taking name suggestions for my new snail

sniles sneetly

Because of the complexity of their cells and their macroscopic size compared to the entire individual--which is only 50 meters across not counting the balloon cell, they are able to link their bodies together and split apart at will using long nerve-dense tendrils.

Jovian collective memory therefore goes back nearly 5 million years, thought by some Jovians to be the earliest time at which Jovians were sapient.

The Jovians developed agriculture 3 million years ago, and have begun to radically affect the evolution of several species. Only in the past few thousands of years, though, have they perfected their magnum opus--organisms which function as giant matter synthesizers.

They had first bred a related clade of balloon-shaped cloud dwellers to be able to link their brains to themselves, and then to use their fusors to secrete heavy elements en masse, so they would not have to generate their own and waste so much energy on doing so.

But now, they have been perfected into giant fabricators, able to assemble almost any structure a Jovian can imagine.

They thought themselves to be alone in the solar system--save for the Sun, the sole other life form known in the system.

That was, until the Galileo Entry Probe.

A meteor shot across the Jovian skies, as they were sometimes known to do. They were so rarely ever captured, being tiny needles in haystacks, but they carried heavy elements, so were valued.

The Jovians used their floating telephone network to transmit information about the meteor's trajectory. A task force of biodrone pilots assembled to rush for the meteor and attempt to capture it for study. They were shocked to find that slowed down much more rapidly than any meteor ever discovered.

When they got close, they figured out why. This was a life form, somehow, using a kind of semi-balloon to slow its descent.

Further study revealed it not to be a huge single cell as previously thought, but a machine of some kind, one assembled out of many crude parts. They found the radio transmitter, and, using the same frequency, broadcast a message to Saturn, the next best planet around which to search for life. When that failed, they transmitted the message to Uranus and Neptune.

They got no response, but the alien machine must have come from Saturn.

One of the biggest projects in recent history had been formed. It would take physicists, engineers, farmers, sociologists, and astronomers many years to realize. But one way or another, the Jovians were going to find their Saturnian sisters.

Escaping the second deepest gravitational well in the solar system wasn't going to be easy. The Jovians built bio-fusion powered pulse rockets and rose out into Low Jovian Orbit, where they built a vast space station--well, vast by our standards.

The team behind the Galileo orbiting spacecraft misinterpreted the pulses as lightning, and the station as an unstable minor moon on the way to breaking up.

They only discovered the Galileo spacecraft too late, while it was on an impact course for Jupiter. It burned up long before anyone could capture it.

In mid-2017, the Jovians arrived at Saturn. Their entry probe revealed nothing to them, their radio pings fell on silent ears.

But there was something there. A moon emitting more energy than it received from the Sun, which seemed to be intelligently changing its trajectory.

And that's exactly what the Cassini spacecraft team observed as well--for though its eyes were much smaller, its target was much, much larger, and much, much brighter.

Cassini was nearly at the end of its mission. But it still had enough fuel to prolong its life. Mission control panicked when they learned the alien craft was on an intercept course.

They got some very incredible views of the approaching craft... then some very out-of-focus views... and then they lost contact altogether.

The Jovians found that it was clearly the same technology as the one that was dropped into Jupiter, and was chocked full of heavy elements, including some unknown ones.

But they saw no evidence of life of any kind on Saturn. So where did the probe come from?

The Jovians turned their attention to the radio signals that were detected from the craft, and searched the solar system for similar radio-bright sources.

It turned out one of the dwarf planets was practically screaming in the radio.

But how could that be? The Jovians studied Earth with their instruments and determined that although it lacked hydrogen in its atmosphere, it was covered in water. Water meant hydrogen, which meant the possibility for life. And there was oxygen in the atmosphere, which did imply something was splitting apart the hydrogen from the oxygen.

And that is why, today, 2026, there is a giant, creepily organic nuclear rocket in orbit around the Earth.

I'm a huge proponent of public transit, rail in specific, and I'm very glad that the greater Seattle area is finally starting to see some solid light rail infrastructure sprouting up in the form of the 1 and 2 lines, but that in no way stops me from critiquing the decisions made in planning and implementation.

Light Rail, in it's colloquial form here in the US, is basically always a compromise solution. It's cheaper than subways, can make good use of existing right-of-way around freeways, and can function as a kind of low-capacity commuter rail in the subways while behaving more like a tram or streetcar in downtown areas. It is crucially, however, not a streetcar, nor is it a commuter rail. Streetcars make frequent stops and are optimized for dense areas with lots of traffic. Commuter rails are larger and stop lest frequently, optimized for bringing suburban residents into city centers. Commuter rail should, however, be independent of street traffic so it can travel at higher speeds. For this reason, most of the Link light rail system in seattle is actually not at-grade (street level), but on either elevated or sub-grade track. Downtown, the lightrail actually functions as a low-capacity low-frequency subway system in what used to be the bus tunnel (we don't have time, but yes it was stupid). Everywhere else, it's up on elevated tracks that largely follow the freeway system.

There are three stations, all immediately south of that Mount Baker elevated station, where the Link actually runs at-grade. These stations run through the historic low income immigrant neighborhoods of southeast seattle. Here, the trains are forced to stop at red lights, interact with crossing and left-turning traffic, and even cross through terrifyingly narrow pedestrian islands. They could have built elevated track here, as they did everywhere else, but they didn't. they didn't want to spend the money. I have personally watched light rail cars carrying hundreds of people have to wait two full minutes for cars turning left in front of them, delaying trains so like, 5 people could drive there. Once it reaches the end of this low income immigrant-dominant neighborhood, however, the Link returns to it's above-grade status, with Mount Baker being the first elevated stop. You want to know how this woman, who claims she was misdirected by her GPS, probably ended up here? I would bet anything she tried to make a turn at the intersection just before the stop and got confused. The intersection, for reference, looks like this:

I'm not saying it's an easy mistake to make, but given the number of people who drive through here every day, it's honestly not that surprising that someone, especially someone who is from out of town, or someone who is used to shared streetcar lanes, would eventually make this mistake. When you're dealing with a city of hundreds of thousands of people, it's only a matter of time before a mistake like this happens. but it is only possible for it to happen because of the decisions made in the planning process, and one of those decisions was "we can save money if we make everything worse in that part of town where all the foreign poors live", and so they built the thing at-grade, instead of keeping it elevated like everywhere else.