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The rest of “Team Colonize” seemed to be enjoying the peaceful days on the ship, each person sitting relaxed within the CLM room aboard the space vessel. Your feet clank against the metallic floor as you approach one of the large cushiony chairs. You begin to speak to Captain Belisarius. “Do we even know if this new planet will habitable? What’s the point of a colonizing mission if we haven’t considered this more?”, you protest. This whole mission seems rushed, and you never really understood it. “Don’t forget your purpose private. You are one of eight lucky legionnaires chosen to go on this mission. Our home planet is dying, elements necessary for life are depleting, and we’ll take any chance of survival we can get. This alien planet is supposed to be rich in resources. Stay in line and do your job,” the captain harshly retorted, then she sourly prodded at her handheld processor device.
Trying to ignore her, you find and lower yourself into another vacant seat next to your crewmate, Brando. “What do we even have to contribute to those other beings? We’re just nonsense, reckless, critters careening through space. Seems like we’d be more trouble than we’re worth. We already burned through the resources on our planet, what’s stopping us from doing the same to this new one?” You think to yourself. “Any alien with two bits of math can put together that we should have wiped ourselves out a long time ago.”
You notice your crew mate, Cosmo, is typing an update to send back to base. Cosmo finished typing her rant, dismissing the holoscreen before her. “Damn emotionless cyborgs. They don’t know what’s best for the crew, why do we have to report back to-” but her complaint was cut off when an alarm began to ring. “ALERT” flashes in bright red against every surface of the ship. Before anyone could react, Belisarius already leapt out of her captain's chair. “Unknown mechanical threat detected. System error 762. Check all -” The intercom made a sputtering noise, and the audio went dead moments later, ending the message. Belisarius blinked at the screen, her eyes wide. The crew had faced more threatening forces back home, but here, in space, unarmed and unprepared, they could do nothing but investigate the ship and pray for safety.
[[Check Engine Room]]
[[Recalibrate Flux Compactors]]
As you routinely check every system in the engine room, just like you were taught back at training camp, you notice one of the machines is low on soxidate fuel. You grab a glass tube filled with a bluish liquid and retreat to the engine room. You unscrew the metal seal, and the liquid almost instantaneously turns into a translucent gas. Like uncorking a bottle of champagne, due to the change of pressure, the cap flies off and hits a smaller circuit mounted on the wall, and a stray wire dangles. You brush it off, as you know this is just the backup power box for the speaker in one of the resting chambers. After you fit the neck of the tube into the opening of the machine, you tip the fog into the tank. The machine roared to life as you flicked the ignition switch again. A stray spark from the loose wire makes contact with a puddle of unidentified liquid. Nothing happens. The circuit board continues to spark occasionally, but you decide that it’s nothing threatening to the integrity of the overall system. “It’s just a minor malfunction. I’ll notify Brando and have them come take a look.” You sigh with relief, and head back to the CLM room to update the captain on the ship’s running condition. “Everything seems to be running at optimal power, Captain,” you report, “however, circuit board 16 has faced some damage. Nothing major but occasional sparking is present.” “Good job private. Brando, this looks like a job for you. Go repair any damages,” barked Belisarius. She stood proudly, even though none of the emergency measures were facilitated by her. The crew took action while she froze up at the first sign of danger. Brando went back to work on the smashed mechanism. Everything seemed to have returned to normal, until Brando dashed through the corridor, passing by several other crewmates, and then came to a full stop. “The sparks ignited some trinnate fuel left on the floor of the ship! Multiple circuits have caught on fire!” “Damnit! That was trinnate,” you swear to yourself. Trinnate fuel, like a wet log, may not seem flammable at first but given time and the right circumstances, will eventually catch fire. You look into the hallway leading to the engine room and see that the fire is already taking its toll. It’s orange arms reach around the doorway, and you can feel the heat lash across your face. The world seemed to burn away in an inferno of yellow light. Everything was catching fire with the spacecraft and all its crew transforming rapidly into a fiery comet. You dash towards the emergency capsules, the life-saving cocoon-like structures meant to keep the crew safe in absolute emergencies. As you stand before one, about to enfold yourself into it, you feel the force of a gut-wrenching body slam, followed by the sound of shuffling feet. You crashed to the floor of the cocoon, scraping off the silk-like fibers of its inner walls on your way down. The world goes black as you fade out of consciousness.
[[...]]You walk into the room containing the flux capacitors, and Cosmo follows. The room is nearly pitch black, with only a few dim flickering emergency lights scattered about. You can hear Cosmo swearing under her breath, cursing at the captain’s lack of leadership. She stubs her toe against the machinery holding the flux capacitors. This time, her expletives are a lot more audible. You smile apologetically at Cosmo, but the intended effect was lost because of the near-complete darkness. You approach the flux capacitor and attempt to identify the problem. Cosmo joins you after gaining her composure, and leans further over her console, loathing the darkness. You notice a burned-out energy tablet, and figure that this must be the source of the ships problems.
As you reach out to change the tablet, a bolt of electricity leaps towards you. The lights in the room receive a surge of power, and return to full power before becoming unbearably bright and exploding. You feel the electricity invade your entire body. You immediately lose all muscle control and lunge backward as your limbs involuntarily contract. In an instant, searing brightness fills your eyelids. Becoming catatonic due to the excruciating pain accompanied by the blurry spots in the back of your head, you are frozen in time. Then, just as quickly as the intense pain began, it stops as soon as Cosmo pulls you away from the tablet. Though your movements and thoughts are unstable at first, you slowly return to reality and begin to compose yourself.
The ship shudders in severe turbulence as one of the screens beeps uncontrollably, and you sense that something is terribly wrong. In a moment, you’re sprinting through the entrance of the room. You fly by other crewmates who'd been just a little bit too late to respond to the chaos, and then come to a halt. Not because you'd wanted to, but because the entire ship was shaking like a thing possessed. You glance around, cursing the pitch darkness once again and coming up with several creative death threats in the process. A hollow tank slams into you. You stammer backward, and trip over a metal box that must have flown off a nearby shelf due to the shaking of the ship. You feel the weight of your body being flown back, and slam into an open emergency capsule, a pod-like structure meant to keep the crew safe in absolute emergencies. You hear a crack as your back makes contact with the metal rim of a glass pane in the capsule. You kneel on the ground, almost vomiting from the mixture of pain and terror. Cosmo rushes into the pod, stepping on your hand in the process. Brando follows behind her, making it with few seconds to spare. The fibrous door seals shut and the pressure in the pod begins to stabilize. You feel a sudden jerk in momentum and notice that the pod has launched. The world starts to spin, then slowly retreated to a tiny nub before you snuff out of consciousness.
[[...]]
You wake up and feel a cool breeze rush over your torso. The total darkness blinks in a shower of sparks from the failing electrical lines of the wrecked pod. You take your finger and rub it right up against your jawline until the thin scab along the edges of a gash crack beneath. The pain isn't panicked: You are slow, calm, methodical, working your way up to the jagged jut right beneath your cheekbone, and turning your nails slightly inward to unearth sharp metal scrap caught in the pores of your skin. You flatten your palm and run it lightly over the left side of your face, feeling the dip in the surface of your cheek rasp against the smoothness of your hand. You look at your surroundings, and find that they are completely unfamiliar to you. Little drops of oil make rainbows on chunks of flat rock, wet from the sky. Something explodes a couple feet beside you - you roughly calculate that it’s about two feet and seven inches away - and flinch. One ear doesn’t seem to work anymore and a ringing headache settles into the action. You look in the direction of the explosion, and make out scraps of the transmitter, your only way of communicating with base. Reality sinks in, as you appear to have no means of escaping this alien planet. You crawl off the metal perch that had kept you half suspended in the air and look around.
Glancing around, you realize you must have crash landed in the pod adjacent to the main ship, with boxes and scraps scattered about. Cosmo and Brando are nearby and conscious, but clearly in shock from the previous events. You see one of your crew members lying in a pool of dark liquid, unmoving. You turn them over and notice that they have sustained a hole bashed through their temple, fragments of their head have caved inward. There’s no sign of other survivors, and it's apparent that you, Brando, and Cosmo are the only one’s left.
[[Interact with Aliens]]
[[Scavange the Ship]]
[[Look for Food]]
It’s not hard finding the inhabitants of this planet. Where the ship landed was just on the outskirts of a highly populated area, in the midst of huge rough cylindrical objects with millions of flakes protruding in all directions. The civilization in sight seems to be very technologically advanced. They have learned to build infrastructure, transportation devices, and tall skyscrapers, almost like it is back home. It isn’t a far walk into the midst of what seems to be a city, but you take it nice and slow. There is no telling whether this species will be friendly or not so staying hidden is probably a necessary precaution. As you’re hiking through what seems to be where they sleep and take residence, you stay completely out of sight. There are millions of tiny spikes in front of their sleeping quarters, which throws up a red flag. Obviously they don’t want anyone or anything coming near it. You try and avoid the small thorns and keep hidden, dodging in and out of the cylindrical objects. You eventually make it to the larger buildings and there are no more spikes, they must not mind visitors in the bigger city area. The sun this planet is orbiting has begun to sink in the sky and the lack of light makes it easier to feel hidden. Still making it a point to not be seen, you wander down an alley between two buildings. There is a large brown box at the end that is full of what seems to be their form of clothing and food. You find a suit of theirs that fits you and put it on, pulling a hood over your head for cover. The food also smells delicious; this must be some type of storage facility. Just as you seek out what looks to be the most appetizing -it was a long trip after all- you hear a door fling open and laughs pouring out of the opened building. As you look up a creature’s silhouette is in view coming from the brightly light inside. You duck behind the box and wait. It, still laughing, walks out to the box and throws a large bag inside. It then proceeds to pull a small tube from its suit and begins to breath in and out through one end of what must be its breathing device. It stands there for quite some time just breathing, and you get the sensation that it isn’t violent at all, in fact it’s quite mellow. This could be your chance; this creature could help you survive on this planet. Do you step out from the box, or not?
[[Interact]]
[[Avoid]]The ship is ruined. A preliminary survey of the wreckage revealed that engine two and three have completely disintegrated, leaving no hope of escape from this new world. Given the ship's condition, the only way that it can be of benefit to you now is for salvaged parts. You discover that much of the ship is in shambles as a result of the wreck, but it is a large ship and something must have survived. The outer areas of the ship were badly damaged, forcing you to move to the interior of the ship. The interior is in much better shape, and there are much more supplies here. Entering a small supply closet, you discover an aid kit behind a jumble of shelves. Surveying the pile, you wonder if the kit is worth risking getting trapped under this precarious pile of twisted metal.
[[Grab the Kit]]
[[Leave the Kit]]Trying to find food is more difficult than you thought. The only resources close to the ship don’t seem to be edible, or at least not anything that tastes good. The ship landed in the midst of big cylindrical objects but the skin is very crunchy and flakey and has no taste, almost like dirt. There are particular cylinders that have small brown spherical objects lying all around their base, but they are very tough and hard and you can’t bite into them. You decide that you will have to adventure far until you can find something to sustain the remaining crewmembers and yourself. You can see a highly populated area, almost like a city, but there are no farms or agricultural landscapes near it. It would probably be better to travel in the other direction in search of some kind of vegetation or wildlife habitat to hunt in. The aliens would most likely freak out and capture you if they saw you, not just hand you a meal and wish you luck. You head deeper into the sea of the cylinders, walking for what seemed like hours. You’re so thirsty, you can’t even think about your hunger. Something to drink would be heavenly. Eventually you hear the rushing sound of water, and find a stream flowing on the ground! It looks just like it does back home, translucent and not viscous at all, which means it could be safe to drink. Without having water for so long you feel it might be worth the risk to try and drink it. Do you choose to hydrate yourself or assume it’s not safe and pass it up?
[[Drink Up]]
[[Don't Drink]]You do it; slowly shuffle out into the beam of light coming from the doorway. The alien immediately turns his attention to your direction. When it sees you, it takes a deep gasp, and in doing so inhales the tubes it was breathing through. It gets lodged in his air way and he starts to convulse and go into shock from not being able to get air. The air must be toxic to them without the breathing tube. You try and drag the alien back inside the building but it's so much bigger and heavier than you, so you run inside to see if there is another alien who can help save it. As you enter the building you see another one who has huge tumorous masses on it, but instead of being weak and sickly, it actually jumps up and screams when it sees you. You try pointing outside towards the dying one but it starts running in the opposite direction still screaming. As you stand there hopeless, you see another small tube lying on the table, it's more yellow and flimsy and slightly greasier than the other but maybe it still works. You grab it and run back to the alien lying in the alley and insert it into its lips and close its mouth with your hand. It is completely unresponsive. Just then loud sirens start blaring behind you and lights are flashing hectically from the opening of the alley. Three aliens start emerging from the lights, sprinting towards you. Two grab each of your arms and the third sticks something in your neck, and the world goes black.
[[You Wake Up]]The alien eventually walks back inside, and you remain crouched behind the box. You decide to finally indulge in the delicious smelling food inside the box. When you jump inside to get a better look at the buffet, an alien pops up from the corner, underneath some of the bags of clothes and food. It starts screaming and yelling and trying to grab you. It has limbs much longer than yours and is able to snag you quicker than you can get away. To your surprise he doesn’t try and hurt you, he just holds you very close to his body, putting your face up against his. You don’t really like this interaction. He starts to take off his suit and repeats “goude bowy” over and over, while still holding your arm. You obviously don’t know what this means, the aliens have a completely different language, but you get the feeling it means something unpleasant. His grip loosens momentarily and you take that opportunity to rip your arm away and climb out of the box. You hear it shuffling inside trying to get out as well, so you take off out of the alley and run back toward the outskirts of the city. You decide it’s best to not try and deal with the aliens by yourself so you make the trek back to the ship to meet your comrades again. Maybe a group of you can adventure out again in the morning and have better luck with your endeavor. You decide to head back to the ship.
[[Look for Food]]
[[Scavange the Ship]] The room is silent but for the soft clanking of cold metal tools. Time seems to have slowed down, nearly coming to a halt. Your head is spinning and everything hurts. You blink a few times before opening your eyes fully and looking around, it is almost too dark to see. Suddenly, a blinding white light appears above you, and you’re able to see about half a dozen beings standing around you. You try to sit up but fail. "Eets eyes, theer ohpin!" One of the beings screams, flinging a tray of sterilized tools to the floor. You try to move, but the pain shoots through your entire body. Your wrists are bound to something metallic, but you feel the raw lacerations wherever the restraints contact with your bare skin. You see another one of them grab a translucent tube and they force it down your throat. You feel a spicy coolness invade your lungs. They’re on fire. One reaches for something on the table, then lurches over and without warning tries to pierce your abdomen. Over and over again the blade is thrust into your abdomen until it finally breaks the outer layer of your skin. Filled with agony, you try to muster out a screech, but you hear nothing, you are unable to make a sound. It removes the long, dripping, blade from your flesh, and you feel a warm, vital liquid trickle down your torso and onto the icy table. “The skeen has bin brohkin. Inturnal struckture ees unliyk any hoomans. Furthur testeeng is reequestid. Contakt aireyah fiftee wun.” These sounds mean nothing to you, but the calm tone and stature of the being infuriates you. It is unperturbed, but you are in searing, unfathomable pain. You try to fight back, but you’re completely paralyzed. There you lie, hopelessly, trying to escape, but they only probe you further. They begin to dismember you, cautiously removing your innards from your body, oozing with your body’s precious life-sustaining amber liquid. There is nothing you are able to do. They put a sharp metal needle in your arm, and you’re able to watch it slowly penetrate the outer layer of your skin until it finally hits a vein. It feels as though fuel is igniting in your body. The pain is so excruciating that you’re starting to fall in and out of consciousness. Your thoughts are swirling into a void, reality begins to fade… and you wonder… when it was… that you… ceased… to be… alive.
[[END]] Cupping your hands together, you draw up a swig from the stream and indulge in the long awaited hydration. It’s marvelous, so cold and quenching. But almost instantly you get a headache, and feel extremely nauseous. In confusion, you look around and see a large canister on the bank about 100 yards up stream of you. With uneasy dizziness you stumble up to it. In large black letters it reads “HUMAN WASTE CONTAINER: HIGHLY TOXIC, DO NOT INGEST”. So they call themselves “humans”, you think as you hit your knees and face plant into the ground, overcome by intoxication and surrendered to death.
[[END]]It just isn’t worth the risk of you contracting an illness from bacteria or a waterborne illness. No matter your thirst, you have to find purified water, so the hike goes on. Just as the sun is setting you can see two single buildings in a clearing next to what seems to be the same river stream you found before. Next to the taller red building there are green poles coming up from the ground that are about head high. On the poles are yellow bulbs, which may or may not be some kind of alien fruit, how would you know? You walk up closer in the shadows and hidden from plain sight. The stream is running along the side of the rows of poles, but you still resist the tempting water and decide to see if the yellow bulbs are edible, so you pluck on off and bite into it. It’s soft but only to a certain point, and then the middle is solid and you can’t sink your teeth in all the way. All in all it doesn’t taste bad and must have some kind of nutritional value. You grab a few more to take back to the others, and start to walk towards the smaller white building to see if there is maybe pure water on the inside. Your arms are full of the bulbs and as you’re walking you see an alien open the door of the white building, holding a long tube that points in your direction. It screams, “hoo da hale er yew!”, obviously in their alien language, which makes no sense to you but you are still able to sense that it isn’t friendly. All of a sudden a loud explosion comes from the tube. You freeze, drop the bulbs, but feel an immense pain in your chest. Then blackness takes over.
[[You Wake Up]] Thank you for playing our text-based adventure.
CREDITS
Jacquelyn Barrett - "Mission Status", "Recalibrate Flux Compactors", "Check Engine Room", "...", "You Wake up", Coding
Ella Collins - "Interact with Aliens", "Interact", "Avoid", "Look for Food", "Drink Up", "Don't Drink"
Reid Rosbottom - "Scavange the Ship", "Grab the Kit", "Leave the Kit"After a moment of thought you decide that the reward outweighs the risk and the aid kit would be too beneficial to leave behind. You begin by gingerly nudging the pile, and discover that “precarious” was an understatement, the entire structure shifts and several beams shudder as if about to break their welds and plummet to the floor. Beginning to regret your decision, you crouch and gently shoulder your way into the closest thing to an opening that you can identify. The shelves shudder and you freeze, thinking this is the end, but it holds. Careful not to brush against anything, the journey continues and you get closer to your prize. As you reach out for the kit, the stack shifts, crushing your outstretched arm. The pain is immense, but you know that if you react too violently the entire thing will collapse ontop of you. Fighting back cries of agony, you begin to slowly pull your mangled limb from the wreckage. In one final effort, you wrench yourself free and roll backwards, out of the way of the tumbling metal. Sitting against the wall, nursing your arm, you look down and see that in the midst of the falling rubble, you still managed to procure the aid kit. Extatic, and desperate for relief from what is left of your arm, you tear open the kit and retrieve a syringe of bone sealant and three pain relieving capsules. After taking the pills, the syringe enters your arm, and begins the 20 minute process of rebuilding your poor appendage.
You begin to consider your other options.
[[Look for Food]]
[[Interact with Aliens]] You survey the situation, looking at the massive pile of twisted metal. You approach, eyeing the mass. One step closer, and the entire structure shudders and shifts. Nope. This endeavor is not worth even embarking upon. You turn and resume your search for supplies. As you continue throughout the interior, more and more useful objects are found. More food, small electronic components, and just a little bit of toothpaste. With your stash in hand, you return to show the remnants of the crew what you were able to find. On returning, and everyone eats a small portion of food so as to regain a little energy. One of the crew has an idea to use the electrical parts to build a translator incase there is intelligent life on this planet. You hand off the components to Brando, whom is far smarter than yourself.
[[Look for Food]]
[[Interact with Aliens]]