The full story of The End of Everything. This story was run from May 17th to August 5th 2021 and was originally posted on the Clockworksun Stories Discord server.
This story is 24 updates long, plus an epilogue, spread over 63 standard pages with a total of 20,000 words.
Note that some reaction counts may not be exact, as voters may have changed their reactions between the close of voting and the time this story was scraped from the server.
Note that some reaction counts may not be exact, as voters may have changed their reactions between the close of voting and the time this story was scraped from the server.
Howdy gang; welcome back to the next one of these "story" things. New house is still coming soon, but I think we can stall long enough with just choosing the prompt and setting to make it. If not, oh well. We'll delay the beginning a bit. Anyway, here are the choices.
As per usual, starting prompts are retired after four times on the docket. The number of times a choice has been up is listed next to its name, as well as the general length.
(4) [SHORT STORY] The End of Everything
Cosmic Atmospheric / Horror
Space
The end of the universe has been and gone, and yet life remains. Pitifully inching across the empty, frigid void, a single starship crawls across utter nothingness, its reactor capable of sustaining it for millennia more. But what is the point of living in this utterly dead existence? Is there a way to reverse entropy, to jump-start the universe back to life? You’re not sure, but it’s got to be a better plan than just sitting around in the ship, waiting for the ultimate end.
(4) [SHORT STORY] The End of Everything
Cosmic Atmospheric / Horror
Space
The end of the universe has been and gone, and yet life remains. Pitifully inching across the empty, frigid void, a single starship crawls across utter nothingness, its reactor capable of sustaining it for millennia more. But what is the point of living in this utterly dead existence? Is there a way to reverse entropy, to jump-start the universe back to life? You’re not sure, but it’s got to be a better plan than just sitting around in the ship, waiting for the ultimate end.
(2) [SHORT STORY] “HENRY”
Puzzle / Mystery
Present Day - A large mall
Getting on the wrong bus by mistake can have consequences, but usually they’re limited to just wasting time or transit fare. This time, our protagonist has ended up in some sort of warped reflection of their original shopping destination, along with several other hapless shoppers. Together or apart, they must figure out a way to escape the mall while staying ahead of the many dangers it poses. It may also be a good idea to figure out where that bus went off to...
(2) [SHORT STORY] Eir Terminus
Science Fiction / Heist
The Future - Space/Kronwaë
In today's galactic market, cybernetics, implants, and biotech are all the rage, though prohibitively rare and expensive for many. There's significant demand for these modifications at a more reasonable price, and where there's demand, there's supply. Enter our protagonist, a - shall we say "repossessor?" - of implants and other tech. Illegal? Sure. But who's going to stop a bounty hunter? Oh, the galactic police? Well, that could prove problematic.
(1) [NOVELLA] The Man in the Maroon Suit
Horror / Mystery
Present Day, the dream world
“I never used to remember my dreams. That changed, a couple of months ago, when I first met Him in a nightmare. Tall, thin, grinning in just the right way to seem totally unhinged. I called him the Devil. I’ve encountered him several times since. Always hunting me while I sleep. I can never wake myself up when he’s too close, and I dread what will happen if he catches me. But that alone isn’t what makes me glance over my shoulder when walking down the street. It’s that I saw him yesterday in real life.”
(Winner: )
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Alright, End of Everything is next. We’ll go through a few rounds of decisions to figure out our characters and setting, then get started actually writing probably late next week. To start with, let’s talk characters.
Our protagonist is on an entropy-defying starship, possibly the very last source of energy in the universe. How big is it?
- Small. A single occupant. The size of a large van.
- Medium-small. A handful of people. A large RV or small apartment.
- Medium-large. A low double-digit population. A moderately sized building.
- Large. A colony ship sustaining a population approaching the triple digits. Several city blocks.
How did these people / this person get on this ship and outlast the death of the universe itself?
- They don’t know. The ship is all they’ve ever seen. Born after the end of the universe.
- Some great cataclysm as worlds were swallowed up by chaos. They barely escaped.
- Decay set in gradually as things dried up. Some people saw the writing on the wall sooner than others. Prepared, perhaps.
Lastly, who is our protagonist?
- Kirin. Quiet, kinda spacey. Spends a lot of time remembering how things used to be, which does not improve his mood. If there are other people on the ship, tends to stay away from them.
- Natira. Comfortable amidst the mechanical innards of the ship, keeping the thing patched up and functioning. Needs to always be doing something; sitting still or reflecting is terrifying. She doesn’t sleep much for this reason.
- Elen. Constantly researching and experimenting, trying to find some way to counteract entropy. Knows this ship can’t last forever and desperately wants to devise a plan for the future. There has to be something they can do. It can’t be over. Right?
(Winners: , , )
- Small. A single occupant. The size of a large van.
- Medium-small. A handful of people. A large RV or small apartment.
- Medium-large. A low double-digit population. A moderately sized building.
- Large. A colony ship sustaining a population approaching the triple digits. Several city blocks.
How did these people / this person get on this ship and outlast the death of the universe itself?
- They don’t know. The ship is all they’ve ever seen. Born after the end of the universe.
- Some great cataclysm as worlds were swallowed up by chaos. They barely escaped.
- Decay set in gradually as things dried up. Some people saw the writing on the wall sooner than others. Prepared, perhaps.
Lastly, who is our protagonist?
- Kirin. Quiet, kinda spacey. Spends a lot of time remembering how things used to be, which does not improve his mood. If there are other people on the ship, tends to stay away from them.
- Natira. Comfortable amidst the mechanical innards of the ship, keeping the thing patched up and functioning. Needs to always be doing something; sitting still or reflecting is terrifying. She doesn’t sleep much for this reason.
- Elen. Constantly researching and experimenting, trying to find some way to counteract entropy. Knows this ship can’t last forever and desperately wants to devise a plan for the future. There has to be something they can do. It can’t be over. Right?
(Winners: , , )
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Okay, we’ll have a moderately small starship, populated by a handful of people who escaped some great cataclysm. Elen will be our protagonist, though we may see the other two in some manner. I’ll think on it. Sure would be easier to not have to come up with any new characters 
. Now, let’s think about some other questions...
How long have they been on the ship?
⌚ - Days.
️ - Weeks.
- Months.
- Years.
Are they generally getting along, currently?
- Yeah. Mostly.
- Trying. But it’s not easy.
Is the ship in danger of running out of energy any time soon?
- Yes.
- No.
First, second, or third person?
1️⃣ - First.
2️⃣ - Second.
3️⃣ - Third.
What goes wrong?
- A planet is discovered in the ship’s path.
- Someone has a mental break and does something irresponsible.
️ - Hull breach.
[Before we get started, I just want to issue a warning that this story may very well attempt to grapple (however ineptly) with some sensitive issues. Depression, melancholy, anxiety, suicide, you get the idea. I don’t know exactly which of those topics will be covered, and we may end up without any of them, but I just wanted to get that out there before we get going.
This story is intended to be rather short.]
(Winners: , , , 3️⃣ , )
. Now, let’s think about some other questions...
How long have they been on the ship?
⌚ - Days.
️ - Weeks.
- Months.
- Years.
Are they generally getting along, currently?
- Yeah. Mostly.
- Trying. But it’s not easy.
Is the ship in danger of running out of energy any time soon?
- Yes.
- No.
First, second, or third person?
1️⃣ - First.
2️⃣ - Second.
3️⃣ - Third.
What goes wrong?
- A planet is discovered in the ship’s path.
- Someone has a mental break and does something irresponsible.
️ - Hull breach.
[Before we get started, I just want to issue a warning that this story may very well attempt to grapple (however ineptly) with some sensitive issues. Depression, melancholy, anxiety, suicide, you get the idea. I don’t know exactly which of those topics will be covered, and we may end up without any of them, but I just wanted to get that out there before we get going.
This story is intended to be rather short.]
(Winners: , , , 3️⃣ , )
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Scene 0
Elen woke up in total darkness, an occurrence that was becoming uncomfortably ordinary.
...
They let a minute pass, or two. No lights appeared. There were some distant clanking sounds from the corridor, but they were mostly drowned out by the hum of the air circulator. Elen exhaled in a motion somewhere between a sigh and a yawn, then rolled to the side and sat up on the edge of the bed. The floor tiles were still cold. The secondary heater had broken last week and Natira hadn’t been able to fix it. At least the air was still comfortable: the main heat fed straight from the reactor. If that thing broke down, they would have much larger problems than just being chilly.
Fumbling around in the dark, Elen eventually tracked down their phone and turned on the flashlight. Just as they had expected, the room’s light switch was still set correctly. Toggling it between “off” and “night” did nothing; only the “full” setting had any effect, flooding the room with dull white luminance from the overhead lights. Elen knelt to inspect one of the LEDs near the floor that should have been on overnight. It didn’t look broken, but of course they weren’t an electrician. Natira might know, but she had messed with the system several times before and it just kept failing after a few weeks.
Elen dropped their sleeping clothes into the hamper and pulled yesterday’s set from the chair. Today was finally their day for laundry, which only came once every other week to save water and power. That meant re-wearing clothes several days in a row. At least it wasn’t like they were doing much besides sitting around all day. After dressing, Elen took a moment to open the blinds and look out the porthole window. They did this every morning, just in the hope that maybe - just maybe - something would have changed.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing but total blackness outside. Not a single star, planet, or anything else. The universe was silent.
They closed the blinds, eyes downcast. They hadn’t expected anything to change, but it was still disappointing.
Well. That just means I need to try harder. Keep looking. I’ll find something. Eventually.
Grabbing a bag of toiletries, Elen finally clicked the lights off - again, to save power - and slid open their bedroom door. The bathroom door was closed, so they headed the other way into the dining area to see if anyone else was around.
A young woman sat at the table with her back to Elen, red hair tied up and out of the way, one earbud in, and methodically unscrewing something on the table in front of her.
“Morning, Natira,” Elen said, setting their bag on the other side of the table and shuffling through the cabinets for anything that wasn’t a dull grey cube. No luck. “When’s the next fab cycle, again?”
“El, I am so glad you’re up.” Natira didn’t take her eyes off the thing she was working on - looked like a plastic box with a few tangled wires spilling out the ends - but did at least take out the other earbud as well. “Kirin’s ignoring me again. I think he’ll come around in a few hours, but you’ve got to hear this.”
Elen sat down and poked at the cube. The lights flickered, then stabilized. “What’s broken now? What are we out of? Something important?”
“No, no. It’s... hang on, just give me...” she trailed off, using a set of needle-nosed pliers to pull at something hidden behind her hands. To Elen’s concern, they noticed she was bleeding again. Nothing life-threatening - just a jagged cut across the back of her hand - but bad enough that it hadn’t closed up on its own yet.
“Hey, are you aware you’ve got a cut on your hand?”
“Almost...” Something clicked in the plastic casing and the shell fell into two pieces, revealing a circuit board inside. Natira finally set her tools down and looked up. “Hm? Yeah, I know. Doesn’t really hurt that much, so I’m saving supplies.”
“You’re bleeding onto the table.”
“Huh? Oh fuck, sorry. I’ll clean that up.”
- Make her patch up the cut.
- Suggest wearing gloves.
- Say nothing about the cut. Ask about the important thing.
(Winner: )
- Make her patch up the cut.
- Suggest wearing gloves.
- Say nothing about the cut. Ask about the important thing.
(Winner: )
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Scene 1
“...Okay, alright. What’s this important thing you wanted me to hear?”
“Right.” Natira rummaged through a drawer for a towel and started wiping down the table. “So, you know how you keep looking for... well, anything, out there?”
“Yes?”
“And how I keep telling you there’s nothing out there because it all got EATEN? And how Kirin’s too mopey to offer much of an opinion?”
“Yep. You didn’t...?”
“Oh yes I did. Here, come on.” She wrapped the towel around her hand to prevent further bleeding, then dragged Elen down the short hallway to the bridge. With the utter darkness out the windows, it looked like the ship wasn’t moving at all, even though it was traveling at a sizable fraction of the speed of light. “Look.”
Elen looked. The radar display - the one that had been entirely blank for months - was no longer empty. A green dot pinged on the screen ahead and to the right of the little icon marking their ship, the Atlas. “You’re kidding,” they breathed. “Really? Why now - what is it?”
“Terrestrial planet. Big, about two earth masses. Liquid water, all over the place. Nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere. It’s... honestly, it looks habitable. But...” She paused, scratching her head. “It can’t possibly be. There’s no star.”
“So how is the water still liquid?”
A shrug. “All I’ve got are the scan results, El. But seriously, this is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in... ever! Another piece of the universe that survived! We have to go check it out! Even if it’s not habitable, even if there’s no easy energy left, maybe we can find some fuel for the reactor. Materials for the fabricator. Fix things, keep going. Keep living. If we’ve got anything, that’s better than the absolute nothing out here.”
“Can the Atlas even survive that? I don’t think she’s in great shape, and atmospheric entry isn’t exactly easy on the hull...”
“Well, uh, probably!” She hesitated, seeing Elen’s expression. “No, definitely. I can make it work. I’m sure of it.”
“And what if those things catch up with us while we’re stopped? That planet’s going slower than we are, right?”
“In whose frame of reference?” Natira laughed as if she had just made a hilarious joke, but quickly recovered. “We’re catching up with it, so yes. Basically. Look, you’re not seriously going to suggest not stopping here, are you? The first thing we’ve seen, at all, in almost a year? We gotta land!”
“I want to find out more about it too, but, well, we have to think of the future, right? We’re ahead of the... those things, for now, but who knows how long we have? If we land, can we take off again? Immediately, if needed?”
“Er, well.” Natira glanced over at another readout. The one that showed how much engine and reactor fuel remained. The engines were in the red and had been for weeks, though at least they didn’t burn fuel unless they had to change course or speed. The reactor had recently dipped into the orange and would only last another three or four months at the current rate. “Yes. Yeah, we can make it back out on that level of fuel. It’ll be tight, but it’ll work.”
- Accuse Natira of lying.
- Accept her assertion.
️ - Agree with her. They should land on the planet. [Takes a lot of fuel.]
️ - Partially agree. They should establish an orbit and do a deeper scan before deciding for sure. [Takes less fuel.]
- Disagree. They should keep going past the planet. [Takes no fuel.]
(Winners: , ️ )
- Accuse Natira of lying.
- Accept her assertion.
️ - Agree with her. They should land on the planet. [Takes a lot of fuel.]
️ - Partially agree. They should establish an orbit and do a deeper scan before deciding for sure. [Takes less fuel.]
- Disagree. They should keep going past the planet. [Takes no fuel.]
(Winners: , ️ )
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Scene 2
Elen frowned, trying to work out how much fuel they had burned to date and how much it would take for an atmospheric entry. It seemed like there wouldn’t be enough, but Natira probably knew what she was doing. Better than Elen when it came to starships, at least. “Okay. But I’d be a lot more comfortable if we could at least get into an orbit first. Verify everything, do some deeper scans, get some local geography. That kind of thing.”
“Sure!” She slumped into the command chair and wiggled her fingers above the controls before hesitating. “Should probably make sure Kirin’s aware,” she grumbled. “Before just firing the thrusters on him.”
“And maybe he’s got other ideas or opinions! Right? All that knowledge about the old days; maybe he’ll have an idea about where to land or what to look for. I’m sure he’ll be just as ready to get off the ship as you are.”
“Right. Sure.” Natira did not look convinced. “How about you go talk to him. I’ll stay here and work on plotting the corrections.”
“Okay. Back soon.” Elen stepped into the hallway and made their way back through the dining area to the living quarters. Noting the bathroom was now open, they took a quick detour to finish getting ready for the day before tossing their bag back on their bed and considering what to do.
Kirin was in his room, presumably. The ship was too small for anyone to hide very effectively. But getting his attention long enough to talk was never easy, especially with something so unusual. Natira usually preferred the direct approach; she didn’t get along with him very well. Elen... well, they tried. Sometimes they had success.
[If the most-voted option doesn’t work, the next-most popular will be chosen until we get to an option that works.]
✊ - Knock and say they need to talk.
- Open the door and start the conversation. It doesn’t lock.
- Explain the gist of the problem through the door and ask his opinion.
- Just announce they’re going to the planet.
- Nevermind. Go back to Natira.
(Winners: ✊ / (tie) > )
- Open the door and start the conversation. It doesn’t lock.
- Explain the gist of the problem through the door and ask his opinion.
- Just announce they’re going to the planet.
- Nevermind. Go back to Natira.
(Winners: ✊ / (tie) > )
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Scene 3
Knock knock
“Hey, Kirin, you in there?” Elen waited a moment, but didn’t receive a reply. “I want to talk with you about something.”
...
Okay... “There’s a planet nearby. Natira found it on scan, and it looks like it could be habitable. We’re planning on landing there. I just wanted to see if you had any input on that.” Another pause. “You know, before we just changed course without telling you or anything.”
...
“Are you actually in there?”
More silence.
“Well, okay then. Feel free to come out if you want to talk. It’s going to be a few days till we can enter orbit anyway, so you’ll have time to think it over.”
Maybe he’s sleeping, Elen considered as they left the door and headed back to the bridge. Or hiding in the wall paneling or something. I usually get some sort of response, at least. They shrugged. Oh well. He’ll come out at some point. Can’t stay hiding forever.
“That didn’t take long. Did he have anything to say?”
“No; no reply. Go ahead and put us on course to enter orbit. There’s no way we can miss this, whatever it is.”
“You got it, chief.” Natira double-checked a few figures before gently tapping a button. The ship’s engines rumbled to life; the Atlas changed course and began to slow. “We should be in a high, stable orbit in about 30 hours.” She opened her mouth again as if to say more, then furrowed her brow and stopped. “Go ahead and get back to your day; I’ll stay here and make sure the engines don’t blow up. It’s been a while since they were last on.”
Elen went back to their day.
Time passed. Kirin slipped in and out of his room like a ghost, always managing to drift out of sight by the time Elen noticed and tried to get his attention. Natira would occasionally stop by, face and arms smudged with grease, to pick up another bottle of water or some obscure tool. She seemed cheerful enough, explaining that the engines were, in fact, still running. That’s all she would confirm.
The next day, around mid-afternoon by standard sol cycle, the Atlas entered orbit. The engines cut off after a few more navigational tweaks, leaving only a dangerously low sliver of red in the gauge. More detailed scans flooded over the planet’s surface as the craft looped around the sky.
It was definitely habitable, but one of the strangest planets Elen had ever seen.
About half of the surface was covered in a deep, saltwater ocean, centered on one of the poles. A central core of ice that warmed into more tropical waters before tapering out near the equator and giving way to land. There was a short strip of beach and jungle ringing the central latitudes, maybe a hundred miles wide. Then this too tapered off. Jungle plants gave way to sand and dust, leading into a massive desert that covered nearly a third of the planet. Finally, the land nearing the planet’s opposite pole was the most unusual yet. Strings of earth and rock rose out of the ground in twisting, knotted bridges that looped around each other like a pile of loose noodles. At the pole itself, the ground dropped away and all the twisting columns of rock poured into a hole deeper than scans would show; too much interference from all the rock bridges. There was no sun, but thick, hazy clouds drifted over the planet and seemed to produce their own light. The entire place was shrouded in weird, eternal twilight from these thousands of drifting lanterns.
- Recommend landing in the arctic.
- Recommend landing in the ocean (on an island).
- Recommend landing in the jungle.
️ - Recommend landing in the desert.
- Recommend landing near the twisting columns and the polar hole.
(Winner: :palm_tree: )
- Recommend landing in the arctic.
- Recommend landing in the ocean (on an island).
- Recommend landing in the jungle.
️ - Recommend landing in the desert.
- Recommend landing near the twisting columns and the polar hole.
(Winner: :palm_tree: )
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Scene 4
Kirin finally appeared only a few minutes before the Atlas was going to enter the mysterious planet’s atmosphere. Natira was on the controls, keeping careful watch, while Elen paced behind her on the bridge. They heard quiet footsteps and turned around. “Hey, good to see you.”
Kirin tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear and tapped at the doorframe. “We’re really landing, then. For good or just temporarily?”
Elen glanced at Natira, but she was occupied coaxing the ship into the right position while using as little fuel as possible. “Maybe? It depends on what we find there. And, well, if those things followed us.”
“Do you really think this is smart? It’s not going to replace Earth. Is there even any life down there? Civilization? What are we going to find?”
“Life, yes. Lots of plants. We should be able to get enough food and water, assuming it’s edible as well as just habitable. Civilization, I don’t think so. Doesn’t look like any intelligent species are here.” A pause. “You might like it. A whole planet to ourselves.”
Kirin shook his head. “That’s not it. There’s nothing left. I just don’t get how you can still have hope.” He gripped the doorframe. “Even if we land and survive and start a farm or something, and even if those planet-eaters aren’t already on their way, and even if the plants down there aren’t poisonous, then what? Break our backs for the next forty years until we get too old to keep working and die? There’s nothing left in the universe. You saw them. You saw it...” He trailed off. Elen tried to come up with something to say, but didn’t get there before Kirin spoke again. “What’s the point? We’re never going to get Earth back. Why bother?”
“Well, uh... I don’t really want to die? Is that good enough?”
“No! Why bother staying alive when there’s nothing to live for?”
“There’s this planet down there. What if there is something there? A way to get rid of the planet-eaters, restore life to the universe, and bring Earth back? Wouldn’t you feel silly if we didn’t at least check?”
Kirin raised both eyebrows. “But there isn’t. That’s ridiculous.”
“Look, this place is crazy. You can’t rule it out. It’s still here, for one. Nothing else seems to have survived. It’s gotta be special.”
Natria interrupted. “Heads up; we’re about to enter the atmosphere. Hold onto something.”
The ship began to vibrate and Elen looked out the window to see the strip of green jungle around the equator growing closer at a rapid pace. They glanced at the engine fuel levels. Almost entirely empty. “Uh, are you sure we have enough to get down in one piece? Let alone back up?”
“Sorry, can’t hear you over the sound of us landing safely!” she shouted back, keying in a sequence and causing the engines to roar loudly.
Elen could just barely hear Kirin muttering something approximating “oh great” repeatedly as they clambered further into the bridge. Little red lights began popping up on key components as the ship’s shields struggled to redirect the heat of atmospheric entry. They sat down and buckled themself into a chair, shouting for Kirin to do the same. “Do you need any help?” they yelled over the commotion.
“No, nope, all good! Everything’s workin’ great!”
A warning light blinked on by the fuel gauge, which now read essentially empty. The engine pitch began to change and the ship shuddered more violently. The ground was still far away, but approaching very quickly. “You sure?”
“Yep! Just stay put!”
- Stay put.
- Bail. Take the others with, if they’ll go.
️ - Take over a set of controls. [You can note what to do specifically]
(Winner: )
- Stay put.
- Bail. Take the others with, if they’ll go.
️ - Take over a set of controls. [You can note what to do specifically]
(Winner: )
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Scene 5
Elen stayed put. Natira had gotten the ship this far; she knew what she was doing. Even though it sometimes really didn’t seem like it.
The ship’s course stayed relatively stable, though it continued to gain vertical speed while losing horizontal. Glowing clouds loomed up and passed by without incident. The jungle canopy came into view as separate trees and branches rather than an omnipresent mass of green. The engines sputtered and whined.
“I’m setting us down now!” Natira shouted. “No time to pick a landing spot! REALLY hang on this time!” A moment later, both engines fired backwards for several seconds before cutting out with a grinding cough. The fuel gauge read empty and the Atlas dropped out of the sky.
The ship crashed through the jungle canopy, energy shields sparking against solid wood. The shields won, at least to start with, shattering branches and trunks alike as the craft blazed a fiery path to the ground. Elen was shaken around like a badly-configured washing machine, grateful for the harness preventing them from being launched across the bridge entirely.
Finally, the ship hit the jungle floor with a thunderous slam. This final impact was enough for the shields and they broke with a two-tone warning siren lost among the already-existing cacophony. More trees appeared out of the twilight, crashing against the hull directly and collapsing against starship-grade plating. Cockpit glass cracked, but held.
At last, after an interminable slide through the jungle, the Atlas finally came to rest. Warning lights blinked all around the bridge and smoke rose into the canopy outside. Thankfully, there didn’t appear to be any fires inside the ship and the overall structure was mostly intact. It would need a lot of repairs to get spaceworthy again, though.
All three sat in stunned silence for a few moments. Finally, Natira released her harness and stood up. “Ah, heh. Uh, ta-da! We’re here!”
- Congratulate Natira on the survivable landing under extreme circumstances.
- Berate Natira for the crash landing and for either lying or being wrong about how much fuel would be left.
(Winner: )
- Congratulate Natira on the survivable landing under extreme circumstances.
- Berate Natira for the crash landing and for either lying or being wrong about how much fuel would be left.
(Winner: )
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Scene 6
“Is everyone okay?” Elen asked, struggling to stand on the slanted floor. “Kirin?”
“Yep...”
“Natira?” She was already up and walking around, so Elen decided to assume she was fine. “Good job on the landing, by the way. You know what they say: any landing you can walk away from...”
“Don’t lie. I really screwed this up. No fuel, no ship, stuck on a mystery planet we don’t know much about.”
“That’s not-”
She glared at them.
“Okay, yeah, this is a bit of a problem. But it’s not your fault, and you did do a good job making the landing survivable!”
“It is my fault, though. I lied to you. I knew we wouldn’t have enough fuel to get back off the planet. I did think we’d have enough to land, but that’s even worse. Not only am I a liar, but I’m also incompetent!” She took a quick breath and quickly walked to the door. “I’m going outside. I’ll let you know if I get eaten by something.”
Elen looked at Kirin, who raised his hands. “What? What do you want me to do about this?”
“... Nothing. We should go out too. Take a look around. C’mon.”
The jungle teemed with life, at least where the starship hadn’t crashed through it. Most plants seemed to emit a dull sort of glow; combined with the clouds above, the atmosphere was a perpetual twilight. Enormous trees grew tall with grey, spiraling bark and dim turquoise leaves. Smaller shrubs and ferns rooted in clusters around the trunks of these behemoths, while tall fronds of grass dominated the jungle floor between them. Thick vines hung down from the canopy - also a deep blue - tipped with a little star-like glow twinkling enticingly just a little below eye level.
The dominant sounds were that of crackling fires burning out and broken metal settling, but below that was a constant rustle of leaves and stems moving in the light wind. Occasional hoots drifted through the air, maybe caused by some sort of animal. Distantly, there was a rush of white noise. Flowing water, perhaps. Elen accidentally kicked something aside as they stepped into the grass and bent down to investigate.
Nestled snugly in a slight depression was a perfectly smooth heart-shaped stone, made entirely of transparent red crystal and about the size of Elen’s fist. They instinctively reached down for it, then hesitated. This thing had no business being here. It was too intentional, and too human, for it to make any sense.
[This choice is a branch point. Some option(s) will lock out at least one ending.]
❤️ - Pick up the heart.
- Leave the heart.
- Destroy the heart.
Once that’s done, what next? [You can specify a particular object or action to focus on within a category, if desired]
- Go find Natira. Where did she run off to?
- Try to find a source of water.
- Investigate the plant life; see what might be useful.
- Look for any animal life; see what might be useful.
(Winners: ❤️, )
- Leave the heart.
- Destroy the heart.
Once that’s done, what next? [You can specify a particular object or action to focus on within a category, if desired]
- Go find Natira. Where did she run off to?
- Try to find a source of water.
- Investigate the plant life; see what might be useful.
- Look for any animal life; see what might be useful.
(Winners: ❤️, )
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Scene 7
... That’s what made it interesting, of course. Elen picked up the heart and shivered with a sudden chill. The jungle grew quiet around them and sounds from another place trickled in. A slow, throbbing heartbeat, deep within the planet’s core. A suggestion of music. Less beat and melody; more timbre and pitch. Six distinct voices singing and crying in discordant harmony. That heartbeat pulsing behind it all.
A particularly energetic pop from the wreckage interrupted and all the otherworldly sounds faded. Elen shook their head, vaguely worried, and slipped the heart into a pocket. What did it mean? It almost felt alive; the stone itself seemed to quiver or pulse at times. No, not now. Gotta survive first. Mystery heart-stone later. What’s the first thing to look for; water?
“You find anything interesting?” Elen called across the clearing, listening for the source of the water sounds.
Kirin stood up from his position crouching at the base of one of the trees. “These things are really crazy. Their bark feels like metal, but it’s grown so organically... And these ferns; they’ve got this blue line running up the stem that glows. If you look close, it’s actually made of some kind of gel. I wonder how it generates light...”
“Metal trees?” Elen knocked on one of them and got a dull clang for their efforts. “Holy cow. I wonder if we could use them to patch up the ship?”
“Maybe. I still don’t really like it here. Feels too strange. And why is it still here at all?”
Elen shrugged. “Don’t think we have much of a choice right now. C’mon, let’s go track down a water source before nightfall.”
“Nightfall? Here?”
“Er, right. Sorry; it looks like sunset so it feels like sunset. Although if these plants ever stop glowing for some reason, it’s going to be very dark. The canopy’s too thick for the cloudlight to make its way in. Let’s go find some water anyway.”
Kirin cautiously moved forward. “Did you see where Natira went, by the way? I know she’s sulking, but we don’t know anything about how dangerous this place is.”
“Maybe she’s doing the same thing we are? Plus, she said she’d tell us if she got eaten by something. I think we’d have heard something if she were in danger; let’s just give her some space.”
“Okay...”
The jungle floor wasn’t too difficult to move through. Tall grass bent easily out of the way and the enormous metal trees were too far apart to hamper progress. The only things that really got in the way were the glow-tipped vines draping down from the canopy. There were too many to easily pick out a path between them, and they were too heavy to brush aside without significant effort. Plus, just touching them seemed to leave a prickly, tingling sensation on Elen’s hands, so they made the executive decision to not touch the vines until more research could be done. This meant a lot of squinting in the gloom and weaving between little lights.
Still, progress was made, and in only a few minutes, Elen and Kirin had made it to the bank of a shallow river trickling gently over a bed of rocks. Smaller, non-metallic trees grew on the banks and dug their roots tightly into the rocks, holding the riverbed together and splitting the water into many turbulent flows. Glowing yellow fruits, each about the size of a large pear, hung heavily from the trees’ branches and smelled faintly of citrus. No vines grew here, and the nearest giant trees were far enough away that the canopy thinned to allow a glimpse of the sky. The water seemed normal and safe; dipping a finger in revealed nothing but a pleasant cooling sensation, and in fact seemed to wash away the residual tingles from the vines. It didn’t smell like anything besides minerals.
- Taste the water.
- Don’t.
- Taste the fruits.
- Don’t.
- Go looking for Natira.
- Return to the ship and wait for her to come back.
️ - Keep exploring the jungle.
(Winners: , , and a tie between and )
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Scene 8
Elen cautiously cupped their hands in the water and, after the vine tingles went away, took a sip. It was... fine. Tasted a bit like rocks, but otherwise totally normal water. “It should be okay,” they told Kirin, “But probably give it a few hours to see if I explode or something before we assume it’s totally good.”
A nod. “While we’re here, do you want to check out these fruits too? I know we’ve got a few weeks of fabricator cubes - assuming they aren’t currently on fire - but I don’t think we’re getting the ship back in space by then.”
Elen considered one of the fruits and gently poked it. The branch swayed; it seemed the fruits were quite heavy. “I don’t know; at least with water, it’s pretty obvious if it’s bad. Not much you can do to it. But some random alien fruits? That glow? They could be full of radon or bees or some terrible neurotoxin!”
“That doesn’t seem very likely.” Kirin grabbed a fruit and pulled it off the branch. It retained its glow, though the color darkened somewhat from light yellow to deep orange. He turned it around in his hand. “Feels like a lemon, but bigger. And glowing.”
Despite their misgivings, Elen stepped closer and stared at the fruit. “Do you have a knife or something? Maybe we could cut it open and see what’s inside.”
“There’s definitely a few back at the ship. Every toolbox has one.”
“Toolbox... Natira! We’ve been out for a while. Do you think she’s okay?”
“I was the one asking you that question ten minutes ago!” Kirin stuffed the fruit into a pocket with some difficulty and dipped his hands in the stream. “She’s kind of annoying, but not stupid. I don’t think she’d just wander off and not say anything.”
“So...?”
“So, no. I don’t think she’s okay.”
Elen swallowed, suddenly feeling warm. “We should go look for her.”
“Where? We can’t see anything in this gloom and we don’t have a map or GPS or anything. How do you expect us to help her without just getting lost ourselves?”
“Well, we can’t just leave her out here!” Elen glanced back towards the distant flickers of orange light that still marked the ship’s clearing. “Natira! Are you okay?!”
Kirin looked from tree to tree, clearly nervous. “I don’t like you shouting like that. There could be something out here.”
“What do you want to do, then?!” To their further dismay, Elen noticed that the omnipresent blue glow from the trees, grass, and shrubs was beginning to dim. Maybe it would come back soon. Hopefully.
“I don’t know!” Kirin hissed, trying to keep his voice down. “I don’t even know which direction she went! We are in no position to form a search party, but if she doesn’t just come back...”
Elen held their head, trying to think. “Uh... what about her phone? She must still have it, right?” They dug into their pockets, trying to find their own. On such a small ship, phones hadn’t been useful in almost any way, especially since there was no way to get a network connection without a nearby comm buoy. But they all still had them, and Natira had sometimes kept hers on so Elen or Kirin could get ahold of her while she was in the hull or reactor or somewhere similarly dangerous. Maybe if she had it on right now, and if the ship’s communication arrays were still active, and if she were in any condition to pick up...
After thirty seconds of booting up, Elen selected Natira’s name in their contacts. The phone considered their request, then ended the call with a “no network connection” error.
“Dammit, dammit, the comms array must be damaged. I don’t - I don’t know what to do!”
- Head out and search for her. [Risks Elen and Kirin.]
- Stay at the ship, fortify, organize, and wait for her to come back. [Risks Natira.]
- Try to fix the comms array. [Risks Natira.]
- Elen goes out to search. Kirin stays back to fix the array. [Risks Elen.]
(Winner: )
- Head out and search for her. [Risks Elen and Kirin.]
- Stay at the ship, fortify, organize, and wait for her to come back. [Risks Natira.]
- Try to fix the comms array. [Risks Natira.]
- Elen goes out to search. Kirin stays back to fix the array. [Risks Elen.]
(Winner: )
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Scene 9
Kirin shook his head. “Look, you might be crazy enough to wander around in the jungle with absolutely no idea where to look, but I’m not. I’m going back to the ship. I watched her work on the comms once; maybe I can figure out what’s wrong with it. Coming?”
“N-no. That’s a good idea; you go fix the comms. I’ll stay out here and look for her. There’s gotta be some sign of where she went, right?”
“If you get killed by something out here, just remember that I told you so. Good luck; don’t die.”
“Will do...” Elen watched Kirin jog off into the forest. The blue glow was dimming further, leaving only the starlike vines and the strange yellow glow of the fruits behind. They picked another off the branch and held it up as a sort of makeshift lantern. Nowhere near as bright as a flashlight, but - “Wait a minute, I’m stupid.” Elen tapped at their phone for a moment and a much more powerful light sprang to life. They took the fruit anyway. Maybe it could be useful.
As they crept through the darkened forest, Elen started to remember random bits and pieces of various biology classes. Bioluminescence was a very rare trait on Earth, restricted mostly to attracting prey or warning off predators. Trees and shrubs didn’t need light to see. So why did they all glow, and why were they suddenly dimming?
They couldn’t get the thought out of their head that maybe the plants were trying to lure in prey. Smaller animals, perhaps, or larger ones. Human ones. A ridiculous thought, of course, but here they were on a planet that should have been destroyed months ago along with the rest of the universe. Nothing was out of the question.
Something vibrated in their pocket. Elen reached for their phone, shocked and thrilled that Kirin had actually gotten the comms operational, before realizing they were already holding it and the vibration was something else. Nervous, they pulled the red crystal heart out of their pocket and held it lightly. It visibly pulsed in their palm every second or two, thumping in the same rhythm as a real heart.
“What are you trying to tell me...?” Elen whispered to the heart, feeling slightly foolish but willing to give it a try. “Can you tell me where to find Natira?”
Thu-thump.
Turning in a slow circle, Elen listened to the heart. It seemed to beat faster or slower depending on what direction they were facing, though the difference was very slight.
Before they could make a decision, Elen jumped as their phone actually rang. They picked up and Kirin spoke. “Elen, I got the comms working.” He paused. “Obviously. Turns out the system just needed a reboot; it started right up. Find anything yet?”
“No,” Elen said, omitting any mention of the heart. “But as soon as you hang up, I can try to call her.”
“I tried already. Went to voicemail. I don’t know if that means it’s just not on, or if...”
“Well, maybe I can hear it? We don’t have many other options here!”
“No, we do. This thing comes with a locator. I only have one tower so I can’t triangulate anything, but I can get a distance from the ship. Apparently she’s about 410 meters away, whereas you are about 260. I don’t know what direction, though, for either of you.”
“Can you just set up another tower or two and get a precise location?”
“I don’t know how! I don’t even know if we have any! That’s Natira’s thing!”
“Okay, I’ll go out to 400 meters and see what I can find. Am I going in the right direction now?”
“No... that’s closer to the ship. That’s better; now you’re going away.”
“What’s the circumference of a circle, again? 2pi times the radius? So I only have to walk like two and a half kilometers to check every possible location. That can’t be too hard!”
“Good luck. You’ll need it. I’ll tell you if you go too far.”
Elen glanced down at the heart as they picked through the undergrowth. It seemed to pulse fastest at about a 90 degree angle to their current path. Also, it was definitely picking up speed.
❤️ - Follow the heart.
- Follow the slowest pulses instead.
️ - Just keep going as is.
(Winner: ❤️ )
- Follow the slowest pulses instead.
️ - Just keep going as is.
(Winner: ❤️ )
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Scene 10
What the heck. It’s not like it’s a WORSE idea, right?
Elen changed direction and aligned their path with the fastest beats from the heart. Feeling a sense of urgency, they jogged through the jungle as quickly as they could without running into too many of the starlike vines. There sure were a lot of them, and they almost seemed to be... moving? Elen slowed down, unable to keep going without running into dozens of the glowing vines. Their face and arms tingled.
“Hey, there are a lot of those vines here. Am I getting close? I’m not sure how much farther I can go with them growing so thick.” A short pause. “They, uh, also look like they’re moving. It’s kinda creepy.”
“You’re at 390 meters. If you found something weird, I’d keep going if you can. You know how much Natira likes weird stuff.”
“Right, right...”
Elen crouched lower, trying to get underneath the mass of vines above. They shuddered, looking up and seeing a crawling canopy of hundreds of slowly moving snakelike plants. Each was still tipped with its little starlike light, and all those lights were flowing and shifting like waves. Moving ahead and converging on a single point, just out of sight.
Natira, you had better appreciate this when I get you out of whatever trouble you’re in. I am not having a good time right now.
“405 meters,” Kirin said after over a minute of harrowing crawling. “You should see something just ahead, if she’s there. You could also be on the entirely wrong side of the ship. Just saying.”
“Thanks for the - oof - confidence.” Elen slid onto their back and aimed the flashlight up, noticing that the vines had actually climbed further into the canopy here and there was room to stand. The sound of running water was audible in the periphery, too - apparently they had circled back around close to the river.
It was difficult to make out exactly what was going on in the branches of the enormous silver trees above. Between the darkness and the slithering movement of the vines, the scene resembled nothing more than hundreds of snakes writhing overhead. Still, after several harrowing seconds, Elen let out a breath as everything shifted into place.
Hundreds of vines were tangled around a central cocoon, suspended maybe ten feet above the forest floor by a thick silver branch. The cocoon was made of vines and more continued pressing in to cover up the object inside. They hadn’t finished yet and several protrusions poked out: a foot, an arm, a few strands of hair. Unless there was another red-haired human in this forest, Elen had found Natira.
“Good news, I found her.” Elen swallowed.
“Bad news?”
“Bad news, she’s in a vine cocoon fifteen feet in the air. And - HEY NATIRA! - probably knocked out. I think the vines are - you remember the tingles when we touched them - I think they’re carnivorous. What do I do?!”
[Select one or more objects and one or more actions. Specify your plan in #story_discussion; otherwise I will loosely interpret based on the results here. You can tell the choices are very vague, so I would highly recommend specifying. This choice is potentially deadly to either or both characters involved.]
- Hands.
- Phone.
- Glowing fruit.
- Silver trees.
- Nearby river.
❤️ - Crystal heart.
- Use on Elen.
- Use on Natira.
✂️ - Use on the vines (destructive).
- Use on the vines (nondestructive).
(Winners: , )
- Hands.
- Phone.
- Glowing fruit.
- Silver trees.
- Nearby river.
❤️ - Crystal heart.
- Use on Elen.
- Use on Natira.
✂️ - Use on the vines (destructive).
- Use on the vines (nondestructive).
(Winners: , )
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Scene 11
“Okay, okay, maybe...” Elen grabbed the still-glowing fruit from their pocket. “Do you like this instead? It’s all glowy!” They stretched up towards the canopy, trying to get the vines’ attention. None of them seemed to care or change direction and the cocoon simply wrapped tighter. “No, no, that’s not gonna work. What about...”
Lacking better options, they ran up to the nearest tree and slapped the crystal heart onto a vine. The plant slithered upwards, but languidly, and it didn’t appear to be damaged. The heart didn’t change its beat. They tried again with the fruit, smacking the same vine just to see if it did anything.
Nothing to the vine, but it seemed to have an effect on the tree. Where the fruit struck bark, tiny droplets of juice splattered out. Smoke rose from the points of contact and little char marks appeared on the tree. “Acid? Or does it only do this to the tree?” Elen squeezed the fruit, trying to drip some juice onto the vine, but it had risen up out of reach at this point and they only succeeded at getting juice all over their hands. No burning pain, so not conventional acid. Maybe it only affected the trees. Still, not helpful right now.
Unless...?
Elen gasped and dropped the fruit, dashing off towards the river. Few vines stood in their path; almost all from this section of the forest seemed to be gathered around the cocoon. In only a matter of seconds, they slid to a stop on the riverbank and picked several more fruits, then darted back the way they came.
Sliding again on the undergrowth, Elen pocketed their phone and as many fruits as would fit, then leapt up onto the tree and began to climb. Their hands - sticky with fruit juices - burned into the trunk and created shallow handholds in the rough bark. The reaction was very exothermic and Elen winced at the heat, but kept moving. Natira was no longer visible in the vines.
After a minute of harrowing climbing, Elen reached the branch that supported the cocoon. They balanced in the fork of the tree, pulling out all the fruits they had gathered and squeezing them against the branch just before where the vines were attached. The juice burned through the bark and wood surprisingly quickly, but painfully slowly as the seconds and minutes ticked by. Quiet rustling noises rose from the cocoon.
After five fruits and almost as many minutes, Elen had burned through enough of the branch to feel confident moving on to the next stage of their plan: they stood up on the branch and kicked at the weakened section with all the force they could muster.
Something cracked.
They did it again, and again, then risked a jump with both feet.
The branch gave and there was a terrifying moment of vertigo as Elen, the branch, and the entire cocoon plummeted to the forest floor. The vines supporting it snapped, their connection to the canopy severed by the weight of the falling branch.
Elen sat up, bruised but not seriously injured. The cocoon was now still and lifeless. A few vines had come loose, exposing parts of Natira’s clothing, but she wasn’t moving and the cocoon was mostly intact. The fabric they could see was coated in a shiny substance and seemed damaged. More vines drooped from the canopy above, seeking closer. Elen reached out to pull the vines away, then hesitated. The tingles they had felt earlier. Some sort of toxin? Would touching the vines be enough to knock them out too?
- Go for it anyway. Pull the vines off, get her out of there.
- Drag the cocoon to the ship.
- Drag the cocoon to the river.
[Or write in an alternate plan.]
(Winner: )
- Go for it anyway. Pull the vines off, get her out of there.
- Drag the cocoon to the ship.
- Drag the cocoon to the river.
[Or write in an alternate plan.]
(Winner: )
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Scene 12
Okay, okay, maybe the fruit works on the vines too, Elen reasoned. Or it can at least help protect me.
They gathered up the squeezed fruit carcasses and slathered the remaining juices onto the vines of the cocoon, careful not to actually touch it. No reaction. Must only work on the trees. Maybe something about the bark. Anyway, gotta figure out some way to get these vines off without touching them.
After a few moments of consideration, Elen grabbed one of the fruits by the peel and tore the front open enough to act as a makeshift mitten. They didn’t have a lot of grip, and it left the back of their hand open, but it was better than nothing. Repeating the process with the other hand, they set to work tearing the vines off Natira as quickly as possible.
She was not in great shape. Still breathing at least, so that was good, but her skin was red and inflamed, seemingly dissolving in whatever chemical soup the cocoon had been producing. Her clothes had offered some protection, but the fabric was also falling apart - the acid (or whatever it was) must have been targeting multiple types of organic material.
Elen started to feel tingles on their hands again, along with a bit of dizziness. Still, they were almost there and the vines above were getting too close for comfort. They tore the last few vines off Natira’s ankles, threw the fruit gloves away, and started dragging her through the forest. Vines pursued for only a few feet before giving up and returning to hanging stationary in the air.
Elen let out several ragged breaths. “I got her out. She’s still alive, but I think there’s some kind of acid. Maybe a toxin that’s keeping her knocked out. What do we have left for medicine?”
“Let me check...” They heard rummaging around on the other end as Kirin poked through the rubble. “One tube of medigel and plenty of bandages. Not much else. You think she needs it?”
- Use the medigel. [Guarantees recovery, but uses precious supplies.]
- Don’t use the medigel. [May cause permanent damage, potentially including death. Suggest alternate treatments in #story_discussion.]
- Use a little medigel. [Will aid recovery, but not guarantee it. Uses some supplies.]
(Winner: )
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Scene 13
“Get like half the tube ready. I’m going to bring her back.” After receiving confirmation from Kirin, Elen awkwardly shuffled Natira into a position where they could carry her without too much strain. The remaining acid on her skin burned as it dripped onto Elen’s. They grimaced, marching back towards the ship anyway. No time to waste.
...
The vegetation’s dull blue light came back on after about six hours. Natira had woken up once, enough to summarize what had happened, then went back to sleep. In brief, she had found a group of vines drooping low over a burnt ship component. She had tried to recover it for possible future use, but the vines had reached out to brush against her as she got close. There hadn’t been any good way to remove whatever substance they secreted, and she collapsed only a few minutes later. Elen knew the rest.
The next “day,” Natira stayed in the ship to rest and gather a full damage report while Elen and Kirin headed back into the jungle to explore and scavenge. Together, they managed to organize and bring back a good amount of miscellaneous debris from the ship. They were also able to map out - by hand - a rough sketch of the immediate area, including the ship, river, and general landscape.
Elen hadn’t died from the river water, so the group collectively decided to trust it in order to prevent an easily-avoidable death by dehydration. Enough fabricator cubes had survived the fire to last at least a week, but without the fabricator itself online, future food would have to be sourced from the jungle.
Natira’s damage report:
Reactor: damaged but repairable, no fuel.
Engines: one in acceptable condition, two repairable, one destroyed beyond repair. No fuel.
Hull: damaged. Repairable for atmospheric flight; spaceflight will be risky without better tools.
Fabricator: damaged but repairable. No power without the reactor.
Comms: good. On backup batteries.
Scanners: long range good, local damaged but repairable. On backup batteries.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines.
Shields: destroyed. Repairable to about half-strength. No power without the reactor.
Batteries: good for another week or two of current use. Needs the reactor to charge.
Near the end of the “day,” when the blue glow from the plants was dimming again, Natira called the other two into the bridge. She was still weak and wrapped in bandages, but was able to move around slowly well enough. “So I’ve got some bad news,” she muttered, pointing at the screen. “I fired up the long-range scanners just to see what I could see, and... well, there’s no easy way to say this, but-”
Kirin interrupted. “Let me guess. You’ve picked up a planet-eater on scans and are about to tell us we’re going to die?”
“Whew!” Natira wiped her brow theatrically. “Good guess: yes.”
“W-what?!” Kirin choked. “Really?”
“Yep. Those things are huge; there’s no way to miss them. It’s at the edge of the system and moving slowly - well, slowly for them - so I’d estimate we’ve got about two months before it gets here. But it’s definitely coming directly at us.”
Elen sat down, feeling that same nauseous sensation that had become all too familiar over the long months on board the Atlas. “Can we get back into space before it gets here?”
Natira exhaled. “We can try. But, I’m gonna be honest, I don’t like our chances. At absolute minimum, we’d need the reactor, hull, and three engines fully fixed to even get out of the gravity well. Plus, we need fuel for the reactor and engines. Which means light cubes - ha! - or something radioactive enough for the backup fusion generator, plus refined starship fuel or something close enough that the fabricator can finish the job. But that’ll mean getting the fab online too and - aaagh!” Natira sighed. “I’m competent, sometimes, but that’s most of the core systems that I’d need to fix with very limited tools. I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not alone, then. Don’t forget about me and Kirin, okay? We’re a team, and we can get through this if we rely on everyone’s strengths. Two months, you said? To fix all this and get back into space?” Elen looked around at the broken glass, flickering lights, and hundreds of warnings still scrolling up the screen. They shoved down the anxiety and grinned. “Piece of cake.”
Week 0 report:
(see above for ship repair status)
Water: unlimited (river; this line will be left out of future reports barring changes)
Food: 1 week
Batteries: 2 weeks
Medical: 0.5
Time: 9 weeks remain
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 1:
️ - Reactor
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
- Local scanners
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 1:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: ️ , )
️ - Reactor
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
- Local scanners
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 1:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: ️ , )
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Scene 14
Week 1 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good, no fuel.
Engines: one good, two repairable, one destroyed. No fuel.
Hull: damaged. Repairable for atmospheric flight, spaceflight risky.
Fabricator: damaged but repairable. No power.
Comms: good. On batteries.
Scanners: long range good, short range damaged but repairable. On batteries.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines. No power.
Shields: destroyed, repairable to half strength. No power.
Batteries: good. One week left.
Food: 1 week
Batteries: 1 week
Medical: 0.5
Time: 8 weeks remain
Specifics listed below.
Using the last of the spare parts and some scraps from the pile gathered by Elen and Kirin, Natira was able to repair the reactor to a point where she “at least wouldn’t feel too uncomfortable turning it on.” However, with no fuel for either the main photonic cycle or backup fusion process, it has yet to be tested. She still has trouble moving much more quickly than a walk and is starting to get worried about how long it’s taking to heal.
Meanwhile, Elen and Kirin catalogued and named the following species of flora:
- Angler vines: Secrete a neurotoxin that is highly water-soluble. Prolonged exposure causes disorientation, drowsiness, and eventual unconsciousness. Once warm prey is sensed not moving, vines descend on it and bring it up into the canopy where it is dissolved and consumed. Lights on the vines attract small animals as prey. All the vines share a single mycelium-like system in the treetops.
- Featherferns: Delicate, leafy plants that primarily grow around the base of silverbark trees, but can be found elsewhere near large natural windbreaks like cliffs or hills. The stem is lined with a blue gel that seems to have electrochemical properties; more research on this is advised for possible applications in batteries or other electrical components. Meanwhile, the fronds are formed of hundreds of tiny filaments that curl together, resembling feathers. Similarity to other species suggest plentiful minerals and vitamins if consumed, but this would need to be confirmed by the ship’s short-range scanners.
- Lantern trees: Produce lantern fruit. Only grow near flowing water and prefer rocky soil. The fruits are toxic to silverbark trees, so none of the giants grow nearby. Fit for consumption, similar to citrus on Earth. Reasonable source of calories and some vitamins, but not enough for a full diet on their own.
- Silverbark trees: Enormous, tall, redwood-analogue giants of the jungle. Bark contains a high concentration of silver and trace amounts of other metals, extracted from the soil with extremely deep and complex root systems. Host a variety of other symbiotes, including angler vines.
By combining lantern fruits for raw calories with fab cubes for essential vitamins and minerals, the group was able to extend the food supply another week. Featherferns seem like a promising candidate for additional nutrients, but no one can yet confirm the plant’s content without the ship’s scanners online. Additional plants to supply protein, a high-calorie base, and fatty acids would be recommended for a balanced diet. Alternatively, fauna may be discovered to fill these vacancies.
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 2:
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
- Local scanners
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 2:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Featherfern gel: electrochemical applications? [Short-range scanners will assist.]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: , )
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
- Local scanners
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 2:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Featherfern gel: electrochemical applications? [Short-range scanners will assist.]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: , )
1
1
2
7
1
2
1
7
4
Scene 15
Week 2 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good. No fuel.
Engines: one good, two repairable, one destroyed. No fuel.
Hull: damaged. Repairable for atmospheric flight, spaceflight risky.
Fabricator: damaged but repairable. No power.
Comms: good. No batteries.
Scanners: good. No batteries.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines. No power.
Shields: destroyed, repairable to half strength. No power.
Batteries: good, but empty. All systems offline.
Food: 2 weeks
Batteries: empty!
Medical: 0
Time: 7 weeks remain
Specifics listed below.
Thankfully, the scanners weren’t as damaged as initially thought, and Natira was able to get them mostly working after just two and a half days instead of the entire week. This freed her up to run a series of analyses on all sorts of samples of flora and fauna, as well as start a sequence of geologic scans to fill in a map of the local area. Without being in the air, the ship only has so much range, but a good 10-15 mile radius of the jungle is now mapped fairly precisely, depending on the specifics of the terrain.
As a bonus to all this GIS mapping, the group discovered that they were actually relatively close by to the northern edge of the jungle, where it gave way to the planet-wide beach. At Natira’s suggestion, Elen and Kirin took the full-day one way trip to hike there and back in order to investigate a different biome in more detail. Meanwhile, she worked on further analysis of jungle plants while nervously watching the batteries tick down with every scan performed.
Featherferns, as it turns out, are in fact just as rich in vitamins as initially thought - similar to related leafy greens from earth. However, the electroactive gel, stem, and parts of the fronds are laced with a complicated molecule heavy in cyano groups. Not being an organic chemist, Natira could only guess at its function. The ship’s computer, however, had enough understanding of molecular bonds to label the compound as highly toxic. Further investigation of the gel would take longer than she had before the others came back, but she could at least work out which bits of the plant were edible and which were poisonous. Never one to shy away from risks, she put herself on the line and cooked up a few frond tips. “Not too bad” is her current review.
At the beach, Elen and Kirin fashioned some fishing poles out of scrap from the ship and spent two days there learning and gathering materials. They discovered and catalogued the following interesting things:
- Salt bulbs: In the shallow water just off shore, the beach’s sand quickly gives way to rock and mud. Rooted in the shallow layer of muck are occasional gelatinous, translucent, fist-sized bubbles that the two have designated ‘salt bulbs.’ These creatures appear to be filter feeders, pulling water through layers of membranes and filtering out all non-water particles. Organic material seems to be digested and used for energy, but natural salt from the water appears to just build up inside the bulb until it’s all expelled at once in a powerful jet - this happens about once a day, by observation. Removing a bulb from the water and cutting open its outer membrane feels cruel, but allows access to all the cached salt inside. The things don’t seem to have much sentience, at least.
- Spade flounders: Often found slowly swimming just over the sand and muck just off shore, these triangle-shaped flatfish seem to prey on small crabs, worms, snails, and other lesser creatures inhabiting the seafloor. While they’re well camouflaged by their scattered coloring, they aren’t very bright and are easily fooled by bait on a fishing pole. Can grow up to three feet long. Base-level scans indicate a high protein and fatty acid content. Thorough cooking is recommended to avoid risk of parasites.
- Jewel crabs: One of the more interesting creatures found digging around the seafloor, these half-dollar-sized crabs have brightly-colored, glittering carapaces reminiscent of gemstones. Spade flounders and other flatfish seem to avoid them entirely. Highly aggressive when approached, and appear to have thin spines that could be used to deliver venom. If left alone, they simply scuttle along the seafloor and snap up smaller creatures. Due to the potential risk of poisoning, no further investigation was taken.
- ???: There are larger creatures further out in the ocean. Elen spotted a 25 ft shadow when diving to investigate salt bulbs, but couldn’t get a good look before it faded back into the ocean. Plus, to be honest, they didn’t really want to get a good look without some protective gear.
- Firebirds?: When starting a fire to try and cook some of the fish they caught, Elen and Kirin were surprised by a flock of little round birds, each about fist-sized with sand-colored feathers. They were highly interested in the fire, hovering within inches of the flames. Elen tried to shoo them away, but was clawed, pecked, and driven away by the creatures. The birds sat by the fire until it died, their feathers slowly growing darker over time. As soon as the flames flickered out, they flew off into the jungle again. No one is quite sure what to make of them quite yet. The claw wounds were risking infection, so the last of the medigel had to be used.
By building the fire a few hundred feet inland instead of directly on the beach, Elen and Kirin were able to avoid the firebirds long enough to cook up a good amount of fish. Combining this with salt gathered from salt bulbs meant they were able to preserve a reasonable amount of meat with at least a moderate degree of confidence. At least enough to last a few weeks when supplemented by the plants near the ship itself.
The ship’s batteries have finally run out. It can no longer maintain a stable internal climate, create communications links, or run scans. No ship components will be active until power is restored, and repairs will take longer without computerized diagnostics. Severe weather could prove dangerous without life support systems.
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 3:
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 3:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Featherfern gel: electrochemical applications? [Short-range scanners will assist if powered.]
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Silverbark bark: rare-metal extraction? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
️ - Search out radioactive minerals specifically. [To be used with the reactor’s fusion process. May require some processing, and could be dangerous to health. Short-range scanners will assist if powered.]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: ✈️ , ️ , , ️ )
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 3:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Featherfern gel: electrochemical applications? [Short-range scanners will assist if powered.]
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Silverbark bark: rare-metal extraction? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
️ - Search out radioactive minerals specifically. [To be used with the reactor’s fusion process. May require some processing, and could be dangerous to health. Short-range scanners will assist if powered.]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: ✈️ , ️ , , ️ )
1
6
2
1
5
3
1
6
1
1
5
Scene 16
Week 3 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good. No fuel.
Engines: one good, two repairable, one destroyed. No fuel.
Hull: damaged. Okay for atmospheric flight, spaceflight risky.
Fabricator: damaged but repairable. No power.
Comms: good. No batteries.
Scanners: good. No batteries.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines. No power.
Shields: destroyed. Repairable to half strength. No power.
Batteries: good, but empty. All systems offline.
Food: 1 week
Batteries: empty!
Medical: 0
Time: 6 weeks remain
Specifics listed below.
Natira didn’t get as much done this week as she wanted. Not only is she getting worried that the residual effects of the angler vine just won’t wear off, but without the ship’s self-diagnostics, the only way to tell where holes in the hull are is to look for them manually. A sudden rainstorm helped with this by causing the leaks to become significantly more obvious, though it also caused additional problems by getting into unprotected components.
After several days of hard work, Natira managed to exhaust the batteries in all her relevant power tools. No more welder, drill, grinder, or multitool. She had to take a break from the hull at that point, leaving it basically intact but still not ready for vacuum. In the meantime, she tried to fashion some sort of useful electrical device out of featherfern gel.
This was difficult.
As a mechanic, she had a general understanding of electricity and battery technology, but she had never been the kind of engineer to actually craft them by hand. It certainly wasn’t as easy as some games made it seem; you couldn’t just squish some electroactive goop into a metal cylinder and call it good. Still, there was definitely something there. With some leads, some gel, and a bit of water, she was able to briefly illuminate an LED. By mixing in some acid from a lantern fruit and a base plate from silver bark, she was able to get a slightly more energetic reaction going - enough to register a useful level of current on the meter.
Unfortunately, it was just too unrefined and difficult to control to actually use in any of the ship’s systems without risking damage. Plus, the gel itself didn’t seem to be very energy-dense. It would take an enormous pile of the stuff to do anything useful. Reluctantly, she shelved the idea for now. At least until the scanners or fabricator could be brought back online to better understand and take advantage of the gel’s properties.
Meanwhile, Elen and Kirin used the geologic data generated by the scanners to try and track down something that could be useful for the reactor. Each equipped with a rad badge - an unsophisticated device that changed color in the presence of radiation - they split up to cover more ground and headed for nearby depressions that could indicate caves where radioactive minerals might be found.
Generally the more adventurous of the two, Elen headed out past the edge of the map to the south, checking the farther caves momentarily and finding nothing but shallow dips with hardly a hint of rock. No, they decided to take a risk and walk well past the edge of the mapped range, into the border of the desert.
After several days’ travel, Elen emerged from the jungle and stared into a vast, rolling plain of ash. It wasn’t sand, not entirely. There was certainly a base layer of coarse, almost pebble-like sand, but resting atop that was almost a foot of fine white ash as if from a planet-wide fire. It drifted on the wind but seemed to have an almost magnetic fascination with the wastes and refused to blow far into the jungle. Elen wondered if something was actively producing the ash, if a recent event had created it, or if the strange forces that kept it in the desert had preserved it for years.
For the first time in weeks, the gemstone heart twitched. Elen blinked; they had almost forgotten they were still carrying it. They looked down at it, all red and sparkling. Hang on... Another color caught their eye. The rad badge wasn’t totally white anymore; it was very faint yellow. A low dose, but the most they’d seen so far.
They’re going to be late even as it is, and delving further into the desert will not improve matters. Still, taking the long journey back first will only waste more time...
Elen will...
️ - Journey into the desert.
- Return to the ship.
Kirin and Natira will...
- Search for Elen.
- Stay with the ship and keep working.
[The ship cannot be repaired further without some form of power]
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 4:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
️ - Journey into the desert.
- Return to the ship.
Kirin and Natira will...
- Search for Elen.
- Stay with the ship and keep working.
[The ship cannot be repaired further without some form of power]
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 4:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
[Featherfern gel requires scanners or fabricator to complete]
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Silverbark bark: rare-metal extraction? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
[Searching for radioactive minerals is in progress]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: ️ , , , )
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Silverbark bark: rare-metal extraction? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
[Searching for radioactive minerals is in progress]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: ️ , , , )
7
1
3
5
1
2
4
1
5
Scene 17
Week 4 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good. 3 weeks of fuel.
Engines: one good, two repairable, one destroyed. No fuel.
Hull: damaged. Okay for atmospheric flight, spaceflight risky.
Fabricator: damaged but repairable.
Comms: good.
Scanners: good.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines.
Shields: destroyed. Repairable to half strength.
Batteries: good.
Food: 3 weeks
Batteries: reactor online + 2 weeks reserve
Medical: 0
Time: 5 weeks remain
Specifics listed below.
Elen journeyed into the wastes. The trip was slow and treacherous; the top layers of ash held no weight and disguised the uneven sandy surface below. Occasional sinkholes led to plummeting into a suffocating ashen grave more than once - Elen learned to feel ahead of them with a branch from the forest quite quickly. They followed the radiation badge, and the heart.
There was no night here. There were no plants to emit light and no jungle canopy to block the glowing clouds passing by overhead. The ashen desert’s endless, twilit day stretched on and on for hours. Eventually, Elen had to stop and sleep, half-burying themself in a mound of ash and waking up multiple times during the “night” choking from a gust of wind.
It was a miserable trip.
Sometime during the second day, towards when Elen was considering turning back, they spotted a white wave on the horizon. Peering over the nearest dune, they blinked several times before realizing what was going on. Elen ducked down behind the dune and braced for impact mere seconds before a furious windstorm blasted into the area. Ash was ripped from the desert and sent flying into the air. Lighter particles of sand were torn away as well, turning the air into a stinging, pelting whirlwind.
Elen staggered back the way they had come, intending to return to one of the nearby sinkholes for shelter from the storm. However, in the howling wind and ash-induced low visibility, they must have gotten turned around and missed the trail. The heart beat quickly and Elen followed it, unable to come up with a better idea.
Only a minute passed before they came across a tunnel digging into the side of a dune. Ash and sand had been blasted away from the entrance, revealing a naturally-formed tunnel into solid stone. Grateful for the shelter, Elen entered and sat down against the wall. The heart still beat quickly, almost trying to draw their attention to something.
Elen blinked and looked at the rad badge. Bright red. Danger. But also...
They glanced between the howling storm outside and the cave’s unknown darkness. Elen heard themself half-laugh aloud. They headed deeper into the tunnel.
...
Meanwhile, with Elen missing and the ship currently un-repairable, Kirin took Natira with him to investigate the jungle. She still couldn’t handle running or climbing, but at least walking was doable. Here are the interesting things they found:
- Curious to learn more about the firebirds, Kirin returned to the jungle near the beach and climbed up one of the silverbark trees to the jungle canopy. It turns out they nest near the very top of these trees and often fly or bask above the canopy in the weak cloudlight above. In some cases, they have been seen nibbling on the little star-like lights at the tips of angler vines. Babies are hatched from eggs and multiple adult birds - anywhere from three to eight were observed - nurture and protect the young. No other significant standout behaviors were observed, but Kirin was able to gather a few feathers from empty nests for further study as needed.
- While they were at the beach, the two of them spent a good deal of time fishing and gathered three more weeks worth of food, when combined with greens from the jungle.
- On the way back, they observed a series of large, plodding footsteps along the river bank. Cautiously following, they observed a twenty-foot long, seven-foot tall quadruped with smooth blue-green skin, a long, flexible neck, and a stubby, bulbous tail. The creature was observed slowly moving along the riverbank, alternating between grazing on lantern fruits, smaller shrubs, and silverbark leaves. Scarred-over claw marks in its side suggest the presence of a larger predator. It was docile when approached, not taking much notice in Kirin and Natira. They named it the long-necked grazer, or Steve for short.
- Bark from silverbark trees is difficult to remove and very sturdy, but it melts relatively easily. With the fabricator, it would be easy to separate out the various raw metallic components for use in ship repair or other construction. Without it, the alloy is too mixed to be easily utilized.
Elen returned near the end of the week, prompting relief that they had survived, admonishment at their recklessness, and jubilation at the several pounds of radioactive minerals they had brought back. Natira worked through the night to break down the rocks into a form that could be processed by the reactor - melting down and infusing a small amount of both silver bark and featherfern gel as stabilizing agents - and finally dumped the load into a fuel cell, fired up the reactor, and didn’t tell the others about the risk of the thing just blowing up.
... It worked. The internal mechanics made unhappy grinding noises for the first batch, but after some tweaks to the configuration, the core read stable and power flowed through the ship. Natira went to bed as the batteries started to recharge. Things are looking up.
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 5:
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 5:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
[Featherfern gel is in progress; can be sped up with fabricator]
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Firebird feathers: ??? [???]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: , ️ , )
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
- Fabricator
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative action to prioritize for week 5:
️ - Explore.
- Research flora.
- Research fauna.
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
[Featherfern gel is in progress; can be sped up with fabricator]
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Firebird feathers: ??? [???]
[In all cases, you can specify more details for any option.]
(Winners: , ️ , )
1
1
7
1
5
3
1
1
6
Scene 18
Week 5 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good. 2 weeks of fuel.
Engines: one good, two repairable, one destroyed. No fuel.
Hull: damaged. Okay for atmospheric flight, spaceflight risky.
Fabricator: good.
Comms: good.
Scanners: good.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines.
Shields: destroyed. Repairable to half strength.
Batteries: good.
Food: 2 weeks + fab cubes
Batteries: reactor online + 2 weeks reserve
Medical: 2
Time: 4 weeks remain
Specifics listed below.
As a heavy component near the center of the ship’s mass, the fabricator had fared reasonably well in the crash and Natira was optimistic she could get it operational quickly. With power restored and auto-diagnostics online, she was in fact able to quickly trace the issues back to just a single mangled conduit, torn by damage to the hull. She had the machine up and running again within a day, and a good thing too. After weeks on end of working without a break, she was almost out of energy. Some lower-activity fabrication would be a welcome change of pace.
She got started by attacking the featherfern gel again, combining the scanners with the fabricator to tease out the issues that had escaped her previously. While the gel had some potential as a battery agent, its properties actually seemed to lend it more to use in hardlight coherence applications. At least, that’s what the ship was telling her. Natira herself had no idea about this stuff; the specifics of directed energy fields were what people spent their whole careers researching. However, that lack of knowledge didn’t stop her from programming the fabricator to construct a wide assortment of pre-designed blueprints.
By combining spare ship debris (surely all the bits that fell off weren’t strictly necessary), sliver bark, and featherfern gel, Natira had a wide assortment of raw materials to feed into the fab. She could build tools, spare parts, fab cubes (ugh), or - almost - even firmlight cubes. While hardlight would be preferred, such dense energy sources couldn’t be constructed in her ship’s fabricator. The process was so delicate and complicated that city-sized foundries were needed to get anywhere near a consistent supply. And of course, there weren’t many of those left now.
Still, firmlight was pretty good. She just needed a source of those very particular compounds that could somehow bind photons into solid form: everything else was stabilization and could be constructed out of components from the gel, bark, and scrap. And, glancing down at the assortment of specimens brought back from the ocean, she had a good idea what she might be able to use.
Even the fabricator struggled to convert firebird feathers into the usable raw form that could form the base of firmlight cubes. The required compounds were there: these creatures were able to absorb energy from sunlight and fire, storing it in a solid, extremely energy-dense form. It was just attempting to convert this natural form into a more standardized component was not an easy task. There were factories and specialized tools for this. Trying to use her “everything and the kitchen sink” fabricator was the equivalent of trying to cross interstellar distances in a sublight ship. Doable, sure, if you were patient and clever. But definitely not easy, and definitely not fast.
Days slipped by alongside dozens of failed experiments, and by the time for the crew’s weekly wrap-up meeting, she had nothing to show for it besides a handful of radioactive, extremely volatile, destabilized goop. She had to be missing something, right? Right?
Elsewhere, Elen and Kirin took advantage of several newly-fabricated tools to move much more quickly through the jungle. Lightweight mesh protected against vines without restricting movement. Hands-free comm units extended network range and provided terrain maps on the go. Headlamps helped vision not only at night, but in the day’s gloom as well.
And so it was almost a surprise how easily they uncovered the next big discovery. A hill wasn’t a hill.
The red crystal heart beat slowly - a pulse every minute or so - as the two stood and puzzled over the enormous, obviously artificial block. It was a roughly trapezoidal prism, formed of a strange metallic stone hybrid and maybe 20x40x15 feet in size. Smooth parallel grooves lined the block’s sides and enterprising moss had overgrown the sheltered channels.
The structure was the first sign of intelligent life on this planet so far - aside from, perhaps, the heart - but it didn’t seem to do anything. Climbing to the top was a difficult task, but once up there, the silent stone refused to provide any further information. There were no glyphs or obvious mechanisms under the thick carpet of vegetation. Nothing that would indicate significance as a gathering spot. For all intents and purposes, it looked like just a giant stone block someone had dumped in the jungle.
Nonplussed, they headed back.
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 6:
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative location to prioritize for week 6:
- Jungle
- Beach
️ - Desert
- Engines
✈️ - Hull
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative location to prioritize for week 6:
- Jungle
- Beach
️ - Desert
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Select this option once you’re confident Natira can make a breakthrough.]
⬛ - The giant block in the jungle. [??? You may want to specify a particular method of investigation.]
(Winners: ✈️ , , )
- Salt bulb membranes: filtering applications? [Fabricator will assist if powered.]
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Select this option once you’re confident Natira can make a breakthrough.]
⬛ - The giant block in the jungle. [??? You may want to specify a particular method of investigation.]
(Winners: ✈️ , , )
3
4
2
2
5
1
6
1
2
Scene 19
Week 6 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good. 1 week of fuel.
Engines: one good, two repairable, one destroyed. No fuel.
Hull: Good for atmospheric flight, spaceflight maybe.
Fabricator: good.
Comms: good.
Scanners: good.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines.
Shields: destroyed. Repairable to half strength.
Batteries: good.
Food: 3 weeks + fab cubes
Batteries: reactor online + 2 weeks reserve
Medical: 1
Time: 3 weeks remain
Specifics listed below.
With the fabricator and autodiagnostics online, patching up the hull was a relatively straightforward (if tedious) task. By the end of the week, no breaches remained on the scanners except for a handful on the underside where Natira couldn’t reach. Since, you know, the ship was embedded in the ground and interior components were in the way. She would have to get those later, once the ship could move.
Watching the planet-eater on the scope, she glanced uneasily at the engines. Still no fuel and she hadn’t even started on them yet. There wasn’t much time remaining. It was getting awfully close. With the reactor, they could go sublight no problem - especially if they had a supply of firmlight cubes for high-density energy storage. The issue would be going FTL. Planet-eaters moved far too quickly to outrun when flying sublight, and the reactor just couldn’t output the kind of power spikes needed to engage the drive core without some extra help. Starship fuel, loaded into the engines to help shove the ship through the barrier in reality that the hyperdrive pierced.
But where to get some? She sat down with a few of what Elen and Kirin had called “salt bulbs” to see if their membranes could be of some use in filtering out usable fuel.
As it turned out, the answer was a solid “maybe.” The organic membranes were capable of filtering a variety of particle sizes, seemingly controlled via an electric current from the “brain” of the creatures. She could, in theory, set up a line of filters to extract only the required components from a rich slurry. The only problem was, well, the lack of that slurry. Starship fuel was usually harvested from dead stars: hyperdense, almost crystalline dwarves too small to collapse into black holes. She didn’t even really know what to look for on a planet. It wasn’t like oil, where you could just go drilling to find some.
But they had found firmlight components in the feathers of birds, of all things. This was no ordinary planet. Maybe there was something here that could be used as starship fuel too. She could hope.
Kirin returned to the beach, bringing Elen along with him. They gathered some additional food, preferring the flounders and fruits to bland fab cubes. They gathered some more firebird feathers to help Natira’s firmlight investigations. But the main purpose of their visit took them out onto the waves in a thin modular boat constructed in the fabricator. Exploring this planet had already turned up so many useful resources. Traveling further would be their best chance to track down those last few items.
It seemed that the main inhabitants of the open ocean were a variety of rays, ranging in size from a few feet across up to gargantuan creatures with hundred-foot wingspans. The most enormous rays didn’t rise to the surface, but could be observed as shadows in the deep, and by the waves generated by their massive wings. None of these giants seemed dangerous or threatening; they swam alongside the boat peacefully and even allowed themselves to be petted if the mood struck them.
But then, all of a sudden, the rays fled. The boat drifted into a region of turbulent, warm water. Very faintly, perhaps even too faint to be real, it seemed the ocean was glowing here. Bubbles rose to the surface in a circle hundreds of feet wide. Elen glanced at Kirin.
- Take a look.
- Return to shore.
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 7:
- Engines
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative location to prioritize for week 7:
- Jungle
- Ocean
️ - Desert
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Select this option once you’re confident Natira can make a breakthrough.]
⬛ - The giant block in the jungle. [??? You may want to specify a particular method of investigation.]
- Search for starship fuel. [Scanners will only be able to pick anything up from the air. Engines, reactor, hull, and scanners required.]
(Winners: , , )
- Take a look.
- Return to shore.
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 7:
- Engines
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative location to prioritize for week 7:
- Jungle
- Ocean
️ - Desert
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Select this option once you’re confident Natira can make a breakthrough.]
⬛ - The giant block in the jungle. [??? You may want to specify a particular method of investigation.]
- Search for starship fuel. [Scanners will only be able to pick anything up from the air. Engines, reactor, hull, and scanners required.]
(Winners: , , )
7
1
7
1
1
4
2
2
2
4
Scene 20
Week 7 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good. No fuel.
Engines: two good, one repairable, one destroyed. Fuel in progress.
Hull: Good for atmospheric flight, spaceflight just a bit more.
Fabricator: good. No power.
Comms: good. On battery.
Scanners: good. On battery.
Drive core: good. Useless without engines.
Shields: destroyed. Repairable to half strength.
Batteries: good. Discharging.
Food: 2 weeks
Batteries: 2 weeks reserve
Medical: 1
Time: 2 weeks remain
Specifics listed below.
Noting the reactor’s fuel gauge ticking closer and closer to empty, Natira split her time between working on the engines and assembling a little prefab submersible while the fabricator still had power. There was something important in that column of bubbling water; everyone knew that. Hydrothermal vents didn’t reach up to the surface like that. Wildlife didn’t flee natural formations. This would be something like that stone block in the jungle. Artificial. Powerful. Useful, hopefully.
So here they were again: Elen and Kirin sat in dim silence as the sub hovered down into the depths. In the wavering cone of light, streams of turbulent bubbles rushed past, heading for the surface. At least they wouldn’t lose track of which way was up.
“Hey, do you see that?”
“What?”
“It really is glowing. Down there. Green light; see it?”
Kirin peered into the darkness, then his eyes widened. “Yeah. What is that?”
“We’re about to find out. Hold on.”
Elen brought the sub down further; they were nearly two miles deep and almost at the extreme end of its rated operational range. Still, it would be worthwhile. Turbulent water and thousands of streaming bubbles buffeted the craft. External temperature probes read over 400 degrees F and rising as they got closer. Cooling loops began to whine.
Suddenly, there it was. An enormous... cable? A cylinder as wide as a street rose out of the muck of the abyssal plain, abruptly cut in two by some horrendous impact eons in the past. Green hexagonal conduits shone brightly within, boiling the water around them and still oozing a glowing fluid onto the seafloor. The heart in Elen’s pocket gave off several slow, rolling beats.
“What... is it? Some sort of underwater pipe? What was it carrying?”
“Looks like that green stuff. Get a sample and get us out of here; this heat is too much for the sub.”
Elen glanced down at their pocket and the hidden heart for just a moment. “Right.”
Minutes later, as the submarine ascended out of the danger zone with a hold full of mysterious green fluid, Elen thought back to the massive cable’s sheath. The material had been very similar to the block they had found in the jungle. Probably made by the same people. For the same purpose? Were they connected somehow? Maybe the fluid would do something? Too many questions. Better to analyze it first.
Under scanner analysis, the green fluid revealed an incredibly high-density energy content. Not compatible with the reactor, but with a little bit of finesse and some filtration, it would make perfect starship fuel. The people of this planet (presumably) were transporting fuel through undersea pipelines. Where were the other artifacts of their civilization? How had just these monolithic pieces of infrastructure survived with no other traces?
Uneasy, Natira prepared to get to work. Far above, a titanic shape unrolled across the sky. The planet-eater is close now. Time is running out.
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 8:
- Engines
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative location to prioritize for week 8:
- Jungle
- Ocean
️ - Desert
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Select this option once you’re confident Natira can make a breakthrough.]
⬛ - The giant block in the jungle. Relations to the ocean pipeline? [???]
- What is that planet-eater doing? Why is it moving so slowly? [??? May be helpful. May only waste time and cause anxiety.]
(Winners: , ️ (chosen by coin flip), ⬛ )
- Engines
️ - Shields
Specify an explorative location to prioritize for week 8:
- Jungle
- Ocean
️ - Desert
Activate a special project? [Projects with more than half the total cast votes are activated. More active projects will decrease the yield of ship repairs and explorative actions, depending on which character(s) are involved. Projects may be completed more quickly by certain ship components being active.]
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Select this option once you’re confident Natira can make a breakthrough.]
⬛ - The giant block in the jungle. Relations to the ocean pipeline? [???]
- What is that planet-eater doing? Why is it moving so slowly? [??? May be helpful. May only waste time and cause anxiety.]
(Winners: , ️ (chosen by coin flip), ⬛ )
7
1
3
2
3
1
7
1
Scene 21
Week 8 report:
Ship repair status:
Reactor: good. 3 weeks fuel.
Engines: three good, one destroyed. Several jumps worth of fuel.
Hull: Good for atmospheric flight; spaceflight... probably!
Fabricator: good.
Comms: good.
Scanners: good.
Drive core: good.
Shields: destroyed. Repairable to half strength.
Batteries: good.
Food: 1 week + fab cubes
Batteries: 2 weeks reserve + reactor online
Medical: 2
Time: 1 week remains
Specifics listed below.
Elen set off into the desert again near the beginning of the week. They knew the reactor needed more fuel and they were the only one who had an idea where to find any. Meanwhile, Kirin and Natira took a trip out to the mysterious stone block in the jungle.
With several new ideas spawned from the undersea conduit, the two of them ran several handheld scans and dug into the mud around the base of the block. A sheath of strong, flexible material extended down farther than scans would show, deep into the heart of the planet. This block was a conduit as well. Perhaps an endpoint, or... Natira shifted her head, tried to imagine the structure without its covering of mossy vegetation.
An emitter?
Using several battery packs worth of handheld tools, the two of them were able to clear off the top of the block. While before there hadn’t been any signs of machinery, now Natira could read the “decorative” grooves for what they were. This block was an enormous emitter, similar to the nodes that projected the shield around their starship. Whether it would produce a similar projected energy effect or something completely different was unknown, but the sheer scale of the thing worried her.
Node-based emission systems like this only worked when there were many projection nodes spread across the surface of the thing they were protecting - like a starship. With something this large, if there were more of them, you could cover the entire planet.
For what purpose, it was hard to say. But the planet’s mere existence past the end of the universe spoke volumes.
Near the end of the week, Natira slammed shut a panel on the last functioning engine. Elen loaded a new batch of radioactive minerals from the desert into the reactor. Kirin pulled the trigger.
Slowly, and with a heavy amount of cracking and shifting mud, the Atlas lifted into the air. It moved sluggishly with only three engines online, but it certainly did move at all. Wanting to get this over with as soon as possible, Natira had Kirin hold the craft steady while she and Elen patched up the last few holes. It took only a quarter hour, then the ship settled back into its crater. The landing legs were past repair, but they were overall mostly unnecessary. They were airborne, and they could be spaceborne as well. The planet-eater would arrive in a matter of days. Is there anything else to finish up on the planet before jumping away?
Specify a ship repair to prioritize for week 9:
️ - Shields
Explore?
- Arctic
- Jungle
- Ocean
️ - Desert
- Rock bridges and the polar hole
- No. Blast off right now. Escape. [This option will lead to a final choice, an epilogue, and the end of the story.]
Activate a special project for the final week?
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Something is still missing. A breakthrough is so close.]
- What is that planet-eater doing? Why is it moving so slowly? [??? May be helpful. May only waste time and cause anxiety.]
(Winners: ️ , , )
️ - Shields
Explore?
- Arctic
- Jungle
- Ocean
️ - Desert
- Rock bridges and the polar hole
- No. Blast off right now. Escape. [This option will lead to a final choice, an epilogue, and the end of the story.]
Activate a special project for the final week?
- Firebird feathers: Firmlight applications. [Something is still missing. A breakthrough is so close.]
- What is that planet-eater doing? Why is it moving so slowly? [??? May be helpful. May only waste time and cause anxiety.]
(Winners: ️ , , )
4
1
1
1
1
5
1
4
2
Scene 22
Final week report:
Ready to go.
No time remains.
Specifics listed below.
Unfortunately for the shields, a large number of emitters on the bottom of the hull had been torn away entirely. The fabricator was unable to replicate the complicated circuitry contained within, so Natira had to get creative and shuffled the remaining nodes around. Enough to cover the ship with a hacked-together barrier of energy. It would stop micrometeorites and other space debris, but it wouldn’t stand up to any real impacts. It would have to do.
After a day and a half hooking that up, everyone returned to the ship for liftoff. Engines fired powerfully and tree branches cracked as the Atlas pushed its way through the canopy to emerge into open air. The ship hovered for a moment before ponderously turning around and flying South, in-atmosphere, towards the desert and the mysterious rock bridges ringing the south pole. It wasn’t time to leave yet. They still had a day or two before the planet-eater arrived, and they could go FTL to get away while it was busy doing what it did best: eating the planet. Plus, they only had another three weeks of fuel for the reactor. Leaving now would be nothing more than delayed suicide.
Quietly, Elen had to wonder if leaving at all was anything more than delayed suicide. There was nothing out there. Eventually the reactor would run out of fuel again, whether that be in three weeks, three months, or three years. It wouldn’t last through their natural lifespans. But what could be done?
Watching glowing clouds whip past as the ship rumbled through the skies above the empty desert, Elen felt their gaze drift towards the pole. The heart beat more and more quickly as they flew. There would be something there. A last chance to figure out this mystery and save themselves. Right?
Hopefully.
...
Hours later, the Atlas hovered over the south pole. Powerful spotlights and geologic scans poured down into the abyss below, but the way the rock bridges twisted around themselves prevented either from revealing anything more than a mile down. The hole just continued straight down, firmly unvarying in size and direction, seemingly forever.
“Well, what now?” Natira asked, shutting off the scanners. “We’re not getting anything from up here.” She hesitated, looking out the window again. “Do you, uh, want to go in? I think we’d fit.”
Elen gripped the heart in their pocket. It wanted to go down. They were sure of it. Before they could speak up, though, Kirin interjected. “Can you take us down just to the edge of the hole? I want to look at one of those bridges.”
“Sure.”
Minutes later, Kirin confirmed his suspicion. “Look at the readings here. These things are all conduits, just like the pipeline we saw under the ocean and whatever that block in the jungle was. They’re all leading down here, maybe from across the planet. Everything terminates here, in this pit.”
Elen pressed a hand against the nearest rock bridge. It didn’t feel any different from normal stone. “It’s gotta be important then, right? Something caused this planet to survive past the end of the universe. Whatever it is, it’s gotta be down here. Maybe we can use it.”
“I’m all for poking around weird ancient machines, especially since we don’t really have any other options. Still haven’t gotten the firmlight stuff figured out, so we’ve only got a few weeks on the reactor. If there’s any chance whatever’s down there can help us, well...”
“Sounds like we’re all in agreement, then. Let’s dive.”
The holo-display presented a tangled mess of strands of rock, all color-coded by how far away they were. Natira kept her eyes on it as she gingerly nudged the thrust levers, squeezing the Atlas through a gap only a little larger than the ship itself. Thankfully, most of the passage was much more easily navigable, but there were several sections that brought up serious piloting challenges. Still, there was always a way to go on.
Elen stared out the windows, directing a spotlight to cut through the darkness outside. They had made it down about fifteen miles in about two hours, and nothing had changed significantly. The sides of the hole stretched on, perfectly straight, in an increasingly unnatural way. More bridges of rock emerged from the walls occasionally, joining the main mass and continuing down and down and down.
“Hey, guys. Scans are saying we’re almost there. Another mile or so and I’m seeing this hole broaden out into a massive open space. But, there’s also something that looks like a dock, just before there. Hang on; we’ll be there in a bit, but we’ll need to decide where to go.”
Deep below, a dull red light began to reflect off the walls and stone bridges. External temperature probes read several hundred degrees. As the Atlas continued to descend, the crystal heart beat faster and faster before suddenly stopping.
And...
Synchronizing.
A distant, muffled thump-thump matched the pace of the heart in Elen’s pocket. Slow, enormous. The crew exchanged glances, nervous. “You’re all hearing that, too, right?”
Nods.
The ship dropped out of the hole into a gargantuan open space below the world. A dull, red-orange surface stretched beneath them, disappearing into the heat haze in all directions. A secondary planet within the first. The mass quivered and pulsed in time with the thunderous heartbeat. Most of the rock-bridge cables sunk into the strange, gelatinous-looking surface, hooks the size of buildings holding them in place among the pulsing. Some conduits disappeared into the distance.
A metallic hangar, about four times as large as their ship, glowed gentle white from a position set into the wall just a few dozen yards above the sudden drop. A translucent field of glittering particles blocked the entrance; Natira confirmed it was a standard airgate. To keep out the brutal heat of the exterior, presumably. They would be able to get out of the ship there. If they wanted.
Thu-thump.
- Land the ship in the hangar. Get out. Explore.
❤️ - Pilot the ship around the red mass. Investigate. What is it?
(Winner: )
- Land the ship in the hangar. Get out. Explore.
❤️ - Pilot the ship around the red mass. Investigate. What is it?
(Winner: )
6
2
Scene 23
“Well, looks like that’s where we’re supposed to go. Maybe it’s got some information on this place.” Natira began to slowly maneuver the ship towards the hangar. “Unless any of you want to go mess with the... uh...” She gestured out the window and down. “That stuff.”
“I’m okay with the hangar plan.”
“Thought so.”
The Atlas slipped through the airgate with only minor turbulence and came to rest on the ancient metal floor of the hangar. The air was dry, warm, and still. A constant distant rushing sound emanated from far below.
Several doors led out of the hangar, but most of them led only to empty storerooms, abandoned mess halls, or pristinely preserved dormitories. The facility seemed built around the hangar as a hub, and could probably have housed several dozen beings at full capacity. All the hallways and furniture seemed larger than would be expected, lending the place a forbidden sensation. Like they were trespassing in the halls of giants.
Nothing was destroyed, damaged, or even dirty. Cooking implements were neatly organized. Boxes and manifests were tidily stacked away. Beds were crisply made. It seemed for all the world that the original inhabitants had just stepped out for a moment and would be back shortly.
At least, until they tried the last door off the hangar. This one had a sort of lock, keyed to a flexible metal stick with eight multicolored beads threaded onto it. The key had been left in the door.
Past the door and down a short hallway was a circular room. In the center, the floor was lowered down to make room for a chunky holoprojector attached to the ceiling. A control panel stood nearby, an alien skeleton collapsed against its base. The room was utterly silent. No heartbeat, no distant rushing noise, not even a quiet hum from the lights.
Elen dared to approach. They knelt next to the dead alien and bowed their head in respect. The creature had been quadrupedal, with two extra arms protruding from each front shoulder in terrifyingly complicated multi-socket joints. It would have been taller than Elen standing upright, and one of its desiccated hands still grasped a small gold card that would fit cleanly into a slot on the bottom of the control panel.
“It’s dead,” Elen confirmed, standing. “But it had this,” they continued, presenting the gold card.
“Hang on, maybe we should-” Kirin objected, seeing Elen start to move.
They slid the card into the control panel. The holoprojector clicked on, still bright and functional. Several things immediately became clear. “Oh. Oh.”
The holoprojector displayed dozens of video feeds, documents, and graphs. All of them came together to reveal one frightening truth: there was an infant planet-eater just below them, and it had been there for many, many years.
The red-orange gelatinous substance was an advanced material constructed specifically for this purpose, designed to provide nutrients for the gargantuan creature while holding it in a kind of stasis, preventing it from moving or growing. The conduits piped energy from the planet-eater, using it to fuel the entire planet in the absence of a star. Over millennia, vast caverns had been carved from the planet’s interior to feed the creature, ensuring it stayed alive enough to be pumped for energy and support the ancient civilization that had once lived here. Now, the old machinery had failed long ago and the planet-eater was nearing starvation.
Of course, other planet-eaters had not taken kindly to the theft of one of their young. Defenses had been constructed across the planet’s surface, too potent to be broken by an adult with any force below that which would destroy the planet utterly, and the infant with it. After years of failed attacks, the creatures had retreated and finished consuming the rest of the universe. Everything except the planet that still held one of their own hostage.
Then, the planet-eaters left. The universe returned, renewed. Life blossomed, grew, and died. The civilization of this mysterious planet collapsed. The planet-eaters returned, far ahead of schedule, furious and desperate to reclaim their child. With no one left to maintain them, the defenses had failed along with the machines required to sustain the creature’s stasis.
And then a little starship crewed by three survivors of the planet-eaters’ rampage elsewhere had crashed in the jungle.
The facility’s controls still worked, mostly. At least, the ones that mattered. All security protocols had disengaged millennia ago, with the systems assuming all administrators had died. They probably had. The skeleton lying against the control panel might have been the last one.
They could release the creature. Of all the machinery buried within the planet, by far the most robust were those conduits that maintained the infant planet-eater’s hundred-mile prison. The locks were still powered, the pumps still pressurized, the bulkheads still sealed. All could be disengaged from this very terminal. The young creature would break free and... it was unclear what would happen then. The adult planet-eater was very close now. Would they reunite, recognize the good deed, and leave peacefully?
No, probably not. In all likelihood, they would live up to their name and eat the planet.
They could restore the defenses and stasis mechanisms. It wouldn’t be easy, it wouldn’t be fast, and it would carry a very real risk of killing the trapped planet-eater. Plus, it would involve continuing to harvest an infant creature’s life force for years and years, and it might cause the planet-eaters to return sooner than usual a second time. But a fleet of autonomous maintenance drones still lurked not far below, ready and waiting for someone to give them the order to come out and repair the stalled machinery of eons past.
They could survive the onslaught, much as the ancient civilization had. The planet wouldn’t last forever, of course, but it would last another hundred-odd years for sure. They could live here, unheeding of the end of the universe.
Or, they could leave. The facility was packed with hardlight supplies; the ship’s reactor could last for years. Fly out at FTL and let the adult planet-eater carry out its plan to save its child. Allow the planet, and the universe, to be devoured. Maybe in the years to come, the universe would return. It had before, according to this hologram.
Maybe they could outlast the end of the universe in their ship, long enough for new planets to form. Maybe they could land in a new galaxy and live on some freshly-created planet. Or maybe they’d just run out of fuel years in the future and die in empty space.
[This is a branch point. Any option here will lead to an epilogue, then the end of the story.]
❤️ - Release the planet-eater. Pray for empathy.
- Restore the machines. Keep the planet-eater imprisoned.
- Leave. Fly off into the void and hope.
(Winner: )
- Restore the machines. Keep the planet-eater imprisoned.
- Leave. Fly off into the void and hope.
(Winner: )
4
1
5
Scene 24 - Final Scene
In the end, they couldn’t stay. As inviting a concept it was to live on a world that would be safe from the planet-eaters, safe from the end of the universe, they couldn’t pull the lever to engage the drones. They couldn’t pull the lever to release the creature. They left the control panel untouched, its dead steward from eons past still slumped against its base.
No one wanted to stay. There were concerns over morality - imprisoning a child to power the planet. There were concerns about the defenses - would the drones be able to rebuild before the adult could get here? There were concerns about the planet itself. How long would the machinery last? Could the trapped planet-eater survive? What would it be like to see the adult in the sky, slamming against the shield day after day until it broke through or gave up?
It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t happening.
But releasing the thing... Freeing an imprisoned child was always the correct thing to do, right? But it was hard to sympathize with the thing. It and its kind ate planets. They had destroyed the entire universe. They had consumed the Earth and sent the Atlas and its crew on this journey in the first place. Plus, what would happen if it got out? Would it just leave? No; of course not! It would eat the planet, and them along with it. There was no way it wouldn’t. That was its nature.
It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t happening.
So they left. They took turns carrying heavy, explosive cubes of hardlight from the facility’s storage rooms into the ship’s cargo hold. Counting them all up, Natira estimated the reactor could hold up for slightly over four years, assuming nothing critical broke in deep space. Fuel would be a bigger issue, but of course there would be no reason to change course if there was nothing left in the universe.
With nothing else to do at the facility, and not wanting to get any closer to the imprisoned planet-eater far below, the crew boarded the ship for what might be the last time. The decision made and the mood solemn, they rose into the blistering-hot air within the polar hole. Three hours later, they left the atmosphere.
...
Elen stared at the red crystal heart. It glowed in the dark now, but no longer beat. They couldn’t sense anything from it, not since they had left the planet. They held it up against the porthole, placing it against a backdrop of utter blackness. Pretended it was a star, just for a moment.
What are you? What’s your purpose? Why were you there; why did you help me? Why did you sync up with the planet-eater?
The heart offered no answers. Perhaps it had none to give. Perhaps Elen had missed something terribly important, which was about to be consumed and destroyed forever.
...
Kirin lay in bed and stared at the shadowy rectangle that represented one of the only things he had managed to save from Earth. It had originally been intended as an address book, but as those had fallen out of use once mobile phones started existing hundreds of years ago, he had repurposed it as a sort of multipurpose collector’s notebook. Quotes, sketches, signatures, and even actual contact details filled the pages: some written by his hand, but many more written by friends, family, and even strangers he had met only briefly.
Every single one of them was dead now.
The same thoughts spiraled in his mind. Why did he have to be the one to survive? Why not his parents? His cat? That stranger he met on the train that one day? Why did he have to be the one in the ship at the right moment?
He sighed, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to even see the book’s shadow. There was no god. Or if there was, it was nothing more than one of those planet-destroying monstrosities.
...
Natira sat alone on the bridge, fiddling idly with one of the stabilizers. She didn’t really have to be, but it gave her something to do. The ship’s internal mechanics hummed comfortingly around her, but just outside the cockpit window’s few inches of hardened glass, there was nothing but silence and vacuum.
She drummed her fingers on the armrest. Nothing left but routine. Pilot the ship, check for issues, fix the problems. Repeat every day for four years. Just as she had done for the past several months before the few weeks on that unnamed planet still barely visible as a tiny dot behind them.
There was nothing to work towards anymore. On the planet, there had always been a goal. Fix the ship, figure out the feathers, scan for minerals, whatever. Even before, there had always been the thought that maybe they’d find something. And they had! But now... nothing. She was absolutely certain that there was nothing else left in the universe. How could there be, if that one planet had only survived due to imprisoning one of the very creatures in charge of destroying it?
So there was nothing left to work towards. Just a long, slow march of surviving another day. One at a time. Until they ran out of hardlight.
She sat there quietly for several more minutes, trying to think of anything at all that might make these next few years worthwhile. Bearable. Miserable? Literally anything except an ephemeral and ultimately futile extension of their lives into the empty, uncaring void.
...
Epilogue
On the distant world of Ujee IIa, Qaniit wiped his brow and glared up at the blazing sun. He jammed his shovel into the sand and took a long draught from his canteen. “Sandeek, couldn’t we be doing this at night?”
The expedition leader also set down his shovel to take a break. “Not unless you want to tangle with the wraithbeasts! Heh, why even come out here if you’re afraid of a little sun?”
“I’m not afraid of a little sun. I’m afraid of that monster!” Qaniit gestured at the red, bloated star that scoured the Ujee system with temperatures that often reached 140 F. “If we don’t find anything in the next half-hour, I’m taking the lander and leaving you here with your ‘little’ sun.”
Sandeek laughed and slid down the dune to clap Qaniit on the shoulder. “Ha! I’d like to see you try!” He calmed down a bit. “But yes, we should be heading out before long. I’ll check in with the rover team; if they haven’t gotten anything yet, we’ll head back.”
Qaniit nodded appreciatively and took another drink. Sandeek could be grating sometimes, but he wasn’t unreasonable and did his best to keep everyone at least safe, if not necessarily comfortable. He had provided little personal thermal regulators, but the devices could only do so much against such blistering heat and Qaniit originally hailed from an arctic tundra. He wasn’t built for this kind of weather.
Still, if they couldn’t find anything useful out here, the trip would have been a total waste. Fuel, supplies, time; everything just down the toilet. So far they had dug up a few piles of scrap from some ancient battle, but nothing really valuable. The Ujee system wasn’t frequented by scavengers, and Qaniit was beginning to see why. Nothing here but sun, sand, and-
“Qaniit, get over here! Rangil says his team found something!”
“Really?” Qaniit picked up his gear and got on the sandspeeder’s passenger seat. “Did he say what?”
Sandeek gunned it and the two of them shot off into the desert. He shouted over the engine, “Some sort of ancient starship - fully preserved! They’ve got the clamps over there right now and are digging it out. Should be worth a lot more than its scrap, if it’s as old as they say!”
...
Minutes later, Qaniit hopped off the speeder and half-slid, half-walked down into the pit that Rangil’s team had dug. Sandeek engaged the parking brakes and was right behind him. “Wow, that is old. Any idea how old?”
The ship was of an ancient, round-nose design that hadn’t been seen in the galaxy for centuries at least. Rangil had a magnetic crane set up and was attempting to pull the entire thing out of the ground in one piece. “Ey, chief! Y’see this thing? You got any contacts who’re lookin’ for an antique?”
“Of course, of course...” Sandeek paced around the crater, thinking. “This is very odd. You see these scorch marks? Recent.” He wiped a hand across the hull and came away with a layer of ash. “And the crater’s new, too. Winds are too strong; would have filled it in. This thing is incredibly old, but it only recently crashed here. I wonder where it came from? How long it’s been floating in space?” He shook his head. “Crazy galaxy, hey? Alright, lads, bring it up. Has someone called the lander crew?”
Qaniit slowly tuned Sandeek and the rest out as they maneuvered the crane to try and lever the ship out of the ground. He cautiously approached, feeling an odd sense of familiarity. Not the design of the ship, but... the circumstances? The scorching heat, burnt crater, and streaked lines of ash on the hull. They reminded him of his very first encounter with the greater galaxy, years ago now, when a bounty hunter had crashed her ship a few miles from his village.
Hers had been much newer, of course. He shook his head. That had been a totally different incident, actually. The only similarity was that a ship had crashed. Why was he thinking it was so similar?
“Qaniit, stand back!” The crane motor whirred and sand shifted. Qaniit stumbled back up the slope to safety as the craft slowly emerged from the ground, rivers of sand sloughing off in grainy streams. The shattered bridge window was visible now, revealing the interior of the craft completely filled with sand. And next to it, still barely visible in a faded etching on the hull, was the craft’s name. Atlas.
Qaniit frowned thoughtfully. That name was familiar. Why? What did he remember? Recently, in passing? Earlier, during his previous job? Had Ellie mentioned it? Earlier still?
“Can I get a hand here? Qaniit, can you get on the other crane?”
He shook himself out of it. “Yeah, I got it.”
He’d have to think about this later.
<3
Conclusion
Hey, thanks for playing! So Qaniit found the Atlas, but did the crew survive? That’s a little unclear, but I think there’s enough information here to at least come up with a theory or two... And what the heck was up with that heart? Was it linked to the planet-eater somehow? Did Elen in fact miss something important? What happened to Kirin’s cat?!?!?! :(
Anyway, End of Everything certainly wasn’t my favorite story. It was... okay, I guess, but I don’t think it really reached what I wanted it to do. Plus it had historically low engagement from y’all, which either means no one else liked it either or this server is dying. I’m hoping for the first, since I like writing these little stories. I think it ended up trying to put too many themes into what was definitely supposed to be a short story, and it ended up not really getting in-depth enough into any of them. There’s the jungle survival stuff, the exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization stuff, the existential dread stuff, the planet-eaters, etc etc etc. We really had to move quick over a lot of stuff and that ended up leaving out some characterization. In summary: oh shucks, oh well, we’ll do better next time.
On the plus side, Qaniit! Yay! (Applause) He’s not going to be important later or anything. Plus, who’s this “Ellie” he mentioned? I’m sure she’s totally irrelevant too. Hmmmm...
So, what’s next?
To start with, if you have questions or suggestions, or if you just want to discuss the story, feel free to speak up! I can answer some questions about the world, characters, and connections to other stories (though some things should remain a surprise). After that, I’ll be archiving the current #story_updates channel and creating a new one.
The next set of starting prompts will be up... very quickly, actually. Probably within the next few days at most. I want to write a new story, since I didn’t really get into this one too much. I like most of the prompts currently on the docket, but I might make a few changes to one scenario to avoid something like this for the next one. I’m definitely putting a novel up for selection, but there will be a few shorter options as well. Hopefully it’ll be a fun one, whatever we end up picking!
Thanks a lot for your support and engagement, and I hope you stick around for the next one!
~ Shaun / @Mxblah
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