WSP 040

Wanderlust’s Guide to the Solar System

Jeh continued translating for Wanderlust, which started to become difficult as the Crystalline One was soon talking a lot and rather fast too, so excited to share everything she’d built up on her explorations.

“So, first thing I did upon arriving on the moon was explore it for everything I could find. Turns out, moon isn’t that interesting after a while, lots of rocks, always gray and shiny, nothing too interesting. The crystals were mostly too small to see in that era too. The interesting things I did find were the robots.”

“I really have trouble translating that word, ‘robots,’ “ Jeh said. “I keep telling them non-rigid.”

“That’s as good a description as any, but they aren’t spirited or even alive, they have no way to reproduce or replicate and as far as I can tell never had any actual awareness, but they all ceased operation long ago so I could be wrong about that. Robots are… well they are similar to rigids, but instead of being born, they are constructed by others to do an exact purpose. Other words would be device, golem… machine? Machine might work.”

“I think that’ll work.” Jeh relayed the information.

“So these… ‘machines’ were built?” Blue asked. “For… what purpose?”

“I think to explore the moon. Here, let me show you one of them I have here with me…” A hole opened up in the floor and Wanderlust used her body to push up a six-wheeled device about the size of a large dog. It was roughly box-shaped, had a golden reflective surface, strange white pipes coming out of it, and a blue grid laid out on a rectangular sheet.

“Hey, I’ve seen those things on rigids!” Jeh called, pointing at the rectangular sheet. “They use them to eat sunlight.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what they do! While these ancient robots were still operational, they drew their power from the sun using these panels. How? I don’t know, I only know that because I too know what rigids are like, I’m not an engineer. Plus, the technical knowledge required to build something of this complexity was far beyond even our best minds when I left. Everything we built had to rely heavily on magic as well, this uses no magic at all.”

“A device that runs on no magic…” Vaughan shook his head. “So it is possible. I wonder how it’s done…”

“No idea. Taking some of the others apart didn’t really help matters, they tend to have things like this in them.” A pedestal rose out of the ground, on top of it a green, rectangular object made of a material no one could identify, but was somewhat similar to a few plasts. Metal dots and etchings covered the thing, as well as a lot of strange cylinders and boxes of minuscule size. “Clearly this does something, but I haven’t the foggiest what.”

Blue stared at it for a while. Then she kept staring at it. Then she sighed. “I’ve got nothing. There appears to be writing on it, might that help?”

“There’s never enough writing to go off of.”

“And I can’t read it,” Jeh said. “That probably means something.”

“Well yes, everything here predates magic, there’s no way you could know.”

“You mentioned that before,” the Sourdough twins said as one. “There was a before magic?”

“Yes! Afraid I don’t know anything about it, but one of the big proven theories before I left was that Ikyu had only been producing magic for a fraction of its existence, somewhere around five thousand years—or probably closer to ten, now. Before that, there was none of it. And these robots are definitely older than that, from societies long past.”

“But isn’t magic a fundamental part of existence?” Vaughan asked.

“Evidently not.”

“But the Great Crystalline Ones, they were part of the creation. You yourself come from them!”

“It is strange, isn’t it? I have so much knowledge and inspirations within me, I am sure there once was a Great Orange Crystalline One in the past. And yet, what we found does not lie, magic is relatively new in the universe, and Ikyu and the moon existed before. Long before. And, given these robots, people were around before then, too. They even came here personally! I have one with seats!” Another hole in the floor appeared and pushed out of it a highly unusual vehicle with four wheels, two chairs that seemed barely strapped on, and a dish poking out of the front.

“These seats are clearly human-sized…” Vaughan said, investigating them closely. “And look rather rickety…”

“Probably easier to hold people with the moon’s force,” Blue said.

“…Do you not have a word for gravity?”

Jeh paused the translation. “What now? Like the ‘gravity of a situation?’ “

“Yes, that’s where the word comes from.”

“Well that can translate directly…” Jeh turned back to Karli. “So, apparently there’s a general name for the force that keeps us adhered to the ground. Gravity.”

Vaughan blinked. “Like the ‘gravity’ of a situation?”

“Yes, I just had this conversation with Wanderlust.”

“That saves us the trouble of having to name it…”

“It was quite awkward tryin’ t’ talk ‘bout it without a name,” Keller added.

“I’m curious about these seats…” Blue said. “We have adaptable seats for different races. These aren’t.”

“I have never found anything but human-designed seats, and not very many, most machines clearly were not controlled by people.”

“A machine that operates without a pilot…” Vaughan scratched his beard. “I suppose that is one limitation in magic, it requires a present will.”

“Only humans…” Blue tapped her foot, not sure what to make of this. “Do we know anything else about what they were like? Anything?”

“I’ve identified a few of their symbols… most anything on the outside of the robots were wiped clean by the sun, but some interior iconography survived. This is the most common one I found.” A small metal plate was brought up. Etched into it was a rectangular design with stylized stars in a corner box and stripes everywhere else. “There are other symbols like it, rectangular, but they always seem to have stars in them for some reason. Probably something to do with their purpose to explore space.”

“There’s no trace of anything like this left on Ikyu…” Blue said, blinking. “An entire magicless society before any recorded history… and we have nothing on them. If they hadn’t left things on the moon we would never know they existed…”

“Quite something, isn’t it?”

“I’m… not sure what to think of it, honestly. It’s… exciting and kind of terrifying at the same time?”

“Well, now we’ve left stuff on the moon!” Jeh said, putting her hands on her hips. “That broken-off knob is on here somewhere!”

“And in ten thousand years another group will show up and wonder what strange people made a ball on a stick and threw it to the moon…” Blue frowned. “We have no way of knowing what any of these machines were really used for, do we? We don’t have any context, we can’t read anything on them…”

“But they were here,” Vaughan said. “And we are witness to them. I’m just mildly upset that someone was here before us.”

“I think I like this better,” Jeh said. “We’re not the only ones to look up at the sky and go ‘I want to know what’s up there.’ There’s us, but before us there was Wanderlust, and before her there was… well, whoever made these things.”

“Is there anything older than them?” Blue asked. “If I’m right, the moon should let anything like that survive almost indefinitely, unless it got hit by an impact…”

“Good thought! I wondered it myself, but all of the machines seem to be of similar ages, and made with similar materials even.”

“Something happened to them shortly after they started doing this, then…” Blue said. “…A secret Zeroth Cataclysm?”

“Who could say, really? I have many memories locked away in my facets, but none of them can dare to answer that question even in part.” After a moment of silence, she continued. “Anyway, after I did all I could with the moon, I started thinking about how I could go further. You see, I couldn’t actually leave… but I am an Orange Crystalline One, master of force! I started shooting rocks into space to see what would happen. Turns out, it’s hard to see rocks in space once they get anywhere remotely interesting.”

“Don’t we know that…” Blue said, remembering the difficulties with the satellite and the Skyseed.

“And even once I improved my senses as far as I could manage, I still couldn’t see the rocks any better. I could see the planets a lot better, oh and what fun things I see, but anything I threw out there, even extra shiny crystals, were soon just too small to make any sense of. I had to rely on flying blind. Fortunately, I had all the time in the world to throw rocks and see what happened. Turns out the laws of gravity are rather predictable, you just need to perform a lot of tests to figure out how to throw things…”

“What are the laws of gravity?” Vaughan asked.

“I, uh, don’t really have them labeled in a row, but it’s something like… every object that’s big enough pulls on every other object with a specific force. The sun has the strongest pull, followed by Qi, then Hexi, then Azure and then Cyan.”

“Hold up,” Jeh said. “Azure and Cyan?”

“Oh, we’ll get to them, don’t worry.”

“Ominous.”

“That’s part of the fun!” Wanderlust let out a laughing chord and her facets sparkled. “Anyway, after sending out thousands upon thousands upon… yeah it was a lot of rocks. Point is! I was able to map the gravitational fields out there so I could predict where my rocks would go. With. Well some reasonable amount of accuracy, enough to get them back close enough to me so I could grab them with the same net that I used to grab you.”

“How did you do that, by the way?” Blue asked. “I’ve never seen a Crystalline One… do that.”

“Only ones as big as me could even try. I have to disassociate myself into several pieces, constantly have each piece act with spells on each of the others, using a ton more energy just to maintain connection and cohesion… and my full awareness isn’t even out at the tip, just a fraction of it to make sure everything doesn’t fall apart and does what I want it to. Usually, I use much smaller nets, costs less energy.”

“I wonder if Benefactor could try, or if it’s just an Orange ability?”

“Benefactor?”

“A massive Purple Crystalline One we know.”

“Hmm. I don’t know, I rely a lot on Orange, but I suppose the disassociation part might work… the levitating and direction control might be hard, though. Our facets do interact with light, so it might be possible for her if she found a workaround or a secret buried in her structure. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t do it if I could get my trajectories more accurate, but it’s hard enough to find ones that loop back to the moon at the right time. Patience is paramount here.”

“I still don’t see how you could do anything with this knowledge,” Vaughan said. “You could throw rocks out there and get them to come back. What do they tell you when they come back?”

“Nothing, generally. Which is why once I’ve figured out a good trajectory with them I stop using them, and instead use… these!” Crystals in the floor folded up into a small, fist-sized shape that looked like a cup with a hatch propped open by a very thin wire. “This is one of my crystalline capturing bullets.”

Blue stared at it. “My… you… you throw these at the planets?”

“And I skim their atmospheres and grab stuff! It took a while to get it to work, but atmospheres can be predictable too… or I can send fifty of these out at slightly different angles, at least one of them will come back. Usually. I can precision shape them to snap closed the moment they feel a very slight braking force, skip them off the atmosphere like a rock on a pond, and then viola, they bring back gasses to me! I have a large collection of gas from every planet that has an atmosphere from doing this. And a few other things as well… unfortunately, despite thinking about it for so long, I still haven’t found a way to automate landing and getting surface material. I can only do glancing blows, too, too deep into the atmosphere and things never come back no matter how fast I throw them.”

“This is going to be so much information…” Blue said, eyes wide. “Can… can we see them?”

“Absolutely!” Suddenly, various jars made entirely of Orange crystal appeared, but with walls so thin they could easily be seen through, revealing gaseous interiors. Most of them appeared perfectly clear, but a few had dusty particles or smog in them. There was one ‘jar’ that wasn’t see-through at all, looking more like a sphere than a jar, and it had far more facets and internal layers than all the others. Blue was immediately drawn to it.

“Oh, we’ll get to that, don’t you worry, that stuff is hard to get! But patience, first we need to describe the Solar System.”

“Solar… System…” Vaughan scratched his beard. “I’m guessing the sun is special because it’s so bright?”

“Yes. Obviously. What else would it be called? I mean… look at it.” A larger pedestal emerged from the crystalline ground. The fiery ball of the sun appeared in the center, surrounded by nine planets. Four of the planets had larger objects orbiting around them—the largest planet had four of said object.

“Waiwaiwaiwait,” Blue said, holding up a hoof. “We orbit around the sun!?”

“…Did you not know that?”

“No! We didn’t even know other things had gravity until we arrived here!”

“…How did you guys even get up here? That’s like… how?”

“Have ya seen our ship?” Keller asked with a laugh. “A big metal ball held together by magic and dreams!”

Blue stared at the model of the Solar System before her, shaking her head. “I’m starting to think we weren’t meant to be up here just yet…”

“I’m surprised you didn’t crash!”

“We did,” Jeh said. “We survived.”

“…Okay. I’m sectioning that part of myself away for now… they made it to the moon without even understanding basic gravity I don’t even… AHEM! Well, I can tell I’m going to have to give you a rundown of how the Solar System works, so… let us begin! The sun…”

~~~

The sun is the center of the Solar System, it anchors everything in place and has far more gravity than everything else. It also gives basically all the light in the System. It’s also on fire all the time. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Past the sun, in order, we have Talu, Penthar, Ikyu and the moon, Zhevanthe, the little one here I call the Weird Rock, Qi and its four moons, Hexi and its singular moon, and then the two distant planets that I’ve found in my experiments but I don’t think can be seen from Ikyu, Cyan and Azure. Yes, I named them because of their colors. Cyan used to just be Blue, but then I figured out both of them were blue and I had to rearrange them in my mind. Azure also has a moon, Cyan does not.

Azure’s the furthest out, might as well start with it and work our way back in. From staring at its spot in the sky forever I can tell that it’s blue. Why is it blue? I guessed water at first but the air samples I get back don’t have water for me to condense out of it, unlike Ikyu’s so I don’t know. Given how far away it is and how large it appears, it’s at least three times as big as Ikyu. In terms of diameter, not volume.

Also, it has a moon. I call this moon the Annoying Moon. It’s Annoying because it’s so far away I can’t learn anything else no matter how much I focus my facets on it and I can’t do anything besides tell you it exists. And that it’s orbiting around Azure in a very odd backward direction unlike everything else in the Solar System. Ah, what I wouldn’t give to be able to see it. Best I can tell from throwing things at it, it has no atmosphere, and that’s all I got.

Next we have Cyan. Cyan is almost exactly like Azure. Slightly smaller. Lighter color of blue. Has no moon. Honestly, the only reason it’s interesting is because it’s so similar to Azure, none of the other planets are anything even remotely like each other, every last one of them is extremely unique. Why these two extremely distant ones out at the edge that no one can see are like twins is beyond me. And I’m probably the only one in existence who knows this!

Neither of these can be seen from Ikyu, I’m fairly certain. I only found them by staring at the sky for so long with my really sensitive… senses. What, I don’t have eyes, I’m relying on how light interacts with my crystal facets. Azure took me forever to notice, it’s so faint.

Anyway, we finally come to something you’ll be familiar with, Hexi. This one you can see in the sky. What you might not be able to see are the rings. Splendid, beautiful, amazing rings. That look so confusing until you stare at them for a really long time with sensitive facets and go “oh, that’s a ring not a handle.” It’s yellow. The atmosphere samples I get from it are similar to Azure and Cyan, but it weighs a little less than theirs. But guess what? The rings. I can sample the rings. I lose a lot of my launches by trying, but some of them return, and they come back with fine ice crystals and rocks! These are the only solid samples I can get, they’re very precious to me.

Hexi’s moon I have named Fuzzy, because it is very Fuzzy and has an atmosphere. Samples I get from it are actually quite similar to Ikyu’s, but are missing water. And, uh, it’s a little dirtier too. Actually, can you breathe it? Anyone want to try? Ah, Jeh, good! …Evidently no, you can’t breathe it. Shame. Oh well, its atmosphere is so thick I can’t see the ground from here, same for Hexi itself.

Hexi’s really, really big by the way. Three times as large as the blue twins out there, makes Ikyu look pathetic. But it’s not as big as Qi. Hot smoking wallaby weasels, this thing is massive. Not only is it big, its gravity is so much stronger than anything other than the sun. It’s close enough that I can see features on it, and I can see a massive red tornado whirling around on its northern hemisphere that could eat Ikyu whole. You heard me. Whole. Huh? It’s like the Tempest? Oh, is that what you call Ikyu’s permanent hurricane? Yeah, I guess that’s a good approximation, though Qi’s storm moves around. The atmosphere’s too thick to see the ground though, sadly. Its atmosphere samples are basically identical to Hexi’s.

Qi has four moons though. Ah, so you’ve seen them, but didn’t know what they were. You know that should have keyed you in on the existence of gravity… oh, did I touch on a bit of a sore spot? …Anyway, I have named them… Yellow, Frozen, Chonker, and Four. I never came up with a good name for Four. It’s the furthest one out and I get nothing interesting from it. Chonker’s interesting just because it’s the biggest moon in the Solar System. Frozen is so named because I can pretty much guarantee it’s made out of ice, given how shiny it is. And then Yellow. It’s yellow. It’s also got an atmosphere that’s got some really unusual chemicals in it that I don’t think are safe for you to breathe in and… you want to try, okay fine. Smells like something burning? Huh… anyway, Yellow is Yellow. And apparently toxic. Jeh you really are quite the trooper!

Now, if you put your knowledge together and actually tried to arrange things, you’d probably think the next planet was Zhevanthe. However, there is this tiny little thing between it and Qi I call the Weird Rock. It’s the smallest planet by far and as best I can tell is just a rock. Basically no gravity. I’ve also seen a good number of smaller objects in the same orbit it’s in, making me think there’s a ring of loose objects there. Maybe the Weird Rock used to be bigger and something smashed it to pieces? I dunno. All I know is that it has no atmosphere and it’s the same for the smaller pieces.

Zhevanthe is next, it’s smaller than Ikyu by a bit but not as tiny as the Weird Rock. It’s got an atmosphere that’s got some of the same stuff as Penthar—wait I haven’t got there yet uh don’t worry we will—it’s similar but missing some other components. Not that I know what those are, do you have any idea how hard it is to identify different kinds of air? Also, Zhevanthe’s atmosphere is much thinner, I can see right through it to the ground. Can’t make out many features but every now and then the entire planet becomes fuzzy for seemingly no reason.

And now we arrive here at Ikyu! The moon! The object which I used to name all other moons! …Yes I know it’s confusing but come on it’s a good name, what else are you going to call them, planet planets? …Satellites? I… well that just sounds lame. Anyway, you know what Ikyu and the moon are like, no use staying around here.

Penthar is next! Penthar is almost the same size as Ikyu but its atmosphere is so much thicker, I can’t see through it. It’s made of similar stuff to Zhevanthe’s, but not quite the same. I… honestly there’s not much to say about it. Yeah, I know I hyped it up but… well it’s interesting because it’s very bright and it has phases like the moon! …Oh, you could already see that through your telescopes. Uh…

Anyway, the innermost planet, Talu, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with. Turns out, it’s actually the hardest planet to get to. No, really, it’s such a pain, the sun’s gravity actively makes it hard to go deeper in even though it’s actively pulling on everything. This is entirely because we’re moving in circles around it pretty fast and to go in we have to stop moving in that circle and that takes energy. Lots of it. But I did eventually manage to figure out the right way to get there and then Talu reveals another trick. It’s close in size to Chonker—slightly smaller actually—so I assumed the gravity would be similar. Nope! Talu’s gravity is much higher! Almost everywhere else in the System larger means more gravity, but not with Talu! You may also notice that its orbit isn’t exactly a circle. In truth, none of the planets have perfect circles, I think it’s because they’re all pulling on each other constantly, but they’re pretty close. Talu ain’t close. Talu is a befuddling mystery of an enigma that is a pain to launch things at.

And after all the trouble I went through to get things there, dumb rock doesn’t even have an atmosphere! I can’t sample anything! For all I know the thing’s literally molten from being so close to the sun and I don’t get to know! Please, I’m begging you, when you figure out how to go further out into space figure out what the deal is with Talu. And the Annoying Moon. I understand those are the two hardest places to get to but those are the places that drive me the most insane.

…Though we end our journey with the sun. The sun is. Well. Um. It could eat Qi for breakfast and it wouldn’t change at all. It’s a massive raging ball of fire that makes the rest of the Solar System look like debris. But you know what? Despite it being a pain to get there, I used what I learned with Talu to get in as close as I could manage. Crystals don’t feel heat, so the sun couldn’t stop me. It took several tries, but I managed to get samples back. The first samples just had gasses like the giant outer planets. However, I knew that the sun had heat. I wanted to see how much. So, I started experimenting with different arrangements of crystals…

~~~

Blue looked at the mysterious, multi-faceted jar that blocked all light. “You… you found a way to contain the heat?”

“Yes! Almost all of it. What you’re looking at is a nearly perfect insulator. Crystals don’t transfer heat, but light can still escape and carry heat out. But if I lock that in, nothing changes. The inside of that canister is as hot as the atmosphere of the sun.”

“How… hot is that?”

“Would you like a demonstration?”

“Yes!” Jeh said. “Yes please!”

“I’ve been waiting for this~!” Suddenly, a crystal wall was raised between them and the other half of the room. However, despite it being rather thick, they found they could still see through it if they looked at it head-on, though the Orange was ever-present and tinted everything they saw. “And behold, a demonstration of the reverse. If I can find a way to reflect all the light back in, I can also find a way to reflect it out! Just takes hyper-precise tuning of the interior facets and boundaries.”

On the other side of the wall, Wanderlust raised several small pillars and placed various loose shapes of crystal on them. In the middle, a single sphere was placed, made out of the specially arranged crystal that kept all the light inside. “Now, this is what the sun’s atmosphere is like normally.” Wanderlust cracked open the reflective shell.

Everyone heard the explosion, but they didn’t see anything. The shockwave ran through the chamber, shattering several of the pillars and all of the shapes resting on them.

“Impressive,” Keller said.

“Actually, not really,” Wanderlust said. “That happens mostly because of how low-pressure the samples I pick up are. The sun’s sample is only slightly more violent than most of the others. It’s, in essence, a pressure bomb. However, if you compress multiple samples together, you get what I call sunfire. Which we are going to need a larger viewing port for, please hold…”

Everyone felt the entire room move. Wanderlust hadn’t even waited for Jeh to finish translating before doing it, so everyone else was a little shocked when everything started rumbling, but Jeh quickly calmed everyone down. “You gotta actually give people some warning, Wanderlust!”

“Apologies, I am just… so excited! Oh, what the heck, let’s fold that overexcited part of myself in again, I want to feel this!”

One of the walls to Jeh’s left suddenly became so thin that it could easily be seen through—barely possible to tell it was there. Outside was the scenery of the moon, lit by a sun currently behind them. A single Orange pillar emerged from the ground a fair distance away. On top of it, there was a single spherical crystal which, once again, reflected light so that nothing could get out of it. It was too far away to see when Wanderlust cracked it.

But there was no mistaking what came afterward. Immediately a spherical raging inferno exploded out, engulfing a significant stretch of the lunar landscape. Rocks and dust went flying into the air, and would have shattered their viewing window had Wanderlust not caught the debris in an Orange field. There was no fire, for there was no air to ignite, but nonetheless the lunar surface melted into legitimate lava, and the parts that didn’t were pushed to the side to form a new crater.

Everyone stared at the newly formed circular lava lake with open jaws.

“That is the true power of sunfire! A Red Crystalline One would have difficulty doing that!”

“…Can we have one of those?” one of the twins asked.

“Rina!” Blue blurted. “Or Rona! You don’t just ask things like that!”

“Sure,” Wanderlust said. The moment Jeh finished translating, a pedestal rose out of the ground with a spherical crystal containing sunfire. “Tell me what happens when you use it in an atmosphere, I actually have no idea. I may collect a lot but I don’t think the effects of blindly shooting it at Ikyu would be… good. Though I have considered it several times…”

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Either Rina or Rona went to grab the sunfire crystal, but Keller held up a hand to the two of them. “Sorry girls, Imma have t’ hold this one. Ya understand.”

The twins nodded in agreement, backing up to let Keller forward. He grabbed the crystal and put it deep in his bag, presumably so it would be protected.

“…You’re just… giving it to us?” Vaughan asked, eventually.

“Why not? Consider it part of our trade, you’re giving me a container of compressed air, and so am I. Yours is from Ikyu, mine is from the sun. Even trade!”

“Doesn’t it take a lot of effort to make these?” Blue asked.

“Yes. But I’ve had that method perfected for over a thousand years, I have hundreds of these at this point. It’s really no big deal.”

“Are there any other samples we can take back?” Blue continued. “We don’t need anything as… compressed as this, just proof of our mission, stuff we can study.”

“I can cook up a sample platter. Give me a few minutes.”

“You have no idea how much this means to us,” Blue said. “Seriously, thank you from the bottoms of our spirits, this… this trip has been far more successful than we ever could have imagined.”

“We still have to land back on Ikyu,” Keller pointed out. “Mission’s not successful yet.”

“Right, right… Wanderlust, how long will it take us to go back on your trajectory?”

“Around three days,” Wanderlust said. “Actually, I think I can make it safer if I extend it to five.”

Blue nodded. “We need to figure out what kind of message to send to Benefactor as we’re coming in…”

“The transmitter survived?” Jeh asked.

“Only the drive exploded. There was some kind of Orange feedback loop going on. The transmitter doesn’t depend on Orange so it didn’t suffer as far as we can tell.”

“A transmitter? You have long-range communication?”

“Only from Ikyu orbit,” Blue explained. “And even then only to Benefactor.”

“Ah. You know, we had arcane devices that could transmit and receive almost anywhere… I don’t know how to make them, sadly.”

“You can probably be seen from the surface of Ikyu if you moved to the light side,” Vaughan pointed out. “If you flash all your facets at once you can send basic messages since you’re so big.”

“Ah! There’s an idea…”

“And Benefactor can send signals back!” Jeh realized. “Two-way communication to the moon via two giant Crystalline Ones!”

“A long-distance conversation partner… where we don’t understand each other’s language.”

“We should probably set up a basic communication code of some kind, specific signals that mean certain things…” one of the twins said.

The other twin nodded. “We’ll get on that. The rest of you should probably figure out what to put in your message to Benefactor, and write everything we’ve learned down.”

“…I have a question.”

“Yes?” Blue asked.

“Who’s in charge of this mission? Honestly, at times it seems like the children, but that doesn’t make sense to me.”

Keller chuckled. “Technically speakin’ Vaughan’s the head honcho. He ain’t the sort for bein’ commandin’ though.”

“We’re a team,” Vaughan said. “And even unexpected tagalongs are still part of it.”

“Awww…” the twins cooed as one.

Vaughan tipped his hat to them. “Now… let’s learn as much as we can before we get launched back home.”

~~~

They stayed with Wanderlust a day, learning and writing down all they could, and solidifying the plan for the future. Wanderlust had moved a portion of herself to the light side already and was growing it in size, sending flashes to Ikyu where Benefactor was. Benefactor had already flashed back in response, but there was no way to decode anything at the moment, so there was only an acknowledgment of existence.

A very interesting observation was that there was always a two to three-second delay between pings. It was never any shorter.

“I think we just measured the speed of light,” Blue said.

“Add that to the pile of things we’ve learned,” Jeh added with a shrug.

“It’s a big pile…”

The six of them loaded back into the Moonshot. Their spoils for the mission included a large number of moon rock and dust samples—even larger than could fit through the sample airlock since Wanderlust had given them a lot of extras while the door had been open. (Fortunately, the seal on the main door hadn’t broken, so it was able to be sealed again). They also had the sunfire crystal and a tray filled with small jars of Orange crystal that contained small amounts of atmospheric samples from everywhere in the Solar System, as well as a few of Hexi’s ring particles. They also got a small piece of one of the ancient robots—a little flat surface that always reflected light back the same direction it was sent at it. Beyond this, though, were notebooks upon notebooks filled with drawings, information, and imaging devices filled with pictures of Wanderlust’s various models. A lot of this stuff was highly breakable so they made sure it was padded and tied down properly in the storage containers. The imaging devices and Orange jars were given particular care—even going so far as to rip up pieces of unused notebooks to provide extra padding since they only packed enough real padding for the devices they brought with them.

They cleaned up the Moonshot. The only irreparable damage was to the drive itself—it had exploded, naturally. The crystals it flung out had made gashes and cuts, but the metal was thick enough to either resist being cut or was able to be welded back with Vaughan’s Red magic. Wanderlust had actually tested the Moonshot to make sure it was airtight, taking it out and seeing if any of the air leaked out. The first time it was leaking, but Wanderlust was able to fill any remaining holes herself, using her actual crystalline form like an adhesive. None of these repairs were visible, all of them were microscopic, but they were enough to make the Moonshot airtight once more.

They left one of their compressed air tanks with Wanderlust. And then they strapped themselves in. Even though there was no more drive, Jeh’s chair still existed. They had even managed to get the gyroscopic track to work again, though it was no longer a smooth journey to reorient herself. Fortunately, that didn’t matter, as there was no drive to push anything. All they had to worry about was temperature regulation and air restoration—that is, until they reached Ikyu. Where they would have to be able to slow down enough not to burn to a crisp.

“It was really nice meeting you. Please come back!”

“We’ll do our best,” Vaughan said. “But chances are we’ll have to build a new ship, and this one took a while to make.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve been around a long, long time. Even if you take a decade, it will be of no concern to me. I really do look forward to being able to learn about all these distant places…”

“Me too…” Jeh said. “I want to walk on Zhevanthe. Fly through the storms of Qi. See the fire of the sun up close…”

“I look forward to your return, little Jeh. Now, please, everyone… brace yourselves. I am going to gradually accelerate you so you don’t splatter your insides over the ship like last time, but it’s still going to be rough.”

“What’re we gonna do?” Keller asked. “We’re just passengers on this trip ‘til the end, even if we pass out, it’ll still get where it’s goin’.”

“True enough, Keller. Still, try to keep your awareness, hmm? Anyway… goodbye, my friends, until we meet again. Have Benefactor send me a message the moment you can with our code.”

“We’ll try to transmit it when we get close,” Blue said. “Don’t know how much time we’ll have.”

“Simply trying shall be sufficient. Safe travels!”

“Wait!” Jeh called. “We need the countdown!”

“Countdown?”

“Ten!” she called.

“Nine!” the twins joined in.

“Eight!” Vaughan and Blue came next.

“Seven!” Keller was last of the passengers.

“Oh I see… your numbers…”

“Six!” They all shouted.

“Might as well! Five!”

Four.

The large cylinder Wanderlust had formed out of herself pointed itself at a nearly ninety-degree angle relative to the path of the moon through space.

Three.

The shimmering light within the cylinder organized into a pattern, rippling up from the base and moving to the end.

Two.

The Orange field activated, grabbing hold of the Moonshot.

One.

“Liftoff!” Jeh shouted.

The Moonshot was accelerated quickly enough to slam everyone back into their various seats, but not enough to make them lose consciousness. There was a sensation of rotation that became tighter and tighter—for, in truth, the cylinder on the outside of Wanderlust was just the last part of acceleration, the rest of it was happening in a very large ring-shaped hole in herself. Just when it felt like the rotation force would be too much… they were released. As they flew through the cylinder the acceleration dropped to zero and everything became weightless as they shot into space.

“…Can we unstrap now?” one of the twins asked, breathless.

“I don’t see why not,” Vaughan said, unlatching himself. He moved to one of the windows, the others close behind him.

They looked down. From this angle, they could see both segments of Wanderlust, one on the dark and one on the light side—the separation wasn’t all that much, as the pieces only had to cross underneath the south pole to make the transition. Already the part on the dark side was shrinking. But both of them were flashing at the Moonshot as it receded.

“That’s the code,” one of the twins said.

The other continued. “She’s sending the ‘green’ signal. Probably wishing us safe travels.”

Jeh pulled out a Purple crystal. “How do I say something back?”

“ ‘Message received’ is three short flashes,” one said.

“And ‘good status’ is two longs and two shorts,” the other finished.

Jeh nodded, and used the Purple to send out those signals back at Wanderlust.

Wanderlust responded with the exact same message in turn.

“And now… we wait.” Vaughan collapsed on the couch. “And I think the first order of business for me is to sleep, good gravy we’ve been at this for a while…”

“Rest… yeah, we’ll certainly have plenty of time for that…” Blue yawned. “Someone needs to stay awake to the air restorer, though…”

“I got it,” Keller said. “Y’all take yer rest.”

“Thanks… Keller… Oh wow, it’s amazing how fast tiredness can set in once there’s nothing to do…”

~~~

Some time later, Jeh, Blue, and the Sourdough twins were awake. The twins were taking care of all the loose black dust and cleaning it up. Jeh was just sitting on the couch while Blue worked on her math.

Suddenly, Blue stopped levitating her pen and turned to Jeh. “Jeh… I’m a little worried about you.”

Jeh sighed. “I… I know.”

“We are too,” the twins said. “Things… happened down there.”

Jeh nodded slowly. “I… I’m not that dumb, I’m pretty sure this… Jenny,” saying the name clearly brought her physical pain, which was an expression virtually never seen on her face. “She… was me. I just… every time I think about that… name or anything I feel… I hurt. I…” Tears were in her eyes. “It actually hurts. I feel pain, but this… it actually hurts and… I don’t know.” She wiped her eyes. “Something… something happened. Something bad. I think… I think there might be a reason I don’t remember. I… I may have forgotten on purpose. So I wouldn’t be… her anymore.”

“You can do that…?” Blue asked.

“I… I don’t know, it’s just what it feels like.” Jeh rubbed her arms. “Whatever I used to be… it’s… it’s not me anymore. I’m Jeh. The girl who… came from the forest.” A small smile crawled up her face. “I came from the forest. A nice… peaceful place. Sure it had bears and winter and stuff but I liked it. And I like you guys. Whatever… whatever I’ve forgotten… I didn’t like. I… I think I’m sure of that now.”

Blue put a hoof around Jeh, trying to hug her, but the zero gravity made that a little awkward. Jeh accepted it anyway.

“Jeh… even if you remember or are told whatever you used to be…” Blue used her levitation on herself to look Jeh right in the eye. “You will always be, to me, Jeh. The girl who miraculously came out of the forest when we needed her most and never left our sights since.”

Jeh giggled. “Showed up at just the right time, didn’t I?”

“Yes… you did.”

The twins had their turn hugging Jeh.

“You might still be told who you are,” one of them said.

“You are digging into the secrets of the universe,” the other continued.

“You might be forced to confront it.”

“You might uncover it.”

Blue glared at the two of them disapprovingly.

Jeh nodded slowly. “I… know that, you two. I… I think I…” she shivered. “No, I can’t handle it.” She curled her arms around herself and shuddered. “It’s… too big…”

The twins nodded. “We will do what we can to protect you from it. But… we might not be able to. If Wanderlust had decided to say more rather than listen to your request…”

Jeh took in a sharp breath. “If… if it happens, don’t blame yourselves. But… thank you. All of you. For protecting me.” Jeh chuckled. “Me…. Needing protection… how silly.”

“One day you probably will have to confront the truth,” one of the twins said.

The other nodded. “But that day doesn’t have to be today. You can get stronger first.”

“You’re already getting stronger!”

“You can talk about it! Without breaking down!”

“Yeah… yeah! I can!” Jeh beamed. Still shaking, she lifted a triumphant fist into the air. “One day… one day, it’ll be fine.”

“…Don’t rush it,” Blue said. “The mind can be… a devious trap.”

Jeh looked to her with sad eyes but nodded in understanding. “I… will.”

“And I will do what I can to protect you from it as well. I… think I’ll ask Wanderlust about this… other girl next time, and she can tell me what happened. So, at the very least, someone will know. It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Blue… I…” Jeh burst into tears and threw her arms around Blue’s neck, pressing her into a wall.

For the first time in a long while, Jeh did not have the words to express herself. And yet, she didn’t feel like this was a bad thing at all.

~~~

Blue drew another dot on the trajectory map between the moon and Ikyu.

Exactly on target, even halfway back.

“I guess throwing rocks into space for thousands of years really does make you good at orbits without doing any actual math,” Blue said, blinking. “It’s going to be real annoying actually deriving how all this orbital nonsense works. The orbit we’re on now is simple enough, but…” She looked at a sheet that demonstrated a “grand tour” trajectory Wanderlust had used to visit every planet. Granted, it depended a lot on the planets being in very particular positions, but Wanderlust had determined it mostly from trial and error, there was no underlying theory really. Well, aside from a few basic rules, but not much she could calculate, aside from actual distances between the planets and…

…and her mind was already starting to race with the possibilities. She was going to have her work cut out for her when they got back.

Assuming they survived reentry. Which, admittedly, wasn’t a guarantee at this point. They could still fail at the last possible second. The odds were decent, all they had to do was hit the ocean, which Wanderlust had seemingly “calculated” for properly, and not burn up. The not burning up part was all that depended on them. They just needed to use the Orange they had to slow down. Jeh and Vaughan would be able to pull it off, surely. They didn’t even have to be precise, and the Moonshot was an easy spherical shape to work with…

“I see you getting worried there,” Vaughan said from the couch. He was strapped in so he could rest. Blue was free-floating, looking at her desk head-on, as she liked to do. “Your ears are starting to twitch.”

“I’m just wondering if all of this is for nothing if we explode in the atmosphere.”

“A message will be sent to Benefactor, people will know what happened. And… well, even if we do explode, Blue, we’ve experienced everything we needed to experience.” He scratched at his sunburned face, peeling off some skin. “I could die happy, Blue. I’ve been to the moon, seen the universe unveiled before my eyes, and… I got to experience it all with some of the people who mean the most to me.”

Blue folded her ears back. “Vaughan… don’t talk like that, you’re not old yet. Well, that old.”

Vaughan chuckled. “Oh, I have no intention of dying, I intend to go to the edge of the universe and see what’s out there. But Blue… you have given me my dream. I know you already know how much that means to me, but I have to say it anyway. We were there. On the moon. We went so far up that up became down! It doesn’t even matter that people had been there before us—if Wanderlust hadn’t been there, or the machines, the moon would have been kind of boring! Blue, this has gone far beyond even my wildest expectations.”

“Mine too,” Blue said. “I’m… not as satisfied with it as you are. I have a lot more questions. It’s making me wonder how much of what we just believed automatically was just… wrong. I’m having doubts, Vaughan.”

“Now, normally I’d just tell you to go to Lila with that, but I have something for you in this case.” Vaughan looked Blue right in the eyes. “Tell me, to my face, that the series of events that led us here could have happened by random chance.”

“Um… you know what, that… that would be rather ridiculous. Heck, just finding Jeh in the forest at the right time to save you that day alone is… probabilistically absurd.”

“Indeed. Dia’s hand is on everything, Blue.”

“…But then why were we allowed to believe so many things that… were wrong? The world is far older than we think it is, and…”

“Was it important for us to know those things to live our lives?”

“…Um… no…”

“Then we didn’t need to know.” Vaughan smirked. “We still didn’t need to know, the knowledge we’ve gotten is a gift.”

“…Thanks, Vaughan. Still, though…” Blue looked out the window. “If we were wrong about so many basic things… what else are we wrong about? Truths look us in the face and we don’t see them simply because we are used to thinking the old way… even you and I, who go out of our way to try and think of things that aren’t normal, still get caught in the trap.”

“Whatever we believe, the truth is the truth. No matter what we discover, even if we come to the wrong conclusions, there will still be the truth. And it will stand up to scrutiny and testing, Blue, you can be assured of that.”

“Still. I don’t… want to be wrong about things. I want to be right.”

“Then let’s learn as much about the universe as we can then, hmm?”

Blue grinned. “I like that attitude.”

“I thought you might.”

~~~

“…All I’m sayin’ is ya two were clever,” Keller told the twins as he held up the starfire crystal. “I didn’t even have the gall t’ try that.”

“We simply identified her inherent innocence and excitement,” one of the twins said.

“The gamble that she didn’t even realize it could be used as a weapon paid off.”

“To her, they are just impressive fireworks.”

“Or ways to prove she can do everything a Red Crystalline One can.”

“War and conflict have been far from her mind.”

“She barely registered the implications of the Second Cataclysm.”

Keller whistled. “You two have quite the minds on ya. Perhaps I should be takin’ what ya say more seriously.”

“Everyone should,” said one.

“The world will be ours,” the other added.

“Well, I could think of worse people to be in charge,” Keller said with a chuckle. Then he narrowed his eyes seriously. “If ya ever threaten the Crown my feelin’s for ya will mean nothin’.”

“Keller!” Blue called. “They’re just children!”

The twins looked at Keller with hard eyes and nodded. “We understand. We hope when the day comes it will be peaceful, not violent.”

Keller nodded. “Part of me wants t’ see ya succeed. Show me what ya got, Rismelda and Ronadale Sourdough.”

“We will.”

Blue stared at the three of them with a dumbfounded expression.

“You still don’t believe they’re actually serious about conquering the world?” Jeh asked. “Wow.”

“But… they’re… they’re just…” Blue rubbed her head. “Ugh, now I have a real headache…”

“Oh, that reminds me, we should send a message to Gronge,” Vaughan said. “He’ll want to know what we discovered about the arcane field, it’s related to his research.”

“Oh right… Keller?” Blue looked up at the Agent.

“Addin’ it t’ the list of things I’m gonna say.” He lifted up the transmitting device. “We in visible range of Benefactor yet?”

“Almost,” Blue said. “And… there, I can see her peeking over the horizon now. Try her.”

“This is Agent Keller, flash if you can hear us.”

Benefactor flashed almost immediately.

“Good. Ahem. We’ve got a lot t’ say and not a lot o’ time t’ say it, so ya might wanna keep careful notes, however you Crystalline Ones do that. So… most important things first. Mission was a complete success in almost every capacity. As you can see here…” He started going on based on the itinerary for the message they had developed with Wanderlust. The basics about the mission and the biggest things they learned were first, the image of the Solar System, explanation of the presence of Rina and Rona, and the state of the ship and the plan to crash into the Western Ocean. After that came the code by which communication with Wanderlust could be established. And after that Keller just crammed as much information as there was time for.

Which there wasn’t much. A stable orbit near the surface of Ikyu took about ninety minutes to complete. They didn’t even have that much time. The Moonshot started to shake as it entered the atmosphere.

“It’s time!” Jeh shouted, pulling out her Orange crystal.

“And we’re goin’ in,” Keller said to the transmitter. “Wish us luck.”

Benefactor flashed to them an ‘affirmative’ signal.

“You know we really should have thought of that signal procedure before we left,” Blue commented.

“Let’s focus on not dying right now!” Jeh called. “Vaughan, let’s pull!” In unison, the two of them surrounded the Moonshot in Orange. Flames did not develop on the edge of the craft, but the interior did start heating up. There was no way to cool it off effectively anymore, for they were in the atmosphere, and Blue magic’s cooling effects would be minimal.

“This thing is heavy!” Vaughan grunted.

“No, really!?” Jeh shouted. “It’s a giant hunk of metal!”

“I’m going to be cooked alive…” Blue muttered, putting her hooves over her eyes. “Baked while falling to the ocean…”

Either Rina or Rona threw some water on her.

“…Gee, thanks.”

“It got you to get out of fear mode and into sarcasm mode,” one of them said.

“Mission success,” the other added.

“You two are going to be the death of me,” Blue deadpanned.

“We hope not,” they said as one.

“I think we’re going to be okay…” Jeh said.

“You can’t feel the heat!” Vaughan said, sweat pouring down his face. “I just, agh, it’s getting a bit much…”

“The air is cool, once we slow down enough we’ll be able to…” Jeh paused. “Um. Blue? Can you look below us?”

“Why? It’s just ocean. We checked, we’re right smack dab in the middle of the…” In the middle of saying this, Blue had moved her head to look down. “Oh.”

“Am I right?”

“Right about what?” Vaughan asked.

“We’re falling into the Tempest,” Blue said.

Vaughan’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“At least it’ll be cold!” Jeh said with a laugh.

“We’re not prepared to deal with a storm that intense!” Blue called back.

The twins started giggling. “Looks like our adventure isn’t over yet!”

“We’re gonna die in the clouds!” Blue spat. “We’re gonna get zapped and… and…” She paused. “We’re getting colder, aren’t we?”

“It… feels like it,” Vaughan said. “I think we’ve slowed down enough that we’re not gaining heat anymore… but… we don’t have enough force to divert away from the Tempest… we’re going in.”

Blue shuddered. “How long until we hit?”

“Few minutes,” Vaughan said. “Question, Blue. Does the Moonshot float?”

“I… don’t know.”

“We’re about to find out.”

“Assuming the lightning doesn’t zap us to death!”

Keller started flipping a coin. In the turbulence he couldn’t tell if it landed anywhere. “All I can say is that I’m lookin’ forward to a smoke, even if it’s on top o’ a sinkin’ ship in a storm.”

“You’re insane.”

“We all are!” the twins said, big grins on their faces. “The adventure of a lifetime is behind us, and a new one awaits!”

“I wonder how things have changed since I was last there…” Vaughan said, stroking his beard.

“Oooh, that’s right, you’ve been here!” Jeh clapped her hands. “This’ll be a great trip!”

“I love how you’re all just assuming we survive this at this point,” Blue muttered.

“What else can we do?” Vaughan asked.

“I… we… erm… UGH, morons, the lot of you.” She paused for a moment. “But I’m a moron for coming up here in the first place, so…” She sighed. “Fine, let’s assume we make it through this. Anything we can do to help that along?”

“Aim for the eye and hope we float,” Vaughan suggested.

“Okay, do that.”

So Jeh and Vaughan did their best to redirect their trajectory to the center of the eye of the storm. However, they did not have the power of precision to come anywhere close to this. They entered the clouds far from both the center of the storm and the edge.

Unimaginably powerful winds roared against the edge of the Moonshot, making it impossible to hear anyone speak.

Lightning flashed in the windows. Blue’s hair started standing on end, and not from fear, but from electric charge. Everyone was jostled around significantly, but at this point, they were used to it, and the straps held. Jeh and Vaughan did their best to control things but they no longer had any way to see anything besides dark clouds, lightning, and rain pelting the windows.

Despite this, Jeh was laughing.

What a great way to end their trip!

Splash!

~~~

“The situation has worsened,” the entity made of a singular blue eye said, his flames illuminating half the room. The other half, the half that held his superior, glowed Green. “We have detected Orange flashes from the moon from a massive Crystalline One. Clearly in contact with Benefactor.”

“So, one escaped to the moon…” There was a pause. “It… it couldn’t be her… could it? Oh no, it is, isn’t it?”

“You would know best. Our predictions suggest the likeliest candidate is Wanderlust.”

“So that’s where she went… insane crystal… she doesn’t even know the things she knows… but Benefactor will likely figure out how to extract it from her.” There was a sigh. “She really was such a harmless soul. Too innocent for our work, grew fed up with it, for good reason I’d say. She was probably the smartest one, abandoning ship. If only the rest of us had that option.” There was a pause. “The problem is she’s even less accessible than Benefactor. The only things that can make it to the moon are the Moonshot, which no doubt caused all this, and… an Orange Crystalline One, which would be pointless since even if we somehow find a way to send enough to fight, they will not be able to resist the call to merge.”

“It is quite a predicament. The attempt to destabilize Kroan has also failed.”

“How?”

“Prince Wyett behaved exactly as predicted. Princess Tenrayce did not, she recovered quicker than anticipated and appears to have initiated a complex cover-up that we aren’t fully privy to. The kingdom is angry, weakened, and mourning—but not fallen apart, their anger is being focused.”

“This… I do not like where this is going anymore.”

“You can always return to the fallback.”

“I would rather not. There are… people who deserve to have good lives. To have another chance.”

“Does the world itself not take precedence?”

“It always does. Just because I would rather not doesn’t mean I won’t.” There was another pause. “To think, a space program has triggered all of this, through no fault of their own. They aren’t even looking into our secrets intentionally, they’re just finding things by complete accident!”

“Shall we move against them?”

“No, no. I forbid it. They have done no wrong against us. We do not retaliate needlessly.”

“And yet, their kingdom…”

“The Kroan Crown is not without blame. Whatever secret they hide, it is clear their goals are to prod where they shouldn’t. Why, though… what drives them…?”

“It is still unknown, none of our spies have managed to pierce the inner royal family, all we can say is that they are hiding something big.”

“…Four thousand years… we kept this all managed for four thousand years. Why does everything suddenly stop working now?”

“I cannot say.”

“Neither can I, and that bothers me immensely.” There was a loud sigh. “Benefactor is our current target. I wish there were a way to end her quickly, but she is protected, and she is going to learn things from Wanderlust. And she will tell those things to Kroan. And… and that is going to have a domino effect I can’t even begin to predict. …We cannot stop the chain before it falls, but we can set up fences to keep it in.”

“There are suggestions of diverting the rigid plague to our purposes.”

“The rigid plague is the second largest concern at the moment, it clearly seeks to use us, and we are therefore playing an extremely dangerous game.” A pause. “Too many people know of our existence. Be honest with me, am I being too hesitant to wipe everything clean?”

“You are not. Life is precious. There is a reason we follow you.”

“Yes… thank you. You are dismissed. I need time to… think. Return to me if you and the others come up with a new plan.”

“Very well.” He turned and left his superior in the Green room alone, to sit and think about times long past.

Alone with ghosts of the past.

“I do so hope I can let you keep your happy life…”

~~~

Coming soon… WSP M02: The Tempest

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

So, I’m curious, at what point did it become clear that this Solar System was our Solar System? I’ve been dropping hints for a loooooong time, but now it’s right there in the open, impossible to deny. Let me know!

Anyway, yes, this is our Solar System, with all the familiar planets. Wanderlust has gotten some information… wrongish. This isn’t really her fault, despite having eons to do her studies, she can only see things up to a certain brightness even with her best efforts and has very limited ways to actually probe the system. She’s using rocks and crystals after all! It’s a small wonder she managed to get anything done, but determination, lots of time, and trial and error will overcome just about anything.

First of all, she’s missed a few things. She hasn’t noticed either of Mars’ (Zhevanthe’s) moons. She hasn’t found any of the minor moons of Qi (Jupiter), Hexi (Saturn), Cyan (Uranus), or Neptune (Triton). She also has no clue about Pluto or any of the objects out there in the Kuiper Belt aside from the occasional comet, and those are kind of strange flukes to her at this juncture. She has found Ceres and a few asteroids, though she still thinks Ceres (Weird Rock) is a legitimate planet. She mainly considers it one since it makes her maps look nice and there’s no one to challenge her. She is a scientific community of one. Hence all the bad names will either stick or someone will come up with new ones very shortly.

Fun fact: Uranus can actually be seen with the naked eye. Just barely. On perfect nights with no light pollution. It looks like a really faint star. In fact, in an old star catalog, it’s recorded as a star. It moves so slowly no one recognized it as a planet until much later.

Regardless, even with all her trial and error, Wanderlust is baffled by Mercury (Talu). Granted, the planet is weird for us as well—it’s subject to very minor relativistic effects that make its orbit slightly off from what classical theory predicts. But its odd orbit is just a brute fact to Wanderlust. What bothers her is that it has much more gravity than bodies of a similar size to it.

This is because, as mentioned previously, gravity is determined by mass, not size. Granted, more massive things are usually larger, but not always! Mercury is composed almost entirely of heavy metals and has a very large core, meanwhile Ganymede, which is larger, is made mostly out of ices and does not have as many heavy metals. Wanderlust’s trial-and-error strategy reveals its shortcoming here: she can launch things and get them to move predictably, but she can’t mathematically determine how much pull something has without throwing things at it to see.

She’s also missed a ton of minor moons which, while someone is in one of the gas giant systems, will generally affect things. Sometimes her probes go missing for seemingly no reason and she has no clue why. These moons are generally why.

One may also notice an interesting observation about Jupiter (Qi). The Great Red Spot we know in our day is in the southern hemisphere, but Wanderlust describes it in the northern. Clearly, from now and whenever this story takes place, the Great Red Spot we know has dissipated and a new one has formed somewhere in the northern hemisphere. We even think the Great Red Spot might have vanished for a time earlier in Jupiter’s history when observations were less common, but we can’t say for sure.

Now, I’m sure you all have a ton of questions about how the Solar System came to be in the state it is now, where Earth is Ikyu, and all that, but that’s not something I’ll answer in the Science Segment! I am interested to hear your guesses as to what’s going on, though… that said from a more practical science-fiction writing sense, using the real planets allows me to stay more scientifically plausible in what I write. Coming up with unique planets that are scientifically feasible and have the complexities of our Solar System’s worlds would have been a nightmare and a half.