Epsilon Mate: An Omegaverse sci-fi tale

Chapter 1

Jessie

It was that dream again. The one with the spaceship. Now, my skin felt wrong, somehow. Too tight and constricting. Underneath, my entire body burned. Something about the man in that dream always made me react... oddly.

Weird.

Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!

Alarm clock. Bedroom. Daylight trickling through the curtains. The sinking feeling of disappointment that it was no longer sleeping time. Work time was imminent, and a countdown had begun, which only fit a certain routine.

Out of bed. Bear the cold. Scrunch toes against the bare wooden floorboards and imagine I'm on a beach. Stand up. Slippers on. Better, until I entered the bathroom. The thin fabric soles of my flimsy footwear were no match for the freezing tiles. Toes scrunched again, and cold flared in a cramping sensation up the back of my calves. I stood on my tiptoes and tried to see into the high mirror while I brushed my teeth. I'd always liked my teeth. They were white and straight, despite the amount of coffee and wine I'd thrown at them over the years. I hurried about my routine, showering, dressing, brushing my curly red hair until it would fit into an elastic, then I grabbed my bag and coat.

Out of the house thirty seconds before the bus was due. Perfect.

Not perfect.

Turned around, stamped up the stairs to my room. Unlocked the door. Grabbed name badge. Arrived back on the pavement outside in time to watch the bus drive past with its smug "go green! Beat the traffic! Ride in the bus lane" advert pasted above the smoky tailpipe.

Fuck.

My manager Julie's voice from last week replayed in my head in a loop. If you're late one more time, Jessie, you're fired. Like every other slave to the minimum wage, I needed this job to survive.

At the bus stop, I seethed through about four cigarettes waiting for the next number twenty-seven to Cardigan Square. An old lady sitting in the bus shelter kept glaring at me and clearing her throat.

"I haven't got any cough sweets, love." I chucked my last cigarette butt down the drain. It wasn't like I'd been smoking in the bus shelter. I only did that if it was a rainy day and no one was around.

People said the habit was going to kill me. I imagined they had happy lives filled with friends and relatives. They got Christmas cards and people to say "congratulations" or "I'm sorry for your loss" during life's big moments.

Honestly, I never shared this with anyone, but every cigarette I smoked was another few minutes when I didn't have to be alone in my own head. I wasn't one of those people to share things like that with others. Not even in the haze of too many triple vodkas at three in the morning. If I had anyone to talk to, perhaps I wouldn't feel utterly out of place and superfluous.

Getting on the eight-twenty bus was humiliating, like wearing the dunce's cap from my granddad's school days. I was sure everyone on the bus must be looking at me, knowing I was late and judging me for it. The only people on this bus were on their way to claim their unemployment money or to sit somewhere near a railway bridge drinking White Lightning.

Even the eight o'clock bus got me into work with minutes to spare. Oh Godddd, I was so fucked. When Julie saw my clocking-in time, she was going to go apeshit.

To make everything more annoying, the traffic was so much worse now than twenty minutes earlier. The bus didn't even crawl. It jerked through stop-start traffic. It gave me far too much time to think while I stared through the window at the Horton Roundabout from every possible angle. We moved forward about five inches every thirty seconds. Some bozo in a Volvo had blocked the flow of traffic in his fear of letting anyone else get ahead of him. Probably had no idea his inferiority complex had caused hundreds of people's lives to grind to a halt. Twat.