The Silent Garden¶
Jisun’s plasma torch hissed as it cut through the station’s outer hull. The metal curled away like tinfoil, revealing a chamber thick with silence. Her boots magnetized to the floor with a soft click-click. She stepped inside, breath fogging in the cold.
The air smelled of lichen and old copper. Walls pulsed faintly green under her headlamp—a bioluminescent moss, its tendrils spiraling into corners like forgotten thoughts. She’d expected rust, debris, the usual corpse of a derelict. Not this.
A child’s drawing floated by, ink smudged. Behind it, a row of hydroponic trays, each cradling withered stems. Except one. One tray held a plant with leaves like translucent wings, trembling as if exhaling. Jisun reached out, hesitated. Her glove would crush it. She turned the tray instead. Etched into the base: Project Chloros, Phase 4. Do not disturb.
She unclipped her scanner. The device spat out errors. Radiation levels normal. Oxygen—wait, 22%. Someone—or something—had been here recently.
In the next room, a skeleton in a maintenance uniform slumped against a console. A name tag: R. Nguyen. Jisun saluted him with a gloved hand. “Rest easy,” she muttered. Her voice sounded too loud.
The console flickered. She jostled it, and a log entry played. Static, then a woman’s voice, strained but warm: “Day 347. The moss is spreading. It sings when the station creaks. I’ve started answering. Don’t know if it’s the isolation or… maybe it’s always been here, waiting. Nguyen says I’m anthropomorphizing. But he waters the trays too.”
Jisun froze. The entry cut off. She cycled through files. Most were corrupted, but one folder remained: Garden Notes. Sketches of plants she didn’t recognize. A child’s handwriting: “Today Mama taught me how to listen to the leaves. They go shhh when they’re thirsty.”
A child? She’d assumed the crew died alone.
Back in the hydroponic bay, she noticed a vent cover ajar. Inside, a stuffed rabbit, its fur matted. Tied to its ear was a thread with a tiny note: “For keeping me brave.”
Jisun’s chest ached. She repacked her torch, left the drawing and the rabbit where they were. At the airlock, she glanced back. The green glow of the moss seemed softer now, like a held breath.
As her ship undocked, she replayed the woman’s log: “What if life isn’t about surviving? What if it’s about… tending?”
The station drifted smaller in her viewport. Jisun didn’t mark its coordinates. Some gardens, she thought, are meant to grow in secret.
Who tends a garden in the dark?
She never found out.
But sometimes, in the static between radio channels, she swore she heard a child laughing.