As Buster worked, he found himself once again thinking back to Earth.

One of the more fascinating curiosities of human culture was how many of the spacefaring species of the Nakunan empire undeniably resembled the indigenous animals of Earth. He thought it was just a great cosmic coincidence, but he understood why the humans placed importance on it.

One of the things that made humans unique was that they anthropomorphized the world around them. When they were just discovering that there was a world around them, they had thought that the forces of nature were giant men with thoughts and feelings just like their own. When they developed civilization and culture, whether they gathered around a fire or a television they told stories that took the animals from the world around them and projected their own thoughts and perspectives onto them to be explored. In the twilight centuries of their homeworld, governments and businesses represented themselves with mascots: anthropomorphic representations of what they stood for.

Why would would things change once humans lived among the stars? Of course they would project the animals from their homeworld onto the sentient species they encountered across the cosmos. It was very cute, and Buster loved learning about the pandas on Earth that walked on four legs and ate only a single type of grass.

Pandas were a special animal. They were rare, elusive, existing for eons in harmony with the world around them. When the humans of Earth discovered them, they were charmed: the panda's calls resembled the cries of their infants, their eye spots drew recognition from the same part of the brain as human faces. And so when human development destroyed the environment that the pandas had thrived in and they started to die out, the humans made a concerted effort to save them. They spent lots of money building special little habitats where they could be kept safe, and where tickets could be sold for a handsome profit.

Some humans felt a vague injustice was afoot and objected. "You're only doing this because they're cute." they said, and they weren't wrong.

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The problem wasn't that the pandas were getting help. The problem was that all the other animals were being left to die because the humans didn't value them. Even when they acted benevolently, the humans of Earth were still selfish.

And so as the rest of Earth died out, so too did the pandas. The day that the last panda died in captivity was a day of mourning for the Earth. And in Earth's nightmarish final decades, pandas were a symbol of what they had lost and would never get back. The playful black and white face was a memento mori that their own extinction was coming for them, and they had nobody to blame but themselves.

Buster felt a strong kinship with the pandas of Earth, though he would never see one himself. He, too, had been failed by the world he lived in. He had been placed in a cage by people who couldn't even save themselves. And now his face could act as a reminder to Nakuna that their end was coming.

Buster imagined what life was like for the pandas of Earth, just like he imagined what his life would have been like living among his own ancestors. He imagined a lot of things in the quiet moments he spent working. Recently he had been thinking about humans a lot for one particular reason.

After internalizing the concept of anthropomorphizing, he was starting to wonder: If I was a human, what would I look like? His first thought was that he would have pink skin, since pink was his favorite color. But he understood that skin color was something with a lot of historical and cultural significance to humans, and he didn't want to embarrass himself without learning more first. He was glad, because every time he learned more about humans he had something new to appreciate.

It was silly, sure. Just a flight of fancy. But he had always found significance in the strangest places. He had clung to a scrap of pink cloth and it had carried him to paradise. So who knows? Maybe one day, he would know what type of human he was. And in doing so, he might finally know what type of panda he was.

He had defeated one of the most fearsome mercenary squadrons in the galaxy without firing a shot. He had survived the people he had wronged coming after him, emerging from magenta flames unburned. He had survived years without a home, and then built one where not even Nakuna felt safe trying to hurt the people he cared about.

Maybe one day, he'd even be able to understand who he was and why he did the things he did.

One step at a time.