One Step at a Time

One Step at a Time, published in the Vivid Worlds anthology by Slab Press, has been shortlisted for the BSFA Short Fiction award.

Editor Donna Scott has kindly allowed me to showcase the story here during the awards process. If you enjoy the story, you can find the anthology itself at the usual venues: https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=wctnzjPhB9SYyPz8WkSXhVWQk3XIOahdzdC9L9U5Si4

by Rick Danforth

Like its owner, Cold Harbour Farm had seen much better days. They had both survived the now perpetual smog, the downturn of society and the time Charlotte had tried to homebrew mead.

Another thing that had seen better days was the tractor she was kicking to life.

Electric had long ago replaced the diesel behemoths of her childhood, but percussive maintenance had stood the test of time.

As the tractor whirred into life, Charlotte thanked whatever guardian angel was watching over her and closed the cab door. After waiting for the air filters to ding green, she removed her respirator to bask in the purified air of the tractor cab. A brief yet welcome respite.

A respite that ended when she saw a tall figure in black walking between the stone walls of the road that snaked between the lush fields to arrive at the farm’s front gate. The air that was so inhospitable to Charlotte caused the plant life to flourish.

“Shit on it. Jon!” Charlotte swore and then remembered to press the radio button on her hip. “Jon! We have a priest coming.”

“Where are you?” asked Jon. “North field, facing the road. You?”

“Sorting out the cheap-ass air purifier you say is all we can afford.”

It’s more than we can afford, thought Charlotte. The law said you had to have one to help the world, they had two. Given the lack of enforcement, some didn’t have any. They were doing far more than their fair share. But it wasn’t the time for that. “Can you help or not?”

“What flavour of help?”

“As intimidating as possible. Don’t worry about effectiveness,” said Charlotte. The priest didn’t look like they were carrying any heavy gear. If a shotgun wouldn’t work, there would be little call for much else.

“OK. You keep them busy. I’ll be with you after the power-on-self-test.”

Charlotte nodded to herself, as she drew an old-fashioned shotgun from the cab. She pressed a button and the less old-fashioned auto-targeting scope flicked into life.

Cradling it in the hook of her arm, and reattaching her respirator, she walked through the long grass that would hopefully feed the next generation of cows after they emerged from the bio-fabricators.

The priest made no effort to hide. Why would he? His job was to spread the horrible, toxic word of an idea so stupid Charlotte couldn’t see how it lingered. He just stood at the gate, in his plain black suit with matching respirator, waving a long, thin hand.

“Hello there, I’m Thomas,” said the priest, as Charlotte neared. “I just wanted to meet you and share a kind blessing on this lovely day.”

“Lovely day? It’s fucking freezing, and the air pollution means I can’t take this off.” Charlotte flicked at the respirator on her face.

“Well, it is as fine as we can expect.” Thomas flashed a wide grin that gave his trim figure an almost skeletal appearance. “And if you don’t like how the Earth is coming to, then you can always kill yourself and help her recover?”

“Don’t beat around the bush,” said Charlotte with a barking laugh. “Thought you might buy me a drink first. Bit of foreplay.”

“Earth has precious time left, and it’s best for both her and you that I don’t waste time. We both know the state of

the world. We both know the abject failure of humanity to do a damned thing about it. If you want to help the planet, you can offer no greater assistance than a painless death to aid the healing process.” Thomas clapped his hands together and bowed his head.

“If I wanted to help the planet, I’d run a farm where I spend ten per cent of the bloody income on air purifier filters.” Charlotte sniffed, then spat out the line Jon said earnestly each time. “One step at a time.”

“And why put yourself through all that,” said Thomas, changing gears seamlessly. “It would be much easier to die, don’t you think? No stress, no pain. Just peace.”

Charlotte wanted to say, oh God she wanted to say, “You’re a fucking parasite. Take your self-serving nonsense back to where you came from and leave us alone.”

She didn’t say this aloud, because although a woman of sixty probably had a lot less future than one of twenty, she was far more careful about it. Especially around a man who openly wanted her dead.

As Charlotte wondered what she could possibly say, Jon saved her the effort.

He came in on the farming mech suit. They were supposed to be the next generation of industrial farming equipment, a giant walking frame of metal, but they had never truly replaced the humble tractor. But right now, ten feet high surrounded by metal with a baling fork in one hand and a flamethrower lit in the other, it looked far more intimidating than a tractor could ever hope to be unless it was on fire and dropped on your foot.

With the arm ending in fire, Jon gestured and blew a plume of flame ten feet long. “Why don’t you clear off.”

Thomas didn’t bat an eyelid. “Good morning. Have you ever considered the sweet release of suicide?”

Charlotte cocked the shotgun and rested it on the priest’s

sternum. It couldn’t compare to the mech suit in size, but a cold barrel to the flesh spoke volumes. “Get off our land before I send you where you want us to go.”

“It’s not my time yet, unfortunately. I have to shepherd others.” Thomas held his hands up in the air. “But if you ever want to talk, I have a beautiful spot near the lake. I’ll always have coffee and biscuits for guests.”

“No coffee in the world is worth that,” said Charlotte, her voice loud and clear despite the rattle of the respirator.

After the priest was a blur moving between the dry-stone walls, Charlotte took a deep breath. She safed her shotgun, although she had never chambered a round, and put it on her back while she bit her lip.

Jon took longer to relax. The guilt of involving him hit Charlotte like a brick as she watched him stand still in the mech, fists clenched to the controls, his eyes straight forward, straining, waiting for a threat to arrive.

Tonight was unlikely to offer much sleep for Jon, it would bring back his memories of wearing a uniform in a vain attempt to keep the country together. It was such a shame that keeping it together had meant tearing some of the individuals apart.

“We maybe need up the security. Some cameras, early warning, maybe a fence?”

“Hmm,” said Jon, his brain taking longer to adjust from the action than it had Charlotte. “It would slow down buying that next air purifier though?”

Charlotte bit her tongue about it being a damned fool purchase. She needed to relax him, not stress him further. “It would. But if we can’t keep it safe, not much point in having it?”

“True.”

“Why don’t you take the mech back to the barn and I’ll get lunch on?” asked Charlotte, forcing a smile. “We have some

of the bacon you like left. And plenty of eggs.” “I need to secure the fence near the riverside?”

“There’s no cows in it yet, it can wait,” said Charlotte firmly. Jon needed a period of relaxation. The bio-fabricator could start churning out calves the moment the field could take them, but that could wait until Jon was calm enough to not see them as a threat.

She’d been hoping to raise the long-ignored question of whether to use the machine to print their own fertilised embryo that sat in the freezer, but it looked like today wasn’t the day for that.

Tomorrow, she’d have to find a new excuse. Just like every other day.

Lunch came from bacon made from their own pigs, eggs from their own chickens, and cheese from their own cows. All birthed from the bio-fabricator out in the barn, modified by the Livestock Genetics Resequencing Program to breathe the toxic fumes they called air.

It was accompanied by bread they traded from one of the farms near Robin Hood’s Bay and coffee from the Biodome at Honeysuckle. Charlotte had no time for the breeders who had segregated themselves away from the world, but they made a good dark roast.

The wooden table in front of the faux fireplaces and the smooth stone flagstones of the old farmhouse gave a good rustic feel to the kitchen. At least if you ignored the metal shutters, screens and speakers for the smart house that had all been bolted on when Charlotte and Jon had renovated an abandoned old homestead.

They said nothing as they ate. Jon rarely talked during meals; said it defeated the point of putting food in his mouth to spit words out of it at the same time. The silence felt as heavy as a blanket.

But it was as comfortable and snug as a blanket too. Charlotte didn’t feel the urge to play anything through the speakers or screens littering the kitchen. The soft tapping of metal on ceramic and the faux crackle of the fire was all they needed.

Only when Charlotte was leaning back, hands on her stomach and wondering if she should make another round of coffee, did she say, “You did well today.”

“Ta.” Jon.

“Do you think we’ll be seeing him again?”

“I have a feeling we will,” said Charlotte with a sigh. She had hoped to handle such issues by herself, for now. She didn’t want Jon any more unsettled than he already was.

But that ship had sailed right into a cliff face.

Charlotte shook her head. In a fair world, the priest would have walked off somewhere down south, leaving the East Riding far behind. “He said he was going near the lake.”

“Let’s have a look.” Jon went to one of the screens. “House, fire up Herdbot-3a. Sent it to go have a look.”

“Herdbot-3a online,” said House.

The screen nearest Jon fired into life as footage zoomed low across the farm, skirting the hedges and scattering chickens like bowling pins. The bot went so fast and low Charlotte wondered if it might cause a few unexpected egg drops.

But Charlotte had other concerns than the chicken’s welfare. “How often do you use these?”

“Here and there. Downloaded a custom firmware with self-piloting.”

“That explains why you didn’t want fence cameras.” Charlotte tried to sound disapproving, but she was mostly impressed. It had never occurred to her to double up the herdbots as security.

“He’s there.” Jon tapped the screen which displayed one of the nearby lakes just outside the paddock. “That little cave

between the lake and the road.”

“Hmm.” Charlotte looked at the screen. She didn’t like what she saw. An airproof tent, fire and a few crates made it look like he was staying a while. “As long as it’s not on our land, it’s not our problem. Will keep an eye on the fence, like.”

“Yes,” said Jon, pausing with a pained face. “But if he stays a while?”

Charlotte shrugged, then swore as realisation dawned. “It means he’s picked a spot to…usher us?”

“Yep.”

“Damn.” Charlotte sagged in her chair as her near future settled on her. “I’m going to have to do something about that.”

“Well—” started Jon.

“I’ll do it. You stay out of that, go fix the air purifiers. You keep telling me we need to do our bit, well go fix our bit. I’ll fix this.” Charlotte watched Jon pause, then give a nod of agreement.

“Just one step at a time.”

It was four miles from the farm to Greater Cowden. Along the surprisingly well-preserved road were derelict houses, burnt-out husks of barns, and warehouses reclaimed by nature. Aside from the road which was being used just enough to keep plants off and just little enough to not cause damage, nature was reclaiming the waste of the civilisation.

The last forty years had been harsh for the planet, but even harsher for Britain. If you could even call the last dredges of government left Britain.

But for as Charlotte and Jon, it had provided opportunities. They had chosen the best of the abandoned farms. Worked and grafted until gleaming, shining farmsteads stood alone amongst a scenery of ruins from the previous world. One

day, hopefully, they may even leave it behind to the offspring who sat in the freezer between the cow embryos and Jon’s ice-lollies.

The best part of Greater Cowden was the Stumble Inn. It was the only pub on this side of East Yorkshire, or at least the only one Charlotte knew was in walking distance to get home. There was little point in leaving the farm to look further away, so she didn’t. Nor did anyone else, aside troublesome priests.

In deference to the past, the pub had white and timber faux Tudor frontage and an adorable painted sign. In deference to the present, it had hermetically sealed windows and an airlock door so that patrons could enjoy their drinks without the risk of choking to death on polluted air.

It was an oddly reassuring hiss as Charlotte stepped through the chrome elephant of an airlock, and into an otherwise oak-panelled pub with wooden tables, dim lighting and hand-pulled pints.

She avoided a mysterious stain on the floor and took a stool at the bar next to other like-minded farmers that she mostly recognised. The same bar she had met Jon at twenty years earlier.

“Dark Mild?” asked Big Rob, the bartender. Charlotte always wondered how his towering frame fit through the airlock. Or where on earth he had found someone to surgically install air purifiers into his neck, little fans whirring beneath his jowls.

“Ta,” said Charlotte, taking a seat along the bar. It wasn’t full at this time, but there were always a few people trying to escape either the work or the loneliness of their farmsteads.

“Had a feelingyou’d be in. Heard you had priest problems?” “Aye. Just the one, like.” Charlotte shook her head, but didn’t bother asking Rob how he knew. The man knew

everything, aside from how to make food taste edible.

“Said it was best for the planet?”

“Aye. Tried to sweet talk us. Offered us tea and biscuits for God’s sake.”

“You may want to talk to Priya ‘bout that. They had some dealings with one over at Leven last year.” Rob nodded at a figure in the corner in a red coat.

Charlotte nodded her thanks and bought another pint, adding a stout for Rob as thanks. The company of others and the homebrewed beer was only half the reason people came here; the other half was to trade information. A job much harder now that websites numbered in the dozens.

The reason for coming here was certainly not the food that Rob so enthusiastically made. As she sat down next to Priya, he slid a complimentary bowl of chips across.

The limp, soggy chips were the not only the worst she had had in her life but the worst since the advent of agriculture. But she ate a couple to be polite, shuddering as Rob turned back to the bar.

“Still awful?” asked Priya. Charlotte nodded.

“He boils vegetables so long they melt in your mouth in the worst kind of way.” Priya sighed and looked sadly at the chips as if they were a deceased friend. “They as bad as the priest you’re having issues with?”

“Aye, one turned up last week. Was very reluctant to sod off.”

“Probably wanted your farmhouse to work out of. Means he’s probably holed up round the corner from you.”

“So why does he want the house?”

“They’re still people at the end of the day?” Priya shrugged. “He wants a nice bed and dry walls as much as you do. Basic needs of humanity.”

“Not sure how they call themselves humanity when they’re going around trying to end it.”

“I had an ex go to it once,” said Priya with a forlorn sigh. “Never would have dreamt of it. She loved her farm, won prizes for her jams. She had big expansion plans to make jam for the market up at Sigglesthorne. Then I came back one day and that was it. They like to dig their own graves first and then die in them. Something about giving back to the earth the most via that.”

Charlotte started picturing Jon digging a grave and immediately put it out of her mind. It wasn’t something she could picture. Not without crying. “What do I do?”

“Fancy a smoke outside?”

Charlotte didn’t, you couldn’t smoke in a mask, but she followed Priya outside. They didn’t have to say anything, they both knew the score. You could talk about whatever you wanted in the pub and no one would care unless it involved fleecing one of the patrons. It was a mostly supportive community of folk trying to scratch a living from the ravaged land in the shadow of the local breeding dome.

But police-based monitoring was a different problem. It wasn’t often that you even saw copper in the wider Hornsea area. Charlotte had no idea where they were even based, but if you talked about some of the bigger crimes indoors you were likely to get a visit.

“So priests might look dumb, but they’re not dumb enough to think everyone can be persuaded to think their thoughts. They get them all out of some half-baked book by a chap named Malteaser or something.” Priya shook her head, then ate something of her pocket with every sign of relish. “But if people can’t be persuaded then they aren’t above helping them along. It’s in their best interests at heart.”

“How the hell do they do that?”

“They always find a way. Could be an air leak, or a gas fire. Could be a knife in the night. Sometimes they stumble across an old weapons depot from the army. They’re surprisingly

adept at finding those.” Priya’s eyebrows danced like she suspected something, but Charlotte had more pressing queries.

“They want me to die, and they could have anything from a box of matches to a tactical nuclear weapon? That’s helpful.” Charlotte rubbed her temples; the stress was already rising. Unfortunately, Thomas might be the only one with a cure for her stress level. “What the hell do I do about it? I just have a battered old shotgun and farming equipment.”

“Well.” Priya looked out onto the coast. Where battered land slowly gave into the seas inch by inch. Then she held a memory stick up. “Take your printer offline. Use the designs. Then purge the entire printer memory before you reconnect the printer.”

“What’s on it?”

“Nothing I want to say aloud. But as long you have a 3rd generation printer and a full tank of printing fluids, you’ll be fine.” Priya paused. “And make sure you have plenty of land plot acid.”

“Thank you,” said Charlotte with a frown. Every farm had to have the synthetic blended acid to dissolve the leftover munitions from the war. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even checked if they had any.

“It’s alright. Buy us a pint or two and we’ll call it even.”

When Charlotte stumbled home far later than she had either intended or promised, she was delighted to see the house had shutters down, with thin red lines of light running around the house to warn strangers it was in sentry mode.

Even Jon didn’t argue about protecting the building they slept in; he must have turned it on as he went to bed. He always went to bed earlier than Charlotte, saying nothing good happened after nine pm.

Charlotte had a different opinion, so she asked House to

lower the shutters in the conservatory while she ripped off her respirator. Then she went to a battered, drinks globe near the window, opened a vial of daypasser and poured it into a crystal whisky glass. The synthetic drug was the perfect end to a day, soaking her muscle pain and stress into the ground with a mild aftertaste of tin and fudge.

Like the dome-runner had promised, it was happiness in a bottle. Charlotte just wished she had listened to his advice about not using heavy machinery before the time she had ploughed a field with furrows like a jigsaw puzzle.

“House,” said Charlotte, sinking into a battered old armchair facing the window. “Please play some low jazz and turn the shutters off when I fall asleep.”

“Protocol twelve initiated,” said House, with a slightly lower voice than normal. “There are two critical alerts for your attention.”

Something deep down in Charlotte’s mind screamed, but as the daypasser trickled into her neurons it was like yelling into the Grand Canyon and listening for the echo. Eventually, she muttered, “Why didn’t you tell me before I took trip?”

“You told me not to bother you after you had been to the pub. Protocol seven.”

Charlotte giggled. “I did say that. Play alerts.”

“The priest has been spotted near the edge of the far field.” “That’s probably a bad thing,” said Charlotte, eventually.

“Did he steal any cattle?”

“No. You do not currently have cattle.” “A good way to stop thieving.”

“But Jon has been talking to them.”

“The cattle or the priest.” Charlotte yawned. “The priest.”

“Remind me in the morning,” said Charlotte as she started to fade into a purplish-green haze. It sounded like it might be important. But it could be important in the morning.

Charlotte woke in the conservatory to a warm blanket and the smell of frying sausages in the kitchen. Both were the benefits of being married to a considerate man who was an early riser.

Jon just nodded as Charlotte walked into the kitchen, enjoying a sausage sandwich and coffee with the safe knowledge that with her headache and dry mouth, this was the worst she would feel that day.

That feeling was dispelled immediately as House sent her a private message reminding her what she had been told last night. After the pork was nothing more than a lingering aftertaste, Charlotte said, “House said you’ve been talking to the priest.”

“Bloody House.” Jon looked up and glared at one of the ceiling speakers. “I told you not to track me. I’m not cattle.”

House said, “Tracking user activities is one of my core services. It provides multiple benefits such as—”

“Did you talk?” asked Charlotte, as the house droned on about control panel configuration and contacting a vendor who hadn’t existed in decades.

“He said hello when I was repairing the fence.” Jon shrugged. “Sometimes, you just get talking, you know? And he had some biscuits. Good ones, with jam in.”

“Hmm.” Charlotte knew the feeling. She wasn’t sure Jon had ever displayed it in his entire life. Half the village thought he was mute. “How is dying better than living?”

“It’s not about dying. It’s accepting that this is a way to repair the planet. Humans have done enough damage, why not just leave the planet alone? If Earth could talk, I’m sure that’s what it would want.”

“Do you want to die though? Are you looking for a way out?” asked Charlotte. She hated asking the question, Jon always struggled with thoughts of that calibre. She just hoped his solution wouldn’t be a high-velocity calibre.

“It’s not as easy as that. Not as simple as that. What is?” said Jon, busying himself washing dishes that were already clean. “Who wants to die? But we have to make millions of changes to help the planet. I’m not convinced we’re helping it enough doing what we’re doing.”

“We have two air filters. And surely you want to usher in that embryo we have ready?” Charlotte swallowed. She had wanted to deploy that embryo into the fabricator for over a decade. Waiting for Jon to finally choose a side of the fence he perpetually hovered on. “Remember one step at a time?”

“As said. Nothing’s ever simple.” Jon put the thrice-cleaned dishes back in the washing rack and turned round. “But you know what is simple?”

“What?”

“I have cows to deploy so we have beef to sell.” Charlotte watched Jon go. She wasn’t sure what to do about

the priest, but it needed to happen sooner rather than later.

It took a while for Charlotte to build up both her arsenal and the courage to do the job she had to do. She had killed pests, cattle and once a rabid dog, but a person felt very different. Even if that person was advocating the end of all other sentient life on Earth.

They also occasionally helped people shuffle on from their mortal plane, so Charlotte worried they must have some skills and toolsets in that arena.

Both of which meant Charlotte wanted no part of a major confrontation unless she had stacked the deck.

With a farm there were a thousand jobs to do, so it gave her time to think as she fed animals, maintained equipment, did inventories and checked her tablet feed for news of priests.

Eventually, she built up the courage to be the adult she wanted to be. It was that or clear the noxious goo out of the filters which made her gag. She disconnected the fabricators

from the network and surfed the chip.

It was a mildly terrifying collection of items designed with one purpose. Flicking through, Charlotte selected a few which were designed to turn the farm lifting mech into a walking tank. Armour plating to cover the delicate occupant, an acid spraying arm and a railgun that had been designed for a war that had never happened between countries that probably didn’t exist anymore.

It took two days for the industrial fabricator to finish. Two days in which Charlotte planned a myriad of excuses to tell Jon who thankfully didn’t complain about the stacked print queue. He was busy with the bio-fabricators in the far field, not even coming back for lunch, and Charlotte was grateful for it. So grateful she would probably embrace whatever bizarre farm animal hybrid he came back with. Nothing could be worse than the lizard cows.

When the printers had finished, Charlotte connected the armour to the mech and went to storm the cave.

In Charlotte’s youth, the forest had been a pleasant meadow where middle-class families went for picnics or long rambles on the weekend while saying how nice it was to be back in nature.

Now it was truly nature once more. Where people needed masks, and cows needed artificially created embryos, the vegetation managed just fine. Free of native animals to tear it apart, the trees, bushes and weeds ballooned into one almighty mess that would take a team with machetes to clear. Or one angry woman with a mech-cum-battlesuit. The heavy feet smashed brush and shrubs underneath to clear a path to the lake. Branches and pine needles flailed uselessly against the viewing screen, but somehow one of the needles

broke into the armour to wedge into Charlotte’s foot.

She was still swearing as she broke through the foliage and halted at a greenish lake. At the edge of the water was

a battered milk float of all things. It was charging from a nearby solar panel, and where the old milk urns would have lined the back there were metal casings with a green hinge.

As Charlotte moved closer, she sighed with relief that they weren’t nuclear, chemical or any new level of weirdness that man had taken upon themselves to destroy man. This was something that she, via the suit additions, was actually equipped to deal with. She sprayed the land plot acid over the devices until the metal was a sodden dark green.

The acid blend seeped through the metal and made the gunpowder useless. It was a farming necessity so that spare munitions from the downfall didn’t interfere with cows or ploughs. Both of which reacted negatively to explosives.

It took less than a minute before the green metal was fizzing away, holes open to the elements, and the powder was following suit. Charlotte followed with another spray. It wasn’t the time to be frugal.

“What on earth do you think you are doing?” asked Thomas, only the mildest annoyance showing in his face and tone as he emerged from the brush. “That’s important.”

“Was,” said Charlotte cheerfully, noticing that the closer bombs were now halfway dissolved. “It’s a lot of nothing now.”

“Do you know how long it took to salvage those? Months of hard work gone to waste. Do you know how many souls I could have ushered into the next life?”

“Yes,” said Charlotte quietly, the cheer fading as the weight of the moment dawned on her. “Myself and Jon. Far too many.”

“They weren’t all for you, you self-centred idiot.” Thomas took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “It’s alright. The world provided once, and it will provide again. It may take some time, but I am sure I can gather enough to fulfil my

purpose.”

Charlotte knew there and then that she couldn’t allow that to happen. If not here, he would just pipe his poison elsewhere. She raised the gun arm, pulled the trigger and fulfilled his purpose to die to help the planet.

His head jerked back, and the body collapsed onto the floor. Charlotte took a few steps forward to confirm the body was dead. It didn’t take long. In her experience, bodies tended to have a lot more head. And a lot less redness seeping into the ground.

Charlotte felt nothing but a weird numbness that spread through her body. It told her that something would come to her later. A grenade clutched in the priest’s hand would hopefully lessen that emotional burden.

There was a twitch ahead of her. Charlotte saw a head sticking out of a hole in the ground.

“Jon?” asked Charlotte, numb fingers hanging uselessly in the mech’s control gauntlet. Desperation powered her as she shook her head and moved towards him

He was a few feet past the priest, into the tree line, sat in a shallow grave with a gaunt face. Freshly covered graves around him filled the small clearing. There was one empty one next to him that Charlotte now used the mech-suit to stand in, crouching as low as the hydraulics would allow.

Jon stared at her, sweat running down his face with the effort of sitting upright. “I’m sorry to sneak away. I wanted to do it together, but I knew you’d never agree.”

“Why would I want to die?” asked Charlotte. “I just wanted to sit on a farm, spend my life with you and slowly make the world a better place for our future child.”

“It’s not just…” started Jon, before sprawling back into the grave.

“Jon?” demanded Charlotte, moving the mech so close the viewing screen could touch Jon’s face. A face she could now see was bereft of life.

Charlotte just walked away from the farm. She couldn’t deal with the body, not now. She couldn’t even consider what the right path might be. Instead, she returned to the house almost blind from the tears running down her face in the mech control suit. Once back, she stored the mech away and cleaned the air filters. Next, she fed the cows, collected the eggs and finally loaded the bio-fabricator to produce her child.

Later, when she felt up to it, Charlotte used the mech-suit to dig a proper grave and buried Jon in the bottom field. That year, the hops came up richer and thicker than in previous years. The crop was sold for more than usual, and Charlotte used the profits to buy another air purifier.

She and baby Joan would make the world a better place, just one step at a time.