The election wasn’t long in coming. Each candidate was given twenty minutes to make their speech to the assembled crowd. Everyone aged seventeen and up was permitted a vote which they submitted anomalously into a tablet with the group looking on. The tablet tabulated the votes in real time and spit out a result moments after the last person made their selection. Alexander took the tablet from the last voter and read it over carefully. The result surprised everyone except me.
Eliza.
Leave it to my wife to bend the very universe to her will. She had given one hell of a speech and clearly had proven herself a reliable member of the community. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dad shake his head and put his face in his hands, grinning. I wouldn’t have been shocked to learn that he probably talked her into it. Despite my misgivings, I was proud of her. My gorgeous, courageous, fearless wife who had stopped at nothing to tackle every obstacle that came at her. She motioned me towards the center of the group and kissed me soundly, making the crowd clap and cheer.
It was decided that she would meet with Jacob and Alexander right after the announcement in order to be fully briefed about the plans for the colony. Her engineering tasks were reassigned to someone else. I’m not sure she anticipated that one. Eliza giving up her projects was almost unthinkable. I was sure she would find time to slot them in between duties. As for Marcus, it was obvious that he was feeling bittersweet about the whole thing. Eliza soothed his ego by appointing him to oversee social cohesion within the colony. It was a fancy way of saying that he would be in charge of settling the petty squabbles that cropped up simply by dint of living with other people. It was a smart decision. In doing so, Eliza positioned him perfectly to become more well known throughout the populous while gaining leadership experience.
The election seemed to soothe most everyone right away. Even those who had voted for someone else seemed relieved to know that at last, someone could pull them in a unified direction. Eliza got to work right away, restructuring the cobbled together routines of the colony into an organized regimen that worked as well as any machine. In celebration of her victory Eliza decreed that everyone be given an extra ration of food that night. Someone managed to scrape up some food-scrap liquor that was being brewed and passed it around as liberally as possible.
I stood in front of the fire, sipping on a cup of the foul tasting alcohol as I watched my wife and son make their way around camp, shaking hands and receiving congratulatory slaps on the back. It could have been the booze, but I felt a spark of hope bloom in my chest.
Maybe we were going to be all right after all.
Chapter Four
I bent over a row of potatoes, intending to harvest the plant and set it back to grow new spuds. The sun shone hot against my back and my thin clothing did little to protect me from the heat. We were still wearing the scrub-like garments that were provided for shelter use. Not the best for getting your hands dirty. As I pulled up the plant I felt a shadow being cast over my shoulder.
“Dad, do you need something else to do?” I turned and dusted my hands on my pants before taking the gloves off.
“What can I say, I am ‘doing something’. I’m coming to check on my daughter and our precious food supply.” He smirked and settled himself on the ground next to me. “Okay, what I really wanted to know is when I can look forward to eating something other than potatoes with salt, potatoes with pepper, potatoes with…:”
“You want to get down here and dig with me? Because I’d have more energy to work on growing a more varied diet if I didn’t have to work by myself all the time.”
“Where are your fellow farmers? I know Pascal can’t be far away. I think he’s got a little bit of a crush on you.”
I flung a dirt clod at him. “Pascal is half my age and hasn’t quite gotten the hint that I’m a raging lesbian. Now either help me dig or go find someone else to bother. I really don’t have time for you right now, old man.”
He scooped up a handful of dirt and hit me in the back with it, showering my hair with soil. “Raging lesbian indeed. My god, how could I have raised such a daughter.” I rolled my eyes at him and continued working. The potatoes came off the plant easily enough and looked healthy. Surveys of the nutrient levels in the soil showed us that it should be good to farm for years to come. The planet had effectively been thrown around in its own juices. Enough dead plant and animal matter had decomposed into the land around us that farming worked quite nicely. I was about to trade places with Dad and start on the next plant when I caught sight of him frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
He held up a potato that looked normal enough at first glance. As he turned it around, I saw that his thumb had sunk into the skin almost to the first knuckle. “Is that bad?”
“It probably means that some kind of worm or other animal got to it before us. Here, let me see it.” I took the vegetable from him and split it in half with my utility knife. The indent ran well into the flesh of the potato. Radiating outward from it was a kind of blueish blackish color, almost like a bruise on skin. I prodded the discolored part with my knife
