ataraxion | text

Obviously we have a few unexpected guests with us now but there's actually one more everyone should know about. Some of you may be familiar with the name Felix Laurens. Or the face, he looks like this (and really loves having his picture taken):

For those who don't know he was captain of the Scylla, a pirate ship that tried to raid the TQ during jump cycle 17. I'm not going to recount his whole history, you can find more info here. To sum up: as far as we knew, Ward murdered him along with his captive crew during that jump. You may have seen him on the network since then anyway. We don't really know how or why, but he in some fashion survived, trapped. A friend and I finally found him, and he's been in quarantine in Medical for the last couple months.

We've let him out now. He's surly and weird but we don't believe he's an immediate danger to anyone. He hasn't behaved violently with us at all, he just wanted to get out of that place and have access to a gravity couch. So if you see him around or at the jump, a few suggestions:

Don't freak out, and please don't attack him

If you see him standing outside a normal door like a kitchen or library or something, please let him in. He doesn't have nanites, so he can't actually open any doors in this place himself.

If anyone has any ideas how to get him nanites, please let me know that also.

Do keep an eye on him and do be on your guard. He may not have any personal desire to harm us, but he is susceptible to the same types of compulsion that we all are, that make us do things we would never otherwise.

If he does or says something strange, or goes somewhere he shouldn't be, let me or Charles Xavier or Dr. Gallo know asap.

If there's a problem, also let us know and we will handle it.

If Ward or Resnik show up, let us know that, too. We think they'd have come by now if they really wanted to finish the job that badly, but who knows.

There isn't much about this that I can really explain, but if you have questions this is the place for them.

ALSO: if anyone has a spare comm, let me know? I know there were a few around somewhere at some point.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Everyone has tried. Suggest a means of escape and I'll tell you how we know it won't work.

Broadcasting a distress signal to summon a highly advanced race to come to our aid. [That would be his race, though he's not quite up to openly broadcasting his alien nature until he comes to realize the humans here are more accustomed to aliens walking among them. His first encounters with humanity had not been happy ones.]

Alternatively, triggering a self-destruct sequence in a piece of technology to clear a path to the ship's bridge, where we could attempt to seize control. Or maybe to the ship's core--the one that Shepard attempted to find-- though I do not know enough about its make or function to know if that would be entirely safe.

First, as far as we can tell there are no other races in this galaxy besides humans. Even if there were I don't know how keen we'd be to invite yet another unknown and potentially hostile element into this mess. That signal probably WOULD reach the government of this place which as far as we know is hostile. Also, our position in both time and space change drastically each jump, so tracking us at all has supposedly taken them generations.

We don't have access to self destruct sequences, but we do have access to the bridge. Nothing there does anything no matter how we attempt to gain access to the systems. The core is hidden somewhere in a shifting network of unnavigable hallways filled with all sorts of horrors from genetically engineered monsters to actual black holes. We're trying to find a way back but we haven't and we really don't know at this point what to expect if we ever do find it.

I appreciate that you're new and that it's difficult to hear or accept, but we really have been trying.

It was not my intent to slight your efforts--you just must understand, it is very hard for me to simply lie down and take this. If there have been escape attemtps, I want to know about them. The same will apply moving forward.

[Anyways, there's a bit of a pause between that response and the next one; Glacius is attempting to decide how much he can or should reveal, here. Really, he supposes he can't keep his secret for long; a scattered few have already seen him, after all.] What if I could prove to you that other races did exist? [Anything about the piece of his technology that he found in his locker is off the table for now, even if he does have the capacity to trigger its self-destruct mechanism personally. Even if he gets found out, he has to do what he can to preserve the secrets of his species; he has to keep them safe.]

Good, I'd never suggest that you just take it. Most of us are still trying and we can always use more help, just know that there's a good chance a lot of your early ideas are going to get shot down. I've found it's better to try to break the problem down into smaller parts and shove at them than to try to figure out one overarching "escape plan".

Prove that they exist in this galaxy? Or in general?

[He doesn't really seem to care about being 'shot down'; he's a very hard creature to ruffle, and besides that fact he'd rather not end up wasting his time. He actually would probably appreciate the up-front way of handling things.] I am not sure I understand the distinction.

The people on this ship are from many different universes. Some of them have other races, some of them don't. In this world no one has never made contact with any despite significant space travel, so if you can prove there are aliens here that would be very interesting. If you mean showing me that aliens exist in your own world/in the multiverse in general then it's unnecessary because I've met them.

[... Oh.

Well.

He's heard the "multiple universe" concept explained before, just not so clearly. He was sort of doing his best to not believe it because that technically means he's the last of his kind here and, well... he can't imagine any fate much worse than that.]

And you are absolutely certain that is what is occurring here? If so, how did our captors reach into so many different universes? Is it the sort of thing that could be reversed?

I'm certain. Some people think we're all dreaming or dead or something, but otherwise it's generally accepted as true. And the basic concept is definitely true; I traveled between dimensions before I ended up here. How, we don't know, but it has to do with the jump drive malfunctioning. We hope that it can be reversed but it isn't something we have the ability to do now or none of us would be here.

[There's a bit of time before Glacius responds again. He's not quite sure how to take the news, and there's definitely a fresh wave of sorrow that hits him now that the full depth of his separation has been confirmed... but his will has never been weak. Setbacks happen. He still has a mission, loyalty, and a drive. He's not going to give in, not yet.]

News of this situation keeps getting worse and worse. Is there anything else I should know about?

text

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject