Space Story Where You Do Things

The alarm sounds in the small cockpit of your solo exploratory spacecraft. That means the computer has detected the necessary compound nearby. You scan the report and see that a large deposit of the stuff you need is on a nearby planet. [[Go get it!]] [[Go back to sleep.]]

You lay in a course for the planet and proceed. When you get to it, though, it looks kind of scary. It's all purple and gold and shady and huge. You double check your readings but unfortunately yeah, this is the place. [[Enter the atmosphere.]] [[Too scary.]]

That stuff's not going anywhere, and you were in the middle of such an awesome dream. You turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. When you wake a bit later, the stuff is indeed still there. [[Go get it!]] [[Just five more minutes...]]

You bring your little ship into the atmosphere, engaging all the necessary thrusters and stuff. The atmosphere is super cloudy and oddly colored. You follow your readings to where the stuff you need was detected and emerge from the dark clouds over a boiling golden lake of who knows what. There's a small purple island ahead. Your readings say that's where the stuff is. There's something moving around on the island, but it's hard to see what it is with all the golden steam rising around you. [[Head for the island.]] [[Too scary.]]

Nope. You reverse course and are soon putting a significant distance between yourself and the scary-looking planet with the stuff you came out here to find. You feel a little guilty cuz people are depending on you. Every other scouting mission has failed. Now you've finally detected the stuff, but it's in a place you do not care to go to. [[Go back. Everyone's depending on you.]] [[Don't care. Not going back.]]

You fly the ship through the golden steam and set down on the purple island. After double-checking the seals on your spacesuit you open the hatch and step out onto hard purple whatever-this-planet-is-called. The thing you saw moving through the haze isn't one thing, it's a swarm of things. Black things with legs and arms, kind of, that hop around, kind of, and don't seem to care that a ship from another world has just landed on their little island. One approaches you. [[Kick it.]] [[Say hi.]]

You decide to go back. You turn the ship around and as you do something huge like a comet or something, you're not sure, comes out of nowhere and crashes into your ship. The comet thing is much larger than the ship, so the ship just gets carried along like a bug on a windshield. (Windshields were things on cars, ancient Earth transportation machines. You know what bugs are, those are still around.) The comet thing is traveling fast. You survived the initial crash fine, but you find yourself pressed to the floor of your little ship as it rockets through space. You lose consciousness. In the blackness of unconsciousness, a figure appears to you. A shard of blue light with a kind of face. It speaks, in your mind. You understand it to be asking you what you are doing here. [["Where is here?"]] [[Don't respond.]]

Nope. Every other mission failed. Now this one has, too. You suppose that you COULD just tell everyone where the stuff is and someone ELSE could go back out and get it, but then you'd have to admit to your cowardice. You think about this long and hard on the journey home. You get back to the colony and park your little ship in its spot. You have the best parking spot cuz you're the lead scout. Everyone comes running over to you to see what you've found. [["There's nothing out there."]] [["I found it. A lot of it. All we could need. But it's on a planet that looks really, really scary. Like I'm talking kinda terrifying, you know. I just didn't think I could do it. I couldn't go down there. So somebody else should go. Cuz I can't go back. I understand that might mean, probably SHOULD mean, resigning my commission as our lead scout, and possibly being banished from the colony for my cowardice. But I couldn't just lie and say I didn't find it. We need this stuff. All the information is in my database, and whoever wants to go back there can even borrow my ship. Or take it. I'd rather never go into space again then go back to that weird scary planet. I can't even tell you how much it gave me the jeebies."]]

You lie and say you found nothing. Everyone's spirits are crushed. But you make a really inspiring speech about not giving up, about how this just means everyone needs to work a little harder on finding alternative solutions and imaginative innovations. It's a really good speech. Everyone actually ends up cheering and applauding you. The artists and scientists go immediately into their combined lab/studio to work together on just the kind of innovations you theorized. The leader of the colony takes you back to their tent for a congratulatory drink. You keep insisting, "We shouldn't be celebrating, I didn't actually do anything." But the leader is insistent. "I knew we'd never find what we needed," the leader confesses to you. "I knew it was a doomed venture from the start, but it gave people hope. What you just did is give people that hope back. I should have had us all working harder on alternative solutions, that's a great idea. Much more active than waiting around for a scout to magically find exactly the compound we needed somewhere out there in the cold infinity of space." You kind of chuckle-shrug as your face gets hot and you pray your guilty discomfort doesn't show. "I know we've never been close," the leader goes on, "But I'm going to tell you something no one else knows." You nod faintly. "I'm dying. I've known it for some time. It's been really stressing me out, you know, because I didn't think we had anybody here who could actually take over for me. But now I know better. I need you to lead these people when I die. You're the only one who can do it." Your eyes wide and your mouth agape, you don't know what to say. "I'll take that as a yes." In less than a month, the leader is dead, and you have taken over. Your artists and scientists actually DO work out a few alternative solutions. They aren't perfect. There are social and environmental side effects, but the colony survives. If you had retrieved the stuff you were sent out for it would have been much, much better, sure, but things have worked out okay. You rule for a long time. You're an okay leader. You much prefer sending other people into space instead of going yourself. Your only real problem, for the rest of your natural life, is obsessively monitoring flight paths and data records, secretly altering plans and deleting clues, so no one ever, EVER, finds the scary planet where the stuff was and discovers that you rose to power on the back of a lie that made life harder for your people than it needed to be. And no one ever does. Well done. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

The reaction isn't as bad as it could have been. One of the other scouts takes your ship and goes to get the stuff. You don't ask much about it. You're given credit for finding the stuff, and some props for being honest about your feelings. But the leader of the colony does ask you to step down as lead scout. It's ok. You feel like you'd prefer to stay on the ground anyway. The compound you'd been sent out to retrieve, once enough of it is brought back to the colony, drastically improves the quality of life for everyone. Eventually, people forget about what you did, or rather didn't do. Well, they don't forget, but they stop caring. When the leader of the colony dies suddenly, you seriously consider putting yourself forward to replace them. But it takes you too long to make a decision about it, so the position is given to the scout who went back to the planet for you. They actually end up being a great leader. So things work out okay, as far as you're concerned. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You think the words and the figure understands them. The blue shard of light shimmers. "You are sentient!" Its voice is understood rather than heard. "Yes," you think. "You are in my mind," it answers. [["Thank you for having me."]] [["Are you sure YOU'RE not in MY mind??" said with a smile.]]

When you don't respond, the creature assumes you are not a sentient life form. Your waking consciousness is thus never returned to you. You live forever, your mind absorbed into the mind of the creature, but never understanding what has happened to you, never knowing where you are, never quite remembering you were ever a human person with a name. But the blue shard mind of the bright comet-like creature is a beautiful, beautiful place to be. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

"You're very welcome. You may stay if you like, or I can return you to your body." [[Stay.]] [[Return to your body.]]

You elect to stay in the being's consciousness. Maybe you realized it or maybe you didn't, but the choice was a permanent one. Your mind gets absorbed into the mind of the being. You live forever, but you begin to forget what has happened to you, where you are, eventually that you were ever a human person with a name. But the blue shard mind of the bright comet-like being is a beautiful, beautiful place to be. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You are immediately returned to your body. The pain is so unbearable you pass out again, but this time you go nowhere special. When you drift back into a kind of consciousness, your ship is dark and freezing cold, and seems not to be moving at all. In fact, it has been released by the being, but due to the intense structural damage received in the crash, it is powerless and adrift. You realize you are floating because artificial gravity has failed. You realize you can't breathe because the air supply system has failed. You realize you are in pain because of the more intimate structural damage your body received in the crash, but you realize that the pain is subsiding. You realize this is because you are rapidly freezing to death. You would ponder the series of choices that led you here, how it can't really be your fault it happened the way it did, how you were always just doing the best you could, how random everything in life really is, how the crash itself was so astronomically unlikely in the infinity of space, how literally you mean that, how kind of funny that is, but by now it is far, far too late for you to ponder much of anything. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You were trying to be charming, but you understand that the being is now incredibly concerned. It had never considered that way of looking at things before. You feel that the being is suddenly in awe of your intellect and imagination. As one brain, you begin sharing histories and thoughts and emotions. You learn that the being always absorbs into itself consciousnesses it deems to be less than sentient. Sentient minds it gives the choice to be absorbed or to return to where they came from, but even then, if a sentient mind elects to stay, it is absorbed and quieted in the now immeasurable sea of other minds that make up this comet-like shard-blue psychophysical life form sharing thoughts with you. Your simple jokey question has broken the being open psychologically. If you had said something else, the being wouldn't have known the depth of your mind, the potential of your imagination, because it wouldn't have asked about it. Just as it hadn't asked any of the other minds. How many beautiful, matchless intellects has it callously absorbed and worn down in the collective wave pool inside of itself? It is appalled at its own horrors. You try to comfort it. The being realizes at the very least it can begin to make up for its crimes by granting you, your beautiful consciousness, an equal place here within itself. That is, if you wish to stay. If you stay, the being promises, you will be an equal. But the being understands if your desire for the physical world you left behind is too strong. It will return you to your body if that is what you wish. [[Stay as the being's companion.]] [[Return to your body.]]

You stay. Your consciousness merges with the being and all thoughts of the physical world leave you forever. You travel through space (the plural and collective you that you have now become), doing things I can't even tell you about because I'm not that smart, I can't even conceive of them, but trust me, they are all really freaking cool. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

The thing immediately explodes. You didn't even kick it that hard! Icky goo goes everywhere, including all over the leg of your spacesuit. The other creatures swarm forward. You fall back in panic, but they're mainly swarming the goo puddle that used to be the creature you kicked. They're eating it somehow, sucking up the spilled goo, lapping it up with their kind of arm things. One has found the goo on your leg and begun sucking at it. Another joins, and another. They work very precisely, they only want the goo. However, their suction is quite powerful, and the seams of your suit begin to tear. Before you know it, most of the leg of your suit is gone. Your boot falls off as well. You slide back away from the black mass of feeding creatures, the weird smell of the planet getting up into your lungs. But you aren't dying, at least. Oh wait, my bad, yes you are. Whatever that golden steam is, it is not good for you. You're finished. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

The sound of your voice, as passed through the suit's electronic filter, startles the creature. It startles ALL of the creatures. They don't seem to have eyes or faces, but they all stop moving around and somehow look at you. [[Nope. Get back in the ship and get out of there.]] [[Say hi again.]]

Terrified, you hop back into the ship, shut the hatch and lift off. It isn't until you're well beyond the atmosphere and back into space that you realize one of the things is in there with you. It's right there next to you, one of its kind of arms touching your suit, I mean there isn't much room. You just didn't notice cuz it's a shadowy black color and the ship is always really dark inside. [[Scan it with a scanning thingy.]] [[Freak out and try to kill it.]]

Your "hi" passes again through your suit's electronic filter and over the crowd of creatures. They begin to move closer, to cluster around you. You say hi again. They seem to like it. Maybe. It's really hard to tell. They have no faces so they have no expression, but they seem fascinated. [[Scan them with your scanning thingy.]] [[Do a little dance since you have an audience.]]

This is crazy. The stuff you've been sent here to find? The special compound your colony needs to survive? This creature is MADE OUT OF IT. Like A) Awesome! and B) Whaaaaaa? The thing's just standing there, kind of. Just looking at you, kind of. It doesn't seem dangerous. You just keep flying towards home and hope it doesn't make any sudden movements. It doesn't move for the whole ride home. Just kind of stands there in its weird way, looking without eyes. Just stands there with you as you fly and nap and eat nutritional lollipops and pee into your suit. Standing there for the whole day-long flight back. When you arrive back at the colony you park your little ship in your reserved lead scout parking space, the best in the colony. Everyone crowds around hoping you've brought them good news. You stand in the open hatch and start to explain what's up. Someone asks you if you think the creature will have to be killed to extract the necessary material. [["It's a living thing. We'll have to find a way to avoid hurting it."]] [["Who cares, amirite??" said with a jokey grin and wide eyes.]]

You freak out and try to kill it. You strike at it with one gloved hand and to your surprise and disgust, it basically bursts open, spraying gunk everywhere. Thankfully you hadn't taken your suit off yet, so none of it came in direct contact with your body. You wipe off the faceplate of your helmet and your instrument panels and continue your journey home. You'll have to admit to being a failure, but at least people will be distracted by the disgusting horror you've been through. When you get back, though, as the resident team of artists/scientists is testing the icky goo (like they do), a fortuitous discovery is made. This disgusting goo that was inside the creature IS the compound you were sent to find! So you succeeded in bringing it home! Ships return to the scary planet again and again and bring back more and more exploded creatures, which you start to feel kind of bad about, but hey, it was them or us, amirite? Years later, your society's collective guilt over dooming an entire alien race to death breaks the colony apart from the inside. As maybe it should. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

Heads nod and murmurs agree. You stand aside so the team of resident artist/scientists can get a look at the creature and begin to figure out how to communicate with it. Eventually they do, and it turns out the colony only needs a SAMPLE of the compound once the creature explains how to synthesize more. The creature is returned to its planet with a cool story to tell its friends. You are lauded and applauded until the attention becomes a bit too much for you to bear. When the leader of the colony dies suddenly, everyone all but demands that you take the job. But you already feel like you need some time alone. You turn it down and cite personal reasons. You take a trip away from the colony, find a cool spot to be with yourself for a while. When you eventually come back, everyone understands. They even saved your parking spot for you. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

Your attempt at a joke is met with icy silence. A couple people shake their heads, kind of disgusted with you, like they thought you were better than that. For some reason, you think more joking will make it better. You go, "Come on people, it's them or us!" You say it in what you think is an obviously performative way that will clearly communicate you don't actually believe what you're saying, you're totally just kidding, your real opinion is the opposite. People probably get that, but your remark is way tasteless and over the top. Someone throws a clod of dirt at you. It misses, but it still hurts. You are brushed out of the way by the resident team of artists/scientists who make contact with the creature and begin the process of figuring out how to work WITH it so everyone can benefit. You aren't exactly ostracized, but no one thinks you're cool anymore. You're always credited as the person who made the discovery that saved the colony, but people say it in a way that's like, "It's kinda too bad it was them, they're kind of a butt." You pull away from people, feeling in your heart like the level of people's reaction is nowhere near the level of offense you committed. It takes you a while to feel like yourself again. The artists and scientists figure out how to communicate with the creature, and it turns out the colony only needs a SAMPLE of the compound once the creature explains how more can be synthesized. The creature is returned to its planet with a great story to tell its friends. You keep your head down and keep contributing and being respectful, and you eventually earn back your parking spot. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

This is crazy. The stuff you were sent here to find? The special compound your colony needs to survive? These creatures are MADE OUT OF IT! You're like A) Whoa!! and B) Uh-oh. What are you supposed to do? Bring one home with you? Alive? Dead? Get some kind of sample of one of them? They aren't tiny. You couldn't really fit more than one in your one-person ship with you comfortably, alive or dead. And then what would happen? Your people keep coming back here, taking more and more of these creatures, farming them or something? No, there has to be another way. The creatures are still standing around facing you without faces. You have a few options. [[Try to get one into the ship.]] [[Go home and explain the situation, see what everyone thinks should be done.]] [[Go home and say you found nothing.]]

You boogie down for the audience of creatures. When you finish, all of the creatures immediately turn away from you and begin walking away. They begin funneling into a hole in the ground. Two of the creatures have come up behind you and are nudging you in that direction. You go with the creatures underground, into a vast network of tunnels and caves where thousands of these things live together. After what feels like miles of tunnel, you're brought into an enormous space and nudged all the way to the very center. It's been incredibly dark everywhere else, but this space has some kind of bioluminescent sludge all over it so you can see. The creatures reflect the silvery glow. When you get to the center, all of the creatures back away from you, leaving an empty circle around you. The space is packed with the weird monsters. They're all waiting for you to do something. [[Say hello, everyone.]] [[Dance.]]

You grab the nearest one by one weird arm thing and pull it towards the ship. The arm comes off and the creature bursts, spewing icky goo all over the place. Immediately, the other creatures are on it, eating it, sucking up the goo, using their little arm appendages as vacuum tubes. They start sucking at the goo on your suit as well. They're swarming your legs, and you begin to feel the seams of your suit ripping under the pressure of their very powerful and precise vacuuming. Before you know it, the legs of your suit are gone. You stumble back from the crowd of feeding creatures, your boots falling off. They've sucked all the goo off you so they don't care about you anymore. The sick smell of the planet swirls into your suit and into your lungs. You lay there on the ground coughing. But at least you're not dying. Oh wait, my bad. Yes you are. Sorry. You're dead. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You go back to the ship. One of the creatures had snuck inside, but it's sneaking back out as you get in. You check the small inside area and it's now creature-free. You fly off and make the day-long journey back home. At home you speak to the colony leader about what's going on. They call an assembly of the whole colony for everyone to decide how to proceed. Everyone decides to send a few people back to the planet to see if they can somehow communicate with the creatures, or find a sample of the compound to work with without having to hurt any of them. The expedition is a success, and the creatures explain to your scientists how to synthesize the compound with only a small sample which the creatures seem happy (or at least indifferent) to supply (they basically pee the stuff out). The colony is saved, and you and your team are lauded and applauded. When the colony leader dies suddenly, several people suggest you should take over. You think about it, but instead nominate the scientist who cracked the creature communication problem. They accept and become a super cool leader. Everything goes pretty awesome for everyone. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You go back to the ship. One of the creatures had snuck inside, but it's sneaking back out as you get in. You check the small inside area and it's now creature-free. You fly off and make the day-long journey back home. At home you break the bad news to everyone. Everyone's spirits are crushed. You know you'll have to continue to protect the population of creatures, so you volunteer to go right back out and keep looking. You're already lead scout, so when more people volunteer to go out, too, you're put in charge of laying out the search grid. You meticulously structure flight paths and search patterns so no one will ever go near the planet where the stuff you all need actually is. So many times you think you should just come clean and tell everyone so the group can decide what to do, but you're afraid of how everyone will treat you when they find out you lied. Everyone admires how hard you work on the search, never knowing you're working so hard to conceal the location of the special stuff, not to find it. When the colony leader dies suddenly, several people suggest that you should be the one to take over, but you deflect and refuse. You have to keep focused on the search, you say. Everyone understands that. The person who takes over isn't that cool, and you're really good at keeping the planet secret, so the needed compound is never found and your colony slowly deteriorates until you are all forced to leave to find another home. Of course they ask you to plot the most likely course to take to find an inhabitable planet. The creatures, btw, are fine. They go on living their weird lives undisturbed, so I guess good work there, at least. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You drop back into sleep. When you wake this time, definitely more than five minutes later, you find your ship nose to nose with another scout ship. You recognize it immediately. It's the ship of your nemesis, a rival scout from a rival colony. Your communicator thing beeps. [[Answer it.]] [[Open fire!]]

"I know what you're out here looking for. Have you found any yet?" Of course they're looking for the same stuff that you are. Both colonies must be in need of it. Your rival's sensor equipment must not be able to scan for it, though. They don't know it's within reach. [[Share information.]] [[Withhold information.]]

Your ship has puny little guns on the sides, but the metal bullets can certainly do damage. Your nemesis is taken completely by surprise as their ship is suddenly riddled with holes. You watch the air escaping from the other ship and think, um, okay, maybe I didn't need to do that. The rapidly changing pressure pops the hatch of the other ship. You watch in horror as your rival gets sucked out of the cockpit and dies instantly in the freezing vacuum of space. The body spins up (up from your perspective, at least, there's no absolute up or down in space) and away. You're not feeling great about what you just did. Like, I don't know what you expected, maybe just to trade some light warning shots or something, but you didn't think you would... you would... kill them. You just killed someone. The mission you were on is now the farthest thing from your mind. [[Go home and admit what you did.]] [[Go home and lie.]]

By the time you get back to the colony, they've already been contacted by the rival colony. They know what you did, so you admit to it fully. The colony leader takes you into their tent to speak to you privately. In order to maintain peace with the other group, they have agreed to banish you. You understand, but you cry and cry. You ask if you can speak to someone from the other colony to apologize. Did your nemesis have a partner? A family? You don't even know. The leader just shakes their head. No one wants to speak to you. Even your own people avoid you completely as you pack a single case to set off with. Only the leader comes to see you off. You're allowed to take your ship and told what direction to go in. As you get into the ship, you again apologize. The leader just kind of shrugs. You've really disappointed everyone. You get in your ship and take off, tears streaming down. Space is huge and mostly uninhabited. The chances of you finding other life before you die of old age are very, very slim. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

By the time you get back to the colony, they've already been contacted by the rival colony. They already know what you did. You try to spin the story. You didn't start it. The other scout came in out of nowhere, firing at you, obviously after the same stuff you were looking for. You tried not to fire back, you really did. You literally only fired one warning volley and one of the bullets somehow connected exactly with the other ship's hatch controls, blowing the hatch and sucking the other scout out into space. You're so sorry, but the other colony simply isn't telling the truth about what happened. You've always been a trusted member of the colony. You're the lead scout after all! So your colony's leader has no reason not to believe you. A war starts with the rival colony. It doesn't go on long because neither colony is that large, and neither colony was in very good shape to begin with. Both groups are decimated, and the survivors, you included, are left without most of what they need to survive. The remnants of your group fight amongst themselves, split up, go off into the wilds of this strange planet you've been calling home. No one's ships are functional, and though you were a great pilot, you were never a very good mechanic. So you end up spending the rest of your numbered days foraging and wandering, alone, on this desolate planet you have really, really come to hate. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

They do not react. They're still waiting. [[Tell a joke.]] [[Dance.]]

You dance again. You're not a great dancer or anything, you're just, like, bopping around like you did outside. But they seem to love it. You don't get it, but wow. They love it. You stop, and the temperature of the room changes. They want you to dance more. You boogie a little more, and the change in them is clear. Uh oh. You stop and do an awkward little bow and try to walk out of the center of the room, but the wall of creatures nudges you back. This isn't great. It gets colder and colder until you dance again. The creatures don't go anywhere, they don't seem to have anything else to do but stand here together and watch you dance. So you dance. Until you can't. Then you rest until it gets too cold, then you dance some more. They don't seem to know that they need to feed you, and the cold when it gets cold is pretty bad, so it doesn't actually take you too many days to die. And at least you go out dancing! [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

It doesn't go over well. [[Try to leave.]] [[Dance.]]

You try to walk out of the center of the space, but the wall of creatures nudges you back. [["Okay, you all, this isn't really fun anymore..."]] [[Dance.]]

No reaction of course. So you figure you better just give up and [[Dance.]]

"Actually yes. There's a big deposit on a nearby planet. Maybe enough for both of us. What do you say we work together, just this once?" Your rival thinks it over for a moment, then responds. "You tell me where it is, and I'll lead the way there. I don't want you taking off with your fancy fast engines." (It's true, your colony has made many more scientific advancements than theirs.) [["Okay, fine, but don't try to pull anything!"]] [["No deal. I fly in front, you follow."]]

"Uh, nope. Nothing yet." A pause. "You're lying!" They've seen through your super clever falsehood. They fire a few warning shots in your general direction. Both of your ships are equipped with pretty crappy little guns, but only one metal bullet has to pierce your hull to give you a really, really bad day. [[Fire back.]] [[Plead to stop the fighting.]]

You message them the coordinates and follow as they head toward the planet. It's true, they can't go anywhere near as fast as you can, so it's easy to stay with them. But just as the planet comes into view, a huge blue comet of some kind crashes into your rival's ship, snatching it out of the no-air and carrying it along its own completely unaltered flight path. It's huge and traveling fast, and your own ship gets sucked into its gravity wake. You find yourself pulled along against your will, your ship's systems failing one by one. You try to communicate with your rival, but you get nothing. There's probably no way they survived the impact. Whatever this thing is (you're starting to suspect it's not a comet because you think it's changed directions a couple times), you have to get your ship out of its wake before your life support systems fail. [[Try firing your guns.]] [[Try firing your guns.<-Try depressurizing your cabin.]]

They have to comply. They need you at this point. You take off for the planet and make sure to go slow enough that they can follow. But just as the planet comes into view something huge like a comet or something, you're not sure, comes out of nowhere and crashes into your ship. The comet thing is much larger than the ship, so the ship just gets carried along like a bug on a windshield. (Windshields were things on cars, ancient Earth transportation machines. You know what bugs are, those are still around.) The comet thing is traveling fast. You survived the initial crash fine, but you find yourself pressed to the floor of your little ship as it rockets through space. You lose consciousness. In the blackness of unconsciousness, a figure appears to you. A shard of blue light with a kind of face. It speaks, in your mind. You understand it to be asking you what you are doing here. [["Where is here?"]] [[Don't respond.]]

Before your finger even hits the touchpad, the giant blue thing makes another sudden change of direction and your ship is whipped out of the gravity wake to go careening through space. [[Careen through space for a bit.]] [[Careen through space for a bit.<-Yeah, that's all you can do.]]

You careen through space for a bit, which with only partial artificial gravity in place is kind of sickening and kind of fun. As you spin, you see out your spaceshield (when pointed in the right direction) a green and blue planet with a huge space station orbiting it. With your ship about to die, you should have just enough power to aim for one or the other. [[Aim for the planet.]] [[Aim for the station.]]

You key in the last command your ship will ever receive and aim towards the green and blue planet. You're 99% certain you'll burn up in the atmosphere because you have no way to slow yourself down, but you've decided to take that 1% chance of survival. It's quite a gamble, though. And it doesn't pay off. A bunch of weird animals get treated to a once-in-a-lifetime fireworks show, though, and I'm sure they'd thank you for that if they could. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You key in the last command your ship will ever receive and point yourself towards the orbiting space station. The station shows no signs of life, but with your ship about to die, it looked like a much safer place to try and land. As best you can in the wonky gravity in your cabin, you check the seals of your suit in case you have to spacewalk your way inside. In fact, you realize, you should probably get out of the ship right now because you have no way of slowing it down or bringing it to a stop. So unless someone in the station can do something about it, your ship is about to crash straight into the thing! You strap on a rocket pack and use the manual emergency controls to blow the hatch. You are sucked out into space and there you are careening again as your little ship, your best friend in the galaxy, ends its life in flames against the side of the space station. Still no activity from the station itself. The ship took out a huge chunk of the side of the thing, but it's big enough that it was never in any danger of being completely destroyed. It takes you what feels like days to rocket over to the station and find an entry hatch. There's no atmosphere inside. There's no one home. The place is abandoned. It takes what feels like another few days just to walk through the whole thing. You find some kind of food that seems packaged well enough to be preserved, but until you can get some oxygen flowing you can't take off your helmet to eat anything. You're near death by the time you're able to restore atmospheric controls to one room, the food storage room (a mechanic of any kind you are not, but basic electrics training just saved your life). Thankfully whoever built this place breathed oxygen, too, cuz that's what floods in. You take your helmet off and eat, then pass out. Then wake up and eat, then pass out. This routine continues for a while. You only ever succeed in getting air to flow in one room at a time, but over the course of your life you make several sections of the station livable. A library-like room has a collection of picture books that teach you the vanished people's language and culture. You find what seem to be musical instruments and teach yourself to play. You get better at electrics, but you're never able to repair communications or find any kind of spaceworthy craft inside to get you home. It's not a bad life, though. You've got enough to keep you busy 'til the end. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

You fire back. You mean to fire warning shots, as they did, but one lone bullet catches their hatch controls and blows their hatch open. Before they are sucked out into space, they manage to fire another volley that leaves hissing holes in your spaceshield. And dripping holes in your spacesuit. The spaceshield blows open (or rather gets sucked out) and your lifeless body goes with it. The two pilotless ships drift in a similar direction for all eternity, occasionally bumping into each other and keeping enmity and competition alive, as their masters taught them to. [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]

Your plea gets through. It turns out your rival doesn't want to fight any more than you do. It has just become such a habit, you discover, that you've both forgotten it doesn't really have to be this way. You share the whereabouts of the compound and you both decide to go there together. You fly, side by side, toward the planet. You watch an incredible blue comet fly by up ahead. At the planet, you discover the compound comes from a creature that lives there. Your colony may have better technology, but the rival colony has made more diplomatic advancements, and they've actually contacted a species just like this before. Your rival realizes they already have a sample of the compound they need, from a species related to the creatures here, they just hadn't thought to test it before. The two of you leave the creatures alone and you actually travel back to the rival colony with your former nemesis. Once your new friend explains what's going on, the sample is tested and the compound confirmed. You get in touch with your own colony and say you'll be home soon with samples and instructions for synthesis. An era of peaceful cooperation settles over the sibling colonies and they help each other grow and prosper. (And most definitely during the first big two-colony mixer, you and your former nemesis get flirty and have some fun together. Super good times, wink wink.) [[Space Story Where You Do Things]]