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Strange things can happen after a death in the Colony; you learn that over the course of your many lifetimes. Families splinter, unlikely friendships form, vacant positions lead to political jostling and rivalries. After a while, you see it all from a bird's-eye view, like a tapestry. Sever that thread, tug on that one, tie these two together, and the whole community is reconfigured like a kaleidoscope. At first it's a mindfuck to realize that you and everyone you know are so mutable, not really individuals at all but an interconnected tangle of cause and effect. You get used to it eventually, but you never forget how it felt the very first time, when Tammy died in your very first life.
The Founders on Earth long mythologized the day when the first human child would be born on Vertumna. What a victorious moment it would be, the culmination of generations of work and dreams! No one is prepared for the day the first human child dies on Vertumna, nor for how quickly and tragically the moment arrives. All the Colony mourns Tammy as their own daughter, and the grief's tendrils are far-reaching. Many people become frightened of holo-technology, the creche is never the same without Tammy's warm smile, and the entire Vertumna project loses some irretrievable piece of its hopeful innocence.
Most of the kids become moody, restless, worried, like that old Earth expression about carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. You and Cal were Tammy's closest friends, and you both feel as if your childhoods ended that fateful Pollen day. After school, you help Cal shovel soil and prune weeds in Geoponics. As you work, you discuss your growing disillusionment with Vertumna. What once felt exciting now seems dangerous. Was the Founders' promise of boundless possibility nothing but a bundle of precarity and tragedy? Everything seems to be going wrong, as if Tammy's death is an omen looming over the Colony. Even in his grief, Cal has a perennial optimism that devastates you with its sweetness. You covet it at the same time you want to preserve it, to keep it safe from your own cynical despondence. After a while, you stop venting to Cal and hope that some of his idealism will rub off on you. It doesn't work, but it's a light in the darkness.
You need all the light you can get in such dark days. The famine leaves everyone frail and hungry, despite yours and Cal's borderline unhealthy number of shifts in the dome. Your mom falls in the battle to keep the Colony fed, then the Shimmer takes your dad soon after. There is a brief reprieve when the Heliopause crash brings an infusion of fresh labor and supplies. However, more colonists means more problems, and Lum proves to be a malevolent dictator. The Glow attacks get worse every year, depleting the defenses and scant food reserves. Life becomes an endless cycle of repairing and rebuilding, a futile attempt to patch ever-growing rifts in the community that are starting to feel more and more like chasms. It seems as if the planet is trying to exterminate you, to stamp out the humans like an invasive species.
Maybe it's for the best. Cal insists that the colonists should find a peaceful ecological niche on Vertumna, but that's impossible for you to imagine, especially with Lum in charge. You begin to understand Dys's bleak defeatism. Knowing there's someone who agrees with you makes you feel less alone. You and Dys grow closer after your parents die, sneaking out beyond the walls to explore and commiserate about being Vertumnan orphans. Together you discover the secrets of the planet, meet the Gardener named Sym, and plumb the depths of the ruins in the wresting ridges. Within the Colony walls you mostly keep your pessimism to yourself; it wouldn't be helpful to remind everyone of the dire circumstances. But with Dys, you can be honest about the doubts and despair you can't uproot from your heart no matter how hard you try.
Puberty and its attendant hormones hit you and your friends like a Faceless during Glow. Everyone starts pairing up, making out, settling down. There's a new tension between you and Cal, an awareness of the closeness of your bodies as you work together in Geoponics. You become absurdly attuned to his every move, his muscles rippling under his shirt, the gentleness and steadiness of his calloused hands. Best of all, you can sense his hungry gaze on you, too.
One day Cal invites you over to his place, and Auntie Tirah leaves the two of you alone with the dregs of a bottle of wine. You confess your feelings in a surge of tipsiness and coziness and the warmth of Cal's smile. The next thing you know, he's smiling into your kiss and running his hands through your hair. You pull away to catch your breath and giggle into the soft crease of his neck.
Dating Cal is the most natural thing in the world; your love blooms out of the rich soil of your lifelong friendship. He's so attentive and delights in spoiling you with bouquets of exofauna, your favorite snacks, and trinkets from the command store. You don't feel at home in your gangly adolescent body, but to Cal you're a marvel. With his perfectly-balanced body temperature, he's constantly worried that you're too hot or too cold. One day in bed, when you mention that you feel self-conscious about getting sweat on him during your delightful romps, he kisses the perspiration from your skin.
"Mm, delicious. I love smelling like you. It's kinda hot," he declares. How could you ever deserve such a perfect partner? How is it possible to feel this happy when the world is quite literally crumbling around you? You're grateful for your idyll with Cal but don't trust it. You can sense disaster looming on the horizon, because life on this planet is nothing but one damn disaster after another.
Meanwhile, you and Dys continue your investigations into the old tech the Convergent Domain left behind. Sym teaches you about all the ecological harm Vertumna has already suffered and the Gardeners' Sisyphean task of restoring and harmonizing the native wildlife. You see yourself through the Gardeners' eyes for the first time, a scrappy species of colonizers flitting from one polluted planet to the next. Can humanity really learn from your past mistakes and change your ways before it's too late? You suspect not. If Lum's stupid war continues and Noctilucent gets his way, the humans will be eradicated like any other weed. You dread watching the realization of their impending decimation dawn on the original Vertumna colonists. Poor Cal will be heartbroken, but you know he'll try to put on a brave face for you and the others.
Dys and Sym begin discussing the process of transforming humans into Gardeners. The idea of becoming a Gardener thrills Dys, so you support him in his quest. You know Dys has never felt at home in his entire life, not on the Strato or in the Colony or even in his human body. Maybe transcending to a higher plane of consciousness will finally put his restless soul at ease.
Finally the day arrives. You and Dys navigate the well-trod paths you've made through the wresting ridge until you arrive at the underground Convergent Domain facility. You give Dys one final hug then watch him plunge into the vat of glowing sludge. He looks so at peace with his decision. In that moment you envy him, unburdened by the pain of both the past and future. So when Sym turns to you and asks if you'd like to join the Gardeners as well, you say yes.
It's not premeditated at all, pure impulse. An opportunity to blunt your grief and existential angst presents itself, and you take it. It's only in your subsequent lives that you realize your choice is selfish, quite literally: you are only thinking of yourself. You don't stop to consider your friends and allies in the resistance. You don't think of Cal until the moment before you submerge yourself in the eerie gel. By then it's too late.
From Cal's perspective, you disappear one day without a trace while on an expedition. The Colony probably registers you and Dys as missing, presumed dead due to an exofauna attack or some mysterious natural disaster. You're never sure exactly what happens, because you are no longer troubled by such things as a Gardener. But you are troubled very much in future lifetimes. Later, you wonder whether Tang might have guessed the truth or something close to it. Did Cal suspect you and Dys fell in love and ran off together? He's not the possessive or jealous type, but he must have been so baffled and hurt. And you chose to do that to him.
You begin your second life determined to do things differently. You save as many people as you can, starting with Tammy. The entire dynamic of the Colony shifts with each new survival and each death that you can't figure out how to stop. You're so focused on trying to avoid tragedy that you hardly notice. Until one day Cal and Tammy announce they've fallen in love. You feel a pang seeing them so happy together, almost as happy as you felt when you were with Cal. It's partially your own fault, you reason; you've already abandoned Cal once and weren't prioritizing spending time with him this time around. There will be other opportunities to woo him once you get the hang of this reincarnation thing.
Except Cal falls for Tammy in your third life, then the fourth, on and on until you stop counting. It happens over and over again, shattering your heart every time. So many things change from one lifetime to the next: governors, careers, configurations of couples, throuples, and polycules. But Cal and Tammy seem inevitable in every timeline, like their love is a column holding up the very fabric of the universe.
For a while, you try to get closer to Cal in the hopes of rekindling your relationship. Surely there's some part of him that remembers, on a subatomic level, that he used to love you more than anything in the universe. However, even your friendship with Cal is never quite the same with Tammy in the equation. There's another person he can confide in, another partner for school projects, another hormonal teen to flirt with. Tammy's supersonic hearing makes it difficult to have a private conversation with Cal, much less confess your feelings or try to explain that you two fell in love in a previous life. Despite your best efforts, Cal feels bound by the promise he made to Tammy when they were children. He made promises to you once, yet he doesn't remember those because you took them for granted.
Stars, it hurts to fail to win someone who once gave himself to you so willingly and unreservedly. Tammy is entirely innocent on top of being your friend, so you can't imagine allowing her to die just to get Cal back. You resign yourself to watching your first love find his soulmate in life after life. In your mind, Cal begins to feel like Tammy's rightful property. You avoid doing or saying anything that might interfere with their love story. Tammy deserves him more than you ever did; she would never in a million years abandon Cal without a word. You and Cal must have been nothing more than a blip, a cosmic fluke that only happened in the vacuum of Tammy's absence.
Sometimes you feel flashes of attraction or old inside jokes bubbling to the surface. It's best to nip those feelings in the bud, you learn. You try to remind yourself that you're in love with a version of Cal who no longer exists and will never exist again. It's unhelpful and hypocritical to yearn for something you gave up so willingly and thoughtlessly; it only breeds grief, resentment, and pain. Though you can't help wondering what would have happened if you were brave enough to stay and fight for Cal and your life on Vertumna. Cal has always wanted a big family, so you wonder what your children would be like and how you'd raise them. Where would your living quarters be? Could you have overthrown Lum together and set the Vertumna project on a better path? In other timelines, you learn that it's not as impossible as it felt in that first life. By then it's much too late. It's too late for anything but regret and dreams of what could have been.