Paused by Heather Long

Author:Heather Long [Long, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

The other suites were closed and quiet as we made our way to the lift. Andreas didn’t speak as the lift carried us to the garden level. A little over two weeks in the biosphere, and I still didn’t know what the others did each day, unless it involved me. When the doors opened to the garden level, and a wash of fresh, unrecycled air tickled my skin, I sighed.

I really should spend more time in the garden. Not only was its existence a marvel, it could also feed the soul. The addition of color to my suite helped, as did the dinner with Hatch and the conversation with Oz — even this conversation with Andreas—yet our condition remained an inescapable fact.

“I thought you'd feel better with a walk in the sun,” Andrea said as he led the way out of the lift and onto the grass. “But based on your long face, this is worse.”

It wasn't worse, but how to put into words and explain to him what I could barely explain myself? “We’re prisoners. Maybe we are prisoners by our own design, but we are prisoners nonetheless. Each time I come down here, I have to wonder…what is the purpose? Is it, as it appears, to provide food? Is it a psychological ground where we might acclimate to an Earth that seems so very far away?”

I spared him a look, but Andreas merely wore a speculative expression. Maybe this was what he meant about going for a walk and a talk. I was giving into a request I hadn’t wanted to fulfill. Oh, screw it.

“Or is there something far more nefarious going on here?” I chose a path at random and followed it, Andreas matching pace with me. “I’m trying not to be paranoid. It’s a hard condition to maintain. A prisoner’s first duty is to escape; a scientist’s first duty is to truth.”

“Fair.” My surprise undress didn’t dispute my charges. “Which are you, Valda? Are you a scientist? Or prisoner? Or perhaps, you’re simply you? So, if the first task of Dr. Bashan is to the truth, and the first task of the team leader is to escape—what is your first duty as you?”

“Can one really be a team leader of prisoners?”

The sun heated my cheeks. Maybe I had spent too much time lingering in my suite and in the lab—the work wasn’t to finish itself. Even the breeze—where the hell was the breeze coming from?—cooled as the sun warmed. “I don’t know what any of us can be.” It was the most hopeless sentiment I’d allowed myself to consider. “It is better to not focus on what we don’t know and to enhance what we do.”

“That’s called avoidance.” Fortunately, nothing smug inhabited his tone. The land climbed steadily. Normally, I traced the path through the crops then down to the shore. I hadn’t come this way before—the green of the grass was almost emerald, and the sky above it a stunning shade of azure.

“Do you know

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