We Make Solar Systems

A Sci Fi Flash Fiction Story

They say it’s easier to destroy than create. No argument here. I build planets for a living—and even with a stellar architecture degree and ten years in the field, creation never gets easier.

The Argus System was our crown jewel. We’d already forged three gas giants; now came the hard part: the five inner, habitable worlds.

I was mid-bite of synthetic eggs on Outer Station Two when the alert hit—anomaly on Planet Three. Lana Dendarus, site supervisor, flagged it: Pulverizer Droid 47-Theta had frozen mid-cycle. No error codes. No mechanical fault. It just… stopped.

We skimmed low orbit in a hoverpod. Lana smirked as we flew.

“Smells like bacon,” she said.

“Smells like memory,” I replied. “Nobody’s cracked a real egg in centuries.”

We descended through scaffold clouds to the crust site. The droid stood inert, half-embedded in raw planetary shell. Two techs were already on it. I accessed its diagnostics—everything read green. No damage, no freeze. But buried deep in the code was a non-standard subroutine. A backdoor, an unauthorized one.

“Someone tampered with this,” I said.

“We got it straight from Prime,” Lana replied. “Could be sabotage.”

Then the scanner picked up something beneath the rockface: a geometric structure. Symmetrical. Crystalline. Artificial. Old.

“It’s not just triggering the droid,” Lana said. “It’s controlling it. Look—command hierarchy’s been rerouted.”

“It’s waiting,” I said.

“For what?”

“A handshake.”

We sent word to Central Command. Within minutes, Overseer Delgos appeared on comms.

“You are to seal the site and withdraw,” he ordered.

“With respect, this could be pre-human tech—”

“I don’t care. Your job is to build, not dig up ghosts. Lock it down.”

Then the channel cut.

Lana was quiet. “They knew.”

I stared at the artifact scan pulsing faintly like it was alive.

“What now?” she asked.

I nodded to the drone. “We dig. Off-grid.”

“And if it wakes up?”

“Then we find out if it wants to build... or stop us.”

The artifact shimmered, watching.

And for the first time, I wondered if we were ever the architects at all.

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We Make Solar Systems
Flash Fiction by Jeff Walker © 2025