Ayaka was still standing on the bridge of the Khopesh when the last evacuation flight passed Proxima Centauri b’s Karman Line and rocketed toward the TFS Escapade, the heavy cruiser it was assigned to.She had—barely—been able to keep herself from pacing back and forth behind the drone wing commanders, but a thrill passed up and down her spine when she heard that the last lander had safely made it off the surface and she was unable to keep herself from practically vibrating in place. Only two decades of comportment and etiquette training, courtesy of her father’s expectations, kept her from showing how anxious she was.She turned to Captain Chang, who shot her an empathetic glance as he began, “Don’t worry, we’ve already prepared the rescue mission. Wing three, prepare to—”Before he could finish his sentence, the holotank in the center of the bridge turned red and an abort signal flashed, accompanied by a message: “All surface missions are suspended until further notice.”The message
Joon-ho was floating in a warm darkness, his knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. ‘Is this what it feels like to be dead?’ he thought. ‘Just floating in... nothingness? Man, a whole lot of people are gonna be really disappointed when they die. No angels with trumpets, no pearly gates, no mythical beings or buddhas... and apparently no hot goddesses offering perks to be born on planets they’re responsible for.’ He sighed, or at least attempted to.Suddenly he heard a muffled thud-THUD and two other noises that reminded him of conversation. One was a low-pitched murmur—a man, he thought—and there was another, higher-pitched sound. If the first was a man, then the second should be a woman.‘Why does this seem so... familiar?’ he mused.He drifted in the endless dark, listening to the murmuring and rhythmic thud-THUD. ‘Well, if this is what the afterlife is like, then I guess it could be worse,’ he thought as he floated in the warm, welcoming nothing that surrounded h
Joon-ho felt a thrill pass through him at the question. It was a question he had been waiting for, seemingly for his entire life. He didn’t know many people from the task force, having spent the entire journey out either practicing his mana manipulation skills or in his private VR space, but he firmly believed that he was the leading expert in the Proxima Centauri system on all things fantasy, sci-fi, and anime.He began lecturing the trees on all things elven, all the way from the mythological alfar and dokkalfar to present, including the races’ representation in novels, video games, and movies. He provided every detail he could think of, and as he spoke, he saw them in his memories, including his emotions and thoughts as he first discovered the rich body of entertainment through humanity’s history. He recalled heroes and villains, epic tales of adventures, and the struggles and challenges that each individual went through in each story he recounted to the trees.As he spoke, the tre
A month passed and the red mana shield around Proxima Centauri b was still present, just as strong as it had been when it was first raised, if not stronger. The TFS Proxima had been in a high polar orbit practically the entire time, and it seemed like the shield had detected her sensors and strengthened itself as a result.But if they had been able to see through the obscuring shield, the members of Task Force Proxima would likely have been rather surprised. Who wouldn’t be surprised if they saw continents springing up seemingly out of nowhere?That said, the continents hadn’t been created out of nothing. Rather, it was more like the roots occupying the ocean floor had mostly withdrawn, lowering the water level and exposing continents that had already been there, but flooded by the water.And following the law of unintended consequences, the withdrawn roots had taken most of the mana with them from the water. But as energy, including mana, could neither be created nor destroyed—barrin
Three months later.Ayaka and Captain Marinakis were in the captain’s ready room on the Farsight, attending a virtual meeting with the task force’s leadership. Things had settled into a routine, and the meetings had gone from daily, to weekly, and now this was the second monthly meeting they were holding. Nothing of any note had yet been accomplished; the situation remained unchanged.“We’re still functioning on skeleton crews to reduce resource consumption. Even though we have the replicators, our problem with the algae in the feedstock tanks remains unsolved, but we’re still working on it and should have a solution soon,” the fleet’s head of logistics reported.For the past six weeks, the crews of the ships had been rotating in and out of VR training simulations, with only skeleton crews maintaining the ships in reality. The initial mission planning had called for restocking their algae tanks and supplementing them with organic compounds from asteroids in Proxima Centauri and on the
“Oh. My. God,” Ayaka murmured. Her murmur was caught by everyone else in the meeting, as they had all been stunned into silence by the hologram the AI had generated in the middle of the conference table. All of them couldn’t help but agree, as the visual of Proxima Centauri b was starkly different than when they had first laid eyes on it.“Proxima, generate a comparison hologram,” Admiral Bianchi said once he recovered his voice.{Comparison generated, Admiral,} the AI said as a hologram of the planet as it was appeared next to the current one.The two planets looked completely different. When they had first arrived, there was only one continent on it and some scattered islands. But now, one, two, three.... “Five continents,” Dr. Standing Bear said, her tone filled with shock. “Great Coyote, that should have taken millennia, not just months.”She wasn’t wrong, either. Change on a geological scale took time that was better measured in eons, not months! Earth had once been a pangea as w
Joon-ho had taken to sleep as a way of measuring time in the timeless meadow. Although he never knew how long he slept, or when he fell asleep or woke up, for that matter, at least he could count “days” by tracking his sleep schedule. Currently, his count was at seven hundred and sixty-three.He had no way of knowing how accurate it was, but at least the practice kept him sane. Time had proven a difficult concept to communicate to the trees, who seemingly lived forever and saw no point whatsoever in dividing days into hours, minutes, and seconds, or years into months and weeks. The only thing the trees cared about were seasons; there was a season to sleep and a season to grow. Everything else was superfluous to them.Currently, he was laying on the soft grass, trying and failing to fall asleep. Not only was he excited by his impending rebirth, but the role he had played in the creation of new life had his thoughts in a tizzy. Though the trees had done all of the work of birthing the n
Proxima Centauri b, one month later.At the former site of Research Base New New South Wales, a single tree grew. Unlike any of the other newly created vegetation, it was alone in the center of a vast clearing and was of no particular species of tree. And on that tree was a single fruit, pulsing with a rhythmic red light.Motes of shining mana were flowing into the fruit, causing it to sway from side to side. As more and more motes struck the fruit and passed through its skin, the swaying sped up with each passing second until cracks spread on the fruit’s surface. They continued spreading and widening until the fruit fragmented much like an eggshell, dropping a slim, hairless human figure to the ground, covered in a clear, slick goo. The man, for man he obviously was, given the equipment between his legs, stood and wiped the goo from his eyes.“Fuck me!” he cursed as a wave of dizziness swept over him and he nearly fell to the ground. “I think I forgot how to walk. Do I have to grow u