This is Part 1 of the Blog Battle Entry for May 2022 and the prompt is Cultivate.
The Space GArden – Part 1
Thomas slurped at his coffee before placing it back on the common room table. It was now only a little warm as he had been lost in his thoughts for some time as he struggled to wake himself up. Life on board the board the spaceship Wilson was not interesting it was merely a set of continually repeating tasks. At first it had seemed like a good idea, locked away for five years to look after the rest of the crew in stasis while the Wilson shot across the galaxy to reach the star FX-83GTX. The name of the spaceship was rubbish, (the product of a people vote for the name, so what do you expect?) the name of the star was rubbish (The result of astronomers being boring – so what do you expect?) and this mission was rubbish. The lovely Rita who was the only other human he had to interact with made up for it. Even that was so great, nothing romantic was going to happen as mission control on Earth forbid it and they were fitted with interaction limiters to enforce it.
Rita joined Thomas across the table, her eyes only half open. Her neck length black hair looked dishevelled and her oblong face with rather messed up makeup looked rather more oblong than usual. She was thin, wiry and wearing the standard issue mission padded white jumpsuit. Rita slurped some coffee.
“Morning Thomas, are we there yet?”
Thomas slurped some more coffee but pulled a face of disgust as his coffee was now totally cold. “Morning Rita, nope. We still have 1 year, 9 months, three weeks and four days until we can wake up the crew.”
“As long as it’s not long then.” Rita snarked sarcastically.
“Good morning Thomas and Rita.” A calm but artificial voice announced. “I hope you are both well this morning. There is a new and exciting job for you both to start today.”
Thomas and Rita both looked at each other with a look of non-excitement. The voice was coming from the ship’s artificial intelligence called Dave. It seemed that Dave had been programmed to give the impression of emotion by using words like excitement to try and give the impression of positive emotions. This never really worked especially Dave announced that being prodded for a medical exam would be a happy experience. Maybe the engineer’s didn’t know what happy and exciting were Thomas mused.
“As you know…” Dave continued. “For you both and the crew to survive when they wake up from stasis there needs to be enough food for you all. The garden on the ship was cultivated to feed you all and is currently not fully productive and needs feeding. Please follow the instructions on the box and start feeding the garden.”
In front of them both a box full of tubes of what they assumed was some kind of super fertiliser materialised in a sparkle of light. Both Thomas and Rita looked up at each other and grimaced. They hated gardening.
“Have a happy time making the garden grow!” Dave finished.
After breakfast they both took the long walk to the ships garden and started following the instructions. Day after day they used a little of the super space fertiliser to feed the plants. The garden was pretty large so this was a full on job as well as their other duties of looking after their sleeping companions.
The task was getting right up their nose and after week s of what seemed like minimal result, this is always an issue when people are left unsupervised. Thomas and Rita as well to be fair weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer lets say and … well…Thomas had an idea.
At breakfast one day, both of them looking even worse than a usual morning. “I’ve got an idea Rita” Thomas announced.
Even Rita to give her some due did feel a shot of cold down her back with that announcement.
“I think we need to stop messing about and give the garden all the fertiliser. Like today.” Thomas grinned.
Rita wasn’t so sure, but with the alternative of another day of gardening she relented surprisingly easily. “Sure, let’s do that and then we can get back to days of watching rubbish films!”
“Yes!” Thomas grinned, both of them got up and started excitedly running to the garden.
To be continued…
Part 2 to come!
© Simon Farnell 2013 – 2023
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Simon's Space 
Good morning, Dave…. Not only do I distrust the ship’s AI, I can only imagine what catastrophe Thomas’s idea will bring about (and suspect Dave calculated that was what would happen). Overdosing the garden will either kill the plants and doom the crew, or (more likely) create monster plants that will run amok and like Audrey scream ‘Feed me!’ That’s how your story tickled my imagination, at least, so now it’s time to head to chapter 2 and see if I’m right … or way off track!
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Ah I like to tickle the imagination and it’s good to know I can instill AI distrust still lol
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This is a bright, sharp story Simon. Dealing with the practicalities of long time flight as no convenient wormholes or folds have been found.
Looking forward to Part 2 (after this morning’s chores).
I do like the little gems:
‘The name of the spaceship was rubbish, (the product of a people vote for the name, so what do you expect?)’
‘Dave announced that being prodded for a medical exam would be a happy experience.’
Both statements even funnier because they are based on fact.
Thomas’ idea strikes me as something which is going to be regretted….
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Hehe thank you Roger, it’s always good to hear your view on my stories 🙂
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