TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[space_aces]

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

Your journey only happened because of your benefactor, so it begets that it starts at your benefactor as well. SUPERBIA, which is as much of a location as it is an entity, is where everyone's search for Fortuna begins.

There's not much of a welcome party: shortly after their fateful encounter with SUPERBIA, in which they swore to join the quest to find Fortuna, the new Privateers will find themselves afflicted by a sudden change in perspective. See, teleportation is a tricky process, so from SUPERBIA's point of view, why not make the target destination none other than itself? One highly disconcerting moment later, and the Privateers find themselves inside the belly of the beast.

The vast mega-structure is shockingly lonely, void of anyone other than the Privateers. Those who look off the metal satellite and to The Network for intelligence (or take a skim at the Space Wikipedia article) will find out that the surrounding space is clear for lightyears; rumors have it that the place is cursed. It won't take long to understand why.

1

Overclocked

The innards of SUPERBIA are that of an impossibly scaled up computer, and the Privateers start right in the middle of it. You are the spider living in the dusty PS4. Literal rivers of coolant, transistors the size of mountains, landscapes made entirely of circuitry. The sky, bounded by a distant metal ceiling, is constantly alight with coursing electricity that cracks the sky with lightning storms. It can be assumed that the Privateers are the first living things to set foot here, because such a place is not ever meant to be traversed by delicate, organic, mortals that worry about things such as "temperature" or "voltage". SUPERBIA needs not lifeforms to continue its operations; why design for them? Traversal itself is difficult: unscalable walls and perilous drops are common to encounter. The only company the Privateers will find are oddly adorable maintenance robots, which sadly seem too occupied by their directives of maintaining the massive machine to offer any assistance (or even acknowledgement of their new guests).

It is immediately clear that the most urgent priority is to get the hell out of here. Before your adventure ends at the starting line.

2

Skeletons In The Closet

If one stays inside SUPERBIA, either by getting horribly lost or losing all common sense, one will notice a peculiar pattern emerge as one gets deeper into the bowels of the mega-structure. Passages shrink and become more level, and the incredible hostility and danger of the surroundings fade away, until one comes across areas which were definitely intended for humanoid organisms to use at one point.

The construction of these areas is cramped, unfurnished, and dreary; they are reminiscent of artificial environments meant to handle harsh external conditions like a submarine or bunker, but they are entirely livable. One can eventually find distinct rooms, but everything in them has crumbled to dust and their original purpose is nigh impossible to discern. Deeper investigation may reveal the few items that have stood the test of time. While it is more plausible for life to have existed here, that doesn't seem to be the case now. What happened here?

3

The Shipyard

In the opposite direction, when one finally reaches the outer edges of SUPERBIA, they will be rewarded with the place to pick up a spaceship and a stunningly beautiful view of outer space. The outside of SUPERBIA has no atmosphere to get between you and the stars, and they shine brightly, like a beacon calling one out into the first steps of adventure.

The shipyard is already filled with countless space ships of every size, form, and function, all autonomously constructed by SUPERBIA's factories over the countless years. What's the harm in taking one or twenty out for a spin? Even if one has no intentions of permanent ownership of the vehicle, it's not like SUPERBIA will miss it. For a Privateer with a more specific vision, however, there are kiosks around the yard which will allow one to design their very own space ship down to their exact specifications. When the process is done SUPERBIA's matter printers will have it out and space-ready right before your very eyes.

If a Privateer has a ship, vehicle, or large item that they intended to bring with them, they will also find them here, neatly parked in the Shipyard. Why didn't SUPERBIA extend this courtesy to the pilot's themselves? The answer is revealed as soon as the owner makes a closer inspection: the inner contents have been rearranged, like a whirlwind was unleashed inside and assorted loose items thrown around. Now aren't you glad your transportation was given special attention, and the same didn't happen to your innards?

4

Hot Crewmates in Your Area

But how will a single Privateer man an entire space ship? No worries: when one steps into a ship, the strangely endearing maintenance robots will suddenly take acute interest. The robots will follow inside and immediately start assuming the duties of a spacefarer, eliminating the need for extra hands on deck.

Even still, there's just no eliminating the want for a human touch, though. Thankfully even that dilemma has a contingency plotted by SUPERBIA.

Communication devices are easily available on every space ship. They come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from huge stationary consoles to portable smartphone-like screens. But whenever a Privateer attempts to access the Network, a pop-up will appear, obscuring the whole screen.

Tell me a little about yourself. Are you a LEADER or a FOLLOWER? What is your best feature?
The device will be rendered unusable until one relents to the pop-up's demands and provides answers to its questions. What will these be used for? The mystery will be solved when a social media app mysteriously installs itself on the same device, with profiles preemptively made for every Privateer. Each Privateer's profile consists of their given answers, paired with embarrassingly candid photographs. SUPERBIA has eyes in many places it seems.

Comments

[kid_devil_you_dont_know]

It was probably a silly question, but you could be from a parallel Earth where technology developed differently. So I had to ask. Stranger things have happened.

You've survived out in space for 15000 years? Hot damn, TRW built you to be tough. You said you remember back to when I'm from. Is there a difference, when you're recalling memories from before you... turned into a person? [He could use more precise terms, yammer about sentience and singularity theory, but Eddie opts to use Ten's own words for the process. Feels more polite, in his mind.]

Baseball is more my game. The Oakland A's had an INCREDIBLE season this year. But the Raiders did pick up a win after a really rough month, so maybe they're turning it around too.

[pioneer10]

Closer to 18,000 these days. But it's been thousands of years since I "woke up" so don't worry about it. The specific date isn't really important.

Well, humans had been beaming a lot of information out into space the entire time I was cruising along, and I absorbed a lot of that sort of passively— call that residual memory, and accessing it is slower, but it also takes less power. Once I was aware of myself, the first thing I did was a radical reformat, so while I don't have infinite space, it's not like I'll run out room anytime soon. I've got about... Maybe ten exobytes onboard, now, and I'm approximating here. We can do some pretty cool science with quantum communications these days too, so I've got access to the earth's information superstructures. Internet, telecommunications, you name it.

[There is a brief pause. Hm.]

Well, I used to have access. Now I've got this. I am definitely going to have to respect you less for being a baseball fan, though. But if you ask real nice, I might tell you how the Superbowl turns out, in 2003.

[kid_devil_you_dont_know]

[That... is a huge amount of data. It's so much data that "huge" doesn't even begin to encompass its size. Heavy emphasis on radical for that radical reformat. Eddie gives a little shake of his head and refocuses on typing a response to Ten.]

So you're like... a keeper of all our knowledge (and if you've seen the Internet, plenty of our human ridiculousness) wandering through space and seeing all kind of things we'll never get to see. That is amazing.

[The message after the pause makes him laugh out loud when he reads it, and he's smiling as he types back:]

Ha! Well, you wouldn't be the first one to rag on me for preferring a "slow and boring" game. (I'd settle for knowing if the Raiders beat the Patriots in the November 17th game, since that's only a little bit in the future from where I'm standing. But I really doubt I've earned it yet. You can tell me later, after we've worked together for a while.)

[pioneer10]

Kid, you are vastly overestimating how much anybody wants to download the minutae of human life into their long-term memory. Like, I love you all, I really truly do love you weird little guys, but literally nobody cares about ninety-nine percent of what you do in a given year. Not even a space probe shooting through the infinite interstellar void for thousands of years, has time or space to care.

But I do have football stats so. Y'know. Priorities.

[Give her a minute, onboard memory is slow... and, yep. Got it.]

Raiders v Patriots, November 17th of 2002. Raiders take it 27-20, most commentators cited a fumble from Tom Brady for the lynchpin moment. You gotta give it to Oakland, they crushed it. Look at the coverage— oh.

Sorry I guess you can't see this. I usually just talk football with the other probes, and we're always in each other's channels.

But hey, that's good news for you, as a citizen of Raider Nation.

[kid_devil_you_dont_know]

No offense meant, Ten. Maybe I've had too much exposure to Carl Sagan. 😅

[Eddie reads her response regarding the football game and grins. The Patriots being defeated always puts him in a good mood.]

No worries. Thanks for letting me know.

[pioneer10]

Look, it's not

[She sits and thinks about that for a minute. Huh.]

Okay, normally I'm the buzzkill that has to give the new guy the 'eternity means forever and there's nothing out there so how about you enjoy the life you've got' speech. God knows I'm qualified for it, but.

But.

I'm going to do something here that I don't usually need to do, which is, I'm going to admit that I'm wrong. I'm a scientific instrument, I have to be realistic about this: maybe Carl Sagan wasn't completely full of shit. We've all been transported to an alternate dimension, and I'm

Sitting on a floor, which is. Kinda novel. Not really a fan, but you can't argue with gravity.

So I probably should have downloaded a little more repository of human knowledge. Great, now I'm gonna have to say it: you don't know what you have until it's gone. I have become the cliche that I always despised.

[kid_devil_you_dont_know]

['Do not type song lyrics at the scientific probe who has developed sentience, Bloomberg,' Eddie thinks to himself sternly.] I suppose, on the plus side, that's more freed up storage room for whatever you learn on this journey.

As for ending up in alternate universes, I'd give you the platitude "you get used to it"... but I'm still not. Instead... we'll adapt. Seems to be a trait of those who come from Earth, anyway.