Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Attention. This is the crew log
of Ensign Colby Jordan. We're all designated as systems technician.
Current simon is CHICRGO acquisition vessel Achilles room in four,
which is undergoing post flight processing and containment procedures in
docking port to a station alf Centaury. Information contained in
this file has not yet been vetted Level one analysis
of file indicates eleven security breaches committed in the creation
of this file. Please set your system's security at EPSILLON
while accessing this data. Remember your safety in the company's
safety are one and the same. Log number one August fourteenth,
twenty seventy four. I really have no idea how to
begin this, since I don't normally bother with doing logs
in the first place. Always felt like a pointless exercise
since the shippe I keeps track of everything and the
Jericho Company exacts don't care what we think as long
as it doesn't impact our jobs. I had to fight
dirty with Achilles. Hey, I just to get access to
the logging program, so I'll just be blunt. They are dead.
Everyone else is dead and the ship doesn't believe it impossible, right,
I mean, surely the big books back on Earth created
a perfect system, one that can't go wrong. We're so
trusting of our machine captains that the corporate newsletters are
always spouting off about the ninety two percent mission success rate.
Jericho AI has a thousand dies in ears, can take
control of any ship, and uses cold and practical logic
to get the job done. Why even send humans on
missions any more? Accept us system technicians know the bitter truth.
The company can't afford to fashion every ship in the
fleet with the true AI, so they slap together a
bunch of cognitive programs into one fancy package designed to
mimic a true artificial intelligence. It does find at handling
ship functions, but it's not an intellect that can think
and adapt. That's why cargo ships are sent out with
a crew of six humans, and why the captain isn't
mechical but flesh and blood. It's also why we have
implants in our chests that transmit our by our readings
to the ship, because that's the only way the system
knows we're alive. That fact is rather important because Jericho
trusts a state of the art tech far more than
it trusts its employees. Our rank affects with ship systems.
We can access without authorization from a higher rank. The captain,
of course, has full authorization, but only if the computer
allows it, and little on me an ensign is at
the bottom of the rom I can't even make a
log entry with a captain westing Houses approval. But if
the captain is rendered dead or capacitated, the highest rank
and crew member gates control. We don't make that determination,
though the computer does. Because even though the system can't
determine if we are alive or dead without help, it
decides how to doll our control. Basically, we have a
chain of command dictated by our implants. I should of control,
I don't. Westinghouse and the others are dead. Their implants aren't.
The expansion got them, but the computer still thinks they
are alive. As a result, I'm locked out of most
ship systems because I need captain authentication to do anything.
Let us tax are tricky. I managed to put together
a diagnostic program that forces the ship computer to go
into maintenance mode for twenty one minutes and free se
seckons every twenty four hours. In that time, while the
computer is distracted, I have the ability to enter the
system and whittle away at the security firewalls and encryptions.
It's been fifty seven hours since the crew died, and
this log is my first success. I'll have to cut
it short because I'm almost out of time. I'm going
for the communications system next. I'll transmit a distress call
in this log and hope someone intercepts it in time.
Because the ship is on its way to off Centaury
Station and it cannot be allowed to dock. Repeat. Do
not allow the ship to dark under any circumstances. Log
two August eighteenth, twenty seventy four. Three days attempting to
send out a signal, three wasted days the expansion eat
the calms rare. I'm a tad tomoralized right now, so
I'm going to waste to day's access time with another
log entry. Even if I can transmit any date off ship,
I can at least keep a record of what happened
here in case the ship survives. But I don't, though
honestly it'll be better if the ship doesn't survive either.
I'm not ready to go that direction yet. We still
have two months before Killes four arrives at the station.
I have time. I suppose I should talk about the others. Florin, Mads, Kindy, Lars,
and Westy Hass. None of them deserved what happened. They
were all good workers, committed to the unofficial company slogan,
the cargo comes first. I won't say we were great friends,
since HA spent more time with a computer than talking
to them about their home, lives or significant others. But
I'd sip alebation pack with any one of them. None
of them were incompident either. They didn't die because one
of them got greedy or high and did something stupid.
I know Jericho will try to spin events so that
they don't have to pay through the nose to reimburse
their families, but they deserve all the credits they can get.
They had no idea what they were walking into. None
of us did. Our Age minus one thousand, one hundred
twenty nine looked like a million other planets in the
Galactic Survey database, a barren rock with lots of free
minerals to exploit. All we had to do was keep
the ship in orbit and sit back while the drones
went down and did the work. I didn't study the
survey map myself, but Lars had been practically giddy about
the place after his analysis. There was a plentiful amount
of anomalous material glittering the surface, some of it piled
up in mounds as high as three hundred meters. We
didn't even need to break out the mining drones to
collect samples. If the material turned out to be valuable,
as the spectrographic report suggested, we'd had some serious bonuses
coming our way. It was an easy job, too easy.
The drones only took four standard days to deliver the
sample payload to the Achilles four. All the drones scans
checked out no biological contaminants, no barren energy readings, no
explosive properties. The cargo wouldn't have made it into the
ship had it chirped any warning bells. The cargo shuttle
went into cargo Bay three without incident, and everybody was
there to greet it. Mads and Kindie were the only
ones who had to be there since they were running
the metallurgical tests, but the other three had decided to
sneak a peak as well. I mean, this was a
brand new substance of finding that few ship crews ever
come across. Forget our bonuses. This kind of thing could
get us into the history books. Now, why wast I there? Well,
I was going to be. I received an emergence message
from the computer concerning the drone task force in the planet.
The drones were my territory, and I confess that I
get territorial about them, though I don't label them or
give them names. We go through too many of them
for me to want to get attached. So I diverted
to my work station on the bridge and view the
message right as the cargo was getting offloaded back in
Bay three. I admit that I was distracted from the
goings on in Bay three at first, because the message
at me had a complete loss. All five drones assigned
to the surface had just died. All energy readings and
signals were zeroed out, and it had happened almost simultaneously,
all of them going dark within a span of ten seconds.
But they'd been on mapping missions miles apart from each other.
Some kind of natural disaster a massive store or earthquake.
This planet didn't have weather, and the computer would have
warned us about any incoming meteor impacts or tectonic shifts,
So what got the drones? It was this mystery that
occupied my thoughts when I first heard the screens coming
from Bay Free. I don't really want it well on
what happened right now, I'm pretty low already. I'm all
almost out of time for to day that the records
showed that Uno Carrod. I am just lucky, if you
can call my current state of affairs being lucky walk
three September first, twenty seventy four. I just noticed the date.
It's been a while, hasn't it. I've been using my
access windows to try to reprogram the sistant to acknowledge
me as a sole survivor, but the computer's not going
for it. Those damn implants. I suppose it's a good
thing that the computer had a direct of constituting a
regard for life so high that it would to clare
crew member dead unless the impunt says so. The only
way to kill the directive is to kill the computer,
which would kill the ship and then me. I should
probably answer the million credit question you've been dying to
ask me, how are the implants still functioning if the
crew is dead? Well, by the time you are reading this,
there might be an answer, but right now I've no idea.
My best guess is that the expansion took control of
the implant somehow and is replicating the vital signs of
my crew. The fact that it's sophisticated enough to do
to scares the crap out of me, But then I've
been scared every minute of every day since the crew died.
Right time to talk about the expansion. That's my name
for it, and it does what it says on the
tin it expends. Thanks to the computer lockout, I only
have so many analysis tools at my disposal. It appears
to be composed of some kind of microscopic entity akin
to a virus or nanobot. Its main mass resembles I
base moss, only its colors changed from red to blue
and back at random intervals. It doesn't move except when
it's growing, which appears to be done by breaking down
other materials and assimilating it into its structure. When it grows,
it grows very quickly. In between my attempts to sway
the computer to my side, I've been able to access
security footage from the on board survulent system. I was
able to watch the last two and a half minutes
of my crew's existence before the expansion got the cameras
and the ship initiated a total lock down around cargo
Bay three. I've had over a month now to deal
with what I saw. I like to think I've processed
and moved on, but God, I get shells just thinking
about it. Up until fifteen hundred hours, the video depicts
pretty standard docking procedures. The cargo shuttle comes in and
life to the floor. It takes seven minutes for the
decontamination and threat scans to judau business, so nothing visible
is going on at all. At fifteen thirty nine hours,
the system gives the okay, the bay pressurizes in the
crew enter the zero gravity zone using mag boots to
stick to the floor of the room. While this is
going on, an automatic silver crane is removing the sample
canister and locking it down. Mads goes over to it,
Candy is right behind him, and the others are hanging back.
Everybody seem real. Eagert uncork this fintage wine we found,
but they were all following established procedure. If I could
pin a negative on them, it was with Mads and
Candy who were definitely in a rush to study this
new substance. At fifteen forty two, Maz opens a secured
access point to the cargo canister in order to get
a microsample for study, which is less than a millimeter
in diameter and has a number of filterers on it
to help control substance spread. That was enough room to
allow the stuff to breach containment. It comes out like
tooth gel bursting from a tube that got squeezed too hard.
Mads had his face right up to the axis point
when it happened. Obviously, Mads was the first to get
broken down. His face disappeared into the substance, followed by
his head, then neck, and then the rest of them.
His arms and legs flailed helplessly around like snakes on
hot coals, and I suspected he was already quite dead.
At that point. Kender's noble instincts got the better of him,
and he grabbed one of Mad's arms and tried to
pull him free. All he accomplished was to become the
second victim as the stuff worked its way on to Kenny.
For guy screaming as it took his hands and then
took the rest of them. Westinghouse and the others backed
off and round for the airlock. But the computer was
already one step ahead of them, as was the expansion.
It was spreading out all over the cargo bay, a
loving cuppet of hungry Adienzl's latching onto and absorbing everything edible,
other cargo container's equipment for our shuttles, and drunes, lubricant
for our machinery, and even a cargo shuttle itself. The
computer couldn't allow a thing like that to get any
further into the ship, so had trapped the captain and
the others in there. I could hear Westinghouse screaming at
the computer to let them out, even used his command
of ride to try to get the door open. I
think he forgot about company policy involving mission priorities. We
know the tales about how entire crews have been lost
on these missions, but the ships fly back just fine.
It's simple math, right. If you lose the ship, you
lose the crew. If you lose the crew, you might
save the ship. A ship eating organism is too much
of a threat to risk getting loose, and even a
captain's already can't change that. It ate the contents of
the cargo bay as easily as it took in mount
and kindy. In some places it would bunch up and
send strands of itself into the other parts of the room,
using zero gravity to get about a quicker In short order,
the room assembled a thick spider web in there, strands
of red and blue covering all the walls and flooring,
with bits of clothing and other material hanging off it
in places. For dessert, it took out all four cameras,
ending the available footage of fifteen forty four iOS. I
never did see what happened with the others. It fled
to a corner of the room not covered by an
operational camera. I think they were still screaming when the
last camera fell. They may have still been alive. Considering
that their implants still claim they are alive. I doubt
there will ever be a clear answer to their times
of death. Since then, my ability to monitor the expansion
is very limited. Surfiskans can't determine if it's organic or
artificial hell, so if the scans are just about useless,
it gives me either false readings or no readings. It
explains why we got the all clear to take it
on board. At least the expansion can't absorb everything, or
the ship would have been consumed with an IROs. It
is an appetet for all sorts of materials, but it
apparently doesn't like duracrete synthetic material composing the walls of
the bay and the sample container it was in. It
also counts stomach unnatural materials like polister. The computers locked
down all three doors into the bay and other openings
shut off of drcrete shutters. The ship could eject the
cargo bay into space, but not of five crew members
showing life signs inside, and not without captain authorization. So yeah,
not an option for me yet. Despite the lockdown, it
got to the comerae. I don't think it targeted it deliberately.
The ship lost one of our backup power nose at
the same time. I've had some time to study the
damage report, and my guess is that the expansion found
a power cable not adequately covered by the containment shutters.
It followed the cable all the way to the power node,
and before new shutters could be implemented, it got to
the comerae. This stuff is in the outside of the ship,
and there are a number of ship components that could
feed on out there, but it's not spreading. External cameras
show that the external bits of door meant maybe even dead.
I think it is a problem with complete vacuum, and
that might be why it acted on our h minus
one thousand, one hundred twenty nine. The planet had no atmosphere.
It hasn't spread further on the ship since eating the carmaree.
With any luck, it won't get any further. But it
won't do me any good unless I can gain control
of the ship, speaking of which I better get back
to it or else all these logs will be for nothing.
Log four September fifteenth, twenty seventy four. It got to
Cargo Bayne two that got to the food. My fault
for getting so stupidly complacent. Can't blame a computer or
the company for this one. The expansion had been so
quiet that I thought it had gone into a type
of stasis, like what it did back on our Age
minus one thousand, one hundred twenty nine. I mean it
had eaten everything it could right well, yesterday it pulled
a fast one by suddenly breaching Cargo Obey two. We
kept the lion's share of the food stock. I had
moved some of it into the ship keelinary section from
my own convenience, so it wasn't a total loss. I
still have a month's worth of fruit of normal consumption,
so I could probably ration it to last until at
least reaching Station Alpha Centaury in six weeks. But that's
only probable. Number two. Number one is that it got
past containment again, and that is a bit more serious.
Thanks to my constant hacking, I managed to gain access
to structural scan records. It turns out that the drawer
creet isn't in peverse to the expansion. It just slows
down the absorption rate to a crawl. There was a
week section between Bay three and B two. It also
means that the other parts of Cargo Bay could go
at any time. And you know, it would be nice
if I could talk to this misbegotten son of a
trash compactor about it and create a new containment line
in the adjacent sections to Cargo Bay free. But I
can't still locked out, so I just have to stay
out of the vulnerable sections and trust in a computer sakeouts.
It's all just a stop get measure. My best calculation
is that the expansion will infest the entire ship within
five weeks, it'll hic key systems like propulsion, the ntomatter
power plant, and life support. Before then starving to death
is the least of my concerns. Alert Station Authority has
issued a cautionary advisement. An accident has occurred in docking
port two. Please avoid use of docking port too until
further notice. Remember your safety and the company's safety are
one and the same law. Five September sixteenth, twenty seventy four.
Who comes up with all this bullshit? Which company executive
decided that all us human employees, which are stupid, to
be trusted with our own ships? You know, all us
dumb is with advanced degrees and ye us a space
travel under our belts. But I guess they know better.
They know us learned folks are just rife with dysfunction.
Caun't possibly give us control. That'd be too much. A
functional mind, whether living or mechanical, would look at this
situation and say, hum, we appear to have by a
hazard contaminating our ship. Maybe we should stop the ship
and purge it. Let's set off the distress beacon or
ritual la probe to go ahead of us on broadcasts
for help. Let's do anything besides army flying back to
our home base with a microorganism that eat practically everything.
But I get it now. Functional minds are on company policy.
They want obedient minds. They want the ship and their
cargo back. The cargo comes first, company motto and all that.
Why else would you have your ship computer automatically head
back to base despite knowing it as a boar hazard
on board. That's why we're flying back eno. It's what
they call a non response of command protocol. If the
designated captain is deemed alive and a lot by his
or her implant, then a captain who refuses to give
orders is considered compromise, with the rest of the crew
likely in the same boat. In case of a compromised commander,
the ship automatically returns home unless his status changes. Its
considered an anti piracy tactic, making the assumption that a
compromised captain is either being coerced by pirates or is
aiming to become one. I know, I know. This is
all on productive renting. If this gets read, it's of
some account in trying to tabulate the costs or a
manager trying to figure out how to spin this in
the media, they're all about up policy. This entry is
just a destruction because I am about to try something dangerous.
If it works, it should buy me more time, hopefully
enough to get me back to controlled space. If it doesn't,
this will be my last entry, and I don't want
to end my record without a last word or two
and one more thing in case I hadn't spelled it
up clearly enough. I'm pretty convinced that Jercho leadership is
made up of nothing but a more robustards. But I'm
sure we all knew that already. Report day to breach
on September eighteen, twenty seventy four is caused file corruption,
hard drive damage located unable to enact repairs. The next
log entry, designated entry number six and created on September seventeenth,
twenty seventy four, is being classified as ninety six percent retrievable.
Continuing to next entry Log seven, October second, twenty seventy four.
I did it. I managed to pull off a minor miracle.
Let's start with the fact that I need the ship
wouldn't make it back to controlled space if I kept
letting the computer cull the shots and I admit that
my dpack stunt didn't help matters. The vacus in Breck
I created two weeks ago caused a lot of damage
to ship's systems, both thankfully nothing vital, but the vacuum
brake is holding. The expansion has infested the entire twelve
percent of the ship it had access to you, but
it can't get any further, not with the call vacuum
of space blocking it. So I tried a different tactic
with the computer. I pulled a Captain Kirk, as dos
texts like to call it. I use some hard logic
in the system managed to convince it that the life
signs coming from cargo Bay three couldn't be human life
signs any longer because a they'd been exposed to hard
vacuum for fifteen days and be not moved out of
the bays for weeks. Even a system as unfathomably stubborn
as a cargo ship computer could figure that one out.
So I'm the designated captain. Now that's my minor miracle. Unfortunately,
my options are limited. I can't jettison the expansion now
it's infected too much of the ship's structure. The expansion
also took down the ship's probe launcher and all the
probes with it, so I can't rig up a probe
to transmit a distress call. Still, at least now I
have access to navigation and propulsion, and I can use
the more powerful ship scanners and the expansion since the
drone scans were unreliable. Best of all, I don't have
to worry about stup attacking windows any more. I can
doe these locks any time I want, so if you
don't mind it, got some new toys to play with.
Hopefully I'll have a plan of action the next time
I sit down and record another one of these apocalyptic diaries,
and it'll be nothing but good news. From here on
out Station Alert. All trance at his own Section three
has now been prohibited. We are experiencing a significant power
fluctuation in that region and the issue is being addressed.
All non essential personnel still in his own section three
should remain at their current location until further notice. Remembered,
were safety and the company safety are one and the
same log eight October fourth, twenty seventy four are not
good news, not at all. My mom was one of
those kind people who never saw adopt She put her
faith in heable remedies, in clean living and positive thinking,
and she stuck to her beliefs even when she started
getting pains in her chest and her breathing was growing shallower.
I used to think it was a sign of insanity,
but more and more I think it was actually a
sign of fear. She was afraid of reality intruding into
her happy that having some unsure a picture of her
chest with a timid growing in her lungs would forever
spoiled the magic in her life, replacing it with cold,
dread and the omnipresence of mortality. She died in ignorance
of what killed her, a blessing the rest of the
family didn't get when the coroner told us about the cancer.
This stuff isn't what I would call smart, not human smart.
But it has a few brain cells somewhere in that
mess of my good cells. Yes, my coiit is in fungus.
I've no idea how to define it better than that.
I'm nos a noobiologist or even a regular biologist. It
might be related to a mushroom, but it's a smart mushroom.
I did a full thermal scan of the affected areas,
since the stuff gives off a lot of heat as
it grows, and the scan showed that its tunneling through
the floor, a ceiling, and even the auter hole. Its
avoiding vacuum by going inside the struts and plaiting digging
right up the middle. Most of the supports have a
thickness of five centimeters, which doesn't offer much wiggle room,
but the stuff is carving out tunnels only one centimeter thick.
It's low going. But if slow going works for tortoises,
as I'll work for this stuff too. Our computer projects
the closest expansion mass will bypass my vacuum break in
nine days, most likely emerging in the engine room. I
can to pressurize the engine room, but I'll never be
able to pressurize it or else. The expansion would immediately
infest it and take out the engines. Worse, even if
it can't get the engines, the stuff will shrug its
metaphorical shoulders and tunnel to the next section. I can
see where this is going. The expansion will keep coming,
and the only way I can slow it down is
to keep to pressurizing more and more of the ship.
Eventually I'll be stuck on the bridge, sleeping on the floor,
surrounded by trashing my own ways, waiting for the Expansion
to reach me in my last centuary. I'm the captain
of a sinking ship. What an honor to be me.
The rescue pod remains an option, but every space marin
the knows the odds of a successful rescue outside of
controlled spaces. Next to nail, I can control the navigation
system now, so I can turve out our course if
I wish. I suppose I could part the ship next
to a quasos, so I could have a spectacular light
show to watch before the ship this integrates. But I
am not going down with the ship. Do you hear me?
Do you hear me, you miserable corporate che I am
not dying for you, are this company. I'm riding this
ship out of the damped until I find a good
place to get off. I'll send it straight into Alpha
centaury itself and melt the ship into slack if it
means destroying the Expansion. But I am living through this,
so says I the Captain of Achilles room in four,
and so it shall be done. Log nine, October eighteenth,
twenty seventy four. I couldn't help but reread my last entry.
I can't tell if I'm getting leany or just down
right scary, considering I haven't talked to another sentient soul
in weeks, I don't think I can be blamed for
going a little nuts. The ship computer can't hold a
decent conversation, and these logs are just me talking to myself.
I guess it's true what they say about solitary confinement.
It's the best punishment out there, though it still pales
to the type of torture where you're trapped in a
prison cell with a predator that's doing everything it can
to get to you. At least the astrophysics classes I
took in training are paying off the computer, and I
came up with an alternate course that should shave four
days off the strip. That means I have five days
before we enter controlled space. That puts me inside the
range of the quantum beacons, which pick up the low
power to stress signal from the rescue pod. Here de kaye,
I think I might live through this. It's going to
be tight, though, after ship is already depressurized, I have
a vac suit available to get through the vacuum, but
breathing is in my biggest problem. The stuff is taking
through the outer hole as well, and my rescue pod
is right in its path. Best estimate I can come
up with is that the rescue pod will be consumed
right around the point I reach controlled space. I can't
get more precise than that which SCHEVL lifeformans. This race
takes the hole in Gilada. Space. Mariners like to claim
we're powered of an ancient tradition that goes back centuries
to the times of wooden ships travel in Earth's oceans,
spending months or even years away from their homeland in
search of famed fortune or just plain survival. I've heard
lots of tales over the years of sailors meeting all
manner of disasters, from freak storms to hidden shoals to
belagient pirates. The tails that always stuck out in my
mind want the dramatic ones. But the store is about
slow death. A ship that wandered until it becomes own,
whether the wind refused to blow for days or even weeks,
the crew to bleeding their stores and their water, to
come into starvation, dehydration and inviting while they contract a
nasty disease that spreads all through their ranks, the men
dying to an enemy they can't fight or flee from.
What was it like to be stuck inside a death
trap like that, praying for strong wind, hoping for rescue,
wanting for a piece of dry land to escape to.
I really hate those stores now Log ten October twenty first,
twenty seventy four twelve vires before I reach controlled space,
twelve lovely iyurs. I mean, what's twelve virus more in
the scheme of things. I've been stuck on the ship
for over three thousand, six hundred iurs. Now twelve viyres
is easy, peasy. I'm just really bore, also really freaked out.
Is that possible being bored and freaked out at the
same time, or is my mood just taking turns going
from one to the other and I can't tell any more.
I've quarantined myself to the bridge for a few days now,
and my leisure options are limited. The company has a
real problem with people using Bridge hardware for entertainment purposes,
and while I co attack into my own stash of videos,
I might very well jeopardized and key systems in a process.
So I've been doing a lot of reading, mostly status
report and training simulations and other fun things like that.
I also decided to look over the recorded orbital scans
of our H minus one thousand, one hundred twenty, not
because I was looking for a clue or a pipany
concern in expansion, but because again I'm really bored. You
know what. I found a whole lot of mountains. The
thing is, while they are literally everywhere on the surface,
there is a pattern to them. The biggest mounds are
closer together, in some cases lined up symmetrically. The three
D imaging picture shows some of these clusters going on
for miles and miles, and the more I looked at them,
the more they resembled the outlines of sidscapes, with the
tallest one substituting for skyscrapers and the numerous smaller mans
stepping in for apartment buildings and houses. It got me thinking,
what if those mounds used to be buildings. Maybe this
isn't a fanciful notion created by a man both on
board of time and with too much time on his hands.
I have to think that this planet wasn't always a
wastened It occupies a Goldilocks own and has the right
planetary spin. Caravity is comparable to Earth. It just lacks
an atmosphere, and that is a big problem. Then again,
maybe it did have an atmosphere once. Maybe the expansion
came to our age eleven twenty, or was created by
an intelligent species that once lived there, and it did
what it does well. It ate everything it could, reducing
a fellow sentient species into nothing but mounds of organic refuse.
Maybe it destroyed the atmosphere as well, or maybe the
species destroyed the atmosphere in order to stop it from
going any further. Can't prove any of it, but it
makes for a pretty depressing tale. It's also a good
argument for why a ship needs to fly into a
sum good thing, a pre programmed the flight computed to
do so. Once I'm off the ship, I just have
to send a short brain signal from the pod and
voilat the Achilles four becomes part of the grid beyond.
I'd say I'll be sad about it, but I kind
of hate this ship. Now twelve hours to go. Like
I said, easy peasy log ten addendum, Ah, I can't
even I'm not in the right frame of mind to
do a log, but a record has to be kept.
I have to find a way to get this out,
find a way to transmit this. It's all I have
left now. Others must know what happened here, others besides Jerko.
The pod is gone and no, not because expansion ate it.
That would be unfair, but it would make sense self
replicating sporel like Nno, structures must do what they must. No,
the pod is gone because I decided to send navigations
a semi course correction while I was still on the bridge.
I didn't want to risk the pulse short range transmit
of not being up for the task. I didn't think
it would matter when I did it, since the star
I picked for the jaw kuiliominous forty tree was well
inside controlled space and wouldn't fate my time mine. Good
thing I thought ahead, I guess. As soon as I
executed the course correction, I was immediately locked out of
the navigational system. At the same time, there was a
rupture at the pod bay compartment. Damage control showed a
localized whole breach limited to the rescue pod itself. Somehow,
the pods internal power cells went into overlow. That can't
happen unless the cooling system is disabled. Is gone. My
control of the ship is gone. Most of my captain
authority is gone in terms of access, unlocked out of
anything important. Yet turns out there was another order in play.
After I cried my eyes out over the loss of
the pod, I went back through the status logs, going
back to when this whole horror show started two months ago,
hoping to find out why this had happened. I found
what I was looking for. One day before the common
ray got eaten, Achilles four received a communication from Jericho
systemaized only, meaning that no crew member on board had
access to it. The message wasn't in the log, but
thanks to my deep hack, I could get the computer
to cough it up, and I'm not ashamed to say
that I cried my eyes out again after reading it.
The ship computer. It transmitted the biohazard warning and what
preliminary data it had on the expansion to Jericho at Quarters,
which as standard procedure in these kinds of situations. What
isn't standard As the ship received the corporate order to
maintain a course for Alpha Centaury Station. The ship could
also the course as long as it arrived at station
within three months. External communications can only go through corporate channels.
Any attempt to destroy the ship by the captain, like
I had just done, would result in command lockout. At
the same time, the ship computer would ensure the crew
didn't attempt to flee the ship. So all shuttles and
pots we have mysterious problems arise if we can try
to use them, such as culling systems abruptly breaking. Wouldn't
one us warning the authorities right, Jericho knows what they
have aboard the ship, and they want to bring it home.
The cargo comes first, the crew comes last. I have
no more words for you, my corporate overlords. Words no
longer due justice to what you've done. I can't even
bother to I can't even log eleven October twenty fourth,
twenty seventy four. It's taken me a few days to
get my ship together. I can't say that my shed
is in fact together. I think I'm way past pulling
myself into a state resembling an actual human being. But
I got something. I got me a plan. It's a
bad plan, and it's a fatal plan, but that's the
only kind of plans I have left to use. I'm dead.
I already feel dead, like I'm a ghost, wandering and
empty ship. My CoP's decomposing somewhere out of sight, or
floating out in space, or just another part of that
creeping mass consuming the ship. This two days left in
my trip, but there's no salvation at my destination. Jericho
is waiting for the ship to dock, no doubt, itching
to study test and dies out the expansion. They can
probably still save me, but they won't. I'm too much
of a liability now I have all the incriminating evidence
needed to bring them upon criminal charges. They'll either let
the expansion finish me off, or they might help my
demise along by initiating an accident. They'll alter or purge
some records, and that will be that one more loss
pro added to the memorial wall back on Earth. They
don't know what they're dealing with. They only have early
scanning data. They'll let this thing on to the station
and it'll run wild. Office Inurer station has over ten
thousand souls aboard, and cargo ships travel from the station
to Earth every day. No matter how thoroughly Jerco screwed
me over, I can't let all those people die. I
can't risk the expansion getting to Earth. So my fatal
plan well, since I can't deliberately fly the ship into
a star, i'll settle for doing it accidentally. I can
do a d pack again, only this time I'll permanently
take out the ship computer. They'll cause the engines to
shut down as an automatic safety precaution. The trick is
when to do the shut down, but I figured it
at well. If a time it right, the ship will
do a gravity slinchip passentry room, and four a small
gas giant, which will send me right at the start DELF.
Since I can't use the ship computer to help guide
me this time, I have to use my own calculations.
This could go very badly. I don't want to sling
a ship into a planet if I can help it
or out in a deep space. Worship might eventually be recovered,
but it's the best option for my list of fatal plans.
If US succeed, then this lug dies with me and
Jericho will probably skatee by without the authorities ever catching
wind of the ship they were pulling. But hey, I'll
go out saving lives. Definitely worse fates than that one
way or another. This is my last entry. I will
waste my time thinking of famous last worries, but I
will say this. My crew deserved better. I deserve better,
and Jeriko deserves a whole hell of a lot more
than what they're going to get. Station security raised a
level OMEGA. Biohazard safeguards are now in effect. Please stay
at your current location and evacuation team will arrive within
two aros. Remember your safety in the company safety or
one and the same attention hidden daed and newly discovered
A known log entry now available. Release of log entry
appears to coincide with signal BOAST originating from Achilles four.
Cause of transmission ann log twelve date annn hullo. There,
my corporate overlords. If you're reading this entry, a few
things will have transpire for starters. I'm dead. I won't
know how it happened, but I'll be dead none the less.
I hope it was fairly painless. Next, this ship is
still in one piece. Ye might think that means my
plan is a failure, and that would be a fair
assessment of things, considering what data you have available. Except
that was my plan, not the real one. I did
try to shut down the computer, but only so that
the system would log my attempt. Ship computers have so
many firewalls underdundant hard drives that it's almost impossible to
disable it through hacking. I did it so that you
wouldn't look too hard at my actual hacking effort. What
I did was rig up a new transmitter. The only
one I still had available was the one still attached
to the wreckage of the rescue pod. I had to
use my vecksuit to travel through a number of De
pres Show's compartments, and it wasn't much fun. I kept
expecting the expansion to burst out of the walls and
absort me at any time, but that didn't happen. I
raged the POD's transmitter to run off the ship's power
supply as well as connected to my personal digital device.
That way, the ship computer doesn't even know it exists.
I've downloaded the logs into my personal device, and I've
hidden the device somewhere it won't be found too quickly.
But not before I set it to record my buy
readings for my implant. I added the condition that if
my implant were to ever go dark, the device will
automatically transmit two signals. One will be to send the
logs through the POD's short range array. It'll only work
for one good burst, but every communication array within two
thousand miles of the ship will pick up the data burst.
The second signal will be to the Achilles Room, and
for itself, it will activate the program I put in
the life support system, the one that will pressurize every
compartment on the ship. I've crunched some numbers and realized
that the ship's hull is in a very tenuous state
from all the expansions tunney. Returning the air to most
of the ship would be like truna let match into
a pole of gasoline. The expansion will surge into all
the compartments, causing whole breaches everywhere. It could even rip
the ship apart. I admit it's a plan with a
number of serious risks. What if my personal device runs
out of power first or gets smashed. What if the
expansion eats me and duplicates my implant readings. What if
the pods transmit it proves too damage to do the job. Yep,
it's a desperate plan. But then I'm a desperate person.
I realized that even if I could destroy the ship,
I wouldn't stop Jericho. The company would just send a
new ship to our age minutes one thousand, one hundred
twenty nine. I have to expose the company and expose
the expansion, and nothing get people's attention like a dying
mariner's last love coupled with the public destruction of a
cargo vessel in range of every able sin. So package
truth be told. The one thing I'm really afraid of
is that the company's retrieval team will bring the ship
directly into one of the station's docking ports. If the
ship comes apart inside a docking port, there'll be no
way to stop it from infesting the station. But you
guys wouldn't be that arrogant, right There are protocols for
this kind of thing. I mean, unless you're too busy
trying to hide the ship to care about small matters
like by hazard containment. I suppose no matter what happens,
your corporate guys are going to be real cross with me.
No death benefits from my mom, no bonus for my
hard work, which I think is a real crappy thing
to do to a loyal employee like me. After all,
I followed the corporate mantra. I delivered to you what
you wanted. In the end, the cargo came first, and
that is the end. Thank you for listening and I
will see you in the next one.