Eden

“Eden” was a poor, though optimistic, nickname for this lifeless planet. The desert is endless. Shades of brown and red all the way to the horizon, where ancient, well-worn mountains slouch against a sky tinged pink with dust.

I thought finding the old hab the Clary-Gallagher terraforming team used forty years ago would be more difficult, but its roof still protrudes through the layer of sand that buried the rest of the building. We dig through to the airlock, which they never got to use without their spacesuits on.

Casey goes inside first. He shines his flashlight against the far wall, until the overhead lights flicker on. I’m impressed they still work. “Couldn’t have been an environmental failure,” he says. “I wonder what happened.”

“Me too. This place is spotless.” No signs of a struggle. But then I see it. Or him, or her. A pile of loosely-connected bones stretched out on the floor, forever reaching for help that would never come. I knew we would probably find them. I just didn’t realize it would be so quiet here.

“You okay?” Casey asks.

“Yeah. It’s just—they must have been scared.”

Casey picks up a slate from the table in what was their living room. He reads for a few moments, then motions me over. “Come look at this.”

Standing as near as my helmet allows, I look over his shoulder.

Earth Date: December 27, 2264

This is the thirteenth day the storm pummels the walls of the habitat, as if in cosmic disapproval of our presence. Ignoring it is impossible; sometimes the squalls are so violent, the shudders wake us at night.

It must be some kind of planetary puberty, a hormonal burst of anger before adulthood: Eden’s first Type-One summer. The winds will calm. The weather patterns will stabilize. Our crops will be nurtured for the first time by a foreign sun.

Everyone is going a little crazy with boredom. We have plenty to watch and read, but all of us want to be out there, working. But then, what’s a two-week delay after two years asleep and two more of manufacturing equilibrium?

Earth Date: December 31, 2265

The storm is beginning to break. I was getting tired of staring at these walls, though the murals make things a little easier. Our brains need mental stimulation from the surrounding landscape, or they deteriorate. Cognition slows. What should be small interpersonal issues become overwhelming. Memory is negatively affected. Soon, this planet, which was once an airless, monotonous desert, will be covered in life.

CHET is the only one who’s been in good spirits throughout the storm. I appreciate his consistency. For dinner today, he made us potato soup. They were supposed to be planted outside two weeks ago, but they would have drowned.

Earth Date: January 5, 2265

Jeremy and Peter got into an argument today. Tempers are running high right now; none of us have been able to go outside in days. We’re almost three weeks past the date the first crops were supposed to be planted.

It was a stupid argument. Jeremy was talking a little too loudly on the phone while Peter was trying to get some work done. We’re lucky it didn’t come to blows.

Everything is off. The weather, our team, CHET, even the composition of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels are far too high to maintain a habitable temperature at the surface. It could take years to undo the damage, and I don’t even know that it’s possible. I don’t know what caused the spike, either. The next few days will be spent figuring out what to do, if anything.

I found CHET deactivated in the kitchen, in the middle of preparing breakfast. The stove was still on. It took me an hour to get him running again, and I still have no idea what went wrong. We can’t lose him. He’s an invaluable member of the team, though what’s a team without a mission?

Things feel hopeless right now. I think I’ll go to bed early.

Earth Date: January 10, 2265

All our work. Undone. Irreparable. It’s as though the planet has an immune system and we are a bacterium. Sunlight can’t break through these soupy, impenetrable clouds. This is the summer that wasn’t.

Earth Date: January 15, 2265

CHET died today. Maybe “died” is the wrong word, but most of us shed tears anyway. We tried every protocol in the manual and nothing brought him back.

The rest of the team is constantly at odds. We fight more than we get along. None of us really know what we’re doing here anymore. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of finding a solution to the climate catastrophe with the tools we have available.

And I am reminded, incessantly, of how small I am and how little I understand.

Earth Date: January 16, 2265

THIS IS A WARNING. READER, LEAVE THIS PLANET. YOU ARE NOT WANTED.

CHET awakened today and spoke to us in a new voice. I don’t understand its reasoning, but the consciousness behind it made one thing clear: we are not welcome. If we don’t leave, we’ll be exterminated.

We can’t leave—that was the whole point. God help us. I hope it’s quick.

I look at Casey, who shakes his head. For a while, neither of us say anything. We came to solve a forty-year-old mystery. The terraformers of Eden were my generation’s Mary Celeste, but even they don’t know what happened here. Once more, I turn to look at the skeleton, whose index finger points to the airlock. They can tell us one thing: get the hell out.

We leave as quickly as we arrived with only the slate to prove we were ever here. As our shuttle returns to interstellar space, I can’t help but wonder what Eden might have been.