Black Seeds

The skyship had long since stopped receiving transmissions.

For the first several months of their journey, Femi and Elias waited for the daily uplinks from The OA–the orbital AI unit that had coordinated and overseen the Last Evacuation–like the dutiful agents they had sold themselves to be. The OA was there to monitor their trajectory, collect data from the other skyships, and guide them toward the next predetermined habitable system. The OA was never late. The OA was never wrong. But eventually,  its messages grew shorter, more fragmented—bursts of static punctuated by clipped, synthetic words—until one day, there was only silence. They waited, confused and were rewarded only with disappointment. 

Three weeks into the blackout, Femi shut off the comms console.

“They’re a little hard to work with,” Elias said dryly, though his voice cracked from the dullness of recycled air. “The drones, I mean. They work well, just not with humans.”

The hum of the skyship filled the pause between them. It was constant, mechanical, like the breath of something that refused to die.

They weren’t lovers when they left Earth. They were merely scientists, paired by compatibility scores and a computer’s guesswork about emotional resilience. The government’s last desperate plan had been to send a hundred two-person vessels into the void, each carrying fertilized embryos, frozen genetic material, and the carefully preserved history of humanity. The Somni X-5  was one of those ships. To Femi, it was both future memory and mausoleum. She hated to think about that Day. She worked hard to mend that piece of herself, but thoughts always bleed when the stitches are too thin. 

The Earth had burned behind them—its atmosphere shredded by solar storms, its oceans swallowing what remained of proud, naive cities. There were no survivors. Other than the 200. 

In the beginning, the two clung to routine. Morning data logs, sterilization of equipment, experiment cycles, meal calibrations. They spoke to each other only when necessary, their conversations clipped and professional.

But isolation has a way of softening edges. Over time, their words stretched into sentences, their sentences into stories.

At dinner one evening, Femi lifted her head from her tray. “You always eat so slowly,” she said.

“I like to pretend it tastes like something.” He smiled faintly, chewing the same bland protein block. “My grandmother used to say, if you chew long enough, you remember what you have forgotten.”

“What did you forget?”

“The taste of fried noodles. Chili oil. The smell of street vendors after rain.” His voice dimmed. “You?”

“Plantain. And my mother’s garden. She’d call me in at sunset, when the air turned gold.”

Neither of them spoke for a while after that. But the next morning, Femi began cultivating herbs from the nutrient stock. Eventually, she coaxed a sprout—a single, green curl of basil—from the sterile medium. When the first leaf unfurled, delicate and trembling, she wept.

Elias pretended not to notice until late that night, when he joined her at the growth pod. He bent close, inhaled deeply.

“It smells like Earth,” he said.

“Like Lagos in the rainy season,” she murmured.

From then on, the basil became their ritual. They watered it together, measured its growth, inhaled its scent during meals. They ate rehydrated grain with a leaf apiece, pretending it transformed the taste. In some small way, it did.

Days bled into months. They learned to read each other’s silences, to translate the subtle language of fatigue and longing. Elias hummed when he repaired the hydro-lines. Femi laughed softly when she caught him humming off-key. They began sleeping in the same cabin—first out of convenience, then out of need. The sound of another heartbeat in the dark became the only thing tethering them to sanity.

It was during Cycle 73 that everything changed.

Femi stared at the test strip on the lab counter, afraid to breathe. The thin blue line bloomed slowly, fragile as a vein under skin. For a long time she said nothing, unable to believe it.

Elias found her standing there, frozen.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, voice gentle.

She turned the strip toward him. Her eyes were wide, wet. “It worked,” she whispered. “Elias, it worked.”

For a heartbeat he didn’t move. Then he let out a sound between a laugh and a sob, his face lit up with a fierce childish grin. He rushed in, catching her around the waist and lifting her off her feet. She squealed in surprise, nearly knocking over the equipment.

“You’re serious?” he breathed.

She nodded, laughing now too, her hands pressed to his chest. The sound of their joy filled the sterile room—too loud, too human for the hum of machines. For the first time since launch, the Somni X-5 felt alive.

After that, every hour revolved around preparation. They monitored hormone levels, recalibrated nutrient rations, adjusted environmental settings for optimal gestation. They argued about names, about delivery methods, about whether to build a cradle out of spare insulation panels.

When the nausea came, Elias insisted on cooking her portions himself—precisely measured, extra warm. He started carving tiny heart shapes into the ration bricks before rehydrating them. It was absurd, sentimental. She loved him for it.

At night they lay together in the narrow bunk, the ship’s low pulse thrumming beneath them. She would take his hand and place it on her belly, still flat, and say, “Do you think they’ll remember us?”

He’d smile faintly in the dark. “They won’t need to. We’ll be within them.”

Sometimes, when she slept, he sat by the viewport, staring at the endless scatter of stars. He imagined The OA somewhere out there—silent, calculating, still running equations about survival odds. Humanity had gambled everything on science, and somehow, in their isolation, love had found a way to win.

It was three months later when the hum of the ship changed in pitch. A low vibration, almost too faint to notice, rippled through the deck. Then the alarms began.

Elias was already at the console when Femi entered, robe loose around her shoulders. Red lights pulsed across his face.

“Reactor breach,” he said, scanning the data. “Containment chamber two.”

Her stomach dropped. “Can we reroute?”

He tried. The interface hissed an error message. “Autopilot’s diverting everything to life support. Manual override’s locked.”

“Can the drone—”

“The OA is gone, Femi. It’s just us.”

For a moment, neither moved. The temperature in the room began to rise, the air thick and metallic.

“If we lose containment—” she started.

“We lose oxygen. We lose everything,” he finished. His eyes instinctively drifted to her belly – round and proud.

Femi turned to him, her voice breaking. “Elias, the radiation—”

“I know.” He pulled the maintenance suit from its locker. “It’s got to be done outside.”

His hands shook slightly as he tinkered with the bolt connectors on the helmet. “They’re a little hard to work with…remember?”

“Don’t,” she said, grabbing his wrist. “We can find another way.”

“There isn’t one.” He sealed the helmet, the hiss of pressurization drowning her words. “You said it yourself—our child needs air. That’s enough.”

He moved toward the airlock. She followed, shouting through the comm. “The tether line isn’t long enough! You’ll never reach the vent!”

He looked back, face blurred behind the visor. “Then you’ll name them for me.”

The airlock cycled open.

Through the viewport, she watched him step into the void—a shadow against the flood of starlight. His tether line gleamed like silver thread, snaking along the hull. He moved slowly, methodically, toward the vent housing. Each movement looked impossibly small against the dark.

“Almost there,” his voice crackled through the comm. “Manual override engaged—”

The ship lurched violently. A deafening shudder rolled through the hull. Femi’s body slammed against the console. The tether jerked taut—and snapped.

“Elias!” she screamed. The comm filled with static. “Elias! Elias, respond!”

Outside, Elias struggled as his figure continued to drift, weightless. With a massive effort he lurches his body forward, and grabs hold of the rudder, just below the external chamber. He turned once—slow, deliberate. His visor tilted toward her, reflecting the red glow of the alarms. He raised a gloved hand in something like a wave, then pushed the vent lever.

A blast of blue light erupted from the reactor shaft. The ship steadied. The alarms faded.

The reactor stabilized. The hum returned—steady, rhythmic, alive.

But he was already drifting away.

Femi pressed her palms to the viewport, fog blooming beneath her breath. The stars were silent. His body tumbled gently, turning end over end, a human silhouette against eternity.

“Come back,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Please.

There was no answer. Only the steady pulse of the engines he had saved. It took her ages to realize that keening scream was hers. 

She stayed there for hours—days, maybe. Time no longer meant anything. She thought of the basil plant in the lab, still green under its artificial light. She thought of the life growing inside her, cells dividing in perfect rhythm, carrying the fragments of two vanished worlds.

The name came to her as a whisper, riding the memory of the wind. Uda. The black seed that will grow and heal the heart of humanity. Femi spent the last of the ship’s power writing a log entry for whoever—or whatever—might find them:

We were two among billions. Now there is one, and one becomes two again. If you find this, remember that we tried. Remember that even at the end of the world, love was still possible.

When the power dimmed to emergency levels, she floated once more to the viewport. Beyond the glass, the stars burned like scattered embers.

She searched for him among them.

And through the viewport, she watched his figure dwindle to a single point of light—and for the first time, she understood how stars are born.