Heading North

Gregory Berdstein checked the clock. 33:01. In less than an hour a new day will start on planet Bright. In less than an hour his shift will end and he will get some sleep. Or at least some rest. The young man threw a glance at the door in the back of the operator’s cabin, leading to a cramped crew section of the Mobile Harvesting Factory. Gregory was surprised he can’t hear Lorenz’s snoring. Probably because the inner walls of the factory were enhanced this year. Berdstein envied his senior teammate for being able to sleep so peacefully in this place. He himself could not. Everyone told him it took time to accommodate on this damn planet. But for three years he lived here it only got worse. Staying in the settlement on the equator was at least acceptable, even with all the reversed day and night schedule. But the expeditions were insufferable. Even ruined Earth was better than this. If not for the decent payment, he’d be out of here as soon as the first spaceship departs. But his work here helped keep Claire and Mark fed, healthy and safe. So, Gregory stayed. Still, this damn polar days drove his brain nuts. And each year got only worse.

“Who could have thought that I will get to hate sunny days.”

“Sorry, I don’t understand your question”. A monotonous voice of MHF AI replied him.

“Relax, Mai, this was not a question for you”. Gregory leaned back on the chair. He remembered a talk they had with Lorenz a few days ago.

“Doesn’t it annoy you that we have to go further and further north each cycle?”

“Well what did you expect?” The old man shrugged. “The government demands as much ARN as possible to restore Earth. And the science teams still struggle to find a way to replicate the substance or to make the flowers grow anywhere but on Bright’s soil and under the blazing rays of its sun. So we have to harvest it, slowly wiping the flowers from the face of the planet. When we first came here it was all covered with them. An ocean of blue petals, rippling on the wind. Now we claw at the polar zones, where we can only work during polar days to power up our solar panels. At least we don’t need to do the hard work out there.”

A beep from the control panel pulled Gregory from his memories.

“Unit delta-04 reporting damage”. Gregory checked the clock again and sighed. It was still his shift, so he will be the one to deal with this. Gregory looked at the monitors. He soon found the automatic harvester drone lying on the ground instead of floating up in the air. “Damn it”. Going out was the last thing he wanted at the end of his shift.

“What’s wrong?” Lorenz asked when Gregory shook his shoulder, sitting up from a narrow bunk. The old man’s skin – almost as white as his hair, - looked gravely pale in the dim light. There were no tanned people on Bright. Tan is brought by the sun and sun on Bright meant death.

“One of the birdies is acting up. It fell down. Gotta go out and pick it up.”

According to protocols, the operator’s cabin must be manned at all times, so Lorenz will have to endure with less sleep.

Gregory pulled on his protective suit and carefully checked each clasp. Cursing under his breath, he pushed the button on the door and stepped out on the Bright’s surface. It was bright outside, like on a cold sunny winter day on Earth, when sunrays reflect from fresh snow and frosty trees, multiplying tenfold. It was that bright even with thick pitch-black face screen of the suit. Looking outside without it will make you blind in less than a second, burning your optical nerves to a crisp. Along with the rest of your brain. Radiation level on Bright was enormous. Gregory threw a quick glance at the sun. It was supposed to be a middle of a night, but it stood pretty high above the horizon. It will not even touch it in weeks. And then it will disappear for almost half a year, forcing people to retreat back to their equatorial base. “I hate this planet” Gregory murmured. He trotted towards the damaged drone, stepping carefully to avoid crushing the flowers. They had official name, but Gregory could not remember it. No one used it anyway. They were simply called the flowers. There were no any other flowers – or any other life – on Bright’s surface. The scientists said that there were other primitive lifeforms – deep underground, protected from the scorching radiation by the azure petals up here. Gregory cared not. The flowers were the only thing important here. Avoiding stepping on them was hard – they were large and they were everywhere, their triangular blue petals, each twice the size of Gregory’s palm, spread wide to cover as much space as possible. By the time Gregory reached the drone he was sweating under the thick and heavy protective suit. The damaged drone fell on one of the flowers, its spread propellers resembling the flower pattern too. A dead metal flower atop a living one. Gregory chuckled. He was listening to Lorenz too much. A few more expeditions and he will start writing poems. Well maybe Claire will like it. The drone and the flower reflected the sun in almost the same way. Of course, the flower was not made of metal. But its surface was covered in tiny glistening droplets. ARN. Anti-radiation nectar. The unusual substance that humans found nowhere else and could not replicate in the labs. The flowers somehow synthesized it, releasing from the tiny pores on the petals. This substance could withstand, absorb and deactivate enormous amounts of radioactive particles or waves. When it was discovered, the dream of restoring Earth became something more realistic than a dream. And humans pounced at these flowers, like giant metal-clad bees, gathering all the nectar they could reach. First by hands, then with the drones, like the one that Gregory was looking at now. The man lifted the machine and frowned. A thin thread of smoke was rising from the ARN storage compartment. And the metal on the lower surface of the drone was dotted with dark spots. Gregory could swear it was giving up to radiation, but the drones – as everything on Bright – was made from ARN-infused materials. It was not supposed to suffer from radiation. Gregory threw one more glance on a crushed flower and frowned once again.

“What in the… Lorenz, you see that too?”

“Is there anything special I am supposed to witness?”

“The damn flower. It’s not blue. There are red threads all over the petals.”

Lorenz went silent for a second. “Pick it up too and bring here. Mai, call all harvesters back. Do not evacuate their compartments in the tank.”

“Affirmative”.

While Lorenz was giving orders to AI, Gregory carefully pulled a cutter from his backpack. “Why didn’t it happen an hour later?” he complained. Trying to pull the flower out was useless – they had extremely deep and thick roots. Even cutting the stem was not an easy task, but eventually it gave up. On his way back Gregory could see the path their mobile factory made through the field. Most flowers that the drones collected ARN from already started to wither, black dots covering once azure petals. But now that Gregory knew what to look for, he noticed something else too. There were other flowers with red threads. A chill ran through his spine. “I hate this planet”.

Inside the factory Lorenz was already waiting with a tool kit in hands. He grabbed the drone and the flower and chased Gregory to the operators cabin. Ten minutes later he joined him, looking even more pale.

“The poor birdie insides are all melted. It seems that something corrosive was mixed in with our precious nectar. We warned them this will happen eventually.” He took a microphone and pushed a few buttons on the control panel. “Delta to everyone. We have an emergency. I repeat, we have an emergency. We encountered a mutated kind of flowers. ARN they produce is highly corrosive and damages the drones. I repeat, the flowers are mutating. ARN becomes dangerous. Delta out”

A few minutes later the radio went on.

“Base to ev…one. Continue harvest. I repeat, cont.. ue …vest. We will send the team to con..rm Delta’s report.”

The radiation level on Bright brought in severe interference and long-range communications were always a problem. Harvesters had to rely on a chain of retranslation towers, and even those sometimes failed.

“Lorenz, what do you mean “we warned them”? Are you… are you a brightkeeper?”

The old man looked at Gregory with a disappointment, but clearly directed at himself. “I should have watched my tongue, didn’t I? Indeed, I am one of those who tried to prevent repeating a mistake we made on Earth.”

Gregory gulped. Brightkeepers were a group of activists who protested against a rapid harvest of ARN. The United Earth Government accused them of betraying the homeworld of humanity and claimed them as terrorist organization. They even threw a few leading scientists behind bars for actively supporting the group. The public opinion, however, was on the government side this time. Most people believed restoring Earth was more important than caring about alien flowers.

“And… What exactly did you warn about?”

“You’ve seen it yourself. The flowers are changing. They either mutate because of growing overall radiation level, or they adapt to out threat. And that’s not all. The climate is changing. The storms here…”

Suddenly the factory trembled. Gregory clutched the armrests and Lorenz almost fell as the floor, walls and everything shook again and again. Suddenly the radio went live. “Base to everyone! An emergency message! The huge earthquake hit the equator settlement! The Hope Mountain started erupting! Everyone return to base. I repeat, everyone return to base!”

“We did warned them.” Lorenz whispered. “They didn’t listen”.

“What do you mean? What did you do?”

“We did nothing, kid. Do you know what is unusual about Bright?”

“Everything?”

“Well, this planet is definitely unique. But that’s not unusual. What is unusual is it’s stability. Planets so close to their stars tend to have high tectonic and volcanic activity. But not Bright. We proposed a theory that the flowers stabilize the planet – by negating the high radiation level and by holding the outer cortex layers with their surprisingly deep and intertwined root system.”

“Wait, is that the thing about flowers being created by alien race to prepare the planet for future colonization?”

Lorenz smiled. “Some believe in that. I do not. Nature is far more creative than most people give it credit for. Anyway, whatever the flowers origin is, as we started gathering ARN and the flower density decreased, the planet became as unstable as it was supposed to be, being this close to the sun. We tried to rob this planet to heal the one we robbed before. It’s only natural that we face another disaster.”

“What do we do now?”

Lorenz threw a glance at the monitors were flower field glistened nonchalantly as if the earth was not shaking a minute ago. In his eyes Gregory noticed both sadness and… love? “Equatorial zone will now be too dangerous.” Lorenz said. “We predicted that if something like this will happen, we will have to try creating underground base in more stable region. So… I guess we head up north.” 

Prompt used - NORTH. Well, this time I used it pretty straight) Word count 1938