Pending

Three of the four air filter modules were now out of order. James filed a new request in the supply and repair system and watched the result message blink in orange on the screen. "Pending."

Last time he needed help he had to wait a whole week to get it. Then the main transport tunnel in his area got damaged too. The worst was, he had not received his vaccine update yet. He looked up to the flash news display over the entrance. "Population: decrease 2%."

Five years ago he started donating his share to the gene and health fund. Two of his children had survived, he was informed, and resided in baby care cells. "Not that different from me", he thought, "Isolated."

A century and a half now, since the quarantine regime has been into force. Millions had died while building the infrastructure and tuning the system that sustained the life of this world. "No", he shook his head, "Our life in this world."

It must have started a long time before that but no one saw it coming until it was too late. They have tried to tame this planet, breed the species that would feed them, and kill the ones that got into the way. Then evolution filled in the gaps that were left out open. Organisms that survived adapted to the new situation, humans and their livestock were now the main, or even only, hosts for parasites and parasitoids. The greatest effort of his society was targeted at biology and medicine research and development. "And I sit here and wait, for someone to pack and send a fucking twenty by ten by eighty centimeter module over the robot wire line, before the fourth one is down and I choke to death. Someone. Somewhere. So that I can live to help someone else live. Somewhere else. To help build a future for our children that will be born one day. Sometime. And now is just an abstract thought of an abstract notion of an eternal world that stretches outside of my twenty square meters of life. Why do I care so much, when a couple of million years from now it will not matter at all."