bloodyrosemccoy | The Geography of Main Street: Prologue

Anybody want a space-gorilla-doctor origin story?

This is a project I started for no good reason. I'm pretty sure there isn't a market for Autistic Space Gorilla Delinquent Sets Up Technology Black Market In Stanford-Torus Pleasantville, but I've been having a blast writing it. I might make the book this is spun off from, the infamous Space Doctors Alien Medical Drama, available, but for now I'm just gonna post this one. If you like autistic main characters and space opera, this is gonna be your jam! It's a bit of a love letter to Mystery Science Theater 3000, too.

So: Here goes!

Gonna make this an index page for all the chapters, so:
Prologue (You Are Here)
Chapter 1: Civic Hygiene
Chapter 2: Focal Citizens
Chapter 3: New (Metaphorical) Horizons
Chapter 4: Healthcare and Ecomanagement
Chapter 5: Arts and Culture
Chapter 6: Hidden Gems
Chapter 7: Beacon Studios
Chapter 8: Safety Protocols
Chapter 9: Societal Breakdown
Chapter 10: Lessons From History
Chapter 11: Policy Amendments
Chapter 12: Station Identity Politics

Oh, hey! Here's a ✨Paypal link ✨ in case you want to tip me! No pressure, but there it is.

CW for shitty family members and a reference to a gruesome death!

---

In retrospect, I don't think I was supposed to know my dad was experimenting on children, but that never stopped adults from talking about it in front of me.

Not that it was a secret, exactly. But apparently I wasn't supposed to join the conversations about it. Once I asked Grandma and Ms. Coralym if they were talking about one of my dad's subjects, and Ms. Coralym's response was, "My, my, somebody has big ears."

Then she smiled at me in that way some people have, that always makes me feel guilty, as though I should be ashamed of myself for reading in the backyard hammock when she decided to lean over the fence to talk to Grandma.

I had no idea how to respond to something like that, so I ignored it. "But are you?"

They'd been using a lot of the same phrases Ms. Palbert had heaved out between sobs when she'd brought her son over to our house the night before: "wit's end," "unmanageable," "damaged," "unmotivated." The son she was describing stood a bit behind her on our porch, gazing at the sky panels dreamily. I thought he might be older than me, but it's hard to tell with paquos; they're smaller than koranos like myself, and they mature faster. At any rate, he seemed not to hear his mother's complaints, but when his gaze crossed mine through the front window, he flicked his ears amiably and continued scanning around at nothing in particular.

(Come to think of it, this might have been another discussion I was not supposed to hear, even though I was sitting on the floor doing a jigsaw puzzle not two meters away.)

Dad stood at the door, listening to her in his characteristic stonefaced silence until she ran out of superlatives. Then he said, "No."

Ms. Palbert stared at him, openmouthed.

"Please," she said. "This may be his only chance!"

Dad was unmoved. "He was in the pilot study, with the early implants, and they need reworking. And we can't have him as a subject in both. I'm sorry, but leaving that implant in, or putting in another, could be dangerous."

"But he's improved a bit," she said. "Surely another implant would make him truly manageable!"

"Perhaps manageability is not what concerns me," Dad said, and I could hear the steel sheathed in his words. "However, an implant not the only possible treatment. I am researching alternative accommodations. The implant is showing some efficacy, but until it's approved for steady use, we can explore other options. There has been some indication that the control groups—"

"Control!" Her voice was rising again. "If only there were some control! You don't know what it's like. I can't take him anywhere. His room is full of junk; he compulsively digs through the trash; he's sullen; he ignores schoolwork—"

Dad's face has always seemed to have more points of articulation than anyone else I know. A muscle in his cheek twitched.

"I am sorry, Ms. Palbert," he said again, and now the steel was unsheathed. "Please call me if I can help any other way. I'll see you in the clinic tomorrow, son," he said more pleasantly to the boy outside the door. "And then you'll be rid of me forever."

The boy didn't reply. His mother, still weeping dramatically, led him away.

They hadn't shown up to the clinic the next day, either. That was what Grandma and Ms. Coralym were talking about—they'd been speculating where he'd gone instead. Dad was moody and snappish about it, even though it was Grandma's night to have dinner with us and Vilda had made his favorite roast.

"Did Ms. Palbert send her son to the farms? Or the mines?" I asked him.

"Who told you that?" Grandma demanded.

"Farms," Dad said before I could point out that she had, or had at least said it in front of me.

(That's another reason I was confused: Grandma and the neighbors didn't seem to think I was supposed to know—even though they talked about it in front of me—and neither did Vilda, but Dad would talk about his subjects to my brother and me and it wasn't some big thing.)

"Jod says Ms. Palbert should have sent him there long ago," Thoren put in. "Says he was a lost cause. Destined for delinquency."

Grandma nodded sagely. But Vilda, who was serving the scalloped crossflorets, scoffed.

"Jod Coralym's parents should keep their noses out your father's work," she said. "Some of them are lost causes, but if Dr. Grewell can give just one of those poor souls a chance at a normal life, it will all have been worth it."

Dad ignored her misty-eyed flattery, reaching for the serving spoon.

"Some of them truly don't want that chance," Grandma said. "But, Thoren, you've told us what Jod thinks. What do you think?"

My brother considered as he dumped hot sauce over everything on his plate. "I think that if even Dad can't fix them, it's good that they have something they can contribute to society. There's nothing more important than food or resources, after all."

"Quite so," Grandma said warmly. "It's a perfectly respectable occupation."

Well, that went without saying. Which was strange, because people said it all the time while they were whispering about who was sent away, and they'd give you those guilt-inducing smiles when you tried to talk about this perfectly respectable thing.

"What if Dad does fix them all?" I asked. "What if we don't have anybody to work the farms or the mines?"

"Well, maybe he doesn't have to fix all of them," Thoren allowed.

Vilda laughed. I was silently hoping the conversation would distract her, but no: she had brought out the red courgette stew and, as always, she headed directly to my plate and heaped out a generous portion.

I'd asked her once if she wouldn't mind serving other vegetable dishes instead. I told her that I liked all of them except this one; that the ones I liked were all equally nutritious; that if Dad and Thoren really liked the red courgette stew, then she could serve it some nights and I just wouldn't eat it; that it wasn't objectively bad food, but that I didn't like the slimy texture of the vegetables or the spice blend.

I'd thought it was reasonable enough, but it had somehow resulted in the dish being served twice a week instead of every other week, and Vilda not allowing me to leave the table until it was gone from my plate.

Maybe I shouldn't have said "slimy."

"What do you think, Dreedo?" Thoren asked me.

I thought back to the class trip we'd taken to the farms, and to other places on the station—the paper mill, life support, and so on.

"I don't know," I said. "I mean, it's respectable, but it sounds … hard. Maybe … maybe Dad can fix them all, and then … maybe we could get a dispensation to have some tech do the harder things instead? I know tech makes people lazy, but if, you know, if everyone wanted to make other contributions, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to use it—"

A sharp rap on my knuckles sent a white flash through my vision, followed by the intense discomfort of a viscous smear of vegetable matter on my hand.

"Now, now," Vilda said brightly, waving the spoon she'd smacked me with. "We'll have no loafer-talk in this household. We can't take away an opportunity for those poor children to make something of themselves. Don't you worry about the Palbert boy. If he won't respond to Dr. Grewell's treatments, then perhaps the fresh air and good, honest work will do the trick."

Dad barked out a one-note laugh. "Fresh air."

"You know what I mean," she said. "Now, Dreedo. Take a bite."

I sighed, cleaned the gunk off my hand, and dug into the slimy heap. She wouldn't serve dessert until I'd choked it down, so the sooner I started, the better.

#

Weeks later, Grandma leaned over the fence to talk to Ms. Coralym again, and the name "Palbert" resurfaced.

The words they used were different this time, though. For one thing, they were quieter and more solemn, even though the speakers lingered on them. For another, it was a harder to tease out a proper narrative when words like "tragedy" and "accident" were mixed in with "blessing in disguise" and "relief."

Also, I was pretty sure I was misinterpreting something severely, because the images conjured for me seemed less like "a blessing in disguise" and more like "a gruesome and horrible fate not to be wished on anybody." That couldn't be right, obviously.

I decided to ask.

"What's a thresher," I said to Grandma after she had come in the door and pulled me into her usual unavoidable hug, "and why did you say it's probably a relief for Ms. Palbert that her son died in one?"

I didn't have to eat the stewed courgettes that night: Dad sent me to bed without supper.

After that, I stopped trying to chat with Grandma.

#

Chapter 1: Civic Hygiene