COB FARR

Sometimes it felt like nobody else remembered living on a planet.

            Sam wasn’t the oldest on board the ship, or even the oldest in his department, but it could definitely feel that way. He was reminded unpleasantly of people he’d known as a child, older neighbours and family friends who would reminisce about more difficult times. It had always rubbed him the wrong way, as if they were disappointed that things had become easier. He hadn’t understood it at the time. But now?

            The ship’s temperature was fixed within a five-degree window, fluctuating over the course of a year. The weather forecast was simple and routine, to the point people stopped bothering to follow it. What was the point, when you could wear the same cut of clothes year-round and never be uncomfortable? Not to mention, nobody ever got caught out in the rain.

            The rest of the ship’s physical conditions were similarly easy-going. The single corkscrew corridor was at an easy incline, and the air was never too dry or damp. Strict quarantines had killed off the most common and difficult bacteria before they’d even left Earth, and anything new that arose was swiftly and completely dealt with. Sam hadn’t had so much as a tickle in his throat for twenty years.

            Life was good. It was easy. That was why Sam had enlisted in the first place. He’d live a full and safe life, and in a few generations his descendants would arrive at whatever planet the ship was pointed at, and nobody along the way would ever have any reason to miss the planet Earth.

*

Sam’s working group consisted of five people, two junior to him and two his senior. The terminology came from other departments, and was almost amusing when applied to his own. Who on Earth would’ve called a pack of gardeners a ‘working group’?

            Duties within their group were easy enough to divide. Every morning the two younger gardeners would walk through the group’s section of the ship and water the plants there. As they did so, they’d note any plants that looked like they needed more attention, and return to the workroom with a list.

            Sam took care of most problems on that list, though Hazel had been shadowing him for long enough now that he trusted her to identify and correct some of the smaller problems. She probably could’ve been doing more, but Sam wasn’t in a rush to push the work on her. He enjoyed walking the long spiralling corridor, leaning in to check on flowers he’d watered from single cuttings and splinting carelessly bent stalks with paper and a spot of gel. There wasn’t much variety in the appearance of the ship’s main thoroughfare. Any relief he could offer through the greenery littering the walkway, he was happy to give.

            The two older gardeners gave most of their focus to the few trees in their area of the ship. Trimming and clearing leaf litter weren’t necessarily easy jobs, but they were ones that didn’t require as much walking as watering every plant up and down the corridor. The two were also experienced enough to recognise more complex or serious problems, sometimes years in advance of any action needing to be taken. They were the only ones in the current group who’d worked with plants on Earth – they’d taken quickly to the different needs of plants in an artificial environment, and the extra years of experience were a godsend.

             Right now, it was the middle of the ship’s ‘warm cycle’. Sam was preparing the composting bins while Hazel and Chris did the morning watering. It was a relief to be working on that before the leaf litter started to pile up; normally he was halfway buried in the stuff before he finally got started.

            He’d just screwed one of the bins’ lids back on when Chris entered the workroom, already pushing their list from their handheld tablet onto the large screen mounted on one wall. Sam watched them work, the way he often did when there wasn’t anything else to do.

            Chris had been born on the ship, not long after it had launched. It showed, though Sam wouldn’t have been able to say just how. Maybe it was in the way they held themself, comfortable with the ship’s slightly off angle, or maybe it was their skin, evenly tanned without any freckles or sunspots. It could’ve been any number of things, though.

            Today, unlike any of those previous days, Sam addressed Chris. ‘Hey, Mackay. You’re twenty-three soon, right?’

            Chris turned from the screen for a moment, giving Sam more of their focus. ‘Yeah, in a few months.’

            Sam blew out a breath. ‘Doesn’t that make me feel old. I was twenty-three when we launched, you know.’ Chris only hummed in answer, so Sam braced himself and asked what he really wanted to know. ‘How did you figure yourself out so young?’

            It probably wasn’t the sort of question he was meant to ask. He certainly hadn’t asked it at the time, when Chris was only barely nineteen and came in with all of their records changed. Back then, he’d done the polite thing and taken in the new information without comment, doing his best to be quick in correcting himself to their new preferences. It wasn’t like Sam had never met someone who was non-binary before, after all.

            Now he had Chris’ full attention. They turned completely away from the list, giving Sam a searching look. ‘I got lucky, I guess. I knew something was wrong with me, and someone I trusted said she might know what it was, and I listened. Took a few months to think things over myself, and then I made the application to alter my record.’

            Well, Sam thought, that wasn’t much help. It was good that Chris hadn’t had to struggle to figure out what was wrong on their own, but that wasn’t advice Sam could follow. He doubted any of his friends could look at him and say, this is why everything about you feels uprooted and out of sorts, go fix it.

            ‘Hey, Sam…’ Chris said, waiting for him to look their way. ‘Do you… I could put you in touch with my mentor, if you wanted. The one who talked me through all of my stuff.’

            Sam smiled, but shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain that his problem wasn’t like theirs, that he knew who he was. What he’d really wanted to know was how Chris had stuck the courage to tell everyone who they really were, to say to however many people they had to, something is wrong with me, and I need to fix it. It sounded like that part had never even been an obstacle to them, once they knew what they actually needed. ‘That’s not the kind of thing I’m trying to figure out,’ he said.

            Chris just nodded, still searching Sam’s face. ‘If you say so,’ they said, and got back to work.

            Sam turned back to the compost bins and tried to put the talk behind him. He still had ten more he wanted to wash out and line with accelerant today, on top of whatever problems came up from Chris or Hazel’s lists.

            He’d almost forgotten about it by the time Chris took their lunch break. He looked up when they cleared their throat, finding them standing awkwardly in the workroom doorway and avoiding eye contact.

            ‘My parents were scared, when I came out,’ they admitted. ‘They didn’t have any problem with it, but they thought other people would. I told them nobody cared, as long as you did your registration properly, but…’ They shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe whatever’s getting to you is an Earth thing, like theirs was.’

            Sam nodded, tight-lipped, ignoring the curdling feeling behind his ribs. ‘Maybe you’re right. It was a hard place to live.’

*

Days passed. The bins were all cleaned and prepared. Some of the plants started growing more leaves, or shedding the ones they already had. The single bin they used in the off-season filled up almost immediately – the workroom would’ve been strewn with leaf litter if Sam hadn’t made his preparations early.

            More shedding meant more man-hours spent collecting the litter. Sam found himself spending more time with his older coworkers, saving them the strain of bending down again and again or having to truck bags up and down the ship.

            The older gardeners were like him, born and raised on Earth. Technically Hazel was as well, but she’d only been a child when she left, and it showed sometimes. These were people who’d really lived on a planet, who’d had full lives and ambitions they’d left to help settle a new planet. They’d been old hat with these jobs when Sam first started, and he still found himself thinking of them as the ‘real’ adults sometimes.

            He found himself working with Gemma most often, since she preferred to manage the trees in their section of the central corridor and those ones were the largest. Not to mention they’d be a hassle to gather up if left to blow about too much. She wasn’t the oldest in their working group, but had a steady demeanour that paradoxically unsettled Sam in contrast to it. Still, she was a good person, and as close to a friend as he could really consider her given their jobs.

            Normally their interactions were fairly sparse, but the time spent together opened them both up a little. He found himself telling her about things he’d read recently, and listening to her stories about her younger siblings, some on board and some left on Earth. It was nice, and almost scratched the itch he’d been carrying for so long.

            And then, because things were going too smoothly, it ended. Gemma turned to him in the middle of determining which leaves were about to shed to tell him, “You’re not happy here.”

            “What?” The statement was so plain, so uncomplicated, that it blindsided him. “If I wasn’t happy here, I’d request a transfer.”

            “Not here as a gardener,” she corrected, not looking in his direction. “Here right now. On the ship. You miss Earth.”

            Sam couldn’t help but scoff, hopefully quietly enough not to be heard. “I wasn’t any happier on Earth. Things are better up here.”

            Gemma hummed, leaning in closer to a branch of the tree. For a while they only spoke about the work, and Sam let himself hope that she’d dropped the subject, but then she continued. “Even if you weren’t happy, you still miss it. Maybe you miss it because it made you unhappy.”

            Maybe she and Sam were friendly, but not enough for him to be comfortable with this line of conversation. “I don’t want to talk about this. It’s not like I can do anything about it anyway.”

            Here, finally, Gemma turned and fixed him with a look. She was only ten years older than him, but he found himself aware of just how lined her face was as it hardened and focused on him. “This isn’t me trying to make conversation, Sam,” she said. “This is going to burn you out if it keeps going.”

            “Thanks, well, now that I know that I can just not burn out, right?”

            “I’d prefer that,” she agreed easily. “Liking your job isn’t enough. I know we’re not close, but – you’re not happy. You’re worrying your apprentice, and Chris too.”

            Sam expected to feel angry at Chris bringing this up to their own mentor, but he found he only felt exhausted. It wasn’t like they’d understood him enough to get a say about it. “It’s not something that I can just fix, alright? Some people just aren’t happy, maybe that’s how I’m meant to be.” The words felt bitter on his tongue – he could feel himself shrinking, getting defensive in all the ways he hated. It’d been so long since he’d felt this way, maybe not since they’d taken off.

            Gemma was still looking at him, the kind of look that would’ve made a younger him squirm. “You aren’t happy because you aren’t letting yourself be happy. No,” she continued, when Sam tried to talk, “I can’t convince you, so there’s not really any point talking about it more. Just. I don’t know.” She sighed, turning away from him to focus back on her work.

            Sam stared after her for a minute, unmoving. What was he meant to do about that? If he was unhappy, he’d been that way for a long time. Before he left Earth, at least. How was he supposed to fix that?

            After a while longer, he forced himself back to work, gathering the leaf litter off the ground and collecting it into bags. He didn’t look at Gemma, and she didn’t say anything more.

            Stupid. Of course he was unhappy, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. He’d left, given up on Earth. The price for leaving was regret, and the price of regret was remembrance. Earth had hurt him, but he loved it all the same. Stifling that love was always going to leave him stunted.

            He kept sweeping up leaves, kept his head down. Sam could settle for being alive. He’d leave happiness for people who didn’t know what they’d given up.

Cob Farr writes short-form science fiction inspired by Golden Age tropes and themes. Living on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, they draw inspiration from both classic authors such as Asimov, and modern writers including Martha Wells for their work.