“The Lost Dead World Thing” by Mari Ness

We lost it, you know, somewhere between
one space battle and another, or
one expedition or another. No big deal,
we said. Probably
happened a lot—
someone forgetting a keystroke,
or forgetting a word. You forget
a lot on this job. A lot.
You forget how fast
data corrupts. How quickly
things can be lost.
How bright
the galaxy shines.

I looked at the charts, tried
to remember when we’d gone there,
when we scanned it, when
we decided
that world was dead.
Perhaps always been dead.
No time for a full study, we said. Just time
to check the surface for useful things,
to see what we could rob from the rocks.
I tried to remember, tried to remember
when I had knelt on those cold, dull rocks,
when I had drilled, with shaking hands,
as the shadows marched slowly
across the stone. Tried to remember
when we decided to abandon it, using
when to tell me
where. I try
again, drift
through star charts,
touching nothing, and yet

the questions come.
Just a thing, I say.
Personal thing. We have
no time for personal things.
The star charts vanish
from beneath my hands.
It was useless, useless,
not just dead. Useless.
The stars drift past my window. I think
of that cold dead stone, the drill
shaking in my hands. The shadows
slowly stretching
beneath the cloudless sky.
The three dull suns tracking above
and beyond them the dance of stars.

Other work by Mari Ness appears in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Diabolical Plots, Nature Futures, Strange Horizons, and other anthologies and zines, including right here in past issues of Kaleidotrope. A micro-chapbook, Let me tell you of that garden, was just released by Sword & Kettle Press as part of their New Cosmologies Series, and a tiny collection of tiny fairy tales, Dancing in Silver Lands, is available from Neon Hemlock Press. Find out more at marikness.wordpress.com or at Bluesky at @mariness.bsky.social, or check out free to read reprints at Marikness – Medium.