Translunar Travelers Lounge, Issue 14, February 2026
Set in Aguiyi, a massive fortress city that was once a mobile war machine, this Afrofuturist story follows Obinna Egeonu, a young man from H-3—the lowest, dimmest level of the city’s rigid social hierarchy, colloquially known as Sepia Town. Obinna works as a sewer cleaner for the Hazard and Safety Commission, scrubbing the aftermath of giant mutated rats from underground corridors. But he harbors an ambitious dream: to pass the entrance exams and join the Segun corps, an elite unit of mecha pilots who defend the city against infestation.
The story opens as Obinna rides a cramped railcar into the sewers with his friend and colleague Chike, studying exam prep material on his datapad. Despite scoring perfectly on practice tests, Obinna can only afford the free study package, and he knows that H-3 residents rarely ascend the social ladder. After completing a gruesome clean-up job involving a massive rat carcass, he sits the first written exam—a 150-question multiple-choice test—and emerges feeling defeated, convinced he failed a section on genetic mosaicism.
Nursing a beer in an H-2 bar, he meets Chiamaka, a witty, bespectacled woman in an oversized leather jacket who cheekily talks him into sharing his drink. The encounter is a bright spot in an otherwise anxious day. When results are posted, Obinna discovers he scored 71.8%—a narrow pass. He runs into Chiamaka again outside the Defence Commission building, and they begin texting.
Obinna gradually learns that Chiamaka is far from the bar-hopping social climber Chike warned him about. She is an H-1 native, a doctor within the HSC, and the daughter of the mayor’s political opponent. Her father, a Watcher (city police), died the previous year—the bar meeting had been the anniversary of his death. Despite their vast class difference, the two develop an easy, genuine connection.
When Chiamaka offers to use her family’s political connections to find Obinna a position in the Farms as a contingency plan, his pride gets the better of him. He ghosts her for two weeks, tormented by insecurity rooted in past heartbreak (his ex, Amina, had left him for a more upwardly mobile man) and internalized shame about his H-3 origins. He fears that accepting help would confirm what the people around him have always believed—that he doesn’t truly deserve to rise.
The story’s climax arrives when Obinna travels to H-1 for the applied exam—a physical and machine-handling test conducted inside the Segun barracks. Seeing the sunlight for the first time in years, he sends Chiamaka an apology and a voice message owning his behavior. She responds with a meeting location: the Green Hub’s Flower District.
There, surrounded by sculpted gardens and real sky, Obinna offers her a rose and a genuine apology. Chiamaka accepts, feeds him breakfast, and they share their first kiss on a park bench as the sun sets. A week later, a message arrives from the Defence Commission—the outcome left beautifully unwritten, but charged with hope.
The story is a tender meditation on class, ambition, pride, and the courage it takes to let yourself be loved.
Uchechukwu Nwaka is an Igbo medical student at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His works have appeared in PodCastle, Escape Pod, Fusion Fragment, FIYAH, Omenana, and Brittle Paper, among others. He won the Locus Award for Best Novelette (“The Rainbow Bank”, Giganotosaurus) in 2024. His work has also been a finalist for the Utopia Award and long-listed for a BSFA Award. When he’s not writing short fiction or working on his new novella, he can be found reading manga, streaming TV shows, playing amateur volleyball, or trying to catch up with his endless schoolwork.