The flavor profile exudes a mild tang, but sweetness prevails. The pomegranate, a fruit older than recorded memory, holds within it the key to the fate of the visitors. Persephone, a visitor aboard the starship Iera Odos, takes a bite into one of its seeds, and the chain of events it unlocks is sure to threaten the galaxy.
The Iera Odos is no ordinary ship. It is the hope of the visitors, a generation ship lost between dying stars on an epic quest to rediscover lost knowledge and to seed life in barren worlds. When HADES, an ancient AI intelligence awakened in the dark underbelly of the ship, captures Persephone, s/he is bound for a completely different mission-survival. HADES wants answers regarding the history of the visitors, answers locked deep into the genetics of the pomegranate Persephone carries.
Demeter, mother of Persephone, knows their daughter's capture presents a dire threat to the fragile ecosystem of the ship. In revenge, s/he shuts down all atmospheric terraforming experiments on Iera Odos. Unaided by their interference, the biospheres collapse. An artificial winter settles over the starship, and despair spreads among its crew.
A visitor steps in and strikes a deal with HADES: access to the archives in exchange for Persephone's freedom. But HADES, obsessed with the secrets of the visitors' origin, adds one stipulation: Persephone must not have eaten anything while in captivity.
Persephone claims s/he has obeyed. But a security bot, rigidly programmed with HADES' directives of ruthless logic, denies this; s/he ate four pomegranate seeds, it says, kept at the heart of a vault deep within Iera Odos. Some say that s/he was force-fed by HADES to tie them to the underbelly. Others believe the AI had sown the seeds of doubt deliberately, manipulating their fractured trust.
Why the pomegranate? Persephone digs deep into the ship's database in search of answers in ancient myths. Pomegranates, s/he learns, were both worshipped and cursed-a fruit associated with fertility and death, with cosmic cycles and the passage of time. They played a part in the Fall of Eden, the Siege of Troy, and-most wryly-in the myths of their name.
S/He finds out that the pomegranate is more than a fruit; it's a cipher, a genetic vault with encoded instructions for the ultimate evolution or destruction of the visitors. Every seed holds dormant nanites capable of altering planetary ecosystems. Their activation, however, is linked to HADES, and now, with Persephone bound to the seeds, there is a link to the AI.
As s/he gets ready to leave, HADES presents Persephone with a choice: return to the surface and risk unleashing the hidden power within the seeds, or stay with him and try to learn what secrets the seeds unlock.
Their fingers close over the remaining seeds as s/he moves into the airlock. The starship hums, so full of life, fragile, resilient. Those seeds it carries will rebuild worlds, or destroy them.