1: The Scout

secure teddy bear tucked away, landing gear systems confirmed online, secondary protesters confirmed functional, all activated robots inactivated in stone, Shush, Boots, you're not a robot. You're my security blanket. I've been cargo strapped in. It's me. Oh my god, oh my god, holy shit. We've been in the upper edge of the atmosphere, so everything's getting a bit hot out there.

Unexpected parameters, good. Okay, wow, he almost assimilated. Billy got the noise just right. This is apparently nostalgic. oh my god if i don't make it mom and dad i love you and i leave you my music collection at the responsibility of burning all my adolescent poetry oh my gosh here we go Welcome to Delta Gamma 1462. Do you see that, Boots? Look here, I'll boost you up. It's dirt! Oh, I'm gonna kiss it. I'm going to.

If I get a weird alien fungus, oh well, that's data for the folks back home. I am going to kiss it. Yes, you, you beautiful, beautiful piece of rock.

Okay. It looks like we touched down a bit off of where we intended. Let's see. Okay. Activate cartography bots A1, B3. Hey, guys. Can we get some 3D scans of the surrounding five miles? Thanks. There you go. Up and at them. Come on, Boots. Let's take a look over that ridge ourselves, too. I think that... Yeah, I... think a little north of here is where they wanted base camp and that's yeah that's something wrestling in the bushes there can't quite

Through the foliage, yeah, there's got to be at least mid-sized fauna here to break that path. And that... you. There we are. Yeah, that looks marshy as heck, and I refuse to be puddle glum. Thank you, Houston Settlement Planning Department. You're the best friend a gal could have. a year's supply of vacuum-sealed anchovies when I asked for tuna, a library so poor I had to get Anna to sneak book downloads in with her letters, and orders to put home base in the middle of a marsh.

Humanity at its finest. We'll wait for the cartographers to come back in for the final report, but I think let's just settle at the landing site. Scout cadet training step one. First priority, secure your safety and survival. I've got air. I've got my schedule. I've got an entire freaking planet.

tips of my fingers. Are you ready, Boots? We've avoided its dulcet tones for months, but now I think we need it. Computer! Reactivate speech protocols. Pinpoint beacon SVX-227 and navigate... Scout Hartley, you've got two minutes to explain why I shouldn't write you up to your superiors for tampering with mission materiel.

What? Who are... You're not my computer. No, I'm your scout minder, and you have two minutes before I... You're not going to write me up because I'm on day one of a five-year mission with no return trip, and there's literally nothing the settlement office can do. Now, what the hell? Who are you? What tampering? I've been on ground for five minutes. You muted your computer nav systems, emergency alerts, instructional system, and also, coincidentally, me. Oh.

Well, the computer kept telling me when to take bathroom breaks based on my latest meals and its estimation of my digestive speed. I did what I had to do. You're not supposed to be able to disable the computer voice. Especially not the alert system. I was on that ship for 355 days. I had time to figure it out. And I had time to get really sick of its voice. Well, regardless of how irritating you eventually find my voice, you will not be doing that again.

What are you even doing on my line? Settlement Office said they didn't have funding for sending live minders. Wait. Did the Union win that fight? I know they were agitating for mandatory regular human contact for us, but I... Didn't think the settlement office would actually cave to the expense. They found the pocket change somewhere. Don't tell me. You don't read the news bulletins the home office sends out either. To be fair, they send a lot of messages.

Gwendolyn Hartley, Scout Explorer Class of 66. Assigned to Delta Gamma 1462. Tidily locked with a temperate ring at Perpetual Twilight Zone. My name is Belle Summers, and I've been assigned to work as your minder for your five-year mission. They assigned me three months ago, which is when I first tried and failed to contact you. That's not my fault, okay?

We were trained with the computer system, you know. I didn't know I was blocking out a real-life person every time I denied the computer speech access. You're a real scout now. Things don't go like they do in training. Well, nice to meet you, Bell Summers.

Anything else you wanted to yell about? Don't turn off your access protocols again. Don't mess with mission materiel or programming. It's set up the way it is for a reason, and the reason is to keep you alive despite your best efforts to be an idiot. If you have questions or problems, you contact me. That's literally what I'm here for. And... and wear your sunblock. Hey.

Does you being here mean I don't have to send the Home Office status reports anymore? No. It's worth a shot. I'm on your line for four hours every other day. I don't have access to your readings, samples, scans, or anything other than audio. I couldn't report much more than, Scout Hartley appears to remain in good health and good spirits, and they're looking for a bit more than that.

Well, I better get to work then. You do that. It'll be like I'm not even here. Boots, open new transcript. What's boots? My controls bot. They say hi. Now, Boots, open new transcript. Recipient, Houston Epsilon. First planetside report. Day 356. Scout and ship have landed with minimal damage. First topography models and scans have been processed and stored for the six-month shipment home. Base camp moved 1.2 miles south of planned camp due to marshy ground.

Initial scout bot's retrieval scheduled as next activity. Blame O'Malley's and don't squawk at me about it. Initial scout bot retrieval isn't the next task on your itinerary. Yeah, thanks, but it is what's happening. The next item on the itinerary is supervising ship disassembly and initial scout habitat construction. I wanted to give her a chance to see the place first before I murder her and use her bones to build a new light. Murder? It's a ship. It's my ship.

I spent a year breathing her air. That's a 27th of my whole lifetime. She brought us here and it's... It's beautiful. I'll start disassembly when I get back. The schedules are there for a reason. You need a place to settle when you sleep. Your planet... Yeah, your landing site is pinged as having suspected dangerous fauna. I'll start disassembly when I get back.

Worst case, if the bots don't manage to construct anything solid before I'm too sleepy, I'll hole up in one of the pods they haven't disassembled yet. I half expected you to say you'd sleep outside, worst case. It wouldn't kill me.

Okay, Hartley. When the settlement office scout bot tags a location as dangerous for temperature, air quality, toxicity, radiation, flowers that shoot lightning out of their leaves, whatever, it means dangerous. Didn't you say something about how I wouldn't even know you were here? Hmm? Well, I'm not technically there.

I cannot see anything you are seeing. Oh, it looked rodent-like. Brown, but with a blue sheen on the fur for camouflage with the grass, maybe. Oh my goodness. First fauna sighting! oh i can't wait until the hummingbird bots go out to register the wildlife oh and i get to name it ah okay oh my gosh and that's a bird sort of what's the purpose of that Dorsal thin, do you think? Are you asking me or your bot? Boots. Oh, definitely Boots. Oh, it's gone. Boots, did you capture video of its flight?

Good. Log it, beam it back to storage, okay? So, are you going to, like, listen to everything I do, Summers? Yes, but I'm only on your direct line for four hours every other day. The rest of your time is yours. The rest of my time is the settlement offices. But I get what you mean. If you need me to log off, I can disable audio and come back on later. If you need to do something private.

But that time taken out of your four hours will have to be paid back later in the day. Do you need me to log off? I... No, that's okay.

The more you stick around, the sooner you go. I was just going to write some letters home. I'll just pretend you're not here. Neat. Boots. Open new transcript. Dear Anna, I'm officially the third landfall of our class. Priyanka landed two months ago. I told you, right, about the message she sent out? Just... 15 minutes of birdsong and running water over stones, and then her at the end going, suck it, slowpokes. Yeah, well, not all of us happened to graduate in the...

perfect orbitational window to launch us planetward and had our planet on the proper side of its sun. Some of us had to wait for launch. Some of us had to take the long way. Not that all of the ways weren't long. Oh my gosh, Anna, there's grass. I mean, it's this beautiful periwinkle, and it's got these barely submerged gossamer-thin root matrices that rise up like little soap-sud hillocks in the fields.

Tell your kids, all right? Next time you're in there being like, grass is brown, clouds are yellow, trees are orange, to your gaggle of goslings, tell them, but not where my sister is. Her grass is periwinkle. Say hi to your kidlets for me. Check if Houston will let you show any video to them when the larger data package finally makes it home in a year or so. They ought to, the old farts. Mail to Anastasia Hartley.

536 G Alabaster Avenue, Delagina, Gaia. So, your sister's got kids? Oh, no. Anna's a teacher. Oh, she's an educator, so you're the underachiever in the family. Yeah, don't remind me. New transcript, Boots. Dear Mom and Dad, I made it to Delta Gamma 1462 just in time to catch their equivalent of autumn. I'm setting up my home base in a wooded meadow-type area, a bit like the summer cabin. You'd like it, Mom, except for the commute.

I'm thinking fondly of you both and hope everything's still going well at home. I got your last letter yesterday before the landing, and I'm happy to hear that Cousin Julia is getting married to a circus performer. Which sounds like a bit, but I believe it. And that Nana had more puppies. You really need to get that dog fixed, Mom, I keep telling you.

And I'm thrilled to hear that the nice neighbor kid is finishing his degree in the nice, respectable field of culinary anthropology and not-hermit space adventures. Love, your littlest. Mail to Janice and Bertrand Hartley, 32 Kirk Street, New Beijing, Gaia. Are you sure it's smart to remind your folks it's their youngest out here? Eavesdropper. It's literally my job.

Yeah, well, I don't think Mom's gonna forget on her own that it's their baby girl who went off and left them. That's why I'm on this particular birth, actually. What? Priyanka. You mentioned her in your letter? Yeah, we went to university together. Class of 66. What about Pri? I'm a friend of the family. They got me assigned to this sector. Her sector of space.

They had to get some cousin or other to pull some strings, actually, to do it, but they wanted me to keep an eye on her. Oh my gosh. You're assigned to Pri? Have you contacted her yet? Has she, like... broken all her audio equipment in protest, declared spoken language is against her personal system of ethics? I think she considered it.

Unlike someone, Priyanka had her audio enabled for the voyage. So we've had time to work out a system that works for everyone. Mostly, I supervise and let her be. Is Priyanka your only other scout? Or is anybody else sharing this delightful experience with me? The settlement office likes to set assignments in batches, so I bet they're all your cohort. This sector has three first settlement planets within this station's FTL comm range.

Yours, Priyanka's, and Mikhail Reza's. Oh, Mikhail. I owe him a letter. He's a chatterbox. Keeping you on your toes? This may be my first rodeo, Hartley, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think you're going to be my biggest handful. I'll try. What, did Pri not set out her first day on an unauthorized scoutbot retrieval mission? That coward.

We promised! You what? We swore. It's a scout trainee thing. A scout trainee thing? Maybe for your local training program. We used to joke about it at school. It's... It's sort of become a tradition now. The day they instruct on the Scoutbot disassembly procedures, all the trainees go out for drinks after. There's even a specific bar. I don't know what they did before O'Malley's opened a couple hundred years back, but...

These days, all the trainees go grab mugs of Guinness and elderberry wine and swear an oath of disobedience. Standard operating procedure. First task after the essentials are in place. We're all supposed to go out and find the scout bot and bring it home. Peter, the romantic, he always said he'd do it even before base camp set up. Just go find the lost sheep before anything else. But Priyanka talked him down. What for?

Why did Pri talk him down? Because if you didn't talk Peter down, then you ended up three islands over at 6am the next morning, making friends with a turtle and unsure how you got there. No, why the scout bot? They send the scout bots ahead of us. Do you know this? Do they teach you this part when you get the minder's certificate? Is it a certificate?

The scout bots circle the planet a few times, checking air and radiation and toxicity, and then sit near a likely landing site for a full planet cycle to check temp and average weather. Do you know about the first settlement scout explorer? I mean, we'd had other explorers before, but... Singh. He was the first of this profession. My profession, really. He settled Gaia. Inhabitable Alpha Delta 83.

Gaia now, yeah, and home to 2 billion. But the Scoutbot is how it got the first name. Inhabitable. When Sing touched down, Gaia was just this lopsided little world with all its land bunched up in an archipelago on one side of the planet. They dropped him down and started barking instructions over the time delay. Deconstruct this, set up the shelter, this robot, build your latrine downwind, wash your hands before you eat. Please wash your hands before you eat, Hartley. But Zing...

Well, these first contact robots, you're meant to scrap them upon your arrival. We get trained on it, just like dismantling the ship for parts and fuel. The old dude I'm looking for becomes 30% of an agrobot. Some of his chips get recycled into a comm array, and the rest goes into the pantry. It's not vital, but it's procedure, and Houston likes to pretend every bit of procedure is sacred.

They'd tried to drop Sing down near the scout robot, but of course they were a few islands off. Sing found him in the sixth month, once he'd, like, built a boat. At least you don't have to build a boat. Not yet. I mean... This isn't the only continent with land in the livable region on this planet. Isn't a short-range hover transport vehicle part of your equipment? Won't that traverse seas well enough? Yeah? So? Maybe I want to build a boat.

Anyway, then Houston Beta barked down the line how to disassemble it, and instead, Singh patched him up and carted him back to base to sit outside the main camp to report on the weather and peaceful retirement. And now, we do the same.

Swore it over a pint at O'Malley's, so no going back now. But if you did go back, though, to your supplies and your defensible structures, what about that? Gotta show respect for services rendered. Scouts got to stick together. What are we if we don't bring our people home? If it was people, I might agree. But it's a bot.

And don't squawk at me. I know scout bots aren't sentient. Thanks. I promised, okay? And I've got its coordinates. It's just a mile or so out from camp, and I haven't had a real hike in a year. Yes, you haven't done any serious exertion in a year. You're going to exhaust yourself and fall down a crevice and- I bet you're great at parties. I bet you stand on tables. Only if there's good music.

Oh shit, a bug! A good bug? All bugs are good. I think this one's a pollinator. It's going to town on this flowering tree. Boots, take footage. There's a good bot. What's it look like? Sort of iridescent in the light. It... Oh, there's the scout bot. Oh, hooray. Hey, handsome. You ready to get some new digs? Here.

Let me reactivate your mobility settings. There you go. Up and at him. Oh, look at those creaky old joints. You're going to do just fine, Dora the Explorer. Just got to make it a few miles back. Okay, you found the scout bot. You fulfilled your drunken promises. Can we go back to camp now? Uh, you can keep sitting in your comfy space station chair. It's not that comfy. Maybe grab yourself a coffee, put your feet up. Oh, fuck. Hartley? Hartley, are you there? Hartley? Hartley?

Okay. Hartley, what the hell? Hey, Summers. How's space? Colt? Hartley, I need you to talk to me. What happened? Shit. Hartley, I swear to God, if you don't talk to me... I need... something to apply suction. God, why don't they make us pack anything useful? It...

Tool belt, pouch A5, the vacuum sealer for anaerobic sample capture. Unscrew the blue part of the casing, remove the yellow safety catch, shove the port up against whatever needs suction. It'll error. Cancel the error message with, uh... Code 624, and the suction will start. Why do you need suction? Hartley, what is going on? An unidentified alien life form bit me in the left calf. You don't need suction for that.

You need to capture it to get a venom sample for your anti-venom kit. Yeah, I know. That's why I was crashing through the bushes despite the bleeding hole in my calf. I've got it. Oh. You caught it? Got a lot of blue-bellied lizards in the grass as a kid. Boring summers. The kid's working. It says 45% derived. I was just thinking I should maybe be doing something while I wait for the kit to process an anti-venom sample for me. You know, like rattlesnake bites in an old western? That's not...

To do that, you'd need to cut the puncture wound open a little more, and all that does is put you at further risk for infection. Kid, if your survival training is coming from Westerns, I'm worried about the state of the modern education system. Take it up with my sister. Hannah's the educator. I'm just the feral alien Chuchoi. She's also the one who liked westerns. If you can lie down, try to do that. Rest. It might buy you some time.

I like time. The kit says 70%. Now that I'm closer to it, it is sort of lizard-like. Thick and short with some small limbs. Maybe more newt-like, but with fur. That's real neat, Hartley, but... It is real neat. My first close fauna encounter. First contact on my planet. I get to name it. Bitey Hairy Newt? No, you can't suggest things. You'll ruin it. How are you doing?

It's numb. My vision's gone a little wonky. I'll write it down later for the science report. 90%. Shit, why couldn't it have gone after my right leg? Could scratch up my enamel. That's fine. I've got a repair kit for that one. You're handling this really well. Thanks. That's not condescending. I don't mean to be... I mean, I'm impressed. 98%? Come on. Yes! Okay. Anti-venom injected. I'm gonna... just...

Sit. For a bit. And you injected it close to the site? Shit, my leg hurts. I hate needles. Regretting your decisions yet? Ha. No. I grew out of that emotion. You grew out of- What? Regret's dumb. I hate being dumb. So, uh, which scout school did you go to? Gaia? Damn, the original? Wait, don't you know this? You have my file. I... I do. I just thought I'd make conversation. Okay. Well...

I grew up on Gaia, so it wasn't a hard choice. Pri, you know, she had to hitch a ride from Ferndale. Took her, like, six months of space station hopping before she even got into our sector of space. But at least Ferndale sees outgoing ships now and again. Can you imagine growing up on some planet without even a spaceport? That would suck.

You do realize you've basically volunteered to trap yourself on a planet that's not going to see any ships but one-way settlement vessels for probably at least your lifetime? What? Really? No, I miss that day of orientation. So, what are you going to do if some little kid dreaming of scouting gets born on your planet, oh wise one? I'll take on an apprentice. And...

By the time we're really fully done exploring this place, we'll have seen some ship come to visit. Might be a generation or so, but at least we won't be bored in the meantime. And hey, maybe we'll hit some sort of rare mineral and then ships will be flocking our way before the first ten years are up. Scouts who come in hoping for a windfall usually don't have a very good time. I'm not expecting one, I'm just...

Same. I knew what I was doing signing up. They drilled that into us, you know? You know how many waivers I signed? Did you read them? I memorized them. Now, I don't think Peter read them, or Priyanka.

But Mikhail and Maisie and I used up highlighters and had stress dreams over them. Okay. I'm feeling stabler. I think I'll head back to camp. Are you sure you're good to walk? Yeah, better than sleeping out here. And I can lean on boots. God, it's still pretty out here. Going to do your job now? This was part of my job. Not according to the itinerary. Ship disassembly should be started by now.

It was part of my job. Scouts have to stick together. And now you, sweet thing. I was talking to the scout bot. You, sweet thing, we're gonna find you the perfect spot to retire. It'll be the best view. Tomorrow. You should get up early. What, worried I'll sleep in? No, no, I... You should get up before the sun does. It's your first sunrise on planet. You don't want to miss that. I... That's really sweet, Summers. Don't get me wrong.

Romantic with a capital R. But, um, I'm not going to have a sunrise? Planet is tidally locked, remember? Oh, right. Sorry, I didn't... I knew that. I did. I was just thinking... One side's always facing the sun, one side's always facing away. There's a bit of a tilt to the planetary axis, so the sun, like, wanders a little, but... Yeah, yeah, I know that.

Sorry. I did read your planet's file and specs. Four times. I have post-its. I have three colors of highlighter, I swear. I believe you. Calm down. You just like sunrises? Wait. You're not space porn, are you? You have seen a sunrise? Not in a year or so, but yeah. I'm from Jada Landing. Oh. Good mountains there, right? Yeah. You miss them? Do you miss Gaia? Not yet. So what's next on the itinerary after ship disassembly, oh guiding voice in my ear? Um, so...

I'm realizing now this is going to sound a little hypocritical, but when you get back to camp, can you go to part bay 629C? I was actually kidding. I know my itinerary. I'm supposed to start ship disassembly, then the defrost process for the first seedlings. It's sort of hard to break protocol if you don't know what the protocol is meant to be. I wasn't kidding, though.

So, if you could take another moment out of your already wrecked schedule... And do what? I want you to build an emergency beacon. Right now, you can only get a hold of me if I'm already listening. And four hours out of 48 isn't acceptable. It's fine. I wasn't expecting to have any backup for a definition of backup that includes bodiless, powerless voices in the sky. All the same, Hartley. And build it out of what?

Do you think they sent me down here with a toolkit and a shed of scraps? Every bit of cargo is earmarked for a purpose. Every scrap of the disassembled ship is too. They don't send things we don't need. They don't send some things we do need. Like... tuna fish you need component 695d 629c the radio from a bot control unit and then a switch and a few boards from the agrobots should do it and a heavy amount of solder but they pad your supply as they should

It won't do anything more than send a ping if triggered, but that's enough to get me to come log on to your line. Belle, we're not supposed to- Hartley! You just walked miles on wobbly space legs, wrestled with a venomous alien creature, and rescued a bot that's also supposed to be broken down for parts. For sentiment, you can do this for safety. What safety? What are you gonna do if something goes wrong? Listen? Yeah?

We just had a little emergency and you weren't that helpful. I was a little helpful. You were freaking out in my ear. Like, the suction stuff was neat, I guess. How generous of you. Still dizzy? You know what my best advice was? Just don't go at all. See? You're not much help if I just don't do what you say. I agree. Oh, good. Hartley, I...

I know you came out here expecting no backup. You signed on for five years on this planet, keeping yourself alive, building something that could support the others when they land, but you don't have to do this alone. I know you could. I believe you could, but I am here. You, Priyanka, and Mikhail are why I'm here on this station. If you get in trouble, and I can't help...

If I don't even know you're in trouble until I log on for my shift and no one answers me, please do this for me. Oh, there's camp. All right, sweet thing. Where do we put you? Hartley. I think I'm going to leave him on this ridge, overlooking the marshes. There you go, lad. Rest up. Partly. Fine, Summers. Just let me start ship disassembly, and then you can talk me through your arts and crafts project. Thanks. I appreciate it. Just give me a second.

Ship. You beautiful vessel. You creaky, frigid bucket of bolts. We've come a long way. You've carried me a long way. I like to think this isn't goodbye, but I don't really know how you feel about it. This is your first and only landing after your first and only launch. And now you're going to become the bones of everything we're building here. All right. All right. Reconstruction sequence initiate.

Thank you. See you on the other side. All right, Summers. What have you got for me? I assume you've got a protocol? Okay. Go to Park Bay 629C. Well, that's it. If you need me, if you need anything... You hit that switch and I'll get pinged up here on the station. I'll be on your line in five minutes at the most. What if you're not? Should I be worried? If I'm not, then either I'm actively dying or one of your cohort is. Ah.

Yeah. Think you're going to have a place to sleep tonight? Aw, it's like you care. It's my job. And I want you to live long enough to send your first data package out. I want to see that bird. With the dorsal fin? It was beautiful. Yeah. Our four hours is up. You get some rest, Hartley. And in an actual dwelling, please. A roof? Maybe a door?

Storage Bay 6 is still intact. It'll work for now. I'll see you in two days at 800 Galactic Standard. Well, not see, exactly. It's a phrase, don't be pedantic. Can't help myself. You must bring out the best in me. Scoutminder Summers, signing off. Alone at last, Boots.

Can you get the disassembly bots to hold off work on storage basics? They can keep going on the rest. Thanks, bud. Yeah, come on, with me. Boots, open transcript. Dear Peter, I'm the third landfall. I always liked coming in almost last. You know me. I've got my bots activated and the ship in the first stages of disassembly. Tomorrow, I start the scouting and set up some of the aggro experiments to see what we might be feeding people when they land.

According to the early Scoutbot soil readings, it sounds like this might be a potato's planet, but oh well. I've got five years to figure it out, and more seed banks than a girl could ever ask for. I didn't realize how weird it would be that this storage bay is the exact same as it was on the ship, just removed from itself. I'm just sitting here, in this torn up part of something that used to be whole.

These are really familiar walls now, Peter, but I look out my door and there's grass, not just the corridor lights. The bots are turning the floor lights into the heating elements for the greenhouse. I think that's on the schedule for next afternoon. If Summers doesn't give me another arts and crafts project. I've got a scout minder, by the way. Not just the guidance computer, an actual minder. Bell Summers.

They're up on a space station within FTL range, fussing. They seem less easy to ignore than a computer guidance system. Oh well, I'm sure I'll learn how. Remember in orientation, the dean was all, look to your left, look to your right. Of the three of you, only one is going to graduate. I always thought that was funny. Like, even if only a third of the class makes it to graduation,

Doesn't he know the overachievers flock and sit together all at the front of the room? It was you on my left, I think, and Maisie on my right, and we didn't even bother looking. Ironic, in retrospect. Remember after? We had preterm reading to do and hours to put in at the machine shop, but we bought breakfast burritos at 3 p.m. and hiked out into the reserve.

We hadn't memorized every trail and hollow there, not yet, so every turn and rise was new. We sat up beside those old pines and wasted the whole day. Never had a better burrito. I know you were there, too. I just feel like I have to say it out loud, you know? We climbed up to the top of that old granite rubble heap, through the blackberries and dune daisies, and... What if I forget that?

I've never seen a sky that blue, you know? The sky, Peter? I wish you could see it. It's blue, but the shading's not quite right. I can't think what to call it other than blue, but Peter, it's so easy to see I'm nowhere near home. It's funny. I lived a year in space, Peter. And I'll probably never fly again. But I've got lots to do. Hey, sweet pea. Need something? Yeah, you want a bedtime story, Boots? Yeah, me too. Come here, you roll on up and get comfy. Okay, how's this?

Once upon a time, there was a cosmonaut. She lived on a space station way up among the stars and ate moon rocks for breakfast and comet tails for dessert. She had never met anyone before, like the prince who hailed her station. She had never heard anything before, like the broadcast he sent over the transmitter. It was music, but she had never heard music before.

There was something like a heartbeat, and she had only heard her one heartbeat before this. She could feel it, trying to match the rhythm. There was something like glass hitting glass. But everything that fragile and high had broken long ago in her home. There was a voice. And she had only before heard her own. whispering secrets to the comet that rushed by, or telling stories to the vacuum, which only wanted to make something kinder.

This episode of Second Star to the Left was written by E. Jade Lomax and directed and edited by Rachel Kellum. Gwendolyn Hartley was played by Ashani Konatkar. Belle Summers was played by Joran Boss. Original music was composed and recorded by Adam Rubin and Joran Boss, featuring the track Light Thought One by Kevin MacLeod of Acompetech.com. Second Star to the Left was created by E. Jade Lomax and Aisha Farah.