Sugar Bomb

Seth’s POV It was the fourth of July when everything truly began. I lost myself in her like a stone thrown into the wild currents of a river. I couldn't sleep fully, and if I finally managed to, I dreamed. I dreamed of those emerald eyes gazing at me with that primal curiosity hiding in their depths. The tradition of celebrating the Fourth of July has endured in our community for hundreds of years. It was one of the few days off from work. I was glad that I would finally have some time for myself. Although I had gotten used to the daily routine, it was a pleasant change. At the sound of the morning bell, I sluggishly opened my eyes. The start of the day on the Ark was always announced by the same piercing sound of the brass bells located at the top of the tallest building in the city. I got up, feeling an unpleasant numbness in my body, and approached the large round window. The view was not surprising, although it consistently evoked a sense of loneliness in me. Blackness spread across a nonexistent horizon. And the stars... millions of distant, twinkling stars. Some shone intensely bright, but most seemed to be behind a veil, barely piercing through the depths of the blackness of space. The spaceship I lived on had many windows, but each offered the same view, except for the one-way glass in the isolation and quarantine rooms. I ordered breakfast to my room and changed into my daily uniform. The Ark had clear rules, which also applied to clothing. The daily, strict schedule of work and all meetings had to be adhered to, and the preferred behavior among our small community was restrained, ideally entirely devoid of emotion. This was reflected in my daily uniform: a simple black jacket, trousers with a crease, and ankle-high boots. I had been wearing it in civilian life for over thirty years. However, I wore it relatively rarely, considering that I spent most of my time in the laboratory, in a white coat, working on a highly classified project. I ate the breakfast delivered by the service and headed to the main conference hall. Did I mention that for us, a day off is never truly a day off? Walking briskly, I went through the automatically opening doors and found myself in a familiar room: the Great Hall. "Hello, Seth," I heard the sharp greeting from my colleague, Jeremy Stevens. The tension in his voice did not bode well. "Good morning, Stevens. What do we have today?" I gave him a quick glance, then shifted my gaze to the rest of the group sitting around the round table. I liked the Great Hall. One of its walls was entirely glass, giving the impression of being "open" to the black space with millions of stars. The three men present in the room, including Stevens, who was standing with his arms crossed near the entrance, were scientists. I, Seth Berkeley, was their superior. Above me and the commanders of the other departments stood only the emperor. "I don't know if the vigil for the holiday will take place, sir," replied a young scientist sitting at the right end of the table. He nervously tapped his fingers on the surface. "We received information from the military department just before you arrived that we need to be on full military alert for the next twelve hours," he added, furrowing his brow in consternation. I admit, this news surprised me; it was not a common occurrence. The Ark had been on the same course for over four hundred years, and its trajectory had been meticulously calculated before launching from Earth. The only thing that could surprise us was the threat of a collision with a stray meteorite, too small to be detected by radar from a great distance. "Alright, we didn't have anything special to do today anyway," I gave my colleagues an ironic smile. We always did the same thing. Unsuccessfully. The main mission of our journey was to ensure the survival of the human species, but we were running out of ideas on how to achieve that. The duration of the Ark's voyage had been calculated by Earth scientists to be six hundred Earth years, the time it would take to reach a habitable planet. The Ark was well-prepared for such a long journey; it was a large self-sustaining shuttle with atomic propulsion. We had agricultural, forest, water, residential zones, large laboratories, greenhouses, and the Capitol. In the Capitol lived myself, the rest of the scientists, military units, and, of course, the Emperor. The second residential area was home to all the workers, farmers, and engineers. Contrary to appearances, we had already survived four hundred years of interstellar travel, but as I mentioned, our chances of survival as a human species were decreasing with each passing day. The project we were working on involved mutating the Y genome to recreate the X genome from it. Unfortunately, our hard work over the centuries had not yielded satisfactory results, resulting in a complete absence of women in our community. Our last resort was the female reproductive cells frozen on Earth, but after thawing, they showed no signs of life. Something must have gone wrong, and it was too late to fix it. We ourselves—the successive generations of men—had been created in laboratories like the one where I work. From artificially created embryos. Unfortunately, there was no chance to produce women this way because their DNA cells had been infected and irreversibly altered back on Earth, so the few we had preserved were already defective and could not generate any life. We tried countless times, I and my predecessors. Without success. "Seth," Stevens' voice snapped me out of my reverie. "An unidentified object is heading straight for the Ark, but they confirmed it's not a meteorite, probably something smaller." "Nothing surprises me anymore," I replied, sitting at the head of the table. "So, just another day. Back to work." I exchanged resigned glances with the rest of the team and reached for the report of the latest failed experiments. The other men took their places at the research stations along the wall parallel to the large window. I had no strength for work today; this wasn't how it was supposed to be. I gazed at the twinkling stars in contemplation. I often found myself thinking about them, wondering who they really were. Most of the Ark's community didn't even know they existed; maybe that's why they seemed so empty, lost, and at the same time nervous. They were never taught about the existence of women. From the first grade, education focused on the sciences, and starting from adolescence, very demanding physical activities were introduced so that young men wouldn't have time to get bored. Later, work took the place of sports. It wasn't easy. I was fortunate to know about them as a scientist. I knew they once existed. I also had access to the archives, which I occasionally browsed with curiosity. They depicted various animals, plants, and interesting photos, but never did they capture a female human being. I somewhat understood this—why reopen old wounds? The only thing I was sure of was that they were differed from men not only physically but also emotionally. The female animals I saw in slides from the old world significantly differed from the males in terms of appearance; they were usually much uglier. Sometimes I wondered if it was the same for our species. And for God’s sake, if only I had known then how wrong I was.