Glitter Makes the Galaxy Go 'Round

By Leah R Cutter

The future looks nothing like what those old-time science fiction writers thought.

 

The Fairies, Brownies, and Pixies (FBP) create spaceflight.

 

Not Humans.

 

Those who want a job in the Space Corps end up as ticket takers. Maybe in hospitality or maintenance.

 

Odell dreams of something bigger.

 

Verifying the amount of glitter that coats a starship.

 

But does the position actually exist? Can Humans do it? And if it does, can she somehow prove herself capable?

 

Part of the NIMBY universe of stories.

 

Also, part of Issue 30 from Uncollected Anthology, Fairies in Space.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215724941

Book preview

Glitter Makes the Galaxy Go ’Round

Glitter Makes the Galaxy Go ’Round

LEAH R CUTTER

KNOTTED ROAD PRESS

Contents

Glitter Makes the Galaxy Go ’Round

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Also by Leah R Cutter

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Glitter Makes the Galaxy Go ’Round

Odell sighed wistfully as she put her ebook reader to the side and leaned back on her bed. She was safely ensconced in her childhood bedroom, reading about the past while thinking about her future, now that she’d finished high school and was on her way to a tech school. Or something.

She glanced again at her book and shook her head. Those old-time science fiction writers had no idea what space travel was going to be like! None!

First of all, there were no wormholes or hyperdrives or jumpgates. Nothing so mundane. And it wasn’t Humans who’d found their way to the stars first, either. It hadn’t been Human ingenuity that had opened up the greater galaxy.

No, the Fairies, Brownies, and Pixies (FBP) had led the way. First, the Brownies developed a sheath for starships that allowed them to slip between space. Then the Fairies came up with the right combination of Pixie dust and Fairy glitter to give the ships power. (There was an ongoing online battle between the Fairies, the Pixies, and their PR departments, as to which ingredient was more important, the dust or the glitter. Odell privately believed that while the Pixie dust gave the ships more magical oomph, the Fairy glitter gave them style, made them iridescent in all the pictures she’d plastered to the walls of her small room when she’d been younger, at least as young as fifteen. She was so much older now, eighteen going on thirty, as her mother said.)

However, as the FBP were the ones to first reach the outer planets, and had learned the secrets of how to fly to far-flung galaxies, Humans were treated as non-essential personnel.

They worked for the Space Corps, but only doing menial tasks for the most part. They manned the ticket counters for the great ships, selling seats to Humans and