The spinal column of our prison was our prison was our home/ and the shadow of our home/ lay in the vessel’s bones/ and we knew these halls these halls but smaller/ in this temporary hauler/ and we ascended
We ascended
We ascended
And rung by rung the vessel sung and we sung as we drug it up and left below the pit we knew in which we’d stew and which we grew
But grew no more
Here was our call
Calling from above our love our newest home our truest home a world of life a world of hosts free for our homes...
2023-04-24 23:22:30 +0000 UTC
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I move my stuff into Habitation Ring 1 that night, choosing a room as far away from the one where I found Leilea Arc Hess as possible. While I’m moving, I take the time to go through every currently unoccupied room in Habitation Ring 2, checking dresser drawers for false bottoms until… yes! Another handmade notebook, in the same unfamiliar alphabet as the first. This one’s much shorter; Dr Kinoshita was only up the back of the ship with crewmates to psychoanalyse for less than a year. I check the dates and they match up; these are defi...
2023-04-23 00:15:10 +0000 UTC
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Hammond stepped in front of Saina. “Parvi,” he muttered, “I’ll distract her attention; you hide in the seats until she’s clear of the door and then get out – ”
The pair were surrounded by a tornado of fire. Saina squealed and grabbed Hammond as the flames crept closer. A hole in the flaming wall opened to let Alania pass through, then closed behind her. She strode toward the pair, fury in every line of her being.
Hammond stepped between Saina and Alania, hands raised in a pacifying gesture. Alania flicked a wrist; a...
2023-04-21 23:24:10 +0000 UTC
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Despite Sands making it clear that Movie Night is in no way compulsory, almost everyone shows up. The only one absent is Celi Tate, the new doctor, and our existing doctors explain that ke’s under sedation in the medbay, dealing with complications from chronostasis that they refuse to elaborate on for patient privacy reasons.
This information does not put anyone in much of a Movie Night mood. Despite Tal explaining the gambler’s fallacy to everyone again and the doctors insisting that the revival chance estimates are inherently unr...
2023-04-18 23:34:28 +0000 UTC
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Okay. This was nothing to worry about.
I put the pearl back on the plinth, but the light didn’t come back on. Moving it must have permanently disconnected something. This was… this was nothing to panic about; I should have expected this. Removing the heart probably shut down the whole magic system, and the glowing stone around me was, presumably, magic. So… what would still be working?
Well, all of my potions. The very first potion I’d ever made had been one to cast light. I hadn’t packed one for this journey, though. W...
2023-04-17 23:37:06 +0000 UTC
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I’m checking our various hardware supplies on a terminal in Network and Engineering Ring 1 later that day when our new psychologist walks in.
“It’s Aspen, right?”
“Sure is. How are you doing, Renn?”
His grimace makes his perfectly symmetrical cheekbones stand out even more prominently. “Well enough, given the circumstances we’re in. The captain says that you – ”
I brace myself for more questions about my stupid books.
“ – were the ship’s previous captain.”
“Oh.” I relax. “...
2023-04-17 00:23:20 +0000 UTC
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The thing they don’t tell you about riding the wires, right, is that there’s always, ALWAYS a way back to you. Stands to reason. I mean, you’re in your meat; can’t escape it. So riding the wires, there’s always that line, back to the meat. And if you make that line – and you gotta make that line – then they can track it.
There’s ways, of course. The obvious way is to be too boring to pay attention to, which is what most people do. Be boring, and the Man doesn’t have time for you unless you catch them on a bad day, or ...
2023-04-15 06:22:23 +0000 UTC
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It took me a little while to be sure what I was looking at.
Not because the room was poorly lit or anything. The stone within the 2m space glowed as brightly as the stone outside it, although instead of a plain white, it shone in all kinds of colours, seeming to almost display recognisable images of forests or lakes or sunsets, but never quite resolve into actually recognisable shapes. Staring at the walls for too long was like looking into a mirror reflecting another mirror at infinitum, but the shape between them wasn’t my reflecti...
2023-04-14 23:29:50 +0000 UTC
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By the next morning, everyone’s awake, registered, and well enough to (at Captain Sands’ insistence) attend a morning meeting at our usual picnic table, even though there’s no way we could all fit. (Everyone except Zale and Clover, our two failed revivals who are still on life support. Doctor Tate is in a wheelchair and Sunset looks ready to collapse at any moment, but all five of them are there.
Over pancakes, I survey our growing crew. Thirteen of us now – Denish, sitting awkwardly away from the table to avoid taking up too m...
2023-04-11 23:29:28 +0000 UTC
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They say that if you hit water from a high enough height, it’s like hitting concrete.
Well, I wasn’t worried about that. I knew I wasn’t high enough for that to be a concern. I’d fallen off this exact cliff before, struggling with di Fiore over a counterfeit Guardian Ring. And that time, I hadn’t had an oxygen supply.
I held the mask to my face and breathed as slowly and calmly as I could as I sank into the water. I’d wanted proper scuba gear, but my prepared excuse for why I was buying this oxygen (had the shopkeeper...
2023-04-10 23:20:17 +0000 UTC
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Sunset moves in her bed, and the Friend quickly shoos us all out. “Go and inform the captain,” it says, which… okay, yes fair, he should be informed, but I still can’t help but feel annoyed. If I was still captain, I – well, if I was still captain, we wouldn’t have two medbays full of newly revived colonists. So it’s moot, I suppose.
Captain Sands is in Lina’s medbay, talking to Sam, our new astronavigator, who apparently woke up while we were arguing about brain damage. He rushes off to meet Sunset, and I retr...
2023-04-09 00:10:34 +0000 UTC
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Saina pulled a couple more people into the link, one at a time, to ask for updates. I didn’t know them or have any context for what they were discussing, but she didn’t drop her link with me the entire time. I think she was worried I might freak out again.
In my defence, a lot was happening rather quickly.
Finally, my vision cleared, and my choices of viewable location were just the Pit and the hospital.
No. I had two views of the hospital to choose from. The space inside my little curtained area, and the space directly...
2023-04-07 23:25:14 +0000 UTC
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Have you heard of the magical girl genre?
Fuck yes, have you read Sailor Nothing? World-changing. Preneek. Literature. I mean we only have two thirds of it but they were a great two thirds.
If you had awoken in Captain Aspen’s situation, would you have waited as long to wake others up?
I wouldn’t have woken anyone up. I don’t think it would even have occurred to me.
Do you feel more lucky or guilty that you’re the only one to survive your Ring’s ejection? Sorry if th...
2023-04-07 23:10:04 +0000 UTC
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The first of our new crewmates to wake is the doctor, Celi Tate. The doctors are insistent about kem not being crowded, so it’s a few hours before I’m allowed to see kem. Ke blinks up at me from the hospital bed.
“Captain Sands says you’re famous,” is the first thing ke says to me.
I roll my eyes. “I’m not. How are you feeling?”
“The doctors say I’m recovering well. Can’t wait to get to work.”
“The captain explained the situation to you?”
“Yeah.” Ke grimaces. “I suppose somethin...
2023-04-04 23:26:46 +0000 UTC
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I screamed.
There was a startled sound. Not me, not the monitor beeping next to me; something from outside the soundproofed curtains. But not from the rest of the hospital. Something from… somewhere else. Like the hand.
I shut up and listened.
“Points, Kayden!” Saina exclaimed. “Calm down!”
“S-Saina?” I asked. I couldn’t see her, beyond that horrible image of the disembodied hand, but I could hear her.
“Yes. Yes. Everything’s alright. I mean, it won’t be if we fuck this up...
2023-04-03 23:58:13 +0000 UTC
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All eight of us crowd around the chronostasis pod. It doesn’t take the entire crew to revive someone; we could work a lot faster if we split off into groups of three, but no one, event he captain, has suggested doing that. It’s not like we’re on a time limit. And sure. If something goes wrong, having so many extra people around won’t actually help, but… here we are.
“Sam Sareff,” the Public Universal Friend reads off the pod terminal. “Thirty three years old, astronavigator. No health complications relevant to revival, ...
2023-04-02 00:08:05 +0000 UTC
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I woke up feeling a lot better. Not great, but a lot better.
There was still something… itching… in the back of my head. Not quite a headache, although it did carry the unpleasantly disorienting tingle that signified magic in my body that wasn’t Kylie’s. But it was more than that. It felt… invasive? It reminded me of the spellthing in my Initiation, handing me a cup of tea and waiting for me to take it into my body and trap myself. I pushed the feeling away, and opened my eyes.
I was in a bed in the hospital ward in Sko...
2023-03-31 23:17:47 +0000 UTC
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The funny thing was, the cell they lead me to wasn’t all that different from my room in the school.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, really, but it made sense. I already lived in a cave underground, with a magically sealed door and no possibility of windows. Where could they put me that would be more secure than that? The only real adjustment that needed to be made was to not give me clearance to open the door.
There were some differences, of course. The cell was much smaller, containing only one bed, and with no forc...
2023-03-31 22:27:36 +0000 UTC
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The video in question is from the two cameras on Denish’s space suit. I watch him exit the ship through the pod launch ring 3 airlock, wait for the giant lens to be cycled, through, then help Tinera down.
“All good?” Adin asks through the radio.
“All is good. We are ready.”
“Let’s get this done,” Tinera says.
“R-right. Okay, go ahead.”
The emitter is on the aft engine shield cap, and watching the pair open a small door in the shield cap to get out there without having to drop through the elec...
2023-03-28 22:19:15 +0000 UTC
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One of the sekuranti settled a cloak over my shoulders, concealing my hands shackled behind my back. Ralphie adjusted his collar to hide the tattoo on his neck. Ralphie left, half a minute later the tall bald guy hustled me out, and the last one waited until we were a ways down the corridor before following us out.
Oh. This was a discreet arrest.
That was… probably not good. Probably quite bad, actually. Being arrested was one thing; being secretly arrested in plainclothes as a suspected spy, two days before all of your friends...
2023-03-27 22:27:14 +0000 UTC
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“Well, this isn’t great,” Lina says as we pluck beans for dinner. It’s less than ten minutes after my meeting with Captain Sands, and the two of us are alone in Greenhouse Ring 1 – the captain had said not to tell the rest of the crew that he and I were onto their criminal pasts, so I can’t exactly risk calling a big meeting or bringing it up over breakfast. But Lina will make sure that everyone else knows.
“I’m not sure what we can do about it, really,” I shrug. “I mean… we need a functional ship. And it would be...
2023-03-26 00:44:59 +0000 UTC
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“Di Fiore betrayed me like that?!”
“He understood his duty and the importance of keeping an eye on an active danger to the school. What is the key for?”
I considered lying. But the instant I got caught doing that here, this information game was over, and I needed information to find a way out. Everything except finding a way to talk myself out of this room was functionally irrelevant at this point. Besides, Malas or any of his apprentices would recognise the key easily; it’s not like it was a secret I’d be able to pro...
2023-03-24 21:35:47 +0000 UTC
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“Alright,” Captain Sands announces, wiping coolant off his arm with a rag as he strolls into Recreation and Medical Ring 1, “the coolant system’s as fixed as it can get. Tal, go turn on the oxygen.”
Tal shoves one last piece of pancake into kes mouth, leaps up, and dashes for the medbay to access the terminal. I try not to get too excited. After collapsing, the captain took the advice of the doctors a lot more seriously and begrudgingly remained under observation until they pronounced him fit for duty less than twenty four ho...
2023-03-21 22:30:23 +0000 UTC
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2023-03-21 22:28:54 +0000 UTC
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I hesitated. What was the plan here, exactly? Get into a fistfight with my surveyanto? This wasn’t the time to panic. I had no idea what he actually wanted.
“What did you just try to drug me with?”
“A truth potion. It wouldn’t have hurt you. I just wanted the chance to ask you a few questions before the sekuranti got here.”
Shit. Fuck. Balls. Maybe this was the time to panic.
I forced a laugh. “You called the cops on me? Why? You think me and Alania Miratova’s conspiracy of random mage students are com...
2023-03-20 22:26:45 +0000 UTC
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The doctors shoo us all out of the room pretty quickly so they can run tests. About an hour later, I’m let back in alone. Keldin is significantly more awake, sitting up in bed and sipping some of that disgusting protein broth that we all had to drink after chronostasis.
“You didn’t tell me you were the captain,” he says as I walk in.
“I’m not,” I say. “I mean, I won’t be soon. Once you’re in the system, you’ll be captain.”
His expression tells me that this is probably something I should’ve said up ...
2023-03-18 22:13:55 +0000 UTC
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Over the next few weeks, we planned. We gathered supplies. We hung out with our loved ones when we could.
I packed everything I thought we’d need. Food, water, first aid kit. Lighter, knife, some light climbing equipment. Oxygen tanks, for a part of the journey that I really wasn’t looking forward to. We made copies of the map of the way out, disguised as runic circles; if we failed and our stuff was found, we didn’t want anything that could possibly trace back to the janitors, and that meant we couldn’t take anything obviously...
2023-03-17 22:25:31 +0000 UTC
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So guess what I forgot to queue for February 22nd? This, apparently! Apologies for the super late installment.
2023-03-16 05:15:27 +0000 UTC
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Send in your questions by the end of the month!
2023-03-16 03:11:39 +0000 UTC
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ID chips were implanted into colonists shortly before stasis for recognition aboard the ship and new colony, but during the training, accommodation and boarding process, it was more convenient to use these paper ID cards.
2023-03-14 14:10:09 +0000 UTC
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