Alex knew they were all forgetting something, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He continued to eat his breakfast as he racked his brain. It was important. He knew that. If it was so important, why couldn’t he remember what it was? His brain worked in magical and mystical ways that not even he could understand.

Then it came to him. His discovery yesterday.

Lark was starting to leave the recreation room. “Lark! Wait,” Alex said, leaping to his feet.

“Is everything okay, Alex?” Lark turned around with a look of concern someone normally gets when their friend leaps to their feet and yells at you.

“No. Well yes, but no. It’s about the discovery of Kuyenda on Volta.”

Lark’s eyes widened. It had clearly slipped their mind as well. “Shit. I forgot about that. I got so caught up on survival.”

“I think it’s the reason the Ishan Empire got interested in Volta so suddenly.” Alex ran his finger through his short, curly brown hair.

“That would make sense. We know that the Ishan’s also use Kuyenda in ships. Oh? I don’t know what to do.” That was unusual. Alex wasn’t sure he could name the last time Lark had been unsure. They always seemed to know what to do; that was why Lark made such a great commander.

“Do you think it’s still worthwhile to look into its distribution and depth?”

Lark came back to themselves with all the answers again. “Yes, but not right now. For now, I want you to investigate weather. Once we’re more comfortable in this situation, you can start looking into Kuyenda on Volta.”

“Thanks Lark. I’ll get the report on weather by the end of the day.” Alex sat back down to finish his breakfast as though nothing had happened. He was pissed about half rations, but there wasn’t much he could do. He could just let the others starve, but he wasn’t that much of an ass.

Iris scooted the chair closer to Alex and, in the branch of Nyenyez from Zachitika, said, “how are you holding up Alex?”

Iris was Alex’s closest friend on the Volta Science Base. Alex and Iris lived on the same planet, Zachitika, and had been on one other mission together. They had both worked on a mining planet for two years and had become very close in that time. They would often speak in the Zachitika branch of Nyenyez when they were alone together. Out of respect for the others, they only spoke universal Nyenyez so everyone could understand without the use of their personal AI’s translation feature.

It was common knowledge that anyone can understand any language with the help of their AI, but it was polite, if possible, to speak in a language both parties could understand without need for translation.

Universal Nyenyez was the language that could be spoken anywhere, and someone would understand you. Many branches of Nyenyez had been created in the hundred and fifty years of Nyenyez being spoken due to the communication delay between planets. Universal Nyenyez was a language that was forced not to evolve, so no matter how much time passed, it would be the same.

“Fine. This is just all a lot to take in.”

Iris put an arm around Alex’s shoulders. The arm was necessary, Alex felt comforted just listening to someone speak his mother tongue. “I get it, but we’ll get through this.”

“I’m just most annoyed that I can’t contact my husband. He gets so pissed if I don’t message him for one day. What is he going to say when I miss seven months’ worth of messages?”

“I’m sure he knows what’s going on. I can’t imagine he’ll get mad at you.”

Alex sighed. “Joke Iris. It was a joke. I know he won’t be mad at me. It’s out of my control.”

“Sorry,” Iris said defensively. “Your sense of humour is kinda screwed.”

Alex took the last bit of his breakfast. “Your right. I’ll just go to the shop and buy a new one. Need anything while I’m there?”

Alex got up, picking up his breakfast plate.

Iris laughed. “You are so strange, Alex. No matter how long I’ve known you, you never seem to get less strange.”

“You’re pretty strange yourself.”

“I think we’re all pretty strange on this base. We all willingly decided to go on an exoplanet science mission. That’s pretty strange.”

Alex laughed. “I guess you’re right. I’m going to get to work. I have a lot of weather to predict.”

“See you, Alex. I’ll probably see you in the lab.”

Alex nodded before going to put his plate away. He went into the small kitchen area and placed his plate on the pile of dirty plates that would be auto-cleaned later.

Before heading to the lab, Alex went to his room to put on his AI carrier. It was one of the things that other people found odd about him, but he refused to eat with his AI on. Something about it felt wrong to him. He liked to have moments of disconnect from AI. He was pretty sure that was something he had inherited from his husband, Levi.

Alex’s room had a whole section of the small amount of wall space dedicated to shifting image displays of Levi. A string of small fairy lights hung above his bed, they added warmth to the room Alex liked. Alex’s desk had very few things on it besides his personal display and his art supplies. He had only brought a sketch pad and some pencils. That was another odd thing about Alex—his love for traditional art. Most artists had moved to digital art two hundred years ago, but Alex found drawing physically relaxing.

Once he had slipped on the ring AI carrier and put in his earbuds, Alex headed to the lab to begin work.

In the lab, there was the unspoken rule: you are never to interrupt someone while they’re working unless the building was burning down. For this reason, Alex completely ignored Newt, Phoenix, and Penny when he entered the lab. Alex just sat down in front of his display and connected his AI.

Even though the AI system could do most of the weather predictions on a more established planet, there was still too little data on Volta, meaning Alex had to do a lot more work to get accurate weather predictions. A lot more dull work that would make him want to rip his hair out.

He booted up the weather-predicting AI and set it working on the data that was being collected by the base’s plethora of sensors. It would be able to go about fourteen days forward. Any more than that would be full guess work instead of partial guesswork.

This kind of work was boring, monotonous, and long for Alex. It included very little real thinking on his part, just fact-checking the AI. He much preferred weather work where he was analysing the effects of major weather events on the Volta atmosphere and vegetation. He had spent many days working with Phoenix, analysing the way Volta plants reacted to drops and rises in temperature. It was much more interesting than the work he was doing now and, in his opinion, more productive.

While weather predictions were easy, it was time-consuming. The AI would take two minutes for one day, and Alex, being human, would take ten minutes checking it. The most annoying part for Alex was that nine times out of ten the AI was correct, but regulations stated that he had to be there to check it. There had been enough disasters around relying fully on AI that they were pretty strict on regulations. It pissed Alex off.

By twelve, Alex had managed to get twelve days of forecasts. He could have done this significantly faster if Volta had had more data. He had been working for two hours and needed a break.

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Since there was no lunch to be had, Alex got himself some coffee. Alex had no idea how much coffee they had on the base, but he needed coffee. He wouldn’t start drinking the leaf water Phoenix and Newt favoured until Volta’s snow melted.

Just as Alex finished getting his coffee, Penny entered the kitchen.

“We had the same idea,” Penny said as she went to the drink dispenser and filled her cup with coffee.

“I need something to consume instead of lunch. What can I say? I’m a Chachikulu.” A Chachikulu was an alien species that eats so much in very short periods of time that it had become a way to describe someone who liked to eat a lot.

“How’s the work going?” Penny asked, leaning against the wall.

Alex sighed overdramatically. “So dull. I hate doing daily weather predictions.”

“How can you hate doing weather predictions? You’re a fucking meteorologist!” Penny exclaimed as she looked at Alex in mock shock.

“I like analysing the effects of weather on environments, I like predicting major weather events, I like analysing a year of weather data, but I do not like being a weatherman. The AI does all the work for me I just have to go through the tedious task of fact-checking it.”

“You are such a nerd, Alex. You enjoy taking a year of data and analysing it?”

Alex looked Penny with a smirk. “You physically cannot call me a nerd. We are all nerds here. We’re on an exoplanet science mission. Why would you be here if you’re not a nerd?”

Penny stood up straight, holding her coffee in both hands. “Fair enough, but I think you’re more of a nerd than me.”

Penny began to leave the kitchen. Alex called after her, “says the engineer.”

“You cannot say a word about engineers. We are nerds, yes, but you are a meteorologist and geologist. You are probably the biggest nerd on the base.”

Penny left before Alex could defend himself further. Shortly after Penny left, Alex headed back to the lab to finish the weather predictions.

“Fuck weather predictions,” he muttered to himself as he entered the lab.

***

Alex finally finished the weather predictions at one thirty. He had practically died of boredom in that time.

Alex got up from his seat, stretched, and then walked over to where Iris and Lark were sitting. “So sorry to interrupt you, Lark, but I just finished the weather predictions, and I was wondering if you wanted me to go over them with you?”

“Thanks Alex. Just give me a few minutes. I just have to finish something.” Lark didn’t even look up as they spoke.

Alex wasn’t hurt by Lark not looking at him as they spoke. He understood that when you were in the thick of work, you did not want to be distracted.

Alex sat back down at his workstation. He had taken some soil samples a couple of days ago and was yet to put them into the system. Alex pulled gloves over his hands. He grabbed the first Ziplock bag of soil from his draw labelled, sample from Zabwino Flats. Next, Alex spread a scoop of the soil onto a slide. Alex slipped the slide under the microscope.

“Millaid, photograph the sample.” Alex commanded his personal AI.

The photograph appeared on Alex’s screen a second later. He took a few more photos of the first sample of soil, then moved onto the next bag. When he finished with a bag, he carefully sealed it and placed it back in his sample draw.

It took Alex about half an hour to document all the samples, even so, Lark had not even looked up from their work. Alex recognised he was going to be waiting for some time, so he began to look through the images the AI had flagged as containing microorganisms.

The first image that Alex looked at had a microorganism that had already been discovered, but the next had one that wasn’t recognised by the AI. He would have to show these to Penny later. Alex had seen a lot of alien life in his time, but it never ceased to amaze him. The way that they looked so similar and yet so different from earth life.

The fact that earth was a metric for life in Alex’s mind had always confused him. Like most people, he had never even seen the planet, yet he still viewed it as the ideal place for life. Alex had been born and raised on Zachitika. It was one of the Nyenyezi planets that was not counted as a naturally habitable planet. It had been terraformed about a hundred and fifty years ago. His grandparents had been among the first people to live on Zachitika once the terraforming was complete.

Alex believed that the idea for a habitable planet should be based on Kunyumba. It was a perfect planet for humans. No terraforming had been necessary on the discovery of Kunyumba. Volta was similar in that way. Planets that required no terraforming to support human life were valuable but not too rare. Humans had discovered pretty quickly that, in reality, earth was not actually that unusual. A planet falling in the habitable zone of a star was more likely than was ever predicted. Most planets needed small amounts of work to make the atmosphere breathable or more protective from the sun.

Volta had piqued interest because it had a naturally occurring, breathable atmosphere. It was interesting to have a planet around an M-type Main-Sequence star with water. A lot of planets around M-Dwarfs had the water boiled out of them during formation. Volta being on the barest edge of the habitable zone for an M-dwarf was a blessing in disguise. It had formed just far enough from the sun that it had not had all the water turned to steam.

It had always amazed Alex at how much luck was involved in the formation of habitable planets. If Volta had formed with the perfect atmosphere to block out the bulk of the ultraviolet rays, which could have broken up the water molecules, allowing for the hydrogen to escape the atmosphere, leaving too much oxygen to support life. Truly amazing the luck it took to create a habitable planet.

Alex stopped marvelling at the Volta’s microorganisms when Lark tapped on his shoulder. “I’m ready to go over the weather with you.” Lark said, pulling a chair next to Alex.

“Do you know how dumb that sounds? You make it sound like I’m just going to pull up a weather app and we’ll gawk at it together.” Alex said pulling up the spreadsheet of the weather for the next fourteen days.

“Shut up and tell me what to expect.” Lark said with a playful slap on Alex’s arm.

Alex saluted. “Yes commander.”

Lark sighed overdramatically.

Alex ignored them and stared to tell Lark what to expect. “We will be having very similar weather we are having today with averages of about negative fifteen to twenty for the next week except on Tuesday when the temperature will reach a low of negative thirty degrees and wind speeds will get up to forty kilometres per hour. The only concerning weather event I found in the next fortnight was a storm on Monday next week. It will come with heavy snow and temperatures as low as negative forty degrees.”

“Do you know what wind speeds will look like?”

“About fifty kilometres per hour.” Alex said, pointing to the column of the spreadsheet where it showed the predicted wind speeds for each day.

Lark stood up and said, “thank you, Alex. Could you send me that spreadsheet and tell me if anything updates?”

“Will do commander.” Alex said as he turned back to his display.

He commanded his personal AI to send the spreadsheet to Lark. When that was done, he stretched before standing up. He needed a break.

The Volta science base was small, with only twelve rooms. It was the smallest of the five exoplanet science missions Alex had been on. Even though it was the smallest base, it was by far his favourite base he had lived on. It had a lot of windows that let the constant Volta daylight stream into the base. It made it feel much more open than any of the other bases Alex had lived on.

The constant daylight had taken some time for Alex to get used to, but it was still less jarring than the daylight cycle on Wamisala. Wamisala had eight-hour days. It had also been an uncomfortably hot planet. It had a breathable atmosphere but a scary high UV index.

Alex walked through the corridor of the base and entered his room. He grabbed his towel, toiletries, and a change of clothes, then went to the bathroom for a shower.

Once he had washed the work off himself, he felt significantly better. Alex sat down at his desk and opened his sketchbook to a fresh page. Putting in both earbuds Alex played his chill playlist and started sketching. Drawing was his way of relaxing. The world melted away when he drew. It was relaxing and comforting.

Someone pulled him from the world he was sketching out by knocking on his door. He got up and opened it to find Iris.

“Hey Iris!” Alex said with a wave.

“We’re all having dinner if you want to come.”

Alex took off his AI carrier and earbuds. “I’m coming.”

While they tried to have meals together, it often didn’t work out like that. Since they were all adults, they were allowed to choose when to eat. If they didn’t want to eat when the others were eating, that was fine. No one was going to drag you kicking and screaming to the recreation room. Mostly people eat later because they're working anyway, and no one on the base would ever have the audacity to pull someone away from their work.

When Alex entered the recreation room with Iris, Everyone else was there except for Lark. That made sense to Alex, they had been pretty caught up in their work today and probably didn’t want to stop.

“We are sharing meal rations. You can choose between soup or nachos.” Newt said between bites of nachos.

Alex shuddered at the thought of nachos. He had had bad experiences with them in the past. “I’ll take the soup.” Alex spat out hurriedly.

“God, what do you have trauma with nachos?” Phoenix looked at Alex confused as he asked it.

Alex got his paltry ration of soup from the kitchen. “I don’t want to talk about it, Phoenix.”

“What the fuck did the nachos do to you?" Phoenix laughed.

“Nachos killed my grandma, okay.” Alex said jokingly. Phoenix and Newt laughed.

Alex sat down between Penny and Iris. “How was the rest of your weather predicting?” Penny asked.

“I nearly died of boredom. We all know the AI is practically always correct, so why do I have to sit there and fact-check it? It’s better at predicting the weather than me!” Alex finished by throwing his arms up.

“Rough. I nearly died of boredom doing diagnostics. I really wanted to look at the microorganisms in those soil samples you collected.” Penny sighed.

“Oh yeah! I documented the samples today, and I’m pretty sure there were some new species in them. We’ll have to have a look at them together tomorrow.”

Penny smiled widely. “That’s amazing! Thanks for documenting them.”

Alex waved a hand at Penny. “It was nothing. I love looking at alien species. They never cease to amaze me.”

Penny nodded. “I can’t wait to look through them with you.”