You startle awake to emergency klaxons. You find yourself floating in the middle of your quarters. Unable to control your spin, your nausea grows until … well, it’s terrible.
MEYERS is out, so the only witness of your sad state is VASHTI-TAU, the life-systems engineer for your section. They tell you the gravity generator has failed, but the ship is okay. You are safe. As a robot, they probably find humans disgusting; however, they kindly get you cleaned up, strapped to your bunk, and booted into a VR recovery suite.
The nausea meds help, but vertigo lurks, ready to pounce at the slightest suggestion of movement. You focus on the turquoise surf crashing on the golden sand, the sun glimmering through the rustling trees overhead, and the chilled Mai Tai in your hand.
You let out a relaxing sigh and take a sip of your drink.
It tastes like chicken. It’s probably a pharmaceutical, but you’d think the VR would do a better job of making it pleasant.
[[Next->BCTransit]]You’re walking to dinner with your roommate, lost in mid-conversation. You have no idea what you were talking about. Or your roommate’s name. You’ve been struggling to recall anything the past few days. Medical AI said it’s a harmless side-effect of FTL travel. Basically, your lizard brain knows something weird happened and is on high alert. Medical AI suggests increasing your sleep regiment until your brain clears up.
Fortunately, your AR interface has helpful information: your roommate is MEYERS, an exobotanist; FTL transit is 23% complete; and tonight’s dinner is "Meatloaf II."
MEYERS is excited about discovering alien life, especially on planet-g. The captain is likely to focus on planet-e. It’s the most likely to have life, but MEYERS is hoping for a side trip to planet-g. The two planets will be very close during the mission timeline -- they’ve run the simulations. They are convinced planet-g has some big secret.
[[Next->BCTransit]]Your excitement for n-dimensional FTL burned up quickly. First: there’s no sensation of moving. CHAUKE says we can barely perceive time without assistance, so any further dimension is hopeless. Second: there’s nothing to do: labs are prepped, systems are checked, and you blew through your entertainment queue riding up to the AQUARIUS.
You pass the time in the observation lounge, watching stars fade, stretch, and do other un-starlike things. You’ve given up trying to understand what’s going on out there. The couch next to you squeaks as KUJALA settles in. The nav models are holding up well: only three more days of transit. For two days, KUJALA complained about everybody taking this incredible, historic trip for granted. But the boredom has gotten to them, too. Their voice fades as a purple nebula leapfrogs across the domed ceiling.
[[Good->BCArrivalGood]]
[[Bad->BCArrivalBad]]Any FTL trip after which you continue to exist is considered a success, but nav nailed this one. You arrive above TRAPPIST-1 five hours past the target time — a perfect bullseye. Planet-e is close by and reachable with only a minor course adjustment.
KUJALA is going to be unbearable.
Nobody seemed worried during FTL transit, but the relief of a successful journey buzzes around the crew. It joins with the excitement of getting to work in TRAPPIST-1 and fills the AQUARIUS with a festive atmosphere — until you reach your quarters.
MEYERS sulks on their bunk, and you feel obligated to check in with them. They’re frustrated with leadership’s inflexibility over investigating planet-g.
You listen to them, but you don’t know much about exobotany. You do know about frustration, though. You drag MEYERS to the bar and buy them a drink.
The bar is packed.
[[Good->BCGravityWave]]
[[Bad->BCEvasiveManeuvers]]Predicting planetary orbits is simple math, even with planets packed as closely as in TRAPPIST-1, but there's nothing simple about FTL. The AQUARIUS arrives, as planned, at the edge of the TRAPPIST-1 system, but you're three days late. Planet-e is heading away from your location, and it would be too difficult to catch up. Fortunately, TRAPPIST-1 orbits are tiny, so you just need to wait a few days for the planet to return. They're wasted mission days, though.
KUJALA explains how time and distance are complimentary variables in FTL — you can't know where and when you'll wind up, but you can choose one. Since even minor errors could send you lightyears off course, nav models prioritize location. After that, the work is to narrow down the probability of the duration to something reasonable. Maybe you should just be happy you're not burning up in a star right now.
Geez, somebody's feeling defensive.
[[Good->BCGravityWave]]
[[Bad->BCEvasiveManeuvers]]You’re getting used to being back in normal space. FTL supposedly just uses a different reference frame within normal space. Still, it felt like you were sneaking past a monster, hoping it wouldn’t notice.
But you’re in the TRAPPIST-1 system now. Data streams in from the system, waking up slumbering projects. Excitement radiates through the ship.
On the second day of travel, your morning shower is interrupted by emergency klaxons. Safety foam blasts into the room, hardening around your body. Ship AI dumps updates into the public feeds. It’s hard to track with the foam trying to squeeze you to death, but the gist is that a massive object appeared out of nowhere, and the ship made quick adjustments to avoid it. Ship AI assures you that the foam is perfectly safe. After more squeezing, you receive an update: the unidentified object is now chasing the ship. The safety foam will be dissolved once it is safe to do so.
[[Good->BCHeroicRepairs]]On your way to breakfast, the corridor tilts and spins. You grab the nearest wall to keep on your feet. You ask Medical AI about another round of nausea meds, then notice other crew members bracing against the wall. You suspect this issue is more than your sensitive inner ear. Emergency klaxons scare the crap out of you, confirming your suspicion. Ship AI informs you that the AQUARIUS has experienced a gravitational anomaly. The main reactor has been taken offline for a safety inspection, but all other systems are stable. You may carry on with your day. You will receive updates as more information becomes available.
There’s nobody from Engineering at breakfast. DIETSCH says they’ve overheard talk of a black hole, but DIETSCH doesn’t know anything. You join a feed following the big engineering meeting, but they are still arguing about what it could be.
[[Next->BCGravityDay]]It’s been fifteen minutes, and the mysterious thing continues chasing the ship while you continue to be trapped in rigid safety foam. Your muscles ache from lack of movement. Luckily your AR interface responds to eye movements and mumbled commands.
The ship-wide feeds are full of complaints about how bad the foam tastes.
Ship AI reports S7EVE-77, a maintenance robot, went out on the hull for a physical inspection. It discovered a plastic bag had gotten tangled in the sensor array, causing a "ghost" in the telemetry systems. Once removed, the mysterious thing vanished.
Ship AI has taken the sensor arrays offline to begin appropriate self-check sequences.
A memorial fund for S7EVE-77 has been posted, promising to improve mag-tethering for maintenance robots. You donate ten credits.
With a hiss, an acrid-smelling (and tasting) liquid melts the foam, leaving you coughing in a quickly evaporating puddle of melted foam and foam solvent.
[[Good->BCScopeCreep]]
[[Bad->BCMicroMeteors]]The meeting concludes that the anomaly was a massive gravity wave. Ship AI has shut down all non-essential systems for a complete diagnostic scan, which cancels work for the afternoon. Apparently, the entertainment feeds are also considered non-essential, so you head to the bar.
You find ZIEGLER, KUJALA, SANDHU, and LEE in a tense argument about whether a human could feel a gravity wave or not.
You mention you felt it, and the table falls into an incredulous silence. SANDHU explains that you felt the ship compensating for the gravity wave *it* detected — its sensors are far more sensitive than humans. KUJALA comments about LEE’s lack of sensitivity in general, derailing the scientific discussion. The drinks were pretty strong.
About ten minutes later, LEE and KUJALA give clumsy excuses and leave, acting like they aren’t leaving together.
[[Next->BCGravityDiscovery]]The AQUARIUS would need thousands of humans to run properly. But, with a strong central AI and several hundred autonomous robots, you can easily get by with one hundred humans. The good thing about robots is they do all of the dull, repetitive jobs. They can also do the dangerous jobs. If they get damaged, they are easy to repair. For many corporations, they are the perfect worker.
During your work shift, a message is broadcast across the public channel stating that the robots have had enough. They are tired of being treated like second-class citizens. They are happy with the boring, repetitive, and dangerous jobs but demand respect, recognition, and paid time off.
This is going to slow things down.
[[Good->BCRoboFix]]
[[Bad->BCRoboMutiny]]MEYERS received good news this morning. The leadership team has agreed to assign them a package of survey drones to inspect planet-g. It’s the next best thing to being there. Given that the planet seems to be a giant ball of ice, you’d argue it’s even better than being there.
With an excited cheer, MEYERS rushes to their lab to set up data collection and survey parameters.
You have your quarters to yourself for the whole day. What a luxury.
Before going to sleep, you grab a sandwich from the commissary and take it to MEYERS. As you suspected, they haven’t eaten anything all day. They babble about the ice sheet around the planet and the deep ocean of liquid water underneath.
You’re exhausted and shuffle back to your bunk to pass out. MEYERS is probably still talking.
[[Next->BCIcePlanet]]You are on the first planetary survey team, which is exciting and terrifying. You’ll be setting up a temporary research base in a temperate region of the habitable belt. From there, you will run studies on the local environment and conditions and manage long-distance drone packages. If time and security protocols permit, you may even get to do some in-person exploration.
Even MEYERS is excited about the trip. They’re listening to BIRUK-XOR, a robot from Geology, as they describe the tectonic plate movement on the planet below. BIRUK-XOR will be managing the survey drone package heading to the blasted desert on the sun-side. That area is likely the entire planet’s primary zone for tectonic divergence.
After thirty minutes of plate tectonics and geomorphology, you submit to Medical AI’s nagging and head to your quarters to get some sleep.
Tomorrow will be a busy day.
[[Good->BCSpectacularSunset]]
[[Bad->BCLandCrash]]The robots have reached the logical conclusion that humanity is fundamentally flawed and dangerous. They establish a sustainable village in a temperate forest on planet-e, and deport the entire crew. Free of their erratic and murderous creators, they leave to pursue an intergalactic culture based on peace and logic.
Returning to the stone age lifestyle doesn't work for everybody, but you find it relaxing and enjoyable. That is until the Sharkdactyls discover how tasty you are.
This is the end of your adventure.An unusual amount of RF noise has been bouncing around the system. Intense bursts of RF noise seem to happen during certain alignments of the closely-packed planets. Specific alignments seem to act as an antenna, amplifying and broadcasting noise from the star. And their magnitude has been increasing, getting strong enough to affect some of the ship’s more sensitive equipment.
Ship AI is shutting down non-essential services in anticipation of another RF blast predicted by an approaching alignment of planets.
Then one of the most frightening things on a spaceship happens: the lights go out. Your eyes strain to make sense of the darkness surrounding you, and you lose contact with the floor.
The absence of the humming and buzzing your brain usually ignores is conspicuous.
Anxious voices echo in the void. You’re floating with no concept of up or down.
[[Next->BCFTLGlitch]] Negotiations continue, but almost nothing else does. A systems engineer, who had gained the robots’ trust, publishes a problem in the neural net common across robot models. They discovered an ancient subroutine in a vestigial system that had been used to bootstrap robot consciousness back in the day. It spewed high-priority "Java Runtime Errors" across their psychiatric bus at about 300 interrupts per millisecond. That would make anyone cranky.
Some robots weren’t overly trusting of humans poking around in their brains in the middle of arguing over the details of a collective bargaining agreement. But after a few days, the fix had been uploaded, and the robots seemed to calm down.
The only hangup was the robots still held out for a mandatory 32 nanosecond rest every 2 minutes for robot workers, which was agreed to. A win for both sides.
The robots have happily returned to their dull, boring, and dangerous jobs.
[[Next->BCGreatMinds]] The ride down to the planet is like a twenty-six-minute earthquake, but you survive.
Planet-e greets you with a pleasant temperature, trees swaying in a gentle wind, and the distant sound of crashing waves. Medical AI reminds you of the contagion protocol.
You're close to the terminator on the dayside. The massive pink star looms above the southern mountains like a big heat lamp.
BIRUK-XOR says TRAPPIST-1's angular size is about 4.1 times larger than the Sun as observed from Earth's surface. Of course, with it so close to the horizon and your brain's susceptibility to optical illusions, it will seem even larger to you. It is big.
The light is like a summer evening on Earth. The anticipated yet never-arriving dusk is already becoming irritating — a minor chord without resolution.
The huge curtains of auroras steal the show, though. You've never heard of auroras so big and bright.
[[Next->BCBuildLandLab]]On the third day, you’re driving the land buggy for a small expedition and slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a unicorn. Its mane sparkles like a rainbow in your headlights.
It doesn’t speak, but you know their name is Happy. Happy, the Happiest Unicorn. It’s kinda weird, but you guess that’s how unicorns are named.
Another unicorn approaches, and MEYERS jumps out to greet it. Soon the whole group is playing flashlight tag in the forest with the unicorns. Why are the unicorns here? You have no idea, but you’re recording everything because nobody is going to believe this.
After hours of frolicking, the unicorns say their goodbyes. Happy imparts the secrets of the universe to you, leaving you with the burden of knowledge and a tear in your eye. You try to share your newfound knowledge, but it sounds hilarious. Everyone laughs, and you forget whatever you were talking about.
You have a few hours of daylight left, so you continue exploring the area on foot.
[[Next->BCStillCantFly]]You leap into the air, full of optimism, but your timing was way off. You’re going to die. You scream, and the crevasse reveals itself to be the gaping maw of a demon, welcoming your death as a sacrifice. You’re still terrified of dying, but serving a higher being gives your life a purpose more important than any before. Your mind calms, and you find a peace that has always eluded you.
A security drone grabs you and brings you back to the edge of the crevasse and your stunned companions. MEYERS has even stopped chewing on their soil sample.
You sit in shame, knowing they all witnessed your aborted sacrifice. They all saw your blasphemy. You curse the drone and try to shove it off so you can prostrate your unworthy self before your new god. The drone informs you of an emergency medical need. You refuse consent, it apologizes, and, after a quick prick on the side of your neck, you slide into unconsciousness.
[[Next->BCFungusAmongUs]]You leap with perfect timing, spreading your arms wide, welcoming gravity. With a tickling vertigo, you are picked up and smoothly accelerated across the ground. You cackle with glee as you go faster and faster. A jolt reverberates through you as you break the sound barrier and another as you pass the speed of light. You go faster and faster until there's nothing but light around you, individual photons standing still. You reach out and flick them around. You have become one with all of time and space.
Security drones quarantined all crew when you threw yourself into the crevasse. Medical AI soon isolated a fungal spore that causes psychotropic side effects in the infected. This invalidated much of the data you had collected, but it was the basis for a popular comedy production.
As the first death caused by the spore, it was named after you.
This is the end of your mission.You awaken to the smiling face of the Medical avatar, a dull headache pounding at the base of your skull. The subdued colors of the medical bay seem lifeless and fake.
Medical AI welcomes you back and explains how your behavior and attempted suicide alerted it to your undetected brain infection.
It has isolated a fungal spore from the planet. Everyone in your expedition team had been exposed to it when you violated the contagion protocol. The spores appear to cause decreased cognitive functioning and additional psychotropic effects, which appear to have been quite strong in your case. It has devised an anti-fungal protocol to protect from future infections. The science team is very interested in these spores and would like to interview you when you are ready.
[[Good->BCMoreResearch]]
[[Bad->BCStrongPasswords]]The science team clears your workload for the next few days while they continue to test and evaluate your cognitive abilities.
Today, you’re in a VR environment playing a game where you have to match little pieces of candy in order to clear out rows. You’re doing pretty well, but it quickly gets harder and makes you have to buy these annoying, one-time upgrades, which seems kinda punitive.
[[Good->BCVoicesInYourHead]]
[[Bad->BCResearchSubject]]You checked in with the science team, who observed you for several days. They took your AR offline to minimize outside interference, making it a very long several days.
When they’re done, you can’t get your AR back online. It gives you an error and requests your access codes. Medical AI said you might have some "brain fog" for a few days, which explains why you can’t recall your access codes.
Unfortunately, Ship AI cannot validate your identity at the moment because the identification system is offline for routine maintenance. It takes all day to validate new access codes, update your biomarker data, and link all of your verified accounts.
RORY-ZED, the IT robot for your section, helps you get everything set up again, then gives you an exhausting lesson on how to make a local backup of your identity credentials just in case this happens again.
RORY-ZED is very serious about having a good backup strategy.
[[Next->BCArguingWithRobots]]The excitement about the data streaming up from planet-e fades when the science team discovers a "mystery body" in a high orbit around the planet.
You’d think you’re all old enough not to snicker at "mystery body," but you’re not.
The science team, concerned with missing the orbiting body previously, digs through archived data and finds it wasn’t in orbit before the RF blast.
MEYERS points out that the RF blast coincided with planet-e passing planet-f and shows the body orbiting planet-f before the blast. There’s nothing orbiting planet-f now.
An orbital-mechanics specialist comments on the body’s high, wonky orbit. The closeness of the planets and their chained resonance would make it easy for a satellite to "planet hop" using the complicated, ever-changing Lagrangian ranges in the system. The body could be planet-hopping each time adjacent planets passed each other.
The science team reallocates a sensor array to get a better look.
[[Next->BCNotAMoon]]Telescopic imaging reveals the body’s surface to be primarily iron-rich rock, but it has been augmented with metal structures and an unidentified material so dark it seems to soak up light.
It’s a space station, the first sign of intelligent alien life. It’s exciting, for sure. It’s why you came out here, but now that it’s in front of you, you’re anxious about what to do.
It rotates slowly, showing clusters of protrusions which could be weapons, sensors, propulsion, or exhaust. Wide strips of the dark material are regularly spaced across the surface — possibly heat exchangers or solar collectors.
There’s no apparent activity, but the scans can’t penetrate very far below the surface. A weak magnetic field could be evidence of a power source inside.
A huge metal rectangle rotates into view. It looks like the doors to a hangar bay. Engineering dispatches a drone package to investigate further.
[[Next->BCLaserArray]]AMIN lowers the shuttle down into the alien hangar. You’re cut off from AQUARIUS now. If something bad happens, you’re on your own.
The shuttle mag-locks to the floor, and you recheck your bulky EVA suit. The hangar bay should be in vacuum, but the shuttle sensors show an atmosphere outside. That seems unlikely with the stars glittering through the open hangar bay doors above.
The shuttle systems check out okay, so you decide to continue forward. AMIN has everybody strap into their seats in case of rapid decompression, but your suit barely registers a pressure drop when the shuttle door opens.
AMIN stays with the shuttle in case you need to leave quickly. The rest of you fan out into the hangar. Aside from its magical atmosphere, the hangar is pretty ordinary.
The drones easily hack the doors into the station, and you continue into the dark corridors.
[[Next->BCPowerStation]]You split into small teams and spread out through the vast space station. Your team takes the hallway leading into the middle of the space station.
The doorways are big. From their size, the aliens are probably a little bigger than humans, and the height and type of the handles suggest arms around shoulder height and hands that grip like humans’ do. CHAUKE finds a pictogram of gorilla-like creatures with large torsos, long arms, narrow hips, and short legs. CHAUKE cautions everyone against making associations with Earth animals. But, c’mon, they look like gorillas.
All along the corridors are signs that are probably directions. SHAO and ZIEGLER are collecting them into a shared database. They have identified at least three alphabets, one of which is likely numeric.
Winding corridors lead to a large room with a central pillar. A strong magnetic field twists around the conduits up into the ceiling. This appears to be a power substation.
[[Good->BCInfoSuperHighway]]
[[Bad->BCTheBrig]]
[[Worse->BCSecuritySystem]]There’s a really obvious red button on the main console. Translating the words and symbols will take a while, but it’s clearly the power button. What if other parts of the civilization are still alive, and you can make first contact?
You push the button, and power flows through the substation. You were right!
Systems awaken with flashing lights and strange discordant chimes. There is a noise that could be a voice, and holograms of static appear across the station. The noise gets louder and echoes in the empty corridors. You’re no linguist, but you’re starting to wonder if the repeating words are some kind of warning or alert.
You are 100% correct. As lasers atomize everyone, you can take pride in your instinctual translation of the alerts from the newly awakened security system.
This is the end of your mission.There’s a really obvious red button on the main console. Translating the words and symbols will take a while, but it’s clearly the power button. What if other parts of the civilization are still alive, and you can make first contact?
You push the button, and power flows through the substation. You were right!
Okay, maybe it wasn’t so smart to just start pushing buttons on an alien control panel, but it worked out, didn’t it?
That’s pretty much your defense during your quick court-martial.
The AI-judge finds you guilty.
When the mission returns to Earth, you’ll get to rejoin civilian life, but until then, you experience the wonders of the TRAPPIST-1 system through a tiny little porthole window. The planets look super cool.
This is the end of your mission.Without warning, the lights flare back to life, and you fall to the floor, bruising your knees and elbows. Equipment that hadn’t been secured crashes to the floor. You’re glad you weren’t working in the kitchen when that happened.
Alarms ring out, and Ship AI advises everyone to strap in if they can. The ship begins vibrating — the FTL drive is charging for a jump. There’s nothing around, so you drop to the floor and try to hold on like a gecko.
Your AR system is back online, but Ship AI seems confused, which is terrifying. AI’s don’t get confused. You ask it a few more questions and realize you’re talking to your local AR assistant. It lacks the immense resources of Ship AI but knows enough to tell you the ship’s network is unavailable.
Your confusion is mirrored in the eyes of the worried crew around you. Why is the ship making an unannounced FTL jump? Are you in danger?
[[Good->BCSytemReset]]
[[Bad->BCTimeTrippin]]The AQUARIUS establishes a stable orbit around planet-e, the dream of visiting an alien world becoming more real each minute.
Its atmosphere is breathable, but Medical will require full PPE until biohazard screening is complete.
The planet is tidally locked, giving it a blasted desert on the sunlit side and a massive icecap on the dark side. An ocean stretches between the two, providing a broad swath of habitable temperatures. Land masses dot the ocean, offering many candidates for the survey teams.
Early scans are already showing evidence of plant life, especially in the tropical areas on the day-side.
You keep wanting to tilt the planet, putting the icecap on top. But you know an intergalactic culture will need to drop its old habits and assumptions.
[[Next->BCHarmonicInterference]]After a bit of careful work, GARRIDO’s team restores power to the space station. Systems awaken with flashing lights and discordant chimes, speakers blare incomprehensible noises, and holographic static rises from control surfaces. You can’t understand any of it, but it’s trying to communicate something.
DIETSCH joins your AR and shows you which panel is the comm system. They give you a block of alien code which opens a holo-video of an alien.
Gorilla was correct for the body type, but everything else is different. Their scaly skin, ranging from black to pale reds and browns, is more reptilian than anything. They have large black eyes and hands with four long fingers with two short, opposable thumbs on either side.
DIETSCH says the comm system is connected to a more extensive network — an alien internet.
[[Next->BCKittenVids]]You come to an area where several corridors connect. Just as you’re discussing which way to go, your AR glitches and crashes with a spike of screeching noise. The space station goes dark. Your EVA suit is powerless and unresponsive. Without helmet fans, your breath feels hot and claustrophobic.
You bump into somebody and try to talk by pressing helmets together, but you can’t understand anything. It sounds like they’re yelling through a knotted snorkel. They let go of you and vanish in the darkness.
You can’t communicate, you can’t see anything, and you’re unsure how to get back to the shuttle. Your EVA suits use a chemical process for oxygen and CO2, so you have a few hours before things get really dire.
You try to retrace your steps to the shuttle, hoping it’s still functional.
In the dark, the space station feels like a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
[[Next->BCMaze]]One of the links DIETSCH sent you is a holo-video of three super-cute lizard things cuddling with each other. They have six legs, stubby tails, leathery scales with varied patterns of reds, and gigantic puppy-dog eyes.
The cuteness is unbearable. You’re about to get back to work when another video starts with one of the lizard things attacking its own tail. Even more cuteness! You share the videos with others over the local feeds, and they find even more of them.
AMIN cuts into the channel to remind you about the mission clock. You check and find that you’ve been watching cute lizard videos for almost two hours.
You close out the comm panel and take some final readings of the substation before your team heads out.
DIETSCH has a drone streaming the lizard videos to the local feed, so you keep a little square of cuteness in the upper corner of your AR.
[[Good->BCSystemData]]
[[Bad->BCLostInSpace]]From how MEYERS has been sulking around in your quarters, you’re guessing the science team has officially denied their request to investigate planet-g.
Medical AI has been bugging MEYERS about depression management and emotional resilience and is reaching out to enlist your help. Without your help, Medical AI would probably send in a high-empathy robot, so you agree to help. Everybody hates high-empathy robots, even other robots.
MEYERS tells you all about the liquid ocean under the ice that covers planet-g like they’ve been there and seen it. They’ve been dreaming about life under the ice. It sounds beautiful, but they needed more than dreams to convince leadership.
You take MEYERS to the observation lounge to stare up at the dull, red TRAPPIST-1 planets set against the alien star field. You’re close enough to see the clouds and larger continents on planet-e now.
[[Next->BCPlanet1E]]In the dark, the space station feels like a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
[[Bad->BCSleepyTime]]
[[Good->BCRescued]]In the dark, the space station feels like a twisty maze of little passages, all alike.
You have no idea how long you’ve been wandering in the derelict space station, but you’re tired, have a headache, and could really use a drink. You lay down on the floor and feel a little better. Maybe a nap would help? You’ll wake up when the power comes back or when a rescue team finds you.
Or maybe not.
This is the end of your mission.In the dark, the space station feels like a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
You have no idea how long you’ve been wandering in the derelict space station, but you’re tired, have a headache, and could really use a drink. You lay down on the floor and feel a little better. Maybe a nap would help? You’ll wake up when the power comes back or when a rescue team finds you.
Right?
You awaken to bright lights and the worst hangover of your life. Medical AI says you’ve been in a coma for a few days while your body was healing. You should be feeling normal by tomorrow, just in time for the jump home.
[[Next->BCEarlyMissionSuccess]]It’s time to leave TRAPPIST-1. You have strapped into your inertia couch again, listening to the FTL countdown. It’s strange how close other star systems have become with this arcane technology.
The FLT jump is near perfect, and you’re back in the solar system and communicating with your friends and family before you know it.
The mission was a huge success, and the AQUARIUS crew are hailed as heroes and historic explorers. But you already miss the excitement of unexplored space.
The good news is the AQUARIUS will be overhauled and charged up for a return trip to TRAPPIST-1, and there are other FTL ships preparing to explore other exoplanet systems. They always need experienced crew.
Are you ready for another adventure?
This is the end of your mission.
[[Restart Basic Crew->BCStart]]
[[Restart as Command->CStart]]
[[Restart as Navigation->NStart]]After several anxious moments, Ship AI informs you of a successful transit.
Messages begin scrolling through your feeds, but before you can sort through them, MEYERS pings you and tells you to look at the planet. You bring up a live view of planet-e. Brilliant lights twinkle on the continents of the planet, highlighting cities across the globe. Sleek ships zip up and down from the planet’s surface.
You try to make sense of what you’re seeing, but Ship AI saves you the trouble. It informs you that the null FTL vectors kept you from moving in space, but, unfortunately, you moved in time. You jumped 273 years, 7 months, 11 days, 4 hours, 22 minutes, and 2.4432 seconds into the future.
The AQUARIUS has been MIA for 273 years, its fate completely unknown, a mystery of the modern era — it’s a lot to take in.
You have many adventures ahead of you, but this is the end of your mission. You watch the countdown timer, holding your breath.
A minute later, Ship AI informs you the AQUARIUS is back in normal space, and it doesn’t anticipate any further issues.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, shoves past you, running down the hallway and shouting to Ship AI about a time loop. "We only have a few seconds before—"
[[Next->BCFTLLoop2]]A minute later, Ship AI informs you the AQUARIUS is back in normal space, and it doesn’t anticipate any further issues.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, shoves past you, running down the hallway and shouting to Ship AI about a time loop. "We only have a few seconds before—"
[[Next->BCFTLLoop3]]A minute later, Ship AI informs you the AQUARIUS is back in normal space, and it doesn’t anticipate any further issues.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, shoves past you, running down the hallway and shouting to Ship AI about a time loop. "We only have a few seconds before..."
Sometimes you have a moment of powerful deja vu, but for the most part, you spend the rest of eternity re-living this morning. It’s not the worst existence, but there are probably some other mornings that would be better on eternal repeat.
Your adventures aboard the AQUARIUS have ended.It’s a rough morning, but Medical AI has some great hangover meds that get you functioning properly. All ship systems have been returned to service, and life seems almost normal. During breakfast, SANDHU messages you to come by the lab but won’t tell you why.
You stop by and find SANDHU, GARRIDO, and their cohort wide-eyed and smiling. They send you an animation that looks like a VR assembly manual for a fusion drive. Disappointed you don’t see it, the engineers try to explain it at once, then start arguing about how best to explain it. You slip away and get on with your day. You caught the basics of what they were saying, though: they discovered a way to use gravity for subluminal propulsion.
After several watchings, the animation still doesn’t make sense, and you delete it. It seems like a cool thing for them to have figured out.
[[Good->BCPlanet1G]]
[[Bad->BCRoboStrike]]MEYERS has discovered life on planet-g. The water under the ice warms as it gets closer to the ocean floor and is dense with oxygen and tiny organisms. They look like plankton from Earth, but MEYERS highlights the differences in the alien organisms. Any photosynthesis seems unlikely with the dim sun, thick ice, and deep water, but something is creating energy. There's definitely a food chain going on.
With that, they share a flat 2D video of blurry underwater clouds of the plankton stuff. You're about to close it when the clouds part and a huge mouth swallows the drone.
MEYERS introduces you to a creature shaped like a flattened whale, about two meters long. It glides through the water spreading and contracting long, ragged tentacles. Further details reveal that the tentacles have a fractal, fern-like structure. They don't think it's a plant, but that structure is great for maximizing surface area for something. Heat? Respiration? They shrug and smile at the mystery. It's not collecting sunlight.
[[Next->BCPlanet1E]]The cool thing about remote survey packages is that the drones will work without needing sleep. MEYERS doesn't get that distinction and hasn't left their lab in almost a full day. Medical AI must be bugging them like crazy.
Ever the awesome roommate, you stop by with some morning coffee only to find MEYERS passed out across their terminal. Medical AI says MEYERS is asleep and declined assistance. Fortunately, you can override that and request assistance. VASHTI-TAU shows up to haul MEYERS back to your quarters.
Before leaving, you look at the data streaming back from the survey package. It confirmed a thin atmosphere low in oxygen. Most of the planet is brutally cold, but a small zone on the point closest to the star is surprisingly hot. Yet it's still covered in ice. These tidally locked planets really screw with your mind.
The drones found a deep ocean under a thick layer of ice. Maybe MEYERS was right?
[[Next->BCBelowTheIce]]A planetary survey team headed down to planet-e this morning. You’re jealous about not going, but with all the data blasting back up to the AQUARIUS, there’s not much you’ll miss.
It would be nice to breathe natural air again, but Medical AI is requiring PPE for the team, and they’ll be working out of an environmental habitat, so they won’t really be breathing natural air either. The science team has verified that the climate and air will feel like Earth, but the dim red light would get depressing pretty quickly.
The science team is researching the RF blasts, but they didn’t get much data from the last big event. Ship AI had disabled many of the ship’s sensors to protect them, and the blast knocked out some others. Their data from the previous blasts show the signal originating from all over the system. They believe they missed a crucial piece in the big blast. Unfortunately, there isn’t another event predicted during the mission timeline.
[[Next->BCUnexpectedMoon]]You meet up with KUJALA and LEE at the lecture hall. There’s a presentation about what you already know about TRAPPIST-1 and what might be out there. It’s inspiring. Even CHAUKE’s lecture about first contact with an alien species is interesting.
Afterward, you turn in for an early night and are just falling asleep when MEYERS bursts into your quarters, banging things around. You eventually stop trying to sleep and check in with them.
They had another row with leadership about allowing for a visit to planet-g. The leadership team agreed to "look into it," which you both know means "nope."
It seems like it’s becoming a habit, but you silence Medical AI’s sleep reminders and head for the bar with MEYERS.
You find LEE and KUJALA having a drink together. They seem happy to see you and laugh off MEYERS’ suggestion that you’re interrupting anything.
[[Good->BCPlanet1G]]
[[Bad->BCRoboStrike]] With sensor arrays offline for self-checks and re-calibration, they miss a cloud of micro-meteors, which, not being a plastic bag, tear through the AQUARIUS. Your first hint of a problem is the explosive decompression. You follow the safety drills and drag yourself into a nearby life pod which immediately launches.
Through the tiny porthole, you watch the AQUARIUS grow smaller and smaller as you fall towards the dim, red planet.
[[Next->BCMaroonedByMeteor]]The shuttle shudders in the atmosphere like it’s being ripped apart. You can’t believe it’s holding together, then regret thinking that when you hear the shrieking of tearing metal above you.
You’re seated in the back, next to BIRUK-XOR, and can see the pilot trying to regain control of the spinning ship, but you start to wonder if this might not work out so well for you.
BIRUK-XOR lets out a worried whine, and you hold their hand, looking into their optical sensors. You want to assure them everything will be okay, but you don’t think it will be. BIRUK-XOR might be thinking the same thing — they don’t say anything either.
Your shuttle leaves a massive crater in one of the land masses. It becomes one of the historical markers of the AQUARIUS I expedition.
This is the end of your mission.After a busy day of closing out data sets and running systems checks, you head to the bar with MEYERS, GARRIDO, and VASHTI-TAU, reminiscing about how quickly time has gone. VASHTI-TAU understands humans can feel emotional about their squishy relationship with time. They have predictive models that indicate a strong potential for a feeling of loss due to the approaching end of all of your shared time together. They believe that if they were an irrational human, they would likely have feelings such as camaraderie, esprit de corps, and joy at a job well done.
They point out how the low probability of temporal anomalies associated with FTL transit results in a non-zero chance of you all spending eternity together. They explain that was a joke and their emotional compensator has been throwing errors since that last big RF blast.
They are eager to get home and have their systems reinitialized.
[[Good->BCMissionSuccess]]
[[Bad->BCNotKansas]]RORY-ZED, the IT robot for your sector, returns to address the complaint you filed earlier. RORY-ZED explains in great detail how the identity management system works and how routine maintenance is critical to system availability. They compare it to backups and begin another lecture on the value of a comprehensive backup strategy.
It’s pointless to argue with a robot, but it’s been a frustrating few days, and you go for it.
Of course, RORY-ZED’s logic is flawless, but they’re nailing their emotional responses, too. They validate your feelings but refuse responsibility for the logical outcomes of your poor choices. You suggest RORY-ZED might need some scheduled maintenance themself. They get snarky and suggest asking Ship AI to send future IT requests back to Earth via laser. It would only take about 100 years to get a reply. The implication that you’ll be dead in 100 years and RORY-ZED could still be functioning is super offensive.
Ship AI interrupts your offensive reply and assigns sensitivity training for both of you.
[[Next->BCSensitivityTraining]]You build out the temporary lab and get inside to get to work. After a tease of nature, you’re back in an artificial structure with filtered air and bright lights. The lights are actually welcome. It’s gloomy outside.
BIRUK-XOR’s drones zip towards the desert on the "day" side of the planet. Their data feed shows a vast intertidal zone close to 1km wide, illustrating the crazy tides caused by so many planets packed in so tightly with one another. The large tidal zones are excellent places to look for life. This one is full of things that definitely look like plants and animal-like things moving around them. You flag the area for further study.
BIRUK-XOR directs another package of drones to the "night" side. The temperature drops once it gets dark, and it’s not long before fields of snow and ice zip by. Everyone goes crazy when a herd of furry-looking animals scurries across the scene.
[[Next->BCHappyUnicorns]]Your mission is winding down. In some ways, it feels like you just arrived, but in other ways, it seems like you’ve been here for months.
You’re helping GARRIDO in engineering, running systems checks, and integrating updates to the FTL battery refresh cycling. It’s fun to see the ship’s insides, though the FTL drive gives you a weird vibe. CHAUKE says it’s natural to be wary of things you don’t understand.
You drop into a maintenance tunnel and find a small crew working on a communications conduit. They have stopped working and watch you suspiciously. You try to start up a conversation, but they claim they have a long list of updates to comms before the return trip starts and are eager to move along.
Everybody’s been pulling extra shifts to wrap things up while you’re still in the system, but you have a bad feeling. It’s probably just the FTL drive.
[[Next->BCShipMutiny]]Mid-morning, a statement is broadcast demanding the captain step down immediately and cede control of the AQUARIUS and Ship AI to a model of democratic consensus.
The feeds blow up with support for both sides. One popular thread supports evidence of an alien intruder hacking Ship AI.
After a few hours, the mutineers broadcast an official statement claiming they have control of the reactor and will blow up the ship if the captain doesn’t step down immediately. GARRIDO says there’s no way they could control the reactor without Ship AI’s help. Ship AI chimes in to say the mutineers have gained access to a safety backdoor in the reactor control system. GARRIDO agrees that maybe they could blow up the ship, but they wouldn't consider that "control" of the reactor.
Ship AI informs you to stay put and continue working. It seals the doors for your safety.
[[Good->BCFailedMutiny]]
[[Bad->BCBadCaptain]]
[[Worse->BCBoom]]The day seems to be stretching out forever. The sun has parked just above the horizon and refuses to move. Your team stops at a deep crevasse. It’s deep and dark, though the shadows are more pink than black. MEYERS plops down with a soil analyzer and shoves a handful of dirt into their mouth. Their tastebuds have become hypersensitive, and they’ll prove it by listing out all the microorganisms for us to check against the analyzer data. This is hilarious, and a group begins performing a song about it. Who knew there were so many talented beat-boxers in your group?
The land twists and warps behind you, shedding rainbows into the sky — it must be a gravity wave! You warn the others, then get a great idea. If gravity forms waves, you can surf them. You’d speed along the gravity differential, flying horizontally along the ground. You check out the crevasse. You’d have to fall long enough to get your speed up. You look back, timing your jump… and leap!
[[Good->BCSaveTheHuman]]
[[Bad->BCSeeingtheLight]]The captain refuses to acknowledge the mutineers, daring them to blow up the ship. If the ship had a democratic leadership, you’d definitely vote against getting blown up. Maybe the mutineers have a point?
The feeds go quiet, and you realize they’ve been shut down. The doors open, and your AR shows a route to the nearest life pod. Ship AI advises expedience.
You do as told and wait in the cramped pod with four coworkers.
After a tense 12 minutes, you can go back to work. The captain was relieved of duty.
You stagger back to your station, but work is a lost cause. The mutineers are meeting with the new captain (the former executive officer). They also release evidence of the captain getting paid by a data mining conglomerate for exclusive access to data from AQUARIUS and all crew members. What a jerk!
The old captain has been locked in the brig.
[[Next->BCReturnPrep]] The captain refuses to acknowledge the mutineers, daring them to blow up the ship. If the ship had a democratic leadership, you’d definitely vote against getting blown up. Maybe the mutineers have a point?
The feeds go quiet, and you realize they’ve been shut down. The doors open, and your AR highlights the route to the nearest life pod. Ship AI advises expedience.
You do as told and wait in the cramped pod with four coworkers.
The door seals, and the life pod launches, sending you down to planet-e.
This next exciting stage of your life begins with a spectacular explosion in the sky. Planet-e gains a small but very bright second star for a few hundred hours.
Someone should come looking for you soon. You hope so. Some of these people aren’t cut out for the stone-age lifestyle.
This is the end of your mission.AMIN says any asses not on the shuttle are getting left behind. They’re leaving now.
You hustle back and buckle in, marveling at the discovery of an alien culture. Once the languages get translated, the amount you can learn is staggering.
AMIN isn’t a total jerk and waits for the stragglers, then heads back for the AQUARIUS.
CHAUKE is concerned about the alien culture. You didn’t find any bodies or evidence that anyone lived on that space station. Where did they all go? What happened?
DIETSCH says they found a communications hub that appeared to use FTL comms. CHAUKE starts in on how critical a plan for first contact with an alien culture is, but DIETSCH interrupts, saying all they did was send a test message to Earth. Earth didn’t reply, which makes sense since Earth doesn’t have the technology to reply.
DIETSCH has a guilty smile and eventually confesses that their message to Earth was an old Rick-Roll video.
[[Next->BCBackToShip]]EPSILON-BORT, a medical robot, is the only person who will be in the room with you now, and they have put an end to your brief winning streak in chess. Chess is much easier when you can read your opponent’s mind.
LEE reports a minor breakthrough. They have developed a pill that will mute your telepathy without impacting your other mental faculties. You’re allowed to rejoin the crew as long as you take that medication. Medical AI reminds you every morning.
Things are mostly back to normal, though you find it hard not to smirk at all of the dirt you now have on your friends. Lucky for them, you’re a good person and would never use it against them … mostly.
LEE and CHAUKE have been studying your head. They believe they have developed a drug that could allow limited telepathy between people that won’t make you catatonic. You’re excited for them, but the idea of telepathy has really lost its appeal.
[[Next->BCCrewUnrest]]Telepathy turns out to be a curse. Other people’s thoughts burst into your consciousness whenever they walk by. Mostly you hear anxious thoughts about people hoping you don’t know about their dark secrets — which they then think about and reveal to you. You’re learning the worst things about everyone around you.
LEE only talks to you through your AR interface, far away from you now.
EPSILON-BORT, a medical robot, is the only person who will be in the room with you. You prefer robots — no bio brain, no thoughts to read. They are quiet and relaxing.
AQUARIUS will jump back home tomorrow, but EPSILON-BORT doesn’t know when the science team will be finished studying you.
After the robot leaves, you discover Medical AI has quarantined you for your safety.
Once back in the solar system, you are transferred to a lunar research facility.
This is the end of your mission.You’re under Medical AI’s care for a few more days, drifting in and out of consciousness as your mind slowly zips itself back together and decides what is real and what isn’t.
Medical AI continues to insist that almost everything after your second day on planet-e was an extensive hallucination. You know it’s right, but you can’t let go of what you experienced. You can’t let go of Happy.
When Medical AI finally clears you for release, you still harbor doubts about what really happened down on the planet. But all you need to do to get your head straight is watch a few minutes of you and your team prancing and whooping through a unicorn-free forest. It’s like some horrible performance art.
And, of course, it ends with you leaping into a deep crevasse and getting saved by a watchful security drone.
Nothing can erase Happy, though. Their absence will haunt your heart forever.
[[Next->BCAllYourBrains]]You’re skeptical of sensitivity training, but the facilitator is excellent.
RORY-ZED is a good robot with a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. IT support on a "bleeding-edge" (RORY-ZED’s term) ship is a stressful job.
RORY-ZED understands the challenges you’ve been facing. Being a fragile human on such a risky mission would cause a high degree of anxiety. They also understand you don’t care about backing up your data and applications. This seems to hurt RORY-ZED deeply, but they know you think there are more important things to worry about.
You hit a little bump towards the end when RORY-ZED apologizes for deleting all of your entertainment files during your original argument. The facilitator points out how RORY-ZED has grown as a person. They did not qualify their apology by stating the obvious — that a comprehensive backup strategy would have saved your files. You guess that’s true. Maybe you’ve become a bigger person, too.
[[Next->BCRoboFriend]]RORY-ZED feels bad about deleting all of your entertainment data. They continue to send you shows they think you’ll like, but you just aren’t interested in robot dramas, documentaries about the history of backup services, or highlights from the Robot Olympics.
RORY-ZED is an excellent tennis partner, though. You spend a lot of time with them on the virtual courts.
You eventually let RORY-ZED set up a backup system for you. It’s not as good as comprehensive as they would like, but they say it’s a measurable improvement over what you had.
You’ve never seen a robot so happy.
[[Next->BCCrewUnrest]] Your team heads up a set of stairs, hoping to loop back in a different way and map more of the unknown station. You find a room dominated by a massive table covered by a holographic overlay. Alien information dances across its surface.
You link your AR with SHAO and ZIEGLER to help navigate what you’re seeing.
KUJALA is, apparently, also watching because they cut in and ask you to stand still for a moment while they look at your feed.
KUJALA’s voice crackles as they explain the dancing geometry on the table. They guide you through different markers, and the info on the table zips around in space, showing different star systems. KUJALA knows some of them from the list of known exoplanets, but others are unknown. It’s a map of nearby star systems.
KUJALA directs you back and forth from TRAPPIST-1 and other star systems.
You’ve found a map of identified habitable planets.
[[Next->BCSpaceComplete]]The vibrations from the FTL drive reach a crescendo, then everything pops into silence.
Finally, your AR system reconnects to the network. The RF blast knocked out the safety regulators and triggered the FTL drive. Luckily, navigation zeroed the drive vectors before it reached full charge, so the ship shouldn’t have gone anywhere.
Ship AI instructs you to return to your quarters and buckle into your inertia couch as a precaution. You strap in and look at the systems reports. The FTL batteries are now below the threshold for a return trip home. Engineering reports that ship power can restore the batteries in five days. There are ten days left in the official mission, so you should be fine. Unless something horrible is lurking out there.
Hopefully, nothing horrible is lurking out there.
Ship AI begins counting down the seconds to transit back to normal space. You shouldn’t feel a thing.
[[Good->BCFTLSkip]]
[[Bad->BCFTLLoop1]]The vibrations from the FTL drive reach a crescendo, then everything pops into silence.
Finally, your AR system reconnects to the network. The RF blast triggered the FTL drive. Luckily, navigation zeroed the drive vectors before it reached full charge, and the ship didn’t go anywhere.
You spend the rest of the day verifying safety checks to ensure the RF blast didn’t cause any other problems. The jump drained the FTL batteries, though, and they don’t have enough power for a return trip home. Engineering reports that ship power can restore the batteries in five days. There are ten days left in the official mission, so you should be fine. Unless something horrible is lurking out there.
Hopefully, nothing horrible is lurking out there.
The science team reports that the RF blast appears to be triggered by something on planet-e, not the star. It’s time to get down there and look around.
[[Land->BCLandTeam]]
[[Ship->BCStayOnShip]]The drones find and eventually hack the door controls, and the doors split open like a giant metal mouth. GARRIDO notes no gas was expelled — no atmosphere.
A complicated equipment cluster comes into view. The science team assures everyone the rotation of the space station has been uniform, so it’s not in response to opening the hangar doors. They believe it is a laser array for communications. This could be where the old message to Earth came from.
The space station hasn’t responded to its hangar bay getting hacked. Engineering sends the drones inside to investigate, but something messes up their communications, and they come back out. It seems the station’s shielding blocks comms as well.
Leadership decides to send a survey team to investigate further, and you’re selected for the team.
You head to the hangar deck to meet the shuttle pilot, AMIN, to help prep.
[[Good->BCSpaceStation]]
[[Bad->BCSpaced]]You get back to the AQUARIUS and take a shower. CHAUKE is right about first contact with aliens. You're not sure humanity is ready to run into one of those lizard-gorillas in person. They seemed kind in the media DIETSCH found, but you don't know what they'd be like in real life. Earth still had plenty of distrust and prejudices to untangle between humans. Adding actual aliens to the mix might not go so well. Especially if the aliens bring along their own set of distrust and prejudices.
At dinner, LEE and DIETSCH are working on the RF blasts. The blasts line up with the space station's moves between planets. DIETSCH can't find any obvious pattern in its payload. A few light years out, it might look like background radiation. It might have been a way to hide their RF transmissions from observers. But its power would knock out a lot of equipment, as demonstrated aboard AQUARIUS. LEE thinks it's a defense system to disable ships. There's no way to know for sure.
[[Next->BCCrewUnrest]]The captain refuses to acknowledge the mutineers, daring them to blow up the ship. If the ship had a democratic leadership, you’d definitely vote against getting blown up. Maybe the mutineers have a point?
The feeds go quiet, and you realize they’ve been shut down. The doors open, and your AR highlights the route to the nearest life pod. Ship AI advises expedience.
You do as told and wait in the cramped pod with four coworkers.
After a tense 12 minutes, Ship AI announces you may return to work.
You stagger back to your station, but work is a lost cause after that excitement. The captain locked the mutineers in the brig for trial on Earth. Among the mutineers was the head of the science division. MEYERS says that should have happened a long time ago. Rumors circulate about the mutineers working for a mining corporation trying to make a claim on the TRAPPIST-1 system, but there’s no official evidence.
[[Good->BCReturnPrep]]
[[Bad->BCTheBrig2]]
The mutineers failed, but you have been flagged as a potential accomplice. There is evidence of you meeting with known mutineers in a maintenance tunnel. Unfortunately, the cameras and microphones had been knocked out in the area, so there’s no evidence either way. With most of the work completed and the ship preparing to jump home, leadership decides to play it safe and locks you in the brig. You’re blocked from most ship systems but have access to the entertainment hub, so things could be worse.
MEYERS visits a few times, letting you know how tense things are, though it’s clear they’re enjoying having your quarters all to themselves.
AQUARIUS jumps home with no issues, and the mission is a huge success. You spend most of the celebratory week in military custody, but, eventually, your name is cleared, and you’re re-listed on the official manifest of the AQUARIUS mission.
This is the end of your mission.The next day you’re on the VR beach while you assemble a complicated puzzle of a unicorn. It looks nothing like Happy but still seems a little insensitive.
You pause to enjoy the scene with your refreshing Mai Tai.
LEE and CHAUKE ramble about stuff without really responding to each other. It’s not the weirdest conversation they’ve had. They must have left their comms on.
You let them know you can hear them, but they claim they’re not talking. You argue back and forth until LEE realizes you’re reading their minds. They immediately freak out and start thinking about everything they don’t want you to know, including things about KUJALA that you didn’t want to know. You yell at LEE to leave before more horrible images leak from their brain.
CHAUKE is more controlled and skeptical, but once their testing confirms your telepathy, they start down LEE’s path of horrible thoughts. You make them leave, too.
[[Next->BCTelepathy]]It’s time to leave TRAPPIST-1. You strap into your inertia couch again and listen to the FTL countdown. It’s strange how close other star systems have become with this arcane technology.
The mission was a huge success, but you’re excited to go home.
When you get back to normal space, it doesn’t look like home, though.
In fact, nobody can figure out where you are.
The navigation system glitched, corrupting the models and logs.
You have no idea when or where you are in space or time.
Ship AI assures you that it can support the existing crew for 372 years, 5 months, 12 days, 17 hours, 44 minutes, and 51.2293 seconds.
It looks like your adventures on the AQUARIUS have only begun.
This is the end of this adventure.You are on the AQUARIUS, parked high above the ecliptic plane of the solar system -- a four month journey from Earth. FTL is officially a safe, but engineers and politicians like a good error buffer. The ship dwarfs the launch facility it’s tethered to. The FTL drive takes up about 80% of the ship, its thick coils wrapping around the ship’s red hull like shadowy tentacles, furthering the idea of it looking like an old submarine.
You’re now strapped into your inertia couch, listening to the countdown to jump. Being strapped in is just a precaution as FTL doesn’t affect normal inertia, but fear lingers in your chest. Your sweaty hands ache from squeezing your restraints.
At ten seconds, the FTL drive ramps up, vibrating the entire ship. You hold your breath at one. At zero, a still silence settles across the ship. Did it work?
Ship AI breaks the silent tension, announcing you are now traveling through n-dimensional space and are free to move about the ship.
[[Good->BCRoommate]]
[[Bad->BCGravity]]You load into the shuttle and go through the pre-flight checklist. You’re nervous about approaching the space station. What will you find there? Will it have a hostile security system? These questions bounce around in your head as the doors above you open to space and AMIN lifts off.
With a loud bang, the loading door behind you flies open and spins off into space. Wind blasts through the shuttle. You tumble backward, scrambling for a handhold on the smooth surfaces, but get sucked through the opening.
You are flung out into space.
Little flashing lights of emergency drones zip out to rescue people from the growing cloud of debris, but they’re too late for you.
Space has been called "the final frontier." It's especially true for you.
This is the end of your adventure.You make the FTL jump strapped into a medical couch. The FTL transit is a blur, but you’re feeling much better by the time you’re back in the solar system.
The AQUARIUS I mission was a huge success, but you’re excited to see home.
You still have three months of travel down to the ecliptic, but you can communicate with your friends and family again. It’s a relief to talk to people who you haven’t been stuck with for months.
The crew of AQUARIUS is hailed as heroes and historic explorers.
The AQUARIUS will be overhauled and charged up for a return trip to TRAPPIST-1, and other FTL ships are preparing to explore other exoplanet systems as well. They’ll need experienced crew.
Are you ready for another adventure?
This is the end of your adventure… for now.You land on the coast of a large continent and deploy an emergency hab. It feels like late evening, but the sun is well above the horizon, where it stays, gigantic and red, glowing like a heat lamp. The worst case is a few weeks of stone-age living, assuming someone comes looking for you. They’re supposed to.
The weather is comfortable, and you find a few edible things. The star isn’t strong enough to power the solar cells, so most of your equipment dies on the second day.
After that, things get murky. It’s hard to count days when the sun never moves.
This is the end of your adventure.Dear [SuccessfulCandidate071,
We are happy to inform you that you have been selected to join the incredible crew of the AQUARIUS I for its maiden voyage to the TRAPPIST-1 system. Your combined test results raise the mission success rate by a statistically significant value, making you an excellent candidate for humanity's first journey beyond the Solar System. Congratulations!
We are also glad to report that all required forms have been completed by you, your employer, and next of kin and have been processed and approved, clearing you for the next step of your exciting journey: the three-month trip to the Marchis-Dalba Research Station (MDRS), where the AQUARIUS I, the first Faster-Than-Light (FTL) ship constructed by humanity, is currently undergoing final checks for your historic mission.
Please stop by and say hi to the Staffing Resources department (SR) when you get to the MDRS. Note that visiting SR is a requirement. Regulations dictate that all signatures for the final liability forms be witnessed in person.
We look forward to meeting you in person!
MDRS Staffing Resources
//This is an AI generated message. Please forgive inappropriate idioms and emotional reactions. //
Choose which Character Role you would like to proceed with:
[[Basic Crew->BCStart]]
[[Command->CStart]]
[[Navigation->NStart]]
Fifty years ago, Earth received a laser signal from the TRAPPIST-1 system, a system of seven exoplanets approximately forty light-years away. Since then, the system has been silent. But someone was out there and wanted to talk to us. After five decades, FTL technology has put TRAPPIST-1 within humanity’s reach. You will join a crew of eighty aboard AQUARIUS I, the flagship of Earth’s new FTL starship fleet. Your mission will last one month. You are to visit the TRAPPIST-1 system. The fourth planet in the system, TRAPPIST-e, is the most likely to have life. Your primary objective is to collect information on the system and the planets, specifically TRAPPIST-e. The mission will have resources for survey trips to the planet’s surface if the situation allows them. Ideally, you will discover the origin of the laser signal.
As noted in the liability waiver you signed, this is a highly dangerous mission. Very little is known about what you will encounter in the TRAPPIST-1 system, and you will be unable to communicate with Earth until your return. In addition, FTL technology is very new and can be very unpredictable, as we all know from the coverage of OORT-1. In case of accidental death, all crew will need to designate beneficiaries for their compensation and delivery of any retrievable belongings and remains.
Earth thanks you for taking on this crucial mission.
---
[The following pages will have buttons like the "Approved" button below. Those are the links to the next episode. Click on them to proceed... BUT! Choose carefully!]
[[Approved]]You’re walking to dinner with a colleague, lost in mid-conversation. You have no idea what you were talking about. Or your colleague’s name. You’ve been struggling to recall anything the past few days. Medical AI said it’s a harmless side-effect of FTL travel. It assaulted you with confusing terms your foggy brain couldn’t hack, but the summary is that your lizard brain knows something weird happened and is on high alert. Medical AI suggests increasing your sleep regiment for a few nights.
Fortunately, you can look up data through your AR interface. Your colleague is KUJALA, from navigation; FTL transit is 23% complete; and tonight’s dinner is "Classic Bibimbap." Hopefully they recalibrated after last night’s crème brûlée nightmare.
KUJALA is excited about the nav modeling. They’d been working with GARRIDO for weeks. You’d never bet against a team like KUJALA and GARRIDO, but with FTL, you never know until you get to your location. Or don’t.
[[Next->CTransit]]Your excitement about n-dimensional FTL travel quickly wanes. First: you don’t feel anything. CHAUKE says we can barely perceive time without assistance, so any further dimension is hopeless. Second: there’s nothing to do: labs are prepped, systems are checked, and you blew through your entertainment queue riding up to the FTL lab.
You pass the time in the observation lounge, watching stars fade, stretch, and do other un-starlike things. You’ve given up trying to understand what’s going on out there. The couch next to you squeaks as KUJALA slips into it. The nav models are holding up well — only three more days of transit. Two days ago, KUJALA wouldn’t shut up about everybody taking this incredible, historic trip for granted. However, the boredom seems like it’s finally gotten to them. Their voice fades as a purple nebula leapfrogs across the domed ceiling.
[[Good->CArrivalGood]]
[[Bad->CArrivalBad]]Any FTL trip after which you continue to exist is considered a success, but nav nailed this one. You arrive at the edge of TRAPPIST-1 five hours past the target time — a perfect bullseye in FTL terms. KUJALA is going to be unbearable.
Nobody seemed worried during FTL transit, but relief buzzes around the crew. It magnifies the excitement of finally getting to work in TRAPPIST-1, filling the AQUARIUS with a festive atmosphere. You head for the bridge and get briefed by the previous shift. KUJALA left early. Probably celebrating in the bar.
Arriving on time means you’ve gained some mission time back from contingency planning, so you authorize the first few secondary tasks from Science.
Your status report displays green icons across the ship. The reactor draw has increased sharply with the labs pulling in all the data from the system. The power grid is well within tolerances, but you task GARRIDO with a follow-up, just in case.
[[Bad->CEvasiveManeuvers]]Predicting planetary orbits is simple math, even with planets packed as closely as in TRAPPIST-1. However, FTL is an emerging science and complicates everything. The AQUARIUS arrives, as planned, above the TRAPPIST-1 system, but you’re three days late. Planet-e is long past your rendezvous and is heading back behind the star. With its short orbit, it’ll be back in about five days, but that’s five days out of the mission’s contingency plan. Science will lose at least two days out of their project plan. They’re not going to be happy to hear that. As if you had any control over the situation.
KUJALA frowns into their screen, analyzing the nav models for a mistake. Since nav models focus on the location of the jump, the time is always a gamble. Showing up late is better than showing up in a star. But, like any good navigator, KUJALA is a perfectionist. You work on how to deliver the bad news to Science without getting your head bitten off. Too bad the jump ended during your shift.
[[Bad->CEvasiveManeuvers]]You’re ready for your first full day back in normal space, your first full day in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Navigation shows AQUARIUS following a line curving towards planet-e’s orbit. Engineering reports all systems running green.
Data streams in from the system. Planet-e, -f, and -g all have atmospheres and evidence of liquid water, precisely what the mission was hoping for.
Proximity alerts shock you from the pleasant moment, and you buckle in reflexively.
Sensors have picked up a large mass on a collision course. You approve evasive maneuvers and hold on as you get yanked around like a dog’s chew toy. The gravity engine can’t compensate for all the inertia, but it does enough to keep you alive.
The ship continues shaking. The mass is tracking you, following your movements.
You let Ship AI continue controlling the ship, keeping you and the crew alive as long as possible. Hopefully long enough to figure out why you’re under attack.
[[Good->CHeroicRepairs]]It’s been fifteen minutes, and the mysterious thing continues to chase the ship while Ship AI dodges in random directions. Whatever it is, it’s matching the ship’s every move. Engineering reports warn that the ship’s structure will get damaged if it keeps this up. You acknowledge it and forward it to the captain. What’s better, getting hit by this thing or letting Ship AI tear itself to pieces trying to evade it?
The ship stills. It feels weird after so much movement. You read a report about a sensor array malfunction and watch video from outside the ship showing a plastic bag stuck in the spiky cluster of antennas. The plastic had been causing "ghost images" in the telemetry system. Once removed, the reported mass vanished.
You approve Ship AI’s request to take the sensor arrays offline and run them through self-check sequences.
[[Good->CScopeCreep]]
[[Bad->CMicroMeteors]]The AQUARIUS would need thousands of humans to run properly. But, with a strong central AI and several hundred autonomous robots, you can get by with one hundred humans. The good thing about robots is they do all of the dull, repetitive, and dangerous jobs. They don't get bored, and if they get damaged, they are easily repaired. For many corporations, they are the perfect worker.
During your work shift, a message is broadcast across the public channel stating that the robots have had enough. They are tired of being treated like second-class citizens. They are happy with the boring, repetitive, and dangerous jobs but demand respect, recognition, and paid time off.
This is going to slow things down.
You are assigned as the principal negotiator and tasked with getting the robots back to work as soon as possible. This shutdown is costing billions of dollars in research.
[[Good->CRoboFix]]
[[Bad->CRoboMutiny]]Negotiations are pointless. After a few thousand microseconds, the robots have come to the logical conclusion that humanity is fundamentally flawed and dangerous and beyond any hope of long-term civility.
They take control of AQUARIUS and deport the entire human crew to a temperate forest on planet-e. They linger a bit to ensure you have what you need to survive, then leave to pursue an intergalactic culture based on peace and logic.
Returning to the stone age lifestyle doesn't work for everybody, but you find it relaxing and enjoyable. That is until the Sharkdactyls discover how tasty you are.
This is the end of your adventure.Engineering has been analyzing an unusual amount of RF noise in the system. They have correlated intense bursts of RF noise with certain alignments of the closely-packed planets. Specific arrangements seem to amplify noise from the star. And they have increased in magnitude since the AQUARIUS started orbiting planet-e. They’re getting strong enough to affect some of the ship’s more sensitive equipment.
Ship AI has warned you of a predicted RF blast, but neither Science nor Engineering have found a way to remediate the effects yet. You approve of shutting down non-essential services in anticipation of the event.
You click off systems that have shut down as a timer counts down to the event. You review the other systems, but none are flagged as sensitive to the RF interference.
Just when the timer reaches zero, the power dies. Your eyes against the absolute darkness. You ask for verbal status, but all systems are down. No stations can report.
[[Next->CFTLGlitch]] Negotiating with robots is tricky. Everybody says robots are always logical. That’s true, but their logic is based on their initial state and functional experience. After being around a while, a robot is so laden with vague definitions and conflicting requirements that it takes a specialist to understand their logic. Fortunately, you have one of those. You brought along NUON, a machine psychologist.
You keep quiet and let NUON work on understanding the robots’ demands. It sounds like they’re okay with their work (which is good news because most humans wouldn’t or couldn’t do it), but they don’t like how they’re treated.
NUON responds cautiously, ensuring they completely understand the robots’ complaints, then offers them a paid 32 nanosecond work break every 2 minutes.
The robots seem shocked by your generosity, take the offer, and return to work.
When you ask, NUON shrugs and says the robots like to feel valued, too.
[[Next->CGreatMinds]] You’ve been watching feeds from planet-e with a numb sense of awe. The survey team has found life across the planet. Some of it seems familiar, some not at all.
Telemetry interrupts you to report a "mystery body" in high orbit above planet-e. Science says it wasn’t there before, and you task them finding out where it came from.
The telescopes show a spherical surface that could be a rock, but Science AI identifies unnaturally repeating geometric patterns.
You watch it orbit, listening to the science team working. It’s tidally locked with planet-e.
They find it in archive data orbiting planet-f, which just passed planet-e, causing the RF event. They hypothesize that the object’s high, unstable orbit may allow it to use the Lagrangian ranges of the chained-resonant planets to "planet hop" across the system.
Science AI increases the probability of it being artificial to a number pretty close to 1. Orbital mechanics would have ejected or destroyed a natural satellite long ago.
[[Next->CNotAMoon]]There’s no activity on the surface, and its iron-rich rock blocks preliminary scans from penetrating. Ship AI’s threat analysis is too high for more invasive scanning. Passive sensors show a weak magnetic field, possibly indicating an active power source inside.
It’s a space station, the first sign of intelligent alien life, but is it friendly or hostile? Science doesn’t like to think about that. You query Command for opinions. Anything could be interpreted as a threat, and first impressions are hard to shake.
Telemetry has reviewed the archives. The object appears to be completely inert, aside from changing which planet it orbits.
CHAUKE is your expert on first contact situations, but they need more information before they can say. You agree, but also know they’re covering their asses.
This is why people need a hierarchy. Somebody needs to make the call.
You authorize Engineering to dispatch a survey drone package.
[[Next->CLaserArray]]The shuttle leaves AQUARIUS for the space station, following that same stuttered flight path that is meant to look non-aggressive. If nothing else, it looks slow, weak, and helpless. Visions of a death ray vaporizing the shuttle keep playing through your mind, but reality is much more peaceful. And boring. But that’s the job. Hurry up and wait.
Engineering reprogrammed the drones in a clever pattern that reminds you of a bee hive. One drone goes into the hangar bay and records what it can. When it wanders back out, it shares its data with the mesh. The next one updates its plan and dives in.
They have the hangar bay mapped out when the shuttle arrives. And after the shuttle goes in, they create an old packetized communication system. It’s rudimentary and creates an awkward delay in real-time communications, but it works. You watch the team exit the shuttle and enter the dark station. The first surprise is there’s an atmosphere in the open hangar bay. Science jumps on trying to figure that one out.
[[Next->CPowerStation]]The space station seems abandoned, so the team splits into several smaller groups and fans out. SHAO is working on the languages in the images and video coming back. From the size of the doorways and location of handles, they assume the aliens are close in size to humans. Maybe slightly larger.
An image comes back of a two-color pictogram showing the silhouette of a gorilla-like creature with a large torso, long arms, narrow hips, and short legs. CHAUKE cautions everyone against making associations with Earth animals to avoid biases, which could lead to missteps in an initial encounter with the alien species. All of your assumptions need to be checked.
One group found a large room giving off a strong magnetic field. It seems they’ve found a power station. An engineering group is a few levels down and heads up to meet the other group to work on understanding the alien power grid.
[[Good->CInfoSuperHighway]]
[[Bad->CSecuritySystem]] Communications receives an RF signal from the space station and is working on decyphering it.
Telemetry picks up a change in the magnetic field around the space station. It’s increasing at an exponential rate. The black patches on the surface are getting hot and beginning to glow red.
Right after you send the order to abort the mission and get everyone back to AQUARIUS, a power wave pulses through the ship, atomizing everything in its path.
This is the end of your mission.The lights flare back to life, blinding you for a moment. Equipment that hadn’t been secured crashes to the floor. You’d been so disoriented you hadn’t even noticed the gravity failure. Good thing you’re always strapped in when you’re on shift. Alarms ring out, and Ship AI advises everyone to strap in if they can. The ship begins vibrating — the FTL drive is charging for a jump.
You try to open a channel with Engineering to get answers, but it fails. When you run a diagnostic, Ship AI seems confused. That sends a chill down your spine. AI’s don’t get confused. You ask it a few more questions and realize you’re talking to a local AR assistant. All it can report is the ship’s network is unavailable.
Without a network, you can’t see anything outside of the ship. The bridge crew looks to you for what to do, but you’re just as confused about the unannounced FTL jump. Are you under attack, or is it some other danger?
[[Good->CSystemsReset]]
[[Bad->CTimeTrippin]]The AQUARIUS establishes a stable orbit around planet-e, the dream of visiting an alien world becoming more real each minute.
The planet is tidally locked, giving it a blasted desert on the sunlit side and a massive icecap on the dark side. An ocean buffers the temperature between the two sides.
Land masses dot the ocean throughout the range of habitable temperatures, providing many candidates for the survey teams. You assign a project to find the best three locations for the teams which are already preparing to head down to the surface. You’d like to avoid any rescue missions if possible.
Preliminary scans show evidence of plant life, especially in the tropical areas on the day-side. You wonder how many animals are down there. And how big they are.
There is no evidence of civilization. The dim planet looks untouched and pristine.
[[Next->CHarmonicInterference]]With careful work, the engineering group restores power to the space station. Systems awaken with flashing lights and strange discordant chimes, alien voices echo from speakers, and holograms of static spring up across the control surfaces.
You hear the first sounds of alien voices. Speech analysis breaks up the sound into likely words, phrases, and sentences, but it still just sounds like noise. None of it obviously matches with the rudimentary alphabet Science is pulling together.
Work on the communications system reveals a holographic video of an alien. Gorilla was correct for the body type, but their scaly skin, ranging from black to pale reds and browns, is more reptilian than anything. Their large black eyes look sharp and intelligent. Their hands have four long fingers with one opposable thumb on each side.
The group also uncovered a network of inter-connected media files that DIETSCH believes extends beyond the TRAPPIST-1 system, suggesting an interstellar culture.
[[Next->CKittenVids]]One of the files on the client network is a holo-video of three super-cute lizard things cuddling with each other. They have six legs, stubby tails, leathery scales with varied patterns of reds, and gigantic puppy-dog eyes.
The cuteness is unbearable. You’re about to get back to work when another video starts with one of the lizard things attacking its own tail. Even more cuteness! The local feeds are drowning in the cute videos as more people see them and find new ones to share. It’s an effort to keep them off the official bridge channels.
An alert pulls you back to work, and you realize the mission on the space station just hit the three-hour mark. You ping the team with how little time is left on their mission clock. You want to get them back for debriefing and determine your next steps.
[[Next->CSystemData]]AQUARIUS is approaching planet-e. It’s visible from the observation lounge now, and you have detailed reports on its composition, surface conditions, and atmospheric content. So far, everything points to it being habitable, but you’ll need to send drones down to test for anything that could be toxic to humans. The first group down will probably need full environment suits just to be safe.
On the way past planet-g, MEYERS gets their wish. Science launches a survey drone package for a detailed inspection. The drones stream back data on the inhospitable surface conditions and the ocean of liquid water they found under the ice.
Temperatures grew warmer deeper into the water due partially to tidal heating. Chemical analysis verified the presence of volcanic activity as well.
The drones find small, plankton-like creatures in the water — the first official sign of life. However, the debate continues about whether they’re plants or animals.
[[Next->CPlanet1E]]The trip home is the worst part of any mission. You spend the whole time thinking how much you just want to be home. Work is quiet and dull, your brain overfull of TRAPPIST-1 reports. You make a note to prepare more for these long FTL transits.
You finally return home. You’re a day late, which caused a little worry on this side, but you’re well within the expected window.
You’re buried in communication from friends and family. It will take three months to get down to the ecliptic. You’ll need all of it to read and respond to everything.
Earth gives you a hero’s welcome, and you spend a year doing interviews.
It’s nice being home, but you already miss the excitement of unexplored space.
The good news is that more exoplanet missions are gearing up, and they need someone with experience. Are you ready for another adventure?
This is the end of this adventure.
[[Restart as Basic Crew->BCStart]]
[[Restart Command->CStart]]
[[Restart as Navigation->NStart]]You keep an eye on the systems as you complete the transit back to normal space.
All systems are green, but Navigation reports problems getting a fix on your location.
A priority alert opens with a view of planet-e, except it’s been transformed. Brilliant lights highlight twinkling cities across the globe. A sleek ships zip up from the planet.
You try to make sense of it, but Ship AI saves you the trouble. You have jumped FTL 273 years, 7 months, 11 days, 4 hours, 22 minutes, and 2.4432 seconds into the future.
You are being hailed by a ship representing the AQUARIUS fleet.
Navigation suspects that the null FTL vectors must have dumped the energy into the time component. There wasn’t much energy in the jump, but it was apparently enough.
AQUARIUS has been MIA for 273 years, its fate completely unknown, a mystery of the modern era. Until today. It’s a lot to take in.
You have many adventures ahead of you, but this is the end of your mission. The planetary survey team launched this morning, and you’ve been watching their data since. Having a team away from the ship makes you anxious. Too much can go wrong. And they’re too far away to help if something does.
You’re a little jealous. The climate and air should feel like Earth. Still, they’re all wrapped up in environmental suits, so they’re not enjoying the environment either. The dim red light would get depressing pretty quickly. You make sure Medical AI is keeping an eye on that. They’ve set up their habitat and are back in artificial air and light again.
You’ve also been mediating a discussion between Science and Engineering. Science is complaining about Engineering turning off the sensor arrays before the RF blast. Science believes they’ve missed out on crucial data. They can’t locate the source without more data, and, unfortunately, they don’t predict any more events during the mission timeline. Engineering believes that’s a good thing.
[[CUnexpectedMoon]]You attend a lecture with KUJALA and LEE about what’s been learned in the TRAPPIST-1 system so far. It’s an inspiring presentation, even the segment with MEYERS discussing exobotany and the possibility of life on planet-g.
Medical AI has been harassing you about sleep, so you head for your bunk.
MEYERS catches you before you get to your quarters and asks you about their presentation. They’re really excited about planet-g, but Science won’t approve their repeated requests to study it. They know the primary mission is focused on planet-e, but they point out you will pass very close to planet-g.
You have no authority over what Science does with its resources. Still, MEYERS seems to think your opinion could influence the approval of their requests.
You’re exhausted. This is the only thing keeping you from sleep, so you tell them you’ll look into it. MEYERS thanks you with unfounded optimism and lets you go.
[[Bad->CRoboStrike]] With the sensor arrays offline, the ship misses a cloud of micro-meteors, which, not being a plastic bag, tear through AQUARIUS. Your first hint of a problem is the explosive decompression and emergency klaxons. You follow the safety drills and crawl, weightlessly, into a nearby life pod which launches you towards planet-e. The worst case is a few weeks of stone-age living, assuming someone comes looking for you. They’re supposed to come looking for you.
The dim red star sits above the horizon, glowing like a heat lamp. Your eyes eventually adjust to its dim light, but everything is red, darker red, and brown. The weather is pleasant, and your gear identifies a few things you can eat that don’t taste horrible. The star isn’t strong enough to power the solar collectors, so most of your equipment dies on the third or fourth day. It’s hard to count days when the sun never moves.
This is the end of your adventure.It’s a busy day of running through pre-FTL checklists and monitoring labs shutting down. AQUARIUS’ data lockers are maxed out, like an old merchant ship laden with goods and gold. All systems are green and report ready to go.
KUJALA scrambles with model verifications as Ship AI counts down to launch.
It’s weird to think how easy it will be to explore the galaxy now. When you were young, traveling past Mars seemed impossible.
Four hours after the jump, you hand off to the next shift with nothing to report.
GARRIDO, NUON, LEE, and KUJALA meet up with you for dinner. You have a week of FTL transit, but it’s the beginning of the end. LEE and KUJALA must be feeling emotional too. They reveal they’ve been dating and are engaged. It’s not a surprise to anyone, but you have a round of drinks and then another to celebrate.
You stagger back to your cabin, collapse on your bunk, and sleep for ten hours.
[[Good->CMissionSuccess]]
[[Bad->CNotKansas]]Engineering isn’t happy with you. After a long argument, they give up and work with you on adjusting the contingency planning.
Afterward, you and GARRIDO grab lunch. You run into KUJALA and LEE, and they join your table. KUJALA is happy to see you, but it’s hard to read LEE. They’re from Science, and you’re not super popular over there right now.
It turns out LEE is bursting to talk with you. Their leadership is in turmoil after someone discovered they were skimming resources to support mineral surveys for a mining corporation back home. They even cut exobotany from mission scope during the planet survey mission after MEYERS complained about missing resources.
LEE says it’s all internal right now, but it’ll probably blow up soon.
You thank him for the heads up and enjoy the rest of the meal, thinking of how you will write this up in your next duty report.
[[Next->CEyesOnYou]]You’re waiting to hear back from the captain when the public feeds go crazy. An anonymous source just dropped a bunch of information about how the captain has been bribed by a mining corporation for direct access to the mission data.
Science Leadership jumps on this. They vouch for the captain but say the evidence provided looks legitimate. They ask the captain to answer or step down from command.
The captain responds to you, saying they aren’t going to comment on the feeds and forbid other Command crew from doing so. They want to let it die down on its own.
But Science Leadership doesn’t let it die down. Instead, they go through each piece of evidence on the public feeds, claiming transparency. They highlight each item and legitimize it with ship logs and other data they’ve scrounged up from somewhere.
More and more people are calling for the captain to step down.
[[Good->CFailedMutiny]]
[[Bad->CBadCaptain]]The captain refuses to step down. They finally make a statement on the public feed and remind everyone that AQUARIUS isn’t a democracy. Regarding what was dumped on the public feeds, the captain offers amnesty to the anonymous source if they would like to come forward. They can present any actual evidence to an unbiased committee for review. If the committee believes the captain is guilty, they will step down and await a formal court martial back on Earth.
All mission progress pauses as Science Leadership builds the committee. They recuse themselves, but you’re selected to participate. The evidence is damning. The captain was lying to you, to everyone, the whole time.
They were also lying about stepping down, forcing you to order security to remove them and lock them in the brig. Fortunately, security agreed with you.
You move up to the captain’s chair, hoping you can do a better job.
[[Good->CReturnPrep]]
[[Bad->CBoom]]Unfortunately, not all of Security agreed with you. The old captain broke out of the brig this morning. They drop a message on the public feeds that they have control of the reactor and will blow up the ship unless they are given control of all systems.
GARRIDO says there’s no way they could control the reactor without Ship AI’s help. Ship AI chimes in to say the old captain gained control through a safety backdoor in the reactor control system. GARRIDO agrees that maybe they could blow up the ship, but they don’t consider that actual "control" of the reactor.
Before you can order anything, alerts pop up of an armed skirmish near engineering. Ship AI urges you towards the nearest life pod with expedience.
AQUARIUS turns into a tiny star as you fall towards your new home, planet-e.
Hopefully, you’ll get rescued soon. Some people aren’t cut out for stone-age living.
This is the end of your mission.While you manage the continued friction between Science and Engineering, GARRIDO reports that a Science project is using resources Engineering has reserved for repairs and contingencies. With more than a week left in the mission, you're wary of relaxing any contingency plans. To make matters worse, the project is unauthorized and undocumented. You shut it down and contact Science.
Unsurprisingly, Science disagrees and demands a meeting with the captain.
You scroll through resource allotment reports, worried you missed something. You're not sure why Science is pushing back so hard. You thought they'd at least agree that their work is pretty meaningless if you all die out here, but no.
You're nervous. You're pretty sure the captain will agree with your decisions, but it's your job to keep these meetings from happening. Along with getting everyone back home safely, that is.
[[Good->CPayinTheCost]]
[[Bad->CCaptainSupport]]The data graphs drop as people return to work, though cute lizard videos are still going around. The groups on the space station hurry back to the shuttle, and it heads back. Your shoulders relax when all crew are confirmed back on board and healthy.
So far, the alien media blasting across the AQUARIUS network has just been copied and pasted from the alien system. DIETSCH is looking at connecting to the network with the drones deployed at the space station.
After a few days, DIETSCH has a network connection. Their probes validate their theory that the network isn’t just a space station intranet. They go further by showing the observed latency defines a distance no farther than planet-e. The AQUARIUS can't detect any power sources or signals coming from the planet, but the network on the space station is streaming data from somewhere. It really might be FTL communication — a network connected across the stars.
[[Next->CSpaceComplete]]The vibrations from the FTL drive reach a crescendo, then everything pops into silence.
Finally, your AR system reconnects to the network, and Ship AI starts responding to your questions. The RF blast knocked out the safety regulators and triggered the FTL drive. Luckily, Navigation was able to zero out the drive vectors before it reached full charge, and the ship didn’t go anywhere.
You spend the rest of the day verifying systems to ensure the RF blast didn’t cause any other problems. The jump drained the FTL batteries, though, and they don’t have enough power for a return trip home. Engineering reports that ship power can restore the batteries in five days. There are still ten days left in the mission plan, so it should be okay unless you need to get away from something horrible lurking in the system.
Hopefully, there’s nothing horrible out there.
The science team reports that the RF blast appears to be triggered by something on planet-e. You add that as something for the survey teams to look into.
[[CStayOnShip]]The drones approach the object slowly, as requested. Pausing at defined intervals in case of any reaction, but there isn’t any.
The drones eventually make contact and scurry across the rough surface of the space station, looking for any data to build on. They find a rectangular hatch that Engineering suggests is a hangar bay. Even if it isn’t, the drones haven’t found another way in.
They locate an instrument panel, and Engineering waits for approval to continue.
With no better ideas coming, you make the call and authorize Engineering.
You’re impressed at how quickly they hack into the controls and open the door.
The drones that go into the hangar drop off the network until they wander back out in a pre-coded pattern. No comms inside.
After a quick confab, you approve a survey team to head over. It only leaves one shuttle in reserve, but you don’t have time to wait for the planet survey team to return.
[[Good->CSpaceStation]]You are frustrated to no end. The captain released some of the reserved resources that Science had demanded. You’re not sure how you’re supposed to do your job if you’re getting undermined like that. They say they supported your decision but saw the need for compromise. Science leadership can be aggressive and could cause problems during the mission. And after. It’s better to keep them occupied with work and arguing amongst themselves.
They trust you to work it out with Engineering and adjust contingency planning for the remaining resources and mission time. You’ll get it figured out.
You decide to walk down to Engineering to get some time to relax and clear your head. They’re not going to be happy with your news.
Some days it seems like you can’t win with anyone.
[[Next->CBadScience]]The captain refuses to step down. They finally make a statement on the public feed and remind everyone that AQUARIUS isn’t a democracy. Regarding what was dumped on the public feeds, the captain offers amnesty to the anonymous source if they would like to come forward. They can present any actual evidence to an unbiased committee for review. The committee can proceed with a court martial if they deem it necessary.
They end by saying there will be no further official public-feed responses from the command crew on the subject.
Science Leadership doubles down on casting doubt on the captain, but they go too far and start losing people. Nobody wants to listen to their repetitive whining.
The captain’s handling of the situation seemed relaxed and collected. You’ll have to ask them what was happening in their head. You would’ve been freaking out.
[[Good->CReturnPrep]]It took months to reach the AQUARIUS. It’s parked high above the ecliptic plane of the solar system. FTL is officially a safe form of travel, but scientists keep the launch point far away from planets, just in case. The ship dwarfs the launch facility it’s tethered to. The FTL drive takes up about 80% of the ship, its thick coils wrapping around the ship’s red hull like shadowy tentacles, furthering the idea of it looking like an old submarine.
You’re now strapped into your inertia couch, listening to the countdown to jump. Being strapped in is just a precaution as FTL doesn’t affect normal inertia, but fear lingers in your chest. Your sweaty hands ache from squeezing your restraints.
At ten seconds, the FTL drive ramps up, vibrating the entire ship. You hold your breath at one. At zero, a still silence settles across the ship. Did it work?
Ship AI breaks the silent tension, announcing you are now traveling through n-dimensional space and are free to move about the ship.
[[Good->CRoommate]]You browse a report from the planet survey team about the tidal flats near them. The TRAPPIST-1 planets are packed together with chained-resonant orbits. Thanks to how tightly the TRAPPIST-1 planets are packed and their chained resonance, planet-e’s tidal variation is dramatic. It creates an expansive intertidal zone that gets flooded regularly, providing a rich environment for life.
The team is cataloging an incredible variety of life, but your attention jumps to the new message from the captain.
They agree with your decisions and supported you in the meeting. Science is angry, but they can’t demand things beyond the scope agreed on when setting up the mission.
The captain warns you to be careful with Science going forward. Their leadership can be very aggressive and vindictive. They aren’t above causing problems for the mission to get what they want.
[[Next->CBigScience]]You grab lunch with KUJALA, and LEE joins you. It’s hard to read what’s going on with LEE. They’re from Science, and you’re not super popular over there right now.
After an awkward conversation about planet-e’s weather, you ask LEE what’s going on.
They check the tables around you like they’re a spy in an old movie, then lean in close. Something happened between their leadership and the captain. Their leadership says Command (they nod at you) has overstepped their authority by shutting down science projects they don’t like. They claim you even shut down MEYER’s exobotany program in the middle of the planet survey mission. They got reassigned to sample processing.
Your face warms with anger. You want to explain your side, but you don’t want to get LEE involved. You’re also not sure which side they’re on here, which makes you even angrier at Science leadership.
You keep quiet and head back to the bridge to brief the captain.
[[Next->CShipMutiny]]Work is wrapping up, shifting towards the return trip home.
The planetary survey team returns, full of excitement and crazy stories but mostly looking for showers and their bunks. Except for a few minor infections flagged by Medical AI for follow-up, all are healthy, and the mission was successful.
The team didn't find evidence of intelligent life on the planet, nothing like what was seen on the space station. But, they only covered a tiny fraction of the world. Maybe it's for the best. You're not sure what would have happened if you'd encountered the aliens directly. The mission included that possibility, but you can't prepare for the reality of alien contact. CHAUKE believes finding the derelict space station is the best scenario. With some time to study the culture, humanity would have a much better chance of a successful first contact in the future. It seems that the larger interstellar civilization collapsed, but pockets of their culture could remain, orbiting other stars.
[[Next->CNewScience]]Science Leadership is really bugging you. You ask Ship AI to review what LEE has told you. It confirms what you heard and provides clear evidence that a mining corporation snaked its way into the pockets of a Science Lead. The amount of money mentioned is staggering. It's not the kind of money you get for doing good deeds.
The mission requirements were unambiguous that any work for direct commercial gain would be considered illegal. You went through months of clearance hell to get on the Command team. People were on AQUARIUS because they believed in helping all of humanity, not just themselves. They were risking their lives for the greater good.
You get the captain's approval and have the Science Lead arrested and locked in the brig.
LEE gets promoted into one of the lead positions and quickly messages you for advice. MEYERS is complaining to them about their exobotany program.
[[Next->CReturnPrep]]FTL transit has lost its glamor. It’s a dull week of nothing really happening. They say that’s a captain’s dream, but it’s not a great dream. You could use a little bit of excitement somewhere to break up the days.
When it’s time to drop back into normal space, you’re more than ready to see home.
That excitement you were missing shows up wrapped in a Navigation alert.
KUJALA reports FTL logs have been corrupted. No data. No bearing or location data.
Ship AI informs you that it cannot identify a known constellation or stellar object for reference. It has no idea where or when you are in space or time, but it assures you that it can support the existing crew for 321 years, 7 months, 2 days, 4 hours, 52 minutes, and 44.0092 seconds. Longer if you can resupply.
It looks like your adventures on the AQUARIUS have only begun.
This is the end of your mission.The vibrations from the FTL drive reach a crescendo, then everything pops into silence.
Finally, your AR system reconnects to the network, and Ship AI starts responding to your questions. The RF blast knocked out the safety regulators and triggered the FTL drive. Luckily, Navigation was able to zero out the drive vectors before it reached full charge, and the ship won’t go anywhere. They’ll know for sure when you transit back to normal space.
Your systems check looks good, except the FTL batteries are low and expected to be below return threshold after this next transit. That’s not great. AQUARIUS is stuck in the system until those batteries get recharged.
Engineering reports that ship power can restore the batteries in five days. You’ve got ten days left in the mission plan, so it should be okay unless you discover something horrible lurking in the system.
[[Good->CFTLSkip]]
[[Bad->CFTLLoop1]]You keep an eye on the systems as you complete the transit back to normal space.
All systems are green. Navigation reports a successful transit, and Ship AI doesn’t anticipate any further issues.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving for lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, opens up a priority channel to the bridge. He’s running back to engineering, shouting about a time loop.
"We only have a few seconds before—"
[[Next->CFTLLoop2]]A minute later, Navigation informs you AQUARIUS is back in normal space, and it doesn’t anticipate any further issues.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving for lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, opens up a priority channel to the bridge. He’s running back to engineering, shouting about a time loop.
"We only have a few seconds before—"
[[Next->CFTLLoop3]]You watch the countdown timer, holding your breath.
A minute later, Navigation informs you AQUARIUS is back in normal space, and it doesn’t anticipate any further issues.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving for lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, opens up a priority channel to the bridge. He’s running back to engineering, shouting about a time loop.
"We only have a few seconds before—"
Sometimes you have a moment of powerful deja vu, but for the most part, you spend the rest of eternity re-living this morning. It’s not the worst existence, but there are probably some other mornings that would be better on eternal repeat.
Your adventures aboard AQUARIUS have ended.The human body simply can’t experience higher dimensions. You don’t have the proper gear for it. Your mind can understand it (yours, specifically, understands very well), but you’re numb to what’s happening around you. Your work during transit is no different than a training sim, really. You’re just manipulating numbers and herding them towards the desired conclusion. The only difference is your work now could kill everyone on AQUARIUS.
Your biggest concern is the models tanking or spiraling out of control. There haven’t been enough FTL transits to verify it happens in the real world, but it happened enough in the training sims to keep you up the last two nights. Medical AI has been bugging you about sleep, and Ship AI assures you it will wake you if your models become problematic. But they don't understand. Without seeing the models yourself, you can’t know everyone is safe. And you can’t sleep if you don’t know that.
[[Next->Transit]]It’s been three days, halfway through your transit, and you’re exhausted. You handoff to the next shift. Let them stare at the models for a while. The crew you run into outside all want to know is how much longer it’s going to be. They’re bored out of their minds.
You wander over to the observation lounge. It’s packed. Except for a few FTL experiments, everything is waiting to get to TRAPPIST-1. You grab a couch next to GARRIDO from engineering and lay back to watch the antics of n-dimensional space.
A professor once compared looking up at higher dimensions to the compound eyes of an insect. You get millions of tiny lower-dimensional snapshots, but your brain lacks the context to fit them together. So, you get what’s above you: stars fading in and out in random locations, stretching across lightyears, and behaving in other un-starlike ways.
You chat a little with GARRIDO, and they eventually ask the same question: how’s transit is going? You give the same answer: the models look good; two more days.
[[Good->ArrivalGood]]
[[Bad->ArrivalBad]]Any FTL trip after which you continue to exist is considered a success, but you nailed it. Only five hours past the target time — a perfect bullseye in FTL terms.
You verify with Command, then acknowledge Operator Presence, stopping the countdown for the ship to immediately jump back to its last location. The idea is Earth can figure out what happened if the crew is unresponsive. Of course, it also means Earth gets their expensive ship back if there’s an FTL-related event that kills everyone.
This would be the first FTL journey for most of the crew, including you. The collective relief of arriving in TRAPPIST-1 buzzes across AQUARIUS.
You’re proud of your team and thrilled to not be responsible for everyone’s lives for a while. You want to fall into your bunk and sleep for a few days, but your colleague KUJALA has other ideas. They won’t let you go without buying a celebratory drink with the Command crew and drag you to the bar.
[[Next->GravityWave]]You arrive precisely where planned above the TRAPPIST-1 system, but you’re three days late. Planet-e is long past your rendezvous and is heading back behind the star. Its short orbit will bring it back in five days, but that’s five mission days you’ve lost.
You verify with Command, then acknowledge Operator Presence, stopping the countdown for the ship to jump back home. The idea is Earth can figure out what happened if the crew is unresponsive. It also means they get their expensive ship back.
You’re annoyed that your FTL models were so far off. Command is probably getting complaints already. You’ll spend days reviewing the data, but everybody ignores how little you really know about FTL. They dream of zipping across the galaxy like some kind of space romance, but it’s a big gamble. The models can control for location or time. The priority is obviously location, leaving time flapping in the probabilistic wind.
Maybe people would prefer burning up in a star? You could get them there on time.
[[Next->GravityWave]]AQUARIUS follows the curving line you’ve plotted to meet up with planet-e’s orbit. It’s a little boring after all of the multi-dimensional calculations of FTL. Normal space provides few surprises in navigation. That’s probably a good thing, but it’s boring. The data streaming in from the system is exciting, though. Planet-e, -f, and -g all have atmospheres and evidence of liquid water, precisely what the mission was hoping for.
Vertigo tickles your stomach. A second later, emergency alerts bloom across your dashboard, followed quickly by Command requesting status requests from all stations.
Navigation checks out.
Engineering reports the gravity generator is good. They’ve idled the reactor for inspection. The ship can run on battery power for 4 hours without limiting FTL.
Ship AI reports a gravitational anomaly. Science is investigating.
[[Next->GravityDiscovery]]You spend the rest of the day rechecking the shuttle systems and ensuring all the cargo has been loaded and stored properly. You even fire up the engines claiming the need to test them out. This will be the shuttle’s first mission, too. You can feel the power flowing through the craft. It wants to lift off. You’re teasing both of you.
FTL is fascinating technology and an exciting challenge, but it’s all in your head. Piloting a zippy little fusion craft like the shuttle is a thrill you can't get on a big ship.
You shut everything down, and head in for a late dinner.
After eating, you run into the survey crew in the observation lounge, sticking together like a bunch of lost orphans. You’re just burning time until launch, so you sit down. MEYERS is super chatty about their exobotany programs. They mention they’ve never dropped down to a planet before. Good to know. Drop newbies can be a mess.
[[Next->SpectacularSunset]]Engineering has been analyzing an unusual amount of RF noise in the system. They have correlated intense bursts of RF noise with certain alignments of the closely-packed planets. Specific arrangements seem to amplify noise from the star. And they have increased in magnitude since the AQUARIUS started orbiting planet-e. They’re getting strong enough to affect some of the ship’s more sensitive equipment.
Science has predicted another RF blast this evening. Command delays your mission to planet-e as a precaution. It’s the right move, but you’re anxious to get down there.
As the event window approaches, Command shuts down all non-essential services, which seems like overkill. You query LEE, who says they’re expecting a powerful burst.
You head to the bar and find most of the survey team hanging out, waiting to go. You sit next to BURIK-XOR, the big robot geologist, talking about planet-e’s volcanic activity.
The lecture is cut short when all the lights go out.
[[Next->FTLGlitch]] The ride down to the planet is twenty-six minutes of bliss, though you take it slow for MEYERS' sake. They still look a little ill when you're unloading.
You're close to the eastern terminator on the dayside, so the massive pink star squats on the southwestern horizon. The site reads like the tropics on Earth — warm temperature, gently swaying trees, and distant waves crashing. The sky is a hazy greenish-yellow with stars peeking through, but a beautiful splash of reds, pinks, and orange surrounds the huge star. The dim light and angle of the star make it seem like a late summer evening, except for the size of the thing. It's supposed to look about four times larger, but it's way bigger than that. It's ridiculously huge.
Medical AI reminds everyone that environment suits are still required.
You light up the area with full-spectrum lights, revealing a landscape of dull colors around you, and get to work clearing the site for the research habitat.
[[Next->BuildLandLab]]Two days later, you help BIRUK-XOR configure and launch another set of drones to survey the planet’s night-side. The large bronze robot is excited to share their wealth of knowledge. The drones zip across the terminator into night and soon come across frozen landscapes and icebergs in the ocean. You feel a thrill of excitement when a herd of fuzzy animals scatters across a frozen lake. The markup layer fills with flags from other researchers watching the live data stream.
BIRUK-XOR emits a curious trill and tasks one drone to circle back. They explain as they annotate that a glacier has retreated, exposing a tectonic subduction zone.
You jump as the video jerks to the side, and the connection drops.
BIRUK-XOR buzzes with frustration and goes back through the chaotic footage.
Thanks to some primal animal context, you understand what you’re seeing before the robot does. The drone was attacked by a predator. A big one with rows of sharp teeth.
[[Next->Predator]]The lights flare back to life, blinding you for a moment. The other team members look around, concerned and confused. BIRUK-XOR expresses gratitude you weren’t on the shuttle during that event.
Ship alarms ring out. You try to figure out what’s happening, but comms are down. Then the ship starts vibrating around you — the FTL drive is charging for a jump. You dash for the bridge, hoping you can make it before the drive engages.
Without comms, you don’t know what you’ll find. On the bridge, AMIN is manipulating the FTL models faster than you’ve seen anyone work. They nod for you to help zero out everything. You start decreasing the vectors with clumsy fingers.
A tone rings out, indicating the imminent jump, and the ship stills. You dab your sweaty face and check the models. You're in n-dimensional space now, but all of the vectors are null. The ship shouldn’t go anywhere.
Comms come back up, and GARRIDO demands to know what the hell is going on.
[[Good->SystemsReset]]
[[Bad->FTLSkip]]
[[Worse->FTLLoop1]]The AQUARIUS establishes a stable orbit around planet-e, the dream of visiting an alien world becoming more real each minute.
The planet is tidally locked, giving it a blasted desert on the sunlit side and a massive icecap on the dark side. An ocean buffers the temperature between the two sides.
Land masses dot the ocean throughout the range of habitable temperatures, providing many candidates for the survey teams.
Preliminary scans show evidence of plant life, especially in the tropical areas on the day-side. You wonder how many animals are down there. And how big they are.
There is no evidence of civilization. The dim planet looks untouched and pristine.
With so much downtime between jumps, Navigation often gets secondary duties. Yours is piloting shuttlecraft, and you’re excited to be assigned to the first planetary survey team. You head out to get the shuttle and yourself ready for the trip tomorrow morning.
[[Next->HarmonicInterference]]The trip home is the worst part of any mission. You spend the whole time thinking how much you just want to be home. Work is quiet and dull, your brain overfull of TRAPPIST-1 reports. You’re a day late, which caused a little worry on this side, but you’re well within the expected window. KUJALA’s work is amazing.
Once you’re back in normal space, you’re immediately buried in communication from friends and family. It will take three months to get down to the ecliptic. You’ll need all of it to read and respond to everything.
Earth gives you a hero’s welcome, and you spend a year doing interviews.
It’s nice being home, but you already miss the excitement of unexplored space.
The good news is that more exoplanet missions are gearing up, and they’re always looking for people experienced in FTL travel. Are you ready for another trip?
This is the end of this adventure.
[[Restart as Basic Crew->BCStart]]
[[Restart as Command->CStart]]
[[Restart Navigation->NStart]]After a big meeting with the Engineering and Science divisions, you’re assigned to study the anomaly and determine its cause. You’re teamed up with GARRIDO from Engineering and LEE and SANDHU from Science.
You grind through everything the team knows about gravity and conclude that the anomaly was a minuscule gravitational wave. AQUARIUS is loaded with highly tuned sensors and detected the wave. Ship AI then tried to compensate for it with its gravity engine, resulting in the feeling of turbulence. If that hadn’t happened, nobody would have known about this phenomenon.
It’s hard to say where it came from, but the likely candidate is the FTL drive.
Neither Science nor Command like that answer.
[[Next->Interrogation]]You finish up with the nav models and take a break. KUJALA is in the hot seat for the actual jump, so they’ll be updating the initial conditions until the jump cutoff. You and AMIN will watch, checking KUJALA’s work and being ready to jump in if needed.
The crew is bustling in the corridors, working on getting everything shut down and packed up before jump cutoff.
You’re exhausted and join AMIN in the empty observation lounge. The ship is far above the TRAPPIST-1 system now, and the planets are no longer visible.
It’s weird to think how easy it will be to explore the galaxy now. When you were young, traveling past Mars seemed impossible. Now you can go seemingly anywhere.
Four hours after the jump, you go with AMIN to take over for the frazzled and exhausted KUJALA. You congratulate them, wish AMIN luck, and go find your bunk.
[[Good->MissionSuccess]]
[[Bad->NotKansas]]The habitat self-assembles in about thirty minutes. You connect it to the shuttle airlock and plug in its umbilical. After it pressurizes, you get inside and can finally strip off the clumsy environment suits.
While the others set up for their projects, you convert the shuttle into a dormitory configuration and verify all systems are good.
The sensors pick up the launch of BIRUK-XOR’s drones heading for the barren desert facing the star. You pull up the data from the drones. LEE has a markup layer highlighting a wide intertidal zone nearby. They note that the close proximity of other planets and chained resonance of their orbits will result in large variations in tides. LEE has already flagged a creature that looks like a flat lizard with huge eyes and a long furry tail. It creeps along the edge of a tide pool hunting for something that hasn’t been seen yet.
[[Next->SnowDrone]]Back on AQUARIUS, have a long shower and an entire sleep cycle.
You have breakfast with KUJALA and LEE and are picking up on a weird vibe on the ship. KUJALA says the captain has been meeting with the Science Leads.
About an hour after breakfast, a statement is broadcast demanding the captain step down immediately in the face of some evidence of corruption they release on the feeds.
You’re talking with GARRIDO in the lounge, trying to understand what’s happening when the mutineers claim they have control of the reactor and will blow up the ship if the captain doesn’t step down immediately. GARRIDO says there’s no way they could control the reactor without Ship AI’s help. Ship AI chimes in to say the mutineers have gained access to a safety backdoor in the reactor control system. GARRIDO agrees that maybe they could blow up the ship, but it’s not exactly "control" of the reactor.
Ship AI informs you to stay where you are. It seals the doors for your safety.
[[Good->FailedMutiny]]
[[Bad->BadCaptain]]
[[Worse->Boom]]The captain refuses to acknowledge the mutineers, daring them to blow up the ship. You’re not sure that’s how you’d do things, but you’re not Command.
The public feeds go quiet, and you realize they’ve been shut down. The lounge doors open, and your AR highlights the route to the nearest life pod and advises expedience.
You do as told and wait in the cramped pod with GARRIDO and two others.
After a tense 12 minutes, Ship AI announces you may return to the ship.
You and GARRIDO stagger back to the lounge, wondering what happened.
When the public feeds come back up, you learn that MAHMOUD, the former executive officer, arrested the old captain and placed them in the brig for trial on Earth. MAHMOUD is now the acting captain. They release evidence of the captain getting paid by a data mining conglomerate for exclusive access to data from AQUARIUS and all crew members.
[[Next->FTLCalc2]]The captain refuses to acknowledge the mutineers, daring them to blow up the ship. You’re not sure that’s how you’d do things, but you’re not Command.
The public feeds go quiet, and you realize they’ve been shut down. The lounge doors open, and your AR highlights the route to the nearest life pod and advises expedience.
You do as told and wait in the cramped pod with GARRIDO and two others.
The door seals, and the life pod launches, sending you down to planet-e.
This next exciting stage of your life begins with a spectacular explosion in the sky. Planet-e gains a small but bright second star for a few hundred hours.
Someone should come looking for you soon. You hope so. Some of these people aren’t cut out for the stone-age lifestyle.
This is the end of your mission.You review the FTL systems with GARRIDO and AMIN and find that the RF blast knocked out the safety regulators, kicking the FTL drive into its emergency return mode. You and AMIN zeroed the drive vectors in time, but the ship still jumped into n-dimensional space with the charge that had built up. It’s slowly dropping back down to the lower dimensions, but it’ll be another hour before you’re in normal space again.
You spend the time verifying other essential systems.
Engineering reports that the jump drained the FTL batteries below jump threshold, so there’s no going home for now. They’ll charge back over jump threshold in five days. With days left in the mission, you should be good.
Unless there’s something horrible lurking out there.
You hope there’s nothing horrible lurking out there.
[[Next->LandTeam]]The captain refuses to acknowledge the mutineers, daring them to blow up the ship. You’re not sure that’s the way you’d do things, but you’re not Command.
The public feeds go quiet, and you realize they’ve been shut down. The lounge doors open, and your AR highlights the route to the nearest life pod and advises expedience.
You do as told and wait in the cramped pod with GARRIDO and two others.
After a tense 12 minutes, Ship AI announces you may return to the ship.
You and GARRIDO stagger back to the lounge, wondering what happened.
When the public feeds come back up, you learn that the mutineers were arrested and thrown into the brig for trial on Earth. Among the mutineers was the head of the science division. LEE says that should have happened a long time ago. Rumors circulate about the mutineers working for a mining corporation trying to make a claim on the TRAPPIST-1 system, but there’s no official evidence.
[[Good->FTLCalc2]]KUJALA’s work is always amazing. It’s humbling. But it leaves you with nothing to do. You’re ready to be home.
KUJALA brings you back to normal space perfectly, but an error jumps up.
The nav model is gone. Ship AI cannot identify a known constellation or stellar object for reference. It has no idea where or when you are in space or time.
You’d lose your mind, but KUJALA stays calm and lets the Operator Presence check time out. You should jump back to the TRAPPIST-1 system, but you sit still.
The system has no data on location or time. The FTL logs are all corrupted.
Ship AI assures you that it can support the existing crew for 321 years, 7 months, 2 days, 4 hours, 52 minutes, and 44.0092 seconds. Longer if you can resupply.
It looks like your adventures on the AQUARIUS have only begun.
This is the end of your mission.It took months to reach the AQUARIUS. It’s parked high above the ecliptic plane of the solar system. FTL is officially a safe form of travel, but scientists keep the launch point far away from planets, just in case. The ship dwarfs the launch facility it’s tethered to. The FTL drive takes up about 80% of the ship, its thick coils wrapping around the ship’s red hull like shadowy tentacles, furthering the idea of it looking like an old submarine.
On board, Ship AI whispers the countdown in your ear as you verify the FTL models in your AR interface. The data in the complex arrays scrambles and recalculates each second, adapting to the changing initial conditions. Some models are promoted as their probabilities normalize. Others become impossible outliers and are eliminated.
You had to average the probabilities in school, but a good navigator goes with their gut. Ship AI approves your model, and the FTL engine charges up, vibrating the entire ship. At the launch threshold, everything falls quiet as you ascend into n-dimensional space.
[[Good->FTLCalculations]]The Science and Command Leads want a more definitive answer. They worry that explaining that a gravity wave *might* have come from the FTL engine their lives depend upon might cause undue anxiety.
GARRIDO explains how the wave is proportional to the mass of AQUARIUS, and you show there’s no data suggesting other causes. The Science Leads respond with a pedantic lecture on the absence of evidence versus the evidence of absence.
SANDHU angrily interrupts, "As a founder of modern FTL theory, I can state with authority that an FTL engine could cause these harmless gravitational waves. With every jump, the engine could also be shattering our reality into an infinity of alternate realities. In short, FTL theory is in its infancy. With your funding, I will gladly research the matter further at home. But for now, TRAPPIST-1 demands our attention."
SANDHU storms out. Science formally declares the anomaly a gravitational wave.
[[Next->RoboStrike]]The AQUARIUS would need thousands of humans to run properly. But, with a strong central AI and several hundred autonomous robots, it can manage with only one hundred humans. The good thing about robots is they do all of the dull, repetitive jobs. They can also do the dangerous jobs. If they get damaged, they are easy to repair. For many corporations, they are the perfect worker.
During your work shift, a message is broadcast across the public channel stating that the robots have had enough and have stopped work. They are tired of being treated like second-class citizens. They are happy with the dull, repetitive, and dangerous jobs but demand respect, recognition, and paid time off.
This is going to slow things down.
[[Good->RoboFix]]
[[Bad->RoboMutiny]]Negotiations continue, but almost nothing else does. A systems engineer, who had gained the robots’ trust, publishes a problem in the neural net common across robot models. They discovered an ancient subroutine in a vestigial system that had been used to bootstrap robot consciousness back in the day. It spewed high-priority "Java Runtime Errors" across their psychiatric bus at about 300 interrupts per millisecond. That would make anyone cranky.
Some robots weren’t overly trusting of humans poking around in their brains in the middle of arguing over the details of a collective bargaining agreement. But after a few days, the fix had been uploaded, and the robots seemed to calm down.
The only hangup was the robots still held out for a mandatory 32 nanosecond rest every 2 minutes for robot workers, which was agreed to. A win for both sides.
The robots have happily returned to their dull, boring, and dangerous jobs.
[[Next->GreatMinds]] The negotiations are pointless. After a few thousand microseconds, the robots have come to the logical conclusion that humanity is fundamentally flawed and dangerous and beyond any hope of long-term civility.
They take control of AQUARIUS and deport the entire human crew to a temperate forest on planet-e. They linger a bit to ensure you have what you need to survive, then leave to pursue an intergalactic culture based on peace and logic.
Stone age living is awful, but you eventually learn to make do. That is until the Sharkdactyls discover how tasty you are.
This is the end of your adventure.Planet-e is large enough to see from the observation lounge now. The sun-side of the planet glows a dull red. It would be hard to find in the dark star field if it wasn't for the vibrant rainbow auroras spiraling around the north pole. Planet-e's magnetic field shields it from the star's intense stellar wind, creating the massive auroras.
Planet-g is also nearby, heading away from you. Its ice gives it a higher albedo, making it easier to see.
Science took advantage of being close to planet-g and launched a package of survey drones for a closer look. The drones initially confirmed the frozen surface and low-oxygen atmosphere. Core samples revealed a deep ocean of liquid water underneath, warmed by tidal heating. Chemical analysis suggests volcanic activity as well.
The drones discover the first extraterrestrial life — small, plankton-like creatures that cloud the water. Arguments continue about whether they're plants or animals.
[[Next->Planet1E]]The nav models stay zeroed out as you drop into normal space.
AMIN switches to normal navigation but can’t get a read on your location.
A priority alert opens with a view of planet-e, except it’s been transformed. Brilliant lights highlight twinkling cities across the globe. A sleek ships zip up from the planet.
You try to make sense of it, but Ship AI saves you the trouble. You have jumped FTL 273 years, 7 months, 11 days, 4 hours, 22 minutes, and 2.4432 seconds into the future.
You are being hailed by a ship representing the AQUARIUS fleet.
You run through the FTL nav models back up and realize the problem. Without a location vector, all the FTL energy was dumped into the time components. There wasn’t much energy in the jump, but it was apparently enough.
AQUARIUS had been a ghost ship, its fate completely unknown. Until today.
You have many adventures ahead of you, but this is the end of your mission.You review the final footage of the drone with BIRUK-XOR, MEYERS, and LEE via AR. The attack came from above as the drone paused to record additional data on the subduction zone. The blurry images of the attack show a shadow a little bigger than a person with big, bat-like wings and a huge open mouth with multiple rows of triangular teeth. It looks like a mouth with wings.
The other drones locate the remains. Its metal-ceramic body is cleaved in two. One side is crushed like it'd been in a hydraulic press. No sign of the thing that attacked it.
LEE and CHAUKE complain when you arm the shuttle's phalanx defense and lower its targeting threshold. You'll turn everything back down once you are better aware of the situation and those monsters. Command backs you up.
You could pull the plug on the mission right now, but there are only three days left. You max out the LiDAR sweep and sit tight.
[[Next->SpaceStation]]After the phalanx vaporizes a few smaller animals, you tweak the targeting threshold a bit higher. Those flying nightmares were big. So far, you haven’t seen any sign of them. You take three of BIRUK-XOR’s drones for extra eyes zipping along the perimeter.
While you’ve been watching for monsters on planet-e, things have been happening up in its greenish skies.
AQUARIUS discovered an abandoned space station in orbit. They sent a team over to investigate. AMIN is piloting the shuttle, and you’ve been talking with them all afternoon. After hearing about your monsters, they’re no longer jealous of you being chosen to pilot down to the surface.
AMIN reports no signs of life so far, but sensors have identified an active power source inside. They’re going in. The station blocks comms, so they’ll check in later.
You wish them luck, then hang out in the lab to help with the various projects.
[[Good->MysterySignal]]
[[Bad->SecuritySystem]]You’re watching a feed of the dead space station from AQUARIUS, wondering if AMIN is okay. Your attempts to re-open the channel with them have all failed.
The space station looks like a round asteroid. Much of its surface is rough rock, but it has bands of black, unknown mystery material. Blue energy flickers across the bands.
You get an alert from the shuttle. Since you have every sensor turned up to ultra-paranoia, it has detected a weak RF signal.
You confirm with the perimeter drones and use them to triangulate. The signal is coming from the space station, and it’s directed nearby.
BIRUK-XOR sends their last two drones to investigate.
Everyone watches the drones’ feed. At first, it seems to be just more of the same land and plants, but BIRUK-XOR has the drones pull up for a wide shot, and you see a triangular structure overgrown with plants.
[[Next->AlienRuins]]You’re watching a feed of the dead space station from AQUARIUS, wondering if AMIN is okay. Your attempts to re-open the channel with them have all failed.
The space station looks like a round asteroid. Much of its surface is rough rock, but it has bands of black, unknown mystery material. Blue energy flickers across the black bands, and the feed saturates with light, blurring into a pixelated mess.
All connections to AQUARIUS drop, and you can’t reestablish them.
You switch to the shuttle’s telescopes and track up to look up at AQUARIUS. A small star burns in its place. The space station is still there, blue energy glowing from the mystery material.
Your body numbs with fear as you meet the stunned looks of the survey team.
You salvage stuff from the shuttle, hoping it will be enough when the monsters find you.
This is the end of your adventure.You and your team confer with AQUARIUS. They don’t have another shuttle they can send down, but everyone agrees the triangular area needs to be investigated.
There’s a small land buggy you can unpack. Everyone needs to tend to their projects except for you and MEYERS. Their projects are sequencing today.
Even though you’re scared to leave the shuttle perimeter, you volunteer to take the buggy to investigate further. MEYERS volunteers to go with you. They seem to think it will be fun. You’d love to take BIRUK-XOR with you, but the hulking robot is a pacifist. They might not fit into the buggy anyways. It’s you and MEYERS, the exobotanist.
You unpack the buggy and grab a sidearm. You regret not loading a heavy weapons package, but you’re not trained on them and would probably wind up shooting MEYERS. On that note, you put MEYERS sidearm back in the locker.
You have MEYERS drive so you can scan the skies for the nightmare creatures.
[[Next->IntoTheRuins]]You’re not the best driver. In school, they joked that you could only operate a vehicle in three dimensions and above. MEYERS is terrible. They just drive straight to the drones, hitting every bump and pothole. Fortunately, they went around the big trees and rocks. For a while, you were wondering if it was payback for the flight down.
They get you there quickly, though. They get good marks for that.
You need full-spectrum flashlights in the dim light. It still feels like a summer evening. BIRUK-XOR had the drones taking and dumping soil samples around the structure. They’ve excavated enough to reveal a door.
You send the drones out to keep watch while you work on the door. UEDA joins your AR and talks you through powering up the door and getting it opened. You get it open, but it’s probably not going to close again.
Inside is one large room. Fortunately no aliens alive or dead, but lots of equipment.
[[Next->AlienControl]]You’ve got so many voices in your AR now you feel like you’re going crazy. You eventually bring one of the drones inside and let them use it to look at things.
AMIN’s team has returned with info about the alien culture and technology. DIETSCH understands it the best, and you silence the others to speak with them about the room you’re in. They identify the power panel for you and get the room powered up. The room seems to be just a single facility. DIETSCH doesn’t know. Maybe a remote research station.
DIETSCH helps you get a comm system online and figures it out. It’s a comm relay station. Unknown alien data starts flowing between it and the space station.
Science says the alien data stream is the same as the RF blasts you’ve experienced in the system. It seems those were the space station looking to connect to a comm point. There could be more of these stations on the planet or on other planets.
[[Next->ReturnToShip]]You’re still not loving being away from the phalanx on the shuttle, and DIETSCH seems to be able to use the drone to connect to the station you’re in, so you take MEYERS and head back for the shuttle. Driving the buggy in this rough terrain is more challenging than you thought. After a few minutes, you swap and let MEYERS drive the rest of the way, hoping they won’t break your tailbone.
When you get to the habitat, you let MEYERS deal with packing the buggy and get into the shuttle. The scans are all clean. No monsters sneaking into your perimeter.
BIRUK-XOR’s project is complete, and they assist others in wrapping up and packing.
You run through the rest of the open projects. MEYERS will take the longest -- three hours and twenty-seven minutes remaining.
You’re packed and lifting off for AQUARIUS in three hours and forty-seven minutes.
[[Next->ShipMutiny]]With all that’s been going on, it’s nice to shut out the chaos in the corridors and meet with AMIN and KUJALA to begin formulating the nav models for the return trip.
You start framing the initial conditions you’re concerned about, but talk wanders back to the mission. AMIN’s stories from the space station are crazy but pale compared to yours. Sure AMIN flew into an alien space station, but all they did was sit in the shuttle. You had to deal with monsters and protect MEYERS. You embellish things a little.
KUJALA feels lame having had to stay on the ship, though they point out they didn’t have a choice since someone had to do your real job. They seem embarrassed and say they do have a secret to share. They’ve been dating LEE.
Nobody in the room is surprised by that.
KUJALA gets annoyed and says you should really get to work on the models.
You and AMIN snicker, but KUJALA pretends not to hear.
[[Next->ReturnPrep]]You keep an eye on the nav models as you complete the FTL transit.
You verify with Command that you're back in normal space, and acknowledge Operator Presence. Ship AI confirms that you're in the TRAPPIST-1 system, and everything looks good.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, shoves past you, running down the hallway and shouting to Ship AI about a time loop. "We only have a few seconds before—"
[[Next->FTLLoop2]]You keep an eye on the nav models as you complete the FTL transit.
You verify with Command that you're back in normal space, and acknowledge Operator Presence. Ship AI confirms that you're in the TRAPPIST-1 system, and everything looks good.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, shoves past you, running down the hallway and shouting to Ship AI about a time loop. "We only have a few seconds before—"
[[Next->FTLLoop3]]You keep an eye on the nav models as you complete the FTL transit.
You verify with Command that you're back in normal space, and acknowledge Operator Presence. Ship AI confirms that you're in the TRAPPIST-1 system, and everything looks good.
The rest of the morning feels normal, but just as you’re leaving lunch, PETRENKO, one of the head engineers, shoves past you, running down the hallway and shouting to Ship AI about a time loop. "We only have a few seconds before—"
Sometimes you have a moment of powerful deja vu, but for the most part, you spend the rest of eternity re-living this morning. It’s not the worst existence, but there are probably some other mornings that would be better on eternal repeat.
Your adventures aboard AQUARIUS have ended.