CONCORD
Our planet, Concord, is home to the perennial bluegrass, long, fine, and named for its peculiar hue: verging on indigo at night, shifting into a brilliant shade of navy under sunlight. Curiously, a single stalk plucked for observation appears dull and mute, but when planted next to just one other, both take on a more enchanting colour.
Concord is the only habitable planet amongst the twenty (inclusive) in our system. It scribes a near-circular 300 million kilometre orbit around Myrmidon Deep (J1804 Lensed Star 17), a k-type main-sequence star, bright enough to support life at this range. This large orbit diffuses our host star’s light and warmth evenly across all latitudes, producing near-homogenous climate and fauna.
The bluegrass is thus both perennial and ubiquitous, hardy enough to thrive in almost any terrain or climate, forming both seas for children to part with their hands and hide in and meadows for cattle to graze in.
- from “The Pale Blue Dot” by Cardinal Gliese Psusennes II
ALICE
Beneath me stretched a vast, undisturbed lake that mirrored the heavens above. The moon stared back at me, resting still upon the water’s surface. It chased as Mobius glided on cold air with a quiet aerial hiss. Mountains stood guard in the distance, their frosted peaks reaching into the clouds. A sliver of white sand whipped past beneath us—without it, I would not have realised the water had given way to a rolling field of long, blue grass.
I leaned forward in my seat, eyes drawn wide, drinking deep of the scenery that wrapped around me. I could only drop my jaw in awe. This is in… space? I looked up, the void a distant dream. The planet beneath me was bigger. It had to be. How many steps would it take to cross this field? How many to climb that mountain? The figure in my head continued to rise as the peaks grew closer, reaching frighteningly high above me. How deep were the lakes and oceans? A mountain’s worth of water, or two—perhaps more? My head spun at the scale of it all. If this was all truly wrought by chance—then there must be nobody luckier than me.
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The ship slowed, quelling the wind and its fury. All that remained was the coil whine of the ramjets as they spun down and the whirring of the gimballed thrusters gently manoeuvring the ship towards a clearing. The silence gave me space to breathe, room to think, and bared me to my crushing reality—I was alone, accompanied only by a ship. My race had gone extinct aeons ago and all that remained was the blind faith they had placed in me. It would be so simple to take off, set course for distant space, and go back into cold sleep, leaving me to drift and dream for all eternity. I cannot turn away. I must not. This duty is mine to bear. The vacuum of space made this planet all the more precious—a single, blue dot, and yet how vast, how beautiful it was! I could not let it slip by.
“Aligning for final approach,” a voice chirped, almost human with a slight sheen in its pitch. Who?! A metallic sphere floated above my head and orbited me once before hanging still near the windshield. An electronic sigil formed its eye, glowing a cold white.
“You… you’re not human?” I asked foolishly.
“No. I am tied to Mobius, to speak where it cannot. Please leave the landing to us—you must be disoriented after your long nap.”
“R-right… how long, if I may ask?”
Oracle did not respond, rotating towards the windshield. Mobius pitched up to zero its forward velocity, angling for a vertical landing, the shift in gravity gently pushing me into my seat. Its motherly trajectory lulled me into a fading vignette of a memory. Large, warm hands I put my unconditional trust in held my tiny body whole, lowering me slowly into something warm and soft.
Mobius sank, perfectly level with the horizon, poised to be the first on our new home. It was beautiful, pure and unspoiled by intelligent life. It was not barren, no—the grass waved in the wind to greet us, and in the distance there must have been some sorts of yet unknown primitive life forming a food chain, but none of it would ever see me as anything but a force of nature: a falling meteorite, but never a soul. Perhaps they were unable to see at all.
I began to cry. This is telling of my weak, feeble heart, but mine is one that cannot beat alone.