IO9 is proud of the show Imagination Lightspeed magazine. Once a month, We are showing a story From the current LightSpeed case. The choice of this month is the “last meal on Awassa” by Kilman. Enjoy!
The last meal on Awassa
Written by Keel Coleman
Portan, dark purple porridge in its primary digestive bag, is very staring at the framework of the width in the black space and the distant stomach of the planet who came to study. The simple meal and the gesture that represented her calm after a long and eager morning in a section of the bay of growth that was in a whole flower and needed manual pollination. Although the other crew members about the chaos made the selection of the usual rest time, Cook had overwhelmed the Osard pills only before going out to the nap in their rooms.
When the two joined the crew as a couple, about four solar companies, a gardener was concerned that the special treatment he showed from the kitchen would lead to resentment. I heard that it might be alone in a long transportation if it left a bad impression, especially on a small ship where everyone knew each other, and he slept at night in the observatory, and it could be counted at least a handful of Christmas and endless nights on board. But unlike Bastani, this was not the first long distance from Cook and soon looked at the planets and ports of the crew, tracking family recipes, popular street foods, and festivals. The small scientific vessel crew was immediately fond of it, and she found itself to heat them as a result.
She finished her porridge, and avoids the bowl clean, but she remained on the table to –
The amplifiers that were mounted around chaos and hit three urgent tones.
Other crew members dropped out of the tables and left the serving meter as they were doing and moved to preparation. For a gardener, like many pride, this means standing with its limbs on its sides. She turned towards the nearest screen, which has already turned from Al -Ittihad news to the video of the bridge.
The captain’s wings were tied near its chest, and their five eyes were reddish and ran quickly. On all the four nails of her time on board, she had never seen them before.
“crew AwsaThis is your captain talking. “
The sensitive hearing of the gardener picked up all the ear points around the room that overwhelms the words with translations. Not only did her ear points translate the words of the captain, but also an enlarged things like stadium changes so that they are less prepared to another tone error. they He was Fear, but with an angry with perhaps?
“As some of you may already know, we lost contact with the team that he sent to GULSAN-6 two hours ago. This happened shortly after sending a probe to the gas giant. After reviewing the shots, scanning, and investigating data, we can conclude with high certainty that Gulsan-6 is, instead of a planet, which is an unknown type. Since its shape is always changing. Awsa also.”
When the steps of her hearts fell from harmony, Bustani found that she was no longer able to solve feelings behind the words. On the surrounding faces, I read the practical despair of the captain regarding the situation. While continuing to speak, the countdown appeared at the time of the intersection at the bottom of the screen. They asked three of the senior crew members to the bridge and asked everyone to contact their loved ones. So. . . There was nothing useful for her to find Cook.
• • •
Cook was in the aquatic cultivation row, leaves of herbs and drop them in a manually woven basket. Her soft dark skin was full of orange cell cells and its huge barley was hanging.
“Cooking?”
She did not stop speed or search.
“Nailo? Have you seen the captain -“
“Of course,” Cook said. She referred to the herbs and fruits that were wandering in the basket like this was a sufficient explanation.
And to formulate, it was. The two needed a few words.
Cook will do what I loved to the end. She was already slipping around the corner to the next row, and if the same species as a gardener, I heard a term of granulation, not well translated into many other fleet languages.
Love is close to the beloved meaning, one of which is the one who has often called her actions. A loved one who traveled with her when she left her lush world in the ninth focus. Lovely kept and seedlings are warm despite the miserable cold outside the focal greenhouse. Love came with her on vacation, where she got a hole with a chef with a soft skin in a background room. Lovely accompanied by both of them AwsaWhere they were washed away in all the drama and mutual care of a large family that Cook missed and discovered a gardener that it could tolerate when it was not loving it-gossip change the transformation, hugs, and very loud music across the thin walls, and its first corridor accompanies the engineer. . .
She skipped her hearts.
She took herself out of her dual condition and joined Cook in another section of the Gulf, where she was cutting blue flowers from dew climbing. Gently took the scissors from it. “My job,” said. “Just tell me what you need.”
• • •
When the harvest was completed, Cook agreed to give preparatory to unprepared crew, but the enthusiastic so that she can contact her family. Place a gardener in bed, the blankets that hold on its exciting ends, and tried to prevent the ambiguity of Cook two rooms. She set up updates from the bridge to a high size, causing some pain.
The bridge crew has learned a lot about “steam” and how the team and the shuttle consumed. They managed to collect this data when the steam changed its course to take the second probe that they sent to analyze. They still cannot stop or overcome it, but they estimated that they can buy additional several hours with the remaining investigations as months.
When I got out of the call, Cook was strangely happy with the news. “More time to cook,” she explained. After a few minutes, with bottles of something clear, it was “a special suitable rescue” gossip between her arms and a message against a gardener cheek, and was outside to make a feast for their crew, their granules.
• • •
He has often recorded a gardener with videos that have nothing to do with its duties. She soften the fur about her eyes and cleared her throat.
“This is a Kitry gardener,” it started. A member hostile in an unknown type that bears my ship, AwsaAnd I have no one to say goodbye to those who are not in the same boat. . . However, I think, whoever sees this. “
The awe prostrated steadily through the bloodstream now, but she imagined the people who would see this, especially the youngest, and did not want them to feel fear about it.
“Instead of farewell, do you mind telling you how it is a gardener in a long -term scientific ship?” I found a smile, the teeth of the silver herb. “It is incredible. I love my job. Every day, I persuade things in life. I help them grow. I spend my tips with dirt under my feet and light on my skin. Sometimes my partner, cooking Nailo, brings me a challenge to germination, and there is usually a special request from the cooking crew at home, and sometimes I get water, light and nutrients directly in the first attempt. Not in many cases, but this is not that well.”
She can already hear music roaming the observatory. The scientists who were, everyone wanted to see the steam approach. It was a cold method that could not be denying to death: it was eaten by the monster of space. There will be written papers on this topic for decades, and not only regret that they will not be the ones who write them.
“If you are considering joining the fleet, look for it. Don’t let our bad luck prevent you.”
• • •
Through an unannounced agreement, they all followed the dress law in Fid Nights, which had no requirements other than personal comfort. Many of his colleagues in the crew moved empty boxes from the storage bay to make a long table for a meal “like a family”. He was not aware of the family style, but it seems that this means that there is an impossible amount of food that is approved about chaos until everyone has proven, at the threat of more spoons, that they were physically unable to eat another bite.
The meal was a show, of course.
DEWDROP flowers stuffed with fungi, closed with the chromium sensitive to the factory, fried to the middle of the blue night. Smokeous thick leaves are used to enhance flavor. The fruit dish with everything was from the bitter Kio, to the sweet water berrymelon to the sour seed gardene that the edible gardeners did not know before today. The roasted frog and tomato inside the corn pies, served with yellow rice. Raw claws, thin slices, along with a dry retreat that was angry red she knew that she would send her to the Meed Bay if she touched her. Purple purple gradient from Osard, from light, light -cooked grains that are still on the trunk – the roots of digestion – to the type on steam are perfect for eating lunch into almost a black pile of bread rolls. Smoking leaves are packed with sedative herbs and wrap them tightly. And those bottles of pure liquid are suspicious. And more. And more. Something, gift, for every crew member.
What followed that was a night of dance, drink, embrace, some prayer, more food, revelation from the secrets of the juicy ship, and four rounds of “Moon shark” by everyone with the parts of singing, stomm or howl.
In the middle of the night, they saw the last investigation disappear in steam. He was a gardener alongside Cook, a resting cheek decorated on her soft shoulder, and their hands entered enough enough to cut blood circulation.
Someone chanted embarrassingly, drunk. More chants around the group are gone like nervous laughter. Then it was silent. . .
Al -Bustani surprised herself by starting another round of “The Moon Beni”. The crew joined it warmly, and moved away from the end and return to their party.
About the author
Keel Coleman is an author for him to nominate IGNYTE, whose imagination appeared or will be released Fiyahand Under a sky that does not stopand SolaPUNK Magazineand The best American science fiction and 2022 imagination and 2024And others. Keel is Maryander in the heart, but they currently live in Pennsylvania with their families, and a stuffed dragon called Pen, and a group of strange and trivial groups. It can be found online in Kelcoleman.com.
Please visit Lightspeed magazine To read more wonderful science fiction and imagination. This story appeared for the first time in the September 2025 issue, which also includes a short imagination written by Jake Stein, Cadwell Turnbull, Philip Hajdar Darvik Zorko, Bouji Takas, Slassic Taskra, Isabelle Kim, and Stephen S. Power, and more. You can wait until the contents of this month are sequenced online, or you can buy the whole problem now in a comfortable electronic format for only $ 4.99, or subscribe to the e -book version here.
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