Planet building is heavy stuff. Literally. Tenry always chuckles to himself when he thinks of that joke, and laughs out loud when he tells it to another person, which isn’t often. He sighs with a sort of weary pride, as he sprinkles a bit more iron into the dust field. The report said this planet was to be an ore colony.
Most planet builders work in at least pairs, but you don’t have to. And Tenry has preferred to work solo since he left the Atlas crew some years back. It’s not that he doesn’t like people. He just doesn’t fit with them. It’s been that way since he was a kid. He’d find a group, get along great, be excited to find sapients that enjoyed his company and he, theirs. But then the newness would wear off. The little quirks that push people apart would always launch Tenry away to the next home, next planet, next group of doomed relationships.
Until he met Saba. Every time Tenry is building an ore planet he thinks of Saba. She found him beard-deep in brew on a mining planet right after he’d picked a fight with an unusually large Trylan, a species known for their quick anger. She’d saved his ass, paid his tab and then given him a job on her ship. Well, after he’d sobered up. For the first time since childhood, Tenry had a home. Not just a temporary place he knew he’d eventually leave. Saba brought out a side of him he thought was gone—a gentle heart, a witty mind, a thoughtful friend. She taught him how to survive—thrive—in space. But then she left, and he was lost again. A higher position, a different ship. But he was too stubborn to move, too scared to make another change. Until change found him. Without Saba, it all fell apart. They spoke sometimes, when he got enough credits to send interstellar messages, or the rare times he was in her vicinity. But for the most part he was a loner again.
He shifts the temperature up slightly, checking his large console for readings: the proton and neutral helium counts, the gravity and the combined mass of dust already formed. Then he prepares to jump. Oh, how about 27 million years? That should do it.
He opens a time vortex and eases the ship in. Not too fast, or he’ll overshoot by a few million years. The electricity twinkles as he moves through time. It always does. And not just in his ship’s electronics. In every atom in his body. It’s odd, the sensation of being aware of your every electron. It reminds him of the time he found himself face to face with a bear when he was 11. He’d been hiking with his parents in the mountains and ran ahead, rounded a corner without thinking and stopped abruptly to watch the large brown creature raise up on its hind legs. It was at least 15 gossles tall and less than 30 steeps away. Time travel was like that, before the fear set in. It was visceral. All-encompassing. It demanded you direct every sense, every neuron, every part of your being toward it. And then Tenry is there. His baby planet is a teenager. Spherical yet awkward, still mostly magma.
And Tenry is noticing something he’s not felt before. Flatness, even letdown? Is that a ping of sadness? This is usually his favorite part of planet building. When he can see the first real signs of progress of the plans he put in motion. But an odd thought enters his mind. What’s the point? All planets are born—or made. And they all die. Mining planets. Farming planets. My planet. Why even bother? He puts his ship in stasis mode and sleeps.
—
When Tenry wakes, he initiates his self equalizer protocol: enhanced starlight time, mantra sermons and a musical selection programmed based on his neural assessment. He even splurged and opened one of the chemo-meals: a concoction synthesized to match a memory and infused with balancing nutrients. He feels good as new, ready to go back to work. He takes a seat at his console and alters the hydrogen/helium ratio. He ignores the nagging feeling that sets in a few hours later and starts rerouting M-type asteroids. Throws in a few S-type as well. Planet precursor recipes are a science for the most part, but there is an art to it as well. Macho planet builders would call this assessment soft, unscientific, but Tenry has seen the difference when he visits his fully grown planets. As he got better at building them, he noticed the ecosystems were more self-sustaining, the resources less unbalanced. He even thought the civilizations got along better. But he knew to keep that last idea to himself. Still, it was nice to think that he had some part in bringing people together.
As he reaches over to the far side of the console to start running the collision predictions, he grazes his comm screen. It flickers on at his touch and the most recent message—the one he’d tried to put out of his head—flashes into his life like an unexpected comet. It draws his eye the same way an unsanctioned collision would. There’s nothing good there, but you can’t look away.
Tenry Clandau,
It is with a heavy heart that I inform you of Capt. Florence Saba’s passing. She left instructions to request your presence at her honoring ceremony.
It will be held at the following spacetime: 7262.02937589083, 0573.48095981286, 7709.31203709000.
Freely,
Admiral Shao
He takes a deep breath, turns off the comm and wipes his eyes on his collar. Every planet dies. And every person dies, at least the ones Tenry cares about. He fine-tunes a few of his trajectories, checks the vital signs one more time, then jumps again.
Kimberly McCoy 