Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

by Phoebe Wagner

  “Yes, of course I have.”

  “There was surprise among us when we discovered humans, since we have met other space-faring species only a handful of times in our history. However, and I want there to be no confusion over this: it became apparent very quickly that you had nothing to offer us.”

  “I know, our technology is not as advanc—”

  “Current level of technology is not the issue. I refer to human biology. It stands as a classical example of passive engagement with evolutionary forces. There is only so much your species will obtain with the same sensory organs and neural circuitry that your primate forefathers used to pick at ants from the ground. This is the reason we don’t simply give you the technologies you seek; you have neither the ability to understand them nor the industrial capacity needed for their construction. Most other Gendoji are sickened by such genetic provincialism, and those who are not find it darkly comical at best. I was only allowed to accept humans onto my territory and body if I promised the others I would not enable you to contact any of their symbionts or divulge any information on them.”

  “So why accept me at all?”

  “Several millennia ago, a fellow Gendoji assisted me when my technical skills were lacking to support my newly expanded shell. He was heavily criticized for interfering in the necessary rigors of my development and suffered a punitive loss in territory as a result. But thanks to his help, I survived. When I recently realized my techniques would be insufficient to support any more growth and thus I would begin to die, I found myself prone to a similar measure of generosity. So I contacted your species, and, when you joined my ecosystem three years ago, I began to design this.”

  A small sphere slid out from the surface of the tower. It was pale red, with a small creature inside, much like how Handy Worm looked when I first received her from one of Pax’s seventh-raptors at the docking bay of a landed shuttlecraft. There were sixteen other volunteers receiving their own Worms back then, but I was the only one that survived swallowing mine. There have been no other volunteers since.

  “Is this another symbiont Worm? But I thought you said no Gendoji would take me?”

  “This is not a prototype Worm like the one you acquired before. Your current Worm allows me to extend your sensory perception well enough for you to engage in a very minimal symbiotic contract with me and provide further data on your biology. This new Worm allows you to produce a second generation of Worms.”

  “What?”

  “This is a seeder Worm. It will produce Worms that other humans will be able to contract with, even allow survival in all the planets the Gendo have thus far colonized. They also allow some measure of self-modification, enough to make the new humans attractive to symbiotic contracts for many Gendoji. This will enable humans to keep interacting with us, but, more importantly, it will give humanity some preliminary tools with which to modify your own biology and properly accelerate your advancement.”

  “So this Seeder Worm will let me not only stay here but in any other Gendoji colony?”

  “No. The seeder Worm itself doesn’t have any of the environmental protection functions of the prototype. I know this isn’t the solution you wanted, but I’m giving you a chance to further your people and spawn a new generation of humanity.”

  “But I can’t do that!” I thought of myself with an engorged belly teeming with symbionts and remembered the sneer of Alina’s disgust.

  “I understand that this might be a difficult role to accept given your culture’s social constructions of gender; unfortunately I could only design the seeder Worm to interface with you specifically.”

  “Wait. I just don’t want to go back. There is so much for me here. Can’t I have another Worm that will survive your passing? Maybe—”

  “No. I am not interested in coddling your individual weakness, I seek to further your species as a whole. But I will not force you into a contract, of course. You may choose to ingest the seeder Worm and thus accept a new symbiont contract or not. Without the Seeder, the prototype Worm will wither and die, leaving you much like you were before. That is the choice I offer you. The Seeder will survive for a day in its receptacle. You have that long to make your decision.”

  I stopped, letting my anxiety subside as I looked closely at the Seeder Worm, its undulating curves and small, precise claws. I put my hand over its holding orb, and it swam up to nuzzle against my palm. I saw that my disgust was just human insecurity, a weak, frayed part of myself that seemed to melt away with the Seeder’s cooing touch. How did I forget that my mother was with me at the Uedo zoo, holding my hand as I watched the white tiger? I remembered looking up to her broad smile as she saw the magnificent creature, giddy at how big and loud it was. “Now this is real beauty,” she whispered, almost to herself.

  I stood for a long moment with my hand over the Seeder, waiting for Pax to continue, but he remained silent as Handy Worm slowly returned to my limited control.

  “I understand,” I eventually responded, knowing this would be the last time I talked to Pax. “I will miss you.”

  “Whatever you decide, Sanjit, I wish you luck in your future endeavors. You have given me cause to hope that humanity will become more than what it is. Goodbye.”

  Then Pax retreated, and my world felt unbearably narrow again. The tower felt somewhat greyer now, more static. I reached out and gently touched the surface. It was warm and pulsed slightly. I had probably never been closer to the biological nexus of my Gendoji. Pax was always spread along the countless ganglia of his massive body, greater than the tower, sure, but more diluted. At that moment he was a single entity, compressed in the deathbed and tombstone to the oldest Gendoji on the planet. I imagined then I should be reminded of my absent father, that perhaps Pax replaced that role in my life, but I had no memories of him so the comparison felt awkward and incomplete. But I’m glad that I never belittled him with the comparison, never projecting the awkward structures of human authority onto him. He was never a mentor, a father, or boss. I call him a friend, glad to have the true meaning of what he was to me lost in the trite vagaries of the word. I knelt in front of the seeder Worm and picked up the sphere, the small creature inside again seeking my touch.

  “What will you do?” asked Oquail behind me.

  “May you please take me back to Alina? I could take a raptor, but I would rather go with you.”

  “Yes. I have no further contract with Pax and am thus free to do as I may.”

  I climbed back onto Oquail, the first-panther smoothly running back towards where we left Alina. The planet’s second sun started rising, bathing Pax’s humming body with gamma radiation. Many creatures changed in response to the damaging light, each with their own protective strategy. Oquail’s fur matted down into a tessellating lattice, its nanocrystal fibers reflecting the radiation through a physical process I never managed to understand. My own Worm pumped out an extra thick fluid for shielding, a blunter, less elegant solution.

  We arrived back, and Alina was standing again, the raptors letting her move around since they knew she couldn’t outrun them. She turned sharply to us as we drew near.

  “Did you get a sample?” she asked, voice straining against the microphone. “Is that what you’re holding?”

  “No.” She stopped as I moved the sphere away from her, as if to protect the Seeder. “Not quite.”

  “What is it? Some other tech?”

  I got off Oquail, whispering my thanks to her via Handy Worm. Alina got closer, her visor fully opaque to prevent radiation exposure. I thought not seeing her would make talking with her easier, but it didn’t.

  “It’s a new Worm.” She stopped, then took a half step back.

  “Yes, it is,” I replied. “This one can only produce new Worms but won’t allow me to survive planetside. I’ll have to go back if I take it. Well, I have to go back either way. My current Worm won’t make it without Pax.”

  There was a short moment of heavy silence. “I see. Well, you certainly will be welc
ome back to the station.”

  “Will I have my old position back?” What a desperate, foolish question. Even before I took Handy Worm that option was lost to me.

  “Of course. We have a full new wing waiting for you.”

  “What do you mean a new wing? As in quarantined quarters?”

  Alina paused again. It had never been this hard to get her to talk. We used to be so good together. Or at least so I thought, standing there, hoping for her to reach out to me. But she diligently stayed three meters apart, the protocol distance for avoiding biological contamination.

  “Only temporarily, until we determine your medical status. We don’t know what the risks of exposure to Gendo modifications are, or even if our germs can harm you.”

  I should have expected this. After all, I looked like a Worm myself, eyes red-tinted and naked body covered in mucus. I wouldn’t be a fellow scientist to them anymore, I’d be just another sample.

  Before I took Handy Worm, back when I was still a researcher at the orbital station, I fabricated data in a desperate attempt to regain the faltering affection of the brilliant and beautiful Alina Hertz. But I was caught, and the committee assessment was swift and merciless. To avoid being sent back to Earth in disgrace, I volunteered to be in the first group to receive a Worm. All the other candidates were elderly or terminally ill. Each one desperate for some final miracle, just like me. When I was told the Worms worked on nobody else, I was so happy for the opportunity to remain at the periphery of Alina’s life. But she was already out of my reach, had been before I ever doctored my samples.

  I looked at Oquail, turning my back on the environmental suit, letting Alina have her sterile distance. Oquail could probably see right through the suit, past Alina’s eyes all the way down to each of her lesser photoreceptor cells.

  “Oquail, I want to build a ship, take the Seeder to Earth and pick my own candidates to bring back to the Gendo. This would also give me the chance to develop my own biology away from the reach of those who would try to contain me.”

  Oquail’s sensory filaments flared in red and green, then she lowered her muzzle close to my face. “I would gladly help you accomplish such a thing. I have centuries to hunt and breed. This will be a fitting tribute to one of Pax’s final wishes.”

  “It will be difficult for me to survive here with the new Worm,” I replied, “I would need your help keeping me alive.”

  “Yes, and I offer it freely. We do not have human limitations on manufacturing or resource allocation, especially with so much of Pax’s body now unused, so you will not need me for too long. I will recruit some newly released symbionts for this construction. Many have not yet decided what to do when Pax dies, and this will serve as a pleasant distraction as they consider their future contracts.”

  I turned to Alina again, who now looked like a sliver of awkward metal, pitiful among vast rolling plains of true technological mastery. Something from an old life better left behind.

  “I will stay here, Alina. Maybe I’ll contact the station later to inform them of my plans, but you will likely never see me again. Goodbye.”

  She tried to speak but I reached out with Handy Worm and turned off the speakers on her suit. Such an unreliable system, all it took was cutting a single wire.

  Not looking back, I got on Oquail, and we rode to the distant crags at the edge of Pax’s body, where naked white shell flared up into kilometer-high barbs bridged by a tight webbing of purple tissue. At the base of one of the barbs, a small cluster of creatures waited, all responding to Oquail’s plea. There were dozens of builder raptors and several sensorial panthers, even a handful of second- and third-silphid engineers.

  The released symbionts were expecting us, and as soon as we reached them I retreated into a small cavern a few of my fellow third-panthers had dug for me. They must have heard of the seeder Worm and imagined what I would go through to ingest it. Sitting with my back against the lukewarm wall, I pried open the Seeder’s sphere and tilted the opening onto my lips. The Seeder slithered down my throat with unexpected ease. The cut it made on my esophageal lining stung and filled my mouth with blood. But that was nothing.

  The real pain came when the Seeder confronted Handy Worm. For what felt like hours I tore at my chest and screamed in agony as the Seeder violently pushed aside my poor Worm. Handy Worm slowly shriveled and died as the Seeder displaced each of her connections then ate her twitching remains. She was a good symbiont and deserved better than the short, mean life she was designed for.

  Later that evening I was recuperating in a protective bubble on Oquail’s side, feeling so very warm and safe, when each symbiont scuttling across the incomplete spaceship paused in their work to look up. A piercing wail filled the air as the screams and howls rolled across the Gendoji’s shell to herald the death of Pax and the frantic grief of his symbionts.

  Even without Handy Worm I could feel the suffocating brutality of his absence, as if a cutting emptiness seeped into the air and oozed from the walls. Teeth bared and panting, Oquail lowered her head to me, and we wept and roared and clutched to each other like wounded children. “This will be a good ship,” she muttered between sobs. “You will do good things with it.”

  §

  As I sail towards Earth, I’m certain that the change I bring will be welcomed by some but resisted by many. Maybe they will come to realize the benefits of what the Gendo offer, or maybe only a few will be willing to leave behind their fossilized traditions, the Sol system fading into irrelevance as humanity carries on. I might also be shot out of the sky before even landing.

  Trying not to concern myself with what happens on Earth, I drift within the tight corridors of a ship that doesn’t need my control. The Seeder Worm is busy knitting a womb inside my abdomen, but often it turns aside from its work and lets me see into my own flesh with a clarity that Handy Worm never possessed. But I no longer have Oquail’s guidance or Pax’s gentle oversight, so I am careful with each modification I test, knowing there is nobody to help me should something go wrong. It is clear that I am no longer a Gendo symbiont much like I am not Alina’s lover. Strangely, more than ever before I feel like my mother’s son, my own alien motherhood an extension of hers.

  I am simultaneously exhilarated and terrified, occasionally even in pain as I struggle to improve my body in concert with the Seeder’s evolving needs. Sometimes I indulge in the bittersweet memories of Pax in all his boundless magnificence, but more often I wonder what my future children will create, what elegance they will bring to their flesh.

  light sail star bound

  joel nathanael

  discourse could sail oursolar vessel

  cutting lightthrough astral seas

  pick a star(s)

  & we’ll make it our own

  endless permutations of cosmic trade winds

  photon propulsion

  would keep taut

  our copper & micron sails

  we could train our hands to speak &

  untie knots of extradimensional

  language

  phonemes we cannot yet articulate

  new vowels

  voiced unvoiced dual-voiced

  we could round centauris

  alpha beta proxima

  we could winter there

  our personal perihelion

  before we leave for andromeda

  Synthesis: This Shining Confluence

  Bogi Takács

  “Measure yourself against infinity”

  —Attila József

  Tendrils snap-tied into flesh, the flood rolling

  rumbling underneath, the sun ever-high

  and the wind-shear biting into your cheeks

  you rise;

  on the back of the Livyatan of old, riding

  the runaway serpent, the planet turning

  under you, your twined bodies leaving

  spark-foam in your wake;

  you run hands—flippers—fins through

  the seasalt, reach out to sens
ors bobbing

  on the surface, grab their data streams in

  the sheer joy of motion;

  merge—unify, as you are unified by

  this shining confluence of technology

  and magic, this breathless rush toward

  the city-domes in the distance;

  the human-shape a singular part of

  an ever-evolving whole teeming with

  krill and plankton, eddies and whirls

  of crystallized secrets;

  a raw historical perspective of coral and

  whale fossils, your head snapping to take in

  information from every direction, glory

  singing in your gasps;

  survival and precise adjustment and

  metastable states and gradient descent

  and a careful calibration based on your

  minute handiwork;

  the fundamental substrate of life is

  within your reach as you swim onward,

  always serving the endless light

  within and around you.

  Solar Powered Giraffes

  Jack Pevyhouse

  The sleek machines

  traverse the land

  like gilded towers.

  Their footsteps

  enrich the soil.

  Their tongues

  purify the water.

  Pan, Legs Resting