to peel back the edges of the universe
Bombardier. Mercury. It wasn't a glamorous, sprawling metroswathe like much of the rest of Cradle's fulcrum worlds, but instead something more reminiscent of a weed pushing itself up between faults in asphalt, stubbornly growing out of necessity than careful cultivation.
There was something to be said for it, for humanity's proclivity to scrabble and grasp for survival, to flourish in the face of challenge and adversity--and while her younger mind couldn't grapple with all the complex particulars, that driving necessity took root early in the wake of their purpose here; the anchor for humanity's very first Dyson web. Without access to the sort of energy it provided, the crises across the galaxy would be catastrophic. Catastrophic.
It should have scared her, young as she was, but with how often her parents repeated their responsibility to their station, to Cradle, to humanity spoken with such reverence every time she lamented their absence without fail (until she stopped asking altogether)--how could it?
She'd say she understood, but she didn't, not until she saw the web. Really saw it.
While the only residential hub on Mercury, Bombardier's passages and facilities were still largely industrial, perfunctory spaces. There weren't windows and atriums and greenery--save for the hubs through which Union's officials would pass most often--as most of Bombardier was below ground, given Mercury's climate on the surface.
There was a passage, though, near her family's apartments. A long corridor that opened up like the elbow joint of a drain pipe, branching down into other residential passages. She remembers a few scattered tables, once-plush, curved leather benches lining the walls with grooves where people had sat on and off for decades, vidscreens with the latest station news alternating with programming beamed across the Omninet from Cradle.
She remembers the concrete flooring was shinier down the main thoroughfare, that she'd spend her limited amount of free time occasionally tracking up and down, playing at filling the shoes of her parents or their colleagues on some important mission or another for the Anchor (like defending it from invading mutant astronaut dinosaurs who she'd inevitably convince of the error of their ways and she'd get to ride up and down the hallways).
On one of those days, though, something had possessed her to lay out in the center of the little concrete plaza, staring up at a ceiling that vaulted far higher than she'd ever really noticed. Reinforced steel beams were criss-crossed by thick ropes of tied up cabling, recycled air hissed through slats in the massive, squared rows of ducts that spliced down the junction of each hallway. Electricity buzzed in the artificial lights, flickering almost imperceptibly, while the TV blathered on at a low drone.
She didn't notice any of it, though, peering up into what she'd always thought was a shadowy ceiling that terminated not in darkness, but light. It was high up enough that it didn't really cast light down, not below the artificial industrial lighting lining the hallways and the edges of the room in a harsher, off-white glow, but it was a massive porthole to what must have been the surface.
She could see the outline of thick bolts the size of her six-or-seven year-old head lining the edges, and whatever glass was up there was so thick that it cast a foggy haze over the sights beyond, blowing out the flickering strands of the Dyson web so each lit section looked more like a glowing bulb on a strand of holiday lights.
Like she was seeing cracks in the black expanse, fingers of gold trying to peel back the edges of the universe.
It was that moment, that spark of wonder and of terror that spurred her along the path her life would eventually take. Her parents might have planned to have her take up engineering, but while she internalized the responsibility and importance of caring for the Anchor on behalf of all humanity, she would eventually fly straight past it.
