Enduring Aella

Episode One | Egg Salad

I've always hated egg salad.

It's the smell more than anything. Retch-inducing. Gut-churning. Fetid. And it was all I could think about as he screamed at me. Not his contorted face, all flushed with fury, nor the pulsating vein on the side of his neck—just the overpowering smell of egg salad.

He reeked of it.

It reminded me of the kind my grandmother used to make. The one that sat untouched at all our family gatherings—just a big old lump of rancid mayonnaise, sweating and curdling in the summer heat.

He pushed closer, his hot breath washing over me as he spewed his sulfurous hate. My stomach rolled. Tears welled and pooled at the corners of my eyes. It was almost enough to send me scrambling back to the car.

Almost.

I lurched past him, stumbling into the mob of protesters. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the building's entrance like a hostile sea, battering me with waves of insults and cardboard signs.

We called them Earthers—frightened, hopeless people clinging to the world as it crumbled around them. Unwilling to change. Unable to adapt. They were a dying sect on a dying planet, and a permanent fixture outside every interstellar relocation hub.

They were desperate. Desperate to matter. Desperate to convert. Desperate to save their way of life as it grew faded and forgotten. Part of me felt bad for them, but Earthers were cruel in their desperation.

"You're abandoning your people!"

"Deserter!"

"Traitor!"

"Coward."

I froze, choking back a strangled breath. A familiar ache blossomed across my chest—a torrent of emotion threatening to sweep me away. Shame. Guilt. Fear.

They were dangerous feelings—threadbare cords strung tight between conviction and despair. I tiptoed across them. One false step, and I'd have spiraled into "could-have-been," and "should-have-done." Resolution would have turned to doubt, or worse, regret.

Regret was terrifying.

"Coward."

An older woman stepped in front of me. Her limp brown hair clung to a damp forehead, and her face was puffy and pink from heat and fury. Her lips curled into a vicious grin as she hefted her sign—still dripping with red paint—to shake in my face.

Crimson drops splattered against us both. I wiped mine away. She wore hers like a badge of honor. My hands balled into fists. I wanted to hit her, to scream at her, to defend myself. But she was right. Amid the crowd, she saw me for what I was. A coward.

I was abandoning Earth. I was leaving my home and my people, and it wasn't because I was a dreamer in search of adventure or a reconstructionist yearning to build a new world. I was running. From her. Or, rather, the memory of her. Elina Gregory.

I wanted nothing more than to escape her, to leave this world she no longer existed in. A world where I was still recognized and measured by her achievements.

Elina was a passionate activist. She held the noble, but unpopular, belief that the newest generation of synthetic humans—the models designed with critical thinking, touch receptors, and emotional simulators—should be free to live their own lives. They should have had autonomy and respect. Freedom.

The world saw them as servants. A cost-effective way to fill their greedy needs. Factories turned out millions of synths human enough to love, but not human enough for basic rights.

In her mind, an ethical line was crossed, and she was determined to fix it. Traveling the world, she hosted seminars, raised money, and graced talk-show stages. She was dedicated, eloquent, and brilliant. She was also my mother.