by RS McCoy
MABLE
LRF-PS-103
SEPTEMBER 12, 2232
“She’s pleasant,” Mable huffed as her new boss left the office. Oh joy, Scholars.
Calvin hung his head low and put his hands on his hips. After a few breaths, he picked himself up and said, “She’s actually fantastic. She’s going through some personal issues at the moment, so just go easy on her for a while.”
Personal issues? Since when did Scholars have personal issues? Mable realized. “You’re sleeping together.”
Calvin shook his head. “Not for the time being. It’s not really any of your business, but we can talk more about the situation at dinner tonight. Right now, you need to get familiar with 196.”
“That’s the planet?”
“Yes, the planet. Very likely the future homeworld for the human race. We’re very close. In a few days, we’ll have our meeting with Director Filmore. If all goes according to plan, he’ll grant permission for a colony. Then we have a few years to wait, but so far, it’s the most promising world we’ve ever seen.”
Mable had little to no interest in planetary research, but she couldn’t deny the allure of contributing to the largest discovery in the existence of mankind. There were worse assignments.
“You’re really Alex’s sister?” Calvin asked, more blurting it out than anything.
“In the flesh.” Mable wondered if Calvin knew Alex was alive, that he was off in some colony living his happily ever after, that he had her son in his care. No, she decided, of course not. Arrenstein would never tell a soul.
Calvin nodded like it made perfect sense, though she didn’t know why.
“All right, might as well get started.” Calvin spun his tablet on the table and pulled up a series of files. A violet planet hovered to one side as information streamed by on the other. “This is Perkins-196, named so because it was the 196th planet reported by Dr. Perkins.”
Yikes, 196 planet reports? No wonder she had to go get some on the side.
“It’s a mostly water planet with significant biodiversity in the terrestrial portions. So far, we’ve only found a few aquatic species, mostly microfauna. Before the meeting with Director Filmore, we need to finish cataloguing the indigenous species and identify those that could pose a potential threat to a colony or the colonists.”
Aquatic species? Microfauna? Finally, someone was speaking her language.
“You can help Dr. Perkins with the biological analysis, or Dr. Niemeyer with the geomorphological and climatological analysis. Your choice.”
As much as Mable felt the chill from her new boss, she knew far more about biology than any of that rock stuff the other guy was studying. Besides, if she was going to blow her cover, it might as well be with Vince’s girlfriend. Then, maybe he could bang her and she’d forget all about it.
“I’ll take biological analysis with the frigid doctor.”
Calvin rolled his eyes and let out a short laugh. “You’re just like him, you know? He was difficult, too.”
Mable stood and said, “I take that as a compliment.”
“You should.” Calvin walked around his desk and stood close, where he could speak to her in a low whisper. “Aida doesn’t know anything about CPI or bugs or any of it. She’s already had three extractions. She’s involved, but I don’t know how yet. Keep an eye out, but don’t let her know anything. She can never know.”
Calvin put his hands in his pockets in an Arrenstein-esque way as he walked across the hall. Mable followed him, though she wished she hadn’t. She felt like an unwanted viewer to their private moment.
Dr. Perkins pulled her awards from the wall, tossing them onto the desk behind her. She grabbed a handful of file drives and added them to the pile, clearing whole shelves in a single motion. Calvin approached her from behind, his hand comforting on the small of her back. “Let me help you,” he offered, his tone quiet and soothing.
“I don’t need your help.” She swiped a shelf-full of planet profiles into the seat of her chair.
“Dr. Perkins, please. Dr. Kaufman will escort you to your office. She’d like to work with you on the terrestrial species catalogue.”
She spun like a possessed woman, her gaze pointed as she glared at Mable. “I don’t need her help,” she said to Calvin. Her tone was venomous.
Calvin placed an arm across her chest, as if to hold her back. To Mable he said, “Could you give us a minute?”
Mable gladly walked out.
ABRAHAM
LUNA COLONY
SEPTEMBER 12, 2232
Abraham finished the last bite of eggs and slid his plate into the sink. Charlene and the children were already in the classroom working on their morning lessons. With breakfast done, it was time to get to work.
“Can I help you?”
Abraham turned to see Siya in the doorway. He shook his head. “It’s against the rules.”
“I’m bored,” Siya replied. “I have nothing to do. Put me to work. I’m a man who needs to work. I beg you, give me something to do.”
“All right. But you do everything I say. Got it?”
Siya smiled and nodded. “Ay, boss.”
Abraham and Siya both walked down the corridor to the greenhouse, where Abraham started every day. He pointed to the boxes on the right and said, “These are the vines. Berries, grapes, olives on the vertical. Squash, cucumber, and zucchinis along the horizontal.”
“This is what you make the pasta out of?” Siya pulled a fat zucchini from the vine.
“Yeah, why?”
“No reason. It’s very clever.” Siya held out the zucchini to him.
“There’s a basket over there along the wall.” Abraham pointed.
Siya dropped the vegetable in the basket and returned to get the rest of the tour. “On the right, are the standing crops and ground-dwellers. Corn, tomatoes, sugar cane here. Melons, cabbage, and lettuce down on the end. Over here are the potatoes, carrots, and onions. This one with the big leaves is kale. Broccoli and cauliflower in the back there.” On and on, Abraham showed him each crop in their sorted boxes, the bonsai fruit trees along the windows, and the herb boxes down the middle row.
All the while, Siya took it in without a word.
“Mornings are for checking the crops and doing a light watering. There’s a line over here, and one on the other side.” Abraham pulled the wand from the stand and turned on the pump. A light drizzle of rain fell from the end. “Not a lot, just enough to get them all wet and keep the humidity up. Like this.” Abraham demonstrated his technique on the strawberries. “Can you do the other side?”
In twenty minutes, Abraham and Siya had covered the entire greenhouse in a light rain.
“You keep these plants on your own?” Siya asked after they finished.
“Charlene works with the kids. I do the rest. It’s a pretty even split.” Abraham shrugged and led Siya through the far door to the animal room.
As always, the pungent aroma of his livestock smacked him in the face like a fist. Siya lifted a hand to cover his nose as he said, “Praise Allah, that is awful.”
Abraham laughed. He didn’t care for the smell either, but he liked that it bothered Siya so much.
When they reached the chicken pen, Siya stared wide-eyed. “I have never seen these in person.”
The chickens took to a raucous round of clucking when Siya came around. Abraham reached into their pen and stroked their necks and backs to quiet them before he could tell Siya, “These are the ladies. We have twenty hens on this side, and over there are the four cocks. I put them together every two weeks for a fresh batch of chicks. First, we check the coops for eggs.”
Abraham showed Siya how to lift the top off the row of little chicken houses to reveal one or two or three eggs a piece. They were a pale turquoise with smears and splashes of black, like ink. With only seventeen eggs, it was a light haul, but enough to feed the children in the morning. One of the adults could go without for a day.
“You kill some of the
m?” Siya asked when the egg basket held their meager bounty.
“Once a week. One of our protein sources.” Abraham stepped over the thigh-high pen and collected the squeegee from the wall. “Can you spray a little water in here?” With the floor wet, Abraham scrubbed the floor clean of chicken manure and pushed the foul water into the drain. He used a clean towel to wipe off the tops of the chicken coops before stepping out.
By the time he was done with the hens, Siya was already in the cock pen scrubbing the floor. When he saw Abraham appear beside the pen, he asked, “Is this the water we drink? Or do I want to know?”
“We have months of water in stores just in case there’s an issue with the system. These drains lead to a processor. It’ll concentrate it by fifty percent so it can be used to fertilize the plants. You think it smells bad now, just wait until we spray it in the greenhouse. It’s pretty rough for about ten minutes.”
Siya’s face twisted as he pushed the last of the grey water into the drain. Lastly, the two sprinkled handfuls of corn, apple peels, spinach, and celery ends. The hens pecked and clucked as they clamored for each piece.
Further down, the two men arrived at the goat pen. “The black ones are the females. First, we milk them.”
Siya swallowed hard. “I think I watch first.”
Abraham shook his head and set the bucket below a doe. He went slow and showed Siya how to squeeze from top to bottom, gently but firmly enough to get the milk out. When the goats had given all they could, Abraham hung the bucket from the wall hook where he would collect it later. They cleaned the goat-pen floors with squeegees then fed them corn and alfalfa. The goats bleated and waited for their daily head scratches.
When the animals were fed and cleaned, they moved into the aquaculture room. Abraham showed Siya the six tanks, each six-by-six-foot and five-feet high. “On the left, the red drum here in the front, Coho salmon in the middle, and Nile tilapia in the back. Over on the right, there’s the amberjack, silver carp, and the last one is the alternatives. A bunch of shrimp. Some seaweed. Oh, and the mussels. Mediterranean mussels, I think.”
Siya tipped his head over the tank of red drum and gaped at the fish like they were the single-most exciting discovery of his life. Each was a foot and a half long with a rusty color and black spots on the tail. One of the larger ones breeched the surface and splashed enough to spray Siya with a few drops of water. When he turned back to Abraham, his face was filled with a big happy smile. “These are fish!”
“Yeah, except for the one in the back.”
“You eat these, too?”
“Just the silver carp. The others aren’t big enough, yet.”
Siya turned back to the red drum and marveled at them. “What you want me to do in here?”
“Today, just feed them. Catch a few of the shrimp. A few handfuls of the seaweed. I brought some sliced vegetables, too. We’ll scrub down the tanks and change the water tomorrow. Once a week.”
Abraham let Siya do most of the work in aquaculture. He was too excited to keep back. Abraham fished a few dozen shrimp out of the back tank with a net then let Siya pluck them out and toss them to the fish one by one.
Then, Siya asked, “We are done?”
Abraham shook his head and laughed. “Not hardly. Come on.” They closed up the aquaculture room and returned to the animal room. On his way through, Abraham pulled one hen from the pen and carried her by the neck. “Grab the milk tin there,” he told Siya.
They walked back through the greenhouse and finally returned to the kitchen. Abraham pulled the largest knife—a heavy cleaver—from the magnetic strip and set the chicken on the cutting board. Still holding her neck, Abraham raised the knife and hammered it back down. The hen’s head flopped into the sink but her body kept wiggling, her feet kept running.
Siya stared at Abraham like he was a murderer, though that wasn’t too far from it. “Today is chicken day,” he explained.
Within five minutes, the chicken had gone limp. Abraham showed Siya how to pluck the feathers into a pile, how to pull the organs from the central cavity, and how to cut off the feet and neck. They kept a few strips of meat from the neck to feed the fish tomorrow. The chicken went into cold storage awaiting dinner that evening. The rest was added to the compost pile.
Next, Abraham walked him through the process of pressing the oil from olives, squashing grapes for the juice that would become their next batch of wine, and how to make cheese from the goat milk using his homemade culture.
“How you learn all this?” Siya asked with his arms elbow-deep in grape juice.
Abraham shrugged and continued to press the liquid from his cheese. “Just learned, I guess. Looked up an article when I couldn’t get something to grow. I lost a whole season of berries until I learned to prune them back.”
“I tell you, Abraham.” He said Eh-bra-him as always. “I did not know what this place was. Now, I see it. Those little ones, they are yours. And she is your woman. This is your family, and you are the papa.” Siya smiled and tapped his elbow against Abraham’s.
“And what does that make you?”
“Uncle Siya!”
Abraham tried to choke back his laughter but failed. He wrapped his cheese in mesh and squeezed while he chuckled. At last, he set his wad of cheese in cold storage and washed his hands. “Come on, still have to finish up in the greenhouse.”
With two buckets of chicken pieces, pressed olives and grapes, and the leftovers from last night’s dinner, the men returned to the greenhouse and turned the compost. Shovel by shovel, they distributed the fully processed portions to the plants that needed it. They had only fertilized the standing crops when Charlene appeared in the doorway, her features drawn.
“What’s wrong?” Abraham asked before he realized. “I know we had rules, but he asked to help and he’s done a good—”
Charlene shook her head. “Renner is sick.”
THEO
LRF-RB-102
SEPTEMBER 12, 2232
The indigo body suit was suffocating. It was stiff and dug into his skin in more than one spot. On his second full day in the uniform, the fabric began to rub and chafe. Theo did his best to adjust the material, discreetly pulling at the elbows and shoulders as he walked to his first day at his new job.
It was nothing like he expected.
He’d dropped Mable off at Planetary Systems, with his sister no less. He’d known she was here, that they would probably see each other at some point, but he hadn’t thought it would be so soon. Or that she’d react so strongly.
Theo had never seen her that way.
He remembered her the day of her Selection ceremony, so proudly Scholar, wearing her blue cords over the black robes. She wore them like they’d always been hers, as if she’d lost them and the dean had merely returned them.
Now, here she was, in the most prestigious research facility in the world—or off it, rather—and she looked miserable, yet looked ecstatic to see him, like she’d been struggling. What could she struggle with? She was the ideal Scholar.
Theo wondered if maybe they had more in common than he had realized.
He lifted his palm to the scanner at the door to the Robotics wing and waited to be granted access. He flipped a hand through his hair as he waited, wishing it was longer.
The circular door spun open. A tall man with a square jaw and sky-blue eyes started, “Dr. Kaufman?”
“That’s me,” he replied, already regretting it. What a particularly non-Scholar thing to say. Thankfully, the man failed to notice.
“I’m Dr. Lehmon, Lead Robotics Engineer. Your office is RB-104. I’ve already sent the files to your tablet. Let me know if you have any questions.” He spun on his heel and returned down the corridor.
Theo stood in place for a moment, wondering if that was really all there was. When the man disappeared down the hall, Theo entered the wing and found 104 on the left.
His new office was identical to Calvin’s, as they probably all were. A black metal chair
before a black metal desk. Black metal shelves on the wall behind and next to his desk. Nothing more.
Theo sighed and took his seat. He placed his tablet on the desk and pulled up the files that had appeared in his ecomms log. When he clicked the first, the model of an astronomical probe spun on the left. Its spherical body had ten long metal instrument appendages on the back so that it looked like a freeze frame of a comet passing by. Nova 8, it was called. Theo tapped the current position and illuminated a large cosmic map, the nearby stars of Draconis, Aleramin, and Agemim highlighted with tags.
Theo minimized the probe data and moved on to the next. By the fifth, he had a disturbing feeling that his job in Robotics would have little to do with actual mechanics. The files were updates and coordinates for the current fleet of research probes. It made sense on the LRF, after all, that resources would be put to use in one aspect of cosmic research or another.
But that wasn’t what Theo cared about. He wanted to make something. He wanted to build and design and create.
He didn’t want to monitor.
By lunch, Theo was entirely bored and famished. He hadn’t spoken to another person since Dr. Lehmon’s abrupt introduction. He hadn’t eaten a thing all day. He had no choice but to make his way to the LRF galley and stand in line for his mid-day serving of provisions.
Mere months ago, he would have loved it. He would have been so proud to stand amongst the elite. He wouldn’t have given his strawberry provisions a second thought.
Now, he sat alone, shoving the provisions down his throat as fast as he could, hoping to minimize the taste. It didn’t help.
Looking around, he saw no one he knew. No Mable, no Aida. No one he wanted to talk with. He had nothing in common with any of them. He suspected a few were superstars, researchers he had idolized in his youth.
He didn’t care a thing about any of them anymore.
What he wouldn’t give to sit with Knox and Osip at the CPI galley, to laugh and joke with freedom. What he wouldn’t give for a t-shirt and cotton pants.
