SETI first discovered the superplanet Chroma in 2024, though official confirmation of the findings weren’t printed publicly until eight years later in 2032. David Burke of Trump Country’s NASA published the discovery inAnnual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics of a planet that orbited around the sun in an entirely new way. Until then, our solar system’s First Nine planets had revolved around the sun on a relatively flat plane, albeit at different radii.

This new planet, however, had an orbital path an entirely new direction, angled such that each time it passes through from one side of the galaxy to the other, it is coming from and going to new places in space. There will come a time in a few hundred thousand years when Chroma will pass by Earth again on her way to orbitally trace a sphere around the universe. We call this path Chroma’s Sphere, and it is estimated to take 396,219 years for each completion.

While tracing Chroma’s Sphere, the planet has the potential to explore every inch of our galaxy. With such an exploratory spirit (and many, many planetary collisions along the way!), it’s no wonder the planet has such abundant life.

The atmosphere is heavy, bursting at the seams with the building blocks of life. The crust regularly buckles under pressure, repeatedly forming new mountains, valleys, and volcanoes. Bodies of water cover the rest of the landscape, taking up almost 47% of Chroma’s total surface area. Between the two, rivers of liquid minerals and enzymes permeated everywhere.

Life on Chroma varies extremely depending on location. The planet’s churning results in an uneven planet density, resulting in rapidly fluctuating changes in atmosphere, temperature, and gravity all over the superplanet’s surface. In the equivalent surface area of Earth, an expected eight or nine times as many unique species can be seen surviving the landscape of Chroma at any given time, and often entire species will flare up and go fully extinct, never to be seen again, within a week.

Just one year after launching the Life satellites, Life I returned on schedule with the equivalent of a gigantic tin box full of extraterrestrial life and atmospheric samples. The Nazeeb on board may have been wild and dangerous pre-domestication, but quickly grew into a household favorite “third pet” alternative to cats and dogs. Even things as small as bacteria, dust, or rocks aboard that ship came back and resulted in breakthrough science and revolutionary products that flooded the country’s economy and exports under Trump’s guidance.

Around that time, leading astrologists were feeling more confident in their orbit projections for Chroma, and confirming more enthusiastically to the public that, no, this gigantic hurtling rock of life won’t obliterate us on its way through endless space. People seemed to be warming up to the thought of experiencing something new, and life seemed to flow a little more smoothly with everyone relaxing from a big scare.

It’s an astounding experience to think about how such a tiny satellite could carry such a precious gem to our world, after travelling hundreds of thousands of miles through space to a planet nearly ten times as massive as our own, picking up things too small to see.

Life I’s gravity slingshot meant it arrived several months before Chroma would actually pass the Earth, and served as a harbinger to excite and prepare the world’s population for the sight in the sky they would see that night, but nobody was prepared to witness the true scale of life. People froze, panicked, threw out reason and took to the streets, but I didn’t.

I climbed as high as I could to get closer to the view, and when I could climb no more I just stood, eyes to the sky. I stood in awe at the beautiful birth of life that painted the sky for all of three all-night days. Upon that planet there live billions and billions of species seeding every inch of the universe with life, and its image in the sky alone was relieving proof that even in our endless universe, we are not alone.