have her pride. Ms Estella is from a rather well-to-do family, and she inherited money from her father upon his death ages ago, and that’s how they got the money to buy up the boarding house. They’ve run it now, together, for years and years. I think Ms Quigley and Ms Estella probably were here, managing things exactly as they see fit, since before the Great Split! But I don’t say that, of course. I’m simply not that brave!
Ms Estella kept glancing up from the papers spread out before her with raised eyebrows. All day, she’s been scolding me in one of three ways: “I don’t like a girl with a long face.” “You’d think we beat you!” And, when she seemed really to want to annoy me, “Proper young ladies do not slouch!” Now, she only gave me those occasional, disapproving glances. I half wanted to leave the room and be rid of Ms Estella, but she would accuse me of moping in my room with my ‘silly pictures.’ It still makes me angry that she knows about that. What business if it of hers if I keep pictures of my family? Ms Estella calls it ‘unhealthy,’ but I don’t care what Ms Estella says.
She didn’t know it, but I had one of those two pictures—the one of my mother—in the book I’d brought down from my room with me. I opened the book occasionally to pretend to be reading so that I could sneak glances at the photograph, instead.
My mother must have been the most beautiful lady who ever lived. I secretly wonder if I may look like her someday. In fact, thirteen seems to me like such a mature age that I rushed to the mirror this morning half expecting my face to show some new trace of her. No such luck. I hadn’t much hope, anyway. My mother looked nothing like me. Her nose turned up prettily where mine goes down. Her eyes were blue where mine are just plain brown and her skin was creamy white where mine is always tan no matter how little sunshine there is. Blonde hair framed her cheeks. It had the effect of making her whole face look like a delicate picture. My hair is dark and doesn’t do much of anything.
I was debating with myself whether or not I ought to sneak another glance at the photograph when the door opened and Ms Quigley walked in. A gust of wind came in after her, disrupting my train of thought and Ms Estella’s papers.
“The Ladies’ Auxiliary Club must have let out early,” Ms Estella said, to no one in particular. Her voice was more cheerful, because she much prefers Ms Quigley’s company to mine. She was right, anyway. Ms Quigley had been gone to the Ladies’ Auxiliary Club meeting, where she does volunteer work, and she usually isn’t in before dark.
I suppose I ought to describe Ms Quigley: Ms Quigley is everything Ms Estella is not, at least in the way of appearance. Ms Estella is skinny and tall and all the little bones in her elbows and cheeks and finger joints stand out sharp and pointy. Ms Quigley is short and stout, and her face sags. I think she hates me. She doesn’t look at me when she talks, and her eyes cut daggers at me when she thinks I’m not looking. Ms Estella does it, too, but somehow, that has never bothered me quite so much.
Ms Quigley came in with an armful of firewood. Cold season is coming on, though at the moment, it’s still more wet than anything.
Ms Estella ran to help her. “Firewood? Already? You should have told me, Juniper!” (Juniper is Ms Quigley’s real name, which I secretly think is funny.)
Ms Quigley only grunted in the way that says she can handle herself.
I left my book on the table and followed after them into the parlour halfheartedly.
The present was given without buildup or ceremony. Ms Quigley reached in her bag and handed it to me in a rather off-handed way. “For you.”
I was startled. It was wrapped in brown paper, with a string crisscrossed over the top, and tied neatly in a bow. I was actually touched for a moment. All I could do was breathe out, “Thank you!”
Ms Quigley hefted the last of the wood into the fireplace rack and sniffed. “Yes, well. Don’t expect me to do it again.”
After that, I stopped feeling touched. Between her and Ms Estella, I think for sure that Ms Quigley likes me the least. For Ms Estella, contempt for me is more a matter of propriety. With Ms Quigley, I feel that her dislike must be due to something more personal, some fault unknown to me but glaringly obvious to her. Ms Estella seems to know this, too, but the most she has ever said about it is that, “Ms Quigley is a fine woman and we’ve been friends for a long time, but don’t go thinking she’s my nut to crack.” Which I suppose just means that there is no figuring out Ms Quigley.
Anyhow. I opened the present and Ms Quigley gave me this book I am writing in now, even though she hates me. She calls it a ‘birthday present,’ of course, but presents from Ms Quigley are not a yearly occurrence. Secretly, I think that any time Ms Quigley gives me a present it is her way of keeping me out from under her feet.
If that is indeed the case, then I suppose I’m doing what she really wanted. I am sitting quietly upstairs in my room—the room which has always been mine here at the boarding house—at my desk with pen and paper, toiling away.
When I stop and look out the window, I see grey. Grey street and grey buildings and grey sky. Grey like Ms Quigley’s hair. I hate the colour grey, but I believe Ms Quigley loves it. As a matter of fact, I think that is why she likes living on West Millennium Avenue and on Elara in general. It is grey and perpetually gloomy like her.
I’ll write more tomorrow. I haven’t explained myself very well, just Ms Quigley.
Regards and all that, etc., etc., etc.
-MZ
…
It’s the evening now, and I’ve decided to write more before bed. I am sitting downstairs in the front parlour at Ms Quigley’s writing desk. It is small, and she doesn’t use it much except for when she’s penning thank you notes and grocery lists and such. She doesn’t mind other people using it occasionally. It is one of the few things Ms Quigley doesn’t mind.
Dr Craven and Miss Nadine are across the room at the tea table playing a friendly game of chess. Ms Quigley and Ms Estella call it a tea table, anyway. I think it is really more like a card table, but neither of them approves of card playing. I am surprised they approve of chess.
Dr Lucius Craven and Miss Nadine Turner are the other two wards of Ms Quigley’s and Ms Estella’s boarding house. Dr Craven has been around for almost as long as I can remember, and Miss Nadine has been with us for four or five years, I should guess. Craven is in his forties with pale skin. His hair is chestnut brown, or at least it used to be. It’s been quickly disappearing of late. Ms Quigley says this is an unfortunate occurrence for any man and I had better never say anything about it. I have never said anything about it. Dr Craven is also tall and skinny and wears his small spectacles perched just on the end of his nose. He never uses a small word. It was from Dr Craven that I learned the word ‘perpetually.’ He says that I talk perpetually.
Miss Nadine is small and not very pretty. She reminds me of a mouse in looks and deed. Her hair is medium brown and always looks frazzled. Her face is too narrow, and her eyes are beady black and squished together. She is a nervous person. Her voice squeaks and stutters when she talks. She is thirty something, though I’ve always thought she looks older.
Other boarders have come and gone over the years, but these two and myself are the most permanent.
Nadine offered to let me sit in for her at chess, but I said “no” and “thank you.” She and Dr Craven are now engaged in an animated conversation about teaching methods and seem to be only half paying attention to the game. Both of them work in that profession except that he teaches grown-ups at the university and she teaches only young children. Their conversation sounds dull to me, but I guess they are both enjoying it.
Ms Estella is upstairs writing letters, probably to family members in neighbouring townships. Quigley must still be in the basement reorganizing the food supplies.
In my last entry, I promised to explain myself. Well, there isn’t much to be told. My name is MZ-3. I go by MZ for short. You say it like ‘Emzee.’ I have no parents. My mother died when I was very young and I’ve never heard of my father.
The one image I have of my mother is in the photograph I keep in the drawer beside my bed. I’ve tried before to remember her better, but somehow, I can recall only her hands. This seems to me an odd thing to remember about one’s mother, but memory is an odd thing. The rest of the memory is very vague. My bare feet were in water so clear I could see straight through to the bottom, and there was the smell of some sort of harsh chemical, and a pair of white hands—my mother’s hands—were there, peeling open the wrapper on some sort of cold treat. But I realize that is far from a complete character sketch, so the picture is really all I have to go on.
My mother’s name was Jackie Starr. I love that name. Sometimes when I’m alone and no one is listening, I whisper it to myself. Jackie Starr is like a magical word that could summon a goddess of beauty back from the dead. If that doesn’t sound too dramatic. Ms Estella says I am all too dramatic about my mother. She is usually quite tolerable compared to Ms Quigley, except for when it comes to my mother. She has her own version of Jackie Starr. According to Ms Estella, a fatherless orphan (like me) can only mean one thing: an illegitimate birth. And it is perfectly shameful for any woman to have a baby when she isn’t married—an absolute shameful wrong—and Jackie Starr was “obviously too pretty for her own good.” She says this always with a little sniff of superiority and fans herself like she cannot believe she has been prompted to speak of such a thing.
I think Ms Estella is just jealous. I bet every man in all twelve galaxies was in love with Jackie Starr and nobody was ever in love with Ms Estella! I never told her that, but I thought it. She is also of the opinion that the name given me by my mother is atrocious. MZ-3 sounds like a machine or something, she says. Not a little girl. How tiresome Ms Estella is!
Ms Quigley normally just grunts when I mention Jackie.
My one living relative is my brother. Well, really he’s only my half-brother. We share Jackie Starr. He’s older than me—all grown up now, technically, though he’s somehow always seemed very grown up. Of course, our experiences have been quite different. We’ve been raised apart since our mother died—how strange that I can remember her hands but not her death!—and somehow, in the confusion, I wound up at the boarding house with Ms Quigley while he stayed with his father in faraway regions. It is a rather complicated story I’ve never quite understood.
Nonetheless, my brother is very dear to me and I believe I mean something to him, too. I see him once every year in the same month, which is far too little but all he can manage. My brother works a very important job now, so he is always busy and can’t write as often as he used to do. I try not to be jealous. I keep his picture beside our mother’s in the drawer next to my bed. I can’t wait to see him in a few months! He always brings me a present.
But oh dear! Ms Quigley has just come in and I had better hide this before she wants to see what I’ve written. That would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
-MZ
…
Monday, April 14 – Tuesday, April 15, 2352
Dear Diary,
I was not able to write yesterday because of the gathering in the town square. It was unexpected for everybody. We were all just sitting down to table in the downstairs dining room for our midday supper. We were in the usual order: Ms Quigley at the head, Ms Estella to her right, Nadine across from her, Dr Craven next to Nadine, and me at the very end, tacked on rather like an afterthought. We five always take our meals together in the downstairs dining room because Ms Quigley would have it no other way, and we all know it.
We were all settling down together for our meal when there was a knock at the front door. It was a loud knock, not the subdued tap that one would expect from neighbours or other polite company. Ms Quigley stood up to answer it. Our food was already on the table, but no one moved. We all just sat there looking after her.
Ms Estella’s eyebrows were up. Dr Craven sat very still. Miss Nadine wrung her napkin between her hands. I couldn’t see out into the front foyer where Ms Quigley had gone and I didn’t move to try and get a better look. I twisted my special bracelet around my wrist. It is made of some sort of polished black stone, with flowers etched on the surface. I’ve always thought it must have been expensive. Probably, it costs more than anything else I own.
I heard the door open. Ms Quigley’s voice was short and snappish. “Yes?”
I recognized the other voice immediately. I think we had all guessed it already. The soldiers have an unmistakable sound—tinny and mechanical, almost like how I would imagine a person speaking underwater. I didn’t hear everything that was said. Just a word here and there stood out: “Alliance…” “Square…” “An order…”
Ms Quigley returned to the dining room a moment later. Her back was straight and stiff. “A gathering in the square,” she said, like an announcement. But I think her voice turned a shade darker. “Mandatory.”
For a second, everyone remained still. Then they rose from their chairs and walked out into the hallway, mostly in silence. They said nothing in particular. Just that it was “an unusual time of the day” or “not perfect weather.” I forgot to move.
Ms Quigley turned her sharp eyes on me. “You heard me, child.”
I know she hates me.
We left from the boarding house with no further preparation, except to make sure that our identification tags were firmly affixed to the fronts of our clothes. I don’t have to look at mine to tell you exactly what it looks like: a rather unflattering headshot of myself, with everything else printed underneath:
Name: MZ-3 Starr
Citizen Status: Planet 115 (Elara), Citizen
Sex: Female
Then my date of birth, (which you already know), the fact that I am a minor, and my civilian number, 80132. It’s odd to think of myself as a number. We didn’t used to have numbers, before the Alliance came.
Ms Quigley straightened my tag on the way out the door. She hates the tags but must like them at least a little, as it gives her more reason to scold me.
Ordinarily, we could arrive at the town square in a matter of minutes, but our progress was hindered greatly by the throngs of people clogging the streets: young and old and in-between, babies and children and old people. People streaming in from every thoroughfare, side street, back alley, and corner in the city.
Soldiers moved amongst us, doing their best to direct traffic. They hurried people along, barking at us if we took too long in any one place. Everyone seemed to be trying their hardest to keep away from them, but they were hard to avoid.
Ms Quigley surprised me by holding my hand. She muttered something about how a little girl like me was likely to wander off and get lost. Her grip was so tight that my fingers felt crushed.
It was a good ten minutes before we reached our destination. The town square looked less like the town square and more like a roiling ocean, with a dozen or more little rivers pouring in from all sides.
It looked different than I had ever seen it. The stores and courthouse were strung with gigantic banners in white and gold. I recognized those, of course, as the colours of the Interplanetary Alliance, and its insignia, too—a round star surrounded by four points of light shaped like teardrops. There was a stage with a podium and screens on both sides. More people clustered in the square than I had ever seen, even on holidays. A steady stream of sound rose above it all, the hum of a hundred voices and whispered conversations combined into one.
Soldiers stood around the perimeters still as statues, surrounding everything. They are called IDU’s (Interplanetary Defense Units). I used to think that they were machines of some kind and not real people. They do look rather inhuman with their black, metal suits and helmets with the shiny face shields in the front. I have never seen an AI bot, but I imagine they must look something like that. Besides, who ever heard of a person called a ‘unit’ before?
But more on this later. I’ve been writing for some time now, and I hear Ms Estella calling me downstairs to do something. I hope no more knocking comes at the front door.
-MZ
…
Wednesday, April 16 – Thursday April 17, 2352
Dear Diary,
I just rolled out of bed and rushed immediately to my desk to begin my entry for today, before school.
I can hear Dr Craven washing in the hallway bathroom and Ms Quigley and Ms Estella banging around downstairs in the kitchen. They are talking in voices too low for me to hear. That seems to happen when there are any new developments with the soldiers. The grown-ups here at the boarding house don’t talk about it in front of me. Ms Quigley gives them one of her ‘looks’ if they try.
I suppose Nadine is still asleep in her room. I think she is still affected from the gathering in the square. She was never the most resilient, and her nervous spells have only increased in number and intensity over these last few months.
Back to the town square: Ms Quigley and I and the rest of our lot from the boarding house were swept somehow to the middle of the giant crowd. I couldn’t see behind me or in front of me. I couldn’t even see Miss Nadine or Dr Craven huddled somewhere very close by. If not for Ms Quigley’s hand in mine and Ms Estella hemming me in on the other side, I think Ms Quigley would have been right and I would have wandered off and got lost; it was that disorienting!
I couldn’t see through to the podium, and if it hadn’t been for the screens, I wouldn’t have known what was going on up there at all. There was great debate several months ago about whether we should have screens in the town square, but the Alliance had gifted them. And you can’t refuse a gift from the Alliance, no matter how traditional you happen to be.
The fussing, moving, noisy crowd grew quieter and stiller. Mayor Ives Garrison stepped up to the podium. He wiped his forehead on a handkerchief. Mayor Garrison sweats profusely and the rumour is that he has the gout, too, but we’re not supposed to talk about that. He greeted us with a joke I don’t remember (most likely one of the half a dozen that he always tells). These usually earn him at least a small round of devoted laughter, but there was none. A few people even groaned. Mayor Garrison cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Without further ado.” He signalled to someone in the back, and they queued up the projector.
The broadcast began a minute later, and a terrible shock overtook me. I was so rattled that I lurched forward, crying out, and a girl in front of me said something in a very unfriendly voice. I think she said, “Quit shoving.” A few heads turned my way. An IDU standing nearby even looked left and right as though the sound had caught his attention, too. Ms Quigley pinched my hand with her fingernails. Hard. I ducked my head and tried to be invisible.
For a moment, even I couldn’t understand what had startled me so badly. Perhaps it’s because I’m not used to seeing him in uniform. He was wearing a pristine white uniform with metals on the front and gold tassels on the shoulders. It’s a wonder that I was able to mistake him for even a moment, however. His person is abundantly recognizable: a youngish man—more of a boy, really—with hair so blonde it appears white and strange, lavender eyes ringed with black liner (an odd fashion choice, and one nobody would attempt on Elara). Those eyes seemed especially striking when paired was his cool and steady stare.
The image was so real that I could almost believe I could reach out and touch him. But I knew that wasn’t true. It was only a projection, and probably a pre-recorded one, too. Even so, the projection had the uncanny effect of making him appear behind the podium in the same spot where Mayor Garrison had stood moments before.
Words from last year’s visit echoed in my head: “We must be careful, little sister. The Alliance has its detractors. You must not make them yours.” My hand clenched at my side in pent-up agony. I must not show excitement. I must be careful.
I can’t remember what all was said in the broadcast. The young man on-screen introduced himself by his official title of High Commander Finias Vondraak and launched into his speech. He reminded us of the Great Split, a mass exodus from the human home planet of Earth, and of all the reasons for it—famine, crime, war, enslavement. And then there was the formation of Earth’s powerful and cruel One-World Government. (We Elaramites know all about that! People shifted uncomfortably at the mention of it.) But Earth’s government had fallen some twenty years ago, making the planet even more unstable.
“The place has become a no-man’s land,” the young man pronounced grimly. “A power vacuum, and the people who have stepped in to fill it are of only the most disagreeable sorts. Criminals and fugitives and rebels. The people who live there have become, like the planet itself, only wilder and more disorderly. A little less than human.”
It all sounded complicated and frightening to me, but the Commander spoke calmly, as if even Earth was simply a problem to be overcome. His voice was like his look—official and rather stern but not fully grown-up. “But I am here to tell you that that history can be just that—history, to be discarded and forgotten. Under the Alliance’s guiding hand, we will no longer be defined by our troubled history. We have the power, now, to begin shaking off the shackles of the old ways and the old Earth. We must not look back. We must set our eyes on the glorious future of humanity. For our future is glorious.”
“And all of this,” he assured us, “is the world we—that you—are helping to build. But it will fall to the young people like myself to lay the foundations for this future. As the newly appointed High Commander of the Alliance Youth Recruits Programme, I speak as the face of our organization to the young people of our race scattered like seed through these twelve galaxies. It is only by the sacrifices of those like myself that we stand to overcome the profound weaknesses and failings of our ancestors. It is the only way we can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of our fallen race. It is the only way—”
Someone said something indiscernible in the room behind him. I believe it must have been planned that way. The speech seemed too carefully coordinated to allow for rambling and interruptions.
The boy commander allowed himself a small smile. “But my zeal overcomes me. Our project is so much greater than any words I could convey to you. It will require your loyalty, your support, perhaps your own sons. But know that every one of these sacrifices counts. That we appreciate every one of them. That we stand with you as you stand with us. A future of a united humanity living a post-humanized existence.”
I wanted to feel proud. Who doesn’t want to overcome weaknesses and failings and be united and all that? But I felt more like I was about to lose my breakfast or faint or something because it was obvious that the broadcast was not being taken well. It may have started out small, with a group of rabble-rousers in the back, but it escalated at a surprising rate—an especially surprising rate in a courtyard full of typically mild-mannered shopkeepers and housewives and factory workers. The anger was like a living thing, growing and gaining the ability to speak. I wanted to say something, but I would have had to shout to be heard over the projection and the angry murmuring. I silently begged him to be done talking.
The blonde-haired young man finished his speech with the Alliance’s signature salute: one finger to the forehead and out again. I noticed a few people in the crowd copy his example, most of them awkwardly. But most people did not copy him at all.
There was a long, peculiar silence. I realized that there had been a shift in the IDU’s, too. They didn’t draw their guns—big, hulking plasma machine rifles—but there was a feeling that they were suddenly more aware of them. I thought that it was like the silence earlier in the dining hall. Tense and uncomfortable. I found even myself going perfectly still.
I think the broadcast was meant to continue. The Commander was to be replaced with some new, far-away face to lecture us on our glorious future, but whoever was operating the system must have cut it off. The hologram crackled and vanished, and even the screens went dead.
Mayor Garrison jumped in, to interrupt, just when the air itself felt ready to ignite and explode. He walked up to the podium, clapping halfheartedly. His smile was more pained than anything. “Well, well. Thank you to the Interplanetary Alliance for that…Rousing…Speech.”
This was followed by another groan, though the sound was quieter than the angry murmuring had been before. Mayor Garrison cleared his throat and rushed on with a hurried, “Without further ado…” He dismissed us and stepped down. The tense feeling hung in the air for a moment even after he was gone.
It was odd to me how so many people could disperse so quietly. It was like watching frightened mice scurry off to their dens. Even out on the streets, the mood seemed to have changed from earlier. The crowds of people didn’t seem to walk so fast or shove so hard. Most of them were silent. My group and I made it back to the boarding house more easily than we had left it, also in silence. I couldn’t bring myself to look at anyone.
Dr Craven headed upstairs, muttering. I don’t know at all what he said. Dr Craven tends to talk to himself unintelligibly when he is in any state of excitement. Nadine complained of a headache and decided to retire to bed with a dose of sleeping syrup. She looked pale and hasn’t been quite well ever since. Ms Estella went to the dining room to clear off our uneaten meal from before. Her lips were pressed together.
“You should go to your room and rest, MZ,” Ms Estella told me, with unusual gentleness. Ms Quigley went to help her in the dining room. Ms Quigley didn’t say anything. I went to my room.
I’d like to say that things have returned to normal since then. But few Elaramites move outside on the streets anymore even in good weather, and I saw yesterday from my window that in the place of many dozens of busy pedestrians were the IDUs with their rifles strapped to their sides. I have become almost as nervous as poor Nadine. The world has grown very quiet.
-MZ
BONUS SCENE:
Sunday, August 24, 2352
Dear Diary,
I suppose I was aware of McGee, and she of me, before we ever formally met. Even on that first day on the Communications Deck, when I went to meet Lieutenant Danley and my training began, I imagined I felt that pair of especially curious eyes on me. But she didn’t choose to show herself to me until much later.
I was by myself in the training yard, in the afternoon after my daily session with Lieutenant Danley. The Environment Simulator was turned off, leaving me standing in the drabbest version of the room, with nothing but blank walls, floors, scaffolding, and equipment. Roger had come with me, of course, but I snapped at him to wait outside in the mouth of the tunnel.
“You can still see me from there. Surely my brother wouldn’t object to that,” I said coolly. I had no patience with him anymore.
Training with Lieutenant Danley had made me moody, and I often found myself in a bad temper. Besides, between the fact of having Roger constantly by my side and his aloofness, he had become a tiresome presence. Even his clever quips no longer delighted me.
I found myself standing before the shooting range alone, just staring across in agitation at the targets. I pointed my finger like an imaginary plasma gun. Under my breath, I even made a noise like a plasma gun. I must have looked dreadfully silly and Roger, if he was watching, may have been laughing internally at my expense. (That’s something he would do. I’ve learned, in my time with him, that he has a humour of only the darkest and most understated sort.) But I hadn’t the heart to care.
It was while I was standing there, contemplating the problem, that the target jumped. It had been hit dead in the centre! I stood amazed, half believing that I had done it myself. But I dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. My finger was not a real gun. So I did the next logical thing: I turned around, looking for the source of the fire.
A girl stepped out from behind a corner of scaffolding. She must have been several years older than me but was dressed in the uniform of a higher-ranking officer. I couldn’t think of what the exact rank was. Her skin was several shades darker than mine, like warm cocoa. Her hair was in a ponytail, but it wasn’t tied back as severely as Lieutenant Danley’s, and several loose strands curled around her ears.
“You could do that, too. If you had the right teacher, that is.”
“Lieutenant Danley is teaching me.” Even to my own ears, I sounded forlorn and pouty.
Tears had sprung to my eyes, and I started to turn away, not wanting to speak to anyone.
But the girl was not deterred. “Danley’s good, but I know better.”
Before I had time to be shocked at the boldness of her words, the girl sprang into action. She took something out of her pocket and tossed it into the air. It was some kind of strange disc device. It expanded in mid-air and shot like a cannon across the yard. The device was no larger than a saucer, and I should have thought it would be impossible to hit such a target. But the girl fired her pistol again. The disc shattered into pieces. It had been hit with a clean shot. Then it reassembled itself and flew back into her palm.
I looked at her in amazement.
She smiled. “I couldn’t hit a T-missile when I was your age, either. It just takes practice.” She held out her hand. “Name’s McGee. Sergeant Third-Class.”
“Just McGee?” As soon as I said it, I wished I could snatch the words back out of the air. It was a bold question, much too bold to ask of a strange officer with a rank higher than my own.
The girl’s face flickered for a moment with an odd expression. I bit my tongue. But the look settled into a smile. “Just McGee,” she agreed.
I shook her hand uncertainly. “MZ Starr. Well, actually, its MZ-3, but everyone just calls me MZ.”
McGee nodded towards the row of targets. “You really want to hit one of those?”
I looked across the yard. A pang of longing exploded in my chest. I hadn’t realized until that moment how badly I did want to hit one!
“Yes,” I said.
I must have made some expression I wasn’t aware of because McGee looked at me and laughed. “You’ve got spirit, after all. I like that.” She took her pistol out of her holster and offered it to me. “Whad’you say? You want me to teach you what I know?”
Of course, I accepted. We meet in the afternoons, but I don’t mind it as I did with Lieutenant Danley. It’s easier with McGee because she’s so much friendlier. She makes a game of it. In fact, she’s very glib, as she is with everything. She even calls Lieutenant Danley ‘Old Sourpuss’ behind her back, which shocked me the first time I heard it. I wouldn’t dare say such a thing! And if I’m shooting and miss my mark terribly, McGee says only, “You can do better.”
Under her guidance, I did get better—only slightly, but even that gave me hope. At least Lieutenant Danley didn’t scold me as often. If she wondered at my improvement, she didn’t let on.
-MZ