Starforged Solo: Session 3
Journey by hoverbike over the Demeterian tundra. Glowing lights in the dark.
From the Journal of Zaramirra Wolfe
The people on Murad’s farm help me load up with supplies for my journey across the tundra. Their generosity and kindness still makes me uneasy. They are too eager to please me. Once I’m packed, I lower my riding goggles and head north on the borrowed hoverbike, the looming expanse of the Demeterian tundra spread out like a half-frozen sea before me. My bot rides on on the passenger mount. She tells me again that she’s not picky about comfort. This is clearly some kind of sub-process designed to make me feel comfortable. I’m beginning to understand Ria more day by day, but there is something about the way a machine thinks that sometimes puts me off.
Day One of Expedition
After riding for most of the day, I make it to a relatively tranquil area on the tundra. I’m still miles from the indicated spot on the map Murad has marked for me, but I figure this is as good a time and place as any to take a rest. The sun dips below the horizon on the golden tundra, the last of its warmth going down with it. I pull my star cloak tighter to catch a moment of rest. But a bright light catches my closed eye, and Ria’s sensors suddenly perk up. I check her logs and notice an unfamiliar reading, something that tells me I’m in the presence of a new kind of energy out here. I feel the familiar rush inside my chest and gather my survey kit. I have enough of a charge in the pack for a short walk in the dark. These are the moments one can’t afford to let go with the winds. I check the hoverbike is hidden from any Keepers’ roving eyes, set Ria’s sensory lights to cautious, and head out into the cold darkness.
It’s too dark, and I can’t envision a path through the tundra. It all feels the same on my boots. I check Ria’s low-light indicators. At first, no sign of anything. I being to wonder if what I saw was simply a symptom of my fading energy. I’ve been out between stations for too long I think. Hallucinations are part of the job when you’re always searching for something. But then I see it. It glows vibrantly red and orange in darkness. I bless whatever forces brought me here that I didn’t take one step further, because the glowing object has revealed itself in a gargantuan sinkhole the size of a ship. My boots come right up to the edge of the cliff face and I turn my guiding light downward to see the forty foot drop I would have fallen had the object not suddenly sparked and lit my way.
I look up to take it all in. What is it? There are markings between the glowing lights, and some kind of energy rises from the hull — if I can call it that — though I’ve never seen anything like this before now. I circle the sinkhole, and ask Ria to begin recording. She informs me that we are still miles out from the intended discovery, but I remind her that this is all part of the job, part of the game. We are explorers and this is what we do.
We find a way to reach the object, a small bridge in the ground that remains untracked. I step lightly over it, my cloak billowing backwards as the updraft below catches its magnetic fibers. I land on the other side. I feel the glow of it in my body somehow. It’s not simply the warmth. It’s something deeper, something ancestral perhaps. I shake these thoughts and begin to make the necessary and routine survey relevant to my work in field, regardless of the find. But I can’t tamp down a deeper feeling in my chest that this might be of some importance. Perhaps Murad wasn’t full of ani-matter all this time. This feels like the tip of the iceberg if there’s more of it buried in the tundra.
I complete my survey and head back toward the camp to process what I’ve found. As I continue back toward my campsite, I begin to connect the dots of the encounter. The symbols on the ancient machine in the sinkhole are familiar to me, despite their alien, unknown, origins. I know of only one other occurrence where symbols like this made sense. Dear Roku, space keep his bones, showed me the meaning of such a numerical system once. There are familiar symbols scratched all over the hull of the Phantom, which have always spelled out nothing to me. But Roku was certain in one thing about the ones he claimed to have translated: they represented some kind of calendar system. A clock perhaps. An approaching time and place for something that is yet to come. I arrive back at camp with my data and take these thoughts with me into dreams.