Transmission #6 – Gardening Round Titan
Transmission from: Nimih Fintec, Assistant Experimental Officer, TESS
(Titan Experimental Space Station)
Earth Received Time: 13 July 2287 03:27:35 UT
It’s what keeps us alive.
Yes, we need womb-tight walls
to swim within, and the spin
that gives us floors as we circle
Titan, its monster master Saturn
multi-colour glaring, hypnotic.
That’s sine qua non, but
never enough for our long
stays between shuttle arrivals
marking months then years.
I grew primulas outdoors
when I still had an outdoors,
then germinated orange pips
under propagator lights; now
I garden the lowliest of forms.
The iron law - what goes around,
comes around: our CO2, our piss,
our excrement, becomes our air,
our water, food. Little green cells,
so simple, no stalks, no leaves,
our carbon-fixing oxygen-creating
life support: our algae.
Nimih Fintec is a non-binary Assistant Experimental Officer on the Titan Experimental Space Station - TESS. A child refugee from the Chennai flood disaster they were adopted into a Fintec-pod family where their academic ability was recognised early, leading to a scholarship at the Geneva Space Academy. There they studied xenobiology and after project work on Mars, joined TESS and its search for life on Titan. Nimh’s own Fintec-pod bud has contributed a number of other scientists to various space programmes.
Transmission received via Ruth Aylett