ataraxion | ░▒▓█▛▟▛▙▚▞▗ ▘

Boy, that was a close one! That gas formation was a clever trick. Hello there. I know I've already spoken to some of you—I had hoped to do this individually—but it appears we need to move things along more quickly than we'd realized. That ship of yours seems eager to shake us, and we simply can't let that happen. My name is Lina Barnez. The rest of the team and I have been working on contacting the Tranquility for some time. Unfortunately, our tech isn't perfectly compatible with what you're running on. It hasn't been easy, but we're managing. I don't know how long we'll have. We're here to help you, but in order to do that, we'll need you to help us. You've been through a lot on this ship: it's a miracle so many of you are still with us. We'd like to make sure you stay that way, but we can only do that if you're completely honest with us. We know about the events on Strela, the Cyllene and Arima, as well as the Scylla. What happened to those poor people was not your fault, and you have my word that we have no plans to hold you responsible for those events. But we need to work together to make sure it doesn't happen again. The more you tell us about what's been going on aboard the Tranquility, the more we can do.

[ NOTE: All conversations will be cut off before too long by the engines suddenly powering back up, and the jump alarm sounding to alert characters to proceed to medbay immediately. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

My team can't see what's happening to you inside the ship, so I have a feeling our perspectives are quite different. Is it truly the sheer feeling of isolation that's bred this mentality? How many of you are there?

You know they'll get on my case if I tell you how many of us there are, yeah?

And no. There's more than the isolation, though "space madness" could probably cover most of it. You said one of us called it hell. What's that mean to you, exactly?

It means that conditions aboard the ship are very, very bad. I do believe that's a universal understanding of the term.

Thanks.

[ rUDE. ]

You'll need to get a bit more creative if you want a better perspective. Unexplained phenomena, hallucinations, tech that shouldn't exist in most of our universes. I'm not even sure it should exist in yours, frankly, but if you're on VR's team you'd likely know it better than I'd be able to explain it, anyway.

Do you know why the ship would want to shake you?

Much of what we have on the ship at all is purely theoretical. Our hope is that you can confirm some of our suppositions. Could you characterize the nature of these phenomena and hallucinations?

Standard hallucinations. The usual, you know, "ghosts", surreal visions, disassociation with one's environment.

And the tech doesn't behave the way you'd expect. We've had a difficult time making sense of the hallways, though in a ship this size and in these conditions I suppose that's excusable.

Thank you. Can you tell me more about your inter-ship navigational difficulties? It's our understanding that some of you have been with the ship for quite a while: have no interior blueprints been made or recovered?

A few, I think, but the information's been limited.

The tech can't map the hallways. Our best guess is that there's something disrupting perception, both via the tech and during firsthand exploration. Inconsistencies, inexplicable changes, etc.

Hallucinations.

Have you got any blueprints from the ship's construction?

We've been over the original ship schematics, but there's currently no way for us to transfer them to you. A formatting issue, due to the lack of compatibility between our systems. It sounds like you probably understand the idea. Do you have any idea what's causing the sensory disruptions?

Yeah, your tech's about as useful as the PS4.

[ will the future ever figure out backwards compatibility for the love of god ]

And no. There are a few theories going around, of course, but then again there's also talk of ghosts, so. How much of an understanding do you have of us? How we got to the ship in the first place, etc.

Any understanding of your situation is purely speculation until we hear more about what's happened since you boarded. The more you can tell us, the more we'll be able to offer you.

So give us some theories, then. Ours are just as speculative as yours.

Do you know how the jump drive works? Hyperspeed, wormholes, folding space? Because I could theorize on any one of them, but that doesn't make any of them true. I'm not the one who built it.

You're on the right track! The jump drive was designed to create a wormhole by accelerating the particles around the ship. This wormhole folds space and creates a bridge to another position, using negative energy to stabilize the connection. The term jump is something of a misnomer, you see: the ship never moves. Space folds around it.

Yeah, but how much negative energy? What about quantum inequalities? Because it's got to take a huge amount of exotic matter to account for a successful jump.

[ It's got to leave scars. Or corpses, apparently. ]

[ doo dee doo. jump alarms. ]

Well, the jump drive uses the physical forces derived from a quantized field to get things moving, but by altering the geometry of the warp bubble and oscillating the intensity of the warp, the scientists responsible for the technology lowered the negative energy requirement associated with the jump significantly. In truth, the jump itself need only propel the ship into the throat of the folded space, because the process itself generates a considerable amount of negative energy to be collected mid-jump, perpetuating the process.

[ but baby ]

Sounds like a bunch of science fiction, tbh.

[ Which... is reality now, apparently, and it's not like he wasn't doing tests on alien tech back home. ]

What about the colonies? Did the alterations to the geometry of the warp bubble and oscillations to the intensity of the warp make it safe to jump while the ship's that close to a population?

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