Excerpt: WT: Biosphere Mars

There was a meeting Isaac wanted her to attend, but according to her PDA she also had two papers due that she hadn’t remembered hearing about before. She didn’t even want to think about leaving the cozy nest she’d made for herself here in the skeleton of what would soon be the living room area in the housing section of the biosphere, going back to the apartment she shared with Dionne wasn’t anything she was looking forward to after the fight they’d had that morning; but she knew she had to go back eventually. Putting it off was only delaying the inevitable, but she wasn’t going to deny she hoped that Dionne had gone out or was already asleep when she got home. How she was going to fit in doing the chores she’d apparently neglected to do on top of all of the rest of this…
Isaac mimed knocking on the door that wasn’t there.
She gave him a half-smile as he sat down on the hard floor next to her and glanced over the various things she had strewn around her.
“Problems?”
“I was just thinking that we may have an issue with the plant pollination, sometimes in an enclosed environment insects can get out of control. I’m trying to work out if that means it’s going to be easier or better to artificially pollinate or if there’s going to be enough time or funding to work out which insects are going to be better. There are so many factors that may be different even with this, given we have no idea the full effects the Martian environment will—you’ve totally zoned out.”
He kissed her on the forehead, “I’m sure whatever it is you’ll sort it out. I…I have no useful input on insects or plant pollination at least.”
She sighed and turned back to the papers, scrawling a few things underneath what amounted to a comparison chart between bees and butterflies.
“Perhaps,” he said, trying to draw her back, “artificial may be best. Whoever’s here we’re going to have time to kill and insects is just another factor to add into “things which could go wrong”.”
“The whole thing with the biosphere is that it needs balance…”
“You’ve said yourself we’ve not got the thousands of millions of years of evolution that the actual Earth went through. Start small. Essentials.”
She nodded.
“Maybe you should take a break?” He moved a leg across the paper she was trying to write some more notes on, “You were in here when I left to check on things over an hour ago, and don’t you have class?”
She jolted, and looked down at the PDA in fear, then sighed, slumping back against his shoulder, “It’s too late to get there for it now…”
“I told you bef—“
“I promised I would do this with you,” she turned, and put one hand on his cheek, “and I don’t back out of my promises.”
“There are other people that Pinnacle is hiring on, you know?” he pointed out, “I’m sure they’re all capable and delegation of things is not a bad idea. You don’t see me out there being a one man construction army, do you? We’re the idea people--.”
“If there was a flaw in some of the I-Beams somewhere you can’t tell me you wouldn’t be up all night for however long it would take to get things sor—“
“Alright. You have me there,” he played with his left eye, apparently adjusting a lens, and then looked back at her, “Have you eaten today? You said you were going to take a break and get a muffin. I don’t see a muffin wrapper. I see by your face I have no got you.”
She nodded.
“Well, then, let’s get you some food.” He hefted himself up trying not to stand on any more of the papers than he’d already blocked with his leg before, and offered her a hand up.
At first she appeared to be refusing it, focusing on the papers once more, but then she shook her head, scooped them up and stacked them together, before slipping them in her backpack and accepted his hand, “Where are we going then?”
“You decide,” he said.
She frowned. Decisions were always really difficult with sort of thing. There were so many options and she could never decide which would be the better or which she actually wanted, “I don’t know, anything sounds good at this point. I’m starving after all.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said.
“I’m not. Starving. Food. Dining choices. They’re all on the same theme.”
“But you’re trying to get out of deciding. It’s the same dog but washed.”
“You know I never understood that metaphor.”
“Now, that’s changing the subject.”