💾 Archived View for cosmic.voyage › Melchizedek › 010.txt captured on 2023-12-28 at 16:02:19.
⬅️ Previous capture (2020-11-07)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Message Incoming... Source Melchizedek.0294 Approach β Hyi Ascension 00h 25m 45.07036s Declination –77° 15′ 15.2860″ Distance 24.33ly Equinox J2000.0 SOL Year 3781, QEC adjusted [Autotranslator enabled...] Stephanie Janssen, Specialist First-class ::: Hey universe, it's Stephanie again. So, Seriph Adeyemi had a talk with me and now I've got to send out another message since the last one wasn't great. It was not okay for me to talk about the crew like I did, and so I'm here to set the record straight. Navigator Hämäläinen and I were celebrating the spirit of the season a bit too hard and made things seem worse than they are. We're not fucked, okay? I mean, things really did look pretty bad, and we have spent a month in the dark. On a traditional ship we'd be suffocating in the heat from our bodies without any way to rad-out the excess, but the grav-sheer drive sucks so much energy from Melchi's surface that it's colder than lunar balls on a dark side squat. Eva joked that we don't need to go back into cryo cause the whole ship will do it for us. It was funnier when she said it. It sounds bad, right? But it really isn't, or it's getting better. Our people know what they're doing. I mean, they're all pretty much geniuses in what they do or they wouldn't be here, right? It's like the slime-- Seriph Adeyemi and Captain Pasani were taking the slime in cryo really seriously at first, thinking it might have screwed with the crew in some way. Once we figured out it was harmless Adeyemi was ready to cleanse the whole patch and be done with it but the captain made us go in and carefully move it into containment. I was worried we were prepping the worst dinner in the 'verse, to be honest. Not even Prezzi knew what he had planned. I guess Jerome has access to all our personal docs in the pads or something because he knew all about Kroups genetics work back on Gamma. He didn't even need to thaw her out. He just plucked her notes out of the pad and passed them to Doctor Idjani. I was there when he did it, too. We were in flex--that's our muscle tensioning training to avoid low-G wasting, even though we're at a full G and I don't understand why we need to do it every other cycle. But anyway, we're all strapped down and sweating. It was me, the doc, and Eva who was singing some old farming songs from the way back. She was warbling or undulating or something with her tongue in her throat (it's supposed to sound like some Earth mammal) when Jerome pokes his head in. He didn't give Eva a second glance! When he's into it like that it's like the rest of the 'verse better just get out of the way or shut up. He locked eyes with the doc and slipped over. Then he's like, "Doc, you have the slime-shit all locked up?" And doc nods like, "Yeah, it's under my bunk," or something gross like that. And out of nowhere Jerome goes, "Kroups has a phenotypic allele psuedogene mutation that causes the daughter cells to be heterozygous at the fragile sites," or some utter gibberish like that. Jerome's no geneticist and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't know the first thing about phytology, but he's spouting out syllables all over the place. Doc keeps on nodding like he understands any of it, but I can read him and that shit was going right over his head too. The captain keeps it up for another couple minutes and starts getting into detail about Kroups notes and that's when my ears perk up. I had no idea he could read our private logs, but apparently it's a thing and of course my mind immediately goes to some stuff in mine, and then I look at Jerome's butt, and now my face must be red from more than the flex. Thank the stars the captain was all focused on the doc. At the end of it, the two of them put a plan together to mess with the slime's DNA and make it into something useful. I guess it must have been on his mind because of the arabidopsis. If fucking empty space can play DNA lottery, why not us? And thank the stars he thought of it because the Melchizedek just got a 2^6 times better. In less than a cycle the doc had that slime glowing like our Christmas lights. No really, literally glowing. Bio-luminescence it's called, and it's a thing of beauty. The slime is smeared all over the vents now on all decks since that's where the moisture collects anyway. The gunk glows with this really amazing blue-green light. It's not that bright yet, but you can see well enough to walk the decks again, and Jerome says that as the slime continues to spread it'll get brighter. So yeah, we're not fucked. We've got glowing slime! Take that, science. Speaking of science, last time I mentioned that our beloved and trusted captain was doing some funny math about us arriving on schedule without getting the old bug-splat from deceleration. Well, he finally came clean and explained it to the rest of us and I. Am. Not. Impressed. Apparently we can get to β Hyi safely without going back into cryo and without the big squish, but it's going to take an extra four deceleration orbits skimming the atmo of β Hyi 3. We'll gradually work our way in closer on each slingshot and cut thrust. That's not exactly quick, though. The first orbit will take an extra month. The other three get progressively faster but all together it means that three months left is actually six months left. Orbital mechanics can blow me. Prezzi tells me this is not a problem. Got that? I am to say that this is not a problem. There, I said it. So this not-problem means we're going to run out of rations about halfway to touchdown. This lack of problem means that our temperature is going to drop below freezing about a month before touchdown as well. There's absolutely no problem at all with sticking around out here where space may or may not chop up your genes at any moment. It's an adventure! For real, though, we're going to make it. If the captain can turn fucking space-slime into hallway lighting then he can sure as hell figure out a way to keep us fed and warm for a bit longer. These people are geniuses and beautiful and they're going to save everyone. Got that, Prezzi? Everyone. .