An Apple a Day

When I was a little boy, I used to look at the stars. When I asked Mum which was which, she used to be able to tell me. She was an astronomer, and my father was a physicist. Both were professors in the Surrey University.

This particular fact was what led me into two things that were important in my life. One was that I was born brainy, and they both tutored me as I moved through primary, secondary, and university. Surrey of course. I graduated with honours as an astrophysicist. The secret that I kept to myself was that all my life I had wanted to be a tourist coach guide.

My father was Professor Anthony Irwin, and my mother was Julia. I was an only child but never had any hang-ups because of it. What gave me any hang-ups was that they had been fans of the Australian wildlife guy and called me Steven. I’m sure that if I had been a girl, they would have called me Bindy. That was what I was called in high school as I was rather short and puny.

This led to the second reason. I was born in twenty-twenty and graduated in twenty-forty-one. By that time, space travel had taken leaps and bounds during my lifetime. I was employed by the U.K. office of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, or SSTL. They were owned by the Airbus Defence group and worked closely with the university. They were partners with Astroscale, a Japanese founded company that was worldwide. Just before I was born, they had formed National In-orbit Services Control Centre, in Harwell, Oxfordshire.

My work was involved in processing the ways to carry out the main business of the company, which was to remove aged, obsolete, or misfunctioning orbital items. I worked there until twenty-fifty, and then saw an advert for fit people to work with Virgin Galactic. They wanted someone who could fly the capsule, if needed, but mainly to be the font of all knowledge for the very well-off tourists. The business had been doing very well for the last fifteen years, and the trips were close to being foolproof.

I had learned to fly, had my own light plane and decided that this could be the best coach captain job of all time. The interview included time in a simulator, and my knowledge of the stars as well as my experience with space debris was enough for me to be accepted into a short training period. That culminated in me being one of the crew in a flight with an experienced ‘pilot’ to show me the ropes and to gauge how I interacted with the passengers during the trip, which now did several orbits.

I had a wonderful time working in orbit, with SpaceShipThree, something that wasn’t a long way from being in an ordinary coach, even if we didn’t stop at a country pub for a drink before coming home. In twenty-fifty-six, I had a call from an executive from Sierra Space. They had a great reputation for taking supplies and crew changes to the New International Space Station after all the problems that had happened the mid-twenties with the old one.

Since then, there had been a big shake-up in space journeys. SpaceX had slowly left the scene after the owner went crazy when his car company was put into administration and his main customer, the US Government, had deserted him. Bezos and Blue Origin were still in the game, flying similar trips to Virgin from West Texas. They had perfected reusable first stages, as well as retrieving second stages and returning capsules.

Sierra Space had captured the bulk of the work in sending supplies to the NISS, as well as bringing refuse and crews back. This was because they had developed a reusable space plane, similar to the Shuttles that NASA had used, but smaller, because they were sat on top of the third stage and were not the actual stage. It was called the Dream Chaser. They were launched on a New Glenn rocket from The Cape and landed anywhere on a normal runway that was long enough.

I went to America to talk to them. What they wanted me for was just the one job. I was to go to the old ISS with the final crew. We would dismantle the experiments and reusable items to be taken back to earth. There would be a Dream Chaser sent up for the others in the crew, and my job was then to prepare the ISS for its final trip. They had decided that it couldn’t be dismantled and be sent into a decaying orbit, so we would add a couple of rockets to send it on a trip further into space. A last Dream Chaser would be sent up for me to return to earth in after I had started the automatic countdown.

The money that was offered was enough for me to do whatever I wanted for several years. It wouldn’t be happening for a year or more, but I would have to undergo a lot of training, including time on the ISS with an expert. My small stature was considered a bonus there.

I had a long think about the job and got back to them to say that I would do it. Virgin Galactic told me that with that on my CV, I would be welcomed back with open arms. When I went to America and worked with Sierra, I was also instructed in the New Glenn systems as well, with New Shepard also offering me a job afterwards, should I want it.

The job itself may have been simple, but the planning and preparation was huge. They finally decided that the ISS would be given some impetus to send it away from earth, as it was now far too big to risk a decaying orbit. Skylab had been a lucky time, with it landing in the Australian outback, where nobody was underneath when the remains of the re-entering craft hit. The ISS was many times larger.

I got training in the rockets that we would attach, along with the connecting of them to a control system. There were four of us that were trained in space walking and attachment. We went up to the ISS a couple of times, the first to get used to being there and discovering the joys of outside working, and the second to take the first two rockets and attach them.

The third time we went, we had the last two rockets and attached those. Each time we went, we brought back items that were wanted to be saved. That third Dream Chaser took the research experts back to earth, and we worked on connecting it all up. A few weeks later, another Dream Chaser arrived with some provisions for me and the final units that needed to be fitted, mainly cameras and radio transmitting equipment to send back information as the ISS made its way out of the solar system I would be long gone before anything meaningful came back.

My companions left me to do the circuitry and testing, heading back to earth. For a while, I would be alone in space, the last person to live in the ISS after so many years. Finally, another Dream Chaser arrived and automatically docked. This had to happen before I moved the ISS out of orbit.

As I was doing the final checks, I was getting strange radio messages from control. It appeared that a new pandemic had started and was spreading very rapidly. I was told to hold off starting the countdown until things settled on earth. The first time that I knew that something was really bad was when the crew of the Chinese space station called my radio and asked me if I knew what was going on. I was able to get TV transmission and it wasn’t very cheerful, even in the short time I passed over the US. I told them that it looked as if the pandemic was far more lethal than the COVID one. They told me that they had lost all contact with their control.

A couple of weeks later, I couldn’t raise my own control.

The proof that things were dire was during the night passes, when there were less and less lights showing. I tried the radios and found only static. Then the Chinese called again to say goodbye. They had started their automatic destruction countdown and were going to send themselves to sleep until the end. I knew roughly where they were and sat by a window until I saw a flash in the darkness of space. It looked as if I may be the last man alive, as there was no replies from my calls to the NISS. They may well have returned to earth.

I eked out my supplies as much as I could to give the pandemic time to disappear. If anyone was left on earth, they weren’t using the radio or television. I set the last remaining telephoto camera towards earth and set it to capture any landing spots that I could set down on. I wanted to land in England and discovered that the main runway of RAF Lakenheath was totally clear and long enough for me to put the Dream Chaser down. Many of the bigger airfields were littered with abandoned planes

Being in Norfolk, I would be able to see if I could find my way to any civilisation that was left. It was a lot to take in, but I had enough time to process my thoughts. I wasn’t one to just give up. I didn’t blame the Chinese; they had no means to return home unless a capsule was sent for them. At least I had my own life raft.

Finally, I got into the Dream Chaser and set the automatic landing co-ordinates for Lakenheath. It would adjust the re-entry and glide path to line me up on the runway. I sent the radio signal to the ISS rockets and moved the Dream Chaser away from the ISS to avoid any problems. At the proper time, the rockets fired, and the ISS started its journey further into space. I sat in the pilot seat, strapped myself in and waited until the computer told me that I was in the window for the return. I pressed the button in front of me and started my own journey of discovery.

Re-entry, after all the tourist flights over the years, had become safer and slower than the early fireballs of the past. These days, we just reduced speed with forward thrusters so that, by the time we were into the atmosphere, we were going at a more normal speed. Of course, we still had a heat-resistant outer skin over a layer of tiles, but the process was a lot gentler, even if it did take a lot longer. With the tourist trips, this was always the best time for them to take photos of the earth.

As I descended into the atmosphere, the computer took over control, steering me towards a circuit that would line me up with the runway. It took two complete journeys around the earth before I was finally into the right slot and approaching England from Scandinavia. This was the only chance to land. Without engines, there was no going around for a second try.

As I passed over the Norfolk coast, I pulled my straps tighter, just in case. I had lowered the heat protection from the cockpit window, so had a good view ahead. Off to the left, I saw Norwich, with some areas that looked as if they had been destroyed by fires big enough for me to see from the height that I was at. As I got nearer, I stopped looking at the scenery and concentrated on the destination, which came into view in the distance.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw that the main runway was clear and easily long enough for me to land. The computer was working away, using all the sensors and cameras to control the landing, without there being a radar or radio beam to lock onto. If it had a voice, it would probably be asking me why I was putting it through all this.

The wheels touched gently, and the parachute deployed as it should, slowing us down to the point where I could over-ride the computer and take over. I jettisoned the drag chute and allowed the Dream Chaser to roll towards the end of the runway, slowing it down with the brakes so that I could make a slight left turn onto one of the old wartime runways that looked as if it was just a storage area. The Dream Chaser rolled to a stop, and I just sat there for a while, getting used to gravity pushing me down on the seat.

About three hundred yards away, there were buildings with the closest looking as if it was a fire station. Three hundred yards may not seem very far, but when you’ve just arrived from some time in space, it wasn’t an easy trot by any means. I got out of the pilot seat and went to the back of the Chaser. It wasn’t that big but would seat six and their luggage. I took off my helmet and breathed the air in the cabin. It smelt like old hot socks, but that was usual. I stripped out of the space suit and left it on one of the seats, and then opened up my own bag, taking out a pair of jeans, a tee and a pair of jogging shoes, getting dressed. Then it was time to see if I was about to die.

I un-dogged the hatch and it opened upwards with a hiss of escaping air. I then sat on the edge of the opening and looked out over the airfield, seeing green grass and hoping that my next breath wouldn’t be my last. After five minutes of smelling the summer scent of grass, I opened the locker that hid the rope ladder which would get me on the ground. I had done this in training, but we usually had steps arrive to let everyone walk down.

I dropped my bag onto the concrete and clambered down. Picking up the bag, I took out the last small bottle of water, took a swig, and started off towards the building. I had to stop a couple of times to get my breath, but my legs were holding up well.

The building was the fire station with a line of brightly coloured trucks. Inside, in the ready room, there was a group of brightly coloured fire fighters’ outfits. Some were on chairs, some on the floor, and one laying over a desk with a phone next to it. Each suit looked as if it had been worn by a blow-up person who had been deflated. Each suit, when I looked more closely, contained an ash-like powder which was also at the ends of each arm, usually with a wristwatch to one side.

Whatever killed the ready crew had been quick and had caused the bodies to become dust. That, to me, looked like something that would be used in battle, so that the decayed bodies wouldn’t harbour the virus any longer, the medical equivalent of a clean nuke.

I found the main office, with a map of the base on the wall. I took the map out of the frame and took a quick look around. I didn’t hang around there, taking the fire-chiefs’ car and going further into the base.

My first stop was a building a restaurant called the Knights Table. When I went in, there were a few dust-filled clothes piles around, and I found a more remote table and cleaned it off. Then I went into the kitchen to see what I could cook up for myself. There wasn’t any electricity, but there was gas, and the water was still running. My immediate act was to make a cup of tea to sustain me while I looked.

Although nothing was good from the fridges, the deep freezers still had chilled food, so I pulled out a pack of steaks and pulled one off to put on the gas grill, then found enough tinned vegetables to create a meal. When I sat down with it, I began to feel human. The next thing for today was to find somewhere to sleep. Tomorrow would have to be the preparation to leave.

Not far away was the Liberty Lodge, the military quarters for short-term stays. I went in and found a clean room, had a cold shower and got into bed naked, to sleep naturally for the first time in some weeks. Refreshed and feeling ready for the day, I dressed and raided the dining area for breakfast. Again, I could heat up some water on the gas for a black coffee and fried some old bread and eggs.

Today, I had two things to do. The first was to find decent transport. In the car, I found the transport building and had a choice of vehicles. I needed something which I could carry things in, so opted for one of the new Man 4x4s. They had been the mainstay of light military trucks for decades and the latest ones were hybrids. They had four electric motors and a big battery under the cargo floor, with a four-cylinder diesel to create the charge. With enough fuel, I could drive anywhere. The first things that I loaded on were three pallets with big drums of diesel, and a toolbox full of tools, using the fork-lift. There were plenty of spare parts on the shelves so I added another pallet load of anything that I thought would be needed. I made sure that I had big hammers and pry bars should I need to break into places, as well as a roll of plastic tubing so I could syphon the fuel drums to top up the tank.

I then drove the truck to the Military Clothing Store and collected a range of work clothes and footwear to keep me warm and dry. I then went to the Exchange, where I loaded the truck with other things to keep me warm and dry when winter came in. I also added a box of books that would keep me occupied. Most of all, I cleaned them out of torches and batteries. It was time now to say goodbye to the air base and it’s collection of dust-filled piles of clothing and to venture out into the real world.

I drove through the boom gate at the main entrance and turned right onto the Mildenhall Road. From what I could tell so far, was that there may have been a lock-down in place, as there were very few cars left by the roadside. At Mildenhall, I turned towards Bury St. Edmunds.

There had been another thing that I had kept to myself all these years, and that was imagining that I could walk into a department store and help myself. There was a big shopping centre at Bury St. Edmunds, The Arc, which had a range of shops when I was last in the area.

The ‘A’ road took me into Bury from the north, and I came across my first accident scene just before I got to the town centre. It was a simple one, a car had crashed into another one that was parked. It was as if it had just happened. I stopped and had a look. The one that had been travelling had a small pile of clothes behind the steering wheel, a skirt and top, and a baby seat in the back with a very small pile of toddlers clothes.

I carried on into the centre, turning into St. Andrews Street and parking at the Arc, outside the Top Shop. I sat there for a while as I considered what I was about to do. As far as I could tell, there were no living humans in the area. Perhaps some isolated pockets could have survived a normal virus outbreak, but everywhere had gone quiet, even the polar bases.

I got out of the truck and looked in the back for a prybar, just in case. There were a few items of clothing that had been blown around in the mall, so it may have been open when everyone died. I checked the Top Shop, and the door was open. It was that which decided me. I put the pry bar back in the truck and walked back along St. Andrews Street until I reached the junction with Risbygate Street. There had been a salon that I had noticed on the way in.

I went inside and took stock. It looked just like I had imagined a salon to be, and I went through to a back area and found a room that looked like it had been used for waxing. I had no way of heating the wax, so I rummaged around until I had collected a bowl with some water, some soap and a safety razor. I stripped right off and took my time shaving everywhere I could reach. My beard needed shortening with scissors first, but I just went slow and easy until there were no errant hairs that I could get to. Before I got dressed, I gave my hair a good cold-water wash and condition with their best products and smoothed moisturising cream all over.

Putting my clothes back on felt as odd as I had imagined. I loaded up a bag with the products I had used and walked back to the truck, putting the bag in the back. I got in and drove up the mall until I arrived at a big space in front of Primark. Taking a torch with me, I went through the main doors and looked around. This was what I had dreamed about when I was a teenager, but never thought that it would actually be happening. I had kept the thoughts inside and never followed up in the concept. I wasn’t queer, as several girlfriends would attest, and I didn’t want to be a woman, just to be able to wear the clothes.

I had a plan, with the imagining now pruned as this wasn’t the only opportunity for this. There were department stores across the country waiting for me, their only customer. My first stop was a luggage section, where I chose a nice roller case. The first things to go in was what I’d been wearing.

As naked as a new-born, I pulled the case to The Victorias’ Secret outlet. This was where I’d find the baseline of my sizes. I took a guess at the panties and tried on a ten, which fitted well. I took a range of different colours in that size and put them in the case. The best fit with a bra was twelve, seeing that I was bigger around the chest, so added a range of those to the case. So, camis, slips and nighties would need to be twelves. Behind the counter, I found bra fillers which I slipped into the one I was wearing and put a slip on to match the black underwear. Getting into the swing of things, I put on a garter belt, and then added the different colours of everything I’d picked to the case.

Next stop was the hosiery section, where I opened a pack of smoky stockings and sat to roll them up my hairless legs. It was odd to be standing in the middle of the store, clipping the stockings to the garters. I added packs of stockings to the case. Next stop was the shoe section.

I wasn’t going for heels, as that hadn’t been a part of my dream. I went for ‘sensible’ shoes with nothing higher than a two-inch heel. I also added some trainers, which I wore to move on. I wanted something to wear that would be good for the truck and the journey ahead, so ended up with a red blouse and a black skirt with pleats, as I would need some movement to climb into the truck. I added a couple of extra blouses and skirts to the case, heading for the electrical section, I put two electric ladies shavers in the case, along with a few packets of batteries. I was now ready to move on. My destination, in my mind, was my old family home. My parents had set it up as being self-sufficient, if needed, with solar, batteries, and a generator. There, I would be able to live out the winter to come, but first, I needed to get there.

I pulled the case out of Primark, the skirt swishing against my legs. A lot of what I had imagined was real, there was a new feeling of lightness about my thoughts as I put the case in the truck and pulled myself up into the driving seat, making sure that my skirt was properly smoothed.

I left the Arc and made my way to the hospital, where I went in to find the staff canteen, making myself a black tea and munching on a few biscuits. After raiding the dispensary for bandages and pain killers, I left the town on the A14 and went to Ipswich.

Luckily, the on-board computer was working nicely, and guided me to Morrisons Supermarket, where I stocked up on tinned and packaged foods, long-life milk, toilet paper, tissues, and anything else that looked as if it would be needed, as well as lasting for some time. I needed somewhere to rest for a while and take stock of the new me. The truck computer was questioned, finding me somewhere that looked good.

I followed its directions out of town on the A1071, and found myself at the Meadow Valley Lodges, stopping outside Lodge Three which was listed as having a hot tub. The lodge was fully fitted out to receive guests, and I took full advantage of it. I used the gas stove to make a decent hot meal from tinned goods and the few vegetables that I had found in Morrisons and sat in my skirt and blouse to eat my first proper meal as Eve, rather than Steve. The hot tub was heated by bottled gas, so I got it warm and undressed in the bedroom, putting on the towelling gown.

I sat in the hot tub as night fell, with an open bottle of wine and a glass. I gazed at the night sky in wonder. It was even better than the view to space from the ISS, as there were no lights to spoil the view. This was what it would have looked like before civilisation. I got out of the tub before I got wrinkled skin, dried off and used the moisturising cream before slipping a very nice nightie over my head and settling down for a good sleep.

I was there a week, leaving all my used clothes behind when I left, following the A1071 until I picked up the A12 again to continue south. I was more settled in myself now, realising that this was to be my life, alone until I died, the last man on earth that I knew of. I released my seed every few days, with the feel of the clothes helping me to think about doing it for real.

My next stop was overnight at the Holiday Inn north of Colchester. Early the next morning I was on the A12 until I picked up the M25 to go over the Thames on the Dartford Bridge and carrying on until I veered off into Swanley. I would spend the night here, and tomorrow I would be at the family home on Church Lane, Albury.

Swanley Market had changed a lot since I was here as a small boy with my mother. Then, it was a small shopping mall with an area outside for market stalls. Now, where the stalls had been, was now the entrance to Swanley Shopping City, a three-storey building that was self-contained, with its own cinema and all the normal shops you’d find in bigger cities. I parked at the bollards in front of the entrance and went to check the doors. It was locked tight.

I had plenty of time and there wasn’t anyone to tell me not to do what I was about to do. I went back to the truck and pulled a battery-powered disc grinder out of the toolbox and set to work on the three removable bollards. Rather than try to cut the locks, which were hardened, I simply cut the steel lugs from the bollards, lifting them out of their holes. I put the grinder back and got into the truck and just drove it through the main doors and into the pedestrian area.

The building was clear for the three stories, with big windows in the roof, so there was a lot of light. I stopped and got out to check the shops map, pinpointing one that was a joy to see. They had their own Victorias’ Secret outlet. With my torch, I went directly there and restocked my underwear supplies, and then a lot extra, taking the bags back to the truck. If I was living in my old home, I would be washing the clothes out and drying them, rather than just dumping them. While I was here, I hit the better shops, putting the dresses I liked in garment bags and making several trips back to the truck. Rather than heading west, I took my time looking around the shops and added a few more items that could be needed, then went a few blocks north to a house that was set up as a holiday let, as the computer told me.

Luckily, it was on gas and there was some still flowing, so I could heat up my evening meal and sit in one of my new dresses to eat it, with a glass of wine. I wore a very slinky nightie that night. In the morning, I shaved in a cold shower and then dressed to go home.

Today was all business, with jeans and top with boots. There may be things that would be needed to be done before I could go to bed that night. I loaded up the truck and picked up the M25, heading south, and then going west before Chipstead I stayed on the M25 until I got to the turning towards Guildford. I stayed on the motorways because I would have plenty of room to go around the few crash sites that I came across.

South of Guildford, I turned onto the road to Chilworth and then to my home at Albury, arriving there in the mid-afternoon. The road was a typical country lane, and the house was red brick which didn’t look a lot from the road. There was a gate into the parking area a little way further on. The house was quite large and there were several outbuildings behind it. On the western side of the house there was a rectangular area where Dad had installed a big solar array to allow the house to be off the grid. We had a big enough tank with heating oil should we get snowed in, and the gas was supplied by a bank of bottles that could be hooked into the main supply into the house should the mains go down.

I had my own key and opened up the house, going in and looking around. It was almost unchanged from the last time that I had been there, before I went to America to train up for the ISS mission. On the kitchen table, I found an envelope and a bunch of keys, sitting on a manila folder with papers in it.

The folder held papers for the house and my parents’ wills. The envelope contained a letter from my mother. In it, she told me that she had been following my career with great pride, and then went on to the advent of the pandemic. At the bottom of the page, she told me that they were going to end things on their own terms, and that they will be in the vintage Riley that was Dad’s pride and joy. I sat down and cried. I didn’t expect them to have been alive but was sad that they had seen the end coming and suicided.

I went back outside and walked to the end shed, where Dad kept the Riley Two-Point Six saloon from the late fifties. I expected that he would have hooked up a hose from the exhaust to the quarter light window with them sitting in the back. This would be interesting, because they would be decomposing normally. When I pulled one door open, there was no smell of rotting bodies. I opened the other one and looked in.

On the passenger side, there was the expected hose from the exhaust to the front quarter light, however, the right had both doors open. One of my fathers’ suits was laying on the floor of the garage by the front door, and one of my mothers’ better dresses was laying over the back seat. They had been brought down by the virus before he could start the car. I suppose that it was better than seeing their remains, but it was still upsetting. I left them as they were and closed the shed doors again.

While I was outside, I checked the other two outbuildings. One was double width and contained the hybrid SUV that they had used for an everyday car, and my mothers’ electric hatchback that she would go shopping in. The last building had doors at both ends, and contained the mower that was used to cut the grass around the solar array, as well as the car trailer that was used to transport the Riley if they were going to a rally a long way away. I went through and looked out the other door, seeing that I would have to cut the grass as a matter of urgency and wipe down the solar panels.

I opened the door fully and went to the mower, unplugging it from the charger. This was the ideal closed system. The mower kept the array tidy, and the array kept the mower charged. I drove out to mow, taking two runs between each line of panels. There were five lines of twenty panels and the act allowed me to move past the loss of my parents, although it hadn’t been a shock. After I finished the mowing, I got the broom, a fibre-glass head with soft bristles on a long handle and swept each panel from top to bottom.

With everything closed up, I went back into the house to check the systems. With the array working well, and the number of batteries, the house could operate as if it was on mains power, so I had lights and electric water heating. I tried the hot tap, and it was working.

It was now getting towards the beginning of autumn, so I needed to make sure I would be able to last the winter. Over the next few days, I took all of my fathers’ things out of the master bedroom and put them in a spare room. Many of mothers’ things fitted me, and still held the aroma of her favourite scent, so they stayed where they were. I filled the wardrobes and drawers with the things I had collected. I had wonderful hot showers, slept in the big bed and wore nice things for dinner, with the bounty that I had found in the working freezers.

One day, I took the SUV with the car trailer hooked up, and went into Guildford to a handyman rental centre, coming back with a gas-powered forklift. I unloaded the pallets with the diesel drums from the truck and put them in where the trailer came from. The truck was parked out of the way for the moment, charged up with a full tank. It would be handy if there was a deeper snow in winter. The forklift was back on the trailer and parked next to it.

One day, I went for a walk to the church. St. Peters and St. Pauls was only across the road, hidden from the house by tall bushes. There were a lot of cars in the car park, and I expected what I did discover when I looked inside. It looked as if almost the whole village had turned up. The pews were littered with piles of clothes and there was a lot of the ash-like dust from bodies. I wondered if they found the afterlife they had believed in as I pulled the door closed to walk home.

I also explored the closer houses. One, across the road and next to the church, had some fruit trees in their garden. They had several apple trees, with some in full fruit. I read up on locally grown apples and found that they were growing enough varieties to keep me in fresh apples year-round. There was Discovery, which were best between July and August. There were Coxs’ and Red Falstaff that were best between September and December, with the Falstaff being able to keep well into the next year. Needless to say, I made sure that I had an apple every day.

I settled into a rhythm of living, eating three small meals a day, getting plenty of sleep, keeping up with the laundry, reading and listening to my fathers’ big selection of CDs, as well as my own from my teens. During the depth of winter, I was warm and dry, only needing to go into Guildford to raid supermarkets for tins, cartons and long-life drinks, using the truck when it snowed.

I lived as Eve, wearing skirts and dresses unless I was doing outside work. It kept me sane, reading through my mothers’ collection of female leaning books and making sure the house and laundry were clean. If I had stayed as Steve, I would have probably let my beard grow and washed once a week. As Eve, I made sure that I was smooth, clean, and healthy every day. Some nights, when I couldn’t sleep, I would put a warm coat on over my nightie and go outside to look at the stars, thinking about the time I had spent up there in space.

When spring came around, I noticed that there were a lot of insects. In my trip south, I had seen the odd cow and sheep, and had wondered if they were alive because they were ruminants, rather than carnivores. I hadn’t seen any cats or dogs anywhere, but had caught glimpses of small birds, so some things survived. There was plenty of tinned meat for me to live on, and I eked out the frozen meat and vegetables in the home freezers. It would be another problem when these ran out, so I was adding thawed packets of frozen veg whenever I went foraging.

Around the middle of June, I was woken by a sound during the night. It was a sort of thrumming noise, which passed overhead, but was gone before I could look outside. It happened a week later, and I was starting to hope that there were others around, even if they were alien.

In early July, I was over the road, up a stepladder and picking apples when the sound came over again. This time I saw what was making the noise. It was huge, and saucer-shaped, with no markings. It was difficult to gauge how big it was, given the surprise it gave me as it went over my head. If the passengers were unfriendly, my existence was likely to be shortened, which didn’t bother me now as much as it should have. If they were friendly, well, who knows what the future held.

Later on, I was back on the ground, making sure that my basket of Discoveries were ready to take home. I had taken a bite of one and was picking up the basket when I heard a different sound. It was like the thrumming but a faster cycle in a higher pitch. It came from a flying rectangular box, about five yards by three, and three yards high, easy to gauge because it settled down in a clear space next to the orchard.

I stood, basket in the crook of my arm, and smoothed my sundress, waiting if the end was truly nigh. A section of the wall of the box lowered to the ground. From the box emerged the alien. I was staggered, as it was very close to being humanoid.

It stood on two legs, about two metres tall, with a vaguely ape-like face that only a mother could love. It had long, golden hair on its head, and a golden fur on its arms and legs. It was wearing a sleeveless jacket and very tight shorts but was shoeless. The fingers, all seven of them, were long, as were the seven toes on each foot, which suggested a home world full of trees. When the breeze caught the jacket, it revealed a line of three nipples down one side of the torso. This must be the female of the species.

Being polite, I spoke.

“Hello. Welcome to earth. I’d very much like to say that I’ll take you to my leader, but I doubt that there is one.”

The alien had a belt with pouches and delved into one to pull out a box. Jabbing at it with a finger, it made a motion that was easy to understand, it held one hand up to its ear. I repeated what I had said. The alien then listened to what the box emitted and spoke into it. The box then spoke to me in English.

“You are not supposed to still be living.”

I answered as we carried on with the translator working.

“I was in space, only coming back after everyone else had died.”

“So, you are a survivor, like me and my sisters.”

“I am. How many of you have survived the trip here.”

“We left our planet in three ships, many of us. We had been tricked.”

“Tricked. How was that.”

“Like your kind, our planet is carbon-based. All of the sisters are carbon-based. The brothers are all silicon-based life forms. It is a complicated history. The brothers came from another planet and wiped out our own brothers. They tried to replicate with us, but it was always going to be a failure.”

“Why did you come here.”

“The brothers told us that this planet would sustain us, and we would be able to replicate with the inhabitants. They sent a small vehicle with a potion that they told us would wipe out all the sisters on the planet, so that we would be welcomed by the local brothers.”

“The potion must have been intended to wipe out all the carbon-based life. All people of this world were carbon-based.”

“That was their trick. When we were on our way, they sent a message to tell us that they had discovered another silicon-based life form and that we weren’t needed any more. After that, the life pods started to fail. I was on watch and managed to bring a handful into operation. Me, and my few sisters, are the only remaining ones of the many who had left. We thought that we were going to die on a barren, lifeless, planet until we saw you.”

“Where are the others?”

“We put the craft down in a big area, some way further on. I came back in our planet explorer.”

I thought about big areas to the west and decided that they must be at Farnborough.

“What do you intend to do now.”

“We can live from the craft for a while. It has everything which we need. There are more of these explorer vehicles, so will be able to create somewhere to live on this land. We eat much the same foods as yourself, so will be able to settle down. Tell me, you dress interestingly, like the brothers on my planet. Are you truly a brother, one that could lie with me and start a new population of carbon-based life.”

I picked a juicy apple from the basket and walked towards her, the snake in my panties getting excited. She was no raving beauty, but she was still she.

“What will I call you.”

“The name of our planet, in your speech, is Pandurium. My name would translate to Bintmadumorium.”

“My name is Eve. Try this earth apple, Adum. Don’t eat the core. Then take me to your breeders.”

Marianne Gregory © 2026