Challenge Accepted

Challenge Accepted

Edited and Coordinated by Stephanie Barr

Smashwords Edition

None So Blind Copyright 2019 Stephanie Barr

These Were the Things that Bounded Me Copyright 2019 Misha Burnett

The Waters of Callisto Copyright 2019 J. A. Busick

Hands and Knees Copyright 2019 Adam David Collings

Inferno of Guilt Copyright 2019 Steve Curry

Fire Escape Copyright 2019 Scott G. Gibson

A Woman Hobbles into a Bar Copyright 2019 Joyce Hertzoff

Vicious Reality Copyright 2019 Jane Jago

Angel in Darkness Copyright 2019 Clarence Jennelle

Space Triage Copyright 2019 Jeanette O'Hagan

Walk of Courage Copyright 2019 Layla Pinkett

Bad Seed Copyright 2019 Jen Ponce

Blind by Fate Copyright 2019 Connor Sassmannshausen

The Dominant Hand Copyright 2019 Lynne Stringer

The Invisible Event Copyright 2019 E. M. Swift-Hook

Negotiating with Spectres Copyright 2019 Margret Treiber

The Secret Supers—Revealed Copyright 2019 Andy Zach

Cover by Ryn Katryn Digital Arts

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Foreword

The Waters of Callisto / J.A. Busick

Blind by Fate / Connor Sassmannshausen

Bad Seed / Jen Ponce

The Invisible Event / E.M. Swift-Hooke

The Dominant Hand / Lynne Stringer

These Are the Things that Bounded Me / Misha Burnett

None So Blind / Stephanie Barr

Walk of Courage / Layla Pinkett

A Woman Hobbles into a Bar / Joyce Hertzoff

Inferno of Guilt / Steve Curry

Angel in Darkness / Clarence Jennelle

Negotiating with Spectres / Margret Treiber

Fire Escape / Scott G. Gibson

Vicious Reality / Jane Jago

Hands and Knees / Adam David Collings

Secret Supers - Revealed / Andy Zach

Space Triage / Jeanette O'Hagan

Introduction

I am not disabled, just so no one's misled. This project was inspired by an article (by Ace Ratcliff on IO9 gizmodo, 7/31/2018) bemoaning not only the lack of representation of disabled people in science fiction (where their disabilities are not erased by technology) but also any accommodations in science fiction venues. As a fantasy/science fiction author, this spoke to me. I found (by asking), that many of my fellow speculative writers found it spoke to them as well. Many of us knew and admired friends and family who were disabled and accomplished. I have two children on the spectrum (autism) myself.

Within days, we had a group of dozens of interested writers, and over the next few months we built stories with strict criteria. All the stories required that every main character had a disability. They had to solve problems without some trick erasing their disability and without someone else fixing it for them.

All the proceeds are to go to the Special Olympics.

This is a group effort with significant contributions by people who are chronically short on free time, who have given willingly because they also agree. The future has room for all of us. We have nothing but admiration for people who don't let their challenges keep them from being bad to the bone. This book is not about us, but about the people who, day in and day out, build their lives and accomplish so damn much without fanfare, not because they're disabled but because being disabled is just one of the many things they are.

Thank you to Loraine van Tonder, who gave us a huge discount on the lovely custom cover.

My thanks here for the other story screeners, Mirren Hogan and Bob Hranek.

My gratitude as well to the many folks that came forward to help edit: R. C. Larlham, Clarence Jennelle, J. A. Busick, Lynne Stringer, Misha Burnett, and Joyce Hertzoff.

Dedicated also to my fabulous children, Roxy and Alex, and my ex-husband, Lee, and his girl, Kristina, none of whom could ever be defined by their various disabilities.

Stephanie Barr, editor and coordinator.

Foreword

I'm an author who has an invisible disability: a dyslexia when typing that is so severe that the only way I could become a writer was if I had dictation software, because something is not wired right between my brain and my fingers. My mother and my son both have very visible disabilities: an inability to walk and a pretty messed up left arm, respectively. Neither of them let their unique challenges stop them.

So when I was offered the opportunity to read and comment on a short story anthology that highlighted disabled protagonists, I leapt at the chance. I think it's exciting that our society is no longer ignoring those who have disabilities and beginning to celebrate them as the heroes they are. To me at least, anyone facing a disability with grace and courage deserves extra respect because they're not only vanquishing the usual dragons we all have to slay; they also have to vanquish their own personal challenges before they even get to the dragons that we all must face.

Everyone is different. Certainly there are other people in the world who are more beautiful, or stronger, or cleverer than you or I am. So anyone reading this wonderful book should be able to identify with the characters . . . because every one of the characters in this book accepted the challenges they were handed. The one thing every disabled person I know is certain of—myself included—is that we are not our disability. We're people. And people need to overcome whatever obstacles are in their way.

So here's to a fantastic collection of stories. Every one of these tales will inspire you, because they're about people we can identify with and emulate. Theirs are different challenges than you face, perhaps, but they face them as the sort of people we can all hope to be. People who accept whatever challenges life throws at them . . . and win.

Wendy S. Delmater, Editor at Abyss and Apex magazine

Lexington, SC 2019

The Waters of Callisto

by J. A. Busick

The customs agent frowned at Amani, and then at her documentation, as if something must surely be wrong. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and closed it again, frowning.

Just say it, Amani thought in annoyance. How does somebody like you get immigration approval? Did your colony of origin fudge your documentation? Were your records falsified? But she waited, silently, her best patient smile plastered to her face, while the customs agent tried to think of a way to ask his offensive and illegal questions that would not actually sound offensive or illegal.

Eventually, he shook his head as if to say Not my problem and waved her through the gate without looking at her. Welcome to Callisto Station, he said dully.

Amani gave her wheels a push. She rolled past the gate just far enough that she would not obstruct people coming through behind her and stopped. She took it all in: the great swirling blue-and-brown curve of Jupiter rising outside the windows of the habitat, as the fiery disc of Sol sank behind it; in the windows opposite, Jupiter's other moons were highlighted against the deep black of space. Amani felt suddenly insignificant. The transport had not had vistas like this; its radiation shielding could not permit such an expansive view. She threw her head back and felt briefly as if she would be torn from her moorings and thrown into that endless arcing sky. Vertigo and nausea assailed her, and she was forced to look down into her lap and breathe carefully for a few seconds.

She'd made it. She was here.

Take that, she thought, as the sneering, pitying faces of her father, her cousins, her sisters, her schoolmates rose into her mind. Not one of you figured out how to get off that frigid barren rock. But I did it. I'm here.

***

By the time she arrived at her living quarters, Amani was drenched in sweat. Callisto's gravity was less than Mars', but far, far heavier than Amani's home colony on Phobos; even though she had put the lower-grip tires on her rims before she left the terminal, the heavier gravity was going to take some getting used to.

When she arrived at her assigned living quarters, the station's drones had stacked her half-dozen boxes just inside the door. She was forced to move them before she could get inside far enough for the door to slide closed behind her wheels. She only had one day to get moved into the tiny efficiency apartment. It was so small that when the bed was fully extended, her wheelchair rail rubbed the end of the bed and the wall opposite.

No matter. She could fix that. She drank some water, caught her breath, and then retracted the bed into its sofa configuration and got to work.

She put the two boxes of clothing away in the apartment's wardrobe, stowed the single box of plates and utensils and cooking supplies in her kitchen, tucked the lone box of towels and linens into the narrow closet space adjacent to the bathroom, and then unpacked her tools.

The bed was the first thing she fixed. Like anything with moving parts, it was mechanical in its operation. A few adjustments to the spring, and the fully-extended bed tucked itself snug against the wall, giving her a few more centimeters clearance. Still tight, but at least she wasn't marking up the walls with her chair or pinching her fingers as she pushed between the bed and the door. The mirror in the bathroom, hung flush above the sink, was trickier: she had to sit on the tiny sink, balancing wobbly on the corner with the faucet poking her in the hip, feeling at any moment that she would slide into the shallow basin, to reach the point at the top where it was attached. She held it propped with one hand while she placed a pair of tethers with her other hand. When she was finished, the mirror hung out from the wall at the top, angled downward so that she could see herself clearly.

I need the sink lower, she thought, examining it critically from the safety of her chair. But that would require plumbing work, and for that she might need supplies she didn't have on hand. A project for later, then.

When she had the apartment fixed to her satisfaction—at least temporarily—Amani fixed herself a cup of coffee, parked her chair beside the sofa, extended it into a bed, and climbed in. She sat sipping her coffee and looking around at her tiny new home.

New home. New job. New life. And they could take their pity and shove it in a steam vent.

But just behind her satisfaction, lurking beneath her optimism, was a different, darker feeling. She laid back against the pillows behind her and let it rise to the top, so she could identify it.

The current population of Callisto Station was twenty-five thousand; a full order of magnitude more populous than the tiny Phobos Colony. Amani had known virtually everyone on Phobos. Here, in this much larger place, she knew no one. The dark feeling loomed, and she gave it its proper name: she was lonely.

***

They stared, of course. Her new co-workers stared at her wide-eyed, as if no one had ever taught them manners. They exchanged looks as she passed, and she knew that when she was out of earshot they would talk about her: What's wrong with her? How did she get immigration approval? Aren't there rules about that? What kind of people are they recruiting, anyway? Can she even do the job?

But that was the heart of the matter, wasn't it? She could do the job—and if there had been anyone else on Callisto Station or willing to emigrate who could also do the job, she wouldn't be here. The fact of the matter was that no one wanted to get grease on their hands and on their clothes; no one wanted to put on a coverall and go scooting under and over and through the parts of the station most people never saw; no one wanted to wear radiation suits and make repairs along the outer skin of the station. There was no glamour in it, no status. Most people wanted the jobs that kept them closest to the interior—just in case something went wrong—and that let them dress neatly and boast about what they did all day. Infrastructure mechanic paid well, which was why people took the job at all, but it remained barely above the shiftless—the people who worked no shift at all, cast off from station society altogether—in the social order, and in that social order, Amani was the very lowest one: an immigrant, a newcomer, and just to make matters even worse, a wheelchair-user.

Her new boss did not stare; he barely looked at her. Chester Ostling, Manager for Infrastructure Maintenance, had known about her disability when he hired her. He had needed the help so badly that he had hired her anyway and paid her relocation. He simply walked out of his office, glanced her way, and waved for her to follow him.

This is your workbench and locker, he said, gesturing to a small space in a tight, oddly shaped corner of the office, and she stowed her toolkit and set the lock while he waited. He showed her the tool crib, where she could check out more specialized equipment as needed, and introduced her to the clerks in the parts department, who looked down over their counter at her with uncertain expressions. He waited while she was fitted for a radiation suit. The employee fitting her behaved as if she were afraid to touch Amani.

I'm not contagious, Amani said finally, as the woman tried for the fourth time to get a good measurement of Amani's legs without actually laying the electronic calipers against her thigh. She did not add, I was born this way because really it wasn't any of this mousy little woman's business.

What? Oh. Right. I knew that, the woman said, giving Ostling a frightened glance and jamming the caliper against Amani's thigh with unnecessary force.

Joke's on you, Amani thought. I can't feel it anyway.

After the fitting, Ostling showed her how to access and claim work orders.

As she scanned the list of work orders, Amani's stomach clenched. Some critical maintenance issues had been outstanding for over a year. How many people know how close this place is to catastrophic depressurization, radiation shielding failure, and contamination of the water supply?

Probably no more than knew it on Phobos Colony, she thought, giving a mental shrug. The difference here was that she was not the only one who was willing to get her hands and hair and clothes grimy. Well, and that a lot more people would die if something did go wrong. But there was something quietly thrilling about being the person who could see it coming, as opposed to one of the doomed and oblivious masses.

Long list, was all she said aloud.

Ostling answered with a grunt. This is your quota, he said. We operate on a 24-hour circadian cycle. You can work as many as twelve hours in a single circadian cycle. You'll put in at least 35 hours a week, and you can work as many as eighty if you want. I don't care what schedule you keep, as long as you're pulling your weight. Any hours over 48, you'll be paid a premium for, but they have to be approved by me in advance.

Amani nodded.

If I'm not happy with your work, you'll hear about it. Otherwise I'm pretty hands off. Got questions, come find me, he said, and wandered off, dismissing her with a negligent wave of his hand.

So his no-nonsense persona in her interview was genuine in person, too. Amani turned back to her screen, wiped some smudges off with her cuff, and settled in to choose a project.

***

There was a message waiting for her when she arrived at work on her fifth day at Callisto Station. She checked the sender's ident: Melokuhle Kumalo. It told her nothing useful. She opened the message, and a young man appeared on her screen. Hey! This is Mel Kumalo in Fisheries and Aquaculture, and I wanted to thank you for finally fixing our filtration substation. We're already seeing a significant improvement –

A work-order tablet landed on Amani's desk with a thud, and she jumped. The message went on playing, but Amani wasn't watching it anymore; three of her new co-workers loomed behind her: a scruffy woman, a moon-faced man, and a second man, taller and thicker than the other two.

They didn't look happy.

What do you want? she demanded, shoving her chair backward forcefully enough to make space, and turning to face them.

The tall man leaned over her, and she twisted sideways to avoid having her face pressed against the front of his coverall. Up close, he smelled as if he had not washed in days. He picked up the work-order tablet from her desk and shook it in her face. You can't do these jobs! he snarled.

Amani snatched the tablet out of his hand. He tried to hold onto it, but she had better grip strength than anybody she'd ever come up against, and he was no exception. He glared at her, and she glared back, before looking down at the tablet. On it, the work orders she had completed were highlighted. In five days on the job, she had cleared a dozen work orders.

What do you mean? she said, matching their belligerent expressions. Clearly, she could do these jobs. She had done them.

Listen, said moon-face. You can't just go doing any job you want to do—fixing whatever you please.

I can't? That was not what Ostling had said—not on her first day, nor on her second and third day when he had checked in with her to see how she was managing and seemed satisfied with her work. Which jobs do you think I should be doing? she demanded.

The scruffy woman took the work order tablet and paged to the incomplete orders. She highlighted several and handed the tablet back to Amani. These are yours, she said. "You do these."

Amani glanced through the jobs the woman had highlighted. They weren't the kinds she'd been choosing for herself. She had been choosing jobs based on how long they had been outstanding, and how important she judged them to be to the Station's habitability and safety. But these jobs . . . fixing drink machines in the food court . . . changing out filters in the public pool . . . replacing a broken lighting panel in an office near the port? The people who actually worked in those spaces could probably do those for themselves, if they got irritated enough. None of them had any real impact on the safety or habitability of the Station.

They were jobs you might give to an inexperienced mechanic. Or a child.

Amani was surprised at how quickly the anger welled up, and how strong it was. Her hands shook; her blood pounded in her ears. She knew exactly what they wanted from her: helplessness. They wanted her to be less capable than they were, so they could pity her. So they could feel superior. She shoved the tablet at the scruffy woman. You don't tell me what to do.

Oh, you just think you're hot stuff, don't you? moon-face said.

Yes, I do, Amani growled. She pushed forward, forcing him to take a step back. "You bet I do. That's why I'm here! I'm here because even in this chair I can do this job every bit as well as you can. Better! So get out of my face."

Moon-face flailed a bit, looking frightened, and for an instant, Amani felt triumphant.

Then the tall smelly man grabbed the rigidizer bar on the back of her chair and lifted it, dumping her forward. Moon-face leaped out of the way. Amani caught herself on her arms. She was belted, so the chair came with her, twisting sideways as she fell.

Her coworkers laughed nastily. "Do you need some help?" the scruffy woman sneered.

Amani glared up at them. She unbuckled her belt, wriggled free of the chair, and sat up next to it. She grabbed the chair and stood it upright, set the brakes, and pulled herself back into her seat.

No, she said frostily, "I don't need any help."

She went on glaring at them as they slowly backed away.

Touch my chair again and I'll report it as assault, she said.

They glared belligerently right back at her, but in the end, they did leave.

When they were gone, Amani pushed to the closest restroom, locked herself in, and cried.

***

There was another work order from Fisheries and Aquaculture. When she noticed it, Amani remembered that someone in that department had thanked her for the work she had done for them. They were the only department that had. Most, she never heard from; a few had actually complained that it was about time somebody in Infrastructure Maintenance got around to their request.

Amani claimed the work order. Fisheries and Aquaculture had moved to the top of her personal priority list.

According to the work request, they were still having water quality issues, but they couldn't figure out exactly where the issues were arising from. Amani called up a station schematic and began working backward from their location, looking for a likely source of the problem. She identified a few possibilities, and then rolled out to draw some samples.

The first three samples were clean; the fourth, she needed to collect from a pipe on level BG-3. BG, she discovered when she looked it up, indicated below grade. There were seven levels below the surface of Callisto. The lowest five levels were uninhabited and housed the reservoirs that contained the station's various large-scale fluid reserves, infrastructure related to the colony's geothermal energy installations, geologic monitoring stations, and research facilities.

Amani rode the lift down to BG-3. The lighting in the lift dimmed progressively as she descended, matching itself to ambient lighting levels at her destination. Still, when the lift doors opened, her eyes were not fully adjusted and it seemed that she pushed out into a dim and eerie underworld. The air was musty and damp. Amani adjusted the strap on her tool bag and pushed forward slowly.

The floor was wet in places, the murky puddles sometimes unavoidable; Amani was forced to stop and dry her tires with a towel to maintain enough friction for pushing. The space was by turns low-ceilinged or cavernous; enclosed or exposed. There was a low-pitched whooshing sound that rose and fell. It wasn't the air handling system, because she could hear that, too, and feel the air moving through the space. After a few minutes, she realized she was hearing Callisto's subsurface ocean. She stopped, exhaling quietly, listening to the alien sea rushing beneath her.

She followed the piping diagram on her tablet, matching it up to the labels on the pipes alongside and above her. The infrastructure steadily closed in around her until she could see ahead the section of piping that was her goal. This area was dirtier than most of the areas she had passed through. Piles of garbage, some of them covered with ragged tarps or plastic sheeting, were shoved under low-hanging pipes. Stacks of five-gallon buckets sat against the walls, and crates filled with what looked like random assortments of garbage blocked her view in other spots. The clutter made her uneasy, although she was not sure why.

She reached the section of piping she needed to access. It appeared to be wrapped in shredded insulation at the point where her sampling nozzle should have been. Amani studied it while she pulled on her work gloves. The nozzle was right at her eye level in the chair, but she could not quite get close enough to it because of a pile of discarded rags underneath it. She reached for the insulation, shoving up against the pile of rags. The insulation came away, and she could see that the sampling nozzle had been damaged.

Under her footplate and casters, the pile of rags shifted. Startled, Amani rolled backward, sitting up so quickly that the toolbag on her back shifted and nearly overbalanced her. She grabbed her wheels as the pile of rags rose up and reached out to grab her leg with a skeletal hand. Amani pushed backward.

"You stay away from our water!" the pile of rags screamed. It continued to rise up, pushing out from underneath the piping, and as the rags fell away, they revealed a woman with wild white hair, her dark eyes shining in a seamed and pitted face. Other voices chorused in agreement, and Amani glanced to either side and realized that she was now surrounded. There were at least half a dozen of them, some older, some younger, all of them dressed in rags and looking half-starved and very unfriendly.

The shiftless.

That was why the clutter had made her uneasy.

There were people living here.

Amani thought about the personal alarm built into the waistband of her coverall for situations like this one and wondered in a corner of her mind just how long it would take for law enforcement to reach her.

I'm sorry, she said earnestly, although she was trying not to sound nervous. I didn't mean to wake you.

The woman was standing, now, although she was bent at the waist and hunched at the shoulders in a way that put her almost eye-to-eye with Amani.

"You didn't even know we were here, the woman accused. You just came to take away our water!"

Amani glanced at the damaged sampling nozzle. That was why they lived here: they had a clean water source. And that was almost certainly the source of the water quality issue that Fisheries and Aquaculture was having: the damaged nozzle was allowing contamination of their supply.

If she repaired the nozzle—and the repair would be dead simple, taking only a few minutes and supplies that she had in her bag—she would indeed be taking away these peoples' water supply. They had tapped it illegally, but Amani felt inhumane about just taking it away, even if they let her.

If she didn't repair the nozzle, Fisheries and Aquaculture would continue to have water quality problems that could affect the food supply for the entire station.

Amani nodded at the sampling nozzle. I came to track down a water quality problem they're having up above, she said, with an upward toss of her head. Yeah, your water source is probably where it's coming from. They advanced on her, all of them shuffling closer, and Amani thought again about her alarm. But I can't fix it right now, it's true enough, she decided; they were unlikely to let her touch the nozzle. I'll need to come another time.

Oh no you don't, said the old woman. You'll just bring back the law to run us out.

If you keep me here, the law will come anyway, Amani pointed out. If I summon them, the law will come anyway. But if you let me go, I promise to come back. Alone. They didn't all want to hurt her; at least some of them wanted a way out of this as badly as she did. And I promise to bring food to share.

She'll take away our water! some of them protested.

I may not have a choice about that, Amani admitted. But I promise to see what I can do.

They murmured, debating. Her honesty seemed to have won her some goodwill. At least, she hoped it had.

In the end, the bent old woman decided that Amani could go.

Amani, whose hands were shaking, was careful not to push too quickly as she retreated through the tunnels and caverns of BG-3 to the lift.

***

Amani sat in front of the vacuum-packed soups and broths and wondered how many it would take to fulfill her promise to the shiftless squatters to return with food. Was packaged soup really the best choice? Should she take a selection, or just a lot of the same thing? Should she throw in some dried fruit, or maybe some beans? None of it sounded like the makings of a proper meal, but how could people who had no kitchen prepare a meal anyway?

So she stared, and fretted over the fact that all of the realistic possibilities were simply unsatisfactory.

Excuse me. A neatly-dressed fellow stepped carefully around her, reaching for the tomato soup that was right in front of her. There was something familiar about him, which did not make sense to Amani—what could be familiar about the back of a stranger's head? She watched him as he stepped back and dropped the soup into his shopping basket. He was about her age, with a friendly expression and enviable eyelashes—and she felt certain she had seen him somewhere.

He turned, and she spotted the badge hanging from his collar: Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Mel! she said, surprising them both.

He looked down at her, taking in the chair at a glance, and blinking—those eyelashes!—in confusion. I'm sorry, he said. Have we met?

No, she said, and felt the blood in her cheeks. Her mouth felt suddenly dry.

Oh, good! he sounded genuinely relieved. I feel sure I would have remembered you! But . . . you do seem to know me.

Amani clutched her own shopping basket in front of her like a shield. My name is Amani. I'm an Infrastructure Mechanic.

He blinked again, thinking. You fixed my filtration substation!

You sent me a thank you message. No one else has, Amani said. It made you memorable.

He smiled, finally at ease. Oh great day, he had dimples. We'd waited a long time for that repair, he said. I thought it merited a thank you.

Well, you're welcome! Amani was certain she sounded like an idiot.

The conversation lagged awkwardly, so she said, with forced cheerfulness, I'm working on your water quality problem. Actually, I found it. I just haven't, um, she realized what she was about to say could make her sound stupid; it was, after all, just a damaged sampling nozzle—but she didn't really have any better way to phrase