Epilogue: A planet
On the edge of the galaxy, to the galactic west of the NC-301 system, there is a yellow star. For many, many years, this was all there was in the system. Eons ago, the yellow star had been a part of a great nebula within its sector of the galaxy, but it had drifted from that nebula, a wandering child of dust and gas all gathered about itself like a blanket. It had drifted off to sleep all on its own and that sleep had lasted until it was small and bright and burning. No great asteroids or strange magnetic fields disturbed that sleep, and so it sat whole unto itself, with no celestial bodies around it to speak of. Around its weight gravitated only loose rocks and debris, at its edges some larger bodies that drifted towards it, a distant outer shell.
So empty was this system, that as the Hybrasilians and Terenians passed through it on their wayfinding, they never gave it a name. Because it did not have a name, it remained beyond the touch of the gods.
Until now. Now, there are new gods. Gods who live in steel and titanium. Gods who live in flesh. Gods who build with dreams and paper. Can you call them anything else when they have combined their will and their arts to make a world?
The planet that the powers of the galaxy have made is unique.
It is not like Akar the Arena, which was a fully formed barren world filled with nanobots to ever shape and change its surface to the whims of a public demanding spectacle.
It is not like the secret worlds of the ancients, upon which the Zaldairans settled, worlds that had lived for so long that the work of hands and the work of nature had combined together with their automated industry and incomprehensible mechanical deities.
It is not like the great cities of the Terenians, that have eclipsed the way their worlds once appeared, replacing the surface with glass and steel that ever grasp for the sky, creating a view from space of oddly straight lines and circles of blue-gray metal woven together.
It is not like the shaped worlds of the Hybrasilians, that have combined the powers of nature with the craft of biochemistry to sustain their populations and their industry amidst their vast tree dwellings carefully cultivated by artisans.
It is not like the dead worlds that so many try to mine and fight about, their surfaces glorious but barren, settlements forced to be in bubbles meant for temporary extraction by small groups of workers.
No, this planet is alive and it has been left to its life. Left to be wild. To grow without constraints, to take shape as it pleases, in both the small and the large. The madness of a weaver and a mosaic maker at cosmic scale. It is not finished. It may never be finished.
***
The planet did not start this way. It began its life as a small, barren asteroid built around a strong iron core. Like the arena, it was shaped through the efforts of the great Zaldarian shamans who can sing to the nanobots and cause them to work and shape at speed. For raw material, it received resources from the Terenians, the bounty of the greatest miners of the galaxy combining their efforts to bring together materials from within the system and from across other systems to provide the planet everything that it could need to take shape. And for life, it received the gifts of the Hybrasilians, the seeds of the great trees, wildlife from megafauna to microbes, and the waters of their worlds.
Each empire turned their greatest resources, their unique talents to the task: Hybrasilian bio-shapers crafted designs and Terenians offered powered labor and their massive fleets to provide supplies as the Zaldarians set the nanobots to work. From an asteroid’s metallic core, they built layers upon layers over it, each exposed to the light of the system’s yellow sun that watched with avid curiosity. Layers of rock, of dirt, of soil, and finally of crust upon which land and water could rest, compacted together until they could be strong enough to hold themselves together. And when that had its strength, they brought atmosphere: the gasses of nitrogen and oxygen, and just a little carbon, and above them ozone held to warm the surface and capture the light of the little sun.
And then they shaped what had been formed. They took natural mountains that had arisen through the shaping and cut channels for rivers that did not yet exist. They carved beneath great and dusty plains, still bereft of life, that they might have reservoirs and aquifers. Water was foremost in their plans for it was water they needed first, water that might allow life to take root.
And when they were ready, water they brought in spades, great blocks of ice from the asteroids of the Terenians, carried on their transport ships. With water, Hybrasilian seeds, and Zaldarian, and Terenian. A mix of life from many planets across the galaxy.
A mixture of this sort had never been tried. Some Terenian planets cultivated crops that had originated on other planets, and Hybrasilian crafters had much experience carefully altering the biology of local flora for their needs. But a truly combined planet had only been theorycrafted, never implemented. The Hybrasilian shapers worked to make sure that everything was carefully cultivated. They created planned symbiosis, shared nutrients, a complex nitrogen cycle and bacterial processing and reprocessing that would in turn sustain the composition of the atmosphere and the clarity of the water. Once planted, they rapidly grew the seeds of life using the power of technology. Running through generations: accelerated and accelerated through the plans of the greatest scientists that the three empires could produce all collaborating in their vast efforts.
***
But then, the true magic. With all these things in place, they let it go free.
Unlike the Arena, which had its nanobots remain, this planet had them removed when they were done with its crafting. At least, mostly removed. Even the greatest Zaldarian shapers could not entirely remove the integration of nanotechnology with the fundamental life cycles of the planet because they were too integrated with the environmental and evolutionary systems that had been cultivated. What could be said then is that the spark of nanotechnology runs through the soil of the planet and life has evolved to work with it. But it is no longer shaped or even capable of being actively controlled in such a way as happened with its shaping. Instead, the planet has a stable surface and the evolution of the technology is left to its own devices.
Unlike the heartland of Hybrasil, the Hybrasilian shapers stopped their work once life was present and reproducing. The trees are not shaped into great homes for cats to live in multiple tiers. No fields are cleared for agriculture or industry. Life is not managed, and there is no promise that all things will be sustained no matter their own foolish choices. All they have left is the shape of their work, the plans for symbiosis and coevolution that they must now trust will endure.
Unlike the Terenian mining worlds or their great cities, they have removed their generators and extracted their mechas and their ships. They did not leave piles of unused equipment, nor massive settlements empty of their people, nor active generators full of crystal fire to each life for new arrivals. What remains, in rare places, are the leftovers, bits of scrap metal, of old parts, of crates and boxes and mecha feet that showed a little independence in the course of the upheaval of such heavy work. They can be found on occasion, overgrown with plants among the terrain.
In the place of the three great civilizations, life has been left to thrive wherever, and however it might. Conditions are good for this. The distance from the curious yellow star is correct for water to shift from liquid to vapor. The tilt is right to go from hot and muggy at the equator to cool at the poles. The planet has been formed with three small lunar satellites that orbit in sync, so as to pull currents and windstreams to create pockets of temperate zones and pockets of extreme weather, with variation over a twenty (20) year cycle and what scientists estimate will be a two hundred and forty (240) year cycle still to be experienced.
***
What lives here is not kind, but neither is it cruel. It is what came of rapid growth that was then left to its own devices to survive.
Low, hardy trees that cling to stone where they must, while the hot zones are full of tall graceful trees that sway and bend, but do not snap even in the strongest winds of the storms that sometimes sweep through them. The midland zones are full of all different sorts of tall trees, great forests of mist and canopies that hide who knows what. They all know how to scatter their seeds far and wide, to spread and change.
And within these lands there are animals that burrow and save for the seasons. Animals that hibernate. Animals that know how to pounce without hesitation. Some are small and numerous. Some are large, territorial, and powerful. Some, perhaps are even greater than that, titans hidden in the deep places and the tall places who have claimed a land over which they are lord in all but name. Perhaps even a few, integrated with the remaining nanobots, who represent an ecosystem unto themselves. The rumors of the Hybrasilian shapers are that it’s possible that whole islands could rest on the back of giant turtles if the conditions turned out just right.
And above them all, clouds that fly rapidly and carry rain near and far. Warm tropical rain and cool boreal rain that sticks to the mountains and the plains and flows to the seas. The clouds move quickly, and they leave gaps and parts for the curious yellow sun, burning so brightly, to peek through. And so, high and low, this planet is a world full of rainbows.
***
There is a single spaceport, built south of the equatorial zone, where it is still warm most of the year, but far enough out of the fiercest storms and inland from the waves about fifty kilometers. It is built in a solid plain, and south of it there is a moderate plateau with caves and changing tree types as one climbs. Above the plateau is a great mountain range, stretching inland. Down from the mountains, a river runs, making great haste to pool in the plateau, and then running down its sheer sides in waterfalls to strike the plains where it happily slows and ambles its way past the port city built on its banks to the great oceans fifty kilometers away.
This port was built last of all, after everything had settled, after the nanobots were gone, after everything else was removed and the scientists extracted. It was built with more traditional methods, with earth shaped by working mechas and a handful of transport ships planned to remain so that the planet would not be entirely isolated.
The port as it now stands is a mix of prefabricated units made of metal and plastics and some hand-built buildings of wood, stone, and brick, stockpiled with enough food and fuel for a few months. There is space for up to a thousand new arrivals (if they don’t mind double bunking), spare parts, tools, clothes, and various odds and ends in plenty. About a hundred souls, all vetted with Mirror, work the port. A mixture of a few people ready to explore, and several people who want to build something of their own and have no intention of going far until there’s a safe road.
The rest is left to the people who come here, the people who choose to settle such a place. The surface is unmapped beyond a rough orbital topography scan. The places that are rich or poor are unknown. The beings who inhabit the world, the gods who may dwell within, they too are unknown. What grows well, what is best to eat, what would make the best clothes. These are things to be discovered.
***
Around the planet, there is a special perimeter. The system has only one jump entry route and in order to be admitted to the system past the guards, you must send word first and be permitted entry from the planet. You must be permitted entry by Mirror or those she delegates to the task. Otherwise, the perimeter guard will turn you back, offering enough fuel to get to the nearest habitable system two jumps away if you’ve arrived in error and cannot gain entry. If you arrive and make foolish demands, you will get less than that.
This, then, is the manifestation of Mirror’s wish. The wish for a planet. The wish for a home. The wish for possibility. The final thing it needs is a name.
