Fortuna Verto

02-Routine Practice

Sunlight faded from the horizon as dusk brought the end of another long day. For the people of a sun who were usually off sleeping during dusk and dawn, this then proved to make for a rather late day or a rather early night.

Korinna Wisteria had long gotten used to being both a dusk and dawn walker, sleep was just something that could be made up for later. With all of society fast asleep, it was one of the quietest times to take a stroll. As she travelled, she adjusted her glasses while glancing up through the reinforced barrier of the colony dome to appreciate the passage of time, the haze of dusk as Kenta left the sky being very beautiful that night. Kenta was the planet's primary source of light, but certainly not their primary source of warmth, that was handled by Toli instead. Toli however wasn't up to bringing Aestus much warmth this solar season, the Noctal solar season bringing the cold in all of its intensity, the weather outside of the barrier being as low as negative forty degrees. The Diatal solar season would return to scorch the skies with its incredible heats again eventually, but that was last in 3075 and wasn't about to return until the year 3155, the current year being 3115. Of course, such measures of years were completely by Earth's standards, the orbital patterns of her planet were far different from ones from a completely different solar system. Instead of years, she tracked the annual orbit of her planet around Kenta as a sidus, itself being about one and two thirds of a year long. This however did make it pretty complicated to convert between years and sidera, she often wondered why people even kept bothering to use a measure of years at all.

Kori sat down on a bench, searching for the stars in the fresh approach of night. Of course, it was far too early to see any stars at this point, even the faint glow of Proma was hard to spot in the sky, and that star was the third sun of their system.. even if it was also by far the weakest. Even Aestus' two moons, Aluna and Zwena, stood out far brighter in the sky than Proma ever could. Meanwhile, Earth's sun was probably a star that might grace the night's sky, but the planet itself should have had no influence on the stretch of stars above her. It shouldn't have, but instead Earth tried to rival the might of both Kenta and Toli for positions of influence, and had been doing so for the past six centuries since the people of Earth had first arrived. Sure, with such people came marvels of technology, Aestus was a considerably primitive and underdeveloped planet back then. Aestus was also free back then, Earth's grip on the world having held strong ever since. They brought their wisdom, their cultures, their people, their languages.. and tried to replace everything that was already there before them. By now, there was very little left that was still the old Aestus, Earth having cast a shadow over everything. For the first two centuries, the people of Aestus had faced constant oppression, being treated as if they shouldn't even exist. It's an improvement, instead of being seen as worse than animals, they were only seen as worse than normal people now. But at least, for the moment, none of that mattered, the people of Earth having mostly found their beds and left Kori to the sanctuary of silence.

Such silence was not a thing she was willing to waste, not considering how precious it was. Taking a minute to appreciate it was fine, but she knew she really couldn't afford to waste all of dusk. Instead, she got back up and continued along her silent trail toward the office where she tried to get a shift of work done away from the prying eyes of a society she had grown to hate. It wasn't actually the people that she hated, only how she was generally treated by such people. Fortunately however, her work was another matter entirely. Having studied earnestly on the subject as a child, she'd developed a considerable talent for programming AI, objects that got treated actually even worse than she did. To such considerations, she had devoted much of her time in the scripting of various AI sequences, bringing a significant feeling of life to such animatronics. Earth's greatest contribution to her planet was in their technology, and if such generosity was going to come at a price, she would make the most of the best it could offer. This not only kept her busy, but also provided her with a touch of respect, scripting being a big deal in modern society. She thus took account of where she had left off in her most recent project as she finally entered the office, the lights activating on her arrival. As the lights turned on, a loud bang crashed from somewhere deeper in the office, the reverberation of impact on metal, causing Kori to shriek in absolute terror.