If Jove Stray

Chapter 16: facing the storm

"Before or after lunch?"

Alcott put her plate in the sink and wiped her hands. "Right now. Why not? It's not like I'm going to work, and you don't have a job. Bring your holo-rib, we'll message someone about you being our very first social worker. And that way we can tell your mother that you haven't been a complete lay-about."

"Rude."

Tyson followed Alcott out the door and down the hall. The numbered rooms he assumed were apartments and then the larger halls were places of work. Some of these had windows, like the botany bay.

"What are all the colors?" he asked. "Purple is botany, but the others?"

"Let's see. Down that hall is green: environmental. Medical is red, Communication is yellow," Alcott mused. "Each of the departments has their own. We spilt a couple of the branches after Landing Day; Dashiell wanted to expand congress; he thought six leaders for the whole base seemed small."

"You'll run out of colors eventually," Tyson laughed.

"Probably," she admitted. "There's been talk of a satellite base and the whole goal is to have a city eventually. I assume at some point we'll need a more complicated system, well, for everything, I guess. There's a lot that we're just not ready for."

"That would explain why you have my father writing your constitution," he snorted.

"No one here knows anything about laws and rules, at least writing them," Alcott pointed out. "My parents say that when we landed, our congress wrote a charter as guidelines, but that's all we had."

"You don't talk about your parents much," Tyson commented.

Alcott rolled her eyes. "They work in materials and exploration, now that that's a department. My papa wanted me to apprentice with one of them and I applied for botany instead. They think it's because I believe I'm better than getting my hands dirty. Which is rotated when I get my hands dirty all the time. Tell me, which would you rather do, process sand into silicon or plant roses?"

"Rotated?" Tyson questioned.

"I've met so many people from cryo and still I forget we use different words," Alcott laughed. "Rotated is like....stupid or ridiculous. You'll hear moonshy a lot too, it's a milder form. We have different swear words. I've heard some of Earth swearing; I think it all sounds so odd."

"Says the woman who uses 'seasons' as a interjection," he protested. "Is it all the seasons? Can I just pick fall or winter?"

"Non," she scoffed. "That's moonshy. We're here!"

Tyson was still laughing as she slid open the door. His mouth hung open at the sight of the terrifying storm just beyond panes of glass. He glanced down once to find the path and then walked up to place his hand on the clear material.

"It's plastic," Alcott said. "Double paned and reinforced. The most expensive thing I have ever printed, but worth ever credit. The panes retract so this area is actually outside normally."

"That's an earthstorm?" he said, barely hearing Alcott. "Oh my god. I mean. I..."

The storm swirled outside like a hurricane, but instead of rain, sand and even rocks were being tossed against the glass. He could only see a couple feet out into the storm, and the swirling dust was mesmerizing and horrifying at the same time. It made the dust bowl back in Oklahoma look like a light breeze. He had seen tornados, but this was an order of magnitude larger than he could have ever dreamed.

"We're almost to the eye of the storm," Alcott mentioned. "We'll come back out here; we'll be able to see the sky and some stars if we're lucky."

"I would want to see that," he breathed, the glass fogging up with his breath.

Finally, he tore his eyes away from the storm to see Alcott kneeling in the middle of the garden, inspecting a plant and jotting notes down on her holo-rib.

"This plant isn't doing well," she told Tyson, when she saw him watching. "I suspect that it needs more sunlight, but with the earthstorm, I don't have much I can offer it.

"Do you have a UV lamp?" Tyson asked. "Just for the meantime?"

Alcott frowned thoughtfully. "I might. Power in this area is limited, but perhaps I could get Ibsen to rig me up a battery powered one."

The garden was beautiful in its own right. Each of the plants were ones that Tyson recognized, but had some unfamiliar aspect to them. The roses were speckled and the lily pads were purple. He didn't know much about genetic modification, but imagined that it was vital around here. The trellis had vines growing above his head and each inch of the garden was colorful and labeled. Even something for pleasure was still business, it seemed.

He crouched down, inspecting one of the tags.

"Levi wrote them," Alcott explained. "We convinced him to handwrite them; his script is so lovely. I didn't want the whole garden to be stamped with ugly text."

"He is a man of many odd talents," Tyson agreed. "And he knows like, four languages? I don't know when he'd find the time."

"Back on the ship," she replied. "Here, he doesn't have time. He talks about how little there was to do on the ship and how everyone memorized plays and books and poems. Last time I checked he had every plant and its scientific name somewhere in that brain of his. He's more tenacious than I."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he scoffed. "This garden is impressive. And amazing. That's on you, not Levi."

Alcott laughed. "I mean, he did help," she said. 

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I think an earthstorm would be awesome to behold, but only at a safe distance. Thanks for reading!