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The Baggage Carousel of Life
by Z. S. Stalls
1 November 2025
~1,000 words (4min read)
My armpits dripped with sweat. I flipped another page of the Dhammapada, an old Earthen religious text that was mostly just part of my cover. Reading was a good way to pass time inconspicuously, but I paid little actual attention to the words. I was consumed by the surrounding chaos of the Lagrangia Interstellar Hyperport baggage terminal, where I had been waiting for my luggage for hours with hundreds of other travelers.
What relief I had felt stepping through security was evaporating by the minute. Inside my suitcase was a vacuum-sealed brood of dehydrated xiphopod pupae. Illegal everywhere in the Local Cloud except their home planet, even their own species kept them isolated in deep wells until they reached maturity. After emerging from their cocoons, young xiphopods went through a phase of vicious predation, devouring one another as readily as anything else. They were an extremophilic species who could survive in virtually any atmosphere, and this shipment was probably bound for the Martian Mafia. On Mars, their dehydrated pupae could be stored outside indefinitely until awoken by the humidity of an indoor climate, at which point they emerged from their cocoons and became an infestation of killing machines.
This run was the sketchiest I had ever taken but also the last I would ever need. I was getting half a million credits for this one, enough to pay my debts and move to another satellite, maybe another system. Then I would get a real job and never smuggle again. My contact was already waiting in a private shuttle next door. I just had to hand him the suitcase, catch the next cycler home, and watch my credits deposit.
My fellow travelers were also getting antsy. Mostly humans, there were a few other species as well, some with breathing apparatuses and some in full spacesuits. A xiphopod woman balanced meditatively on her back legs, unbothered by the artificial Earthen atmosphere and notably calmer than the rest of us. In contrast to their young, adult xiphopods were quite docile, perhaps more than any other known sentient species.
Eventually, the baggage carousel started up, and my luggage emerged. The xiphopod woman was ahead of me and already at the conveyor belt. As I walked toward my suitcase, she did the same. She grabbed my luggage with one leg and deftly scurried away on the other five.
Xiphopod eyesight was poor, so I figured she may have smelled the contents of my suitcase and confused it for her own. I called and ran after her. Turning around, she met me with a melody of sharp vocalizations. I was surprised to hear such harsh language also sound so smooth. I did not understand her, but she seemed to understand me and gestured that the suitcase belonged to her. She started to walk away, and I lunged for the suitcase. As I tried to pull it away, the suitcase popped open.
Jewelry, electronics, and other personal belongings went sprawling across the floor. More confused than upset, the xiphopod woman stared blankly at me. My attention turned back to the conveyor belt, which had stopped, and a scream let out from the processing room behind the baggage carousel. The whole terminal went quiet as everyone stared toward the room and then at one another.
There was some commotion from the processing room, which quieted down within a few seconds. The xiphopod woman walked toward the opening where the conveyor belt entered the terminal. Peering inside, she immediately turned back and shrieked at the crowd.
I am unsure what she said, but we all understood her body language. The crowd panicked as fledgling xiphopods poured from the opening in the wall. The last I saw of the scene was the xiphopod woman, standing tall on two legs with the unsheathed blades of all four other legs making a bloody mess of her own kind.
My contact needed little convincing to leave immediately with me instead of our cargo, but I had to bribe him with nearly all my credits to get him to take me home and not to our boss's station. I threw my life into a duffel bag, caught the next cycler to New Ares Hyperport, and used a stolen identity to leave the system on some poor stranger's credits.
I thought the fiasco at Lagrangia would catch up with me, but it never did. News media initially blamed the xiphopod woman, but she was quickly cleared of any involvement and was instead hailed as a hero. She and I had owned the same model of suitcase with a manufacturer defect that caused the latch to open on its own. Once mine popped open in the processing room, the vacuum seal inside was easily ruptured. The baggage handlers escaped before the pupae fully emerged, and the xiphopod woman alone slaughtered most of the rampant xiphopods. Hyperport security handled the rest, and miraculously nobody died--except for all the xiphopods, but most of them would have died naturally anyway. I suppose a few would have lived, and I do feel bad about that.
I ended up settling on the xiphopod homeworld, of all places. In the rush of leaving home, the Dhammapada came with me, and I read it often while lying low after the incident. The Buddha had a lot to say about letting go of the past, living in the present and all that. The wheel of life keeps going around, and so do we. In a way, I still do smuggling work, but legally, driving a taxi around the xiphopod capital city. In my time off, I volunteer at a school. Eating your siblings is a rough childhood, and xiphopod adolescents often struggle with accepting themselves in light of their violent pasts. With the victims of my past weighing on my own conscience, a few xiphopod souls included, I can relate to how they feel, and it feels good to help them.
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