1
EVE
The ship orbiting our planet drew closer to our shuttle. It was a ship full ofmen. They were alien men, but they were still men.
The fact that they were men was more alien to me than the fact that they were aliens.
I wondered what they looked like. Would they be tall? I’d never seen a man in my life, but a lot of women on Eden whispered about how men used to look like, and most women agreed that they were taller than us. Would alien men be taller too?
Bang.
I jolted up, turning my gaze from the window to Chief Athena.
“Airlock Eve!” Athena shouted, her heavy, gloved hand slamming against the console.
“Yes, Chief Athena?”
On this crew I was Airlock Eve. Something like 30% of the women on Eden were named Eve, and even on this skeleton crew we had a few other Eves: Co-Pilot Eve, Comms Eve, and most important of all, Emissary Eve. Eden was founded on feminist ideals, and it was common to address a woman as the role she fulfilled in whatever context you spent time with her. There were no men on Eden, so it wasn’t like patriarchial last names were even possible.
So I was Airlock Eve for this mission, as I had to manually operate the airlock to let the aliens in. This would mean I would actually be making first contact for all of humanity. It wasnotan honor, it was dangerous.
“What did I just tell you?” Chief Athena asked.
“Um,” I stammered.
Chief Athena pointed a gloved finger at Life Support Athena. Athena was the second-most popular name on Eden. “Life Support Athena? What did I just say that Eve was too busy staring out the window to hear?”
“She said,” Life Support Athena said, looking at me, but trying hard to come across as helpful to me and not as a brown-noser, “that she is going to go over the rules for interacting with the aliens, and that we all need to verbally agree to each and every rule.”
“Good,” Chief Athena said, “so are you ready to listen now, Airlock Eve?”
I nodded. “Yes, Chief.”
“Good,” she said, “the first rule is no touching. This should go without saying. These aremen. Alien or not, I have it on good authority—from High Command—that they are indeed men…”
She let that linger in the air. The question we all wanted to ask was hanging in the air.Did they have dicks?Chief Athena was smart though, and letting the statement linger like that was her way of saying that—yes—they have dicks, and this is why the no touching rule was so incredibly important.
I caught Life Support Athena trying to meet my eyes. She must have been thinking the same thing. No woman on Eden knew what a dick looked like. We weren’t even sure if dicks were a real thing. It was a thing that existed only in rumors. We knew that men had to havesomethingbetween their legs, and the best guess was that if what we had was like a socket, well, then what men had would have to look like some kind of plug. But how could a plug ever look attractive? How could you live with a plug hanging off of your body?
“No touching,” Life Support Athena said.
“No touching.” Weapons Sojourner nodded. She was the only Sojourner on the crew, but we still called her Weapons Sojourner. When you were in a crew on a ship, your role was always more important than your given name.
All sixteen women on the skeleton crew had to say it. I ended up saying it last. “No touching.”
We went through the rest of the rules like this. It ended up taking almost half an hour, which was the point. It would be harder to claim you didn’t know a rule if you had just spent thirty tedious minutes hearing every rule repeated sixteen times, with a long dramatic pause between each woman and each repetition of each rule.
“No touching” and “No Looking” were the big two. The other rules were more complicated, but it wasn’t anything that hadn’t been drilled into us since we were little girls. To break any of these rules meant exile from Eden. None of us wanted that.
When we were done, Chief Athena pulled me aside.
“Sorry for zoning out earlier,” I said, doing my best to sound genuinely sorry. Which I was.
“It’s fine, Airlock,” she said, “I’d forgotten about it already—of course you were distracted. We all are. Which is why I need to talk with you about something delicate.”
Delicate. That meant she’d been given special permission from Emissary Eve, who was part of High Command, to talk with me about things that most women were not allowed to talk about outside of hushed whispers.
“Okay,” I said. I tried to keep my voice in check, but it came out sounding much more eager than I wanted it to.