Touch the Ground

AUDIO) We begin on a space station, hearing the hum of the slow-turning engine. The room is large and nearly empty.

ARCHIVIST: Welcome to the Archives. Our record for review today will be from section 27: Historical Worlds. The planet Ellori is one of our oldest samples, from the fourth wave before the Founding.

Please note that any opinions expressed in these samples belong solely to the speaker on record and do not reflect the views of this station, the archival union, or the Collected Archives itself. If anything in this review causes listener distress or confusion please report to the nearest attendant for assistance. Potential sources of distress include homesickness and colonization. Please also note there will be time for questions and observations once the sample has concluded.

[AUDIO][At the sound of an electronic swoop, the sounds of the space station fade away. They are replaced by a windy, grassy plain.]

JAI: Sure is cold out here. It was so bright out when the meeting broke up this morning I just took off without my sweater. Typical, you’d say, and you’d be right. There’s no way I was going to spend my last day on the planet tucked up in my room or in some looming building with lights buzzing and doors beeping. So here I am at the edge of the woods again, shivering. If only I had my big sister along nagging me about things like sweaters and making sense, and lunch.

(JAI cont) I needed to say goodbye, I guess. After all the time we spent out here pretending the city didn’t exist I couldn’t just… leave. What was I, four when you first dragged me outside the wall? Four, terrified, and absolutely Not going to tell my sister I wanted to go home. You treated this place like it really mattered, like some huge important secret you were finally going to let me in on. No way was I giving that up.

And you were right.

[AUDIO] The grass and stony ground crunches underfoot as our speaker walks slowly toward a city throughout this recording.

(JAI cont) All that time poking around in the dirt and playing with weeds, and we somehow made it into our lives. Maybe after tomorrow, once us noisy colonists are gone you can take your students out here and show them everything. Let them dig their hands into the dirt and feel it like we did, let them fall in love with the weeds. Maybe they’ll find something as special as our Bluestar, and change the world.

[AUDIO] The footsteps stop and Jai crouches down.

They just… smell so good. All of them, even the grass. That green, bitter, windy smell the walls keep out along with everything else. I’m… I’m going to miss that smell. Think the ship monitors will know if I take a bit of it with me? One of the grass pods maybe? A seed cone? They wouldn’t space me for breaking some kind of “alien plant species intermingling” regulation, right?

It’s a huge honor. I know you said you’d rather stay here and enjoy all the elbow room but you know my feet didn’t touch the ground the day they asked me to go. Jai Garonn, the dirt-scientist going into space and making a new world? Can you imagine how much Mom must have bragged? I know it’s about the soil, not me, but they need Me to make it so, well… ok I bragged too. Me and my useless bluestar weeds, turning rocky fields into farmland, freeing the new world from vat-food.

Geh… I hope I can. The first landing team took samples and it seems like what worked here will work even better there, but… I won’t know until we get there and get it to work. Can you imagine if it doesn’t happen? If they cart my dirt-loving self halfway across the galaxy and it turns out I’m wrong? It’s a good thing there won’t be any fuel left for sending people Back!

(JAI cont) I’ll make it work though, somehow. Like you always said sis,