wow--
What a great twist at the end! Your prose style is more polished and professional here. Practice pays off!
This is worthy of submitting to a sci-fi magazine, but Sam at Perihelion would say it's "already published" here at Steemit and that puts it off limits. Dang! I want to create a Steemit ezine of our community's speculative fiction - someone else is already starting an anthology (not the same as an ezine, but just as good!): Garden Gnome Publications Gets Its First Delegation — Steemit