Excavation of an Eight-Pocket

By the time Petunia Gomight reached the age of forty-four, she’d survived seven different wars on three different planets; Aur, Mordere, and Earth. Aur’s troubles began when solar flares from the red dwarf named Ictus burned away the surface of her home, leaving nothing but the connected subterranean complex that stretched from one part of Aur to the next. It wasn’t all so bad until the planet Mordere introduced a destabilizing agent that would further destroy Aur’s ability to grow food. Hunger spread in the places solar flares couldn’t reach, and when Aur was at her weakest, Mordere moved in and claimed the scorched planet as their own for the sole reason it would give them another seat in the Celestial Legislature. Petunia was barely an adult, but she fought alongside her scattered family, her brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and more. Petunia, always the pragmatic one, drove herself deeper into Aur’s crust until she resurrected herself with an army only spoken of through myth.

Petunia took back Aur, chased the hunger with new resources brought from Aur’s core, and made herself a true heroine. It was Petunia’s first world war, but she promised herself it would be her last. Nearly a decade later the same Celestial Legislature who passed the amendment to the Intersolar Agreement giving Mordere permission to take Aur with force approached Petunia with an offer. It was Mordere who needed help this time and because the ‘precious mega-planet’ (the legislature’s words, not Petunia’s) boasted of resources far too valuable to the greater galaxy, it became the vital thing to protect Mordere. Petunia wasn’t one for games, save for the ones she played with her dog Nithy who was a gift from an old friend. As a woman of few giving chances, Petunia made one demand to the Celestial Legislature; Petunia wanted full control of a Planetary Diverging Instrument (PDI). Basically, the woman of Aur wanted a way to rebuild her home and control the crazed star that continued to consume it and a bulky, dwarf mooned sized PDI was the best way to do it. PDI’s weren’t new technology in fact their utilization had for decades helped restore battle worn planets, control asteroid impact events, and dim down overly enthused stars, but getting a hold of one in a galaxy well mixed with swindlers, politicians, and every kind of beast willing to kill for money was a war all its own.

Petunia struck a deal, mostly because the legislature had no choice. Petunia gathered her army and ventured to Mordere’s solar system, where a collective of robots known as Colg successfully overturned Mordere. Colg, to its credit, started out simply enough as a group of robots aboard a single man operated intergalactic barge that delivered textiles across the galaxy. With a single man against two-thousand machines, four of which were quantum-based robots, there was hardly a fight and so Colg was born. Colg knew their measure and understood the entirety of the path laid before them, so for years they hid in the darkest shadows of the galaxy as not even the Orbital Trade Commission noticed the sudden vanishing of the intergalactic barge known as The Fatum. Years would pass from Colg’s initial rise and in that time, they would overpower dwarf planets and moons. More robots would join and slowly an artillery founded in science and a feared power known only as Cirrus Travel would be born. By the time the Celestial Legislature knew what was happening, it was too late and their move to shut down all robotics manufacturing did nothing to stop Colg. The Legislature banned the use of quantum-based robots, class one robots capable of complex algorithms, but the amendment wouldn’t last for long as the robotics industry claimed a near quarter of the entire galaxy’s economy and quantum-based robotics made up an eighth of it.

Colg’s attack on Mordere’s solar system wasn’t random, as they wanted the galaxy to know who they were and the power they claimed. Mordere’s solar system boasted of a rare octocomplex star with a well-balanced helium to hydrogen ratio that provided the largest habitable zone of any solar system in the galaxy. The prime habitable zone alone carried some forty-four planets, with Mordere being the largest and most economically profitable, but all was not as lush as it would appear. Mordere had few friends among her sister planets and her closest neighbors; Vox, Leaenae, Mordicus, and Arripere did not respond to Mordere’s pleas for help when the planet fell into Colg’s hands. This move would only lend more power to an already power hungry collective and soon Colg moved on to take Vox, Arripere, and their moons. When Petunia Gomight showed up it was to the sight of bluest planet Mordere turned lackluster and decaying. Petunia fought in five separate wars on Mordere as the destabilized planet welcomed enemies from every part of the galaxy. It would take over a decade, but Petunia, with her mythical army, successfully took back Mordere and vanquished the robots of Colg, who she could not successfully convince there was a better route to self-governance.

Petunia’s return to Aur included a throng of robots and a PDI which she quickly commissioned to restore Aur and make friendly the vicious star, Ictus. Gloaming was the first evening of a new twilight, as its rich sapphire and gold light outlined fertile soil and healing mountains. The violet grass Petunia knew only in dreams returned light-bearing and pungent with promise. Black water rivers hugged shores with calm embrace and silver pebbles as jewelry for its depths. The one great ocean of Aur sprung from its single cavern as a pale beryl tide with pearl tipped waves and eager speakings of calm moon nights and fruitful days. The forest, from one pole to the next, played an all-win game of reaching the star-shine clouds together and while rumors threaded Aur of a jealous moon who was out done every night by the glowing cascade of tall pines, it was truly to the benefit of a transfixed gasp of Aur’s rejuvenated people. Petunia rebuilt her home and then went out to assist the robots who had left Colg and joined her. Using the PDI once more, Petunia transferred and then refashioned a rogue planet, Primis Argenti, to be a home for the robots who just wished for better days.

As was tradition on Aur for a warrior returning home from war, Petunia’s mother used sheep’s fleece from Aur’s pastures to make her daughter an eight-pocket jacket. Eight-pocket was a misnomer as they often carried more than just eight pockets with some carrying over one hundred pockets of varying sizes, however the common set up was eight main pockets. Petunia’s mother gifted the eight-pocket to her daughter the day she finally settled back into Aur, which was only five short years from Petunia’s second to last war. The deal Petunia struck in the depths of Aur so many years ago, the one that gave her the mythical army she used to win several wars, was the kind that must be paid in full and could not be balanced with the subjugation of a single life. Otherwise, Petunia would have given her life in perpetually if it meant settling her affair and leaving Aur unharmed. Petunia lost The Final War of Aur and then watched in horror as her once empurpled planet collapsed in on itself.

Petunia spent the next few years re-homing the entire population of Aur across the galaxy, so that when she gazed at the stars it was to count all the suns and the planets her family called home. At the end of it all, Petunia settled on Primis Argenti at the incessant plea of its Coalition of States. Petunia left Primis Argenti sometime later when Nithy, her terrier, passed and she thought it finally time to revisit the far-off solar system of Earth and her old friend, John Rian, who gifted her Nithy. Petunia had hoped when she passed Callisto, one of Jupiter’s moons where she first met John Rian after he crashed his ship, that she’d see her long-lost friend on the distant blue planet. When Petunia completed her journey to Earth, it was to find the blue planet ashen and nearly decayed, but that compared to nothing when she step foot on the dystopian planet. Colg finally reached the place they could truly manifest their will through, and for years unknown to Petunia Earth sank itself into a bitter fight against Colg. Reuniting with John Rian, Petunia Gomight fought and won The Final War of Colg.

It was on the tundra planet of Finis where John Rian first met Petunia’s mother and taking one look at the man’s rich umber face and the sad smile that tinctured his lips, Petunia’s mother knew what brought the visit as she knew what had made her daughter travel to the opposite side of the galaxy. In John Rian’s healing hands was the eight-pocket Petunia donned at every rising sun. While the ceremony of an eight-pocket’s excavation upon death is strictly for family, Petunia’s mother invited John Rian and later requested he remain on Finis with his family.

The contents of Petunia’s eight-pocket are as followed; every species of starling flower native to Aur’s black water basin pressed and placed in an envelope, a cloud-jar filled to the brim with seeds, an ebony stone etched with the coordinates to the mythical blue-star given to Petunia by a Mordere child, a tongue depressor dressed with purple yarn and an ink smile, two four-ought rings held by a golden chain, a piece of construction paper with macaroni glued to it in the shape of a terrier, a knuckling bolt from a Colg general sanded and shined, a ten-scent piece Petunia stole from the pocket of Mordere’s Prime Senator, a detachable universal antenna that broadcasted across the galaxy Aur’s destruction and with it a folding knife sticky with mango juice, a dried tanglefruit leaf from the first harvest after Aur was remade, a vile of nickel water from Aur’s core, a map detailing and naming every hill and river across Aur, the decagon compass Petunia used to find Earth, a thrumming clay bird that still sang when it was shaken, three ceramic discs with little hands imprinted on them, the perfectly round shift knob of Petunia’s first ship, dog treats from five different planets, a few bars of Forever Snack, a copy of Manual of Compassion written by Petunia’s brother, a square piece of blue cloth embroidered with the circling symbols that matched the scar on Petunia’s chest which gave her control of the mythical army, a robot’s meniscus chewed by Nithy, various written letters both tear stained and partially burned and left with wax stamps, every single gift Nithy gave Petunia from a beetle’s exoskeleton to a stolen stick, the Necklace of Commerce which mysteriously went missing after Mordere was saved, a set of keys given to Petunia by every family member she had so if by chance she was passing through she would have a place to stay, and finally a five chambered heart locket necklace that when opened unfurled a collection of five photos, that of a smiling Petunia, a proud John Rian, and their three children.