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Chapter Text

Man created Plants. 

Some called it an accident. Those were the ones overwhelmed with the steep academic threshold of bio-engineering alongside the wild and mystifying world of quantum physics so claimed in their creation. The success of such a creature, the poetry of its existence, the perfection – it was simply too grand an accomplishment for man to take conscious credit for. This was the same mankind that tarnished the blue waters and green fields of the universe's most preciously rare rock. To taste the godhood of such eloquent design with hands so bloody was a sick joke. In a bout of shame, it was easier to give credit to God for the scientific breakthrough lest they grapple with the painful paradox of the foolish wise.

But it probably wasn’t far off in that respect. Tampering with the boundaries of life and power like that– figuring out the perfect code of DNA and chemical composition to let an unknowable dimension of power slip through the cracks… Man knew not what he unleashed. There were things they could never understand.

The Plants were husks of organic matter. The base of their physical bodies was crafted from a long-debated species of flora, blended and mixed and manipulated millions of times over until they moved, they blinked, they sang. They possessed a human likeness, the fault of a species with too much affection to give. But the mouths upon their gifted faces never opened for words, their eyes never seemed to discern the shapes and colors of the lower plane of existence they were trapped in. Philosophers didn’t know what to make of the sentience debate. Definitions changed too fast and the lust for hope wouldn’t let them doubt their actions. 

They say God created Man in His image. Did God have eyes to see and a brain to dream and a tongue to taste? Incredible, divine things if true. It should have been assumed the same would happen to the Plants. They were brought into existence, pulled from the higher dimension to burn through the borrowed flesh in a brilliant burst of energy before the world could even win those happenstantial senses over. But when humans learned how to siphon that energy, to harness that burst into a steady stream of entropy demolishing power– the Plants could finally live, they could be long enough to settle, to observe, to fee–

Oh.

Oh.

Man reached for God. Man obtained God. 

Man created Plants. Plants reached for Man.

Rem Saverem gently touched the glass casing of one of Ship Five’s Electrical Plants. A daily ritual upon her routine survey left an image of her fingerprints in a smear of oil. It was her gesture of gratitude to one of the beating hearts of the Project Seeds voyage. Their ship hurtled toward the vast void of space in hopes of a future. It was a hope they could have never fathomed without the blessing of these creatures. 

Her mindful and quiet nod to the bulb suspended in the capsule might have seemed silly to her colleagues, but those rituals of positive thought were what made Rem so considerably resilient to the loneliness of her current post. She could withstand the vast isolation of a migration ship filled to bursting with an entire city of frozen dreamers as the current lead pilot on duty. 

It was a post traded off for 5-year sessions among the crew. They only needed a skeleton of operators manning the endless crawl toward hospitable planets. She went about daily systems checks, enjoyed the pleasures of the ship's earnest amenities, and got her social interaction from the regular fleet-wide virtual conferences but otherwise, she’d been alone since Conrad went into cold sleep several months ago. Rem spared her senior a sad smile. He had been struggling for some time now, it was a great mercy on his heart to let him sleep, at least until the next pilot trade-off.

Thoughts of Conrad immediately brought her gaze back to the Plant. This chamber of the ship was endless in its wall-to-wall collection of Plants, but the strongest generators were housed on the bridge so that their vitals could be easily assessed. The alien creature hid behind wing-like petals, adored with circuit-like glowing patterns, a perfectly pristine bud. They were all entirely identical, cloned from the same subject ages ago, never the less, Rem liked to look for the individual in each casing. A real feat, considering their enclosed posture. They usually only opened up in unfortunate situations, but in those tragic glimpses, she could see a minute difference in their eyes or the sweep of their lashes and the line of their mouths. Regardless of the science and meticulous human design, the world could still shape them– could still make them their own being. 

Rem sensed fondness for the creature bloom in her stomach, an emotion she had to control in her loneliness. The crew was wary of undue attachments to the Plants due to the ethical conflicts it invited. Rem found those schools of thought to be useless in the face of human nature, but she had to admit that growing attached to a creature that could barely register her existence was not a long-lasting mental health strategy with several years left on her post. She was the scientist, the caretaker-- this was a job. They were the subject of that job. 

She stopped her thoughts.

It was so easy to pacify her guilt with reason and logic and self-preservation.  Rem allowed herself to ease into the proverbial void of agony that loomed beneath her at all times. An act of penance, squeezing her throat taught and clenching her teeth in what could only constitute physical pain. Rem remembered looking into a beautiful brand new eye, half obscured behind a curtain of straw-colored hair. She remembered curiosity and wonder in that eye. The bloom of trust. And then… helplessness. Horror. 

She remembered that blue eye without a face to cradle it.

Rem rocked back ever so slightly, shaking her head clear of the swell of sickening regret and anguish. Slowly, she rose from the proverbial pit, satisfied with her beating. 

It was about time she change out the geraniums in the plant room. As her steps echoed atop the bridge toward that new objective– the geodome, a system ping jolted her from the controlled trance of duty and mission. 

Before she could turn around, the blue lights along the bridge flickered out.

Rem’s heart stopped. She practically gagged on it as the panic hit her like a truck. For one terrible moment, the plant chamber was lit solely by the otherworldly glow of the flowers upon the ship. But the emergency system worked as expected, the room swelled into an even glow as the lights returned, the power failure rerouting from the other Electricity Plants in the room. 

In an instant, Rem was back in front of that Plant, fingers upon the smudged handprint out of habit, while the other brought up the holographic data interface. It beeped an angry red as the vitals fluctuated. Her heart was hammering now. 

“No!” She gasped and she was flying through the pages of the Plant’s data, exhausting the tests and diagnostics built into the bulb’s life support system. Meanwhile, a warning flashed: 

[Termination Imminent] 

“What?! Why?” She cried. It was spontaneous. None of the telltale signs of decay or exhaustion. To think, one of these incredible, nigh-immortal creatures suddenly plummeting into a vegetative state, cut off from the power source they generate. “ It’s not even red .”

She pleaded, lost for what to do as the seconds after the power blip turned into minutes. Her fingers flew over the controls. She hovered over the access panel with Conrad’s sleeping pod controls. Shaking as she hesitated to wake him. He wouldn’t make it in time. The Plant was dying in a manner unlike any other Plant death she had the misfortune of witnessing.

Her heart broke as suddenly, the flower started to peel open, one petal-like wing after the next. She watched as the Plant unfurled its wings to reveal those large, fae-like eyes looking down at her, its body still curled up protectively. Oh, how she had mused to see this one’s face. It was a sick game to grant it now. She had known better than to make the wish. Did she even have the mind to search for the impossible deviations in its design? Something to make it independent. Something to assert in her mind that this one wasn’t just another number of spent and tossed away resources.

More petals than expected flared off the main body, striking creases along its alien limbs, curling off its skin like feathers. The Plant was at the peak of a glorious bloom, the markings on its skin glowing brightly, making the flower resemble the bluish-white light of a star.

And like a flower, the petals began to wilt. Rem watched one of its wings completely detach, floating in the sustaining liquid while the creature seemed to sink lower down the capsule. The petals were flaking off now, the pod polluted by the trail of remains. All the while, the alabaster colors were darkening with decay. Shriveling up as it fell to the floor of the pod. Unfolding. Collapsing. Wrinkling. Even so, the creature's limbs never unfurled from its ball. Protective. Hot tears blurred the image of the pitiful thing.

It was alive. A living thing. She always believed that, but watching it fizzle out before her eyes… Rem choked back a sob.

“I’m so sorry,” She cried. “I don’t know what to do.”

The Plant was looking into her still, that laughably questionable sentience cowed in the vindictive fade of the creature's eyes. Slowly, Rem saw it uncurl one of its arms from its legs, weighed down to the floor mysteriously. Long alien fingers pushed out, toward her until…

The Plant was touching the glass. 

Rem gasped and she collapsed to the floor, forgetting the senseless race of data and numbers on the control panel. Her heart burned and she shoved her hands to the Plant’s, divided by a perfectly invisible but impenetrable barrier. She pawed desperately at the glass as if to brush away the barrier between them. She pushed and scratched, helplessly moved by this dying mystery. “I’m so sorry!” She whined. She shook with sobs, resting her head against the glass in resignation. 

“You’ve helped this entire ship so much.” She knew her words couldn’t reach it. Whether it was glowing bright or petrifying black charcoal like it was now. There was no way to comfort this thing. They couldn't speak. They couldn't understand her words. “We wouldn’t have made it this far without everything you gave us.”

Rem blinked the flood of tears and shuddered a final breath in the stead of the Plant. 

“Thank you.”

It was all she could give back. She wanted to think that it felt her. 

And with that, the Plant's hand slipped off the glass and to the floor of the capsule. 

Rem remained there, head against the glass, staring at the husk of the Plant with glazed eyes. She wondered how cruel it was that Man created these beautiful and tragic things, unable to speak to their creators. Only able to give and give and never able to receive. Because Rem wanted to give back. The hope they gave her was worth the weight of the ship in gold for all she cared. But all she could do was watch it die spontaneously without a reason or explanation. 

Movement caught her eye.

Rem’s head shot up, face covered in a curtain of her dark hair and tear tracks. 

The Plant’s decayed petals, strewn about like a splash of paint upon the canvas– jostled in the water. Far too forcefully for the ambient pull of the liquid. Rem’s mind was blank as her eyes confirmed the motion, coming from the deflated carcass at the bottom of the tank. 

The bottom of the tank. Their bodies floated. 

A bubble rose to the top of the air-tight container straight from the dead Plant. 

And then one of the withered petals blanketed over the alien’s body grew a lump, rising from underneath. It pushed up and out ever so slightly.

Something was inside. Rem couldn’t breathe. Her jaw trembled as she remained frozen, transfixed. She was dumb with shock as the lump beneath the corpse moved and moved and fought and pushed with growing urgency. Like a chick about to hatch until…

A tiny hand broke free. 

Rem held her mouth tight as a strikingly human, infant head squirmed into sight from the opening it had jostled. Disbelief. Completely Impossible.... No... Rare. Beyond rare. This couldn’t be real. It was... 

An Independent. 

The debris of its womb gave the creature at the bottom of the tank the purchase and buoyancy to lift up ever so slightly, still swaddled in wilted wings. The infant’s eyes were squeezed shut behind lashes as fair as its kin. There were wisps of white hair atop its apple-shaped head while every inch of its skin was a light greyish color, smooth and creaseless, but covered head to toe with the signature glowing circuitry of a Plant albeit on a much smaller canvas. 

The baby cracked its eyes open. Ice blue fell on her through the liquid. 

Rem jumped to her feet like a live wire was sent through her.

She had to get it out.

The tank controls were at her fingertips and suddenly the pumps kicked to life, draining the tank of the carefully crafted Plant Fluid. The petals floating about the tank withered even more at the contact of air and grew ridged and brittle drifting to the bottom of the tank where the infant sank back down into the bed of its dead mother. 

A flutter of fear pawed at Rem, worried about the creature's ability to exist outside the tank. Every Plant that met with the elements quickly perished. She could be killing it. This miracle in the wake of tragedy, killed instantly due to rash thinking…

But Independents could survive outside the tank. She knew that already. 

The liquid drained, and there was a sound from within. The infant’s face twisted in discomfort and grunts echoed off the tank. Rem commanded the glass to rise and clumsily she climbed in. Hesitating only before touching the remains of the Plant. So much scientific conditioning screaming at her not to tarnish the subject, let alone the dangers their biology posed to her. But the baby was right there. It grabbed at something positively primal in her.

As she approached, the grunts turned into a full-blown cry.  

“No no. Shh shhh.” Rem trembled, trying to keep her tone light, but her voice was still raw from her crying. Carefully, she pulled back the blanket wrapped around the infant’s legs while her other hand made contact with the baby’s crown. It was wet with the plant fluid and something slimy, and the skin underneath was not the exact sponge and texture of flesh. It was smoother, slightly dense, like a protective layer. The waxy texture of certain leaves. But atop that, the wisp of white hairs tickled her fingers with its softness. 

“It’s okay, baby.” She muttered mindlessly, taking in the creature. Its cries quieted more for the sake of assessing her, infant eyes wide and shimmering with rapt and cautious attention. There she noticed something. Underneath the glowing marks around its eyes and the film of shining grey skin was a mole, just beneath its right eye. There was a flutter in the haze of spent emotions. It was a bubble of delight. The mole… it was cute. A surprising deviation. A mark of an individual. Something independent. 

She began to carefully lift it– the thing barely bigger than her hand– when the third shock of the day revealed itself. 

Another hand beside the infant. Tiny fingers, covered in that greyish skin, poked from underneath the corpse. Without thinking, stomach dropping, Rem pulled back the petal, a frantic worry gripping her. On its stomach, face half crunched up against its hand in the most defenseless way, was another infant.

“There’s two of you.” She heard herself say. Detached. Almost hysterical. 

This time she could tell her mental facilities were fraying. The light must have been too much for the second baby because its face was a little raisin before it hiccupped a high-pitched cry into an angry scream. 

The older sibling’s curiosity-born calm was suddenly broken as well. And then the plant chamber was filled with the agonizing song of the universe's first twin Independents. 

Rem rocked back. She slumped against the weight of the moment. It was insurmountable. Suffocating. Anxiety seemed to lace into her bones and meld permanently with her nervous system. She became worry. She was the incarnation of panic. The cries only seemed to accent the fear. Like swinging hammers. The Dependants around them almost responded to the sounds, flaring just a little brighter with the screeching. 

Something snapped in her and Rem threw her hands to her ears.

“Please stop!” She begged, forgetting where she was, and what she was supposed to do. Why did this happen? Why her? She needed this to stop. She was about to join the crying babies with some screaming of her own when she squared on the second child through her blurry eyes.

It was struggling in the petals, uncomfortable as its body weight pushed on its chest. Its head was in far too strained a position for something so new. The grey skin around its pulsing circuits darkened into a disgruntled red with rising blood pressure. But there was no way to right itself. Helpless. Completely and utterly helpless. Dependant. 

Another memory. A similar helpless cry echoing through this very ship only three years prior. Be it out of shame or embarrassment, Conrad messed with the ship logs to make it seem like it was 50 years ago as if the failure would be forgiven if they appeared to hold onto the subject longer than two years. But Rem was on duty the same as him. She saw it. She ran to the edges of Ship Five in total horror of her colleagues, covering her ears, matching the helpless cries with a pathetic harmony. The subject was never the same after that. 

The greed. The savage tests and neglect. The most incredible miracle they could have ever witnessed-- thrown away within two years. The little girl barely talked. She could only scream and cry as this cruel world tortured her for no discernible reason but for the misfortune of just existing. Rem's protests were dismissed. She was a complicit bystander. 

The Plants gave her to them as a gift. As an earnest request. And now here she was before another attempt. How could they forgive humanity so quickly? How could they forgive her?

The second child was thrashing blindly through the wails. Tapping the floor of the tank, creating sloshing noises from the wilted remains of its bed. The other plants in the room burned ferociously in the sound. The sibling hiccupped and gripped the air as well, though better positioned on its back. Its eyes were open and it laid eyes on its siblings. It inched closer to the screaming blob in the way a virtually immobile thing could.

Did Rem already know their future? Were they doomed to suffer all their life? Was it doomed to be short?

And by some instinct or luck, its tiny hand hooked onto its sibling’s hand. Their fingers quickly clamped together, unconsciously squeezing tight through the agony of being new and alive. Some semblance of comfort was found together. The hand on the glass. The struggle to find meaning and happiness. 

Could she protect it?

Something larger than her bubbled deep inside. It was overwhelming and red. The color of passion. The energy of fire. It turned somersaults along her limbs. It cleared her chaotic thoughts and frantic heart like an arrow shot true, a bullet from the perfect marksman. 

Courage. 

Rem picked up the youngest child out of its uncomfortable position, tugging it slightly as the rest of its mother clung to its leg. The eldest's sympathetic cries turned into a legitimate and furious scream now detached from the sibling’s comfort. While overcome with an inward cringe of pain from the apparent mistake, Rem pushed forward with her goal. 

By some instinct, Rem placed the sticky child upon her chest, right over her racing heart. She leaned back as the infant rested upon her breast with gravity, supporting its bottom with her arm. Then Rem awkwardly shifted toward the other child and somehow hoisted the elder twin on her lap, resting them against her stomach and the palm of her hand. 

They were heavy. Hindsight would call this an exaggeration. They felt like iron shackles. She didn't know how she would ever move from that spot. It stole her breath. Her ear was ringing from the youngest so close to her ear. 

Her free hand reached back to the second infant, fingers lacing through the wispy white hair on the back of its head. She cupped it, supporting it as her trembling turned into an uncertain bounce– more expending nervous energy than presenting a solution. Her mind raced as her fingers tapped the first baby’s back with a trembling flutter. 

“There there.” Her voice was squeaking with fear. 

There wasn’t a soothing rhythm to any of her movements. Her voice was gravelly and strained. Her arms were a stiff cradle. She was probably the worst choice of mother in the universe.

But eventually, the infants' cries died down to nothing. The chamber was a deafening quiet now.

Body heat seeped through her clothes. There was some kind of humming pulse beneath the flesh in her hands. Life. 

Vulnerable. Limitless life. Endless possibilities. 

She sniffed. She hiccupped. It was almost a laugh.

What was that story again? The one about the man with the blank ticket. She could write anything she wanted on that ticket. She could go anywhere. That's what he had told her. It's what put her on this voyage in the first place. She was on the largest train man could dream of, hurdling through the void of space, toward nowhere.  But it seemed that finally...

Finally, she had her ticket. 

Chapter Text

Her tears took longer to dry than that of the newborn infants.

When Rem found the constitution to rise to her feet, the youngest plant in her arms was asleep. The elder, while calm, was nowhere near such a state so she had the challenge of moving them without compromising the other. She eventually relented and rested the wide-eyed baby back on the floor of the tank, ashamed to see it back in the darkened remains. She had to preserve the peace and came back for them when the other was safely rested on the bridge. 

The priority was safety and comfort for the infants. She summoned a worker drone with a press of a button and snatched the portable holo-pad from the plant console. 

“I’ll be right back.” She whispered, and the drone was left to stream the video data of the twins to her holo-pad. 

The ships living quarters were extensive but right behind it was essentially a storage warehouse for items the ship was ill-equipt to mass produce during the first phase of settling. After a variety of clearance checks, Rem found a unit as marked on her hasty search. It seemed too convenient in this moment of specific need, but the ship had incubators on hand for the carefully planned repopulation effort on their hypothetical Eden Planet. The crew was under sterilization orders to prevent any population growth during the commute but it seems the plants were above such control. Rem placed a command for the autonomous help and darted off to her living quarters. 

She palmed a thin cloth in the cupboard by her bed– the video feed of the infants was static with a lack of updates. The eldest child’s eyes were closed on the feed and the steady rise of its chest indicated that maybe, they had finally joined its sibling in resting.

“There you go…” She whispered to herself with the breath of a smile before unfurling the long fabric. 

A fond memory ran through her mind, a college friend, Kathrine– or Katie to her, breaking into fits of laughter as her large orange cat squirmed in the clutches of a makeshift baby sling. Her stomach was barely showing but she was so excited to finally have a kid on the way. The birthrate was down worldwide. She demanded to “expect” as long as she could in good spirits.

That was probably 200 years ago now. Katie had lived her entire life on Earth already, however bleak it might have been. Rem could only hope she finally found happiness be that from having a living child or from something else. She felt alien with her own thoughts for only a moment, displaced by time and mission… she might as well have been another person entirely. 

Slowly, with steady breath, the memory of that innocent time guided her motions with the cloth in her hands. She was the studious one in her Earth life. She studied the new mom video tutorials diligently for the sake of passing them on to her friends. She learned how to tie the blanket around her body to form the baby slings. She was the one who cracked a joke to Katie about it being a fashion statement. She was also the one who videoed the first test drive of the baby sling with the unfortunate feline.

What was she doing?

Not for the first time, Rem imagined the cryo-system control panel, the profiles of the crew on the interface above their pods in their sectioned-off room. She imagined them taking the children from her hands, putting a meal on the cafeteria table, taking care of the daily system checks, and laughing about a random distracting and wonderful story. Help. Companions. They were a couple of button presses away. Ridley would know just what to say to make her feel better. Richard would laugh away her concerns. Michael would do the hard jobs without complaint. Conrad– he’d have all the right answers. 

But then she also remembered Ridley’s advice-giving mouth obscured by a surgical mask, splattered with drops of blood from the tumor extraction. She remembered Richard’s voice on the project observation log, speaking low but painfully clinical. Michael would change the soiled bedding just as quietly as he tampered with the confusing array of ship engineering. Conrad’s head was stuck in the screen, analyzing the data like a book… though Rem had to remind herself that his expression changed 50 days into the project. None of them were completely heartless— just shuttered close with the demands of a species-wide mission and fear or hopeful curiosity… (was she still making excuses?)

And what about her? Young Miss Saverem. What did she do during the project? Administered medicine. Food. They tasked her with education sessions two months in but that only lasted 4 weeks before the unfortunate girl mastered speech. They didn’t want her education to expand past that point. The ethical concerns were straining the team by then. 

 Rem’s stomach twisted and her fingers curled around the fabric of the baby sling. Her teeth gnashed together at the agony of her own helplessness. She couldn’t let Tesla happen again. It didn’t matter how tired or overwhelmed or confused she got. She had to do this alone. She couldn’t trust them. Rem sobbed again at the almost physical weight of what she was going to do. She pressed her hand hard against her face, letting the moisture of her eyes seep uncomfortably down her palm. 

Katie came to mind again. She did end up giving birth to a beautiful baby girl last Rem heard. Earth was just as cruel and chaotic and unfair as any wayward ship, but she did it– on her own too. Maybe it was because she was 200 years removed from the most fundamental human story, but mothers did this all the time. They raised kids into people. They kept them safe. They loved them.

Rem wasn’t burning with love just yet. She identified it as inspiration. Something that had her tearing through the ship with determination.

Back at the bridge, the eldest infant's (Baby #1?) eyes opened at her approach, spoiling her hope that they had fallen asleep. Their startling blue soaked her in like a sponge. She made a disappointed noise as she crouched down to meet them, brushing her fingers across the soft wispy hair on their round head.

“I’m sorry baby. I thought you had fallen asleep.” At her touch, the child seemed to nudge toward her hand, undeveloped neck muscles be damned, their eyes squinting against her. The flare of light from those ethereal markings brought her to a pause. 

Around her, the bulbs answered with a surge of light as well.

“Are you saying hello?” She whispered. “I think your sisters heard you.” 

Baby #1 pressed deeper still, almost like a rooting instinct. “Oh my gosh.” She had butterflies in her chest. She sniffed, yet more emotion overcoming her. She searched for her mission to combat her frankly embarrassing emotional state.  “You can’t be comfortable like that.”

 She broke away from the elder and carefully picked up the still-sleeping youngest (Baby #2, she noted, mole under the left eye). She eased them into the proper folds of the baby sling in front of her. During that process, she marveled at the size of them, the strange texture of their skin, the dimly glowing lines along their bodies… the tiny twitches and fidgets.

The fact that they didn’t even have a name.

How insulting to give them numbers in her head. Just as dehumanizing as the identification numbers on the tanks of the plants. On the other hand, it was agony to consider christening the two lives with a moniker. It’s not like she had a bank of baby names waiting to dish out and her track record with childhood pets had grave markers too embarrassed to state. These poor things were going to have such horrible names regardless, but she would do them the dignity of thinking about it for a little while longer. 

The secondborn coddled closer to her chest much like the sibling and so returned that frighteningly maternal instinct. She was a nurturing type, but this feeling was far too out of control for comfort. She had to shake it off with a nervous laugh.

“Ready to join your sibling?” She asked Baby #1. She had the feeling that she was going to be conversing with this one a lot. Sleep did not seem quick for this one. But fortunately, they were also the quietest of the two. From her understanding, tears were an infant's only means of communication. All she had to do was listen and narrow down the potential stressors. A quiet baby was a happy baby. 

When Baby #1 was snug against her, she noticed them observing their sibling just across her heart. Face smooshed to her clothes, hands frozen against her sternum. The elder twin surprised her by mimicking the younger and groping for those sleeping baby hands once more until they were chained together once again. 

Something was singing inside her. 

Sure they were vaguely wet, grey-skinned, wrinkly beans. But they were cute . 

She prepped the babies once finally in the comfort of her living quarters. A simple towel drying, since a full-on bath was strongly ill-advised for human infants. This woke up Baby #2 to a scary moment of discomfort– rising volume grunts and all– but her swaddling technique did wonders to bring their eyes back to closed. Much like human children, the pressure and contact seemed to be a comfort. Even though Baby #1 wasn’t lulled to sleep like the younger, their faces lit up quite literally with each passing wrap of the blanket. They looked like little burritos when she placed them in the recently-delivered incubators. Or maybe, they looked more like plant bulbs.

Something to note . She mused. 

“Why can’t you fall asleep like your sibling?” Was that glimpse on the cam just a fluke? Were they simply imitating the younger? It didn’t seem like typical newborn behavior by any stretch. She placed Baby #1 in the incubator and had to stop in alarm as her hands pulled away to yet more sounds of distress.

“Oh come on!” It was the elder’s turn to be fussy. She picked them back up and began an awkward bounce. “You’re not hungry are you? Please don’t be hungry yet…” How soon did babies need to eat after birth? What would a plant baby even need?  The incubators had full body health scanners if she could just get them settled. She could pacify their needs a little better with more information.

When she swung herself around in her clumsy attempt to lull away the distress, she noticed Baby #1 quieting as her shoulder swung away from Baby #2. 

“Oh.”

Rem stopped the incubator’s scanning process and lifted up the glass to the younger baby. “You’re attached.”

While her tone was perhaps annoyed, she was secretly relieved. She needed a little prep time for the feeding question. She placed Baby #1’s little bulb next to the sleeping one and that content little glow returned. 

So they sleep together from here on out. She noted again. She’d deal with attachment issues as they developed. She recalibrated the incubators scanned as she closed them in it. 

“Now I just need you to sleep.”

X

Maybe… plant babies didn’t sleep?

The contradiction lay next to the rule if so. Tesla slept. Or at least appeared to sleep in those stressful memories of the girl. Rem scratched her head, with a mounting sense of anxiety at the thought as she eagerly opened the results of the health scan. Baby #1 was pursing their lips with some kind of babbling vocalization and looking through the glass with that same contented curiosity they had well before the scan began. She shushed the concern if only for a moment more. Quiet baby. Healthy baby.

According to the health scan, the genetic makeup of the Plants was 98% identical to that of a human. Peculiarly, they lacked a visible reproductive system which was the most alien trait next to their strange skin texture and lack of a navel. If they were to present any sexually dimorphic traits it would only occur after puberty which is where the DNA evaluation gave some level of guidance. To her immense surprise, there were Y chromosomes detected in the two infants. So at least for now, and at the behest of her own social understanding of things, the siblings appeared to be brothers. 

“What do you think?” She pulled her nose out of the holo-pad and down at the incubator with a lilt of humor in her one-sided conversation. “You two okay with being little boys?” 

Rem waited long enough for a slight sleeping grunt to escape the younger brother. The elder brother meanwhile was starting to look a little silly, expression-wise. Bug eyes fixed on her with eyebrows reaching high in focus like she had two heads. 

“I’ll take that as a yes, but you two let me know if that changes.” She smiled at her dialogue while a brew of questions stirred beneath the hands scrolling through the wealth of data.

This was probably the first confusing revelation that she wished for a sensitive mind to bounce off of. Plants, whether by design or by some happenstance of their original source material, were female-presenting. Even in terms of independents, Tesla was female. When she was reaching her first year, her body was starting some equivalent to puberty. Considering the nature of the sex chromosomes, being an asexual birth, it shouldn’t have been possible to create the Y-chromosome the infants possessed. But by all metrics, these were the first-ever male plants. 

There were implications in this simple observation. One of which is that their creation wasn’t by an inherent process in the biology of the plant, but through a very deliberate creation. Being generators, it seemed logical that they had the means to create something human-adjacent, but the caretaking scientists had a substantial hand in guiding what the plants produced. That’s where half the entire sentience debates came from. They didn’t appear to think or consider the physical world around them. But not only did they produce a human-like thing independent of a formula or program, but they made it independent of their own biology. Most likely they did it through conscious observation or some kind of interaction with humans. They chose to make them.

But why…

Rem studied the data ravenously. A drone robot approached with a silently displayed catalog of texts on child-rearing. Without missing a beat, Rem swiped the list onto her holo-pad and deleted the presented catalog with a flick of her hand. She was already considering how to cover her digital footprint to completely hide these kids from the next crew rotation.

She studied the brain waves and chemical makeup of the twin’s data like it was an exciting novel. They had human bone structures, they produced human fluids and keratin, and had all of those human limitations. But there were blaring othering traits. While having most all the human organs, their hearts for one were large, rapidly moving things. It alarmed her at first but there were no other indications of a stressed circulatory system. Their high bone density and the highly primed construction of their developing muscles suggested that they were going to be durable things. The way they ran hot, and the high level of growth hormones coursing through their systems told of their lightening fast metabolism and rapid maturing. (they didn’t look hours old for that matter…). 

But like their plant sisters, they had another entire circulatory system entangled next to the more human systems. For Dependants, it was the intangible channel of power from their gate. It manifested as a seemingly aimless electrical reading but Rem’s study on plants insisted that the power source was more sophisticated than their instruments could decipher. The power didn’t localize toward any one place, but the circuitry did populate the crown of the head, the back, and the hands the most. If they were able to generate like their sisters, it would most frequently be out of those places. 

Most aesthetically noticeable was their complexion. Their skin was tough and grey– not necessarily due to texture, but thickness. She thought it was waxy before but a simple prod proved that it was less pliable than the pudge of a human baby’s epidermis. It was literally leaf-like, and she made a connection to some kind of protective armor which surprised her. Dependants were notably delicate things, with petal-like skin that bruised at the slightest texture. These creations seemed to actively defy that. Their carapace only thinned around their eyes and along their scalp. Those plant marks littered their body like canyons of texture. A pair of humans molded from plants. 

And then their brain activity. They were slamming the scans with their efficiency, lighting up multiple quadrants like a Christmas tree. The high function would be useful in their fast maturation. But Rem was also reminded of a lecture in Plant Theory that suggested that they were equipt with a communication network. Dependant Plants didn’t have a brain in the same way humans did so the study was inconclusive. Put into a human interface though, the levels would lend themselves to that kind of theory. The crew had never bothered to investigate Tesla’s case despite all the clamoring joy at her ability to speak to them. 

Rem tried to look for any anomalies that might help with the question of food for the twins. With the relatively human systems for food and digestion, she assumed human food might be as good a shot as any other. Dependants didn’t require sustenance as they received all of their energy conversion directly from their gate. Tesla had eaten, voraciously in fact. The team fed her diligently three times a day and she took to it more than any other godforsaken thing they subjected her to. It was the most she ever lit up. Maybe the only thing she looked forward to…

Whether they needed food or not was a stupid question. A question that reduced living into a pragmatic series of checkboxes.

One would think piloting a city-sized hunk of metal filled with innumerable precious cargo and potential across the vast and inhospitable void of deep uncharted space would be the greatest challenge and single human soul could shoulder but motherhood had that beat. 

“Is it warm enough?” She fussed with the bottle that she unearthed from the settlement warehouse, flicking the fluid onto her arm in an attempt to judge the temperature of her carefully crafted formula. The kitchen was rattling with a full-on wail, from both boys. The younger’s sleeping spell was only two hours long it seemed, not enough to scramble together the perfect recipe for the food production plant. The eldest wouldn’t take to the bottle and seemed incredibly offended at Rem’s attempts to feed him hence his apparent distress. It was worse than the ship launching into an emergency protocol.

“Come on baby.” She begged, hovering over the raisin-faced screaming, rolling the bottle off to the side in wait for a better opportunity to give him a taste. “You’re hungry. You’ll feel better. Just… take to it!”

Didn’t infants have rooting instincts? Was there a step she had to do first? Was it how they were positioned? Was it something in the room? Was it a plant thing or a baby thing? Were they actually hungry? Was it sleep? Did they need changing? Rem’s breathing was growing more shallow with each question. And some of them started circling back empty-handed. 

A more demanding screech threw her attention at the younger brother. Feeling her blood pressure trembling higher and higher at the climbing chorus of cries and the louder screaming of her own helpless questions, Rem shifted her goalpost to the other. 

“Calm down Little One.” She heard herself beg the other. She decided to lift him out of the bassinet she had moved into the kitchen and began an awkward bounce of the younger plant. She didn’t know if she was bouncing at the right speed but she was sure the two boys were just feeding off each other’s anguishing cries. She tried to soothe her own heart with the motion but only found it turn into some kind of uncontrollable tremble. She stepped away from the other baby in a swinging rock, no sense of control or strategy possible. She felt her throat clench at the reinvigorated wail from the younger brother in her arms. 

Shit shit shit.

Her face filled with pressure. She was going to cry again . 

Hold it together. She rocked closer to the eldest and trailed her fingers across his head in some attempt to reassure him. With both their eyes closed with tears she didn’t expect them to react to an increased distance any more than before. She exhaled an exaggerated shush in the fight for her composure. She successfully warded off a sob, but tears spilled hot on her cheeks nevertheless. 

She felt a lilt in the baby’s cries during her attempts at soothing. Perhaps there was something to her rhythm then that seemed to miraculously pacify them. A response to a smoother tempo. Something slower, like the seamless bob of a floating leaf on the pond. She clung to the moment like a gasp of air and persisted with it. 

“There there.” Her voice was a little desperate, but the relief was palpable. Something she hoped the baby would take to. 

The youngest seemed to be exhausting himself as the cries died down. Suddenly, the excruciating echo in the room cut out, leaving the lingering whimpers in her arms. Before they were none, the older brother's accompanying cries had stopped on a dime. His eyes were wide at the sudden change, fixed on his brother. 

The air was quiet. But at the same time, filled with something unknowable. Passing between the two babies.

Rem flooded with relief, a shuddering breath, but couldn’t help but recognize the strange relationship between the babies’ moods. Like threading a needle, she didn’t dare to stop her motions for fear of destroying this peace. 

After a moment, she felt brave and eased the younger away from her chest. She palmed the bottle into her other hand while the baby blinked rapidly as though offended. She placed the bottle to his mouth slowly, with a trickle of concern over the temperature. She saw his lips purse and then open. And her hand was suddenly jerked forcefully by the child taking to the formula. Grabby hands pawed the air and scrambled for the bottle but landed on her supporting hand. She watched in amazement as the liquid drained, quickly. 

She sobbed a laugh before she realized he was probably going too fast. She dared to pull away, but instead of a cry, the younger flailed forward. “Okay! I get it. Good good!” She babbled and found the eldest plant making faces. “See what you’re missing out on?” She jabbed, a petty vindication against the elder’s seeming lack of instincts. As if to respond to her, Baby #1 gurgled an approximate grunt at her. 

She dared to reach over the counter while Baby #2 aimlessly supported the bottle against her chest with an unintentional baby arm. He was nearing the end of the formula. Infants didn’t have logic, but these two were already able to observe each other deeply. The younger would be the example this time. She poised the second bottle to the eldest as he watched his brother.

Almost comically contemplative, he regarded it but then, he too, took. 

His wonderfully expressive eyes dance through a series of squints and bulges, but he sucked on the bottle at the same speed as his brother.

She almost wanted to laugh vindictively at an infant. “What a drama queen!” 

From there, burping and changing them followed the textbook which was her only apparent grace. There would be repeats of feeding and sleep (for the younger) a few more times in 2-hour increments, interrupting voracious research sessions. 

It was after the 4th cycle of this care that Rem fell to the floor by their shared bassinet in exhaustion. She mindlessly rocked the crib with her left hand while she lazily poked around her holo-pad awkwardly laid by her knees. She had the sneaking suspicion the eldest would continue to not sleep but if she could get him to imitate his brother she could call this entire effort some form of success. 

Her fingers navigated the interface sluggishly. She set timers, prepared the baby monitors, and bookmarked several saved texts for reading later in the evening. It was… a lot. 

Her stomach suddenly twisted in hunger pains. She had been so distracted she forgot her own hunger. “Owww” She whined at the angry ache her body felt the relative peace to declare. “I could stand to be a better example myself…” She was thinking about Baby #1 as she said it, but there was no energy to even look at him above the lip of the crib. 

She sunk into the agony of fatigue and hunger and the crash of what felt like the most insane day of her entire life. Waking up a simple space traveler and falling asleep a mother. She felt her diaphragm tremble with a laugh. Before she knew it, she was clasping her hands over her mouth to stifle a slap-happy giggle. There was something cathartic about the physical release, even repressed. She shook, her tired mind floating on the happy chemicals with eager respite. Sure it was a little manic, but she couldn’t deny how funny it actually was.

Rem wiped tears from her eyes. 

“I’m gonna be so bad at this.”