Miriam in the Middle | Chapter One
a standalone novel in The Justiceers mainline saga
Miriam in the Middle
By Ophelia Everfall
Part One | Rejuvenation Station
Part Two | Murderous Memoranda
Part Three | Echoes of Eternity
Part Four | Violence Is Golden
Part Five | Synchronistic Syllabus
Part Six | God’s Sexiest Librarian
Part One | Rejuvenation Station
Chapter One
Organizing principles were refunding towards something more basic after the long sleep wore-out and into a constant state of awareness. Words were flowing straight from Miriam Halafax’s mouth without a single thought of mind to control their verbiage.
“I hope you all know this is a very big deal.”
She was speaking towards everyone. Thousands, perhaps, maybe even five thousand were listening across a local population breaching the fifteen-billions. She’d made herself senior advisor of Conjunction, a previously defunct phase-net broadcasting hub—providing timestamped content for universal understanding but spread at rates of varied lapse and with origins of such scatter, moted far beyond lightspeed through polyamorous wavelengths across The Periphery.
“Touching is not allowed. Nobody here is allowed to hold hands. Everyone must be sad!”
Miriam was designing something bespoke and performative with a friend most alien to her—their show. Time spent alone aboard the now absent Annalouise Hallafax’s pentstation orbiting Pelómea gifted newfound grasp of the universe’s grandeur. The planet so seemingly below was a wonder of harmonious life-giving. Shd’d access to its constant witness and found the splendor most pleasing in spirit of heart.
Pelómea was a fruit and it was ripe. The people here were of its seed. They’d built upon its stem. They made it to the stars and connected with The Periphery’s presence already in system and awaiting conscious evolution, reaching towards some desired pinnacle. They’d never feel home alone again.
This planet and eventually the whole system itself was known as waystation for travelers far and wide—reputation benefiting a homebody of ships in orbit of its intimidating heft—balanced only by the space station Daemon spinning 500,000 leagues towards system’s edge.
Daemon had been landing place of Miriam Halafax. She was scribe of the infamous order known as Justiceers. Her arrival into system was preceded by a dreary engagement—encounters with higher, lower, and sidelong beings of intelligence for her to thwart and become in the system of Yemi beside her colleague and appointed Judge, Arthur Katrinus.
He’d taken to a tank for regenerative sleep aboard Daemon but Miriam neglected the call to rest in body herself.
Miriam decided she’d just have to survive more competently than Arthur and make up for it eventually, or he could do his judging thing without her for longer than her wanted at the end of his life and get over it. Regardless, Miriam was injecting lifegiving hormonal rejuvenation slugs into her soft tissue for dissolution and knew Arthur would forgive her one day—they’d no idea she chose not to go down with them—the call was of the heart and Arthur had trouble hearing much but heart from that station within himself.
This pentstation was a ‘slam-dinger’ as per Miriam.
There’d been some given title but Miriam saw it stricken from record. She’d been working on a new one. It was Annalouise’s property in conscription, but by all honest accounting within herself they’d promised it to Miriam for life before leaving unceremoniously.
Annalouise’s last words could still be heard ringing in Miriam’s ear. She’d said, “I hope you do well here—I can’t be here anymore. Just take the place.”
Offerings for unconditional lengths of stay were a blessing anywhere. Miriam cried before she’d realized that because she’d never once before received the gift. Still, laced within Annalouise’s words was a kicker of a notion which would stick some jab into Miriam’s brain for solving.
Why could they be unable? Was it something she’d done? Were they up to no good?
Miriam’s unanswered questions would swirl and churn her guts. They’d build her towards change then become something more which might seek the challenge of understanding in equality. With nobody to scribe for she’d been scribing towards everyone. Proximera was fierce with strife. There’d been a war in the system long ago and nothing ever came to rest exopolitically.
Pelómea was a veritable playland of flora and fauna, biomes and ecosystems upon and within that were unique and diverse—carrying more variation than any planet known of its size beyond that found elsewhere in the goldilocks zones of stars which were able to support a planet towards life—spun like a top by unique occurrence—its harmony speaking to seers of beyond. Pelómea was the only celestial body in Proximera apart from its sun, Gelecki.
Darkness surrounded the haven of life in maps, charts, scopes, and reality.
Single planet systems felt lonely. This one moreseo for those extraordinary lengths of space to its nearest neighbors—an extravagant exception in all directions. The notion of strangeness in Proximera was also affected by a lack of moon, and the fact all water in Pelomea was stowed by layers buried beneath the slotted and sleeved undersurface.
Levels on levels of variated life were growing and thriving inward, towards Pelomea’s core. All were shot through with veining connections of organic evolution most worthy of The Periphery’s study. The planet was living in ways others were not—breathing—yet drones would not penetrate its static ridden energy fields produced by seeming naturality.
Humanity reached the stars quickly here—by actions of a people known as the Dwenn. They’d lived within Palomea, then without, and now above at the edges of its cosmic shore. These humanoids were explained as floral in appearance by many—fungal more accurately—growths sprouting in unique patterns about them.
This was described often across the galaxy to elicit horrified and judgmental expressions exhibiting some ignorance. Nothing was more stunning. Dween were beautiful creatures. They were gorgeous, adorably complex in fades, cascades, and gradients of balanced organic design—beyond human—they’d lived-hard into resilient champions of furious culture built for how Pelomea made them fight to survive.
Apart from the Dwenn was one other human race.
Underground and deep to reach only the surface and casting scattered now-remnants of satellite wreckage to orbit was the Dween’s nemesis of biological ambitions, the Kopi. They’d been seen only once to Miriam Halafax by eyes on scopes. She’d loved them immediately for how they seemed so snuggly. Their fur looked soft.
The Kopi were known for brute force violence. They were hunters and slavers. All witnessed were a female variety of beastly humanity. Their males proved suspiciously absent to Periphery observation. Each and every one surrendered not on beauty—that way fur covered all—how their noses looked so cute.
Sharpest rows of teeth and poison fangs would prove them deadlier than most humanoids. Claws of choice-laden extension, lengths designed at any moment by inner-visage would become real in seconds. They could change their bodies by intentional, thoughtful inventions and lived time.
Kopi made bloodcraft spells that worked to dismay all scientist throughout The Periphery. They cut themselves and stirred potion, painted viscously on each other, bathed completely in dredged red, and somehow the fuckers just seemed to be consistently able to make weirdly magical things happen for real.
Nobody in The Periphery quite believed it but the facts were clear enough. Something weird was going on. These dangerously gorgeous lioness women were fiends for a fight and bought change in the weather—the planet listened to their magic—it controlled more than just geology’s wrought consequences—there was some conscious-bleeding effect by this planet’s intelligence and its workings into all; everything and everyone here was feeling some part of Pelomea inside and the Kopi had influence.
All except Miriam were affected. She was too traumatized and powerful from the events leading to destruction of Grammaton in Yemi, and the strangest happenings which followed, before her longest sleep that brought her to wake upon Daemon at Arthur’s gentle care of guidance.
Daemon’s purring hums of rhythmic orchestra were a strange perfection of peace for that time staying with her companion. He was a kind but damaged man who’d been traumatized the same. He needed the sleep more than her.
Without his assistance in bracing through their travel, his helping her first, Miriam wouldn’t have chosen to stay awake for this mission. It was one of her own making, borne from blankest understanding of what that might entail or become through success. She’d been feeling these people and their cultures out for such time, the Kopi and Dwenn, by heart alone towards some truthful reasoning of her choice to remain.
There was an adventure her body told her was her own and one to seek that would help others—the call Miriam could never resist.
Gelecki was the system’s giant sun. It was the brightest thing Miriam’s new best alien friend Kojiro had been of witness to since their birth in orbit of Pelomea.
Adolescence in Dwenn society was a wholesome and eventually ferocious time of transformation. Transcendent physical becoming saw all to adulthood and pocked with sprouts of their sporous beauty-growths. Kojiro was only just beginning theirs. They’d been a lofty candidate who willingly denigrated themself to the regretful posting made by Miriam for the job, but they saw something in her and enjoyed playing producer so much they’d taken it on without much cajoling.
Kojiro knew the system. Kojiro knew the people here. Miriam knew The Periphery. Miriam knew the stars of time. She would speak to all who’d listen here in Proximera—getting most response on average from those many outward paving crafts hastefully cutting toward their next port of call. She was telling stories.
Alone in space of all three dimensions, Proximera was utilized most by traffic, the stopping place for travelers needed to bridge a gap of this blank space known as Rift—a middlemost resting stop to The Periphery’s blankest time space.
Microphones for the Candelabra Theater had been set-up in the pentstation’s galley by Kojiro who was waiting impatiently for Miriam—his animations queued. She was almost done performing a dramatic silence for the ages. This broadcast program, named by the creative enterprise’s founder and chairman; the star—would be a chance for Miriam to put her game face on. She’d need her focus for moments of spoken word in glorious rendition towards fellows of this system.
Dwenn culture was ignoring her mostly. Yet there were a growing few who believed they saw the signs. Something strangely beautiful was happening within this newfound and rapidly expanding nook of content in The Periphery’s phase-link programming channels.
It was only available locally in Proximera, but would link up with all in time.
Candelabra Theater was a playground and Miriam was telling a story most dear to her heart. She’d been making it up out of thin air.
“Sadness is demanded! The touching will cease to be immediately! We are puppet-people! Toy Master has foreseen its swelling of life to come! We all must grow. We all will make haste for sacred land—the jelly fields will know our kind again!”
Some of Miriam’s performances were more inspired than others. She’d bring it through by raw improvisation synchronized with Tojiro’s ability to manifest livestream animations with mind.
“Broken crumbles over potato salad! Come and get it!” Miriam elucidated in another woman’s voice, cutting in below the PA Orator’s monologue in Puppet Land, to then switch over her narration into a vocal register fathoms below, for baseline exposition.
“The Lunch Keeper was a broken woman of disregard to all life and would see her puppet-children into slavery for all she brought them by plate. It was sandy meat—every day. They’d not a drop of water to spare. Every day was just more sand—more meat. More and more. More and more and more. More and more and more and more.”
Miriam was nodding, feeling this moment coming in heart for so long as she’d weaved an intuitively borne tale for the last hour and a half. She’d wonder herself, in a rare breaking of non-thought, what might be coming to close it.
“Sand was the way people collected in death. It would be only the Toy Master who would know, the Lunch Keeper who would serve, and the puppets own wills of compliance which would teach them one day of what they’d truly consumed—themselves.”
The Lithos Miranos Infiniti was Miriam Halafax’s prize possession—lauded—groveled after even witness of—she’d split hairs with the control wrought from its steering column—design work crafted for plains and roads but enforced to soar in space and drop from orbit to show all speedsters that it might be had at once; style and grace, panache and patience, craftwork and ingenuity, originality and the integrated wisdom of a woman acting from her warrior’s heart.
Miriam dropped from the vent-port and tilted hard into a nosedive clicked-into verticality with a clamor of bang. Force took her body in seat and hands on wheel with chin on jaw and teeth. Miriam’s favorite part of life was this—when soul would join for the ride. Something became her in moments of fury that would take the woman passed decision making thought and bought or earned—it was found and taken and deserved. She was a Scribe of The Justiceers, and a most unique one healed into something more and less and far beyond what anyone would know.
She could make a mountain beg—she would.
Spinning barrels showed her down-spent movement gleeful while seeking towards Pelmoea’s crust. It’s dithering darkcloud atmosphere was horrendous and unnatural—the Kopi had seen to scorch this place with a toxic fume for protection from their enemy of starry vantage.
Miriam hoped they’d like the sight of her Infiniti’s golden glow.
She’d seen to seeking speed around Gelecki. Her circumference runs absorbed light from the monstrous sun. She’d pound fuel into her phase-shifted injection system while carving towards apex around its enormous body of gleam.
Three trips in the last collective cycle maxed-out the storage reservoirs littered through the Infiniti’s framing. Something around and within the webbed nanofibers of its golden-sheened outer plating stowed the most secretively functioned upgrade she’d retrofitted. Miriam Halafax added much upon the design of her to-be universe renown Lithos Miranos with abundance, and this gift would show something unseen before her side of spacetime—joyful declarations of ingenuity untoward the paradigms of The Periphery’s thought.
Fourteen thousand meters turned to now. She’d pull up in time—only just.
Accelleration on the lift and thrust was a tingling in her belly and thighs with somewhere in between. Miriam liked this part best herself. Sound came hard and fast when returned from space to atmosphere and velocity bought by engine in oxygen.
She’d feel speed more. She loved it.
Miriam was a demon at peak velocity and steered like a god. She’d cut into the gymnosperm forests—giants—hoarding growths of globular mass she’d weave through like a fox of Earth in skies of Pelomea. Caverns of epic junction and boring depth would seem no end here.
This one looked big.
Infinus dove in twirl, bought to bear first by blurting reverse thrust from the side-nose pointed forward, before full tilt firing from the side shambled belly burners taking her into a downstream twisted by nothing but grip of hands on the wheel. Miriam liked a little flair.
Enormous crystal caverns were proving intuition unneeded. Miriam operated beyond presumption and guess—this was instinct. She just did things. Everything was being recorded for a post session video-reel broadcasted to a stagnant and sometimes shrinking fanbase in system. Her gut would grumble a wisdom; despite the lack of people about Proximera actually caring to notice how cool Miriam was—they’d figure it out before long.
She’d been smart enough to scout with a drone now blasted into hyper-burn from the nose-cone’s tip slottings to see ahead. Having noticed light of Gelecki cutting from skylit vantage at lengths of distance in cavern unmeasurable, Miriam’s fired scouting bot would prove her discovery of a skyward exit needed.
Upon her full throttled execution of that exit she’d spot it—Mt. Kleo.
Kopi’s highest levels of governance found home in the highest peak of occupied territories on Pelómea. This was the central hub structure of their military complex, technology within would certainly observe and record any and all encroaching airspace thoroughly.
Miriam lowered the darkening blinders—leaning back into her seat and gripping the wheel tighter while the dimming of the scenery brought a calm over the cockpit. Signals blared from the immediate target locks, scanning devices trained on her Infiniti now approached Mt. Kleo dead-on through Tandersmokk Valley, bearing towards a broadside then tearing up the mammoth erection of Mt. Kleo’s southern peak.
The click felt good to hear. Shields were down—locked. Miriam knew it time. She flipped her switch. Everything went golden.
Each last milidyson of collected sunlight held within the banks of her custom Lithos Miranos Infiniti was unleashed. Infinus would be known in name. It would black every camera, burn blind-white into biological eyes unlucky enough to find a glimpse from surface, and leave a mark the Kopi would remember in its databanks until their end.
She’d ridden right up the mountainside. She’d blown Mt. Kleop’s top and tore the sky a hole.
Miriam Halafax was just showing off.
