James fiddled with the fingers of his hazmat suit, feeling the thick rubber standing between his flesh and the world outside. The suit was bright orange, the visor flat and emotionless. The clean room was brightly lit and draped in sheets of white plastic. Very bland, though he supposed aesthetics were not strictly the point.

Underneath the plastic was living sandstone, the bowels of Eridu's hill. The complex had been blasted out by robotic workers even before the first shuttles had landed. By the time anyone was around to stumble upon it, the subterranean chambers had been nicely hidden behind facade of storm shelters. Graceful.

A quite sonata played in the recessed of his mind, echoing in a haunting but pleasant fashion. It helped to soothe his frayed nerves.

James, like everyone else on this godforsaken rock, was not adjusting well to the heightened gravity or the unnatural day-night cycle. He was drowsy, tired, barely able to stand at all. He was in no shape to be doing work. But here he was.

The work, at least for today, would be simple. Just setting up the sample, making sure it was properly sealed in, and watching it. Tomorrow would be the first of the tests. James made the music louder.

A woman, dressed in a bright blue hazmat suit, appeared in his visor. Wordlessly, she motioned for him to get up and follow. She moved to the back of the room, where a large airlock stood imposingly, gleaming in the artificial light. The triangular standard of the Exonavis Corporation was printed in the center of the airlock, looking as menacing and cold as it possibly could. As if by command, it began to open, swinging inward and revealing nothing but shadow.

James followed the woman in as the lights came on, revealing a thick containment vessel in the center of the room. It was empty. Surrounding it was an army of monitors and probes. The vents of an emergency incineration mechanism pockmarked the walls and ceiling. All this sat behind a darkened pane of glass.

James shuffled over to a nearby monitor and entered a code into the keypad. The monitor flashed at him and began spewing data feeds. Air pressure, temperature, composition and a hundred other numbers began to pour out, all of them meaningless, at least for the time being. In the corner of the screen was a video feed, showing the inside of the containment vessel. It was empty.

The sample was carried in by a robot. The containment apparatus opened to accept it, swinging agape like a jaw. Once its job was done, the robot retreated back from where it came to be destroyed.

The sample was unassuming, just a tiny brown rock, its edges jagged from when it was first collected, so many years ago. A few black growths were scattered across the surface. They could have easily been mineral impurities, shadows, maybe just soot.

The woman spoke for the first time. "You ready to get this thing started?"

"No," he chuckled, "but I'm going to do it anyway."

The containment vessel sealed shut, then began welding the seams. It looked like an egg, James thought. Most likely to keep it from cracking if the roof collapsed.

"Has it ever struck you how over the top this all is?" said the woman. "I mean, there's so many safeguards you'd think this thing was the end of the world."

"I think that's precisely the point."

"How do you figure?"

"From what I've heard, what we have before us is the apocalypse in a jar."

"But how? All I've seen it do is make oxygen into carbon dioxide."

"That's what we're here to find out."

The woman made as if to question him, then shook her head. "Hey, I never got your name. I'm Nadya, by the way, Nadya Shimata."

"James Masozi."

The remainder of the day was largely uneventful. The sample breathed at the same, minute rate, and seemed content to do nothing else. The environment within the containment vessel remained perfectly homeostatic, regulated obsessively by the automated sensors. Nothing happened.

"Well, I bet this'll be fun!" exclaimed Nadya, rolling her eyes.

"It might be," James replied.

"Sure. And we'll have a grand old time, watching this rock do nothing. Are you sure we can't leave until twenty hundred hours?"

"Quite sure. It won't be all that bad. Don't you have a chip you could distract yourself with?"

"Yeah, but I rarely use it. Too confusing."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it blurs the line between what you're actually seeing and what your brain is conjuring up. I don't like that, so I decided I'm probably better off without it."

"An interesting view, though I can't say I agree. I find the chip an extension of reality rather than its contender."

"You sound like you've thought about this a lot."

"I have. It's a worthy thing to think about."

Nadya looked at him questioningly and returned to her work. James followed suit. The remaining seven hours passed uneventfully. When twenty hundred finally came, Nadya breathed a sigh of relief and shut off her monitor.

"That'll be it for today. See you around."

She left in a hurry, leaving James alone with the containment vessel. He stared at it for a time, its evocative shape sending tiny thrills down his spine. The music, now a cheerful ballet, played in the distance.

When James finally left the chamber, Nadya was long gone, her suit hanging in the decontamination booth. He went through the arduous process of removing each component of his suit, and placing the assembly in the booth. He then went through the cleansing ultraviolet tunnel, felt the soft tingle of sterilization, and emerged into the clear, open air.

The sun rested atop the mountains, shimmering in the endless day's heat. The air was devoid of moisture, the wind streaming by with a cargo of dust behind it. The colony of Eridu was alive and well, if subdued and homesick, buzzing with the sound of wheels and voices. James turned and stared up the hill, at the flat, empty pane sky above. It steadily shifted from turquoise near the horizon to a dark violet at the zenith.

The moon was almost lost in the blush of the heavens. Its half-disk hovered directly above him, nothing but a silk cutout hanging above. A tiny, bright dot silently glided across the sky besides the quarter moon. He guessed correctly that it was the Facem, soaring in its orbit high above Gaea.

Space was a curious thing. It was one of the most hostile environments known, yet was defined by the lack of anything. Nothing was just as lethal as any weapon. But that empty brought with it silence, stillness. Nothing can ever happen without cause, and in space, entropy hardly even showed its ugly face. A spacecraft set on its course would continue to fly, its inertia unchanged, for nearly eternity. If anything, the more destructive environment was the toxic, corrosive mix of gases inside, and the short-lived flash of being that breathed it.

James found himself suddenly standing in front of his temporary shelter. Ducking his head below the plastic flap, he was welcomed with a mess of crates and paper, thrown haphazardly across the dirt floor. He sighed and knelt to begin picking it up.

"I think it's better that way."

James looked up to find Costanza standing in the middle of the tent, her hands swinging behind her back. "It's prettier when everything's messy."

"You're entitled to that opinion, but I think it's prettier when everything is clean and orderly."

Costanza nodded and began to pick up the papers with him. She put them in a thick stack on one of the crates and said, "I still think it was better all messy."

James replied, "And why is that?"

"Because that's just what I think."

"Fair. Just don't do it again unless I give you permission, okay?"

"I won't."

"How are you liking our new home, Costanza?"

"It's nice. A little dusty, but it's nice."

"Well, I'm glad one of us thinks that."

"Is something wrong, Dad?"

"Nothing important, nothing important. I'm just tired is all."

"You're always tired though."

James chuckled. "I guess that's right. No, I'll be fine, everything's fine."

They both listened to the sound of the wind humming outside. James turned off the cerebral symphony for the first time that day.

"What did you today, Dad? I was bored."

"Just my job. It's probably more boring than your day, I'm sure."

"I don't think so, but it's okay if you don't want to talk about it."

It was always difficult, thought James, to get anything past that girl. She always knew a lie when she heard one.

"I'll tell you about it then. Do you remember Lagos?"

"You told me it was where we lived on Earth, when I was two."

"That's right. When we lived there, I worked as a bioengineer for a big company. I would help make medicine for sick people. I came all the way here to do the same thing for the new colony."

"Make medicine?"

"More or less. They think there might be something new here, that we've never seen before. I might be able to use it to make people better."

"Oh. Is there anyone else in the world? Or is it just us, here?"

James took pause. "Why would you be thinking about that?"

"I don't see anything but the desert when I go outside. In the movies, there's always a plane in the sky, or a city far away. But I've never seen them."

"Why would that be a problem? If we're alone here?"

"I don't know. I just don't like it."

"It's not so bad. We have enough to eat and drink, and firm ground to walk on. It's better than the spaceship, isn't it?"

"I don't know," Costanza said again.

James took her in his arms and whispered, "Just don't worry. Can you promise me you won't worry?"

"Yes, Dad."

The night was bright and restless. Both James and Costanza could not find rest, resorting to medication after hours of vain attempts. When James woke up, it was with great difficulty. He was still dead tired, and immediately started blaring Bach's Magnificat into his head. Costanza was still asleep, silent in her cot. James left after setting out breakfast for her, not bothering to get any for himself.

The world outside his tent was exactly the same. The static nature of Gaea was something he found both calming and annoying. It made the place predictable and simple, while also taking away the cyclical rhythms of the world he had been raised in.

Nadya was already putting on her suit when he emerged into the research complex. He waved a silent greeting. She flashed a grin as she swung the visor down over her face, and James began the process himself.

The observation room was still, cut off from the rest of the universe. There was no sound, no rush of wind, not even the buzz of an air filtration system. The containment vessel was unchanged, sitting on the other side of the glass.

The first battery was scheduled for that night. The sample would be exposed to a wide variety of differing environments and closely monitored for changes in its metabolism. There were no hypotheses for what would happen, no inkling of what reaction the sample might have. James and Nadya were going in well and truly blind. James spoke into the small microphone near his screen, and began recording the video feed from inside the vessel.

"The first test is a radioactive bombardment test. The interior of the containment vessel is to be bathed in fifteen Sieverts of beta radiation over a ten-minute period. Test begins now."

"Enough to kill a grown man several times over. Seems a bit much for the first probe."

"We'll see."

They did. The sample barely reacted at all to the lethal barrage, experiencing only a slight decrease in oxygen consumption. By the end of the ten-minute exposure period, Nadya was laughing under her breath.

"Now I think I know why they're so afraid of this thing. It's basically indestructible!"

"I believe this is just the beginning." He continued recording. "The second test is a temperature test. The environment will be cooled to one hundred Kelvin, then heated to four hundred. The test will take place over twenty minutes. Test begins now."

The thermometer began to count down, faster and faster, plunging down toward zero. Frost appeared on the sides of the containment vessel. Eventually, the cooling stopped, hovering at around negative one hundred degrees Celsius.

The sample had stopped metabolizing entirely. The oxygen it breathed was still gaseous, but any exchange seemed to have frozen along with the water vapor.

"Good to know. We can freeze it," said Nadya.

The temperature then began to rise. Frost sagged and melted before flashing into steam and obscuring the sample in coils of thick vapor. At two hundred degrees, the steam was translucent and the stone sat, entirely unchanged. The sample's metabolism was now at a higher than normal rate.

"So, heat doesn't do anything to it."

"At least not at this level," said James, "The third test..."

And so the sample was put through trial after trial, cooked and choked and crushed. It soon became apparent to Nadya that it could recover from any environmental extreme, chugging along as if nothing had happened.

"What's the story on this thing?" she asked, awe tinging her voice.

"I heard that it's alien. It doesn't come from Earth."

"Wow. That might explain things a little."

"It would, yes. Tell me Nadya, what are your qualifications? I can't help but wonder why you've been assigned to this project."

"Wow, James, a bit harsh there. I've got a doctorate in microbiology, top of the pack over at John Hopkins. I think I can take this one."

"Very good. It's just that you seem like you haven't been exposed to the samples before."

"Have you?"

James took pause. "Yes."

"Well that makes us both a good choice for this project, doesn't it? Now let's stop chatting and get back to the tests."

By the time the last of the tests had ended, Nadya's amazement had mellowed into curiosity.

"What actually is it, though? Organic, or...?"

"It's heavy in metals, so I don't think it's organic. Maybe a machine."

"Huh. So someone built it."

"There's a chance of that, yes. It would be somewhat beautiful if this was the ruin of some ancient, star-faring civilization. An omen, almost."

"I guess that's one way to look at it, doc. Hey, I know this isn't on the list of tests, but I think we should give it something to eat."

"Excuse me?!"

"It's metabolizing, isn't it? Exchanging O2 for CO2. But where's the carbon coming from? I say we give it some glucose and come back tomorrow."

"Are you out of your mind? Why do you think the security in this place is so extreme? We're dealing with a dangerous substance!"

"What harm could possibly come from pouring some sugar on it?"

"I forbid it," said James, softly. He left the observation room stiff with rage.

His anger was mixed with fear. He'd heard the stories, seen the substance do its black work. He might have no idea what it was, but he knew no good could come of it.

It had taken Uyuma away from him.

For a time, he sobbed, lost in sorrow, and it never occurred to him to wonder why Nadya had not yet left the observation room.

He could still feel her breath on his face as she bled out in his arm, the gash in her abdomen too big for hope. They said it was little more than an accident, a breach of protocol that went south. The thing killed a dozen men and women before it could be frozen. Uyuma was so close to escaping, so close, but not close enough. It was a horror, primal and insane, let loose on innocents. At least it was far away from them now. At least now, all that it could hurt were these pitiful few, himself among them.

And Costanza.

When finally he ducked underneath the storm shelter's door and emerged into the sweltering air of Gaea, the tears were dry and symphony was as loud as it had ever been.