[junetide] Bearer of Good News
Dec. 9th, 2012 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
1stmateSummary: The child is the first since planetfall, two hundred years before, the hope of a whole world.
Notes: Written forelf's 2011 ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
junetide gift.
She cries, and the whole world cries with her.
Her mother reaches out and takes the baby into her arms. "Evangeline," she whispers, then clears her throat. "Evangeline," she says more strongly. "The first of many." The crowd gathered in the room takes it up as a chant.
"Evangeline, the first of many. Evangeline, the first of many." The child is the first since planetfall, two hundred years before, and the last of the shipboard colonists were released from stasis just a year previously. Evangeline is the youngest by thirty years, the only success of the DNA manipulation projects. The hope of a whole planet.
Two years later, her mother dies during another failed childbirth; there are now three adult women on the Beta planet.
Evangeline is too precious a commodity to experience the dangers of the planet's surface. She is raised inside the ship, chasing the dronebots as they perform the necessary repairs. One is eventually reprogrammed to keep her entertained as the slowly dwindling population concentrates on refining enough fuel return to Earth, or to at least get within contact range of the Alpha planet.
She learns to call her special dronebot Nanny, and the ship Home, and the surface Bad, and the old captain Grandfather. He is the last of the Fourteenth Awakening still alive, but his age leaves him inside the ship, as well. He offers to take over her education, and she learns of Earth alongside Narnia. His is the first death she will remember.
The day after Grandfather's funeral, she wanders into one of the labs on a lower level. Only one scientist notices her, and he hooks a chair with his foot and rolls it closer without looking. "Vange," he says, and it takes her a minute to recognize the nickname as her own.
"Are you cloning me?" she asks, propping an elbow on the table. "Is it working?"
He grins. "Just like your mother. Never a moment's peace. Yes, I'm cloning you." He swivels a monitor to face her. "See?"
She frowns. "It doesn't look like me at all."
The scientist shrugs. "I don't really care how it looks, in the end. I just want to find out what makes you special enough to be alive today."
"I eat right and do my exercises," she tells him as she hops down from the stool. She knows that's not what he meant, but she also knows he was her father.
On her twelfth birthday, she gets an insemination instead of a cake.
Evangeline slides the stolen card through the scanner on the genetics lab and storms in. "Jason Isaiah Nebbley!" she yells over the excited murmurs and staccato beeps. "Don't you dare leave me out of the loop again!" In the silence that follows, she glares at the gathering until they break up and slink back to their private desks and offices.
"Vange--"
She whirls on her father. "There is no cause for locking me in my bedroom like a recalcitrant child," she hisses. "I'm better at my job than fully half of the people working for you. If anything, I am the most invested in my work. Do you think I want to outlive every known human?"
He frowns. "You should be resting, Vange."
"The most recent insemination was three days ago!" She throws her hands into the air. "I don't understand why you even bother with that when you know the statistics. Even if I do become pregnant, you can't reproduce the mutation that allowed my birth. You're killing me and any hope for the future of our race every time Doctor Sanders shoves that needle up in me."
Jason winces at the imagery. "Go to your room," he demands, and she laughs harshly.
"That might have worked when I was three, had you ever bothered to try it, Daddy dearest. But I have work to do. Go to your room."
The last of the women dies during an unsuccessful childbirth, and Evangeline sneaks out of the ship for the first time. The planet feels too soft under her feet. She chastises herself for being so irresponsible - all she's heard, all her life, is how dangerous Beta is and how she cannot afford to be risked - but she's been looking out of thick windows for twenty-four years. Everything is brighter than she expected, but what really takes her by surprise is the smell. It changes every second, and it's always new. She'd heard Grandfather complain, when she was small, about how stale the ship always smelled. This must be the 'fresh' scent he missed so much while bedridden.
She lays a hand on a tree, imagining that she can feel the life running through it, connecting the leaves to the ground, to the ocean she can see from the top floor of the ship, to the other side of the planet rumored to have a large volcano. She presses her face to the bark and closes her eyes. If she stays very still, she can feel the raw rotation of the planet, the steady rhythm of the waves, the rumbling of the volcano stirring.
Jason is one of the younger men from the Nineteenth Awakening, but he takes ill before many of the Eighteenths begin showing signs of stasis sickness. Evangeline figures out before any of the others that his problem is not caused by the stasis sickness but is instead his heart. They are all so used to dying with their Awakening groups, fifty years after being brought out of stasis, that nobody remembers Earth and natural deaths.
Evangeline pulls Nanny out of storage and reactivates it. The dronebot links to the ship's library to learn how to nurse the scientist back to health, and she starts researching stasis sickness in her spare time. Even if she can come up with something, it's too late for the Eighteenths, but maybe she can prolong the lives of the people from the last two Awakenings. There are plenty of others working on the procreation issue, but she'd rather have company for as long as possible than be the mother of an entire planet.
Jason dies of heart failure in the middle of the Eighteenths' stasis sickness. With only two Awakening groups left, there are not enough people to care for the sick, bury the dead, and provide for the living all at once. Evangeline puts the bodies back into their stasis pods until a mass funeral can be held.
She repeats the process in ten years while the Nineteenths die.
"There isn't enough fuel," Ash says. "Not even for a rescue shuttle. Not even if we could finish retrofitting one for interplanetary travel."
Evangeline sighs. "I always was going to die alone on this rock. Tell me, am I going to go insane first?"
Ash frowns. "Don't talk like that. You can finish this. You can figure out the fuel problem."
She helps zie up as another coughing fit wracks zir body. "Ash, I'm a geneticist. I couldn't engineer my way out of a paper bag. I don't have the slightest clue how to get a rescue shuttle to the Alpha site."
"You have fifty or sixty years to learn." Ash grins and shakes zir head. "Besides, Nanny's learned a thing or two since you were born. It'll help." Zie coughs again, wipes blood off zir face. "Don't you have anyone else to watch die?"
Evangeline looks away from her friend's face. "No."
The dronebot runs the shuttle through a now-familiar sequence of commands. When everything comes up green for the fourth time in a row, it beeps at the woman resting in the command chair.
"I guess we've got no excuses left, have we, Nanny?"
It beeps again.
"Go lock in place," she orders it. "If we don't burn up trying to leave the atmosphere, you can put me in stasis and fly us to Alpha, but I'd rather be awake to watch the fireworks." The dronebot goes obediently to the back of the shuttle, where its treads lock into a dip in the floor. Evangeline straps herself into the chair and rubs her hands together. "Let's see what this thing can do."
The shuttle shakes as it pushes laboriously off the ground. Evangeline groans as it rises into the air, watches dials and digital readings as it flies steadily higher and higher. She frowns as the fuel gauge drains even faster than expected. "Nanny?"
The bot extends an arm and plugs into the computer core of the shuttle. After a moment, several lines of equations appear on the main screen in front of her. She studies them carefully, then sighs.
"Earth gravity," she whispers to herself. "I'm so stupid."
The shuttle shudders as it begins to lose speed and then arc back down towards the planet. Evangeline rests a hand on her stomach as the baby kicks for what will be the last time.
She cries, and the whole world cries with her.
Notes: Written for
elf's 2011 junetide gift.She cries, and the whole world cries with her.
Her mother reaches out and takes the baby into her arms. "Evangeline," she whispers, then clears her throat. "Evangeline," she says more strongly. "The first of many." The crowd gathered in the room takes it up as a chant.
"Evangeline, the first of many. Evangeline, the first of many." The child is the first since planetfall, two hundred years before, and the last of the shipboard colonists were released from stasis just a year previously. Evangeline is the youngest by thirty years, the only success of the DNA manipulation projects. The hope of a whole planet.
Two years later, her mother dies during another failed childbirth; there are now three adult women on the Beta planet.
Evangeline is too precious a commodity to experience the dangers of the planet's surface. She is raised inside the ship, chasing the dronebots as they perform the necessary repairs. One is eventually reprogrammed to keep her entertained as the slowly dwindling population concentrates on refining enough fuel return to Earth, or to at least get within contact range of the Alpha planet.
She learns to call her special dronebot Nanny, and the ship Home, and the surface Bad, and the old captain Grandfather. He is the last of the Fourteenth Awakening still alive, but his age leaves him inside the ship, as well. He offers to take over her education, and she learns of Earth alongside Narnia. His is the first death she will remember.
The day after Grandfather's funeral, she wanders into one of the labs on a lower level. Only one scientist notices her, and he hooks a chair with his foot and rolls it closer without looking. "Vange," he says, and it takes her a minute to recognize the nickname as her own.
"Are you cloning me?" she asks, propping an elbow on the table. "Is it working?"
He grins. "Just like your mother. Never a moment's peace. Yes, I'm cloning you." He swivels a monitor to face her. "See?"
She frowns. "It doesn't look like me at all."
The scientist shrugs. "I don't really care how it looks, in the end. I just want to find out what makes you special enough to be alive today."
"I eat right and do my exercises," she tells him as she hops down from the stool. She knows that's not what he meant, but she also knows he was her father.
On her twelfth birthday, she gets an insemination instead of a cake.
Evangeline slides the stolen card through the scanner on the genetics lab and storms in. "Jason Isaiah Nebbley!" she yells over the excited murmurs and staccato beeps. "Don't you dare leave me out of the loop again!" In the silence that follows, she glares at the gathering until they break up and slink back to their private desks and offices.
"Vange--"
She whirls on her father. "There is no cause for locking me in my bedroom like a recalcitrant child," she hisses. "I'm better at my job than fully half of the people working for you. If anything, I am the most invested in my work. Do you think I want to outlive every known human?"
He frowns. "You should be resting, Vange."
"The most recent insemination was three days ago!" She throws her hands into the air. "I don't understand why you even bother with that when you know the statistics. Even if I do become pregnant, you can't reproduce the mutation that allowed my birth. You're killing me and any hope for the future of our race every time Doctor Sanders shoves that needle up in me."
Jason winces at the imagery. "Go to your room," he demands, and she laughs harshly.
"That might have worked when I was three, had you ever bothered to try it, Daddy dearest. But I have work to do. Go to your room."
The last of the women dies during an unsuccessful childbirth, and Evangeline sneaks out of the ship for the first time. The planet feels too soft under her feet. She chastises herself for being so irresponsible - all she's heard, all her life, is how dangerous Beta is and how she cannot afford to be risked - but she's been looking out of thick windows for twenty-four years. Everything is brighter than she expected, but what really takes her by surprise is the smell. It changes every second, and it's always new. She'd heard Grandfather complain, when she was small, about how stale the ship always smelled. This must be the 'fresh' scent he missed so much while bedridden.
She lays a hand on a tree, imagining that she can feel the life running through it, connecting the leaves to the ground, to the ocean she can see from the top floor of the ship, to the other side of the planet rumored to have a large volcano. She presses her face to the bark and closes her eyes. If she stays very still, she can feel the raw rotation of the planet, the steady rhythm of the waves, the rumbling of the volcano stirring.
Jason is one of the younger men from the Nineteenth Awakening, but he takes ill before many of the Eighteenths begin showing signs of stasis sickness. Evangeline figures out before any of the others that his problem is not caused by the stasis sickness but is instead his heart. They are all so used to dying with their Awakening groups, fifty years after being brought out of stasis, that nobody remembers Earth and natural deaths.
Evangeline pulls Nanny out of storage and reactivates it. The dronebot links to the ship's library to learn how to nurse the scientist back to health, and she starts researching stasis sickness in her spare time. Even if she can come up with something, it's too late for the Eighteenths, but maybe she can prolong the lives of the people from the last two Awakenings. There are plenty of others working on the procreation issue, but she'd rather have company for as long as possible than be the mother of an entire planet.
Jason dies of heart failure in the middle of the Eighteenths' stasis sickness. With only two Awakening groups left, there are not enough people to care for the sick, bury the dead, and provide for the living all at once. Evangeline puts the bodies back into their stasis pods until a mass funeral can be held.
She repeats the process in ten years while the Nineteenths die.
"There isn't enough fuel," Ash says. "Not even for a rescue shuttle. Not even if we could finish retrofitting one for interplanetary travel."
Evangeline sighs. "I always was going to die alone on this rock. Tell me, am I going to go insane first?"
Ash frowns. "Don't talk like that. You can finish this. You can figure out the fuel problem."
She helps zie up as another coughing fit wracks zir body. "Ash, I'm a geneticist. I couldn't engineer my way out of a paper bag. I don't have the slightest clue how to get a rescue shuttle to the Alpha site."
"You have fifty or sixty years to learn." Ash grins and shakes zir head. "Besides, Nanny's learned a thing or two since you were born. It'll help." Zie coughs again, wipes blood off zir face. "Don't you have anyone else to watch die?"
Evangeline looks away from her friend's face. "No."
The dronebot runs the shuttle through a now-familiar sequence of commands. When everything comes up green for the fourth time in a row, it beeps at the woman resting in the command chair.
"I guess we've got no excuses left, have we, Nanny?"
It beeps again.
"Go lock in place," she orders it. "If we don't burn up trying to leave the atmosphere, you can put me in stasis and fly us to Alpha, but I'd rather be awake to watch the fireworks." The dronebot goes obediently to the back of the shuttle, where its treads lock into a dip in the floor. Evangeline straps herself into the chair and rubs her hands together. "Let's see what this thing can do."
The shuttle shakes as it pushes laboriously off the ground. Evangeline groans as it rises into the air, watches dials and digital readings as it flies steadily higher and higher. She frowns as the fuel gauge drains even faster than expected. "Nanny?"
The bot extends an arm and plugs into the computer core of the shuttle. After a moment, several lines of equations appear on the main screen in front of her. She studies them carefully, then sighs.
"Earth gravity," she whispers to herself. "I'm so stupid."
The shuttle shudders as it begins to lose speed and then arc back down towards the planet. Evangeline rests a hand on her stomach as the baby kicks for what will be the last time.
She cries, and the whole world cries with her.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-07 09:35 pm (UTC)I love how you show the worldbuilding just at the edges where it folds. I'm sorry for Evangeline and glad she learned so much.