As the Coven’s chief of security, I maintain an anonymous tip box. It’s rarely utilized, despite the drama I often see from the two-hundred women and fifty staff practicing poetry on our tiny sanctuary. Perhaps it’s a testament to the Coven’s values of healing through performance and poetry that they handled their issues face to face and verse to verse. Or maybe they’re all conspiring behind me while the director, Lady Saph, lures me to her bedroom every night. If the latter is the case, conspire away please.
When my computer loudly announced I’d received an anonymous tip around midnight, I stopped my nightly session with Saph short and opened my computer. It took a few seconds for my whole body to stop shaking from what Saph had been doing to me enough to read the words.
Saph draped herself over my shoulders and continued whispering her love poetry in my ear as I read.
Hello security. Someone is using a large portable oven outside my apartment. I can see the glow from my window and it’s always flickering. I think they’re in the little field behind the north dormitory, near the garden.
Please, after last month’s security breach I’m scared.
I read it over, deciding if she was overreacting to someone having a late-night camping session, or if this was a genuine issue. I settled on option C: immediate security risk, because it’s my job to overreact to everything.
Saph retracted her arms when she felt me tense up. “Go get them Sam,” she said.
I bowed my head like some gallant knight and kissed her hand. Then I got up.
I dressed from my section of Saph’s closet. Black combat coveralls, utility belt, sidearm, combat boots, and one of my two custom built combat drones. I chose Hugs from the pair and tucked his avian form under my arm
Saph stopped me at the door for the final touch. She wrapped my black cape around my shoulders and tied it where my collarbones met.
Saph lived above the administrative acropolis at the center of the Coven. I headed out through the empty lobby. The ocean breeze welcomed me outside with a flurry of sea salt and gentle crooning of wind over the nearby cliffs. The chill was a welcome wakeup call.
I activated Hugz and threw him into the air. His wings unfurled and he took off, wings flapping in the best mechanical approximation of a raven in flight.
I put my oculus over my left eye and tracked his camera feed as he went past the ionic columns of the north dormitory and circled the field.
There was in fact, someone using a portable oven out there. She’d placed it over the firepit at the center of the field and was cooking something. It was round and didn’t look like food. And there was a stack of such round things next to her. I swapped to infrared and saw they were all various shades of pink from residual heat.
Clearly someone was doing an art project. If she was making firebombs or regular bombs, I would have noticed explosives being smuggled in. Or she was the most dangerous threat I’d ever experienced and had completely circumvented the Coven’s high-class security system and my highly experienced measures.
I settled Hugz into high orbit and headed over. It took a few minutes to cross the cobblestones and grass until the buildings opened in the field.
Nymeria was a younger woman in her thirties. She was tall and heavyset, which just meant there was more of her beauty to love. I recalled her being the winner of several weekly poetry contests. As I approached, I remembered she’d ‘graduated’ from the Coven and her going away party was in two days’ time.
“Hey Nymeria,” I said. She was wearing a smock and heat-resistant shoulder gloves. Her black curls were tied by a hand-crafted silver chain around her head.
She put the sphere aside and waved. “You probably think I’m being a little miscreant.”
“Yes,” I said. I came to her side. “What are you doing?”
“This is my going away gift,” she said. She searched the pile, then handed one up to me. It was hollow, translucent, and shockingly light. “Hold it up to the oven’s glow.”
I did and saw a little sketch shining across the inside. It was a map of the coven. And a nameplate. ‘Aelia’
“Wait you’re…”
“Everyone is getting one. You put a candle or glow cube in the center and let it sit in your room under its own power. Or put it on a tether and let it fly free.” She turned back and found a little glowcube. She shook it to activate the warm orange glow. Then she stuck it under the bottom of the lantern.
I released it and watched it float away. The map and the name glowed all around, slowly fading into another scar in the sky.
“No, wait you’re going to-“
Hugz swooped in and caught it in his talons. He flapped down and deposited in her shocked arms with a throaty ‘caw’ before flying off.
“Is that a drone?” Nymeria said.
“This is my little friend,” I said. “Where are you going when you leave?”
“The Coven networking team set me up with a job as senior artisan with the Kalieda manufacturing consortium. They’re unionized, they have a very good rep, and it comes with corporate senior housing. I won’t be building art, I’ll be making monocell apartments and modules,” she said.
“Maybe some art on the side?” I said.
“Oh yes. I’m bringing all my equipment from here to there. And I’ve got one of the coven’s creative protection lawyers on retainer. This place has been very good to me, and I’ll miss it,” she said.
She took out a lump of rock-hard nano-ceramic. “Now I’ve got through half of tonight’s workload. I don’t mind you watching.”
“Can I help?” I said. It was an impulsive thought. However, Saph had been rubbing off on me and now my appreciation of art was growing.
She grinned up at me. “Want to do a little arts and crafts?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Okay, watch me do one first.” She pressed a straw into the ball and held it over the oven until it glowed white. The nano-ceramic was a natural conductor, and it took seconds to heat up. She blew into the straw. It glowed white hot and expanded. As it did, her gloved fingers worked away. I watched as a lantern formed from a single, perfect piece.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Thank you love.” She reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “Can you do the blowing? That would save me so much energy and let me concentrate on the art part.”
“Oh yeah,” I said and grinned back. “Have you done Saph’s yet?”
“No.”
“Can you put a special message on it? I’ll pay extra.”
“You’re paying right now, what do you want?”
I opened my computer. “Here’s the only poem I ever wrote. It’s really, really bad, but It was for Saph.”
She read it over, the smile growing on her face. “I’ll give you her love note, love. Let’s save it for last.” She batted her eyes at me.
“You think I’d run off on you?” I said and raised an eyebrow.
“No, I know you wouldn’t, our dear guardian. I want you to keep thinking about making it as we go. It’s a focus thing for artists,” she said.
Which I am not. I grabbed the straw and wiped it off on my coveralls. “Tell me when to stop, I haven’t done this before.”
“Sure love,” she said.
I pressed the ball of nanite-infused clay on the end. I held it over the oven and within a minute it glowed red. The nanites must have been superconductors, feeing heat into the clay to heat it far faster than mere convection would. That made them quite high end crafting materials.
I pressed it to my lips. Then breathed in through my nose and blew. It expanded slowly but steadily. Nymeria reached over and guided it, shaping it into a sphere as she went. “Stop but keep it in your mouth” she said.
I stopped, feeling dizzy. Nymeria clasped both hands on it and wove with her fingers. I was left feeling irritatingly helpless, held in place by sturdy hands and my desire to aide.
“Done,” she said. “Step back.”
I wafted back a step. Within seconds, the new flying lantern was cold and transparent once more. She took it off and stacked it atop the pile. “You’re saving me minutes of work and recovery between each of these.”
“I’m dying though,” I said. “You must have vacuum bags for lungs.”
“I do go pearly diving here,” she said.
There were no pearls. Just very smooth rocks ten meters down. Nymeria and a few of the dedicated swimmers would go out there wearing nothing but lamps strapped to their head, and dive straight to the bottom. They’d come up a minute later with lips purple and shining rocks clutched in their numb fingers.
“Yeah, I remember you swimming here.”
“No that’s just practice love. I’ve gone much deeper. I grew up on a rafting community,” she said and winked at me.
“A what?” I said.
“My homeworld was the planet of Oracle Five. The entire world is covered in shallow seas so naturally, us natives lived on giant raft towns and survived on the sea. So, diving was my natural talent. And eating fish. I loved fish,” she said.
“Are you going back there to visit?” I put the straw back in my mouth. She placed the clay on the end. We didn’t say anything until the next lantern was cold and ready. Nymeria squinted at it. “I left a thumbprint.”
“It’s unique now. These are hand crafted, not mass produced corpie decorations,” I said. The smile returned to her face.
“I can’t return home, it’s all been bought up and leased to different aquaculture corporations,” she said. She mashed the complicated word in her lips and spat it out
“So you’re building your new home at your new job,” I said. We made the next one.
“Yes. I am going to miss feeling completely safe and comfortable. On the raft, we never truly left our parent’s sight. Everyone lived communally. Like here.”
I nodded. “I envy that you can feel completely safe anywhere.”
“Well a lot of it is thanks to you,” she said. “Does Saph’s bed make you safe?”
We made the next one. I tried to answer the beating in my heart. Is that what safety feels like? Being willing to utterly release everything into her arms?
“Yes,” I said and shivered.
“I confess, I’m jealous.”
“Like romantically?” I said and giggled. “It doesn’t matter to me, really.”
“Yes. However, clearly, she has a type.” She squeezed my bicep and winked at me.
“I make her feel safe,” I said and flexed my arm, showing off all my work in the Coven’s gym. “What happened to your raft?”
We made two more before she spoke again. “I wish I could say the corpies bought it out or blew it up but it’s dumber than that. We were smart, we had a holding company so we weren’t free real estate. There were other rafts. Oceans have currents, like winds but going continuously. The different currents meant we could track fish swimming along them.”
We made another one. I stepped back for a second to breathe after. “Oh I’m dizzy. Good thing I never played a fucking trumpet.”
“We’ve got about ten more for tonight. Then fifty more tomorrow,” she said. “It’s about two AM we’ll stop for now.”
We sat down. She pulled a flask from beneath her shirt and offered it to me. It turned out to be black rum.
“I’ve got enough mass that this won’t affect my hands. I hope you’re not a featherweight love,” she said.
“Absolutely not,” I said, and took the first drink.
“Good.” She tipped it back. “Our raft had the prime current for a very large and tasty species of fish. They had red, juicy flesh that melted in your mouth. Two other rafts decided they wanted the spot. It was really simple far as conflicts go. There was a battle, then a storm blew up in the middle of it.”
I imagined taking cover, bullets flying as the cover, the very ground beneath me shook and the ocean rolled. “How did anyone survive?”
“Our rafts are tough as hell. Still, one of theirs broke apart and sank. The other one lost power and drifted out. You see, my raft built everything better. We specialized in monocelled flotation pods and small watercraft, passed down from our ancestors.” She raised her hands and grinned.
I took my own long drink. “My old mercenary commander had a saying. We can suffer pain and fatigue but will never tolerate bad equipment.”
“No. Problem is, some corpie noticed. And with the cost of repairs and the amount of people who died, we didn’t have the credits to stop them,” she said.
“Which corpie?”
“Don’t know. I didn’t serve them. I refused. I built myself one more craft and fled the night before the official buyout was complete. I was twenty then and a dumbass.” She shrugged. “Ended up on some waterborne fishing craft. Then got into my own form of slavery on some private fish processing plant, just dropping fish into the choppers over and over.” She pointed at the forge. “I almost forgot how to do art. I think that’s the biggest sin of corporations. They rob us of art. Cheap and cost effective is simple, flimsy, and devoid of any passion.”
“I’ve never thought of that but you’re very convincing,” I said. I thought it over. Being a corporate commando was special. I had been-still was, the best. Having a unique set of skills was part of my marketing. We were grouped into squads based on our talents. By her definition…
I shivered. “I’m thinking about the implications for my old job,” I said.
“What. You were police force, right? The elite ones. I forget the name.”
“No, I was militant guard.”
“Who are they?”
“The ones corpies called in when they wanted to kill the elite ones,” I said.
She stared at me a minute.
“When someone told me that story about Saph escaping from a blacksite prison. That was you?”
“I have a weakness for a certain type,” I said.
She nodded. “Well, do you think killing people counts as art?”
“My job wasn’t just killing people. And by the definition you gave, yes it does,” I said.
She stood up, hands balled into massive fists.
“That’s what scares me,” I said.
She stared at the floor and back up to me. “Was what you did that special?”
“Yes. We were the best. If you’d built spacecraft, we’d probably have flown into operations in one equipped with stealthing. We were unique, because we had all the money from our line of work,” I said. I stood too, feeling like I was ruining her project. “Let’s finish them up.”
“Can you show me it’s art?” she said.
I thought it over. Nothing I did was classified. However, I had never revealed that an intruder had crawled into our coven, come within meters of girls sleeping in their beds, and tried to steal from the archives of stored poetry. I’d only reported a security issue that had been resolved. For the sake of everyone’s safety and the coven’s integrity as a safe place. However, Nymeria was leaving in two days and didn’t intend to come back.
I opened my comp and showed her footage from Hugz’ camera as I stalked the freelance merc across the rooftops and disabled him.
“Odin?” he said.
Nymeria’s eyes went wide. “Oh my, is that your callsign?”
“Yes. I was a known quantity among the merc circles in my militant guard days. I do it without augments too. He tried to hack me and realized I had nothing to hack,” I said.
She grabbed another lump of clay and molded it into a ball. We went through the rest one by one, until she said, “last one.”
“Saph’s?” I said.
“The one. Hold out your comp so I can read the poem,” she said. I extended my right arm and began blowing.
“You’re right. By my own definition what you do counts as art, but the definition horrifies me,” she said. I didn’t reply for obvious reasons. The lantern reached full size and I got to stop making myself dizzy. Her fingers worked away, writing the poem out. “I build things, I don’t destroy them. Yet, if we’re safe because of you, maybe that counts.”
I held back my nodding. Her fingers stopped. “There, done.” She took the straw from my mouth and held it up until the lantern had cooled to black. She put it on top of the pile. “Now love, I’ve got to carry these back to my apartment before anyone ruins the surprise.”
Turned out, she had garbage bags on hand. We loaded them gently.
“Did you ever consider yourself an artist?” she said. She hefted one bag over her shoulder.
“I never even thought about art until I came here,” I said. “Some of my comrades talked about it like art. I thought they were just being arrogant,” I said.
“Well, I’m pretty arrogant love and I’m proud of it,” she said. She threw up her arm. Then she threw it around me. “Let’s go love. More liquor when we get to my apartment.”
Dawn’s first light was pale on the sky when we stowed the lanterns in her room. Nymeria had a very neat and ordered room, with furniture ordered all around the outer walls and a thick rug in the center. The light shined in all pale and grey. Hugz alighted on the back of my chair and let Nymeria study him.
“That’s definitely not a standard drone,” she said.
“My two are unique, and coded to behave like birds,” I said.
She stroked the back of his head cowl with two fingers. He leaned back like he was enjoying it. Nymeria giggled and pulled up a seat next to me.
“You’ve know, you’ve always been this dour face hovering around the edge of everything here. I’m glad I finally got to meet you, love,” she said and tipped the flask back. “It’s a good, new experience to close it out.”
“We’ll do this again tomorrow night?” I said.
“Sure, fellow artist,” she said. “And thank you.” She raised an open palm.
I slapped her a high-five. “Is this a suitable farewell, what we’re making you?”
“Yes we are, love,” she said.
Thank you for reading friend. If you enjoyed that science fiction adventure and want a new one every week, feel free to like and subscribe to my substack.
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Sadly, our world has forgotten art. The elites chase profits, often to the exclusion of everything else, and what art they do buy is sometimes crap.
The schools now don't really teach art; they teach Marxism and racism, and the admins don't seem to care.