Work Text:
“What the hell is this?”
Earth looked up, startled at the sudden intrusion. It wasn’t often that his fellow planets opted to open a line of communication, let alone without warning.
“What’s what?”
“This thing on me! I know it’s from you - It has your signature all over it. Your elements. The marks of your creatures.”
Mars’s voice was harsh, the feeling grating through the link with a tumble of frustration and anger. Earth made a soft noise of distress, confusion welling up. He did a quick sweep over the life on his surface, their tiny voices and prayers calling out to the void. A few of them caught his attention, a small thread of energy reaching out from his core to attach to theirs.
Oh!
It was those humans again. Shaping his crust into things that moved and devoured on their own. Things that flew. They were elated, a single word being thrown around, over and over.
“It’s Curiosity.”
“I already know WHY your little buggers tried to tag me with something, I just want to know when it’s going to leave!”
Earth fidgeted under the wave of intense emotions Mars was flinging at him.
“No, I mean... Um.. It’s name is Curiosity. It’s just.... They... They want to know more about you. Why are you mad?”
Something like a snarl filtered back.
“I’ve observed the broadcasts your things sent out. Of course I’m angry. They just want to leave you in ruins, tear up your crust and suck out your blood and breath until the only thing left is a barren rock spinning around like that idiot Mercury. Always two spins away from hurtling into the sun.”
“Oh, I’m sure they don’t want any of that-”
“Like hell they dont! I’ve seen the way they drill into you, spill your blood all over the land, smothering and choking it. The way they tear apart your crust and each other and I’ve seen the messages! I’ve seen them! They want to suck out your life and get into their creations and come to me. They want to make me into something like you, then repeat the whole process until we’re both dead chunks of rock that started an infection that will wipe out our whole damn system.”
Earth sat without words, the ringing silence of Mars’s declaration hovering around them.
The bigger planet’s contempt flickered over the link.
“You decided to give your soul to the chemicals on your surface. To prompt organization from the natural chaos. You may have made something interesting, but you’ve doomed us all.”
He could feel parts of his crust shudder, the trembling giving his emotions away.
The link was severed, but he still whispered a quiet apology into the void.
On his surface, life grew and thrived. Part of him wanted to imagine that the red planet was jealous, but he knew it wasn’t true. They had both prompted life to begin.
Mars had lost interest, the strains of single-celled organisms living for a while in the chilly pockets of ice, hidden within his crust. They withered, after a time. Too difficult to sustain.
But Earth hadn’t stopped. He poured his life and energy into those bonds between creatures. He urged them to grow, to multiply. He watched with delight as they did exactly that - They grew and grew and changed to suit the environment. They became bigger, more complex. As Earth poured more of his soul into those creatures, the more change was returned. Plants, animals, molds, viruses, everything in between, thriving and interacting. It was beautiful.
Recently, hardly a blip in his lifespan, creatures declared themselves humans. They used his crust to create homes for themselves, to alter his natural flow of water, to capture other creatures. They used plants and animals and everything they could get ahold of, to create, Create! They knelt and called out to their creator, asking for help. They asked the spirits of those that had died, to favor them in battle. They created weapons and they created more and more ways to help them conquer the other creatures.
They were so full of hope, those humans. Hope and wishes and dreams and please let me be significant, in this massive universe.
Let me make a difference.
He couldn’t stop it now.
He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to.
“Are you okay? You seem troubled.”
Jupiter’s low, thrumming voice reached him through a new link.
“Ah.. yes, I’m.... okay.”
“You don’t seem confident in that answer.”
The deadpan reply got a spark of amusement back through the connection, but the lingering feeling of sadness persisted.
“Jupiter?”
“Yes?”
He hesitated.
“Do you....well... what do you think of my humans?”
“The creatures that keep sending bits of you out into space?”
“Yeah”
“Do you dislike my moons?”
Confusion.
“What? No! They’re interesting. How do you keep them from colliding all the time?”
Amusement flickered back.
“Likewise. How do you keep them alive, your humans? It’s something I find rather fascinating. How do you keep them from killing each other? From dying due to the other life forms on your surface.”
Earth paused, quizzical.
“That’s a lot of questions.”
Jupiter hummed back.
“You don’t think... I should give up on them?”
“They’re a part of you, now. I’d no more wish for their death than I would try to send one of my moons into Saturn’s orbit. He’d probably try to make another ring out of it.”
Earth tried to smother a giggle at the image.
“They have a lot of questions, my humans.”
“Probably why they started poking at Mars, shoving bits of you into his surface and calling it Curiosity.”
He couldn’t smother the next giggle.
“Probably, yeah.”