Jed never was much for talking and he had found out early in his life, that if you waste your words, no one listens to them. Over the years, he found that his observing people and things was more interesting than actually interacting with them.

Jed always liked being outside. The woods and fields were a place that he felt comfortable in. he was always one to be found out in the middle of his fields, drinking a beer and staring out at the stars. As far as farmers go, Jed was a quiet soul. Or at least that’s what his friends always said about him after a few beers. Only his wife Ellie ever said he was anything but quiet. She just said his jokes were always bad and he never took anything too serious.

Sitting in his fields, Jed felt like he was in another world. He felt the wind blow across the Midwestern plains and he could feel the weather weeks ahead. He watched the Deer scatter in and out of the wood blind at the edge of the fields. He listened to the rustle of small animals scatter in and out of the crops and he could tell what kind of yield he would get the next time he harvested.

The one thing he was not able to really observe was the way the bugs worked. The fire flies in particular puzzled him. Most flies and mosquitos are predictable. The birds and animals all were predictable. The fields and even the weather. Those things were all predictable.

Nothing he had seen ever explained what fireflies did. The randomness of them; never the same direction twice. The lights never in a pattern, always blinking with no rhythm. It was an almost purposeful chaos, but nothing that ever seemed natural. Sometimes there were a few, sometimes hundreds. Tonight there were more than he thought possible. The firefly light lit up the field and surrounded him in the woods. The trees and grass glowed green with the light.

Jed stood up in wonder. The fireflies seemed to be massing around the corner of his Cabbage field. The chaos of blinking green lights slowly started to shift into a swirl of green lights. more and more of the small bugs floated towards the swirling bugs. They came from the woods, and across other fields. at this point, Jed wasn’t really sure what to think, so he just watched.

Now the swirling had sped up and the bugs were blinking with a rhythm. The swirling formed patterns like he had seen in the old Celtic Drawings his grandmother had painted. The complex swirling of lines came from more bugs than he could count. the light from the field glowed eerily green. and still the small fireflies poured in from the field.

Now a second ring formed, this one going the opposite direction from the first one. The patterns appeared much faster this time. The rhythm of the circle beat steadily as more and more of the fireflies came into the pattern.

Finally the incoming fireflies tapered off. the circles danced with patterns and light and the swelled numbers rose the inner circle up well past Jed’s head. Jed wasn’t sure why he was so close to the circle, but he wasn’t going to miss something like this. The swelling stopped and slowly Jed realized the circle was expanding outward making the patterns dance in three dimensions. loops and spirals from once circle to the next spun out and into each other. Watching it from what Jed figured was not a safe distance, he still couldn’t believe the light show in front of him.

and then it was done. The dance rhythm peaked and stopped. then it was gone. no lights, no bugs. just empty.

But not empty. On the ground in the cabbage field Jed realized there was a lump that wasn’t cabbage. As he neared the area the lights had danced he realized the ground held the patterns of the dance. They were the Celtic knots but more intricate than anything he had ever seen painted or shown. When he stopped at the edge of them he realized the lump had moved. Before he could even guess, and baby cry cut the silence.

As soon as Jed’s foot hit the pattern on the ground a pressure released and the pattern exploded into a cloud of dust. Jed covered his eyes, but as quickly as the dirt flew up, it also fell straight back down. When Jed looked around now, he only saw a flat perfectly round area with no signs of his cabbage or the lines. Only the silent child.

The child was half buried in the loose dirt and stared at Jed innocently. No clothes or diapers, but it was clearly a boy when he picked it up. Not quite a newborn, but if it hadn’t been buried, there was no way it could have been sitting up by itself.

When he got home, he found his wife sitting on the porch waiting for him.

“Found this in the cabbage patch, I think we should keep him.” he grinned at his wife. Eye contact between the two said everything.

Ellie just shook her head, took the baby boy and went inside to get him some milk. “That man always makes a joke of everything.”

Frida landed like an old school comic book character. The cluster of people following behind her didn’t do as well. The twenty foot drop from the window above was something that stopped most bipedal creatures. The new body Frida had just stolen didn’t have any issues with it at all.

The Core Company was paying good money for this prototype, Frida needed to keep it in at least living condition. Clearly the foot soldiers behind her were not nearly as worried about it. The parking lot of random rockets and shuttles she was sprinting through provided plenty of cover for her foot race with the soldiers, but it was one she didn’t expect to win this easily.

The new body was extremely fast and reacted better than most of the droids she had driven before. her senses could barely keep up with all the input coming in. She mentally had already plotted at least eight ways to get to the jump off point so she could catch the flight out.

The Orange skin of the prototype was her only real surprise with this job. It was something that would make blending in impossible, but with as many physical extras the body had, she doubted she would even need to worry about it. Forty feet from her rocket she encountered the first real issue.

Six soldiers sat with their weapons aimed at her. The first two younger cadets opened fire. As the shots started, Frida felt the chemicals kick into her new body. The feeling was almost painful. every synthetic muscle tensed, and her eyes dilated out and the whole surrounding area came into a much finer focus.

Time didn’t slow down, but her senses reacted more quickly than she imagined possible. The nerve relays told her how to react, the path of every shot was calculated and she twisted into a tumble flip that let her avoid the weapon fire. The shots blew past her and she avoided them like playing an ancient game of dodge ball.

The sprint forward had surprised her as much as the soldiers. The difference between them was that Frida was ready to fight hand to hand, and the soldiers were not. The flurry of unarmed combat was brutal. Frida literally ripped them apart and broke through the small group.

The small escape rocket shot out from the planet leaving an orange trail of vapor. The orb helmet almost didn’t fit over her head and hair. She hadn’t even realized how much hair was there. The seal around her neck locked and the air she breathed would now be consistent. She internally realized that the orb over her head was probably stronger and more valuable than the rocket she was flying out on. Sitting down in the cramped cabin she did a self-examination of herself with the Body tools she had downloaded with her.

The orange skin was tinted orange purely for aesthetics, but under that was a surprisingly tough substance that clearly had some alien tech in it. The pores could act as a breathing system if needed. The first scan of the internal structure also showed alien tech in the nerves. Nearly instant control of any muscle and the muscles themselves were clearly state of the art as well.

A red light started blinking on the control panel above her before anything else could be examined. The monitor showed why Core Company hadn’t been worried about losing this body. The space worm twisted its way behind her. The giant mouth agape with teeth as it moved through the gap between them.

Sighing, she picked up the plasma gun she had taken from the soldiers below, and opened the airlock. The orange skin immediately changed texture and she felt the changed in her nerves too. The Balance system she had been using changed, and she realized with a little relief and a lot more confidence that she had gone from a gravity center, to a non-gravity center, and her body had changed with it. She had no feeling of up or down, but the normal disorientation that went with it was gone as well.

Using the gravity tech in the boots she climbed around the ship and steadied herself in one of the atmosphere stabilizing fins. The Space Worm was closing in fast, but she grinned as she prepared herself for the jump.

Frida The body Snatcher.

Pushing a command through to the rocket, she pushed off the side as the rocket changed course, Firing a plasma shot into the after-burn of the engine, she felt the force of the explosion push her out and straight into the mouth of the worm.

The gullet of the worm closed in before it could react and she bounced down the cavernous throat of the worm unharmed. Pressures changed as she went through different parts of the worm, as she felt the sides of the worm close in, she found what she was looking for. The helmet glow illuminated the stomach of the worm and she saw the acid sack start to bulge before it spewed open to digest everything. As it bulged Frida aimed the gun over the bulging pore.

The plasma shot ripped into the sack and far into the flesh of the worm. Liquids and acids went everywhere. The Plasma shot popped a hole in the side of the worm and the pressure suction from space pulled Frida and most of the contents of the worm’s stomach. The worm writhed in pain as it twisted with no direction before becoming still and floated around its own internal organic matter.

A quick command to her shuttle and her red rocket turned and picked her up. Securing herself inside she felt her borrowed body reconfigure itself to the shuttle and she strapped herself in for the rest of the ride home.