If you thought about it, the process for selecting the first matter transference test pilot was archaic, although Mae considered it a lucky omen when she drew the Blue 15 raffle ticket. Blue, not pink, was her favourite colour as a girl, and at 15, Mae had decided she wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up.

This is the opening paragraph from my sci-fi short story Twin Souls in the Universe, which I shared on the Tall And True writers’ website in August 2024.

Please note: The Story Insight below contains spoilers.

Story Insight

I wrote Twin Souls in the Universe, originally titled The Hum of the Universe, the Australian Writers’ Centre’s August 2024 Furious Fiction writing challenge. Their brief for the 500-word story was:

• Your story must take place at a sporting/competitive event
• It must include something SHAKING
• And the words GOLD, GREEN and GLOBE. (Longer words containing the original spelling were acceptable.)

Expanding on the first point, characters could not stand on solid ground or in/on water at any point in the story, including in a building or tower attached to the ground, up a tree, or on a boat, etc. They could also be in space but couldn’t set foot on the moon or another planet.

Being a Star Trek fan, this last line about space had me thinking of transporter malfunctions, with Scotty unable to “beam up” and reassemble Captain Kirk. Thus, my story about the first test pilot trial of the matter transference program was born

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Changes to the Story

Three items of deeper insight for readers:

1. The main character in my story, Mae, is UP IN THE AIR at all times, although she reflects on things that happened on the ground. Perhaps this broke the criteria because my story wasn’t showcased or longlisted for August. More likely, the other stories were better than mine.
2. I wanted my two central characters to pay homage to the pioneers of space travel, hence, Yuri, for the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (of course!). I planned to name my female character Sally after the first American astronaut in space, Sally Ride. But as I explained in the “What’s in a Name?” blog post, I’d already used Sally twice (for August 2021 and 2023’s Furious Fictions!), so I renamed her Mae, after Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to travel into space.
3. The story was originally titled The Hum of the Universe because it had a different ending. After Yuri said, “I came looking for you”, Mae replied, “I hoped you would”, and suddenly she heard the hum of the universe. The line was a callback to the silence and loneliness her atoms had experienced. But the day after submitting it, I realised I’d used the wrong callback. So, when I shared the story on Tall And True, along with other edits to tighten the narrative, I changed the last line to … and their atoms swirled like twin souls in the universe. And I changed the title!

Shared on Tall And True

Although I didn’t make the showcase or longlist for August’s Furious Fiction, I loved the original story so much that I revisited it, made the changes mentioned above, found the perfect cover image on Pixabay, and shared it on Tall And True.

I hope you enjoyed Mae and Yuri’s journey in the universe as much as I enjoyed writing and editing it. You might like another of my sci-fi/speculative fiction stories, You Have Been Warned, which I also narrated for Tall And True Short Reads.

© 2024 Robert Fairhead

Thanks to Dmitry Belyakov for sharing the evocative image of a nebula swirling in the universe on Pixabay.