The Eden Project (Books One & Two)

by DP Fitzsimons

  Adam admired the beauty of her slender frame silhouetted against that black ocean of emptiness that rolled on forever outside. He stood and joined her at the screen. “When you are not with me, it’s the only thing that can calm my savage soul.”

  She rolled her eyes and pushed him away. “You and your words,” she said trying to avoid his devilish grin.

  He grabbed her above the elbow and pulled her roughly to him. His familiar arms enveloped her and she laid her head quietly against his chest. She warmed in his embrace. This simple human affection had become their bond. Sylvia exhaled happily as she felt his heartbeat against her cheek.

  “Do you think we will ever find a new world?” she whispered with a girlish sweetness.

  He played with her hair and kissed the top of her head. “I believe we will. Our first target is promising. Even if the air is not perfect, we can build livable structures there as long as the temperatures are mild and the natural resources abundant.”

  “Thanks for that. Every girl’s dream. Listening to the protocol being recited into her ear. Very romantic.” She raised her eyes to his.

  Before he could kiss her, Maya entered and they broke apart.

  “Commander,” Maya began with a mirthless expression, “there’s been a fight on cryo deck.”

  Guilt shot suddenly across Sylvia’s face. “I’m sorry, Maya. I was just about to tell him.”

  “I could see you were working your way up to it,” Maya said without a hint of humor before she left them alone.

  “Who?” Adam asked

  “Who do you think?” Sylvia said as she straightened the top of her jumpsuit and led him out of flight deck.

  * * *

  LEO AND MAX HAD once been best friends. They were both eleven, about to be twelve, and for as long as anyone could remember they enjoyed watching martial arts movies together on their scrollpads.

  And then one day both of their intended mates ended up on other ships. Leo’s intended, Phoebe, was alive and well on ES1 flying off in another direction, while Max’s intended, Elise, was spotted boarding the ES2 just before the doomed vessel exploded on takeoff.

  Adam found them separated by two other boys as they stood next to the cryo chamber of the new object of both their affections, Nadia, or as Sylvia had joked on the walk to the cryo deck, their sleeping beauty.

  Nadia’s intended, Reese, had never made it to any ship and so both boys had been trying to stake claim to her affection. For her part, Nadia enjoyed the attention, but was in no hurry to replace her intended. She, of course, could have had no idea that the boys had become competitive even in visiting her cryo chamber.

  “Guys, come on, can you let the poor girl sleep in peace?” Adam noticed Leo’s lip had been split and bloodied.

  Maya offered the injured boy a small ice pack and then faced Adam. “Max punched him. You need to put a stop to this.”

  Adam glanced to Sylvia unsure and walked over to review Leo’s injury. He turned to Max with a look of paternal disappointment. “What were you thinking, Max?” Adam said. “Leo’s your friend. Violence is not permitted under any circumstance.”

  “The protocol says he must be reprimanded and demoted,” Leo chipped in with a slight lisp caused by his fat lip.

  “Demoted?” Adam repeated. “We don’t have enough people to demote anyone. His only backup is three chambers in that direction and as cold as an ice cube.”

  Sylvia managed to stop herself from laughing out loud.

  Leo considered Sylvia and bent his face in thought before responding to Adam. “Well, then he should learn his lesson. You should make Nadia my intended. No bully should ever be rewarded with such a beautiful prize.”

  Max shook his head at Leo’s words and pretended to vomit.

  “You see,” Leo said, pointing at Max. “That’s classic bully right there. Mocking gestures.”

  “What do you know about bullies?” Adam asked curiously.

  Leo looked surprised. “The old movies, man. It’s all in there.”

  Adam was sorry he asked.

  “He’s not wrong,” Maya interjected. “You should decide before this gets any worse. Not just for these three, but for the others as well.”

  Adam walked to Nadia’s cryo chamber and touched the glass. “You want me to decide this girl’s future mate while she’s in deep sleep?”

  “You should go over our entire roster and find suitable mates per age and other scientific variables,” Maya explained matter-of-factly.

  “It doesn’t feel right. Especially for the ones asleep.”

  “Were any of us any different? None of us had input on who our mates would be. That’s the point, Adam.” Maya pulled Leo between them. “This is what rivalry leads to. Hurt feelings. Revenge. Busted lips.”

  Adam rubbed his jaw line and considered Maya. “And what about you? Shall I decide who your mate shall be?”

  Sylvia reached out to stop Adam, but it was too late. Maya hardened her expression.

  “My mate?” Maya said to Adam, who regretted his words. She touched her round, full belly. Otherwise slender, she was very pregnant. Eight months pregnant. “I am already doing my part to perpetuate the species. I do not need another mate.”

  “You are young with a full life ahead of you,” Adam said. “You should have a mate.”

  Sylvia pinched Adam’s back hard as Maya shook her head.

  “My mate,” Maya began, “has done his part and now he is part of me. Our child will be the first not born on earth and the elder of his generation. Ozzie and Maya have mated and now you must make sure the others do as well. Do it soon, commander, or you will give birth to all forms of petty squabbling and uncertainty.”

  Maya took Max’s hand and set it on her belly making the boy extremely uncomfortable until the baby kicked.

  Max’s face lit up in awe as he moved his hand slowly on Maya’s belly. “The baby kicked me,” he said as a grin grew on his face.

  “We must seek harmony in all things,” Maya said taking Leo’s hand now and putting it on her belly. “Free will is not in the protocol.”

  -6-

  Each night before he slept, Adam did 200 pushups. He drank a nasty telomere tea in the morning and had two cell integrity shakes before each of his daily workouts. He was building mass through rugged muscle confusion and maximum nutrient intake.

  Sylvia tried to get him to slow down but he did not know how to do that. He needed to be an example, a beacon to all others. When he passed kids in the corridors, he wanted them to feel supreme confidence in their commander and, by extension, their mission.

  If they believed he was invincible, they would remain sharp and hopeful even if the mission lagged on for decades without finding a habitable planet. If doubt crept in, order would not prevail and the species of homo sapien sapiens would sputter and cough its final death rattle silently in a dark corner of the universe.

  He owed the doctors. He owed his crew. He owed his species. Most of all, he owed the dead, the ones devoured by beasts that he alone had brought down on them. He alone. He exempted Tuna and Zeke and he especially exempted Gen. He had sucked them into his destructive game. Their mistakes were not their own. Their mistakes were his alone.

  During the days, Adam was in control. He attacked his days with a vigor that was infectious to the other thirty-two crew members.

  After dark, he was not in control.

  When he closed his eyes at night in the soft blue glow of his stateroom, he could not stop the images from flooding him with untidy emotions. He did not want to think of her anymore, the taste of her lips lingered forever in his saliva, the memory of her skin still caused an arrhythmia in his heart.

  He wanted to let go, but she was the only path away from the other memories. If he concentrated intensely he could escape the horrible cacophony of sounds from the dome floor on the final day. Squeals and screams and terrified faces. Innocent eyes looking across the devil’s playground begging him to come running when he could not.

>   He had no choice but to escape those unbearable sights and sounds and fall into memories of her. He had once held her up with a single hand on the small of her back. Her eyes were not eyes at all, but doorways into her soul. They could erase everything. The universe had raced into their bodies, imploding into the blood so that nothing existed beyond the surface of their skin.

  And so each night he survived by escaping to memories of Gen. He had no other way to find sleep. As he faded off, he would sometimes think of Sylvia, vowing that one day he would honor her devotion and tenderness in a manner more appropriate.

  * * *

  ARTHUR SIXTYBORN RARELY COMBED his hair. His fascinations with science and technology so consumed his mind that as soon as his eyes flashed open in the morning, he had a new question about one old theorem or another. He jumped out of bed and paid no regard to his physical appearance. The odd state of his hair had caused the original eight to call him Windy on occasion.

  The younger girls had not been so kind. They gave him a name that stuck far longer than he would have liked. Farty Artie. The name was created at dinner one night in the dome after a sulfur experiment Artie had been working on went terribly wrong.

  Since the ES3 had risen from the burning dome and entered the starry skies, Artie’s fortune had changed considerably. Even though just eleven years old, he became the youngest officer on the ES3. He was the lead Technology Officer on the ship and no one called him Farty Artie anymore. It was simply Artie or even ‘Sir’ to some of the younger ones.

  “Hey, Windy!”

  Artie knew it was Adam because he was the only one who still called him that. Artie quickly licked his fingers and tried to mat down his curly hair before Adam entered his lab.

  “Good morning, Commander,” Artie said returning his attention to the gutted electronic component.

  “How long until we could reach Epsilon Eridani?” Adam asked without any hint of humor.

  “Sounds like you have the midnight blues. Too much darkness out here and no dragons to slay.” Artie was amused, but continued examining the device in his hands.

  “What are you doing there?” Adam said as he sat down at a nearby console.

  “Oh this? We have some blinking lights in cold storage. I want to rebuild the power receptor in the--”

  “Artie,” Adam interrupted, “what about Epsilon Eridani?”

  “Travel time to Epsilon Eridani?” Artie put down the device and turned to Adam. “You want fantasy or reality?”

  “I want fantasy we could make a reality.”

  Artie scrunched his face up in thought. “If all goes well with our first two-month propulsion attempt and we can increase the velocity and duration going forward without incident?”

  “Exactly. What’s the best case scenario?” Adam said as he stood up and moved closer to Artie.

  Artie sat back and considered Adam’s enthusiasm. “It’s all theory, even the distance and the interference we may or may not encounter along the way.”

  “What interference?”

  “Anything. Thick asteroid belts we hit which we may not be able to slow down fast enough to avoid. They could cause extreme damage despite our energy fields.”

  “Asteroids?” Adam said confidently. “I’ll pick them up on our long range mapping tools and, trust me, I will slow us down in time. That’s not a concern. There’s not supposed to be any asteroids out here in the black anyway, trillions of miles from the next star system.”

  “And what about little green men and their laser guns?” Artie said shaking his hands in the air as he made a weird, theatrical voice.

  “Artie, be serious.”

  “All right. Okay. I don’t know, maybe eleven months. Actually eleven months and five days to be more precisely hypothetical.”

  “Eleven months and five days?” Adam repeated.

  “Yeah. But the last leg we’d need to be cooking along at thirty or forty times the speed of light.”

  “Precisely hypothetical?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you were mocking me for the question?”

  “So what?” Artie defended himself. “I figured it out before. So kill me. I figure everything out. I can’t stop figuring things out.”

  Adam chuckled and sat back down. “Okay, then. No more cheery banter. Tell me what else I want to know.”

  Artie scratched his neck and stared at Adam. “Well you’d want to know the time it would take to determine if the exoplanet we find there is in the goldilocks zone.”

  “The goldilocks zone?”

  “Yeah. That means the right distance from Epsilon Eridani, the system’s Sun. Not too hot. Not too cold.”

  Adam understood. “The goldilocks zone.” He nodded.

  Artie could see he wanted to hear more. “Soil samples and radiation levels would have to be analyzed and confirmed as conducive to human reproductive needs.”

  “Which means?”

  “Radiation levels could prevent females from being fertile.” Artie studied Adam’s reaction to that news. “That’s kind of the whole point of all this, to go forth and multiply.”

  “Yeah. That’s a big one.” Adam agreed. “What about living there?”

  “If all of the above checks out, we could have the first, rudimentary biosphere operational within forty days of breaking ground.”

  This part made Adam smile. He nodded to Artie, pleased. “What’s the chance everything will check out?”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. There’s no way of building any type of predictive model on that one. One could only make an intuitive guess.”

  “One could?”

  “Well, I could. And Tuna could, if he was here, but it would be no better than a stab in the dark even with our superior minds.”

  “Go ahead,” Adam urged, “stab me.”

  “I’m torn between three and four percent. Call it a three and a half percent chance. That’s one chance in twenty-eight.”

  Adam slouched in his seat. He could not mask his disappointment.

  “Cheer up. My model could be off and even if it isn’t we could see as many as ten or twelve such planetary candidates before we are old and gray.”

  “Thanks, Artie,” Adam said flatly. Despite his lead technology officer’s attempt to give him hope, Adam struggled to find any.

  “Who knows,” Artie said, “maybe humanity will catch a break. Those are hardly long odds in scientific terms.”

  Adam squeezed Artie’s shoulder gratefully and then left him alone with his dismantled power receptor.

  * * *

  SYLVIA EXAMINED HER TOMATO crop carefully. She sought only those tomatoes that were perfectly ripe and ready to pluck. She chose carefully and slowly filled the basket at her feet.

  “Every plant is a miracle.”

  The voice made Sylvia smile. She glanced over her shoulder to find Maya behind her glowing. The overhead lighting gave her hair an almost angelic glow. Maya laid her right hand softly on her huge belly.

  “Gen loved her plants, didn’t she?” Sylvia stood up.

  Maya squatted down slowly to pick up Sylvia’s tomato basket by the handle. “I thought we could walk to lunch together.”

  “That’s so sweet, but let me carry that.” Sylvia reached for the basket, but Maya quickly hid the basket behind her hip. “I’m not an invalid, Sylvia. I can carry a basket. Please, I insist.”

  Sylvia relented. She quickly picked up her various gardening tools and returned them to a nearby counter. She rinsed off her hands in a flash and joined Maya walking to the door.

  “So, enough posturing, what’s the real reason you came by the gardens?” Sylvia asked as she grabbed the basket away from Maya who no longer fought to keep it.

  They left the gardens and turned into the corridor. “Adam has agreed to evaluate all the unassigned kids and pair them up into future domestic partnerships,” Maya answered.

  “You look happy,” Sylvia observed. “Am I to assume he honored your request not to be mated?”

>   “He better, but that’s not why I’m happy,” Maya said as she suddenly reached her hand out and spun gracefully in the wide corridor. She was dancing with a pretend partner. “When Nadia and the others wake from cryo and are strong enough, we’re going to have a dance. All the new couples will be on their first dates.”

  Sylvia grinned. “It’s so good to see you dancing again.”

  Before Maya could return Sylvia’s smile, a sharp pain hit her hard in the lower belly. She bent over in intense agony.

  “Maya!” Sylvia shrieked as she put her arm around Maya for support. “What’s happening? Is it the baby? What should we do?”

  Maya concentrated on her measured breathing. “Calm down,” Maya instructed. “You’re going to be an aunt.”

  “What? It’s coming? Now? Should we get someone?” Sylvia helped Maya walk slowly.

  Maya nodded as she gritted her teeth. “Help get me to sick bay and I’ll tell you what the baby’s name will be.”

  Sylvia’s face lit up. She calmed then and helped Maya along.

  “It’s very natural, you know,” Maya said. “There’s nothing to worry about. Our bodies are designed for this.”

  “Really?” Sylvia said suspiciously. “Because I’m still kind of fuzzy on how that giant-headed baby that’s inside of you now is going to be outside of you later.”

  Maya chuckled and shook her head.

  “I’m serious,” Sylvia continued. “I don’t understand. It doesn’t make geometric sense.”

  Maya exhaled deeply. “Silly Syl, miracles are not something we’re supposed to understand.”

  Sylvia touched Maya’s belly gently as they walked. “And every heartbeat is a miracle.”

  -7-

  Tuna sat just below the massive flight screen studying long range mapping and moving data around on his console. Zeke sat twenty feet behind him in his commander’s seat watching a centuries old space movie on his scrollpad.

  Zeke’s mouth hung open with an expression somewhere between boredom and bemusement as he watched a young man in white robes talking with two robots in the desert, a golden robot who moved stiffly and a shorter, trash-can-like robot with a domed head.