Rubrum's GURPS - United Humanity Long Distance Exploration

GM UPDATE POST

Nozomi entered the glassy pod. The door was softly sealed and she saw Alex's deformed shape through the cylindrical glass. She turned and saw the airlock system's start up lever. She pulled it hard and a kind of steam came in from above. The hissing sound of air pouring in started to be perceptible to her as soundwaves started to be able to travel in the airlock. A loud alarm beeped once and a green light flashed. The process was over. Nozomi climbed up the ladder a bit and turned the wheel on the hatch. She then pushed the hatch door open and the control room was there to welcome her.

The control room was special. It was just one room, the topmost floor of the front hull. It was a dome. Sort of a half sphere above her. The sphere was a very large window, but like the Life Chambers section, there were mechanical blinds closed over the window at this point. There were almost 10 computer stations sort of in the air and chairs too. These were all the controls to the ship. And yes, they were in the air.

This was because the control room was special. It was built with no gravity. Yes, Nozomi was now floating in no gravity. The seats, command stations, and equipment were sort of positioned in the air at positions facing the glass dome at various angles. All of these seats and stations were accessed by floating around to one's position. In effect, there wasn't really a top and a bottom, just a nice dome and equipment sort of placed around the space in 3d.

There was a main door on the "floor" to access the main ladder to the briefing room. The emergency hatch Nozomi had just used was another way into this room. As best as she could while floating, she sealed back this emergency airlock ladder so that Alexander could use it too. She didn't notice anything in this room, except the equipment and what was described...

The HUD in her visor was clear: there was now breathable atmosphere around her, she didn't need the suit at this point, she was in a livable space. Even though there was no gravity.

Alex waited, somewhat miserably as he hated being alone, in the sick bay for his chance to use the emergency pod to get into the control room and almost jumps into it as soon as he can.

[uses emergency pod]

GM UPDATE POST

The creepy blue atmosphere of the sick bay didn't inspire Dr. Fraser at all. He was restless while he waited for the emergency ladder/airlock to be ready again. He indeed didn't function very well by himself, especially not in a somewhat unpleasant situation like this. He almost fumbled with the sealed door and the security lever when they became ready again, but operated them successfully. He was now free to join Nozomi in the control room. He was greeted by more sounds of "Welcome in the year tw.... Welcome in the year tw..."



In the meantime, Sergeant Gregory and Dr. Martin were getting a little restless in their pods... Claustrophobia is hard to avoid in this situation... And they had no communication with Valentine and Fraser... What if they had died some horrible death? They were stuck in these pods to shrivel and die?

Fraser leaves the pod a little too fast, unprepared for the shock of suddently finding himself in 0 gravity and floats across the room past Nozomi. "I'm in spaaace!". Trying to orient himself he looks around for the main control panel so he can see what is going on, and send a message to the stasis pods to let Gregory and Martin know they were okay.

GM UPDATE POST

Alex and Nozomi both navitaged towards computers. All computers were equal. They all had access to the same stuff. They were just terminals to access mainframe computer. They both looked at the screen. Immediately, they noticed a big flashing red message on the holo screen that said:

“WAKING CREW… WAKING CREW… WAKING CREW”. Below this, there was a chronometer timing the procedure. The time was flashing every second that passed. The time was listed as 999999999 seconds, and all displayable digits were used up.

Nozomi had a hard time operating the computer as she was just not that much into these darn machines. She would be able to navigate the menus a bit slowly, but Alex was immediately at ease looking at what was available to explore... Below the big warning and flashing second numbers described above were various menus available to them all. Those that seemed immediately interesting were:

- Ship power management
- Ship external and internal comms
- Ship integrity
- Ship piloting
- Crew data and notes
- Menus to control the physical environment of the control cabin, most notably the blinds.

Alex seats himself at one of the computers and examines the screen, reading the numbers he quickly does the math. "mutter mutter mutter" pause "#*$@!, Nozomi someone triggered the crew wakeup at least 31 years ago. And that is just when the count ran out of space, it could be longer, who knows how long we have been drifting here for, or why it didn't wake everyone up."

Browsing the menus a little bit more Alex tries to return air to the stasis chamber, hallway and sick bay as his main priority and then use the comms to inform Gregory and Martin it was safe to leave their pods and update them on the situation. Oh, and to bring Alex the beam rifle.

GM UPDATE POST

Alex browsed the Ship Integrity menus to restore the atmosphere in all the rooms where it was possible and also browsed the comm menus to activate the ship's internal comm system...


He quickly realized that the commands would not respond until he had returned power. He navigated back into the Power Management screen and saw that the ship's engine downstair was set to use as little fuel as possible to make the ship's equipment last as long as possible. He dragged the power bar up to 100% with a hand gesture. The power indicator started going up and the hum of the activating engine could be heard faintly...

5%... 10%... 15%... 19%... 24%... 28%... 32%... 34%... 35%... 36%... 36%... 36%... 37%... .... ..... (minutes later) ... 39%

The power seemed to stagnate at 39%, which wasn't normal. A green hue invaded the room as lights turned back on.

He navigated back to the main menu and saw that his priority actions; returning atmosphere to the ship and turning on the comm system, were heavily taxing the reduced input... But it was working. In 60 minutes the atmosphere would be restored to all the sections except the labs of course [whatev guys!]

The Sergeant and the MD, in their "tombs", were relieved to hear the crackling of speakers in the stasis chambers.

"Dr. Fraser to MD Martin and Sgt. Gregory, I hope you have been resting comfortably down there while Nozomi and I are trying to get the ship back up and running again in the control room. The good news is the hallway, sick bay, and stasis room are all filled with air again. The laboratory is also mostly intact. The bad news is that something blew a hole in the laboratory hull and there are strange brown lumps growing in the hallway. I have sealed off the laboratory for now but I recommend coming up to the control room once you have figured out what is wrong with Dr. Dankevych."

pauses

"Oh and could you please bring me the beam rifle since its in the room with you. "

Laszlo sighed with relief and moved to free himself and Sergeant Gregory from their respective stasis chambers, with the intention of trying the status monitors on Dr. Dankevych's again now that some of the power had been restored to see if there was any change.

Gregory took in a deep gasp of air as the stasis chamber opened. He looked up at Laszlo. "Tell me," he wheezed, "I haven't aged another 20 years."

He barely took in what Fraser was saying on the intercom. Something about brown goo and a beam rifle. He scrambled out of the pod and pressed the 'send' button.

"Fraser, Gregory, copy that. I'll be heading up momentarily."

He released the button and spoke to Laszlo, "Doc, will you be alright with Dankevych? Best I'm up there with them."

[Alex checks the crew data and notes]

"Find anything Nozomi?"

Nozomi browses the crew notes and data, as well as the ships integrity.

Laszlo nodded. "I should be fine, Sergeant, yes, thank you. It's probably best if I do this alone anyway. I'll head up with you as far as the sick bay for some materials."

He would much rather avoid having to open the stasis pod without any sort of protection from potential biohazards or toxins.

Gregory looked at Laszlo a second longer, before moving on. "Stay in constant contact, if even the slightest thing seems wrong, report it." He smiled, "It's probably a meteoroid strike, probably, so just a case of seeing what we can get running again. Still..."

He gathered up some equipment and walked to the door. Just before departing, he said "Do your best for him. This isn't the greatest situation to wake up to".

GM UPDATE POST



Nozomi Valentine and Alexander Fraser were sitting on their hovering seats. Both of them had the same idea... Crew notes... They both entered the menu. Crew data was there for everybody, health history, biography... data. Each of them had a diary section where they could record information. Of course, none of the crew had written any diary yet... Or ... Wait... The "Diary" section under Dr. Florent Morel was lit up. On their individual terminals, they both rushed into this menu and started reading... It wasn't a good read...

But meanwhile, Dr. Laszlo Martin and Sgt. Gregory exited their stasis chambers. They exchanged a few directives; Gregory grabbed the aforementioned equipment [Kan’s post] and pressed the door button. This time it didn't refuse to open; atmosphere was re-established in the ship. The door slid open. White lights had come on in the corridor after power had been restored to 39%. Gregory tried as hard as he could to find “brown lumps that had supposedly grown in the corridor” but certainly didn’t see anything… Laszlo was following him to the sick bay unaware of any brown lumps.

They entered the sick bay. There, Laszlo opened a closet and took a red hazmat suit and hazmat container, fully equipped with its own air tank and filters… This suit was relatively thin and comfortable. He walked back, by himself, to the stasis chamber of Dr Dankevych. He started fiddling with the unit which he had time to master by now. With the power back to some extent, he would be able to open the pod… And he did.



A heavy white dust escaped the pod. Laszlo was presented with a grim scenery…



He managed to contain himself, but what he saw was that the dust everywhere in there WAS seemingly Dankevych himself. A really brittle humanoid shape was visible in there, like a see through mummy with teeth and some bones barely attached in the matrix. Everywhere else was just… Danke-dust. At the bottom of the stasis chamber, there was something like 2 inches of dried out… material. Probably a mixture of flesh and all of the liquids that kept being pumped into the “body” by the multiple needles for a very, very long time… Laszlo stared at this for a few seconds, holding a hazmat bag in hand…

Back in the control room upstairs, Gregory erupted in the room and found Valentine and Fraser staring at each others in disbelief… They were done reading Morel’s short notes:

Morel notes:
I can’t believe this. Of everything that could happen, I think this is the worst I could imagine. I woke up. For some reason. I woke up… Thirty (expletive deleted) years in advance of ETA.. THIRTY YEARS IN ADVANCE. I’m alone too, of course. Oh God this isn’t good. You know, those cyanide pills sound pretty appealing.

(2 days after previous entry)
I can’t get back inside and put myself back in stasis. I already aged enough, I wonder if I’d wake up again or if it would work. Who would confirm I’m alright? Cyanide or attempting to put myself into stasis, sounds pretty much the same to me! I don’t even know how to operate this. I’d have to wake up Dr. Martin? I can’t do that to my crew mates. Besides, as far as I can tell, these stasis chambers aren’t meant to be turned on and off… And it’s not like our crude stasis technology is allowing human bodies to have that much of a chance to survive a second crude stasis. I didn’t press the arrival button either. I didn’t want to send an arrival message back home too early with nothing after. I could try to communicate with Earth but it would take years to make it there and what would it achieve really?. At least I can look out the main control room at beautiful space. Actually I don’t really like it. This place is creepy. Alone in metal… Cyanide or not to cyanide? … Oh God what am I gonna do.

(one week after previous entry)
… Are you serious? I can’t do that! Morel, out.

EDIT:

"The devil were you talking about, brown lumps?" Gregory strolled into the command room, cool as day. He was set to toss the assault rifle at Fraser before reading the look in his and Valentine's eyes.

"Something wrong?"

Alex just finishes reading the disturbing journal entries for Morel just as Gregory enters the command room. "Nozomi said there were some strange brown things, it was too dark too see for myself. Anyway, we've found out what happened to Dr. Morel" *grim expression* "or at least why he isn't in stasis. He woke up 30 years early, probably because of faults in the stasis system, and appears to have gone crazy within a week. Still no indication of what happened to Dr. Waseme or the hull breach." *catches the beam rifle Gregory sends flying towards him and feels a wee bit reassured* "Thanks, take a look at the monitor and we'll update you on the rest of the situation".

"Dear God." Laszlo stared in shock at the remnants of Dr. Dankevych. He'd no idea what could have caused such an advanced state of what was clearly very non-standard decomposition. Not much to do save to go over the body in situ to learn what he could here, and then to take samples and analyse them back in the sick bay to glean whatever further information they might yield.

"Then check the status logs? Personal, mission, computer logs, anything to get a grasp on what might have happened while we were asleep." Gregory growled at Fraser, before calming slightly. "Right now you're all we've got when it comes to these computers."