“Quit your flailing around, kid, this isn’t a dancehall!”

Tom’s glance shot back up at the arms-crossed instructor towering above him, to the rest of his row, then to the row behind.

“Apologies, Roth... Sensei.” He straightened back up, mirroring the form held by the peers on either side of him. As the most senior student of Roth’s Academy for Martial Arts, he felt some obligation to lead by example, but sometimes his inner class clown won out.

“I pray, for the sake of all of us, that you’ll have the ants out of your pants before this weekend’s finals. This is the closest our academy has come to the trophy since I stood on that mat.”

Roth motioned her head to the left, towards a flickering digital frame displaying an old class photo; three rows of four, one being a much smaller version of herself, up front, closest to the previous owner, the dapperly dressed Gabriel Case.

Case-Sensei was a local legend in Block 7. His mastery of the craft had earned him a rare one-way ticket to the Continent, where he took a huge risk, using up every remaining credit in his pocket to open the Academy in small section of Calico Tower’s first floor. That small section later grew out to occupy the entire bottom half of the building. Tom had long lost count of how many times Roth had told the story.

“He used to live out of that storage closet over there, you know. This place was his world. Look at what he shaped it into!”

Roth signaled the end of the day’s session and the class broke out of formation. Tom, along with many others, started his way towards the locker room. A blue belt from the back row, had been keeping pace beside him.

“Holy hell, dude, I thought Roth-Sensei was going to flash kick you through the ceiling after that stunt. You know how much these tournaments mean to her.” She pulled the tie from her long black hair and moved it to her wrist.

“Come on, May, I think she’s used to me enough by now to know I can be serious when I need to be. Look at my face!” He turned to her, pointing both fingers at an overly stern facial expression.

May’s face scrunched up, holding back a chuckle. “I really don’t want to laugh at that, Tom”

“But you can’t help it,” he shot back with a smile.

“Hey, you two gigglefolk want to pick up the pace a bit?”

Waiting for the two at the entrance to the locker room, propped up with one foot against the wall, was a tall boy with dreaded hair spinning his own blue belt at his side.

“G… gigglefolk? That’s not a word, Noah.”

“Oh, my dear May, anything can be a word if you dream big enough.”

Noah and May had earned almost every one of their belts at the same time. It had produced a bit of a friendly rivalry, which they’d often mutually overplay for the amusement of friends, Tom included.

“Not to interrupt what I'm sure will be a thrilling back and forth,” Tom cut in, “but we are all still good for the Garden tonight, yes? I think it’ll do us good to detach from these finals for a bit.”

May extended her right hand with a thumbs up. “I’m still good to go! Looks like the weather is going to be awesome tonight.”

“Yeah, it’s like someone forgot to pull the gloom lever,” Noah responded. “Put me down as a still-can-go too.”

“Ugh, the views are going to be so perfect!”

“Spectacular,” Tom responded, breaking into a small dance in front of the two. “Shall we wrap up and prepare for our adventure then?”

May joined in on the dance. “We shall!”

“Hey! You’d better save some of that energy for this weekend!” Roth’s voice could be heard yelling behind the front desk, where she had been doing some wrapping up of her own.

The three laughed and filed into the locker room.

#songbird #shortstory #fiction

“Everything all right there, Carl?”

“Oh, just peachy, Cap. Visuals bugged out on me for a moment again there. Had to wait for the service to restart.”

“Jeez, again? Your replacement surrogate will have an improved optics system, so hopefully...”

“Hopefully I'll get it before I time out.”

“Management marked it to be expedited. Best we can do on our end. You know things slow to a crawl when there's a rush on...”

“There's always a rush.”

“Be grateful you've still got this opportunity. A lotta folks...”

“Always.”

Carl let out a deep breath and twisted his right hand. His surrogate mirrored the action, turning the key in the PCDS Delivery Vehicle's ignition.

“We all good?” Cap's voice popped in through the audio channel.

“All good,” Carl responded, moving the weathered chrome hand to the center console. “Everything's back in focus. Resuming route.”

He tapped his name on the console and opened a new log window.

DELAY10MIN REASONTECHNICAL

“Solid. Okay. Pay attention to your meter. My dash is showing you've only got enough Hylo for a couple more runs today. Should be enough to finish the route, but don't dilly dally, yeah?”

“Roger that.”

Carl sighed into the audio pickup of his RMP rig, crammed into the corner of his small probationary continent apartment, as the surrogate stepped out of the delivery vehicle and into what must have been one of the Surface's hottest days on record.

“Okay, kiddo. Let's do this.”

#songbird #shortstory #fiction

Saturday arrived to the tune of my bedside console's alarm firing perfect three-point shots into my eardrums.

I’d become so used to waking up ahead of schedule that I hadn’t spent much time internally debating whether or not I should even set an alarm. Closest I had gotten to such a debate, I’d concluded that the benefits of not missing work outweighed the annoyance. I don’t believe this was one of those times, though, and this morning’s guest certainly shared that opinion.

Caroline, dressed partially in bedsheets, had shot up beside me, eyes wide and upright, like a student called to immediate attention. The morning light, sneaking through the partially opened blinds, striped her short auburn hair.

“Jesus, when in the hell does anyone ever need a chaos siren like that to start their day?”

“Backup plans are important,” I told her, shaking open a market bag I had managed to find on the floor. “Especially if I plan to keep affording a room to wake up in.”

She sank back into the bed as I scavenged through remnants of the previous night, eyes still fixed on me in partial disbelief.

“I can’t imagine them firing you for your first instance of tardiness,” she said. I smirked, throwing an empty beer can into the bag. “Who said it’ll be the first time?” She rolled her eyes and briefly pulled the sheets over her head. “So this is a typical Jonah morning, huh? Scampering about, bravely risking job security?”

“Well, I don’t typically have a lovely guest keeping me up all night,” I said, smirking again.

“Oh boy, what a facial expression,” she said. “Do you practice that? And hey, if it prevents you from getting to beddy bye at a reasonable hour, we can forego future meetups of this nature.”

I tied up the market bag, tossed it by the door, and spent a couple seconds pretending to think it over. “Nah, I’m still young. I’ll adapt.” Now she was the one smirking. “Are you? Will you?”

She yawned, stretched her arms, and rolled out of bed, leaving her gown of sheets behind. “I guess I should get ready to face the day as well, huh?” I froze for a moment. We’ve been spending the occasional night together for almost half a year now, but still, seeing her manages to completely stop me in my tracks sometimes… and she always manages to catch it.

“Hmm, I’m sorry, something wrong? I’m not distracting you, am I?” She began cycling through various goofball poses as I attempted to form a clever response. “Just thinking about how lucky you make me feel.” It was a failed attempt. “Oh barrrrrf!” she said.

I queued up the news in the kitchen while we both prepped for the day and wolfed down a healthy breakfast of cold leftover pizza.

“The protests aren’t showing any signs of dying down today, Dianne. It appears Overture has gathered a substantially large crowd this morning and is currently blocking off all pathways to the Block 14 Government Center. “

“Good!” Caroline yelled through a mouthful of pizza crust. “Maybe that’ll finally get some dialogue started.”

“Do you really think Parliament is going to respond well to all of that?” I asked. “And even if they did, do you think anyone in the Colonies will ever budge?”

She threw the last bite into her mouth. “Well, Overture isn’t going away anytime soon, so they’re going to have to deal somehow.”

“Sure, like send a bunch of armed CMP grunts in to clear the ‘unlawful public disruptions’.” I tossed my bag over my shoulder. “Still, I do agree, any action right now is better than inaction.”

Caroline smiled, walked over, and grabbed my shoulders. “You’re lovely,” she said.

I glanced over at the kitchen console display, which I had set to loop through morning transit times. “And with that, I’m off. If I catch the next pod, I just might be getting in early. You remember the door code, yeah?” “71752163?” “That’s the one!”

We shared a quick hug before I rushed out the door.

Overture. What a stupid name.

#songbird #shortstory #fiction