The Beginning of Someone’s World is the End of Someone Else’s
A Photosynthezoids Story
She grabbed the laptop from the gate agent and jumped the top 2 steps of the crew stairs, rushing to the cockpit. This wasn’t her first flight since she became an Ice Force Commander, not even close, but this was her first mission in over two months and her first peacetime mission. No more bombing defenseless old people and children through clouds of dark smoke. No more population-wide cries of suffering below. Now, she helped the terraformers turn war-torn Photosynth 387QR into a modern, commercial ecumenopolis. This was her new career.
She sat in the pilot’s chair and threw her orders, and the dispatcher’s flight release onto the co-pilot’s while she adjusted her body in the seat that no longer seemed made for her as it did during the war. She activated the aircraft’s flight management computer and observed that her usual co-pilot, Jax, had transferred all the flight data, fuel calculations, altitude, and the approved route by air traffic control. She perused and compressed her lips at the lengthy list of deferred maintenance, but everything was postponable. Her payload was light this bright, cloudless morning.
The anemometer showed 4 to 7 mph winds from the west — perfect for her mission. She began her pre-flight checklist, reciting each item out loud to herself because she had left Jax at the hangar, heading for the tower. She didn’t need a co-pilot for this simple, peacetime mission. She looked out her pilot-side window and watched the crewman signal her engines cleared for start, then ran through her next checklist and then pressed the starter. The flywheel whirred. She checked her temperature gauge. Despite that maintenance list, the engine seemed fine, not overheating, so she introduced fuel to the engine. She checked the engine’s internal temperature again, no problem. Then she re-ran the same checklist for the second engine, again no problem. Ground control cleared her for taxi to the runway. On the taxiway, she saw Dix, her usual bombadier, now demoted to ground crew but happy for that because it meant peacetime. He flagged her turn onto the runway.
Takeoff was effortless, and she climbed rapidly. She enjoyed smooth sailing over the half-melted glacier and the fields that had been smooth and thick with ice before the war on the soon-to-be the former Photosynth 387QR and future Eedos, purchased by The Eedos Corporation for ecumenopolis experimentation. She thought that the people chosen to inhabit the new planet, once Eedos completed its terraforming and urban planning, were among the luckiest in the galaxy. Maybe she’d put her name into the next lottery for a home with a hydroponic greenhouse garden and a hangar for the small jet she saved her military salary to purchase one day after the war, that far-off time everyone talked about for years was now.
She cleared the mountains and turned south to the forest and lake. She remembered that forest and lake from her childhood, a young, frightened passenger on a spaceship that crashed into the lake. The ship’s captain had died in the crash, so the science officer took charge. Their new leader determined that the indigenous people were perilously superstitious, the land was unsuitable for large-scale building, and most of the plants on the planet were poisonous, so she, her parents, and the rest of the crew survived by hiding in tree houses and eating only mushrooms for a little over a year. Once, she remembered, her parents made her hide in a hole in the ground covered by leaves and branches because the farming team heard rumors that some tribesmen were planning to kidnap her, but nothing came of it. After that, they enjoyed a long, lustrous, sun-soaked summer until the natives started a religious war, claiming it was divine will. A scraggly, fungal-ridden alien helped them fix their ship, and the group evacuated.
She never viewed her stay on Photosynth 387QR as bad or a waste. She learned about mushroom farming and community planning, and she enjoyed hunting for truffles with her pet pig, Zoe. Their leader mentored her, and she basked in the attention. She decided to join the Ice Force as soon as she was old enough. When they got home, she studied and trained and never ate a mushroom again.
This was good, she thought. The routine flyover helped her release her bittersweet memories, sullied by the more recent deaths of her parents and her mentor. But it wasn’t the time to reminisce or brood over her loneliness or war-wounded heart. She had an important job that could shape her future and everyone’s. She circled the area until she descended to the right altitude to offload her cargo, an herbicide used to manage vegetation and facilitate more efficient and pristine terraforming they purchased at a high cost from a commercial planet in a nearby galaxy. She put on her gas mask and pressed the button to release the colorless, clear liquid. It flowed through the lines and sprayed from the spouts running along the back of each of her aircraft’s wings. She continued to circle and spray the forest and lakeshore until the gauge showed the tanks were empty. She wondered why it wasn’t orange because it was called “Orange.”
“Rivitia, do you copy?” She heard from the radio. It was Jax.
“Copy, Jax. What’s up?”
“I just read the lit on this “Orange” stuff. It’s some toxic old junk they bought off a place that already outlawed it.” Hope you were wearing your mask and get out of there fast.”
“Copy. I expected it was toxic. Have to get rid of the weeds, don’t we? And roger that on the mask. I’m wearing it and heading home. Feels good that I didn’t have to hurt anyone on this flight. Just a bunch of old, mostly dead trees and some barely green grass, shrubs, and some brush. I’m putting in for Eedos, are you?”