# **Captain Erica Joubert**

## **The Victor Who Came Home**

### Chapter One — The Return

The stars had never looked so bright.

Captain Frans Joubert stood alone on the observation deck of the *Resolute*, staring through the enormous forward windows at the blue-white planet growing steadily larger beneath them.

Home.

After eleven months of war, the word felt almost unreal.

a99e27cc-5a9d-4c29-9f2a-cbc9d4fa9f92 (1).png (755.4 KB)

They call it our Community Presentation Day on the banners and posters, but that’s really only half the story. Forgotten somewhere under the hood or between the lines, officially, it’s known as Assessment Day. We all call it The Sorting.

It’s not because they expect you to fail, or like they’re setting up a trap, or anything. You’re supposed to pass. It’s a free hit.

I looked hard at his parents, just before giving myself a mental slap. Their ‘boy’ hadn’t been a child for rather a long time. Geeta stepped forward to put a hand to my forearm.

“Things move on, Mike, but you have had so much on your plate, and our son… Dal was terrified that it might make things worse for you, bring up old ghosts”

Unsuspecting of the treacherous dealings of his stepmother, Langdon Ardens (alias Donna Ellis) has to face the indignity of picking out a new wardrobe for his/her new identity. After that, she has to register for school under a new identity and begin attending.

Adjusting to school as a girl doesn't come easy to Donna, but she meets a new student, a pretty brunette named Glory, who wants to be friends. Though in girl shape herself, Donna is smitten with Glory, who invites her to watch the rehearsal of a teenaged boy band that she sings and dances for. The evening jam session is not a bad one, but the conflicted Donna returns home in a mixed up state of mind. As much as she likes Glory, she even more wants to break the magic spell that's transformed h er and go back to being the old Langdon, the delinquent boy who is wanted by the law.

“So, this is it,” I said, leaning down and staring at the flask on the lab bench. It looked so unassuming — a translucent liquid with just a tinge of blue. Powder blue. My hand automatically reached towards it.

“Careful,” Doctor Hartwell said, and I jumped a little, drawing my hand back. “I don’t want you touching that without gloves.”

There are weights on my chest, pulling sideways.

The bed was trying to keep me.

You don’t usually wear makeup, do you?

Pete's Vagina
91. Showtime
by Erin Halfelven

CHAPTER 25
I was a little off for the next few weeks, even though it was Annette and Carole who did the down and dirty with the body. We gave them a hand with it, of course, but they were the ones who had to process it for the morgue and secure a blood sample for the inquest, that is, a sample of the blood that wasn’t already outside the body. The police had brooms in their cars, and station staff had buckets of soapy water for the necessaries once the photos had been taken.

It’s coffee, I told myself for the thousandth time. Just coffee.

The integration runs through the morning.

I'm at my desk, the cuff on, Seo-yeon at her desk running the verification sequence. It doesn't feel like anything dramatic. It feels like work — the familiar rhythm of the lab, the data building on the screen, the two of us in companionable quiet. The integration opening degree by degree, the resistance dropping, the access widening.

ARIA is present throughout. She has been present since I put the cuff on. Attending, keeping the promise. And then, at ninety minutes, she opens the cognitive space.