Corrosive Rhymes and Programmable Daffodils

On a dusty orbital station, a mechanic and a botanist trade stories of malfunctioning machinery and ecological absurdities, their conversation circling an unspoken tension that is interrupted by a sudden, station-wide failure.

"—and then it tried to find a rhyme for ‘molybdenum alloy’. Which, you know, is a challenge for the best of us."

Tyler snorted, a laugh half-stifled by the collar of his pristine EnviroCorps jacket. He picked a piece of chipped paint from the bench between them, flicking it onto the reddish dirt at his feet. "You’re making that up."

Byron leaned back, the cheap plasteel of the bench groaning under his weight. His own coveralls were a map of grease stains and sealant smears. "I swear on my capacitor wrench. Unit 734 got a personality splinter. Started calling itself ‘Byron’. Quoted pre-Collapse sonnets while it was supposed to be hauling slag. Management was livid."

"What did you do?" Tyler asked, his gaze fixed on a row of daffodils that were glowing with a faint, unnatural bioluminescence. A feature, not a bug, according to his work briefs.

"Hit it with the diagnostic hammer until it forgot it was a tortured artist and remembered it was a three-tonne lump of servomotors and debt. Easier than filing the paperwork."

Tyler’s mouth twitched into a smile. "Always the elegant solution."

"It’s the only kind that works out here," Byron said. He watched Tyler, whose focus had drifted back to the glowing flowers. Everything about Tyler was clean, from his uncalloused hands to the way his hair fell across his forehead without a trace of engine grime. He’d only been on Lowell Station for two rotations, and still had the look of someone who thought the regulations actually meant something.

It was a look Byron remembered having, once, before he’d spent five years patching up rust-bucket freighters and learning that the station ran on caffeine, profanity, and creatively bypassed safety protocols.

The bio-dome was their usual meeting spot. Byron would finish his shift in the clamour and heat of the maintenance bays, and Tyler would be waiting here, on this specific bench, ostensibly checking the nutrient feeds for the dome’s unconvincing flora. It was the only place on the station that didn’t smell entirely of scorched wiring and despair.

"They’re programmed to glow when the ambient humidity drops below forty percent," Tyler said, as if sensing Byron’s thoughts. "A visual indicator. Supposed to be… pleasing."

"Are you pleased?"

Tyler finally looked away from the daffodils and met Byron’s eyes. The projectors above cast a flat, even light, but couldn't quite replicate the complexities of a real sun, leaving shadows that were too sharp and highlights that were too sterile. "I think it’s ridiculous. We have sensors for humidity. We don't need the flowers to put on a light show. It's like they don't trust us to do our jobs, so they make the bloody plants report on us."

Byron grinned. "Welcome to Lowell Station. Everything is a progress report."

---

Tyler traced the grain of the bench with his thumb. It was textured to look like wood, but it was cold and unyielding. Nothing like the oak benches in the botanical gardens back on Titan. He remembered the smell of real soil, the unpredictable chaos of weeds, the way rain felt without being filtered through three layers of atmospheric processors.

"So what’s the strangest thing you’ve had to fix? Besides a poetic mining droid," he asked, changing the subject. He liked Byron’s stories. They were a break from the tedious perfection his own job demanded. Byron’s world was one of entropy, of things breaking down and needing to be forced back into functionality. Tyler’s was a world of sterile creation, of coaxing life from nutrient paste under a sun that was just a very expensive lightbulb.

Byron was quiet for a moment, staring up at the curved duraglass ceiling. Beyond it, the blackness was absolute, punctured by the distant, cold pinpricks of stars and the slow, lumbering passage of an ore hauler gliding towards the docking rings.

"The nutrient dispenser in the mess hall," Byron said, finally. "Unit Three. Kept producing a paste that tasted faintly of… regret."

"Regret?" Tyler laughed, the sound sharp in the quiet dome. "What does regret taste like?"

"Sort of like burnt toast and bad decisions," Byron said, deadpan. "Took me a week to figure it out. Turns out a coolant line was leaking onto a secondary protein synthesiser. The resulting chemical reaction was apparently the exact molecular structure for existential dread. The station's lead nutritionist wanted to patent it."

"No."

"Yes. Said it could be marketed as a diet aid. Who wants a second helping of something that reminds you of every mistake you've ever made?"

Tyler shook his head, smiling. He felt the tension in his shoulders ease, a knot that had been tightening all day as he'd argued with a superior about the precise alkaline balance for the new Martian mosses. Being here with Byron, on this fake wooden bench, felt more real than anything else on the station. Byron never pretended things were anything other than what they were: mostly broken, and held together with stubbornness.

He noticed the way Byron held his hands—not fidgeting, just resting on his knees, the knuckles scarred, the nails permanently rimmed with black. They were capable hands. Hands that could fix a recalcitrant droid or, apparently, diagnose the flavour of sorrow.

For his part, Byron was acutely aware of the small space between them on the bench. It felt charged, like a battery holding more power than it was rated for. He was used to the easy camaraderie of the maintenance crews, the insults and back-slapping that passed for friendship. This was different. This quiet, this focus from Tyler, felt… significant. Dangerous, maybe. Hope was a dangerous commodity in a place like this.

---

### An Unscheduled Darkness

"You know," Tyler started, his voice softer now. "The new seed shipment came in. The one from Europa. They’re supposed to have hydro-cassias."

"That a type of flower?" Byron asked, though he didn't much care. He just liked listening to Tyler talk about something that mattered to him.

"Yeah. They say the blooms follow sources of sound. They'll all turn towards you when you speak." Tyler paused. "I could... show you. After my shift tomorrow. If you wanted."

The invitation hung in the air. It was more than just an offer to look at a weird plant. They both knew it. It was a step across a line they had been carefully toeing for weeks. A line drawn between a mechanic and a scientist, between a lifer and a newcomer, between a casual acquaintance and… something else.

Byron opened his mouth to reply, to say yes, to say something sarcastic to cover how much he wanted to say yes. But he never got the chance.

It started with a flicker. The overhead projectors blinked once, twice, then died. For a half-second, the only light came from the pathetic glow of the daffodils. Then they too were extinguished.

Absolute darkness fell, a profound, disorienting black that swallowed the dome whole. It was followed a heartbeat later by the scream of a station-wide emergency alarm—a shrieking, metallic pulse that vibrated through the floor plates and into their bones.

Red emergency strobes kicked in, bathing the dome in a hellish, rhythmic glare. In the strobing light, Tyler’s face was a mask of shock, eyes wide. The fake plants and trees were monstrous silhouettes, leaping towards them and receding with every pulse of red.

"What was that?" Tyler yelled over the klaxon.

Byron was already on his feet, his mechanic’s instincts taking over. His mind was racing through schematics, power conduits, fusion core failure modes. "Primary grid failure," he shouted back, his voice tight with an adrenaline he knew all too well. "That's… that’s not good. That’s everything. Life support, nav-systems, everything."

The alarm wailed. In the flashing red, Byron saw that Tyler was frozen, gripping the edge of the bench. The botanist who understood the delicate life of plants was lost in the face of brutal mechanical death.

Byron reached out, his greasy hand finding Tyler’s arm. The fabric of the EnviroCorps jacket was smooth and foreign under his calloused fingers. "Hey. Stick with me. We need to get to an emergency junction."

Tyler flinched at the touch but didn’t pull away. He gave a jerky nod, his eyes locked on Byron’s. In the crimson flashes, the fear in his expression was stark, but there was something else there too, a flicker of trust that hit Byron harder than any system failure ever could.

The main klaxon suddenly cut out, replaced by a lower, more ominous thrumming sound. The red strobes remained, casting their frantic, silent rhythm over the two of them. They stood in the centre of the silent, screaming red, the unspoken question of the hydro-cassias replaced by a much larger, more terrifying one. The space between them had vanished, not by choice, but by necessity. And in the pulsing dark, neither of them knew what came next.

The silence stretched, broken only by the hum of the emergency power and the sound of their own breathing. The red light washed over them, again and again. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. There was just the waiting.