“What was that???” 

    Jupiter and Uranus turned around, seeing Saturn angrily storm up to them. They, of course, simply chose to smile innocently.

    “What do you mean?” Jupiter asked simply, “I told you we were going to make the journey difficult for them.”

    “No, you said you would mess them up a little to discourage them from going farther. You did NOT say you were going to try to kill them!” Saturn shouted, his voice growing louder with every passing word, “They were about to die! They would have if I did what you said and ignored them!”

    “So whaaaat?” Uranus whined, “You should’ve let them! It would’ve been fun to see. I haven’t seen a good ship crash in a few decades!”

    “They’re just exploring. We aren’t killing them yet.”

    “They’re just exploring?” Jupiter folded his arms across his chest, “You know that’s not all they’ve done. You know what exploring will do. They explored their home planet, and look what they did to it. It was almost destroyed. They almost destroyed Earth for a second time. There is absolutely no reason we should allow them to infect the rest of the galaxy.” He paused, mostly for dramatic effect. “Not after what they did.”

    “Yeah!” Came Uranus’ not nearly as dramatic but extremely enthusiastic agreement.

    Saturn sighed, “I know. I already agreed that we weren’t gonna let that happen, even if the rest of them wanted to. But we’re not killing them just for exploring! That’s pointless.”

    “Wait a second,” Uranus narrowed his eyes, before he jabbed a finger into Saturn’s chest, “You said you stepped in! You weren’t seen, were you?” He accused.

    Saturn shoved his hand away, “Oh yes, I’m that much of an idiot that actually I did better than that. I waltzed right into their ship and introduced myself, and set up a party for them to meet everyone else. Now, we can all be the best of friends!” He rolled his eyes (or at least he attempted to. It’s actually quite hard to roll your eyes when you have no irises). 

    “Saturn this is serious.” Jupiter cut in.

    “Obviously I didn’t!”

    “Awwww,” Uranus pouted, “But if they know that’s a better excuse to throw another asteroid their way.”

    “Why are you like this?” Saturn sighed, before turning to Jupiter, “Did you disable everything on their ship?” Seeing Jupiter’s expression, he knew the answer, “Come on, that’s not even fair. At least give them a fighting chance.”

    “Humans have made it through worse.”

    “Hey…” Uranus narrowed his eyes, “You’re starting to act like the others, Sat.” He muttered, “You’re not gonna start worshipping those murderers are you?”

    “You better not betray her memory like that, Saturn.” Jupiter said, glaring at the other Planet, “Too many of us have. Don’t let them fool you too.”

    “Of course not,” Saturn shot back, crossing his arms. “I’m not an idiot. But I’m not going to agree to pointlessly killing them just for being curious about what’s out there. I don’t care.”

    “If you don’t care, why did you save them??”

    “Because unlike you guys, I still believe they should get a fighting chance.” Saturn spat. “If more of them follow and they actually make a mess of things, do whatever you want. Throw another asteroid, destroy their ship, kill them; I honestly couldn’t care less if I tried.”

    With those words, Saturn disappeared from Jupiter’s home, before he reappeared back on his planet. He stood, and stared at the far away image of Earth, before immediately falling to his knees as he let himself finally respond to something he had realized earlier, but had refused to think about.

    “Shit. He totally saw me.”

***

“I’m really fine, Emile, I promise.”

    “Hey, I’m on the job right now and you’re in my office. It’s Doctor to you!” Emile teased, laughing. “And I know, but I wanna make sure. Life and death scenarios aren’t all fun and games and they can leave your head messed up.”

    Thomas smiled at his friend. Emile Picani was both one of the ship’s general doctors and the ship’s main therapist, and the second the alarms had stopped he demanded to see and check up on every single person on the ship, ‘“just in case”. Since there were no actual injuries (thankfully), he mainly just wanted to make sure everyone was emotionally alright.

    So now, Thomas sat in the chair across from his childhood friend with a choice to make. He knew he could talk to him about anything, but he also knew what he wanted to tell him sounded insane, and would probably make the doctor side of Emile start to worry. Which he definitely didn’t want.

    So he decided to see if he could sneak it into the conversation, casually enough that he could play it off as just curiosity or even a joke.

    “Hey, do you believe in angels?”

    Emile frowned, “What did you see?”

    Thomas paused. Well that didn’t work.

 “Nothing,” He lied, “But the way we got out of it seemed so miraculous. I guess my brain was just searching for an explanation.”

    “Thomas, I’ve known you for decades. I can tell when you’re lying.”

Thomas laughed, “Yeah, I guess you can, huh?” He grew quiet for several moments, before he finally spoke. “I just.. Saw something. It was probably just my eyes playing tricks on me or something, but I thought I saw someone.” 

    “What did they look like?”

    “Well, they had a halo or something, that’s why my first thought was an angel,” Thomas admitted, “But they wore a robe or dress or some kind of simple outfit like that, but it looked like space. Like, at first I didn’t even notice it because of how real it looked. And their eyes were completely white.

    “Sounds like a Planet!”

    Both Thomas and Emile jumped when they heard Giovanni’s voice as he appeared behind them, smiling.

    “Gio I told you no more listening to our therapy sessions!!” Emile immediately shouted, putting his hands on his hips and shaking his head disapprovingly. “I told you so many times!!”

    Giovanni pouted, “But I was bored and there’s nothing to dooooo!” 

    “What did you mean by the planets?” Thomas asked, knowing if he didn’t interrupt now, then Emile was going to begin a lecture.

    “First, it’s not just planets. It’s the Planets, capital P. And they’re an ancient myth,” Giovanni explained, “That all the planets in our solar system are alive. It’s pretty much an ancient religion, but instead of any gods or any gods being associated with any planets, there’s just the Planets themselves. Earth was who created humanity and every other Earth-based life.” He frowned, “It’s a very old myth though, so not much was recorded or has been discovered. Historians only found documentations and art of it around 50 years ago.”

    “Okay… But why bring them up now?”

    Giovanni shrugged, “Based on the space robe, white eyes, and our current location, that’s what it sounded like.” An image of a very faded figure painted on a clay wall showed up besides Giovanni, and if he squinted Thomas could see how the robe and eyes matched what he described. 

“Plus you mentioned a halo, which could be the rings, the Jovian planets have those. You might have read something on them before when you were younger and hallucinated one in a time of emergency. The human mind is stupid and inferior like that.”

    “Gio, we talked about your AI superiority complex already.”

    “I’m working on it!”

    “I mean, I guess that could’ve been it,” Thomas nodded slowly, “I can’t remember ever reading about them though.”

    “Well like I said, your memory isn’t that good either compared to-”

    “Giovanni Version 3.5!!!”

    “I’m sorry!!!”

    Thomas laughed, before he stood up. “Well, I’m gonna get going. I know you have a whole bunch of people still left to see. Thanks for listening, you two.”

    Emile smiled, “You know you can come and talk whenever you need to! Though I do need some time to teach Gio some manners first-”

    “I am perfectly fi -” Giovanni stopped abruptly, staring off to the side in concentration.

    Emile shot Thomas a knowing look and sighed, “Who are you eavesdropping on now?” he asked reluctantly.

    “Remy,” Giovanni grinned mischievously and winked at Emile, “This is veryyyy interesting, so I’ll be going. See ya!” With a wave, he vanished, leaving Emile to continue yelling at him and Thomas laughing.