Violet’s Tales of Whoa! Book Three of the Mossfoot Muckabouts Noah JD Chinn Dedication To those who grew up wanting to be Han Solo, Malcom Reynolds, or even Jack Sparrow. And to those who thought there should be more women like them. Noah JD Chinn Dead Again My name is Violet Lonsdale and I’m worried I might be dead. Actually I am dead. Very. I can show you my corpse, it’s still in my old ship floating around a dead planet in a star system off the shoulder of Orion. But I’m still alive, sorta, depending on your definition. I’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness over a hundred and fifty years ago, and my friend was so distraught and unable to imagine going on without me as a companion that he asked this strange Order of medical monks to do the impossible. Fortunately for him, these guys did the impossible five times a day. Unfortunately for him, four of those times also turned out rather disastrously. My friend was one of the lucky one-in-fives. He’d been left for dead before, his Fer- de-Lance blown out of the sky by Navy Vipers that his own father’s second-in-command had sent after him…long story. They’d recovered his body and managed to bring him back to life using some experimental technology. The Order Brother Mathias belongs to is big on experimental technology, especially when it comes to saving a life. So he figured the Order might be able to do something for me. It turned out they couldn’t save my body but they thought they might be able to save my mind, and transfer it at the point of death to piggy back along on my friend’s. It worked—after a fashion. It took a while for the connections to manifest themselves, and then there was this whole incident where we both ended up floating dead in space for a hundred and fifty years. Neither of us are clear on the details, but whatever lead up to that resulted in his face getting badly burned and scarred—and if you knew how vain this man was you’d know how much that ticked him off. Lucky for him the technology that saved his life before was still holding up. No way his body should have been recoverable after such a long time, but it was. He was a medical marvel, and yet the doctors only kept him in a short while to run their tests and wonder about the weird organic circuitry that covered his brain like a wet napkin. Violet’s Tales of Whoa! That’s me, by the way. We were released and in time I woke up and became a part of his life again. It was an odd partnership to say the least, especially once it turned out I could control his body when he was asleep. I also had my own share of existential crisis to deal with. Am I Violet Lonsdale, or just a reasonable facsimile? Am I sentient, or just a simulation? My friend told me that the fact I asked those questions should be enough to give me my answer, but couldn’t you program a simulation to feel angsty? I don’t know. I still don’t. I remember dying, slipping away, even my last breath. I was plugged in at the time, and could also feel myself being elsewhere—both in my body and my friend’s. The idea was that everything that was me would be saved right up to the point where my brain died and the cord could be disconnected. In theory, I am Violet. I’m just using different hardware. In fact? I dunno. The world we woke up in was different than the one we left, and it took some time getting used to how things worked, but we did all right for ourselves, eventually earning ourselves a pristine Imperial Clipper right off the factory line… …okay, so we stole it. Relax, the owner was a jerk anyway. But in going about doing our business we ended up making some enemies, the worst of which was an Elite pilot working for the Alliance named Officer Dillon, who saw us as a thorn in the Alliance’s goals and held a grudge like nobody’s business. Long story short—even though we were on the same side he blew us out of the sky. We managed to eject, but once at the station medical facility I soon learned there was no “we” anymore. Only I. My friend’s name is Mossfoot and I’m worried he might be dead. Noah JD Chinn Adaptation I actually wasn’t intending to continue these stupid journal entries, to be honest. That was Mossfoot’s thing. He just sucked me into it now and then. At first it was a kind of therapy, I think. A way to vent about the unfair hand he’d been dealt in life. Then, when he noticed people were listening to him, I think he got off on the minor fame it gave him. By the end, I think he just forgot how to stop. So why am I continuing it? Also as a kind of therapy, I guess. Maybe it’s like what they say about coma patients, that talking to them helps keep the brain stimulated. Maybe that’s what I’m doing. Or maybe it’s because when I’m doing these journals Mossfoot doesn’t seem gone for a while. I don’t know. Let me start off with my own little whinge fest and just get it out of the way. Now I’m not going to say that life dealt me an unfair hand. I had a good life, a good death, a second life I by all rights didn’t deserve, and now my own body that I truly didn’t deserve. I have no right to complain about anything. But… There’s no two ways around this. I’m a woman, and I’m in a man’s body. This sucks, for many reasons. First off, there is hair EVERYWHERE. I mean, jeeze, if I shaved this body I swear I could make tiny toupes for a thousand gnomes. I’m not saying MF was excessively hairy. Far from it. Before the accident he was a handsome guy. It’s just compared to my old body I feel like I’m cosplaying as a Yeti. Contrary to what you might think, the fact I’m gay does not help matters at all. Just because I’m attracted to women in no way means I ever wanted to be a guy. I liked my old body. A lot. I kept in good shape, and, while I’m not narcissistic like MF was, I did think I cut a fine figure in the mirror. I often used that fact to my advantage in my work. Well, those days are long gone. I accidentally flirted with a guy I was pumping for information out on Eleu recently, and you should have seen the look he gave me. So, yeah, my love life? Fuggedaboudit. Violet’s Tales of Whoa! The fact my face now looks like it was run over by a runaway barbecue doesn’t help matters. The luchador mask can only do so much. It’s gotten to the point where I blanked out my face on my pilot’s license. Fortunately you’re allowed to do that these days – genetic scanning right on your license has made picture IDs largely optional. So, yeah, this body isn’t exactly my first choice for a replacement. Then there’s the…equipment. Look, I don’t want to get into details, kids might be accidentally reading this, but let’s just say that when it comes to bodily functions you expect things to work a certain way. Getting used to having a runaway fire hose to deal with takes time. I also feel like I’d held my breath so hard that my junk went from being an innie to an outie, which is confusing on so many levels. Upsides? Well, there’s no doubt that MF was in good shape. He’s stronger than I was, though I was more agile and could definitely run faster. When practicing martial arts I’ve had to adapt my style to take this into account. Not bad or anything, just different. I think MF might have slightly better eyesight than I did. I didn’t need corrective surgery or anything, but I swear his vision is better than 20/20. Wonder if he got that worked on back when he still had a trust fund? I may have had better night vision, though. It’s hard to tell through memory. Our reflexes are about the same, so my piloting skill is on par with what it was before. So at least once I’m in the cockpit I can feel like my old self again. Which probably explains why I’ve been spending so much time there lately. That’s about it. Now that I got all that off my chest, I can move on. It’s time to accept my life for what it is and simply make the most of it. There’s just one last thing I have to do first. I’m not the most sentimental person, but I need to say this now and get it over with so I don’t feel guilty if I don’t repeat it every other entry.