Boys Adventure Tale Epilogue and Errata
Timeout! flashed in Oskar’s helmet HUD. He grinned savagely. The Tycho Tsunami–his team–was playing for the Apollo Cup. The score was tied, with only two seconds left on the clock. Oskar was Forward. As soon as play resumed, he would jet toward the goal. In the next second, he would catch a pass to cinch the game. Win or lose, there would be no second chance.
The tension above the regolith pitch was electric. But hovering in his lift suit, Oskar was cool as Oslofjord ice. After all, he’d once been eaten alive by the Empress of the Galaxy. What was a little pressure after that?
The first few weeks after his return had been hard. His emotions had seesawed between love and hate, and yearning and resentment. Worst of all, he’d had no one to confide in. He dared not tell his family, not even Aunt Karina, and he quickly discovered that whether out of disbelief or out of fear, his friends had no interest in his tales. But time and youth were on his side. The skin of his new body paled, his hair returned, and he fell back into his routine. But he never forgot Inna.
She didn’t forget him, either. The army of talent scouts she’d promised never materialized, but a full geeball scholarship did, along with a coveted first-class citizenship. The rest was up to Oskar. He’d met the challenge head-on. With no old injuries to hold him back, in four short years he’d played the game to the top of the leagues, all the way to the Solar Championship. Oskar was now the best of the best, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Inna had enhanced his abilities when she rebuilt him. As far as he was concerned, after the way she used him, it was only fair.
One thing she hadn’t done was appear at one of his games. She hadn’t promised to, and Oskar didn’t expect her to reconsider. It wouldn’t do for the dread Empress to disrupt the whole system just to attend a match. But for some reason, he wished that she would.
His HUD flashed. T-10.
Oskar swooped back to his place in the lineup. He grinned at his sweating wingmen.
T-5.
The ball appeared, flying in from the sidelines under its own power. It stopped between the floating ranks of players.
T-1.
The roar of the crowd swelled. For an instant, the clear, powerful voice of a woman stood out above the din. “Oskaaaar!”
Inna?!
PLAY BALL!
Oskar burned his jets hot. He shot through a gap in the opposing guards like a skyhawk, twisting and banking into a climb. His velocity dropped, and he turned at just the right instant to receive the pass.
He pitched over and thrusted into a double hammerhead, aiming straight for the goal. With mere milliseconds left on the clock, he flashed past the shell-shocked goalie.
SCORE!
The minutes that followed were everything that Oskar could have hoped for. As soon as he landed, his teammates hauled him onto their shoulders for an impromptu victory parade. The crowd went wild, confetti fell–albeit quite slowly, for they were on the Moon–and the president of the Inner Solar System Geeball League hung the heavy championship medallion around his neck.
The whole time, Oskar scanned the crowd for a glimpse of a young giantess with beautiful silver eyes. But she wasn’t there.
The festivities came to a close. The Solar Champion Tycho Tsunami jogged out of the stadium, tired, and sore and happy. Fans thronged the route on both sides, cheering and reaching out to touch their heroes. Oskar gamely grinned and slapped their palms as he ran by. It was all a blur, until a strong hand took his in a grip like a mechanical grab.
He turned, and beheld his captor.
“Inna. You...you came!”
The mighty Empress towered over the startled fans at her sides, a beatific smile on her overlarge mouth. The black torus of a casper suit’s helmet hovered over her raven hair like a demon’s halo.
“Congratulations, Oskar. You’re living the dream I was denied. Maybe something good came of our sorry affair, after all,” she said.
“What’s done is done. Are you staying?”
She shook her head. “I dare not. Your life is yours again, and I want to keep it that way. Goodbye, my sweet Oskar.” She touched a stud on her wrist, and vanished into thin air.
Oskar moved on, at last.
Thank you for reading Boy’s Adventure Tale. The germ of this story is ancient. Inna is likely older than many of you. She first appears in my sketches and scribblings circa 1985. Back then she had big hair, and she wielded an electric guitar in her off-hand. In my fantasies we met and had improbable adventures, all of which ended up, quite predictably, in bed. I grew up, of course. But to my surprise, so did Inna. On a whim, I reran my old fantasy. Boy’s Adventure Tale is the shuddersome product. I hope you’ve enjoyed my escapist adolescent sex fantasy/essay on divine liberty/SFF horror story.
Unfortunately, the story I’ve shared on the blockchain contains numerous errors. The worst:
My use of Norwegian familial terms is a confusing disaster. My sincerest apologies to you, my readers, and all Norwegians everywhere.
A dialog explaining that Oskar had been injured playing geeball, and that Inna suffered an injury that ruined her career was accidentally cut from Part 1. (In Inna’s case, the injury was supernatural, but she chose not to elaborate.)
In part 13, Inna mentions that Hendrick’s treatment will be done in 5 hours. While technically correct, it appears to introduce an inconsistency into the story. In reality, Inna kept him sedated until Oskar was ready to come out.
In the same scene, Inna makes it sound as if Hendrick’s surgery is the only one she has that can regrow a person from a severed head. This may be true, but the explanation would involve Inna removing Hendrick to another machine for sedation.
There are other errors, and probably many I haven’t noticed. Mea culpa.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Epilogue and Errata