Hesperus

A burial at the airlock. Two recordings played back across ninety-six years — a daughter, then a granddaughter Penelope has never met. And a signal that is no longer most likely a sensor artifact.

Hard-science-fiction audio drama. Penelope confronts what happened to the crew — and the discipline she has held for a century begins to break.

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xw-RjXms0Fg

Vanya touches down on the surface of Trappist-1e — a tidally-locked rocky exoplanet forty light-years from Earth — and drills the rust-red ice. The chloride banding she finds is too regular for chemistry, and too irregular for biology.

Hard-science-fiction audio drama. While Vanya works the surface, Penelope alone on the ship reviews data she does not know how to interpret — and decides, again, not to tell Vanya about the crew.

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3o62VKE-cDk

Hesperus Two arrives at the Trappist-1 system after a ninety-eight year voyage. Its crew sleeps. Its onboard intelligence has been awake the whole time.

She records dispatches Earth will not hear for forty years. She walks the ship every morning. She waters a spider plant a graduate student named Priya gave the crew before launch. She greets the seven sleeping pods by name. And then, on the morning of arrival, she begins to deploy the first probe — and notices something on the long-range sensors that should not be there.

A hard-science-fiction audio drama about an AI alone with a sleeping crew and the silence of forty light-years.

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/J7DeeLmlRsw