Artemis XX
By, B. K. Neifert







Artemis

"Off to the Hyperborean sea,
"Fly oh ships, to avoid the Valkyries' war.
"The fire spreads across firmaments,
"As the men and women cannot come home.

"We are distracted by it by the Baals.
"The voyagers look beneath them
"And see the arms of the giants in Jotunheim,
"Beneath the circle of the Earth."

I hope you're right.


























I

“The world is about to go to war,” said Christa Armstrong.
	“Yes... our countries are soon to go to war,” said Yuri Sakharov.
	The Artemis rocket raised above the platform. Musk's designs were fused with NASA's, and the Artemis XX mission was about to launch. Nukes were about to fly, and the mission was to colonize the Moon. The mission was called “Project Rainbow.” Humanity was projected to decline by the billions. Some even speculating no life could exist. The scientists had a collection of 10,000 kinds of seed from all the habitable regions of the Earth. No animals were going to survive, but the people lived their lives oblivious to what was about to happen. The Moon module that landed, a sort of dome if you will, was to be constructed by A.I. powered robotics, since humans couldn't do the work. They were guided by pilots, who made the commands into the prompters, but the A.I. was more suited to the precision necessary for building such a base.
	Yang Yang, the woman pilot, and Rakesh Babha, a male astronaut, was the other mating pair. There was a huge political crap show, that no blacks were on the mission, and also no LGBTQIAA2PRFZ+ people, but there was only enough room for four. The joint mission, a Russian, a Chinese, an American and an Indian, representing the four most advanced space programs. The Saudis and North Koreans had their own mission. They were going to fly to Mars. All of this was independently done, by corporations like Space-X and Infogrowth, and expertly laid out so the mission could be self sustaining on the moon.
	The dome was the size of the Super Dome stadium in Louisiana, ironical due to the fact that it was once used to shelter people from Katrina... though those politics were long forgotten, this dome had four levels, each with already planted trees, and about 10,000,000 gallons of fresh water, which would be recycled by filtration systems on every urination. The waters from the plants would also be cycled, but there'd be no meats. Only vegetables. They had quinoa, as a meat substitute.
	Christa and Yang Yang sat in the rocket with Yuri and Rakesh, talking to each other, glibly. There was a feeling of excitement, of hidden jubilee. As, scientists have this obdurate sense of discovery, where they felt like Noah and his sons about to embark on the Ark and endure a global flood.
	The timer started counting, “Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One...” Christa was reminded of a Steve Miller song, one her Grandfather used to play, but the rocket blasted off. It flung into the heavens, with a fiery ball, lighting the world like an incandescent burst of flame. The entire sky was darkened by the fire ball, so the blue, clear sky turned black like during a Solar Eclipse, but no stars. The rocket blasted off, no rings or after burners on this model. It was the most advanced rocket ever developed. It would have enough to get back to Earth, and it could even land upright on its back, like in a Ray Bradbury short.
	The rocket flumes licked into the air, and soon the quarto were in space.



















II

Out in space, the quarto couldn't unbuckle, as they'd have to be in their seats the whole time. The Ion Boosters would get them to the moon in a matter of a few hours. It would be a geometric display of speeding up, and then blasting the ions in the other direction, to slow it down. So, the rocket would speed up, and then slow down.
	Finally, the rocket orbited the moon, and there, on the maria of the Mare Vaporum, the rocket hovered, and it landed upright, shooting its sparks from the bottom.
	The four astronauts departed the craft, from a ladder that fell down to a hatch, that opened to a staircase. And there, they departed the craft, and entered into the vacuum hatch of the Moon Base. 
	“Eden” as it was called, had a stale air, almost like being in a newly developed office complex, and there were trees growing, which had been transplanted there by the A.I. worker bots. Those were all gone, as the humans had a distrust for A.I.---it really couldn't be self aware, but they felt it were, as they were dazzled for hours by the platitudes it could produce---so there were no robotics on the craft, save the life support systems, which were governed by strict programming that couldn't reproduce or replicate, or code itself.
	They walked into the main emporium, and it was where all the oxygen would be made, as until just recently, CO2 was being pumped into it, in order to help the trees grow. Now, there was just enough balance for the four of them, to produce enough CO2 for the entire forest. So they thought... 
	There was one window at the top of the dome, which viewed Earth like an under ripened blue raspberry in its window. The four looked up, like having the very Earth as a mural, but there was something strange about the Earth. Rakesh was the first to notice it.
	“Do you see any green?” asked Rakesh.
	Yang Yang squinted her eyes, and as they narrowed, from frustration, suddenly they burst wide open, “No!” she cried. All four of the crew were experts in the other's languages, so they all communicated in a slew of four languages, each of them well versed.
	“What do you think happened?” Asked Rakesh, when suddenly a fireball erupted over the Ukraine. It was like a pinprick on the surface, and it looked like a little yellow light lit up on one of those boards you'd see in a 1950's movie---like they were playing a war game.
	Yuri took off his helmut, as Rakesh phoned back to Earth. He had direct communication with the old, and tired Elon Musk---this was his first true success, though being a trillionaire, he never actually did much, beside commission shuttles to travel from one end of the earth to the other. That, and Neurolink, which an old writer predicted, though he received modest fame, people were too jaded to make him a success like Rowling or King. There were no Neurolink on the Space Station, as that, too, was getting controversial. People were getting trapped in the mental worlds, and everything turning to hell within them. People did not want Neurolink, and it initiated a large lawsuit which nearly bankrupted Elon; as, the fact was it did a lot more damage to the psyche than was first estimated.
	So, they lived upon the dome with no A.I. or computer implants, as the massive window sprawled out in front of them, tempered with glass that could withstand a small nuclear blast. That glass had to shield them from space debris, and it was a new, Carbon based glass, where the glass itself was of a similar consistency to pure Diamond. Imagine the problems that created for the Diamond market, as Gold and Silver were both being artificially produced, too. So, the economies were in ruins as most people had no work---most of Western Civilization lived off of stipends, or worked part time jobs, which paid for a small amount of food, and the tents they'd use would cluster together in giant hovel cities. Of course, everyone was shamed into having work, but only a few successful people could actually sustain themselves off of their work. Most work became a prized commodity, more prized than the jewelry which was replaced by synthetic precious metal and stone.
	Here, on Eden, the four astronauts all looked, stunned at the fact that the Earth was barren. All of its green was sucked up, destroyed. It was over the course of 40 years that this happened, but the Nuclear War definitely burnt up whatever green was left on the Earth.
	Yuri called for Elon, “Papa Roach, Papa Roach, are you there? Come in, Papa Roach.” There was nothing but static.































III

Yang Yang and Christa were sitting over a board of chess---each of them achieving the rank of IM, which was a precursor for employment on this mission, in order to ensure some culture would be passed down, should everything be destroyed. It was a Semi-Slav, and Christa played black. Yang Yang was on the offensive, and the metallic pieces clung to the board with magnets.
	“Yang Yang, why do you think the war happened?” asked Christa.
	Yang Yang put a piece to her mouth, and her eyes grew hard. “America wanted to hog all of the computer chips.”
	“Yes, but why did China have to invade Taiwan?” asked Christa.
	“Because America had to hog all the computer chips.” 
	An army the size of a small country attacked Taiwan about four years previously, and all the countries agreed not to use WMDs. That quickly escalated, after four years, which prompted the mission. As soon as World War III started, the mission was due, and they had previously built the blueprints and processed the materials for the dome. Yang Yang only knew her country's politics, but up here on the moon, with everyone's governments blown to pieces, Christa thought she might reason with Yang Yang.
	“Yes, but the US didn't have the computer chips. Taiwan did.”
	“Taiwan is a part of China,” was what Yang Yang said, getting nervous.
	“Yang Yang, nobody can put you in prison up here. Tell me the truth, what do you think about it?”asked Christa. “Ought the world have went to war, over something so petty? How many billions of people are dead now, or in worse straights than this?”
	Yang Yang paused, nervously shook, and looked down to her feet, not wanting to answer.
	“Christa, she's not allowed to talk about this. Neither am I,” said Yuri.
	“Surely you are, Rakesh, right?” He looked down at some schematics, and was working on something while the two women played chess.
	“I suppose... I can talk about it. I don't really want to,” said Rakesh.
	Christa frowned, and furrowed her brow. “But, you look at the world. It's all gone. Don't we at least get to figure out why?”
	“Our job is to preserve the human race. Not to speculate on wars and far away things. We're not specialists. We are mechanics,” said Yang Yang.
	The other three agreed.
	Christa beat Yang Yang shortly after, and then went to work improving the irrigation systems on the moon-base. The soil wasn't able to grow on the moon, so all of this soil had to be transported. It came from the Nile Delta, and was transported on several rocket missions. The A.I.'s did most of the work, putting the building together, though they were somewhat guided by the pilots, they were free to calculate and minutely improve upon their suggestions. As is what A.I. did, was take human input, and make it more precise.
	“You know, this isn't moon soil,” struck up Christa again.
	The other three looked at their charts.
	“Listen, we can talk... do you think space colonization is viable? I don't,” said Christa.
	Rakesh put down his pen. “Yet we're here, now.”
	Christa sighed, knowing that she had the better judgment out of the whole crew. Yes, you could put a man in space, have them live there. But, you'd always need to refuel it. Say they did sustain the atmosphere, and had the perfect balance of human CO2 and trees. They were supposed to, but looking at the vast amount of trees, Christa had an inclination there was not enough humans onboard, to balance out the trees. A sneaking suspicion. Getting people to live off Earth, would be more about chemistry, than anything else. But, say they did? Then what about the soil? They couldn't grow on Moon Soil, so they likely wouldn't be able to grow on Martian soil, either. There's not enough organic material to fertilize the plants. Of course, she was an expert in horticulture, she knew how to make compost, even out of human waste. Everything was regimented down to a science. But, there's always going to be necessity to go back to Earth.
	Christa glanced at Rakesh. “Don't you think, though, Rakesh, that sooner or later, we're going to have to go back to Earth?”
	“Yes, in a few decades, maybe a half a century. When we've sufficiently populated this, we can begin to repopulate the Earth.”
	That was his country's propaganda. This Ark was supposed to rebuild civilization. Though, Christa knew the seed stores, of billions of seeds, were going to be used to reseed the Earth. The mission, even if everything went right, couldn't last for more than twenty years. Surely the rest of the crew knew that. But, they were so minded on the fantasy... it was their only hope, and she knew better than to inject reality into the equation.




















IV

Christa was at work, looking over the life support systems. Yang Yang was there too, monitoring the same reports. Yang Yang had a concerned look on her face. “The O2 is too high.”
	Christa looked at the charts. “You're right... shouldn't we be balancing out the CO2?”
	Yang Yang checked all the data, and the math. They were not only expert horticulturalists, but experts in mathematics, physics, science, chemistry; engineering, but Christa had a minor in the Humanities, which the others made fun of her for. There was no place for Shakespeare or Milton on the moon. But, they both double checked the data. The O2 was rising.
	They reported it to Yuri and Rakesh, not because of a chain of command, but because all of them were equally invested in the mission. There was no romantic attraction between any of them, but there was a romantic idea that someday, one of the girls would have one of the men's babies. Though, the sheer thought of which one revolted both the men and the women, as none of them were particularly that fond of each other. They almost brought a transgender aboard, but then realized they'd be sterile, which was a classified dossier within the company, saying how they couldn't bring a transgender or gay aboard. It was like a light bulb went off, which none of them wanted. But, it went off all the same, but was a political nightmare with the PR departments, explaining why the crew wasn't as diverse as the people wanted. Two Asians and two Europeans, but that's all they could afford to bring. Had they brought others, they'd likely had more success with the current problem, but the logistics, time, money and resources could only afford four.
	But, now Christa was wishing there were Blacks, or Arabs, or Jews on board, in order to help balance out the O2, which would suffocate the trees.
	“We can call back to Earth, see if they can bring more to Eden,” said Yang Yang.
	That was the plan, but they got back static. There was no possibility of reaching anyone. No war chatter, no maydays, only silence. That was the chilling thing. Only silence.
	“Was everyone killed?” asked Christa.
	Yuri had a pale look on his face, and his eyes were whitened, and his pupils pinpoints. They tried for several hours, but nothing.
	Finally, Yuri had the solution. “We have CO2 tanks at the back of the dome. We'll have to pump them into the atmosphere. We should have planned to bring about twenty survivors with us. But, we could only afford four.”
	“The North Koreans and Saudis sent theirs to Mars. I wonder how they're doing,” asked Rakesh.
	“They're probably all dead,” said Christa.
	“You have no optimism,” said Rakesh. “You can believe anything, and have it be possible. You're going to bring bad Dharma on this mission.”
	“I don't believe in God,” said Christa. “And I don't believe in Dharma. I believe in hard science.”
	“What about that writer?” asked Yang Yang.
	“Him?” asked Christa.
	“Yes, he had compelling work. He historically proved God exists.”
	Christa huffed. “Listen, I have no time for fairy tales. Yuri, go and hook up the CO2 tanks to the A.I. mainframe. How much do we have?”
	“About twenty years worth. By that time, we'll all have children.” They all cringed at who they were supposed to mate with.
	“Okay, Romeo, let's not go that far.”
	“We were chosen to be compatible with each other,” Said Yuri.
	“Yeah, and we all know how much Dating Apps work,” said Christa. 
	Yuri smiled, and left to connect the CO2 hose to the Moon Base.
	It took about twelve hours, but he came back.
	“That was a long time. The whole day.”	
	“Don't even get me started on it. I first, when I went outside, had to unjam the air hatch. It's like your bad Dharma brought a curse on this mission,” said Yuri, in a joshing manner, “And then, after unjamming the air hatch, I had to feed the hose, which I had forgotten was on the other side of the building's frame. Then, I worked it, attaching the module. The A.I.'s disconnected it, because some genius thought four people would produce enough CO2. And then, of course, I had to program the machine for the right atmosphere. That was the hardest, as the calculations were simple enough, but tedious; I had to go over every one of them by hand. The A.I. kept getting it imbalanced, so I had to defer to it manually,” said Yuri.
	Christa nodded her head, and then asked Yang Yang the question. “How come you're a Christian?”
	Yang Yang paused, “You know, my government is probably destroyed. I can be free to express my faith.” 
	Yuri nodded his head in agreement. “We are allowed to be Orthodox. And I believe in God.”
	“But you're not a Buddhist, Yang Yang?” asked Christa. “And before you were so cautious to even discuss politics. Why religion?”	
	Yang Yang yawned, “I took what you said. It was like a huge burdensome weight was lifted off my shoulders. You're right. There's nobody who's going to put me in jail now. I'm here.”
	Yuri nodded. Rakesh was angry that he was the odd man out. Christa, too, was the odd one out, but she was an Atheist. A Hindu, two Christians and an Atheist.











V

Christa was standing outside the main cafeteria hall. The Stadium, as they were calling the room with all the Oak Trees, Maples, Conifers, Grass, Flowers---it was perpetually spring and mid summer, the temperature being fluxed to cause the plants not to molt, but to increase the flowers, which were then hand pollinated---that's a chore and a half. It was a beautiful display, and it smelled like a forest, but also the tinny scent of a newly constructed building, and it was getting the odor of a Prison, as the musty BO from the four scientists was beginning to create a stench, which blended with the perfume of the flowers, trees and grasses.
	Christa worked hard, to keep her portion right, when she saw something out of place. It was a little black smudge outside one of the electrical walls, so she thought it would be good to fix it. She went over, and began working off the covering, to find a complicated network of fiber optics and cable wires. She worked with it, looking for the breach, when she found it. She knew electrical tape wasn't going to cut it. It would burn right through. How the wires degraded so quickly, it must have been an A.I. operational error, so the woman gingerly traced the wire back to its origin, and then opened up all the other containers, looking for the next end, as she'd have to disconnect the wire entirely, and replace it. She was an experienced electrician, and knew this quite well.
	Of course, Yuri was walking by, and immediately became alarmed when he saw what she was doing. “What are you doing!” he cried, yanking her away from the wire.
	“I know what I'm doing. This is going to cause a fire if it doesn't get fixed,” said Christa.
	Yuri screwed his eyes, and then began scolding Christa. “I know what I'm doing, Yuri,” said Christa, who was just inebriated enough with rage and spite, that when she began to unfasten the wires, several more worked loose, a huge spark flew out of the wires, nearly killing Christa and Yuri. It shot off like a blue charge, and flung up in the air. An entire segment of the station went dark. Yuri was infuriated, and began swearing at her in Russian.
	Christa worked around it, and began trying to frantically re-patch the wiring, in order to cause the lights to go on.
	Yang Yang and Rakesh were quick to come, and were frantically asking why the entire station went dark.	
	“It's this little Somodiva! She ripped out the wiring to one of the circuit cords!” The entire crew lambasted her, and Christa felt ashamed. She was supposed to be the United State's finest, and indeed she was, but the bad chemistry between Yuri and her caused the friction, which led to the disaster.
	The four of them worked, begrudgingly, to draw the lights back on, but the short circuit went the whole way to the generator, and half the structure was without power. Which meant, there was no CO2 circulating into the atmosphere.























VI

The four of them frantically traced the wires, looking at all the short circuited wiring, and found the generator that was blown. They worked it loose, and gutted it. The crew was not petty, except for Rakesh, so Yang Yang and Yuri both forgave Christa. Rakesh, on the other hand, was cursing her, for her bad Dharma. They built the capacitors, and the wires, and the fiber optics, rebuilding the generator with the entire cache of their spare parts.
	“You foolish woman!” cried Rakesh.
	“It was my fault, Rakesh. She had to fix the faulty wiring, and I interrupted her. If anything, blame me.”
	“Why was she doing such a thing, unauthorized? It's protocol to tell the whole crew when something this major is being done.”
	“I didn't think...”
	“No, you said enough, Christa,” said Yang Yang. 
	The crew worked in silence, with a rage boiling in each of them. Yuri and Christa were both self accusatory, while Yang Yang and Rakesh were angry that such a foolish thing was done without the sanctioning of the entire crew. There's protocol to work with this, and rightfully, they were angry.
	“Must be your humanities degree... reading too many fictions,” said Rakesh.
	“Well, how was I supposed to know that would happen?” cried Christa.
	“How? You had the entire flooring pulled up when I found you,” said Yuri.
	“Would you three cut it out? Crying about it isn't going to fix anything!” shouted Yang Yang. 
	The entire generator was coming along, but there were missing parts, which had to be Jerry rigged.
	“You compromised the entire mission!” shouted Rakesh. “You fool! You should have told us this was what you planned on doing. Nothing this serious gets done, without proper protocol!”
	Yang Yang tightened a nut, and suddenly the entire half of the dome was set back on.
	“Good... it's done,” said Yuri. “We simply need to let this go.”
	“What if the fool did permanent damage!” cried Rakesh.
	“What if I did?” shouted Christa, who was more shouting it out of self awareness.
	The entire crew was livid at this point. Finally, Yuri put it to rest. “I distracted her. I made her angry. She'd be able to do this a thousand times, without error, but I pressed her buttons, and caused her to make this mistake.”
	Rakesh shook his head, “You had every reason to be angry with her! She was acting on her own volition, without protocol!”
	Yang Yang wiped her brow, and said, “Well, those capacitors I Jerry rigged ought to hold up. But, without supply ships refueling us, we're going to have to check it every once in a while, to make sure it doesn't blow another fuse.”
	And that was that.




















VII

Yang Yang and Christa were watching the CO2 markers. It was three years that passed by, since the incident with the generator, and the crew were only half over it. Christa was the object of most of their jokes, the butt of every cruel thing said. She was labeled as incompetent, despite possibly being the most competent on the whole mission. But, morale was low, so she did everything with a halfhearted zeal, which made her work sloppy. It was mostly Rakesh, though, who subjected her to torments. Yuri and Yang Yang had both forgiven her for the mistake, and had probably forgotten about it, too, had not Rakesh brought up the incident so many times.
	None of the crew were sleeping with each other, as none of them had any attraction, or even any like for one another. Working on the facilities was a lot like hell, where nobody liked each other, they were confined in a small space, and the trees were beginning to die. None of them knew why, but were monitoring the CO2 in the atmosphere, and they saw it was beginning to dwindle. They lost about a tenth of the arboretum, which meant oxygen. They had to slowly shut down segments of Eden, in order to conserve on the oxygen. And of course, Rakesh stymied Christa every second of the day. He made her know, her work was bad.
	Yang Yang would console Christa, with warm consultations, but she didn't really have a desire to live. Neither did Yuri. They saw the Earth was destroyed, they saw their little habitation starting to go south. They saw Christa's original foreboding coming true, none the least because she messed up that thing three years prior. Rakesh was insistent that that mistake wore down the regulators on the CO2 pump, and caused it to pump out too much CO2, and therefore, they were running low. What actually happened, was when Yuri was setting up the CO2 pump, he didn't properly shield it. There is an electromagnetic cushion that was also being used on Abram's tanks which was supposed to help deflect small projectiles, and keep this sort of thing from happening. What did happen, was the shield malfunctioned, and a tiny microscopic meteorite hit it in just the right spot, to cause it to start leaking. But, Rakesh was inspired with the thought, it possessed him day and night, that this malfunction was because of the power shortage three years back.
	Yuri was none the wiser, but didn't buy into the theory. Neither did Yang Yang, as the three of them put up with Rakesh's constant abuses. Though, in secret confinements, they joined in many times, because of Christa's low spirits, which led to sloppy work elsewhere.
	After about six more months, they'd lost half the arboretum.	
	“You little slut!” cried Rakesh. “You're the death of all of us! You, you single single-handedly destroyed humanity!”
	“Why?” cried Christa.
	“Because, your bad Dharma went with us on this mission, and you brought all this misfortune on us!” Rakesh cried, circling around and began beating his chest. “I had such good Dharma, such good Dharma! I was an astronaut; I was supposed to survive the rest of the human race! Now, everything is dead because of you!”
	Christa wept, but Yuri and Yang Yang joined in, “You know, your work is very sloppy. How did you ever get on board here? It's that humanities degree. That's what's slowing you down. Nobody needs to know literature out in space. Hard science, that's what they need,” the four of them were growing bitterer with every second.
	Finally, Christa erupted in a roar, “Silence! There's no evidence that any of this is my fault!” 
	“Didn't you short circuit the entire system three years ago? That's why this is happening!” shouted Rakesh. Finally convincing everyone else this was Christa's fault.
	Yuri shook his head, and said, “You know... I just wish you would have listened to me, instead of work on that wire. Then none of this would have happened.”
	Christa bawled, and said, “What about your God? And His forgiveness!”
	That shut Yuri up, and Yang Yang said nothing, but Rakesh scoffed. “Their God? There is no forgiveness, there is only this! What you've done, to doom all of humanity!”
VIII

Rakesh, some months after the previous episode, was working on the pipelines. The filtration units were beginning to corrode. The fecal matter had caked into one of the o-rings, and it needed replaced. So, Rakesh was working on this for about five hours, without authorization. He had completely forgotten about his abuse, but was still self righteous. He could do it right. 
	And sure enough, he went through, and fixed the o-ring.
	About two days later, the entire crew came down with a bacteria infection. They were vomiting, and soiling half the equipment. Their latrines were well kept, but now they were filthy, and the four of them spent hours vomiting, defecating, they were incredibly sick. There was a breach in the filtration system, which converted their feces and urine into compost and water. And this was the purpose of the o-ring that Rakesh was changing. And he hadn't changed it right.
	A simple thing like that, and Rakesh was choking on his own vomit. 
	“Why is this happening?” cried Christa. “What did I do?”
	Rakesh was insistent, now that it was her. Yang Yang was looking through the computer entries for any repairs. And of course, Rakesh documented his repair. Yang Yang blushed, and took the information to Yuri. Finally, Yuri burst into a rage.
	“You! You did this!” cried Yuri. Christa flinched, but then saw he was talking to Rakesh. “All that time, you pester this woman for doing the same thing you did! You scab!”
	Yang Yang and Christa went to work on the o-ring, finding the issue was an over-tightened nut, which cracked the wellspring, and let the water get contaminated with the feces on the toilet pumps. The feces could then contaminate the filters. That needed to be fixed, and sure enough, Yang Yang and Christa were hard at work.
	It soon came to be, that Rakesh succumbed to the illness. He died. There was no burial, no ceremony. He was simply left out the air hatch. There were so many dead on Earth, and the crew were so inured to one another, that a seething hatred filled all of them.




































IX

Shortly after their unceremonious discarding of Rakesh's corpse, the entire tree forest died.
	“We won't have enough oxygen,” said Yang Yang.
	Christa took a breath. “After Rakesh died... I can't say that I miss him. Maybe we deserve to die, too.”
	Yang Yang shuddered. “I thought we were never to speak of that again.”
	“It wasn't our fault, Yang Yang,” said Christa. Yang Yang burst into tears.
	“It may not be our fault, but he was right about this mission being doomed from the start,” said Yang Yang.
	“Do you believe, it was my pessimism that made it so awful?” asked Christa.
	“No... the whole world has been destroyed. There's a verse in our scripture, that says, 'And they will not be able to bury the bodies.' I see this as the siege of Jerusalem. Like Nebuchadnezzar has attacked, and has laid us all bare. And now look, the trees are dying, and we will have no oxygen.”
	“What are we going to do?” cried Christa.
	Yuri came in with even more grim news. “We will only have enough oxygen for one room, if we are going to live here for a prolonged time. I can save enough oxygen for about six months, if we use all the stores, in one room.”
	Christa shuddered. “Rakesh died. I almost think he's the lucky one.”
	“As one prophet said, 'Blessed are the dead,'” quoth Yang Yang.
	“No... blessed are the living!” cried Christa.
	“How are we supposed to stay alive? We have six months left,” said Yuri. “Six months in this hell hole, and we're only going to be able to suffocate. Why? Why does this happen! This should have been a glorious feat for humanity. Instead, it's our tomb. We could... no we could have done this if we had the Earth. We could have established a colony on the moon, but it always falls back to the fact, that humans will always need Earth to survive. We need her milk for our nourishment. We cannot replicate resources from thin air. If it's not CO2 it's oxygen, if not oxygen what else?” cried Yuri. “This was our defining achievement, to finally be an extra-planetary species! But, we died the very moment it was possible.”
	Christa and Yang Yang and Yuri barricaded themselves into the one room where they could feasibly survive, setting up the HAM radio, in case there was any hope of Earth establishing contact. 
	The kitchen. It had metallic refrigerators, all stocked with grains like rice, sorghum, flour, cornmeal, quinoa. It had potatoes, a few months worth of vegetables. The four of them typed on the Wall Tablet, and issued an emergency supply of oxygen to fuel their room. They had five tanks of Oxygen and three suits, in the chance event they'd ever leave that room again.
	It was a tight space, and no beds. They slept on the floors, with sackcloth as blankets and flour sacks as pillows. They slept hard, and couldn't sleep. They had to use a chamber pot for their bathroom, and each would in turn, use it, and then flush it down the sink. This led to an unbearable stench in the room, where the three couldn't shower, but they could cook, and the smell of grains, feces, and sweat from body odor permeated the room.
















X

Within a week, Yang Yang was taking inventory on the rations. And she realized something grim. “We can only survive, if one of us lives. Three of us, will eat up all the rations in a matter of a month. One of us, could potentially survive the entire six months of oxygen. On the chance that Earth is safe to go back to.” That was their hope. Before, they were going to make a city of explorers, and now, now, the only thing they could think was to go back to the womb where they were first knitted. To crawl back into the womb of Mother Earth, for there is no other place humans could survive, just like Christa had warned so many years ago.
	Yuri did the count, and so did Christa. They all realized it was the end.
	“So, who's going to die?” asked Yang Yang. All three looked at one another.
	“Should we draw straws?” asked Christa.
	“No... I volunteer. There's nothing more in this life I want to see. I have a better abode to go to. I hope my suicide isn't interpreted as a mortal sin, but I believe, if it's to save the life of another human being, I shall make it,” said Yuri. Yang Yang and Christa were both perplexed.
	“But Yuri, we can leave it to chance,” said Christa.
	“Then, at least, it was fair.”
	“Does not volition overrule chance?” asked Yuri. Yang Yang nodded her head. “Well, doesn't it?”
	“Yes, but we can at least make it fair. So no one had sacrificed begrudgingly.”
	“Christa, did you see the Earth? It's a dead husk. I do not wish to go back. This place, it is hell. It is prison. I do not wish to stay here. Let me go.”
	Christa shuddered, and Yang Yang gravely looked at Yuri. 
	“I go,” said Yuri, who put on the suit. 
	“What about the oxygen?” asked Yang Yang.
	“No, you two need it. I just need the suit so I can walk away out of this room, just the few steps to where you two will be safe. I will go. I want nothing more to do with life.” Yuri was helped on his spacesuit, and he opened up the door, where a vacuum sucked him outside. The other two held their breaths, and pressed the consul so the door slammed shut behind Yuri. Yuri was gone.
	“Now, it's the two of us. Do we draw straws? One of us has to die,” said Christa.
	“Christa, do you wish to live?” asked Yang Yang.
	“Yes,” whispered Christa with a breath.
	“Because I wish to die. Do you understand?”
	Christa was taken back. “But, you want to commit suicide the same as Yuri? Isn't that against your God's law?”
	“No, Christa. I die so you can live. You have nothing, if you die. You go straight to hell.”
	Christa bit her tongue. And thought, “The witch preaches religion at me, when she at first wouldn't even talk politics. Who is she?” But then Christa's heart softened, when she saw it was the sincere belief of this Christian woman.
	“Would you die, just so I can live?” asked Christa.
	“Yes,” said Yang Yang.
	“Do you think Rakesh would have died?” asked Christa.
	Yang Yang and her giggled, “No, he would have made us draw sticks.” The two women hugged one another, and with that moment of levity---for the grimness of death can bring about moments of glib levity---Yang Yang put on her space suit, and like Yuri, was taken out of the room. It was only Christa now. 











XI

For the entire five months, Christa sat in isolated confinement. To explain the feeling, it is the most awful boredom. Christa sat, gazing at the same four walls, the same kitchen, the same refrigerator, the same everything. She ate the same grains, a gruel she concocted, which was tasteless. She had salt, which she put on it. No cream. No dairy. No meat or broth. Just grain gruel. She ate it, as she grew gaunt, only eating little bits by little bits.
	She paced the room, praying to gods she didn't believe in. In a bargaining phase of grief, she walked back and forth, talking to this imaginary friend all day. God didn't talk back, and it was like speaking into the ether, words which never manifested or were heard. There was no answer, as she only half believed. 
	She paced back and forth, and her only comfort was a radio. The small HAM radio the company set up in the kitchen. As they were getting ready to live in the kitchen for the rest of their lives, they set up that HAM radio, as their final hope for survival. If Earth was habitable, if the world could be resown, that radio was their only hope. No god, nothing,---just that some voice would appear on that radio. And for months, there was nothing.
	She had no one to talk to, and she understood she was all alone. She didn't hear God's voice, but only silence. There was no premonition, there was no divination, it was only sheer emptiness, in a silvery room filled with cooking utensils. 
	The beginning of the day, she woke up at about twelve noon. Then, she set to work cooking, which lasted only thirty minutes. She'd boil water, and have potatoes, rice, yams---oh the yams!, the only delicate flavor she had---quinoa, sorghum. She ate them slowly. Chewing each bit of grain. If pasta---she sometimes had pasta---she'd chew on each grain, and for four hours, she'd chew on her grains. No books... she didn't think to bring books. She would have even read the Bible if she had one. She would have engorged on its flesh, and eaten every word of it, and pored over it with the keenest interest. She may have even believed in it, too, if it got her through this misery. Then, after her four hours of chewing, she'd cook one more meal, similar to the last, and commence eating once again. 
	Soon, the insomnia kicked in, because she had no mental stimulus, so she'd lay awake at night, tossing on the steel floor. And there she'd wait. Ever so lonely. Ever so cold.
































XII

There came a voice over the HAM. One thing they had was electricity, from the Thorium reactor which fueled the entirety of Eden. And when that Thorium reactor was spent, ultra violet rays would blast into it, causing it to reawaken once more, and fuel. It wasn't perpetual... no... the rock could only have a half life of so many millions of years. But, it fueled the base. The one thing she could have, was plenty of electricity, which allowed her to hear over the HAM radio, “Papa Roach to Eden, Papa Roach to Eden.”
	Christa swooped up the receiver, and cried into it, “Yes, this is Eden. Come in Papa Roach.”
	“There's only a couple of dozen thousand survivors. Those who've lived in bunkers. Rich, famous, billionaires---the fallout is still heavy, but some of us have found habitable zones on the Earth. Do you read me?”
	“Yes!” cried Christa.
	“What's the status on your crew? What's the status on Eden.”
	Christa shuddered. “The CO2 stores and O2 stores are broken, leaving just enough atmosphere for one room. Food rations are only able to sustain me for one more month, I'd suspect. The arboretum has completely died, three out of the four crew members are dead...”
	“My... Is there anything salvageable on the base?” asked Papa Roach.
	“We still have successfully kept the seed grains. But other than that, mission is a failure.”
	There was a long pause.
	“Did you say the seed grain?”
	“Yes.”
	There was another long silence.
	“Well, mission was not a failure. Those seed grains are all that's left of the plant life on earth. We're sustained off of canned foods and preserved goods. We have no way of sustaining ourselves past the food. Do you have the DNA samples?”	
	There was another long pause.
	“DNA samples?” asked Christa.
	“Yes, we have DNA samples. We collected it in order to repopulate the wild life, should this war happen. We can clone them, actually. We've had a few domesticated cattle survive, and we can clone any animal we want from them.”
	Christa was shocked.
	“I have to check.”
	Christa looked over the data, and she found a file she couldn't open.
	“I can't open this file.”
	“What's it called?”
	“FireArkRainbow.”
	“That's it. I'll give you the passkey.”
	Christa opened up the passkey, and there it was. The entirety of Earth's species in one crate.
	“In order to complete your mission, we need you to come home, and bring those goods. Papa Roach out.”
	And so it was.





















XIII
	
Christa went straight to work. She put on her suit, and had the five oxygen tanks tethered to her, so she wouldn't run out. She'd need all of it, plus for the ride back, as there was no more oxygen on the rocket ship. She walked out onto the room, and walked a few meters, seeing the lights still on. That was the only thing that worked, was the electricity. Yuri and Yang Yang's bodies were laying not too far away from the door, close by one another. Christa tried not to think about it, as she walked down to the storage room, and there found an electric forklift. She loaded the boxes, and drove it, opening every door in the entire facility, so she could get to the Rocket Ship without having to keep opening every door.
	For two hours, she loaded that Rocket. She'd creep the forklift underneath the skids, pull it up, and drive, into the Arboretum, into the Rover Storage Bays—why'd they even need a rover, she now realized it was ridiculous---and out into the dock, where a ramp fell from the opposite end of the Rocket to the stair case she descended almost four years ago. And up the ramp, she placed the boxes. It was one of those kinds of forklifts where the skid loader raised, and she stacked the boxes, in two rows that were about ten boxes high.
	She then drove down to the DNA store, and there, got that box. She took it, too, and stacked it right at the top of the second row. There, she finally was finished with her work. The last excruciating hour of working at this hellhole. Four years, she endured this terrible place.
	She shut the trap, and finally, entered back into the Rocket. It still worked, with no bugs or problems. As it was supposed to. It was made, so it could sit there for a century, and still be usable when the astronauts needed it again. However, they thought there'd be entire families coming home on it. No, it was only Christa. And she needed to complete the one thing this mission was good for. She needed to come home.
	She climbed the ladder, when one of her oxygen tanks got tangled around the rungs. Quickly, she unscrewed it, letting it slowly descend to the bottom, as it hissed and let out a stream of vaporous gas. She didn't go back down, she just trusted. She climbed the ladder, got back into the cockpit, and she programmed the rocket to come home. There were radio equipment on the dashboard, and she called into Papa Roach.
	“Papa Roach, Papa Roach, give me the coordinates where I need to land.” She was given them, it was at the head of Tesla industry's facilities. And then she was off. The rocket lifted into the air, and the sparks and flames, and the flume erupted, and she was up in the air, hovering, and finally, she was off.