text | username: apollo2

[solarcharged]

Hi everyone. Apollo here. I don't think I've met even half of you yet but I thought I’d share this:

IMG TRANSFER COMPLETE: exterior.jpg

Just in case anyone wanted to see what our new home really looks like.

Has anyone had any luck opening the locked doors? This place looks like it’s way bigger than what we have access to so far. Please do share with the rest of the class if you find anything interesting...

Comments

[splinten]

If we can find some workable tools, I can try having a go at it that way.
Hitting things can be a major problem solver. I've generally favoured cutting them, but I'm short a sword here.

[solarcharged]

Literally cutting them? I didn't realise so many people used swords, they always seemed so flimsy to me. I'm kind of impressed.

Are you an engineer or something? I haven't seen any tools but I haven't exactly been looking...

[splinten]

My sword is pretty sturdy. It's basically unbreakable, which is pretty cool.

[he misses it]

Not exactly. I built a lot of robots and did some modifications to my apartment in my spare time. It's a kind of improvised knowledge.

[solarcharged]

I get the impression that people like you are going to be useful on here. There's plenty of things that could do with being fixed up. Namely some of these locked doors. Doors have no right being this difficult to open...

[splinten]

It is, technically, half of a door's purpose.
Admittedly, I'm a little wary of recklessly breaking through them.
If they were sealed to contain something, like a virus or rampaging parasitic aliens, then I don't think the entirety of our current population is prepared to handle that kind of attack.
I wouldn't even call myself prepared when I've been disarmed like this.
But getting into the computer system to access information has been impossible so far.
The furthest I've gotten so far was figuring out that a message someone was sent came from somewhere on the Station.

[solarcharged]

Well it's pretty shit at the other 50% of its purpose.

But that's a really good point actually. About the containment thing, I mean. Maybe finding someone with some kind of forcefield skills would be a good idea first. Something to think about...

Which message are you talking about?

[splinten]

Failing grade, yeah.

It's worth looking around to find out.

Venus got a message of some kind. It went, "We made it work. Attempt number 6 was successful. It worked, guys!" and then, "Wait. There's a problem. We're not where—"
And cut off.
Which didn't leave me optimistic. The only thing I could determine was that the message came from the station, but not when or where.

[solarcharged]

Oh, yeah. I heard about that one. Annoyingly mysterious and it all adds up to something that's probably not great news for any of us. This whole station feels like it has been abandoned for years. Just look at how gross it is...

[splinten]

It's really owning that grunge scifi vibe. What I'm used to, so whatever, and honestly it's less unnerving than a surprisingly clean, sterile, untouched iPod future. At least we know this place adheres to the physical fact of decay.

[solarcharged]

True. Although I think I would prefer iPod future.

What's your name?

[splinten]

I have to disagree. An iPod future might be glossier, but the tendrils of corporate control are all the more pervasive. The clean and pleasant illusory utopia makes the underlying dystopic power even more impossible to overthrow.

Dirk Strider. What's yours?

[solarcharged]

'The tendrils of corporate control'. Are you a poet as well, Dirk?

My name's Apollo. Professional overthrower of dystopic powers.

[splinten]

Rapper.

Pretty cool career choice. How'd you come across it?

[solarcharged]

Oh. Close enough. Are you famous?

Somebody asked me if I wanted to make the world a finer place. It was better than sitting around and watching the world get slowly crushed under the heel of corporate control, so I said yes. The rest was history.

[splinten]

[how to answer that

duh: with the use of verbal irony]

There isn't a human alive who doesn't know my name.

[because there are almost no humans alive! ha ha ha ha ha......]

That's a pretty good origin story.
Did you win?

[He is naturally curious. At the end of the world, with no one around him, learning about heroes who rose up against tyranny was one of the only connections he ever got to have with the past.]

[solarcharged]

Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But we're not done yet. Improving the world is an ongoing project. There's always some multinational corporation of bastards somewhere just waiting to be punched in the face.

[splinten]

I'm kind of jealous that punching them in the face is an effective tactic.

[solarcharged]

Punching people in the face is an effective tactic for most problems. Or throwing something. Like a tank, a bridge, those kinds of things.

But you change the world with words. That's a much more impressive skill set.

[splinten]

I'd agree it's impressive, but that isn't really an accomplishment of mine.
Not to explain the joke, but there are literally two humans alive when I'm from. That's including myself.
Personally, I've found that I can solve most problems with a sword, but throwing a bridge feels like a really cool way to fix things too.
I'd definitely be down for trying that one if I got the strength for it.

[solarcharged]

[ Oh, shit. ]

Only two? What happened? If you don't mind telling me, I mean...

[splinten]

The entire story of humanity's long descent into Extinction Classification is about as long as it is stupid.
To give you the briefer version, an alien tyrant used Crocker Corp to get a foothold into humanity's psyche and, with corporate influence and a facade of an external threat, incited the collapse of human civilization into a fascist self-annihilation spiral. Violent suppression of dissenters, concentration camps, water supply replaced by Faygo, that kind of thing. That got rid of the vast majority of the population without Her Imperial Condescension even needing to get involved.
After that, she finished the ice cap melting for us, made the majority of the planet uninhabitable to humans, and engaged in experiments and disruption of human social groups, before eventually neglecting us for a more easily managed species. Humanity just couldn't make it at that point. There was no chance of rebuilding.
So it's just me and a friend of mine.

[solarcharged]

[ ...He can't believe that was the briefer version. ]

Well, shit. That's awful. I'm so sorry.

So you've got no home to return to?

[splinten]

[He is lucky he gets to miss out on the longer version. He is lucky he gets to miss out on Guy Fieri.]

It's just how things are. There's nothing to do about it at this point.

[No home to return to? He should have had one. But they messed all of that up. Some other version of him will make a home to go back to. He'll go to the Dreambubbles with everything else that Paradox Space has discarded.]

Yeah. This is kind of it for me.
Seeing this many people around is pretty cool.

[solarcharged]

[ jfc you're breaking his heart here!! ]

If we manage to find a way off this thing and back to our home worlds, you can come back to mine. I think you'd fit right in. We could do with some better rappers.

[ Apollo literally could not name a single rapper ever BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT ]

[splinten]

[Dirk, being an idiot who has literally never interacted with an adult who wasn't trying to kill him, does not fully understand what is happening here. This is why he kind of stares at the communicator for a while, attempting to process this.

Eventually, he manages,]

That feels like a really generous offer.

[He can't quite articulate how it feels like that. But it does, and it's confusing.]