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When Apollonia awoke, it was early. Sunlight filtered dimly through windows whose blinds did little to keep it comfortably dark.
“Turn off the lights,” she groaned.
“I humbly submit that I am incapable of dimming the sun,” the drone said. Norton, she thought. Yes, he’d be Norton now.
“When did you get a personality?” she grumbled.
“I am a simple AI,” Norton replied. “But like any being, I take time to open up to a person.”
“Hmph. Well, what time is it?”
“It is 7:03 AM, local time.”
Seven! That was too early. Stupidly early.
But she was already awake and hadn’t Guilli said he’d make breakfast that early? She should go down to see.
Changing into a fresh, but annoyingly identical to the last, jumpsuit, she left her cabin.
The air was damp, and she looked around uneasily through a haze that seemed to swallow the world.
She knew what fog was, but it was again something new to her. It was kind of ridiculous how little she knew about all this. It was all different; the look, feel, smell. All of it.
This is what humanity had come from . . . and what they’d lost in the stars. Or at least she had. Maybe in other systems they still had dirt and trees grew and there was fog. She didn’t know.
There was so much she didn’t know.
Making her way through the fog was eerie but enjoyable.
The Ranger’s cabin was visible even from her door, and smoke puffed from a squarish block on top, which she thought might be a chimney. The smoke gave her the creeps; seeing it in a space station was always, always a bad sign.
There was a smell with it, too. It was not the normal acrid smell she associated with smoke, but almost pleasant.
She knocked.
Guilli called her in, and she entered.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Ah, good morning to you!” he said. He had a pan over a fire-fueled stove, but she could not see what he was making. “Please sit down, this will be ready shortly.”
“Thank you,” she said, getting tired of only being able to thank people and not being of much use otherwise.
“I hope I’m not making it hard on you – making me breakfast.” It was an automatic concern of hers, but she realized after she said it that this was Earth; no one was hungry. “I mean, it’s a lot of work . . .”
“It’s part of my job!” he said. “I am expected to make sure the feeding and sheltering of people who come through here happens. If it were many? Well, that happens only sometimes, and if it did you can be assured I would not slave over a stove by myself, making eggs! No, I’d have drones do that. But you are just one, and I need to eat also, so making just a little extra that can fit in the pan is no trouble!”
She felt humbled by his kindness, and couldn’t think of much to say as he finished and plated the meal.
Putting her dish in front of her, she found herself staring at something she did not quite understand.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Scambled eggs! Laid fresh this morning, my friend.” He grinned, and then ate some.
Carefully poking a yellow clump with her fork, she thought they looked so different from the eggs she’d had before – well, egg-flavored dishes. Why bother to grow a whole egg in space, let alone have a chicken lay them, when you could just grow some genetically-altered algae to vaguely have the shape and flavor of egg?
Taking a bite, she was surprised at the depth of flavor. Would the Craton have eggs just as good? She hadn’t tried. Hadn’t even considered.
Or was this just something one could only truly experience if they lived on Earth?
She ate, trying to savor every bite. There was a pale cheese grated over top that blended perfectly with the egg.
When her plate was empty, she wished for more, but knew she ought to stop.
“I can give your drone the local map,” Guilli said. “You are free to travel anywhere within a two-kilometer area – plenty of space. Beyond that, we hope to leave nature as undisturbed as possible. No person is to go in, save a Ranger like myself – and only on a rare occasion. You understand, yes?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good, then once you feel like it, you may set off. Do not worry about the bears around here – they are fat and lazy, much like me. They have accepted me as one of them, so they will not bother you. That, and they don’t like drones.”
She chuckled, and wondered if Norton had told the man of her concern.
Guilli busied himself cleaning up and then went to a desk to look at his pad. It was an odd juxtaposition seeing a computer and other equipment just as complex as she might see on any starship here in his rustic cabin.
Taking his business as a sign she should leave, she went out into the sun, seeing that the fog had all dissipated. Norton buzzed up to her unobtrusively.
“Where would you like to go?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just go explore.”
She spent the day out in the woods. Tumbling down slippery ditches, every exposed bit of her getting scratched from sticks and rocks, getting unexpected bites from small insects that buzzed in her face.
But also seeing trees even larger and grander than any she’d seen before, finding a gurgling stream with tiny cute fish in it, seeing dragonflies dancing in the air (and cheering them on as they devoured the mosquitoes).
It was a marvellous time.
The hours seemed to pass in a haze, and she stopped many times. Once to eat another meal bar she’d brought, the rest just to stop and look at what was around her.
Once, sitting on a log, she saw a tiny mouse busily dragging off some kind of seed pod. It paid her no mind, and she just watched it, feeling an emotion she could not really affix to words.
By the time she returned to the Ranger station, the sun was just beginning to dip over the horizon.
The cabin was puffing smoke again, and through the window she saw a flurry of activity.
“Should I check in?” she asked Norton. “He looks busy.”
“I believe he is cooking,” Norton said. “And you are welcome for dinner.”
“Oh!” she said. Knocking, she heard him call for her to enter.
Going in, the cabin smelled delicious. She hadn’t smelled anything like it before; the scents were both foreign and familiar, and made her mouth water.
“What are you making?” she asked.
“Chicken!” he called back.
She nodded and sat down. She’d had plenty of chicken in space. It was one of the more popular cuts, and she liked it much more than the greasy mess that was duck, or the fishiness of capybara.
When he placed the chicken on the table, though, it . . . didn’t look right.
She glanced to him, but he looked so sure of himself, not bothered at all.
The Chicken was so much thinner than any whole chicken she’d ever seen. It was . . . lumpy. The spices were spread in a way that looked off – uneven, with larger bits she didn’t recognize.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling herself lock up inside, fearing rudeness to a man who had been so kind.
He cut a leg and offered it to her, giving himself the other, with a wing. “You may have more as well, if you wish!” he added, and pushed a bowl of leaves at her.
They were all green, and she stared, unsure what to make of them. Did she . . . eat them?
“It’s a salad,” he said. “Ah, of course, you don’t eat those in space colonies, hmm? Not efficient enough to merely grow leaves! Well – consider it an Earth specialty. The leaves all taste good. We drizzle a bit of oil mixed with vinegar, use some leaves of a more flavorful nature – this has mint I picked today in it – and eat it. Try it, I hope you will enjoy it.”
She nodded, and took a bite, surprised how tough they were to chew through. The flavor was intense, and she forced herself to swallow it. She had to take a smaller bite next time, that was for sure.
He was looking at her, smiling easily, as if he had not a care in the world. Curious to see what she thought of the chicken.
She picked up the strange-looking leg. The compressed blobs of meat forced onto plastic or pseudo-wood frames were one of her favorite dishes she’d gotten to eat on Vitriol. Rare, prized.
Could the real thing really stand up?
And she’d never eaten a thing that had once been alive. At least, not moving around where she could see it. She was terrified to think that hours ago, this had been a clucking bird.
But Guilli’s eyes were still watching her.
So she took a bite. It was delicious.
Other Terrestrial 