A Successful Colonization
I crushed the delicate pod in my hand. The wispy filaments attached to the seeds were not as soft or as silky as they looked, scratching my hand like fiberglass insulation.
We had not meant to bring this plant to Nova Terra, its seeds were not listed on the ship inventory. The seeds we brought to grow—corn, beans, wheat, soy, all the vegetables—those had stopped producing many cycles ago, if they had grown at all.
And yet this weed, this accidental hitchhiker, sprouted year after year. So prolific that we sent the children out to pull up weed sprouts as soon as they emerged, before the leaves spread and shaded out our pampered crops. So many sprouts we left to wither on the ground in those early cycles, not knowing how our bellies would crave something, anything close to food. In later, wiser, times we gathered the plump weed shoots and pounded and boiled them to add bulk, if not calories, to our diminishing rations.
My partner, ever the optimist, tried so hard to find a use for this bountiful plant. We stayed, after the others had taken transport away, and tried to make this colony work. We found no medical use for the weed. The fibers proved too scratchy for weaving and too brittle for cordage. The sap failed as an adhesive, yet it was too tacky for an astringent and too bitter to consume.
Now green fields expanses of weed spread across the land, far beyond the fields we had once so carefully tended. Acres and acres of lush monoculture on what was once a barren moon. At some moments it could almost look like earth. But an earth without birdsong or buzz of bees. Just the weed and myself, and no other living thing.
I crushed the delicate pod in my hand. The wispy filaments attached to the seeds were not as soft or as silky as they looked, scratching my hand like fiberglass insulation.
We had not meant to bring this plant to Nova Terra, its seeds were not listed on the ship inventory. The seeds we brought to grow—corn, beans, wheat, soy, all the vegetables—those had stopped producing many cycles ago, if they had grown at all.
And yet this weed, this accidental hitchhiker, sprouted year after year. So prolific that we sent the children out to pull up weed sprouts as soon as they emerged, before the leaves spread and shaded out our pampered crops. So many sprouts we left to wither on the ground in those early cycles, not knowing how our bellies would crave something, anything close to food. In later, wiser, times we gathered the plump weed shoots and pounded and boiled them to add bulk, if not calories, to our diminishing rations.
My partner, ever the optimist, tried so hard to find a use for this bountiful plant. We stayed, after the others had taken transport away, and tried to make this colony work. We found no medical use for the weed. The fibers proved too scratchy for weaving and too brittle for cordage. The sap failed as an adhesive, yet it was too tacky for an astringent and too bitter to consume.
Now green fields expanses of weed spread across the land, far beyond the fields we had once so carefully tended. Acres and acres of lush monoculture on what was once a barren moon. At some moments it could almost look like earth. But an earth without birdsong or buzz of bees. Just the weed and myself, and no other living thing.
