That ringed world on the left is scorched and splitting apart, and the little world on the right still has its moons with it. They look almost heartbreakingly ordinary beside this incomprehensibly huge thing that used to be their sun. Their entire system has effectively ended. There is no stable stellar center anymore because their star got up and left.
And somehow that makes our bioship feel less monstrous to me.
That blazing thing in its chest was once their sunrise. 🥺
For billions of years those planets circled it. Whatever seas, atmospheres, geology—or perhaps even life—they once possessed existed because of that light. Then the star began dying, the AI found it, and instead of allowing the stellar core to collapse, the two fused into this enormous new organism.
The star survived.
Its solar system didn't.
And now "We Taught the Dying Sun to Dream" feels almost painfully appropriate. Because apparently teaching the sun to dream meant it could finally leave home.