The Sky Strands

Every day Maribeth checked the skies. She used to listen to the radio waves, but she had to stop during the dry season because power was at a premium. Wake up. Clean the Sky Strands off the roof before their acid takes hold. Fish for breakfast and dinner. If it's not pouring rain - which is only one out of every three days - hike to the tallest volcano lip and watch the skies. Maybe she’d drink some dew from the AquaFruit and pass out.

This was the 3rd cycle since Joseph died, her only companion for five years. If they had actually made it to the colony, they would never have even met, a high Imperial like Joseph and an agricultural 3rd class like her. It's not that she didn't care for Joseph. Over five years she had grown to love him, but she was convinced he sort of resented her. If he had just waited another 30 seconds before hitting eject on their escape pod, maybe somebody better would have come along, someone she would have legally had to give up her seat for. She did what she could to keep him happy, stranded on this uncharted planet, but days stretched into weeks into years - or “cycles” as they had taken to calling them because it was impossible to keep track of human calculations with 29-hour days and no moon to base any monthly succession on.

In early days she had taken to marking a tree with a tick of her knife to count the days, but then it got too difficult to count the number of ticks made. Who cared anyway. They would either be rescued or they wouldn't, and all that mattered was that they were alive when they were found. And if the human need for companionship and, yes, sexual intercourse, helped them make it through the endless days, then it really wasn't that big of a deal, was it?

Never mind that she wasn't even attracted to men. Of course she couldn't have told anyone that, or she wouldn't have even made it onto the ship for the new colony. She knew what to do - she'd seen the holo-videos. And she could fake the emotion and servile attention that seemed to be expected of her. She could do that until they were found and brought to the new colony. She had a contract and a guarantee for a new life, and she intended that it be filled. When she got her feet under her there would always be ways around the morality code. There had been for years.

It was when they gave up on being discovered that her opinion changed. It was then when she didn't think she could make it through another cycle.

“Do you think it's too cynical to name our first child after the planet we never reached?” Joseph asked offhandedly one night.

“Our first child?” Maribeth asked. “You plan on more than one fictional child?”

“Oh, I didn't know you had brought birth control into the escape pod when we had 3 minutes before the cruiser exploded.“

‘I'm not having a first child with you’ was her first thought, ‘let alone several.’ But she didn't say that. She had learned not to directly contradict him.

Not that he would hit her again; her workout routine had made her more than capable to take him on in any disagreements. But he had found other ways to punish her, like hiding the ration sticks. The island was only 5 miles around but that still meant it wasn't really worth searching for the cooler, especially when he could move it every night while she slept.

The fucker hadn't even told her where it was before he died. And in three years of grid pattern searching, she was convinced she would never find it. Besides, if it wasn't well covered the ration cooler could very easily have been melted by the Sky Strands over three years. The Sky Strands were this planet's idea of a poorly told weather joke. Long snot-like goo strands that rain down on the planet every night. They burn through most material in a couple of days. The trees, while they were alive, had some sort of enzyme to fight it. Anything inorganic, even her cabin made from teak wood and fronds was no match for this interstellar goop. It looked like rubber cement and smelled like rotten eggs. Every morning she cleaned it off the roof so she would have a roof the next morning.

The escape pod was no match, and the homing beacon was gone before they realized the danger. So why look to the skies? No one was coming because no one had been told where they were. Where she was.

Bring a child into this cursed existence? He had to be crazy.

Some people had trouble seeing past their training or life circumstances. In the High Imperial, no one had an abortion because no one would believe a child's life would be anything other than perfect. In the streets where she grew up, Maribeth knew better.

The only path to a better life was to make a bargain. Every decision is a bargain. You weigh one choice against the other and you bargain that your life will get better if you proceed one way and not the other.

Being on this planet, there were very few choices left for her. It felt like Joseph relished taking more choices away as she grew dependent on him for the ration sticks. When she taught herself to fish and to harvest the AquaFruit in the volcanic craters, he threw a fit. He told her that he would leave her here when the exploratory scouts discovered them. He could say that she had made an attempt on his life. It was her word against a high Imperial.

So you weigh one choice against another, and you bargain that your life will get better.

Joseph asked her for a child, and she asked him for a night of peace. She had asked him for a night alone, when she didn't have to share her time or her bed. This was another choice he wanted to take away from her.

But she made a bargain that her life would get better. That night she told Joseph she would give him a child. She gave him an extra portion of the AquaFruit wine she had learned how to ferment. Maybe he thought she was just trying to make him more agreeable, but she knew how strong the AquaFruit wine was. Countless sleepless nights had been cured by half as much as what she served him.

He never made it to bed that night, drifting off on the thrush rug that she had woven. Sound asleep, Joseph’s light frame hung limp as she carried him to the roof of the cabin. The cycles of brute-strength training that this planet had forced her into were finally paying off. The nets she had crafted to fish in the shallow waters would have to be sacrificed – she knew that as she tied him to the crossbeam of the roof.

The Sky Strands came a few hours later. Maribeth could only assume his shock as he awoke to his predicament, tied to the roof and pelted with acid goo. She didn't hear his screams though, because a healthy amount of AquaFruit wine had helped her close out today as well. As she slept safely under the roof, Joseph cursed her existence above her. Or at least she assumed he did.

By the time she awoke the next morning there was little of his skin left. He must have died long before his organs and bones were exposed to the Sky Strands, though no one can be sure.

She had weighed her choices and made a bargain that her life would get better. So every day she looked to the Sky. Maybe they would find her, maybe they wouldn't. The Sky had already saved her once.