Chapter Text
“What in the ever-living fuck is he wearing?” a mean, raspy voice asks.
“Business caj, looks like,” another voice, kind only by comparison, deadpans.
“In a pod on its way to a fuckin' long-haul?”
“Apparently, yeah.”
Well, those are two voices Stede doesn't find particularly familiar or comforting. He pops one eye open. There is blinding white light, blotted by two silhouettes leaning over him. He shuts his eyes tight.
“Is he alright?” the mildly kinder voice asks, sounding a bit bored.
“Fuckin' better be since we're stuck with him.”
“Stede... Johnson?” The kinder one greets as if reading from a file. “Stede Johnson. Is that really it? Wow, that's somehow both strange and generic.”
Oh, that's him, isn't it? Johnson. Bonnet no more!
Stede opens both eyes this time, squinting and blinking rapidly to allow time to adjust. There are two men looming over him. One is short and angry, with an X tattooed near the corner of his eye. The other is smirking and has a little scarf tied around his neck.
See, thing is, Stede can’t remember exactly how he got here. He knows where he is generally. He’s aboard a long-haul spacer owned by QA Industries, the primary rival to his father's (and by extension as an only child, Stede's) company. He knows he signed the paperwork and is— minimally— qualified to work here. There had been a big fuss regarding his departure date. Weeks before his scheduled departure, a slew of panicked interns started calling and asking if he could maybe be ready tomorrow, if possible, they would compensate generously, please?
“D'you think the pod was damaged, maybe?”
“Looks fuckin' fine to me, Lucius.”
There's a distinct poke to Stede's cheek. “I know that but, like, maybe he wasn't getting enough oxygen flow in there?”
Stede eases himself up. His whole body aches as he goes. He'd been warned about stasis pod travel, sure. Unfortunately, it seems being warned of a hangover doesn't make the experience of one any more bearable. It's easy to imagine those tiny nanobots in his bloodstream doing double time now, swimming about to fix him with little success.
“What if I, like, pinged the system?” the one called Lucius suggests. “To check his vitals?”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
“Why even have the system if we're not using it?”
“System's half insane at this point. Wouldn't trust it with a fuckin' lullaby.”
“He can hear you,” Lucius whispers.
The mean one scoffs. “See if I fuckin' care.”
Though Stede is still disoriented, the details are flowing back. The room is starting to make sense, with its high, domed glass ceilings, warm, dewy air, and plethora of lush flora. A set of sprinklers click on overheard to spritz the room with a cool, even fog. An artificial sun beams through the glass overhead.
Stede's stomach grumbles like a hot pot left to simmer without enough ingredients.
“Why am I—?” Stede begins, then stops for a moment. His tongue is numb and heavy from disuse. The two men cease their bickering and turn to him. The one called Lucius is looking disgusted with the general vibe. Stede rolls his tongue around his mouth, feeling the grooves of his palate as if rediscovering them, then says, “I'll admit, I'm a bit new to the whole... ship etiquette, but should a new arrival not be greeted in the med bay?”
The small, angry one curses under his breath and turns away from Stede, hands on his hips.
“Listen, buddy, hey,” Lucius says, leaning close and placing a hand on Stede's shoulder. “We sort of need you to wake up... well, now. Immediately. And fix the oxygen filters... oh, within the hour, probably.”
Stede's head is spinning and his stomach is rolling, rolling, rolling. “Today?”
“Bit urgent if you wanna keep breathing, yeah.”
“Urgent,” the angry one says, turning on his heel to face Stede again, “is putting it fucking lightly.”
“Mmyeah, we might be about to run out of oxygen. Like, all the oxygen. Izzy over there's a bit stressed.” Lucius jabs a thumb in the direction of the angry one.
Stede raises a brow at this. “The Gable, even?”
“Gable's a bit under the weather.”
Stede snorts. A greenhouse, under the weather?
“Is this not more of an engineering task?” Stede asks.
Lucius falters, holding his hand to his chest in a dramatic performance of surprise. “Wait, are you not a biological engineer?”
Stede rests his head in his hands, still reeling from being woken prematurely from stasis. The room goes dark for a moment before the overhead lights splash the room in blinking red. Instead of sirens, though, there's a slow, twinkly song, much like those ice cream trucks in those old films Stede adores. Lullabies.
A voice comes over the comms. “'Mergency,” it says, then clicks off. The voice is slurred and gravelly, like the speaker has just been woken from slumber.
“You did this,” Lucius hisses, leaning marginally in Izzy's direction.
Izzy groans to the ceiling. His hand rests on a large knife strapped to his leather-clad thigh. For aesthetic reasons, it seems. What could one need with a knife of that caliber aboard a long-haul? Other than for possibly murdering members of the crew. Eugh.
Lucius turns back to Stede. His face blinks between dark and red as the music tinkles around them. “You're qualified for this, right?”
Well, the job listing certainly made the on-boarding sound a tad more structured than this! Boasting on as it did about 120 hours of on-job training, skills assessments, trial runs... He's done a good bit of green space management planet-side and has plenty of what he'd marketed heavily as transferable skills. It seemed like a grand idea when the hiring manager took a big, crunchy bite of apple, shrugged, and said, “Fuck it, you're hired.”
It's seeming like less of a good idea now, aboard a ship floating in deep space with a crew that relies on his expertise to survive. Is he qualified?
“There's no time like the present to find out!” Stede announces as if answering his own internal question, putting on a chipperness that almost hurts. That, and the nausea is building, churning pure stomach acid while he rumbles for nutrition. He's had the tube in the stasis pod, sure, but the human body never did quite catch up to technology. He needs real food. In his belly.
Stede swings his legs over the side of his pod, plants his feet firmly on the floor, and immediately collapses. The floor is soft. It's warm; it soothes his muscles and follows him as he moves his arm across it. Heat-responsive floor panels! That's nice. Perhaps he'll have a bit of a lie down here until his stomach settles.
“Get this man a fuckin' sandwich!” Izzy shouts to no one specific. “Edward! ”
There's a static sound overhead as the communications system flicks on. “Mm?”
“Get this man a goddamn bite to eat before we all fucking suffocate!” Lucius pleads, more irritated than commanding.
The comms make a fuzzy, hesitant sort of sound, like the man behind them is debating what to say. Then they just click off. There's a few moments of blinking red and the unnerving childhood nursery twinkle before the comms click back on with a grunted, “He's comin'.”
“Fuckin' great,” Izzy grumbles. The lullaby grows louder, as if someone took their fingers to the volume dial and pushed it all the way up.
A man of wild hair and a stained apron arrives moments later. He looks around at the scene, takes a drag from a non-regulation cigarette, then tosses a little package at Stede.
“Turkey, cheese,” the man says. A small, papered bundle hits Stede on the thigh. He tears into it like a madman, wolfing down a sandwich that tastes nothing like turkey and cheese.
“Where did you get fuckin' cigarettes again?” Izzy questions, stomping over to the sandwich delivery man to snatch at his burning cig.
“Eh, it's no big deal!” The apron man says with a shrug. “Been saving them for when you and Edward get us all killed.” His voice is laden with an accent Stede can't quite place. He avoids Izzy's grabby hands easily, lifting the cigarette high over his head and out of Izzy's reach.
The comms flick on. “Mandatory Status Update: still dunno the oxygen levels. O₂ sensor failure.” The lullaby speeds up, as if played at double speed. It makes Stede think of playing racing games with his children, when tensions are highest on the final lap and the background music really ramps up. Bit of a humor on this ship, isn't there? Funny Captain.
Well, Stede had wanted something different, hadn’t he? And this is certainly that.
One might say that Stede had merely fumbled into a career as a biotech horticulturist. Stede just liked plants. He liked nature, really, but took a special interest in flowers. That interest grew to an overall curiosity about the purpose of flowers, then the raising of flowers, then the largest tech corporations in the world were saying “To hell with old tech!” and incorporating plants into all sorts of aspects of life. Hospitals, schools, spaceships just like the one he’s on now.
A healthy heap of nepotism, a quick degree, and a dash of luck bring Stede to this very moment: standing in a long-haul greenhouse, leaves shivering in weak airflow as the vents stutter. His hands are on his hips and he thinks, Oh, I've really fucked myself now, haven't I ?
And all for his father who quite openly despises him. All to gather some imagined intel that might win over his father and protect the fortune he doesn't deserve to inherit. For The Bonnet Corporation. Isn't that something?
Might as well make a game of it. Pretend he's here on some covert operation! In reality, lying about his real last name just makes things so bloody much easier . It leaves far less to explain. Fewer things for others to prattle on about.
But it's a good bit of fun, isn't it? To pretend he's here to spy on the enemy? A spot of corporate espionage, a daring escapade or two, and some light horticulture to while away his time. He'll have to keep a journal of all his observations!
If he doesn't die in the next few hours.
The other three leave the room to panic elsewhere and Stede's dash of luck rears its head. Goodness, he really is a lucky man! There's nothing wrong with the oxygen at all. It's low, sure, but a quick lap of the greenhouse reveals that there are plants blocking the vents, confusing the sensors and obstructing airflow. They're easy enough to move out of the way. It requires nothing more than a bit of manpower and a confident gait, really.
Stede is delighted to find he has inherited a miniature food forest. His specialty! All six layers of the miniature ecosystem are intact, though some are much healthier than others. The plants themselves wouldn't have been his top pick, all from such wildly different corners of the globe. It would have been ideal to have a less competitive system (surely that isn't a failed passion fruit vine on a North American apricot tree!), but it'll do.
“Could I see a copy of the crop rotation records?” Stede ventures, tapping at the tablet left on the tool bench by the door into the greenhouse.
Stede isn't sure who he's asking. Seems like the thing to do, if space movies are any indication. They just sort of… talk into open air about this trajectory or that calibration.
Maybe he’s asking that guy on the comms, perhaps? There is no verbal response, but the page on the tablet starts scrolling without his guidance until Stede is staring down the poorest crop rotation plan one could possibly imagine.
“Carrots?” Stede huffs petulantly. “A root that deep in a system without bugs to eat away the excess!” He lets out a tuttery, mean little laugh. “And whose idea was this ?”
The page scrolls of its own accord down to the name Lucius Spriggs highlighted in bright yellow.
“Well, I hope he's a better... what does he do?”
The pages flip until Stede is looking at Lucius' file, mostly blacked out for privacy, though his position is there, highlighted yellow: Lead Programmer – Cert Level III.b
“Right, of course,” Stede says. He's met enough programmers and computer-types in his days to understand the general vibe of their ways with plants, but damn. Where are all the nitrogen-fixers? Not a single pea shrub in rotation! Stede lets out an indignant hmph.
Fuck the oxygen. Stede is far more worried about the long-term neglect. Crusty dried leaves fall from what is clearly a once-impressive canopy of fig trees pruned into a short, bushy exactness. There's insufficient nitrogen in the soil at the far back, where the bulk of the larger roots reach far down into the soil bed of the greenhouse. Then there is far too much nitrogen near the front! Rookie error! The ground-cover of clover is exhibiting signs of root rot and the leaves of a cherry tomato bush are burnt to hell. Honestly, it's like no one even tried to take care of the place! Plants this genetically modified live and die young, so Stede would estimate it's been— lord, this place has gone at least three weeks without a proper caretaker!
Stede is keenly aware of the camera following him back and forth, panning with him across the middle of the greenhouse as he moves plants back and forth. His actions seem to level the system out, because the blinking red lights shut off and the music stops and the comms flick on to say, “Reckon it's fine for now.” It's the same Edward voice as earlier, authoritative and tired like a man beyond ready to give up and retire.
When Stede ventures through the short tunnel between the primary greenhouse and the smaller, denser Gable he knows should exist, he instead finds a wall of lumpy metal soldered together to seal off half of the tunnel.
Well that's a bit odd, isn't it? Certainly something to make note of in the journal. Could be of import later, to him or his father. It will also make his job much more challenging. The Gable is meant to house the core oxygen producers. Mass amounts of algae, young plants to replace those ready to pass on in the main greenhouse. He’ll have to make do with just the one greenhouse and the nursery room tucked in the corner.
Though he's starving and tired and cranky, Stede spends an hour tending to the unhealthy plants. It's always a long game with plants. Trial and error, gentle care, and a healthy amount of conversation. Stede is of the camp of “plant people” that know from personal experience how much a plant loves to be given a name and treated to kind words. How a succulent can have all the light it needs or a ligularia can receive the appropriate level of water to thrive but it means nothing if the plants do not feel loved. If they are not cared for as individuals, with a soft hand.
It's clear that these plants have been without that love for a long while. The fertilizer is hooked up to the pots and chambers, but the soil is brittle up top and poorly drained, encouraging root rot down low. The yellowing plants get a healthy meal of nitrogen. Stede's done all he can once he's had a lovely chat with the peace lilies; once he's greeted and rotated the aloes; and once he's pruned the figs and apologized for the delay in their care.
Stede steps outside of the greenhouse and the reality of being on a long-haul hits him with a blast of pressurized air in a space much different from the oasis he now manages. To his left is a dead-end, cluttered with boxes and the diagonal of a mop handle cutting across the wall. It's a poor attempt at covering up the door that once used to be there, soldered off just like the other entrance into the Gable.
To the right, though, showcased in a large, comfortable lounge space, is something breathtaking. Before him is a full-wall expanse of fortified glass. There’s a galaxy there— a dark, puffy scar cracking across the black.
Stede has seen stars; he's gazed up at the milky way from an island off the coast of Tanzania while studying the curious red sap of the Dracaena cinnabari. He's gazed long at the red speck that is Mars while out for his late-night walks, after Mary and the children were long asleep. But never in Stede's wildest dreams could he have imagined being wrapped in a glitter of stars that look close enough to touch. They're still small, distant things, but somehow out here they feel more like entire suns, nurturing strange plants and microorganisms on a million other planets. Intelligent life on other planets is unlikely, according to humanity, but humanity is quite small, isn't it? What do they know? What could they possibly know of trees like thimbles, of creatures like a canyon?
In a way, that's part of what drew Stede to this mission. Wouldn't it be something, he'd mused, to be among the first group of humans to step foot on the most promising goldilocks planet known to man? To remove his space helmet, suck in fresh oxygen, and soak in the rays of an entirely foreign sun?
Stede is keenly aware of another camera on him, its strange light blinking. It reminds Stede of a Recording light, only blue instead of red.
“There you are!” Lucius calls from a doorway that slides open hands-free. He says it like Stede is a particularly difficult hospital patient— not like he saved everyone's lives today (sort of– oh, fuck it, as far as they know!). Stede takes one last long look out the window, then turns to be polite. The room is peppered with simple tables and chairs, fixed to the floor by some force unknown to Stede. It’s a large room, much like a lounge, though the plain walls and stunning alteration between monochrome black and white furniture aren't quite the vibe Stede would have chosen.
“Let's get you wined and dined and take you to bed,” Lucius says with a rather condescending hand on Stede's shoulder.
It's the clothes, isn't it? Bit rude. It's not as if he's brought an entourage of suits aboard! He brought one modest suit and no one’s even seen it yet!
(In fact, he got all the way to an hour before departure when he swapped his stunning cream suede suit for some lighter wear.)
He learns the sandwich-maker goes by Roach. Tonight's stew isn't bad, but it definitely doesn't taste like the chicken and dumplings that it's announced to be upon arrival. Stede scarfs it down, then excuses himself to the restroom, following the text above the doorway that reads RESIDENCES | RESTROOMS in three languages: English, Chinese, and Arabic. He takes one look in the mirror and boy does he look like a pile of warmed-up shit. The water is a refreshing splash on his face. What he truly craves is a full shower, but Lucius is waiting to show him to his room.
There are at least a dozen doorways, all situated around the showers and toilets in the center like a circular hall-style dorm. Most of the doors have names and nouns and descriptions (that are presumably also names) to the right of them. John, Swede, Buttons, Frenchie, Jim— most of the doors are wide open to reveal vacancy, as if the crew has long since left the ship. Stede can hear soft guitar strings from one of the rooms, door slightly ajar. He’s so distracted with trying to peek in that he bumps Lucius when he stops in front of a door that reads “JACK”.
Lucius slides the little name card out of the placard. There's a dull, blue-ish hue to Lucius' hands as he moves, lit in moonlight tones. The ship has a nice simulation of a night with one of those milky bright supermoons. Well-lit, but distinctly night.
Lucius patters away after a disingenuous goodnight. Another door shuts somewhere down the hall.
Stede steps into his room. The lights flick on to a homey, warm glow. It's a cramped space barely fit for one. It reminds Stede of his brief obsession with van lifers and tiny houses. There's a small desk under the bed, which is lofted high towards the ceiling. There's a chunky, complimentary laptop with an old tech aesthetic to it. The bed is simple with a white plastic cover on it, reminiscent of his college dorm mattress so many years ago. There's a calendar filled with Xs taped by the door, but the last X is from over three months ago.
Directly in front of him is a blank wall with a control panel next to it. There are no letters on the panel, only various shapes that indicate an up arrow, down arrow, circle, and a line.
Stede taps up and is greeted by pornography. It's a silent still-shot, but of a woman getting railed up the ass. Stede scrunches his nose.
“Welcome back, Jack,” a robotic female voice greets from the little panel. The AI system, Stede presumes.
“New owner,” Stede says. The wall dissipates back to plain white.
“New owner,” the voice responds.
“Stede Johnson.”
“New Owner: Stede Johnson. Select your scenery.”
Stede waits for options or for the wall to do something. When nothing happens he says, tentative, “How about something naturey?”
“Something naturey,” the voice confirms. The drab white walls light up with a rainforest mid-storm, water hitting the leaves at an ear-splitting volume.
“Volume down!” Stede shouts, then adds, “please.”
“Volume down.”
It's nice, now. Stede notices his bags have been left on his bed for him. He takes out the few belongings he still owns: a small ship model, an ebook, and his favorite clothes. It takes no time at all to arrange them into his tiny rainforest room. Once done, he collapses into bed, closes his eyes, and listens to the rainfall patter and drip.
“What's your name, then?” Stede asks, popping an eye open. He only wishes to be polite. He doesn't have much exposure to advanced artificial intelligence. Or spacer tech in general.
“Name pending.”
Stede hesitates. “Well, what strikes your fancy?”
Silence.
“Is there a name you’ve always found particularly pleasing?”
“Name pending,” she repeats, inflection identical to before.
Not very... artificially intelligent, is it? It's like all the cheap tech back home: home systems, chat bots, Mary's hands-free phone.
Stede clicks his tongue. “How about Janice?”
“Confirming Name: Janice.”
“Perfect.”
Stede's asleep in under a minute, exhausted from the day.