The day begins, persists, and ends with a near endless state of fulfilling productivity. It’s time to be a little cog of a great and noble machine. It’s time to be integral and completely replaceable.

—

She’s in a lightning storm, basking in Earth’s rain nearly as much as she basks in its sunlight. It‘s possibly a waste of time to study human sciences. It’s definitely a waste of time and resources to re-enact their old experiments, centuries past their relevance. But it’s her time to waste now, and resources are abundant. She’s hit by lightning for her efforts.

She intends to try this again.

—

The body of her parent is given over to the core of her world. It’s time to become a crystal and help energize their world. It’s never time to stop contributing.

—

There’s a starseed in her hand and it feels like such a mundane thing to be so precious. It glows but so do other crystals. So do lightbulbs. And yet it’s the beginning and end and still another beginning of so many things. Her fingers wrap around it and it cracks so impossibly easily. How can they be so fragile? Who created this flawed design?

Couldn’t she do better?

—

She’s nearly met her water allotment for this turn. It’s time to adapt and make do again. It’s time to be creative and resourceful again.

The meal is the same as it was yesterday and the day before. It’s time to eat. It’s time to nourish herself for the sake of efficiency.

She wants to try the meat even though she doesn’t need to and it has no appeal other than curiosity. But it’s not time for that. It’s not time for needless waste for the sake of a whim.

—

The starseed on her desk suddenly lifts and fades, proving the agent’s warning against letting it sit outside Negaspace or her subspace for too long. But she’s wanted to see for herself, or at least have a recording of it. The waste was worth it, especially when the supply was, if not abundant, at least steady enough not to feel the loss. Particularly when one considered the snacking habits of certain of their members.

She should try one at some point. Could it be as sweet as candy?

—

The sky is turning light and she looks up to bask for a moment in the cracks of light that peek out from above the towering buildings that loom over all. It’s time to leave the city for a short while. It’s time to leave.

—

The sky, as vast and generous as all things of Earth, turns dark and strange before opening up into a show of power the likes of which she had never seen, had barely only tasted. This is what they needed. What they’d always needed and lacked, even in the legends of old Velenia.

Power, unchecked and unending.

—

Aeleas had left into a vast and potentially dangerous unknown. It was time to see it for herself, it was time to leave.

—

A power vast and potentially dangerous was awaiting their collective efforts, that prized resourcefulness, the creativity to make do and use everything at hand. Their constant drive for productivity. The selfless and ruthlessly opportunistic survivalism of Velencya versus an unending greed whose years of starvation was far eclipsed by their own.

It was now their time.