When the crows cry, I feed them. The AI running our habitat only powers up if it hears them. Nobody knew why. It’s just me now: the navigator, no programmer.

When the oxygen goes, we will too. I’m down to six ration bars, their favorite: they like the foil wrappers.

Joanne Merriam lives in Nova Scotia. Her writing has appeared in dozens of periodicals including Baltimore Review, Haikuniverse, and Pictura. She owns Upper Rubber Boot Books, known for the first English-language anthology of solarpunk, Sunvault. You can find her at joannemerriam.com.