By the time Lena finished, her coffee had gone cold.
Her mother had stopped interrupting somewhere around Spatial Inventory.
That had been twenty minutes ago.
Lena sat curled into one corner of the porch chair, staring across Redtail while the silence stretched between them.
The farm was mostly dark now.
A security light cast a pale circle around the barn, occasionally catching movement behind the fence.
Beyond it, the greenhouse frames were black lines against the night sky.
Finally, her mother spoke.
“So.”
Lena waited.
“The world is ending.”
“Changing.”
“Lena.”
“Sorry.”
She rubbed a hand over her face.
“Planetary Transition.
Seventeen days.
Probably catastrophic.
Definitely dangerous.
I don’t know exactly what happens when the countdown reaches zero.”
“And you’ve known this for almost two weeks.”
“Yes.”
“By yourself?”
Lena frowned.
“Not exactly.
Vale knows.
A few other people know something is coming-”
“I don’t mean who knows.”
Oh.
Lena looked down at her lap.
“You’ve been dealing with this for almost two weeks?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I can tell.”
“I had a lot to do.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Lena didn’t answer.
Her mother sighed.
“Baby.”
Lena closed her eyes.
There it was.
One word.
For almost two weeks, people had been looking at Lena like she knew what she was doing.
Contractors asked her for decisions.
Marcus asked what she wanted purchased.
Ruth asked what they needed next.
Vale asked what mattered.
People Lena had never met arrived at Redtail every morning and started building things because somewhere along the line Lena had decided those things needed to exist.
Even the fucking System kept handing her objectives as if Lena were obviously the appropriate person to prepare a tiny corner of Earth for whatever was coming.
And suddenly she wasn’t any of those things.
She was just someone’s daughter.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Lena said.
The words escaped before she could stop them.
Her mother’s voice softened immediately.
“I thought you had a whole plan.”
“I have lists.”
A small laugh came through the phone.
Lena laughed too.
“So many fucking lists.”
“Language.”
“I’m thirty years old.”
“And apparently that wasn’t long enough to learn better.”
Lena smiled and wiped quickly beneath one eye.
For a little while, neither of them said anything.
Then her mother asked, “Do you really believe this is happening?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
“Okay.”
Lena opened her eyes.
“Okay?”
“I didn’t say I understand it.”
“That’s fair.”
“I didn’t say I’m not wondering if you’ve completely lost your mind.”
“Also fair.”
“But you told people that asteroid was going to move before it moved.”
“Yes.”
“And you were right.”
“Yes.”
Her mother took a breath.
“So I’m listening.”
It wasn’t I believe you.
But it was enough.
“What do you need from me?”
Lena’s brain immediately supplied a list.
Documents.
Medication.
Clothes.
Anything sentimental that couldn’t be replaced.
Anything she couldn’t stand to lose.
But she didn’t want another list.
Not tonight.
“I need you to come visit.”
“All right.”
Lena sat straighter.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Tomorrow?”
A pause.
“I can probably do tomorrow.”
Relief washed through her.
“And Mom?”
“Yeah?”
Lena stared out at the farm.
“I need you to believe me.”
Her mother was quiet.
“I believe that you believe it.”
Lena’s stomach sank slightly.
Then-
“And right now, that’s enough for me to get in the car.”
Lena smiled.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Thursday morning, Lena had a veterinary geneticist coming, a mother on the way, and six separate deliveries scheduled before noon.
The veterinary geneticist worried her the least.
Probably because Harper was Ruth’s problem.
Or had been, right up until Ruth had recommended her and Lena had said, yes, get her here.
Now she was Lena’s problem.
Lena stood beside the barn with a cup of coffee and watched the greenhouse crews work across the field.
They’d been at it since Tuesday.
The first structures were taking shape now, steel frames rising in clean rows where there had been nothing but open ground two days ago.
Pallets of panels, irrigation equipment and electrical components surrounded the site, with more arriving faster than the crews could install them.
It still looked like a construction site.
A very expensive construction site.
But Lena could finally see what it was going to become.
Her phone buzzed.
MOM: I’ll leave around 10.
Do you need me to bring anything?
Lena considered that.
There were currently enough supplies arriving at Redtail to support a small town.
LENA: No.
Just drive safe.
She sent it.
Then added:
LENA: Love you.
The response came almost immediately.
MOM: Love you too.
See you soon.
Lena put the phone away.
“You nervous?”
Ruth was coming out of the barn.
“No.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s my mother.
Why would I be nervous?”
Ruth looked around Redtail.
Lena followed her gaze.
Workers.
Trucks.
Livestock.
Construction equipment.
Enough stored food to make several federal agencies curious.
Okay.
Maybe there were reasons.
“She knows,” Lena said.
“Hearing it and seeing it aren’t the same thing.”
Lena didn’t particularly appreciate that observation.
Fortunately, a pickup turned through the gate before she had to respond.
Ruth looked toward it.
“That’ll be Harper.”
Lena straightened.
Good.
This she could handle.
Harper was here because Lena had a problem.
Several, technically.
The System had confirmed that Redtail’s livestock populations were genetically diverse enough for sustainable breeding.
That didn’t mean Lena had the slightest idea how to keep them that way.
And there was still one line from the completed quest that she’d been thinking about.
Establish redundant breeds within a critical production category: INCOMPLETE.
She hadn’t needed it.
The quest was complete.
But the logic behind it bothered her.
One breed.
One set of vulnerabilities.
One disease, one environmental condition, one unknown Transition effect that hit that breed particularly hard…
and an entire source of food could disappear with it.
Lena didn’t need more animals just to have more animals.
She needed the right animals.
And apparently Ruth knew someone who could tell her what those were.
Harper parked beside the barn.
Ruth started toward the truck.
Lena followed.
Harper climbed out of the truck with a laptop bag over one shoulder and a binder tucked beneath her arm.
She looked around before closing the door.
Then looked around again.
Lena couldn’t blame her.
Redtail had become considerably more difficult to take in all at once.
“Harper.”
Ruth hugged her briefly.
“Thanks for coming.”
“You made it sound interesting.”
Ruth glanced at Lena.
“That was before she bought half the county.”
“I bought one farm.”
“So far.”
Lena ignored that.
Ruth gestured between them.
“Harper, Lena.
Lena, Harper.”
Harper held out her hand.
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too.
Thanks for coming.”
“Ruth said you wanted help with livestock planning.”
“I do.”
Harper looked toward the pasture.
“What are we working with?”
Lena smiled.
“I have a list.”
“Of course you do,” Ruth muttered.
Lena pulled out her notebook.
They started with the goats.
Harper wanted numbers first.
Species.
Breeds.
Sex ratios.
Ages.
Where they’d come from.
What Lena knew about their parentage.
Registration records where they existed.
Health histories.
Production histories.
Then she wanted to see the animals.
That part took considerably longer.
Lena followed while Harper moved through the herd, asking questions and making notes.
Some Lena could answer normally.
Some required a quick glance at Animal Appraisal and a carefully edited version of what it told her.
Harper stopped beside one of the does.
“You know her sire?”
“Yes.”
“Dam?”
“Yes.”
“Any relation to either of the bucks?”
“One.”
Harper looked up.
“Which one?”
Lena pointed.
“Him.
Same grandsire.”
Harper checked something in her notes.
“Then I wouldn’t pair them.”
Lena glanced at the information hovering beside the doe.
‘Breeding compatibility.’
The display shifted.
The pairing wasn’t dangerous.
It wasn’t even particularly bad.
But the other buck offered substantially better genetic diversity.
Harper had reached essentially the same conclusion without a blue screen telling her.
Interesting.
“You have remarkably good records for animals you’ve owned for less than a week,” Harper said.
“I asked a lot of questions.”
Behind them, Ruth made a suspiciously cough-like sound.
Lena didn’t turn around.
Harper apparently decided not to investigate.
Good woman.
By the time they moved on to the pigs, Lena was already glad Ruth had called her.
Harper didn’t just look at individual animals.
She looked at populations.
Which males could be paired with which females.
Which lines were overrepresented.
Which animals should produce replacements.
Where they would eventually need new genetics.
The System could tell Lena that an animal was suitable for breeding.
Harper knew how to make that mean something ten years from now.
That was what Lena needed.
The chickens came last.
All thirty-two of them.
Harper stood outside the enclosure studying the flock.
“What are you trying to get out of these?”
“Eggs.
Meat.
Replacement birds.”
“Priority?”
“Eggs.”
Harper nodded.
“Then I’d probably start your redundancy here.”
Lena looked at her.
“Why?”
“Fast generation interval.
Relatively cheap to maintain.
Easy to keep enough numbers for separate breeding groups.
And if eggs are a major protein source for you, they’re worth protecting.”
That made sense.
Lena opened her notebook.
“I don’t just want another breed that does the same thing.”
Harper glanced over.
“What do you want?”
“A backup.”
“That is what another breed would be.”
“No.
I mean an actual backup.”
Lena pointed toward the chickens.
“If these are great layers but terrible in extreme heat, I don’t want another great layer that’s also terrible in extreme heat.”
Harper nodded slowly.
“You want complementary vulnerabilities.”
“Yes.”
“That’s smarter.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I sound surprised because Ruth told me about the auction.”
Lena looked at Ruth.
Ruth looked completely unrepentant.
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“That could mean anything.”
Harper laughed.
Then she opened her binder.
“If we’re doing this properly, we don’t choose purely for production.
We choose for resilience.”
“Exactly.”
“Which means I need to know what you’re preparing for.”
There it was.
Lena had been expecting that question eventually.
She considered how much to say.
“Supply disruption.”
“How long?”
“Potentially very long.”
“Feed availability?”
“Unreliable.”
“Climate?”
Lena hesitated.
“Potentially extreme.”
Harper looked up.
“Extreme how?”
“Both directions.”
“Heat and cold?”
“Yes.”
“How extreme?”
“Plan for worse than you think is reasonable.”
Harper studied her.
Lena let her.
Ruth had apparently told Harper enough to get her here.
Lena wasn’t going to explain the System.
She didn’t need Harper to believe in it.
She needed Harper to plan around the conditions Lena gave her.
Eventually Harper nodded.
“Okay.”
That was easier than expected.
“What else?”
“Water shortages.”
“Disease?”
“Yes.”
“Parasites?”
“Yes.”
“Predation?”
“Probably.”
“Reduced veterinary access?”
“Assume none.”
Harper’s pen stopped.
“No veterinary access.”
“If we have it, great.
Don’t build the plan around it.”
Another pause.
“Commercial feed?”
“Same.”
Harper looked toward the flock again.
“So you want animals capable of continuing production under conditions that would normally be considered unacceptable.”
“Yes.”
“You realize there’s a tradeoff.”
“With production.”
“Usually.
The animal that gives you the most milk or the most eggs under ideal conditions is not necessarily the animal you want when conditions stop being ideal.”
“That’s fine.”
“You say that now.”
“I don’t need maximum production.
I need production that doesn’t disappear when things get bad.”
Harper smiled slightly.
“Now I know what I’m looking for.”
Good.
They moved back toward the table beside the barn.
Harper opened her laptop.
“For poultry, I’d look at hardy dual-purpose breeds.
Strong foragers.
Good temperature tolerance.
Reliable reproduction without depending entirely on incubators.
Broodiness might actually be useful for you.”
“Definitely.”
“For dairy, I’d think the same way.
You can keep your higher-producing animals, but I’d want something efficient enough to maintain itself on less-than-perfect forage.”
Lena wrote.
“Cattle?”
“Depends what role you want them filling.”
“Food.”
“That narrows it down tremendously.”
Lena looked up.
Harper smiled.
“Meat?
Dairy?
Dual-purpose?
Draft potential?”
“Any of those could matter.”
“Then we’re going to need priorities.”
“Why?”
“Because no breed is good at everything.”
“I don’t need one breed to be good at everything.”
“Good.”
Harper turned the laptop toward her.
“I’d rather build layers of redundancy.
Different breeds, different strengths.
If one struggles, another may not.”
That was exactly it.
Lena looked over the notes Harper had started making.
Heat tolerance.
Cold hardiness.
Feed efficiency.
Foraging ability.
Parasite resistance.
Maternal traits.
Calving ease.
Disease resistance where identifiable.
Production under nutritional stress.
Each one had breeds beside it.
Some Lena recognized.
Most she didn’t.
“How many of these would you actually keep?”
Harper laughed.
“Not all of them.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have one farm.”
Right.
That problem again.
Space.
Feed.
Water.
Labor.
Every additional animal had a cost even when Adrian was paying the financial one.
Lena tapped the page.
“So how do we keep access to the traits without keeping all the animals?”
“Genetics.”
Lena looked at her.
Harper continued typing.
“For the larger livestock especially, I’d start banking semen.
Embryos where it’s practical.”
“Banking.”
“Cryogenic storage.”
Lena’s attention sharpened.
“For how long?”
“Properly stored?
Decades, easily.
Potentially much longer.”
“How much space?”
Harper stopped typing.
Then looked at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was a look.”
“Most people ask about cost first.”
“I have someone for that.”
Ruth snorted.
Harper glanced between them.
“All right.
Space depends on the equipment and what you’re storing, but compared to keeping the actual animals?
Almost nothing.”
“How much is almost nothing?”
“A decent tank can hold thousands of semen straws.”
Lena stared at her.
“Thousands.”
“Yes.”
“From different animals.”
“If that’s how you build the collection.”
Lena leaned back.
Oh.
That was useful.
Extremely useful.
“So instead of keeping five different cattle breeds-”
“You could keep the live populations that make sense for Redtail and bank genetics from others.”
“For later.”
“Yes.”
“If we need a trait.”
“Potentially.
It’s not quite as simple as ordering heat tolerance out of a catalog and adding it to your herd, but broadly, yes.
It gives you options.”
Options.
Lena liked options.
“What would you bank?”
“For Redtail?”
“Yes.”
Harper thought about it.
“First?
Unrelated genetics for the breeds you’re actually maintaining.
Insurance against losing important lines.
Then I’d look at breeds with traits we may want to introduce later.”
“Heat tolerance.”
“Yes.”
“Cold.”
“Yes.”
“Disease resistance.”
“Where appropriate.”
“Feed efficiency.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“Plenty.”
Harper started listing them.
Lena wrote.
Then something occurred to her.
“What about breeds we don’t think we’ll ever use?”
Harper frowned.
“Why would you store those?”
“I don’t know.”
Lena looked at the notes.
Different breeds.
Different traits.
Different populations shaped by different places, climates and purposes.
Some of them rare.
Some of them already disappearing.
“How many livestock breeds are endangered?”
Harper’s expression changed.
“Worldwide?”
“Yes.”
“A lot.”
“Hundreds?”
“Yes.”
Lena’s pen stopped.
Hundreds.
“And genetic material exists for them?”
“For some.
There are conservation programs.
Gene banks.
Universities.
Breed organizations.
Private collections.”
“Could we get it?”
“Some of it.”
“How much?”
Harper studied her.
“That depends entirely on what you’re trying to do.” Get faster updates on g.com.
Lena didn’t know.
That was the problem.
Five minutes ago she’d been trying to make sure Redtail still had eggs if one breed of chicken couldn’t handle whatever Transition did to the world.
Now she was thinking about animals she’d never seen.
Breeds Redtail didn’t need.
Genetics they might never use.
Except-
What happened if nobody had them afterward?
The System had warned her about catastrophic disruption.
Hundreds of millions dead.
Infrastructure failure.
Agricultural collapse.
Animals weren’t exempt from any of that.
Some breeds were already barely hanging on now.
What happened to them when keeping humans alive became difficult?
Lena looked at Harper.
“Could you preserve a breed?”
Harper went still.
“That’s different from what we were just talking about.”
“I know.”
“If you’re talking about actual genetic conservation, not just keeping useful breeding options for your own animals, you’d need a much more deliberate collection.”
“Could it be done?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Broad representation.
Multiple unrelated donors.
Different family lines.
Ideally enough material to capture meaningful genetic diversity rather than a handful of individuals.”
“Embryos?”
“For some species, absolutely.
Semen.
Embryos.
Potentially other reproductive material depending on what you’re doing.”
“How much physical space?”
“Still not much.”
There it was again.
Lena looked down at the list.
One breed.
Ten.
Fifty.
Hundreds.
“You could preserve them without keeping them alive.”
Harper hesitated.
“You could preserve the genetic material necessary to potentially restore populations later.”
Restore.
The word caught.
Not maintain.
Not use.
Restore something that had been lost.
Lena stared at the page.
If they could do that with livestock-
Seeds.
They were already buying seeds.
But how many varieties?
How many crops?
How many plants existed because someone had bothered to preserve them?
What else could disappear?
Fruit trees.
Rootstock.
Livestock.
Microorganisms she probably didn’t even know enough to ask about.
All this time, Lena had been preparing to survive what was coming.
Food.
Water.
Shelter.
Medicine.
Energy.
Everything twenty people needed to stay alive.
But survival wasn’t the only problem.
Eventually there had to be an afterward.
And if enough disappeared during the Transition, surviving wouldn’t bring any of it back.
“How much could we save?” Lena asked.
Harper was quiet.
“What?”
“If we started now.”
“Lena-”
“Sixteen days.
Existing collections first.
Anything already stored somewhere that we could acquire and move here.”
Harper stared at her.
“Why sixteen days?”
“Deadline.”
“For?”
“Having it here.”
Harper waited.
Lena didn’t elaborate.
Eventually Harper exhaled.
“If you’re serious, I wouldn’t start by trying to collect new material ourselves.”
“Good.”
“I’d identify existing repositories first.
Commercial genetics companies.
Conservation programs.
Universities.
Breed associations.
Private breeders.
Figure out what already exists and what we can actually access.”
“Could you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Could you decide what matters most?”
Harper hesitated.
“I could build priorities.”
“Rare breeds.”
“Yes.”
“Heritage breeds.”
“Yes.”
“Useful adaptations.”
“Yes.”
“Genetic diversity.”
“Obviously.”
“And whatever else I’m not thinking of.”
“That category is going to be substantial.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
Harper looked at her.
Then at the increasingly ridiculous list between them.
“How big are you imagining this?”
Lena looked toward the pasture.
The answer should have been simple.
Enough for Redtail.
Enough to protect their livestock.
Enough to make sure they had options.
Except that wasn’t what she was thinking anymore.
She was thinking about everything that might vanish simply because nobody had thought to save it before it was too late.
“As much as we can.”
A clear tone sounded in her mind.
Lena froze.
PRESERVATION-CLASS PROGRESSION UNLOCKED
Preservation is not limited to immediate survival.
A resilient settlement must retain the capacity to restore what is lost.
Current Preservation Profile:
Food Security: GOOD
Agricultural Continuity: GOOD
Medical Reserves: DEVELOPING
Biological Preservation: DEVELOPING
Technical Preservation: INSUFFICIENT
Cultural Preservation: MINIMAL
Lena stared.
Well.
That was new.
“Lena?”
Harper’s voice barely registered.
Preservation-class.
Not a quest.
Progression.
The System had apparently decided she’d crossed some invisible line.
Her eyes moved down the categories.
Food Security: GOOD.
That tracked.
Agricultural Continuity: GOOD.
Also fair.
Medical Reserves: DEVELOPING.
She could work with that.
Biological Preservation: DEVELOPING.
Obviously.
Technical Preservation: INSUFFICIENT.
Lena frowned.
Rude.
Then-
Cultural Preservation: MINIMAL.
What the fuck was she supposed to do about that?
Save the Louvre?
Later.
Her attention returned to Biological Preservation.
‘Details.’
The interface changed.
BIOLOGICAL PRESERVATION
Measures retention of viable biological resources necessary for ecological, agricultural and civilizational recovery.
Contributing resources include:
Living genetic diversity
Cryopreserved reproductive material
Seed and germplasm collections
Agricultural genetic resources
Microbial resources
Domesticated species diversity
Other viable biological material
Lena read it twice.
Microbial resources.
She didn’t even know what that meant.
Which was probably a problem.
Seed and germplasm collections she understood well enough.
Suddenly the thousands of seed packets she’d been buying looked considerably less comprehensive than they had yesterday.
“Lena.”
She blinked.
Harper and Ruth were both looking at her.
“What?”
“You stopped responding,” Harper said.
“Thinking.”
Ruth raised an eyebrow.
Lena ignored her.
She dismissed the interface.
There would be time to figure out the rest.
Well.
There wouldn’t.
That was rather the entire problem.
But right now she had Harper.
“I need you to run this.”
Harper frowned.
“The breeding program?”
“That too.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“The genetic archive.”
A pause.
“You decided that very quickly.”
“I’ve had a productive morning.”
Harper looked at Ruth.
Ruth shrugged.
“I warned you.”
Harper looked back at Lena.
“How big an archive?”
Lena thought about the new interface.
Biological Preservation: DEVELOPING.
Hundreds of breeds.
Sixteen days.
And an entire world of things she hadn’t even considered yet.
“As big as we can make it.”
Harper was silent for several seconds.
Then she looked down at her binder.
“This was supposed to be a consulting visit.”
“Not anymore.”
“I gathered that.”
“You’ll do it?”
Harper looked toward the livestock.
Then toward the greenhouse construction.
Then back at Lena.
“If you actually have the resources you seem to have?”
“We do.”
“And you can get me access to people and facilities?”
Lena thought of Vale.
“Yes.”
Harper closed the binder.
“Then I’ll see what I can put together.”
Lena smiled.
“Good.”
Her phone buzzed.
She pulled it out.
MOM: Leaving now.
See you in a few hours.
Oh.
Right.
Lena had somehow forgotten about the part of today she was actually nervous about.
Ruth glanced at the screen.
“Your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“On her way?”
“Yeah.”
Harper started gathering the papers scattered across the table.
“Should we continue inside?”
“No.”
Lena put her phone away.
“We have a few hours.”
“A few hours for what?”
Lena looked down at the list.
Rare breeds.
Heritage breeds.
Heat tolerance.
Cold tolerance.
Disease resistance.
Cryogenic storage.
Repositories.
Genetic archives.
Then at Harper.
“Let’s figure out what we’re saving first.”