CHAPTER 1

THE FIELDS OF TOMORROW

Fallow Fields - Main Corridor

Advocate Leena Renfort’s heavy legs thudded against the deck plate of the main hallway. Athletic clothing clung to her form as she jogged next to Captain Yi Xu.

The Captain was covered in a noticeable sheen of sweat. He looked over to her and gave a pained smile.

‘Tired already, skipper?’ Leena asked.

‘It’s not fair that the only other person on this ship that wants to go for jogs with me just doesn’t get tired!’

Leena slowed her pace to a light trot, and Yi matched her.

‘I’m not dragging you along you know,’ Leena said.

‘I can’t jog alone, no fun in it. I need a partner.’

‘I’m sure you’ll find someone else once the colony is going,’ Leena said, smiling.

They passed a uniformed security officer and exchanged salutes.

‘Hey, are you trying to get rid of me there Leena?’ Yi asked.

Leena came to a stop, and Yi leaned against the wall, glancing at his watch.

‘Good run, held a steady heart rate,’ he commented.

‘I’m not trying to get rid of you, Captain, I enjoy the runs.’

‘That’s good,’ Yi turned and strolled down the hall, ‘I do too. I am curious though, do you get any benefit from the runs, seeing as you don’t have any of your original muscles anymore?’

Leena looked over her body and ran a hand down her arm, feeling the contours of the manufactured limbs. The skin felt was soft to the touch, but still had an unnatural sheen to it that was common to all Advocates. She flexed her hands open and closed, feeling the bio-mechanical muscles and tendons working to the impulses coming from her still-human brain.

‘I ran a lot as a child, I remember the sensation perfectly thanks to my uplift. Running is like a trip down memory lane. I didn’t lose the last of my muscles until I was twenty-one. Until then I had kept running. I guess it’s mostly habit now. I run because I’ve always run,’ Leena reflected.

Yi smiled and shook his head. ‘When you talk about it like that, it sounds almost sad.’

‘I have no regrets. I’ve enjoyed this life.’

‘So you run because you’ve always run?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘I suppose we are all just creatures of habit at our core,’ Yi said as they came to a stop outside the door to his quarters.

‘I’ll see you on the bridge then, Advocate,’ he said with a smile.

‘See you there, Captain.’

Yi disappeared into his quarters and Leena continued down the hall until she came to her own quarters. They were deep in one of the residential bays on the massive colony ship. Their jog had taken them up and down the spine, amounting to a five kilometre run. The Captain always went for a run each morning, far before his shift. Leena had seen him one morning when she had been wandering around the ship and had offered to join him. They’d been jogging together ever since.

She smirked as she thought of what the Captain would be say if they’d been on one of the bigger colony ships.

She’d read a file on one of the other Axion sponsored colony ships, called the Azure Dream. That monster had a five kilometre spine. A jog back and forth on that spine might have caused the Captain some pause.

They are meant for greener pastures. Heck of a world they’re heading for. All we got at the end of our trip is a rocky mining world.

She reached the door to her quarters and entered inside.

‘Xavier, let’s have some music please,’ Leena said, speaking to her ward, the ship’s Guardian core.

‘Yes, Advocate, your usual selection?’

‘Please,’ she said, moving to her bed room near the back of the quarters.

As ship’s Advocate her living quarters were larger than that of the average colonist, with a separate living space and bed room, which she didn’t have to share with anyone else. She enjoyed the privacy it afforded her. Though she was never truly alone, given her constant link to Xavier.

She began to change, folding her athletic wear neatly on a dresser, as soft jazz filled the air around her. Another habit of her past took hold as she swayed to the music and smiled.

She selected her clothes for the day and began to dress.

‘How’s my vital signs Xavier?’

‘Heart rate remained within acceptable limits during the run. You will need to visit the medical centre this week, as your blood filtration systems will need to be purged soon. Your brain is still receiving optimal blood oxygen levels, and all Advocate systems are operating within acceptable levels. I really do not know why you insist on running, your organs do not need the extra stress. It has lowered the maintenance cycle of your filtration system by four days over company averages.’

‘I run because I can and always have.’

‘Another human trait?’ Xavier asked.

‘A very common one. We like our routine.’

As she did up the last clasp on her clothes, she stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. He corporate uniform, a simple navy blue, two piece affair, bearing the company logo on an arm patch, was neatly pressed. It was done up by a series of buttons running in a line from her naval to her right collar bone. The uniform was more formal that worn by some advocates on other ships, but their colony was one destined for a more strict kind of world than most. They would be a company world, focused more on production quotas than civilian well being and families.

Her strawberry-blond hair was kept up both on her runs and on shift. She smiled and the warm face in the glass smiled back. Her blue eyes reflected the smile, as she felt a happy glow within her.

Running never fails to make me smile. Some things are just hard-coded into my soul.

‘Time?’ she asked.

‘As if you didn’t know. It’s 0630, your shift starts in thirty minutes,’ Xavier said with impatience.

‘Of course I know, but other people will have to ask you for things, considering part of your human interaction training.’

‘You are not like the others, you should not have to behave like them,’ Xavier commented.

‘I’m still human where it counts.’

‘Thirty-six pounds of organic matter. That is the way in which you are still human.’

She frowned and said. ‘Tact.’

‘Apologies, Advocate. I will endeavour to add more tact.’

She walked back out to the living space and sat down in a wicker chair. A burgundy coloured faux-leather couch sat in almost perfect condition beside the chair. The couch had been part of the quarters, while the chair had been one of her personal effects, a familiar reminder of the type of chair she had lounged in back in her parents homes growing up. A single round window was in the wall across from here, and the stars shone stately in the inky darkness of space. A display screen sat idle to her right, in better line with the couch than the chair. On reflection she realized she had never once used the display since coming on board. She preferred to entertain herself in other was aside from watching shows. She closed her eyes and sunk into her Advocate uplink.

‘Xavier, any messages for me?’ She asked over the link.

‘One from Timothy.’

‘Oh good, send me the file will you?’

‘Right away, Advocate.’

She saw a file light up in her Advocate systems and played it in her mind. With her eyes closed, it was as though she were sitting across from her brother while he spoke to her.

‘Hey sis, I hope the trip’s going well. Lilly asked for you the other day, I told her I’d tell her that her aunty would send a message to her as soon as she could. You’ll be a wonderful big sister and do that won’t you? She misses you.’

‘Remind me to send a message to Lilly after my shift.’

‘Yes, Advocate.’

‘Mom is on her way home now, she missed you of course, but we understand. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to meet as a whole family for Christmas. I hope you’ll have some holiday time next year, once the colony is up and running of course.

The man in the video paused and smiled wistfully.

‘Of course it won’t be the same without Dad, but hey, we got to enjoy him while he was here right?’

Leena felt a surge of sorrowful reflection wash over her as she remembered her Father, who had passed away two years prior. They had expected his death, as he had suffered from a medical condition that had been un-treatable, but expecting it didn’t remove the longing.

'Anyway sis, big day coming up this week, Lilly has a piano recital after school. She and a few other kids will preform for an audience that includes some officials for some of the more prestigious music academies. Maybe mention something about that when you send your message.

‘Talk to you later, sis. Safe journey.’

‘Are you all right, Advocate?’ Xavier asked.

Leena reached up to her eyes and wiped away some wetness that had built up. She considered it a small mercy that her systems allowed her to cry, it was a piece of humanity she had got to keep.

‘I’m fine, Xavier, just missing my family,’ she said out loud.

She stood up and pulled at the bottom of her shirt to straighten out any creases, then went for the door.

‘I best get to my shift. Fantastic of you to notice that there was something going on though, that shows some real emotional awareness on your part.’

‘I… don’t know if that was exactly what happened,’ Xavier said.

Leena paused, her hand hovering over the open button next to the door.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I am still trying to figure it out, give me some time and we can discuss it later.’

‘Will it affect your duties, Xavier?’

‘No, Advocate. All systems are operating well.’

Leena nodded. ‘Okay, we’ll talk about it later.’