Symbiosis (3 of 3)
Threads of Light and Longing
Note: This is a repost of a story originally published on April 8, 2025. It’s now being serialized in parts for easier reading and better pacing.
Olivia
Callen leaned over the counter, his voice hoarse from too many days of this. “Her name was Iris. She was on Tellarius six months ago. She’s a scientist in algae research. Worked for the institute, I’m sure of it.”
The receptionist—Kalia, her tag read—glanced up from her terminal with the same bored expression he’d seen on a dozen clerks before her. “Iris what?”
“I don’t know her last name.” He gripped the counter’s edge, knuckles whitening. “Just Iris. She studied the glowing algae. Symbios something. Can’t you pull up anyone named Iris from Tellarius?”
Kalia sighed, fingers pecking at the keyboard. The screen flickered, and she squinted at it for a long minute before shaking her head. “No Iris in the Tellarius database. Not for algae, not for anything.”
“That’s bullshit,” Callen snapped. “She was there—I talked to her. Well—not talked, exactly, but—” He stopped, catching the quirk of Kalia’s eyebrow. “Look, she was real. How many algae scientists named Iris can there be?”
“Could be none, could be ten,” Kalia said, shrugging. “If she’s not flagged as ‘Iris’ in the system, I won’t find her. People use all kinds of names off-record. Middle names, nicknames—doesn’t matter. Official logs want full IDs. You got a last name or a project code?”
He didn’t. Just her voice in his head, her hands in his dreams. “She saved me. Rig collapse, fifty klicks offshore. She called it in. There’s got to be a trail.”
Kalia tapped a few more keys, her frown deepening. “That’s CorvoTech’s turf, not institute. Rescue logs might mention her, but they don’t sync with us unless it’s joint-op. And even then, it’s first-last, no aliases. I’ve got no ‘Iris’ tied to any distress call.”
“Then give me something,” he pressed. “A list of women on Tellarius, scientists, anything. I’ll figure it out.”
She snorted, leaning back in her chair. “You’re asking for a personnel dump. Hundreds of names, locked behind privacy regs. I’d need clearance to pull that, and you’d need a damn good reason. ‘Some scientist named Iris’ doesn’t cut it.”
Callen’s fist hit the counter, the thud echoing in the empty lobby. “She’s not ‘some scientist.’ She’s—” He faltered, the words too big, too raw. “I owe her my life.”
Kalia’s expression softened, just a flicker, before flattening again. “I’m not seeing an Iris. Maybe she’s gone—transferred, quit, who knows? Tellarius rotates staff fast, and half the records are a mess anyway. Contractors, consultants—lots of them don’t even log under institute codes. You’d need more than a first name to crack this.”
He stared at her, the fight draining out of him. Six months of chasing ghosts—shuttles to dead-end stations, barstool rumors, a sketch of that rig creased in his pocket—and he was still nowhere. “Fine,” he muttered, turning away. The Eldaran dusk swallowed him as he stepped outside, the ocean’s faint glow glinting in the distance, as elusive as she was.
Days became weeks. Weeks became months. The frustration of no answers became an acceptance of loss. Years went by and while the memories began to fade, the feeling of loss stayed with him.
Dr. Olivia “Iris” Vex walked away from the spaceport terminal, happy to be back on Eldaran. She hadn't been there for years. She'd spent a dozen years in direct fieldwork, places like Eden, Andonia, Tempus, and Prium, relatively new worlds from the human perspective. Some had been undergoing planetary engineering for potential human settlement. Others were just research stations on planets that could never be turned into a place for humans to pile upon themselves in large cities.
Iris, once a city girl, had grown to love the latter type of planet. Certainly, it was good to be on a planet with breathable air and the right gravity, and naturally grown food, nourished by a star. But that meant being around too many humans with no real connections. For Iris, her strongest connections had been on planets with no permanent human settlements.
But, she wondered if that were really true, or if it was just because of those events nine years ago on Tellarius. Was her preference colored by the one single connection that had been most powerful in her whole life—one with a man who she had never met—one that was entirely a meeting of the minds?
She shivered, looked around, and realized that she had stopped walking and was touching her lips, as if missing something that had never even been there.
The day was rushed, her schedule hectic. Meetings and lectures and moving quickly to the next location. In the afternoon, she gave a lecture on her work with mold spores on Eden in a large hall with about three hundred attendees. She stayed after to sign copies of her non-fiction work on planetary engineering, and sold a few copies of her novel Symbiosis that told a story about a love affair between opposites with an uncanny ability to sense each other’s thoughts.
“It seems so real!” one woman said when she brought a well-worn copy to be signed.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Iris said, smiling.
“It’s just such a loving connection. I wish for something like that.”
“Me too,” Iris said, a sad smile playing on her face.
She signed the battered copy for the woman and, feeling generous, she signed a fresh hardcover and handed it over to her.
Inside, she had written, “I hope you find your symbiosis.”
The woman beamed as she walked away with her two treasures.
That evening, a number of the lecturers for the day went together for dinner at Andrea’s an upscale steakhouse in the French quarter of New Lebanon. It was sponsored by the research institute, and they were encouraged to indulge, so wine flowed liberally as they worked through a multi-course meal.
As the second course came, a glazed Eldaran seared scallop, Iris noticed a man watching her from across the restaurant. She looked up to his eyes, challenging him, but he looked away just before they made eye contact.
Coward, she thought. She knew his type. The typical playboy—more looks than brains, and she’d had her fill of that kind of thing years ago. No substance. No connection. Sure, they could be useful for an evening’s entertainment, but even that was something she’d given up on years ago.
She glanced over his way again and this time he did not look away. He held her gaze until she became self-conscious. She looked away and shifted her chair to turn slightly away from him.
It wasn’t the first man who had looked at her, and it wouldn’t be the last. Still, she found it unnerving and she turned her attention to a conversation about the growth rate of vegetables on Eden, and the continual bounty of the cyclical harvest there. The planet had become the galaxy’s primary grower of blue agave and, as a result, became the center of tequila production in the known galaxy.
In celebration of Eden, a couple of rounds of tequila shots were passed around. She drank the first one but declined the second.
Who’s the coward now? she heard in her head.
She snapped her head up, looking around, feeling tears well up. She grabbed her napkin, dabbing her eyes, and looked around. Someone had felt her, heard her thoughts.
She reached out, more powerfully than she had in years.
Callen?
The sound of a glass smashing against the floor grabbed her attention. She turned to look. The handsome man on the other side of the restaurant. The playboy. Was standing, staring at her, a broken martini glass at his feet.
Iris?
She stood, pushing her chair back, and holding onto the table for support.
Is it you? she asked.
A wide grin broke over his face. A dazzling smile followed. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
No way! he said in her mind. I don’t believe it! He began moving her way.
She ran.
They met in the middle.
And the kiss that took nine years to happen finally did.
It wasn’t the last one.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.