Title: Lost Boy, Found Boy
Author: Jenn Polish
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: March 19, 2018
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: No Romance
Length: 21,200
Genre: Science Fiction, LGBT, nonbinary, trans, young adult
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Synopsis
In a futuristic world, Neverland is a
holomatrix, Hook is a cyborg, and Tinker Bell is an automated computer
interface.
Peter is desperate to save his lover
from a military draft that, unbeknownst to him, Mir volunteered for because
they are desperate to be able to fly. So, naturally, Peter programs an entire
island—Neverland—as a refuge where Mir can fly without having to fight in a
war.
But he doesn't locate Mir right away;
instead, he fights for control of the island with automated interface Tinker
Bell, and in his attempts to find Mir, others arrive on the island. But Peter’s
single-minded focus on Mir generates repercussions for everyone.
Excerpt
Lost Boy, Found Boy
Jenn Polish © 2018
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
The boys knew they slept in pods because
it was cheaper than having the oxygen on all night throughout the home.
But there was a rumor, too.
A rumor the pods were programmed to
choose them. One at a time.
The younger boys believed it with
wide-eyed fear and obedience.
The older boys believed it with solemn
remembrance and, sometimes, defiant irreverence.
The middling boys fell, often, somewhere
between utter panic and steadfast denial. It was the middling boys who were
chosen.
Peter was a middling boy. Mir was
middling, too, and placed with the boys.
The morning after Central glitched and
only projected one sunset into the sky, Mir—who used to cradle their right
forearm while they slept, to protect it from the pod; to protect it from the
choosing—found their former protection was too feeble, their old desires long
since changed.
The ship’s emblem was burned into the
tender flesh of their forearm. They’d been chosen.
They grimaced and closed their eyes,
allowing a solitary tear to drop, to sizzle on the still too-hot burgundy
disruption in their otherwise-smooth golden-brown skin.
“Peter.” They frowned. Their oldest
friend was a light sleeper. They pressed the comm button inside their pod
again, making sure it glowed its signature azure, letting them know their voice
was, in fact, being transmitted from their pod to Peter’s.
“Peter.” Louder this time, more
insistent. Their attention didn’t move from Peter’s face. They wanted to see,
just one last time, what the boy looked like when he woke, free of the worry
lines that already plagued his face during his more alert moments. Mir wanted
to, needed to memorize the way Peter’s crisp green eyes opened sleepily, the
way they blinked out of a dreamland and into life. The way they flashed with
all the magic of the stars of old the moment his gaze landed on Mir’s face; the
way they only sparkled like that for them, the way Mir always made Peter’s
mouth tug up into a sleepy, a happy, a blissful smile.
Mir wanted, needed, to record all this,
make sure they never, ever forgot the uninhibited joy they and they alone could
pull from the boy’s eyes.
Because once Peter saw the bloodied
emblem on their forearm—and worse, when he found out why it was there—Mir knew
his eyes would never light up like that again. Not for them, anyway.
Sure enough, Mir’s whisper-shout roused
the boy this time. He jumped, the artery in his neck leaping with him, pulsing
like it was trying to pull his body into flight.
Peter turned on his pillow toward Mir,
peering out at them through the untinted glass of his pod. Finding Mir’s eyes
waiting, watching him intently, Peter smiled. First in his eyes, with that
sparkle that made Mir’s eyes water, that made Mir’s core swoop and their heart
bellyflop; then in his lips, the left side first, then the right. He fumbled
with sleepy fingers for his comm button.
“What’re you awake for, beautiful? Don’t
you know there’s a war on? Sleeping in conserves oxygen reserves,” he quoted
blearily, mockingly. Lovingly. He was whispering, even though Mir knew none of
the boys could hear them—their comm signals only routed to each other’s pods.
Peter had programmed them just for that purpose himself. Still Mir glanced
around furtively at the other six pods in the windowless room. They were all
tinted to near full darkness, but they imagined the other children’s sleeping
forms tucked inside them nonetheless. Oblivious to them, and oblivious to
Peter.
Mir didn’t answer, their throat one
massive, painful lump. They just stared at Peter, stared at the boy who’d held
their hand when they took their first step outside, the boy whose never-ending
determination to make play out of even the most mundane tasks made him quite
desired amongst all of their friends. They tried to open their mouth, but they
nearly choked on their own saliva. Their forearm had long-since stopped
burning—they hadn’t even felt the pod marking them, choosing them as they
slept, but it stung now—and as they took in Peter’s eyes, they became acutely
aware of each new striation in their skin, of the slight swelling surrounding
the ship’s emblem that would take them away from Peter forever.
Peter squinted at Mir’s silence.
“What is it?”
Mir’s eyes just got wider, and Peter
squinted across the room at them, watching them swallow. Wishing there were no
pods—no air at all, for that matter—between them.
“Mir. Tell me.”
Wordless and shaking, Mir lifted their
forearm, rotating their palm so Peter could see the tender underflesh where the
choosing had left its mark.
A combination of disbelief and terror
settled into Peter’s features, his rounded cheeks and angled chin, his wide
eyes and his very, very pink lips. His head shook back and forth like he had a
hinge loose in his neck, and his hands haltingly lifted to the glass of his
pod, his palms pressing, pressing, trying to traverse the spaces between them.
Peter’s horror somehow settled Mir’s
resolve, and they gulped, readying themself.
“I’ve been called to the war, Peter. The
Hub needs pilots.” They paused. Peter was still shaking his head in shock,
tears steadily streaking down his otherwise still, unblinking face.
No point in beating around the subject
now. Best do it while he can’t say anything, anyway, Mir figured. They took a
deep breath.
“The Hub needs pilots, and Peter…Peter,
this isn’t a random choosing. This wasn’t the draft. I submitted my number for
priority consideration last rotation. Right after my sixteenth birthday. I
don’t want to fight in any war, Peter, but I need to fly. I need to fly, and
the only way I can is if I serve the Hub for a few rotations. I need you to
understand.” Mir’s voice broke, and they curled down into their blankets. “I
need you to not hate me.”
Neither child knew how long the silence
stretched between them, but neither child moved and neither child dared to even
breathe too loudly, though Mir shuddered a couple of times.
Even through their shudders, Mir didn’t
look up, not once in all their silence; they didn’t shift from their almost
bowed position, like one of those ancient carvings of servants before royalty.
When Peter finally spoke, his voice was
flat, distant, hollow. He sounded like someone else, someone else entirely. He
sounded like a shadow would sound, if a shadow could sound.
“If that’s what you want, then good for
you, Mir. You’re sharp. You’ll be a good pilot. A good fighter pilot. A good
fighter. You fought to get them to let me into the boys’ podrooms when they
said I didn’t have the proper documents, not to mention getting yourself in
here. You’re already…you’re a good fighter.”
“Peter.” The sound was ragged, full of
gravel and full of grief. Mir lifted their gaze to look into Peter’s, now, but
Peter was staring down at his interior pod controls. He punched in a few numbers
before looking up and smiling, the forcedness, the fakeness sending shivers
down Mir’s spine. But at least his voice sounded more like his own, with that
musical quality, that earthy ebullience underneath it, holding it up.
“And then when you’re done, you can come
back and I can program you the fanciest ship to ever enter Hub space.” Mir
tried not to flinch away from the vacant flicker in Peter’s eyes, even as he
just kept smiling that fake, twisted smile, punching away at his pod’s keypad.
“Peter—”
But Peter was gone, the communications
cut. Peter had overridden his pod’s safety protocols and popped open the top,
despite the surrounding air being devoid of oxygen.
Peter didn’t offer so much as a backward
glance to Mir, who just stared, helpless. Who just pounded lightly,
open-palmed, on their own pod door, unable to override the safety protocols
without help from Peter. Trapped and mandated to sleep until the podroom was
oxygenated again at artificial sunrise.
“Dammit,” Mir whispered. “Dammit.”
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Meet the Author
Jenn Polish is the author of two young adult books, Lunav and Lost Boy, Found Boy. Their debut novella, Lost Boy, Found Boy, is a scifi re-telling of Peter Pan in which Neverland is a holomatrix, Hook is a bisexual cyborg, and Tink is an asexual lesbian computer interface. Their debut novel, Lunav, a lesbian faerie tale, features dragons that grow on trees and friendship amongst rebellion. They teach Theater and English in the CUNY system, where they are also a doctoral candidate in English. They live in New York with their fiancée and their fantasies of having multiple puppies.Website | Twitter | Instagram
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