Queen's Last Interview
Here's a small piece of speculative fiction about a group of lesbian space-pirate revolutionaries, available in full for all paying members. Enjoy!
The thing that had really made Nova angry was space junk. Space junk. It wasn't enough to destroy the wonder and mystery of the moon just to get one over on the boys in red, that schoolyard flirtation, that apocalyptic pas de deux. Nothing cold about it, Yanks horny for the commies' control of their grey downtrodden masses, pinkos touching themselves at how simply coca cola and mickey mouse turned barbarity into 'freedom'.
It wasn't enough to plant the great emblem of violent goonery, Old Glory left for some future space mom to come clean up after them, mooning Moscow at the low low price of ending magic for everyone who dared gaze up and dream.
No, they had to trash the whole goddamn space between, to so fill our orbit with refuse you couldn't exit the atmosphere to at least try and discover a new cosmic font of poetry. They dug the planet's grave with an infinity of expensive war machines and cheap hamburgers then nailed the coffin shut with what amounts to plastic bags tossed out of car windows, and they did it so they could upcharge us for slightly faster cell service.
It was learning about space junk that pushed Nova over the edge to amateur astrophysics, DIY rocketry, and the launching of the Star Queens.
Esther and us other early Queens, we'd been developing our own nebulous plans before Nova came on the scene, but we heard her give the origin rant so many times we found ourselves believing space junk's why we did it too, often as not.
That's the real power of a political vision, to explain to you something you already know, something you were already doing. You just have to be careful not to commit so hard to your truth when it comes along that you forget the desire that let you birth it in the first place.
But if the Star Queens were only about space junk, we'd be a glorified adopt-a-highway program for the Thermosphere, not the Consortium's most wanted terrorists. And then you probably wouldn't be talking to me, because I wouldn't be giving my last interview before facing the firing squad.