“It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it, sempai?” Millie asked softly. The two women walked through a grassy field dotted with towering pines. It was near the center of a Geo-Plant, and at the moment they were surrounded by hills and shrouded from the twin suns by a cool mist. If they wanted to, they could have pretended that the endless leagues of harsh desert outside didn’t exist and they lived on a beautiful, temperate world.

“Hmm?” Meryl asked, distracted.

“It’s so… right.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Meryl clutched her white cloak closed against a sharp breeze. She surely wasn’t used to it here, but a strange feeling of well-being dogged her nonetheless. “I wonder where…?”

“The land is fair and the air is sweet. This is the climate we’re built for,” a gravelly voice said above them. Both turned in surprise to see a man in a lab coat descending the hill towards them. He was about an inch shorter than Millie, with long gray hair brushing his shoulders and a beard spreading over his chest. His eyes were a disquietingly bright green in his bland, lined face. “Even after a hundred years on this hellish world, we can’t ignore our genes telling us where we belong.”

“Are you Dr. Sousa?” Meryl called up to him.

“I am,’ he replied. “And you two must be agents from the Insurance Society, yes?”

“We are. I’m Meryl Strife and this is my assistant, Millie Thompson.”

“Lovely ladies,” the doctor chuckled as he drew near. “I was expecting a couple of dull business types. Yes, I am Dr. Sousa, but you can call me James. Would you like some tea?”

“Oh, we shouldn’t…” Meryl started apologetically.

“Oh, yeah!” Millie cried. “Do you have any Ceylon?”

Her partner sighed. Their host led them into his waystation and started the water boiling. It was a small, office-like space strewn with magazines and discarded wrappers, important-looking official documents and useless looking sketches and doodles. “Sorry about the mess,” Sousa said, “I don’t have guests here very often. So… down to business?” He seemed regretful on this point; though she felt sorry for him, Meryl followed his suggestion.

“Yes,” she said. “We noticed that you terminated your arson and theft policy… it’s not exactly our job to worry about these things, but a Geo-Plant is incredibly valuable. Millie and I were sent to find out why you cancelled it and whether we could convince you to renew your policy.”

“We’ve been doing our best to spread the word…” Dr. Sousa answered. “Where do you ladies work out of?”

“June City.”

“Ah, you made quite a trip to see me,” the doctor smiled and rose. In the next room, their tea was whistling. “It’s not surprising that you don’t know yet.”

“What is it?”

“Thank you, Mr. James!” Millie chirped as he poured her tea.

“Doctor, doctor,” he admonished gently. “If you have to be formal, call me Doctor. I didn’t go through twenty-three years of research work to be called Mister. Now, then. My colleagues and I have recently made a startling discovery. Actually, we’ve become quite the celebrities in this area… if you’ll follow me?”

Taking their tea in hand, the insurance girls followed him back outside. Millie sighed in pleasure as the Geo-Plant’s mist settled over them. “This mist is what makes it possible for the grass and trees to grow,” Sousa explained. “It works almost as a negative greenhouse. If the vessels that took us here hadn’t malfunctioned, this whole planet would be enveloped in it.”

“Mm,” Meryl said grimly. Malfunctioned. She couldn’t help but feel offended by how offhand the doctor was about that long past disaster. It may have faded from humanity’s memory, but for one person, those terrible events were as fresh as ever. Where are you? she silently asked for the thousandth time… but just like every other time, there was no response.

“That would be nice,” Millie said dreamily, snapping her back to the present.

“And it could become a reality,” Dr. Sousa added. “Take a look.”

“Oh!” Meryl gasped. They had descended into another valley, and before them lay the body of the mighty Geo-Plant! It stood crookedly in the ground, its metallic base overgrown with moss and lichens. The clear, light bulb-shaped shell was as pristine as ever, though, giving them a view into the Plant’s swirling green energies. Meryl fancied she could almost pick out a humanoid silhouette twisting and dancing within, but surely it was just her imagination.

“Oooh…” Millie turned to Sousa. “Is that the Plant?”

The doctor’s eye twitched slightly. He obviously wasn’t used to people with Millie’s astounding grasp of the obvious. “Yes. Yes, this is the plant. Do you notice anything about it?”

“It’s… green?”

“It was always green!” he snapped, then sighed. “I’m sorry. My social skills aren’t what they should be. Look at its size. Since I started working this station ten years ago, the Geo Plant has grown by nearly seven per cent, and the area of its influence has more than doubled!”

“Wow!”

“…really?” Meryl squinted. Now that she looked, it did seem larger than it should have been; not that she was an expert on Plants, in spite of knowing one personally. “What does it mean?”

“In spite of the trauma of the crash and the other purposes they have been twisted to, some of the Plants have retained their original functions. The Geo-Plants scattered over the surface of Gunsmoke are no exception… but that’s not what surprised us.” Dr. Sousa knelt and ran his hands over the healthy mat of moist grass. His voice began to grow more intense. “We had never realized how adaptable the Plants were. Disconnected from the Project SEEDs power grid, the Geo-Plants have begun relying on solar power—look around you.” They did. “What do you see?”

“I… Trees, grass, ferns…” Meryl spread her hands. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Exactly! Plants! Nature’s own solar collectors! Legions of them, hungrily drinking in the energy of the sun… and they are all still connected to the Geo-Plant that birthed them! Do you understand what this means?” He didn’t give them time to answer. “The larger each Geo-Plants area of influence grows, the more power it can draw from the sun, and the faster it can grow!”

“You mean…?”

“That’s right. The process is speeding exponentially! We could see a green Gunsmoke in our lifetime!” Both insurance agents stared, shocked. They had, in fact, quite forgotten the original purpose of their visit. Fortunately, Dr. Sousa reminded them. “You see, that’s why we don’t need the arson insurance. Everybody we’ve told has been overjoyed! The dream of the whole world is being fulfilled! Who in their right mind, from the most upstanding citizen to the most depraved outlaw, would want to risk that?”

---

Who indeed? None of them noticed the man standing at the edge of the Geo-Plant’s ken, silhouetted by the dying suns’ bloody light. He was extremely tall and almost cadaverously thin, his strangely broad shoulders draped in a black poncho emblazoned with the icon of a silver sun across the chest. He wore black pants and a suit jacket that had once been impeccable but were now tattered and frayed.

He raised a long, bony hand, wrapped to the knuckles in bandages to the wide brim of his black hat and pulled it low upon his brow. He blew a cold breath out through the bandages over the lower half of his face and narrowed his hard brown eyes. The flesh around them was twisted and burnt nearly orange by the merciless light of Gunsmoke’s suns.

The soft, gentle meadows before him were hateful to his sight. He didn’t see the future in those hills and he could care less about the hopes and dreams of Gunsmoke’s countless inhabitants. All he saw was weakness. He saw the waste of a beautiful gift they had been given in this bleak world, this vast and terrible forge for humanity to harden and strengthen within.

He scowled and donned a round pair of dark purple sunglasses. It had been long enough; as was his daily custom, he had come to the edge of this verdant realm to face its temptation and strengthen himself against it. With a swirl of black fabric, he turned his back on the meadow and strode into the desert, into the true future of Planet Gunsmoke.

He mounted a motorcycle resting a few hundred yardz back and set off into the gathering gloom. For an hour the man in black plunged Westward through uncharted wastes, relying only on the stars and his sharp sense of direction. Finally, as twilight faded, he arrived home.

It was one of the Project SEEDs colony ships, buried nose-first in the sand to its midline, still surrounded by the broken remains of its engine collar. Half-melted and slightly bent by the long-ago crash, and then scoured and polished by centuries of blowing grit, it now resembled some kind of dark palace out of a grim fairytale. This appearance suited its occupants just fine.

As the motorcycle rumbled to a halt before it, two cowled guards came to attention. “Pastor!” one of them hailed, “You’re back early.”

He nodded coldly and walked past them, leaving the vehicle to their care. The Pastor moved silently through the dank corridors of his stronghold, sunglasses still in place against its flickering fluorescent lights powered by a dying Plant. Occasionally he would pass one of his followers, who would greet him diffidently and stand aside.

Finally he came to the second half of his nightly ritual. Deep within the ship there was an armored door that only he could open. The Pastor pressed his hand to the panel next to it and it ground open, releasing a wash of bitterly cold air into the corridor. After a moment to adjust, he strode inside and regarded his future triumph.

A man was suspended in the center of this frigid room, wrapped about in an octopus of chains strung through eyes set around the walls. When the Pastor had found him, of course, he had been in a much more utilitarian restraint, but our friend had taken the time to arrange him more artfully before showing him to any of his followers.

The captive was tall and well built, a wild mane of white hair tumbling down around his chiseled face. He appeared as though dead, but every so often a wisp of mist would escape his sharp nose and drift to the ceiling. The Pastor walked up to him and put an emaciated hand to his cold cheek.

“You will save this world,” he grated. “You… you will be my vengeance against those weak fools who think they can meddle with what fate has given us. You are my vengeance… from Beyond the Grave.”