Aurora (The Exodus Trilogy) by Andreas Christensen Read Free Book Online Page A

before lecturing her friend.
    “Come on Geena, it’s just decent, hard work. Don’t worry, most of this will be automated, but this is the first harvest outside the greenhouses. We just haven’t had time to assemble and get everything working yet, and you know it. And if we’re able to use the land outside the greenhouses, too, there will be more room for the sweet stuff, such as kiwis, and grapes, and all the other non-essential produce.” Maria was the authority here, as agriculture had been her chosen specialty since Selection.
    Geena had been a math and physics talent even before Selection, and spent most of her days in the astronomy lab, analyzing data collected from the Exodus, which was orbiting the planet. Farming was about as alien to her as… well, aliens.
    Tori was more of an all-rounder, having specialized in mechanical engineering, information technology, and electronics. And she’d grown up on a farm. Maria hadn’t known that about her friend. There was a lot she didn’t know about her, since they had only recently begun hanging out together. Actually, she hadn’t known Geena all that well either, even though they met on the first day of Selection. They had been placed on different teams, and hadn’t really spent much time together before landing here. Now though, the two women were among her best friends.
    It was funny, she thought, that so many had become close friends while in Selection. It seemed illogical somehow, to befriend your competitors like that. She had spoken to Geena about it once, and Geena had told her she had been wondering about the very same thing back on Earth. Geena had told her she talked about it once with her only friend left from her Selection team, Kenneth Taylor, the psychologist. He had said it only made sense when you let the notion of fully rational behavior go. He had said that humans were only rational, self-serving creatures to a point, and there were other factors that influenced us just as much, such as our social needs or the need to belong. People often need to have their worth confirmed by others, he’d said. Or they might feel the need to destroy something to be really free. Not rational, but profoundly human.
    Maria was relieved she had chosen agriculture. Plants were so much easier to deal with than humans. Give them good soil, rich on nutrients, water, and light, and they’d be just fine. You could even tweak their genetic traits, and create new species with more vitamins and stuff that was good for you.
    “Bet you two would like to go fishing, too,” Geena said. “You know, up in the camp on the far side of the Trickler, with Major Hammer and the rest of them. They do all that back-to-nature stuff.”
    “Sure, I’d love to!” Tori said as she took a big bite of her apple, grinning at the idea. “But I’m needed here, so for the time being I’ll stay. But who knows? I might go up there and build boats. Maybe I’ll even be a fisherman some day. I mean fisherwoman, who knows?”
    “Look, Geena, this is a new world,” Tori continued, “and if we are to make this something more than a lab, we need to farm and fish and explore,”
    Maria found that she agreed with Tori. She didn’t just run farming projects, although that was her main assignment for the time being. She also hoped to explore Verdi once Jeremiah Lowell and his team set out. Although the expedition to the south had been promptly denied, there were still plans to explore the west. Once this harvest was complete, the plan was that Jeremiah would lead an expedition out, before winter set in. It would only be a few weeks, because they didn’t plan on doing much exploration during winter, but it would be a start. She though it was about time. So far, there hadn’t been much exploration outside the perimeter, because Havelar wanted Fort Andrews to be fully established first. A safe choice, in a way, but the result was that they knew very little of the world beyond the warning signs and