“Oh, I love a walk in the park, too,” Jane says. “The only problem is, there aren’t any parks on Mars. Do you want to see?”
Of course. Mars has lots of rocks and deserts, but not really parks.
“Well… but Mars is pretty anyway,” you say. “I have seen pictures.”
“Yes, I have too!” Jane says. “Let’s go see if the pictures match the real thing!”
You go for a walk in the dust and the dirt. There are many rocks. The air is very dry. Everything is brown. You frown, and Jane laughs and laughs.
“Yeah, it’s not the most romantic date,” she says. “But I like dust and dirt!”
“You do?” you ask.
“Nope!” Jane says, and slaps you on the shoulder. “Not at all! But even dust and dirt is more fun when you’re with someone. And if we wait, the sunset across the dirty rocks actually is gorgeous. I know a great place to sit on the rocks. No cushions, but the view is good.”
You brush the dust off the rock and sit together. The sun really is beautiful, and the way it highlights Jane’s crazy hair makes you smile. She gives you an energy bar from her bag.
“I’m always feeding people,” she says.
You take a bite.
“Did you make this?”
“I helped make all the food on Mars Farm 104,” she says.
“You’re amazing,” you say, and take a bite.
The energy bar isn’t very good, but they never really are delicious. You take a sip of your recycled water and Jane leans closer. You enjoy the sunset together.
You choose Jane, the food specialist. You think if you have to go on a date, it should be someone who can cook, even if she is very ugly. You meet her in her laboratory the next day. She is standing next to a giant orange block when you walk in. The robot was right—she is not beautiful, at least from your standards. She is large and her hair is everywhere and she has big, wild eyes. She smiles at you as you walk towards her.
“The robot wants us to have happiness, eh?” she says, and laughs. “I have dated more weird people because of that machine. Every time someone comes even to visit Mars, that robot tries to marry us off…”
“You have a nice smile,” you say.
“You mean I look awful otherwise,” Jane says, and when your mouth drops open, she laughs again and pats you on the shoulder. “It’s okay, I know it’s true. I have never been a beauty. Well, what’s your ideal date?”
You nod at the robot as you step off the spaceship. It’s your first day on Mars, and you are really tired from the flight over. The robot guides you into the base, but it continues to stare at you.
“We are glad that you came,” says the robot. “We needed a human on the farm.”
“What?” you say.
“We are a small colony and we have several single women,” says the robot. “You can date one of them.”
“Wait, I am here to work as a farmer!” you protest. “I want to make a great farm on Mars! The best farm!”
“The best farm has a wife and babies,” says the robot. “We need more babies on Mars. It’s in your contract, too. You have to marry someone. That’s why one of the requirements for this job was that you are fertile.”
“My gosh,” you say, and you realize it’s important to read contracts very carefully.
“We have three women on Mars Farm 104,” says the robot. “You can choose which one you want to date. Food specialist Jane. She is thirty-one. She is not beautiful. Some people say she has a funny laugh. Or you can date Yui, the laborer. She is twenty-three, works hard and is very strong. Or you can date Monica, the doctor. She is twenty-nine. She takes care of the other humans on the base, but everyone hates her. However, she is fertile. Which do you choose?”
Kamen Rider Build (2017-2018) Episodes 1 and 2 “The Ones Who Were the Best Match” and “The Innocent Runaway”
Well, well! While retaining many farcical and silly elements, Build feels like a return to a starker sense of danger and drama akin to Kuuga or Agito or even the original. The ideas prickling to the surface of this narrative really stoked me up. This time we get a secret civilization discovered on Mars (which seems like more of an Ultraman trope), and a Pandora’s box which creates massive walls across Japan and splits the country into three warring countries striving for superiority. In the midst of this, our hero Sento Kiryu appears—another amnesiac, this time dwelling in a secret Rider base underneath a café, and assisted by a sleepy chemical genius girl who cooks up powerful brews made from defeated monsters called Smashes; the liquid then enables Kiryu’s alternate Rider forms. When Kiryu hunts down an escaped ex-boxer jailed for murder who pleads innocence—and Kiryu ends up helping him, and so is tagged by the military police as an accomplice to murder. Both Kiryu and the accused have memories of a dangerous mad scientist complex where they were experimented upon, so Kiryu hopes the newcomer can help him regain his memories—but things get really hairy when the boxer’s girlfriend gets changed into a Smash, and a bat-themed villain appears and mops the floor with Build.
As with so many other Rider shows, I really like the spread of fresh ideas in this show—and the urgent sense of intrigue and mystery. Yes, the drama feels a bit overdone, but it also burbles up emotionally, and I could totally understand fans catching tears from the second episode. The humor can overwhelm the serious bits a little, but the at turns antagonistic and friendly relationship between Kiryu and the boxer hits with dramatic satisfaction. I’m a little tired of amnesiac heroes, since they have turned up several times already at this point, but Kiryu with his physics-genius background and Wolverine-esque creepy memories is pretty interesting. The new Kamen Rider design feels like a further iteration on Kamen Rider W, as he combines power liquids to create the best battle combinations—generally one liquid with an animal strength and another with a tech base, such as the standard Rabbit Tank form. The two forms combine in diagonal slashes across Build’s body, too, rather than the straight up bisection of W. Throw in military robot soldiers (perhaps borrowed from Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue) which can climb on each other and form bigger agglomerate mechs (perhaps inspired by the Indian sci-fi comedy Robot and its sequel), and we get some compelling Rider storytelling and hijinx.
Credit: Kamen Rider Web
Kamen Rider Zi-O (2018-2019) episode 1 “Kingdom 2068”
Zi-O is a kind of new version or spiritual successor to Decade, meaning it takes the last set of Rider shows, and smashes them together, opening again with a massive war sequence and a new Rider who possesses the ability to destroy… well, everyone. The grabber of the story is that our hero this time, teenage weirdo Sougo Tokiwa, is destined to become a demon king in the future and take over the world. In order to stop that from happening, a certain Kamen Rider Geiz also comes from the future to attack and kill him and thus prevent his reign, and a girl named Tsukuyomi tries to save him from Geiz while simultaneously attempting to dissuade him from his dire destiny. Tokiwa, however, has felt he was meant to become a king ever since he was a kid, and when he is given the opportunity to use a compass-like device to change into Kamen Rider Zi-O, he decides to take the chance and pursue a future as a righteous king instead of his supposed destiny of evil. There is also some kind of monster stuff going on, and a dude is turned into a warped version of Kamen Rider Build (he steals powers from normal people this time instead of monster essences), which I am sure will come into play later.
The characters bounce all over time, kind of like Kamen Rider Den-O, but this time zapping to dinosaur time, to 1600s Japan, and to 2017 and an encounter with the Kamen Rider Build crew (meaning that they exist on the same timeline and same universe, complete with the alien walls and three warring nations?). With Tsukuyomi and Geiz, we get big mech battles, giving added scale and perhaps a touch of Zord-flavoring borrowed from the Sentai universe… and when Tsukuyomi takes Tokiwa to dinosaur time, we even get a mech vs. rex sequence. I thought the rex looked pretty good—basically a Jurassic Park knock off that strikes a sharp-looking pose until it starts moving. Tokiwa’s Rider form looks styling, too—he is made to look like a big silver wristwatch, with his face as the face of the watch, the hands stretching out like prickly ornaments on the helmet. While Zi-O isn’t as immediately competent at combat as Build was in the previous show (since Build had had time to learn the ins and outs of Rider life before the story began), Zi-O still exhibits power and impact, and right at the end of episode one is facing off with Kamen Rider Geiz who has a similar power set. I didn’t get a really good feel for Zi-O’s abilities just from the first episode, but I like the premise, and I would be curious to see more, even if the story doesn’t quite grab me as hard as Build or Kuuga did.
Kamen Rider Ryuki (2002-2003) Episode 1 “The Secret Story’s Birth”
I approached Kamen Rider Ryuki with caution and suspense, as this was the Rider I was most familiar with—in a way. Kamen Rider Ryuki was later Americanized into the Emmy-award winning Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, which became a huge favorite of mine. I have such warm memories watching the entire series with my younger brother, and I still adore the theme song and some of the character work. In other words, unlike with 1995’s Masked Rider, which I rather despised and thus seeing the Japanese version was almost guaranteed to be a step up, here I was going in with a ton of nostalgia and ardor for the version I had seen in my younger years. Could I say with confidence I would enjoy the original more?
Well… Ryuki has a lot of interesting things going on. The conceit moves away from the Kuuga/Agito universe, and instead the world has mysterious warriors and monsters moving through a reflected world in the mirrors (like Alice through the Looking Glass) and attacking (or defending) people in the physical world. Main character Shinji Kido works for a sleazy news agency, but he is a newb and VERY stupid. As Kido blunders around trying to look into a series of missing person cases, he finds a strange card-device that gives him the ability to see the monsters in the mirror realm. Soon he is pulled in to a fight with a CGI spider, and a mysterious bat-themed Rider saves his hinder. In the second episode, we learn that the animal-themed monsters in the mirror world are hunting and eating people—and that the Riders can contract with them, binding themselves permanently to their chosen monster other, and gaining extra powers and weapons—which can then be summoned by special cards the Rider inserts into a machine built for the purpose. If a Rider defeats and destroys a monster (or another Rider!), they gain strength from their opponent, becoming stronger themselves—kind of like Jet Li in The One. But by the end of the second episode, we still don’t know why this bizarre system of power one-upmanship exists, or why these creatures are attacking humans.
Ryuki takes noticeable attention to dynamic camera angles and more reliance on computer graphics for special effects, with some neat sequences showing the differences between the mirror realm and the real world. From go the show features several Riders while maintaining an all new and emotionally effective air of mystery and intrigue, as we don’t know what is going on, who the heroes are, who the villains might be. The spider and bat themes show up again, but they aren’t as predictable as previous incarnations; the bat man is a Rider! However, Kido and his news agency are obnoxious, and Kido even has a dopey theme song ala Bulk and Skull from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. The acting, too, tends to be stilted, with overall poor delivery—though I could say the same about previous Rider shows. I haven’t watched Dragon Knight recently, so it will be interesting to take a peek at that show one more time and see how it stacks up against its progenitor next (see below).
Also, it must be said, I think, as cool as the cards are, they also feel like a really unfortunate concession to the toy aisle. Card games increasingly became popular in the early 2000s, so incorporating some card system probably felt essential to success, and a lucrative way to create merch and monetize, monetize, monetize. Unfortunately, card gimmicks (and the like) like this would proliferate in the Kamen Rider and Ultraman franchises both and become more and more common in the coming years.
For me, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight (an Americanized adaptation of Kamen Rider Ryuki released several years later) for many years represented peak Kamen Rider. I was already in my twenties when the show came out, but was still very into tokusatsu of whatever shape I could get my hands on, and though I was wary of Americanized versions of tokusatsu media (since they tend to simplify narratives at best, and present chopped-up incoherent garbage at worst), when I watched Dragon Knight with my little brother, I fell in love. Compared to other tokusatsu programming in the West, Dragon Knight had a much more mature tone, dealing with death and complex character motivations and situations. Unlike many tokusatsu in the West, it also had a fully serialized story instead of an episodic structure. It also has truly impressive fight choreography, especially from Matt Mullins, a martial artist/performer who provides electrifying combat sequences that are far better than anything in the first couple episodes in the original Ryuki—the fights and stunts were so good, they won the show a Daytime Emmy for best stuntwork, which was the first award of its kind ever given.
Heck, even watching the show now, I still felt a tingle of excitement jitter up my spine from the fancy bootwork on display. Mullins is a bulky, tall, muscular chunk of cool who can dance in the air as he rocks the spandex and rubber off enemy monsters.
The story of the first two episodes in many ways improves on the already intriguing premise from Ryuki. Replacing dumbhead hero Kido is Kit Taylor, eighteen-year-old foster-kid and screw-up whose father has disappeared… but continues to communicate with him through a series of visions. Kit is resourceful and kind, but deeply troubled, and far more sympathetic and interesting than Kido. When he is tossed out on his tush upon turning 18 by his foster parents, he returns to his dad’s old home and finds a strange device—an advent deck that allows him to see strange robotic monsters that emerge from a mirror realm. Soon he is pulled into the fight alongside a Terminator-esque warrior who can transform into a bat-themed Kamen Rider, and this hero tries to warn Kit away from using the deck to become a Rider himself. However, Kit listens to his ghostly father’s words and uses the deck to make a contract with a dragon that follows him through the mirrors, changing into Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, and by the end of the second episode he is throwing fists with a third antagonistic crab-themed Rider and more goons.
Just like Ryuki, Dragon Knight possesses a fantastic sense of mystery and danger. Instead of the monsters eating people, the focus of the danger is more on Riders “venting” one another in knock-down, drag-out fisticuffs. The low-rent news service from Ryuki is replaced by a young lady working on supernatural news in her spare time who discovers Kit and befriends him—the supporting characters are not the strongest point of the show with some cringe-worthy jokes and acting, but they are far from the worst the genre has to offer. Dragon Knight also sometimes doesn’t tie together sequences from the original with new scenes filmed for Dragon Knight so well, as the seams occasionally show a bit, and the abbreviated combat sequences taken from Ryuki can feel more rushed and less coherent. Even with that said, though, Dragon Knight excels with stylish new transformations and maybe the best tokusatsu theme song ever devised (outside of the original Power Rangers jam)—I love singing along to Cage9’s stellar triumphant vocals and screaming guitars. Man… I love this show.
Kamen Rider Super-1 (1980-1981) Episode 1 “The Galactic Cyborg’s Great Transformation” and episode 2 “The Time of Battle Has Come! The Technique is the Sincere Shaolin Fist.”
After this series, there was a lull of about five years with no new Kamen Rider shows, so maybe the innovations in this incarnation were not well-received. The story has a lot of very familiar beats, but thankfully also attempts something new and interesting. This time, protagonist Kazuya Oki is an orphan (again—several of the others up to this point were as well), and he was raised in a scientific facility in the USA run by an organization called the International Space Development Program. Because of overpopulation, they are planning a trip to a habitable planet called Super-1, and have developed a process to turn humans into cyborgs to better survive the dangers of interspace travel. Like Jo from Kamen Rider Stronger, Oki volunteers to undergo the augmentation surgeries. An evil organization called Dogma Kingdom sends spies to infiltrate the program, leading to the inevitable murder of Oki’s scientific overseer/father figure Dr. Henry (and his amazing mustache). Oki barely escapes alive, still unable to control his own transformations into and out from his Rider form. The overpopulation theme is a popular one from science fiction around the world, and while its often tackled with dubious plans to create new sources of food that backfire ala Tarantula or Soylent Green, here we have the effort framed heroically, and a Rider created with positive intentions by a reputable international identity rather than via kidnapping or tragedy.
Giving Oki an inability to willingly transform is a unique wrinkle, but not executed with great storytelling chops—for some reason he thinks training in gymnastics will unleash his powers, but we never have an inkling as to what possible connection there might be between turning flips and changing form. Eventually, in the second episode, he masters his transformation by studying martial arts, which has this clever bit where his master opines that Oki needs to experience wind as something inside and a part of his body, mirroring Bruce Lee’s famous comments about becoming like water, but connecting to how Kamen Rider traditionally is powered by a wind turbine. Kamen Rider Super-1 is also equipped with a set of five pairs of “hands” that he can cycle through for different dangerous situations—hands for punching, hands that make him stronger, electric hands, etc. These “power gloves” feel similar to later incarnations of Ultraman where the giant hero could shift from one color-coded set of powers to another depending on the needs of the fight at hand, such as in Ultraman Tiga from the 90s. When Oki manages to discover how to transform in the second episode, he automatically gets the ability to use his suite of hand powers at the same time. Moving on to his design, I do really like the metallic look of Super-1, which seems like a precursor of the Metal Heroes metaseries that would kick off with Space Sheriff Gavan the following year. My main complaint? I just wish they would depart from the “orphan hero made into cyborg, father figure killed” dynamic which arises again and again, preventing some interesting possible relational dynamics in the shows.
Edited to add: One of the most notorious behind-the-scenes details of this show is that the star, Shunsuke Takasugi, was convicted of conning money from his fans, claiming the reason for his deceit was because the Yakuza took his Kamen Rider belt and he needed the cash to get it back. Yikes. Apparently Takasugi is currently a fugitive from the law, having disappeared in 2017 and escaping his responsibility to pay back those he had conned. His reprehensible deeds really cast a pallor over his Rider show if you let them.
Credit: Kamen Rider Wiki
Kamen Rider Black (1987-1988) Episode 1: “Black! Transform!”
One of the most popular riders, and even just watching the first episode kicked me in the face! What a show! Embracing a more occultic/magic feel, Black focuses on Kotaro Minami (and his best friend, Nobuhiko Akizuki) as they are kidnapped by a weird tribe of ghostly wizards (they look like Marvel’s Moon Knight). The wizards are part of a group called Gorgom, once again an international evil society, but this time they capture Minami and Akizuki on their 19th birthday and start their nasty cyborg experiments on them to give one (both?) the power of their leader, Creation King. Naturally, Minami escapes (and maybe Akizuki as well…?), and Minami is hounded by an army of spider men. The episode is filled with inspired action and haunting sequences, with the Gorgom walking on walls, the army of spiders creeping into a building with a viscerally disquieting series of shots, and some punishing action sequences. The Rider’s awesome bike can also operate independently and attack the episode’s critter armies without Black astride. In the battles, Minami really gets thrown around, and later the impressively armored Black appears and gets his licks in—and it’s satisfying seeing the dude bust face for revenge and justice. That crunchy satisfaction is heightened by an alternating synth-and-rock score that creates a truly delicious first episode and had me craving for more.
Credit: Bilibili
Kamen Rider Black RX (1988-1989) Episode 1 : “The Child of the Sun! RX”, and episode 2 “Bathed in Light! RX”
When I was a kid, I remember when Masked Rider appeared in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, and how cool I thought he was—at first. The commercials that showed some cool monster suits also had my heart pumping, especially an impressive insect monster that battles Masked Rider in a warehouse. Well, that show ultimately disappointed me, but going back and watching the original Japanese show from which Masked Rider was adapted, those old memories came springing back to me–for better or worse. Kamen Rider RX, the last Showa Kamen Rider, and a show that JUST crossed over into the Heisei period, is a continuation of Kamen Rider Black, and even without my negative childhood memories, it seems obvious this is a bit of a step down. The first episode doesn’t have nearly the visceral impact of Kamen Rider Black, with a much tamer tone. Where Black was creepy and cool with armies of deadly spiders, RX has mutants stealing kids’ bicycles. The story takes place after Black, and Minami is now a helicopter pilot. When he encounters strange energy-emitting spikes jutting out from a lake, a series of events is triggered, and crystalline growths begin cropping up around the city (ala Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla five years later). The Crisis Kingdom has come to take over the earth, and they have already analyzed Kamen Rider Black and devised a way to neutralize him. They capture him, destroy his ability to transform, and chuck him into space—but the sun apparently mutates him, and he returns in a slightly new form to do battle again.
One of the innovations of this series is that now the rider is powered by the sun (like some incarnations of Superman) rather than by the wind. Whereas the old Kamen Rider and many of his offshoots gained strength by letting wind rush through a turbine in their belt, now RX gets power whenever he is exposed to sunlight—which becomes apparent in the second episode. Instead of turbines, I suppose the red circles on his belt are more like solar panels. The second episode explains some of these aspects of the new rider as he faces off against a scary-good, Terminator-esque cyborg who chases our hero down in a yellow car. RX further has a lightsaber (sunsaber?) and his “Rider Kick” has evolved into a drop kick instead of the usual flying kick. In the first two episodes, there seems to be a theme in which the badguys are tying to analyze the Rider’s abilities so as to discover the best way to defeat the hero, which I like, too—though the assembly of goofy villains in a dark base feels a bit too Power Rangers. Still, something about that driving rock-and-synth soundtrack and that heroic theme song sends me, man.
It is Easter. I like writing stories. I wanted to share a story which I wrote for a chapel speech I gave earlier this year. I also drew the illustrations. I have been a Christian all my life, though these days I really have a hard time embracing the teachings and it’s hard for me to say with certainty what is true. However, I keep hoping that there is a loving God out there, and this story is kind of an expression of that hope. I really wanted to write a Christian-inspired science-fiction story, and predictably took some inspiration from from C. S. Lewis’ sci-fi trilogy with the following. The title is a pun playing off of the dual meanings of “body”–and the Japanese title is also a pun, though it works differently… It’s “Hoshi no Karada,” which means “Star Body”–but the word for “desirable” or “to want” is “Hoshii,” and so I was wanting to kind of implicate that meaning in my story, too. A Desired Body. Happy reading–and Happy Easter!
The Japanese version follows the English. Japanese translation provided by Yukakology from Fiverr, with additional edits from my Japanese tutor hero and my coworker Yukiko. All artwork was done by me on paper with pencil, then scanned. Apologies–it’s not great art!
The ATOM pods turned in the gravity pull, detecting the nearby planet and its riches before we could come out of the long sleep. I felt adrenaline as I awoke, knowing that something good had brought me to life. Even just looking out of the sensor window, I could see that the world below us was beautiful, full of treasure we could take for ourselves.
“It’s a good one, I can see even from here,” came Evelyn’s voice over the interphone. “This planet will be our biggest profit yet.”
“Let’s take it, then,” I said. “We’ve been floating for six days. Finally we have something to wake up for, huh?”
We turned our pods toward the planet, and we fell from the sky. Our pods, egg shaped, burned lines of fire through the atmosphere, but the shells protected us as we streaked towards land. We skimmed over the water, the stretching oceans, the shimmering flames of the nearest star glittering above us as we searched for a lifeform we could use to adapt into and begin to take everything for ourselves.
“Remember,” I said. “The lifeform we choose has to be big enough that we can get a good DNA sample. We need to be able to take the organic matter into our biosuits in enough volume or else the mutation will be incomplete. We want to make sure everything goes smoothly so we can really enjoy ourselves.”
“Yeah, I got it,” said Evelyn. “Plenty of life here to choose from, too.”
And there was. Strange bird-like creatures fluttering and singing through the air. Long pin-legged insect-like things dashing across the surface of the lakes. Billions of tendrils poking out of the hills and reaching for the sun. But we needed something big, and these lifeforms—we could take their lives later, but we needed something large for our adaption engines to really work.
“How about that tree?” Evelyn said. “Over there. Biggest tree I ever saw. Lush. Powerful. We can take it, and it will transform us, make us suitable for this world.”
I turned my ATOM pod in the sky, triggered the shade mechanism in my viewing port so that the streaming sunrays wouldn’t dazzle me, and took in the organism before me.
It was like a tree, certainly. Hundreds of feet tall, with gargantuan limbs splayed out, welcoming us in. The outer material—the skin or bark of the thing—was an intricate play of dark and light, whites and blacks, and splotches of gray. Instead of leaves, the thing had bubbly orbs of glittering green that seemed to suck the energy from the atmosphere and beam out heat themselves. But most beautiful of all were the fruit. Massive hanging bulbous fruit, juicy and inviting, thick with organic material that would be perfect for our adaptation engines.
I sucked in air across my newly-grown teeth.
“It’s against the rules to use the trees,” I said, though I liked what I saw. “Sometimes the trees don’t make for good adaptations, you know. It might not…”
“It’s fine,” Evelyn said. “We aren’t going to find anything nicer than this. Those old guidelines about trees are outdated anyway—our new adaptation engines have been updated and can handle the transference even from plant life.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond. Already her ATOM pod was diving. It plunged into one of the enormous red fruit, larger even that her own space-traversing machine. Immediately the pod began to transform, merge with the fruit, and gorge itself on the available organic material.
“It’s amazing, Guy,” Evelyn said. “The fruit, this tree—it will provide everything we need to adapt for this world, so we can take anything we want. The power—it’s astonishing!”
Any time we wanted to use a world and make it ours, we first had to merge with organic material in that world so that our bodies could live there. If we just tried to exit our pods in our newgrown bodies, we would be too vulnerable, weak and fresh in a possibly dangerous environment. The rules, though… they said we should adapt using an animal—flesh and blood, not the tree.
“It’s good, Guy!” Evelyn cried through the interphone. “It’s so good! You need this!”
I couldn’t bear to stay away, hearing Evelyn’s excited voice. My ATOM pod seared down from the sky almost beyond my control, and I bonded with a second fruit, the pod hitting it with a loud, wet pop. Soon the skin of my pod was pulling in organic material—I could hear the juices gurgling around me, assimilating, pulling through the membrane of my cosmic machine.
And I did feel it. The power. The knowledge of this world that would sustain us, the DNA and the pieces of this gorgeous world that were becoming a part of me.
Yes. With this power, we would become the creatures we needed to be to live in this environment, and absorb the truth, the facts of how to adapt through the elegance of the DNA of this amazing lifeform that obviously was thriving here. I felt my body infused with everything we needed to rule and conquer this world.
Within a few hours, our bodies had been converted to something greater than we could ever have imagined, and we emerged from the cosmic membranes of our pods. My body was larger, muscular, my eyes sharper, my mind dancing with the information of a million lives, and I knew how I could make this world my own.
I fell dozens of feet to the floor of the world, and the tendril-like plants whispered away from my gripping feet. I roared and shook my fists at the sky, and I heard Evelyn cry out her own victory not far away. We dashed through the undergrowth to each other, each step cementing the use and the power of our bodies, making us more confident in our new skins.
We crashed into each other, and I lifted her above my head, and our eyes flashed as we looked on each other in naked triumph.
“We are masters of this world,” Evelyn said. “We will take everything we need.”
“Yes, but less us prepare ourselves fully,” I said, and reached to pull off strips of black bark from the tree. “We need to protect our new skin as it hardens for this world.”
The black bark oozed and shifted onto our bodies after we applied the clothing chemicals that shifted the structures of the molecules and created living vestments we could use to cover ourselves. Soon we were running, laughing, taking anything we wanted from our new world.
Nothing could stand against us. The creatures of our new home, for all their variety and beauty, could not overcome our space weaponry, nor our perfect new bodies and the power within us. Again and again, everything we found, anything we wanted, we took, the treasures, the fruits, all things of value bowed before us and went into our collection modules, crunched down to microscopic size via the portable black holes housed inside.
“This world is the richest one found yet in the history of our race!” cried Evelyn. “Look at the minerals, the rich biodiversity, the metals housed in the hills, the quality of the oceans and all that we can yet learn!”
I laughed, and I leapt dozens of feet in the air, pouncing over the shrubbery, crushing everything underfoot, sucking all that I wanted into my portable black hole.
But as the days passed, I realized something was wrong. I woke up with the knowledge that something had broken inside of myself, and I felt a streak of fear stab through my mind. I stood from the bed of pulverized downy cotton matter that had made my bed, and something gave in my leg.
I looked down, and my skin had cracked. The black leathery bark clothing was starting to split. I desperately tried to run, and found my legs seemed to splinter beneath me.
“Evelyn!” I yelled. “What is happening?”
She emerged from behind the cover of overlapping enormous leaves, but I knew from one glance that the flaw was in her, too. The power that I had seen that first day in her new body had halved and broken. Something creaked in her bones as she turned to look at me.
“Death is in this organic stuff we have taken in,” she said. “Did it not fully adapt us? Did the technology fail?”
I grabbed her arms, feeling the pain jag through my fingers as I held her.
“You did this!” I said. “The guidelines warned against using the trees when making the adaptations! Why wouldn’t you listen to me?”
“If you are so wise, then why did you follow and use the fruit for your own adaptation?” Evelyn retorted. “You are no wiser than I!”
“Do you both find yourselves so full of excuses?” came a voice then. “Listen to yourselves, and see how you have led yourselves to destruction.”
Someone was stepping through the flora nearby. The footsteps were like thunder. Yet there was a gentleness in the voice that reverberated through our hearts.
It was the Man. Larger than either of us. Perfectly adapted for this world. Somehow I knew right away we were supposed to adapt through this organism, and not through just any tree or thing we could find in our rush to take and make everything our own.
The Man stepped closer, taking us by the hand, leading us through the underbrush. We walked with him, tears in our eyes, our bodies failing, cracking, falling apart. Even just a few steps and I could hardly breathe, could not keep up with his quickening steps.
“I will carry you, but you must let go of your burdens,” said the Man. “There isn’t time nor space for you to carry all the things you have stolen. Let go of them, and I will carry you.”
What could we do? I did not want to drop the packages, the fruit of our labors, but my knuckles burned with pain as my body continued to shiver and crack. The black hole module fell from my grasp and into the swirling undergrowth.
“Faster, we need to go faster,” said the Man, and his glistening muscles pulled us along, and we saw the tree again from whence we had come, and He brought us there, and we saw He was crying now, His mouth pulled back in a grimace of sorrow.
“You will need to crawl back into your pods,” He said. “If you will follow me, I can save you, but I cannot force you to take the positions. I need to take my own.”
He put us beside the ATOM pods we had arrived in, and then he was climbing up the tree. I peered across at Evelyn, and she back at me, curled in our painful places. We knew if we climbed into the pods, we would lose everything we had ever known, and all the treasure we had tried to take. But what choice was there?
I coughed and spluttered as I pulled myself into the pod, my black bark clothing curling off of me. I was like a baby, barely able to move, and all I could do was weep, and realize the depth of my selfishness. I saw out of the viewport the Man had taken His position indeed. He was on the tree now, becoming one with it, His arms splayed out across the tree’s limbs, the thorns I had not seen before piercing into him, and His blood was joining the tree. As the pod began to take on His organic matter, I could feel the transformation begin.
I could not see Evelyn. I could only see the Man, and He died, shattering as the tree took Him, and He cried out once in a language that I could not understand, but which my heart took in like sweet words spoken to my soul. The broken body that I had boiled and churned in the pod, and everything purged away, in a riotous wave of stinging, shining new.
When the pod I saw in jettisoned from the tree, and sprung away from that world, I saw, too, that the Man who had climbed the tree was gone, too, and somehow I knew that He somehow was walking again. Somehow it seemed He had escaped the thorns and suffering of the tree which had nearly killed me, and which Had indeed killed him.
I knew He had escaped those thorns because, even as I left the wondrous garden that was the astonishing world I had tried to steal, I knew the Man lived because the blood that burned in my heart was not my own.
I was something new, again. And the treasure I walked away with that day was greater than any I had searched for.
What makes a book worth reading for you? I likely would have never picked up Sparks Like Stars except for one reason—My mom was reading it for her book group, and I have gotten into the habit of reading along, which gives us a regular topic to chat about when I call each week. Otherwise, I might have run away from the title—“Sparks Like Stars”? I don’t know, it simply strikes me as something gooshy, maybe preteen… and this book really isn’t that. Written by Nadia Hashimi, an Afghan-American doctor/novelist (dang, how does a doctor find the time to write novels?), Sparks Like Stars is the second book I’ve read as part of my book-club journey with my mother, with the first being The Pearl that Broke its Shell. Both books deal with Afghanistan history and young women navigating in and out of the country. This time, the focus is on a young Afghan girl caught in the middle of the Saur Revolution, manages to escape, and the crazy aftermath. The novel is often deeply moving and eye-opening for those unaware of recent Afghani history, though the plot is built on such radical implausibilities that the tale can come across as a bit eye-rolling.
Note that I will be discussing some spoilers here. I don’t want to spoil everything, but if you don’t want any spoilers at all, skip to the end.
The general set up is that Sitara Zamani, a ten-year-old Afghan girl living in Kabal, is living the high life (relatively speaking) with her father as the right-hand man to the president, Sardar Daoud. Everything goes south when a coup is staged, her family is murdered, and she barely escapes alive under the auspices of a guard she thinks killed her family. After a series of complicated misadventures and barely-evaded capture, Sitara manages to escape the country under a new assumed name: Aryana. After a harrowing side trip through the US foster system, she is adopted by a foreign diplomat, and grows up to become a cancer surgeon—and one day (here is the big spoiler, though it’s mentioned even on the Goodreads page) in walks the guard, Shair, that saved her life and may have murdered her family. He has also escaped to the US, and now he needs her help to save his life. But can he also uncover her past?
For me I enjoyed the first half of the book a lot more than the second. Sitara’s emotionally-wrought escape from death and her ensuing rebellion against her captor, then her growing relationship with an odd-couple mother-daughter pair (one is an actor, the other a diplomat) give a real emotional bite to the story, and create a delicious tension to the hairbrained escape schemes and encounters that play out. When Sitara/Aryana arrives in the USA and is pawned off into a foster home run by a tyrannical Christian mother and her pedophile husband, the story felt derailed a bit.
But then the narrative jumps to Sitara’s adult life, and I felt a lot of disconnect at first. I was more interested in following young Sitara’s adaptation to the new culture than older Sitara’s jaded maturity and broken love life. Then, when Shair appears through the wildest cosmic coincidence on her doorstep, I had a serious flashback to A Little Princess (which I also read earlier this year) because that book, too, relies on a massive serendipity to resolve its character conflicts. With Sparks Like Stars, though, this act of fate is just the first of several that stream from the godlike pen of author Hashimi, and which pull Sitara through a painful-yet-liberating journey back to the world of her childhood.
The celestial fates theme seems deliberate, even with Sitara standing as a skeptic/irreligious individual. She comes from a Muslim background, and there are hints that a greater power is working in the shadows or operating in the heavens—Shair definitely interprets the fated reunion in such a way. The story doesn’t exist without the touch of God so to speak, but it feels a bit faked rather than fated, especially as other bits fall into perfect place, or Shair speaks in deliberate riddles to string the plot out longer. The contrivances pricked my annoyance.
Still, if you can swallow the artificial elements of the tale, Sitara goes through a torturous character arc, and it’s worth it to troop along for the ride. Her relationship with her adopted mother is rewarding and warm, and traitorous Shair might be my favorite character (other than his Yoda-like obtuseness) due to his complexity and tragedy. Hashimi’s writing is at turns poetic, powerful, tense, and flat, with some few passages clonking in my ears as narrator (and Iranian-American actress) Mozhan Marno dramatically reads (I just think a few places needed another editing pass). Marno does a fine job with the reading, strengthening the narrative with due narrative heft. I was wondering as I was listening to the book whether the narrator could speak the languages of the Afghanistan, as there are several phrases in the book spoken in Afghani tongues—and while Marno speaks Farsi (the official language of Iran), it’s not clear to me she can also speak Afghani languages well. But… since I don’t know either way, it doesn’t affect my enjoyment much.
Basically, it’s a pretty good book. And it was nice to talk about it with my mom. That’s about all I got for now 😊
Bringing a tyrannosaurus to court is really difficult. I don’t know how long the judge (and whoever else is in charge of putting together a court proceeding) talked and planned, but it wasn’t long enough. Someone had paid a lot of money to make a large chair for the tyrannosaurus to sit in. The “dino-chair” did not survive one encounter with the tyrannosaur’s bottom. The tyrannosaur ended up mostly standing (he got antsy sometimes during the long court case, and his tail became a dangerous weapon as he twitched it around in boredom or agitation or whatever tyrannosaurs have for emotions).
The most amusing part for me was when the court tried to swear in the tyrannosaurus. To swear in a witness (in this case, a giant dinosaur), the witness is supposed to put one hand on a Holy Bible and one hand in the air. But it was really awkward to position the Bible so that the tyrannosaurus could put one of his claws on the book with his head jutting far out over the audience in the stands, and he looked really funny with his other hand sticking out at an awkward angle. Someone suggested that the dinosaur put his free hand over his heart instead, but then there was a debate about where a tyrannosaurus’ heart might be. I think everyone else in the room (including me) swore a lot more than the tyrannosaurus ever did.
“Honestly, I am not going to lie,” said the tyrannosaur after much foofaraw. “I think the truth is self-evident anyway.”
And the evidence was impressive. With some searching, the police were able to find over several dozen fossilized footprints that perfectly matched the tyrannosaur’s own foot (or feet) all around the city of Final Pumpkin (our city has a strange name related to agricultural scarcity and competition back in the day)—though there was some consternation about why many of those footprints had not been found before. The fact that some did not fit the rex’s feet caused concern that another dinosaur might be running rampant. Footprint experts came and talked about feet and described in detail the contours of the old lizard’s soles. I got so bored listening that I started watching the old lizard to see if he had any reaction to all the attention, but he didn’t seem very self-conscious. Even experiments on the cave in which the tyrannosaur had been sleeping, as well as his prehistoric pillow, came back with the same results: they (the dinosaur, the pillow, the cave) were really old.
So the tyrannosaur had been living in Final Pumpkin long before us humans had moved in. We just didn’t notice.
“And what’s more,” said the tyrannosaur, standing impressively in front of the lectern. “A tyrannosaurus is known as the king of the dinosaurs. It is just natural that I would also become the king of Final Pumpkin City.”
Finally, I took the witness stand to deliver my testimony as the first person to have met the rex, which gave my position an exaggerated sense of importance which I hadn’t really earned. Nevertheless, I was pretty upset by this point, and I would use any advantage I could get.
“Your honor, footprints don’t mean ownership,” I said. “I can walk through wet cement, but my shoe prints don’t mean I own the sidewalk. We have here an old lizard. But being old and a lizard doesn’t make someone royalty. That would be ridiculous.”
Some people were nodding in the audience. I pressed forward.
“Plus he can’t live in my garage,” I said. “I like my garage. I paid for my garage. A lot of money. This old lizard didn’t pay anything. He can live in his cave.”
I thought my arguments were really good. An hour later, the judge came back with the verdict.
“We don’t want to make the same mistakes our nation has made in the past,” said Judge Farrensquelcher, who was presiding. “This court recognizes the tyrannosaurus over there as the king of Final Pumpkin City.”
Originally submitted to a story contest on Reedsy Prompts, in response to the prompt “Write about someone who’s so obsessed with a goal that it leads to the destruction of their closest relationship.”
Leonard Field watched the blurry white dot high above, longing to pull himself out of the muck at the bottom of the swamp. He was halfway submerged beneath the mud, and the rest of his body too was darker now. He clenched his right hand around a chain that happened to be splayed out across the swamp bottom, the individual links digging into his fresh-rugged flesh.
“I can breathe out there,” he said. “Nothing is keeping me down here.”
He could speak underwater, and when he did, no rush of bubbles emitted from his mouth. He did not breathe air in the way he used to. Technically, he didn’t breathe at all. He didn’t need it anymore.
He felt fleshy tendrils around his shoulders gently press against his body; the armored tubes that pierced his chest expanded and contracted.
“We can breathe here for you,” said the voice on his back. “As long as we need to.”
Leonard allowed himself to sink an inch more into the mud, his eyes still staring upwards. The white blur shifted and twinkled, and the fear he felt that it might go away constricted his heart.
“I have to go up there,” he said. “I can’t stay here forever.”
The voice on his back hummed contemplatively, the vibrations providing his body a warm and gentle massage.
“We must agree together,” it said. “Wherever we go.”
Leonard did not reply. The mud covered his mouth. He pushed himself deeper into the dank sludge, brushing against the chain as he did so. He heard the click of metal links, the shifting of silt. He was beneath the floor of the swamp.
Restless. Waiting.
Leonard and the thing slipped across the bottom of the swamp, exploring. The voice on his back was moving its muscles as they went. Leonard could feel it probing, snapping up weeds and small fish, crunching up crustaceans.
They never rose far from the floor of the swamp, always staying close to the mud, where they could easily escape danger any moment. Though the mud floor seemed like nothing but slime and sludge from the surface, there was a home underneath of tunnels and chambers that could easily be accessed by easing through the filmy, gooey silt and ooze that was the floor and was the ceiling.
Leonard paddled languidly while pulling himself along with his hands, dislodging plants, chasing out small animals so the thing on his back could catch them and eat them.
“You should eat, too,” it said. “Your body can eat them now.”
Though Leonard looked down at the floor of the swamp, his mind was above. He remembered cooked foods. Steak. Hamburgers. Even skewers of fish roasted over a fire. A wriggling swamp worm was not food. It was a horror show.
“Are they still there?” he asked.
“We share much now,” the voice said. “When I eat, you take nutrients, but… If you don’t eat and use your own body, you become weaker. It’s bad for us both.”
“It’s bad for us if I don’t see her,” he said. “It makes me weak not to see her.”
“You want to mate,” it said. “It’s a good thing, to reproduce. But the timing isn’t right.”
“I want to live,” Leonard said, and he turned his body around so that his face was towards the sky.
The white blur was still there, not far away. Still shifting in the waves. Still calling to him. Despite being underwater, his mouth felt suddenly dry.
“Watch out!”
The voice spoke too late. Leonard’s head collided with a large rock. He curled up in a ball, clutching at the back of his skull. When he opened his eyes again, he saw strings of red rising around his line of sight.
“It’s not serious, I think,” said the voice. “I can look. I can lick it and make the wound clean.”
“No, no,” Leonard protested. “I’ll check it myself.”
He touched the wound, flinched.
“Oh, no one saved this one either,” said a voice.
Leonard felt his heart drop, and he began to uncurl himself to get a better look.
The rock he had hit his head on was in reality a piece of concrete, round, heavy, sunk in the mud. Above it was another chain, still mostly clean with only minor accretions of swamp muck in the links. The chain floated upwards towards the surface and attached at the end of the chain was a man, naked, and very much dead. But his body was still buoyant enough to keep the corpse from settling down to the ocean floor just yet. Leonard stared at dead body, the series of bubbles still stringing up faintly from the deathly dumb face.
“We can eat him,” said the voice. “He is still fresh, and the flesh will be good for you. Familiar flesh for your body.”
The man looked familiar. Leonard had not known the man well, but he had been a crewmember on the ship. John or Dell or something, it didn’t matter anymore.
Something was happening up there. Crewmembers were dying, and they were burying them in the swamp, where their bodies could become a part of the ecosystem again—a cold and scientific way to deal with the dead, but one he approved of. It was the right thing to do. But still, why were they dying?
Were his friends okay? And what about her?
“I have to see why these men are dying,” Leonard said. “I can’t stay down here forever.”
“That which floats on the surface is large and dangerous,” said the voice. “It swallows many lives. Even before you fell to this world, that which floats took many lives from below. This voice does not trust it.”
Leonard was quiet for a time.
“I came from there,” he said. “They are waiting for me.”
“Are they?” asked the voice, monotone.
Leonard continued to pull himself along the bottom of the swampland, and a slow prickling annoyance arose and seemed to prance upon his temples. Of course they were waiting for him.
Of course she was waiting for him.
Several days later he caught sight of her. When the voice on his back was asleep, Leonard crept out onto a small island far from the ship. It was barely an island so much as a swath of thick mud and reeds that could only just bear his weight, and his limbs were deep in the muck.
Though he was far from the ship, he knew a way to peer long distances with clarity, as if looking through a pair of binoculars. It was a trick the voice had taught him after they had become one. Leonard’s body had changed in some ways after the voice had fused with his back. His hair had thinned, and webs had grown between fingers and toes. The voice had shown him that he could touch fingers to thumb in a certain way, and then, after running his hand through the water, pick up bubbles that, if he shifted his fingers just right, would form into makeshift lenses in his hand—lenses through which he could peer and see farther away.
Of course, peering through a bubble caused some distortion and warping of the image, and if there were impurities in the bubble—refuse from the swamp water—they could disrupt his vision. It took him several tries that morning on the mud island, hiding behind the reeds, before he could get the bubbles shaped just right in his hands, and clean and clear enough to look through.
She was walking on the deck. Long, dark hair framed her perfect, moon-shaped face, now distorted through the filmy water She was wearing a white one-piece swimming suit that hugged her curves, delineating her body. His mouth watered as he stared at her breasts, her hips. Even through the bubbles in his hand, she was gorgeous.
He remembered the first time he had been close to her, smelling a warm scent of jasmine. When they had held hands, the flesh of her fingers so soft in his rough laborer’s hands, the way she would kiss him fiercely on the lips, how they would…
On the ship, she raised her hand to her mouth, a small red dot winked on, then she flicked something into the water below. A cigarette—no doubt one of the new “safe” ones with none of the dangers and a healthy hit of vitamin C, but still… littering here? That was against regulations. He would have to chastise her lightly when he…
The thing with the voice on his back seemed to hum, a feeling like a light vibration playing against his spine. It was waking up. It wouldn’t want him on the surface of the water. It definitely wouldn’t want him spying like this. He didn’t want a fight over what his body did or where his body went.
He clenched his teeth and backed away into the water, letting the colorful and translucent water cress close over his head.
The voice didn’t say anything about the island visit until they were in the tunnels later that day.
The tunnels stretched in every direction underneath the swamp. They were not just the living quarters that Leonard and the thing on his back called home, but other scampering creatures lived there, too. Leonard was always careful stepping through the tunnels because he didn’t know when one of the clawed, sinuous lyre worms would ping like a struck note and lunge out of the puddles to latch on to his heel.
“It is good to walk carefully above too,” the voice said.
“I was careful,” Leonard replied. “I wasn’t even walking. I was low. I got down into the water when you started waking up.”
He had hoped the voice hadn’t noticed that he had been out. It often slept so deeply, but this time… He clenched his fists, and the webbing between his fingers crinkling uncomfortably.
“Better to stay in the tunnels,” said the voice. “You can’t find anything of value on the mud banks.”
“She is my girlfriend!” snapped Leonard. “She cares about me, and you’re keeping me from her! What do you expect me to do, wait underwater until my balls fall off?”
The thing on his back seemed to tense against his shoulders, and it let out a thin stream of warm water that ran down the small of his back. He used to think the creature was urinating on him, but apparently it thought it was calming him down with a “gift” of warm and comforting liquid stored and heated in its body.
It didn’t comfort him. The anger burned hotter.
“If we leave this swamp, we can find other options,” said the voice.
Leonard felt his eyes flash, and he nearly choked with rage.
“I am a human being! And I want to love a human being!”
The thing on his back seemed to consider this. Leonard waited, expecting another warm trickle of not-urine to snake its way down his thighs. It didn’t come.
“Are you sure who she is?” the thing said.
“I’m in love with her,” Leonard said, feeling an overwhelming longing. “I want her.”
The thing hummed and held him, crouching in the dark in the tunnel.
“I will catch a twinkling eel tonight,” said the voice. “It has a pleasing poison inside, it will make you feel good.”
No, thought Leonard. Nothing would make him feel good enough as long as he was under the swamp, stuck in these tunnels, away from his real life, away from everything that he was supposed to be.
The twinkling eel—a long and sinuous blue creature with dozens of sparkling appendages that snap and writhe as it swims—was delicious in its way. Leonard did not eat it, of course. However, even still, after the thing on his back consumed it, Leonard felt the effects of the toxins in the eel’s body entering his own bloodstream.
They filled him, fingertip to fingertip, toes to scalp, with a sense of kinetic energy and a rush of euphoria. Like jagged waves of energy, he felt his nerves jangle and swim across his skin. It felt as if the allure of the toxin reached into his farthest depths, into his deepest desires.
And he saw her. Salinda Powers. Her flashing smile, her curving waist, her flowing hair. Every word like steam from her lips, beckoning him. Every movement lithe and smooth and seductive, like the most delectable dream.
The voice was silenced on his back. Whatever effects the toxins may have had on Leonard, their force must have been multiplied several times over on the thing as it was the one who consumed the eel directly.
Thinking that the voice could not resist any longer, Leonard stumbled through the tunnels, treading over lyre worms and clicker crabs, and pushed out of the muddy bottom of the swamp, out into the water, and up, up, the excitement inside him building, eyes wide, staring at the blur of white above as it grew larger and larger.
He felt the power inside, felt invincible, felt a lust he could not contain. His webbed hands grasped the chain leading off the side of the ship. The cold metal sent a shock of pleasure through him, almost as if he was caressing her arm. Hand over hand he climbed, his breathing ragged, the thing on his back like a dead weight.
He clawed his way onto the ship, gasping, eyes on fire, teeth bared in desire, and pushed himself to his feet.
“Salinda,” he croaked.
He saw her, pointing at him. He tried to smile.
And the men came. They had sticks of electricity. He could not look at them, but only at Salinda, even as the electricity called out his voice and sent his screams spearing into the sky.
When Leonard awoke, something was missing, and something else was there. In his state of mind, it took him some time to figure out which was which, despite the gaping psychological absence. He tried to feel his face, but found that he was bound, and when he tried to turn his head, he discovered himself encased in wires and tubes at every quarter.
Clacking footsteps rang out, and when Leonard looked up, he saw Salinda. As she came more clearly into view, he saw she was wearing a long white coat over a professional gray top and ironed raven-black pants. Her mouth was open in excitement, and he tried to speak, but heard a strange rasping sound instead.
“Shhh,” Salinda said. “You’ve gone through a lot. Your throat sustained a lot of damage I’m afraid.”
She sounded gentle, and Leonard wanted to lean into the comfort of her voice, but he saw in her eyes a jet professionalism mixed with a frightening excitement that pulled at the corners of her mouth and gave a taut character to the skin around her eyes.
“Salinda,” he managed, hearing his voice finally in that awful rasping.
“You remember me,” she said, and allowed her face to be pulled into a savage smile. “I thought you might.”
Leonard imagined those days before, in the spaceship, holding Salinda close, his hand upon her cheek, her hand upon his side. Feeling his hands now as he clawed at the bedsheets, he only found rough scales, the webs between his digits stiffer now, even more uncomfortable.
“I love you,” he said.
The savage smile softened a bit, and she pressed her lips together in a sympathetic grin.
“That might have been the difference,” she said. “That might have been what finally brought one of you back.”
He stared at her, desperately, willing the restraints to go away, aching to reach out for her.
“You deserve an explanation,” she said, taking notes from the monitors connected to his flesh. “We wanted the parasite. But the parasites are smart. Smart, but, I don’t know, good-hearted? Some of the other scientists are already calling them the Samaritan suckers. They suck onto you, you know—and they are suckers for someone who is dying underwater.”
Leonard almost choked.
“Some people did die,” Salinda said. “The suckers don’t always rescue everyone. They bond with land-dwellers so that they, too, can become ambulatory on land. But they also seem to want to save people, and prefer to bond with sentient lifeforms. We don’t really know why yet, but we are trying to figure it out.”
Leonard thought back to the many times it had warned him, how it tried to help him.
“Turns out we got real lucky,” she said, patting Leonard on the upper arm. “Not only did one of the suckers go for the bait finally, it just happened to be a bait that I had had a fling with. At the time I never dreamed that dalliance would matter. Just a nice pastime, you know, and you weren’t so ugly, and I knew you wouldn’t stay around forever. We just tied you to a rock, like we deal with corpses anyway. We thought the chains would hold you, and then we would have the sucker, too, captured as it tried to bond with you. But it managed to get you loose.”
Leonard felt fireworks in his mind, broken shards of darkness and light.
“Where is he?” he hissed.
“Oh,” said Salinda, frowning a little. “Unfortunately the sucker didn’t survive. Thought it would be hardier than that. But we can still learn a lot from its remains. We are dissecting it now.”
The smile appeared again on Salinda’s face, the same kind of taut excitement returning, pulling open her cheeks so that they revealed teeth that nearly snarled, flashing in the harsh light. She put her hand on his, her flesh soft, her fingers hooking around his scales.
750 × 1,000![Amazon.co.jp | KAMEN RIDER DRAGON KNIGHT BOX VOL.1 [DVD] DVD・ブルーレイ - 特撮(映像)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81dGKcJDZCL._AC_SY445_.jpg)
