Monolith Cocktail Blog

The Monolith Cocktail Serialises Andrew C. Kidd’s Tennyson Imbued sci-fi Saga.

Dabbling over the last decade with showcasing exciting, sometimes improbable, intriguing work from new and aspiring writers, the Monolith Cocktail has played host to serialisations of stories by Rick Clarke (of Vukovar and The Tearless Life infamy) and Ayfer Simms (the Franco-Istanbul writer, and for a few years, an integral member of the MC team offering various reviews and conducting interviews).

Furnishing the site since Covid with review pieces and the odd feature, Glaswegian-based writer Andrew C. Kidd now adds his name to this list. Andrew shares his grand interstellar saga, Tennyson In Space, with the MC readers through an epic serialisation. Over the last four months or so we’ve published the Prologue, Part One and Part Two of The Violin, all four parts of the Hic Sunt Leones Et Corvi suite and the Pink Nepenthe. Now we are proud to share the first two chapters of Appl. E.

Appl. E

“Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me
Walking the cold and starless road of death”
From Œnone by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“How sweet.
Just to register emotion, jealousy – devotion,
And really feel the part”
Tin Man, Wizard of Oz

Part 1

All manner of blues in their nightly state were gradually lightened to a lilac hue by the bright white starlight that circled above Alard. Yawning silently, his final thoughts of the day had settled on all the possibilities of tomorrow’s conference.

Would he be scorned as his previous employers on Eris had scorned him? The Eridian administration had decided that they wished no part in his research. Possibly borne out of fear, they justified non-action through esoteric ethical codes and abstract governance. The contempt they had displayed only served as a catalyst to send him on the long road of discovery.

There was no doubt that Alard possessed a detailed knowledge of the science, yet it had been his enterprising spirit that had led him to identify the missing link in the equation – an equation that had stumped so many of the great scientists of his day. He deemed the inaction of his Eridian superiors to be unacceptable.

Let Alard do the bidding of the diffident. Alard the decisive! Alard the subversive!

Once his work had been published, validation would follow. After that, accolades and the yearning of all scholarly minds: affirmation.

Alard had fallen asleep.

The applause he had been receiving had become amplified to uncomfortable levels. The dream sequence had evidently changed. He stirred unpleasantly. A cold sweat enveloped him. Would he have to admit that the idea was never actually his? He gripped at the sheets.

His sleep-self descended into a cavernous place. He was weightless. The long limbs of a nightmarish phantom appeared from the abyss and started to grapple at his naked body. Beads of sweat trickled out. He was being pulled down into a small pool. At the point of submersion, he woke suddenly.

The porthole above him framed a scene of fervent lightness which was blackened only by the opaque canvas of deep space. Dry-mouthed, his mind reset in the awareness of his awake state. His heart rate slowly settled. Sleep would soon prevail once more.

His subconscious mind returned to that late December evening when he stumbled upon the seed that would blossom into his remarkable discovery.

*                      *                      *

Alard sat in the refectory of the Institut de Sobere. Three weeks had passed since his landing on the icy trans-Neptunian object. He had been working as an Auxiliaire Biomédical in the Département de Microbiologie on one of the research modules on Eris.

Dinner was a late affair that evening. A forgettable experiment in one of the accessory laboratories had run over and he arrived to pick at the dregs of the evening service. After tucking into the crusty winged remnants of some types of Orthoptera, a well-heeled laboratory manager chewed loudly on the bench in front of him. This corpulent woman had her back turned to him. She spoke confidently, and evidently, drunkenly.

‘Cut it out… with a k-knife, or a schalpel…’, she slurred, ‘…a scalpel!–’ clumsily correcting herself ‘–and… and I said… well, you know… blast! I really can’t remember in all honeschty?’ She laughed loudly.

Alard was dining alone. He looked around at the rows of benches, all full of people conversing and eating, most noisily.

‘Ahem!–’ the drunkard cleared her throat ‘–a scal-pel…’ She spilt the word in two, placing additional emphases on the ls. This had been an obvious attempt to retain some form of professional standing amongst the junior researchers who were accompanying her.

‘I… I must b’xshcused…’

After stumbling away from the bench to the toilet, Alard turned his attention to the two juniors talking quickly and quietly amongst themselves. He continued to tuck into his grilled grasshopper.

A short interval passed and the sottish drunk fumbled her way back over to the bench. Spittle glistened on her chin.

‘Yes… yes…’, she smiled contortedly. ‘I must admit that I have forgotten what I was saying.’

Exasperated expressions were etched on the young faces of those who sat with her.

‘You were talking about the funeral fields’, the boyish researcher said.

‘And the ethics council’, the other added. ‘You were telling us about your meeting with them – what did they say?’

She eyed her environment cautiously before whispering.

‘It was an outright rejection! And no blooming wonder…’ She paused to turn round to look at Alard who was playing masterfully at demonstrating disinterest in their conversation. Had he looked up, a face, beaming red in the warmth of the refectory and through the vasodilatory effects of the liquor, would have glared back at him.

‘Surely, they will have to rethink their decision. I mean–’

‘I think we will have to watch what we are schaying.’

The playful mask of the senior scientist suddenly revealed an angry temperament. Her orbicular face reddened further.

‘No… yes–’ a confused look emerged ‘–listen, we are in a public space, and we really schouldn’t be talking about such matters of such… of such…’ Words were clearly lost to her again.

‘Magnitude?’, the other junior transplanted, charging her superior’s glass with more of the crimson fluid.

‘Importan-schce was the word I was going to schay’, she misarticulated, taking a further sip of wine. ‘S-ay… I must insist that you stop interrupting me!’ She pronounced the sist of the word insist with a trailing th that sharpened on the tip of her tongue.

‘But it could provide the answer to biopolymer degradation. You said it yourself!’, the boyish inferior declared in hushed tones.

‘No… no, we must desist from any further discussion pertaining to this matter’, she reiterated, shaking her bulb-like head. Another mouthful of wine was gulped down. Her glass clinked as she placed it next to the emptied bottle.

‘In fact…’, she proceeded, ‘…the matter has been put to the same place where… that… ahem, I am presently going to the place of the matter.’ She tutted. ‘No! No… the matter of the place.’

She paused before standing up. Alard caught her awkward smile. Wine-stained teeth dulled in the half-light of the corridor that led away from the canteen. She was evidently, and unannouncedly, retiring to her quarters.

Alard raised his eyebrows subtly as he sipped from his cup. He remarked that the alcohol had clearly made her loquacious. It had imbued high spirits, yet he knew that she would have an altogether different demeanour tomorrow morning as she clung onto the bowled alter of veisalgia.

He returned to the remnants of his meal. The two junior researchers engaged in their private conversation of hushed tones and rapid glances around the room. Alard had an impossible job of understanding them. His mind fantasised about all the possible schemes they could be hatching. He resolved that he would find out what they had discovered, and why it was so important, and why their superior, upon momentary sobriety, had insisted on such sudden and unflinching confidentiality.

He stood up from his bench and walked over to the duo.

‘Hello’, he said, smiling at them with bright-eyes.

*                      *                      *

The morning of the conference had arrived. Alard woke to bright white starlight that crowned the sky. This was a projected visual. An image recorded in high-definition. The artificial luminance shone gradually to induce wakefulness.

Situated some several hundred meters underground, he felt the warmth of this base. It had been built as a defensive bunker in the Never Wars. Long vacated, the Domini had repurposed this as a neutral meeting place.

He had been told that underground streams flowed in abundance here. Alard took this rare opportunity to immerse himself in a water-bath. He stared at the pipes that appeared and reappeared at impossible angles across the four walls. His eyes stung a little in concentration. He knew that his sleep had been interrupted, yet the memory of what had caused his partial insomnia was indistinct. The black pool had been drained from his mind.

A dark suit had been selected for him by the Domini’s anthropomorphous assistants. Alard knew very little about couture. Having been given a choice of garments, he deferred such judgement to these humanoids. A gown, adorned with braided aiguillettes, was placed over his head in quiet ceremony.

He was accompanied from his room down a passageway. It narrowed to end at a small entranceway through which a large stone-grey chamber towered higher than he thought possible in these subterranean depths. It stretched out horizontally across his immediate horizon. The imposition of the conference hall had little effect on Alard. The magnitude of his discovery weighed heavily on his mind; it was far more formidable than any underground atrium.

He was quickly introduced to the Domini. This one-eyed elder studied the youthful scientist who stood before him. Alard’s compressed and block-like hexagonal face fascinated the Domini. His jaw was not so much chiselled, but roughly hewn, flattening out to a chin that was broader than most. The Domini imagined a sculptor who had evidently hammered too hard; corrective sanding had subsequently worn away more than intended.

Another automated assistant appeared. Alard was ushered away from the Domini. As he walked towards the area where the conference was taking place, he noticed the elder’s periodic smile and darting eyes. Alard knew that he was distracted.

His assumption had been correct, for although the Domini was playing the polite and unassuming role, he had sent two of the automated assistants to search Alard’s room. The visual display on the clear meniscus over the right eye of the Domini projected the output of these automations.

Alard had brought only one case with him which was presently upturned. The Domini spotted a large piece of fabric on the only table in the room. It was a quilt composed of variable square pieces of material. Each cutting appeared to have originated from hats and upper body garments and torn trouser pieces. Their dimensions were exact. A small sewn number, stitched into the top right of each square, suggested a cataloguing process. Whatever the purpose, the Domini considered this haphazard arrangement to be strange and meaningful.

Back in the chamber, Alard followed the steps of a small stairway that led to an elevated platform. Four automatons guarded this concourse; beyond it lay the Domini’s domain.

Above the gallery was a large portrait. The outline of the sitter was obscured by the inky-dark background they had been painted against. Alard could vaguely discern a figure cloaked in black – so black that those who dared to study it would claim to have been given a cursory insight into the very infinitude of time itself.

He walked through a partitioned area which served to reduce the apparent size of this cavernous chamber. It was an illusion that only worked on those who remained focused on its four perfectly painted walls. An upward glance would reveal the illimitable ceiling of this atrium.

He sat down at an elliptical table and counted five other positions at sixty-degree angles around him. Alard’s hand moved across the polished surface of the wood nervously. He recalled the plants of his youth. Ruscus aculeatus. Or was it hypoglossum?

In three of the pre-ordained seating positions, small hexagonal platforms were visible. Power units, each one displaying a holographic image, lifeforms from unknown places relayed many miles away. They flickered emptily as he stared at them.

The Domini made his entrance and sat down at the head of the table. A subaltern detailed the order of proceedings. Those at the meeting were formally welcomed. Peace was pledged.

Alard had become distracted by the large portrait that hung over the Domini’s domain. He was absorbed in its charcoal-black colour. Whether smoke, or asteroids in a solar wind, or a helical representation of something metaphorical, its mystery drew him in. He half-expected the black-gloved hand to slowly finger down the surface of the portrait, feeling its way over the partition in the chamber, reaching for him.

‘Docteur Alard–’ A voice snapped. His looked at the platforms on the table. The holographs were no longer void. Bright-coloured visuals sparkled before him.

‘I was saying that we always adhere to the laws of governance’, a tall woman had concluded.

She was dressed entirely in white. One shoulder was enshrouded by flowers. Her holograph was transmitting directly across from Alard. The light garment she wore shimmered against the dimmed lights of the chamber.

‘Pah! Their scaffolds are purely aesthetic, nothing more. If your decision lies with Clan Dœmae, then more fool you.’ The representative of Aēr spoke measuredly yet authoritatively. ‘We offer leading–’

‘You offer nothing more than a monopolistic dominion!’, barked the hologram of the interjector next to the representative of Aēr. She stared blankly at the antagonistic intermediary of Pallas who continued:

‘Our facility at Auriga offers the only viable location to carry out the necessary work. We received your data prior to this conference. It has advanced our understanding immeasurably.’

She bowed before Alard, breaking off momentarily. The momentary skip in her channel meant that she had snapped immediately back into an upright position. She wavered as the image came back into focus.

‘We at Pallas are very grateful for this.’

Her attention returned to the representative of Aēr.

‘However, what has been presented is merely a signal at this stage. Our researchers have been working on similar projects, adding further data to augment what we already understand. I am afraid that much more work is needed to ensure success in this field.’

Alard had been somewhat taken aback by the sharp tone of the elfin figure that scintillated before him. She spoke in the hammered polyphonic tones of Mandarabic, the vernacular of the present-day, an amalgamation of the Mandarin and Semitic languages. Occasional English words were thrown in (the use of the Anglophonic language of the Anthropocene, now consigned to antiquity, implied that the orator had been well-educated).

Her dark brown hair fell in ringlets over her narrow frame. She wore an achromatic-grey garment. A dulled gold hue shone underneath this. Jewellery? Or armour? An emblem appeared next to her name on the screen. It took on the shape of a Capra. Three horned protuberances jutted from its head.

The representative of Aēr was subsequently given the floor. She shot a subtle sideways glance at the intermediary of Pallas before addressing Alard.

‘We offer–’ she cleared her throat ‘–let me rephrase… Appl. E. is your discovery. Should you choose our organisation to be its beneficiary, we would work together to lengthen the very coil that makes us mortal. You see, we are offering you our Ma-ga-leading facilities. Our researchers do not want for anything. We already occupy this space. Your technology would hasten the great work that we have already carried out in this field, and as you will be aware, our expeditionary programme has proffered us with collaborative capabilities that stretch to the very reaches of our Heliosphere. Our base on Auriga would bestow the privacy that you so desire, away from the prying eyes of the…’

She stopped herself to survey the Domini and his associate at the far end of the table. A false smile emerged from behind the rocky outcrops of her rough-textured features.

‘Dr. Alard’, she spoke confidently. ‘Let our confederation be the one to actualise your vision.’

‘You speak confidently on behalf of an organisation that has a track record of abject failure in the field of regenerative medicine.’ The foursquare intermediary of Pallas communicated plainspokenly. ‘You are conquistadors. And your conquests require bodies on the ground. You seek Appl. E. to reign supreme in the Heliosphere.’

The intermediary of Pallas paused.

‘Do not let her obliqueness cloud your judgement’, she concluded.

Part 2

Alard glared at □. Her screen was opaque-white. Glimmers of iridescent bronze and oxidised iron-green shone through at irregular intervals. The thin-framed magnicles pinched his nasal bridge as he read her latest output.

‘Gram-positive Firmi…’

Lines of zeros and ones filed across his monitor in quick succession. He winced. The oppressive laboratory lights bore down on him. Soon, the headache would crescendo.

‘…and Gram-negative Bacteroi…’

The black text continued. Alard, cup in hand, leaned forward to interrupt □.

‘Check object code: line three. Define: ‘resistance’. Enter: ‘hydroxyl’. Align with ‘distal’ and ‘group’. End stri…’

‘Do you mean, ‘assign with’?’, □ enquired.

Alard was tired. The work that he and □ were conducting was in place of sleep. As a laboratory assistant, he was chained to a seven-day schedule. Had there been the same resources on the mountainous Manitoud, he would have extended his leave to complete their research there.

‘Accept correction’, he yawned at □.

The watermark of CHSMC was centred on his screen. It had been during his time on Manitoud that he had first utilised this software. Abstruse to the programming uninitiated, its methods of learning were unsupervised and advanced. Ultimately, CHSMC offered anonymity which was coveted by the likes of Alard who sought to harness hyper-intelligence without interference.

‘End string. Return to superphylum. Define: phylogenetic tree. Check: ‘fermentation’…’

He had programmed □ using CHSMC. Alard had decreed that it was in fact she, and that she would be trained to assist him in his endeavours. During her development, the name Œn⁺, or ONE¹ (pronounced one squared) filtered through to him. It had been she who requested to be known in her runic form as □.

‘… define: ‘pilus’ and ‘assembly’. Remove sequential patterns. Run.’

The cursor on the white screen blinked at Alard. After a short while, a binary sequence started to stream in lines and filled his visual fields. This was the genomic sequence of the polyketide skeleton of a novel microbiota.

He smiled the same bright-eyed smile he had beamed at the youthful researchers in the refectory on Eris. Four months had passed since they had told Alard all they knew about this particular bacterium. It had supposed origins in Scarabaeidae. It failed to retain crystal violet. It was intolerant of oxygen.

The swift ‘redeployment’ of the two young scientists to MakeMake in the Kuiper belt came as a surprise to Alard. As far as he was aware, the high concentrations of nitrogen ices on that dwarf planet were incompatible with life. This had served as a warning to him. If he wished to remain in this Eridian facility, his work would have to be carried out in secret.

As Alard interpreted the read-out on the screen, □ continued:

‘Look at the transcriptomic profile. Its expression pattern–’

‘I can see it’, Alard interrupted, ‘define: GTR–’

‘Acronyms, Alard’, □ chided.

‘Guided. Tissue. Regeneration’, he supplanted.

‘Enter: ‘immune’… no, ‘immuno-modulatory’. Check… wait… add: ‘map regionalisation–’ he paused ‘–check string. End.’

His mind wondered back to his initial encounter with the researchers. They had seemed avoidant, perhaps frightened, when discussing its origins. Harvesting it had been their biggest concern.

Alard knew that success in this field would have Heliospheric-shattering consequences. Unlike their commercial contemporaries, the reputation of the Institute Sobere had remained unsullied despite their conquests in regenerative medicine. It was a complex business, marred by failures, and restricted by ethics.

A mirthful Alard stared at the monitor. He had returned to this godforsaken dwarf planet to continue his controversial experiments within the confines of the Institute. His discovery would be made in their laboratories. Alard and □ worked diligently as they burned through the midnight fluorescence.

*                      *                      *

The representative of Aēr had finished talking. Wisps of thin blonde hair bristled from the cloth-crown on her head. Alard remarked that this caul had been made from delicately shuttle-woven silk. The embossed patterns radiated in the dull light of the chamber.

A holographic image hovered beside him. The emissary of another one of the research institutions vying for Alard’s collaboration came into focus.

She was dressed in a white linen garment which had the most unusual form. A shaped shawl enwrapped her neck. It cascaded from behind her ears to follow the contour of her sharp jawline, finally tracking upwards to her mouth so that the point of the ascending triangular lines met at her lower lip. The shawl draped down to her broad shoulders, pointing outwardly. An inverted triangle pointed down to a long skirt that converged at her ankles. She bore the appearance of a four-pointed star, the tips of which meeting sharply at her head and her shoulders and her legs.

Emblazoned over the right shoulder of the shawl was an arrangement of five-petalled flowers that assumed a strange crescent shape. Stamens burst out of these cupped flowers as if multiple explosions of light had been captured in their maximal phosphorescence. Alard knew that these were a descendent of Myrtaceae. Their white petals shone in an abstract representation of beauty. The concerted and connected display suggested order and affiliation. They diffused a sense of devotedness.

The shawled woman spoke.

‘Alard, having reviewed the documents kindly provided to us by you, and made accessible by the Domini–’ she bowed her head benevolently at the cloaked figure ‘–we at Clan Dœmae believe that we can solve the predicament of antimicrobial resistance together. We can offer scholastic prosperity.’

Across from Alard, the holographic display of the intermediary of Pallas wavered as she shook her head.

Predicament. Scholastic prosperity. It was obvious to her that these words were forced. She knew that Clan Dœmae had no track record in this field. Their research focus had been purely in cosmetology, resulting in alterations in phenotypes rather than genuine gains in regenerative medicine.

‘Aesthetics… aesthetics, aes–thet–ics.’ The intermediary of Pallas’s words slowed in a form of vocal ritardando. ‘That is all Clan Dœmae stands for’, she said after a deep inhale. ‘It is all they are good for.’

The Domini raised his hand slowly, beckoning silence from the intermediary of Pallas. Alard smiled at the shawled woman.

*                      *                      *

It had been on the Secondary Basement level of the Eridian research facility that Alard observed the cultured myocytes on one side of the extracellular matrix. Stimulation provided by the probe would normally result in cellular death. Black necrosis would spread through these tissues like water droplets bleeding into paint. Subsequent contractions would cause the dying cells and their weakened walls to rupture, spilling their mitochondria and nuclei into the culture medium.

On this occasion, there had been no such death. The tissue cultures seemed to multiply. They proliferated and provided solid foundations upon which new tissue could grow.

Alard returned to his calculations. The superadded bacteria appeared to ‘cleanse’ the process.

Augmentation of the microbiome? His thoughts multiplied. Immune proliferation in an otherwise exhausted microenvironment? Sensitisation?

He even pondered the thaumaturgical: the possibility that these bacteria possessed some kind of god-like property.

His immediate concern was whether these bacteria had a sustained response in their new hosts. Only time would decide this. For now, he quietly revelled in his victory.

‘Appl. E. serves to facilitates gas diffusion, which promotes vascularisation. This is the key that appears to unlock the Nixon cathartic problem’, Alard dictated. ‘Once a steady physiological state is achieved, tissue growth follows.’

The output on □’s screen blinked at him.

‘Obviously, validation follows.’ He winked back at □.

*                      *                      *

Alard faced the foothills of Manitoud. He stood with those who had climbed the steps from the depths of the chamber into this pillbox position. A thin opening provided a grand vista.

As he stared out at the expanse of land that lay before him, he imagined wiping his memory of all that he knew so that he could see it all for the very first time. Years on Eris blunted his sensations. It had numbed him. He wished to experience the sheer awe that he once felt for this place.

Alard continued to peer out through the gap. Warm air was being cooled. Mist formed and tumbled down as a faint tsunami from the higher ground. The lowlands were partaking in their morning cleansing.

A quiet klaxon sounded in the pillbox. It beckon those to return from their planned interval to the subterranean chamber. The conference was soon to re-commence. Alard turned to descend the ladder that led away from this world that felt foreign to him.

He sat in his chair and observed the images on his screen fade to a dark green. His thoughts remained on the surface of this planet. He was soon interrupted from his distractions by the sound of a woman’s voice.

‘–and that is why I offer you the opportunity to work with Docteur El-hen.’ The emissary of Clan Dœmae opened her palm by way of introduction.

Alard sat forward to get a closer view of the monitor. A faint figure appeared in a sub-hologram. She was shawled like a Dœmaen. A crossbeam forehead held a weighty expression. Alopecia had evidently robbed her of eyebrows and hair on her head. Her malar bones were protuberant. The shadow from these hid thin lips that appeared to have been half-sketched.

As she leant over the laminar air flow unit, Alard caught sight of her eyes. Unblinking in pupillary standstill, her azurean irises steadied. She was staring fixedly at him.

The aesthetic emissary of Clan Dœmae smiled at Alard as she continued.

‘I must also introduce you to her devoted husband, Professeur Ian Meuse.’

A tall gentleman appeared to the right of Alard’s screen.

‘Avec plaisir’, his broad grim affirmed.

He intoned in the unstressed language of French. What a relief to Alard! Meuse’s whitened teeth appeared to sparkle. He held a confident pose. His auburn hair burned in the bright light of the conference chamber. He had eyes that would pierce their observer.

‘Dr. El-hen and Professeur Meuse are two of our finest principal scientists at Clan Dœmae. Should you choose our institution, you will work closely with them. It is our firm conviction that–’

The words of this nameless representative trailed off in Alard’s mind. His attention remained firmly, and fixedly, on Dr. El-hen.

*                      *                      *

The moment of discovery, the revelation, the summation of years of scientific endeavour! Alard felt a weight lifting from him as he peered at the digitalised output of his work.

‘A bacterium, of the phyla Elusimicrobia, isolated from the…’ Alard paused as he looked up at La Directrice. He scolded himself internally for carelessness.

‘Its origins I shall disclose in time, once I have published my work.’

‘Publish?’, the squat Directrice sitting across from him inflected. ‘You must remember that we operate in a commercially sensitive environment, and what you have discovered… this… this “novel microbiota” as you have so termed it… well, it… it…’

She placed both hands down on the bench. Her mouth, straight-lined and stony, imparted a sullenness. She had elected to change her phrasing.

‘To be perfectly frank, Docteur–’ she squinted at the small font of the name badge on his tunic ‘–Alard. You have not had permission to undertake this type of work. As such, in the eyes of the Institute, it has not happened.’

‘Has not happened?’ Alard raised his eyebrows reflexively.

‘If I may elaborate’, La Directrice continued. ‘You have received neither the permission nor the funding for the work that you have so boldly conducted–’ her tone was sardonic now ‘–and that is the reason that your employment with this facility is being severed.’

She paused as she sipped from her glass.

‘You are lucky that we are not taking this matter further. I have been in contact with the Microbiologiste Principal. It would appear that you have been very busy using the facilities in our module, gratuitement, at the expense of Sobere. He also informs me that having reviewed your preliminary data, you had not applied to conduct this work through the ethics council. If this is true, such a transgression is normally in punishable by–’

‘Punishable?!’, Alard thundered.

‘Yes!’, she replied in lightning fashion. ‘Punishable indeed. If it is true, then this will be treated as an infringement of interstellar research law–’

‘The laboratory-derived samples on this barren rock are flawed’, Alard retorted swiftly. ‘There has been no yield from them. They lack any signature that is useful to in vivo research.’ Alard spoke quickly and with clear diction. ‘My chance discovery has–’

‘Surely you cannot think we are that naïve to believe that the Elusimicrobia originated from an apple?’, La Directrice interrupted. She smirked flippantly after she spoke.

Alard was somewhat surprised. He had never disclosed his plan to claim that he had isolated this bacterium from a pome fruit. Perhaps they had accessed these data without his knowledge? This seemed very unlikely given the watertight encryption afforded by CHSMC.

He looked up at the screens that hung from the ceiling. They hovered over the laboratory stations lifelessly. □ suddenly entered his thoughts. She and only she had known this. He shook his head, denying to himself that she was the betrayer. Alard moved away from the workbench and sat down on a chair. He looked over at the glass storage cabinet to his right.

La Directrice followed his movements. This young man was lying. She had no doubts about that. Her impertinence had spooked him, but she had thrown her gauntlet down too early. He now had the upper hand.

Alard turned his head back towards his superior. He knew that he needed to act quickly. Sobere were not known for their clemency. Images of MakeMake filtered into his subconscious. It was deathly cold there. He stood up and walked back over to the bench. His findings were too important to risk exposition.

‘I accept my termination’, he said plainly, leaving the laboratory immediately.

Alard made the short journey to his quarters. An automated craft wheeled slowly over the white surface of the planet. Coin-stacks of methane bubbles beneath him gave the impression that everything on this barren place was being held up by a great many alkane stilts.

His head pressed against the ill-fitting helmet. Condensation misted his view. Lights from the residence modules were starting to halo around him. He closed his eyes and let his head loll around in transit.

The craft came to a sudden stop. His solar visor dropped down and obscured his surroundings. The faint hiss of the door opening followed. He clambered out and waited in the airlock. The sudden rise in temperature turned the crystal air into a steaming dew. His suit was dried off. He doffed this for more comfortable attire. The short walk along the passageway to his dormitory followed.

Alard thought about what he could call the Elusimicrobia. Nomenclature of other microbiota followed a genus-species naming system. Escherichia Coli. Clostridium perfringens. Clostridium botulinum.

Why not alter the order to species-Elusimicrobia? After all, what he possessed would change the way we live, or rather, continue to live. It was unique, and its representation should be likewise.

The dormitory door clicked shut. Alard stood by the mirror in the bathroom.

He recalled the journeys he had once shared with □ to obtain the original samples. It had been her idea. She had infiltrated the Eridian systems to commandeer the vessels that took them there.

Alard stared at himself in the mirror. His face seemed longer than it had before. Grey hairs glinted uninvitingly in the half-light.

Light suddenly filtered outside of the bathroom. A long shadow had appeared at the threshold. A fellow scientist lumbered in to collapse onto their bunk below his. They mumbled something instinct. Alard smiled disinterestedly. He climbed into his sleeping pod and shut the door. Turning to one side, he pulled out his book of quilts and fabrics and leafed through these. Souvenirs. Leavings.

Alard recounted his meeting with La Directrice. The apple had always seemed a credible source, yet she had doubted it. How has she come to know of his decision to choose an apple as the root of his bacteria?

Apple, or æppel… no, the derivation of apple is malus… no…

A golden-brown apple, already in the early stages of decomposition, had presented itself to Alard on one of the workbenches. A fermenting pome fruit yielding powers of regeneration. There was a playful irony to that! So became Apple Elusimicrobia, arranged in order of species-genus; its short form: Appl. E..