The Pathways of Depot Verde

By Jill Zeller

Neuronal Atrophy, "Spacer's Dementia" is spreading through the solar system. Miles comes to Depot Verde to pick up where his dead ex-wife Natalie left off. But can he uncover her secret cure in time to help their daughter Lily, before the Pharma cuts off the supply? Includes FREE SF short story, "Electric Pathways of the Heart."!

• Language: English
• Publisher: J Z Morrison Press
• Release date: Jun 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476281278

Jill Zeller

The author of numerous short stories and novels, Jill Zeller lives in Albany, Oregon with her patient husband, and a venerable cat and her thralls, two adult English Mastiffs. Her works explore the complex geology of reality. Some may call it fantasy but there are rarely swords and never elves.

Book preview

The Pathways of Depot Verde

by

Jill Zeller

SMASHWORDS EDITION

******

PUBLISHED BY:

J Z Morrison Press on Smashwords

The Pathways of Depot Verde

Copyright © 2012 by Jill Zeller

Cover art by http://www.deviantart.com/

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The Pathways of Depot Verde

As Miles bent over to pick up the clippers, pain laced through his hip, down his leg, exploded out of his right middle toe. It had been this way three years, ever since he broke his back the same day the war ended.

Straightening, he sighed not at the pain, which had become his daily companion, but at the condition of the clippers. Rust nipped the edges and spotted the blades. Although the spring was bent, they still opened and closed in his hand with purpose, as if the clippers, by just being in his hand, shocked him into the notion that he was still alive.

The Arborarium felt large. They had told him it was the biggest one on the Depot—likely the largest planting this side of the Territories. No wonder Company O had fought so hard to preserve Depot Verde, even though its size contributed to its rapid instability. This garden sustained over ten thousand souls at one time—at least that is what Gaia claimed in one of her final messages to him.

A smile lifted the corner of his mouth as he thought about his wife Natalie taking the name Gaia, Mother of the Earth, as if she would recreate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in this benighted place.

But seeing the Arborarium, it looked as if she had. UV radiant panels—the Mirror Sky, she named it—powered by the depot's solar array, illuminated the Betula papyrifera grown for paper, still used in space as it had been on earth. A row of cannabis sativa, used for textiles, which began just off the nursery stairs, gave the air a heavy musk that made Miles' eyes water. In the distance, lines of fruit trees—he could make out persica, germanica, hazel, avocado—marched into