Chapter 14: Chapter 14: TRILLION – Venturing Out

“We need to find a new planet,” Trillion said, resigning herself to the fact it wasn’t possible to create rings out of Steel World. “Lex, can you do a scan of all the nearby stars.” She thought for a bit. “I want a list of the closest fifty stars. And which ones are most likely to support life.”

The orb flashed blue. Ship explained what Lex needed. “We’ll have to build a very large long-range telescope to do that.”

“How long will that take? Actually, never mind. Just build it, Lex.”

New rule, Trillion thought to herself. She was never going on a long sleep like she did before. Why sleep when she could just change her playback speed?

She increased her playback speed and watched as massive construction projects took place in front of her. A million ants were pushed out into orbit but it looked like a blur. Like a single line connected the planet and a floating blob of ants.

Trillion marvelled at what she was looking at. “This is better than those satisfying videos. It looks unnatural and real at the same time.”

Ship looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“I think it’s the fact that this construction is happening in space,” said Trillion, unable to take her eyes off the image. “My natural sense of the way objects interact with each other isn’t working. And you combine that with the fact my perception of time is sped up, and my human brain really struggles to understand it.”

She stared at the large telescope being constructed. The structure looked like a bubble out in space. It solidified. It folded and bent, shrinking in on itself. Then it exploded, millions of tiny ants shooting out from the structure then curving back in to form lines away from the telescope.

Trillion still struggled to comprehend the movement of objects at faster speeds. Her mind still expected objects moving away from each other that fast to continue moving. She felt there was something magical about watching a satellite get constructed that fast.

She could see the resemblance of a telescope. Thirty-seven large hexagon-shaped mirrors slotted together, each about five metres in diameter. It reminded Trillion of the James Webb Two telescope, only much bigger. She assumed Lex had used a similar design to something he knew would work.

Her perception of time started to slow again. The line connecting the satellite to the planet stopped blurring and started to turn into individual objects moving between the two. The telescope started moving around, pointing at different stars, collecting light.

“I love not having to wait,” Trillion said.

Lex made a few beeping noises to signal he had something to show her. A screen appeared in front of her, displaying data on the nearest fifty stars.

She scanned the screen, looking at all the possibilities. She highlighted three stars. “Am I correct that this shows we have three potential stars?”

The orb flashed green.

Trillion highlighted the row of data about each of the planets. She tapped on each column as she walked through her thinking. She highlighted the column showing distance. “We could reach all three within a hundred and fifty years?”

The orb flashed green.

She selected the row showing the probability of a planet in the habitable distance away from the star. Planets in the Goldilocks Zone could support liquid water on them. Close enough to the planets star that the water on the planet wasn’t ice, but far enough away from the star that it wasn’t steam either. Not too hot. And not too cold.

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She looked at the empty square. “Why aren’t there any numbers in here?”

The orb flashed blue.

“Hmmm,” she wondered aloud, “are you saying we don’t have enough data yet?”

The orb flashed green.

“Lex, give me your best guess.”

The orb flashed red.

She looked over at Ship. “Ship, do you mind?”

Ship nodded as he made the number in the boxes change. One had a ninety-three per cent probability of having liquid water on it. The rest had less than twenty.

Trillion looked at Ship. “Why does this star have a high probability of water on a planet?”

“We have only been looking at the stars for a very short amount of time. The other two might have its planet on the other side of the star. This one does have a planet blocking light from its star, and it’s having a noticeable impact on the light we are seeing from the star.”

Trillion pulled up the light spectrum of that star. It was obvious that one of them had a lot of oxygen in the atmosphere. “This has to be something living producing this oxygen?”

“Yes and no,” Ship said, shaking and nodding his head at the same time. “There are some natural processes that can produce oxygen.”

Trillion furrowed her brow, somewhat confused. “But this much oxygen?”

Ship shrugged.

Trillion pulled out a pen. She wrote directly on the screen. Planet 3.0. She pointed at the planet. “We are going here.”

Ship cocked his head, processing what Trillion had just said.

Trillion looked at Ship. “We are heading here. Get ready now, Ship, I want to hit the skies.”

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