{"id":18375,"date":"2026-02-20T11:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/community-service-science-fiction-story\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T11:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:06:07","slug":"community-service-science-fiction-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/community-service-science-fiction-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Community service"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The bird is a beautiful silver-gray, and as she dies twitching in the lasernet I\u2019m grateful for two things: First, that she didn\u2019t make a sound. Second, that this will be the very last time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u2019re called corpse doves\u2014because the darkest part of their gray plumage surrounds the lighter part, giving the impression that skeleton faces are peeking out from behind trash cans and bushes\u2014and their crime is having the ability to carry diseases that would be compatible with humans. I open my hand, triggering the display from my imprinted handheld, and record an image to verify the elimination. A ding from my palm lets me know I\u2019ve reached my quota for the day and, with that, the year.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m tempted to give this one a send-off, a real burial with holy words and some flowers, but then I hear a pack of streetrats hooting beside me. My city-issued vest is reflective and nanopainted so it projects a slight glow. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s to keep us safe like they say, or if it\u2019s just that so many of us are ex-cons working court-ordered labor, and civilians want to be able to keep an eye on us. Either way, everyone treats us like we\u2019re invisible\u2014everyone except children.<\/p>\n

I switch the lasernet on the bird from electrocute <\/em>to incinerate<\/em> and watch as what already looked like a corpse becomes ashes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, executioner!\u201d says a girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cExecutioner\u201d is not my official title. The branch of city government we work for is called the Department of Mercy, and we\u2019re only ever called technicians. But that doesn\u2019t matter to the child, who can\u2019t be more than eight but has the authority of a judge as she holds up a finger to point me out to her friends.<\/p>\n

\n
\"bird<\/p>\n
HENRY HORENSTEIN<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cGuys, look!\u201d she says, then turns her attention to me. \u201cYou hunting something big?\u201d<\/p>\n

I shake my head, slowly packing up my things.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething small?\u201d she asks. Then her eyes darken. \u201cYou\u2019re not a cat killer, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I say quickly. \u201cI do horseflies.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why I lied, but as the suspicion leaves her face and a smile returns, I\u2019m glad I did.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should come down by the docks. We\u2019ve got flies! Make your quota in a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The girl tosses her hair, making the tinfoil charms she\u2019s wrapped around her braids tinkle like wind chimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my last day. But if I get flies again for next year, I\u2019ll swing by.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Another lie, because we both know the city would never send anyone to the docks for flies. Flies are killed because they are a nuisance, which means people only care about clearing them out of suburbs and financial districts. They\u2019d only send a tech down to the docks to kill something that put the city proper at risk through disease, or by using up more resources than they wanted to spare.<\/p>\n

LeeLee is expecting me home to sit through the reassignments with her and it\u2019s already late, so I hand out a couple of the combination warming and light sticks I get for winter to the pack of children with nowhere to go. As I walk away, the children are laughing so loud it sounds like screaming. They toss the sticks in the air like signal flares, small bright cries for help that no one will see.<\/p>\n

\n

LeeLee\u2019s anxiety takes the form of caretaking, and as soon as I\u2019ve stepped through the door I can smell bread warming and soup on the stove. I take off my muffling boots. Another day, I\u2019d leave them on and sneak up on her just to be irritating, and she\u2019d turn and threaten me with whatever kitchen utensil was at hand. But she\u2019ll be extra nervous today, so I remove the shoes that let me catch nervous birds, and step hard on my way in.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it seems impossible that I can spend a year killing every fragile and defenseless thing I\u2019ve encountered but still take such care with Lee. But I tell myself that the killing isn\u2019t me\u2014it\u2019s just my sentence, and what I do when I have a choice is the only thing that really says anything about me. For the first six months and 400 birds, I believed it.<\/p>\n

\n

LeeLee flicks on a smile that lasts a whole three seconds when she sees me, then clouds over again.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoup\u2019s too thin. There wasn\u2019t enough powder for a real broth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like thin soup,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot like this. It doesn\u2019t even cover up the taste of the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the taste of the water,\u201d I say, which breaks her out of her spiraling enough to roll her eyes.<\/p>\n

I put my hands on her shoulder to stop her fussing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe soup is going to be fine,\u201d I say. \u201cSo will the reassignment.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not much taller than she is, but when we met in juvie she hadn\u2019t hit her last growth spurt yet, so she still tilts her head back to look me in the eyes. \u201cWhat if it\u2019s not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if you get whatever assignment Jordan got?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There it is. Because two of us didn\u2019t leave juvie together to start community service\u2014three of us did. But Jordan didn\u2019t last three weeks into his assignment before he turned his implements inward.<\/p>\n

I notice she doesn\u2019t say What if \u2009<\/em>I get what Jordan got?<\/em> Because LeeLee is more afraid of being left alone than of having to kill something innocent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what his assignment was,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true, but we do know it was bad. Two weeks into our first stretch, a drug meant to sterilize the city\u2019s feral cat population accidentally had the opposite effect. Everyone was pulled off their assigned duty for three days to murder litters of new kittens instead. It nearly broke me and Lee, but Jordan seemed almost grateful.<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides, we don\u2019t know if his assignment had anything to do with \u2026 what he did. You\u2019re borrowing trouble. Worry in\u201d\u2014I check my palm\u2014\u201can hour, when you actually know there\u2019s something to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think it would hover over us too insistently to be ignored, but after we sit down and talk about our day I\u2019m at ease, basking in the warmth of her storytelling and the bread that\u2019s more beige than gray today. When the notification comes in, I am well and truly happy, and I can only hope it isn\u2019t for the last time.<\/p>\n

We both stiffen when we hear the alert. She looks at me, and I give her a smile and a nod, and then we look down. In the time between hearing the notification and checking it, I imagine all kinds of horrors that could be in my assignment slot. I imagine a picture of kittens, reason enough for the girl I met earlier to condemn me. For a moment, just a flash, I imagine looking down and seeing my own face as my target, or LeeLee\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But when I finally see the file, the relief that comes over me softens my spine. It\u2019s a plant. Faceless, and bloodless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I look up, and LeeLee\u2019s eyes are dark as she leans forward, studying my face, looking for whatever crack she failed to see in Jordan. I force myself to smile wide for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a plant. I got a plant, Lee.\u201d<\/p>\n

She reaches forward and squeezes my hands. Hers are shaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you get?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

She waves away my question. \u201cI got rats. I can handle it. I was just worried about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I spend the rest of the night unbelievably happy. For the next year, I get to kill a thing that does not scream.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYou get all that?\u201d the man behind the desk asks, and I nod even though I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve traded in my boots and lasernet for a hazmat suit and a handheld mister with two different solutions. The man had been talking to me about how to use the solutions, but I can\u2019t process verbal information very well. The whole reason I was sent to the correctional facility as a teen was that too many teachers mistook my processing delays for behavioral infractions. I\u2019m planning to read the manual on my own time before I start in a few hours, but when I pick up the mister and look down the barrel, the equipment guy freaks out.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThey were supposed to add sulfur to this batch, but they didn\u2019t. So you won\u2019t smell it. It won\u2019t make you cough or your eyes water. It\u2019ll just be lights out. Good night. You got me?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cDid you not hear me? Don\u2019t even look at that thing without your mask on.\u201d He takes a breath, calmer now that I\u2019ve lowered my hands. \u201cLook, the first solution\u2014it\u2019s fine. It\u2019s keyed to the plant itself and just opens its cells up for whatever solution we put on it. You could drink the stuff. But that second? The orange vial? Don\u2019t even put it in the mister without your mask on. It dissipates quickly, so you\u2019re good once you\u2019re done spraying, but not a second before.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looks around, then leans in. \u201cThey were supposed to add sulfur to this batch, but they didn\u2019t. So you won\u2019t smell it. It won\u2019t make you cough or your eyes water. It\u2019ll just be lights out. Good night. You got me?\u201d<\/p>\n

I nod again as I grab the mask I hadn\u2019t noticed before. This time when I thank him, I mean it.<\/p>\n

\n

It takes me an hour to find the first plant, and when I do <\/strong>it\u2019s beautiful. Lush pink on the inside and dark green on the outside, it looks hearty and primitive. Almost Jurassic. I can see why it\u2019s only in the sewers now: it would be too easy to spot and destroy aboveground in the sea of concrete.<\/p>\n

After putting on my mask, I activate the mister and then stand back as it sprays the plant with poison. Nothing happens. I remember the prepping solution and switch the cartridges to coat it in that first. The next time I try the poison, the plant wilts instantly, browning and shrinking like a tire deflating. I was wrong. Plants this size don\u2019t die silently. It makes a wheezing sound, a deep sigh. By the third time I\u2019ve heard it, I swear I can make out the word Please<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n
\"sprout\"<\/p>\n
HENRY HORENSTEIN<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

When I get home, LeeLee\u2019s locked herself in the bathroom, which doesn\u2019t surprise me. I heard that they moved to acid for rats, and the smell of a corpse dissolving is impossible to get used to and even harder to get out of your hair. I eat dinner, read, change for bed, and she\u2019s still in the bathroom. I brush my teeth in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

\n

The next morning, I have to take a transport to the plant\u2019s habitat on the other end of the city, so I spend the time looking through the file that came with the assignment. Under \u201cCharacteristics,\u201d some city government scientist has written, \u201cLarge, dark. Resource-intensive. Stubborn.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stare at the last word. Its own sentence, tacked on like an afterthought. Stubborn.<\/em> The same word that was written in my file when I got sent from school to the facility where I met LeeLee and Jordan. Large, dark, stubborn, and condemned. I\u2019ve never been called resource-intensive<\/em>. But I have been called a waste.<\/p>\n

And maybe that\u2019s why I do it.<\/p>\n

When I get to my last plant of the day, I don\u2019t reach for the mister. This one is small, young, the green still neon-bright and the teeth at the edges still soft. I pick it up, careful with its roots, and carry it home. I find a discarded water container along the way and place it inside. When I get home I knock on LeeLee\u2019s door. She doesn\u2019t answer, so I leave the plant on the floor as an offering. They aren\u2019t proper flowers, but they smell nice and earthy. It might keep the residual odor from melted organs, fur, and bones from taking over her room.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cKilling things is a dumb job,\u201d says the girl.<\/p>\n

After a week of hearing the death cries of its cousins, I was moved to use some of my allowance to buy cheap fertilizer and growth serum for my plant. The girl and her friends, fewer than before, were panhandling at the megastore across the way. She ran over, braids jingling, as soon as she saw me. I thought she\u2019d leave once I gave her more glowsticks for her friends, but she stayed in step and kept following me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a dumb job,\u201d I say, even though it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the point?\u201d<\/p>\n

I shift my bag to point at the bottom of my vest. Beneath \u201cMercy Dept.\u201d the department\u2019s slogan is written in cursive: Killing to Save!<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSee?\u201d<\/p>\n

She sees the text but doesn\u2019t register it, and I have to remind myself that even getting kicked out of school is a privilege. The city had decided to stop wasting educational resources on me. They\u2019d never even tried with her or the other streetrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just means we kill to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly, all I can think about is Jordan. \u201cMaybe they don\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

I think of the plants. Maybe they hadn\u2019t been pleading. Maybe they\u2019d been sighing with relief. I think of the birds that eventually stopped running away.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe they\u2019re tired. The city\u2019s right, and their existence isn\u2019t compatible with the world we made. And that\u2019s our fault for being stupid and cruel, but it makes their lives so hard. We\u2019ve made it so they can only live half a life. Maybe the least we can do is finish the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a terrible thing to say\u2014even worse to a kid.<\/p>\n

Her eyes go hard. \u201cWhat are you killing now, executioner?\u201d<\/p>\n

The question surprises me. \u201cSewer plants. Why?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d wanted her to leave me alone, but when she runs away I feel suddenly empty.<\/p>\n

\n

I have an issue at work when I can\u2019t find my poison vial. <\/strong>I tell them it rolled away in the sewer and I couldn\u2019t catch it in time, because I don\u2019t want to tell them I was unobservant enough to let a street kid steal from me. After a stern warning and a mountain of forms, they issue a new vial and don\u2019t add to my service time.<\/p>\n

Pulling overtime to make up for the day I didn\u2019t have my poison means it\u2019s days before I get to fertilize my houseplant. LeeLee\u2019s door is open, so I bring in the fertilizer and serum. She\u2019s put the plant on her windowsill, but it prefers indirect sunlight, so I move it to the shelf next to her boxes of knickknacks and trinkets. I add the fertilizer to its soil and am about to spray it with the growth serum when I get an idea. I get the mister from my kit and set it up to spray the prepping solution on the little plant to prime it. I open the window and put on my mask, just in case, but I\u2019m sure the man was telling the truth when he called the first liquid harmless. After its cells are open, I spray it with my store-bought growth serum.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m halfway through making dinner when I hear the crash and run into LeeLee\u2019s room.<\/p>\n

\u201cShit!\u201d<\/p>\n

The plant has grown huge, turning adult instantly, and its new weight has taken down LeeLee\u2019s shelf. Dainty keepsake boxes are shattered on our concrete floor.<\/p>\n

I bend to my knees quickly, so focused on fixing my mistake that I don\u2019t register the oddness of the items I\u2019m picking up\u2014jacks, kids\u2019 toys, a bow\u2014until my fingers touch something small and shimmering. It\u2019s a scrap of silver, still rounded in the shape of the braids it was taken from.<\/p>\n

I got rats. I can handle it.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d forgotten the city has more than one kind.<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m waiting up when Lee gets home. I don\u2019t make her tell me. I just grab her kit and rummage through it. Where my kit has a hazmat suit, hers has a stealth mesh to render her invisible. Where I keep my mister, she has a gun loaded with vials too large for rats. I have a mini-vac to suck up excess plant matter to prevent seeds from sprouting. She has zip ties.<\/p>\n

By the time I\u2019m done, she\u2019s already cracking under the weight of everything she tried to protect me from. Within moments she\u2019s sobbing on the floor. I carry her to her bed and get in beside her. I try not to listen too closely as she recounts every horrible moment, but I\u2019m listening at the end, when she tells me she can\u2019t do it anymore. When she confesses that she\u2019s the one who stole my poison, and has only been waiting to take it because she didn\u2019t have the stomach to do to me what Jordan did to us.<\/p>\n

\n

I tell her how we\u2019ll make playgrounds of dead data centers and use hoses to fill the holes where skyscrapers were, and kids will play Marco Polo swimming over a CEO\u2019s sunken office.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I leave her for just a moment, but by the time I lie back in bed beside her I\u2019ve figured it out.<\/p>\n

I tell her that she won\u2019t have to take her shift tomorrow. I tell her I\u2019m going to go around the city with my mister and my growth serum. That I\u2019ll move plants from sewers to the yards around City Hall and every public space and the support pylons of important people\u2019s companies, and then spray them so they become huge. The city will freak. I tell her it will be like the kittens, but this time we\u2019ll all be pulled off our assignments to kill plants. And maybe the serum will work too well. Maybe the city was right to fear these plants, and they will grow and grow and eat our concrete while the roots crack our foundations and cut our electricity and everything will crumble. And the people with something to lose might suffer, but the rest of us will just laugh at the perfection of rubble. I tell her how we\u2019ll make playgrounds of dead data centers and use hoses to fill the holes where skyscrapers were, and kids will play Marco Polo swimming over a CEO\u2019s sunken office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She asks if I\u2019ll put any at our old detention center.<\/p>\n

I tell her, Hundreds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I talk long enough that her eyes close, and loud enough that neither of us can hear the sound of my mister blowing. The man who gave it to me was right. Even without the mask, it doesn\u2019t smell like sulfur. It doesn\u2019t smell like anything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

Micaiah Johnson\u2019s debut novel,<\/em> The Space Between Worlds<\/a>, a <\/em>Sunday Times bestseller and <\/em>New York Times Editors\u2019 Choice pick, was named one of the best books of 2020 and one of the best science fiction books of the last decade by NPR. Her first horror novel, <\/em>The Unhaunting<\/a>, is due out in fall 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bird is a beautiful silver-gray, and as she dies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}