#That they all reblogged in rotation to make it look like a viable take?

[ettle]

I still can't get over the number of people who doubted the mass russian psyop deletion on Tumblr because "they all had leftist political posts and Black in their bios!" Yes. That was the psy part of the op.

[docsamurai]

Humans are weird: The Research Facility

*Quick note before I start: This is the 4th installment in a series I’ve called the Lost Colonies which is largely about human society adapting to the strange environments of other worlds. You can read the other installments here: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this series, but with my new work schedule I had to bring it to a close. If you’ve enjoyed this story follow me on here for my other writings. Thanks again to everyone who has reblogged, liked, replied, DMed, or otherwise shown their appreciation for this series. It means a lot to me that people enjoyed it and the love you’ve all shown me has really helped keep me going for these last few months.*

The airlock hissed and Kiara felt her knuckles ache as the pressure adjusted to the station. Reflexively she clenched and unclenched her fists trying to ease the dull throb that she could already feel spreading to her other joints. On most worlds that had significantly higher or lower pressure than Earth humans lived in enclosed dome cities or underground stations that were kept calibrated to standard Earth atmosphere. For some reason this facility seemed to be kept at a slightly higher pressure. It probably had something to do with the fact that the station was within the atmosphere of a hothouse planet similar to old Earth’s stellar neighbor Venus. She made a mental note to ask about it later when she got the chance.

The door to the airlock swung smoothly open despite the fact that it appeared to weigh nearly a metric ton. On the other side awaited a tall man who stood at full attention in a crisp military uniform. He gave a quick salute and gestured without a word for Kiara to follow him. The pair wandered down deserted corridors that had been polished to a mirror shine before arriving at the administrator’s office. The tall man knocked twice on the door before it slid into the wall, he then stood to the side of the door and snapped off another salute though Kiara noticed that his hand was trembling.

The administrator’s office was just as polished and barren as the rest of the station had been so far, the man himself, decidedly less so. The administrator was a short pale man who had cut himself badly attempting to shave with a thin ring of white hair around his head. He wore a suit which was several sizes too large and had been hastily pressed to try and remove some of the wrinkles. The administrator stood behind his desk and gave a quick nervous smile as he ushered Kiara into the room.

“Welcome to my facility. I apologize that I cannot offer more of a tour at this time but I’m afraid that I haven’t verified your clearance level yet Miss Williams.” Kiara smiled and offered a handshake ”It’s actually Mrs. Williams-Venn but Kiara will work just fine”. The administrator took her hand and then sat down quickly apologizing for the sweatiness of his palms. “Well, Kiara, I’m afraid that we haven’t had contact with EarthGov for some time now, and as such we’ve been unable to verify your rank or clearance level so until we are able to do so we cannot allow further access to this station. I hope you understand.”

Kiara took a long deep breath. It didn’t happen often, but holdouts like these were always difficult to deal with. It was an unfortunate failing of humanity that people could hold onto a failing ideology for centuries. Kiara looked the administrator over again. 15 sols of conducting personal interviews had taught her how to read people and this administrator looked nervous as hell. She’d have to play this one carefully. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, Mr...” “Eckstein. Johnathan Eckstein.” “Well John, I’m sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid you won’t be able to grant me security clearance as that office of EarthGov no longer exists.”

John screamed and fell out of his chair and the guard at the door took off running. Kiara spun around expecting a threat coming from behind, seeing nothing she stood up cautiously and looked over the desk to see John cowering on the floor. He looked up at her and sobbed “Just make it quick.” Remembering the stories she had heard of EarthGov’s brutality it finally clicked in Kiara’s head. John thought she was sent there from EarthGov to kill them all. “Uh, John, Mr Eckstein, it’s fine. You can get up. I’m not here from EarthGov. They no longer exist.” John rolled over onto his back to look up at her, tears streaming down the sides of his face as he sobbed uncontrollably. “Really?” “Yeah, really.”

The sobs eventually turned into relived laughter as John picked himself up off the floor. Finally he slumped back down into his chair and slapped the intercom switch on his desk. “Condition Green. Code 2635. We’re clear everyone.” Kiara heard a dull roar of applause and shouts from down the corridor as the rest of the station cheered in celebration. “I’m sorry for all that Kiara, we’ve just been a little on edge since that transponder lit up. Would you like a drink?” John pulled a bottle of clear liquor out of the bottom drawer of his desk along with a pair of glasses and started filling both before she could answer.

Mildly amused she took the proffered drink and tapped the glasses together in an old Earth tradition. “Cheers” John’s face split into a wide grin as he downed the drink in a single gulp. Kiara tried to take a sip and broke out into a violent coughing fit. “Oh, yeah, sorry, we distill our own around here and, well, you get used to it.” Kiara set the "drink” back on the desk and smiled again at John. “So, how about we try this again. You tell me what’s been going on at this facility and I’ll fill you in on what’s been happening in the rest of the galaxy.”

John nodded and picked up Kiara’s glass and drained that too. “Where do I start? Ok, well, we were an EarthGov secret weapons research lab. We were stationed here to conceal our location with only one transponder to communicate to our higher ups in EarthGov. Our facility is entirely self sustaining since it could take several solar rotations for us to have a window to so much as get people on or off the planet. It wasn’t unusual for us to lose contact with the outside world for long periods of time so at first we didn’t notice that it had been a while since we had last heard from anyone. That while turned into a few years, then a decade.”

Kiara checked her datapad and asked “When did your people last have contact with anyone from EarthGov?” John looked like he was considering pouring another drink but put the bottle away instead. “218 years ago, plus a few months.” Kiara’s eyes went wide and she double checked her notes. “That was almost 20 sols after EarthGov fell!” John’s gaze wandered around the room as he lost himself in thought. “Hmm. You call them sols. Makes sense if we’re not being Earth-centric about our units of measurement. But yeah, not too surprising that they tried to keep their weapons development going for so long after it all went to shit. My grandmother said they were getting kinda weird for those last few transmissions.”

Kiara scribbled notes into her datapad as she tried to wrap her head around this new information. “I had heard a lot of stories about EarthGov I just never thought that- wait did you say ‘Grandmother’? As in it’s only been 2 generations in over 200 sols?” John laughed. “Yeah, I guess I’m a lot older than I look. That’s kinda what happens when you put a bunch of medical scientists in isolation for a few hundred years. I turn 120 in a few months, or whatever unit of measurement you use these days.” Kiara stared at the short man behind the desk. It was true, aside from the hair he didn’t appear any older than his early 40s.

“That’s remarkable. Can I ask how?” John just shrugged as though one of the most significant medical breakthroughs in human history was a minor matter. “Partly genetic therapy and partly cloned organs. We grow a kind of ‘genetic blank’ version of any organ you might need that carries enough DNA to be recognizably human and then when you need something replaced we just take the information we need from your existing cells and work it into the blank. It’s not perfect and we can’t replace everything, but I have a life expectancy of over twice my current age so long as I don’t damage anything important.”

Something clicked in the back of Kiara’s mind “Like I said, remarkable, but you just said ‘medical scientists’ I thought this was a weapons research facility?” John froze in place before scrunching up his face and mutter a curse under his breath. His hand reached again for the bottle in the desk before he stopped himself. “Yeah. Biological weapons. Look I’m not proud of it. No one here is. And everyone who was originally part of the project is dead. About a century we put it to a vote decided that EarthGov was probably gone for good and even if they weren’t that we couldn’t risk that kind of destruction getting out. So we destroyed all the virus samples that weren’t viable for other forms of research. There’s not anything left on this station that could hurt anyone.”

Kiara turned her datapad’s recorder off. “I want you to know that I’m on your side on this, and that I’ll present your case to the Galactic Republic. I’m sure that it will be fine, but I need to know. were the original scientists volunteers?” John stared off in silence for several minutes before finally answering “Yeah. Most of them. I don’t think there was any real animosity towards aliens, it’s just, there wasn’t a lot of work for scientists outside of the government. And what the government wanted was a weapon that the ‘alien threat’ couldn’t defend against. At least, that’s what my grandmother said.”

Kiara’s hands clenched into fists, her knuckles aching again though she didn’t think it was still from the pressure. “Were there any projects done on a virus for Turics?” John shook his head. “Probably, but we destroyed all that a long time ago. I’ll double check the files to make sure that nothing remains though. Why? You got a thing for the big furry bastards?” John was grinning until he saw the look on Kiara’s face. “I’m going to say this just once. If you’re going to be a part of the galactic community, you’re going to need to drop those prejudices right the fuck now. I’ve dealt with a lot of backwards bullshit in this job and I can tell you that if you want off this rock you’re going to have to unlearn a lot of that ‘human first’ mentality. Got it?” John was now paler than she had ever seen a human before. “Understood! I’ll make sure to bring it up with the rest of the facility at the next meeting Kiara.”

Kiara got up still glaring at John. “It’s Mrs. Williams-Venn. And for your sake, you should hope that you don’t have to hear that name again.”