Starman Chapter Sixteen.

I have nothing to say except that normal service will be resumed next week. And that I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m not a biochemist and my biology education stopped age 16 so forgive any inaccuracies. I have tried to use inclusive language gender-wise.

I also owe nods to both Terry Pratchett and The Walking Dead. And probably a whole host of other things since I am a total hoor for horror and science fiction and the combination of the two.

Warnings for murder, gore, blood, human experimentation, vast discussions of pregnancy and conception, miscarriage, religion, a mention of religious based transphobia and bioessentialism, periods, sperm (but not in a sexy way), non specific mention of rape, suicide.

Word count: 7.8k

Starman

Chapter Sixteen

Professor Caoimhe Alarie

“I don’t…I don’t really know what to say. A lifetime of presentations and speeches and demonstrations, but I can never seem to find the right words for my own private journal. Why to make one at all? I suppose its another tentative reach of hope - that one day future generations will look back on these recordings and at least begin to have an understanding of where they came from. Or perhaps it is arrogance and sheer hubris that makes me think that there will be future generations at all. Who can know? We are so close, so close in so many ways, and yet on days like today I fear that we are still as far from a solution as we have ever been.

This vessel is both a refuge and a dream. An ark, as Caleb so quaintly puts it. He had to explain the reference to us all. I still don’t understand why he delves so deeply into those old philosophical texts, but if that is what brings him comfort during this madness then who am I to judge? Our many gardens are fruitful and the horizons bright - scans show a system mere months away that looks extremely promising. There is one large moon in particular where all signs point to functioning biosystems that we can integrate with. Its associated planet is less hospitable, but terraforming should be possible once we have established ourselves more fully. I just hope that we can land safely and decant in peace. The children that have been born thus far are as happy and healthy as one can expect given that they have never experienced anything other than artificial gravity. They play and learn and we are instilling the importance of our mission and their parts in it. I myself try to devote some time to teaching them. Not biochemistry oddly enough, but languages - I am the only Irish speaker on board, and along with Mssr. Durand I ensure that they know their French too! I want the children to be exposed to as much of the culture of where we came from as possible. I am not alone in this desire, and we are very lucky to have such a diverse team. The children are also picking up Japanese, Igbo, Finnish, Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish from some of the others on board. This too is a kind of preservation.

One of the nurseries is already full again - the shorter gestation experiment seems to have been an overall success, though the rate of parental mortality was unacceptably high in my opinion. Perhaps if we fall back on attempting replication of those results in the Genetic And In-Vitro Alteration tanks only we could save more lives. Though I am aware of a division growing amongst those who were grown in utero and those who came from GAIA. We cannot afford this rift. When we land, we must work together if we are to survive. If we cannot, perhaps we really have learned nothing from this mission. Perhaps we deserve-

No, I cannot think that way. Of everyone on board this ship, I cannot think that way. I desperately wish we could have retained communications with the other…arks…out there. Impossible of course. The whole point of them, of us, is to spread as far through the galaxy as possible. To give us the best chance of survival. But it hurts…the emptiness of simply not knowing how they have fared. And of the certainty that we shall never know of their fate.

The next nurseries have been prepared and are ready to receive, but I fear the consequences of these experiments. The smaller children…the idea was to make it easier for them to pass through the birth canal. After all, when we begin to terraform on a wider scale we may not have the luxury of medically assisted births. We must make it as easy as possible for people to give birth without intervention. I hope these children will not be too small that they cannot survive independently. We have their incubators on standby of course, but given that we are to land on a potentially hostile landscape very shortly…we will need all able bodies, all resources to make that happen and establish ourselves. They need to be strong enough by then. Those who were implanted with multiple embryos worry me even more. If a person can produce several children at once, then of course that is preferable to multiple people with multiple gestation periods for a child that may not even survive in the end. The odds are more favourable to us if there are, for example, five or six in utero. But the cost to the parental body…the labour intensive nature of raising that many helpless infants all at once. Again, we have the luxury of being able to do that here, but what about out there? How can one person survive two or three or four at once? At the moment, bodies are not well designed for such things. Perhaps we should revisit some of the discarded ideas once more…

Every time we make progress I feel like our destiny branches - granting a multitude of possibilities, but with oh so many that bring us closer to regression. We barely escaped our home in time - our environment saturated with poison to such a degree that it had irrevocably changed us as a species. Millions of years of evolution halted in the face of greed and carelessness and lack of foresight. While we were busy trying to clear the floating rubbish that had piled en masse on the land and in the oceans we had already ingested too many plastic particles, too much of the detritus of industry. We fled because we had soiled our habitat to the point that our bodies were permanently chemically altered - our eons old reproductive method of flinging genetic material at each other and hoping it took root no longer viable, natural pregnancy and birth a true rarity. The crisis was so long in the making, and the solution so quick in the execution. I feel for those left behind and I hold out hope, however desperate and futile it may be, that they too find a way to survive.”

Caoimhe hesitated and then stopped recording. All of her journal entries ended the same way. Much as she tried to keep to updates of how the mission was proceeding, how the experiments were progressing, she always, always came back to that anxiety, that hollow feeling of guilt that had pursued her across the galaxy deep into unknown space.

Logically, she knew that there had been little other choice. She was one of the finest scientific minds they had, one of a very few candidates to lead one of the population expansion missions. The hope was that they would scatter themselves among the stars like dandelion seeds, the ships that contained them serving both as pappus and achene, once they found suitable ground to land upon. But they had left so many behind. So many precious lives. The testing and harvesting had taken nigh on two decades. Twenty years to sort the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats - idioms Caleb had so “helpfully” supplied from his religious texts. It had been on a purely voluntary basis, though that was of scant comfort to her now, and those who had donated their eggs and sperm had been well compensated, less generously if it emerged that they were unsuitable candidates for the programme. Caoimhe had been angry at the transactional nature of what had occurred, even as she understood the necessity of it. Even then at the eleventh hour when the crisis was far too large to ignore any longer, money had been the primary motivator for most to act. The chance of salvation, however slim, had been the other. There was only a very finite amount of room on each ship. Storing genetic samples was far less consuming than hosting fully grown people. But they had to take some. After all, if they had merely wanted to replicate humans they could have cloned themselves a billion times over. That wasn’t the objective, though it was still the very last failsafe that they had. Collectively it had been agreed that they wanted to fix what they had broken if at all possible, to be able to reproduce as most mammals do. There had been riots when the populace had figured out what was happening. Cities, governments all burned away in the face of impotent rage and fear. But by that time the chosen fertile few had already been in orbit, surreptitiously ferried up to the stations over months and years, barely a goodbye said to their cradle of life as it fell into chaos and flame below them.

Of course, some had believed that the answer was to give up, to accept the fate coming to them. Extinction - no longer slow and drawn out but imminent and real. Caoimhe couldn’t truly accept that, though. The ever searching, ever questioning scientist in her wouldn’t allow it. The cracking of the human genome had been the first tentative step on the road to manipulating the human genome and that opened up so many possibilities to explore. So much potential for their future. When it had first come about some wild and eccentric experiments had occurred in telepathy, precognition, heightened extrasensory perception, some even decided to see if they could emulate cephalopods and change their outward colours to match their environment or inner emotions. This had been before the true horror of their looming demise had been clear, when some had seen the marketing potential for such things and dreamt of selling superhuman powers to the highest bidder. All else had been put on the back burner eventually, the only priority to perpetuate instead. Those experiments seemed…fanciful now. A relic of a bygone era when whimsy was still to be indulged.

Caoimhe rose from her chair and stretched, pain tinged relief rippling through her as bones finally crackled into their proper position again after hours of being hunched in an unnatural position over her desk. She couldn’t sit here and ruminate all day. She needed to check the nurseries and check in with Caleb. He was responsible for their plant life , every bit as precious as the human for obvious reasons. She had been calling most of the shots on this mission thus far, but had made a point of working closely with him as much as possible. Once they had found their home, his expertise would come to the fore as they began the process of actually bedding in and surviving wherever it was they would end up. She didn’t agree with a lot of what he found fascinating or relevant within his ancient holy books, but then again she understood the need to cling to something - especially something of the old world. As long as it didn’t interfere with the work, she could put up with his eccentricities. She sighed heavily at the anticipation of the stretch of work ahead and exited her tiny personal room.

*** *** ***

“Professor Alarie!”

Caoimhe heard her name hissed softly through the velvet dark of the night. Her brain was slow to react, rising through sleep into wakefulness far too slowly for the liking of whomever was trying to get her attention.

“Professor! Professor Alarie! Caoimhe!!!”

It was one of the lab techs, she realised as she blearily dragged herself from her horizontal position to sit on the edge of her bunk. What was his name? Doug? Don? “I’m awake,” she replied, her voice a little hoarse from dehydration.

“He’s losing the child,” came the panicked tone and at that Caoimhe was now fully awake. Fuck. She dragged her clothes on and flung the door open, chasing the young man who was already halfway down the sterile white corridor and heading toward the surgical ward.

They had landed on the habitable moon three weeks ago and were prepping to make their first tentative steps out onto that world. Scans had shown bird and insect life, but no large land or marine creatures that might pose a threat to their safety. Both she and Caleb had agreed to take it slow - better to sit tight within the walls of their ship for a while and make absolutely sure they weren’t going to be paid a visit by something or someone that they couldn’t handle. Some were finding the pressure hard to take - after so many years in space, they were desperate to find a home, somewhere to set down, breathe non-recycled air, walk on real dirt. The FTL drives had enabled them to skip across the galaxy of course, had negated the need for cryostasis while ensuring that the on board community could continue to work toward their goal. Even so, it had been a long time since they had come across any kind of potential place to live and the mood on board was tense, uneasy. The feeling of a knife edge permeated everything.

Caoimhe had hoped that some more successful live births might well raise the spirits of all, remind them of the much larger stakes than their own personal comforts. Several of those without natural uteruses had volunteered to try to bring babies to term in simulated wombs that had been surgically implanted within them, hoping to take the pressure off everyone else, to be more than living storage for sperm. The well documented and seemingly irreversible degradation of the Y chromosome appeared to interfere with these simulated uteruses however, and the weakness of the Y spermatozoa in comparison with X spermatozoa seemed to provide some insight in to why those bodies could not support life as well as others. But there was no time anymore, no time to investigate and experiment and find out exactly why there was such a high rate of failure to try to fix it. Caleb tried to quote some idiocy from his texts at her - something about certain bodies being “designed” for certain purposes. All nonsense of course. Biology was a messy thing and could rarely be viewed in such black and white terms. But whatever the outcome of tonight, she would put a stop to this particular branch of research. They had lost two foetuses and one parent and they simply could not afford to lose anyone else. Besides, medical intervention was usually a necessity in these cases. And they needed to move away from that avenue. She had hoped for a few more healthy children before she called time, but it couldn’t be helped.

She washed her hands, shoved a surgical gown over her clothes, put a mask and gloves on and entered the theatre.

*** *** ***

“Well…um. I don’t know what to say. Again. These…these past few weeks have been incredible in many ways. And heartbreaking in others. We managed to save the child. Barely. She was born at twenty eight weeks. A true twenty eight weeks, not via accelerated growth. She has been doing well since. He did not survive. We had to make a choice. And he insisted we choose his daughter. It was the right thing to do, I know that. And we have stored his organs and his blood and his sperm. He will live on and will assist others through his passing. But still the guilt is relentless. How much more death must we witness to perpetuate life? It seems the height of cruelty.

But on to brighter subjects. Most of the multiple births have gone extremely well. A total of thirty four infants were born to eight adults. We only lost two babies. Heartbreaking though it is, that ratio gives me hope. The smaller children are doing well too. Twelve from twelve and only four incubators needed. They are sturdy and healthy, which is what matters. Next…I have some ideas. I went back to the very start of my research, the earliest concepts I drew up. Some are ethically questionable, some medically improbable, but some…some might just work. I am interested in making conception itself easier. Perhaps through manipulation of menstrual cycles - regularly allowing more than one egg to be released at a time, or perhaps shortening the cycle so that eggs are released more frequently - although frankly I am loath to make that particular ordeal any more unpleasant if it can be avoided.

Which brings me on to the male refractory period. Why have one at all? If the need for that could be removed, wouldn’t the chances of conception be greater, even if the sperm was somewhat degraded? I will need to do some research into this. But the test subjects we brought were all chosen precisely for their child making and bearing potentials, so the chances of their ejaculate being of poor quality is low. I wonder if any of the technicians would volunteer. After all, it hardly seems a terrible gift to bestow…but human trials would be quite a time away and I would need to put this forward to the others on board to hear their thoughts. We cannot start down unethical paths so soon after landing on our new home.

And what a home! The other delight of the past couple of weeks. The moon is lush, temperate, seemingly perfect for us. There are several large freshwater lakes. We have tested the waters repeatedly, filtered and boiled and distilled to make it as safe as possible. When we drink it, there is a tang of something…something distinct. It doesn’t taste like any water we have ever known. There is a tiny hint of…well, it tastes to me like eucalyptus. It is quite delicious. Perhaps its just because I am finally drinking something that hasn’t already passed through hundreds of kidneys! We have been drinking this water for a week with no ill effects. I am daring to hope once again.

We still do not go outside without full environmental suits and helmets on. All scans point to breathable air - the composition percentages slightly off what we are used to, but nothing that will cause us harm. Deconstruction of the outer parts of the ship has now begun. The hold was made overly large for this very purpose. Now we have arrived, we have begun to transform it into the hub of a habitation area. It will connect first to some sleeping quarters for those who are working on construction, then our galley and then to the hydroponics bays, arboretum and plant nurseries. The arboretum seems almost redundant. The trees here are enormous - beautiful. Trunks metres across, yellow and green leaves far above, thick, twisted branches all the way down. They look so inviting, like we should be climbing them. The primal, genetical call of our distant ancestors across time. And while I keep referring to "we”, I personally have not explored, merely viewed the footage taken by others and observed what I can through the viewports. My work keeps me firmly tied to the labs and surgical wards right now, and neither of those will be moving from the core structure of the ship any time soon. I do envy those who can go out. I will have to earn that particular luxury. But my time will come.

The GAIA tanks are almost ready to be decanted. I debated simulating a navel with the next batch, in an attempt to further integration. If they can’t tell who was grown in the tank and who was grown in the womb, perhaps there will be less tension on board. Personally, I find the scars on their backs quite beautiful. They’re all non - functional marks anyway. Who cares what they look like? People get hung up on the most inane things.“

*** *** ***

"It has been several months since my last entry. Work has been frantic, unceasing. When I am not in the lab I am in the galley and when I am not in the galley I am sleeping, though those occasions seem to be few and far between. I have not had a breath to think of anything else except what must be done. I presented my idea for the refractory experiment to the other scientists on board and they too saw the potential that I had. We worked tirelessly and very shortly the mice we experimented on were able to survive the physical change. Admittedly we rushed human trials, as everything is rushed now. We um…well I hadn’t counted on the psychological effects of such a change.”

Caoimhe halted, shook her head at the horrific memory of what had transpired.

“The first volunteer…he…he went insane. His desire took over and he…killed himself in the end. He couldn’t switch it off, it was as if because he could continue he had to, regardless of how exhausted he was. Or how willing his partners were. We isolated him for his crimes. This isn’t a prison ship, we had nowhere truly suitable. We thought he would calm, that we could give him drugs, therapy, something to rein him back. But by the time we came to see him the next morning he had torn strips from his bedding and-”

She ran a shaking hand over her tired, puffy eyes and swallowed thickly before continuing her voice low and defeated.

“They dismissed my other ideas out of hand and called an immediate halt to the experiment. But I know it has merit. If I can just tweak it in the mice, I know we can make it work. There are so few unmitigated successes in Science. Surely they must know that. I just need time. More time. And then, when I am successful perhaps they will revisit my other ideas. I must go…I must get back to it. I can feel it begin to consume my mind. Obsession is knocking. Perhaps I will take a trip outside soon. Just to have a break from those cold, white walls and glaring lights. In fact-”

She broke off again and sat, pensive. When was the last time she had been in any other part of the ship? Was there even a ship anymore? How were the habitation sections coming along? She hadn’t even seen Caleb for…days? Maybe weeks. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the bleary fog of weariness and the seesaw feelings of hope tipping into despair tipping into hope. She needed a break. And she was going to get it.

*** *** ***

“Caoimhe, I’m so glad you could join us!” Caleb’s soft voice cut through musings she didn’t even realise she was dwelling upon as she approached the locker room next to the airlock.

“Join you?” she asked, perplexed. Caleb’s smile faltered to a frown as he took in her slightly disheveled state and her quizzical, not-entirely-present look.

“We are going out for a little botany jaunt,” he said gently. “Everyone who wants to come is welcome. Many have been outside and returned unharmed and we are finally satisfied that the atmosphere is breathable and there are no lurking surprises out there fauna wise. Environmental suits are still necessary, but you don’t have to wear a helmet. I er…I messaged you about it. Several times. You haven’t responded to any of my missives for a while.”

“I’m sorry Caleb,” she said sincerely. “I was so caught up in this latest round of trials that I forgot…well…everything else. I decided to come out today because I feel that my focus is tipping into an unhealthiness of mind. I need a break.”

Caleb nodded, relief visible in his eyes. “That’s good,” he replied, his tone soothing. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I heard about what happened. I just want you to know that no one blames you. You are under such pressure and these things can never be so precise…its why we conduct tests and experiments after all. At least we know it not to be a viable avenue. We can move on from it.”

A flare of anger surged in her chest at his words and at the tone she now felt was patronising in the extreme. What could he possibly know about her work? Or how much pressure she was under? He who grubbed in the dirt day after day while she was trying to save an entire species? She suddenly saw the afternoon stretch ahead of her - Caleb bleating about his philosophy, about how God had blessed them with such a place…what had he taken to calling it? Eden? Elan? Something he had picked up anyway. They would walk and he would want her to talk about what she was working on and want to talk about what he was working on and the dozens of people out with them would all be exclaiming over the place and making noise…Caoimhe could feel the beginnings of a headache just at the imagining of it all and her energy left her at precisely the same time as her enthusiasm for this walk. She wanted to be alone. She would go out when the shine had begun to wear off for everyone, when she could be at peace out there. Until then…well it wasn’t as though she didn’t have enough to do.

Caleb had continued to talk when she had not and she broke into his speech, not caring how rude it was.

“I’m sorry Caleb, but I feel a little unwell,” she announced. “I will defer this time. But I will go out very soon. I just…I need to lie down.”

She vaguely thought she heard Caleb try to say something as she departed, but by that time Caoimhe was back in the well of her mind, her thoughts already turning to the myriad of problems they faced.

*** *** ***

It started slowly, an insidious oozing. Seeping that began to saturate. Trivial arguments that should have been resolved and forgotten about. Clashes in personality that had previously been amicable enough and now seemed insurmountable. Long term partners suddenly separating, citing irreconcilable differences and moving into different spheres of the habitat. Lively chatter and laughter replaced first with sullen silence and then angry words. The cloud settled upon the settlement and no one realised the mistake that had been made until it was far too late.

Certainly not Caoimhe. After her interaction with Caleb she had locked herself away again in her lab, this time bringing a supply of ration bars, water, and setting up a makeshift bed within the rooms so she could throw herself into her work ever more intensely. A part of her realised that she was in too deep, that she should try to find her way back to others, but the greater part was still grieving the loss of her lab tech volunteer. She had done that to him. And she owed him and everyone else to put it right.

Besides, she knew there could be a breakthrough, they were so close, she could almost taste the victory…She spent most of her time with her headphones on and laptop close, blocking out the audible and visual of everything except her tasks. Those few times a message notification flicked up she ignored it. Ignored too the multiple missed call notifications that appeared one day after she had fallen asleep in front of the screen, headphones blaring the soothing sounds of long-dead oceans into her mind. If they really need me, they’ll call back.Or come to visit, she rationalised as she returned to her projects.

When she finally surfaced back to her surroundings it was only because she realised she had run out of water. She glanced at the date on her computer and was shocked to discover that she had closeted herself for eight whole days. She stood, her legs protesting at their lack of proper exercise. It was definitely time to step outside of the lab again. She had made excellent progress, but her mind was beginning to falter and she needed a change of scenery. She briefly wondered why she had received no visitors in that whole time - no Caleb, no lab techs, no happy parents with newborns - but she quickly realised that they must have thought her upset, sulking over her failure. The fact that she had ignored all attempts at contact couldn’t have helped, nor had the way she had been so dismissive of Caleb the last time she had seen him. Shame flooded her as she realised that she owed him an apology. He had always been her friend, despite their differences. He hadn’t deserved being brushed off that way.

The door to her lab opened with a sprightly tone as it always did and Caoimhe halted in the face of something peculiar. A gurney had been pushed up against her door. She peered out into the corridor, first one way and then the other. There seemed to be nothing else out of place. She pushed it gently out of the way, over to the opposite wall. Someone’s idea of a prank maybe? There wasn’t a whole lot of room down this corridor though, and it would have taken someone unnecessary effort to get it there from the surgical ward. And it was a poor prank at best. Her door slid open sideways, there was no chance of either it or her colliding with the gurney. She set off down the corridor toward the hydroponic bay, a tickle of unsettled feeling at the back of her skull.

That tickle became a trickle down her spine and into her gut as she progressed. Something was definitely wrong. Where was everyone? Why was it so quiet? She passed a viewport without really seeing what was beyond as her mind ticked over, then she froze and very slowly walked backward to look through it, her eyes wide in shock. Parts of the cannibalised cargo hold were still recognisable. Work had apparently progressed well, and several branching corridors had been constructed from that main atrium - five that she could see. Only two of those ended in actual rooms. Two were still open ended, coming out into the lushness of the moon itself. One led into a partially completed room and it was this that had caught her attention. It was like a stage play, a sliver of incongruous modernity and soulless technology against a backdrop of verdant, green, overwhelming natural life. A tiny opening into a different world, inviting her to observe a moment frozen in time.

The endless sterile white that she had come to expect, and she now realised took for granted, was sullied. Heavy sprays of black that she knew had once been red decorated the walls like an abominable Rorschach test - one where death was all that could be deduced. Three bodies lay heavy and unmoving on the floor, the breeze softly rippling through hair and clothing. One still clutched a welding tool, the stain at the tip clearly visible against the (mostly) white of the tiling even a hundred metres away as she was. She couldn’t tear her eyes away, and the more she looked the more she saw. There a hammer, a puddle of gore surrounding it incriminatingly. There a table turned on to its side, presumably an attempt at defence given how battered and bloody the top of it was. There an arm, apparently ripped from its socket and flung clean across the room, though she could clearly see it was extraneous, given that all three bodies already had a full complement of limbs…

She gasped, air unable to fill her lungs, bile rising heavily through her gullet, dry mouth, pounding head…she bent over and retched, the small amount of rations consumed hours before coming back up to stain this pristine floor too. When she straightened, she realised she was no longer alone. Caleb was ahead of her in the corridor, watching her as she might observe a vaguely interesting yet not unexpected chemical reaction. He had an extremely large, extremely sharp pair of shears in his hand. Caoimhe’s eyes flicked from them to his face and back again. She felt as if she were frozen to the spot, waiting for him to make the first move, for him to dictate if the moment would descend into a madness of the sort she suspected had occurred out there.

“Caoimhe.” His voice was hoarse, as though he had been silent for too long. Or screaming came a distinctly unhelpful voice in the back of her mind. “At last.”

“What’s happened, Caleb?” she asked, her voice soft with fear and sorrow.

He laughed, and it wasn’t his usual bird like trill. It was deeper, less free, more knowing. “What indeed? And where have you been throughout might be a more pressing question.” He advanced a few steps and she retreated in kind. He hesitated and then looked down at the shears in his hand, seeming to notice them for the first time. A succession of emotion passed over his face - surprise, sadness, fatigue and finally determination as he looked back up at her. “Where have you been, Caoimhe?” he asked again, his voice now low and menacing.

“I was…In…In my lab,” she mananged to stammer out, still shuffling backward in increments she hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“Your lab,” he echoed flatly. “Your lab?! And you didn’t notice anything?”

“Notice what? Caleb, please. You’re scaring me!”

“Where. Were. You?” he asked again, advancing further.

“In my lab! I told you! I was…I was working on the refractory problem. We were so close…I thought If I could just try again-”

“You didn’t hear the running? The screaming? The attempts at communication? Is that what you’re expecting me to believe Caoimhe?”

“Yes! Goddamnit Caleb, yes!” she yelled, desperately. “I was in there for over a week! Listening to notes and music, typing, conducting tests…I lost track of everything. You know how it is when you get hold of something like that, its as if the rest of the world fades! I spoke with you that day about going outside and then I grabbed supplies and I locked myself away. And when I got out today someone had wedged a gurney against my door and I’m seeing DEAD BODIES outside and your behaviour is quite frankly alarming and I don’t understand!” She stood there, chest heaving, her eyes desperately searching Caleb’s face for a single clue - either about what had occurred or about what his next move would be.

He stared at her for several seconds then seemed to wilt, semi collapsing against the wall, the shears still clutched in his hand and his head bowed. “Going outside,” he mumbled bitterly, his voice so quiet that Caoimhe had to strain to hear him even over the ringing silence that had fallen. “That was the beginning of it.” He straightened with visible effort, leaning against the wall fully now, his head tipped toward the ceiling as if he couldn’t bear to look at her while he spoke. “It seems so long ago now…but your little tantrum saved us both,” he declared colourlessly. “After you left, I didn’t much fancy a walk either. My enthusiasm departed with you and instead I found myself worried about whatever it was you were going through. I decided that I would go out with a later group - send someone from hydroponics in my stead to scout for potential edible vegetation.” His head lolled to the side, finally meeting her gaze and his eyes were now expressive - full of sorrow and a gathering of tears. “Whatever is out there, our scanners can’t detect it,” he whispered. “Its in the soil, or the pollen, perhaps even the air itself. Samples upon samples upon samples have been taken and tested in every conceivable way and they are all perfectly normal. But they weren’t - those who went out without their helmets I mean. They weren’t normal when they came back. They were…fidgety. Restless. Dissatisfied. Spoiling for arguments. Those arguments quickly turned violent. Fatal. Well you’ve seen-” Caleb gestured vaguely over his shoulder at the viewpoint behind him. “We couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t reason with them, couldn’t even contain them. Everyone who tried ended up dead. They just went beserk, no limit to their strength in their madness. We realised the correlation fairly quickly. Disinfected the airlock. Burned the suits that had been used and decontaminated the others. But eventually we had to separate people. Those who had been out without protection and those who hadn’t. It…it degenerated so quickly. Everything just…fell apart. Thankfully, whatever it was and however it worked it seemed contained to those who had been in direct contact with the outside. There was no cross contamination. We cut off the habitation side. Shored it up. Welded everything shut. And then we listened to them tear each other apart.” His voice broke on the last sentence, tears fully streaming down his face now.

She could feel how slack her face had gone. The scientist in her was screaming questions about viruses and if there was a possibility that this was not a natural occurrence but some sort of weapon and how on earth this was going to impact their projects. But only one question emerged from her, one terrible question that she could barely get out past the lump in her throat and the quivering of her lips. “How many?”

“Between those who were directly affected and those that they killed…we lost about two thirds of us,” Caleb confessed quietly, and Caoimhe gave a loud sob and collapsed against the corridor wall too. Two thirds. There hadn’t been that many of them to begin with. More than half of their precious cargo. More than half of their numbers.

“The children?” She forced the question out, needing to hear but not wanting to know the answer.

“They’re fine,” came the reply, and a knot she didn’t even realise had been there loosened in her chest allowing tears to fall freely down her face for the first time in many years. Thank God. Thank God they were fine. Caleb appeared in front of her and she was so loose limbed and exhausted from the weeks of unending toil and the catastrophic news she had received, she couldn’t even find it in herself to respond with fear to the shears that he was holding.

“I won’t tell you that it’s okay,” he said bluntly. “It’s not. But we have the labs and the tanks and the hydroponics. Most of the ship is still intact. We can leave, get away and-”

“No.” Caleb looked at her quizzically. “We can’t,” she elaborated. “At least not yet. I have too many expectant parents…At least…at least I hope I still…”

Caleb nodded and touched her shoulder reassuringly. “They’re safe too,” he confirmed. “We kept them with the children and babies, kept them away from everything.”

She nodded numbly, tears still streaming down her face. “Then they can’t go through takeoff. I won’t risk them. We need to do the best we can here. Use the tanks as much as we can. Teach and nurture. Prepare and grow our numbers. Then when we have a crew again we can leave, find somewhere better. Ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

“Caoimhe-” he began, but she interrupted him.

“Please Caleb,” she begged. “I can’t lose anyone else. And I don’t think you can bear to either.”

He stared at her for a few moments, then nodded in clear resignation. “Come on,” he invited. “Let’s go to the nurseries. The children and remaining parents are left inside. The expeditions were supposed to be staffed by crew only, not civilians. But some of them just…they just wanted to see…” His voice trailed off, hopeless with grief.

They began to walk in silence - back down the corridor toward Caoimhe’s lab and onward to where the tanks and nurseries were situated. As they passed her room, Caoimhe heard her voice speak as if coming from miles away. “How did that gurney get against my door?”

Caleb made a noise that could have been a hiccup or a snort. “I put it there,” he confessed. “When the chaos began to descend, of course I tried to contact you. I pounded on your door, rang the bell, tried to guess the code. Nothing. I assumed that you had found your way out after all and gotten caught up in what was happening. At the very start we attempted to treat the afflicted. The gurney was part of an abandoned attempt to bring someone into the medical bay. When we realised what we were up against, we collectively made the decision that we could not allow those people anywhere near the children. That’s when we herded them, sealed them into the habitation section. When I next passed this way I made another attempt at entry into your lab and when I could not I placed the gurney against your door. I don’t even know why. A marker, perhaps? So that if your door ever did open and someone emerged, I would know. It worked too.” A wan shadow of Caleb’s old smile flitted across his lips. “The movement of the gurney drew my eye to the screen monitoring outside your room. It’s how I knew to meet you here.” She opened her mouth to ask a question, but he continued, correctly anticipating what she was going to say. “A lot of equipment was damaged in those first few days. Including the monitoring equipment that had already been transferred across to habitation. Some of the recordings from the past six weeks were corrupted or destroyed and we don’t have an entirely accurate picture of what occurred. That’s why we don’t have a true account of exactly who was sealed inside, who fled through the forests, who killed whom. All we have is a head count of those left on this side, and a personnel list. I’m glad I can add you to the tally of the living.” He gave another watery smile which almost immediately translated into a grimace as his chin began to wobble. “Perhaps its better that we don’t have the footage,” he added with a shudder. “I’ve already seen so much that I never…I can’t…”

He trailed off, his face pinched and weary. Caoimhe took the hand that didn’t contain a weapon and squeezed it, a message of silent solidarity and comfort.

*** *** ***

“Its a life we’re rebuilding. Of sorts. I’m sure there are people worse than us out there in the vastness of the universe. But we have all had to make sacrifices. We have all had to erase those boundaries that we swore were immutable. Morality cannot exist in a vacuum, cannot exist when we face such a grim reality as this. Some chose their deaths instead. They couldn’t live with what they had witnessed, the loss of those dear to them, the notion of potentially never leaving what is left of the ship again. Of course, we have salvaged what we can of them to assist us. Nothing is ever wasted here.

All that exists is the work and finally my ideas have been met with greater enthusiasm than I could ever have predicted. Two distinct wombs within one person. A revival of some of the more supposedly frivolous genetic manipulations with chameleons and cephalopods so that there is a physical manifestation upon the skin when someone genetically compatible is near. Making all female presenting genitalia internal, so that there is more room to give birth vaginally - after all a few extra centimetres can be life or death without medical intervention. These experiments are currently in progress, with varying levels of success. And all it took to make it happen was the near-total destruction of our little corner of civilisation.

Caleb and I have taken charge as joint leaders of the rest. They need to be led, shepherded if you will. Their primary purpose now is to perpetuate. And while a part of me is disgusted about reducing whole people to this one act, that part is small and growing weaker. I find my thoughts flinty these days, my heart like granite. And since we cannot be sure what caused the madness within us, I cannot be sure that it is not an offshoot of the same. Or perhaps it is merely pragmatism. Regardless, I cannot find it in myself to care about those moral judgments as much as I once did. It is an irony that I have begun to find some comfort in Caleb’s religious texts while he himself has outright rejected them, unable to maintain faith in the face of what he has seen and done. We still get along well. I am glad that here, at what feels like the end of all things, I have a friend such as him. His child is strong, healthy, growing within me day by day.

I say me…

Secrets abound, even now.

I took it upon myself to keep back a few of the GAIA tanks for my own use. Caleb is the only one who knows what they are truly for, though we will be unable to keep it hidden forever. The third batch of clones are coming along nicely and these ones are the most precious of all. I have attempted a basic memory transfer, which seems to have been well received. No longer will we have to spend years teaching them what I already know - they shall be born with that knowledge and can pick up the work immediately. Caleb had no interest in physical intimacies and so his sperm was matched with an egg donor from our database and implanted into one of the first set of clones, the ones with the physical modifications I have begun to perfect. I do not wish to experiment on anyone unnecessarily. Thus, my clones seem perfect. After all, they are me and I give my consent. And we are so few now…the babies and children outnumber the adults by some margin. Someone has to take care of them all. And someone has to begin rebuilding the ship. I already have plans for batch number four. If the memory transfers are successful this time around, I shall take the transcriptions and logs from the engineers that we lost and attempt to upload them into the next few mes. From my limited understanding of these things, it seems that the FTL drives are still working perfectly and with a little tweaking we can get the core of the ship back to being space-worthy.

Caleb is right. We cannot stay on this death trap forever. We cannot live with the ghosts of our mistakes forever. We must be bold, soldier on. Away into a future with a brighter prospect.