33. The seas of Selene

We developed and redeveloped all the required technologies for space faring, now adjusted for our different friends in early stages.

The power of dragons wasn’t only in their own beings, able to endure the harshness of space and re-entries. It was also in their connection as nanites swarms to any technological construction.

Meaning they not only helped us engineer the new levels of technologies from the ground with the factories, they also were the best ones to handle them upward. They could easily repair and readjust the control panels, transforming the ships into evolving organisms.

However because building a dragon already was a minerals drain, and energy intensive to turn into these moving computer and nanites things, we couldn’t yet just easily create gigantic dragon queen ships that would embark safely the hundreds anywhere.

To some extent, we still had the same constraints that had forever been challenges to space programs.

I reminded the world of Tsiolkovsky’s genius centuries ago. And how to work from his equation even today.

This was why the first astronauts we sent back to the moon weren’t our dragons directly, but fairies.

As usual now that we had re-established a network of artificial satellites around the globe, we made a space mission sending a dragon and a payload out there.

Only this time, the aim was no longer an Earth orbit but Luna.

Two fairies, a dragon and a smaller ship lit up their second stage engine, and headed out there through the radioactive belts.

Our dragon friend in EVA sheltered the living crew quarters and adjusted everything outside. The cosmonaut fairies piloted and ran their experiments inside.

A few days later, they arrived in orbit of the moon.

I was glued to my screens, watching them and everything going on. This was more than a milestone and giant leap. It was a consecration of everything past and future.

How many bandits kicking and punching did it take me to get there, I couldn’t remember. But it was all worth it.

The dragon remained in orbit, spreading its solar panel wings and waiting.

The small ship made its descent, while we were holding our breath.

And we had a landing. Even better a safe landing. Rarely did I had tears of joy. Even my nanoscopic friends were troubled, stretched so thin and far yet enjoying the celebration still.

The fairies didn’t go too far nor did too much this time. Thankfully communication technologies were far more advanced than in the beginning times, so we could clearly see their faces and rainbows of emotions as they looked outside and touched the dust.

Someday we will turn it to grass.

But for now we were laying the foundations.

They returned up in their ship, and the dragon caught them. He had enjoyed a few rounds of the moon carrousel meanwhile. They liked being satellites birds, and these upcoming flocks would someday migrate, and accomplish far more outstanding things, if we were to give them the means.

I would.

I would give them everything so they could multiply and support the future terraforming. So long we remained friends and they carried me along!

~

Breeding dragons remained a costly challenge. But evolution for machines was about engineering design.

The space dragons to come in the future were gently changing from their older Earth militaristic past. A slimmer but longer body, able to rotate over itself swiftly in every direction, and new darker scales to absorb all kind of electromagnetic energy from space belt and sun radiations.

They used gazes and magic to fly around, and grew increasingly efficient up there.

Steadily, in iteration, we were transforming the walking and flying tanks breathing fire into celestial fishes able to adapt in every direction, in 0g and under constant radiation. Their materials needed to sustain and even make good use of extreme differentials of temperature. What would freeze and burn unprepared ones, we would engineer to our future advantage.

To me they looked like eels with long fins, fishes eagerly active and nimble, in their own new ocean.

It took a lot of heavy resources extracted and refined on Earth to manufacture a single of them.

But they were definitely worth it.

These giant fishes were swimming around the ships next sent to orbit, swiftly assembling them with and into the spaces stations in construction. They were crafting our next generation station and spaceships directly up there, with ease.

Never mind the risk of a Kessler syndrome, I had tasked them to reuse and repurpose everything. Not a waste allowed. Which made some parts of our new space stations really look like shipwrecks or junkyards. But not everything needed to be optimised and liveable yet.

What mattered was not wasting anything.

Our developing fleet of orbital stations eventually crafted smelters and smaller draconic factories meant to repurpose and readjust what we fired up there and couldn’t be used otherwise.

For now it remained more efficient to birth dragon on Earth, but in a far future, we would streamline the logistics to simply ship materials in bulk and birth them up there.

In the years to come, we would build a hive where they would be assembled in the next step to their evolution as a species. In symbiosis with the civilisation of Earth and everyone else.

~

It took a few years of patience and me running in circles before we reached it.

We returned to the moon with some dragons, and fairies on board smaller ships again.

But I was finally invited in one of them. How much I chirped made my friends blush.

I sat in the comfortable seat, partially fluid and squishing me gently. Even the rocket lift off wasn’t as brutal as I feared, now that we had optimised all the vibrations absorption mechanisms. The fairies with me were already seasoned cosmonauts and teasing me as I made weird faces.

Curled around us in that still cramped space, the dragon king Eczar was calm and thinking along the mechanisms of the ship.

We flew off. I mostly felt heavier for a while, but nothing my inner gifts couldn’t hold.

I didn’t get bored looking outside, seeing our planet in all its colours and brightness.

The dragon went outside for the duration of the flight.

And eventually in a heavier repeat of the first fairy moon landing, our bigger ship arrived. I suited up and went outside.

Eczar landed next to me this time, blowing dust around. The dragon king had been rehauled and changed so much I didn’t recognise him at first. Reasonable but also proud, he had made his demand for this. Which was fine with me.

The sunlight was blinding bright. No wonder why we had these golden glasses on our helmets to protect us.

We did it.

S - Won’t you be lonely here?

E - What matters is building the future.

S - I couldn’t agree more my friend.

For me, it was just a small walk and funny hops in lower gravity.

For this reengineered dragon king, it was a change of paradigm.

He walked around, adjusting and testing his new limbs and scales to the selenic dusts. He would melt rocks into roads. He would start digging tunnels.

He alone but proud, would start colonising the moon for all of us on Earth.

I admired his tenacity. As much as I loved space, living alone here for the rest of my life would have turned dream to nightmare, but I was human.

He confidently walked slowly away from the landing site, and only left his footsteps in the eternal landscape.

He would build the first infrastructures for our correlated future to come.

E - Goodbye my friend.

He didn’t reply, but I knew he would be fine. I stepped back into the ship, nodded to the fairies, and we left him behind.

The first one of his kind now walked the seas of the moon, prospecting for water, building roads and towers. Carving dens for the future species to come.

He too had found his calling.

I could only feel kinship for him.

The first permanent resident to Selene wasn’t me, despite the name my father had given me.

Thank you for calling me Siline, and giving me the chances to spread my wings.

But Eczar had earned this rightfully, for the system and me.

Farewell to the ruler of dragons in our time.

~