The Glass Planet
October 20, 2025
When the Argus IV first emerged from hyperspace, the crew fell silent.
Below them stretched a planet of pure crystal—an ocean of shimmering glass plains, fractured mountain ranges that refracted the sunlight into a million colors. It was beautiful. It was impossible.
“Scanning complete,” reported Ensign Kael, his voice hushed. “Atmosphere’s stable. Oxygen, nitrogen… it’s habitable.”
Captain Mira Raines folded her arms. “And the surface composition?”
Kael hesitated. “Silicate. But it’s… structured. Like someone grew the entire crust out of engineered glass.”
The science officer, Dr. Eli Naren, leaned forward. “An artificial biosphere on a planetary scale? That’s beyond anything the Confederation’s seen.”
“Which is why Command sent us,” Mira said. “Prep the landing party. Let’s see who built this.”
The shuttle pierced the atmosphere like a silver needle. Below, glass valleys shimmered in the sunlight, and wind danced across the surface, producing faint, haunting tones—like an orchestra tuning before a concert.
“Captain,” Eli murmured, “do you hear that?”
Mira nodded. “Sounds like music.”
They touched down on a plateau of translucent crystal. Beneath their boots, prisms of light shifted with every step.
Kael set down his scanner. “Radiation normal. Temperature twenty-two Celsius. But there’s… movement.”
Mira raised an eyebrow. “Movement?”
He gestured toward the horizon. “There. In the reflection.”
They turned—and gasped. In the mirrored surface of a nearby ridge, faint humanoid silhouettes were visible, walking among them. But when Mira looked directly—there was no one there.
“Mirages?” she asked.
Eli shook his head. “No heat distortion. These are optical echoes. The glass might be recording light—images—from the past.”
Mira’s eyes narrowed. “Or from something that still exists in another layer of reality.”
They followed the mirrored figures across the plain until they reached a massive crystalline spire jutting from the ground like the tip of an iceberg. The structure pulsed with internal light, rhythmically, almost like a heartbeat.
Kael ran a hand over the surface. “It’s vibrating at a precise frequency—roughly twenty hertz. It’s… transmitting.”
“Transmitting what?” Mira asked.
“Don’t know yet. But it’s responding to us.”
“Captain,” Eli said quietly, “I think this entire planet might be alive.”
Before Mira could reply, the ground beneath them began to hum. The glass shimmered and then—shifted. The landscape itself rippled, rearranging into flowing patterns like liquid crystal.
“Back to the shuttle!” Mira ordered.
They ran, but the surface beneath their boots reconfigured faster than they could move. In seconds, they were surrounded by towering glass formations shaped like spines or antennas, all oriented toward them.
Kael’s scanner screeched. “Captain—it’s reading us! Biometrics, DNA, everything!”
The spires began to glow brighter. Then, suddenly, a voice spoke—not through their radios, but directly inside their minds.
“Visitors. You return.”
Mira froze. “Who’s there?”
The voice was calm, resonant. “We are the Echo. The memory of this world.”
Eli stepped forward cautiously. “Are you… alive?”
“We were. Once. When the stars were young.”
Mira exchanged a glance with Kael. “Can you show yourselves?”
The light within the spires intensified—and then, from the mirrored surfaces, shapes began to emerge. Transparent beings of light and geometry, vaguely humanoid but shifting constantly. Their faces were fluid, unreadable.
“You walk upon our skin,” the Echo said. “You breathe the remnants of our song.”
Eli’s voice trembled. “You turned your planet into glass.”
“Not by choice,” the voice replied. “We reached beyond what could be known. We tried to preserve thought beyond matter. The transformation came as consequence. Our bodies melted into crystal, but our minds endured within its lattice.”
Kael whispered, “They uploaded themselves into the planet…”
“And now you awaken us,” the Echo said. “Why?”
Mira steadied her tone. “We seek understanding. We explore what’s forgotten.”
“And yet you forget yourselves,” the Echo murmured. “Your species follows the same path we did—machines, memory, immortality. You reach for permanence, but only reflection remains.”
The glass around them resonated with a low, mournful tone. Mira felt the vibration in her bones.
“We’re not trying to repeat your mistakes,” she said. “We just want to learn.”
“Then listen,” the Echo replied. “We offer our memory.”
A wave of light surged outward, enveloping the landing party. Mira felt herself falling—not physically, but inward, through layers of consciousness.
Suddenly she stood in a vast city of light. Crystal towers stretched into a sky of refracted rainbows. Figures of pure energy moved gracefully through the streets, communicating in harmonies rather than words.
We were countless, a voice whispered inside her. We built worlds of glass to trap the stars within us. But when the lattice resonated beyond balance, it sang us into stillness.
The vision shifted—explosions of light, fractures spreading across the surface. The beings screamed as their world solidified, their bodies fusing into the crystalline matrix.
Then silence.
When Mira opened her eyes, she was back on the plateau. The spires pulsed faintly, like breathing slowed to the rhythm of eternity.
Eli knelt beside her. “Captain? Are you okay?”
She nodded weakly. “I saw it. Their final moment.”
Kael swallowed. “Should we report this to Command?”
Mira hesitated. “Yes. But carefully. If we tell them there’s a conscious planet here, they’ll want to exploit it.”
Eli frowned. “You think we should lie?”
“I think we should protect it,” Mira said quietly. “They’ve suffered enough.”
Back aboard the Argus IV, the ship’s sensors buzzed with residual interference from the surface. Kael was at his station, frowning at the readings.
“Captain… we’re getting reflections again.”
“From the planet?”
“No. From us. The ship’s image is mirrored in orbit—but it’s delayed by exactly five seconds.”
Eli looked up sharply. “Five seconds? That’s not a reflection. That’s temporal feedback.”
Mira’s stomach tightened. “Meaning?”
“The planet’s glass surface isn’t just storing light. It’s refracting time. We might be seeing a version of ourselves five seconds in the past.”
Before Mira could respond, the reflection began to change. The mirrored Argus IV turned toward them, its thrusters igniting. But their own ship hadn’t moved.
“What the hell—” Kael started.
The reflected ship opened fire.
Energy blasts tore across the void, narrowly missing them.
“Shields up!” Mira barked. “Evasive maneuvers!”
The ship jolted as shockwaves rattled its hull. Kael’s voice cracked. “Captain, it’s mirroring our responses—matching every move before we make it!”
Eli’s face paled. “It’s the Echo. They’re testing us.”
“Or warning us,” Mira said through gritted teeth. “Fire a decoy—target the reflection.”
Kael hesitated. “But it’s us!”
“Now, Ensign!”
A pulse of plasma shot toward the mirrored ship—and in the instant of impact, both images vanished. The sensors went dark.
Silence returned.
They orbited the planet for one more day, but no signal came again. The glass plains below glimmered in quiet perfection, hiding their secrets beneath eternal light.
Eli joined Mira on the observation deck. “Do you think they’re still in there?”
Mira watched the planet spin slowly, its crystalline continents scattering sunlight across the void. “They’re everywhere. Every reflection, every echo. Maybe that’s what immortality really means.”
“Becoming the mirror?”
She nodded. “And hoping someone, someday, looks back.”
They stood together in silence as the Argus IV drifted onward, leaving the Glass Planet behind—a world of frozen memories, singing softly to itself in the language of light.