Against the Tide - A New Elysium Story [Complete]

Sixteen Tranq Darts and a Death Wish

"Calliope, will you tell me a bedtime story?"

"Which one would you like to hear, Evelyn?"

"Tell me the one about the flowers that traveled to the stars!"

"Oh, but that's not exactly a children's story. And I told it so often already - aren't you bored with it yet?"

"Of course not. I love it. Pretty please?"

"Well then, alright... In a sector far, far away, there is a planet called Ephra. It is a curious place, with low gravity and a low density atmosphere. If a human were to walk on its surface and take a leap, they wouldn't come back down for a quarter mile. Close underneath the dry surface, there exists a network of hot water currents that span the entire planet and occasionally burst forth in hot springs. Over time, a curious plant evolved on that planet. It adapted to the strange and harsh conditions beautifully – it developed a strong root network that anchored it deep into the ground. It learned to draw carbon dioxide from the ground too, because the atmosphere alone could not sustain its metabolism. Its root network continued to expand, and over the millennia, it grew to cover almost the entire planet."

"And it's called Starseed because..."

"...because its leaves are dark as the night sky, spangled with silver flowers like stars. Would you like to continue telling the story yourself?"

"Oh, no! Sorry, you go on."

"It is said that the plants evolved like this to worship the beauty of the night sky. So they grew to mirror it on the surface of the planet. It is also said that over the millennia, the plants evolved further and learned to dream. They were dreaming of the universe, and the boundless space beyond their atmosphere. So when they evolved even further than that, they learned to reach for the stars."

"Oh, here comes the good part!"

"Once a year, when the planet reaches its perihelion, the atmosphere begins to heat up, and eventually, the hot water springs breaking forth from the ground will provide enough additional heat to make the plant's seed pods burst. From within these pods, tiny spores erupt forth and fill the air. And some of these spores, they carried that dream of the universe, so they reached out beyond the atmosphere. Somehow, they escaped the low gravity, left behind the planet, and went to look for a new place for themselves among the stars. We know this because on the planet's moon, Merida, some of them took root and began to grow. Merida is very much like Ephra, in terms of its soil and atmosphere - it is said that the moon itself used to be part of the planet and simply broke off from it a long, long time ago. So the plants didn't find it hard to settle there. But that was just the first step on their journey to the stars."

"Calliope, do you think I'll get to travel there one day? I would really like to see them."

"Why not? You're a smart girl Evelyn, I am certain you will be able to go wherever you want to go. Surely you will get see them some day."

~ ~ ~

As Null cast a long glance along the sheer endless rows of hydroponic racks, the memory of a conversation held a long time ago faded like a dying echo.

"But why would they grow that here?" she whispered under her breath.

The longer she stared at the plants, the more she recalled now – random facts about their metabolism, their preferred soil pH, their leaf and root anatomy, and the fact that their dark green color came from cupric oxide that the plants stored in their leaves. But nothing about Starseed came to her mind that would explain why Orion's Reach were growing such vast amounts of it underneath their headquarters.