Sister Resister — Kelli Jae Baeli

Sometimes the best decisions are the ones we make when we have no choice."Kudos to Ms. Baeli! This story is fantastic. Talk about covering some ground (or space) in a short book--this is a prime example of brilliant writing."“I remembered the history lessons my grandmother gave me, passed down from her mother, and her mother's mother. How it used to be perfectly acceptable for two of the same gender to mate. All it took was the apathy of the people, and one fascist regime -- one started by a man named P. Murt D'lanod -- taking over the governing bodies, and all those tolerances and acceptances were a whimpering dot on the chart of human history. We called his adherents P-Murts. And we were the Sister Resisters, bent on reclaiming freedom for all.The oldest histories told us the whole thing had happened before on Earth, but the general populace on one particular continent grew complacent, forgot the lesson, and let it happen again. But that time, it caused the planet to die, and so nothing any of them believed meant anything, because the planet was headed for annihilation due to the mindless plundering of its vitality. I never really understood all that, but knew that for some very personal reasons, the P-Murts would forever be my enemy, and the enemy of all thinking, loving human beings.”Story Book had no idea how to pilot a transport ship. The narratives on her reader never taught her such things. But here she was, waking up on one. The trajectory from Pangea to the prison planet, Sintori-5, would have spelled her doom, had the ship not met with some mysterious mishap. She's alone, except for another surprising prisoner Story finds in the only other remaining suspension pod.She has some decisions to make. Does she rouse the Cephalosapien from the sleep pod? Does she abandon all hope? Maybe just engage in tentacle sex until the food is gone? Or does she choose to go from prisoner to pioneer, taking the ultimate chance, trusting her hybrid companion to get them away from the Garzi warships and then out of their relentless circling of Uranus? Sometimes the best decisions are the ones we make when we have no choice.