Glass and Gardens

by Sarena Ulibarri

  Affectionately known as the Wyrm, the silver, serpentine locomotive glided a metre above the trackless ground. It was guided by GPS and location beacons stationed every kilometre along its path, and powered by a crucible of geomagnetism, photovoltaics, and lightning in a bottle.

  The interior was part Orient Express, part Star Trek, with panoramic windows on every side. Del and Ziad settled into an economy booth, sipping ginger tea and practising their presentations. But the changing landscape outside kept tugging at Del’s attention: there were towns, just like hers, speckled with solar arrays and water tanks. But there were also villages floating on inland seas, their bustling markets a crowd of floating tea houses and creaking junks with patchwork sails. There were forests of typhoon turbines ready to capture the rage of mighty storms, and enormous greenhouses in the desert, flanked by desalination plants powered by the sun.

  As the terrain outside grew more arid—the parched earth puckering into shingles—an oasis slowly rose on the horizon. A gigantic dome of glass—a garden city in a bell jar, infused with greenery and flecked with iridescent butterflies and scarlet macaws.

  Terrarium City.

  ***

  Terrarium City Exhibition Centre was an enormous labyrinth of adjoining halls, and the registration foyer resembled a fusion of intergalactic spaceport and overgrown conservatory. Climbing roses spiralled up the stone columns, reaching towards a ceiling that was little more than a glassy frame for the sky. Full-grown fig trees towered around them, their roots sinking deep into the floor, and it was hard to tell where the carpet stopped and the moss began.

  At a registration booth wreathed in delicate pink mandevillas, Del and Ziad finally received their convention passes.

  Ziad quietly pumped a fist. “Yes! I’m in Meadow Hall. That’s supposed to be one of the fun ones. How about you?”

  Del looked at her pass. “I’m in Tundra Hall.”

  “Uh, I’m sure that’s fun too. I’ll come visit your booth.”

  Del glanced at the sprawling map overhead. “No, that’s all right. It makes sense that they’d situate the live exhibits far away from the food exhibits.”

  As it turned out, Del’s neighbouring booth was technically a food exhibit.

  “Hi, I’m Xiaren Appelhof,” said an angular woman with rosy cheeks and a smile like a flash of steel. “Distributed biogas generation. You?”

  “Del Koumi. Entomological research.” She tried not to stare at the tall, complicated tanks lining Xiaren’s booth. They resembled a more militant version of Ziad’s storage drones.

  Xiaren followed her gaze. “Ah, I see you’ve noticed my portable domestic biogas system. Normally, biogas harvesting systems require thousands of tonnes of cheese to create a commercially viable amount of whey for anaerobic digestion. My system utilises less than twenty kilos of cheese, and generates enough gas for heating and cooking in a typical home. I call it the Fromagerie 5000!”

  Xiaren swung open a panel in the tank to reveal five shelves of ripening cheeses surrounded by gurgling pipes and humming canisters. Del rocked back on her heels, the intense smell of gorgonzola hitting her with almost physical force.

  “That’s…powerful.”

  “I’ve specially cultivated the microorganisms to generate vastly more biogas than normal. And the cheese tastes amazing.”

  Xiaren cut a gooey wedge from a creamy blue and offered it to Del, who, after a moment’s hesitation, took a bite. Notes of chilli and lychee simmered beneath the pungent flavour, and her eyes watered.

  “This would make an insanely good pasta sauce.” She gave herself a moment for the sparkles to disappear from her vision. “So, why did you go into cheese?”

  Xiaren shrugged. “My hometown isn’t overly fond of dairy, but we needed clean energy. And in my mind, gas is gas, whether it’s happening inside a cow or a star. Or a round of cheese.”

  Del looked at the racks of peaceful cheeses, and wondered if they knew they had the heart of stars.

  Over the next four days, she and Xiaren bonded over rice-paper rolls and grilled cheese sandwiches, listening to each other delivering their spiels to the curious visitors who streamed endlessly through the halls. Some people seemed interested in Del’s collection of giant phasmids and burrowing cockroaches. Less so in her infographics, research papers and posters of ‘fun facts.’

  “Koumi?” said one middle-aged man, studying her information screen as it hovered over his wrist-chip. “Any relation to Lilana?”

  “That’s my mother.”

  The man’s smile broadened. “I saw her presentation nearly twenty years ago. She knew her stuff. Generous, too. My pitch for a café run by homeless ex-cons sank at the panel, but your mum gave me a cricket flour starter kit and a recipe for butterscotch pancakes. It’s still a bestseller at the café now. I was so tickled when I saw her Caramelised Onion Protein Bars in my local supermarket a few years back. Tell your mother, ‘Irvine says hi’.”

  However, not every visitor was as supportive as Irvine. Del’s stand elicited as many ‘ew’s as Xiaren’s elicited ‘phew’s. Many potential investors scurried past, eyes averted, handkerchiefs over their noses. By the time Del’s convention pass flashed with her presentation alert, she was feeling less than buoyed by the public’s reaction.

  “Hey,” said Xiaren. “It doesn’t matter what people say. What matters is what you do about it. I’m sure your bugs think you’re awesome.”

  Del made her way through the seething crowd, clutching a single terrarium. Every exhibitor was granted one ninety-second pitch slot with minimal props. If the panel wanted more information, they’d investigate your online portfolio, and, if you were lucky, they’d visit your booth.

  She took a slight detour through Meadow Hall, marvelling at the glittering lights, colourful holograms and delicious aromas. One stand billowed gently with cumulous clouds, while another promised neural-implant learning modules.

  She finally spotted Ziad’s booth. His glistening displays of pastries had tempted a large crowd, and he was enthusiastically describing the carbon footprint of a regular egg tart, compared to the carbon footprint of his regeneratively farmed eggs and macadamia butter pastry egg tarts. Del noted, with considerable satisfaction, that Ziad’s onlookers included a significant number of snappily dressed proxy droids, favoured by professional investors who wanted to inspect potential ventures without leaving the house. Del glimpsed one or two faceports that seemed to show the bleary expression of someone who was probably still in their pyjamas.

  Del’s pass flashed more urgently, and she hurried the rest of the way to Galaxy Hall. The cavernous theatre was almost pitch-black, lit only by twinkling beads of lights on the ceiling and softly coruscating guide-strips on the floor. The hall was largely empty—most people preferred to watch the presentations on their displays, but Del’s heart still stuck in her throat as she walked down the aisle and onto the stage.

  Her courage almost failed her as she saw the panel of five judges seated near the front. Metres away from her sat Solaria Grande, her brown skin dusted with holographic flecks, her frohawk teased with grey and threaded with light-emitting filaments. Cybernetic contacts made her irises a sigil of golden circuitry, and she looked every inch the ecological goddess who’d forced the desert into retreat. Her seed-planting drones had strafed the land with precisely mapped grasslands, scrub and forests. Her educational programs and support networks had empowered communities to manage the natural regeneration of dormant vegetation systems.

  Del felt her voice evaporating as those golden eyes fixed onto her.

  “Adelie Koumi,” said Solaria Grande. “What do you have for us?”

  With shaking hands, Del set the covered terrarium onto the presentation table. “Dung…” Her voice cracked, and the silence seemed to swallow her. She took a slow, deep breath, and imagined she could see Andromeda. “Dung beetles navigate by the stars. Bogong moths migrate thousands of kilometres by starlight. We still know so little about insects and their relations
hip with the constellations, yet they could hold the key to our off-world aspirations.

  “Our ability to colonise other planets hinges upon how well we can recreate functioning ecosystems. How can we do that without the pollinators and the decomposers? Without the complex web of organisms that sustains life on Earth? If we intend to make our home on other worlds, that home will need insects.

  “Furthermore, space radiation remains one of our biggest obstacles to interstellar travel. However, tardigrade cells contain a protein that protects DNA from radiation damage, and not only could this protein allow humans to travel beyond the safety of our planet, it could also have implications for protecting us against cancers, radiation therapy, and cellular degeneration.

  “Another challenge is developing resilient materials that can withstand physical and radioactive assault, but remain sufficiently lightweight and versatile for launch and operational needs. However, I’ve experimented with the proteins in spider silk, and I believe there are potential applications in the development of self-healing spaceships, habitats and safety lines.

  “Finally, orbital junk poses a threat not only to space travel, but to the safety of our satellites and space stations. I’ve been studying the movement of spiders in zero-gravity, and I believe that automated arachnoid robots and mesh snares could play a key role in the retrieval of dangerous orbital refuse.

  “Now, I don’t have a product to sell or a business to implement. What I’m hoping to do is spark interest, encourage collaborations, spur research. What I’m proposing is a space station dedicated to the study of invertebrate organisms in non-terrestrial environments. Because when we eventually journey to the stars, I believe our tiny colleagues not only deserve to, but essentially must, come with us.”

  Del pulled the cloth from the terrarium to reveal a zero-gravity chamber containing a model spaceship surrounded by tiny floating balls of aluminium foil. She flashed a laser pointer across the porthole of the ship, and an ogre-faced spider excitedly scurried out. It launched into a gently swimming motion through the weightless space and proceeded to collect the nectar-daubed foil with a silken snare.

  It wasn’t a product, or a service, or a design. It was probably rather silly.

  But it was memorable.

  She finally dared to look at the panel, whose expressions ranged from bemused to stony.

  “Thank you,” said Grande. “Please enjoy the rest of the exhibition.”

  With a mixture of embarrassment and elation, Del left the stage. As she walked past the panel, she thought she caught a flicker of a smile on Grande’s lips, but it might have been a trick of the starlight.

  ***

  On the final day of the exhibition, hardly anyone came through Tundra Hall. It would seem that word had spread, and a consensus had been reached that there was little to see here.

  “I’m sure it has nothing to do with your presentation,” said Xiaren. “It was cute. I mean interesting. Hardly anyone said it was weird.”

  “Uh, thanks…”

  A familiar figure trotted over. “Actually, it was slightly weird. But also very cool.” Ziad graciously set down a tray laden with eclairs, baklava, mochi, and raspberry strudels.

  Del struggled, and failed, to keep her mood in a trench. “They’re about to announce the winner. Shouldn’t you be networking in the Investor’s Lounge?”

  “My details are online,” he replied. “And I saw this irresistible presentation about these incredible exploding cheeses.”

  Xiaren sighed. “No one was hurt. And I’ve figured out the problem.”

  As Ziad sampled Xiaren’s tasting plate, Del started on an eclair, interrupted only by an impatient ‘ahem’.

  A heavy-set woman with brown skin and scarlet-lacquered nails stood before Del’s booth, arms crossed, wearing an expression like someone who spends her day maintaining a polite tone of voice while suppressing a category-five rage-hurricane.

  “Are you the one who wants to build rocketships for spiders?”

  “Well…” Del wondered if she were about to be subjected to another rant about scientists and taxpayer money. She reached for her ‘Fun Facts About Science’ leaflet, complete with a helpful infographic about the 90% return on investment. “Well, yes, but I have this leaflet—”

  “My Jada has something to say to you.” The woman clearly had no time for infographics. She nudged her charge.

  Del peered over the counter, and a small girl with a vigorous puff of brown hair thrust a large piece of paper towards her. The crayon drawing depicted a shuttle sloshing with spiders, and a puff-haired girl sitting at the controls, smiling like the sun.

  “Jada wants to pilot one of your ships when she grows up,” said the woman. “Shuttling spiders into space to keep the planet safe.”

  The girl nodded vigorously, thrusting the picture towards Del again as though presenting her CV. Del tenderly accepted it, not mentioning that free-range probably wasn’t the best way to transport a colony of spiders.

  “Thank you. I’ll keep you in mind.”

  The girl saluted ferociously before marching away with her mother.

  “That was also weird,” said Ziad. “But adorable.”

  A chord of music rippled from the front of the hall, accompanied by a mesmerising aurora. The stage suffused with light, coalescing into a holographic broadcast of the closing ceremony concurrently taking place in Celebration Hall. The convener thanked all the attendees, and a series of guests gave stirring speeches about innovation and persistence. But everyone was waiting for the final speaker, and the final announcement.

  Solaria Grande was resplendent in an emerald suit that appeared to generate its own micro-ecosystem, seeming to ripple with grass one moment and shimmer with moss the next.

  “The prize is not about the prestige,” she declared, “although it has launched careers and established reputations. The prize is not about the money, although it has seeded ambitious projects and turned dreams into flourishing businesses. The prize is what you brought here with you. The prize is what you take away. The prize is what you’ve shared with all the people who passed through those doors. But that’s not what most of you came here for, is it? So, without further ado—”

  In the breathless silence of the hall, Del, Ziad and Xiaren linked hands, grinning with the inexpressible joy of being here and now, on the cusp of something extraordinary, no matter what came next.

  “—the winner of the Solaria Grande Exhibition Prize is—”

  ***

  Another Thirty Years Later

  The shuttle docked with barely a bump, and Del released the armrests of her business-class seat. She’d made this trip countless times now, but that final click of the docking clamps always sent electric shivers to the very tips of her fingers. She brought her face close to the passenger-side window, her nose almost touching the cold, transparent matrix.

  In the dizzying expanse of space, the station hung in the star-dusted void. It resembled a complicated molecule, with large glassy nodes interconnected via semi-rigid passageways. Its surface rippled with tiny photovoltaic scales, all turning to lap up the passing sun. In the half-light of space, it looked almost like a slumbering snake, curling itself into Celtic knots.

  A coppery octobot jetted gracefully past, trailing a net of captured space debris. Del watched with a faint ache of pride as it climbed in through a station hatch and disappeared with its haul.

  Del passed through decontamination and stepped into the arrival hall. She’d imagined, once, that space would be all chrome and glass and pulsing lights. Clinical, synthetic, easy to clean. But, back on Earth, past efforts to eliminate germs and bugs from human habitations had led to an explosion in allergies, inflammatory diseases and decimated microbiomes. Successful, long-term space exploration would not—could not—be a sterile venture, and what humanity needed now was a sandpit to experiment in.

  Throughout the hall, aluminium trusses were laced with lilac wisteria, and mesh walls brimmed with ferns and brome
liads, forming an avenue of vertical gardens. Despite the softly humming filtration systems, the scent of orange blossom and pear tarts wafted from the nearby cafés. Del’s mouth twitched into a smile—as it always did—at the sleek sign emblazoned over the entrance arch.

  TERRARIUM SPACE STATION

  Del had few rituals, but this one she had maintained for twelve years, since the day of her first visit. She made her way to the Summer Arboretum, past aromatic lemon trees and velvety bushes of French lavender. In a small grove, curtained off by bottlebrush, there stood a little bronze statue of an ogre-faced spider holding a small moon aloft in her forelegs.

  DEDICATED TO ARTEMIS, WHOSE CHILDREN REACHED THE STARS

  Del gazed up at the large circular skylight, the cloud-dappled Earth a delicate sphere hanging in the darkness, and wondered what Artemis would have made of this.

  “Del! I only just saw your name on the arrival logs.” A lean young woman with a short mane of curly brown hair walked across the flowering grasses, her navy flight suit marked with the epaulettes of a captain. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

  “Jada! I thought you weren’t due back for another week.”

  “We had a biomechanics team from Astroviva scheduled to arrive yesterday, so I thought I’d come back early. They’re trying to design an asteroid rover with variable terrain mobility, emergency aerial capabilities, flexible anchoring technology, and a compact folding solar array.”

  “Peacock spiders,” said Del automatically, and Jada grinned.

  “They’re with the arachnology team as we speak.”

  “You’ve been busy. I saw the new Phasmid and Mantis Habitat Pods on the inflight preview.”

  “Yes, those opened last month. I don’t think the stick insects have realised it’s zero-g yet, and I don’t think the mantids care. Oh, and in other exciting news—it’s still under wraps, but we’re planning to build a Cephalo Pod. Because who doesn’t want to see octopuses in space?”