Author: Mina
CROSS PATCH
Merike caught him out the usual way. Why were cheating spouses so unoriginal? She’d wondered who he was messaging non-stop on his wrist com, so she’d hacked it. She was angry, of course, that he was screwing the doc’s assistant, but that wasn’t what caused her anger to grow into a fury that froze the very depths of her soul. No, it was that a lot of their com messages were about ridiculing her.
Hannes regularly made fun of what he called her autistic traits. Her shy awkwardness that she had believed he found endearing, her near photographic memory, her attention to detail – all a source of cruel parody and scathing dismissal. He was so sure his cerebral coms wife had no idea he was playing around with Yuta. His wife who could read at barely three and had memorised her book of 500 Rhymes from Around the Universe. She still recited them in the shower. She might have several doctorates and be able to hack or repair any coms system known to man, but she had no imagination, no finesse.
DRAW THE LATCH
Merike had soon discovered that their favourite bonking ground was Escape Pod 2D-497. She’d set the stage by claiming she needed to work overnight on a coms project. She had sealed the pod – literally – the carbon dioxide was no longer evacuated but re-circulated.
SIT BY THE FIRE AND SPIN
She’d hacked into Yuta’s com system and spent weeks planting false log entries. Entries that would serve to demonstrate Yuta’s fixation on Hannes, who couldn’t leave his wife for her. After all, you don’t leave the daughter of the man running the conglomerate that owns the space station you are managing. Merike had fun with creating entries that would demonstrate an unraveling psyche and a deadly obsession to keep her lover forever. One that would lead to a murder-suicide. A muricide?
TAKE A CUP AND DRINK IT UP
As a last touch, Merike added a glitch to the ventilation system so that the build-up in carbon dioxide was tripled. The coup de grace was that all adjustments were recorded as having been made from Yuta’s com system. Then she made a large pot of Earl Grey which she sipped slowly in her favourite bone china mug. They would die well fucked – not a bad way to go really. Her observations through the escape pod systems showed that Hannes possessed a sexual creativity she would never have credited him with. She looked forward to experimenting with the technician in engineering level four who had indicated he would be “up for it” if she ever felt so inclined.
THEN LET YOUR NEIGHBOURS IN
In the morning, she would return to her quarters and be surprised that she couldn’t find Hannes. She would be worried that the system did not show his life signs and that his wrist com appeared, strangely, to be in an escape pod. A convincing picture of panic, Merike would sound the alarm.
But, till then, there was time for another pot of tea.
When anger turns cold, bodies start to fall.
Excellent little revenge tale.
Re Escape pod – in our world, I believe ships’ lifeboats are popular for this pastime. Though you’d have to be careful not to make the canvass cover move!
So many things wrong – using an escape pod: so many mental alarm bells going off; cheating on a highly technical partner in a high tech environment, yet more alarm bells! Love may be blind, but it also seems it is daft as a brush, too 😉
For me its the fact that she was technically brilliant that makes this story all the more authentic, the broadside that comes with the revelation that she has been cheated on would have made her feel the utter fool. Why would she ever even consider the need to check up on the man she loves, How the hell didn’t she see it earlier and the sheer arrogant joy that he must have had parading in plain sight are all part of the tawdry game.
Yes, kind of sad but an almost universal refrain, “I never saw/knew …”. Amazing what can be over-looked even when in front of you, mainly because we’d never think of doing it (though she seems to have pondered it) so we don’t look for it.
Ah well, I had fun with the escape pod number 🙂
Absolutely! And I am sure after the first couple of assignations they did not even think about being ‘accidentally’ jettisoned! 😉
You would be amazed at the absolutely stupid things supposedly intelligent people will do when they’re getting laid outside of their committed relationship. You would also be amazed at how much people who should know better underestimate the perceptions, abilities, and motivation of the people they’re cheating on.
Sadly, no I wouldn’t! 😉 But probably in that ‘oh boy – really?’ kind of way.
Nice blend of human drama and believable sci-fi.
Thank you! It was partly a tribute to “Saphire and Steel”, which you have to be a certain age to remember. It was made on a shoestring budget and the science was dodgy, but they really knew how to make it atmospheric. The very first episode used a nursery rhyme to chilling effect.
I really want to see those again – Joanna Lumley and David McCallum wasn’t it? I seem to recall a ‘bit part’ character named Lead in one episode?
Yes 🙂 You can never look at old houses or deserted train stations the same way again after watching it…
An exquisitely thought out piece of fiction. The jilted mind can become a logistical Olympian when fueled with such unwarranted deceit.
Yes, but she feels his scorn as much more of a betrayal than the cheating itself.
Earl Grey – the post-prandial beverage of genocidal maniacs the universe over! Nice.
That include Jean-Luc Picard? 😉