Warret Lookout

A Story by TheSpacer

Part of the Remember Us "series"

To every star there is a planet in it's reach which is the farthest one from its warmth, to Garlo it is Warret, a barren hunk of rock barely held on by its star's gravity and whose only remarkable characteristics are its distance, its never-changing celestial view and now, after five years of grueling work, SGOP-1, or Lookout as its inhabitants called it.

From orbit Lookout seems like a big round sea, with is two kilometer radius and surrounding structures looking like villages one would see in any habitable world, in truth, these structures prevented the almost ten thousand workers of Lookout from freezing in the barren and hostile world.

From one of these structures Gwendvin observed the product of the past five years of her work, she awaited confirmation that everything was ready for the awakening of the behemoth that she had built. Her personal communicator warned of an incoming message, an engineer, delivering the message she had been expecting, deep breath, she left her observing position and headed into the control room.

As she entered the buzzing of checking and rechecking systems and facility statuses died out as she made her way to the center of the room.

“We've all been waiting for this moment.” She said calling everyone to attention “nothing more will be gained from nervousness, what we need now is focus.” While reciting these words Gwendvin noticed that she was holding her hands with a tight grip and hoped her audience wouldn't notice. “If I'm here that means you've all checked your systems and you all agree that its finally time to turn Lookout on, now, its in the hands of rebirth, may it go our way...” People seemed slightly calmer in the room but there was still a stress that she knew no words would whisk away. “Alright! Stations everyone!”

The shuffle behind her was still present as she opened communications with the orbiting support station, everything was well, devices primed and ready at optimum capability, all they had worked for all these years was now closer than ever. At the final check she closed coms, did one last sweep of her terminals and vital controllers and without hesitation initiated the start up.

Beneath them the facility gave a bit first low pitch sound signaling its awakening, the sound turned into a waving motion of sounds that repeated themselves with increasing frequency as Lookout came to life, the sea of metal that formed the “dish” of the facility started to glow in a dark blue hue, characteristic of the type of technology used in such facilities, but never before seen in such an enormous scale that gave off the illusion of a aurora borealis occurring almost at ground level.

The sounds increased in frequency until each repetition was indistinguishable from the next and formed a continuous noise, in a moment the borealis effect disappeared and was replaced by a dark blue pillar, behind which the stars seemed submersed in water, forming at the center of the dish and aimed at a little pale dot that was barely recognizable as the support station.

The room held itself in silent awe for a few seconds before exploding into a flurry of hugs, handshakes and cries of joy. Gwendvin barely managed to verify her own consoles for no mistakes before falling onto the floor with a smile and glittering eyes painted her face...

The first step had been taken.