Levi wasn't sure what to expect when he arrived at Val's berth. He knocked once, and the door slid open almost immediately.
"Thank you for coming over," Val told him brightly. "I made chicken and pasta, I heard you like tomatoes?"
"I do," he laughed. "I sent you some of the files, did you get them?"
"I did," she replied. "Thank you."
He had not met Val but in passing before, she was less stern than her partner. Lully had mentioned that she was designing new clothes for the printers, and if her dress was anything to go by, it was much more interesting than anything else worn on the base. The swirling blue pattern on the white meant that it was less expensive than being all blue, but Levi couldn't figure out how you would get the layers like that.
"Here you go!" she set a bowl down for Levi and took one herself. "Like I said in the message, Titus and I are trying to find some resources to build a new constitution and it doesn't seem like any law materials made it into space. Glancing at the files you sent, I think that you've given us an excellent start. I used to do this for my career and that was only weeks ago. I guess I just got used to all of those things being readily available."
"When I was on the Aeneid, we had power outages that were wiping drives," Levi said. "Radiation flares that that were overloading the system. The worst part was that they weren't even bad enough to notice, but our drives and computers were already decades old. They weren't meant to be continually accessed and definitely not meant to have extra power flooding them. I begged Earth to send us the data we lost, but they either couldn't figure out how or they just didn't care."
"What year would this have been?" Val inquired.
"2054?" Levi guessed. "Give or take."
She laughed. "I was in my twenties. God, I had just met Titus and we were working at his dad's law firm that summer." She smiled at the memories. "The year before we had a couple solar flares that had knocked out a bunch of satellites, communications across the country; I only remember because Titus and I started writing letters because we couldn't call each other."
"So they couldn't reach us," Levi mused. "You know, we would have been in our twenties at the same time. I just went into cryo, and you became the vice president's wife."
"That is very strange to think about," she remarked. "Levi, forgive me, but it seems so odd that you work in botany instead of something to do with your past. I read somewhere that you were the historian onboard the Aeneid. Why make such a change?'
"I love botany," Levi shrugged. "And when I got here, everyone was doing their best to forget that Earth had ever been important. I don't have most of the books on the base because I'm hoarding them, but because no one else cared."
"Would you have been a historian if it had been available?" she inquired.
Levi frowned, thinking about the idea. He couldn't imagine trading his world of flowers and vegetables for a life of paperwork at this point, but he hadn't known any better when he had woke up from cryo.
"Probably?" he hazarded. "Not because I regret botany, but because I had never seen a tree or watered a flower before. I was intimidated when I was initially hired. The pasta's delicious by the way."
"Thank you," she said. "I'm slowly learning to cook. It had never been something I did on Earth, but if I don't we'll starve; Titus is clueless in the kitchen."
"Walsh, the head of environment, has a cookbook," Levi suggested. "We've been trying the recipes we can. We don't have all the ingredients on the base of course, but we've been pretty successful. I've been trying to get him to make a holo-rib version so we can start sharing recipes. Surely someone can make a meringue that doesn't fall flat. It's so depressing."
Val laughed again and check her holo-rib for the time.
"We should probably get back soon," she said. "Or at least, I should. Lully says that Harper has some preliminary code for me."
"How did you print this?" Levi asked, gesturing at her dress.
"Oh, I just made the pattern. Lully built the layers so that the machine would alternate colors when it needed it. It sounds dreadfully tedious, but he assures me that it wasn't. At any rate, I'm glad for some variety to my wardrobe."
"It's lovely," Levi agreed, handing her the bowl to set in the sink. They walked out of her berth together, and Val paused, touching Levi's arm.
"Thank you, again," she said. "I really appreciate the texts and I know that Titus will to. It's very disorienting to be dropped into a world with no connection to home."
"I can understand that," Levi agreed. "I'll see you around."
They walked their separate ways, Levi back to the botany bay, and Val toward the printers. Anatoly waved him to her office as he walked into the bay.
"Dashiell asked for a meeting this afternoon," she said. "Did you talk to him? I didn't."
"No," Levi replied. "What time?"
"We've got an hour or so," she replied. "But knowing Dashiell, we might not get out until late, so if you have anything that absolutely needs doing, work on that first."
Levi nodded and left her office to poke his head into Alcott's empty one. The plants here were still thriving; Winston had been checking in on them, but Levi wanted to double check so that that Alcott wouldn't have to start over when she got back.
"I watered them!" Winton called. "I promise!"
"I'm just making sure!" Levi responded and then exited the office. "Alcott would be upset at both of us if any of those plants died. Then what would we do?"
"Run," Winston laughed. "Dumas is still scared of Alcott after the cherry tree incident."
"With good reason!" Dumas shouted from up a tree. "You would be too, Win."
"Sure," Winston snorted. "Anyway, carry on."
Levi sat in his chair, checking his holo-rib for any messages from Dylan before returning to work. He had narrowed down which varieties of blackberries would be most likely to thrive in the soil they had. He hoped that their bramble bush nature would protect the plant from the fierce winds when they transplanted it outside.
Someday, Levi thought. Someday he would be able to stand at the door of the base and see green for kilometers. Once the grass samples were seeded into larger squares, that project would start. Such a dream was just around the corner.
He typed up his report and sent it to Anatoly and Ibsen; they would need more fertilizer from him to prep the soil. Once he was done, he sent his request form to Rainier for the blackberry sample in cryo. Levi liked the idea of all these plants next to the animals and people just waiting to wake up. He wondered if the plants got confused like the people did.
"Ready to go?" Anatoly inquired.
"Ready as I'll ever be," he replied, rising from his seat.
They walked together down to the captain's office. Anatoly took a deep breath before knocking on the door.
"I feel worried," she admitted.
"Don't be," Levi told her. "I can't muck up congress that poorly."
She barked out a laugh as Dashiell opened the door. He frowned at the two laughing oddly in the hallway.
"Sorry," Anatoly said, though still smiling. "You wanted to see us?"
"Yes, of course," he said, letting them into his office.
The room had changed quite drastically since O'Keefe had been in office. Taylor had moved the desk around, but Dashiell had made it feel more like living quarters that he happened to work in. They sat down on the couch and Dashiell rolled his chair around to sit in front of them.
"I'll called you both because I creating a sub-department of histories and archives from personnel and communications," he explained. "I want Levi to head it."
Levi glanced at Anatoly who seemed just as surprised as he felt.
"Merci, but non," Levi managed. "I'm happy where I'm at."
"Levi, I've been getting messages from across the base asking why you have information from Earth, have a veritable library, know four languages and you're pruning bushes as your chosen career path. Just twenty minutes ago, Val informed me that you gave her all we have on Earth law for whatever reason that was in your possession," Dashiell countered. "My request is that you lead this department. The nonnegotiable is that you join it."
"No," Anatoly told Dashiell when Levi couldn't get any words out of his dry mouth. "You can't just make a department out of thin air without a vote of congress."
"I have talked to the other departments that matter," Dashiell countered. "I'm pulling Harper from communications, Matisse and Libba from personnel, Grimm from research and Levi from his bizarre location in botany. Everyone else has agreed. We know nothing of our past, Anatoly. We had a saying on Earth, 'those who forget history are destined to repeat it.' I don't want the ruins of Earth to become our future, do you?"
"Of course not," Anatoly snapped. "You have people, you don't need Levi."
"I do when the whole point of this is Levi. The others are just to support him. I don't even know four languages. The man plays piano for crying aloud and has a mind like a sponge. How can you ask the base to throw away that resource? Levi's skills were overlooked when he arrived here and I plan to rectify that."
"Levi didn't join my team because I was desperate and he had no other options," Anatoly argued. "I turned down multiple candidates over the course of years because I wanted Levi Hark." She scoffed, sitting back on the couch. "I thought this meeting was because you had heard I wanted him to become the new head of botany. How wrong I was."
"I'm sorry, Anatoly," Dashiell began.
"No, you're not," she interrupted.
"I'm sorry that this situation had to come up. But we need him. The rest of the base needs him. You have others in botany, Alcott would be an excellent department leader."
"Alcott doesn't want to be on congress," Anatoly said through gritted teeth.
"I won't do it," Levi said finally. "I'm sorry that you're too late, Dashiell. But I'm not leaving botany. I'd be more than willing to stop by and help or split my time, but I'm not giving up my chosen field when no one else on the whole base has had to. I've lost so much here. Not this."
Dashiell smoothed his blonde hair back and smiled thinly. "Levi, I'm not giving you a choice. So chose to work with me and be on congress. You can even appeal from your seat, though I doubt the others will be so sympathetic. You have access codes no one else does, books and music no one else does; people are upset about that. We're a colony of lost information. You were appointed gatekeeper before I got here and it's time you took that spot again."
"No," Levi pleaded. "Dashiell."
"Levi, my other option is to fine you an astronomical amount of hours and force you to work with me," Dashiell said. "I don't want to threaten and blackmail, I'd rather you see reason. What would you do in my shoes? You're brilliant, Levi. What would you do in my place?"
Levi could think of an assortment of retorts, but the way that Dashiell had mentioned blackmail made Levi worry that the captain was talking about Dylan. He couldn't risk her, not just at the moment she was getting better. He had no reason to believe that Dashiell would stoop so low, but Levi simply didn't want to take the chance.
"Fine," he spat. "I'll do it. And I'm going to fight it every moment I'm on congress."
"That's fine. Meet tomorrow at personnel and I'll show you to your new department." Dashiell smiled. "Anatoly, we'll have to discuss your replacement at a late date. I'm sure you'll need time to think on it."
"I will hold my spot for Levi if I have to prop up my corpse and vote from beyond the grave," Anatoly retorted, rising from her seat. "This is unacceptable."
She grabbed Levi's arm to storm from the room, slowed somewhat by Levi's crutches. The door slid shut behind them and Anatoly wrapped Levi in a hug. He felt like he might collapse in his mentor's arms if she let go.
"I had no idea," she told him. "And I promise you, we will get you back where you belong."
"What if he's right?" Levi stammered. "What if this is the best for the base."
"I don't care, it's not best for you," Anatoly replied. "Dashiell wants someone who can interpret the nonsense from Earth. But what happens when Dashiell doesn't like what he hears? Did this meeting give you the impression that he would handle that well?"
"No," Levi sniffed.
"This dictatorship has gone on long enough," Anatoly sighed. "We don't need a captain. We need a team that wants to work together. I will not rest until Dashiell has been voted out and we have come up with a better way to run this base. Pas mal? Don't worry."
"Merci," he managed through shuddering breaths.
"You don't have parents here to look out for you," she said. "With Dylan gone and Alcott's new partner, I want to make sure you haven't been left to fend for yourself. I cannot tell you how glad I am that you work in botany."
She patted his back and then released him so they could walk slowly back to work.
"Was it true that you held the apprenticeship for me?" he inquired.
"Absolutely. I knew whoever was taking that spot that they would become the department leader. You were so bright and so interested. No one else came close to changing my mind." She smiled. "And I had a suspicion that you had been placed back in cryo under less than legal circumstances. The empty spot was a reminder to O'Keefe that I was waiting on your return."
"Merci beaucoup," Levi told her. "For everything, Anatoly, I meant that."
"My kids are grown with their own problems. I like to think of you as my late blooming son," Anatoly laughed. "Pun intended."
Levi tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled sound. He didn't want to be on congress like this. He still couldn't believe that he was being relocated tomorrow.
"Do you want to take off?" Anatoly asked him when they got back to the botany bay. "Whatever you need to do."
"I think I might need the afternoon," he admitted.
____
So...that happened. I would love to know your thoughts because I've had like, yelling matches with a couple people who have seen this chapter early. This is gonna go a little crazy. Thanks for reading!!