A rollicking prequel to celestial courier Carna hurtling through time and space. Carna Karaki and her Cerva was first introduced to TMR readers in May Haddad’s debut short story “Ride On, Shooting Star.”
May Haddad
As soon as Carna steps into the lift for a date with that cute girl from the dispatch division, her pager notifies her of a job on the other end of the galaxy. The pay would cover her rent, but should she choose to accept the run, the cosmic courier would have to make it all the way across “in 30 minutes or less” (as the Universal Courier Service ads promised) — or else the delivery would be free …
With no time to spare, she shamelessly shoves aside the lift attendant — too underpaid and overmedicated to put up a fight — then cranks the lever all the way, latching onto it for dear life as the cabinet surges through thousands of miles of space at warp speed.
When she’s finally in orbit, she falls head-first out the dinging door, stumbling her way towards her Cerva with a headache the size of the universe that she, too, is too underpaid and overmedicated for.
This ride could very well have killed her.
But hey, at least, this time, the elevator music didn’t hurt.
When the shifty men in suits and shades pass Carna the parcel, they urge her to handle it with care, cautioning that the fate of the universe is at stake — but that’s not something that concerns Carna right now. The rent needs to be paid, or she’ll end up on the chain dispatch again. However, if she’s going to make it on time, she’s gonna need a shortcut. Every conceivable route that the GPS could map out in the infinite vastness of space all lead her through the intragalactic sewage pipeline, where she could lose her sense of smell or, worse, have to take it out herself if she didn’t want to go mad from the inhalation.
But, again, rent.
So Carna hops back onto her bike, activates her vizor — then carefully selects an appropriate synthwave playlist before bursting off into the farthest reaches of interplanetary excrement.
Without sparing a second, she speeds — with mechanically clenched nostrils — through the wormhole where the wastes of Uranus are eagerly disposed of, then swerves against the black hole in the center, making sure not to fall into its event horizon — all the while holding her breath for dear life as waste decomposes atom-by-atom — then accelerates into the exit, careful not to exceed a force of 20 G.
This entire cutoff takes around a second or so and drops her off right where a meteorite just barely brushes by her fender, denting it.
Unbelievable.
Cursing into the cold callousness of space, she shrugs off the STA, clutches the Cerva’s twistgrip as if she’s trying to choke her space-lord, hits the throttle like it owes her rent money, and blasts off bleating, somehow managing to avoid the debris passing by that would’ve crushed her otherwise.
The drop-off point was inside a planetary mind consisting of shell layers — each a computational node — constructed around a Class M star to power the ultimate supercomputer. One could only marvel at who or what was affluent enough to realize this triumph of human genius.
Not that there was time to marvel.
Because as soon as she realizes how hot a celestial body of exploding gas is, Carna knows she’s in for a ride.
Though the outer layers are devoted to computation, this run, as luck would have it, needs her just outside the first layer — designed to harvest energy, releasing heat in the temperature of the star it surrounds — with a force-shield running on empty.
This may daunt most, but this is just another run in the life of a cosmic courier.
So she just shrugs, switches over to her heavy metal playlist, and kicks everything into high gear.
Before you can say, “I’ve been waiting for more than 30 minutes,” Carna’s Cerva disappears in a flash, coursing through space at the speed of light, her vizor perceptually slowing everything down for her so she can process it in real time. Not that it helps much, with space junk flying everywhere in all directions — enough that a minor brush against one would have her veering so wildly off-course that she could end up a galaxy over. As she crosses countless light years to bypass each shell through unregistered heat levels that no other being had ever dared traverse before, she makes sure that her eyes are focused on what really matters — the ticking clock — until the heat is felt through the shield and she’s afraid that sweat might stain the cute blouse under her bomber jacket.
But there’s no need.
Because she’s finally here, the port only a light minute or so away as the force-shield shimmers under pressure.
With no time to say “more than 30 minutes,” she hastily unpackages the parcel and then throws the fire-proof stick through the force-shield — barely managing to get it across before she’s completely blocked off from the input by her safeguard, covering her Cerva in a translucent, but impenetrable protector….
Promptly staring up at the upload screen high above that slowly fills up its bar as her watch’s neon counter ticks down to the end of 30 minutes, she can feel the panic of missing rent again, choking on it — as she would her space-lord — before …
“YOUR UPDATE IS FINALLY COMPLETE!”
This new system overhaul would uncap the AI’s energy intake, finally allowing it to process the latest, highly-anticipated feature, promising users the chance to find their one true love through a comprehensive analysis of every single thought that had ever occurred to them and will ever occur to them since their ancient ancestors back on Earth consented around an eon or so ago to have that chip installed right on their cortexes and the cortexes of every relative, friend, and acquaintance — human or otherwise — till the end of time — time as our modern understanding of physics defines it and will continue to define it … forever.
Of course, the only drawback is that older models hosting the app would now be slower.
Now, with the run finally complete and rent secured, Carna rode her Cerva off triumphantly into the emptiness of space, wondering if she could finally find that perfect match on Matryoshka Meet now.
