The drone-sculptor Liora drifted through the methane clouds of Jastun-6, her exosuit shielding her from the crushing atmosphere. She shaped colossal sky-statues for distant clients, yet no one ever saw her work except the automated cameras that broadcast them across the system. No human hand would ever touch them.<\/p>\n
Then, a mistake\u2014her tether snapped. Thrusters failed. She tumbled, helpless, toward the churning depths below.<\/p>\n
“Liora, respond!” her supervisor\u2019s voice crackled. No signal would reach her soon.<\/p>\n
She should have panicked. Instead, she watched one of her statues\u2014an abstract swirl of captured lightning\u2014glow above, seen only by her. For years, her hands had created without touch, without connection.<\/p>\n
As her oxygen dwindled, something new streaked through the poisonous sky. Another sculptor\u2019s drone, bolting toward her, risking its own destruction to catch her.<\/p>\n
The drone slammed into her, stabilizing her descent. A hand reached from the rescue pod. <\/p>\n
For the first time in years, she grasped it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lost in the clouds, she finally felt touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-scifi"],"_wp_attached_file":null,"_wp_attachment_metadata":null,"_thumbnail_id":"1224","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}