Aquatum Christmas

Every year around that time, I spent long nights in the holo room, the only part of the station capable of shutting out the ceaseless sunshine and the only room still fully functional. My favorite room, and not just because it could turn back time and bring the dead back to life.

I should’ve slept in the hyperbolic chamber, but my heart needed human voices. Instead, I sat cross-legged on the floor in the center of the refractive room and tapped the control pad. A festive living room with crackling fire, lighted tree, and a plethora of presents shimmered into existence around me.

A balding grandpa relaxed in a recliner sipping hot chocolate with a smile, while a young boy and girl squirmed on the floor by his feet. Their father sat in a plush armchair with their mother sitting across his lap. A goldendoodle chewed a bone, the scraping of its teeth mixed with the pops of the fire it lay before as the grandma stood beside the tree holding a present. She smiled at everyone while brother and sister fought over who would open the first gift.

I tapped the olfactory toggle and dialed up the sound. The scents of cinnamon and pine filled the room as everyone turned toward me.

“Merry Christmas 2130!”

2130? Already? My arms wrapped around my knees, and my lungs filled with festivity. The world outside the room disappeared.

The recording passed like all the others. Thanks exchanged. Tears shed. Laughter died.

The blackout shutters hummed as they retracted from the windows around the station. Another night without sleep. I turned off the hologram partway through the third family’s Christmas and rubbed my eyes.

The blue light of the waterless shower washed over and disinfected me. My vision blurred as I fell against the wall with a hand to my head. The light turned green, and I crumpled to the silicon floor.

“Your cleansing is complete. You may open the capsule, sir. Or would you like to run another scan?” A robotic voice spoke from the speaker in the ceiling.

“No, thank you. I’m just resting.” I rested an arm over my knee and coughed wetly. Wiping my mouth, I smeared blood across the back of my wrist and spat the metal taste into the drain. My knees threatened to buckle as I tried to stand.

“I won’t last until they come back at this rate.” I shook my head and used a sterilizing towel.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, sir.”

I scoffed and let the capsule door close behind me.

Donning my white hydration suit and helmet, I crossed the dusty yard from the habitat to the solar fields. From the terminal at the edge of the fields, I checked the diagnostics for the acres of high efficiency solar panels.

Only one quadrant remained functional after so many years, but it produced enough to sustain the dilapidated station. The production log went to the server in the station as I headed for the orchard.

Weaving through the aisles of Punica Aquatum, I manually pollinated the flowers with a small brush. Despite my efforts over several decades, I still couldn’t modify the fruit’s exhausted genetic code any further toward self-pollination.

A deep rumble rolled over the desert and brought my attention to the horizon, where a dark cloud of dust and lightning billowed over the dunes. I snapped my kit closed and hurried back to the station to lock down.

The sun shutters groaned closed, and I dropped the control module on the inflatable couch. In the server room, my fingers flew over the console as I ran a last-minute weather scan and pinged the satellite, the last satellite, thanks to the solar flare of 2214. Sand pelted the station as the report and satellite images returned.

I slammed the emergency safety button, and the station trembled as the tower retreated beneath the dome. With an estimated six hours before the storm would blow over, I returned to the holo room.

Tempted as I was to resume my home holo marathon from years ago, I brought up the station simulator to keep track of the storm. The dust clouds covered several hectares around and no doubt would alter the landscape once again.

I shrunk the weather tracker into the corner of the room and pulled up the simulation for the station grounds. The projection fast forwarded, and I watched half the orchard and a significant portion of the solar field disappear. I clenched my jaw and swatted the hologram into the wall where it shifted to an aerial view and stretched corner to corner.

I would survive the storm, but they came more frequently now. I’d be lucky to finish clearing the solar field before the next one, let alone clean up the remnants of the orchard.

A ready check from the system, wondering if I still wanted it on, beeped as I paced the room. With a huff, I minimized the program to a small, table hologram in the corner and booted up the recordings.

For the remaining three hours of the storm, long-dead families celebrated each other and their time spent together. I grew resentful, but my longing for human contact trumped all.

I didn’t know how far away the closest living human might be, or if I had become the last. Regardless, the decrepit station still stood, thanks to me, all in hopes someone might return for the miracle fruit someday. My long life would have ended long ago on the desert continent without it.

Without warning, all my muscles seized, throwing me head first through a seven-year-old girl opening a doll. I smacked my chin on the floor and bit off the tip of my tongue. Blood dribbled over my lips as I tried to control the spasm.

“Rusty, you old mut, what are you doing on the carpet?” An old woman ran up to me scolding and wagged her finger. A dog leaped up from within me and scurried out of the room as I stared helplessly into the nagging woman’s bright eyes.

“I swear, one of these days I’m going to get rid of that dog, or my carpet.” She shook her head. “And carpet lasts longer.”

The spasms subsided, and I sucked a bloody gasp, rolling onto my back. Around me a family chattered about their Christmas as wrapping paper and bows went into trash bags. They stepped through me and posed in front of the tree.

“Merry Christmas 2131!”

I slapped the control pad at my side with a sigh, ending the hologram. The lights grew brighter until I lay staring at the white ceiling, surrounded by silence. Tears rolled from the corners of my eyes, over my temples, and caught in my long hair.

“Oh, how the time has gone.”

A notification flashed on the ceiling. I sat up, my head swimming, and the alert moved to the wall I faced as the room’s eye tracker ran smoothly. I tapped the air in front of me to open the message.

The storm continued a few miles West . . . or was it North? I still got confused after living on the pole for so long, but the simulation had underestimated the damage. Only a sliver of solar field peeked out from beneath a foot of sand, and only the closest half of the Aquatum tree tops stood above the freshly lain dune.

After my episode in the holo room, I headed straight for the orchard, climbing the dune into the fruit trees. I’d need Aquatum as soon as they ripened and couldn’t afford to lose too many trees beneath the sand.

Over the next week, I worked tirelessly to clear the orchard and solar field. The intense labor forced me back into the hyperbolic chamber to recover every night, though I missed the families living in the holo room. If I didn’t actually sleep, I wouldn’t get everything repaired around the station before the next storm.

In the end, the dust storm hadn’t damaged the remaining solar field, but over half the orchard needed replanting, and from that I only expected a handful of trees to survive.

The first day after cleanup, I checked the preservation room and noted the results of the experiments. I could preserve Aquatum longest just above freezing, but whether flash frozen or freeze-dried, the high water content meant any freezing destroyed the fruit at the molecular level. No doubt this setback came as a result of the modifications made during its creation.

I tossed the ruined fruit into the recycler to harvest the water and condition the pulp into fertilizer for the trees and sunk my teeth into a healthy fruit’s watery flesh. Like its closest relative, the pomegranate, the tiny pods burst in my mouth. Though the flavor couldn’t compare to any extinct fruit, being ninety percent water as intended, after decades of eating only Aquatum fruit, I could taste an almost imperceptible sweetness. This marvel of near-ancient genetic modification and hybridization might mean one day humans could move back.

I snorted and swallowed with a grimace. Over two hundred years of radio silence so far. Despite the hyperbolic chamber, I might not live long enough to keep the fruit alive for anyone’s return.

Germination from seed had failed so far. Only cloning produced new starts for the orchard. We’d developed the perfect fruit for this environment purely through DNA sequencing and artificial starts. If I couldn’t develop a self-propagating tree soon, the trees and I might die after centuries on this God-forsaken planet. All for nothing.

No breakthroughs in over a hundred years. The data would survive for someone else to restart the experiment, but only if anyone ever came back.

I spent the night watching more Christmas holograms until a midnight message interrupted me. The hologram paused itself, and a map of the continent covered my view. A waypoint flashed several miles into the desert.

Chill bumps erupted over my skin, and my heart swelled like a balloon. Tripping as I ran out of the room, I grabbed the mobile console to download the map data and rushed into the garage.

The dust buggy sat unused since retrieving parts from a fallen satellite years ago. I floored it onto the sand and flew over the dunes, leaving a plume of dust hovering in my wake.

My hands shook violently, causing the normally smooth dust buggy to swerve from side to side as I jumped out of valleys and crested dunes. The waypoint slowly neared until I could see dust settling over a crater in the distance. This deep into the desert, the dust became as fine as talcum powder, floating in the air for hours after a large disturbance.

I slid to a stop at the rim of the crater and peered into the hole. At the center, a white cylinder jutted into the air. Its parachute lay stretched out at a distance; large tears from the descent had rendered it useless.

I lost my footing as I rushed down the slope and tumbled head over heels to the base. Wiping sand from my face-shield, I popped the panel off the cylinder’s computer interface and typed in my code. A message scrolled across the screen, Merry Christmas, 2277.

My heart dove into my bowels as I fell onto my backside and pinned my head between my knees. Nearly 200 years ago? How far had they gotten? Were they even still alive?

I checked the date on my mobile console as the empty map zoomed out on my location. My icon blinked in the center of the Antarctic desert.

Another Christmas . . . alone.