Canaries
They’re really small and they don’t eat much. So when they came–and you know who they are, right?–we all had to leave, fast. So I took my cage of canaries with me. I carried as much seed for them as I could but the amount isn’t infinite. So I am hoping they survive the trip.
But where we’re going is anybody’s guess. I know most people would have said it was foolish. I should have packed food for myself, or warm clothes, or old photographs or something. Instead, I brought the birds.
The first night, in the big common room, their twittering kept people up. People complained, yes, but no one threatened me or the birds. After all, there are so few of us. To harm or threaten one of us is to threaten all of us.
I carried my cage wherever I went on the ship. I got to see what other people had brought along. One woman had a glass bottle of expensive perfume, wrapped in layers and layers of plastic. She told me she had been wealthy back on Earth. It was all she had from her glory days. So she understood why I had brought the birds.
People had all sorts of stuff. Parkas. Survival rations. Worthless money. Pictures. Of course nobody’s phone works.
After several weeks, I figured out that the ones flying this ship are just lackeys for the ones who conquered Earth and killed over seven and a half billion of us. I know other people figured that out, too. It meant there’s an opportunity, although what for? They are always watching.
It took a bunch of quiet questions to the right discreet people before I found you, the unofficial head of our resistance, such as it is.
I come to you to offer my services, and also the services of my birds. Yes, really. And I have only six of them, and they don’t live forever. So I need a way to get them a safe place to breed and hatch eggs.
Yes, I am being totally serious.
Because, you see, they twitter in a very particular way when the invaders’ lackeys come close. We are here, all seven of us, I suppose, and we offer our loyalty and our talents and our commitment to the resistance.
Generations ago, birds just like mine were the early warning system in coal mines. And now here, in the farthest reaches of space, they are again an early warning system. Maybe canaries will save us again.
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JR Gershen-Siegel is a Lambda Literary Award nominee (2014, Untrustworthy, under SF/F/Horror https://www.lambdaliterary.org/current-submissions/). Her work is published by Riverdale Avenue Books, Jay Henge Publishing, Hydra Productions, and Writers’ Colony Press.
Fun story. It makes for a very appropriate tweet!