The Orchard

Lilac lights shoot down on me, as I wander through the immense hall, legs and arms swinging in the spambreeze. GMgrass crackles and tickles my feet, morning dew spreading through my skin like an an infection. The lazy blue overalls which appeared in my wardrobe each day draping over my legs like pastry. I think I hear birds, but my mind tells me that I'm wishing too hard.

Lines and lines of trees, all around me. Everywhere, twisting in Fibonacci rhythms and spirals to the corners of my vision. Crunching, crackling sounds erupt from the pager, but I ignore it, focusing on finding my spot.
I take a short jump over the tiny apple-trees to get my bearings.
There.
I see it.
Bathed in artificial sunlight from the mist-shrouded roof miles above, and spiralling and twining ever upwards, it jumps into sight above the smaller trees: metres taller than any, surrounded by a minuscule clearing of saplings and root-butts.

It is there that I sit to get my bearings on the world. I gaze up into the dense leafage, picturing myself as a tiny man, smaller than a mouse, running amongst the buds and fluttering insects, gazing and laughing in wonder at the vastness of his world. There would be other people there, of course. Real people. Nothing like Gen-E. People who stuttered and faltered and stammered and made mistakes, and who would always be as my equal. People to leap with, people to smile to, people to cry with. People. Not people in glass canisters. Not Sleeping people. Real, awake, imperfect, wonderful people.

People I could never meet.

The first signs of flowering are starting again, the tiny blips of stubble on the bark ready to shoot out, bursting into the world in slow motion, never having to feel alone or deserted. They bumble and latch in the cool Spam-air, buffeted by the Spam-breezes and pollinated by Spambees. Millions upon millions of trees, and only this one is mine. I suppose it's because of the clearing. It makes it look deserted, alone, but individual, and noble, doing all it could for people who would never know it's name or thank it when they awoke.
It was like me.

Planet earth is barren, now. No green. No fur. No oil. They sent us along as a first convoy. 'An Experiment'. So far we clocked nine suitable homes. One of them could have been mine, in a kinder universe.

There were originally no caretakers. Gen-E was the cleaner, maintenance, bug fixer, repair woman. She was the immortal babysitter of humanity. But the encountered a problem she could not solve. Her designers said she was failsafe. That she could repair any damage or carry out any task. A supercomputer the size of a car, they boldly stated, would always be able to fix any problem, new or old. Of course, they were wrong.

I have spoken to her on many occasions. She knows precisely what is wrong. What she cannot do, however, is control it.

By some freak of co-incidence, both her main and backup internal errors maintenance system had become corrupted. Both of the most protected systems, at the exact same time, in the exact same way. Had she had a twin, this would have been solvable. However, since she was alone, and no longer capable of fixing internal problems, she couldn't fix the problem that disallowed her from fixing problems. A loop.

You see, when they designed her, all those centuries ago, they did not anticipate this feat of terrible chance, and supplied her with no solution.
Stuck, alone, powerless, she woke up a random member of the one present species onboard the ship. She woke up me.

I gaze again at the roof, feeling the bumpy roots below my back, like extra spines, and wonder what I should do. What can I do? I'm a biologist, not a computer scientist, for fuck's sake. I feel the roof gazing back at me now, just before a low hum penetrates the soil and air.

'Evans. I need you.'

It was her. .

Please feel free to comment/ rate. I'm thinking of continuing it. Maybe not? Might he wake up another sleeper for help?