Fiction | Sci-Fi | Short Fiction | Flash Fiction
Her Orbs, Averted
Memories of Teddy Bear
She stands respectfully to the rear of the bio-engineered Hydrangea Viola bush whose seeds we imported from Earth only three years ago, yet which already blooms to half her height beneath the luxuriant rays of our red-tinted star — just one fruit of success in optimising my husband’s priorities.
Marrying into his socially ascending Svensson family, which owns a quarter share in our Colony’s budding merchant fleet, was no mean achievement. Firstly, I impressed on him how our infant daughter would love a fitting home in the romantic, perfectly landscaped countryside beyond Lumpy Hill.
They finally cleared the area of wild creatures. Right by the just-completed water canal with its bank-hugging footpaths, shaded bench alcoves with nighttime lighting and automatic parasols, and petite pavilions in a hundred styles from all human worlds offered light refreshments and quaint holomusic.
Secondly, having secured the construction of our abode, I had to design and furnish its interior and model the formal gardens behind the main building, choosing and arranging the position of the flowering bushes and shade-granting trees, all to represent the ultimate herbage from Man’s original world.
She coughs discretely, interrupting my musings, and a flash of anger spikes through me, but I quiet it, reasoning that Nanny is only performing her job.
I really have to talk with Doctor to replace my biotek formula because the current shit is doing even less for my composure than the “special tea” did for Mother to alleviate jitters in the austere days before the Colony bloomed.
I asked her to meet me at sunset at the verdure border between our Arboretum proper and the Summer Rotunda grounds. That was the perfect time after she had put my five-year-old to bed, and John drove to his evening huddle at the Spaceport with the other guys from the Mercantile Fellowship.
“Why did you let her dig in the Zen Garden?” I ask her.
She hesitates as if struggling to formulate a concise answer.
“When you commissioned my services, you explained that your daughter is fascinated by technology and you want to nurture this inclination. Her wish to try out her new excavator toy overrode the proscription against disarraying the karesansui.”
I take a deep breath, grappling afresh with the slippery tentacles of rising rage.
“But why did you have to analyze the uncovered material and file a report?”
“The girl handled the objects before I could stop her. After taking her immediately back to the house, I had to ascertain the biohazard level to which she had been exposed. Fortunately, it was not significantly higher than that from the soil of our other botanical locations.”
“You may go now,” I sigh, sensing the onset of my usual headache.
The mechanoid nursemaid shifts the shimmering gaze of her pink orbs away from me as if to diminish any perception of challenge, then speaks.
Still, her words cut through my biotekked composure like monofilament through a tree trunk. They remind me of Teddy Bear’s voice that last time when my teenage hands manhandled him way down into a storage box, to be hopefully forgotten as most childhood fads should be. Damn her Earth-manufactured arrogance!
“If I can venture a suggestion, kind Mistress? Would it not be best if the gardening droids relocated the bones of the planet’s indigenous beings to a less frequented place?”
The story above was first published on X (Twitter) and is © 2024 by David Pahor. No part of my stories should be used to train AI technology to generate text, imitating my writing style.
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