ximilialog | STATION LOG.02

STATION LOG.02

● ● ● S T A T I O N 2.0

GO NORTH, YOUNG MAN • UNDERNEATH THE MISSILE TOAD

// PART I. go north, young man  

A few days following the arrival of the latest batch of the new Orbers, Viveca’s voice filters through the communications devices across the station.

// VIVECA.AI

Hi everyone. I know you’re all assuming this to be another call for a mission, but it’s not. We’re doing some maintenance on the teleportation platform to adjust to the number of people we now have on the team, so you won’t be going anywhere for a couple of weeks, at least. But I’m still asking you to come to the control room as soon as you can. So… see you there.

As soon as you arrive at the round room in the middle of the station, you’ll find that Viveca in her robot body isn’t the only one there to greet you, but Degar is present too, this time wearing a leather tunic and what appear to be cargo pants under his ever-present hooded cloak.

// DEGAR

Great you could make it! Right, so, Viv tells me you guys have been having questions about the North Wing and all that, and we figured we’d show you we’re not hiding, like, bodies or a giant chocolate cake there. So! Consider this your very limited time offer for a tour in the North Wing! We’re keeping it open for about a week, give or take, just so you can come back and see we’re not illusioning it up or anything.

With fingerguns directed at those on the team who can see through illusions, Degar grins and then turns towards the door to the North Wing, waving his hand — and with that, the doors slide open with a hiss.

// DEGAR

Ladies first!

Degar bows to Viveca with a flourish and waits until she’s past the door before he waves his hand again at the team with the universal sign of go, go, go.

And what else is there to do but go?

1.0 The room you step into is long and rectangular, and without any furniture to clutter the space — instead, you’ll find a large sphere, almost crackling with magical energy front and centre and surrounded by open circulation, perhaps for its own protection — the barrier of this object is so powerful that even those without any magical talent can feel the way it feels, almost like static electricity. A (slightly) closer look will wield three different globes of light circling each other in colours of gold, red, and green.

If you choose to take a step closer, you’ll immediately sense it: there’s an awareness, a quiet whisper in your ear, or a chorus of indistinct words, reaching out to you.

// DEGAR

Oh, whoops! Hold on —

Degar, walking back to the room, directs his steps right towards the sphere of energy… and as he walks right up to it, something strange happens — his cloak begins to glow with the same energy as the barrier, allowing him to simply walk into the field of energy… and disappear.

// VIVECA.AI

"Don’t worry, he’s fine. This is what he does most of the time, here… he’s making sure the orbs are contained." Viveca, floating closer, smiles wryly at the team. "Come on, go and have a look at the other rooms. I’m sure you’re dying to know what’s in there… but I have to warn you, it’s not very exciting."

Should you circle back into the room when neither Viveca or Degar is there, you might be overcome with the urge to approach the energy sphere still situated in the middle … but touch it and you’ll be flung across the space like a rag doll. Maybe some of you will stick the landing, but those of you without a 'Poser' finishing move might need some assistance after.

2.0 As you leave the room, it turns out Viveca really wasn’t joking about the lack of excitement. After a sight like the one you’ve just witnessed, this next room appears to have nothing of note except for a set of chairs lined up along the sides of the room, and then one larger one in the middle — a mechanical armchair with several different wires running directly into it.

On both sides of this space you’ll find maintenance rooms directly adjacent: one for the station itself, and one for the AI. Both of these rooms are filled with advanced machinery and screens — and one thing to note is how … clean the one designated for station maintenance seems to be. Not a fleck of dust to be found anywhere. On the other hand, the AI maintenance room feels quieter, looks darker … but as soon as anyone walks in, they’ll find a little cleaning robot beeping at them angrily. Whoops, it seems as though you’ve located the robot’s home, so make sure to not trail in any dirt. (This room is also spotless.)

3.0 Connected to the station maintenance room is the power and life support, a room with a large engine at its back, and closed pods on its sides. Most of them have a blue, glowing stripe on them; only one has a red one. But no matter how you try to open any of them, they don’t budge.

On the other side, connected to AI maintenance, is a room that has clearly been used as sleeping quarters. If anyone were to check, they’d count twenty beds in the room, half of which are divided into bunk beds on either side of the room… and most of them still have some items near them: clothes, a few books written in a language that your translators can’t seem to decipher, a soft elephant toy, and a photograph of eighteen people — a diverse mixture of women and men, older and younger, of different races, and makes; a few droids among them, but all faces unfamiliar to the current team. The group are all posing with smiles across their faces — it’s a commemorative picture, that much is clear. The right upper corner of the photo has been torn away.

Only one of the beds seems to still be in use — everything else in the room smells slightly musty, as if none of it has been touched for a long time.

4.0 The last place to explore within the North Wing is a hexagonally shaped room that matches the ones teleporting food and other essentials onto the station. Indeed, in the middle of this one is an almost identical platform, though what it connects to is a little unclear — in any case, it doesn’t seem to be powered up right now. At the end of the room is circular cut-out and a heavy-duty latch, currently locked into place to seal whatever is beyond it. It’s a door, of course, but it isn’t just any door … for anyone wondering about exits on this station, you’ll realize now where it’d been all along. There’s a control panel on the wall next to it but it requires a passcode … unfortunate for anyone who wanted a scenic tour outside of the station itself.

Perhaps it’s a little less exciting than you were hoping for, or maybe it’s just what you expected — whatever it is, the mystery held above you for the last three missions has finally been revealed and you’ve now seen what the previously enigmatic North Wing has to offer. As most of you exit the wing, you’ll notice that there’s still no visible signs of Degar anywhere (and also no strange whispers in your ear, no awkward feelings of being watched) ... but if some of you decide to return to the orb room and watch for him, you’ll see him leaning against the wall, using magic to create different shapes out of a smoke he seems to have charmed into existence in front of him. Watching the little performance will demonstrate Degar forming a puff of smoke into a ship with many sails, moving through an orbit of several smoke rings. Pretty funny, right? Clearly word travels fast.

Throughout the week, whenever you return to the North Wing, you will find it unchanged.

TOP

// PART II. underneath the missile toad  

5.0 For those of you who often cross through the sunlight room to break paths into other areas of the station, you may notice some changes in the optics around you. Where the trees had once reflected images of a lush foliage of a typical temperate planet during its warmest season, now a series of various conifers (firs, spruce, cedars, hemlocks, pines) in deep greens and soft, spiky, needle-like foliage takes its place, scattered across your field of vision in no particular pattern. Snowflakes glisten and glitter at the tips like miniature crystals, catching the simulated wintery sunlight above from a crisp, cloudless blue sky.

Follow the path into the trees and you’ll find that the room’s detritus is now covered in a fluffy white blanket of snow not yet trodden over: perfect for your footprints. It even feels just a little cooler, brisker — each breath you exhale coming out in a cloud of fog, and yet it never feels uncomfortable enough to require any sort of winter gear.

When you’ve cleared the patch of forest, on the far end of the room is a snow-covered meadow just waiting to be populated with snow angels and maybe a family of snow-people. Grab some twigs for arms and a handful of pebbles for facial features, and you’re set to spend a couple of hours playing in the snow. The rest of the sunlight room has become something of a winter wonderland: the shallow river beneath the bridge has frozen over into ice, shiny and clear, leading into a small pond perfect for sliding across even if you’re lacking skates.

The atmosphere in the room makes for a pleasant in-between to the rest of the station’s rooms, or simply a pleasant space to chill (heh) for a little while.

6.0 During the early days of the festive month, Viveca’s cheerful voice will broadcast across every Orber’s communications device, announcing the appearance of a box to be left near the mess hall. The purpose, she explains, is for any Orber feeling the holiday spirit and wanting to spread a little joy and cheer by way of a surprise gift.

// VIVECA.AI

— we’ll be leaving this up just until the first supply drop arrives, giving us some time to make the arrangements, but we’d like to accommodate as many surprises as possible. No need to be shy about it — it’s nice to do something for your fellow teammates, right?

Anyone is welcome, of course, to put in a gift request for another Orber on the station. The intention is to spread good cheer and encourage team-bonding, and honestly? It’s just a nice thing to do. Once in a while you might come across another fellow Orber on their way to the box, or you might find someone already there, inputting their request onto the box’s screen. Don’t peek (or do, we’re not your mother) or you might ruin the surprise!

7.0 This month’s supply drop arrives like Christmas itself is here, in two parts and with a fairly obvious theme in both. There are a lot of reds, golds, greens, and blues, and the scents are unmistakably festive.

Part one arrives earlier in the month with a smattering of requested holiday goods: decorations in all colours of the rainbow (tinsel, streamers, bells, bulbs, and canes), a tree outfitted with a bright silver star at its top, and a small woven basket filled with sprigs of mistletoe tied in blue ribbon. There are also small bags of baking and cooking ingredients, as well as a modest array of equally quaint glass bottles filled with holiday-specific spices: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, to name a few.

Halfway into the Orbers’ reprieve at the station, a generous stack of completely concealed, gift-wrapped boxes will arrive on the transport, each one with a tag addressed to its recipient in bold black letters. They will have to be moved (some more carefully than others) to the tree that a few Orbers will have set up in the station by now, awaiting Christmas morning to be unwrapped.

8.0 As the month continues, anyone who stops by to visit the infirmary, either to visit patients currently in stasis, to replace some bandages, or grab something for that headache and the like — you might notice that the room seems to have changed enough for it to be noticeable even to the occasional passerby.

It’s bigger, for one thing, and some of the room has been sectioned off to include a pharmacology centre. Equipment to synthesize medications has been installed on one end of the new room, and adjacent to it are a couple of shelves with medical texts from across familiar and unfamiliar galaxies alike. Across from this are overhead cabinets to house a generous amount of first aid supplies, and similarly, stored in cabinets under a long counter space are more equipment: beakers, pipettes, meters, and basins.

Most of this will be foreign (and dare one say uninteresting?) to anyone who isn’t involved in the medical or chemical fields, but for those who are, it might feel like the Christmas spirit has spread to even the most practical ends of the station. Nevertheless, the upgraded infirmary room should prove useful in the future.

TOP

F Y I

• The events in this log take place during the month of December.

• Throughout the month, remember that all the locations in the two wings and the center of the station are available to use, even if they’re not detailed in the prompts in this log. So feel free to make your own wildcard prompts using the training room, the armory, the living quarters, the kitchen, etc.

• If you have questions about anything in this log, please direct them HERE.

• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪

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▶ NAV

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Harley's not much of a chef either, which is why she stays with happy classics like cereal, cheez-whiz, and the stuff with a shelf-life longer than her own life expectancy.

She's on her way into the kitchen for a spur-of-the-moment snack, when the smell hits her like a bad toss from Captain Boomerang. It's not as bad as burnt popcorn, so that's a plus, but it's derailed her appetite for the time being. She's more curious than hungry now.]

Yeesh! What happened in here? Chernobyl?

[Daisy turns to look at who's talking, and laughs at a pretty accurate description to what just happened.]

Pretty much, yeah.

[She's seen her around, but they've never really talked before.]

I forgot to set a timer for the cookies.

[She picks up one of them to show just how burnt they are, then realizes that they're still hot and hisses as she lets it drop back down.]

Need a hockey puck?

[No judgment in her tone, it's not like she's all that great of a cook herself. She can make maybe three things that aren't prepackaged and she lets other people do the rest. Perks of living in a city.]

Well, they're not edible if you've got teeth like ours but we can either mash them up until they become crumbs for a do-over cheese-cake or see how many times we can throw 'em at the wall until they explode like cookie sticky bombs.

What's your plan?

A do-over cheesecake?

[Daisy's nose scrunches up just imagining how that would taste.]

I like the second idea better.

[Even if it is a little childish,]

You want to go first?

Y'know sometimes the mistakes make the best pseudo-graham cracker crust but I'm not sure there's any saving these guys. They were killed in vain.

[Sorry not sorry. Despite the words, Harley smiles, and passes her the first hardened disc that should have begun life as a cookie.]

I think the master and creator should get first honors.

There really isn't.

[Unless she wants to give the 'do over' to someone she hates. Laughing when she hands her the awful cookie, she takes it and aims for no particular spot on the wall before chucking it.]

Here. Your turn.

Nice shot!

[Some chip-offs but not a clean break, but the sound it makes against the wall relights her enthusiasm for the botched batch of cookies and Harley grabs the cookie when it's handed to her, winds up, and throws it softball style.]

[The 'cookie' almost dents the wall from how hard Harley throws it, and that just makes Daisy laugh louder.]

Holy shit. Maybe we should save some of these for the next mission.

I knew a guy that would've loved these.

[Maybe not to eat, but as far as strange melee objects go and an affinity for sweetness Captain Boomerang was definitely her go-to, or he used to be anyway. Chucking them at the wall is one way to kill time and Harley's a no-opportunity wasted type of gal.]

I mean, it'd be a lot easier if we were fightin' somebody with a sweet-tooth or gluten-intolerance but be my guest. I'll owe you a favor if you actually manage to make them more useful than this.

He loved rock hard cookies?

[Daisy leans against the counter, not wanting to risk actually breaking something in the kitchen. If Harley wants to continue, Daisy won't stop her.]

Like actually making them edible?

[She offers, laughing.]

Projectiles are what he loved.

[And My Little Pony but that's not hers to share. Sensing that throwing the cookies like frisbees is out for the moment, Harley settles back into her seat at the kitchen counter.]

That's too simple, anybody can follow a recipe. Except for you, this time. [Sorry, girl. What's true is true.] If you save 'em, let 'em get even harder. They might come in handy in a quick pinch. I like the sound of cerebral trauma via chocolate chip reject, don't you?

[Daisy scoffs, as if she's actually offended by her pointing out that she's awful at following a recipe. She's not wrong though.]

Uh...

I think it's easier to just knock someone out the regular way, but a cookie would probably throw them off guard.

Hm. I like to exercise every option just in case, but the ol' sleeper hold's go-to. Unless, of course, cerebral trauma's the only way.

[Recipes are like math, they don't have to be followed to a T but the transition is easier when you do. Harley liked to play by her own set of rules, so it's hardly a judgment from her when she's only stating the obvious.]

Sounds like you've got a lot experience.

[Daisy looks at her curiously, it's hard to guess what she does.]

What do you do back home?

Experience is relative, there's always someone more seasoned and significant in any room you walk into. I don't succumb to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

[Harley almost forgets herself and takes a bite of one of her cookies while talking. She reminds herself by smacking it a few times gently into the surface of the table. A malcontented beat to a song she missed from home, this place could be distinctly lacking in music.]

Oh, a little bit of everything. Jane of all trades, master of none. I do bounty-hunting, investigation, and I'm an assassin for hire. Whatever gets me a quick buck. What about you?

The what effect?

[Cringing as she watches Harley take a bite out of the 'cookie', Daisy bites back a smile when she hits it against the table.

Blinking in surprise when she gives her a rundown of what she does, Daisy wasn't expecting any of it.]

Huh. That sounds...

Lucrative.

[Oh, right. What does Daisy do?]

I work for an organization.

[Yeah, the bite that bit back. It doesn't bode well but she swallows it down anyway, complete with a grimace. Maybe they should give school-age kids sweets like these, it would definitely dull their voracious appetite for sugar.]

Psych mumbo-jumbo. [Instead of 101, Harley waves a hand around in front of her, the cookie still in it.] OOoooh an organization. [She doesn't do a good job of hiding her mock-surprise and even utters the last word in a deeper tone, serious and straight-faced.] That means government patsy, right? Synonymous for most people don't know we exist and for good reason. It's not for lack of trying. Ha! I know all about those.

[Daisy could explain, but why do that?]

Uh, yeah. Something like that...

[Why do anything?]

Must not have had much pull if you still wound here makin' deals, huh?

[Just recognizing another player in this game, and she already knew the pros and cons of it when she made entry. She knows she's not the only one.]

Anyway, Happy Holidays Hocky Puck. I think I already utilized your cookies as far as I could throw 'em, literally, but next time the snacks are on me.

It's a small ship.

[even though it wasn't. The crew was pretty big, getting bigger on the regular and they needed to have each other's backs if they wanted to make it out of the next big thing in one piece.

Harley doesn't say much more after that, drops the remains of the cookie she'd been holding on the table dusts her hands of the crumbs and leaves stepping wide over the crumbs that had collected from their round of Ultimate Handbal on the way out.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

STATION LOG.02

● ● ● S T A T I O N 2.0

F Y I

7.0

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