The general public of the multiverse, microverse, macroverse, places damned, divine, and/or definitely not either announced themselves to us, and for like, fifty years, we were total assholes about it. After the so-dubbed “cataclysm” in 1983; we were still mad about it, but we just found a way to work alongside the powers that be. 

Aliens, the multiverse, and previously hidden Earthly creatures have been made not only public knowledge, but a part of public life. It would not be so uncommon to see a yeti driving a beat-up car with a million bigfoot stickers plastered on the bumper around UW as it would to see a mermaid and her family playing in the ever-encroaching shore of Elliott Bay. 

 And that’s where I hid: Seattle. 

There was a high enough count of amputees and cyborgs that I could blend in if one wasn’t looking too hard. Crossing fingers on the oversight. 

I walked down the sidewalk’s steep incline, skidding a little on hail as I tried to watch my steps, and snuggled deeper into my thick denim and jersey anorak. The weather was unpredictable, especially in Spring. What with the failure of the last few generations of humans to combat Global Climate Change, spitting directly in the face of climate change activists and mythical creatures alike, and a few aliens who worshiped the color green. No wonder our weather was a mess. 

 I took out a peacevapecapsule and clicked it into the mouthpiece of my mask. A cool, cardamom and cinnamon vapor began to wreath my nose and mouth. I breathed in and stilled on the sidewalk for a moment. I saw my apartment’s front door across the street and I closed the distance. But I skidded on the concrete steps a bit before grabbing the rail, and I felt the synthskin of my hand stretch under the strain, but not tear. Unlocking the door, I moved out of the way so that my drone could fly in and place the groceries on the floor near my mini-fridge. 

I took the 10 liter water package I was carrying over my shoulder and locked it onto the top of the cooler stand and poured myself a cup of water. I drank half of it, then stirred in a red juice powder packet so I could have a boost of sugar in my system. 

Feeling a little high off the tannins from the aroma and spiked from sugar, I got to work, charting courses for dinkey commercial and cheap personal flights. 

Freelancing as an aerospace physicist isn’t easy. It takes a lot of connections in the right places. 

My calculations slowed, my stylus tip dragging against my tablet screen. I dropped the stylus on the desk and found a scrunchie. I put my brown curls in a messy bun and pinned my bangs back on the side of my head that wasn’t patchily shaved. 

I remembered the days when someone in my college’s department could make an introduction, how useful cocktail parties used to be, how easy it was to get grants, when alien tech was the competitor. How it felt to do my own doctoral research. 

Now I tutored middle schoolers in math on Tuesdays and Thursdays, played video games, boxed, and put up new ads online in random and almost untraceable places. The trick to not quite falling to bankruptcy is securing regular clients who trusted you enough to not chart their rockets or ships into something or sending them sailing off into the Great Unknown. 

I looked at the digital picture of NASA’s mathematician Katherine Johnson, on one of my desktop screens, and nodded firmly before looking at my first request since I had gone out. 

Buck Hanson, a freelance tour pilot of his own, had just sent me a request for a charting through crowded air and vacuum-space. 

I pulled up my live astronomy simulator and digitally focussed on Florida, where he would blast off from. I knew what type of ship he had, a silver Toyota-Powerforward, made in 2013. I wrinkled my nose in distaste and input the specifications of the make and model in the system, and uploaded the surface damage blueprint of the ship to give more accurate results. 

I spun the hologram model of Buck’s ship with a flick of my eye; there was more carbon-scoring on the hull than last time. I would mention it to Buck when I got him on the radio. 

 “Buuuuuuckkkk.” I drawled as I tuned in with my hearing aid and spun in my chair. 

 After a moment and a crackle, he responded, “Yes, Ma’am! Got a course for me?”

 “For you? Always.” I said, “Taking another group up around the moon?”

 “Yes’m. Family of four!” 

 “I hope they don’t know what you do in the backseat of that thing.” I typed in a few lines of code into the simulator, adjusting the time slightly forward. 

 “They’ll be none the wiser.” Buck chuckled over the radio. “When’s it looking like?”

 “This family wanted to take a tour sometime in the next week?” I asked absently, eye scanning the paths from the Earth to Moon and back at different schedules of planes and ships. 

 “Ehhhh, you’re looking at 3:20 PM on Tuesday.” I said, quickly double-checking all the air traffic and vacuum traffic in the trajectory. “Yeah, that’s a good time. Does that work, Buck?”

 “Yeah.” He confirmed, “That’ll give me enough days to really sell the moon, but just enough so they don’t wanna land.”

  I grinned into my cup and took a long sip of my red juice. 

 “I’ll send you a clear take-off and return spot in around two hours. Also, the carbon scoring on your hull is looking pretty bad.” 

 “Mm-hmm. Thank you, Nova. I’ll get that looked at by my guy! This is why you’re my favorite!” Buck said, and so I switched channels and shut off the bluetooth radio connected to my hearing aid. 

I took my time finalizing the math and calling runway owners if Buck could use their tarmac, and made myself some eggs for dinner, half vegan from the carton and half real from the shell, and came back to the computer to send the charts to Buck. Having done that, I sighed and threw myself over the futon. I squished several stuffed animals in the process, and adjusted myself so that I pressed my face into the black and red Mothman plush. 

As I lay with my left side against the futon, my right ear crackled. The hearing aid let out a tiny song only I could hear. Someone was calling me. Who? 

“Hey. Who is this?” I grouchily answered. 

“Ms. Cavey? This is Shareese Kline from Honeywell Counseling.”

I groaned internally and sat up reluctantly. “Hello, Ms. Kline.”

“You haven’t been in in quite some time. You really should-” 

“Yeah, I know what kind of business you run. It’s why I picked you. How about you pick a date, and I’ll just come by and drop off some cash and we’ll not have to sit through sixty minutes of silence?”

There was a long pause on the line, until the therapist said, “That sounds good. How does… Next Wednesday at noon sound? At my office.”

“Sounds great.” I pursed my lips and waited in silence until the line went dead. 

 Gritted my teeth and wished I could dig the hearing aid out of my head and throw it across the room. I went to touch the reconstructed half of my face, then stopped just before touching the delicate synthskin. 

Why was general society obsessed with implants to ‘See better, hear better, and be the better U’? That was the tagline of the company NU-U, an earth electronics and hardware company, which specialized in implants and functional utilities, until human tech was outpaced by its competitors from the rest of the Milky Way. It was just the design of the American government to take a monopoly of those resources and charge criminally high rates. 

Now NU-U pioneered and perfected the science of interdimensional travel, which I found deeply interesting, but what they used it for, I could never condone. They essentially reached into other dimensions, ones that a client says had a healthy leg, sliced the leg off and retreated to our dimension to surgically attach it to the client. Because why be on meds when you could a better you?

I groaned and stood up. I had to put the groceries away. 

I didn’t have a freezer, so there were a lot of dry things going into my pantry and perishables going into my mini-fridge in my small studio. Namely pasta, ramen, and dumplings; they were the cornerstone of my diet. To combat the repercussions of my carb diet, I attended an underground gym.

I shoved the last penne box into the small cupboard and went to change into my gym clothes: navy blue leggings and a tank top under a ratty hoodie and some running shoes. I grabbed my gym bag on the way out. 

I locked the door behind me and made my way carefully through the hail-riddled streets until I came to an abandoned sausage factory, a cheerful man with a mustache painted on the side winking at passing cars. 

I slipped past the railing that barred the general public from entering and trotted down the hidden brick stairs to the small back door. I scanned a card under the red laser light and the door clicked open almost silently. The interior was a dimly lit Frankenstein’s monster of a gym. 

I walked past the rickety balance beam, the heavy punching bags, and the janky treadmills. I headed to the back to stash my shit in a locker, not that anyone here who knew me would want my stuff. 

I spun the combination lock and headed over to the yoga station to limber up. I used the antibacterial spray on a mat and a ball and began stretching. My everything cracked as I rolled and twisted. 

I felt men’s eyes on me as I came out of child’s pose, so I stood up and gauged where the stares were coming from. Two men looked away meekly. One man whistled as my eyes met his. He was built like a boxer. His shoulders were broad and sinewy, forearms taut. 

“What exactly are you whistling at?” I called over at him. 

He grinned and seemed to look me up and down. “I like what I see.”

I laughed. “You must be new.”

“Yeah, that’s okay, ba- What?” He faltered, mid-white-boy swagger, coming over to me on these scrawny chicken legs that didn’t match the rest of his somewhat toned body. 

“I’ve been looking for a new punching bag.” I cracked my knuckles. 

He tried to recover by striking a tough pose, chin up the air, “Oh, so you box, baby?”

“Yeah, I box. Baby.” I closed the distance between us and folded my arms. 

“I could show you a few moves.” He claimed nonchalantly, rolling his shoulders in machismo. 

“Bet.” I passed him to go to my locker to collect my gloves. 

“Got your gloves on you?” I asked, as I pulled mine out along with my roll of tape. 

“Yeah.” He said, voice wavering. But when I turned to look at him, he puffed out his chest. 

I turned around and wrapped my hands. 

“Do you need tape?” I asked, offering him my roll as he retrieved his gloves, black and moderately beaten up, almost identical to how mine were a year ago. 

“Uh, no.” He shoved his gloves on raw and strode to the boxing mat, a designated area that wasn’t a ring, but a decently sized place to knock the shit out of each other. 

I slipped my gloves on and tightened it at the wrists before following him. 

He was jumping up and down antzily like a little boy, probably hoping he looked like a professional boxer getting hyped. 

I sized him up again, and got into my stance, feet planted and knees loose. 

The guy took up a high guard, arms up, gloves covering his face, and forearms to me.

This guy probably always boxed in this stance, or maybe it always worked for him. But I wasn’t that tall, standing at 5’5”, and face shots were not something that would be a priority for me, as he was easily 5’10”. I wasn’t going to be throwing any punches at his face, at least not right away. 

“You go ahead and throw the first jab.” I offered, putting my guard up, not quite around my face, but close enough to get there if I needed to. 

 “Ladies first.” 

 “If you say so.” I said, “Count down from ten.”

 He began counting, all the while his blue eyes nervously peeked out at me from behind his forearms. 

 “Ten.”

 I gut-punched him. 

 He wheezed and his arms fell momentarily, so I went for his nose, firing a punch from my body and twisting my arm to give it force. 

 He blinked furiously and shook his head, trying to move to the side. 

 I followed him, right foot before my left foot as we moved to the right. 

 He threw a punch as I was still moving; it hit my right shoulder and made me stumble back, but I quickly regained my footing and moved inward, jabbing at his upper chest. 

 He blocked some of my moves and retaliated unsuccessfully, hitting nothing but air as I ducked. 

He stepped with his right foot behind his left foot to move left, and I spied the weakness of his crossed legs. 

I made a solid blow to his sternum, and he tumbled backwards, tripping over his crossed legs, falling onto the lightly padded floor. 

“Tap out, man.” I said. 

“No!” He pushed himself up weakly with his skinny legs as I watched him, pity forming in my gut. 

He got up and dizzily put his fists up. 

“Come on, dude, give it a rest.” I said softly and blocked a punch to my stomach. 

I sighed, balanced on my toes, and uppercut him. 

He went down again, arms flailing out as he hit the mat. 

“Tap out.” I insisted, stripping a glove off and offering a hand to him. 

“O-ok.” He said weakly, raising his arm so I could grab it. 

I hoisted him to his feet and checked his pupils for dilation and his nose for bleeding or breakage. 

Nothing looked that bad, so I walked him to a bench and sat him down. 

“You did good.” I said, “Just be careful not to cross your legs while moving to the side.” I did the motion for him, mimicking what he had done, then corrected it. 

He frowned, but hissed as he regretted his action as he used the muscles around his nose. 

“I don’t need pointers!” He hissed, “Ah!” He touched his nose and winced. 

“Why don’t I get a first aid kit from the back and spray some bactine, and rub some ointment into those bruises, so they won’t get too bad?”

“No.” He grunted and pushed me out of the way where I had been bending to talk to him while he was sitting on the bench. 

He wobbled away on his skinny legs in the vague direction of the lockers. 

I went to beat up a bag, then run on the treadmill and lift some weights while I was there. I never saw him leave, so I figured he went out the back way. 

I briefly wondered what his reason was for being at this gym. Most of us were here because we couldn’t afford physical therapy, and most of us were cyborgs with debt. It was mandatory for us to have someone sign us off for physical therapy, most folks payed a small fee to the owner of the gym to sign their papers so they didn’t have to work out, because for some, it was just their eye, or purely cosmetic cyborg features they didn’t think about the consequences before committing to it. 

It cost more to use the gym, but definitely not enough to break the bank. And it was significantly cheaper than going to a government-regulated, or a more expensive private therapy practice. 

I used the balancing beam and treadmill for my hearing and my leg, and I have been boxing and practicing martial arts since I was seven, to the complete chagrin of both of my dads. 

I picked my stuff up from the locker and headed back out, leaving the smiling, mustachioed man painted on the side of the building behind me. 

I sighed and let myself relax; I had a good workout. I began heading home, but I was too tired to jog, so I went at a slower pace, thanking the clouds above for no more hail. 

I was about five blocks from my apartment when I felt someone’s eyes on me. I twirled in place slowly, looking partially at the sky, and partially at the two people behind me. 

“Oh fuck! I think it’s going to hail again!” I muttered loud enough for them to hear. I hoped it was a good enough cover. The two people behind me were both wearing Seahawks t-shirts, the newest style of jeans, the type with a million-friggin-buttons over the front, and spotless hospital tennis shoes. 

I started to jog, “Oh shit! Hail!” I lied loudly, acting more spooked of the sky than I was of them. 

They sped up, not quite jogging, but definitely speed walking at my pace. 

At that moment, one block from my home, I decided I needed to get into a public place as soon as possible. 

I made a left and took a winding path to a bookstore at the entrance to my neighborhood. They still had print books, and I loved the smell of the place, and the cats there, even if I didn’t go to purchase anything unless they had anything about old school aerospace engineering. 

I finally got to the ramp that led to the door, crowing, “Fuck yeah!” In my mind. 

Until I felt a sharp pain in my back, and my vision fluttered between light and dark as I blinked my eyes rapidly. 

“It’s night… thoughttt…fffuuuuuuffffffffff…..”