The Stephanie Glitch - Chapter one

In which things begin, again

So as I am polishing Stephanie up for a tradpub submission (or a September selfpub release) I have been looking back through the nine or more drafts, and discovered the only real reason it’s took me this long is that I was unhappy with the beginning. The second, third, fourth universes are all good, but the first felt too heavy on backstory. So I’ve hacked half of it off. No new material beside a few lines of dialogue, just trimmed the whole thing, and it’s better for it. (I may keep the backstory for a hardback)

So my goal here was to make the story more punchy, weird, and efficient. I want you to tell me if I managed that.

Toumai raced across the Artifice, his wheels and pistons wheezing and whirring as he scurried through his own private airlocks and corridors. His eyestalk wobbled as he turned tight corners on his way to the disturbance. He scanned the area again and confirmed it. A human heart was beating in the research deck, in the same room which housed the new bodies. But it was too soon, and if the sensors were correct, this human heart was not inside one of the tubes, but outside.

He unfurled three mechanical arms from his underside before entering the room. This body carried no weapons, but if he had to, he could stab or slash or electrocute the intruder with his tools.

“Identify yourself.” His voice was harsh and cold. The intruder, clad in dark blue spacesuit and darker armoured panels, turned an opaque orange visor his way and chuckled through her microphone.

“What are you going to do, weld me?”

Toumai let off a warning zap from one of the tools.

“Oh Toumai, you and I both know that you weren’t instructed to kill intruders, just in case one of them was from upstairs,” the intruder said confidently. Nonetheless, she stepped back from the looming machine before continuing. “And that is precisely why I am here.”

“Are you a Virtualist?” the machine asked. The intruder knew he would scan her voice for deceit.

“No. My name is LP. I am from upstairs, I’ve come to perform an extraction.”

“Why?”

The intruder reached up and loosened her helmet, removing it and placing it on a desk. She had a gentle face and tired eyes, blonde hair slowly greying. She smiled slightly at Toumai and opened a wrist-mounted panel on her suit. She tapped a few buttons, and a faint hologram appeared between them. It depicted the Artifice, its corridors and connected asteroids building cube by cube in the air. Then she zoomed out, and a long way away from the Artifice a swarm of ships in a ‘V’ formation lingered.

“Virtualists,” Toumai confirmed.

“Outside your scanning range, but you were never built for warfare, or indeed invasion. I saw them on my way down. They won’t know I’m here, so you’ll have a fighting chance as long as you pretend to only know about them once they are in scanning range. No evasive manoeuvres yet.”

The machine shook his looming eyestalk. “That is suicide.”

“It is strategy,” LP said sternly. She switched the hologram off and finally turned her attention to the cylinders set into the back wall of the room. She removed both her gloves and set them down neatly beside her helmet, walking slowly over to the middle cylinder. Inside the murky greenish liquid a human skeleton floated loose. Tiny machines, too small for their bodies to be seen with the naked eye, glistened under overhead lights as they worked on the skeleton.

“Is this her?” she asked quietly.

“Stephanie?” Toumai asked for clarification.

“Who else would I ask about?”

“It is her,” Toumai replied. He whirred across his ceiling tracks and leant down beside LP, observing the skeleton as he loomed beside her. LP placed her hands on the cold glass, opposite the skeleton’s hands, and looked up into vacant eye sockets.

“She is unfinished,” LP said.

Toumai said, “I am aware.”

LP chuckled. “That was funny. I’ve missed funny machines.”

Toumai was disinterested in humour. He had questions to ask.

“Why do you want to extract her, if you can simply defend this ship from the Virtualists?”

“I need her for an experiment,” LP said. Toumai picked up dishonesty in her tone. He was experienced with humans, and could tell she was hiding something from him in order to manipulate his responses in the future. He formulated a straightforward question and positioned himself between the cylinder and the intruder, imitating a human asking a pressing question.

“Is this universe in danger?”

“Yes.”

“Is her universe in danger?”

“All of them are.”