Exquisite Corpse: Our Last Hope, Part 2 (Fiction at Its Best/Worst)

Every now and then, an idea so brilliant comes along that I wish I had thought of it myself. In this case, I actually did think of it. And then I handed it off to my alter ego Hive account@gardengnomepubs.

I'd been running the #exquisitecorpse idea since last year. It really caught on. So the garden gnomes took to it and gave us a pretty nice set up, which you can read about here.

What I like about this set up is there are built-in conflicts within the characters themselves. Hive account@felt.buzz did a great job setting it up for us in the first episode, in which he introduced us to the following the characters:

Maisie - A precocious and snarky 11-year-old and seeming protagonist
Danny - A transgendered serial killer, and the only male (post-op) on the makeshift space vessel hurling itself away from the debris that once was Earth
Syd - A female finance magnate who managed to make it aboard ship with a briefcase full of money
Ally - A female political activist with a proverbial chip on her shoulder
Prof - The female mad scientist who built the spaceship from scraps she'd been collecting for years

How could you not see conflict in these characters?

Image is a screenshot from the YouTube video "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.

And now, without further ado, I give you the sequel. Let the characters' stories be told.

Our Last Hope, Part 2

"Boy, do we ever?" Ally shouted. All heads turned on her. Leave it to the political activist to make everything about her, Maisie thought. She decided not to say a word. Instead, she turned toward the professor.

"What's the problem, prof?"

Syd, Ally, and Danny all moved closer, closing in on the prof, who stood in the door between the engine room and the main compartment looking sheepish. She stuttered a bit before continuing as Maisie joined the others, pushing through them to the front row so as not to miss a word.

The professor cleared her throat. Twice. She got a good look into the eyes of her shipmates for the first time since they all boarded and, just for a moment, glimpses of how each of them ended up on the ship she had made out of salvaged industrial parts flashed through her mind.

"Aaah," she took a deep breath and clasped her hands under her chin. "It seems that the geiger counter is hanging by a thread, and the fusion facilitator box could beeeee. Overheating." She curled her upper lip suggesting she thought that might be a bigger problem than the rest of them wanted to hear.

"In plain English?" Syd asked.

The prof's lip curled again. "We're fucked."

Ally folded her arms across her chest with a "Hmmph! I wish!"

Danny chuckled. He was about to speak when Maisie stepped forward, turned around, and pointed her finger at the three she had grown quite tired of in recent minutes. "Look! I've already warned you, knock it off. Can't you see the prof is in dire straits? Maybe she needs our help."

"Actually," the voice of the professor softly tickled Maisie's ears. "Is that a briefcase?"

All eyes moved toward the briefcase Syd held in her left hand, fingers tightly wrapped around the handle. Maisie noticed the knuckles were ghost white, Syd's grip was so tight. Syd grit her teeth. "Uh, yeah. I --"

"Hinges! I need the hinges." The prof's soft voice rose to a crisp lilt. Syd had never heard anyone get so excited over hinges before. Neither had Maisie.

Before anyone knew what was happening, the prof pushed passed Maisie and put her hand on the briefcase handle, right over Syd's. Their eyes met. Syd wanted to refuse the prof's advance, but she could think of no good reason not to let the other woman have her way. "You just need the hinges, right?

"That's it. Both of them. Then we can save the ship, and the last vestiges of humanity."

Syd let go of the handle allowing the prof to grab it instead. The prof took the briefcase and tossed it to the floor, reached into her lab coat pocket and pulled out a tiny screwdriver. Ally thought, What a strange thing it is just to be walking around with the right size tiny little thingy just when you need it.

The prof hurriedly pushed the screwdriver into the screws of the hinges and took them off. As she did, she held each one into the air as if examining them, grinning ear to ear as she held them between the pinch of her thumb and forefinger, and kissed them. First, the right hinge, then the left. Danny giggled. The rest just watched, bewildered.

When she had what she needed, the prof stood and bounced back to the engine room leaving the others to continue their oblivious goings on.

No one moved. Syd looked at the briefcase. Maisie watched Syd to see if she'd stoop to pick it up. Danny watched Maisie to see if she'd spur Syd on with some childish words of wisdom. Ally, finally having enough of the silence, bent to pick up the briefcase. Syd saw movement out of the corner of her eye and dove for it herself. After a short scuffle, the briefcase flew open at the hinges and stacks of dollar bills wrapped in rubber bands scattered across the floor.

Ally, shocked, sat up with a gasp. She had never seen so much money. Danny laughed and moved away. Maisie jumped to the floor and started shoving the money back into the briefcase with Syd's help. After they had gathered up the money and put it back in the briefcase, Maisie said, "You all have really got to grow up."

Syd and Ally stood, glaring at each other. Finally, Syd broke the silence.

"Alright, you know that problem you were trying to solve? I think I can help."

"You mean repopulating the human race?" Ally asked.

"Yeah, that one."

"How are you going to solve that problem?" Ally was clearly getting annoyed with Syd's uppity high-class fix-everything-in-the-universe horseshit. Who the hell does she think she is?

"I'm really a man," Syd confessed. Danny, standing beside the gauge station let out a loud guffaw. Ally's chin dropped. Maisie shook her head in disbelief. "Yeah, I'm a cross dresser. I've been doing it for years."

Syd pulled the wig from off the top of her head, tossed it to the floor, and wiped her lipstick off with her forearm. Her short, cropped boy scout hair style was a dead giveaway. She pulled the clip-on earrings from her lobes and smiled at Ally. "I've got all the parts you need."

Ally grew enraged. She could feel the red rise from the tip of her toes to the top of her brows. "You mean to tell me you've had the money to buy yourself anything you want in life and you chose high-class accessories?" For a moment, she felt like attacking Syd, making her pay for some nameless crime.

Syd sighed. And smiled, mockingly conciliatory. He knew it wouldn't go over well with the political activist, but where Ally went next was unexpected.

"You had the audacity to appropriate my gender!" Syd opened his mouth to speak, but Ally continued. "You could have been anything you wanted, anything at all! And you chose a minority class that has been one of the most discriminated against in all of history? Are you fucking psycho?"

Syd sure felt like it. "Yeah, uh." He paused to think of what to say next. Then it hit him. "I just wanted to show you bitches you can do anything you want if you put your minds to it." He put his hands on his hips and stood with his legs shoulder width apart, taking the stance of authority. "I mean, I did it too. Growing up poor, all that feminist burn-your-bra bullshit finally ate my craw, and I decided to show you girls you can do it all. Too bad it took a man with a foot-long to teach you that lesson. Ain't that right, bitch?"

Maisie jumped between them just as Ally doubled her fist. Danny stood on the other end of the cabin laughing.

"Stop it! Both of you." Maisie was yelling now at the top of her lungs. "All this save-the-world bullshit you two have been up to hasn't saved squat, has it?"

Ally shed a tear. She could not believe this, this man dressed as a woman her entire professional life just to prove a point and now, right here, in space, with just the few of them, he had the audacity to come clean and shove it in her face. Syd shuffled his feet.

"I guess it didn't do any good, did it?" He said, breaking the silence. "Here we are floating like Major Tom." He began to prance around the cabin doing his best David Bowie impression. "Floating in a tin can. Planet earth is blue."

Maisie rolled her eyes. She didn't know who Major Tom was, but she wished for one minute Syd would get a grip and act like an adult. Suddenly, he stopped dancing. "I have an idea," he shouted.

"Oh please, not another one." Ally crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "This will solve all our problems in one fell swoop," Syd said confidently. "I'll pay you ladies each one hundred dollars to get down with me. We can repopulate the human race and you can earn a decent living. We can start a little barter system. Build up the economy."

"Oh no!" Ally shook her head. "You'll have to pay me $1,000 if you want some of this. Each encounter."

Danny laughed. I wouldn't touch that with a twelve-foot pole, he thought.

Maisie's head zoomed from Syd to Ally. "How quickly communists suddenly become capitalists in moments of universal desperation."

"Sign me up," Danny said. "I want a month-long contract."

"Sorry," Syd said, glancing at the prick on the other side of the cabin. "No deal for trannies."

"I'll carry your baby for ten thousand," Ally threw in. "But no breast feeding."

Syd was about to counter when the prof walked back into the cabin. Everyone turned to look. She stopped. "What's going on?" She got a glimpse of Syd without his wig. "I knew there was something different about you."

"How about it prof? What's your price for sleeping with me?"

"Are you kidding? I've got better things to do than play stupid human games. Besides, with these hot flashes coming on, I can stay in the engine room for only so long."

Maisie grunted. She'd had enough. She threw her hands in the air and was about to walk away.

"As for you, little miss priss," Syd shook his finger. "You come and see me in eight years."