A BOY’S LIFE

With a flash, the ship rumbles toward a massive wall like a hoopty on an unpaved road. You grip the yoke as aluminum alloy peels away to the right and ti­tanium debris shoots off and disappears to the left. At first panicked glance, the wall seems endless, a continu­ous craggy white surface reflecting sunlight into a blinding glare that swallows atmosphere and sears your vision.

You steer down, down, aiming for a thick mass of green to soften the impact. With a muffled, bass-heavy thud, the ship hits something, flips and veers, flips and veers, tumbling head over end again and again. You slam against everything inside – the dash­board, the seat, the Hydrosembler. Impacts blur reality: flashes of pain–blackness, broken machine, black, cracked glass and light, black, and then only black.

It feels like a dream where you’re terrified to move. Your eyes are so low, your eyelashes blear the abyss in front of you. Your back is against something solid, but if you step, you’ll fall past the forest into oblivion. The angles are wrong. Then you realize you’re lying on your back, and there is no way to fall up—up into the sky.

You sit up, struggling to breathe. The air is thick. Dust particles float by like balloons.

The ship is in pieces, beyond repair, scattered around you. Nearby, a sound – deep clicking, chatter­ing like crackling rainfall – comes from a mound of rocks. In an instant, a flurry of legs and antennae emerges on ruddy brown bodies the size of Great Danes. They attack the wreckage, effortlessly grabbing sheets of aluminum alloy and composite materials be­tween powerful mandibles, leading each other back into a crater in the ground. One of them looks at you. It cocks its head, antennae bouncing as if tasting your presence with a sixth sense.

It charges, jaws wide enough to nip off a leg or arm like a string in the blades of scissors. But this is what you get for trying to play God. If you were God, you’d be above it all – in the sky somewhere, uncon­cerned with the petty goings-on of an ant. But you’re not. You’re here, in front of death, ready to see if you’ll meet who you pretend to be.

Suddenly, a strong-smelling balloon — a tiny sack packed with something pungent and unmistak­able — something you’ve smelt multiple times before– bursts against the bug’s head. It thrashes, legs flailing as the acrid scent coats its face and antennae. Its mandibles snap open and shut, disoriented, no longer charging but staggering, wiping at the chemical assault with its forelegs. Around it, the colony fractures, scat­tering like shrapnel from a silent explosion.

You’re whisked away into shelter by another human. Another human like you. Well, not like you. One that has adapted. One that has survived.

You duck into a burrow carved with intention: the door is a disc of packed earth and plant fiber, like a manhole cover with tiny holes letting in dappled light. The other human closes it effortlessly, as if it were made of cardboard. The outside is muffled as the dis­tant scurry of legs is heard rumbling away.

The human removes his makeshift mask, and it’s almost Marty. Marty, if he were more wiry, if he had glasses instead of a patch over one eye. If he were thin­ner, he’d look exactly like the teenage boy who spent his after-school hours in your lab/garage. But this Mar­ty has been forged through trial, forced to age, losing innocence to this tiny, volatile world.

He wears a bandolier belt over his poncho with more pouches. A long, sharp weapon is strapped to his back. Everything looks familiar yet alien. The poncho could be fashioned from a tiny piece of an old Wendy’s napkin, the pouches from a plastic shopping bag, the weapon from a fingernail clipping. But you don’t know. All you know is this: Marty – this new version of Marty – ignores you as he mumbles and gathers a few items from around the dwelling.

“Stupid,” he says. “I should never have went out there this time of day. They could’ve seen me.”

Your thoughts linger on your mission. But now that the ship is destroyed… is the mission done?

“We gotta head away from the trash. It’s getting too warm,” he says.

You want to argue. Everything is wrong. This isn’t how you pictured it. You imagined saying, I’m here to rescue you, and the two of you climbing into the ship together. But the ship isn’t there. The future is un­certain. So when New Marty leaves the burrow, you follow.

The minuscule world is massive, warped. A blade of grass stands tall and unmovable like a bright green tree. You climb over pebbles as if they were boul­ders. Perspective is unreal. Houses on the horizon fade into a film of blue sky.

The heat is dry and deceptive, almost comfort­able. But with the slightest breeze, the smell of trash becomes unbearable, each decaying organic element perceptible at this size, each hitting your nostrils at dif­ferent times.

New Marty moves fast, nervously darting from shadow to shadow, navigating cracks and divots like a soldier through trenches. You scramble behind, still dazed, ears ringing with the ghost of the crash. You try to keep up. That’s all you can do. You’ve had no time to check in with yourself. You don’t know if you have any injuries, any broken bones. You can tell Marty’s not in­terested in saving you, so you ignore aches and the wetness of blood under your nose. You scurry behind him.

Under the cover of a trench, he slows his stride to a walk. A feeling of ease washes over you. The way he moves lets you know you’re safe, for now.

He peeks over his shoulder to see if you’re still there. For a moment, it’s like he remembers: obligation. After all, he’s human. You’re human. What do humans do?

“So,” New Marty says. Clearing his throat: “How’d you find me?”

The day he disappeared, you didn’t realize he was gone. You just knew your ship– your baby was gone. The garage/lab door was open. It wasn’t until you checked the doorbell camera footage that you saw him being chased. Then you put two and two together.

Marty had ducked into the machine to hide from his bully. He accidentally activated the Hy­drosembler and shrank out of sight. After weeks of searching the lab on your hands and knees, you knew what you had to do. After all, another ship would be needed anyway to bring him back. So you spent nine months building. Meanwhile, Marty was fighting for his life in the crack of the pavement.

“I stayed close to the ship at first,” he says. “Used it for shelter. It was the only familiar thing– at least for the first few days. Everything else was–”

He stops and looks around as if seeing this new world through your eyes. He slows. Over his shoulder, he steals a glance to see if you’re still there. To make sure he’s not talking to himself. 

“I hardly slept,” he says, “When I finally did, that’s when they came. A group of bugs and their lead­er carried the ship back to their base. When they found me inside, they–”

He touches the scarred skin around his eyepatch before shaking it off, a defense mechanism to keep him from reliving the terror.

“Been hiding ever since. Feels like forever.”

You know you should feel for him, but your mind focuses on the story. The detail. The ship. He ex­plains that it didn’t crash. It just shrank. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. The calculations the first time around were flawless. It shrank, and it was car­ried away by bugs, intact. But how long ago was that? It doesn’t matter. As long as the Hydrosembler core is intact, you can escape this hell.

You want to go and try to get it. New Marty thinks you’re crazy. He barely escaped with his life. He is now used to the nightmare. Used to the cozy little nooks and crannies that hide him from the devil’s com­pound eye. He is afraid to go. Tall and muscular, obvi­ously skilled, but inside, he’s still that little boy run­ning from his bully. The only thing he is aggressive about is his fear. 

You are afraid to stay. You are a scientist, not a test subject. Even if you die, it would be better than staying here.

It was your fault for playing God. That’s why there is a new Marty. That’s why New Marty is down here. That’s why you’re down here. If you were God, you could leave him without moral consequence be­cause you invented morals and consequences. But you’re not. You’re just playing God. So you have to help him, especially when it was you who caused his downfall.

So you keep talking. You use tactics, reason, anything to undo his state of mind. You tell him stories about when you were a boy. Anecdotes and lessons. The more you talk, the farther you two walk, the far­ther away you get from your new goal. Then you stop. You’ve used all of your words. His mind is made up. Your mind is made up.

New Marty keeps walking. You stand still, stubborn as a donkey—looking ahead, looking back—unsure if New Marty or the ship is the carrot, unsure if death is the stick. He keeps walking, and you watch him until he’s out of sight. Until he’s gone.

This wasn’t the plan. You were supposed to res­cue him. But that didn’t happen. The future is uncer­tain. You stand still. You wait for someone who never intended to return. You can’t go. You can’t go without him. You can’t stay. You have to move.

You walk back. Back toward the smell. Back to­ward the epitome of New Marty’s fears. Back to the pungent decaying matter that engulfs your life’s work. You’ll die, probably before you even reach the trash. If not, then definitely when you get there. But if you do survive, you can get the ship and try again. You can rescue him.

It’s easy to know where to go. The odor is un­mistakable. The closer you get, the more powerful. You grab a particle of floating dust and break it apart to shove into your nose.

It’s nighttime when you find yourself ducking behind something massive. Squinting through the darkness, you see two armored creatures standing be­fore an opening. Inside are the faint outlines of dis­carded items combined, piled into a messy heap.

You didn’t think you would make it this far. Ev­ery thought to this moment was about the present, watching, ducking, darting, listening, hiding. And now you’re here. Your brain hums like the computer start­ing up in your garage/lab, and you wait for thoughts to upload. But before you think of a solid idea, the bulk shielding betrays you. It rolls away quietly, softly, as if physics don’t matter.

The lamplight catches it, and you realize your cover isn’t stone or metal at all—only a monstrous dust bunny, disappearing into the night like a tumbleweed in the desert. 

The creatures are two cockroaches. Their glossy shells glisten like lacquered stone, and they are looking right at you.

Inside the cavernous pit, you’re shoved to your knees. Through the clutter—torn strips of construction paper, coils of wire, a metal block with a stripped fit­ting—you spot something familiar. Your handiwork. Your ship. Bent, battered, scavenged, but unmistakably yours. Patched from aluminum alloy plates and sloppy rivets that held despite themselves. Your pride and joy. Your first world-changing creation sits only steps away, half-hidden in shadow. 

You stand, stepping toward it, as if there is no situation, when a roach shoves you back down. A horsefly approaches from the darkness like a Mafia boss. Two others flank it like henchmen. 

The boss fly inches closer. Its oversized mandibles twitch. 

New Marty attacks. No longer creeping. No longer hiding. He moves with the precision of a mar­tial arts master—fast, exact. He zips in and out of the shadows, landing blows on the six-legged creatures, slicing with his semi-transparent weapon. You watch, forgetting this is life and not a movie. All the bugs focus on him, trying to pinpoint where he is, where he’ll strike next.

You break free from your stunned awe and stumble toward the ship. It’s covered in a revolting slime. From insects? From trash? You don’t know. You don’t care. You tug at the door and pull until it slowly gives. A few buttons are pressed. A few knobs are turned. A few switches are—switched. The Hydrosem­bler core begins glowing an alarming orange-red color. You quickly pry open the access panel, fingers trembling as you reseat a capacitor. You flinch as sparks bite your knuckles. Once set, you look up to see the core has turned its normal bright, white-hot blue color.

You hurry back out to tell New Marty, It’s work­ing! We can leave! But you stop short. The scene spreads out before you. The aftermath of a massacre that came and went like lightning.

Antennas twitch in the dirt. Chitinous bodies twisted at odd angles, some in pieces, others slashed or leaking fluid. A fly’s wing twirls in the wind. A cock­roach lies on its back, legs in the air, the semi-transparent weapon sticking out of its head.

The boss fly is still upright, looking right at you with its compound eyes. Your reflection repeats in a mosaic of lenses. Then you see New Marty behind it– you see that he’s holding its head in his hands – a head now twisted backwards. 

New Marty releases it. The boss fly’s body crumples to the ground to join the gruesome display. You look into his eyes, searching for that little boy who used to watch you build in the garage, listening to your rants about rejected scientific studies. You look into his eyes and find nothing. New Marty stares at you. Stares through you, as if your life means as little as the twitching bod­ies on the floor.

The little boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly is gone.

And it’s your fault.

Your fault for trying to play God.

If you liked this story, you’ll love MAGIC POTION.