Mood Booster
The ship psychologists prescribed exercise.
“Exercise? Really?” Raya asked. “I was hoping for a mood booster patch.”
Dr. Leander pushed her glasses up her head like a headband. “I get it, when you lived on Centurion work got hectic, or maybe you felt a bit blue — bam! slap on an MB patch to get through. But Raya, we are seven months into a ten-year mission and your MH indicators are plummeting. You spend most of your workdays inside the ship. Literally squeezed into tight, dark spaces all day with limited human contact. Your superior officers like your work and obviously, you love engineering — it’s a fantastic fit. It’s just not enough. Listen, hon, you have to cultivate other dimensions of health and well-being beyond the job.”
“I’m on the Relentless to do my job.”
“You’re on this ship to do a job, but cosmically speaking, you exist to be a person. A human being. I reviewed Dr. Yin’s notes — he noted your hyper fixation at the Academy came at the expense of fun and friendship, but he let that slide because his job was to help you qualify for this crew. Well, congrats! You made it. Now what?”
Nothing, Raya thought. I have nothing else.
Dr. Leander wasn’t a literal empath, but she gave Raya a tender look as if she understood.
“You already have a weight-training regimen, so sign up for a class. Something communal.”
The thought of small talk with strangers made Raya's heart constrict.
“Try class for a month. If you truly don’t like it —”
“Mood booster patch?”
Dr. Leander pulled her glasses down. “Ha! No. Art classes next.
*****
Raya signed up for Beginners Ilythrian Dance because it aligned with her lunch schedule. The instructor, Master Müot, faced the mirrored wall and showed the class a basic step pattern, naming each movement of the right leg: back, slide quarter circle, lift, tap toe, step.
The students clamored:
“Wait, what?”
“Can you do it again?”
“That’s the basic step?”
Raya watched Müot twice more, mimicked the bent knees, arms arched against an invisible partner, and executed the steps.
Her classmates stomped and slid all out of order, laughing, and demurring to try again.
Raya wondered, What does Dr. Leander want me to find: the camaraderie of others or the power of controlled well-executed movement? Apparently, it can’t be both.
Müot circulated to provide feedback. She watched Raya’s feet, then smacked her hands together exclaiming, “Impeccable!”
Raya attended every class that week — center of the room — a rotating cast of newbies messing up steps all around her.
On the second week, Müot invited her into the Advanced Class.
*****
Advanced was the opposite vibe of Beginners. Dancers dressed the part in pastel leotards, tights, and Ilythrian slippers. They acted the part too, showing up early to find a little area in the studio to run through personal warmup routines.
The first day, before Müot arrived, Raya stood awkwardly by the studio door until a tall male-presenting student made an expansive gesture that invited her to occupy the bubble of space next to him.
His handsomeness short circuited Raya’s brain. He cut an impressive figure — classically chiseled and proportioned with broad shoulders and narrow hips, but more intimidatingly, he exuded exquisite elegance, dressed in dove gray, cords of silver banding his arms, his dark hair half bound with the loose strands silky across his shoulders like the fanciest fringe on an outfit, and the top in a precise, well-contained top knot. He looked like the man already cast to play the lead. In the regular world, Raya would have refused to go near him, but he’d offered room, and she needed it as the other twirling and leaping dancers hemmed her in.
Raya bowed to hide her flummox, as much as a gesture of thanks. Calm down, she chided herself. Moving through feet patterns bled off some of the fluttery feeling. Fortunately, without a warmup routine of her own, she had a good reason to surreptitiously copy his.
He angled so she could follow better. He even paused at one point to emphasize the arch of his foot until she too hit the same tension. He moved elegantly from one pose to another, working to wake up each joint from neck to foot, then dipped right into the opening kata, I’ra, of the Sun Ordinances — which Raya actually knew from practicing at home — taking the Lead footwork, so that she took up the Follow.
Raya felt a synergy buzz between them, two people, feet apart, but in sync, moving through sequences built on partnering and connection that required no words, no thought, just the body’s own language of movement.
Raya let herself make eye contact, holding his gaze, since it was what the dance asked of them — and she saw on his face what she assumed was on hers, a shimmering joy held in check by the slow, deliberate pattern of steps.
Müot’s arrival broke the spell. From then on, class was combinations across the floor with Müot clapping times and shouting corrections. Raya could not shake an awareness of where he moved in the room, a mildly-distracting buzz at the back of her mind, because everything else she had went to the dance. This art form was difficult, intricate, frustrating.
And amazing.
*****
From that first day on, they always worked near each other. Raya tried to be casual about it, ping-ponging through the orbits of other dances until she found herself next to him, but he dispensed with that subtlety by simply pushing his way to stand by her the day he arrived later than her to class.
At first, he led their warmups. He stuck with the first seven katas of the Sun Ordinances, in deference, she assumed, to her limited experience. Moving them gently, steadily through the flow as Lead. He didn’t know she’d already memorized the first twenty-one katas of the 78-piece canon, and the gentle, swaying movements of the first Ordinances weren’t scratching the itch of her brain.
One morning, she kicked it up a notch by flicking her left foot rapidly in the opening sequence of L’Mihara, the third kata of the Equinox Ordinances. Not only was it the most intricate and fast-paced kata of the Equinox, but that opening salvo set her as Lead.
For weeks after, Raya re-played that moment in her mind — his delighted glance from her foot to her face, to her feet, then his seamless shift from Lead to Follow by realigning his weight from his back foot to front so that he could match her tempo in the sweep of his back leg. His eyes on her hips for the clues of when and how to move, as Lead always set tempo. Ilythrian dance positions were not dictated by gender, but Raya had noticed most of the men in the class jockeyed for lead, yet he had showed not even a flicker of ego in deferring to her. In fact, as they moved through the kata he chortled with delight whenever she made him redo a sequence.
As she watched him squint and stick his tongue out in concentration before he’d laugh at how wild the footwork was, she understood, this is what Dr. Leadner meant about taking class: meeting other people.
Having someone join her in the learning and practice of craft changed everything. The first time Müot asked Raya to the front to help demonstrate a partnering sequence, Raya kept up with Müot’s rapid fire instructions, and he gave her two thumbs up and a not-bad-face as she rejoined the line, so she did a polish-my-badge pantomime, like a pompous general, a gesture they then started to use sarcastically whenever either of them biffed a sequence or fell behind the tempo. Raya’s left hip didn’t open as wide as her right and if she wasn’t attentive to it her left leg would default to increasingly smaller circles, so he sometimes pretended his entire left side wouldn’t work in a sequence until she made a rude gesture and corrected the problem. He was a bit precious about his hair so when they partnered, she acted as if it were his hair, not his hands that she had to hold, sweeping locks of it up, and swooning at it in front-facing positions, sometimes even using it in partnered turns since she could duck under it easily. They had an ongoing bit that if either of them made even the slightest negative expression the other would whisper, “I’m so sorry, I farted.” Where normally Raya would have used transition moments in the class to mentally review mistakes, instead she turned to him. He could make light of it all. Like none of what she did was a mistake.
Over the years, Raya had seen other people achieve this camaraderie: classmates who communicated constantly with a panoply of exaggerated expressions and gestures, building a lexicon of nonverbal jokes about mistakes, bodily ailments, and reviews of each other’s performances. She’d always assumed the reason she’d outperformed her classmates was because she had never let herself get distracted from learning and achievement by those types of classroom shenanigans.
Turns out, the classroom distractions were the whole point. She bore the brunt of excoriating looks from Master Müot whenever they laughed too loudly. They sometimes fielded annoyed looks from other students, too — either for their silliness or because they often executed sequences well enough to garner rare praise from Müot. Before, that type of social censure would have sent her slinking to the back of the class, determined to earn her way to the front. This was better. It felt wild to be less tethered to the teacher’s expectations.
He and Raya were simply two anonymous motes twirling in the chaos of the cosmos. The pas-de-deux of their flirtation felt as delicate as a soap bubble. She refused to make a move. She knew, because Dr. Leander kept telling her, that she would have to risk something to gain something, but Raya could not bear to push it, to pop the beautiful pearlescent shimmer of their dynamic. It was easy to use the excuse of her soon-to-start evening shift as a reason to talk with him as they walked out of the studio, but scamper down the hall as soon as conversation could turn from dance. She would spend the entirety of that shift yearning to see him again.
Raya could have gone on forever in that dreamy state: two people in accord, fizzing with proximity and constant, never-ending anticipation. Until Müot messed up.
Müot never used their name or ranks in class. She was Dance Master and they were students, and if she wanted a person, she pointed at them and shouted their leotard color or hairdo.
But she also served on the ship and that chain of command must have momentarily superseded the hierarchy of class, because she slipped up calling him for center combinations, “Commander Ibyex, the L’Mihara.”
Commander? Raya could sense that awareness hit all of them in the room. He glanced at Raya as she realized the scale of his rank: He is SECOND IN COMMAND OF THIS ENTIRE SHIP.
Müot must have caught the mistake; she winced, a micro-expression of regret before she clapped at him move faster, like he was a peasant.
He went to the front, bowed to Müot as was the custom.
There were a thousand people on the ship. Raya had never met any of the Commanding Officers — never thought she would. She’s never thought she’d meet an Android, either. Ibyex was two things she never thought she’d meet. His hair length took on new significance, as it was the custom of his people from Ixhuitchlan for men to wear it long.
The word “people” came to her mind — she was proud of that implicit support — as there were many who did not consider Androids people. Centuries ago, Synthetics had fought wars on several fronts from organic-based zealots, and while the speciesism had become less violent it simmered across the galaxy. In fact, when the crew list was announced for the Relentless, a whole faction had very vocally defected in protest of Ibyex’s appointment.
Raya sensed a shift in the room. A faction of the class cast sour sideways glances at her, as she were also an “unnatural existence,” a few openly assessing her, already judging if she were a good fit for his station. Then some sat up straighter and leaned in to watch him avidly, attuned to his power, casting her out of the picture even though moments before they’d been considered a pair.
Ibyex must have felt it too, as center of the room he immediately messed up the steps, and when Müot barked, “Nope! Wrong!” he took a breath and tried again, slower to his own tempo and not the one Müot counted.
Someone shouted, “you’ve got this!” in a cheery, patronizing, and unprecedented show of support.
Is most of his day interacting with sycophants and bigots? He works in “tight spaces,” too.
As she watched him move through the sequence, precisely hitting the staccato tension of the tight wrist angles, then sweeping through languid transitions into high leaps, Raya knew the safe, anonymous bubble of their dancing had popped and this was the day she would have to unequivocally express her feelings.
A relationship with Ibyex would bring all the scrutiny she hated. It would require her to interact with more people, which was one of the things she was least good at, which might also prove a liability to his work if he needed someone with political savvy. Dating him would bring tension into the reporting line of her own department as Engineering vied for resource allocations.
Everything in Raya wanted to shy away from the limelight of his rank. And do what? she asked herself. Go back to your lonely life in service panels? Part of her clamored, yes! You’ve hardly spoken to this guy! Is he really worth it?
At the front of class, Ibyex brought his feet into the final repose position, bowed to Müot, then sought out at Raya with his gaze.
Her heart leapt at that flash of vulnerability, and she knew despite all those anxieties she was committing to learning steps she’d never tried before. She gave him a sideways thumb and meh-face as a joking “okay job.”
He quirked the side of his mouth but kept it otherwise neutral as all the people in the room watched him. They kept watching him, even as he stood back in line.
At the end of class, people queued to talk to him. Müot interrupted them to have a brisk, whispered conversation with Ibyex, perhaps to apologize for the misstep. From a distance Raya could see the Commander in him, assuring Müot with clear eye contact and firm words until the Dance Master made a deferential dip of her head then strode off, reinflated.
Raya dawdled, packing her dance bag, wiping her face, and redoing her ponytail. When she got to the end of fiddly bits, she sat to watch him talk to every eager person. They packed around him, overly jovial in their showboating. They had never before paid him any attention greater than admiration for his form and style.
He glanced Raya’s way and she did a little wave. He brought his hands together in gesture of apology and excused himself from the admiration party. They didn’t leave; they milled about to watch.
Raya’s heart thudded with anticipation as he approached. Slightly overwhelmed and unsure of what their new dynamic might be, she offered him a piece of gum, as she had after every class. A tradition she’d started because she feared her own post-workout mouth might be gross.
He took the gum and they fell into step, walking to the exit, leaving the other dancers behind.
“Well, Commander,” she admonished. “You’ve taken every piece of gum I’ve offered, even though you can’t chew it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t know if you knew who I was and then you offered me gum and ... I realized you didn’t, but ... then I panicked and took it. I wasn’t sure how to end the ruse.”
They moved into the hall. In the past, she would have broken away, hustling for a quick shower before her shift, but that day she stayed with him. Months of dancing together made it natural to fall into same pace and step, small shifts in body directing which hallway to move through. An aimless wandering that was about being together and not the destination.
She was going to be late for her shift, but now that they’d declared their allegiances she didn’t want to stop talking. “How long were you going to keep it going? If I’d asked you to coffee, would you’ve pretended to drink it?”
“Sure,” he said, “I’d pretend to eat eggs to keep hanging out with you.”
Raya laughed. “Eggs?”
“They’re so gross,” he said. “It’s a human thing I do not understand.”
Raya laughed again, shifting closer so their arms could brush together as they moved. “I don’t think I’ll be very good at explaining human things to you.”
“What do you mean?” he tilted his head to look at her,
“I don’t really understand people, myself. I don’t seem to be like other people.”
“I know,” he grinned. “I figured that out half an hour into our first class when you informed the dancer standing next to us that 'her Ilythrian dance shoes were anachronistic to the period of her outfit.'” He grinned. “It’s why I like you.”
She was sure everybody watching them walk down the hall could see her blush. But he was there, so it was all okay. “Then let’s not do anything the way everybody else does. I know, let’s take an art class!”
Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram
Reneé Bibby (she/her) is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona. She teaches at The Writers Studio and reads for Brink. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Luna Station Quarterly, Taco Bell Quarterly, The Worcester Review, and Wildness. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Reneé coordinates a yearly Rejection Competition for writers—all writers welcome! More at reneebibby.com
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