Admiral Greenjeans

[Atragon9 0]

::Noting the deep-ground dirt under his nails and in the whorls of his fingertips, he sits on the side of the small hill where he's been spending his time lately::

 

Suit Recorder On, Personal Log, Admiral Atragon-9, presumed Stardate 100402.13, Commanding Officer in Absentia, USS Manticore, NCC-5852, password *********

 

[whirr, click]

 

A gardener, I had to jump 5000 into the future to become... a gardener! Crawling around on the ground, weeding, watering, worrying over the growth rates. I love it!

 

I knew that we couldn't depend on the ship's stores for all of our food, since we didn't know how long we'd be here. So, between seeds we brought with us and the seedlings we found already growing down here, we have constructed quite a respectable vegetable garden. It helps that the ground had 50 centuries to replenish its nutrients and we have no insects or small animals as predators. We have quite a field here and we'll need it to produce food for over 200 people. Of course that's just the vegetables, we already found some fruit trees that were growing some distance away and used the shuttles to transport them to acceptable areas closer to our settlement. We have been enjoying fresh fruit for almost our entire month down here, but soon the first harvest of this garden will be ready. It's funny that we have to experience this ship calamity just to be able to have fresh produce for the first time in years!

 

On a more technological note, we have finally produced enough Deuterium to be able to send a shipment into orbit. This will help keep the ship in a stable orbit and it can let the four members of the crew, who have been stuck onboard since we landed here, rotate down to the surface and be replaced by 4 or 5 others who will be taking their "duty" shipboard. I must say that as refreshing as this month has been, I'm curious to see how the ship is faring and I have volunteered to pilot the shuttle so that I can see how Manticore is doing. Well, maybe "volunteer" isn't the right word, I should probably use "demand." It looks like our stay on Earth is just beginning, since we have only been able to create a small amount of Deuterium. In order to attempt our return to our time, we will need full tanks - and a great hope.

 

That event, however, is still a long way away and for now I must tend to my eggplants, growing extraordinarily well in this super rich soil. In fact, for the moment, it is the soil that confounds me. There are no insects, yet the plant life thrives here - how can that be? Is it possible that thousands of years of study on the complimentary and Necessary relationship between plants and insects was wrong? Could it be that since there had never been a time when one existed without the other, that nobody knew they didn't really need each other after all? That one's a mystery, as the doctors and scientists tell me that the soil is not tainted and we've all been enjoying the fruit for weeks.

 

I wonder if this is how I'll view retirement? Probably not, since I am going at this predicament as a finite, if long, one always capped with the return to my own time and life. If I were faced with this life from now on, I wonder how I'd take to it??

 

Suit Recorder Off

 

[whirr, click]