Elana checked her bag again:
- Two rocket launchers, standard issue
- Three bottles
- Extra bullets
- Breast pump
- Sterilized pump parts
- Tourniquet for battlefield emergencies
Fifteen minutes into her first day back at work after maternity leave, and she was already worrying what she might have forgotten. In a job that involved heavy artillery, that wasn’t great. In the background, the whizz of bullets slinging across the field made it difficult to think. They were in forest cover, far away from live fire at the moment, but the noise still tugged at her thoughts.
Elana shifted her body armor, which no longer fit correctly postpartum. She had made some alterations with duct tape and a plastic bottle cap, but the sides still dug into her armpits. She tried to ignore the jabbing sensation and checked her watch. Four alarms blinked back at her from the screen. She wasn’t taking any chances.
‘Alright, crew.’ General Costa, Elana’s boss and commanding officer, stepped into the clearing. Several guns clanked across her rusted armor as she moved. A tattoo snaked up her neck and around her breastplate. ‘Get a woman to do it,’ said the tattoo in thick, twisted letters. She stopped at the circle of armor-clad warriors, the rest of Elana’s coworkers. ‘You all know why we’re here.’ She paused then sighed deeply and switched off her intercom, so the player couldn’t hear. ‘But as this is a video game, I’m going to need to repeat the plan again, so that the player can be brought up to speed.’
Sledge, who was fond of butterscotch drops and 556, groaned. ‘Every single time. Can’t they read the opening screens?’
‘No,’ said one of the twins. ‘They’re too excited about shooting things.’
Sledge nodded. ‘I like to shoot things too, so I can’t blame them.’ He adjusted his rocket launcher to better distribute the weight. It was a blue steel affair that he had nicknamed, Mouth Breather. He had originally wanted to name it Ole Bessie, but General Costa had objected on feminist grounds. Elana still heard Sledge call his rocket launcher Ole Bessie at night when he was alone in his foxhole. But here in General Costa’s presence, Elana knew he wasn’t about to try it.
‘Excuse me,’ said General Costa. ‘I’m expositizing…’ She flicked on her intercom to the player. ‘Three months ago, General Sarkov acquired the mythical Big Fusion Gun in a rampage on a secret government bunker.’
‘When will they learn not to store weapons of mass destruction in poorly monitored bunkers?’ asked Eric, the other twin.
‘I like to store my bullets with my socks,’ said Sledge. ‘They’re safe there and they have a cushion.’
General Costa cleared her throat and threw Sledge a warning look. ‘Due to secret intel, we know that General Sarkov is planning on using this gun to destroy the entire galaxy…’
‘So we’ll all be safe if we go outside of the Milky Way,’ said Eric.
Elana knew she should think of something hilariously witty to add – pre-battle snark was part of her job as Lieutenant Elana Guarda. But all she could think of were the steps to swaddling a baby and Instagram momfluencers.
‘We have to stop him before he gets the gun to the right coordinates, so I’ve planned an ambush using the mechs to power up the weapon at a critical point when his shields will be down -‘
A shrill beeping noise interrupted the monologue. Elana cringed. She couldn’t believe it. Already? She pawed through her flak jacket, trying to remember which one of the hundreds of little pockets she’d placed her phone in. The beeping continued as she threw charge powder, grenades, and bullets into the dust beneath her feet. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the growing pile of stuff on the ground. General Costa even stopped her monologue. Why couldn’t Elana remember where she had put her phone? Why was it impossible to remember anything since she’d had the baby? She didn’t even remember what she had eaten for breakfast, and that was only a few hours ago. Then she remembered that she hadn’t had time for breakfast.
‘Sorry,’ she said to the assembled group. ‘I need to pump – to make food for the baby,’ she added quickly, lest they get the idea she was talking about weaponry.
Elana finally located the phone in a small zipped pocket under her arm. She flipped off the alarm and looked up to find everyone staring at her.
‘How often do you have to do that?’ asked Sledge.
‘Every couple of hours,’ said Elana, shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot. Her boots didn’t fit right anymore either. Her feet had swollen during pregnancy and still weren’t back to normal.
‘How are you going to do that while setting up the explosives?’ asked Sledge.
As the resident demolition expert, it was Elana’s job to set up a large distraction for General Sarkov’s forces.
‘She’ll be just fine,’ General Costa said quickly. ‘Elana is just as capable now, even more so, as a mother.’ Elana noticed she was tapping her “get a woman to do it” tattoo as she spoke. General Costa flashed Elana a look. ‘Go ahead. You have plenty of time left during my monologue to take care of it.’
Elana took a deep breath and nodded. The only problem was she didn’t know where the pumping room was. They had set aside a place for it, or so the official email from HR had informed her. If only she could remember the subject line of the email, she might stand a chance of locating it in her inbox stuffed with over 4,537 unread emails since she had gone on maternity leave. Sighing, Elana picked up her pump kit, which she had carefully camouflaged in a set of bushes. She had thought she was so organized, but this was starting to blow up in her face. Before having a baby, Elana had been the one everyone relied on. Now she just felt like dead weight.
Maybe she should just start walking, like she knew where she was going. She trudged through the bushes until General Costa called after her: ‘It might be quicker to go the other way. Remember the pumping room is in Hanger B. Sledge made you a sign.’
Elana’s shoulders relaxed, but her relief quickly drained as she realized she would have to cross the minefield every time she needed to pump. The player didn’t even get to the minefield until Level Five. And now she’d have to cross it three times a day while carrying several empty bottles and tubes and the breast pump her insurance had provided, along with the complimentary stylish bag. Today of all days, she did not have time for the lengthy paperwork involved in a respawn. Elana slung her pump over her back and picked up her knees, dodging the landmines.
Hanger B was not as well-kept as Elana remembered it. It looked like it had been hit by a mortar shell or a long-range missile, its interior walls charred. It housed some of their older mechs, old issue from the previous game edition. Elana heaved a big sigh and headed into the hanger. It did not take long to find the room, the door with a hand-drawn sign on the back of an old map. Sledge’s shaky handwriting scrawled, “Mommy Milk-Making Room” across a slightly blood-stained map. He had helpfully drawn a bottle, or at least Elana hoped it was a bottle.
She took a deep breath and swung open the door. It was an ammunition closet. Several flammable substances with toxic symbols littered the walls and were stacked across the floor. A plasma cutter dangled from a hook. A disarmed bomb with an old timer stopped at five seconds was tossed into the corner. It still had the explosives attached. In the center of the room stood a single folding chair with a package of moist toilettes. Elana groaned. Ammunition closets do not have electrical plugs, and that is a problem when you are trying to operate a breast pump.
But her coworkers were counting on her and she could not fail. She gritted her teeth, struggling with tangled cords down in the bay. Eventually, she hotwired one of the mechs in the hanger and dragged an extension cord back to the ammunition closet. Apparently, being a demolitions expert equipped her with the skills for operating a breast pump under duress. Twenty minutes later, she emerged onto the field after a lengthy struggle to get back into her armor.
The baby took after her father, the lone NPC survivor in a first-person shooter zombie game.
Elana scrubbed an arm across her eyes as she ran, fighting exhaustion. She had only gotten three hours of sleep the night before as the baby was doing that cluster feeding thing, which somewhat resembled a Combination Attack, where you kept on attacking before your enemy had time to regroup. She had to admire the infant’s strategy. The baby took after her father, the lone NPC survivor in a first-person shooter zombie game.
By the time Elana got back to her coworkers, the monologue was over, and everyone was suiting up into their mechs. Elana fought down her irritation. There were things she had wanted to do before the attack – a perimeter check, an assessment of the elevation and humidity, things that would affect setting explosives on the field. Maybe if she got suited up really quickly-
‘Lieutenant Guarda, a word please,’ said General Costa.
Elana joined her boss at a small folding table under a tree where a map was spread. General Costa placed her hands behind her back.
‘I know I don’t have to tell you what’s at stake here.’
Elana took deep, steadying breaths. ‘Absolutely. I know General Sarkov is poised to destroy all life in the galaxy.’
General Costa waved a hand, dismissing General Sarkov’s evil plan to snuff out all existence. ‘This is more important.’
Elana faltered. Perhaps her lack of sleep was keeping her from understanding. Was there a side quest she was unaware of? She decided to play along. ‘Of course.’
‘I know I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to be a woman and a video game character: The skimpy outfits, the constant sexualization, the traditionally profound lack of character development or comparable weapons upgrade between levels…’
Elana nodded. She had been cast as the main character’s girlfriend in her previous video game series. Her only job had been to wear a bra and scream whenever things exploded.
‘It’s been a hard road with HR, but I think we’ve been making some strides lately. Not to put any pressure on you, but right now you are representing women in the workplace. I want to commend you for proving that working mothers can be just as good at their character RPG jobs as everyone else. Frankly, I knew you would be such a good role model that I’ve requested HR observe your gameplay and performance today while they reform their policies for all women in video games.’ She finished with a winning smile.
Elana glanced into the clouds and saw several faces peering down with clipboards. She fought back a wave of panic.
General Costa punched a fist in the air. ‘Blast through that glass ceiling!’
Elana sucked in a shaky breath. Three hours of sleep.
‘Well, I won’t keep you,’ said General Costa. ‘You have key work to do setting those explosives. Remember we’re counting on you to create a distraction for General Sarkov. We’re all counting on you.’ She left Elana staring into the clearing.
So now, in addition to trying to feed an infant and keep her job while sleep-deprived, as well as not blow up her coworkers with faultily set explosives, Elana was representing her gender in the workplace. No pressure. No pressure at all.
She suited up in her mech, grabbing all her gear and stuffing the extra bags of pump parts and her cooler with the milk around the cooling vents. Some of the plastic pump parts spilled onto the console. There wasn’t much space for packing supplies into a mech, but Elana didn’t have a choice. She found Sledge sharpening his trademark sledgehammer on some rocks.
‘Been guarding the explosive supplies for you so they don’t fall into enemy hands,’ said Sledge. ‘Did you like my sign?’
‘Thanks, Sledge,’ said Elana.
She began setting up the explosives on the perimeter of the clearing. She felt jittery, but she couldn’t tell if it was lack of sleep or the fact that she hadn’t done a perimeter check and was setting up blind.
Eric lumbered up in his mech. The hydraulics hissed and fizzed as he crunched into the clearing. She could tell it was Eric and not his brother from the helpful red swipe across the front of the shield. Sledge had painted them so that he could tell the twins apart.
‘I got bored, so I scanned the area for humidity,’ said Eric. ‘Clouds up ahead that could affect your detonation.’ He paused awkwardly. ‘Not trying to do your job or anything… just… I figured with everything you have going on with your family, maybe I could help a bit. I mean… not that you need help–’
Elana felt a rush of gratitude. That was the thing about this group, everyone watched out for one another. And not in a sniper type of way, like in some other video games she could name. Normally, she would have checked the weather conditions early in the morning, but the baby had vomited on her just before it was time to leave for work, and she had barely made it to the player tutorial on time.
‘Thanks, Eric.’
‘No problem. Hey, I wanted to ask you about the self-exploding darts we just had installed: I can’t get them to–’
Elana’s phone pinged shrilly. Again? Already? ‘Hold on,’ she said. She twisted in her seat to pull her phone out of the bag, but it was not the pumping alarm. It was a text from her husband, at home with the baby.
OH GOD I NEED THE PACIFIER.
Elana had a vague memory of worrying about the dirt the pacifier had collected on the floor and setting it on top of the washing machine, intending to wash it before work. That was, of course, before the baby had vomited. She texted a reply. Explosions rocked the field behind her causing her mech to sway backwards, and she slammed on the controls to keep herself upright.
‘The assault has started,’ said Eric. His mech arm twisted into attack mode, brandishing a slightly larger missile launcher, and his gun whirred as it powered up.
Elana flew into action, scrambling down from the mech to place the rest of the charge. Strictly speaking, it was not a good idea to throw around explosives while you set them up, but this was an emergency.
‘I’ll cover you,’ Eric said, returning fire as a stream of bullets whizzed through the brush from General Sarkov’s advancing forces.
Elana placed the various charges needed to detonate the dynamite. As she struggled to untangle the wires, her phone pinged again. She threw the phone to the ground and glanced at it while yanking at a blue wire.
PACIFIER NOT THERE. SHE SCREAMS LOUDER THAN A HORDE OF ZOMBIES.
Elana swore under her breath. She had been certain it was on the dryer. Where else could it be?
‘Forces advancing, we need backup!’ shouted Eric. He fired both guns, diving behind an abandoned jeep.
Elana shoved the blue wire into the side of the detonator and ran to attach the explosives. Off to the side she heard a strangled yelp and her intercom switched on. ‘They penetrated my armor! My suit is malfunctioning!’ Eric was down. Bullets fell across the clearing like rain. Elana knew they would come faster now.
Her intercom came on again. It was General Costa. ‘Don’t worry Lieutenant Guarda, you’ve got this covered. Women in the workplace, am I right? Eliminate that glass ceiling!’
Elana bit back her irritation and tried not to imagine HR’s laser focus on her performance. Stay calm, she told herself. Which was hard when she was dizzy from lack of sleep.
Elana’s phone pinged more insistently. A call came through.
‘It’s not on the washing machine!’
Elana would have to abandon the explosives and return fire. She stood up and pointed her gun into the fray, shooting at an enemy that was obscured by the fog.
‘I looked on the sink, her crib and her car seat. Not there.’
Right. The baby. Elana struggled to switch her brain back to the binkie as the enemy advanced. ‘Did you look in the clean clothes hamper?’
‘Why would a pacifier be in the clean clothes hamper?’
Two tanks edged through the clearing mist. Elana could see a wave of foot soldiers following them. She was surrounded.
‘Not there, either,’ said her husband. ‘Also, why do we only have one of these things? Shouldn’t we buy more?’
Elana felt her brain might explode if she had to switch tasks again. ‘This is kind of a bad time…’ She dove behind a tree, narrowly missing a heavy grade missile that exploded against the trunk. Bullets whizzed around her head. Elana slowed her breathing. She had connected the charge and gotten far enough away. Now she just had to push the detonator and then–
Elana could blow the advancing enemy sky high, but she would also annihilate her breast milk supply.
But she realized that, in her rush to get cover, she had forgotten the breast milk. She spotted the stylish complementary bag and cooler among tangled wires… right next to the explosives. She must have accidentally pulled it out of the mech while climbing out to set up the explosives. Mere feet away, a tank crunched over the forest brush. Elana could blow the advancing enemy sky high, but she would also annihilate her breast milk supply.
Her intercom came on. ‘I see you’ve got the explosives put together,’ Costa said. ‘Good work. Now just finish the job!’
Elana knew those plastic bottles and yellow caps would not survive the blast. They were right next to a large stack of red dynamite sticks. Breastmilk, or her job? Her decision didn’t take long. She dove onto the field. To hell with the glass ceiling.
Sliding through the mud, Elana stumbled towards the breast milk cooler. A stray bullet dented the side and the cooler began hissing.
‘Refrigerant system is damaged,’ it said in a calm voice.
‘No!’ screamed Elana.
Grabbing a spare grenade off the explosives, she whipped around and tossed it into the advancing army. Then, she drew all her guns and started shooting at foot soldiers as they scurried toward her breast milk. Seeing how she protected it, they all pushed towards the cooler, assuming it was a new and better weapon than the one mentioned in the opening game tutorial.
An alarm started to shriek deep in Elana’s flak jacket. A few foot soldiers reached the cooler before she did. One hoisted it onto his shoulder while others shot at Elana as they retreated.
Elana panicked. Once they got to the tank, she would not be able to overpower them. She had meant to build up an extra milk supply in the freezer before returning to work, but she had been unable to keep up the 4am pumping schedule.
General Costa emerged from the clearing sporting two guns. Sledge followed behind, balancing Mouth Breather on one shoulder.
‘Lieutenant Guarda, this is not in the script for gameplay!’ shouted General Costa.
‘They have the breast milk!’ screamed Elana. ‘And the cooler is broken!’ She pulled a magazine off her belt and reloaded. ‘I only had three hours of sleep last night!’ There was a click as she slammed it into place. ‘I am not representing women in the workplace because I am not my best version of myself at the moment. I need you to accept that.’ She released the slide with a click. ‘I have other priorities right now.’
General Costa leveled her steely gaze at Elana. Then she glanced up into the clouds towards HR. After a pause, her eyes narrowed. She turned back to the battlefield and switched on her intercom. ‘Change of plans, crew.’ She nodded to Elana. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
Elana fitted her gun into her shoulder holster. ‘We need to disable the tank. I’ll handle front fire. Sledge, you and General Costa attack from the flanks. Maintain your sectors.’
‘I’m going to put this on my resume,’ said Sledge. ‘Saving Mommy Milk. It’s a new skill.’
Eric’s voice crackled through the intercom. ‘I’m patching into the cooler mainframe. I’ll reroute the cooling system around the hole to keep the milk cool till we get there.’
Elana turned towards the enemy horde, eyes blazing with the fury that only a sleep-deprived mother can ignite. She was vaguely aware of an alarm wailing in her jacket and the sound of fists pounding against the glass of HR’s windows. But her eyes were on the field. She had never been so sure about a course of action. She punched a fist in the air, raising aloft the stylish complementary bag packed with hand grenades. Then, charging onto the field, she let loose her battle cry.
‘For the breast milk!’
Jess Stork Glicoes has been a barista, cafeteria lady, bridal dress associate and librarian. Sadly, she’s never been a video game character. But that’s okay because their health benefits are probably terrible. She writes humorous fiction and is currently writing a short story collection about the seedy underbelly of motherhood. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Abundant Grace and Written in Arlington. You can find more information about her at www.storkwrites.com.