CAMERON'S PAGE

A series of identical keys on a ring. What are they for? Morning after we walk around the facility and learn more about the flora, you pull an ornament from a tree, this is an empire apple, you say. You name the others as we walk along the rows: ashmead, winesap, jupiter. We clean the dirt off each other's backs when we go inside. The air is warm and dry, far from the cool and wet veil of the fall morning. The thing about randomness, you say, is that it is full of patterns. I laugh and say yes, not knowing how else to react. Inside and clean, we eat oatmeal and run diagnostics. You can low-hear the electricity from the transformers outside the facility when you open your mouth to speak and the room quiets.

We go on several walks per day, some
merely across the room and back, some the
miles to the boundary, where the
particles ping and blister against the fence,
melody like piano when they hit,
reminding us of having our first children,
or losing our first parents, the fits
which that caused in us we wish to not
forget.

On the walk back from that ledge of grace
you do not know what to do with yourself
or the rest of your day. This was all
unknown when we chose to settle here. No one
knew any of this. Sometimes a generator
goes out, and someone gets injured. Really
injured, I mean, and it's always some new
unforeseen problem with the thing.
But someone always finds a way to fix it.
And the field cocoons our littlest world once more.
So there's that. These memories rippling on the floor.