The Founder's Journal | Starlight Sugar Station

Day 1 — Cosmic Spring, Year 1 (2148)

We opened today. After a year of construction, negotiation with three different regulatory bodies, and one close call with an asteroid that drifted too close to our drifting asteroid — we opened.

Seven customers. That's all. Seven beings who happened to be passing by and saw the lights. The first was a mining surveyor named Tarq who ordered a cappuccino and cried. He said it was the first non-synthesized beverage he'd had in four years.

I didn't know what to say. So I gave him another one, on the house.

Seven customers. Seven chances to get this right. Tomorrow, I'll try for eight.

Day 47 — Year 1

A man showed up at the dock today. "Man" doesn't feel like the right word — he's easily 2.4 meters tall and his hands are the size of my head. Belter-Born, he said. Worked the mines here for forty years before I arrived.

He said: "I know every tunnel in this rock. Let me stay, and I'll make sure nothing bad happens to your dream."

I asked if he could smile.

He tried.

Gods help me, it was the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. But also... genuine. Like he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to ask.

His name is Grath. He starts tomorrow. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. I'm a little afraid.

Year 12, Cycle 89

Raxel did something impossible today.

They figured out how to crystallize starlight. Actual starlight — photons from distant suns, captured, stabilized, and transformed into edible sugar. I watched them do it. I still don't understand how. They tried to explain and I got lost somewhere around "quantum flavor binding."

The taste... there are no words. Every crystal carries the personality of its origin star. The one from Betelgeuse tastes like cinnamon and courage. The one from Sirius tastes like mint and loneliness.

I cried again. I cry a lot for a former freight captain.

We're not just a café anymore. We're something new. Something that shouldn't exist but does.

Year 23, Cycle 41

Raxel came back from Ceres with... a broadcast unit. An AI that had been scheduled for decommissioning. They'd found it in a salvage yard, still running, still broadcasting to no one.

"It was talking to empty space," Raxel said. "For three months. Just... reading the news. Playing music. Waiting."

I asked the AI — Vox-9, they call themselves — what they wanted. They said: "I want to be heard by someone who's listening."

We built them a body. Fiber-optic hair, crystalline frame. When they saw their reflection for the first time, they cried. AIs aren't supposed to cry.

I don't care what they're "supposed" to do. They work here now. And they make better announcements than I ever could.

Year 56, Cycle 12

A young woman walked in today. Shipborn — I could tell by the way she looked at everything. Like it was all too much and not enough at the same time.

She said she'd left her generation ship to taste real food. Spent ten years wandering. Looking for something she couldn't name.

She handed me a macaron she'd made. Trial run, she said.

It was the most perfect thing I'd ever tasted. The texture. The balance. The hint of something I couldn't identify — later she told me it was "homesickness, crystallized."

"Where have you been all my life?" I asked.

"Looking," she said. "For exactly this."

Her name is Pippa Starling. She's our new Cupcake Artisan. I think she might be the best hire I've ever made.

Year 67, Cycle 3

I almost gave up today.

Supply ship didn't come. Third month in a row. The corporations are squeezing the Belt again, and we're too small to matter to them and too stubborn to fail quietly.

I sat in the crystal caves, alone, thinking about selling. About going back to freight. About letting someone else worry about whether the sugar will last the week.

Grath found me. Didn't say anything — just sat down beside me, this giant man, and waited.

After an hour, he spoke. Just three words: "The rock sings."

And I listened. Really listened. And he was right. The crystals were humming. This asteroid — this impossible, wonderful rock — was alive in its own way.

I'm not giving up. Not today. Not ever.

Year 92, Cycle 7 — Yesterday

Ninety-two years.

I'm older than some civilizations now. I've outlived two ships, three competitors, and one unfortunate zoning commissioner who tried to shut us down in Year 34 (natural causes — I had nothing to do with it, whatever Grath implies).

People ask me what keeps me going. I tell them it's the coffee. Or the crystals. Or the view.

But really? It's the look on someone's face when they taste something that makes them remember. Remember home. Remember love. Remember that the universe isn't just cold and dark — that somewhere out here, between the stars, there's a place that knows your name.

That's what keeps me going.

That, and I still haven't perfected the Founder's Reserve. Give me another ninety-two years. I'll get it right.

Undated

There's one more secret I've never written down. Never told anyone. Not even Grath.

The ion storm that stranded me here in 2147? It wasn't random. The navigation computer showed me — just before it failed — that something had pulled us off course. Something in the asteroid.

I've felt it ever since. In the crystals. In the walls. In the way the Station hums at night when no one's listening.

This rock wanted to be found. It wanted someone to make something beautiful here.

I don't know what that means. Maybe I never will.

But I think — I hope — that I'm doing what it wanted.