“How then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives which were people.”
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

STINGS
עוֹקֶץ
لسع

“Schachter (שכטר )” Yiddish, to slaughter

MIRIAM SCHACHTER
they/them
“Miriam” biblical
strong silent type
a perfectly normal person with something deeply wrong with them

MARGRET 'GRETA' LEAH SCHACHTER
“Margaret” 'pearl' “Leyah” Hebrew, wearied
she/her
dyes her hair blonde for reasons unknown even to her
loves the bees but is also bored as hell of them

RUTH 'DEBORAH' SCHACHTER
“Ruth” biblical “Deborah” biblical
she/her
amuro ray
the kind of 'pacifist' that owns a gun
doesn't wanna talk about it

HERSCHEL SCHACHTER
“Herschel” Hebrew, deer
he/him
mr. probably not appearing in this story

MARA 'JAEL' ESHEL
“Mara” biblical “Jael” biblical “Eshel” Hebrew, orchard or garden
she/her
char aznable
thinks her heterochromia makes her hot shit
weird hebrew tattoos


“Chamanara” Persian, gardener

SAFFURAH 'RIPLEY' CHAMANARA
“Safurrah” bird, “Ripley” pop culture
they/them
refuses to listen to music with comprehensible lyrics
does risky shit for no reason
pilot school dropout

LEYAH CHAMANARA
“Leyah” Quaranic, weary “Chamanara” Persian, gardener
she/her
missed the trans girl catgirl programmer era so just became a regular career hacker
would secretly love to have little cat ears
so stealth she forgot to tell her own child
hacks Ripley's phone to program in alarms to remind her to pray

MICAH BANKS
“Micah” biblical “Banks” Old English, ridge or hillside
he/him
this guys dead

RACHEL YAKOV BANKS
“Rachel” biblical “Yakov” biblical “Banks” Old English, ridge or hillside
she/her
washed up bank robber
no career now that banks are all nationalized
thought the future would be more cyberpunk dystopian than it is
thinks she knows shit

Fifty years before the collapse of western civiliazation

the world's elite conspired to colonize local planets and asteroids, culminating in a launch of a passenger spacecraft carrying a selection of politicians, scientists, military leaders, entrepreneurs, nobel prize winners, and wealthy patrons to a new life beyond the stars. The launch failed and the passenger spacecraft exploded on takeoff (later discovered to be the result of sabotage), wiping out a huge portion of world leadership in multiple governments and industries. The chaos resulting from this sudden vacuum of power kicked off a worldwide revolution, leading to the gradual emergence of a new international society and world order.

The technology and infrastructure that was once built to house, feed, and indulge the wealthy and powerful was seized by the new socialist governments and repurposed to create a system of offworld agriculture and farmland to support the continuously deteriorating natural resources on Earth. So far, the only colonization of other planets has been restricted to the farmers and specialists who run the farms, orchards, and apiaries. They receive government-provided housing, utilities, comforts, and supplies, paid for with everything their farms produce. A life of financial and economic security in exchange for the danger and isolation of living in space, a lot which is typically passed down from parent to child, as finding and training new candidates is a difficult and expensive process.

Beekeeping is the only animal husbandry that has successfully thrived offplant, and apiaries have been found beneficial if not indispensable to the success of other offworld farms. Nahl-18 houses one of the largest honey-producing apiaries, and is managed by the city-state of Jerusalem; more specifically the Schachter family.

A tightly controlled system of courier pilots, essentially space truckers, manage the exchange of essential goods between their home countries and the offworld farms. Loosely managed coalition of other pilots, flying small, zippy ships, offer various illicit services, from passenger transport to smuggling, although civilian travel and transportation of goods between biodomes without government approval and oversight is highly dangerous and illegal. "Ripley" Chamanara, a Jerusalem Ground Control dropout, is one such pilot.

A woman calling herself "Jael" wishes to travel to Nahl-18 to visit an old friend for Rosh Hashana. Discretion is a must.

Meanwhile, a new lead emerges on a seemingly cold case, a string of highly specific unsolved murders from the not-so-long ago turmoil of a new world. A once-successful bank robber brought low by a grievous injury reveals herself as one of the victim's cousin and next of kin, and she claims to know who did it.