The World After Arrival

More about The World After Arrival

No record agrees on who first set foot here, only on what followed. The surveys
noted a stable crust, a forgiving gravity, an atmosphere willing to be persuaded. The
rest was inference. We combined the elements for life and industry in the usual order
—air corrected, water coaxed into reservoirs, power sunk deep enough that it would
not wander. What could grow, did. What could bear weight, was asked to do so.

Then we built on top of that. And on top of that.

What began as necessity accumulated into habit. Landing fields multiplied, became
docks, became corridors. Warehouses learned the rhythm of arrival and departure
before the first permanent streets were named. Routes bent toward the place
because the place made sense. Traffic followed gravity of a different kind. By the
time anyone thought to ask what this world was for, it was already answering the
question on its own.

There was no ceremony marking the transition from settlement to hub. No
proclamation. Just a quiet moment when the manifests grew longer than the sky,
and ships began stopping here even when they did not strictly need to—because it
was easier, because everything passed through eventually, because the future
prefers prepared hands.

Today, distances shorten here. Not physically—those remain stubborn—but
operationally. Cargo changes direction. People change trajectories. Decisions made
elsewhere arrive to be realized. The world does not mind. It was empty once. It
remembers nothing of that.

This is not a frontier anymore. It is a reference point.