Chapter Text
Your name is Solanaceae. Before you were born, your parents chose the calm temperament augment for you.
Your best friend in childhood is Tangent. You both love science, though she's better at it. She rarely praises anything you do, but that makes it even more meaningful when she does. She has lofty goals for her life: to make huge strides in scientific research and to make Instance proud. You would be happy just to do science with Tang every day.
Year 10
Not long after you land on Vertumna, your friend Tammy dies. Suddenly, your new home feels much less safe.
Tang trusts you more than any of the other kids, so she pushes you to find out what's up with her brother, unwilling to make him aware of how much she truly cares. You befriend him too. Many things about him remind you of Tang (though they both hate when you say that) so there's already a natural pull towards him. Dys likes to sneak out beyond the colony walls, and you go with him. Life within the walls already feels unsafe after Tammy and you desperately want to learn more about the planet you've arrived on.
Year 11
One day, you're outside alone when Uncle Tonin is attacked by a manticore. You're not strong enough to help, so you do what you think is right and run to get the adults even though you might get in trouble. He's dead by the time you get back.
The ship itself killed Tammy, the jungle killed her father, and now nowhere feels safe. Professor Hal dies too, during Glow, when monsters attack the colony. The monsters also destroy the greenhouses, forcing your parents to rebuild and replant every year.
Year 12
Working in geoponics to help your parents leads you to spending more time with Cal. He's older and his presence is mature and comforting; he always knows what to say. His optimism is a salve, a respite from the death and fear all around, and you can almost feel at peace doing the predictable work of planting, watering, and tending the crops with him. But working in geoponics isn't enough; there simply isn't enough food to harvest. Teams must head out to forage and find edible native plants that can be immediately added to the dwindling food supplies.
Year 13
You spend more time with Dys when you go out, but only sometimes, because he hates the repetitive nature of foraging and would prefer to leave that for you instead. At least you find a couple of pets to bring home; your hopeye and vriki add a lot of comfort to your life.
Dys is hard to get to know and is often upset for reasons you don't understand. You try to draw from your experience with Cal and how gently he handled you whenever you were struggling, but Dys is not like you and is usually not comforted. You never know the right thing to say or how to make him feel better, which must be why he doesn't like you as much as you like him. If you didn't have to work so hard to solve crisis after crisis, if you didn't need to forage so often and could explore with him instead, maybe you could figure him out. One night, you lie out together under the stars and listen to music together, linking your fingers, and you wonder if maybe he does like you after all.
Year 14
Your mom has a single-minded focus to solve the famine, eschewing all breaks, giving you most of her food, and and her body eventually gives out. She was always hard on you, but much harder on herself. The workload only increases now that the chief cultivator is gone and the loss of her knowledge is incalculable. Governor Eudicot, Kom, and others die in the attacks this year, and nearly everything is destroyed.
Year 15
The Helio lands. You're unsure about all these new people — soldiers — but primarily relieved that that the famine is over for good so you can focus on other things.
Your dad is sensitive to the Shimmer disease that appears every Pollen season, and it's only getting worse. You throw everything you have into saving him. The Valley of Vertigo has been one of your haunts for so long and you can traverse it almost as well as Dys, so it makes sense that you're the one to continue to search for information on a Shimmer cure. You bring back a fungal sample and for the first time in ages you work with Tang again. The two of you have a breakthrough and Tang creates a cure. She's so happy to share this success with you — she's proud of you — and it feels like you finally did something right. Though you're not as close as you once were, and sometimes you feel a distinct judgment leveled at you for going off into the wilderness with her brother instead of doing real science in the lab, her approval still means something to you.
Year 16
While you were out, constantly foraging and searching for information on Shimmer, you met Sym. Dys knows Sym too, and it's a fun secret you share that brings you closer together. Sym is always happy to see you and treats you gently. Usually he isn't very forthcoming, but he's interested in you and in everything to do with humanity. In some ways, he reminds you of Cal with his steadiness and care for all living things. Sym gets you in a way few do, and you wish you could be a little selfish after years of doing so much for everyone else and spend more time beyond the walls learning from him.
Year 17
You've gotten to know the Helio kids a bit, but only on a superficial level. The ones that aren't soldiers seem nice enough; Nomi even goes on expeditions from time to time. Rex has a presence and enthusiasm for life that is another reprieve from the harsh realities of the world, but he and Nomi are so tight and you feel like your attention is already so split between different friends and jobs and tasks that it's hard to find room for new friends in any consistent way.
Year 18
In a rare month you spend exploring, Sym is attacked by manticores in front of you. The flashbacks to when you couldn't save Tonin propel you forward, and by some miracle you succeed in saving him. Collapsed on the ground afterwards, you give in to the urge sparked by adrenaline or success or loneliness and your affection is reciprocated for the first time in your life. It's dizzying, to know someone cares for you as much as you care for them. And then, because your life is nothing but a dark comedy, he dies while saving you.
Year 18, Glow
Not long after Sym's death, the colony is bombed. No one knows the culprit for sure, but it's interesting timing that Dys vanishes right after the bomb goes off. Many people suspect he did it and the rumor mill churns with conspiracies.
Once, with awe in his voice, he had mentioned a place called the Wresting Ridges and you wonder if he's there. You've never been and can't bring yourself to go now. You're too needed in the colony, or so you tell yourself. For all of his faults, you miss him. Exploring without him, and without Sym, holds no appeal.
Year 19
Oddly, Tang chooses now to want to spend time with you. You find comfort in one another, briefly, on the roof of engineering. No strings attached. The idea of being alone and untouched had been something you accepted until you kissed Sym, but that shattered you and opened up a new need for physical affection. With your first love gone by his own choice and the second one dead, you figure it's better than nothing. You and Tang are both fairly miserable and the distraction makes you feel less-bad for a moment.
Sym comes back, somehow, with memories missing. Being around him makes you miss Dys more, while also making it hurt less. He is the only other person that saw the side of Dys that you did and you wonder if he knows more about why he bombed the place and left, or if he knows where Dys might be. You don't ask. If he is out there, you almost don't want to know. He made his choice and you're still intensely angry with him for leaving you here and saying nothing.
Not long after Sym reappears, he takes you to the Overseer. Finally, you're allowed to know why life since you landed has been filled with so much struggle year after year. The truth about the Array, the Convergent Domain, the wormhole, the Gardeners… it's a lot to take in.
The next time you find yourself outside the walls, you try to find an Array access point yourself. Instead you find a newly-regenerated Sym who reaffirms his commitment to telling you the truth from now on. You're ecstatic to finally get answers to all of the questions you have and he shares more about the vat… and about his body. The fact that you find yourselves drawn to one another, again, in almost the same exact way, makes it feel something like fate. For the first time in ages, you can fully let down your guard with someone and simply enjoy being with them.
The Overseer shares an offer with you: make peace, and live within certain limits, and the attacks will stop. You could cry with relief. Hesitantly, you bring the offer to Lum. He laughs it off and you're discouraged, but Glow is only a few months away. Hopefully then he'll see that the forces of the planet are much smarter than he realized and both sides can come to a compromise.
In the meantime you go to Sym for reassurance. You wish you could spend more time with him because it feels like he's the only one who understands you (and you note the irony in only feeling understood by someone who barely knows humanity). There are other concerns to deal with, though: like trying to figure out how to work with the council and how to get someone to take the Overseer's deal seriously if Lum continues to refuse. Unfortunately you're not a politician and don't even really know how the council works. So you stay in the colony often, mostly out of guilt, figuring if your dad has to suffer the loss of his partner and continue on, you can allow yours to wait for you outside the walls. Sym soothes you with a reminder of his immortality, that he will always be there, and it's perfectly okay if you take a while. The work you have to do is important, and he believes in you and your ability to figure it all out. He doesn't want you to be stressed and he will come to you during Glow, when you can both make the case for why humanity and the planet should work together.
Year 19, Mid-Wet
You wake to a message requesting that all colonists assemble in the courtyard. You try to rouse your pets to come with, but all of your words and gentle shaking doesn't wake them. They're dead. While it's a complete shock, in a way you're not surprised to have lost two more creatures that are important to you. The planet takes and takes. Is it some Gardener thing, or something you did wrong…? You'll have to ask Sym about it when you see him next.
The atmosphere in the courtyard is tense and strange. It's been raining heavily, but you were so shattered by the death of your pets that you brought nothing to protect from the downpour. Cal, reliable as always, offers to share his umbrella so you huddle with him.
Tangent is surrounded by guards and has clearly been crying. A pit opens in your stomach as you start to connect the dots that something is seriously wrong.
Lum announces his plan to wipe out all life on the planet. It doesn't sink in right away what that means: you first think of all of the pets and livestock in the colony who provide for you. Cal, of the same mind, shouts this question.
As Instance speaks, you realize your complicity in the construction of this bioweapon. You helped Tangent and this is what she did with it. It hits you that all xeno life is going to die, including the Gardeners.
The one person that ever loved you back is dead (or will soon be dying), at the hands of your oldest friend, with data that you collected.
You shout at Tangent, unable to find words to describe the complete betrayal you feel, keenly, for the second time. One twin shut you out, sabotaged your entire colony, and left without a word; the other let you in, used your knowledge, and took everything from you.
As your shouts fade and Tangent tries to explain herself, Cal rushes forward towards the stage. A plasrifle crackles, screams fill the air, and people push away, revealing Cal motionless on the ground.
You should be running to your friend's side but your knees buckle; the sheer scale of loss you're experiencing at this moment is incomprehensible. As soon as you try to focus on one, your brain remembers the others, and bounces back and forth between them all until you feel like you're not even inside your own body. Glow was so close…