Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction Read Online Free PDF

Kell’s glass eye.
    People without eye donors had biomechanical eyes. They had microchipped acrylic ones. At the very least, Margo had always thought, they had those plastic boxy pieces that you had to keep a cap on at night to block out images while you slept.
    When you were Kell, on a faraway colony, and you knocked your eye out, what had to go wrong, what had to break down, before you fashioned your own out of whatever you could find, and carried on?
----
    “Someone’s taken an interest in us,” was the first thing Diallo said when Rumer came on to the bridge.
    “Peacekeepers, or the Kang family fun squad? Or both?”
    “It’s difficult to say. She’s not marked. And she is keeping her distance.”
    “Blueberries,” said Kell. “Gotta be. You’ve heard that bitch talk. She knows somebody.”
    Rumer ignored him. “Can you signal-cloak us?”
    “I have done, of course,” said Diallo. “But I cannot do it long, and eventually she finds us. Very quietly persistent.”
    “Keep on it ’til you shake her. She don’t want us that bad, or she’d be on us already. We make our drop, even if we gotta pour it down there like manna.”
    Diallo nodded, and bent over his joysticks.
    “About that,” said Kell, rubbing his eye.
    “About that,” said Rumer.
    “What’re you thinking you’re gonna do with her? Our hitchhiker, I mean?”
    Rumer shrugged. “I don’t know as I have a whole lot of options. We take her with us far as we can, drop her at the first opportunity, and hope she has the good sense not to talk to anybody.”
    “You don’t mean you’re still gonna take her on the drop?” Kell looked entertainingly uncomfortable. “Jesus, Rumer, she’s not… she can’t even… plus, you heard her, she’s dyin’ to talk to the police. She thinks police are like… service dogs, or somethin’.”
    “Don’t shit yourself, soldier. We drop her at Black Oven before anything else happens. It’s backworld enough no one’s going to care why we’re there, and she can go about her business, and we about ours.”
    “Pretty outta our way, isn’t it, Black Oven?”
    “Everything’s out of our way. What do you suggest?”
    Kell shifted a little. “Hey, I’d just like to remind you, but we got about two tons a’ very perishable cargo down there, and there’s some very angry Koreans want it back. This was your idea, this thing. I wanted to do something small, something normal that’d make us a little fuckin’ money. You’re the one who wanted to go all Wyatt Earp Robin Hood…”
    “What do you suggest, Kell?”
    “Well,” Kell hesitated. “Well, have you thought maybe we just… maybe we just get rid a’ her?”
    “How the hell you want to do that?”
    “I don’t know, man…”
    “Yeah, you do, asshole.”
    “Look, she woulda’ been dead anyway if we hadn’t picked her up, that’s all I’m tryin’ to say. Just, in the interest of the cargo. I’m not saying exactly we should, you know…”
    “What are you saying, exactly, you fuckin’ moron?”
    “I’m saying, you know, maybe, we put her in one of the shuttles, with some food, if you want, and we just…” Kell mimed the dustpan’s tiny shuttle drifting harmlessly away into space.
    Rumer smirked, despite himself. “I thought you wanted to fuck her.”
    Kell recoiled like he was standing too close to a serial kiddie-diddler. “She’s in a chair, man, don’t even joke. That’s some sick shit.”
    Rumer rolled his eyes. “Turn the temp down in cargo and head for Black Oven,” he said to Diallo. “She’s clever enough to catch her own ride from there, I expect.”
----
    Margo wasn’t going to let them continue to have their muttering, panicked, poorly-buried talks around her as though she didn’t understand what they meant. From now on, she would be where they were. If they wanted to continue having conversations about their secret black hole machine, or whatever, they’d have to do it while she was in the room.
    That was