Page 87 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Stars
Ana
Those domes rose up from the rust-red dust like shimmering soap bubbles before you came to be , Nan would tell me. Her eyes would glitter as she reminisced about watching the distant planet’s structures from orbit, squinting through a dusty porthole of our generational starship.
Just tiny silver hemispheres they were, Ana, before they overlapped and went up-up-up over the cycles .
History classes had already told me what those domes contained. The first intrepid Terraformer crews, large groups of volunteer Genshippers that my grandmother would enviously see off at the docking ports. But our kin were mechs, too important to the operation of the Genship to spare for the multi-cycle missions to the planet’s surface. My namesake had to console herself with window-watching, imagination bridging stellar space between there and-
- here .
The hiss of the hydraulics preceded a rocking thump that made my stomach, only half-full of bland rations, swirl unpleasantly. I braced a hand on the bulkhead, barely finding my feet as the transfer shuttle found its own on the planet’s surface. My people never left the ship or went planetside, not since the Starstreak incident, which meant I was the first Genshipper in two generations to attempt this particular folly.
The teeming life that once filled the domes on the other side of this docking port had abandoned the surface before I’d taken my first steps, fleeing the aftermath of a chemical spill that changed their bodies and made the entire planet uninhabitable. While the main biochem holding tank cracking was enough to threaten the Terraformer project by itself, a once-in-a-lifetime passing comet dragged additional volatile elements into the chaos too, each one more mysterious than the last. The resulting gasses were pulled into the air cycling intakes for the entire dome network, fundamentally altering the genetics of the Terraformers in a matter of hours.
With bodies no longer compatible with the atmospheres in the domes or the Genship, the teams were forced to decamp with all the equipment and supplies they could carry. Following a strange, irresistible instinct, the Terraformers had unanimously voted to board a hastily-retrofitted shuttle, the Starstreak , in order to follow the comet’s trail. They left the planet in a rush for uncharted space, ignoring frantic queries and direct orders from their Genship leaders as they mindlessly followed the comet. Without constant exposure to the unknown elements in the comet’s tail, the handful of Terraformers that couldn’t make it to the Starstreak withered and died in a matter of days. The Starstreak was out of hailing distance by then, into the boundless black before we could even begin to parse what had happened.
The doomed planet was left abandoned from then on, our leaders too fearful of exposing additional members to whatever wasting disease had taken the handful of remaining Terraformers. After a lingering period of shock, mourning, and reluctance, our scientists began carefully examining the atmosphere, the cycling units, and even the domes, albeit through probes and unmanned vehicles. While superstition and science didn’t often sit on the same side of the table, caution and fear kept us all safe on our ship for nearly two hundred cycles after the event. Though the most restless members of the Genship had originally left with the Terraformers, some like Nan had remained behind, quietly inspiring a new generation of explorers through whispered bedtime stories. It wasn’t against the laws to talk about the Starstreak , of course, but anything beyond brief, respectful grief was heavily culturally discouraged.
Thankfully Nan didn’t give a shit about what other people thought. If she had, I might never have volunteered for the Genetic Alteration Program, and I wouldn’t be holding my breath as I watched a sliver of light pour in beneath the rising fuselage door. I wish she’d been alive to come with me, but she would have been deemed too old before the GAP was even a concept.
I inhaled slowly, as much to test the atmosphere as to experience something none of my people had for decades. It tasted stale, like an old storage pod left for too long, but there was something else, too. Something that reminded me of the hydroponic bays, but heavier. The scent lingered in my senses, grounding me like mag-boots on sheet metal, calling for me to immerse myself in it. I gripped the sides of the door for a moment, daring to lean my head outside into the dome vestibule and inhale again.
Anxiety sliced through me. Was this the calling ? Was I experiencing the dangerous, reckless pull to follow the comet that my predecessors had? I eased back into the ship and concentrated, a spike of fear making my hands flush cold. No. I could resist it, I could consider my actions in a way they hadn’t seemed to. This was just the driving curiosity Nan had instilled in me, the wonder of finally being somewhere I’d only seen in long-range scanscreens.
Shaking out my hands and taking another deep breath, I clambered down the ramp with false ease, willing my body to believe it was just another day wandering the Genship decks. Eerily quiet, I never thought I’d be homesick for the thudding, chugging noises of the wall-mech that powered our lights, water, and delivery systems back home. And how odd was that, hearing myself call some other place home ? We never landed, never docked, the Genship was simply our life and world and always had been. Most considered the Terraformers a fringe pipe dream, a bunch of stellar dustheads ungrateful for the blessings of our ship.
I frowned, adjusting the heavy pack slung on my shoulder. Guess that made me a stellar dusthead too, all things considered. I’d not only volunteered for the GAP, I’d come to the planet to follow a plan of my own, one the skittish science team knew nothing about. When Nan’s health was dwindling, her stories became less cautious, more full of wonder, halfway to the calling as if she’d sucked up that same ill-fated cycler air. There was a man she’d loved, well after the engine accident that killed my grandfather, who had joined up with the Terraformers. He’d promised her things, love and a life together, sweet whispers of devotion in his last nights aboard the Genship. He believed in the mission, believed he’d be able to send for her once the domes were settled. He’d been wrong, but as Nan’s mind grew hazy in her last days, she lost her grip on time and forgot the Starstreak had ever happened. She frequently called me by my late mother’s name and urged me to pack our things, sure that her distant lover would call for us at any moment. It made her so happy, the urgency of that doomed to-do list, that I didn’t correct her. Instead, I packed small things and quietly unpacked them again once she fell asleep, sniffling back tears of grief as I lost her piece by piece. Her last words broke my heart, her tone excited and bright even as her voice grew whisper-thin, her grip on my hand stronger than it had been in weeks.
Lawrence called! Get our things, my girl, we’re finally going down to the planet to join him!
The next morning I found Nan in bed with eyes closed and a gentle smile on her lips, her chest still and quiet as the boundless black. I wept bitterly, grieving not only for the woman that raised me, but for the spark of her defiance, a curious mind that rebelled against the dull monotony of Genship life. I made her an impossible promise over tears that dried in stiff tracks on my cheeks: I would get us both to the planet somehow.
That vow sat heavily in my pocket now, a small, nondescript cylinder typically used for injecting servo fluid. The empty interior was packed with precious ashes painstakingly stolen from Nan’s cremation, just before the launch of the tiny memorial pod containing the rest. That was against the laws, keeping remains of the departed, but I figured Nan wouldn’t mind my bending the rules a little for her. Reaching down and curling my fingers around the canister for strength, I straightened my spine and started down the long, debris-strewn corridor into the reception dome.