When I was a child the station was alive. Not like a crowded market or an anthill is alive. Alive, alive. It grew, like a fiddlehead unfurling in the sun, tiny green shoots spooling infinitely outwards, the spreading lace of a fern frond against the inky blackness of space. The station grew, and I was happy.
The traders came, and the particle-miners, colourful, chaotic humanity in strange contrast with the featureless hallways, the herbaceous airlocks. I remember the deep rumbling hum as the ships locked on, and, shuddering, stopped. The ships became one with the station, and the tendrils pulsed with the stored energy of a thousand distant suns, each ship a separate source, jewel-like and perfect.
That was what things were like, when I was a child.
And then, one day, everything ended. The ships that slid, noiseless, through the black abyss came occasionally, then rarely, then very nearly not at all. The vibrant, the eager, the children left, called by jobs and schools and lovers in other systems, on other stations. The tendrils yellowed, browned, curled in upon themselves. They died, one by one. The station retreated into itself.
Now we wait, the station and I, alone in the endless winter of space. We wait for the slow warming, the sudden flush. We wait, I believe, for spring.
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SmackDown: Back to Our Roots
Science FictionOur previous two SmackDowns were both massive successes, and it's high time for another. You might remember the last one was heavy on the "game" elements, maybe even too heavy. This time we're going back to the basics and keeping it simple. It's jus...
