John Danziger, narrating... "It's now clear that we're not going to be able to go any farther to find the edge of our human caused extinction zone that we're in. Julia says that Uly's central nervous system is continuing to degrade without an obvious, detectable cause. Heller has told me privately that the boy will have to be put on manual life support in a few days if his condition continues to worsen at its current rate. I'm at a loss on what I can do to help the situation. The rest of the group feels the same way. Our morale is at an all time low. Time to stick with a solid plan. That is, if we can figure out one."
The mechanic/new group leader of Eden Project eyed up the tents blossoming across the pinkish desert steppe and grimaced as he inhaled the melon pepper smell of disintegrating, dead vegetation rising on the wind. A scuff of shoes on rocks alerted him sharply, and he just barely lowered his Mag Pro gun away from a hostile aim in time to prevent an accident. He made out Morgan Martin's silhouette joining him on the sentry hill in the early morning darkness as the first copper rays of sunlight began to fill the sea green sky. John stopped a sudden urge to audibly give voice to his current thoughts about the Project's current fate.
Martin sighed an exhausted greeting and made his way over to a half finished dug-in-the-ground latrine pit. Morgan wasn't so inclined to be heroically stoic. The long haired, pony tailed business executive type spat out some sour sand that had been blown into his mouth by the stiff breeze as he, too, unzipped his settler's pants to pee into its depths. "Everything here's always about death and decay in the end. I hate this planet, John."
John smiled wryly. "Careful, Martin. This one has ears. Should we be biting the incredibly ugly land that still surrounds us?" he joked sarcastically.
The chistled man's expression hardened its Grecian lines."We've been living off that Earth made food synth hydrolyzer we recovered off of Bennet's ship almost 100%, Danziger. Who's mooching off who?"
Danziger shrugged, being honest. "All of the water we've been drinking and peeing back into ground holes since Day One is entirely G889's I'll have you know."
Martin rolled his eyes. "Oh, and the air's been a total gift, too, as of late? I've coughed out more dirt in the last three days than I've picked out from under my fingernails from digging toilet holes every night. Pretty pointless if you ask me. Nothing can eat us or our sh*t. We're the wrong type."
John let out a smile as he stared at the dead forest stretched out below them. "Use your face mask. Like the rest of us." Danziger said, finishing up relieving himself. "Then maybe you won't have to go to Julia for any more sonic pulmonary cleansings."
"I like those sessions." Morgan admitted. "I win instant sympathy and the attention I'm entitled to from Bess, whenever I go."
"She's your wife, not your mother hen." said a new, much younger voice. Both men readjusted their clothing quickly and repositioned their bathroom hands safely onto neutral hips as True Danziger walked into view. She immediately dropped her own pants down to the buff and squatted over the pit.
John and Morgan whirled their backs to her with exaggerated discomforture, averting their eyes. "Modesty, half pint! We have discussed this." John growled at his daughter.
"Never mattered when I was a baby." she shot back. "Dad, could you hand me a scrap? I forgot to bring some." True said, holding out her hand and wriggling fingers.
Blindly, John reached into his pocket for one and stretched out an arm to give it to her without looking. "Well, remember better next time. Better yet, why don't you void by yourself when nobody else is around? Might spare us some awkward moments like this one."
True completed her dump, deftly wiped herself, and pulled up her cargo trousers with a short hop. "You told me to stay in everybody's visual because we're on high alert. Make up your ship addled mind." she said. "Why do we have to build toilets anyway? I thought there's no alien bacteria anywhere on the planet to even be able to get us sick."
"Are you done yet?" Danziger huffed.
"I sure am." she snapped, matching their hands and hips poses.
John and Morgan both turned back around and eyed up True. Danziger crouched and took his daughter by the shoulders, as he knelt at her feet. "We have enough germs of our own inside our bodies to still cause issues to ourselves if we're not careful. It's bad enough that the phage Bennet engineered is killing off all the natives."
"Oh, I get it now, Dad. We don't want to add another epidemic on top of an already really, really bad one." she sighed.
Her father nodded tiredly.
"How's Uly doing?" Morgan asked True, changing the subject while shouldering the Mag Pro he took from John.
"The same. Still blind as a bat. Why didn't he say anything about his eyes? The idiot!" she groused with only half concealed worry. "He was starting to gasp a little when I left." she shared. "Like it was hard to breathe."
Morgan and John traded subtle glances at the girl's report of a prognosis they already knew was terrible.
"We still have his immunity suit as a back up, True." Morgan replied.
True made a face. "He hates that thing! He was so much happier running around camp at top speed using his own two feet!"
"Shush. He might hear you. It's up to all of us to keep Uly's spirits up. Let's grab dinner, Half Me. I want to talk to everybody before we eat." John said.
Uly was twitching in his sleep, under the influence of a sedation program through his virtual gear headset. The med tent had been assembled three sided, so the open side could face a camp fire for warmth and have access to plenty of fresh air.
It still felt weird to Bess Martin, even after a year marooned on G889, that a bug screen would never, ever be needed. The only thing that seemed familiar was the fullness of one of the planet's larger twin moons. The shadow of the second had been drifting nearer to the edge of its shining companion noticeably, every night. ::Moon cross.:: a part of Bess realized. ::It's nearing that time again?:: she wondered.
John Danziger and the rest of Eden Project were gathered around Devon Adair who was dishing out a fruit stew from a pot placed inside of the hydrolizer Danziger had bolted to the back of one of the Trans rovers. Its solar energy fully restored, meals were swiftly programmed to order and passed around to the group who sat around the fire. All there was left to do for breakfast was to wait for the nutri-java pot to finish heating over the green flames.
Julia kept one eye on the medical monitor screen she had turned on over Uly's head. She rested a cheek on Alonzo Solace's shoulder as she tried to relax her vigil over her patient.
"Julia, he's not bad yet." said Solace realistically. "And even if Uly's heart stopped, I doubt he'd be allowed to get away with it. Isn't he a Terrian prince or something now? What kind of royalty would he be to his Dreamers who saved him once before, if he suddenly died?"
Some of the stress on John Danziger's face fell away at that, as he built up their cooking fire. "He's got a point, Heller. That's one hell of a life support team waiting in the wings."
Devon Adair wasn't so reassured. "Uly's getting worse. Just like he did when we first landed here."
John Danziger nodded reluctantly. "And.. it's been proven that anything the Terrians choose to do for him is going to take more than a little while to happen."
"If at all." Julia agreed, stretching her medi-glove over Uly's pale chest one more time to take a reading of the boy's vital signs. "Nobody's seen or dreamed of a Terrian for a month."
"Maybe all we have to do is reach the edge of the extinction zone to re-establish contact with them." suggested Bess Martin. "We could send out a scouting party."
John Danziger shook his head. "It's never gone well for us whenever we've split up. I think we should stay together as a group. Let's not repeat past mistakes."
Morgan gestured, agreeing. "Yep. Separating would be stupid. Who knows how far this extinction zone really extends. It could be covering this whole continent by now. Any scout vehicle could potentially move out of the main group's head gear range, run headlong into danger, and we'd never even know about it."
Yale, the cyborg tutor was frank. "We'll never know unless we try that idea first. Just think of the consequences if we don't." he warned.
An uncomfortable silence reigned as everybody ate their steamed fruit and sipped their nutri-java.
Bess Martin picked up the plate of yellow eye stalks that Uly had refused to eat a while ago and dumped them gently onto the ground next to the fire. The stalks re-animated softly with a lemon glow and sank their roots back into the sand, returning to their original upright growing plant and motion detector state. Bess knew they'd offer themselves up as food for anyone who needed nourishment or medical care again willingly. "The ultimate recycler weed." she murmured with a half smile, tickling their feathery fronds in admiration. "You would have been very welcome on the farm back on Earth my fine fern-y friends." she chuckled. They turned their mono eye bulbs to study her face in detail as a reaction to the stimulus and subsequent replanting. Once assured of Bess's lack of hunger, the Terrian eye stalks reverted their attention towards Uly's nearby sick bed and remained firmly oriented to the boy's position as soon as her hand broke contact.
Cameron was smoothing down the hairs on his arms as he shivered. "I don't think I'll ever get used to those things." he said.
"Why not? They're very good for us." wondered Mrs. Martin.
Magus agreed, shaking back her short, dark hair. "Cameron, the eye stalks were made that way by a clan of Terrians who must still hold a lot of compassion for human beings in spite of everything we've done to them."
"I know. I realize that. I... It's just that they're so... alien." said the big man, still creeped out.
"Wait a minute." True spoke up, pointing to the yellow eyestalks' gentle surveillance of the boy's still face. "They're watching Uly. And us. Right? Who's on the receiving end of that?"
"Welcome to my world." said Zero suddenly. The android had been standing at attention, on passive patrol scan, near the edge of the group. Everybody startled. The voice that had spoken had not been the gentle male tenor they had all come to know as the Zero's normal vocal modulator. The voice, speaking in a much higher tone, was pitched easily into the range of being... female.
