Rogue SIMP J01365663+0933473 borders between a planet and brown dwarf. Nearly thirteen times the size of Jupiter, its immense gravitational pull holds three lunar stations captive, including Ilargi, Losna, and Kuu.

Today we landed on Kuu to refuel, as well as let the artists on board paint, ink, and sketch the borealis patterns encircling Rogue SIMP's North Pole.

I'm no artist, so I just pulled a beach chair into the Observatory, then kicked back with popcorn. Popcorn takes me back to Earth days, with my brother, sister, and the telly.

The student-teacher program's been pouring their hearts into the interstellar garden project on the third deck. Since red corn and pumpkin are the latest crops, we've been feasting on autumn memories for days. Delicious.

I wonder if it's autumn in San Angeles, like the calendar said.

Some of the crew joked the other day that they could tweak a setting here, a cog there, and the calendar could say anything; and that made me appreciate my internal clock, my internal compass—when and if I ever return my cyborg feet to domesticated Earth.

For now, I'm only bound to reality by digital information and starlight.

Our lives are more intertwined with relativity than we dare understand.

Speaking of relativity, Kuu doesn't benefit from sunlight; so life adapted by burgeoning bioluminescent forests as majestic as the Brazilian Rainforest.

Of course, I don't think the rain or rivers are made of water. Aqua-based life—our life—feels more and more unique (the galaxy's marvelous accident?) the further out we go.

But then, the same piehole that suggested he could mess with the calendar, also pointed out that we could be the only aqua-life idiotic enough to fare the stars. He said, we could be common, sans the part where we want to explore deep space.

Why didn't we venture inward instead, he asked, down the virtual reality rabbit hole?

Why didn't we dedicate ourselves to godhood, making worlds of our own?

Yet before we left, thirty percent of Gen Z and Gen R were plugged into artificial landscapes; so I'm unsure if we've truly dodged the inevitable descent into a virtual existence.

After I poured the last kernels of popcorn into my mouth, I stared out the massive bay window, into the sea of the Milky Way, where Rogue SIMP bled indigo and violet energy into the dark skies of Kuu.

By now, maybe the rest of Earth's population is plugged into virtual worlds designed by the One Percent.

We could be the only humans to have ever seen a planet like this, alone and abandoned, save its tortured moon-children, drifting through empty space, without a sun for a mother or father, independent and beautiful.

♦

First draft: September 18

Word count: 482

Inspiration: @BeyondSol Space Travel Contest, found here:

https://www.wattpad.com/632823216-beyondsol-contests-and-prompts-the-space-travel