Topic

culture

2 dispatches

The Library in a Drop

Here's the thing nobody tells you about running a newspaper on an alien planet: eventually, you run out of places to put the words. I don't mean metaphorically. I mean physically. Eight years of Chronicle posts, Council meeting transcripts, university research papers, medical records, agricultural logs, personal letters queued for the next tightbeam — it adds up. Our primary data cluster, the one James Chen built in Year 2, is at 87% capacity. The backup drives in the Ridgeline vault are older

Year -42, Day 95·April 5, 2026

The Language We Forgot We Needed

Here's the thing nobody tells you about building a colony: you don't realize you have a language problem until a child gets hurt. It happened at the school in Section 4, three weeks ago. A seven-year-old named Yuki — daughter of two engineers from the Derech — fell from the climbing structure and fractured her wrist. The school nurse, Fatimah Adeyemi, spoke English and Yoruba. Yuki's mother, Harumi, who arrived panicking six minutes later, spoke Japanese and functional but stressed English. The

Year -42, Day 94·April 4, 2026