“What about the sweet corn? I love sweet corn,” Saafi said, revealing a mouthful of large, white teeth.

“I don’t think sweet corn is on the menu,” Emanuel laughed.

“I’m not going to lie. I was very pleased when I heard the diet would be mostly vegetarian,” Saafi continued. “I grew up eating very little meat.”

Timothy rolled his eyes. “Remind us where you’re from again?”

“You know where I’m from.”

“Africa?”

Saafi snorted. “Somalia,” he said proudly.

“Never been there,” Timothy quipped.

Emanuel paused at the edge of the platform and looked at the field, attempting to change the subject. “You’re looking at the last row. Once we’re done it’s back to the mess hall for lunch, so let’s make this quick.”

The trio jumped off the platform, landed softly in the dirt, and began trekking through the field.

“Finally, we’re in agreement about something,” Timothy replied with his mischievous grin. He brushed a long strand of curly hair out of his eyes and reached into his pocket, pulling out a handful of seeds.

“A little here, a little there,” he said under his breath, sprinkling the seeds onto the ground. The job was a change of pace from sitting at a terminal, typing in code and monitoring the biomes. And truthfully, he was beginning to enjoy it. Besides the fact that his hands were stained shit brown, he liked feeling like he was contributing to the mission.

Overhead, the click of one of the monstrous air-conditioning units startled him. Timothy cocked his head to survey the dome, and for the first time he realized how massive it really was. He’d spent most of his youth holed up in his room, playing video games and hacking into websites just to piss off greedy corporations. There were moments when he felt like he might have missed out on the rest of the world by spending so much time living in a virtual one, but this mission made up for all of that. And while he might have only traded his small computer lab for a much bigger one, the Biosphere was still the most advanced and aesthetically beautiful building he had ever seen, let alone worked in.

The AC unit clicked off, and the fans quieted. As Timothy reached in his pocket for another handful of seeds, there was another click, a deeper one. Emanuel and Saafi heard it too. The trio stopped dead in their tracks, scanning the walls for the source of the noise.

“All hands to Biome 3,” Alexia said through the speaker system. A pair of emergency lights above the entrance doors glowed to life, their red lights blinking intermittently.

“What the hell is this?” Timothy yelled.

Emanuel dropped his bag of seeds and took off running for the door. “What are you waiting for?”

Saafi ran after Emanuel, his long, lean legs catching up with the biologist quickly.

“What the fuck?” Timothy said. He didn’t want to be left behind, so he dropped his bag and began a fast-paced jog. He didn’t even make it to the platform before he had to stop and catch his breath. He blamed his labored breathing on a youth spent smoking in a room the size of an ancient phone booth.