Upcross

by brujaja

Chapter 3

Martinaea didn’t expect much from life. She was resigned to poverty, and she accepted her physical peculiarities and mental aberrations. She didn't need to be the prettiest or most popular, or have the most toys, or leave a trail of the squashed and eviscerated on her way to the top. In fact, the top was not a place she had any designs on. She was happy just painting, listening to loud music, reading, and cooking. Well, mostly happy. There was one thing that she wanted — just one — and she wanted it profoundly. Sincerely. Mightily.

Martinaea put forth a powerful effort of will to bring what she wanted into her life. What she got was a series of mistaken identities, and, ultimately, what appeared to be a stable vacuum in her life instead. “I suppose that even homing beacons draw moths,” she thought. But all of that wanting, all of the need and imbalance, slowly evolved into a kind of charged, crackling absence that was impossible to ignore. “Great,” she thought, “I have an electric potential barrier.”

And it was just that kind of thinking that always got in her way. If she weren’t such a science nerd, if she could be more girly, Martinaea knew she'd have an easier time with men. In movies and novels, women who took care of themselves and knew how to fix things were sexy and compelling; but in the real world, "I don't know how to do this, will you do it for me please? *blink* *blink*" seemed to go over much better. “Captain Save-A-Ho never looked twice at his first mate,” she thought, and giggled. What if your first mate was your first wife? That could get confusing. Better not join the Navy.

So Martinaea started skulking around Slipdream like Diogenes with his lantern, looking for that one man. Honest, yes; certainly — but "deviant" was more like it. Non-conformist to the point of ridiculousness. It seemed like that was what it was going to take. So far, the gearheads and the vampires were both pretty much a bust. Next she was going to try a new world that had just been formed: it was designed to be, the media said, "a totally alien environment, in a far-off galaxy, inhabited by strange and bizarre life forms."

“I guess I could wear tentacles to bed for the right guy,” she mused. “It wouldn't be the weirdest thing I ever did.”