Estelle
Estelle Sparks was the kind of person who lived her life half a step out of sync with the rest of the world—and was perfectly happy that way. Once again, she had lost another hair tie. She knew it had been on her wrist five minutes ago. She always kept at least one there, like a tiny insurance policy against inevitable chaos, but now it was gone. Again. Probably swallowed by the same mysterious desk void that ate pens, sticky notes, and once an entire USB drive labeled “IMPORTANT. DO NOT LOSE.”
“Great,” she muttered, weaving a broken stylus through her hair instead. It barely held, loose strands already escaping like they had somewhere better to be. Her desk was a contradiction. To anyone else, it looked like a disaster. Ramen cups stacked three high, reference books splayed open, loose sketches curling at the corners. However, Estelle knew exactly where everything was. Or mostly exactly. Enough to function.
Above it all, covering nearly an entire wall, hung her real workspace: A massive map. Or rather, maps. Plural. Layered. Intersecting. Different climates stitched together in messy harmony. Forest zones bleeding into desert plains. Glacial ridges annotated with bright neon sticky notes:
“Check wind behavior.”
“Add migration routes?”
“TOO EMPTY HERE.”
A cluster of reference images framed one corner: Lush moss-covered cliffs. Fractal ice formations. Coral-like desert structures. A storm that looked almost alive.
Estelle leaned back in her chair, squinting at the largest section, the newest planet design. Planetary Region 7B: Verdant Collapse Candidate. She’d named it ironically, because it wasn’t collapsing. Not yet anyway. She spun slowly, mug in hand, slurping lukewarm coffee that had long since passed the point of “good idea.”
“Okay,” she said to no one, tapping her stylus against her lips. “You’re supposed to feel… abandoned. Not dead. There’s a difference.” Her monitor glowed to life as she flicked her pen. The world-builder interface unfolded. A clean grid overlay across a lush green landscape. Forest canopy density sliders. Atmospheric variance controls. Water table simulation. Familiar. Comfortable. Safe. Estelle adjusted a variable.
Humidity: +12%
Immediately, the simulation responded. Vines thickened. Fog rolled in low, swallowing the ground in pale gray layers. She smiled, just a little.
“There it is.” Another tweak.
Fauna Distribution → Increase (Mid-tier herbivores)
Shapes flickered into existence beneath the canopy—deer-like creatures with extended limb joints, something avian that didn’t quite obey gravity correctly. She paused. Tilted her head.
“Mm… no. Too normal.” A few more strokes—she elongated a creature’s back, gave it asymmetrical antlers, and added a second set of eyes more out of curiosity than intention. The system rendered it without complaint. Estelle leaned closer, studying it.
“For something that doesn’t exist,” she murmured, “you look pretty convincing.” She clicked Save. The creature froze in place for a frame longer than it should have. A rendering hiccup. She frowned.
“…okay.” Then it corrected itself. Smooth. Seamless. Gone. Estelle shrugged it off, already moving on. On the far corner of her desk, her phone buzzed violently against a stack of notebooks. She ignored it. Another buzz. And another. With a sigh, she reached over blindly, nearly knocking over a half-empty ramen cup in the process.
“What?” she said, not even checking the caller ID. A familiar voice exploded through the speaker.
“Oh, good, you’re still alive.”
“That depends. Is this about the deadline?”
“It’s always about the deadline. You’ve got fifteen maps due, wait, no, sorry, fourteen, because you finished one at three in the morning like an unhinged gremlin.”
Estelle grinned slightly. “Correction. A productive gremlin.”
“You’ve been living off instant noodles and caffeine for a month.”
“So has the entire studio.”
“Yes, but most of us blink occasionally.”
Estelle swiveled in her chair again, gaze drifting back to the wall. To the maps. To the places she had built. Each one a world with rules she had decided. Storms that existed because she thought they were cool. Creatures that lived or died based on a slider. Ecosystems that didn’t need to make sense, only feel right. She tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear.
“I just need to tweak one more region,” she said. “It’s missing something.”
“It’s always missing something.”
“That’s because it’s not real yet.”
There was a pause on the other end. “…you ever hear yourself when you say things like that?”
Estelle smirked faintly. “Constantly.” She sighed as the silence on the other end continued. “It’ll be done by tomorrow. Seriously. I’m just tweaking the final details,
so it feels like a place that the players want to explore. That’s the goal, right?”
A grunt from the receiver. “Ughhh. I swear, girl, after this, I am taking you to the karaoke bar for some real-life interactions. You need to get away from the computers!” Estelle laughed and hung up the phone to continue her work.
