After being cast in darkness for weeks, blushing Parnus moonslight flooded the cabin and allowed him to shut down pin-prick lights overhead, saving what power he could for landing. Her eyes darting behind their lids, Scotia didn’t surface as quickly as Dusan desired. A staccato beat reverberated in the cramped space, his giveaway foot in sync with short and quick breaths. A relaxant mist no longer delivered in tandem with oxygen and nitrogen would be helpful at the moment, Dusan thought. Two years he’d waited. “Scotia”, he bent down and whispered close to her ear, long nimble fingers brushing her hair back from her creased forehead. Always serious Scotia. An initially positive indication of cell coherence despite its’ silver hue, Dusan noted hair growth in her record with a nod. If anyone was made for this sunless planet, it’s Scotia, he thought and traced one vividly blue vein the length of her clavicle.
“Approaching Parnus”, the craft announced. The remainder of her physical inventory would have to wait. “Secure your person and all loose objects within the next sixty seconds before momentum shifts”. His hand lingered against her cheek for a moment longer. Momentum shift, indeed. Whatever lay ahead, at least she was here with him and Zehmy.
Except, Scotia still dreamed of old earth. She paced the gardens of Eudaimonia, normally where she’d find her best friend Haffney, hunched over eggplant or pepper plants, never choosing the best for their weekly portion as she did. Where could he be? Once, there had been sprawling flower gardens complete with an intricate hedge maze and baby animal statuary which separated Eudaimonia’s scientific center from the shoreline a few miles away. A sea surge claimed that parcel not long after most of the population left for Parnus. Her eyes stung from the gusting salty wind, but an almost-full moon helped her navigate a path. “Haff?”, she called feebly. Deja vu fluttered like a sheer curtain in her periphery. She retreated a couple of paces. Sounds from the equipment shed carried on the wind and made her heart clench as if it stopped. Scotia’s shorn head hinged back and forth fiercely in the shadowy night as her mind struggled with what it heard. Preeky’s cries of pleasure were plain, as was his “yeah, that’s it”. Scotia ran then, away from the shed, away from Haff and betrayal, back to their container where she’d plead illness. Just for the day. Then she’d get it together, she thought, but her body heaved with sobs and her childhood sweetheart story lodged in her throat. She damned Dusan, again, for leaving her behind on this dying planet. But… how did she hear him, “Scotia! Scotia”, excited and definitely Dusan, “We’re here, Scotia!”
Although they efforted, earth’s civilization could not recover enough ecosystem to sustain the species. Extinction became probable as catastrophic events occurred almost daily and fertility grew scarce at an equally stifling rate. Those who remained in the western world created Eudaimonia, a new society, in a region formerly known as Colorado. Scotia, Haffney and Dusan were born in Eudaimonia and began training for a new planetary home before the age of five.
Despite world unification, Mother Earth and Father Sun did not open their hearts again for humanity. Her core mantle and atmospheric shield abused beyond repair, she now only needed water to cool her from his raging beams. In only two short decades, they lost most of the world’s artful masterpieces, along with the seven wonders of the world and cave drawings dating back to the dawn of mankind. The seas rose over Vatican City, completing the fall of Rome, while towering skyscrapers across the world fell unceremoniously. Eventually, Eudaimonia’s population sustained themselves on a single meal of millet and sweet potatoes, later adding iron-rich plasma snacks when prisons became insecure. Cannibalism wore a disguise of justice.
Remaining scientists became royalty, and as such, reassigned resources toward discovering an exostar or moon with a habitable zone. They hoped for two decades, at least, of data collecting. Their plan provided time to devise survival necessities and structure developmental plans. Repopulation hopes seemed more fantastical than relocating. For once, every human on old earth agreed discovery was their primary move if humans advanced to another planetary home. After a decade of increasingly desperate and resultingly daring exploration of the Milky Way, only two viable sub-planets were discovered, exhaustively studied, and to everyone’s sorrow, ruled out .
Commander Xavier Parnus hypothesized a harnessing of enigmatic forces between Baade’s Window and the Galactic Center in order to travel outside of the Milky Way. His theories met with scorn, mockery and threats to his explorer license until, with the help of Dr. Urick Parnus’ biophysics team, he found a way through and beyond. The sons of astronauts, the brothers were catapulted into heroes worth worshipping once Parnus was deemed unexpectedly habitable.
While Dusan’s bio-pod had opened a week prior, Scotia had remained in an induced theta state with periodic windows of deep delta wave restoration until they arrived in the orbit of Parnus’ furthest moon. The pod provided several essentials: oxygen, hydration, nutrition, waste removal, and cryogenic sleep. In preparation for Scotia’s retrieval from old earth/Eudaimonia, Dusan himself had added an extra layer of shielding in hopes of mitigating metabolic changes and cellular abnormalities upon morphogenesis, or “reorganization” as Eudaimonia’s elders preferred to describe the process.
Frowning at a tiny oval scar at Scotia’s hairline, Dusan wondered whether he’d made a mistake agreeing to the implant. Coni would’ve let him add his affirmations regardless, he thought, then cast his regret away with a shrug.
Conshoi, Dusan’s sister and reluctant Director of Health on Parnus, added psyche reconditioning and unity consciousness to the orientation modules in Scotia’s biopod. “Coni”, as Dusan called her, also let her brother insert a few assurances throughout Scotia’s theta periods, after she gave her older brother an enormous dose of teasing. Nothing comes for free, she’d reminded him. With Dusan’s consent, an epicortical nano implant was placed easily with Scotia in cryogenic stasis. Research volunteers were scarce on Parnus, although generalized fear seemed to be relenting according to Coni’s measurements. Still, she considered all of the 388 humans who inhabited Parnus psychologically fragile.
“Scotia, we’re home”, his long dark fingers caressed her cheek and stirred their nano-implants into a dopamine dump with a bit of serotonin, a calming hormone he suspected she lacked. Her eyes calmed and the edges of her mouth turned up. Sharp edges of her collarbones and wrists had softened some since they departed Eudaimonia. Her cheeks weren’t sunken anymore, the injuries from bashing into the cliff face mere shadows now. The state of her mind would take longer to assess than her physical condition, her experiences an anomaly in the new Parnus population. People were accustomed to her being an anomaly, though. Dusan didn’t think she’d be happy about muscle loss, but Zehmy would make up for any negatives, after her initial shock. Almost two years could not be undone in 32 days, he knew, but he had not felt this hopeful since… Dusan shook his head, his braid clamps clinking at his back. “Scotia, wake up. Come see these bubble waterfalls on our moons”, he told her as her eyes slit and her head swiveled to him. “Here, let me get your breathing tube. You ready?” At her nod, his mouth turned up at the corners. Of course, she was ready. “You know what to do. Here we go, Scotia. Inhale. Now big exhale.” So far, so good. Her cough sprayed him in a fine mist and activated a humming air vacuum. ”Here, let me help”. A tickling sensation in her cheeks made her involuntarily crinkle her nose as he suctioned out her mouth.
She’d made it. Scotia squinted her scratchy eyes toward the rosy sky outside their spacecraft’s viewing panel. After taking a slow and long sip of unfamiliar liquid from a hydrobot, she croaked, “How soon”? Dreams of Zehmy had filled her theta wave periods even before their journey to Parnus. Drawing in enough air to inflate her lungs felt impossible, as if an immoveable weight sat in their depths. “I feel like if I could get a few deep breaths my mind would clear”, she whispered to Dusan, his face close to hers.
“Your body is waking up and taking over where the pod functioned. I’ll get some measurements in a minute,” Dusan replied. He lifted her out of the pod to a nearby padded chaise where he’d slept next to her since his biopod opened. He hoped he never had to get in one again. Despite closing the viewing panel and ports on immense swaths of nothingness, space was lonely. Scotia was not the only one excited about a reunion with Zehmy.
Ixkeeb insisted on an in-person introduction to Scotia. Dusan’s wide forehead creased and he let out a long exhale. If he didn’t warn her… or even if he did, Scotia’s reaction would determine all of their futures.
Crone Story Astro 