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  • FUTURES

A new partner

Family heirlooms.
By
  1. Timothy Mudie

    1. Timothy Mudie is a speculative fiction writer and an editor of all sorts of genres. His fiction has appeared in various magazines, anthologies and podcasts, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Deep Magic, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse and Daily Science Fiction. He lives outside Boston with his wife and two sons. Find him online at timothymudie.com or on Twitter @timothy_mudie.

A creature in a protective suit reaches a hand out to grab a heart-shaped locket

Illustration by Jacey

Another bust. Ciro scanned the contents of the box Mulli wore around her neck: no locket. It was Mulli’s third dive of the day — Ciro didn’t even know how many times the flipper-eel had dived over the past two months. And Ciro had nothing to show for it: his mother’s locket, his last remaining connection to her, still missing, even though her body had been recovered within a day of her accident. The locket must be deep in the chemical slurry, dislodged by the current or some animal after Mom’s exo-suit fully deteriorated. No matter how many dives Ciro had to send Mulli on, he vowed to find it.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03742-6

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