“My father and mother were foodies, Papa especially,” she said and he nodded.
“Oh believe me, I know. Mike could argue for good tasting food with the best of them,” he sighed. Brightening, he turned to Kiara and said, “I’m glad you like the taste little Missy.” He poked her side and she squealed. Fi smiled. During this transition time, Louis had served as almost a surrogate father to them both. It was like they were drawn to each other. Fi wanted to know more about her father, to hear stories she’d never heard. And Louis wanted desperately to make it up to them, to find some way to apologize.
Fi knew that as angry as she’d been when she first found Eden, Louis and Larry, and the other colonists for that matter, didn’t really have to apologize. Everyone did what he or she had to do to survive, period. There wasn’t any more to it than that. Still, whether guilt was his driver or not, Fi really enjoyed spending time with Louis. There were some ways he that he was just like her father. He was enthusiastic, funny, sarcastic, and filthy-mouthed. Fi smiled at the way he made Kiara laugh.
Fi spent most days splitting her time between Asher and Louis and everyone was happy to give her the break from responsibility. Kiara was even living with the Skillmans for now while they gave Fi some time on her own. It would have been impossible to part Kiara from Zoe anyway, she realized. Fi saw her each day and came to put her to bed each night, but then she returned then to her own space, to a room in which no one else existed. Just for a while, she knew, she needed this. They finished their salads and daily apple and Louis’ wife Lizzie appeared as she came from the north tunnel.
“Ah, perfect timing,” Louis said and stood to greet her. He gave her a warm embrace and quick kiss and Fi smiled. She knew that this loving relationship had to be part of what her father had ‘seen’ in Louis. He was definitely a quirky, stubborn, and arrogant guy like Mike had told her, but he adored Lizzie. And now, Fi could tell, he adored her and Kiara as well. They were unofficially adopted, she thought with a chuckle.
“Aunt Lizzie!” Kiara bounced out of her seat to meet her. Fi laughed. Kiara could be so carefree now. It seemed to make everything they had gone through worth it.
“Are you ready to go to school little Missy?” Lizzie asked Kiara, smiling and holding out her hand. Everyone had adopted Fi’s nickname for her, except Asher of course, who still called her ‘Ki’.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Kiara shouted and grabbed Lizzie’s hand to go. Fi groaned and Louis grinned at her. Her eyes were pleading.
“You know that it’s still up to you Fi,” he said. “What do you want to do today?” Fi pouted. She knew she should be attending school. Let’s face it, she thought, an eighth grade education was not enough to be respectable. At the same time she felt idiotic sitting in school, especially if it had to be with other high school-aged colonists. They seemed like children to her. She sighed.
“Today I want to play hooky with you Louis,” she decided and he nodded.
“You know I love having you along,” Louis smiled.
“So the thing is,” Fi said as she and Louis headed out of the cafeteria pod toward the field pods. “I still don’t really understand exactly what happened.” She shook her head. “I mean, I sort of understand. Papa told me a lot and I’ve seen a lot, but I feel like I don’t really understand it.”
“You’re not alone in that feeling, Fi,” Louis agreed. “To be truthful, I’m not certain we’ll ever have a complete answer. It seems like a lot of worst case scenarios came together at once. But, it’s still our fault. It turns out that we aren’t much better than yeast,” he sighed.
“Yeast?” Fi said, confused. “What do yeast have to do with it?” Louis paused.
“Well, I know that you know more Biology than the average person, so tell me what you know about the way that yeast cells grow in a petri dish.” He talked to her just like her father, she thought, like she was more than a stupid kid.
“Well,” Fi started. “They start out as a tiny little colony with a whole big petri dish and they grow like crazy. Like bacteria.” Louis nodded.
“And then?”
“Then they grow to cover the whole dish and they start to run out of food, and they also have no way to escape their waste and they start to die.” Her face changed as she thought about it. “They die even faster than they grow in some cases once they run out of resources,” she murmured. They run out of resources, she thought, like a Famine. And they drown in their wastes, like the Sickness. Her stomach squeezed. The metaphor hit too close to home. “I see what you mean. You mean we should have expected more of ourselves.”
Louis nodded. “I certainly expected more of us. It’s not like yeast have a brain to say, ‘Hey we seem to be running low on food here, or ‘Hey, what are we going to do with all this waste?’”
“But we do have brains.” Fi said. “So we should have stopped and asked ourselves those questions.” She dropped her head, suddenly depressed. “No better than yeast,” she muttered. Then she straightened up and turned to Louis. “Well, at least there is Eden. I ask you to show me the yeast that could have done this!” she laughed and waved her hands at their surroundings. Louis joined her laughter.
“Yes, there is a difference,” he agreed as they stepped through the hatch to the main field pod. Fi took a deep breath and smiled. She loved the smell of the fields, even when they’d been fertilized with the handy bat guano from the sealed cave at the north end. It all smelled moist and green and fresh. She could practically hear things growing as they reached up toward the shimmering daylight in the pod. Today, Louis was going to take some samples and show her how they do the genetic typing to separate the strains.
“You know,” he began and waved to colonists that greeted them. He then knelt down when they approached the plot of interest. “We’ve learned so much from chasing this genetic marker, this thing that makes the plants speed up. Darryl is very excited about our new discoveries, what they could mean for our understanding of senescence,” he said and then stopped when he met Fi’s horrified gaze.
“Don’t worry Fi,” he chortled as he cut samples from some lettuces. “We have definitely learned our lesson about being in a rush,” he reassured her. “Discovery is one thing. Application is another. That was what we had to learn. That is what is so ridiculous about this disaster. It only happened because we blindly charged ahead with ‘Better living through technology!’ as our banner.” Fi’s frown softened. For a second there she thought she was losing her mind…it was like the old world way of thinking all over again. But no, thank goodness, we’ve finally learned some sense. He stood and examined his samples as he spoke.
“We always assumed that every technological ‘advance’ we made, regardless of its target, would result in a better world. But tinkering with your food supply,” his voice grew incredulous. “It was so stupid, so egotistical, so short-sighted.” He shook his head and waved at Fi to follow him as they walked toward another plot.
“To be honest Fi,” he said thoughtfully. “No matter how much we dig, we may never know if it was the genetic modifications, the cross-breeding, the pesticides, the additives, preservatives, supplements, or all of the above. There were just so many changes at once, over such a short period.” His expression was earnest. “We have to remember that not every action taken to solve a problem will be free of unforeseen consequences. No matter how good our intentions.” Fi frowned in confusion.
“I thought this all happened because of corporate greed and political corruption. Isn’t this the food companies and the government’s fault?” Her question stopped Louis in his tracks and he turned around, his face serious.
“Of course that was partly the cause, particularly the acceleration without regulation. But it was good intentions that really started this whole thing,” he explained. Fi was surprised. How could that possibly be, she wondered?
“Before we altered our food supply, there were famines around the world for millennia. Droughts, war and displacement, crop deaths. These things wo
uld occur and there would be millions dead in dusty sub-Saharan Africa or in flooded, desperate Bangladesh.” He stopped. “Do you remember ever hearing about that song, ‘We are the World” Fi?’”
Fi closed her eyes to think. “Maybe?” she ventured. Louis frowned and nodded, his face registering his own age.
“Well in the last century, in the eighties, there was one of those famines, but this time it was shown on television. Fat, happy, Americans saw images of dying, bloated, infants and mothers sitting in a desolate wasteland, facing their demise.” He shook his head. “It changed people Fi,” he said. “We had so much and they had so little.”
“We felt guilty,” Fi interjected and Louis nodded.
“Yes, we felt guilty. All these famous people got together, many of them African-American, and sang a song of hope, and it was played at the exact same time all around the world. It really was a big moment. I remember some of my toughest buddies tearing up when they heard that song.” He sighed and laughed for a second, shaking his head.
“What?” Fi said.
“I just started thinking about the words to that song. It was all about how humans had the power to make a brighter day for all of us…” he choked. “We really thought we’d done a good thing. By trying to eradicate this type of famine, I mean.” Fi was shocked at the emotion in his voice. “I’ll never forget what one entertainer said about his visit to Africa, the one that compelled him to work on ‘We are the World’. He said, “There is no way to die of starvation with dignity.” Tears trailed down both Louis’ cheeks. Fi stood and gave him an awkward hug. Unlike Lizzie, Louis was not normally a hugger, but this time he accepted the affection. As she held him, Fi chuckled a bit to herself and Louis pulled away, startled.
“What on Earth could possibly be funny?” He wiped his cheeks. Fi smiled sadly.
“Well, forgive the darkness of my sense of humor these days,” she started and he nodded. “But it seems like our ambition to be better than yeast in a petri dish somehow led us back there anyway,” she concluded. Louis shook his head back and forth and then burst out laughing.
“Yes,” he allowed himself to be amused by the irony. “Yes, I guess that is what goes for humor nowadays,” he said and they turned to continue their journey to the lab pods.
The New Normal
----------- Fi -----------
“This is really cool Sean,” Fi ripped off another piece of bread and popped it into her mouth. They were in the main cafeteria pod where Sean was going over an application he’d created for her.
“You see here, Fi,” he flicked his finger, “The colonists can log in themselves and update their sizes and the supplies that are low. Then the database coalesces that for you,” he gave another flick. “And, taa daa!” A list popped up with items and totals. “You can even print it out to take with you, since you don’t bring tablets on your Seeks.” Fi grabbed the tablet from him and started playing with the application.
“Sean, I can’t tell you how much work this saves me.”
At first, Fi had joined Asher’s Seek group because she wanted to be with him when they went Topside. It had not gone so well. Her presence with the group made Asher jumpy and cranky and after a few tries, she conceded. She started her own Seek group to take care of the other needs of the colony. Eden still had no way to make fabric, so she often focused on gathering clothing and linens as her primary targets. It was ironic that she was good at shopping-based gathering, considering how much she had sucked at natural gathering. As she had always done for her own Family, she gathered mundane things like toothbrushes, deodorants, and razors. The men of Eden were eternally grateful for the razors. It was silly, but this might be the thing for which she was now most revered.
Sean’s database was going to be a great help in organizing the colonists’ sizing information and supply needs.
“Sean, this is great. It will not only ensure that I get what we need on the Seeks, but it will allow me to help redistribute used clothing within Eden as well.” Sean nodded, his mouth full of apple. An apple a day was more than a saying in Eden.
“You know,” she added. “It’s a heck of a lot easier going on Seeks than it was on raids, huh?”
“No contest,” Sean agreed. “Going everywhere in the daylight with a group of armed friends is a lot better than what you and I had to do.” Fi’s smile twisted up at the corner. Ain’t that the truth, she thought. It wasn’t as heart palpitating as hiding from thugs on a shelf in the darkness, she mused, but that may not be a bad thing.
Just then, Louis swept into the room looking for her. She waved at him and got up from her seat. Sean got up as well and Fi gave him a hug.
“Thanks so much for that app Sean. The colonists thank you too, believe me,” she turned to Louis.
“Ready to go Fi?” Louis asked her with a twinkle in his eye. “Whoever is working today is going to be glad to have some company, I’m sure.”
“Yup. I’m ready,” she said and followed him out of the cafeteria pod. She walked behind Louis with excitement as they headed out to the radio room. This was the first time that Louis had taken her to the radio room since they’d come. They had talked about it before, but they’d needed to arrange it with Gary because the radio room was heavily secured and very far from the rest of the colony. The tunnel leading to it was at least a mile long, Fi realized as they walked, if not longer.
When they arrived, Fi was amazed. It was like an old bunker from the last century or something, she thought. The room itself was very small, tiny in fact, with a couple of built in shelves filled with small boxes covered in knobs and buttons. There was a cabinet with some additional boxes hooked to a tablet. A man perched on the only seat in the room and he turned to great them. She could hear static popping in the background.
“Louis,” the man smiled and stood up to shake Louis’ hand. He turned to Fi. “And what do we have here? The famous Fi Kelly!” he grinned and broke into a big, friendly laugh. He was a bear of a man who seemed outsized in this dim little cave. With fondness, Fi realized that he reminded her of Sensei Bob. Thoughts of Sensei Bob always made her sad, but she still said a daily prayer for him, hoping that he’d made it somehow, some way.
“Tom,” Louis smiled and shook his hand. “You have guessed correctly,” he gestured toward Fi. “This is indeed the famous Fi Kelly,” he chuckled at Fi’s embarrassment. Fi still couldn’t get over the attention her Family’s arrival, and particularly with her at the helm, had caused in Eden. It made her very uncomfortable when people noticed her at all, let alone treating her like a hero. Fi stepped up and shook Tom’s hand.
“It’s very nice to meet you Tom,” she said with a warm smile. “I’m here to learn all about what you’re doing out here.”
“Wonderful!” Tom said as he sank back down in the tiny chair. His body did not even attempt to fit into it, but instead spilled over the edges in all directions. “It’s a pleasure to have the honor,” he said formally and Fi giggled. Tom seemed surprised for a second to hear a giggle come out of her mouth. Her toughness was so legendary that it surprised people whenever she behaved like a teenaged girl. Tom turned back to his knobs.
“Well Fi,” he began and started to swing back and forth on the chair as it’s frame groaned in protest. “As you know, we still have to rely on a lot of old-fashioned technology when dealing with Topside because we’ve lost everything else,” he stopped and turned to Louis momentarily. “By the way, they have some positive news about the new solar generator that they want to try on that server farm that was recently truthed,” he said to Louis. Louis grunted and turned to Fi.
“You know that Sean and his group are working on finding pieces of our old communications infrastructure and putting them back together, right?” She nodded.
“Though I don’t understand it all, the few times he’s gotten to tell me about it,” she admitted. Though she was great at biology, other sciences were not as easy.
Louis laughed and nodded. “Me too!” he winke
d and she grinned.
Tom piped up. “Would you like me to explain the reconnection plan to her briefly?” he asked Louis, who nodded. Tom turned to Fi. “So we have some plans to bring heirlooms back to the surface as you know,” he began and Fi nodded in affirmation. “But what then? How do we re-integrate with the Topsiders? How do we reconnect all the survivors and help to rebuild? As Larry always emphasizes, the heirloom restoration is only one phase of our resurrection as a species. Reconnection will be the second.”
He swung his chair to indicate the array of boxes in front of him. “So we have this HAM radio set-up and we are reaching out, trying frequencies to see if we can find others out there and get a sense of where and who they are,” he said. He turned some knobs and Fi could hear static and at times flickers of other sounds, but no more. “We are also listening,” he added, emphasizing this point. “We are listening to see if someone else out there is reaching out as well.” He turned the volume knob back down temporarily. Fi grew pensive.
“So this is like a radio version of the Seeks then,” she began and Tom nodded.
“Yes, it’s similar. We find Topsider groups, if they have communication equipment, and we mark where they are or note what we can about them. But the main difference between this baby,” he patted a metal box affectionately, “and your manned Seeks is that this has far more reach, global reach really.” Fi’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
“You can reach people all over the world with that little thing?” she asked him, incredulous.
“Yes, in theory,” Tom smiled, “but there are a lot of challenges. The reason you had to come so far to see me is that this repeater station has to be associated with an antenna, and that antenna has to be high up on a tower or mountain.”
“So we are sitting underneath a mountain right now?” Fi asked, turning her eyes to the ceiling. She hadn’t really thought about what was above them. Eden was just Eden to Fi when she was inside it. Like another world.
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