Aero had waited eons since he put in his application, or so it seemed. Had it been thrown straight in the bin, were the Upper Council laughing at his ideas? He had been naively pleased with himself for thinking of an original project for his thesis. If his idea worked, few would be interested in an experiment in an outer sector hardly anyone had heard of, but the upside of that was that failure, even accidental destruction, would not bother many. Still, he must be positive, if his idea worked perfectly he could apply for bigger projects in one of the inner sectors. Aero did not want to be stuck forever like his parents, caretakers for this remote part. For generations his family had cherished their responsibility for the growing community, the only surviving community in this sector. Experiments had been carried out, there had been the demise of an early community, followed by the extinction of another, but new life always followed.

Aero was nervous in front of the great board.

‘I have read your application, but I want to hear you summarise it in plain language.’

‘Our humble little sector is due to be demolished because of numerous failures in its past history, but while I know my voice cannot stop its destruction, I think we should take advantage of the opportunity to conduct an experiment which could then be applied to more important sectors.

My plan would be to shuffle the planets around and expand the solar system at the same time. The attempts by the colony to escape from the solar system have become more frequent and if they ever succeeded it would cause chaos in other galaxies.’

‘Which is precisely why we have scheduled the solar system for urgent demolition. However, some members of the board find your ideas rather amusing, so we will retire for a few eons to consider our decision.’