Chapter Text
Dr. Amelia Brand held her breath in anticipation as the cover of the hyper-sleep pod slowly retracted, revealing the body-sized bag inside. She steadied herself as she began to rip the bag along its seam with shaking hands.
There he was. He looked slightly older than she remembered, with flecks of gray peppered in his black hair and beard. His forehead was etched with shallow lines that she never recalled being there before, and his body was thinner too.
But was him.
Wolf Edmunds
As Brand raised a hand to brush the side of his face, his eyes opened before he squeezed them shut again, coughing and fighting for his breath. Amelia’s hand flew to support the back of his head as he rode out the rest of his fit. Once his coughing subsided, he looked up, eyes finding hers.
“Amelia?” He croaked.
She felt the corners of her eyes sting as she nodded, savoring the sound of his voice saying her name. “Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
He slowly pushed himself up to sit, bringing him level with her. He raised both of his hands to gingerly cup either side of her face, expression awed.
“I don’t believe it,” he choked out before he cracked into a smile. “I must have—I’m not dead, right?”
Brand laughed. “I better hope not. Otherwise, I came all this way for nothing!”
Wolf’s smile deepened, crinkling his eyes as they shone with tears. “I’ve missed that laugh.”
Amelia helped him out of the pod, and the two made for an embrace. She wrapped her arms around his torso and buried her face into his chest, blocking out the world around them. She could feel his heart thundering against her skin as she breathed him in.
For a few, silent moments, they stayed like that, holding onto each other desperately. Eventually, Brand pulled back so she could look up at Edmunds, who bent down to plant a gentle kiss on her forehead. She closed her eyes, feeling at peace for the first time in a long time.
“Are you alone?”
Amelia opened her eyes to meet his expectant gaze. A lump lodged in her throat as she slowly nodded.
“Yes, the rest didn’t make it,” she answered thickly.
The corner of his mouth tugged downward.
Amelia exhaled. “I’m here now. And we have work to do.”
“That we do,” Wolf agreed, pulling away from her and making his way to the other side of his HAB, where MONS, his robot copilot, sat waiting. Next to him, a laptop rested on a desk, folded and dusty. Wolf brushed the dust away before opening up the computer. Amelia watched after him, a tight feeling growing in her chest. She was trying to find the voice to ask the question ringing in her head.
Finally, she said, “Wolf, did you know?”
Edmunds hand froze for a moment as he tapped away at the keyboard. He recovered and resumed typing. “Know about what?”
His reaction didn’t go unnoticed by Amelia. “Plan B.”
“Of course I knew about Plan B,” he turned to face her, eyebrows knit together.
She swallowed hard. “You know what I am asking.”
He pressed his lips into a hard line before looking away, confirming her fear and reactivating her tears.
“Your father didn’t tell you before you left?“ he inquired.
“No,” she answered. “No, I had no idea.”
Wolf gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Amelia. You’re father had to do a lot in order to achieve—“
“No,” Amelia interrupted, shaking her head. “No, don’t even start that.”
“Amelia,” Wolf said carefully. “You have made it all this way. Surely, you must understand now.”
She shook her head again and looked down, the tears falling from her face and onto the floor. When she looked up, Edmunds was gone, and she was alone.
——
Brand jolted awake with such force that she nearly rolled off her bunk bed and onto the floor below. She gasped to catch her breath before settling back down. Her pillow was wet, soaked with her tears. She sniffed, flipping it over onto the dry side and laid her head on the cool surface. She closed her eyes, but all she saw behind them was that empty room.
Amelia sighed, accepting defeat in getting any more sleep. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, albeit too fast. As the wave of lightheadedness passed, she navigated her way through the HAB and to the door that led outside. It was currently night, and the camp was illuminated by the soft, yellow glow of lanterns she had placed outside each module. It certainly made going outside a lot less intimidating.
She made it to her lab module, where inside, she could see that everything was just as she left it. Ten cylinder incubators sat in a row, secured along one of the walls. Though it appeared that they were filled with nothing but water, they were to serve as the home for the first batch of fetuses for the next nine months. Currently, they were just two weeks old.
It had been about two and a half months since they landed on Edmunds. Before even thinking about touching the eggs, there was groundwork that needed to be achieved first. Amelia was soon confronted with how hard this would have been with just the four members of the Endurance team, plus the Lazarus astronaut—if he had lived. But the potential team of five ended up being a team of one, and rebuilding a new earth was proving to be an anxiety-inducing process.
She let out a breath as she heard the sounds of shifting metal behind her. She turned around to see CASE.
“Dr. Brand?” the robot inquired.
“It’s nothing, CASE,” she assured him. “I was just worried is all.”
“Nothing has changed since you bedded two hours ago,” he reported.
“I know it’s just…” Amelia sighed. “I couldn’t sleep. Might as well be productive if I am going to be awake.”
“I understand,” CASE concurred before adding cautiously, “But not getting proper sleep is not going to help you carry out Plan B.”
She shook her head before moving to her desk, situated on the wall opposite of the incubators. She sat down in her chair and opened her laptop, bringing to life the surrounding monitors plugged into it. As she waited for the screens to load, her eyes found the framed photo sitting on the corner of her desk. The picture depicted a freshly graduated Brand, holding her first diploma. Next to her, with his arm slung around her shoulder, was her smiling father. She gazed at it for a few moments before reaching over and turning the frame so that the photo faced away from her.
“Are you checking the data?” CASE asked.
“No.” Amelia glanced floor next to her desk. The carcass of MONS laid there, dented and smashed in various places. The robot was excavated out of wreckage alongside his astronaut and was carried into camp by CASE, as MONS was far to heavy for her to drag. Amazingly, most of his damage appeared to be cosmetic, meaning she had a chance to reactivate him and access additional data Wolf may have left her—
Left us, she corrected in her head.
But Brand was a biologist. She felt she would be more suited in performing impromptu surgery on another living being than to repair a robot. So, MONS remained lifeless at the foot of her desk for two months.
With the monitors fully powered on, Brand pulled up the user manual for MONS and skimmed through, finding the page she had stopped last. She then spent the next few hours frustrated as she poked around MONS’ motherboard, trying to decipher how to troubleshoot the system. Eventually, she gave up, angrily throwing the screwdriver on the floor and dropping down in her chair.
“Might not be wise to throw objects in the place with glass containers,” CASE advised. “Much less ones with fetuses in them.”
She released a huff of frustration. “I know, I know.”
“We have the data from Edmunds already,” CASE reminded her.
Amelia leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. “I know. But an extra robot wouldn’t hurt you know? We need all the help we can get.”
“The damage MONS sustained from the landslide is severe. Even if you got him rebooted, he will not be mobile.”
Her lower lip began to tremble and she bit down to keep it from doing so.
“Dr. Brand,” prompted CASE. “I don’t think there is anything else in MONS for us now.”
She swiped away a stray tear. “There’s no harm in trying.”
Amelia kept her head inclined. She thought back to the last time they tried to recover a dinged-up robot. And how that didn’t end well at all.
Despite the bright light blearing down at her, her eyelids began to grow heavy. Eventually, they closed—the dark accompanied by floating spots of color.
——
Brand was in the NASA mess hall, holding her tablet in one hand, and balancing her lunch on a tray in the other. Her eyes were too focused on the screen, that she could not see the collision course she was headed down. Soon, she rammed into someone, spilling her lunch all over the floor, but managing to save her tablet. She and the man she ran into simply looked at each other before looking at the mess they made.
“What did you have?” The man asked eventually. “I can get you more.”
“Okra,” Brand answered, voice cracking. She cleared her throat as she blinked in surprise at her own reaction. At this time, her father had recently told her that okra was on its way out. She never really cared for okra, so she didn’t have many feelings to the news.
At first.
But the next time she had the vegetable, she noticed that, somehow, it tasted better than she remembered. It began to taste special. She hesitated the word luxurious.And now she was looking at what could possibly be her last helping of the stuff spilled all over the cafeteria floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said with an edge of understanding in his voice. “Here, let me help clean it—“
He went to fetch a broom. When he returned, he began to brush the okra into one centralized area.
“You’re Dr. Brand, right?” He had asked as he scraped the food into the pan. “With the BPS team?”
She gazed at him. People knew who she was around NASA, of course, but often she was referred to Dr. John Brand’s daughter first, head scientist of the BPS team second. Not the other way around.
“Yes,” she answered. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’ve seen you around?”
He tapped the pan against the trash and gave her a shy smile. “As intended. I like to keep a low profile. My name is Nikolai Romily, physicist.”
Amelia smiled and stuck out her hand. “Well, you know me, clearly. Nice to meet you.”
Her path wouldn’t cross with Romily’s until a few weeks later. In one of his meetings, her father and his board sat in their conference room, with Doyle and Amelia in attendance. She never liked this conference room, as the photos of the departed Lazarus astronauts surrounded them served as ghostly reminders. She’d like to imagine each of their thoughts should they have the ability to listen in on the meetings regarding the Endurance mission.
“Dr. Brand and Dr. Doyle are officially part of the crew,” her father had announced at some point in finality.
Doyle and Brand exchanged looks while the older meeting attendees shuffled in their seats and a few cleared their throats. She understood that they thought the two of them were not experienced. Not like the 12 brave pilots before them. But they settled with no more objections and turned their attention back on her father.
“We have two more seats,” her father announced. “I was thinking Monroe would be the best choice for piloting the craft. That leaves a fourth…“
“I can recommend someone, a physicist,” piped Amelia before blushing at the realization that she interrupted her father in the middle of a meeting.
Her father drew no mind as he nodded in her direction. “Who do you have in mind?”
——
The morning found Amelia slumped in her chair, having fallen asleep in her lab. CASE apparently stayed put the entire night.
“How long was I out?” She groaned as she began massaging the ache in her neck.
“About three hours,” he answered.
She nodded, which was a mistake as it sent a dull pain up her neck into the base of her skull.
“There’s Advil in the HAB,” CASE offered.
After nursing her headache, Brand moved to the third module of the campsite, which held the atmospheric water generator and other organic materials for farming. The readings on Edmunds complemented those on Earth. The oxygen levels were a little lower sitting at 19.78%. The air was dry and that did affect the amount of water she could produce on any given time. Thankfully, with the solar panels stored away, she was able to use another method. By using the power of the star Edmunds orbited, she could heat the soil and extract water, After many weeks of frustration, following all the different manuals provided with the equipment, she was able to make a greenhouse, trapping the fog created by the generator.
“CASE, status report on the crops?” She asked as she panned over the grouted soil.
“About one more month and the carrots should be ready for harvesting. More time is needed on the other crops. About two for the potatoes.”
“Good,” she said.
She figured she’d try a few different types of crops first. It was plenty, for now. Eventually, she would have to expand the fields, and that’s a huge undertaking, for just a human and a robot. She worried about the soil, as it took her two months to prepare. According to some of the manuals, it would have been best to wait a year before starting the crops, but Brand felt that she didn’t have a year to wait.
She ducked out of the greenhouse and checked the water levels in the generator’s reservoir.
“They have been in their incubators for about 2 weeks,” she said speaking to herself mostly. “9 months and I should have more crops. Even more than that, actually. They will be on formula for the first 12 months.”
Brand and the robot stood in silence as she gnawed nervously at her lip. “I didn’t overshoot this right? Everything is timed perfectly?”
“Yes,” CASE reassured her. “Everything is going to plan.”
“You know, I typed up some of the manuals for initiating Plan B,” Brand mused. “The ones for setting up the lab that is. I was very detailed in them, of course, and as I was working on them, I kept thinking, ‘this is such a delicate process, with so many opportunities for things to go south’.”
“Murphy’s Law,” CASE commented simply.
She smiled ruefully at him. “Yes. But there was always something that eased the anxiety while working on them. Plan A. All of these extra steps and coordination for Plan B was just a formality.”
Brand shook her head, feeling the threat of tears. When not working on the crops, monitoring the fetuses, or trying in vain to revive MONS, her mind ruminated on the lies that brought her here. Of course, it wasn’t healthy, but there was only so much you can do to keep your thoughts locked away.
The many times her father looked dead in her eyes and espoused his gravity equation and how it was going to save the world. And she believed every word! For years, he filled her head with fairytales of saving the people on earth.
All the while, Mann knew. She wondered if Edmunds was also aware. Did the other Lazurus pilots know? She now even questioned Doyle and Romily.
The only person who understood her betrayal was Cooper.
She quickly shook her head, as if she could shake the memory of Cooper from her brain. Out of all of the recent events, it was his memory she refused to entertain.
She remembered when she first received the news of her father’s death. Murph accused her of being in on her father’s scheme. Maybe she should be flattered that Murph assumed her father would tell her.
You have made it all this way. Surely, you must understand now.
Sure, she understood. She understood that her father thought so little of her intelligence, that he had no problems manipulating her. No respect for her as a fully realized scientist or as a grown woman.
And the worst part was that he was right. She willingly allowed herself to play along and believe him.
She sighed and shook her head. “How much water do we have in the generator?”
“About 82 gallons,” he said.
“Huh, I might treat myself to a longer shower tonight.”