#ftl radio

[ftl-radio]

Mr. Morale

[katakaluptastrophy]

The Nine Houses are obviously deliberately technologically limited. Aside from having FTL capable spaceships, the most advanced piece of technology that we see in the Houses is "an electric transmitter box, with headphones and a mic." It's not clear entirely what sort of device this is, but it apparently requires you to stick an antenna out the window.

On New Rho, Cam has a beeping, and therefore presumably digital watch. Nona has to remind her that's it's called a "watch", and not the House term, "clockwork", which rather suggests House timepieces are analog.

There's a projector box embedded in the BoE conference table, which loads an image like dial up internet because they are "using shortwave" - presumably shortwave radio, which can transmit pictures. As We Suffer apologises for the slowness of the image loading because of shortwave, that suggests that other methods of transmitting an image do exist, but that for whatever reason they're not using those. Perhaps they do normally have something akin to the internet, but this is down due to the conditions on New Rho, or being avoided due to House or inter-cell monitoring.

The audio of Juno Zeta's proof of life is on "a little piece of electronics, a fingernail-shaped thing with prongs", which sounds like some kind of drive.

We also see We Suffer in the impromptu command centre in the tunnels with "a headpiece and a flip-top computer", presumably being used for some kind of communicatons or planning.

And of course, there's Cam and Pal's recorder, which from the descriptions of it making squeaks and garbled noises sounds rather like it might contain a cassette tape.

A paramilitary group on a beseiged planet may not be the best evidence for the level of technology outside of the Houses, but if it is in any way indicative, non-House society doesn't seem to have non-space travel technology beyond things that would have been available in the early 00s.

[marlinspirkhall]

Humans sending out signal after signal, message after message, space probes, emails, photos, light shows, intergalactic fireworks, all in the hope that they're not alone: Please reply, please reply, please reply, ple–

Aliens, screeching across the universe in a brand new FTL ship: CAN YOU SHUT UP? WE GOT YOUR FIRST ONE THOUSAND MESSAGES, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND HOW BIG SPACE IS?

Humans: oh my goooooosh, hi

Humans: Did you invent faster than light travel just for us? 🥺

Aliens: NO!!!

SETI: Radio message received.

Radio message: We are receiving you. We have decided to answer you in your own language, and–

SETI: New radio message received.

Aliens: Oh no.

Radio message: We have received your previous messages pertaining to life on Earth, and have included our own data packet about life on Big Tree in return. We named our planet before we learned it was only 30% arboreal. Thank you for the golden disc, it was extremely tasty. Haha. Just kidding.

SETI: Data packet downloaded. Decrypting...

SETI: New radio message received.

Radio message: As previously stated, we are receiving your messages and your gifts. We took a photo of our planet with our own photo-capture device, as we were unhappy with the one you provided.

SETI: Data packet update: Warning: Several terrabytes of information may be corrupted.

SETI: New radio message received.

Radio message: This is the Generation Ship Tree Hollow. My designation is Captain Root-Skygazer. Our people have instructed us to fly ahead and communicate with you when we reached the thirty-year marker, as these messages are likely to reach you faster. They request that you stop broadcasting messages with the subject line: 'Oh, how woeful it is to be alone in an uncaring universe (and other similar poems)' because it frightens the children and makes our scientists deeply existential. I, personally, am partial to episodes of M star A star S star H. It has been of great interest to learn historical facts about the longest Earth conflict of your common era. I miss my home, and I am saddened that I will never see yours. This ship has a self-sustaining ecosystem of plants native to our planet, and a crew manifest of one hundred and fifty-seven. The replacement generation currently numbers one hundred and seventeen.

Radio message: Hey, Ball Of Dirt, it's Big Tree again. Lose our number, would you? There must be some other semi-evolved space aemoba you can bother. (Several words untranslateable)

Aliens: Yeah, so your answering machine is going to be like that for a while–

Humans: What was that part about a Generation Ship?

Aliens: We were hoping you could tell us that, actually. We lost contact with them after the 200 year marker.

Radio message: This is the generation ship Tree Hollow. My designation is Captain Cradleroot. Captain Root-Skygazer was my grandfather. Inspired by the speeches of your contemporary leader, Ronald Reagan, I decided to restructure the existing system here which allowed crewmembers to eat as they required. Under this new system, we award tokens to whom we feel has done the most valuable work, and they can redistribute those to the hungry if they wish. But they do not. However, I believe that [...]

Humans:

Aliens:

Humans:

Aliens: This is all your fault, by the way.

[thedexcat]

VotV Speculation Megapost

(For posterity's sake, the latest major release is 0.8) (Also, buckle in. This post is a long one.) (Edit 9/20/24: Added Addendum 1) (Edit 10/14/24: Added Addendum 2) It should be extremely obvious, but spoilers ahead.

As we all know, Voices of the Void has a "story breadcrumbs" approach to its plot. Combine that with its alpha status, and we're left with a lack of hard answers. However, some pieces did seem to click into place. This is far from anything definitive, but here are some of the conclusions I've drawn. Let's start with everybody's favorite:

Part 1: The Arirals

god i want one to hold me like that

You know em. You love em. Like 90% of the fanart is about them. But the question is... what the hell are they doing here? Judging by the fact that they construct a campsite in the facility, they clearly expect to be here for a while. A common interpretation I hear from people is that the ones out in the facility are either political refugees, or just some sort of benign "tourist group". I've personally come to a different conclusion. Let's consider what they brought with them.

Exhibit A: The weapon (left)

The weapon they drop around Day 24 is no mere Star Trek phaser. If you drop it in the main building, pretty much EVERYTHING in the building is going to be sent flying from the resulting blast. Not only that, but the "human-wieldable" version that can be unlocked for the sandbox mode has one hell of a fire rate. Something tells me that there's no way in hell this thing is a civilian-grade weapon. And, as established in a previous post of mine, they're kitted out in full-body armored stealth suits.

Exhibit B: The stealth suit (Kerf dutifully remains there for scale)

These aren't tourists or runaways. They're goddamn Black Ops. But you're probably asking, "If that's what they are, then why do they have nothing better to do than to steal shrimp and prank you?" Don't worry, I'll get to that later. Eventually. Maybe.

For now, let's move on to a third thing of theirs: The letter to Kel.

Exhibit C: Esraniki's Letter (D-, see me after english class)

This is the letter left at the Ariral camp if you have maxxed reputation with them. There's one line in particular that's always stood out to me. "GET WE HOME YOU GET DEATH AVOID" So... why can't they go home? Let's review: A: They have perfectly functional spacecraft parked right behind you. Even if they were broken, surely some random Pre-FTL primitive wouldn't be able to help with a mechanical failure in their technology. Hell, they buzz you at the radio tower with one. So there seems to be nothing physically stopping them from leaving. B: They've come kitted out with some serious weapons and armor C: Something in the facility is drawing the attention of all manner of extraterrestrials (and ghosts and demons. are 'metaterrestrials' a good word for them?) So my take? They're monitoring something, waiting for an opportunity to act upon it. (In keeping with the Patch Note naming convention, I will be calling this unknown something "The Threat") Not only that, this 'opportunity' may only open up with the assistance of a human. But what could Dr. Kel possibly do that an Ariral couldn't? Well, I can think of one thing he can do better... Interface with human technology.

Exhibit D: Ariral Communique (quality: shit) Computer technology isn't some universal constant. You can't make a program and expect it to magically run on alien technology with an unknown architecture. This ain't Independence Day. The fact that the Arirals barely managed to send a heavily-garbled message to Kel's computer, quite frankly, speaks of an extreme amount of effort on their part. And it was all just to say the word "OUTSIDE".

If The Threat has some ties to human technology, then perhaps Kel actually could be more qualified to deal with it than the Ariral Black Ops. Hmm... An unknown threat with ties to human technology. Could it possibly involve...

Part 2: The Incredibly Suspicious Bunker

"I left a 'Do not enter' note on the floor. That'll stop people from investigating!" This damn thing is quite obviously, as TVtropes would put it, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. It is my firm belief that this is what the Arirals were sent to monitor, and where The Threat can be found. But we can't really get much further in than a few doors. So... what's in there? An easy assumption to make is that it's some sort of fallout/storm shelter. But something nearby might tell a different story...

Exhibit E: *squints* ...Liberty Prime? If you take a metal detector over to the bunker entrance, you'll quickly discover a buried drive nearby. The image you just saw is its contents. It's clear that something is being depicted here. What exactly it is, well, that's hard to say. but if you look at that teeny tiny thing at the top, you'll see something that looks like the Alpha base and its radio tower

oh god we're getting into crusty duende video territory now

What this says to me is that there is a colossal something underneath the base. Some sort of mega-facility? Unnatural cave formations? Something else entirely? Or I could be looking at it entirely wrong. But the point is, it's very likely that something extremely expansive is down there.

What if we could just take a peek a liiiittle bit further in? Well, there is ONE way...

Exhibit F: The Least Cursed Elevator in Horror Fiction

Roughly around 3:33 each night, there is a chance that a camera inside the bunker will become active. It's monitoring what appears to be a heavy-duty elevator coated in blood. An elevator like this would also indicate something buried deep underneath the base. Say, this elevator seems familiar...

Exhibit G: Monique Santificer's Extremely Ominous Foreshadowing

...Huh. I'm sure that only means good things. So we have a Hellivator and evidence that there's some place that you'd need a Hellivator to get to. Are there any other clues around? Well, there's that handy instruction book on robotics. You can make your own little friend!

POV: You're 5'11 and she's 6'0 And... Oh! looking back at that camera, it looks like someone else made their... their own... friend...

Exhibit H: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- ...I don't think they followed the instructions to the letter. So it seems the people in the bunker were working on combining robots and, er, 'biomass'. I don't think our meaty friend here is The Threat itself, but I do believe that it is some aspect of it, or at least a result of it. And whatever The Threat is, it seems to be "leaking" out of the bunker. After all, this toothy bot here seems to have little siblings burrowing out from underground!

Exhibit I: should start running Kerfus. Kerfur. Whatever name they have, they love you! Such a shame that the flesh inhabiting their chassis does not.

they seriously recalled the ++ models over a little thing like this, smh Something deep underground, cursed flesh, and occult sigils. Hmm. Things would tie together neatly if there were, say, some sort of demon around associated with flesh and dark depths.

Part 3: Furfur (and conclusions)

"I WATCH YOU SHIT AT NIGHT" The Great Earl of Hell and raw flesh afficianato, it's Furfur! Demonology refers to him as a liar, but also a teacher of secrets. And he seems to really really like flesh. Not bones, though. He's always leaving those behind.

They say that if you burn an offering of flesh at his altar, he'll give you a marketable Furfur plushie!

The children who survived loved them! Interestingly, there's a certain location connected to Furfur: The bottom of the well. If you pass out at the bottom of the well, you will end up in a (dream of a?) mysterious structure.

Exhibit J: all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well

A few things of note in this place: -More demonic sigils -The only 'exit' is a tunnel leading upward with a broken ladder. And even if you could reach up there, Furfur's giant skull-face is blocking the way. -A unique knife, which when examined in the inventory, says that it was found "deep underground".

How very interesting that this flesh-loving demon has his own little place down in the depths of the earth. And you say the bunker reaching downwards has been spawning horrific robot-flesh amalgamations? Robots that are specifically of human design?

Well then. So here's what I think is going down:

no i'm not crazy it's invisible alien catgirls versus demon cyborgs you weren't listening were you?

-Some scientists from before did a Very Bad Thing in the bunker depths. If I had to venture a guess, it's that they bargained with Furfur for secrets of the flesh, perhaps in the pursuit of cybernetics, biocomputers, or somesuch. This resulted in the Very Bad Thing happening, thus creating The Threat. -The Threat was contained to some extent, but is starting to noticeably leak out. It is also severe enough to have drawn extraterrestrial attention. -The Arirals have sent a squad to monitor the situation and act if necessary. Seeing as there's been no urgent need to act as of yet, they are bored out of their skulls and taking it out on you. -The fact that the bunker hasn't been blown up by catgirl black ops already says to me that the situation down there is delicate, and a 'guns-blazing' approach would be inadvisable. Not only that, but The Threat seems to be tied to technology they have little knowledge of. They would most likely need outside assistance if they want a 'clean' resolution to the problem. -And wouldn't you know it? Right there in the facility is some nerdy, crusty, half-crazed twink that seems to be very proficient in handling human technology. How very convenient.

"average person eats 3 roaches a year" factoid actually just statistical error. Dr. Kel, who-

That's how I think this ties together, personally. Of course, there's always unaccounted for 'loose ends' that may or may not be tied to the Bunker Conspiracy (the rozital pit in particular has been bugging me with its vagueness). Plus there's always the chance that I misinterpreted things like a dumbass. There were a few other smaller things I wanted to cover, but my fingers hurt from typing, and my ability to hyperfixate has its limits. And sorry if the screengrabs are a bit mismatched, I've already spent hours on this post without having to get screenshots from the game myself. If anyone actually read through this monstrosity of a post, congratulations! If you're as deeply brainrotted as I am, feel free to point out the reasons I'm dumb and wrong :)

Addendum 1: Meta Aspects

no, not this. wrong place. wrong time.

Every now and then I hear talk of lore clarifications in Discord servers, Google Docs, etc. Will I be covering these?

(source) The reason? I want to give my impressions based purely on the work as published. Death of the Author and whatnot. The furthest I'll reach 'outside' the games are those ambiguous little teasers on YouTube, which you don't have to be in any 'specific server' or anything to see.

haha what if funni meme robot was irreversibly corrupted by the horrors?

Think of it as me giving a form of feedback on how the game is presented as an isolated work. Anyway, I'll be posting another Addendum later, connecting more demon stuff to the bunker. Fun! One thing I intend to investigate between then and now is a rumor of a very poorly documented... item interaction. As a little preview, consider this note.

It seems, in my pursuit of knowledge regarding a mysterious bunker in an incomplete videogame story, I find myself investigating a skeletal entity of ambiguous origin described as having a single glowing eye. God. Fucking. Dammit. Every time with this shit.

This always seems to happen whenever the protagonist is bullied by tall monstergirls

Addendum 2: Classified

Progress on my investigation has been slow due to a combination of poor RNG and real-life stuff. Fun fact: I've never encountered the fossilhound in my many months of playing, and it looks like that won't change anytime soon!

I'll get you one day, ya boney bastard. In the meantime, it seems that someone has leaked classified pokemon data communications from our employers...

And just who do we encounter within the first few weeks?

Our classified documents are their vacation photos

So it seems that at the very least, our employers seem to be aware of the Arirals. So to what end do they want to draw them out? And why would the Arirals show any particular interest in a human presence in this facility specifically?

They clearly seem to be hiding their presence from the world at large with their cloaking ships and whatnot, but they seem almost eager to grab the attention of anyone working at this particular site.

And, as everyone already knows, Arirals are certified Goobers. They form like 3/5ths of the Counsel of Goobers*. The ones we encounter at the very least are very much not what our employers expect to kill us. So our employers are also aware of the existence of some other threat, possibly even THE Threat. *the remaining members are Kerfuses and Dinguses

Truly an incomprehensible menace from beyond the stars. (source)

Personally, I feel like this all feeds back into my previous thoughts. There is clearly a Threat at this location, and the Arirals probably believe that they may need human assistance to do something here. Or maybe I'm just biased towards whatever random thoughts got cooked up in my head.

Anyway, hopefully next time I'll be back with reports of yanking the lifecrystal out from the Fossilhound's head and shoving it up its ass. I am so, SO sick of trying to get that thing to show up.

[foone]

I'm surprised there's not more supernatural spaceship media. Like, your average little cargo ship is jumping around the outer rim trying to cut some time off their delivery route and they pick up a distress call, so they have to answer it.

(under a readmore cause this got a little longer than I expected)

They warp in to the approximate coordinates and there's a colony ship orbiting a gas giant, stuck in the shadow of it, basically frozen over. It's centuries old, but these sleeper ships from the pre-ftl era were built to last, so it's still broadcasting the SOS. It's not responding to radio, so they need to board it.

Normally this'd just involve turning off the SOS. The ship is clearly dead and not responding to any hails, the crew must be long gone and the reactor is just keeping the SOS going. But this is a sleeper ship, so it's possible there's just no one awake. Stuck in longsleep for god knows how many decades, waiting for someone to stumble on their signal...

So they board it, activate the computer, and it tells them that everyone is dead. The ship launched, and over the 358 years it's been traveling for, every single cryo chamber has been either opened or never had any lifesigns in it in the first place. The last event logged on the computer is 136 years ago, when the acting captain set the ship to orbit this gas giant, and turn on the distress signal. Since then, nothing.

But there's still power on the bridge. There may be something there. So they climb up the decks, passing the grim sight of endless rows of cryochambers lined up like tombstones, all showing red lights of lifesign failure. As they get closer to the bridge, the time of deaths get later. The ones on the first deck were close to the launch date, and the ones near the bridge are nearer to that 136 year ago deadline.

This wasn't a hardware failure. Something killed all these people, one by one, over 220 years.

They get to the bridge. The computers are all powered down, but the power management system is still active. Two of the decks still have their cryochambers powered, but it's the ones that were supposed to be empty. There's no lifesigns in them, so the little computer in the power diagnostic system has been recommending they be turned off to save on energy. Naturally it's been recommending that for three and a half centuries. One of the crew members almost absent-mindedly agrees to the prompt, and those cryochambers deactivate. They were empty anyway, right? The sound of humming from the bridge mostly fades away, as a few hundred cryopods on the deck below power down.

The boarding crew powers off the SOS beacon. They'll alert the authorities to the ship's location when they get to a port, surely someone wants to investigate what went wrong here, or at least do an archeological study. This place is beyond an antique at this point... Wait. What's that?

The power computer says there's still one active power draw, about 1.2 kilowatts, in the captain's quarters. That's too much for a personal computer, but just about right for a single cryo pod. Maybe the captain or someone is still alive? That pod isn't on the network, so they can't see the lifesigns from here.

They head over, and the bulkhead door is still cracked open, with a thick cable running in through the gap in the door. Whoever wired this up clearly didn't have time to correctly reroute the power systems, they just lugged a cryo pod in here and basically ran an extension cord to a nearby terminal.

They pry open the door, and there's a softly glowing cryo pod in the middle of the surprisingly spacious room. It makes some amount of sense, generally on these ships the captain would be the one who has to wake up and deal with any situations that arise, while the rest of the colonists are content to sleep until they reach their new home.

They look in the pod, and there's a man lying there. He's not the captain, though. They saw his photo on the bridge. This is someone else. Some one quite pale and gaunt. Maybe they were suffering malnutrition before they put themselves in the pod?

The pod is softly beeping. It's reactivating, apparently triggered when they opened the door. The pod shows no lifesigns, so it's not worth worrying about, the panel sliding over to reveal merely a well preserved corpse.

And then he smiles. "I'm so glad to see you! When we ran out of food we we're afraid we'd never see another human again. And even through those environment suits, I can tell you're so deliciously human." he licks his lips, and the boarding crew spots his prominent canines.

There's a noise halfway between a howl and a shriek from the floor below. The man in the cryopod leans up his head. "ahh, I see you've woken up my children as well. Marvelous. I hope you brought plenty of friends for us to snack on."

The head of the boarding party lifts her arm to call their ship, tell them to get out of there or drop a torpedo into the colony ship's reactor. Before she can bring it to her face to call, there's a flash of motion. Before she can even realize what's happening, the man(?) in the cryopod is up and holding her wrist away from her face.

As she cries out at the sudden pain, the other members of the boarding party spot movement down the hall. A lot of movement. A wall of thin pale people are running towards the captain's quarters, climbing over each other and pushing each other aside, like a pack of wild wolves who just smelled prey.

The boarding party steps back into the room and slams the emergency close. At least in here they only have to deal with one of those things.

The door hits the cable and bounces off with a loud alarm. It fully opens again, ready to let the hungry mass in.

So... Have you ever noticed how much a cryopod looks like a coffin?

[gehenna-checklist]

Log 21.1-FCSPN, by Ak'dul Op'tar Ga'hre (Cithlar, Cithlari Prime/Teerna IV, Sector 1 - Segment Delta, ''-'-'''---')

"Welcome, this is a log regarding first contact with the Human spacefaring species from Terra/Earth (Sol III), Sector 2 - Segment Delta, ''-'-'''---'. The official date of contact was on GY.: 82.

First contact circumstances were unique and noteworthy. We were in the middle of yet the Third Exorith Infestation, with one of its probe-asteroids being aimed at Sol III and scheduled for first impact in four Terran months (180 rotations). Humanity (as they refer to themselves) is not an advanced species and struggles with FTL transportation, relying on primitive and crude jump drivers to move large distances, often at a speed inferior to ten LY/Y. They also lack nearly all qualifications for the Federation's criteria of galactic empires, including total unification, high quality of life standards, and subspace technology.

As the Federation's policy demand, the Cithlari Union attempted to intercept and destroy the probe aiming at Sol III, but failed due to a logistical error on Aajel Prime and we clearly realized how it would not be possible. In disrespect of the standard policy the chief researcher for Sol III, Tu'nil Ge'bre Ja'nem, started communications with them using their archaic radio technology to alert them of the upcoming invasion and we, with our non-interference policy now lifted, began introducing them to the Confederation and how to prepare for the invasion.

What was unexpected and the purpose of this log was their reaction. We expected a young species panicking under the threat of what to them would be giant monstrous space bugs invulnerable to conventional weaponry. Instead, we were faced with a new 'deathworlder' species.

This short contact procedure clearly painted to us and the Confederation as a whole how brutally violent humanity's evolution was. I will keep detailing of that in a future log, but their military prowess and culture are exceptional for their development in other aspects, which, combined to their natural aptitude for combat led them to become dominant in Sol III. In four Terran months, when the first probe fragment landed on the African continent, it took them two rotations of their planet to locate it and destroy the entire vicinity with atomic weaponry.

The next six probes were all quickly neutralized. One was intercepted in orbit by an airborne vehicle, another was destroyed in lower orbit by a railcannon, two were attacked by their army and air force in inhabited areas and the last one landed on a populated area of high density, causing thousands of casualties until the zone was isolated and could be bombed as their doctrine demands.

First contact procedure resumed naturally and it became paramount that they were included in the Confederation post-haste for three primary reasons. The first one was their qualification at fighting Exorith in ground warfare, the second was that many demanded their extermination but that would be a high crime, and the third is that they could led to massive damage in the situation of a spacefaring war.

A study has been initiated to explore the Human race and its biological, cultural, and evolutionary traits. We are eager to study another warmongering species after the introduction of the Konith Empire to the Confederation, and it seems to us that humanity is excellent at this matter.

End log, goodbye."

[inbabylontheywept]

Hold Your Breath and Burn

Seventeen hours.

Seventeen hours of sitting in his ruined craft, waiting for the carrier to send someone out to save his sorry ass. Seventeen hours of praying that he’d get out before the waste heat from his scrammed piece of shit reactor officially crossed the line from wring-out-your-underwear to meat-falls-off-the-bone. Seventeen hours of praying he was gonna make it.

And now with one blip of radio noise he knew he was gonna die.

Honestly, it was almost a relief.

He punched in a message through the QRAM system.

Hunter-Seeker nearby. Just caught an IFF ping. Being used as bait. Abort rescue.

A drop of sweat rolled down his nose as he waited for a response. He considered letting it drop to the floor. No need to draw this out any more than he already had.

The computer chirped at him. He almost hadn’t expected a response. Any time spent on him would essentially be wasted.

It was oddly comforting to know that they were willing to waste time on a dead man. Helped him feel less like a casualty on a spreadsheet. There was something human about knowing that someone would waste time on you.

He checked the message.

I’m sorry.

He shrugged. What else could be said? He was sorry too. Dying sucked. He’d bitched a lot about living, but honestly, it was starting to look like a pretty great deal.

He cut his self-pity short before it could even grow roots.

He leaned over the QRAM, suddenly tired.

Now what?

There was a longer pause. No sweat dribbled down his nose. He was glad for the reprieve, even if he knew what it signaled.

Hunt-Seekers are dangerous threats.

An obvious statement. Borderline cagey. Something about it made his hackles rise. He waited to see if another message would arrive.

One did.

Would you be willing to make one more sacrifice for mankind?

Ah.

He mulled the question over. Considered every reason he should say no. Considered every way to say no.

Will it hurt?

There was no pause in the response to this. The immediacy was frightening. He’d hoped there’d be something couched in there, but the straightforwardness moved him.

Yes.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. He wasn’t dead yet.

So be it.

---

The plan was surprisingly simple. Completely unsurvivable, but simple.

First, he would vent the cabin. He had an emergency O2 tank that would last for approximately three minutes. The safest speed that the cabin could be vented at was a little under fifteen minutes. That wasn’t possible, so they’d have to rush the job and see how he made it. The goal was to take exactly as long as the tank would last, and then hold his breath for the last part, because it would, in theory, be very short.

Step two would be overriding the reactor scram. The boric acid would be pumped directly into space, and the reactor would flair up to 1200 F. That was actually the primary reason they needed to vent the atmosphere first: To cool the interior cabin enough that the reactor wouldn’t simply incinerate him in the first five seconds.

Lastly, he would activate a mini-jump. If he was lucky, the Hunter-Seeker would only detect the exit blast, and warp to the end of his FTL cone. It would then drift through space, lost and confused, for at least several seconds. He’d use those last few moments to consider his life up to that point. Then, the reactor would run out of built up xenon.

The rest would be physics.

Are you ready?

The operator's final message hung in the air. Was he ready? Could anyone be ready for this?

Yes.

Pull the trigger. I'm gonna be the first person in two-hundred years to give Oppenheimer a hug on my first day in hell.

---

Another blossom of crimson splattered across his vision as the pressure gauge crept below zero point two atmospheres. He had no idea what the depressurization was doing to his body, but it hurt like hell. The vac-suit was clinging to his body like saran wrap now, damn near tight enough to break a rib, and it still wasn’t done.

He snuck another peek at the pressure gauge.

Zero point zero five.

He went to suck another shaky breath from the tank and found nothing left. His vision was already fading in at the corners. This was even harder than he’d thought.

He stared at the gauge and willed the last bit of air away.

Zero.

Finally.

He leaned across the console and hit the override on the reactor core.

---

The reactor did not roar to life. There was no air to carry the sound, no messenger in this void save light. And the message that light carried was not thunder, no roaring in the canyons, but heat and pain. The energy didn’t flow out of the reactor like it did in air, it was an immediate, searing, flash of agony.

He couldn’t tell if the vacsuit was melting into his skin, or if his skin was melting into the suit, but he could feel a dreadful wetness across his back, the one part of his body exposed to the war god slinging him through space. He barely noticed the sensation of warping, barely noticed the first hesitant blip that appeared on his LADAR screen.

But barely was still enough.

It worked. The stupid son-of-a-bitch had fallen for it. The Hunter-Seeker set a destination at the end of his warp cone and jumped blind. It was catastrophically lazy, and even as his lungs burned from lack of air, even as his back burned with the blowtorch heat of a dying reactor, he knew that he’d won. There was nothing left to do now but wait.

He looked through the display that pretended to be a window to the outside. Imagined the stars, beautiful and gleaming, suspended over the vastness of space. He saw the faint white shine of the reactor reflected across that glossy screen, felt that half numb pain of fire across his entire back, and imagined that last bit of xenon trapped inside, fading away, lost in the sea of neutrons. Fading, fading… gone.

He could almost swear that the flash of light began right there, right as he imagined it would. He died then, ripped apart on a level that few can scarcely imagine, but for one brief moment before death took him, his underwear was dry in the same elegantly understated sense that space is cold and stars are warm. Four hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium going supercritical is a magical thing.

The Hunter-Seeker never had its moment to look death in the face. All it knew was that in the space where a carrier should have been, it was alone. And then it too was gone. In the space where it used to be, where it had been, there was little more than echoes of fire and heat.

And then those too faded to black.

[vintagegeekculture]

A History of Faster than Light Communications

One of the technologies taken for granted in science fiction and space opera is faster than light communication...or as scifi fans call it, an ansible. In reality, most communications are limited by the speed of light, so it takes a delay of a few minutes to send and receive messages even in a solar system. As 2001 pointed out, it would take 6 hours and back for a radio message to reach Saturn. A traditional radio signal sent to the closest star would take four years to arrive.

Isaac Asimov coined the term “ultrawave” or “hyperwave communications” in his Foundation novels in the 1950s, to refer to signals that propagate along “subspace,” a lower level dimension where travel is quicker. Only information can travel in subspace, but people and objects can’t. Jack Williamson mentioned “rhodomagnetic waves” in a few of his scifi stories, which function as a kind of intergalactic communicator, but also are the basis for a death ray, meaning in his universe, any ftl communication device can be rewired with a minimum of effort by a boffin into a lethal death ray. 

In the 70s, Ursula K. le Guin popularized the term “Ansible” for this kind of communicator, instantly able to communicate regardless of distance. It’s this term that seemed to stick among fans and scifi culture, and most people with this device in their stories call it an “ansible” in homage to le Guin. Ansible communicators are just a part of scifi now, generic scifi worldbuilding, along with hyperspace travel, neuronic whips, space marines, and wisecracking robots. Many scifi writers have ansibles in their stories who are completely unaware of who originally coined the term and where. 

For most scifi writers, instant FTL communication is just a plot convenience to move the story along. Even Asimov, who made overthinking things his M.O., didn’t spend any extra time thinking about it. But James Blish however, put a lot of energy into figuring out how a faster than light or instant communicator would actually work....and he came to the conclusion it would be a technology with enormous philosophical, and indeed, practically religious implications.

Here is what I mean by that. In his story “Beep” in 1954, James Blish came up with the idea of a Dirac Communicator, which is the usual instant, no delay ansible. But Blish reasoned that the only way instant faster than light communications could actually work without any delay is by sending a signal into a null-dimension without time, so every single message ever sent (past, present, future) is sent simultaneously in a timeless null point, with machines only able to decode the time-sealed relevant messages they receive. 

If you stop and consider this, if a technology worked this way, it means that we live in a completely deterministic universe where all our decisions are made in advance. And as Blish was intelligent (and wiseassed) enough to point out in his 1954 story, it means that if faster than light communications actually work in the universe, that free will is an illusion, and that we actually do not have it. The universe is a watch proceeding on a predetermined pattern set at the moment of creation. An interesting conclusion to draw, all from a technology scifi takes for granted and sit in the background. 

[flight-of-the-sacred-eagle]

Fuck it. New Invader Zim AU

Penpal AU

So this AU, the Irken Empire isn’t… well. The empire we know. It’s far more primitive (more advanced they humans and have colonized parts of their own solar system but haven’t invented ftl travel).

An older Dib and Zim are both kinda outcasts in their respective societies. Zim is… well. He’s Zim. And kinda obsessed with trying to find alien life. Dib is pretty much the same thing. So the pair spend their time trying to find evidence of life. This leads to them using radios, constantly trying to make a call to the universe.

And eventually, Zim picks up Dib’s transmission. And returns it.

There’s a month delay on Zim’s side, but eventually Dib gets the return message and the pair are kinda freaking out. Because holy shit they actually found alien life. Except no one cares (irkens) or don’t believe them (humans)

After about a year of back and forths, Zim eventually manages to create an instant transmission system and sends Dib the blueprints. And it works.

About four years go by with them talking more and more and pretty much falling in love. And Zim, being Zim, decides this isn’t enough. If no one cares, he’ll do everything himself. This leads to him, with Dib’s help, creating basically Skype between the too.

And this is… fine. For a few years, but by this point they really see each other as their only friends and Zim realizes he’s head over heels. So he decides, screw it. He’s making FTL travel. The empire had toyed with it for a bit before giving up, but Zim is determines.

And a decade later, he’s figured it out. So, without telling Dib (or really anyone else) he fucking dips and heads to Earth.

And there’s this really cute reunion/first meeting thing. Idk. I thought it’d be cute

[klikandtuna]

Hey :)

Random question: are there any existing songs that bring FTL!Crowley to your mind? You know, the way Time Stand Still makes you think of the SCB boys? Or, alternatively, any songs that you had in mind / were listening to when you wrote FTL!Crowley? Or any that you feel resemble his music (not necessarily Pondwater)?

Putting this in your asks instead of DMs bc I thought some other people might be curious as well :D

Ooooooh this is an excellent question…without a definitive answer 😆 I’ve honestly never thought about it before!

In my head/heart, FTL-Crowley’s music is a mishmash of most of what I was into back in high school and college.

— Rush, absolutely, for their quirkiness, fantasy-centered themes and imagery, and an absolutely KILLER guitar (think “Distant Early Warning,” “Mystic Rhythms,” and obviously “Time Stand Still”);

— Kansas, for their huge power ballads, more fantasy stuff, and odd time signatures (think “The Pinnacle,” “Icarus II,” “The Wall” — I actually named one FTL chapter after this song!);

— Springsteen, for his storytelling (“Thunder Road,” “Radio Nowhere”);

— Led Zeppelin for their blues roots, more fantasy stuff, and another killer guitar, and sheer POWER (“The Rain Song,” “The Battle of Evermore”)

Iiiiii don’t listen to much current music, so I’m afraid all the comments asking if FTL-Crowley is Hozier are lost on me 😅 I will say that while Crowley loves to write about his favorite things, Pondwater is by far his most autobiographical song; most of them are glorious tangents about anything that catches his internal eye with a sparkle of silver.

THANK YOU for the ask, I love discussions like this!! 💛💛

[ftl-radio]

[mwexodusofficial]

Mouthwashing: Exodus | Chapter I: Primer

In the year 2087, humanity discovered FTL (faster-than-light travel) via rapid transmission between distant locations by using a form of quantum entanglement combined with dark matter reactors.

This discovery exploded the commercial spacefaring ventures, and within decades multiple solar systems, planets, and new spacial phenomena were discovered. As asteroid mining became mainstream, rare minerals prompted a new age of technological development that exploded humanity's progress exponentially. Newly-discovered planets were quickly terraformed, colonized, industrialized and beautified. The new wave of entrepreneurs and innovators, combined with the excitement of exploration, sparked revolutions in every industry. 

The medical industry, in particular, had produced cutting-edge bionic limbs and organs, stem-cell regeneration, limb cloning and micro-bots capable of eliminating nearly every ailment known to man. Mankind was nearing its zenith in reaching a true utopia under a united galactic government.

Then came The Terror. A mind-boggling, behemothic alien creature the size of the moon entered the Terra solar system at FTL speeds and immediately assailed Earth with millions of its monstrous offspring- Gaiters, termed for their stumbling gait when they moved around. These car-sized creatures ripped through the atmosphere and slammed into the surface, wreaking havoc and slaughtering humans wherever they trampled. This cataclysmic event was met with global outrage and fury. Military counterattacks, long-range bombardment, and close-range combat led to the deaths of billions of humans, on top of the already overwhelming casualty rate of innocent civilians.

(Below, a Gaiter - Circa August 2nd, 2122 - Art by @Sherza_shrew)

The Terror was eventually brought down by a heroic band of starship fighters strapped with nuclear warheads, and its offspring were tracked down and killed. However, the losses it caused and the widespread destruction it left created a mass paranoia amongst humanity. Military expenditure and innovation skyrocketed, which caused regression in most other industries' advancements. Logistics were heavily disrupted as Earth was the central planet of commerce amongst the galaxy, which led to many colonies and governments being forced to revert to heavily outdated technology. Governments became corporatist and autocratic as the fear of hostile alien life drove regressive policies and mass consumerism.

And on January 24th of 2263, a transport freighter by the name of Tulpar, working its last human shift for Pony Express, fatefully collided with a stray asteroid...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Captain, Orion speaking. The Tulpar flight path stops here."

Captain Hawkes reached across the multitude of control panels around him and toggled a switch that brought up a holographic cartograph of the transport freighter's flight path. It was true. After 10 long months of travel, they'd arrived at their destination.

"Pull up the far-range scanners and find that damn ship." The Captain radioed in over his headset. "When we finish this rescue mission, we're getting a fat paycheck and medals galore. So scour that freighter from top to bottom and ensure no man or woman is left behind."

Captain Hawkes switched comms to EVA and Medical channels to issue further orders.

"EVA Team, make sure you're in gear with plasmas loaded, your time to shine is coming up. Triage team, I want you following the EVA Team if the oxygen in the freighter passes scrutiny."

"Roger that, Cap, over."

"Copy Captain, over."

He switched off those channels and pulled up imaging of outer space from the hundreds of cameras installed on the exterior of the massive military vessel. Nothing aside from distant stars could be seen in any direction. It was fortunate that the far-range scanners could reach up to 2 Astronomical Units away. The Captain turned to his co-pilot, Sammy; a stocky yet athletic-seeming young man with bright, optimistic eyes and a charisma that swayed the whole crew and landed him at the third-highest authority on the vessel in under 2 years.

"Sammy."

"Hey-ho."

"Take over piloting. I intend to board the freighter and assuage the crew."

Sammy's eyebrows furrowed in concern.

"Captain, you sure that's a wise move?"

Another reason why the Captain had taken on Sammy was because he was intensely straightforward. Whereas other crew rarely dared to question Hawkes' decisions and assessments due to his decades of military service, Sammy had no such fear. That brash honesty had come in handy in the past, and it would continue to do so in the future.

"Yes. This I am confident in. And I'll tell you why." Hawkes addressed him, reaching into his coat pocket and removing a cigar box. He took one out and lit it up on the spot, blowing the smoke to the side.

"How long have you been chainsmoking cigars, Captain?"

"Since before your balls dropped, kid. And I haven't been chainsmoking, wise ass; I'm enjoying the privilege of my position."

"Excessive enjoyment."

"Anyways... around a decade ago, we did a rescue mission similar to this one- a stranded commercial freighter in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. We docked and I sent in the EVA Team, only to find out minutes later that half of them had been stabbed, shot and beaten severely by the crew. Turns out the crew was full of exotics who didn't speak English, and the EVA leader using the translator was a brash prick. Couple of his words got mistranslated into some very unsavory terms, and next thing you know, a battle breaks out."

"Damn... did anyone die?" Sammy asked curiously. Captain Hawkes seemed particularly offended at the question and flicked Sammy's forehead with his index finger and thumb.

"Nobody died because I acted quickly. That's Rule Number One, if you ever take command. Rule Number Two, is to never show favor to any subordinate or equal in times of crisis. That EVA leader I told you about- he was a good friend of mine, over 3 years. After that mission, I canned him. You can't have people that senseless and irresponsible onboard a vessel; they can be the sole unravelers of your entire ship. I've seen it happen too many times, on too many journeys with too many cruisers."

Sammy nodded his head solemnly, acknowledging the Captain's grim background. Captain Hawkes was a near-legend within the Canaris Armed Forces, and a war hero to the citizen populace. His astounding feats at the Battle of Yamilcar and the Siege of Korres were widespread tales, and his list of accomplishments were so vast that even the most ill-informed citizens of Canaris heard regaling tales of his bravery, cunning, and heroism in their day to day.

To be in his ranks and, no less, his Third Mate, was an honor that Sammy latched onto with intense fanaticism. Captain Hawkes was even more magnetic in person- despite his decades of battle experience, he was eloquent in his way of speaking, mixed with occasional layman phrases and speech. It was incredibly endearing no matter if a person were the lowest criminal or the most elite of socialites.

Yet in this moment, when Hawkes spoke that last sentence, his eyes grew foggy and distant. His speech staggered and broke into a brittle narrative, as if he were revisiting haunting memories in his mind.

"I've seen the crew of a medical cruiser slaughtered port and bow across the ship. They'd hacked each other into gore. The surveillance records revealed a young woman had been stoking distrust after their food storage had broken out into flames. She'd deluded herself into believing there was an enemy spy onboard, romanced the Captain to get a hold of his keys to the cockpit- where she locked herself in when the killing started. Turned out she was taking smoke breaks in there, near the pallets of gauze and disinfectant. One carelessly thrown cigarette was all it took. And she was fuckin' ignorant to it."

Sammy saw as his eyes filled with a subtle but brimming rage, as if he were reliving the experience and seeing the perpetrator right in front of his eyes. A nasty grin erupted across his face.

"She was lucky little cunt. She was the last alive, and perished right as we docked with their ship. Found her locked inside those same Captain's quarters, wrists slit and in the middle of pigging out on cigars and emergency rations. And as a final 'fuck-you' to the people who had survived the slaughter, she turned on the ship's disinfectant sprayers and left it on. Everyone else on the ship suffocated to death."

He averted his eyes, shaking his head with a cynical sneer on his face.

"Rachel Gillaby. The lowly sack of shit that doomed an entire crew for no good reason, and the Captain who put his personal pleasure ahead of foresight. Hopes, dreams, ambitions, the desire to survive- all snuffed out in despair, because of one petty bitch and a worthless captain to boot."

Hawkes slowly leaned towards Sammy, eyes burning with fire and brimstone, his facial muscles stretched in vitriol. In a passing moment, Sammy could plainly see the faint bags under Hawkes' eyes; gray hairs peeking out within his scalp that weren't easily seen.

"You read the same report I did." Hawkes rasped, toggling a few buttons to turn off the ship's primary engines. "The Tulpar's autopilot was overridden, sent on a direct collision with the asteroid. Only the Captain is capable of that. And that means we likely have another Rachel on this ship. So I'm going to board that ship with my own two legs, and I'm gonna find that bastard, and I'm going to make sure he suffers the worst imaginable fate a human being can conceive."

"Are we allowed to punish civilians during a rescue mission, Captain?"

Hawkes chuckled slyly, opening a side drawer, pulling out a hefty red book, and tapping Sammy (somewhat-lightly) on the head with it.

"You haven't read up on Canaris Spacetime Intragalactic Law, have you?"

"N-No, sir. Sorry, sir."

"I'll simplify. The Discretion Clause under Article Seven permits 'interrogations, up to and no further past the point of severe injury, for suspected traitors, mutineers and corsairs, as long as medical aid is provided hereafter.' As long as they are breathing, coherent and given medical care, we can de facto torture them."

"Captain... is that ethical?"

"I base my ethics on the magnitude of the crime and their truthfulness." Hawkes retorted, finishing his cigar. "I'm sure you would treat a suspect of rape who's lying to your face much differently than an accomplice to petty theft who spills their guts out. Then again, I'm one man. I know how bad this law can be for victims of cruel Captains. But with what our nation is dealing with right now, changing a law like this is probably not at the top of the list. And I sure as shit am gonna use it to my advantage for however long it lasts."

Sammy nodded, this time more fervently, an expression of grim determination on his face.

"I see. Good luck, sir."

The Captain exhaled, patting Sammy on the shoulder as he stood up.

"Don't scratch this beauty even slightly when we dock. It needs to look pristine for the photo ops when we return home."

Sammy smiled, nodding one last time, as Captain Hawkes briskly made his way down to the EVA Team.

"God is with us!" Sammy shouted out, and the Captain stopped in his tracks for a moment. He smiled, and this time it was one of youthful relief.

"God is with us." He mumbled, almost hesitantly. For the last 40 years of his life, he'd been a cynical, grim atheist who considered the universe a cold, dark place that was entirely uncaring of life and its inherent suffering. Less than 3 months ago, he had carried a deep hatred and loathing for religion, what he had believed to be a disgusting false hope to the fearful and dying. Less than 3 months ago, he was on the verge of retiring, finding his home agrarian planet, and blowing his brains out. It had been nothing but despair, rage, and agony. For decades, on end.

Now... now he felt... reborn.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Music: "Ratnik", by Avery Alexander)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Captain, freighter sighted. Proceeding to point."

"Good, I'm turning off coms for a sec to speak with EVA."

"Copy, over."

Hawkes switched off the radio receiver, looking across the room at the EVA Team gathered in front of him. Outfitted in Roxcorp EVA suits. Plasma cutters in one hand, Hyletta handguns in the other. Hawkes had Central Command to thank for these cutting-edge weapons; they'd approved his recent request for up-to-date weaponry and artillery. This ship was outfitted and his crew rearmed; the Argonaut II was now one of the most powerful military ships in the nation, and arguably within the Lower Quadrant.

Hawkes could be more proud as its longtime Captain.

"EVA Team, last check."

"Ready." "Ready, Cap." "Ready, sir."

"Ready, Captain Hawkes!" "Ready!" "Ready."

Hawkes nodded, looking to the Triage Team. Outfitted in Janil Company space suits, carrying medical bags and cauterizers; even they carried holsters with handguns. Captain Hawkes was taking no chances after that incident he'd told Sammy about.

No more of his crew's blood would be on his hands.

"Form up!" Hawkes barked, and the teams stacked into two column in front of the depressurization chamber. Hawkes flipped on his radio and switched to Drone Control.

"Elise, what are the unmanned drones seeing?"

"The freighter suffered catastrophic damages at the front where the cockpit lies. There's sealing foam covering most of the front, and there are dozens of holes over the exterior and nearly to the back of the ship that's filled with sealing foam. I've sighted two docking entrances, only the starboard side is unaffected."

"We'll be docking starboard, then. Any signs of forced entry or looting?"

"Negative, Captain. We're in some remote deepspace, so I wouldn't expect it."

"Catastrophes come when you least expect it. Comb it over one more time with the drones then report back."

"Copy, Captain."

Hawkes switched to the Command room, where Sammy was steering the ship.

"Prep us for docking, Sammy."

"Roger that, over."

Hawkes kept his radio on to wait for an ETA on docking, taking one final examination of the two teams in front of him. If there were signs of forced entry into the freighter, the Argonaut II's military garrison would be deployed through first. In this case, however, Hawkes' primary goal was getting emergency aid and rescue to these poor souls. A year stuck in a crashed and floating freighter in the middle of nowhere was no doubt terrifying, and Hawkes didn't want them to feel a second more of that- especially if there was a traitorous captain onboard adding to the despair.

"Elise here, drones found no external forced entry into the ship. You are greenlit."

"Copy, Elise, over."

"Sammy here, we will be docking, ETA 3 minutes."

Captain Hawkes tightened his gloves, unslinging the automatic energy rifle over his shoulders and into his hands, cranking the bolt intensity up a notch. If there was even one traitor onboard, he wasn't taking chances.

"2 minutes to go."

Hawkes noted the air was filled with nervousness. No matter the experience, no matter the repetition; nobody was truly and fully prepared to enter an unknown stranded ship unfazed. Any number of things could lie on the other side.

"30 seconds left."

It was up to Hawkes to make sure this mission ended in complete victory.

"We are docking in 3... 2... 1..."

Rumble.

The ship quaked in momentary reverberation as its docking anchors latched onto the port of entry into the ship. The light to the airlock pulsed green as it confirmed docking was successful.

"Get moving!" He barked, and the EVA leader opened the airlock, walking in with the teams and Captain Hawkes. The airlock closed shut behind them. The depressurization chamber hissed loudly as pressure equalized between the Argonaut II and the Tulpar. Hawkes latched his helmet onto his spacesuit, readying his rifle.

The doors to the Tulpar, however, did not open. This was somewhat unexpected by Hawkes; dark matter reactors were infinite power sources, which meant that the Tulpar's reactors weren't maintained and shut down as a security measure to prevent over-stimulation and explosion. That didn't bode well, and Hawkes was beginning to feel a sinking ache in his chest as he gave the next order.

"EVA, do your thing."

His EVA leader, Wally, shuffled forward alongside two others and began searing into the dense metal with their plasma cutters. The process took only a few minutes, and after finishing, Hawkes kicked in the cut-up doors. Chunks of metal crumbled to the ground, and Hawkes prepared for a large wave of suction if the inside of the ship was depressurized. To his surprise, it never came. The ship was pressurized, but out of power, which meant that the auxiliary batteries were still working.

Hawkes walked aboard with his crew, rifle raised as they scanned each part and parcel of the ship's interior.

"What the hell..." He muttered, seeing a host of destruction, dereliction, and blood scattered across this floor of the ship. On edge, Hawkes made his way towards the cafeteria- this was commonly where survivors tended to gather on stranded ships due inherently to its social atmosphere.

On top of the unease, Hawkes was also angered as he made his way through the tight corridors of busted pipes, broken machinery and leaking silos. Having been a captain for over 30 years now, Hawkes could tell by look and instinct alone what state a ship was in.

This one was nearing the verge of self-implosion. He quickly went for his radio.

"Search Teams, we won't have time for salvaging ops. This ship is in a bad state, and I don't trust the next hour. Find the survivors and any bodies, and evac A-S-A-P."

"Yes, sir!" "Roger, Captain!"

Satisfied, Hawkes continued down the winding corridors, and noticed a change in scenery as he rounded a corner-

"What the fuck?!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Music: "Temporary Suicide", by Kevin Penkin)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hawkes felt nauseous as he moved in to clear the room, seeing a horrific display of insanity and gore in front of him. Three mummified dead bodies were sat the cafeteria table, frozen in place like a picture in time. Holding back his horror, Hawkes walked up to the table and inspected the plates in front of them.

"This is fucking sick." He mumbled, coming to the quick realization that there were sliced portions of leg meat adorned on the plates like cutlets. Without wasting a beat, Hawkes activated his radio.

"Hawkes here, get to the cafeteria. 3 confirmed dead. Get 'em to the Argonaut II and clean them up for the Revivifi- Revifiv- Rev- FUCK, The Rev-iv-if-ic-ation Ritual!"

"Copy, over."

Hawkes stared morbidly at the corpses of these three. A young woman, a young man, and a middle-aged man. What a horrible outcome. Momentarily, he inspected each of the corpses, attempting to figure out how they had died. His conclusion was sickening, and only left more questions than answers.

The middle-aged man, whose name tag read 'Swansea', had been shot in the chest and head. Hawkes knew only the Captain had access to a firearm on a freighter like this. 

The young woman, whose name tag read 'Anya', had overdosed on painkillers, every orifice on her face leaking blood. 

The young man, whose name tag read 'Daisuke', was axed in the face; Hawkes had glimpsed the bloody weapon sitting next to a makeshift bed as he had entered the room.

Sickening. Atrocious. Horror.

Hawkes had seen plenty of terrible, gruesome, and outright barbaric events in his life. But this was certainly up there. He could feel the despair in the environment, the utter hopelessness of this crude vessel. Just by looking around, Hawkes could glimpse the dystopian feel, the uncaring corporatist metal and sinew that only amplified their morbid horror at the developing situation.

This was a terrible death. And morbidly, that gave Hawkes hope. The more terrible the death- the more likely a revivification could occur. What a sick way of thinking, but it was the inevitable changing of the times. He got back on his radio.

"Elise, I need answers for what happened here. Rip open that surveillance station and get a drone to download the records, all the way back to a year ago, if possible."

"Shouldn't be a problem, Pony Express has shit vessel designs but they love to keep records of their employees."

Half the EVA Team and the entire Triage team clambered into the room, cleaning up the bodies and loading them into transparent body bags, before hauling them down the corridors to the Argonaut II.

"Hawkes, Wally here. We found the Cryo room, there's a confirmed KIA inside, gunshot wound to the head."

"Copy, Wally. I'm heading over."

It took a minute to get there, and all along the corridors Hawkes was getting more and more uneasy. They were gambling with their lives, for every second they remained on this freighter. It was in an obvious state of breaking down and he wanted to be nowhere near when it eventually imploded.

He arrived at the Cryo Pod room, only to find Wally using a plasma cutter to sear through. 

"Hey, Captain. The door lost power, so we're cutting in."

"Take it away."

Another searing finished, another door kicked in. The team made their way inside, and Hawkes walked up to the cryo pod.

"Holy shit."

Sitting inside the cryo pod was a frozen amputee, wrapped in bandages and covered in seared flesh. A single eye stared out from the cryo pod's window, its eyelid missing completely.

BWOOOM! BWOOOM! BWOOOOM!

The atmosphere changed from unease to alarm as the ship's emergency sirens went off suddenly.

"Warning. Equilibrium disruption in DMRC-3. Dark Matter implosion imminent. Evacuate via the departure pods. Evacuate via the departure pods-"

"Get him out NOW!" Hawkes ordered. "Throw the corpse over your shoulder and haul ass!"

The EVA Team scrambled to open the cryo pod's chamber. It hissed and opened upward, and the EVA Team loaded the amputee onto a stretcher and sprinted for the exit. Wally picked up the dead body and threw it over his shoulder, making exit the same way.

The remaining group onboard the ship ran with terror pumping through their veins. A Dark Matter implosion was an extremely rare event, and often resulted because of low-quality engineering of the safety mechanisms that deactivated reactors when they became unstable.

In essence, this event was very in-character for Pony Express- that shitty low-tier transportation company. Events like this were so rare that any company, corporation, agency or interest group whose name was on a ship that suffered a Dark Matter implosion event could kiss their companies, livelihoods, and lives goodbye. Regulations on Dark Matter reactors and maintenance, across every nation, were the most strict and scrutinized.

"Elise, make sure you record that ship's activity on the far-range scanners when we're out of blast range. I want evidence to bring down those sleazy Pony Express shitstains!"

"Copy."

The last of the teams shuffled hurriedly into the airlock, watching as the door closed behind them. They practically stampeded into the Argonaut II as soon as its airlock hatch lifted up, and Hawkes fumbled for his radio.

"Sammy, disengage the port and get us the hell out of here!"

"Got it!"

A high-pitched whirling sound emitted through the room as the airlock clamps let go of the Tulpar airlock and retracted. The entire ship began to rumble as primary engines roared to life, accelerating the ship away from the Tulpar at increasing speeds.

"Sammy, we need to be a million miles away before that thing detonates, charge up the FTL and HIT IT!"

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Hawkes felt existential chills run down his spine. He'd only heard this sound once before in his entire life. It was the sound of microparticles of dark matter getting ready to collide.

It would be annihilation of everything within a 93 million mile radius. This was why Dark Matter reactors were only authorized for private sector companies in exceptional circumstances; they were so destructive if the failsafes failed, that the emergency contingency plans in place for reactors erupting near planets and stars all involved some form of death for any crew onboard the ship. The firstmost plan enacted is to use Quantum Positioning technology to 'warp' the unstable ship to an empty area of the galaxy. 

This ship didn't have a Quantum Positioning Relay, so the next plan was to get out of dodge.

"Sammy here, FTL drivers are spooling, ready for takeoff in 5... 4... 3..."

Hawkes pulled up an external camera from the back of the ship to check on the state of the Tulpar. His face paled as he witnessed the ship begin to fold in on itself as two giant orbs of pure light spun around each other with intensifying rapidity. The vibration emitting from the dark matter could be felt to the bone, and the entire ship was reverberating nonstop.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!" Hawkes began to panic, seeing the orbs nearing detonation.

"2... 1... Launching!"

BWWWWWWWWWWW-IP!

And just like that, they had entered FTL travel. The reverberation came to a sudden stop, and the crew surrounding Hawkes breathed a sigh of relief. Hawkes, meanwhile, was shaking violently with nothing but after-thought panic on his mind. He and Elise were likely the only ones who knew how close they had been to complete obliteration.

Taking several gulps to bring himself back to reality, Hawkes turned off his wrist holopad and stood up on shaky legs, attracting the room's attention.

"WELL DONE!"

The room erupted into raucous applause and cheers. The mission was done, and nobody had died. That was a victory in his and everyone else's books.

"Where's the amputee?"

"Over here, sir!"

Hawkes walked over to the amputee, who was just beginning to come to his senses from the cryo-freeze aftereffects. His eye slowly moved around groggily, then slowly, gradually...

Clarity.

"Hggghhkkk.... Hgggkk! HGGGGKKK!!!! HGGGGGKKKK-AAAAAAA!!!!"

The amputee looked around in wild, frenetic shock and jolted his seared limbs in a frenzy. The agony, the pain, the terror, the despair, the memories- they all came flooding back into his mind.

Almost immediately, the triage team moved in to restrain and treat the slowly-bleeding leg stump that had clearly suffered amputation. Hawkes immediately connected the severed leg limb to the scene he had witnessed at the cafeteria.

"What the fuck is going on here... Kai, get him some anesthetics and haul him to the Operating Room!"

"Yes, sir!"

As they carried him away, Hawkes' eyes, tired but observant, scanned over the corpse of the fourth dead crew member. He flipped him over to read his name tag:

Jimmy

"We'll find out what happened." Hawkes muttered with a grimace across his face. "We'll find out who's responsible. And we'll make sure we get justice."

_____________________________________________

(Art below is credited to @rabstergabster on Twitter/X)

_____________________________________________

-

-

-

-

-

(Portrait of Captain Hawkes)

-

[elbiotipo]

Notes on technology in Campoestela:

Most spaceships are single-stage-to-orbit. They have rather standard jet engines to lift off from the ground like a standard plane.

To get into orbit, they use a rocket engine that uses a solid fuel made of a HIGHLY combustible (yet stable) carbon-nitrogen compound which allows a better fuel than anything previous. This was first discovered by Iranian scientists who named it "Nafta".

(sí, Beto tiene que estacionar su camión espacial para cargar nafta)

Nafta was a big discovery on its time, allowing cheap SSTO rockets. Nowadays it's produced in many worlds and widely available. It also has uses as weaponry, but it's not that efficient.

Nafta is used for lift-off and orbital burns. For manuevering in space, there are small jets on the nose and tail of spaceships, similar to the Space Shuttle.

Spaceship piloting is still not an easy task, but it's comparable to being a jet pilot, about 4 or 5 years to master. Hard, but something on the reach of many people. People from the generation ship clans are a bit more used to it and often represent an outsized part of space pilots, but there's always many wellers (from down the gravity well) who get their licenses too.

The hardest thing is always landing. Especially given all the different gravities, atmospheres, orbits and such you have to learn in each different case, even with all the automation in the world. Many spacers feel confident sticking to one or at most two or three planets they know.

Pilots that only do shuttle or cargo runs in the same star system or planet are called "Starters", because they go around the same star. It's rude, but many spacers do it.

FTL travel is another thing. FTL travel is done using a ring-like structure that projects a bubble around the ship and takes it to a (completely made-up for the setting) dimension called the Aether. The Aether is one of the meta-dimensions (there might be more) that uphold reality. Conveniently, you can use it as a shortcut to travel between stars, which project "shadows" on the Aether.

The Aether has its own navigation, with currents and whirpools and areas of thick dark matter (which, for cinematic purposes, actually look like bright nebulae) There are routes that are easier to travel and navigate, and these are where the most visited worlds are. Even stars that are close in real space might be very hard to get in Aetheric space, so there's routes that can take you all over the galaxy in a week, while many other places are out of reach.

Navigating the Aether is very similar to flying a plane through a cloudy sky. Some spacer says it's even easier than flying in real space.

Staying on the aether depends on how much you can keep the fields upholding your "bubble". This depends on the energy of your ship. Big ships can travel all over the galaxy but they have enormous energy consumption requirements.

Smaller ships (such as Beto's Mastropiero) dock with a ring-like structure that allows them to make short jumps. The average jump in an explored route is about 12-48 hours, so it's much like aircraft flights.

Exploring new aetheric routes is something that is very romanticized but in reality is a tedious process of jumping, cataloguing new systems (many of them empty and useful only as refuelling stations), seeing where the streams go and end, how they change, and more.

There is no FTL radio or live communication. There is a kind of aetheric radar that allows you to see incoming ships and do some morse-like communication, but it's not very efficient, there is no such thing as a galactic internet (though it's said ancient civilizations had one)

Aether travel engines require very sophisticated manufacturing and materials, which were hard for humans to develop. This was long only in the hands of governments and corporations, but after the Machine War, accessible aether starships hit the civilian market.

Smaller ships are still used by governments (more like loose "leagues") to do what big ships can't: supply satellites and equipment to remote bases, small-scale transport of engineers, researchers, aether "meteorology" and exploration, etc. This is very much like bush planes in remote regions or the role of Aeroflot in developing the USSR.

While humans in the setting, like most species, are composed of many different leagues, cultures and organizations, their technology is remarkably consistent. This is because cheap and reliable spaceflight depends on very reliable standarization. Some of the spaceship parts used six centuries after Gagarin are still the same used in the Soyuz. The ISO is perhaps one of the most enduring legacies of human civilization, along with FIFA.

[paradoxcase]

John 19:18

THE TOWER HAS R

Since normal humans can't do anything like this anyway and it doesn't seem like John has at this point in the story actually consumed anyone's soul, I guess by "the old difficult way" he's referring to his power level from before that happened, during the part of the story that we're reading now?

This is a piece of land that John just raised from the bottom of the ocean, but it already has a building and a car on it. I guess some flooding happened when the world ended? Also, I think that car is probably all dead, insert Miracle Max reference here

So, it's not like surprising or a revelation at this point, but here is positive evidence that a body can be physically alive and even healthy, but if it doesn't have a soul in it, it's not really living. I think if BOE had observed Gideon's body to be physically alive in some way but lacking a soul they would have described it differently; Gideon's body probably has some big holes in it because of the fence at this point, or at least it probably did at the time that BOE had it, so it wouldn't have been like Ulysses and Titania here, but it's not clear what the extent of Gideon's immortality is, exactly, if it means inconvenient holes get repaired or if she can be alive in spite of inconvenient holes, or what

Also, here we have that true resurrection doesn't just involve the physical act of repairing someone's body and starting it up again in some way, there has to be some element of retrieving a soul, presumably from the River

So whatever this is, I don't think anyone is using it 10,000 years later. The Nine Houses uses this stele system, which seems to be related to radio somehow, but you can't use it to go somewhere that's far away from a stele and they do know where they wind up. And BOE went out of their way to steal a ship with a stele just so they could use FTL travel, so they obviously don't have another means. I wonder what happened with this idea that caused it to be abandoned? Like, obviously the trillionaires who went off in their FTL ships did survive and I guess maybe became some of these other civilizations that John's fighting against, so it must have at least worked a little bit. But the stuff about "oscillating to a prearranged spectrum" makes me wonder if it isn't actually related to the steles at all? Or Augustine was right and there was no FTL at all

Also, I wonder if John does understand the math now after 10,000 years

This seems like such a weird argument to make? Like, I'm not sure if this interaction is happening in public or not. If it's a public thing, I can see them being like, this guy killed a bunch of poor innocent cows, how can we trust him??? but it sounds like a lot of this was private negotiations between John and the trillionaires, I think in those circumstances they wouldn't be talking about the poor innocent cows and would instead be saying things about how it's not a good investment, I don't think any trillionaires are going to be pretending to care about cows for just John's sake. And I mean, one of those guys is probably Elon Musk, right, can you see Elon Musk making this argument to anyone in any context? I really cannot

So again, it's sort of framed as being about the Earth, specifically, and not about the people and animals living on it... although, if this is Alecto's memory of John telling this story to her maybe he is phrasing everything that way for her benefit? Like obviously the greater injustice was leaving all of the people behind. The only real difference between what the trillionaires did and what John was planning to do was in how many people escaped, right? Like, John wasn't out there fighting oil companies and pollution either. Maybe when someone takes the ships you were planning to use to leave instead it's just easier to say "you abandoned the Earth, you cowards!" instead of "you left us behind, you bastards!" because then it's easier to claim the moral high ground, but I think they already could do that, since they were planning to take everyone and that was the whole point?

[pari-treeminders]

Hello once again friends, some interesting updates today...

The latest reports from our dig site have come in, our teams have reported that the ruins have become engulfed in a strange purple fog, seeping out of the walls and floors, at first this oddity was merely a foot note but it rapidly started spreading to the rest of the planet. Our researches are baffled as attempts to analyse it are not bearing any fruit. We hope the arrival of our friends in the @elepharchy and the @darexirepublic can be of help.

Following up on our bandit hunt, our peace keepers have been able to track faint FTL disruptions to another system, there they have found a large ocean world, home to a small Pre FTL civilisation. Our security forces have begun establishing a small out post to watch over this humble civilisation less the bandit menace seek to plunder them unabated.

And lastly, our northern most outpost has report yet another increase in raiding activity, Several attempted raids have been thwarted thus far but barely. If this keeps up i fear a more proactive approach will be required of us.