Rays vs. Red Sox GDT 3: Cobb of Alex Corn

Josiah whipped the bacon slabs onto the skillet. They sizzled and popped and he prodded them with a dirty fork. Cracking an egg on the edge of the black metal, Josiah drizzled the yolk and albumin directly on top of the browning bacon. He popped open the cajun seasoning dispenser and dashed two hearty wrist-flicks onto the eggs. He dug his fork under the bacon and flipped both the eggs and bacon, now a single entity of reddish-brown, white, and yellow.

He slid the tri-colored breakfast onto yesterday's plate, still damp from the prior day's grease. Just as he eased himself into the creaking old wooden chair, with fork and knife poised above the meal, Adedit ran into the room.

"Something's cracked the soil!" He disappeared through the doorway as quickly as he had appeared.

Josiah swore and tossed the plate of food into the refrigerator. Tugging on his boots and gloves as he ran, Josiah called to the computer's hallway command receptors.

"Open command: Where is Adedit?"

"He is in the far portside airlock," a female voice responded.

"Open command: Is Adedit leaving?" The voice did not respond. Somewhere in the station, a computer console blinked, "Unknown open command."

"I'm waiting for you," Adedit's voice echoed through the station PA system.

Josiah reached the far portside airlock just as Adedit clicked tight his helmet. Josiah jumped on the back of the two-man rover and sealed his own helmet. The airlock doors hissed deep and violently for several moments.

"Where is it?"

"Right under our damn noses," Adedit said.

"On the farm?"

"Yeah. The whole time."

The airlock door thundered open and the black and gray expanse stretched empty, endless before them. Earth glistened like a plump blueberry in the dark sky.

Adedit sped around to the front of the complex. A low fence marked the target farm zone with a grid of red spray paint denoting each specific target plant zone. Adedit and Josiah leapt from the rover and low-grav trotted to the red grid. Each reach square enclosed perfectly still, smooth, and undisturbed soil.

"Where is it?"

Adedit pointed across the red grid, to the far side of the plot.

"What the hell?" A low hill -- molehill-sized -- of colorless moon soil had gathered just outside the furthest red square. A sliver of green poked through the soil. "Did we plant anything that far out?"

"Must've been a seed that fell without us noticing."

The hill trembled.

"Did you see that?" Josiah trotted the circumference of the garden plot with Adedit behind him. "It's growing right goddamn now!"

The soil trembled. The ground shook. The station's foundations groaned and the rover slid across the dusty moon surface in small, vibrating hops. The moon itself trembled.

"What the hell?!" Josiah linked hands with Adedit, who tugged him away from the green blade.

The ground calmed. The landscape returned to its vacuum steadiness. The stars throbbed quietly. The earth twisted slowly overhead. The two scientist farmers stood silently, staring through beads of sweat, as the mutant corn gene spread cracks deep along the moon's surface.