In this universe, there are basically two kinds of people – winners and losers. Jake Gideon was one of the latter. Indeed, if there ever were a living soul that the appellation, ‘born loser’ could apply to, it was Jake Gideon. Murphy could have coined his famous law specifically for Jake.

It was not for lack of trying, however; Jake had tried all of his life to reverse the tide of bad luck that seemed to curse him. Nothing ever seem to work. Investments that made fortunes for others began to immediately slide downhill with the first dollar he invested. Companies that had been in business for generations went belly up within months of hiring him. Jake’s list of woes was endless.

So when he’d won the deed to the plot of land on Daedalus, an agri-planet in the Corellian star system in a hand of poker, no one was more surprised than Jake was.  “I hate to let it go…” sighed the rube who had lost the hand. ‘But a bet’s a bet. It’s got a crop of prime grade trigorn growing on it.’

“Trigorn?” Jake questioned. ‘What’s trigorn?”

“Trigorn, my friend, is the profit crop of the millennium.” the stranger replied. “It’s a grain that’s hybrid of corn and triticale; got a three to one yield from the seed, it’s pest resistant, it will grow in almost any kind of soil, and best of all, it’s selling at 1000 gold credits per kilo. The farm’s got a fifty acre field that’s bearing up to 100 kilos per acre.’

Jake’s mind spun as he did the math…. Five million gold credits for a crop of grain! And he owned it!

Sudden suspicion seized him. “What’s the catch?” he asked Rube. “If there’s that kind of profit involved in it, why aren’t you more concerned about winning it back?”

His opponent sized him up. “The catch, my friend, is that the growth season for trigorn is five years long. I’ve been on Daedalus for two harvests now… ten years… and that’s more that I can take. Daedalus isn’t exactly at the center of the universe. Ten years of tending a trigorn crop is as much as I want to spend. Time to hand it over to someone else.”

Jake was stricken into silence; five million in gold credits, but a wait of five long years to collect! Could he handle being alone like that for five long years?

His need to finally be a winner in life outweighed the idea of spending five years alone on a nearly deserted agri-planet. He grinned at Rube.

“Well as much as I’d like to say I’m sorry you lost it, friend, maybe it’s for the best for both of us.”

“Maybe so, friend…” replied Rube with a grin of his own as he signed over the deed. “Maybe so….”

It took Jake less than a year to begin wishing that he hadn’t taken Rube up on the bet. He had expected there to be some sort of humanoid being to inhabit Daedalus, but he was chagrined to find that the only other form of life that inhabited his farm was robots.

There was HR-105, a standard household model, which took care of all the cleaning and cooking chores, and their was FR-208, which assisted in the tending of the crops tended to the crops; otherwise, there was no other intelligent life form within 10,000 kilometers of him. Oh, there was a tiny supply port within a day’s travel, but the old man who manned the post was anti-social and incommunicative. He would hand over supplies to Jake with a glare and stony silence, and nothing Jake had ever said or done had caused him to unbend.

So Jake was basically alone. Alone and lonely, to the point of being nearly psychotic from it. Each and every day, he got up feeling that he could not bear another single moment of solitude. He got up, determined to haul ass to the supply port and stow away aboard the first freighter that docked for more than sixty seconds. But then, every time he began to imagine leaving, he would also begin to see in his mind’s eye those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gold credits pouring into his waiting hands, and it shored up his determination to stick it out. Being rich as Croesus was worth a few years of being alone, wasn’t it?

And so now, after eighteen months, he arose with the thought of flight hanging around his neck like Coleridge’s albatross. It was stronger today than it had ever been, and it was all he could do to keep himself from fleeing to his speeder and heading hell bent for leather to the supply port.

Groggily, he staggered into the kitchen in search of food and coffee, hoping it would take his mind from thoughts of escape.

“Good morning, sir….’” Five greeted him in its robotic monotone, and for the thousandth time, he wished that he could have at least been blessed with a more advanced model of ‘droid that had a human syntax chip built into it’s audio system. “Isn’t it a lovely morning?”

Jake glared at Five and thought about disassembling the droid for the thousandth time. Did the damned thing have to be so irritatingly chipper? “What’s for breakfast?” he demanded peevishly, although he already knew what the answer would be.

“Trigorn mush, sir…” Five replied, causing Jake to roll his eyes heavenward and whisper a silent prayer for bacon and eggs. The damned robot didn’t seem to know any dish in which the main ingredient was not trigorn.

Jake sat down and tried to work up and appetite for the unappetizing bowl of mush before him. He was failing miserably when the FR-208 model came speeding into the kitchen.

“Sir!” It commented in a tone that could almost be classified as emotional. “There is something wrong with the trigorn!” 

“What do you mean?” he demanded, imagining his five million cold credits slipping through his fingertips. “What’s wrong with it?”

            “There are…. things…in the crop, sir. I am not familiar with their origins. They resemble large green eggs, sir.”

Jake was completely thrown off balance. “Green eggs? Eight, you’ve been reading too many Dr. Seuss books.”

Eight seemed offended. “I am not hallucinating, sir, if that is what you are implying. I suggest you come and see for yourself.”

Jake sighed. More problems. There seemed to be enough problems with this place to last for ten years, much less five. “Okay, okay, Eight. Cool your jets. I’m coming.”          

Jake accompanied the robot to the speeder and pointed it in the direction of the field. Upon their arrival, Jake could not detect anything amiss with the fields, but Eight lead him a few feet into the crop, where they found the object that had so distressed the robot. Jake’s heart gave a lurch of dismay. There were hundreds of them! And each one set in a cleared circle of about ten feet in diameter, meaning he had lost at least a half a bushel of trigorn per egg! In his mind’s eye, he could see the golden stream of credits dwindling and drying up.

“Dammit!” he protested. “There must be hundreds of them!”

“Two hundred and eighty-six of them to be precise, sir.” Eight replied. “Just as I said. Green eggs.”

Indeed, they were precisely what Eight had described. Green eggs with a texture that roughly resembled the skin of an orange, approximately five and a half feet long and three feet in diameter… pretty much the size of a small human being.

“Anyone checked the basement for pods?” Jake mumbled.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Eight inquired quizzically. “We have no basement and therefore, no pods.”

“It was a joke, Eight.” Jake replied.

            “I see. Sorry, sir.”

Jake grunted an acknowledgment and continued his inspection of the eggs. He walked around one, looking at it from all angles, trying to figure out precisely what an egg of this size could contain. He bent over to get a closer look, and suddenly, the egg gave a wiggle. Startled, he jumped back as a frisson of fear rushed through him. What if this was the egg of some monster; some being that was inherently hostile to all other life forms? There was such a creature from Algus XII… it was born with both organic armor and weapons, and it was born pissed off at the universe. Its goal seemed to be the elimination of any species not its own. And here he was without a weapon of any kind…

 Eight seemed to sense his apprehensions; it activated its only weapon, a mini cannon designed to eliminate rodents and other pests that might be attracted to the trigorn; certainly nothing that could mete out any great damage to a being created with mayhem in mind.

As the two watched, a crack split the egg down the middle; both of them backed up a few feet further. The crack widened and emitted a green cloud of a gaseous substance. Jake and Eight made a further retreat. From a distance that would give them a running head start should whatever emerged from the egg prove to be inimical.

A slender arm of a pale green hue appeared from the interior of the egg, followed by a slender shoulder, and then a head topped with long, lustrous emerald green hair. The being slowly worked itself free of the ovoid of its genesis and stood upright. Jake gasped. The being was a female… a soft, lushly rounded and gorgeous female, with eyes of a hypnotic aquamarine that were set in a face of such stunning beauty that his breath was quite taken away.

Mesmerized, Jake began to move forward, only to be stopped by Eight.

“Sir, what if the creature is hostile?” Eight questioned. “Is it wise to approach it?”

“Eight, nothing that gorgeous can possibly be evil.” Jake commented.

“I beg to differ, sir…” Eight began. “The Aphrodite Creeper of Talosia is known to be a stunningly beautiful specimen, but it ingests all life forms that approach it---“

“Okay, Eight, I get the point. I’ll be careful. Just be prepared to deliver a little message if she reacts in an unfriendly way.”

“Indeed, sir.”

Jake approached the newborn being cautiously. As he neared, she lifted her head, looking at him as if she were actually looking through him. As he drew closer, he could see that her eyes were vacant, void of any sign of intelligence, just as a newborn human infant’s would be. She swayed slightly and uttered a cry that sounded, for all the world, like a child crying out for its mother, and then slowly sank to the ground, her eyes closing. Jake was close enough now to see her chest rising and falling in the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. Just like a baby.

“Well.” Jake remarked. “If this just ain’t the damnedest thing.”

“It is very odd indeed, sir.” Eight replied. “What should we do?”

“I don’t rightly know…but I’m guessing that she’s an intelligent, sentient being, and that her kind are born grown like this. Maybe it just takes a bit for their minds to catch up to their bodies. However that happens, we sure can’t leave her here like this.”

“To the contrary, sir. Daedalus has no natural predators that could harm her, and the climate is quite temperate, so being left here would harm her in no way. On the other hand, should we be so foolish as to take her back to your dwelling, she might prove to be a danger at a later point in time.”

“Anyone ever tell you what a pessimist you are, Eight?”

“I’m merely pointing out the need for caution, sir.”

“Fine. But being a human, I can’t help myself. I don’t fell that leaving a helpless and defenseless girl out in the middle of nowhere is the gentlemanly thing to do. We’ll take her back to the house.”

“As you wish, sir.”

An hour later, when Jake placed the foundling in the cot that Five had hastily assembled, she was beginning to stir from her sleep. He could see the movement of the orbs of her eyes as she swam upward from the deep, exhausted sleep into which she had dropped. When she finally opened them after what seemed a long struggle, there was clear intelligence in them. Jake was stunned by such a quantum change.

She looked pointedly at Jake and spoke. “K’melth megrim ca’at?”

Jake shook his head to indicate his ignorance. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand you.”

            She studied him for a long moment. “Where this?” she asked finally, her Intergalactic accented and piginized, but perfectly understandable.

Taken aback, Jake was a moment in answering. “Dadelaus… an agri-planet in the Corellian system…” he replied.

She shook her head in apparent irritation. “Off course. Should be on Talmeria in Crab Nebula.”

            Jake was astonished. “But there are no habitable planets in the Crab Nebula… it’s all gas giants and stars that are burning out.”

“Maybe you…” she replied pointedly. “I T’lain… you?”

“Jake… Jake Gideon.”

“Earther?” T’lain inquired.

Jake nodded. “Is Talmeria your home planet?”

She shook her head. “No. From Becorai in what you would call Novai system.”

“Then why should you have been in the Crab Nebula?”

“You fish that swim to certain place to lay eggs?”

“Yes… salmon…” Realization suddenly dawned on him. “Oh… I see…Talmeria is your spawning ground!”

T’lain nodded. “Ship hit meteor storm. Went off course. Landed here.”

“Yeah, right in the middle of a prime crop of trigorn.” Jake replied. “Bushels of my crop were ruined.”

“I sorry. Not intentional. Recompense. How many survive crash?”

“We counted two hundred and eighty-six eggs.”

Tears sparkled in her eyes. “Fourteen not survive.”

“You started out with three hundred?” Jake inquired.

She nodded. “Prime number females.” she replied. “All future mothers…”

Jake was confused. “What do you mean, future mothers?”

“All intended to help replenish our race. Dying out. Atmosphere weakening… scientists created us, sent off planet to spawn, so healthy. We go back now. All intended as mates to tier chieftains, to breed offspring and replenish our race.”

“So, you guys will be kind of like the queens of your various tribes or groups?”

T’lain nodded. “Yes, tier mates.”

“Why haven’t the others hatched yet? Why only you?”

“I am to be tier mate to the tier master… the head of all the three hundred chieftains.”

“I see…” Jake murmured. He was thinking of how valuable these women could be and what a bundle of credits their chieftains might pay to get them back. It might make the five million gold credits he would get for the trigorn crop seem like a drop in the bucket.

            He’d also noticed that T’lain’s speech patterns had become more regular, more ‘adult’, for lack of a better word. Her mind seemed to be catching up to her body.

            “I am weary…” she mumbled, her eyes closing. “I must sleep again now.”

            “Yeah, you do that.” Jake replied. “I have some business to take care of anyway.”

            Two hours later, he had been to the supply port and sent out a message to a friend who he could trust to take his message to the chieftains on Becorai, and was now on his way back to the holding, thinking about gold credits. “They could be worth at least twenty million credits!” he laughed to himself.   “Enough for me to live like a king for the rest of my life.” The idea caused him to laugh out loud.

            When he arrived back at the farm, he went to check on T’lain. She was still sleeping soundly. Jake decided that it was time to do the same himself.

            When he awoke the next morning, his entire outlook had taken a change for the better. He was actually looking forward to trigorn mush for breakfast.

            “Good morning, Five!” he greeted cheerfully. “What’s for breakfast?”

            “Trigorn pancakes, sir.” Five replied. Jake looked at the droid quizzically. A change in the norm? Maybe he ought to check out Five’s processors… they might need changing.

            “Well, bring ‘em on!” he replied. “I’m as hungry as a bear!”

            Halfway through his meal, Eight glided in. “Eight, have you checked on T’lain this morning?”

            “T’lain. Sir?” Eight inquired quizzically. “What is T’lain”           

            Jake was a bit peeved. Were Eight’s processors giving out, too? What the hell was going on here? “T’lain, the woman from the egg.”

            “I’m sorry, sir, but that does not compute. I do not understand what you are speaking about.”

            “The woman from the eggs you found in the trigorn field, you idiot machine!” What is wrong with you?”

            “I must ask the same question of you, sir. There is nothing abnormal about the trigorn field, other than it is growing at an expanded rate.”

            Jake was flabbergasted. “Eight, do you not remember coming to me yesterday and telling me that you had found three hundred green eggs growing in the trigorn field and that when we went out and investigated, we found a woman hatching from one of them? Her name was T’lain, and she spent the night her last night.”

            “Sir, there are no other beings her other than you, myself and Five.” Eight replied.

            “Dammit!” Jake swore. “What the hell is happening here?” 

            Running outside, he jumped in the speeder and raced in the direction of the trigorn field. What he found astonished him. There was no sign of a single egg in the field, but there was a lushly grown field of trigorn triple the size it had been yesterday… at least 15 million credits worth of trigorn. He stared at the field in amazement. What had T’Lain said? Recompense?

            Well, she had certainly kept her word about that. But since Five and Eight had no recollection of yesterday’s events, would part of her recompense be that he wonder for the rest of his life if it had all been a dream?