[Pioneer Dominique Reynolds]

There hadn’t actually been any civilian transports scheduled for today. Instead, they rearranged a cargo shipment and slotted a seat in for me. The cargo room didn’t have anything too interesting, just construction paste for repairs and some assorted replacement parts. The flight would just be me, alone, surrounded by boxes for the trip… if we would actually take off on schedule?

Just as I started to raise a complaint, the ramp door opened up and a downcast Dokchara was escorted onto the ship by a couple of crew members. They fitted another chair into the slotted floor before buckling him in and leaving, signaling the pilot for departure on their way out.

Dok gave me a sideways glance before going back to his detached mulling. The poor guy was clearly in a depression spiral and needed someone to be there for him. I’d be the first to jump to his aid, but thinking about it now… what did I actually know about him? So far, it’s just been all business mode with a bit of banter between us, but we’ve never talked to each other about our personal lives. What could I even say to him as a friend looking to help?

…

Hell, I wasn’t in the best headspace either. After what we found in that facility and… Well, I’ve shoved all of those emotions into a pretty little lockbox in my head, leaving them for later.

The least I could do for him is just talk, right?

“…So, what are you in for?”

A weak smile quickly flashed over his face. Nice to know I wasn’t dead in the water with my first attempt.

“They, uh, deemed me ‘mentally unfit for evaluation’ and told me to go see a therapist first.”

“Hey, so we’re headed to the same place. Those people are good at what they do, I’m sure they can help you out.”

He slumped back in his chair with a deep sigh before looking up to make eye contact. I could see the complete lack of capacity for anything oozing from his expression.

“…There’s just so much bouncing around in my head right now. Everyone I was fighting for is already fucking gone… I don’t even know what to do now. That was it, Dom. My goal in life, ‘be the hero that saves the people’ and whatnot. What’s left for me?”

…

“I don’t want some head doctor telling me how to think, jumbling up my thoughts, Dom. I just need time to sift through it all.”

By now I could hear the rumbling of landing legs extending for our arrival. It would only be a few minutes before we made it to the office area, and I couldn’t have him going in with that sort of mindset.

“Dok, these people are some of the best in their field. The colonists here are an incomprehensible distance away from their homes, with minimal chance of ever going back, so the organizers had no doubts that this would cause a whole slew of new anxieties.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“The therapists aren’t there to change how you think, they just want to help you understand what’s going on inside your head. You want to sift through your thoughts? These guys are paid to pull it all out and put it onto a spreadsheet for you to read through. Figuratively.”

“…You seem familiar with them?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve blown through my fair share of therapists getting all the licensing for these implants.”

I finished off with the best smug grin I could muster. He promptly responded with his signature ‘what the hell do you mean’ face before our conversation got interrupted by the ramp door opening again. A couple of guards walked in to escort Dokchara to his session, but not before staring at me for a few seconds and making some excited hand signals between each other. I guess it’d be rare to find someone that hasn’t heard of me by now.

Either way, this left me alone to my own devices. Now while I was technically supposed to go to my own therapy session as per Captain’s orders, I found the idea of roaming the colony to be a much more enticing use of my time here. Nobody was keeping tabs on what I did anyway. I was just free to walk off onto the streets if I so desired.

Being the architect for this entire colony had its perks. After less than a minute of walking, I arrived at a maintenance ladder in a walled off area between buildings. Only those brave enough to venture the darkest depths of the cursed, ever-expansive valley of Colony Prefab Maintenance Handbooks could be enlightened to this path I walk.

I took a leisurely pace across the tops of the rows of buildings, sticking by the edge to admire the view. The colony was at a downtime right now, likely during the scheduled sleeping hours enabled by the shifting tint of the glass dome enabling life in the area. Humanity’s expansion efforts taught us that human sleeping habits simply didn’t care about the celestial forces driving planet rotation and day/night cycles, so we standardized forcing the 24-hour schedule anywhere it could be made possible.

Looked like some people with a surplus of freetime and artistic intent found a way to keep themselves busy. The row of buildings across the street had been used as a canvas, now sporting a sea of vibrant street art. Swathes of cryptic messages in flamboyant, incomprehensible fonts flanked beautiful murals depicting abstract faces and whatever topical paraphernalia occupied the front of the artist’s mind during fabrication. Certain stretches of the colony had been sectioned off for this exact purpose, filling the normally dreary and bleached habitat with intermittent flourishes of eye candy.

After a few minutes of sauntering across the untrodden rooftops and enjoying the artificially enriched air, I arrived at my destination, the edge of the city where the glass dome met the thick metal ring supporting it. The dome wasn’t actually one massive piece of glass, that would carry disastrous connotations for when the inevitable breach in structural integrity eventually reared its ugly head. It was instead a massive dome-shaped metal skeleton filled with sectioned glass panes allowing for quick and easy replacement during a breach. I’d gone to a place where the roof of a building was in close proximity with one of the limbs of the dome’s skeleton.

This limb was one of the three main structural supports of the dome and featured a maintenance ladder going up the underside of it all the way to the summit. The ladder was meant for construction drones, instead of people, due to its precarious angle and dangerous consequences, but that also meant it was more than capable of supporting my weight as I climbed up.

At the very summit of the dome was a small disk-shaped airlock barely capable of fitting me. It had security measures to prevent unwarranted use, but a few seconds of fiddling with the interface, and I was recognized as someone with access. One deep breath later, and I was inside the airlock, feeling the pressure drop before the outer door unsealed.

I found a lip where glass met the skeleton and took a seat facing the sun. Rays of light hit the surface of the moon, scattering across and up the surface of the polished dome, bathing me in a warmth that no other source could properly match. The sea of dust shimmered, almost like I was on Earth watching one of those picturesque sunsets over the sea. The only sounds that could reach me here were the minuscule vibrations traveling up through the dome, muted by the expanse of alternating mediums. Up here, I was truly alone, at peace…even if it was only for a couple minutes before I needed to join back up with the buzz of reality.