Celestial Architect

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Lucicron ignored the battle on the other side of the sealed doors, the last battle to ever be fought between his people, here on the edge of the galaxy. He ignored the enemy smashing into the doors and the slow whirring that signified the cutting tool. But he could not ignore the hot pang creeping up his spine, oozing out his brow as sickly sweat.

He had minutes to perform hours of calculations, to fix the last ditch effort to preserve life in the cosmos. The planet hung before him through the observation screen, red and pulsing and unstable since the sabotage.

There just wasn’t enough time for the safe option, calculating tectonic resonances, tidal influences and the correct magnetic alignments to stabilise the world… unless he took the risky option.

“All life is risk,” he murmured, “But a risk worth taking.”

Lucicron acted quickly, scanning the orbital plain for what he needed. There, another failed planet, slightly smaller and teaming with unused organic molecules. He gripped it with a graviton pulse and flung it at the larger world.

He stepped back from the console, biting his lip as the readout tracked the impending collision, hoping he made the right choice.

The doors burst open, a shot tore through the smoke. He collapsed on the console, the searing impact turned numb and he slid down. He knew it was a mortal wound, but they were too late, they failed.

“We stopped you, traitor,” the warrior stepped forward and regarded the hellish world. “We will be the last life, the universe will return to balance, quiet, and at peace without us to meddle.”

“I am not the traitor,” Lucicron mumbled, “But neither are you. You simply gave up when hope was still waiting to be stoked like a flame. And I have stoked that flame, life will live, with another chance to make its own mistakes, or thrive.”

“What do you mean?” The console chimed a warning,  “What have you done?”

“I stoked the flame…” Lucicron smiled as the life left him, and the enemy were left stunned as the smaller planet collided with the larger one.

There was a gargantuan flash of light as the celestial bodies ignited against one another. The smaller planet fragmented and jettisoned out into a wide orbit which struck the orbital platform and carried it away in a hail of terrestrial fire.

Over the years, and centuries and millennia – in a cosmos now quiet of life – the second planet reformed, moulded by the first as it moulded back in reciprocity. The orbital forces stabilised the two bodies as tidal forces went to work, forming a planet and moon. Eventually the churning fiery mass within the planet subsided and stabilised, and the organic molecules within it formed into complex machines which formed more complex machines which eventually progenitor-ed life.

They would come into consciousness in a lonely, empty cosmos, clinging to a desperate raft in the radiation currents. But with a chance to grow, and to thrive.

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