Better gaming through discussion

Monday, April 21, 2014

01 - Rodrigo

Two technicians floated off the space elevator into the center of the relay station in the Martian thermosphere tethered high above the Ares Vallis Dome.  One man, one woman.  The technicians busied themselves setting up one of the four wedge shaped med-bays for the incoming transport.

Outside the port holes they could see a transport approach the relay station.  The shuttle adjusted itself shooting white tufts of air from nozzles scattered around its smooth windowless fuselage.  Within minutes the transport docked with the relay  station and the technicians boarded the transport by way of a small docking arm.

The transport was small and dimly lit.  The man walked hunched over so as not to hit his head as he approached one of the two sets of pods packed together inside the transport.  The pods were just large enough to hold a person.  They were featureless besides a small glazed viewing window located above the head-end, and a read out screen in the middle, that displayed the vital signs of the immigrants inside.

The two technicians wordlessly assigned themselves each to a pair of pods.  The man peered inside his pods and saw a male immigrant lying in stasis.  Just beside the immigrant, in an identical pod was the immigrants duplicate.  With a few quick key strokes to the read out screen the man began transferring the consciousness of the immigrant who had been born on Earth to the duplicate that had been grown in transit to Mars.  Two minutes later the old Earth-born body of the immigrant was nothing but an empty vessel and the new transport-grown body sat up carrying with it the consciousness of the immigrant.

The man ushered his immigrant back to the med-bay, as did his female counterpart.  Routine tests were conducted as robotic arms, connected to endless tracks that cross-crossed the stations walls, floors, and ceilings, delivered tools and supplies to the technicians.  As the tests were being concluded the stations automated systems spoke in a calm and even tone: "Warning, air pressure drop detected." The man swung around and looked out the port window over his shoulder.  Blue flames were creeping around the edges of the window.

Without warning the one of the walls of the med-bays across the station collapsed on itself as if a huge invisible fist had punched a hole in the wall from the inside out.  The immigrant on the table in front of the man slammed into him sending him into a wild zero gravity spin.  At the same time, all of the air was sucked out of the station through the hole in the wall.  The man hit one of the stations walls and was able to stabilize himself.  Looking around he watched as everything rushed towards the hole in the stations walls.  Both immigrants were tumbling end over end. He watched helplessly as they flew through the opening and were lost.

It only took the station 7 seconds to raise the walls to the damaged med-bay and seal off the hole.  15 more seconds and oxygen was resupplied to the remaining med-bays allowing the man to fill his lungs with air again.  Along with the air came sound.  The automated systems were still speaking, saying "...air-pressure restored. Warning, hull breach detected.  Warning, fire detected.  Attention, proceed to the exit..."

The man looked around the station.  Floating debris cluttered his line of sight, but he could make out a body floating about on the other side of the station.  It was the woman technician.  The man dodged debris and crossed the station, pausing briefly to peer down through the space elevator shaft at the center of the station.  Blue flame coated everything below him.  The fire swirled slowly as it expanded and burned.  The man reached the woman and found her to be knocked out.  He called for an automated arm to retrieve her body and bring it back to the transport.  With the elevator drowning in a pool of flames, the transport was the only escape route available.

The automated arm dragged the woman along the edge of the station back to the transport.  The man held onto the woman and was pulled along too.  As they glided towards the transport the man ordered the station to open a communication channel to the dome below.  The station spoke again, but this time it was the voice of someone back on the surface.  The man explained what had happened and asked for help, but there was nothing anyone back on the dome could do to help him.  The transport would provide temporary protection if the station burned up, but the transport wasn't designed to survive reentering the Martian atmosphere.  The recommendation from the dome was to board the transport and use it to fly to another relay station and get back to the planet through another dome.

The man guided the woman onto the transport and sealed the hatch behind him.  He punched the button labeled 'detach' on the center console.  The transport didn't move or make any sound.  From inside the windowless chamber he couldn't tell if anything had happened.  Before he could wonder any further a muffled explosion went off and the transport was sent into a sickening spin.  The man struggled to grab hold of the woman as their bodies were thrown around inside the tight quarters.  Once he had her, he held her tight against himself and tried to stabilize them both as the transport whipped around and around.

The man put his hand out to brace himself against one of the walls, but he had to pull his hand away quick.  The walls were hot.  It was then that he realized that the walls were beginning to turn a shade of dark orange.  A couple seconds passed and the walls grew brighter orange and he could feel the heat radiating off of them.  The station had pushed them away in the blast he had heard and they were now tumbling back towards the planet, burning up in the Martian atmosphere.

The man did his best to keep himself wrapped tight around the woman and stay away from the walls, but the heat was becoming intense and the ship was rotating in a wild pattern.  Just before the heat overwhelmed the man and he lost consciousness he caught a glimpse of something strange through the view window of one of the pods within the transport.  An immigrant's earth-born body was still inside, though now it was empty vessel.  The immigrant's consciousness had been transferred to another body - the same body that had been swept out into space back on the relay station, yet its eyes were opened and it was staring back at the man through the view window.

*     *     *

Rodrigo stopped his salvage hauler just outside the Ares Vallis wind farm as soon as he saw the fireball in the sky.  The relay station was on fire.  He watched as the whole station was swallowed by the smooth blue glow of a zero-gravity fire.  Suddenly the station seemed to crack in half and the perfectly formed fireball was pushed out in every direction.  It was frightening yet beautiful.

Rodrigo stayed and watched the fire grow and spread across the sky.  Soon debris could be seen streaming across the sky as it burned up in the atmosphere.  Suddenly something large came flying out of the sky and crashed a few miles away off in the middle of the wind turbines.  Rodrigo emptied his trailer of the miscellaneous scraps he had been collecting all morning, jumped back into the hauler, and speed off in the direction of the crash. Today, he thought, is going to be a good salvage day.

When Rodrigo located the wreck it was still smoking.  Right when he saw it he knew what it was.  The transport was embedded in the ground at the bottom of a four foot deep crater.  With heat gloves on he tore a whole in the hull of the transport with his cutting tool.  A sickening smell was coming out of the whole he had cut.  As he cautiously lowered himself into the dark and steaming hull he was overwhelmed by the smell of burnt flesh and hair.

Inside where two people intertwined tight together that were burnt beyond identification.  Rodrigo checked the bodies to see if they were still alive.  To his disbelief they both were still breathing.  He knew he had precious few minutes to stabilize both people before they succumbed to their injuries.

He wiped his gloved hand across the view window of one of the pods in the transport and found it to be empty.  With his other hand he wiped the connected pod's window and saw an immigrant still inside.  Immediately he knew what he was going to do.  He went back to the two blacked bodies and pried them apart.  He could now see that one was a male and the other a female.  From the look of things it appeared as though the man had wrapped himself around the woman to protect her during the crash.  As a result the man was in much worse shape and needed attention first.

Rodrigo dragged the body to the empty pod and sealed the man inside.  He wiped off the read out screen of the pod and prayed that the pod was still functional.  The screen was light up and began displaying the vitals of the man inside the pod.  He was in worse shape than Rodrigo had thought.  Stabilizing him in the pod would be impossible. If the man was to live Rodrigo would have to do something more drastic.

Rodrigo queued up the bio-cycle procedure on the linked pods, setting the pod that contained the burned man as the host.  With a heavy heart he took one last look down through the view window into the immigrant’s pod and punched the start key.

With one burn victim sorted he turned his attention to the other.  However, just as he loaded the woman into the last vacant pod he heard a noise outside.  The read out screen showed him that the woman was stable within the pod. He knew had time to think about what he would do with her  but first he had to find out how close the snooper drone had gotten.

He half crawled out of the transport's hull and found the pentaped drone surveying his hauler from a few paces away.  Rodrigo hefted his cutting tool in his hand and walked over to the drone.  The drone watched him intently as he raised the tool over his head and crushed its metal body in one blow.  I'm all in now, he thought to himself.  Other drones were sure to arrive soon.  Rodrigo had to get moving.  He had done all he could for the two crash victims, now all he could hope for was that his gamble on them would be worth the sacrifice he had made for them.

Rodrigo started up the hauler once again and began to drive himself, the transport shuttle, and the three bodies out of the wind farm and away from the mangled drone.  Rodrigo's comm device chirped loudly over the rumble of the hauler.  Rodrigo's partner spoke from the device, "I'm getting a lot of chatter out of the dome channels, what have I gotten myself into?"

"I've collected some valuable scrap, and I smashed  a drone.  I'll explain when we meet up, where are you?" Rodrigo replied.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Pitch Session - Rodrigo


Mars Immigrations Program - Earth Advertisement

The new frontier.  Start over on Mars.  Mars has everything you need and more.  Consider this:  Mars has no disease, no hunger, no wars, no pollution, and no over-crowding.

What does Mars have?  Mars has unlimited resources, planned communities, a planned economy, a unified government, and bio-cyclical healthcare with the promise continual health and prosperity.

Immigrate to Mars and live the perfect life.  Live forever.

Mars Immigrations Program - Martian Slogan

Exceptional minds: Earth's last export


Background

Every 25 months immigrants are launched when the planets are closest together.  The transport carries immigrants, along with their new body, to the red planet in approximately160 days.  The transports are received at one of a handful of relay stations where their consciousness is transferred from their Earth body to their new Martian body, referred to as bio-cycling.  Once the technicians at the relay complete the bio-cycle the immigrants are brought down to the surface of the planet via space elevator to begin their new life on Mars.

Each immigrant is specifically selected and approved prior to departure from Earth to be integrated into Martian society which ensures the fulfillment of each individuals socioeconomic potential in their new life.

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