Post by Sciencin on Jan 28, 2019 2:52:22 GMT -5
Maybe I'll have a table of contents here if I ever write more stuff that I can post here but I'm not that organized so I'll just jump right to it I guess
Have a story that probably makes no sense because it's been edited even less than an acceptable first draft and I've posted absolutely 0 backstory information for what's actually going on or who these people are or why they're here
also i promise the fact that Starset is a favorite band of mine has nothing to do with the title, it's just a fitting term for the story shh
A light next to the airlock door turned green, and the muttering fell silent as the first in line, dressed in a lurid orange EVA suit that stood out sharply against the otherwise sterile monochrome surroundings, stepped purposefully through the door and into the airlock. Three other figures followed, all dressed in the same white mass-produced suits that the passengers had been issued, but marked with various symbols of authority. One carried a metal cylinder about a meter long; the other two held unmarked boxes.
The door closed behind them, and as they cycled through the airlock, the chatter in the bridge rose again, this time with considerably more excitement. Screens came to life above the airlock and in the walls of the bridge; they watched, transfixed, as the pilot’s suit camera captured the second airlock door opened outward with a quiet hiss, flooding the airlock with the golden glow of Toliman setting on the horizon. The pilot took a deep breath, and stepped over the yellow tape marking the border between bridge and planet.
“Well, then, my dear esteemed colleagues.” The shuttle and everyone in it seemed to hold its breath as Yvonne Majby, pilot of the Wandering Albatross, paused. Onscreen, the glare of starlight faded to reveal a clear sky, tinted a soft twilight lavender; and then, when Majby looked back down to the horizon, an expanse of blue-green stretching as far as the eye could see, broken only by a few small mounds, boulders, and clusters of plants whose long shadows pointed toward the ship. In the distance, a dark line marked the ocean.
“It seems we’ve arrived, against all odds, in more or less one piece.”
The pilot’s voice, quietly in awe but even in its determination, was broadcast by the AI persona throughout the shuttle, and to the Sol Quaesitor still in orbit far above, and from the ship a jubilant transmission rushed toward a single shining point of origin in the sky. A wave of cheers resonated with the deep thrum of the shuttle’s engine, shaking the thin walls of the bridge like a heartbeat, and the spacesuited ghosts in the hallway surged forward with renewed energy, as if they’d all chosen that moment to recall why they were here, and what lay on the other side of the airlock.
Together, the colonists watched once again in silence as one of the pilot’s companions pulled out equipment and began to test the air; watched as the one holding the cylinder activated some hidden mechanism, and the rod extended into a flagpole at least fifteen times its original length. As he planted it in the ground, two flags billowed out in the strong breeze: one, the blue-and-white of Earth, and above it, the colony’s flag, a white circle on black, with the unmistakable red form of a human handprint. Alpha Centauri Bb, for the first time, touched by humankind.
Among those first few in the bridge, dressed in a cheap mass-produced spacesuit the same off-white color as the cheese stick she was eating, Thora Daley snorted and hefted the helmet tucked under her arm. “I should've stayed aboard and waited for a later shuttle. It's an honor and all, 'course, but I'm gonna miss the big party. Do you have any idea how many champagne bottles are being popped open up there right as we speak? There won't be any good and proper Terran stuff by the time they get it down here and we'll all be stuck drinking that artificial crap excuse for drinks the ship makes.”
Next to her, her husband, Hayato, laughed and shook his head. The sound broke the reverent awe in the room, and a few others laughed with him, some at Thora's comment, others in relief and disbelief that they had finally, after decades of preparation and decades of frozen sleep as the ship lanced toward its destination, emerged victorious after their last sunrise to see another dawn. They were on the shores of a new world, watching a new sun dip below the horizon. The room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
“Alright, crew.” Majby's voice sounded over the intercom, brimming with energy and triumph. “We'll have time to party later, but right now we need to set up base down here and start unpacking. The faster we get this done, the better. I’m gonna need the Daleys out here, Steinsson, and Takahashi’s team. And Gefen, get your ass out here now if you want to collect any samples before we set up a sterile dome- I don’t want to put up with your whining when you don’t have any alien dust mites to keep you amused.” There was a quiet “Yes!” from the back of the disembarkation bridge that brought about a new round of chuckles.
Thora took a deep breath, grinned at her husband, and threw her shoulders back before putting the helmet on and twisting it in place with a click. Next to her, Hayato Daley did the same. The other shuttle passengers parted to let them through as Steinsson and Takahashi cycled through the lock, followed by the rest of Takahashi’s team, and then the two of them with Gefen. The man was almost bouncing with excitement, fiddling with the gloves of his suit and patting down his pockets to make sure he had everything. As the door closed behind them, the room grew suddenly silent apart from the gentle hum of machinery. Gefen looked like he wanted to start a conversation, but was struggling to find the words.
His dilemma was solved a moment later when a red light let them know the room had been momentarily flooded with sterilizing gamma radiation. They couldn’t feel the slight breeze as the pressure in the lock was lowered slightly to match the outside of the shuttle, but they could hear the hissing of pumps ready to release the air back in as soon as they’d cleared the second door.
It opened barely a second later. Bathed in fiery light, all they could do for a moment was stand frozen in place and raise their hands to shield their eyes as they stared at the landscape before them.
It was, at first sight, disappointing: a flat, barren plain, dotted with stones and vegetation, tinted the blue-green color of lichen and shining with frost, just as they had seen from Majby’s video feed. But despite the bleakness of the landscape, it was still enough to take their breath away.
Hayato was the first to speak. “Well, damn.”
“Damn is right,” Majby’s voice called from outside, “but we, along with everyone on that ship, are waiting on you.”
Without another moment of hesitation, Thora stepped over the threshold and felt the soft crunch of frost under her boot. She dug her heel into the ground, disturbing the fine blue layer on top, then walked toward the others, grinning at the thought that she was finally stepping on real ground, on a real planet, feeling real gravity, albeit weaker than what she was used to. Hayato followed quickly behind her, but Gefen knelt down as soon as the door shut behind them, examining the powdery groundcover as if it were the most fascinating biological curiosity known to man.
Up close, the plain wasn’t quite as barren as it seemed. The ground was covered in a thin, fuzzy, moss-like layer, speckled with tiny yellow points that could’ve been flowers. There were patches of what seemed to be grass, only harder, spikier, like thin thorns poking from the ground. They cracked under Thora’s boots like toothpicks.
“Guess the temperature,” Steinsson said. His voice echoed loudly in her helmet, and she quickly lowered the volume. It was hard to see his face through the glare of the star on his faceplate, but Thora could see he was smiling.
“Why don’t you enlighten us instead?”
“It’s a balmy -2 Celsius!” he exclaimed, as if this was thrilling news.
Thora wrinkled her nose. “Balmy? I thought this was summer. Goldilocks zone, my ass.”
He laughed. “Well, it’s all about perspective. I’m from Iceland. But at any rate- this hunk of rock doesn’t really have seasons, not like Earth does, anyway. Much smaller axial tilt. According to the probes, it’ll be like this, give ten or take twenty degrees, pretty much year-round.”
“Sounds god-awful,” Hayato chimed in. Thora had never heard him sound happier.
“Doesn’t it?” Steinsson beamed. “But hey- it’s liveable. I’d take a bit of cold over burning to death or suffocating or wading through liquid nitrogen, that’s for sure.”
“Liveable, maybe. If you’re a polar bear.” Takahashi stood up from the crate she’d been bent over, arm slung through what appeared to be a coil of wire, and gestured emphatically to the rest of her team. “Tan, get over here and help me start with the tent. Dietrich, mark off a center twenty-five meters from the shuttle. Don’t just stand there! Shoo! We’ve got four hours and counting to get a warehouse set up before the next shuttle comes down, and we want this over with before it gets dark. Move, move! We’ve got a planet to colonize. Rome didn’t build itself, or whatever the saying was.”
Have a story that probably makes no sense because it's been edited even less than an acceptable first draft and I've posted absolutely 0 backstory information for what's actually going on or who these people are or why they're here
also i promise the fact that Starset is a favorite band of mine has nothing to do with the title, it's just a fitting term for the story shh
First Starset
The ghosts emerged onto the bright disembarkation bridge in a slow single-file line, shuffling with eyes locked on the floor in front of them or on the pale length of the semi-translucent umbilical cord originating from the belly of the shuttle. They squinted against the ambient light that seeped through the walls, trying to pick apart the diffuse shadows into features of a planetary landscape. Some were talking in hushed whispers; all were yawning and blinking away the haze of sleep, doing their best not to jostle one another in the tight space. A light next to the airlock door turned green, and the muttering fell silent as the first in line, dressed in a lurid orange EVA suit that stood out sharply against the otherwise sterile monochrome surroundings, stepped purposefully through the door and into the airlock. Three other figures followed, all dressed in the same white mass-produced suits that the passengers had been issued, but marked with various symbols of authority. One carried a metal cylinder about a meter long; the other two held unmarked boxes.
The door closed behind them, and as they cycled through the airlock, the chatter in the bridge rose again, this time with considerably more excitement. Screens came to life above the airlock and in the walls of the bridge; they watched, transfixed, as the pilot’s suit camera captured the second airlock door opened outward with a quiet hiss, flooding the airlock with the golden glow of Toliman setting on the horizon. The pilot took a deep breath, and stepped over the yellow tape marking the border between bridge and planet.
“Well, then, my dear esteemed colleagues.” The shuttle and everyone in it seemed to hold its breath as Yvonne Majby, pilot of the Wandering Albatross, paused. Onscreen, the glare of starlight faded to reveal a clear sky, tinted a soft twilight lavender; and then, when Majby looked back down to the horizon, an expanse of blue-green stretching as far as the eye could see, broken only by a few small mounds, boulders, and clusters of plants whose long shadows pointed toward the ship. In the distance, a dark line marked the ocean.
“It seems we’ve arrived, against all odds, in more or less one piece.”
The pilot’s voice, quietly in awe but even in its determination, was broadcast by the AI persona throughout the shuttle, and to the Sol Quaesitor still in orbit far above, and from the ship a jubilant transmission rushed toward a single shining point of origin in the sky. A wave of cheers resonated with the deep thrum of the shuttle’s engine, shaking the thin walls of the bridge like a heartbeat, and the spacesuited ghosts in the hallway surged forward with renewed energy, as if they’d all chosen that moment to recall why they were here, and what lay on the other side of the airlock.
Together, the colonists watched once again in silence as one of the pilot’s companions pulled out equipment and began to test the air; watched as the one holding the cylinder activated some hidden mechanism, and the rod extended into a flagpole at least fifteen times its original length. As he planted it in the ground, two flags billowed out in the strong breeze: one, the blue-and-white of Earth, and above it, the colony’s flag, a white circle on black, with the unmistakable red form of a human handprint. Alpha Centauri Bb, for the first time, touched by humankind.
Among those first few in the bridge, dressed in a cheap mass-produced spacesuit the same off-white color as the cheese stick she was eating, Thora Daley snorted and hefted the helmet tucked under her arm. “I should've stayed aboard and waited for a later shuttle. It's an honor and all, 'course, but I'm gonna miss the big party. Do you have any idea how many champagne bottles are being popped open up there right as we speak? There won't be any good and proper Terran stuff by the time they get it down here and we'll all be stuck drinking that artificial crap excuse for drinks the ship makes.”
Next to her, her husband, Hayato, laughed and shook his head. The sound broke the reverent awe in the room, and a few others laughed with him, some at Thora's comment, others in relief and disbelief that they had finally, after decades of preparation and decades of frozen sleep as the ship lanced toward its destination, emerged victorious after their last sunrise to see another dawn. They were on the shores of a new world, watching a new sun dip below the horizon. The room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
“Alright, crew.” Majby's voice sounded over the intercom, brimming with energy and triumph. “We'll have time to party later, but right now we need to set up base down here and start unpacking. The faster we get this done, the better. I’m gonna need the Daleys out here, Steinsson, and Takahashi’s team. And Gefen, get your ass out here now if you want to collect any samples before we set up a sterile dome- I don’t want to put up with your whining when you don’t have any alien dust mites to keep you amused.” There was a quiet “Yes!” from the back of the disembarkation bridge that brought about a new round of chuckles.
Thora took a deep breath, grinned at her husband, and threw her shoulders back before putting the helmet on and twisting it in place with a click. Next to her, Hayato Daley did the same. The other shuttle passengers parted to let them through as Steinsson and Takahashi cycled through the lock, followed by the rest of Takahashi’s team, and then the two of them with Gefen. The man was almost bouncing with excitement, fiddling with the gloves of his suit and patting down his pockets to make sure he had everything. As the door closed behind them, the room grew suddenly silent apart from the gentle hum of machinery. Gefen looked like he wanted to start a conversation, but was struggling to find the words.
His dilemma was solved a moment later when a red light let them know the room had been momentarily flooded with sterilizing gamma radiation. They couldn’t feel the slight breeze as the pressure in the lock was lowered slightly to match the outside of the shuttle, but they could hear the hissing of pumps ready to release the air back in as soon as they’d cleared the second door.
It opened barely a second later. Bathed in fiery light, all they could do for a moment was stand frozen in place and raise their hands to shield their eyes as they stared at the landscape before them.
It was, at first sight, disappointing: a flat, barren plain, dotted with stones and vegetation, tinted the blue-green color of lichen and shining with frost, just as they had seen from Majby’s video feed. But despite the bleakness of the landscape, it was still enough to take their breath away.
Hayato was the first to speak. “Well, damn.”
“Damn is right,” Majby’s voice called from outside, “but we, along with everyone on that ship, are waiting on you.”
Without another moment of hesitation, Thora stepped over the threshold and felt the soft crunch of frost under her boot. She dug her heel into the ground, disturbing the fine blue layer on top, then walked toward the others, grinning at the thought that she was finally stepping on real ground, on a real planet, feeling real gravity, albeit weaker than what she was used to. Hayato followed quickly behind her, but Gefen knelt down as soon as the door shut behind them, examining the powdery groundcover as if it were the most fascinating biological curiosity known to man.
Up close, the plain wasn’t quite as barren as it seemed. The ground was covered in a thin, fuzzy, moss-like layer, speckled with tiny yellow points that could’ve been flowers. There were patches of what seemed to be grass, only harder, spikier, like thin thorns poking from the ground. They cracked under Thora’s boots like toothpicks.
“Guess the temperature,” Steinsson said. His voice echoed loudly in her helmet, and she quickly lowered the volume. It was hard to see his face through the glare of the star on his faceplate, but Thora could see he was smiling.
“Why don’t you enlighten us instead?”
“It’s a balmy -2 Celsius!” he exclaimed, as if this was thrilling news.
Thora wrinkled her nose. “Balmy? I thought this was summer. Goldilocks zone, my ass.”
He laughed. “Well, it’s all about perspective. I’m from Iceland. But at any rate- this hunk of rock doesn’t really have seasons, not like Earth does, anyway. Much smaller axial tilt. According to the probes, it’ll be like this, give ten or take twenty degrees, pretty much year-round.”
“Sounds god-awful,” Hayato chimed in. Thora had never heard him sound happier.
“Doesn’t it?” Steinsson beamed. “But hey- it’s liveable. I’d take a bit of cold over burning to death or suffocating or wading through liquid nitrogen, that’s for sure.”
“Liveable, maybe. If you’re a polar bear.” Takahashi stood up from the crate she’d been bent over, arm slung through what appeared to be a coil of wire, and gestured emphatically to the rest of her team. “Tan, get over here and help me start with the tent. Dietrich, mark off a center twenty-five meters from the shuttle. Don’t just stand there! Shoo! We’ve got four hours and counting to get a warehouse set up before the next shuttle comes down, and we want this over with before it gets dark. Move, move! We’ve got a planet to colonize. Rome didn’t build itself, or whatever the saying was.”
By the wonderful 
