<< BACK TO RS001 LOG Message Incoming... Source Melchizedek.0294 β Hyi, 4th Planet Ascension 00h 25m 45.07037s Declination –77° 15′ 15.2860″ Distance 24.37ly Equinox J2000.0 SOL Year 3782, QEC adjusted [Autotranslator enabled...] [Voice recording initialize...ON] [Crew autodetection...ON] [Narrative mode...ON] [Autodisconnect after 5 minute silence...ON] ::: [Voice detected: Maureen Hendrix, Staff Sergeant] Hendrix: This is Maureen on day one hundred twenty three, ER [translation note: Earth Relative]. Let's see what we have on the agenda today, shall we? Hmm, yes, it looks like we'll be working with human waste again. Lovely. Queen of the shits, reporting in. Before Bern gets on my case, lets run through the basics: I am now inspecting ship-board waste reclamation unit number four, called aft-commode by our ship designation, and "shit house" by our colorful crew. Unit four is a favorite of our botany team because, of course. Being the most isolated on the ship and furthest from sleeping quarters it tends to gather the most solid waste. Why might a botanist like solid human waste? Microbes, my dears! We've got all these little sorts of critters in here crawling around doing their funny little business. Their little antics are the building blocks of life. (Or at least a nice low part of it.) Today I will be separating them from their cultures. I'll bet Bernie never thought of calling her business "culture" before, have ya Bernie? How much culture do we have today, lets see. It looks like we've collected just over 253 litres in volume. It looks like everyone has transitioned nicely off ship rations and into the food stores. Hmm, a strong ratio of fibrous material; everybody's getting their roughage. The docs will be happy to hear that. Liquid matter ratio is a bit low, as is to be expected from number four. Nothing abnormal showing on the readouts: pH is about 6.6. No blood, mucus, pus, undigested meat fibres. What we have here is some grade-A healthy poo, my friends. Yessir, botany is going to love us. Our lovely Melchy has the transfer equipment built in, which is more than I can say for our portable waste units. Here on the mother-ship with one press… of a… button [Melchizedek waste processing transfer started for reclamation unit 04. Unit 04 temporarily out of order. Maintenance schedule updated. Cleaning systems initialized. Flushing tanks.] We will get started on the transfer. And listen to that sound. Pure music. The slopping, squelching you can't hear on the log is the pressurization phase as stool matter is hydraulically pressed through a sieve of various sizes to break down any solid bits. You know what I'm talking about, loves. [sotto voce] the corn. Next up we introduce some liquids to lower the mixture to the proper consistency for secondary straining and temperature isolation. Then, my favorite part, the centrifuge. Look at that baby spin! She's a variable centrifuge and will take our mixture up to 20,000RPM [translation note: Rotations per minute] first, and later to 40,000 to force cell membrane separation. We're going to be concentrating cells in our suspension first to find the valuable bits that we'll reproduce in the labs and then feed into the soil. The rest will be torn apart for the raw genetic material. That's the fun bit! [Humming detected, song identified: "She'll be coming round the mountain", traditional] Now while this runs we have a little bit of time, so I like to double check the levels on the ballast tanks while were here on the port flange. Melchy tends to use liquid hydrogen for ballast while in flight, but here in atmosphere we use the surrounding air mixture, just in high concentrations. It's easy to let these slip while we're parked and yep, look at that. We're a bit low, so I'll kick that into gear and… [Port ballast balancing initialized. Locking port maintenance crawlspace during heat transfer. Warning, foreign object detected. Aborting port ballast balance. This issue has been reported.] We should be all go--huh? That's not… Hmm. Okay, I see what I did there. Nothing to worry about Bernie. Probably a squirrel or somethin'. [sotto voce] friggin thing [unintelligible] There we go. That should-- [Port ballast balancing initialized. Locking port maintenance crawlspace during heat transfer. Warning, foreign object detected. Aborting port ballast balance. This issue has been reported.] --do it! DAMNIT. What is going on in there. Melchy, dear, scan port-side assembly for foreign objects, please. Command init. [Beginning port scan for port-side assembly.] Melchizedek: Foreign object detected in access hatch JE14, port. Unable to secure hatchway. Hendrix: Something's in, oh damn. Melchy, who is assigned watch in Melchizedek presently? Command init. Melchizedek: Current duty assignment belongs to Doctor Reed. Doctor Reed is currently on watch in fore control. Hendrix: Who the hell is in-- [Voice detected: Eva Hämäläinen, Navigator] Hämäläinen: --op stop stop! It's me, Maureen. Hendrix: Evee? What are you doing monkeyin' around in there? I almost flushed the ballast on-- Hämäläinen: Oh, that would be a bad look for me. Can you imagine? [Laughter detected] Sorry Em. Didn't mean to get in your w--are you mixing-out shit house? I'm glad THAT didn't get on me. Hendrix: Oh, yep, shit queen today! Hämäläinen: My leige! Hendrix: Ooh, a curtsy. I'm honored. You are just covered in grease, though. That's not coming out. Hämäläinen: No matter. I like the engine smell. Hendrix: Easier ways to go about that, dear. What were you up--what? Why are you shushing me? Well I never-- [Retroactive transmission of work-log enabled. System encryption enabled. Relaying audio transcription to Melchizedek.0294 base station.] What did you just do? Are we on the QEC now? I don't want to talk about shit on the QEC, Evee. What is this? Hämäläinen: Sorry, Em. You can't encrypt a work log and I can't have record of my being here. I only know how to encrypt QEC traffic. We're covered now. Nobody can read this. Hendrix: Except the whole damn universe you mean! What is going on? Hämäläinen: Um. Hendrix: Um? Hämäläinen: It's complicated. So Stephanie-- Hendrix: I told you Janssen was trouble! You should have kept away after we got planetside, but does anyone ever listen to Miss Maur-een? No. Of course not. She's her own brand of trouble, they say. Can't go listening to that one. Best not-- Hämäläinen: Oh stop it. You know I trust you Em. It's not like that. I just… Things just happened. Hendrix: Don't I know it. That's how things happen. Juuust. Sorry, Evee. I don't mean to be harsh. I'm the last one should be throwin' rocks around. Hämäläinen: None of that either. You're not some castoff. Any of us could have-- Hendrix: Yeah, but I did. I should have known it, or said something. Hämäläinen: They'd have pulled you off. Then where would we be? Hendrix: Without a shit queen? Hämäläinen: Hah, yes. That's right. And poor Hove would cry himself to sleep at night. "My microbes, my lovely microbes" [Laughter detected.] That's why I wanted to talk to you. Hendrix: The microbes? Or the waste? Hämäläinen: Your baby, Em. [Silence recorded for 0:22] Hendrix: It's not a baby. Just-- Hämäläinen: an embryo. Yes. Your embryo. Hendrix: Not anymore. She'll--It'll wake up with the first settlement. You know that. It's better this-- Hämäläinen: Bullshit. [Silence recorded for 0:37] Hendrix: I can't do anything. It's done. Hämäläinen: Maybe. Hendrix: Don't. Don't you do that. Don't you get my hope's up, Eva Hämäläinen. I can't do-- I can't be like you. You can do-- Just don't. Hämäläinen: Em, I'm so-- [Silence recorded for 0:11] [Crying detected] I'm sorry, I really am. But we can do something. Stephanie-- Hendrix: Fucking Stephanie! You have to stop listening to her shit. Evee, she's dragging you into her crazy. Don't you see that? Hämäläinen: No, Em. She's opening my eyes. [Sigh detected] Look, I won't push. I've just been thinking a lot recently. We're 24 light years from home and we're never going back. There's no other future for us. We came here on mission and we will do that. We will make life be here on all these worlds and one day others will come and live in it. They will write our names in their books and maybe Prezzi or Jerome will get a statue. We won't see it. Hendrix: We all signed up knowing-- Hämäläinen: I know. I am willing. My heart is willing. I will do this thing and I will bring life… If. [Silence recorded for 0:08] Maureen, we haven't heard from Earth. Hendrix: What? Did our comms go down? Hämäläinen: No. I mean at all. Since cryo. We-- Hendrix: No way. I don't believe it. Adeyemi's been in contact-- Hämäläinen: She hasn't. She's been trying to raise them on the QEC but no one answers us. No one on Earth at least. We hear from other ships. Hendrix: Other ships? Who? Hämäläinen: All over. Hundreds of them. Colonies too. Deep ones. Hendrix: But that doesn't mak-- Hämäläinen: Doesn't make sense? Yeah. I know. We were one of the first away. But we've been asleep a long time. Hendrix: You think they went out that much faster? Time dilation changes? But why--But Earth? Hämäläinen: I don't know. I don't have answers, but neither does Prezzi. Jerome kept it a secret at first because he thought the grav sheer had something to do with it. Hendrix: But we were in grav sheer by Earth without a problem before cryo. It wouldn't-- Hämäläinen: I know, I'm just saying what he told me, Em. I don't know if he believed it either. But then Moussa… and then he didn't want to talk about it. Prezzi started taking over more and she wanted to keep the information a secret. She said she didn't want it to distract the crew. "The mission comes first," you know? Well, we still have no idea what's going on at home. We have no idea whether the Ecclesia is still in power. We don't even know if the colony ships left Earth. We don't know that there's still an Earth out there. Hendrix: My God. [Silence recorded for 1:20] What can we do? Hämäläinen: Prezzi wants to continue. What else can we do, right? Hendrix: And you? Hämäläinen: I don't know. If we spend our lives creating life here for someone else, what if they don't come? What have we done then? We've made a land for the butterflies and the bees, but no people. Maybe that's good enough. Maybe. But Em, what about your baby? Hendrix: She--It wouldn't be brought out of stasis. No one-- Hämäläinen: And all of us will sit in our graves as martyrs to nothing. [Silence recorded for 2:01] Hendrix: You are talking about a mutiny. Hämäläinen: Ahh, hush. Not that word. No. I am just not so quick to throw away my life as I once was. I have something to care about now, something I didn't before. Hendrix: And so do I, you think. Is that why me? One daughter won't remake humanity, Evee. We can't just start having babies. 41 isn't enough. The genetic diversity-- Hämäläinen: We have other options. Like we do with the plants. Hendrix: You want to… That's illegal, Eva. Genetic dispersal on humans could create-- Hämäläinen: It could save humanity, yes? It could give us all another generation, tens of generations. We could fill the stars, yes? Hendrix: It's insane. When the colonists come-- Hämäläinen: If! If they come, we have so many worlds. Thirteen in range for us. How many more are reachable by children, or their children. The colony ships aren't due to arrive for a thousand years, Em. We could have settled everything by then. They'll arrive to a space dock instead of pasture lands. Hendrix: But it's illegal. We'd be-- Hämäläinen: Nothing. There's no law here. There are 41 of us. How many do we need to make a decision. [Silence recorded for 0:18] Hendrix: No, I wont. I can't talk about this. It's mutiny. I should report you. I want to get back to my shit now. Just leave me be, Evee. Go. Just go. Hämäläinen: Please, Em. Just think on it. There's hope for us still. A hope we never know about when we signed up. We can love. Hendrix: Just go. Hämäläinen: Think on it? Hendrix: [Sigh detected.] Fine. [Silence recorded for 0:58] I could have my baby? Hämäläinen: A daughter of Eden. Hendrix: I'll think on it. [Voice recording terminated] [End of encrypted envelope.]