The R'lyeh Odyssey
As the vast emptiness of space stretched before me, I couldn't help but wonder why he'd ever applied for that forsaken position. His decision had left me virtually alone, tasked with the mind-numbing chore of overseeing massive machines that barely seemed to need supervision. Weeks, maybe months, had passed since they'd last required any input from me.
These mechanical giants were content crawling on the surface of the dwarf planet, which remained nameless. Their movements, precise yet eerie, conjured images from Lovecraftian tales in my mind. As a personal jest, I'd taken to calling the planet R'lyeh, after the sunken city of Cthulhu, even though the jest would likely be lost on any official records.
The control room displays pulsed in a hue of monotonous green. Each glowing indicator seemed like a mocking reminder of my purposelessness. On more than one occasion, I'd wished for a sudden flash of red, just for a change of pace – some tangible problem to solve.
Interrupting my musings, a voice boomed, “Yo, Mike, you there?” The voice seemed to emanate from thin air. Setting my chai down, I responded, “Yeah, I'm here.” With a casual wave of my hand, the owner of the voice, Obol, materialized.
He now sported the appearance of a teenager, having chosen to modify his bio-printed body upon our arrival. In truth, he was older than me. “Going a little stir-crazy?” he asked, pointing to the evergreen displays.
“Understatement of the millennium,” I muttered, sipping my chai. Obol conjured a chair, taking a seat nearby. “You know, the Transfer links are nearing completion,” he offered. “Once operational, our bandwidth will explode, and we'll be flooded with entertainment and visitors.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And how long until that happens?”
“Could be a year, or two,” he replied.
“That's a lifetime, not a wait,” I groaned.
Obol moved towards the vast window, where the stars glittered brilliantly against the inky canvas of space. The red dwarf we orbited shone faintly, and as our habitat rotated, R'lyeh came into view. Gargantuan machines, which I had affectionately named Cthulhu, Ghatanothoa, and Yig, trekked across its surface, raising plumes of steam. For a moment, we simply watched in silence, comforted by the illusion of company, even though this Obol was merely a duplicate, and the actual Obol was light-years away.
Decades flew by, and the dwarf planet R'lyeh was no more. Its resources had been utilized to the fullest, and the machines that once roamed its surface were dismantled. It's incredible how much can change in a century.
Now, I reside in Opal, a spectacular city within the clouds of Nyphtis, an ice giant. The vast and dense atmosphere feels like a refreshing change from the vacuum of space. And today, an amusing realization hit me: there are versions of me spread across every colonized star system. My desire for exploration and expansion had, in the end, overshadowed my fear of solitude.
