My contribution to the deadlinesforwriters short story challenge December 2025. The prompt was „apple“ and the required word count was 300.
Progression
Tessa never volunteered for this trip. She has at least been lucky with her assignment in botanical, specifically in fruit tree seed bank maintenance. From time to time, like today, she plants a few seedlings to ensure they are still alive.
They never make it to full height due to the lack of space. Tessa can only ever let them bear fruit once.
Marc turns up in her lab just when she is filling up the pots. Tessa manages a smile, just about. He flops down on the creaky visitor’s chair.
“I haveve no idea why I keep repairing the drive modules,” he grouses. “They’re just going to fall apart again! Nothing on this ship was made to last this long!”
He is a Third-Generation Ark Passenger just like Tessa with a knack for fixing things, much to his dismay.
May’s voice crackles from the loudspeaker: “Hey! Guess what’s for dessert tonight?”
“Recycled organic matter like usual?” Marc deadpans.
For a few seconds, the only thing they hear is May frowning.
“No, it’s apple pie, thanks to Tessa! You know, I can’t wait to see you plant your seeds in real soil on a real planet one day.”
“We’ll see,” Tessa says. She shakes the pots, smoothing out their contents.
“Right… I guess I’ll go back to baking.”
Tessa winces at the deflated tone in her little sister’s voice, yet Marc isn’t done venting.
“Wish I could go back in time to the First Genners. They set us on this path and couldn’t even get their calculations right! You do know we missed our destination trajectory ages ago, right?”
“Yeah. But I’ll be the last person to tell May,” Tessa says and looks into the bag labelled Earth. Just enough left in there for one last generation of apple trees.
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