The Quantum Turnip

 

Jonno Virek had faced a fair share of cosmic absurdities in his time, but the giant glowing vegetable floating in the cargo hold of the Peregrine Queen had to be top of the list. It looked suspiciously like a turnip, though one with a faint shimmer of temporal distortion around its leafy top. And that was not the sort of garnish you wanted in your stew, thank you very much.

He squinted at it while sipping a mug of strong tea, letting the tannins steel his nerves. Mara, ever the practical one, stood with her hands on her hips, eyeing the temporal vegetable like it had personally offended her sense of engineering order.

“Jonno,” she sighed, “please tell me you did not accept this thing as payment.”

He coughed. “It was either this or a collection of pre-owned, slightly charred shuttle tyres. And you know how hard it is to shift those.”

“A time-shimmering turnip,” Mara repeated, deadpan. “We’re risking a paradox for a root vegetable?”

“Technically,” Jonno said, warming to the subject, “it’s a chronotuber. A delicacy on Ophiuchi Minor. They say it can bend local time fields to boost growth.”

“Or destroy causality,” she shot back. “Depends how you use it.”

Jonno took another long sip of tea, letting the scalding liquid buy him a moment to think. The ship hummed around them, almost as if it was waiting for them to decide whether it would still exist in five minutes. Typical day beyond the Belt, really.

“Look,” Jonno said, trying to sound decisive, “we keep it stable, deliver it to the client on Kesper Station, and avoid poking the leaves. Sorted.”

Mara rolled her eyes with the force of an orbiting moon. “You always make it sound so easy.”

“That’s because if I admitted how hard it was,” he said, “I’d need even stronger tea.”

Unfortunately, the universe was rarely inclined to cooperate with Jonno’s plans. As soon as he set the mug down, the turnip pulsed with a strange ultraviolet glow, and a faint chime echoed through the hold. Then, very politely, it rolled across the deck all on its own, heading for the cargo ramp.

“Oh brilliant,” Mara snapped. “It’s self-mobile now?”

“Maybe it wants a stroll,” Jonno offered, hopefully. He reached for it, but the vegetable blurred sideways like a quantum hamster on roller-skates, smacking him lightly on the ankle. For something so innocent-looking, it moved with suspicious determination.

They gave chase. It wasn’t exactly a dignified pursuit — two adults scrambling after an errant vegetable while trying to avoid being sucked into a time anomaly. But dignity was a luxury beyond the Belt, where Jonno had long since traded it in for functional trousers and a reasonable pension plan. He lunged. Mara lunged. The chronotuber skipped between them like a champion squash ball, humming faintly as if amused by their efforts.

Finally, Mara managed to grab a leafy stalk, twisting it with a deft tug. The turnip squealed — honestly squealed — and froze mid-roll, its glow fading to a sulky purple.

“Did… did that thing just sulk?” Jonno panted, leaning against a bulkhead. “We’ve broken its tiny time-travelling heart.”

“I can live with that,” Mara replied, examining the leaves. “I think I’ve disengaged its temporal motive force. We’d better get it crated up before it decides to rewrite the ship’s log.”

Jonno bent to help, still slightly worried the thing might bite, though it lacked any visible teeth. Together they sealed it in a stasis crate lined with radiation foil and a polite sign reading DO NOT PET THE TURNIP. Belt folk, after all, were notorious for trying to adopt anything, no matter how odd, and Jonno wasn’t about to explain a timeline meltdown over tea and biscuits again.

“All right,” Mara said with a grin, brushing her hands off. “Another cosmic absurdity, dealt with.”

Jonno saluted her with his teacup. “We should put that on a plaque. Our ship motto.”

He set the course for Kesper Station, resolving not to take any more edible temporal artefacts as barter. Probably. Unless they came with free biscuits, because there were lines even a troubleshooter couldn’t cross. And after all, this was beyond the Belt — where the universe made its own rules, and then forgot them five minutes later.

As the Peregrine Queen slipped back into the deep trade lanes, Jonno let the hum of the engines soothe his thoughts. Out here, the line between sense and nonsense was as thin as the ship’s worn carpet, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Mara gave him a warm half-smile, and he clinked his cup against hers in a quiet toast to tomorrow’s troubles. Whatever they might be.

And if there happened to be another vegetable with a questionable sense of physics in their future — well, he’d try not to let it squash him. Tea first. Always tea first.

Come back next week to see what else might roll under Jonno’s boots — and possibly break the universe in a most inconvenient manner.