Binary Systems [Complete, Slice-of-Life Sci-Fi Romance]

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Gordon: I've always admired people who could cook. Claire, for example.
Marie: I didn't know she cooked.
Gordon: She dances too. She just hides her more fluffy side well.
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Sol 494 FY 26, 17:41 Mars Time, Bonestell Crater Colony, Hab Layer, 9.32.002.B

The connection wasn't perfect, but it held. Gordon's face pixelated in and out on the screen above the kitchen module while Marie lined up her gear: one dented mixing bowl, a whisk with a bent handle, and her prized aluminum sheet pan—scavenged, polished, and passed down from Ma's hab.
"So you're making cookies," he said.

"I'm making Earth-style cookies. In my own hab!"

"I'm proud of you."

"Not proud enough—not yet! But you will be."

The metal pan hissed faintly as she laid it on the prep surface. The oven chamber behind her gave a small mechanical cough as it finished equalizing pressure.

"How much have you thought about Martian food?" she asked, pulling a squat container of golden fat from the cooler shelf.

"I've looked up astronaut food, and I know you said you grow algae—"

"Not much, then." She dropped the fat into a saucepan and set it on a low burner. "Why do you think I'm so short? It's because they had trouble feeding me. The admins—they didn't exactly pack cylinders of formula on the first Mars mission. Nobody expected to have a kid so early, so I was… I was a real challenge to keep alive."

"I can't even imagine."

"Yeah. It was sad-face time: Mom apparently couldn't breastfeed."

"Things I didn't expect to learn about today: your mom's boobs."

"Hey, this is a tender formative memory."

"No way you remember that. But I'm glad you survived, obviously. I guess it must've been really tough for your parents."

"Yeah. Birth control isn't foolproof. And no one who came here wanted to be sterile—that would've defeated the point of sending enough people genetically to save the species or whatever."

"You were telling me about food."

"I was going to."

The fat had melted now, bubbling softly. She watched the solids drift downward, then slowly poured the clear top layer through a mesh strainer and set it aside to cool.

She ran through the checklist in her head: cricket flour for protein, the high-carb algae flour that always left her hands dusted green, the finer algae flour Ma used when she wanted something that could almost pass for pastry. The rice flour was for structure. Not ideal—too dry—but it helped offset the weirdness of the protein flours. She hated the taste of it raw. Smelled like chalk. Ginger. Lemons. Fake chocolate powder. All here.

"Sorry, I just got off track," she said. "I remembered something I wanted to ask you—I looked at your CV because I was curious. It took you 26 years to graduate?"

"I was 26 when I graduated."

"See, I thought I was hitching my star to some kind of boy-genius-programming-prodigy. And here you are: 26 to graduate college?"

"With a master's. While working."

"Okay, so I'll grant you that, but… I had all my engineering coursework done by the time I was 19. Got my certifications by 23."

"You lived and breathed that stuff, didn't you?"

"Well, literally, yeah. Why?"

She crushed a few hardened sugar shards into a ceramic bowl with the back of a spoon, then began folding in the clarified fat—thick, glossy, and still warm. A powdered bitter blend went in next, staining the mix a dark tan.

"Well," Gordon said, "I didn't start out going for business science. I was going straight for computer science. But I changed when Father told me what I'd need to know to do what he needed me to do—and be able to audit for the company. So I changed careers. Also, I had a job.

"But—it's like—there's this whole bundle of stuff you have to get through before you even reach the degree-specific classes…"

Marie let him ramble while she separated her flours into another bowl: a dusty blend of grainy, green-tinged powder, the chalky high-carb mix that clumped in dry air, a finer beige flour, and just a hint of grated root, wet and fragrant.

She whisked them together, then slowly stirred them into the fat-sugar mix, the dough stiffening into a heavy, spiced paste. It didn't quite hold. She dipped a spoon into her cup of coffee—lukewarm, bitter—and added a splash.

Gordon kept going. "So you've got… I don't know—history, basket weaving, art history, gym class, lesbian dance theory…"

Marie narrowed her eyes. "Is that even a class?"

"I don't know. I would never have taken something like that. But Karen says—she's working on her second master's—and every time she turns around, there's a new 'lesbian dance theory' she has to take before they let her near a hard science course again.

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"And the term kind of stuck."

She did not like the way he said Karen.

"So that's what took you so long—all the 'lesbian dance theory'."

"Two different types, remember. Computer science chicks really can't dance." He paused. "It was a joke."

"Funny."

Marie scooped the dough into rough mounds, spacing them evenly on the aluminum sheet. She pressed each one flat with her fingers, then slid the tray into her makeshift pressure oven.

"Actually though?" Gordon's voice softened. "I felt comfortable in college. Like… I was with people who maybe had been through some of the same stuff. Like maybe they understood what it was like to have expectations for yourself. Or what it was like to get lost in a problem."

The chamber sealed with a hiss. She turned the dial up +20 kilopascals, then set the temperature to 175C.

"I made friends," he said. "It took me a while to figure out a lot of them were only my friends because of who my dad was, so… That wasn't great.

"But that's also where I met Harry."

Marie leaned against the edge of the counter, watching through the oven's viewport. The cookies were just beginning to rise—edges crisping, centers puffing like tiny domes.

"Okay," she said quietly. "So basically, college is where you get to stop feeling like a kid. I get why you didn't rush out."

The oven chamber hummed as it maintained pressure, the internal fan making a low, centrifugal whine. Marie checked the gauge—steady at +20 kilopascals. Just a few more minutes. The tops of the cookies had begun to crack slightly.

Gordon's voice filtered through the speaker again, warm and nostalgic.

"So… what was it like being an engineer's apprentice?"

"Oh—well, I was six engineers' apprentice, actually."

She pulled up a stool near the cook station and leaned her elbows on the counter.

"I had to do hydrodynamics and plumbing. Metalworking and precision fitting. Bio-systems. Advanced fabrication and finishing. Atmospheric systems."

Gordon blinked. "That's a lot. And you had all that done by 23?"

"Yes, I did. But I didn't have any 'lesbian dance theory'. I just learned what I needed for what I needed to do. Anything related to that, so I'd understand the underlying concepts—math, chemistry, physics, biology. But mostly not… like, American history. They haven't made me do that since high school."

"So what was high school like?"

"It was weird," she said, her voice going quieter. She flicked the edge of a spoon against the side of a mug, making it ring softly.

"They imported a curriculum for me. Just a little bookshelf of expensive Earth books made of paper—which I was not to tear or write in. And adults who were between shifts would step in and make sure I did my homework. It was like being tutored by half the colony."

She stood again, crossed to the viewport, and checked the cookie edges—just starting to brown at the rim.

"It seems like I always had oversight. But I mean… as a kid, they weren't ready for children. It wasn't just that they didn't have formula. The infrastructure wasn't ready for someone to need somewhere safe.

"I spent a large part of my first five years in the same hab suite, because that's the one they'd childproofed. Once they had the farm set up, I got free run of the place—but even then, they had to have someone keep an eye on me so I didn't unplug hoses from the tanks. Or steal eggs, or fight the chickens or something, I don't know."

She gave a short laugh—dry, self-aware.

Marie still remembered Herschel—the man across the hall in 9.32.001:A. He used to whistle in the corridors, soft like birdsong. Then one day, he didn't.
She was six, maybe seven. No one told her directly, but the silence said enough. What she remembered most wasn't the adults' voices, or her mother's drawn face. It was the low, flickering lights in the corridor hub—the ones that pulsed when the AI was "thinking."

That night, she sat cross-legged in front of the maintenance panel, watching the lights idling. And she told it not to be scared. She told it that people died sometimes, but that didn't mean they left. That Herschel had loved his silly red socks, and the AI should remember him that way.

The lights steadied. She decided that meant it had listened.

Years later, she learned that low-frequency oscillations like that usually indicated processor throttling due to external load. But she still liked her version better.
She considered telling him about her younger self, talking to the walls. Maybe later.

"Just… growing up alone. It was weird."

She paused. The screen showed Gordon still listening, nodding.

"I had another question for you."

"Shoot."

"I saw this beautiful pale woman in some of your older photos—from a few years ago. No, like seven years ago. I was wondering who that was?"
Gordon's expression shifted—not defensive, exactly. Thoughtful. A little distant.

"Claire's mother. I don't have much contact with her anymore, since she decided to separate from Hiram. I was just her stepson. So, apparently, she didn't feel the need to keep contact with me. Which I didn't see coming."

Marie frowned. "I thought you said Hiram was 72?"

"He is."

"There was just no way that woman was… so well preserved."

She idly juiced the lemon into a cup. Waste not. A few shards of sugar followed shortly afterward.

"She isn't. He married much younger for his second wife. Let's see—they had Claire when I was five. So she'd be… mid-fifties now?"

"I thought you said your mom divorced him when you were six."

"I did."

The chamber beeped softly. Marie popped the seal, and a burst of warm, sweet-sour air filled the hab. Her shoulders relaxed immediately. That was the part she loved best—the release. The scent came out fast and rich: toasty, sharp from the citrus, and dark with something bitter and deep underneath. Coffee and carbon. Real cooking.

She let the pan sit, the cookies crackling quietly as they settled and rifled through her freezer for ice cubes. Into the cup they went.
"Had you been close?" she asked.

"She was always pleasant, kind of like the 'fun' aunt. Claire was more strongly affected than I was. House is fairly empty without her, though. She used to cook."

Marie smiled faintly as she began sliding the cookies from the pan with a spatula. They resisted a little. No nonstick on Mars—that would be a waste of resources—just plain aluminum and plenty of practice.
"I've always loved cooking. I'm not a chef or anything—but I can make chocolate chip cookies. Artificial chocolate, I think it's mostly coffee-based."

"How is that even a savings?" Gordon asked.

"Well, we already have coffee, I guess."

"That's so odd to me. I'm imagining eating an espresso chip cookie. It sounds good."

"I try to make good things."

She sipped her lemonade, grimaced, and poured herself some water from the tap to dilute it.

"The fun part is adopting Earth recipes from the internet to Mars pressure. Water boils at a different temperature, so cookies also bake at a different temperature. Ma does it all the time, and they never turn out the same. But I cracked the code."

"Do you change the flour/water ratio or something?"

"I'm not a good cook. That sounds like good cook stuff. I just put my oven in a pressure chamber. I made a pressure-cooker-toaster-oven! From scratch."
"You implied that you made changes to the recipe. But that's… impressive. Sounds dangerous."

"Oh, I do. I sub all sorts of ingredients, and I put 'pressurize to plus 20 kilopascals' before the baking time. And not really dangerous if you know what you're doing."

"When you depressurize, does it fill the house with cookie smell all at once?"

She lifted one cookie from the cooling rack, turned it over, and took a bite. It crunched at the edge and gave way to something soft, just barely underdone in the center.

"It's my little gift to myself," she said, mouth half-full. "Smells like home."