WJM Fiction

I know. But nobody cares. Galactically speaking, there are quadrillions of stories every day. Let’s be real: quadrillions of those quadrillions don’t matter. Yours doesn’t matter. Your dog’s doesn’t, and we all wish you’d learn that. Your fifth grade teacher’s doesn’t, and you knew that, inherently, from the minute you met her. In fact, the… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER ONE (1/2)

Darkness is a funny thing, when you wake up to find it without expecting it. It’s not there, but it’s all around you. You can’t see through it, but you know there are monsters in there somewhere. All your problems and solutions lie just out of reach and yet there you are, stuck like moist… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER ONE (2/2)

When spaceship fuel is loaded or unloaded, the port central to the transaction is evacuated very sneakily. The substance volatile enough to aggressively propel spaceships through interstellar distances and so potent that it requires freezing for transport and so valuable that its presence is a secret is generally not considered safe for civilian interaction. The… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER TWO

When James woke up he was confused. The last thing he remembered was blacking out inside an empty, freezing conveyor ramp. That meant certain death. Upon unblacking out he didn’t feel dead, and so had difficulty piecing his facts together in a cohesive pattern. A third fact, which he sought after he came to the… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER THREE

Gareth Will smiled. He had brought a man back to life. Yet one more thing to knock off the list of stuff he’d never expected to do during his apportioned run of mortality. The wonders would never cease. Then again, as a child he knew doctors had been selected at birth and he certainly hadn’t… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER FOUR

James hated spaceships. And now here he was, being dragged through the corridors of one by a bearded hillbilly, breathing through what he was pretty sure were lungs filled with poison, with soaking wet clothes which were gradually stiffening. Never in his life had he imagined he’d wind up on one of these. He had,… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER FIVE

Galactically speaking, missing persons reports are a fairly unreliable proposition. Between the limited scope of the local authorities (which vary in effectiveness), the relative incompetence of the Empire’s own forces, and the practically infinite expanse of the galaxy in which said Empire is located, the finding of persons reported as lost is an exercise which… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER SIX

Gasocorp bureaucracy is notoriously impressive. It’s been noted that executive turnover is the lowest for any company in all of recorded history, and due to the pride in stasis throughout the corporation at large the turnover rate continues to decline. It is theorized that at some point in the relatively near future the rate will… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER SEVEN

“Ma’am, you have to understand: missing persons are pretty hard. I mean, he might have actually been taken or something. And then how are we supposed to find him?” “I don’t know!” Melora Morris had been shrieking at the policeman for the better part of a half hour. He just kept standing there, eating a… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER EIGHT

Galactically speaking, religion is a deeply personal idea. A study done at the Galactic University roughly three millennia before your temporal latitude found that the fewer restrictions placed on it- and the less it was acknowledged from those considered to be “leaders”- the less people came to care on a macro level, and while nothing… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER NINE

Illegally, and yet somehow- as it had been explained to him- contractually, bonded to Gasocorp, James Morris sat on his new bunk. Well, ‘new’. New to him, although truthfully he’d never had a bunk before so it wasn’t necessarily new. It was more his…first bunk. Gasocorp discouraged using numerical descriptors in their welcoming material however,… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER TEN

Something, as they often said, didn’t sit right about all of this. Then again the question of who ‘they’ were and why they felt the need to say anything about anything was still under heavy debate in all corners of the galaxy. It was one of the last indicators that the Galaxy was still functioning,… Read more: Galactically Speaking -CHAPTER TWELVE

The still night air of Malyria completely failed to tousle Melora’s hair as she stood and stared at the dead pine in her backyard. The thing barely cast a shadow. It had been planted as part of a shrine when she and her original husband had moved in, but after she’d killed him the thing… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Galactically speaking, piracy is a problem. Not in an abstract, theoretical way but rather in an absolutely practical sense. It is a daily occurrence in every single system that has days, which is to say that it is a daily occurrence literally everywhere. The levels of piracy are varied of course but you can rest… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Upon the bridge of the Albright, chaos reigned This was not unusual, nor was it an unusual amount of chaos. There were charts and maps and official courses designated but the standard policy of Gasocorp was to allow the captains of their ships to, essentially, follow their guts. The formal argument went something like this:… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The hangar was spotless, the fuel was loaded, and James was lying in the fetal position in the furthest corner from where the rest of the crew was standing, as they waited for their full hour to finish. There was no percentage in finishing before it was up and as they’d already been waiting for… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Pirate Captain Jeliah wasn’t in the mood for Dave’s bullshit. He was newish. Her whole gang was newish. The old ones had been hired away by one of the larger pirate companies. She’d never sell out like that, but all her old crew members had excuses. Families, children, pirate school debt- she’d heard it all… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

James hated spaceships. Now he was stuck on his second one in less than a week. Technically a third, if you counted the shuttle- which no one should ever do, because counting it would be the same as acknowledging it being a vehicle and all that would do is encourage it. The planetary shuttle is… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Shadow Council of the Galactic Empire meets in secret. There is light, obviously. If there was no light, if it really was exclusively in shadow, then nothing would ever get done. There would be a stronger element of secrecy, of course, but realistically if everything were in shadow then the words on the papers… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER NINETEEN

James was asleep when the first bell rang. He remained asleep through the second bell, and when the third bell went off he sort of snorted absent-mindedly and rolled over. Then the water hit him. Frigid, brackish, algae-filled, disgusting sinkwater which had been kept in a refrigerator at the previous day’s end rolled down his… Read more: Galactically Speaking – CHAPTER TWENTY