Cerebra and the Dragon
/I wrote this story for Twisted Fate Publishing’s second charity anthology for Mind, LIGHT. Mind is a charity that has always been close to my heart, so being able to contribute meant a great deal. If you, or someone you know, has been touched by the struggles that come with mental health issues, please buy a copy.
Below is an extract. The story was long-listed for the BSFA Award for short fiction, 2023, alongside some incredible works.
Imogine wasn’t meant to work on her personal projects in the main hangar bay, but the dragon wouldn’t fit anywhere else.
They’d taken a shuttle down to the scrapyard on the planet Bheithir in the hopes of salvaging some usable parts, when she’d seen it - a tiny, blinking golden light, flickering in the gloom of a broken down warehouse. And there it was again, no more than a centimetre across, set in the centre of a gigantic forehead, shining like an electronic pulse as the robotic crane hoisted the immense creature free of the shuttle and laid it down in front of her.
“Captain Alysa’s going to flip when she sees this,” Akilah said, folding his arms, his thick dark eyebrows set in their usual frown.
Imogine clapped her hands together with glee. “I know!”
He rolled his eyes. “Not in a good way, Imogine. She’s given you a storage room for your mechanical experiments, but I doubt she’ll sanction this one.”
“Well she doesn’t have much choice, it’s here now.”
“She could just vent the hangar.”
Imogine shook her head. “No, there’s life here, I know it.”
Akilah frowned. “What do you mean by that? It’s a mechanical… what?”
“Dragon.”
He stepped forward to examine it more closely. “Like in the ancient legends? Do you think it’s robotic?”
Imogine would have smiled, but she was already grinning from ear to ear. “Do you want to find out?”
He touched the light experimentally with a long, delicate brown finger. The dragon lay with it’s gigantic head resting on its front paws. The body, which lying down was as tall as Imogine herself, had once been covered with metal plating, but patches had fallen off and left the inner workings of the beast open to the elements. What remained was thick with grime, obscuring the base material with a layer of brownish-grey detritus.
Imogine went to join Akilah by the forehead. “If there’s a place I can plug in and analyse data, it’s going to be here.”
Akilah raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think that?”
“Because whoever made this had ideas and dreams.” She rubbed at the metal casing around the light and revealed a small panel. “Let’s bring the dreams back to life, shall we?”
“What kind of metal is this?” Akilah asked, rubbing away more of the grime with the sleeve of his blue overall to reveal a shining, yellow surface. “It’s just dirty, it’s not corroded. You don’t think it’s… gold, do you?”
Imogine shrugged. “If it means you’ll help convince the Captain to let me keep it, then sure, it’s gold.” She levered the panel up with her screwdriver and whistled. “This is flawless… and I think you could be right, it’s gold. Just abandoned and forgotten. Now, let’s see if I can make a connection. The lights are on, but is anybody home?”
“That’s a secure computer you’re using, right? Not one that’s connected to the ship’s systems?”
Imogine snorted. “No, I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
“Glad to hear it. You’re going to get us in trouble,” he persisted. “The Cerebra is a serious medical research vessel.”
“So?”
“So you brought a gold mechanical dragon on board a serious research vessel?”
“It's a serious discovery.”
“It's a fairytale. It's a story. It's not real. How will this help our Captain get more funding? How will it help our scientists find cures for diseases? How will it improve people's lives?” He shook his head and walked back along the length of it. “It’s different when it’s hidden away in your storage room, but in the main hangar bay? This is where the Interstellar Board of Medical Research reps arrive to inspect our operation.”
Imogine shrugged. “Let me deal with Captain Alysa. As for how it will improve people's lives... It's a gold dragon! It's this type of thing that feeds people's minds. Nobody dreams about cellular cascades, they dream about... this.”
“She'll want it off the ship.”
He was probably right, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight. “Well I suppose we’ll see, won’t we.”