Emily took a deep breath. She looked across the windswept plain of short grasses. The plants were green, but a dark green. Almost black rather than the lighter shades that she was used to.
It had been a long journey here to Epsilon-354, through the void of space. Gaia that Emily had decided to call it. But they had made it. And here they were now, on a planet with a full biosphere and not a single sign of sapient life on its surface. Emily glanced to the side as there was a rustle. A rodent-like animal with tusk-like bones sticking out of its jaws stuck its head out of its hole and looked around. Spotting Emily standing there staring at it, it dived back into its burrow and scurried away again.
The main ship still hovered far above in orbit, old and on the verge of failing from the long journey. But still working and doing what it needed to do.
“C’mon, Emily,” Clara said from behind her, “Our new home won’t build itself.”
Emily turned around and nodded as she went over to help Clara unpack the assorted crates. With so much time on their hands, they’d spent decades designing a large dream estate for them to live in once they reached the planet itself. Peter and two of the others were using the main ship even now to collect nearby metal rich asteroids and use the atomic printer to create more parts like the ones stacked up in these crates.
Emily and Clara were working on building the foundation to the building where all of them had chosen to establish their new home. The other five were wandering around and exploring the area in some short range electric helicopters that Emily and Clara had assembled right after they came down from orbit on their shuttle.
The atomic printer could do it all, and with so long to build up their supplies and plans they had all the disassembled parts for the vehicle ready when they came down here. All they had to do was assemble them and make sure that nothing had worn out while it sat out in storage in the bowels of the main ship.
Emily started helping Clara marking out the perimeter of the building with some colorful surveying flags. As they took measurements and started planning everything, Emily fully started realizing just how ambitious a project it would be.
But it wasn’t like they had anything else to do. May as well make their home as complicated as could be, right?
“What’s got you down, Emily?” Clara asked suddenly after adjusting the placement of one of her flags after consulting the plans on her datapad in her hand.
“I thought you’d be happy,” Clara said, “We finally made it here after so long! But you seem a little down now that we’re here on the surface.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Emily said, “I guess… I just sort of hoped that there’d be aliens here. Somebody else to talk to. It was stupid, we all saw the scans years ago. But still…”
“Hey, this place is great,” Clara said, “Even if there aren’t any people, it’s much nicer here than it would be back on Earth. It’ll just be us, but look at the size of this place we’re going to build! Don’t you enjoy the wind on your skin, seeing animals and plants again? Have a blue sky above you rather than the black of space?”
“It is pretty nice,” Emily admitted as she took a moment to take in the sensations around her. It was nice. She felt her mood improve a bit. She was glad to be out of the cramped ship finally and out into an open space again.
— — —
The giant estate was finished. It had taken three whole years to build top to bottom with all of them working on it. There were a few mistakes and missteps, but with the digital blueprints and the atomic printer to create custom parts as needed, everything worked out.
The atomic printer was an energy hog, their antimatter reactor on the main ship almost completely devoting its energy to powering the thing while it was running. They had two spare atomic printers that they had luckily hadn’t had to use yet. But if they broke then that was it. The parts for them were ridiculously complex and Emily had no idea how one would go about creating them.
The printers themselves, despite their amazing ability with making most things, still weren’t able to make copies of themselves. At least ones that would work properly. Their fabrication abilities weren’t quite enough to pull it off without some very precise equipment and facilities that were wildly impractical to build for only ten people.
So it was a relief when everything was done and they could let the machine cool down and rest a bit. They were literally irreplaceable right now. Emily had started worrying about strain on the thing with how often they’d been using it in construction of their new home.
But the home, estate, palace, whatever they were calling it, was done now. Each of them had designed their own corners of the huge complex, with all of their individual spaces meshing with each other and merging with the common rooms in the center.
Now that the building itself was finished they started moving everything inside. The main ship had been carefully deorbited and landed a short distance away for deconstruction.
Although it was useful to have a ship in orbit, the equipment on this ship was too valuable to leave up there. Going in and out of orbit was difficult and dangerous, and it would be best to have all their critical equipment down on the planet where it would be safer and they’d have easier access.
So all that critical technology had been stripped from the main ship, including the antimatter generator, and most importantly the atomic printers.
Emily had set up a sort of lab and workshop inside her own section. She had enjoyed being the ship’s engineer over their journey, it had made her feel important. And it reminded her of her time in CODA international lab with Luke before everything had gone wrong.
Two of the atomic printers had been set up for her to use, with everyone else sharing the last one. As the time passed they never ended up using it all that much. Just for the odd little projects that they had on occasion.
It had been two or three years now since the house had been completed and they were all pretty settled down in their new home. The others had picked up some knowledge but none of them seemed to enjoy science or building things all that much. Whenever they could, they left any repairs to her rather than bothering to do it themselves.
It got annoying sometimes, frankly, how they never even thought that they should do it themselves despite being perfectly able.
Even Clara did it, although the woman sat with Emily and they chatted as Emily worked on whatever the problem was. So Emily never minded when it was Clara asking for something. The others generally wandered off and left her alone to solve the problem, sometimes without even thanking her for her help after she was done.
Peter hadn’t been around in a while. He had built an electric plane with some solar panels for power and started exploring the rest of the planet. Gaia. He sent messages back through the radio transmitter that Emily had set up, but had been gone for a year or two on his own by now.
The rest were mostly just milling around the house and working on their own projects. From what Clara had told Emily most seemed to have decided to work on some artwork. Creating statues, making paintings from local dyes that they made from the local plants.
Things like that. They showed off their work to the group sometimes when they had their common meals once a week. Emily mostly just sat and listened. Clara was too interested in the conversation with the others to push for the others to talk to Emily like she used to on the ship on the journey here.
Even after all this time none of the rest of them had gotten over their faint dislike of her. Despite her best efforts to become their friends over the course of the trip and help them out with some mechanical problem whenever they needed it.
She felt very unappreciated, but despite herself she couldn’t resist refusing to help when they asked her to repair something for them. It wasn’t like she had any better things to do with her time.
Life was very lonely with Peter gone and Clara now invested in her art enough that the two of them hardly talked to each other anymore.
Emily sighed as she glanced around her haphazard workshop filled with all sorts of devices and bits and bobs she’d made over these last few years. Just some simple projects to keep her occupied. With the two atomic printers at her disposal, making most of the parts was a breeze even if it caused the lights of the room to flicker sometimes from the high power draw.
Emily had just returned from another one of their weekly dinners. Emily always looked forward to those. But no one had spoken to her the whole time she was there today. Not one word directed towards her as she sat there at the center of the table quietly eating her food. No one had talked to her. Not even Clara. Not even a greeting or a goodbye.
What was the purpose of it all? Was this all there was? Just the ten of them in this lonely complex for eternity? Wasn’t this new planet supposed to be better?
“What should I do?” Emily asked herself as she looked around the workshop, “Something important and worthwhile. There must be something more than this.”
Emily sat heavily on a nearby bench and put her head in her hands and just thought for a while. She pressed hard into her eyes with her palms as she just sat there thinking.
“I just wish I had more people to talk to,” she muttered, “If there were more then I’d be able to find somebody who cares about me. Someone who understands.”
Emily looked around the room again. Her eyes stopped at a little stone statue as tall as her hand sitting in the corner. A gift from Clara, one of her first efforts at carving a human form.
Emily walked over and picked up the surprisingly heavy little statue. The chiseling was rough with obvious divots and marks where Clara had missed a strike or carved off too much. It was lumpy and misshapen, but it was also distinctively a humanoid form with a head, two arms at their sides with little divots in to mark the torso. Then two legs with another divot to show that they were split. Then two feet at the bottom with the mangled attempt for toes that Clara had made.
Emily rubbed her thumb over the rough surface of the small statue and stared at it.
“From the clay…” Emily muttered as an idea formed and took root in her mind as she stood there, “Why shouldn’t I? I have as much time as I need to get it right...”
Emily’s hand clenched around the statue tightly as she realized she’d finally found something to guide her. She’d been rudderless and purposeless for so long. She’d do this.
Emily put down the statue on the bench again. She closed her eyes and reached deep within herself.
“How do I bring them back?” she whispered, “I have to Know.”
I… This is why I’m here? To help little Emily with this? I… I thought it was just inspiration at the time. Luck, chance. But I’ll do my best. Creating a fully functioning cloning chamber is a complex process. We’ll have to build many things before we’re far enough to get to the chamber itself. Like tech trees in a video game. Ah, and we’ll need the genetic recombination software and synthesis as well so it’s not just pure clones of you ten. Introduce enough genetic variation that they’ll be able to reproduce and not deal with inbreeding. That’ll take a while to create too, totally separate technology than the incubation chambers themselves… But let’s do it, Little Emily. I’ll be helping you the whole way. We’ll bring them back together. All of them.
Emily’s eyes flickered as a rush of knowledge and inspiration struck her as all sorts of ideas flitted through her head all at once as she stood there motionless.
When her eyes opened again, they were determined and focused.
“I have a lot of work to do,” she told herself firmly, “I’ll bring them all back.”
— — —
Emily mumbled to herself, drifting off into space as she mechanically ate her meal. No one noticed and Clara didn’t say much to Emily besides greeting her when she arrived and exchanging some pleasantries before returning to her conversation with the others.
“Hey Emily,” Sanje asked after the meal ended and everyone started dispersing again. Emily shook her head and refocused on the man.
“Yes, Sanje?”
“My plumbing has a leak. I was wondering if you could come by and fix it. It’s rather irritating.”
Emily felt her annoyance rise. The entitlement, to just state it like that. Like it was her fault somehow that his pipes had leaked. Sanje knew how to fix it, he just didn’t want to bother doing the extra work. Even if he didn’t know how to fix it, they all had plans for the building. The way it should be fixed should be in there. Emily had made sure to work hard to put those notes in there just for them when she worked on the design. All he would have to do was compare the plans to reality and move from there using her notes.
He just didn’t want to do the work.
“Fuck off, Sanje,” Emily said, “Do it yourself for once. I’m not your plumber.”
“This is our shared house. It’s your responsibility and you know best how to…” Sanje protested.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Fix your own shit!” Emily said, her resentment boiling over, “Don’t pull that shared house crap on me. I’m the only one who does any repair work around here. And you know what? I’m done with it! Done!”
Everyone was staring at her now as she ranted at Sanje who looked stunned at her sudden outburst.
Emily raised her voice, “All of you, I’m not doing any repairs on your junk anymore. Call me when something’s wrong with the antimatter generator or atomic printer. Otherwise all of you can do it yourself. I’ve got more important things to do than chores that you should be doing for yourselves. Not for all of your ungrateful asses.”
She turned and stormed out of the room. She heard the others scolding Sanje who was trying to defend himself as they blamed him for causing Emily’s outburst.
Emily went back into her workshop and angrily punched the metal wall to the side of the doorframe. It dented in slightly, and the short burst of pain in her knuckles calmed her down slightly.
She took a shaky breath and slowly calmed herself down. Should she have blown up on Sanje like that? But as she thought on how he’d asked her... How he’d just assumed that she’d help him despite him never talking to her when he didn’t have to… That it was somehow her fault and responsibility when things went wrong…
She felt angrier just thinking about it. She took another deep breath and calmed down. Yeah, she’d blown up on him. But she’d stand by her statement. She wasn’t helping them with anything simple from now on. She did have more important things to do now.
It was three months into her grand project and already it had helped give her purpose. She was making slow but steady progress as she worked feverishly, forgetting everything else as she went. She hadn’t done much yet, but hope swelled in her chest the more worked and the more progress that she made. Aching hope built inside of her that she could do the impossible and bring humanity back from their extinction.
Emily got back to work in her workshop to assemble some more equipment, and her anger soothed and she started humming softly as she worked and she slowly relaxed.
This was something worthwhile, finally something good that she could do. Something good that she could build.
Emily almost didn’t hear the knocking at her door as she inspected the digital file on the computer screen for the part she wanted the atomic printer to assemble.
On the third knock, Emily was knocked out of her flow state and looked up as the noise registered in her mind. She went to the door and opened it and saw Clara standing there outside.
Emily stood there awkwardly in the doorway for a moment as Clara didn’t say anything.
“Are you going to invite me in?” Clara asked a little awkwardly.
“Oh? Er, yeah. Sure,” Emily said and stood to the side as Clara came inside and looked around.
“Huh. You’ve really been busy in here,” Clara said indulgently, “What are you building?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just some things to pass the time,” Emily said, not sure why she lied. But she didn’t want anyone to know until the project was finished. She didn’t want everyone else to shatter like she would if the project failed somehow. False hope turning to choking dust and more hatred if things didn’t go well.
“Nice, nice, glad you’ve got some things to do…” Clara said as the two of them sat on a bench.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
“What was up at lunch?” Clara asked, “You totally exploded on Sanje. I mean, fair. But what’s going on? It can’t just be him asking for repairs so rudely.”
Emily sighed, “I meant it, Clara. The rest of you can repair your own things. I’m sick of being treated like it’s my duty to do it for them. You know that none of them even thank me after I finish anymore? Just dismiss me like I’m a servant or something once it’s fixed. It was a long time coming, it just came out all at once.”
“Really, they did that?” Clara asked, “Don’t you worry. I’ll set them straight, lay down the law. They’ve been running wild with Mr. Rose being out exploring the planet for so long. I’ll get them all to apologize and not be so rude to you. But you don’t have to cut them all off completely because of that.”
Emily shot Clara a sharp look before shaking her head, “No, Clara. I’ve decided. Even if they apologize, I’m not doing it. If they were my friends then they’d talk to me even when they weren’t forced to. That goes for you too. You can figure out the simple things on your own by now, you don’t need me.”
“I don’t need you,” Clara said huskily as she leaned forward and scrunched her shoulders to accentuate her breasts as she leaned forward in the casual low cut shirt that she was wearing, “But maybe I just want you, hm? Maybe I have some ulterior motives that you’ve got to discover.”
Clara winked at Emily before sitting back with a smirk on her face.
Despite herself, Emily found herself being convinced away from her formerly firm stance. Maybe it would be worth it to spend some more time with Clara? But then she shook her head to clear it from the hormones and felt anger as she realized what was happening.
“Y-Y-You know what, Clara?” Emily said, “Get out. You’re just like the rest. You only care about the work I’d do for you. You don’t talk to me for months and months, not one real conversation, and now you come here and- and- and play with my feelings like this? Make me feel like an idiot when I know you’ve never been interested in me like that in the slightest? Get out.”
“What? I- Emily…” Clara stammered, looking stunned, “It’s not like tha-”
“GET OUT! GO!”
“I- Er, okay,” Clara said as she saw Emily’s expression. She walked over to the door and hesitated before walking through.
“Sorry,” Clara said, “See you for the meal next month,”
“See you,” Emily said, her anger diffusing a little bit as Clara shut the door behind her with a loud click.
Emily hesitated before turning back to her workbench. She’d make up with Clara later. See if the woman really apologized for what Emily was sure that she had been doing.
It was time to get back to work.
— — —
“Hey Peter. How was your trip?” Emily asked as she took a bite of one of the local fruits. The food here was edible somehow. Probably not nearly as nutritious as something from Earth would be due to their alien nature and divergent evolution. Human guts weren’t made to eat food like this. Or more accurately their gut bacteria. Bacteria which had been thoroughly been purged by their long trip across interstellar space. It was to be seen if their bodies would adjust as new bacteria migrated into their digestive tract from this planet, or if it was something innate to human biology keeping the food from being nutritious.
But the food was roughly close enough to earth fruit that it at least tasted good, even if it probably didn’t actually provide them with many real calories that their body could absorb. This fruit was closest in flavor to an orange even if it had interesting flavor undertones that Emily had never tasted before she came here. It tasted good. And nutrition hardly mattered for any of them, so it was really a win-win situation all things considered.
“Good,” Peter said and slicked back his wet hair. He’d just come back from his journey a few hours ago and looked like he’d just left the shower.
“It’s been quite the experience exploring this planet. All sorts of creatures and natural wonders. I can’t believe this place is so… hospitable.”
“I know, this planet really is amazing. A great place for a fresh start,” Emily agreed.
“Yes, a fresh start,” Peter agreed absently, “I like the sound of that.”
Emily handed him one of the fruits and he stared at it curiously for a moment before taking a bite.
“Oh! This is quite good. Where’d you get this?”
“Some of the others like to go foraging,” Emily said, “It’s just a thirty or forty minute flight on one of the planes. There’s a jungle they fly to to scavenge good food like this.”
“Interesting. Maybe I’ll have to go with them next time they go. What’s it like?”
“Oh. Well, ah. I’ve never been,” Emily said.
“You haven’t? Whyever not?”
“Oh, well. Things are a bit tense around here. I don’t think I’d be very welcome,” she said.
“Tense?” Peter said with a frown, lowering the fruit and putting it down on the plate on the table, “How so?”
“Er, uhm. You know. Just arguments about our chores,” Emily explained, “I had to do all of them for a while. Repairing things around the house, electricals, the whole thing. I got fed up and told the rest to do it themselves at one point. They tried to convince me over and over to keep helping them despite being clear that I wouldn’t do it for minor things anymore. I did shout at some of them once they started lying about what the problem was to get me to come help with something more minor instead… But all of that drama was a year ago. They’ve mostly avoided me since then and just started doing it all themselves finally.”
“Avoided you?” Peter asked with a frown, “It’s not that nonsense with the past again? I thought I made it clear to them that you weren’t at fault…”
Emily shrugged. It was clear that their grudge against her still played a big part in it.
“What about Clara, what did she do? She’s your friend, no?” Peter asked.
“Clara? She… Well, she chose them over me once things grew tense. I haven’t talked to her in a while.”
There was some silence as Peter stared at her. Emily suddenly realized that she was dumping on Peter right after he came back from his exciting journey.
“But I’m sorry for just saying all that right after your back,” Emily said quickly, “Eat! Eat! It’s all resolved now, so no need to worry about it anymore.”
“Resolved? It doesn’t sound that way. You’re still isolated from everyone else, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I can deal with it. I’ve got a big project I’m working on. It’s been going well, so it hasn’t been too terrible honestly.”
“Hm. What’s the project?”
“Top secret. I’m not going to tell anyone until I’m sure it’ll work,” she said reflexively. Peter flinched.
“Sorry,” Emily said as she realized how harshly she’d spoken on reflex, “I didn’t mean it like that. But yeah. Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up when I’m not even close to finishing still…”
“Well, I suppose I can understand that,” Peter said thoughtfully, “It’s your project. But I’m more than happy to hear about it if you want to tell me.”
Emily nodded slowly, “I’ll think about it,” she said.
“I’ll talk to the others,” Peter promised, “Get to the bottom of it. It’s just the ten of us together. I wouldn’t be a good leader if I let something like this go on without healing the divide in our group.”
Peter put his hand on Emily’s shoulder.
“I’ll handle it now that I’m back.”
“T- Thank you, Peter. I appreciate that.”
Peter lifted his hand off Emily’s shoulder and picked the fruit from the table and took another bite.
“These really are excellent,” Peter said around the juices that leaked from the corners of his lips, “Here, let’s sit down. I should tell you about some of the things I’ve seen in more detail. Maybe you can tell me what else you’ve been up to besides this ‘top secret’ project of yours.”
They sat down and Peter told his story. It had been months since Emily had talked to anybody besides herself. It was… good that Peter was finally back. She was sure that he would figure out how to make things right again.
— — —
Time passed. With Peter in the middle of the conflict, Emily and the rest of the group made up. Emily still thought it was all their fault, but even she could admit that after they started lying to her that her reactions and insults at them had been a bit over the top. She’d been extremely frustrated at that point and hadn’t held back screaming and laying into them even when they protested that the mistake had been genuine.
Emily didn’t know. Maybe it all had been coincidences. She still felt like they had been lying to her. But maybe they hadn’t been lying to her every time.
But she apologized for being too sensitive, and the rest apologized for taking her work for granted as Peter stood there frowning sternly at them like a disappointed father.
Although reluctantly, Emily was accepted back into the larger group and started going back to the monthly meals again with everyone. Clara… Well, Emily still hadn’t completely forgiven her for abandoning her when things grew tense with the rest of the group. But they were chatting again and things were slowly trending towards a mending friendship.
Between the meals, Emily returned to her lab and kept working in complete obsession. Not sleeping, not resting, just work work work constantly. She could feel the progress coming faster and faster as she kept muttering to herself and building device after device. Her only roadblock was getting more materials and the speed of her two atomic printers most of the time. The ideas seemed to just spring into her head fully formed as soon as she became stumped by a problem.
— — —
After nearly eight whole years of obsession and constant work, it was finally complete. At least the first part. She’d invented everything she needed, all the technology necessary. Now she just had to assemble the last machine, the incubation chamber for the clones itself. She had another meal with the others and returned to work shortly after.
It only took three whole months to build once she started. But she did it. The final machine was built and brimming with yellowish thick fluid to the brim at six feet tall and almost as wide across its cylindrical base.
Creating that fluid had been such a pain. Emily had to take meat from some of the bodies of the alien animals that the others had hunted and heavily process it before it could be fed into the machine that she’d built to create the right blend. It had been a rather gruesome process, but she pushed through until she had enough of the fluid to start up the machine to nourish a growing embryo.
The whole chamber was sealed in metal on all sides so the exterior light wouldn’t interfere with the growth process of the clone inside.
Emily did all her final checks to make sure everything was working properly and then took a deep breath. It was time.
She took out a knife and walked over to a cell incubator that she’d prepared. She carefully sliced at her upper arm and carved away a deep slice. There was a spray of blood before the wound healed again. Emily carefully placed the large chunk of her flesh that she’d cut off in a glorified blender and ground it up and suspended it in a special fluid to help isolate the living cells.
The outside of her skin was layers and layers of dead cells as a barrier to the outside world. She had to isolate the living cells underneath so her machine could genetically alter them so they’d act more like an embryo. Totipotent or embryonic stem cells they were called, created from reverting them back from the more specialized skin cells that had been in the piece of her body she’d just isolated, ones that could only reproduce to form other cells that would be found in the skin. Otherwise the skin type cells would never be able to form cells in her brain or heart like embryonic stem cells could.
But after spending some time altering the cells in the cell culture so they were as close to embryonic cells as they could be, she placed the fluid with all the altered cells and drained it into the final machine.
This one would filter out all the cells and select the one most viable for development. And then genetically alter it even further in an extremely fine tuned way. To turn it from an embryo like cell into something that would be indistinguishable from a real human embryo unless one inspected it very closely.
Emily watched the screen as the machine did its work. She had already input her parameters long before now. It should randomize the genome a bit while also making sure to weed out and cure any genetic diseases that would crop up. She could have gone more granular with it, but that reeked of the Empire genetic purity eugenics programs and made her feel icky about looking too much deeper into doing any more alterations. So Emily left it mostly randomized besides the computer weeding out the genetic diseases.
The machine finished and with a spurt ejected the cell on the other end into a small test tube attached to its side. Emily carefully grabbed it and pulled out the test tube with the invisible embryo cell inside. She walked over to the large incubation chamber and put the test tube with the embryo inside in its little slot.
With a loud sucking noise, the contents of the test tube were drained as it entered the larger incubation machine and started being processed and developed. After the embryo was above a certain size then it would be ejected to the next slightly larger chamber in a long series of them. Each specialized with certain hormones and conditions to simulate proper fetal development. Once the fetus was a certain size it would be placed in the large central chamber where it could start fully developing with less supervision from the machine like as if it were in a real womb.
But all of that was automatic. All Emily could do now was sit back and monitor things every once in a while. It would be a full year before it would be finished. The accelerated growth should take the baby past the phase where they could only survive on milk and straight to when they could eat real food. None of the women including her could breastfeed and there were no cows or similar animals to be found if that would even work, so that had been an important hurdle that Emily had had to work hard to overcome when she was designing the incubation process.
Emily pursed her lips as she stared at the machine as she thought about what to do. Should she announce it now? Or after the baby was born from the machine? She hoped the bacterial cocktail she’d included into the machine worked like she hoped. The beneficial bacteria should be implanted in the baby’s gut and allow her to process the natural food on this planet. Or so Emily’s careful tests had informed her should be the case. Should.
No. She’d… She’d tell Peter soon and let him decide. She’d need help preparing for the new baby. But she’d have to talk to him to see how to break the news to the others.