Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (reading list txt) 📗

on my hands still haunted me. A couple of times a week I would jerk awake in my tent soaked through with sweat only to remember that I was alone, that the horror was already passed.

Fiona was eventually permitted to come and visit me, helped along by Eliza and Marcus at her sides. She had lost a good amount of weight. Having been fairly slender before, the change in her body fat made me worried, but she seemed to be carrying on well enough. She even took a meal with me, sitting in the sunshine while she eyed one of the ‘popcorn’ bugs warily.

“You eat these?” She held one already skewered to her nose and sniffed.

I guffawed. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that, believe it or not. Try it. Shut your eyes and pretend it’s a biscuit.” Fiona screwed up her nose, put the bug into her mouth, and bit down. I burst out laughing as she discovered that the bugs still held juice inside them after roasting and spit the remnants of the carcass into the dirt.

“You bastard! You could have warned me!”

“You still fall for the same tricks kid, even as a mother.” She shot me a glare and pouted. I gave her a delicate hug, being careful not to squeeze her too hard. “It’s good to have you back, Fiona.”

“It’s good to be back, Dad. But I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything for you.”

I cringed as she started whacking me on the shoulder with her hand. “Could. You. Please. Stop. Trying. To. Get. Killed! I’m only a bit more than half your damn age and I think you could beat me in a contest of who has been patched up by the doctors more!”

“Okay, okay!” I chuckled and held a hand up, three fingers extended with my pinky crossed over. “I solemnly swear that I will try to not get nearly murdered by psychotic artificial intelligences. Or other people. Or giant cat-things. Or…”

“Cat what?” Her eyes widened.

“Never mind. I’m sure you’ll get the chance to see one someday. For now, we continue.” I bid her goodbye and returned to my work. We now had an operational weather station, water collection, food storage, and basic medical abilities. Inside the shelter everything was being slowly dismantled for its parts. We needed everything from blankets to scrap metal if we were going to keep a settlement running. The 3D printers were busy fabricating everything that we didn’t already have. Medical supplies, machines, and other speciality items were stored away as they were made for future use. The printers themselves were carefully inspected and cleaned after each printing job had finished. Those were going to be what we shut down last. Medical equipment was likewise disassembled and stored except the capabilities we predicted we would need in the short term. Everything was handled with care and precision so that if all else failed, the shelter could be powered up again.

I had taken it upon myself to pass on as much information as I could to the newcomers. Five years of life on the surface hadn’t gifted me with much, but my love of old movies and books had. Every day I led a class for anyone who was interested on various topics ranging from weather patterns to clean water. It was a humbling and happy experience to watch young men and women discover things about the Earth that I had taken for granted as a child.

As for the flora and fauna of the area, we had no more trouble from the cat-thing or any other predators. The commotion of the settlement had scared away everything larger than the bugs for miles. I can only imagine what they must have thought. The reappearance of humans was probably just as strange to them as their existence was to us.

To my great surprise and happiness, Fiona had thrown herself back into botany. She teamed up with Oscar, an older man who had sought out a new occupation for himself after he was widowed years ago. The two of them had teamed up to start in on farming. Fiona volunteered to plow the fields while Oscar followed behind her, replanting potatoes. Medicinal plants were kept in a separate area set up near the medical station to provide ease of harvest and storage. The potato plants transferred easily, the hearty little plants taking root almost right away. Thing was, transferring and planting the potatoes by hand was too slow. The settlement wasn’t hosting the full thousand people of the shelter but we were nearing three hundred. Even with rationed food we were struggling to keep up with demand.

The 3D printers were still running full tilt producing essential objects and materials, so making any farming equipment was out of the question. Fiona took it upon herself to search out an alternative solution while she drafted extra hands to make up the difference in the mean time. I caught her laying down in her tent one afternoon, feet sticking out of the entrance flap.

“Hi?” I pushed the fabric open. Fiona let out a huge sigh and slowly let the tablet fall to her face.

“Dad, I feel like an old timey farmer, and not in a fun way. Short of press-ganging every person under the age of 30 to bend down with Oscar and me to plant by hand, I can’t figure out a way that we can get these potatoes planted quickly enough to feed everyone.”

“Don’t we have any tools that can dredge the earth for you? I bet one of the utility spades can do it.”

“Yeah, but only if I want to end up looking like an eighty-year-old by the end of the first week. We need something bigger. Are we sure we don’t have any cow embryos in the shelter? Even cow DNA would be a good start.” She lifted the tablet from her forehead and set it aside.

“You think you’ve got time to raise a baby heifer into a full grown working animal?” I