At tea time, Polo asked me a question.

“Why do you not settle down, like the other tra/ʬʮʬ/ers?”

We were strolling through the anomaly and they paused at my ship, a rusty shuttle built long ago, in a time I do not fully remember. They tapped it thrice, producing a kind of hollow sound that suggested the vessel was not apt to withstand the infinity of space that so often pressed down upon its shell.

I shrugged, and remarked, “Don’t you know me well enough to answer that?”

Polo laughed, nodded to themself, and told me to go feed some animals.

Entry Planet: Desert Palace // Dusty Planet // DUST + AQUAMARINE

To be certain, and to have aim always, is to truly live. I believe this. The task given to me was a paradox: both cryptic and clear. Of course, I could feed animals: my pack was stuffed with carbon morsels and flecks of ferrite, and to upend it as a feast for the harmless creatures would be more delight than chore. Yet I heard something else in Polo’s voice, and I knew that they were imploring me to do other things. To observe. To document. To think.

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The Desert Palace’s creatures offered me no immediate insights. They gobbled up carbon as expected. Visible foremost, universally around the planet, were the great, caterpillar-like sky worms. Of more interest were the tiger-striped fish, whose markings curiously mimicked those of the surrounding rock shelves, and a beautiful herd of quadrupeds who grazed and galloped more elegantly than I remember seeing.

I could read nothing from the landscape of the planet itself. But that did not matter so much, as it was beautiful.

I left the Desert Palace with my eyes on the green planet nearby, which was densely populated with you all… my fellow travellers.

Verdant Planet // FOREST GREEN + RUST



Strangely, for such a luscious world, I found the fauna elusive. It was only after a long hike from my temporary base of operations, a quiet trading post, that I finally stumbled upon a tiny land creature skittering in the low grass. I fed it happily, and sat to browse the logs of other travellers who had more thoroughly explored this world. Polo says it is from atop the shoulders of giants that we can touch the stars. Ironically, the metaphor in this case applied to something far more terrestrial.

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My eye, and my ship, wandered. From up here — forgetting the creatures for just a short moment — the craters that scarred the surface were curiously varied.

I told myself I’d return and collect harder data, some day, in an imagined future where time is a match for space… I knew already it was a lie.

Temperate Planet // BLUE + PEACH

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Life on this blue giant is beautiful, don’t you agree? The yellow luminescence of the cave-beasts’ tendrils offset the ominous, midnight blue of the wooded area where I first alighted. On this planet, I was truly happy to observe for Polo – with a scattering of morsels, a plethora of animal life — of all shapes and sizes — emerged. The apex beast appeared to have made its home in a cave mouth, and it regressed and re-appeared habitually, oblivious to the other creatures and to my alien presence.

Nuclear Planet // OCHRE + TECHNICOLOURS

Have you seen a hoofed and four-legged creature that lives a strictly aquatic life? It seems like a cosmic joke: a divine creator’s tongue-in-cheek remark to those who would seek to establish rules of evolution. The irradiated waters here were brutal to my cobbled-together exosuit, and I suppose I put myself at more risk than necessary to capture the images of these… things. It is true that such creatures are not unique to this planet. But they are, nevertheless, fascinating.

Hyperborean Planet // BLUE + SECRETS OF RED

Polo is laughing at me still, I know. What is this new stage of the universe they so coyly imply is beginning to fruit? After my exploration of four planets in the new system, I had convinced myself it had little to do with the animals. The great ice world also presented no immediately anomalous qualities. In fact, I felt with increasing intensity that Polo was mocking me. Why did he send me to a place so familiar to the glacial world near Oezen Gamma? You feel it to, don’t you? The trees, the quality of the colours, the weather… all too similar. On that planet, a week — a week? — ago, the geographic monoliths were cubic and hollow. All of them. I wondered if they had meaning, but resolved that they did not. Perhaps I was wrong.

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I have become so used to the patterns of the worlds which I explore. There is a beat to the landscapes. On this planet, the beat was off. A hollow cylinder here led me to anticipate the same thing there; and yet, the next was not hollow. Pyramids, even more prominent, jutted from the landscape also; even strange outcroppings like, infinity bands, tempted me to wonder, to shift my camera’s documentary eye. It is not the existence of these shapes that startled me: rather, their co-existence.

Have you seen such worlds? I ask this genuinely.

To be certain, and to have aim. Hah! Did you believe that, when I said it? There is no such thing as certainty. How could there be? Perhaps there is only beauty. And beauty is terribly uncertain. Wondrous uncertain.