We had not expected paradise. We had expected hardship, danger, and potential failure. We hoped to create a new society in full harmony with nature, but nineteen people had died of accidents and illnesses since we arrived, including three who had died the day before for no apparent reason.
Wendy had named them fippokats after an imaginary childhood animal that had pink noses and curly tails like them, although to me they looked more like rabbits than cats.
OCTAVO YEAR 1–GENERATION 1 Grateful for this opportunity to create a new society in full harmony with nature, we enter into this covenant, promising one another our mutual trust and support. We will face hardship, danger, and potential failure, but we can aspire to the use of practical wisdom to seek joy, love, beauty, community, and life. —from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pax, written on Earth in 2065
The war had begun long before we arrived because war was their way of life.
An hour ago, three women had gone to pick fruit. They did not come back, they were not answering their radio, and the Sun had sunk almost to the top of the hills.
went back to her work at a rough-hewn
Of the fifty who had left Earth, now only thirty-one remained.
“I was dreaming about children,” she said. We’d talked a lot about children. They’d grow up in this gravity, so they’d be shorter, adapted to their environment,
Our plaza was the size of a small soccer field, and on two sides we had assembled homes from wood, pieces of landing pods, stone, clay, parachutes, and tree bark. On the third side sat the lab, made from a landing pod designed specifically for that reuse.
