Oh my God! Debbieâs been abducted by aliens.
She wakes up to find four of them looking down at her. They have very big needles, but before they can use them on her Debbie is rescued by a stranger who canât remember who she is.
Naming her Ellen because she was good at taking down aliens too, Debbie sets off with her on a voyage across the universe. Hunted by the aliens who want their ship back, Debbie and Ellen discover a cosmos filled with civilizations. All of them also want something: community service for sleeping in a public place, pirates with a ransom to collect, a secret military from a mysterious ghost ship, and the emperor of the entire universe who wants nothing more than a nice dinner. As they negotiate their way through it all, Debbie and Ellen search for answers to the questions: who is Ellen, why is she aboard this alien ship, and why are these aliens abducting people?
Somewhat Lost: It Was One Bottle of Wine is a sci-fi first-contact space opera in which Debbie discovers almost no one out there has heard of Earth and it might be better if it stayed that way.
Oh my God! Debbieâs been abducted by aliens.
She wakes up to find four of them looking down at her. They have very big needles, but before they can use them on her Debbie is rescued by a stranger who canât remember who she is.
Naming her Ellen because she was good at taking down aliens too, Debbie sets off with her on a voyage across the universe. Hunted by the aliens who want their ship back, Debbie and Ellen discover a cosmos filled with civilizations. All of them also want something: community service for sleeping in a public place, pirates with a ransom to collect, a secret military from a mysterious ghost ship, and the emperor of the entire universe who wants nothing more than a nice dinner. As they negotiate their way through it all, Debbie and Ellen search for answers to the questions: who is Ellen, why is she aboard this alien ship, and why are these aliens abducting people?
Somewhat Lost: It Was One Bottle of Wine is a sci-fi first-contact space opera in which Debbie discovers almost no one out there has heard of Earth and it might be better if it stayed that way.
Thereâs a very bright light, so bright I have to close my eyes again. This is weird. Even if the bedroom lights were left on when I went to bed, theyâve never been this bright.
Unlessâno way! Did I die in my sleep? Is this one of those near-death experiences? Oh come on, thatâs not fair. Okay, that was an entire bottle of wine last night in front of a very weepy movie. Guilty as charged, but a momâs gotta do something when her other half takes the kids to visit his parents for the weekend. Thatâs what me time is for. The small price of a hangover in the morning wouldnât have been at all surprising. But dying in my sleep? Thatâs not fair at all.
As my eyes get used to it that light becomes round and high, in the apex of what appears to be a dome-shaped chamber. There are things hanging down around it, metallic tendrils, each one with some nasty-looking instrument at the end of it. Well, this isnât what heavenâs supposed to look like. Where are all the angels? Whereâs the choir invisible? Where are all my dead relatives waiting to greet me? Whereâs God? Or is this the other place? No one goes to the other place in a near-death experience. Correction: Almost no one goes to the other place in a near-death experience. Well, isnât this just peachy? My near-death experience is the other place: an eternal visit to the dentist, probably with no anesthetic. We left fairness behind a long time ago.
Time to wake up. My body is waiting for me in a nice, warm, cozy bed, which this surface Iâm lying on most definitely isnât. Itâs cold and very hard. Moreover, only my eyes can move. I peer down over my cheeks to find four figures standing in a semicircle around my feet. They look like doctors, very short doctors but all of them wearing white scrubs. They should be wearing surgical masks and caps as well. Instead, this bunch seems to be wearing Halloween masks: green triangular things with a small mouth at the bottom, two big almond-shaped black eyes above, and nothing more than two nostrils in between.
Thereâs a name for this, sleep paralysis, and it usually involves being abducted by aliens. Wait. You cannot be serious. Abducted by aliens! Things like that donât happen to me. Iâm normal, ordinary. I live in a normal, ordinary house in a normal, ordinary neighborhood with my normal, ordinary family. The weirdest thing thatâs ever happened to me is finding my car keys arenât where I swear I left them.
This has to be a dream, a really unpleasant one that has me sweating between the sheets because my heart is racing and I really would like to wake up now. Come on! Wake up! Except now one of those creatures is stepping forward. Its three-fingered hand reaches for one of those instruments hanging down from the light. It wants me to have a look at it, the big grip with the thinner nozzle thatâs several inches in length. See? Itâs wonderful, perfectly crafted for its purpose. And look. When this button is pressed, this thin sliver of a very long needle slips out the end of it.
No! No! Donât you come near me with that thing. Donât you dare come near me with that thing. My eye. You are not going to stick that thing in my eye. Donât you even think about sticking that thing in myâyou goddamn son of aâ
Thereâs a sound, hissy like a snake with a stutter, and the probe alienâs head explodes.
What the hell!
As whatâs left of it slowly collapses, a fountain of green gunk splatters everywhere, some of it onto me. The snake spits again and the other three lose their heads too, with a whole lot more green gunk splattering everywhere.
Oh my God! Oh my God!
In the deathly silence that follows, because it isnât even possible for me to scream, something moves into my field of vision. Itâs a woman. Sheâs tall, with short, dark hair and a slim, athletic body. Sheâs also holding a very big gun which she continues to point at the bodies on the floor. Thatâs okay by me. My headâs fine where it is, if itâs all the same to you.
After a few moments, satisfied that all four of them are now very dead and no longer a threat, she looks down at me through deep dark brown eyes, coolly unconcerned with the slaughterhouse sheâs just made of this chamber.
âAre you harmed?â
No, not physically anyway, but getting the hell off this table would be nice. That comes out as a series of muffled squeaks. Somehow she understands and, reaching down and under the table, she does something. The invisible hand pinning me here disappears and Iâm on my feet, backing away from her and almost slipping up on all that green gunk.
âWhat did you do? You killed all the alien guys. Where are you from, Chicago? They were aliens, werenât they?â
âIf by aliens you mean not of your kind, then yes. Would you prefer me not to have killed them?â
Standing in among them now, and looking back at all those tendrils ending in nasty instruments, the answer to that question is pretty damned obvious.
âNo! Who are these guys anyway, and what were they going to do to me, apart from sticking that needle in my eye for who knows what reason because theyâre a bunch of sadists who get off on that kind of thing? For that matter, who are you?â
âI donât know. I canât remember. They tried to memory-block me. Itâs rather like having a corrupted data file inside your head. I can remember bits and pieces here and there but everything in between is gone. For instance, right now weâre aboard their ship. Thereâs a planet below us. Itâs blue but I donât know what planet it is. I donât know what part of the universe weâre in either. Nor do I know why Iâm on this ship.â
âWait. Weâre on a ship? You mean a spaceship?â
âYes. Why? Where did you think you were?â
âI thought I was in bed dreaming, or at least I hoped I was. So I actually have been abducted by aliens and weâre on a spaceship orbiting Earth. Thatâs what we call that blue planet. Itâs my home, and I think Iâd rather like to go back now.â
âYou canât.â
âWhat? Why?â
âBecause I think I killed them all, but there might be one or two left. If so they will have sent a distress call. When that call is received, others will come and theyâll be looking for this ship. Theyâll be looking for us too. Before that happens we need to be a long way from here.â
âA long way from here? Are you serious? I canât just leave. I have a family. I have friends. I have a cat.â
âYou donât have a choice, unless you want to be here when they come looking. Your Earth, your family, and your cat are not a threat to them. Theyâll be perfectly safe. We arenât. We need to be a long wayââ
âYou canât be sure of that. You said your memory was blocked, like a corrupt data file.â
âIt is, and Iâm not. Do you want to take the chance? Now get dressed. Weâve wasted enough time already.â
Oh my God, sheâs right. Look at me standing here butt naked and covered in green gunk. Itâs sticky, itâs yucky, and it has a very peculiar smell. âEw. Do they have any showers on this ship?â
âI donât know. I havenât come across any, but donât worry, itâs not corrosive. Here, use this.â She tosses a shirt at me. It comes from among all the clothing piled against the curved wall like flotsam on a reef.
âMy God, how many people have these aliens abducted, and what happened to them if their clothes were leftâcorrosive! What do you mean, corrosive? This stuff isnât going to eat through the hull, is it?â
âNo. It hasnât eaten through you, has it? So why would you think it might eat through the hull?â
It was rather a silly thought, put like that, and this woman, whoever she is, clearly doesnât do silly. âNo reason. Itâs just something I saw once. It doesnât matter.â
The shirt does a moderately good job of wiping me clean, enough to live with anyway. After that my own clothes are easily found: a dark green t-shirt and tartan pajama bottoms because thatâs what they abducted me in. Itâs not exactly what anyone would call a fetching ensemble, but then who expects to be abducted by aliens in the middle of the night? Some dingy sneakers that almost fit finish it off. Whoever owned them when they were taken isnât exactly going to kick up a fuss about it.
âOkay. Iâm good to go. What? You donât like it?â
Sheâs dressed all in black: flat-heeled boots, skin-tight pants, and a jacket that might be leather, might be faux or might be something else entirely. Either way itâs very functional, and yet at the same time quietly chic. She could walk a catwalk anytime she wanted to on Earth. Sheâs even got that sense of hauteur they do it with, or it might simply be more of the total lack of emotional engagement sheâs shown so far. Then again, it could be fascination because itâs not what Iâm wearing sheâs looking at. Itâs my hair, shoulder-length and now swept back behind my ears.
âWhat color is that? I donât think Iâve ever seen hair that color before.â
âIâm a redhead. Or a ginger if you want to be a dick about it.â
âAnd does everyone on your planet have hair that color?â
âNo. My ancestors came from a place where the sun only came out once a year and the rest of the time it rained. UV is not our friend.â
She nods slowly, fascinated enough to briefly forget any sense of urgency. Then she snaps out of it, and without another word spoken, leads the way out of this chamber. Iâm expected to simply follow on behind apparently. Not a very promising start to a relationship, but then the only other choice is to wait here for more of them to turn up. Itâll be the strong, silent mass murderer for me then, and weâll get to work on her communication skills later.
The passageway beyond is dimly lit but just as littered. So are all the ones that follow and all the rooms leading off them. Housekeeping may be a chore, but really, if this were my spaceship Iâd be ashamed to bring abductees aboard. But then itâs not my spaceship. Itâs not theirs anymore either. Itâs my new best friendâs. Itâs also a maze, one Iâd be lost in instantly, and itâs by no means certain she knows her way through it either. Itâs pretty obvious where sheâs come from though because of all the headless aliens sheâs left behind, which might be what sheâs following.
âMy God, how many of these guys did you kill?â
âA lot but, like I said, there might be the odd one or two left so keep your voice down and your eyes open.â
For a while we walk on in silence. Itâs horrible. This isnât a ship so much as a crypt filled with ghouls who might jump out at us at any moment, except these ghouls are green aliens. Not that it really matters. Ghouls or aliens: If theyâre out to get you, theyâre out to get you, and these guys, if there are any of them left, are definitely out to get us. The silence is becoming oppressive, morbid even, cloying and stifling like too much cheap perfume. Finally it just has to be filled.
âSo what should I call you? Only I forgot to ask.â
She gives a little shrug. âI donât know. I canât remember.â
âBecause they memory-blocked you. How does that work?â
âI donât know. I know they have that kind of tech because they used it on me. Itâs highly likely they were going to use it on you too. That way you wouldnât have been able to remember any of this once theyâd finished with you.â
âI donât know about that. There are an awful lot of people on Earth who do remember, or at least they think they do.â
âYes. Judging by all that clothing these aliens have been busy, which is interesting. And with that many people, itâs hardly surprising if some of them were ineffectively blocked. As for me, I think they were going to block me entirely and then dump me on your planet with no way home, wherever home is, but it didnât go so well. I woke up and the training kicked in, or at least Iâm assuming itâs some kind of training. Thatâs something else I canât remember.â
âThatâs the second time youâve called it my planet. Does that mean youâre not from Earth? You certainly look human.â
âYes, Iâve been thinking about that too. Unfortunately I donât have an answer. I know Iâm not from Earth because this isnât the only spaceship I can remember being on. I can remember other planets too, and the beings who live on them. One in particular feels like home. I remember a big city filled with tall buildings and bright lights. The streets are teeming but no one is in a hurry. Everyone is very polite. Everyone is quietly happy.â
âCanât be New York then. Theyâll eat you alive as soon as look at you.â
Still lost in memories, she doesnât hear me. âThereâs a building too, with lots of security. There are people in uniforms. I think I must be one of them but I canât remember who they are.â
âSounds like a police precinct or maybe even the Pentagon. Wait a minuteâthat works. Youâre some sort of agent. Yeah, someone sent you out here to get on board this ship and they memory-blocked you and now you canât remember why. That would also explain your training. Youâre some sort of super spy.â
This time she does hear me, although it might have been better if she hadnât. Thereâs a glance, mildly indulgent, as if Iâm prattling on about Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.
âDo you always run off into flights of fantasy like that?â
âPretty much. Thatâs who I am, and by the way, my name is Debbie. Since you canât remember yours, I think Iâll call you Ellen because she was good at kicking alien ass too.â
We turn into another passageway. This one ends in a blank wall with a strange bluish tinge to it, as if it is covered in a layer of cellophane. Itâs fascinating to look at, but a dead-end is a dead-end. There arenât even any headless aliens so it looks like the maze has finally defeated her.
âWeâre lost, arenât we? We could be wandering around this ship forever, slowly dying of thirst in orbit around a planet thatâs three-fifths water. Thatâs if more of these aliens donât turn up first. Where are we supposed to be going anyway?â
âWeâre trying to get to the bridge. ThisâI know this. Itâs some sort of door. It could take us straight there if I could remember how it works.â Reaching out a finger, she stabs at it, causing little ripples to spread out around her fingertip. Apart from that, nothing happens.
âMaybe youâre supposed to tell it where you want to go, like itâs voice-activated.â
She thinks about it, shrugs, and stabs again. âBridge.â
Still nothing happens.
It must be some kind of AI, the kind thatâs so sophisticated it completely fails to understand anything said to it. Iâm sorry, could you repeat that? And weâre still gazing at a blue-tinged wall, a very uncooperative blue-tinged wall. Maybe this AI is waiting to hear the magic word because somebody decided even machines have feelings. Iâm sorry; your request cannot be processed at this time due to your lack of courtesy. Please try again later when youâve learned some manners.
Reaching past Ellen, I try a tap of my own. âBridge, please.â
An even more indulgent gaze is turned on me. âYou actually thought that would work?â
âIt might have.â
âWell, it didnât, so it looks like weâre walking. Come on.â She heads back the way we came, which strikes me as giving up way too easily. They might not call it the bridge. They might call it something else, like Helm or Command Center.
My first tap produces nothing and sheâs calling back to me, âCome on. Weâre walking.â
My second tap causes the wall to shimmer. Now weâre getting somewhere. âEllen. Look, Iâve made it work.â
Or not, because gazing back at me from the other side with its big black eyes is one of them. If its triangular face with that tiny mouth could wear something as recognizable as a smirk, it probably would be. Who knows, perhaps it is. It can gurgle though, which might be laughter. Well, the jokeâs on you pal. My friend has a really big gun and you donât. But then, I donât have one either.
âEllen!â
Thereâs no answer. Itâs just me and the gurgler, and the gurgler might as well be saying, âRun if you want but Iâm still gonna getcha.â
This is not good.
âEllen!â
Feet slap the floor behind me. Thereâs the end of the passageway. Which way did she go: left or right? I donât know. I wasnât paying attention. Maybe sheâs gone left. Maybe sheâs gone right. Those feet are closing on me. Thereâs nothing to choose between the passageways. In both directions thereâs a growing gloom and the certainty that this passageway will run into a dead-end at some point.
âEllen! Help! Now would be good.â
I run to the left, with those feet slapping harder and closer. Please God, let there be something more than a dead-end ahead of meâand there is. Itâs an opening to my left that leads into a long chamber filled with benches. Clutter is everywhere. It looks like some kind of laboratory. There are all sorts of science stuff like glassware, more nasty-looking instruments and strange apparatus: small bench-top things and big, bulky stand-alone things with control panels filled with lights. My situation just got very much worse. Rats donât walk into laboratories, let alone run, especially when theyâre being chased by a mad scientist. The one chasing me is now very madâgibbering mad, in fact. As it leaps up onto a bench and sees me scurrying along the floor, my pursuer picks up one of those bench-top things, a particularly big and heavy-looking one, and launches it across the chamber, only narrowly missing me.
The instrument bounces off the edge of a bench and clatters to the floor, which only serves to infuriate my pursuer further. What was an abductor in white scrubs is now a big, green and very angry chimpanzee. Screaming, it jumps from bench-top to bench-top scattering everything in its path: other instruments, glassware, and all manner of junk and clutter. Debris is flying everywhere and this rat is scurrying away, trying only to avoid the potshots that keep coming every time it catches sight of me.
Then the floor runs out. One more scurry, one more turn, and the only thing in front of me is the meeting of two walls. Screeching and gibbering, my pursuer perches on the edge of a bench above me. Thereâs something big and heavy in its hand, and thereâs nowhere left for me to go but to squeeze into that corner. But for some reason my pursuer hesitates. Maybe itâs savoring the moment. Somewhere inside the green gunk that is its brain itâs probably thinking, Gotcha! Now letâs see what human brains look like.
Big mistake! The stuttering snake hisses from the far side of the room and my pursuerâs head explodes, leaving the rest of it to topple slowly to the floor. It wanted to see red blood splattered across the wall. Instead that blood is green, with some of it once again splattered on me, and hereâs Ellen standing over me as coolly unemotional as ever. For her itâs just another day in the office.
âAre you harmed?â
âHarmed? Am I harmed? Well, letâs see, shall we? My heart is running a half marathon, my nerves are looking for the exit, the emotional scars may never heal and Iâve only been here fifteen minutes.â
âSo youâre not harmed then.â
Really! Come on, Ellen, show some empathy. Someone needs a hug and maybe a shoulder to cry on. Sheâs offering neither, which isnât really that much of a surprise. One thing she definitely isnât is a hugger. At least sheâs taking time out of her busy day of slaughtering aliens to ask.
âNo, Iâm not harmed. It was pretty close though.â
âI got here as soon as I could. Now we seriously need to find the bridge. That thing has had more than enough time to send out a distress call. So come on. Get up. Sitting there isnât getting us anywhere.â
And thatâs it. A helping hand hauls me to my feet and there isnât even time to find something to wipe the gunk away. Sheâs in too much of a hurry and apparently not in the least bit concerned that this stuff might be full of who knows what diseases. After a couple of dabs at it and watching it ooze between my finger and thumb, that certainly concerns me.
âSo how come you can go wandering around the universe without any kind of protectionâyâknow, hazmat suits and the like?â
âI donât know. I canât remember.â
That figures. I could already be dying here. Bacteria could be hacking their way through my skin with machetes and standing in awe at the new world theyâve found to conquer. They could be setting up base camps, founding colonies like pimples on a Petri dish or invading my internal organs in search of natural resources. But never mind. We have to get to the bridge, and this time Iâm sticking close by my new best friend. I might drop dead at any moment but at least it wonât be an enraged chimpanzee that kills me.
We go along the passageway and climb up stairwells to higher decks. This ship isnât simply a maze. Itâs a maze on top of a maze, and then another maze on top of that one. The occasional alien corpse suggests Ellen knows where sheâs going but it would have been so much easier and quicker if that glowing doorway had worked.
âSo how come that thing back there didnât take us straight to the bridge? It worked for one of them after all.â
âI donât know. Maybe youâre right and itâs voice-activated. It worked for one of them because it understands their language. It didnât work for us because it didnât understand your language or mine.â
âYour language? Iâm pretty sure youâre speaking the same language as me. Otherwise how could I understand you?â
âThatâs not possible. Iâve never been to Earth and youâve never been to my home world. We canât be speaking the same language.â
âAnd yet here we are, and youâre speaking English. Are you sure youâre not from Earth? Like maybe youâre another abductee and you just forgot?â
âForgot. How would I forget something like that?â
âThey memory-blocked you, didnât they? So what if you didnât escape like you think you did? What if they were about to release you? What if you watched too many science fiction movies as a kid and all that stuff you think you remember is nothing more than a fantasy youâve created out of all the bits of memory you have left? What ifâ?â
âMe fantasizing! Youâre the one creating entire narratives out of next to nothing. First Iâm some kind of spy. Then Iâm another abductee. Just quit with it, will you? We have more important things to deal with.â
Oops. Looks like somebody might have a little bit of a temper after all. Best keep quiet then, for now at least, especially since sheâs the one with the gun.
Fortunately this ever-so-slightly awkward silence doesnât last too long. One more stairway takes us into a chamber that looks more like a hackerâs basement than a bridge. Behind us is a straight wall with another of those blue panels in its center, the doorway we wouldâve stepped through if we had been able to make it work. Directly in front of us is a console. Itâs filled with open windows and gently slopes toward the chair behind it. âChairâ is a rather loose description. It looks more like a big egg with the front sliced off. There are more consoles and chairs around a semicircular wall, all rooted to the floor by thick stems.
Then there are the screens, hanging in mid-air like movies being projected onto diaphanous curtains. There are small ones on both sides of us, all of them alive with graphics that flash and pulse and scroll. Theyâre quite fascinating to watch but totally unintelligible, at least to me. At the very front of the bridge is a screen so big it fills the wall from floor to ceiling. In its bottom third is the blue curve of Earth, with nothing but the blackness of space above. Of course Iâve seen the photographs and watched the videos, but still, this is a moment that should take anyoneâs breath away.
âWow. Itâs beautiful, and you really canât see any stars.â
âThatâs right. This close to one, you can only see the rest of the universe in the shadow of a planet. Why? Did you think it had all suddenly disappeared?â
âNo. Iâve never been in space before, thatâs all. Seeing it first-hand is a whole different experience.â
Ellen almost smiles, and then sits in the egg before the central console. That must be the captainâs console. After a moment, she very deliberately sits forward to begin tapping and sliding on the console with her finger, scrolling through windows and muttering as she pours over them. âNow. Can I remember how to do this?â
Thatâs not so good. All those graphics and pictographs and streams of text might be as meaningless to her as they are to me.
âItâs a pity you canât talk to it. You could do that, couldnât you? If you werenât stuck speaking English.â
âI would if I could but I canât so Iâm not. Now shush. I need to find us a destination.â
Looking at Earth, so serenely blue and beautiful down there below us, suddenly Iâm having second thoughts. âAre you sure about this? I mean, itâs this ship theyâll be looking for, isnât it? What if we just went down there and forgot about it? Maybe they would too. I could go back to my life, and you could hide out in our basement until youâve learned how everything works on Earth. You could have a good life: get married, settle down, have some kids. How would they ever find us? How would they even know it was us who did it?â
âBecause this ship would still be here. To have abducted that many people, they must have been here for quite some time. They know your capabilities, or lack of them. If this ship is still here with no one on board, theyâll know the only place we could be is down there. As to knowing who it was, theyâll certainly know it was you. They keep records, yâknow. If this ship is still here, the first place theyâll go looking is the coordinates you were abducted from. If this ship is gone, theyâll likely think we took it and probably not bother going down there at all.â
âLikely? Probably? Is that the best youâve got?â
âWould you prefer the alternative, which is pretty much a certainty?â
âNot when you put it like that, no.â
âGood. Then letâs stop wasting time and find somewhere to go.â She taps something on the console and all the lights go out. An instant later they come back on again. It could be my imagination, but is that just a hint of embarrassment I see on her face? Probably best not to say anything. She taps something else and that faint hum that Iâd never noticed before whines down to nothing. Nope, still not saying anything.
Restoring the hum, she sits back for a moment to think. Then she starts moving windows around until she finds one thatâs a list, each item contained within its own little rectangle. They could be anything. The one thing they definitely arenât is in English. Her finger scrolls and hovers, then scrolls and hovers again, every item on that list indistinguishable from all the others except for their different but unreadable text. At last, with a little shrugâbecause what the hell?âshe stabs at one. The item lights up, flashing red. More importantly, Earth disappears from the main screen. In its place is the image of some other planet.
âWhoa! Where did that come from?â
Ellen is just as mystified as me. âI donât know. It must be how the system works. So what do you think? Itâs as good as anywhere.â
Possibly, but neither of us can know since the text running down either side of the planet is unreadable. The photographs embedded in the text are clear enough though, each of them linked to a different region. Thereâs a band of mottled yellow-brown-ocher extending some way out from the equator, with photographs of desert landscapes attached. A band of greens and blues then extends all the way to the white barrenness of the poles. Within it are thick forests, plains and farmland, great lakes and even greater cities, each one highlighted with a photograph of some local landmark. It looks an awful lot like a travel brochure, tempting us with all the interesting places we might visit.
While Iâm still taking that in, the ship shudders. Itâs weird, rather like an earth tremor that fills the air with a frisson of static. Itâs vaguely orgasmic, as if the great whale that is our ship just had a wet dream, if great whales have wet dreams. I donât know, but whoâs to say they donât?
When itâs all over, Ellen is sitting back in the captainâs egg with a tiny grin creeping up the corners of her mouth. âThere. Weâve arrived.â
Somewhat Lost: âIt Was One Bottle of Wineâ by Remi DeWitt is a new satirical take on traditional space operas and features first contact, alien abduction, space piracy, and interstellar mobsters. With three kick-butt female protagonists and non-stop action, the story will keep readers engaged and their adrenaline pumping.
Debbie wakens from a quiet night of wine and movie bingeing secured to a cold, hard examination table on a spaceship surrounded by small green aliens, preparing to do who knows what to her with a needle when they are suddenly and forcefully stopped by a gun-wielding woman in black. The woman, later dubbed âEllen,â has little memory of her past; the âGreensâ have wiped them from her mind. Having gained control over the Greensâ ship, the women take it and flee the anticipated arrival of the aliensâ vengeful compatriots. They pick up the bored former space salvager, Fist-in-the Face, or âFistâ as she prefers to be known, on a subsequent planetary stopover to sell the reportedly valuable cargo the Greens had on board. Each step of their journey is fraught with peril and garners them more enemies or people trying to sell them out to the Greens; while Debbie just wants to go home, Ellen hopes to regain her memories, and Fist looks for adventure and profit.
I greatly enjoyed the three female main characters, especially Debbie, the wife, mother, and unlikely savior of Earth. She truly is somewhat lost as she struggles to gain her footing under circumstances she never had imagined. The story is told from her point of view, and as she gains confidence in her situation, she becomes the trioâs voice of reason and, eventually, a leader. Ellen is a skilled fighter and capable pilot, even without her memories. But as she rediscovers her past, she seems to become a somewhat diminished version of herself. Fist is a rough-edged and tough space salvager, though pirate may be a more accurate description. She regularly asserts herself and constantly teeters on the edge of anger with everyone and anything. But her skills as a salvager get their various space transports functioning, and sheâs got her companionsâ backs in the many dire situations they land in.
The plot is fast-paced, with a lot happening in only hours. I was a little confused over the passage of time in the story, but admittedly, so was Debbie. The author has created a vast space filled with many intelligent and advanced beings, a diverse array of extraterrestrial life of all colors, sizes, and shapes, some complaining that women talk too much and all ill-tempered. The adventure is full of riveting danger and firefights that are edge-of-your-seat and well-choreographed, making for exciting reading. I did think that Debbie would have had deeper moments of introspection and concern over her husband and children back on Earth. While she does reflect a couple of times that her family is probably worried and looking for her, she never even mentions names. However, with her family away for the weekend visiting his parents and the unclear passage of time for the space adventure, would they even be aware sheâs missing yet? Finally, while Iâm not opposed to a cliffhanger ending, I need to have some assurance the current story is not over, and thereâs just no indication that there is more in the works. As the Great Og would say, âDisappointment is ⌠disappointing.â
I recommend SOMEWHAT LOST: âIT WAS ONE BOTTLE OF WINEâ to science fiction readers who enjoy space operas, action and adventure, first contact, alien abduction, mystery, and suspense.