Day Sixteen

The space around us twists; constellations stretch, bend, and melt away, crackling radio static. Another system whisks into being, one with a double sun. Five planets, three solid and two gas. The usual array of icy flotsam at the periphery.
—Not another one— Blue confides to me and Squeaky, keeping his expression neutral. —It's like they don't think we can focus—
—It's good practice— I retort, though by now I'm tired of it as well, —They want to make sure we know the basics—
—They want to make sure we never go beyond the basics— he grumbles.
—I think it's fun— Squeaky interjects.
—That's only because you get too close to your monsters—
—Because they're my monsters. When we do finally get to the new place and start work for real... you just wait. Living things aren't like rocks—
Swift-Runs selects the world second from the sun and it rushes towards us, blank dot to brownish blur to a striated cloud-covered sphere. The atmosphere is acid; the surface a shifting morass of lava flows and boiling metal lakes.
I shrug. —Rocks don't bite—
“Start with a general shaping,” Swift-Runs orders as we check planetary information (only two billion years old, three lumpish captured moons, active tectonics, primarily composed of silica and iron with a large core and correspondingly strong magnetic field; we can taste the auroras). “Standard form Eye-of-the-Pebble, variation thirty-two (sixteen, double desert band, tincture maintained).”
Eye-of-the-Pebble: A formerly violent world cooled by the installation of a ring system and reflection-creatures, surface permitted to settle in whatever is natural prior to further sculpting. Variation thirty-two includes the fragmentation of the planetary crust, creating a specified number of continents regulated by further manipulation of the underlying structure, and no replacement of the native atmosphere. Among other things.
It is a common form. An easy form.
Blue sighs. —Admit it, you'd rather be off painting nebulae with star-bullets—
I prod at one of the moons as Swift-Runs continues his instructions. —This is important—
—Important, sure. But fun?—
“Five major, three hundred minor, tilted across the poles,” says Swift-Winds, tracing the intended trajectory.
—Not as fun as watching shockwaves— I admit.
“Begin.”
We begin.