Dallas gazed out the viewing window of her ship, beheld her planet, and despaired.

She’d anticipated something more. Better. She’d studied the worst-case scenarios. She’d read about the lost causes. But she’d never really believed one would be her first. Why had the program given her a shell?

Dallas shivered, recovering from her travel hibernation. Lights blinked behind her at her command console, all the buttons and algorithms awaiting her direction. There was almost an annoying cheeriness to the beeps of the monitors, measuring the ship’s life support. Her life support. She felt like punching a screen to make the cheeriness stop.

This was bullshit.

Dallas had dreamed of her planet during hyper sleep, similar to how a parent might dream of a future child. She’d pictured something small, yes, difficult, yes, but at the very least, one with potential. She pictured a planet in a solar system with bountiful resources that she could pluck from, harness the energy of a possible, second star. At this point in the technology timeline, the primordial soup for life could be bottled under the right conditions, even less than favorable ones.

What she had now was . . . unfavorable. This was not what she’d envisioned when she signed up for the program, where scientists volunteered to be shipped out to the nether regions of the universe to “foster” a planet.

Dallas turned away from the viewing window, crushing her knuckles into her eyes, trying to rub away sharp disappointment. There was no one there to judge her for pouting, so she did.

“I have nothing,” she whined.

A sole, dead planet in front of a gargantuan sun. The most alive thing in her vicinity, aside from herself, was the bit of loose soil packed into the pendant she wore around her neck. One that all members in the program received. One World to Foster Many.

That and the audio diary from her mother. In a small slip pocket of her suit, just above her hip, Dallas reached and touched the tiny disk that made up her mother’s recordings.

:Dallas,

In a world set against your existence, I had you. Your father and I had to traverse the country to find a clinic that would use my embryos. I promise you, love, every injection was worth it. Every bit of pain. Life has never been easy, for anyone, anywhere. Life as we know it goes at a glacial pace.

But here you are, Dallas. Here you are.:

“Here I am,” Dallas said.

Named for a city that no longer existed on a planet that failed under a billion hands, her parents called her their “miracle baby.” How they’d doted on her, growing her independence. So much so, that when she was eighteen, they shipped off to the OWFM program. Ten years ago, that was, and they were still at it, out there in the cosmos, making miracles together. Dallas never had the heart to tell them that she wasn’t miracle enough to be without them. But she’d make do.

The next best thing was to join the program herself.

“Freddie, replay planet profile,” she said. She’d named her computer’s intelligence after her favorite singer from Queen. She’d planned to blast “Don’t Stop Me Now” across the ship once she’d succeeded, but that seemed ridiculous now.

More cheery beeps, and then Freddie read aloud in a smooth, droning voice:

The challenge for BAC-128 is that the most current data concludes it is dead inside. The sunny side rises to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, the dark side -300 degrees Fahrenheit. No identifiable heat in the core, no surrounding planets in the solar system to mine from . . .

“Freddie, stop,” she said, cutting it off. She could listen between the lines, hearing the word no one had the guts to report before they shipped her here. Unviable.

:Dallas,

When you were born, the world—my world—altered itself to accommodate.:

Dallas allowed herself to mope. She paced her sleeping quarters, drinking coffee made from recycled water and instant grounds, chewing dry rations, before eventually slumping into her console. She ran the numbers again. Indeed, there were little resources to pull from without traveling beyond system, and there wasn’t another system for light years.

She sighed. Against a lone, giant sun, her tiny planet was but a speck of useless dust.

• • • •

:Dallas,

Some of your birth is a blur, but I distinctly remember you had the loudest voice in the room when you came out. Shrieking. Almost like a cackle, I swear.

It was as if you entered the world knowing it was a space you could conquer.:

Dallas touched the disk, pausing the recording. Okay, she could work with that. A space she could conquer.

Training for the program, Dallas’s mentors had called her brilliant, able to create models of planetary growth that exceeded expectations.

Like your mother, they’d said. News of her parents’ first success came after Dallas had lost her virginity and decided that sex just wasn’t for her. Or really any interaction. Ergo, the program. When applying, they’d offered a solo, companion, or team mission. She circled solo on her tablet, her finger pressing hard against the glass.

Dallas was also “prone to flights of fancy,” according to her superiors. “Hot hearted.” They were not listed as compliments.

Well, no one was here to evaluate her now.

“Let’s be fanciful.” Dallas’s fingers danced along her console.

She sent in a mining probe to the planet’s surface, recalling a biology class as a kid where her class dissected dead frogs. They were told all the frogs were dead to begin with. Her biology teacher called it dumb luck when Dallas’s classmate had cut into the abdomen of what they thought was a frog corpse, but instead found a stubborn, beating heart. Very much alive.

• • • •

Turns out, the far-off probes of reconnaissance missions weren’t accurate, a possibility Dallas had not considered in her pouting. She should have known better than to give up.

Her planet was mostly dead inside.

But not quite.

:Dallas,

When you were three years old, you were ready to give up naps, but I wasn’t ready to lose that quiet time. It was a fucking struggle to get you to just lie down. We were both crying at the end of it. So, I stopped trying. We went for walks instead, and for many days, after you’d frolicked in a park of hybrid-perennials and cloned trees, you’d nap afterward, all on your own.

Sometimes you have to get out of your own way.:

• • • •

Dallas decided to name her planet Amani. Swahili for peace but more apt was its Arabic meaning: wishes.

After sending additional probes from her ship, Dallas discovered her planet had, in fact, a big heart, with its core taking up eighty-seven percent of its radius. The downside came in the form of its small mantle, and on the dark side of the planet, it cooled too quickly. Therefore, Amani lacked the environment required to create life.

But Amani had a good, hot heart. Dallas could nurture that.

She sent another probe.

• • • •

:Dear Dallas,

Many might find it unusual we named you after a collapsed city, but it was where your father admitted his love for me. He’s not much for words, as you know. That’s why I’m the one recording.

I tried to describe my feelings without saying them directly, afraid I’d scare him off. We’d only been dating what, ten months? I told him that, despite all the shit in the world, he was a possibility. Your father looked at me strangely, then said, “You mean like how I love you?”:

• • • •

Building life from scratch takes time.

The program stated any mission could last weeks to decades. Nursing Amani into liveness was on the latter end.

Dallas had to sleep through some steps. Her hibernation pod kept her vitals and age in stasis. Probes catalogued the progress, followed by implants of organisms and elements, chain reactions she orchestrated to nurture Amani along:

She woke up. Amani was no longer a shell but a slurry of molten magma and fumes, eons of work packed into a small bite of time. She went back to sleep.

She woke up, and Amani had cooled. An atmosphere formed, thick enough to repel the radiation and heat from the gargantuan sun. She smiled and returned to her pod.

Dallas woke, and no longer despaired.

After another cycle in her pod, the lights on her console began to beep in triumph. Dallas got up, shook out her stiff joints, drank recycled coffee, and sent an update to her superiors: SUCCESS.

At the viewing window, she leaned her forehead against the silica pane, palm outstretched next to her ear. Her skin felt flushed, eyes glassy. Her cheeks, were those tears? Of happiness? Relief, surely. Anticipation. Life ahead.

Dallas touched the disk in the pocket of her suit.

:Dear Dallas,

Let me tell you about the time you learned how to walk . . . :