Cotton Dreams: A Short Story

What if the future looked too much like the past?

Nehemiah Collins and his husband, Captain ZayQuan Faulkner, are bound for Mars, carrying cottonseeds that promise generational wealth and a new beginning. But Nehemiah is haunted by dreams of plantations and alien overseers—and by the fear that history is repeating itself in space.

When a violent encounter forces Nehemiah to reactivate the weapon the military built inside him, love, legacy, and survival collide. As corporations claim new worlds, Nehemiah must decide what freedom truly means—and what it will cost to protect it.

First appearing in Neon Hemlock’s Queer Space Force, edited by dave ring, Cotton Dreams is a powerful Afrofuturist science fiction story blending space travel, Black legacy, and LGBTQ+ love into a gripping vision of the future shaped by the truths of the past.