In the Turquoise Afterglow

Cecelia Cane was the first to be ‘forcefully disembarked’ from the space station when things got tricky. A minor hit from a meteor skimming by had deployed a barrage of procedures. There was an order of importance, a survival list. Unnecessary energy supplies were being used up, it was written in an algorithm apparently; calculated long before the ship went up. Had she known her place in the order of things, she would never have signed up for the mission.

Her dispatch was fast and irretrievably final. Out the hatch. Cheerio.

Casting her phosphorescent glow out into the depths of the universe became tiring after a while. Ms Cane thereby decided to flash intermittently. With her steady turquoise light extinguished, back on the planet of her birth, they feared the worst. It had been expected.

Ms Cane, feeling her duty was more than amply discharged, paid those back at her past home no mind. The beauty of her turquoise flares of light was not enough to ensure any kind of loyalty it seemed. Rescue was not coming.

Now she floated, deep in space. Untethered.

At first there was only randomness.

Part sparkle fish, part android, part something new entirely, Ms Cane chimera-ed herself through the galaxy. Re-invention, re-birth, the ultimate new incarnation: she was the first.

In the Turquoise Afterglow

Slinking around space refuse, turning her lights off to avoid suspicious looking diaspora, Ms Cane began to recover from the shock of finding herself jettisoned and left for dead.

She began flashing in code – Morse, binary, the rhythm of the entire works of Abba. Burning out several sky watchers’ brains as they reached and stretched for the key to this phenomenon; she liked to keep things interesting.

Cecelia Cane had found her true element.

Space trickster, she.