Impulse

A Tale from the Stellar Universe

Danny Maldonado

Oct 17, 2025

Article voiceover

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-5:14

Tales from the Stellar Universe #1

Image by Danny Maldonado

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The planet pulsed every twenty-five minutes, thrumming into my marrow. The global metronome eroded every stone into sand, leaving sprawling dune formations patterned in the acoustic geometries wrought by its ceaseless rhythm.

Seeking to obtain something of cultural significance to add to my collection, I came to this obscure trading hub to comb the local bazaar, with the expectation that the natives might have acquired artifacts, with no comprehension of their true significance. For the greatest treasure in this universe is a good deal.

The bazaar teemed with hucksters peddling scrap technology, native art, and, to my dismay, street food from the surrounding orbits. The vile stenches that masqueraded as cuisine assailed my tender senses. Intuitively, I had brought my well-woven scarf from a far-removed world of a historic people long extinguished until my wardrobe resurrected their fine artistry.

Bestial specimens, orchestrations, machinations, and denizens amalgamated into a cacophony of reverberations. The bazaar sold its decibels high.

The market rabble collided against me as I attempted to maneuver between the stalls. They trampled my travel shoes, shoved me outright, and interrupted my objections. To be frank, I was quite distraught.

A door revealed itself to me through a gap in the horde, and I spilled into it. My ears rang from the immediate cessation of stimuli as I coughed and rubbed sand out of my hair. Finally, I could compose myself. Then the ground pulsed. Dust shifted off the shelves, and trinkets clattered, but to my relief, it didn't rattle my bones. I palmed my eyes as my senses recuperated and inhaled deeply, only to be heckled by something reeking of ozone.

A gaunt insectoid vendor was oiling its arms behind the cluttered L-shaped display counter. Our eyes met, and I stood to peruse his wares. The establishment was a haphazard affair. Its displays were littered with unmarked contrivances.

I browsed through the many oddities, hoping that I might find a unique piece for my ever-growing collection of antiquities. However, the shop’s disorganized displays, compounded with my sensory overload, brought me only frustration.

The vendor approached and hovered over my shoulder as I pored over the displays. It chattered away, showing me its wares at random. I was again overwhelmed and rubbed my temples, then clenched my chest. I glared back towards the doorway, mere seconds away from bursting out of it and sprinting back to my beloved vessel, when the shopkeeper held out his carapaced hands holding a magnificent, stained crystal relief, which he pulled from behind his counter.

“What on this world is that?” I pondered aloud.

Desperate to leave, I scanned my Civ Card. They never accept Stem in provincial worlds such as this. I stepped out of the shop in haste, into the crowded bazaar with the relief in my hands. It was a glorious masterpiece depicting some event, and for a moment, I had forgotten the planet’s distractions and studied the crystal masterwork in my hands.

I held it up to see it better with the sun, when that odious pulse quaked from below the streets up through the soles of my feet to my hands. I flinched. The newest addition to my collection slipped out of my grasp and tumbled down onto the compacted market ground and shattered in a dazzling display of refracting shards.

The market mass ceased its rabble in a dumbfounded paralysis, then shrieked.

The bazaar erupted into a riot of carnage that consumed the streets. I only escaped through the chaos because of the sheer blind ineptitude that overcame the deranged mob.

When I reached my Home World after slipping through the port into my vessel, I learned that the artifact I purchased was in fact a religious sculpture of a sacred event. The vendor turned out to be an evangelist serving a belief in an insectoid queen spirit. And with that fatal purchase, a war began that engulfed the planet and its moons.

I dare lament that damnable artifact, the catalyst of planetary conflict, which eluded my grasp after such a favorable barter. What a splendid addition the acquisition would have made to my collection. For the worst tragedy in this universe is a shattered deal.

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