Mission Day: 160565

Gestation 7, Adam: 26 years, 75 days

Gestation 12, Eve: 24 years, 162 days

Adam floated out of the access tube and into the observation dome. His toes caught and held the bar, arresting his movement. He’d prepared their meal this day so had arrived later than otherwise. Usually, this meant Eve would be anticipating his arrival and would be ready to take his hand.

This day, she did not. Neither was she reading — unusual, but not unique. Rather than being in her typical relaxed ball, she was stretched tall. Her arms were outstretched as if she were about to maneuver to the access tunnel, but she was faced away from him. She remained stationary at the center of the dome. Her tablet floated close to Adam, far from her reach. That was unique; she would not leave it behind.

Consciously, Adam’s mind did not assemble these separate facts, but he innately knew she felt troubled.

Rather than announcing himself, he loosed his toes and gently flicked them atop the bar. He glided slowly toward her. As he approached below and behind her, he stretched out his hands and gently brushed them along her thighs as he floated along her body. He expected a reaction, a twitch or slight startle, but got none. As his hands reached her waist, he gripped slightly. His movement along her body slowed and together they began moving slightly toward the far end of the dome.

He pulled her against his body and wrapped his arms around her waist. He turned his head, buried it in the cloud of her wispy blonde hair, and laid his cheek against the crest of her head. He felt her body relax throughout, and she curled into her familiar ball. He spooned against her and enjoyed the warmth of her skin.

After several minutes, Adam asked, “Are you troubled?”

For several moments, she did not reply, and Adam enjoyed her comfort —not certain she would reply.

“I never tire of looking at it,” Eve answered. She placed her hands on his and held them tightly against her belly.

In the expansive view of the observation dome, Colony World filled nearly half the vastness of the heavens around them.

“How long has it been?” she asked.

Adam breathed in the aroma of her hair. They both knew the answer well and both knew she wanted to hear it. “A little more than two years.”

Eve seldom expressed any interest in studying Colony World. This puzzled Adam. He was most surprised when she had been pleasant about and embraced Alpha’s decision to abandon colonization. Without the full compliment of colonists, it was far too risky to attempt. The dangers below could take one life too quickly, leaving the other alone. Pregnancy and child birth were similarly too risky. They’d fallen into orbit around Colony World and would remain there the remainder of their lives.

At the times when Eve did show interest in Colony World, it was deeply poignant for her, almost melancholy. When Adam sought to understand her feelings, to discuss them, she’d always rebuff him. He’d stopped trying and simply comforted her while waiting for such moments to pass.

She began to stir, so he released his embrace on her waist and pushed very gently from her. As he drifted out of the halo of her hair, he looked where she looked — the immensity of Colony World.

Direct light from the enormous yellow star, as well as its light reflected from the planet below, filled the observation dome and brightened their bodies. It always did this in cycles of almost two hours. For about an hour, the ship lighted in the star’s brilliance. Then for nearly the same amount of time, it dipped into the planet’s shadow, sending them back into the starry darkness that had been so familiar.

There was also a depth of silence new to them. The entirety of their lives, the engine’s gentle, constant, hum reverberated softly through the ship until they’d arrived. Now it was silent. They had not known its presence until they knew its absence. Yet new sounds had replaced that hum. From sunny day to darkest night, from radiant heat to abyssal cold, a dozen times a day the ship circled the world below. Stretching in the heat, guarding in the cold, the ship’s metal and composite skin flexed. At first, the groans and bangs would unnerve them both, wake one suddenly in the night, bring them together for comfort. But now the creaking body was as silent to them as the thrust before.

Had Adam not studied the continental outlines of Homeworld and Colony World, it would have been difficult to know which planet they orbited. In his study of science and ethics, he had come to understand the imperative of bridging the gulf of space from one world to another, but in hindsight he’d decided it had been unethical to launch sentient creatures into space on a colonization mission — without their consent and at great risk. Clearly the risk had been realized. He and Eve survived as castaways; the remainder of his fellow colonists would remain frozen forever, never quite dead and unable to be born. It unnerved him to think of those inanimate men and women sharing the ship with the two of them.

The heavens hadn’t changed during their journey; now it did. It filled Adam with excitement and wonder to see the view from the dome continually different. Not only did the planet below alter its face every moment, but even when they were in the planet’s dark shadows, they could follow the paths of planets that orbited the majestic star and gaze through the telescope at their feature-rich surfaces.

He could see and sense that Eve too was deeply moved, but in a different way he did not understand.

“I baked some muffins,” he offered.

“I can smell them,” she answered excitedly. With a twirl of her arms, she spun around to face him. With another twirl of her arms, her body stopped, though her hair did not. It wrapped about her face, so that only a happy cheshire grin showed through. He did not see the teary eyes beneath.

She reached out with her palm down.He placed his hand around her wrist and pulled, as if to throw her to the apex of the dome.With a firm grip on his wrist, Eve turned her body around, feet toward the the apex.Adam then pulled gently in the opposite direction, sending her gliding, head first, toward the access tunnel and himself to the dome’s apex.

Adam spun, planted his feet on the dome’s surface, then bounced to follow behind the woman he loved.

As Eve’s feet passed into the tunnel, the crab-like incarnation followed faithfully behind, and Adam followed afterward.

• • •

“My experiment is ready,” Eve announced from across the farm they regularly tended.

Adam stood up. For weeks, Eve had asked him to stay away from a particular corner of the farm. She knew she could trust him to follow her wishes. However, a couple of weeks into the experiment, she fashioned a low wall. She did not want even an accidental glance to lessen the impact of the surprise she’d planned.

The time had come, Adam realized, for the great reveal.

Eve sauntered toward him, expertly stepping through the furrows of their crops. Years of cultivating, planting, tending, and harvesting their crops left her with the innate sense to protect them and to not step carelessly.

She held her left hand behind her back as she walked.

Adam was truly perplexed. Every form of plant they had available, he had personally tended. What she was doing back there, he could not guess. They had never seen an animal, and they’d talked about them often. He’d wondered, against reason, if she had somehow created an animal. Was there a genesis chamber for animals on the ship? Was she now husbanding one in the corner of their farm? But he’d heard no sounds from behind the makeshift wall. Nor could he imagine how she could have accomplished such a feat.

She walked teasingly close to him. He expected to catch a brush of her skin against his, but didn’t. She stood so close, he could feel her presence. Being a half-head shorter than Adam she looked up and into his eyes.

“So,” she said. He caught the scent of her breath, could feel it against his chin and on his neck. “The question is whether or not I make you eat them with your eyes open or closed.”

“I really would much prefer to see what you’ve been doing,” he replied a little fearful. He’d expected that whatever she was doing, wether it was an animal that needed butchering — something neither one of them had ever done — or a hybridized crop, there would be some preparation involved. He didn’t expect she’d straightaway stuff it directly into his mouth.

“Oh, you really can be too practical; don’t you want to be a little adventurous?” she teased as she took a couple of steps back.

She swung her arm around, careful to keep her palm upward and not spill nor crush the three red objects that lay cradled in her cupped hand.

Adam regarded them with disgust. A look of horror flashed onto his face. They were unlike anything he’d ever seen. They were bright red, like blood, and were triangular shaped — plump at the base of the triangle and growing skinnier toward the opposite apex. They looked very much like three chambered hearts. Involuntarily, he took a step back.

“Are those … chicken hearts?” he asked with horror projecting off his face and into his voice.

Eve looked at him, completely dumbfounded … then perplexed … then amused. And then her whole torso began convulsing, as giggles worked their way loose. And then she broke out in riotous laughter.

“Chicken hearts?!!” she burst out between laughs, “Is that what you thought I was doing back there?!!” Her laughter calmed to a chuckle. “Nesting on chicken eggs like some kind of hen?” She burst out with a guffaw. “And ripping out their hearts to conjure a fairy tale curse?

“Just for being so absurd,” she plucked one out of her palm, “you lose the privilege of having the first taste.” And with that, she popped one into her mouth and chewed it up.

“Oohhhh!” she exclaimed, “That is soooo good. I should have planted more!”

Eve closed the distance between them with three step, while plucking the second from her hand. She did not tease this time. She pressed her torso against his and leaned into him. Looking up at him, she held the object before him momentarily. He could see it was not a heart of any class of aves. Indeed, not a class of any animal.

She pressed it against his lips. He kept his mouth closed.

“Simple boy,” she chided him, “open your mouth, or I’ll be mad at you.” She occasionally referred to him as boy, when the occasion, such as this, warranted it. It was her diminutive term for his weaker moments.

Slowly, he opened his mouth.

She waited until his teeth were open wide enough to fit it whole, then popped it in. She grabbed his jaw between her fingers and thumb and slammed it shut. Silently, she hoped he didn’t bite his tongue.

Adam chewed a few of times. It was very wet. He didn’t recognize the familiar taste of blood, his own blood anyway, but instead found it rather sweet. Not committed to chewing it up and swallowing it, and knowing better than the spit it into his hand, he asked around the mouthful, “Whaw dis id?”

“It’s a strawberry, fragaria ananassa,” She stepped back, tossed the last one into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then folded her arms under her breasts. “Well? What do you think?”

He started chewing again, more enthusiastically, then swallowed the delectable fruit.

“Where did you get strawberry seeds?”

“You think I’ve been synthesizing mute, paraplegic chickens out of dust over there, and you’re wondering where I got seeds? Really, Adam … you’re not making much sense.”

“Eve, I’m sorry,” Adam said while he put his hands on her hips, looked into her eyes, and smiled. “It is delicious, fantastic. I hope you will plant more. But really, where did you get them? It’s not like you walked into town.”

She looked up and smiled at him, and he knew he’d been forgiven for ruining the surprise she’d so carefully prepared.

“Come,” she said. She turned in his hands, which slid around her body before she stepped out of them.

He followed her to her secret corner.

“See,” she indicated with open arms toward her crops. There were six plants, and easily a couple dozen ripe strawberries with many others ripening.

“That’s amazing,” was all Adam could say. He didn’t notice his mouth watering.

“The landing craft,” Eve began, “has many supplies to support the colony through their first year as well as everything they need to farm, fish, and even hunt. During my lessons, I asked Alpha about the supplies. Now that we’re not going to colonize, Alpha let me dig into them and see what I can find. This looked the most interesting. I took a packet to see if the seeds on the craft were still viable … and voilà! Strawberries!”

“That’s amazing,” Adam replied, still looking at the plants and their red fruit, “What else is in there?”

“All kinds of stuff,” she answered enthusiastically, “Now that I know they’re good, I think we should open one of our other farms and experiment with the additional varieties of foods in the landing craft.”

“There’s got to be some kind of inventory,” Adam said, “Alpha, copy the landing craft’s inventory to our tablets.”

“I am unable to comply, Adam,” the speaker in the farm announced, “I do not have the landing craft inventory.”

“I already tried that,” Eve added. “There is a separate synthetic — well not really a synthetic; it’s just a computer — on the landing craft, but I haven’t turned it on. The craft is powered by batteries. Those need to be activated before the computer can be started. And once activated, they have a very limited life. Alpha would like us to interface it to the computer, so that it can transfer all the data over before the batteries die. I know you’ve learned a lot about these systems. I was hoping you could find a way to do it.”