[dead] Refugee (Scifi original)

[ltmauve]

Spoiler: CYOA Build

Gas giant orbit (125 RU, solar * 0.5) - Jupiter orbit here. Plenty of fun.
Endangered Species (225 RU)
Rotating core (175 RU, +20 -5 -4 -1 -1 -1 = 8pw, 2 modules.)
2x core extensions, (155 RU, 4pw, 8 modules)
Reactor (125 RU, 74pw, 7 modules)
EVA upgrade (120 RU, 73pw)
Mining Drones (90 RU, 43pw, 6 modules)
Storage (85 RU, 42 pw, 5 modules)
Cyber Labratory (70 RU, 22 pw, 4 modules)
Manufacturing Plant (40 RU, 2pw, 3 modules)
Life Extension Drug (35 RU)
Medbay upgrade (30 RU, 1pw)
based on this cyoa Sawu created (the post is in the NSFW thread)

It's 2:30 am. This hasn't been beta'd. Here we go.

Refugee​

"Oh, good, you are awake, Refugee." Comes a strange robotic voice.


"Nrrr." I moan, rolling around on the - this isn't my bed.


I leap off the bed, landing on my feet, and sliding a bit on the unfamiliar cold floor. The walls are a light gray, with drawers and lockers integrated into them.


"I am glad to see you seem to be awake and alert, Refugee." says the voice again. There isn't anyone in the room, just a couple doors, a desk, and some lights. Everything is either light gray or black. There's no color in this place. It's a bit cold and smells like foam.


"Who are you?" I ask the air.


"I am Refugee Station 554-128-A7, currently in orbit around L554-5, locally known as Jupiter, Refugee." The voice says.


Okay, very glad I don't drink coffee, and therefore aren't dependent on it. Okay, still wearing the same clothes I was last wearing, which is a nice pair of jeans and a t-shirt. No, there's some sort of bulky bracelet on my wrist. There's gravity, which feels about right for Earth, the door looks really bulky, humming background noise, hmm.


"What," I ask bluntly, "is going on?"


"48 hours ago, Monitoring Overseer 554 was informed of a gamma-ray burst that would hit Earth. As such, it began evacuation of the local sapient to refugee stations such as myself. You were apparently selected for evacuation based on some criteria of the Monitoring Overseer. As-"


"What!?" I interrupt the voice.


"My apologies, but I am uncertain of the criteria the Monitoring Overseer used to select you as a Refu-"


"That's not what I meant!" I shout. "What the heck is a Monitoring Overseer?"


"Monitoring Overseers are computer intelligences created by the Chiropteran Empire, Refugee. They are created to monitor civilizations and record their culture. They evaluate the civilizations and determine when and if the Chiropteran Empire should make official first contact with the civilization. They are responsible for safeguarding the civilization against threats that it cannot defend against."


I frown and take this all in. So... don't trust this guy.


"Alright, what happened?" I ask.


"You were selected as a Refugee, Refugee. As such, you were teleported into myself. Upon doing so, you fell unconscious from teleportation shock. As such I transported you into the medbay, where I monitored your vital signs until I determined that you were about to awake. Then I has the medical bots move you into this room, as my human psychology matrix indicated that waking you up in a strange medical facility would cause more panic." That voice is really starting to get creepy.


"Can I take a look around?" I ask.


"Certainly, Refugee." The voice says. "You are currently the only inhabitant."


"Alright." I says. I check around the room, opening a locker. There's a spacesuit in there. Some big helmet, a jumpsuit, a vest of some sort, gloves, and boots. Though they look awfully form-fitting. The jumpsuit has metal bits around the neck, wrists, and ankles. It looks like those fit together to make slim metal rings around each section. And the other pieces have matching bits on them that should lock together. A skintight system?


"These suits are intended for your use, Refugee." The voice says. "Your current clothing will not last long. In addition, -"


"Could you shut up for a moment?" I ask.


"Certainly, Refugee." The voice says, before falling silent. Okay, the suit and gloves have foam at the concave areas of the body. This is definitely a skintight pressure suit. There are ports on the back of the suit, and very slim tubes running through it. I check the crotch of the suit, and - okay, there's a carather there. The chest area has support, it looks like, though I would have to try it on to be sure.


I put the suit components back in the locker and move on. The lockers next to it contain identical suits. Drawers contain nothing right now. I move on to the desk, pushing its chair out of the way. It has a glass panel sticking up from it, which lights up with some sort of interface when I touch it. A keyboard appears on the glassy surface of the desk, as well. Don't get distracted.


I move on, and poke the biggest button on the keypad next to one of the doors. It pauses for a moment, then opens. It leads into a corridor. I check the other, which leads into a small bathroom. A glass-walled shower stall, a toilet without a tank, a sink, and a mirror along one entire wall are all that's there.


On closer inspection, both the sink and toilet are made of the same material as everything else here instead of porcelain. It's just white instead of grey. The cabinet beneath the sink contains a bunch of supplies, which thankfully include tampons.


With that, I leave the bathroom and head into the corridor. There are eight doors on each side, with two larger and bulkier doors on the ends. The room I just came from is right at one end.


I open the door directly across the hall, which opens into another room like the one I just came from. Alright, no need to waste time with the rest of them. Also, the door to the first room closed the moment I stepped away from it.


The larger door opens into some sort of common room, with a bunch of seats around a table. Like everything else, the place is featureless grey.


I turn and walk down the corridor to the other door, which opens into -


Space. I can see the majestic bulk of Jupiter hanging there, right in front of me. I move my head, and this definitely isn't a mural. The corridor ends in an observation bubble, looking out at the awe-inspiring planet.


I'm still staring at it a few minutes later when I realize that it's rotating. In fact, it's flipped all the way around. Or more likely, I've done the rotating. So I guess this explains why there's gravity.


I step into the observatory bubble and look around. To my left and right and back towards the rest of the station are a pair of large grey spheres. They look about as large as the width of the barracks across. Below me, there is disconcertingly nothing, and far above me I can see a faint glint that isn't moving with the rest of the stars. I look down below, and there appears to be a slab of ice down there.


Eventually, I get out of the bubble, and back into the corridor. The door seals away space behind me as I walk down the corridor to the other end. I walk into the common room and look around. Bland, boring grey everywhere. Nothing that's not grey, or black, or white. The table is situated so most of the people who sit there can look at a large glassy screen against one wall. The room is massive, though. It's big enough for maybe 50 people to use it, let alone the 16 that the number of rooms indicate. There's a kitchen area as well, with nothing too unusual over there, even if it does have a lot of equipment.


I go through the door to my right, and enter a sizable workout area. I poke around, and while there is lots of equipment there, there's nothing that looks too alien.


The door across from the kitchen opens into a medbay, with several beds. It's also fairly large. Several beds are placed around the sides of the round room, each surrounded by some advanced-looking medical equipment. Attached to the ceiling in the center are a bunch of drones. A folded-up "tail" connects them to a track in the ceiling, while a pair of arms are tucked against a central body.


Actually... I check the door. A track runs right up to it. When I open the door, I inspect the intersection between door and track. Turns out the doors are a bit taller than the doorways, while the track cuts out. So the base of the drones' tails must be long enough to bridge the fairly thick gap. And the track goes loops around the common room before a branch splits off at each door. So that's how the drones get around.


I continue my inspection of the medbay. It looks like each bed has isolation screens available, and the track leads above each one, so apparently the drones can get to each one. I definitely wouldn't have appreciated waking up here, I think as I look at the odd machines next to the bed.


Inspection of the medbay complete, I move back into the drab common room and then through the final door, across from the door to the barracks corridor. It leads into another corridor about half the overall length of the habitation section, before entering a small circular room.


There are two other doors in the room, equally spaced. A ladder in the center leads to a hatch in the ceiling. I go for the door to my left.


After passing through an equally large corridor, I wind up in a massive, dome-shaped room with almost nothing in it. Lights cover the ceiling, and the drone tracks cover the area as well. There's some sort of big boxy machine that I haven't identified by the door, while most of the floor is covered in triangular panels about a meter across. In each corner of each triangle are a few ports, for pipes or something. After determining I don't know what I'm doing, I leave those alone.


The room off the final corridor is equally massive and dome-shaped, but this one is filled with machines, ranging from boxes as small as washing machines to cylinders as large a truck. They look like manufacturing or processing equipment, but I can't tell what they're supposed to do. In the middle are a few workbenches with chairs. They're covered in glass like the desk, touching does bring up an interface.


I return to the junction and open the hatch. I climb up through a pipe and a double hatch into some sort of observation bubble, I think? There's some sort of control panel on one of the solid bits of wall, and a hatch in the ceiling, though the keypad is glowing red instead of green. It's an airlock?


From here, I can see the shape of the station. The hab section appears as a trio of bubbles merged together - the common area, gym, and medbay, with the barracks hidden behind that. I can both domes, and I can also see there's room for three more. Underneath everything is a massive slab of ice, which continues spinward and then up - right, if I'm looking at Jupiter. Struts and pipes connect everything together, including the water tanks above the modules. Looking up, I can see massive cables stretching up from each module towards something very far away, and thinner cables that the bubble is attached to - this is an elevator.


Since this probably goes to a zero-g region, I should probably wait until I'm sure I won't faint or something. I return to the common room and sit down on a chair. It's surprisingly comfortable. Now, it looks like I'm going to have to talk to the station.

 

[Mizu]

sides of the round room, each surrounded my some advanced-looking

Click to shrink...

Intriguing so far. Wonder why no one else is there? Shall this empire feature in the tale beyond as background for how you ended up on the station?

 

[globalwarmth]

I was thinking of a very similar build. Ring station, Jupiter, manufacturing geared towards habitats et all. A gene lab too to clone more people and solve the issue with the genetic bottleneck humans get with the destruction of the planet.

Hostile sellers might be worth it now that there is no more earth for them to be hostile to.

 

[ltmauve]

Intriguing so far. Wonder why no one else is there? Shall this empire feature in the tale beyond as background for how you ended up on the station?

Click to shrink...

As for the empire, I'm not really sure. I have no idea where this is going. I just looked at the CYOA, came up with the idea, and then wrote this chapter. It was ll written late at night. Also I'm going to have to change the layout description, because I realized I goofed with that.

 

[ltmauve]

Okay, I edited the layout of the station a bit.

Inspection of the medbay complete, I move back into the drab common room and then through the final door, across from the door to the barracks corridor. It leads into another corridor about half the overall length of the habitation section, before entering a small circular room.


There are two other doors in the room, equally spaced. A ladder in the center leads to a hatch in the ceiling. I go for the door to my left.


After passing through an equally large corridor, I wind up in a massive, dome-shaped room with almost nothing in it. Lights cover the ceiling, and the drone tracks cover the area as well. There's some sort of big boxy machine that I haven't identified by the door, while most of the floor is covered in triangular panels about a meter across. In each corner of each triangle are a few ports, for pipes or something. After determining I don't know what I'm doing, I leave those alone.


The room off the final corridor is equally massive and dome-shaped, but this one is filled with machines, ranging from boxes as small as washing machines to cylinders as large a truck. They look like manufacturing or processing equipment, but I can't tell what they're supposed to do. In the middle are a few workbenches with chairs. They're covered in glass like the desk, touching does bring up an interface.


I return to the junction and open the hatch. I climb up through a pipe and a double hatch into some sort of observation bubble, I think? There's some sort of control panel on one of the solid bits of wall, and a hatch in the ceiling, though the keypad is glowing red instead of green. It's an airlock?


From here, I can see the shape of the station. The hab section appears as a trio of bubbles merged together - the common area, gym, and medbay, with the barracks hidden behind that. I can both domes, and I can also see there's room for three more. Underneath everything is a massive slab of ice, which continues spinward and then up - right, if I'm looking at Jupiter. Struts and pipes connect everything together, including the water tanks above the modules. Looking up, I can see massive cables stretching up from each module towards something very far away, and thinner cables that the bubble is attached to - this is an elevator.


Since this probably goes to a zero-g region, I should probably wait until I'm sure I won't faint or something. I return to the common room and sit down on a chair. It's surprisingly comfortable. Now, it looks like I'm going to have to talk to the station.

Click to shrink...