Is To Live Through Heaven - 01

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“Hehehehe…” I giggled to myself, It’s not everyday you can say you disarmed a nuke, anyway what the hell is up with the torque? Can it unbolt anything? Fuck the Gerber and knives, everyone needs a torque gun.

“You… Uh okay there?”

“Perfectly.”

There’s a long silence over the net before he talks again, I take to trying to open the RTG to place the uranium in it and yes, I have just been hauling that around with me. It’s a bit awkward but I don’t believe we’re going to move it much now from the security room. It takes more awkward fumbling than a horny twelve year old but I work my around the generator.

“Things okay in here?” The Engineer asks again now that he’s waited the ‘soak’ period.

“Yeah, it’s giving out some amount of power we just need to connect it all up.” I do my best to shrug but it doesn’t really work. Especially since I’m upside down, or am I?

“I’ll work that out, I can hook it up to my welder kit. Just find me some scraps so we can make this room airtight.” I nod and float away past him, that roughly took an hour to complete. It’s a pretty big station. I drift my way over to some ripped open bulkheads to start to collect the biggest and flattest metal I can and that’s when I spot some more “good news”.

“Engy, we have a ship comin’ in.”

To Be Alive Is To... - 08

Previous Chapter

I don’t pull out his battery, instead I use the ports in the side, the terminal on his pod glows green and I press ‘open’. It takes a couple of moments then his eyes flash awake. He struggles to find himself as he tries to remember how he got there, I wave from the outside in.

“Comms, comms, comms!” I test, broadcasting it out to him, also noticing that feeds on my suit power.

“I hear ya’, what happened? The last thing I remember is the door shutting and that’s it.” He scowls, I shrug.

“I can’t remember anything.” I pause at that always seems to be the case. “What I’ve worked out is that the spire from Aegis station, broke off and got spaced. I’m trying to get power and air back on but I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.”

“Shit… What do we have?”

“A RTG from a probe, the fuel in it has diminished to practically nothing right now.”

“Yeah those were supposed to be decommed in a few weeks, so we don’t have any other fuel source for them unless we can generate heat, how’d you get that anyway. They’re supposed to be bolted into place.” I raise my left wrist in reply so he can see I’ve scrapped my interface terminal. “Fuckin’ loon.” I could hear him smirk, his door now slides open and he floats out. He also remembers to grab his survival kit and pistol, he glances at the RTG and sighs.

“I believe a good place to set up a base of operation would be the security or the med room. And we need to leave the battery in the pods to rest while we can.” I state and he nods.

“I’ll need to grab my tools, I left them in the maintenance tunnel under the hanger, the power tools are all dead but I could probably do something like you did if we need to.”

“Alright, I’ll drag this to the security room. Send a message if you need help.” We drift apart heading different ways, he crawls into an access port that I never noticed before while I take directions to the security wing. I’ve also noticed a distinct lack of bodies but plenty of bullet holes and plasma burns. I see shell casings but they don’t do me any good.

I finally reach the security room, the window has shattered and the glass is everywhere, I drift through the broken window slowly to avoid making any rips in the suit and that was until I see it.

As long as my wrist to my forearm, torpedo like but fat at the tip, numerous fins and a thruster at the back. It looked like a small WMD, it must have failed to detonate at close range because it couldn’t pick up enough speed when it shattered through the glass.

“Holy shit.” I accidentally broadcast out.

“What?!” A worried tone barely a millisecond after.

“T-they fired what looks like a fuckin’ nuke in the security office and it didn’t detonate.”

“Oh shit!”

I pull myself around the destructive weapon making sure not to touch it at all or disturb it. It was probably fired by a ship strafing across the hanger, they were very fortunate for it not to detonate.

“I don’t suppose you know how to disarm a nuke?” I asked hopefully.

“Fuck off!” In my observation it looked like I’ll need the torque again, but there is no saying how damaged this weapon is and if it could explode in my face.

“If you hear an explosion, it wasn’t me.” I cackle a little of the comms and he doesn’t say anything, I gently grasp in with my entire arm and press my torque tool to it. ‘Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.’ Eventually after sweating and hugging it out with a nuke it slowly drifts apart, I had dismantled a nuke. That is an achievement.

Awarding Title ‘Risk-taker’.

Yeah fuck you too Jarvis.

To Be Alive Is To... - 07

“Right Dom what do you have for me?”

“Well I’ve set up my laptop to watch you play, fucking immense man. Looked like you were going to lose your shit at that probe though. RTG reactors work on, well... Radiation.” I hear him speak through my helmet, he must have connected his mic to his laptop as well.

“So what? Throw it into space and hope the background radiation powers it?”

“Nah mang, take it apart with your torque and throw some uranium, platinum whatever it inside. Here I’ve got a basic diagram from NASA.”

I stood there in disbelief for a moment before he elaborate.

“Google.” He elaborated, it saves the day again. ‘From what I understand from the wiki page, it runs on the heat and decay of the radioactive materials to create the electricity.’

What else could possibly hold enough radioactive materials for me in one go? How would I attach the RTG to a battery? I’ve reached a dead end and I don’t know how to break through it.

“Is there anything that can hold a lot of radioactive materials?”

“Smoke detectors have Americium or throw a few bananas in there. They don’t all have to be the same material as long as it works for you right?”

I thought about my options some more. I could try and hook up my stasis pod battery to another one to wake up someone, but that would give me under four hours battery life total between us before everything switches off. Currently though, I’m sitting at a nice seven hours in game time.

“I think I have a plan.” As I head in there once more.

“You’re looking for Alpha particles by the way, FYI and all that jazz.”

I almost fly to my pod and scramble around the back of it to remove the battery inside, it’s about the size of my torso, but that doesn’t mean shit in 0G.

I fly along from pod to pod, looking at their jobs and you could use the term ‘cherry picking’ here. That is until I come across a engineer, I have no idea what kind of engineer. Could be a computer software engineer, but he’s fully EVA’d up and that is good enough for me.

To Be Alive Is To... - 06

I leave the transport ship for now, it looks shagged. I don’t expect it to work. I don’t want to touch the ice mining ships either, since I do have a limited amount of them and they will be useful once I have someone that know what they’re doing. I stare down the probes, It’s a sphere with jutting spikes, landing gear, cameras and high power antennas.

They don’t look too damaged, maybe because you can’t escape on one. That wouldn’t have stopped me from strapping myself to it and trying. I take a look around it and see no obvious way to get into it’s guts which is starting to piss me off. For a hanger they should be able to do some basic maintenance, maybe there is an angle grinder or something kicking around, maybe a sledge hammer, I pause and think.

Shit neither of those options would work, no power and no gravity would make that pointless and a waste of oxygen. I need to think of this in a smarter manner, investigating closer I notice that it’s a bolted casing, so if I had something to unbolt it then it would work hopefully, which brings me to my power problem again. I scan the workbenches but find nothing that I can use because it’s plugged in.

Hang on, my EVA suit has power. I look at the terminal on my arm that I’ve neglected because it was smashed. I take myself over to the workbench and peel the cover off it carefully.

Removing all the connection ports apart from the power. I grab a torque tool, I carefully shred the power cable and leave the wire bare for connections. I brace myself for an electrical shock that never comes as I connect the wires from my suit to the torque tool. I flick it on and I feel it hum with power.

Warning! Critical power drain!

Woah, it worked. I stare at the tool in disbelief and look at my power level. It’s fairly low now, I don’t have a lot of time. I do another walk around the probe, or a float around. This rope is very useful, and look for areas where I guess the engine could be, luckily there’s a diagram.

Now my first mistake was not tying myself down with the rope, and my second is not knowing exactly what I’m looking for. I found nothing that resembles an engine that was until I wasted enough time looking on the back of some of the casing I removed indicated an RTG. (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator). It was a cylinder in shape with cooling fins. Looked a hell of a lot more expensive than my apartment and looked like it weighed a fair amount of this wasn’t 0G. I pull it out to the best of my ability and my helmet scans it.

Scanning RTG… Power Low… Needs replacement fuel source…

Uhuh, that’s… Great…

⚶

To Be Alive Is To... - 05

It’s a fair amount for myself, but I counted twenty four other pods, six of which are opaque like mine. They’re possibly waiting on me to kick start this game for them or they’ll stay closed because no one else is unlucky enough to spawn here.

Hopefully there will be a working transport ship that I could pressurise and turn into a Ops Room and work from there, then I’d like to work on either the medical bay or the guardroom. They seem to be situated next door to each other so maybe I could cut through a wall or if I’m lucky they’ve already got a door separating them. I can see why people find space confusing, are you on the ceiling? Floor? A wall? But the easiest way to deal with it, is to not give a fuck. Simplify your mind and don’t think about it, you’ll just get a headache.

The hardest part of this entire experience for me is listening to my own breathing, because it’s the only thing I can hear and I am learning to hate the sound of my own wheezing, hopefully I won’t run into any monsters in like some of Dom’s games, I remember him playing one where they were all zombies and in space. That would be pretty fucking creepy right now considering I can’t see a thing, but the armour he main character wore was badass.

I slowly make my way to the hangar, it’s just a small thing. It has one large resupply ship, but looks fucked as bad as the station. A couple of ice mining ships and a few what looks like probes.

Objective Updated…

Create a powersource for a safe zone.

That’s great thank you so much, I would have never have guessed that is what I would have wanted to do, but how! How the fuck am I meant to do this, you’re giving a rubix cube to a neanderthal right now! So thank you very much Jarvis, you fuck.

To Be Alive Is To... - 04

I did my survey and the station is big as I am fucked. In other words… Very. I don’t know what happened to the solar panels but I can see even from here in low level light that they won’t be working… At all. I do suspect there is a hanger somewhere on this. I think half the station was embedded in an asteroid while this half reached off it like a spire and was broken off in an explosion. I pull myself back into the station, solar panels are a no go but if this place was a mining station they should have tool stations and engines, even replacement solar panels. I glanced at my map and seen a lot of it filling up now, it looks like I don’t physically have to walk every corridor for it to map.

I slowly start drifting down the hallway, gently pushing myself from wall to wall zig-zagging my way across. Travelling in 0 Gs is an art form in itself, I’m lucky in the way they seemed to think having protruding lights are cool, makes travelling easier. What doesn’t make it easier is the inky darkness that is everywhere, being in empty space with no direct sunlight or power just makes seeing almost impossible, the light from my helmet light is extremely low level and red. I float slowly through the space, debris and station breaches everywhere. I imagine that I’ll have to create my own airlock where I can get down and really put some work together, these gloves don’t do much for dexterity.

The area I’m in right now looks like the cryogenic sleeper area, not a lot are being used and even less have suits on. Some with suits on appear to be dead as well, I cannot open their capsules yet. Maybe it was a random power surge or one of the solar panels had a spark of life that generated my character waking up. I would like to wake up some of these astronauts but I need power and a supply of air.

After fifteen minutes or so I reach a halfway that denotes other areas of the station and a small map on a wall. Aegis Station. An official borderlands research facility right on the edge of known space. Inside the asteroid anchor was a hydroponics lab, they were investigating alien plant life and how it acts in space. Boring stuff if you’re not a botanist. It looked like it had it’s own water processing plant, it was semi-self sufficient meaning that it grew some of it’s own food, made it’s own water and air but for stuff that were more technical was resupplied. So ignore everything below where my stasis pod is the rooms and resources I do have to work with include.

• Docking and loading bay,
• Medical outpost,
• Guardroom,
• Kitchen and mess hall,
• A few dozen trashed solar panels and antennas,
• Customs,
• Radar post,
• A couple of EVA stations.

To Be Alive Is To... - 03

Gunfire erupts in my ears, screams and shouts everywhere. “Shit! Get down!” An even larger explosion creates static over the tape. “We are activating-” Another deafening boom destroys the audio “Get to any pods, T-minus.” The next explosion cuts all audio and the tape ends.

“What the fuck?” I question, I look around and try my best I can to gain information from my surroundings and take stock of items I have.

• A digital map (Most of which has corrupted)
• Body condition, it shows my entire body with my heart rate behind it, it glows green.
• Fuel/Power which is already dropping into the orange at around 75%.
• O2 is currently resting at 99%.

Oh, oh fuck. That’s an O2 meter, I’m on a sealed oxygen supply which could possibly mean outside this door is a fucking void. I feel a cold rise over me, isn’t this opening too hard for me? This game needs to be balanced more! I feel around the pod for anything else and I grip ahold of a large pistol. It’s a space survival pistol, or so I’m told by my database. Not directly designed for combat because the trigger guard is so large to accommodate space suits, holding six rounds if one is in the chamber. Most likely to be used to commit suicide if you get spaced without a way back to the station. I have nothing to keep it on me so I keep it in my left hand. Is there a way to… Save the oxygen in this capsule? My helmet flashing and drags my attention to a button next to the capsule door, I hit it with a fist.

“Draining Oxygen... Equalising pressure.” I hear soon after that, a low hiss starts but then fades to inaudibility. I scan around my seat some more and click a red button that is highlighted to exit the pod. The pod slowly slides open and in front of me is a dark hallway, but intact. ‘This doesn’t look so bad…’ I think to myself as my suit helmet light flickers to life automatically.

I grab a hold of the edge and slowly pull myself out of the pod, getting adjusted to the free range of movement that is Zero Gravity. Looking right I see a pitch black corridor with more pods within my immediate distance and the I look left. The station ends abruptly around fifteen meters down that way, torn from whatever location anchored it into position. I watch the stars spin as the station flies rotates freely around in space. I turn around and face inwards to where I was seated, hoping for anything else that would make it easier. My eyes glance under the seat and I spot a bag, reaching underneath I find rope, batteries, knife, water and food.

I secure it to my back and throw myself to the next pod, empty and has no power so I can’t access that one’s survival kit yet. I follow down the hallway drifting silently, I wait until I can’t see anymore and then turn on the flashlight. There’s so much to do and I have no idea how to do it.

“Menu.”

Two options appear, one to close the menu the other to logout. I press logout.

Warning!!! You must be in a safe, habitable area to logout!

I frown at the notification, close the menu and make my way back to the pod.

“Hey Dom…?” I call out.

‘Yeah?’ A message pops onto my helmet’s display

“I think I need some tac-advice on this game.”

‘What’s troubling you?’

“It’s a survival game right now.”

‘I can see that.’ The writing looks sarcastic but I truly know he’s interested.

“Any help then?”

‘Get a good view of the station, take inventory. I’ll google shit for you.’

Seemed like a plan to me, thinking something along the lines of ‘Google, saving virtual lives since creation.’

Rather than searching through the entire station for a storage room that may or may not have spare solar panels I decided to tie my rope against the capsule and throw myself out into the massive tear on the left of the corridor to give myself an outside view of what I’m working with. I make sure to tie my rope extra securely because I don’t want to waste the limited fuel I have in my EVA suit which could be necessary to kick start a different engine if I need to cannibalize it.

I slowly drift out and away from the station, I have around fifty meters of rope to work with, It’s kinda hard to see everything but I appear to be in deep space. The solar system is shagged, no planetary bodies or other things, currently in an empty void of space. Just the station and I, me, myself and the station and holy shit.

That’s a lot of station.

To Be Alive Is To... - 02

I give my avatar body one last look over, it is the spitting image of me. The pod must provide a full body scan and etcetera to allow for this amount of detail, I don’t particularly think I’m bad looking, but I’m not Tom Cruise.

“Can you remove the scarring?” In a blink all the little white and surgical scars disappeared and I nod to myself. “Right I’m finished, load my into the game.”

“There are several dozen spawn points ranging from easy to hard, would you like to select one?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Easy spawns usually spawn you in a wide safe area such as a colony or ship to be awoken from cryogenic sleep. Medium spawns put you in an area that has conflict over territory through rampant native beasts or war. Hard spawns put you in an environment where you’re only objective is to survive, and perhaps even thrive. The system is modular and adaptive, if circumstances change the system will adjust to make things easier, or harder for you.”

“Okay… What’s the benefit of going for harder spawns then?”

“By selecting a harder spawn area there is a significant higher chance of acquiring rare and unique items both in the area you spawn in… And permanently in the Galaxy. To make this balanced however, all characters can only experience one life in the Galaxy and upon death you will have to recreate a character. This bonus is only character bound and not account bound.”

“Let’s do hard mode then, if I die I can just respawn and keep trying again.” I grin.

“Death penalty is one full day until you can respawn again, thank you for selecting your spawn mode, I shall select your spawn randomly.”

“FU-!”

⚶

“-CK!”

‘Damn fucking computer.’ I cursed in my head.

I’m back in the pod, all the screens are exactly the way they were before but something feels off, like a subtle stillness that quiets everything around it then I come to realise I’m not wearing my clothes. It feels like a sort of soft gel around my entire body, looking at it from the outside I’m wearing a luminescent orange space suit and what else feels like multiple layers in between. I blink a couple of times and realise I’m wearing some sort of mask as well, not like the helmet in the real pod but a complete different one altogether.

Systems booting up…

Those words appear on the lower view of my vision.

Initialising…

Then my previously darkened vision explodes with colours and status updates, it has taken a compressed version of all the screens around me and connected them to my vision.

“Audio log detected on station mainframe. Playing...” A dehumanised voice plays in my ears, I’m unable to discern of its male or female.