The Cost of Coffee, part 18
Prompts for 11 July 2025
Write about a new discovery
devastating recency
“have mercy on me”
A character who feels behind
There are only two more “parts” left in this story! If you feel left behind, start at the beginning here.
Pinta stood in the tunnel of the seed vault that she and Naimeh had named "Norway." Father hadn't painted anything new, so Pinta focused on the man with the pipe. She compared Father's image to one that Mother had dreamed. They were similar, but not the same. Father's man looked like a weathered old fisherman, while Mother's image was less distinct and could have been any man with a pipe. Still, something about the images sat just outside her mental reach, making her feel like the meaning of the thing left her behind.
As she studied the pictures side-by-side, she felt Naimeh come beside her. The two of them knew the patterns of the boxes in the messy office and the codes to get this far into Norway, and it had become a place of refuge for them. Father still kept access to the little office among the seeds for himself; it was his place to get away from the devastating recency of fires and betrayal and the crumbling of the society he had wanted to build with his family.
Pinta squinted at the men in the two images. "I can't quite see what they might mean. Are they supposed to be the same person at different times of life? Why would both Father and Mother's minds visualize a pipe-smoking man? I feel like I'm so close to understanding what it means--and how it's somehow connected to the Bio and everything that's happening."
"Well, haven't you become the philosopher and dreamer, weaver of stories now!" Naimeh smiled at Pinta. "I thought I was the dreamy one and you were the scientist."
That made Pinta laugh. "Have mercy on me, oh sister of mine. My mind might be more complex than anyone realized. Father's talk about stories has made me think about why science matters. Why are we here?"
"Here, on Mars?" queried Naimeh. "Or here as an existential question?"
"Both?" Pinta was half-joking, but only half. She had started to wonder about the purpose of all the Bios set around the universe just as Earth's atmosphere finally collapsed. Why hadn't everyone just ended together? Millions of people died with Earth; only those chosen to populate the biospheres had any hope of survival--and no one knew how many of those biospheres succeeded. The World Collective Government decided who lived and who died; Pinta had never really thought about that before. Maybe it was Father's stories that sparked her imagination. Maybe it was his references to religion; maybe there was some "uncaused cause" who expected some kind of allegiance. All Pinta knew was that the principles of the Mars Bio were breaking down and she really didn't know why.
Suddenly, Naimeh gasped, saying, "Pinta!! It's not the man with the pipe that matters! It's the pipe itself! Look at them; they're identical!" Pinta saw it immediately, once Naimeh pointed it out. Looking more closely, she noticed something else.
"The pipe in Father's picture has smoke coming from it, but the one in Mother's dream doesn't."
The sisters looked at each other, each one hoping the other might have some idea of what smoke versus no smoke might mean.
"Let's ask Father," said Pinta. He was the one, after all, who talked about story and religion being important. Perhaps there was a story about a pipe or smoke that might be useful. Pinta shook her head at herself, muttering, "Who am I? This is one thing I shouldn't be admitting to: that there might be more than can be seen and understood. The last few weeks must really be playing tricks on me."
Naimeh remained silent, and Pinta could only guess at what her sister might be thinking. Naimeh was the one who would normally talk about things she imagined. But Pinta didn't imagine the images on Mother's drawing or Father's mural. That they reflected the same thing had to mean something, didn't it? Back and forth, from interest to skepticism, Pinta's mind swirled for the remainder of the walk home.
The Cost of Coffee is a micro-serial (turning short story) inspired by Flash Fiction Friday prompts by
at Gibberish