hearts and flowers

Trace finally moved her glorius eyes from the microscope.

"they're perfect", she gushed, "sooo much nicer that the huge ones you gave me last time".

i was rather proud of those giant rosebushes, with theor pink and white blooms like wedding headdresses. i said nothing.

"how long did they take this time?" she demanded.

i mimed a modest shrug, clearly visible - i hoped - on the screen.

"about two hundred and sixty years," i admitted seld-effacingly, "i had a bit of trouble getting themjust the right colour - they kept going green on me".

Trace peered again atthe microscopic roses i had made for her, obviously drinking in the colours - orange and pink and yellow.

" how did you manage the dewdrops?" she asked, spinning around to look directly at my image on the screen.

"it's a secret," i replied. a full answer would have required a lenghtly technical explaination about the use of a concentrated solution of complex sugars, produced by the secretions of a micro-organism i had designed especially for the purpose.

her attention returned to the microscope, once again enthralled, to my entire delight, by the sub-miniature but the perfect roses i had crafted her.

"it's time, my love," i said eventually.

"yes isupposed it must be," Trace replied sadly, tossing back her blonde hair.

one of my drones led her back towards the suspended-animation chamber, the shining metal of the manipulators gently pressing against the softness of her skin. through the remote, i carefully prepared the couch inside the chamber, then gestured for her to enter.

orbiting a distant star our little habitat, our sanctuary, spun on around the distant star once knwon in the catalogues of ancient earth as bygones. but in the exodus, the diaspora from the civilisational collapse that seemed to engulf everything we held dear, we managed to get away, we thought, intact. but, in a last gasp of senseless violence, i was severely injured, irreparably damaged beyond even the habitat's capabilitu for healing. now, i am only able to exist in simulation, my mental patterns executing on the processing array which infuses every part of the structure - part buiding, part spacecraft - in which we live.


* to be continue *