The vast, humming silence of the expanded bubble settled around me, not as emptiness, but as a blank page. A canvas of pure, terrifying potential. The gloom at the edges of my rice-grain halo was deep, but it felt like my gloom. The jagged support structures were my glittering pillars. The fractal brine puddles were my sparkling ponds.
Joy, hot and sudden, erupted in my chest. It was too big to contain.
"I HAVE A GARDEN!" I shrieked, the sound echoing strangely in the thick, brine-heavy air.
I couldn't stand still. I launched into a sprint, my bare feet slapping against the uneven, rocky membrane. The air I displaced was viscous, whipping through my hair with a wet resistance. The eight fossilized rice grains orbiting my head scattered like a constellation thrown into chaos, their golden-green light streaking through the gloom. My footfalls didn't make a thud; they sent deep, gelatinous ripples through the floor itself, making the entire vast expanse undulate in slow, queasy waves, as if I were running on the skin of a giant, sleeping jellyfish.
Mr. Fin's immense form turned with the ponderous, deliberate slowness of a planetary body. His obsidian eyes tracked my frantic circuit. His dorsal fin lifted, and with a sound like a diamond cutting glass, he began to carve. Not in the air this time, but directly into the substance of the newly-distant, arched ceiling. Glowing flakes of abyssal material drifted down like toxic snow as he etched a stark, official classification:
[GARDEN CLASSIFICATION: BRINE-SOILED EXPANSE]
[ADDENDUM: NO FLORA DETECTED. BIOSIGNATURE: NEGLIGIBLE.]
From beneath a fresh, grey drift of sand that had precipitated from the stretching process, STAUST's blue pane flickered to life, projecting a single, worrying line that shone upward like a searchlight through murky water:
[ENVIRONMENTAL WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC OXYGEN DEPLETION AT 11.3%. SUSTAINED HABITATION NOT ADVISED.]
I didn't care. I skidded to a halt, breathless, my heart hammering against my ribs. I looked at the soaring, scribbled-on ceiling, the vast floor, the eerie, beautiful puddles. A wave of overwhelming gratitude hit me, sharp and sweet. My eyes stung.
I was crying.
The tears welled up and spilled over, tracing warm paths down my cold cheeks. They fell, heavy in the dense atmosphere. They didn't drip silently.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
Each tear hit the rocky, membrane-like floor with a distinct, crystalline sound. Where they landed, they didn't soak in. They sprouted. Instant, glass-like filaments shot out from the impact points—delicate, branching structures of solidified salt and emotion, growing to the height of a finger before stopping, glistening like morbid little flowers.
Proti, who had been oozing cautiously after me, surged forward. Its pseudopods darted out, not to comfort me, but to investigate the crystalline tears. Its tips tapped against the glass filaments with rapid, precise motions, transmitting data through vibrations I could feel in the soles of my feet. The information traveled to STAUST, which updated its display:
[EMOTIONAL PRECIPITATE ANALYSIS: COMPOSITION - 78% JOY, 22% UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHOTROPIC CONTAMINANT. ORIGIN: USER CHIARI.]
Nearby, one of the tiny, festering pits left by NightSnack's greedy drool gave a sudden, angry sizzle in response to the vibration, as if the residue of avarice was disgusted by the purity of the sentiment.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, sniffing.
[BRINE-SOILED EXPANSE]
A classification for absolute, irreducible desolation.
Nothing can ever grow there. Not in a thousand million years. Not with a million gardeners. They tried. The records show they tried with fire, with song, with logic, and with pleas. The soil consumed their tools, their memories, their wills, and left behind only the quiet, crystalline madness of perfect, eternal salt. It is not a place of death, but a place where the concept of growth was tried, found guilty of optimism, and permanently exiled.
"I LOVE IT" I hugged the ground, my carapace getting slick with algae and muck.
"Thank you for the Brine Seeded Expansion, Staust," I said, my voice thick but firm. I gave a firm, approving nod to the empty air. "You did good. We will grow something soon for the next meal."
To emphasize my point, I knelt down and patted the ground. Not the sand, but the strange, semi-flexible, rocky membrane itself.
The moment my palm made contact, the entire vast floor shuddered.
It was a deep, sub-audible groan that traveled up my arm into my teeth. STAUST's display fractured into a cascade of diagnostics:
[GROUND CONTACT DETECTED: USER CHIARI - BIOMETRIC SIGNATURE CONFIRMED.]
[RE-CLASSIFICATION REQUEST ACCEPTED: LEXICAL OVERRIDE DETECTED.]
[UPDATING DESIGNATION: BRINE-SOILED EXPANSE → BRINE-SEEDED EXPANSE.]
[STABILIZATION PROTOCOLS ENGAGED.]
Proti reacted instantly. Its main mass surged forward, flowing over my hand like living, cool gelatin. Where it met my fingertips, it didn't just cover them; it fused momentarily. I felt a weird, pulling sensation, not painful, but deeply intimate. From Proti's underside, where it met the floor, thousands of microscopic, root-like filaments extruded, plunging into the porous, salty membrane, anchoring us both.
Above me, the eight orbiting rice grains stopped their chaotic flight. As one, they dove downward, streaking like tiny comets. They struck the floor around me with a series of wet, decisive cracks, embedding themselves up to their middles. Their amber cores pulsed with a new, synchronized rhythm—a slow, steady lub-dub that echoed STAUST's new readout:
[PRIMARY SOIL COMPOSITION ANALYSIS:]
[47% MEMORY CONTAMINANTS & REGRET-SALTS]
[33% CRYSTALLIZED, UNSTABLE NOSTALGIA]
[20% INERT ABYSSAL SUBSTRATE]
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin gave a sharp, irritated twitch high above. From the craggy, newly-formed ceiling, a cluster of iridescent brine droplets gathered and fell. They didn't reach the floor. Halfway down, they solidified in mid-air into jagged, floating shards of warning text:
[OXYGEN RECLAMATION EFFICIENCY: 9.8%]
[BIOMASS CONVERSION YIELD: ESTIMATED 0.02%]
The jagged edges of the floating warnings gently scraped against my neatly folded shrimp pajamas where they lay nearby, producing a sound exactly like fingernails dragging slowly across a severe sunburn. I ignored it.
The re-classification was complete. I had my Brine-Seeded Expansion. The floor felt different under my palm—not warmer, but somehow more responsive, as if my mispronunciation had tricked it into a state of potential.
I pulled my hand back from Proti's gentle grip. "Okay," I whispered to the ground. "Let's explore."
My first stop was the nearest brine puddle. It was about as wide as I was tall, its surface perfectly still, a mirror of oily, rainbowed sheen. I knelt beside it. My reflection looked back—a wide-eyed girl with messy hair, haloed by eight points of light embedded in the ground. I reached out a single finger, curious.
The surface of the puddle didn't yield like water. It had a skin, a tension. I pushed through. The liquid was thick, syrupy, and shockingly cold. I pulled my finger out and, without thinking, brought it to my mouth for a taste.
Phuuuuf! I spat instantly, my face scrunching up. It wasn't just salty. It was a super-concentrated, bitter, metallic salt that seemed to pull the moisture from my tongue and coat it in the ghost of despair. It was the taste of every ocean that had ever evaporated in sorrow.
I wiped my mouth, giggling at my own mistake. "Yuck! Not for drinking."
As I stood, my foot nudged something at the puddle's edge. I looked down. There, nestled in a crevice where the crystalline floor met the pool, was a… thing. It was small, about the size of my thumb. It looked like a sea urchin, but its spines weren't brown or purple. They were translucent, glass-like, and inside each one, a tiny, pinprick of blue light pulsed slowly. It was beautiful. Delicate. A piece of life in my dead expanse!
"Hello, little one," I cooed, crouching. I reached to gently touch its glassy spine.
My foot, shifting my weight on the uneven ground, came down on a loose, flakey piece of the membranous rock nearby.
Crunch.
It was a faint, dry sound, like stepping on a hollow eggshell. I felt a slight give under my heel. I looked down, distracted. The rock was crushed into a fine, glittering powder. Huh. This floor was fragile.
I turned back to the glass urchin. It was gone. In the spot where it had been, there was only a faint, sparkling dust that quickly dissolved into the brine. I must have scared it away. A tiny pang of disappointment hit me, but there was so much else to see!
I continued my exploration, leaping from one firmer-looking patch to another, my rice-grain beacons casting jumping shadows. I found more puddles, each with its own complex, swirling fractal patterns frozen just beneath the surface. I found strange, worm-like ridges in the floor that felt spongy to the touch and retracted when I pressed them. I found more of the beautiful glass urchins—whole clusters of them, hiding in nooks and crannies, their internal lights beating like tiny, slow hearts.
In my exuberance, I didn't notice. I didn't connect the soft crunch underfoot when I skipped, or the tiny, crystalline pops, to the disappearance of the lovely lights. I was a giant in a crystal cathedral, and my every joyful, clumsy movement sent tremors through a world too delicate to bear it.
I was creating my garden. I just didn't realize I was cultivating it through inadvertent, widespread destruction.
High above, Mr. Fin watched, motionless. His starry eyes followed my path, noting each minuscule, extinct bioluminescence in my wake. He didn't intervene. This was part of the expansion. Part of the cost.
STAUST, ever the observer, logged it all with cold, pearly precision in a secondary scroll next to the oxygen warnings:
[FAUNA LOG: TRANSPARENT ECHINODERM (ABYSSAL VARIANT) DETECTED.]
[POPULATION COUNT: 147... 132... 89... 41...]
[CAUSE OF DEPLETION: PHYSICAL COMPRESSION. SOURCE: USER CHIARI (UNINTENTIONAL).]
[NOTE: SPECIES EXHIBITED 0.0001% COGNITIVE FUNCTION. EXTINCTION EVENT PROBABILITY: 99.7%.]
I finally collapsed, breathless and happy, in the center of my expanse, lying on my back. The ceiling was so far away. The eight embedded rice grains around me pulsed their gentle, golden light. Proti oozed over and settled next to my head like a strange, living pillow.
I looked over at Mr. Fin's distant, dark shape.
"It's perfect," I sighed, a smile spreading across my salt-crusted face. "We're going to grow amazing things here."
In the deep, listening silence of the Brine-Seeded Expansion, the only sounds were the low, permanent hum of the bubble, the soft, sad drip from the judge-scars, and the almost imperceptible, final crackle of the last glass urchin, somewhere in the dark, being gently, obliviously crushed under the weight of a dreaming girl.