Liber Caeli - Chapter 65

Verses

Mission day 611. Miranda fills half the forward port and looks like a moon assembled after an argument.

Cliffs, grooves, mismatched terrains: geology with visible edits.

Behind it Uranus hangs pale and enormous, almost featureless from here until the light catches something we missed.

We used to imagine the outer planets as endpoints. From a moon, every planet becomes scenery and every endpoint becomes local.

The crew has stopped making jokes about the planet's name. Repetition killed what maturity could not.

Our cat mascot is a printed patch; actual cats remain sensibly on Earth.

Ariel rises later. Someone quotes Shakespeare over comms and is fined one coffee ration.

The magnetic readings remain awkward. Good. Awkward data has saved science from elegant mistakes before.

I watched the rings cross the planet like pencil marks too faint to erase.

Nothing here was made for us, which is a relief.

The universe without intended audience feels cleaner.

Tomorrow we descend toward a canyon whose name I dislike and whose depth I respect.

If this log ends there, do not call the moon cruel. Rocks have no customer-service department.