This premise has probably hit the maximum level of absurdity at this point, so I'll try to get back to more grounded stuff for a while 🤣 Will try to continue the Last Resort series for a bit, and catch up on some of the great ideas that people have suggested.

Also the scale is kindof wonky in this - the portal should be much smaller to fit the premise, but just wanted it to be visually obvious 😅

Lance perched sullenly on her shoulder as she carried him through the so-called Interstellar Colonisation Hub. It was nothing more than a warehouse. So this was where his NASA career was doomed to end, in logistics.

Workers were busy filling cylindrical capsules with everything an off-world settlement might need: seeds and soil samples; freeze-dried fungi and insects; pharmaceuticals; ration packs; miniaturised oxygen cylinders; inflatable airtight domes; even doll-sized items of clothing.

The capsules were sealed and fed into a pneumatic system that whisked them away towards the portal device at the far end of the warehouse. Only a few inches wide, they were sized precisely to slip through the narrow threshold, fired off towards planets unknown. Lance stared forlornly at shimmering vistas he would never explore. So near he could almost smell the alien air. And yet so out of reach.

“Welcome to our planet production line!” Naomi smiled. “We’re still waiting on a micronaut small enough to make the first trip, but we’re laying the groundwork now. We estimate it’ll take thousands of these just to establish a functioning biosphere. And just when you think you’ve accounted for everything, you miss some tiny pollinator and the whole food chain collapses.”

She sighed. “Animals are another problem. It’s not like we can just empty out Earth’s zoos. Someone suggested we might need to modify the initial colonists to jump-start a full ecosystem. We’d only need the ship a DNA respository, instead of a whole ark. But have you ever heard anything so ghastly? Turning people into animals and compelling them to breed. As if we’d ever find volunteers for such a thing!”

“Uh huh, sounds great,” Lance said absently.

He wasn’t really listening. His attention was on the capsule in her hand. It would be tight, but he could fit. He was sure of it.

A plan was forming. It was a bad plan. But then no man ever walked on the Moon by playing it safe.

“Mind if I have a look around myself?” he asked.

She hesitated, as if worried he might get stepped on. “Okay,” she said, setting him down. “Just don’t go far.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

Just a few billion light years, he thought, ducking out of sight and scurrying towards an empty canister.