The Ballad of Gorky

<div class="title-main">THE BALLAD OF GORKY </div> <div class="title-dlc">by Chad Briggs (link-reveal: "http://www.chadbriggs.com")[(open-url: "http://www.chadbriggs.com")] Alpha Build 0.3 (Works best on desktop browsers)</div> <div class="title-copy">A sci-fi adventure set in the "(link-reveal: "Still There")[(open-url: "https://stillthere.ghostshark.it/")]" universe. It's about chasing ghosts, dreams we've left behind, red pepper pizza as a divine experience, and yet another motherfucking AI. </div> <div class="title-subheading"><u>PART ONE</u> The Ask [[START|FirstDarkness]] </div>

Eleanor kneels down beside you. "Screw those Corp assholes. And screw Dad. I'd put money on you over some Corp kid any day. What have I always told you?" You break into a smile, "Burn bright JK". Eleanor smiles back. "That's right. Nobody tells the Kowalski sisters what to do." [[You nod agreeably. |The Ask]]

Eleanor looks down at you and smiles. "That's my girl. It's like I always tell you...." "... burn bright JK!" You say finishing her sentence. "Hah! Okay, I might have told you that once or twice. But only because I know you can sling past all those Corp nertheads with your eyes closed. Kowalski sisters forever?" Eleanor closes her hand and extends her index and middle finger towards you. You... [[... reach out the same two fingers and touch hers.|ShakeYeah]] [[... stare at her hand, not sure what to do. |ShakeNo]]

Her smile fades and she looks at you sternly. "JK... I don't have much time. I need you to do something for me." Eleanor takes the burner from your possession and leaves it floating nearby. She takes out a small object from her jacket and places it in your (link-reveal: "hands,")[(show: ?line2)] clasping your fingers over the top. |line2)[ A glowing diamond appears behind Eleanor, quickly growing in size. She looks back at the shape, then quickly back at you. "You've got to help him JK. He's still there. He can still save her. [[Promise|IntroPromise]] me you'll help him." ]

Your fingertips touch and then in one smooth motion you both twist your palms so the fingers become hooks. You tug on each others hands firmly. You both smile and Eleanor pulls you in for a hug. "Love you sis. You need to get out of this maximum trash colony and away from dad." After a second of two of a silent embrace, she lets go and stands back [[up.|The Ask]]

Eleanor waits patiently. She squints at you. "Really? No infamous Kowalski Shake? Come here you!" She grabs your hand, extends the same fingers as hers, then curls the fingers into a hook, locking with hers. She then pulls you in for a hug. "Love you sis. But you need to get out of this place." After a second of two of a silent embrace, she lets go and stands back [[up.|The Ask]]

The diamond shape flares into a burst of intense white light and your arm jerks up to shield your vision. Seconds later, the light seems to subside and you slowly open your eyes. You [[squint|introsquint]] to make out shapes and shadows.

As your eyes adjust, you realize you are now standing amidst strange undulating shapes moving in the darkened distance. A small area around you is being illuminated by an overhead shaft of light. The blurry shapes come into (link-reveal: "focus.")[(show: ?line2)] |line2)[A metallic ring with glowing lights on its underside floats above your head. Several miniaturized planets, asteroids, and short metal cylinders float below the ring, directly in front of you. Floating in their midst are two distinct looking metal pylons that have a checkered black and white hologram stretched between them. Your hand (link-reveal: "vibrates.")[(show: ?line3)] |line3)[Looking down, you see one of your hands is holding a sleek toy spacecraft. Particularly worrisome is that these hands belong to your ten year old self, not the calloused adult hands your used to. You turn the ship over in your hands, inspecting it. You see a button on its top side. It blinks twice, followed by a vibration from within the ship. You... [[... push the button.|IntroShipOn]] [[... let go of the ship and watch it float, suspended in front of you.|IntroShipOff]] ]]

Decals on the ship flicker to life, the fake rear thruster light glowing brightly within its plastic housing. The floating metal cylinders in front of you light up sequentially, emitting a slight hum. You reflexively pull your arm back and [[chuck|chucked]] the ship at the floating cylinder closest to you.

You release the toy ship and it floats in midair. A floating UI hologram pops up in front of you. Bright glowing letters say "The universe is waiting GravShot Cadet! Power on your ship and start slinging!" You... [[... reach out and grab the ship, pressing the button on top.|IntroShipOn]] [[... look away from the UI, admiring your toy ship as it floats in the array of tiny planets, metal cylinders, and asteroids.|IntroShipShutdown]]

The toy ship hurtles towards the floating metal cylinder with impressive velocity. As it nears the cylinder, lights on the cylinder seem to glow a little brighter. The spaceship then does the unexpected: It banks and curves around the cylinder changing its (link-reveal: "direction.")[(show: ?line2)] |line2)[The toy ship hurtles from celestial body to celestial body, arcing around each one as it picks up speed. Finally it crosses the black and white checkered pattern, triggering the two metal pylons beside it to glow very brightly. The ship comes to a halt from some invisible drag on it's body. The hologram UI in front of you flickers and digital fireworks [[erupt|IntroCongrats]] on it's display. ]

As you stare at the high tech space mobile, the floating UI changes. The glowing letters now say "No game activity detected. Auto shutdown in 10... 9... 8... 7..." You... [[... wait for the countdown to finish with morbid curiosity.|IntroShipReboot]] [[...reach out and grab the toy ship, pushing the button to power it on.|IntroShipOn]]

The countdown finishes. The light above you increases with intensity, blinding you once again. The flash subsides quickly and is replaced with [[darkness.|FirstDarkness]]

As the fireworks shower the screen, UI animates on the text "Congratulations GravShot Cadet! You set a new personal record!" The metal cylinder nearest to you glows brightly again, dimming all the other cylinders. The toy ship floats over to the cylinder and past it, slowly drifting in your direction. You reach out and (link-reveal: "grab")[(show: ?line2)] the ship. |line2)[ As you clutch the ship in your hands, you hear a voice [[behind|IntroEleanor]] you. "You always did have a need for speed JK." ]

You turn around to see your older sister Eleanor standing in front of you. Your eyes light up and she grins widely. You run up and hug her at the waist. She hugs you back tightly. "I missed you so much," you say as you fight back tears. "I missed you (link-reveal: "too")[(show: ?line2)] sis," she says, gently returning your hug. |line2)[ She steps back and wipes the tears from your eyes. Looking over at the floating space diorama, she says "I see you still wanna race burners as bad as you ever did." You look down at the toy burner in your hand. Your.... [[ ...shoulders sag and you fidget with the burner. "Dad sez ain't nobody from the Outer Rim ever raced burners. Only Corp families got the credits for that." |intro dream negative]] [[...face lights up and you swoosh the toy burner around in the air. "Uh...Maximum ya! I'm gonna be the best burner jockey ever!" |intro dream positive]] ]

"I don't understand, help who? Why do you have go? I just got you back! Please don't leave!" you blurt out, still clutching her hands. The diamond shape is growing bigger and you feel a vibration through your whole body. Eleanor looks at you, frustrated she as so much to say and no time to say it. Her mouth opens to (link-reveal: "say...")[(show: ?line2)] |line2)[WHOOSH! Eleanor is violently yanked out of your hands and back towards the diamond shape where she is engulfed by the glow. The diamond shape disappears as quickly as it arrived. Tears streaming down your cheeks, you look down at the object in your hand. It is a small toy replica of an old space lighthouse. On the side of the station, you see the lettering "Brane Co. SL-2874 BENTO" Your sisters voice suddenly reverberates loudly through the void "JK... " "...[[wake up.|Part02-Title]]" ]

You abruptly sit up in the command chair of your spaceship and gasp. Your ponytail gets caught in the headrest of the chair, yanking your head back as your yelp out an "(link-reveal: "Owwwfuckk!")[(show: ?line2)]" |line2)[You untangle the hair, mumbling additional barely audible curse words in the process. For the one millionth time you swear your going to cut it all off. To add insult to injury, your hand is now slathered in marinara sauce from the mostly eaten [[pizza|Dream01Dustoff]] on the tray in your lap. ]

You look down at the red goop on your hand along with the additional mess of pizza crust and crumbs that are now all over the floor. "Ugggh. Mozzarella cheese dreams are the maximum worst," you mutter to yourself. In a feeble effort to be more positive than your normal whiny self, you take a moment to be grateful how far food synthesizers have come in the past century. You can't (link-reveal: "imagine")[(show: ?line2)] surviving a long haul scav run without one. |line2)[ You CAN imagine how nice it would be if you didn't ALWAYS get the SAME weird look requisitioning a debatably large quantity of "Red Pepper" and "Martian Sausage" synth spools during resupply docks. You look back up and... [[... look around the cockpit.|ShipFirstLook]] [[... reach down to clean up the mess.|FloorMess]] [[... lick the marinara off your hands.|Cleanliness]] ]

<div class="title-subheading"> <u>PART TWO</u> The Floppy [[START|IntroWakeUp]] </div>

You are engulfed in darkness. Your eyes and ears strain to detect activity in the void, but find nothing. You try to shout "Hello?" but no sound leaves your lips. A glowing, floating, diamond-like shape roughly a foot long appears before you. It seems to be expanding slightly. You reach out to touch [[it.|FirstContact]]

(if: (history:) contains "ShipFirstLook")[In front of you is the control stick and your HoloHud, your eyes and ears to navigatig the stars and communicating with the rest of the galaxy. To the right is the area you've affectionately dubbed "Pizza Burner", containing the food synthesizer and recycling pods. To the left is the ScavBay controls. Here you manage the The Bright's array of scavenger apparatuses and the massive scrap container you tow behind you. Behind you is the sleeping quarters... err... sleeping wall that backs up against your single sleeper bed, toilet, and shower. You contemplate taking a closer look at the...] (else:)[You gaze at the small confines of your ship's cockpit, whirling around some lowkey G's in your command chair as you do it. The Bright isn't much, but she's been home to you for a long time. The cockpit of The Bright serves not only as interface to fly her through the stars, but your living quarters as well. In front of you is the control stick and your HoloHud, your eyes and ears to navigatig the stars and communicating with the rest of the galaxy. To the right is the area you've affectionately dubbed "Pizza Burner", containing the food synthesizer and recycling pods. To the left is the ScavBay controls. Here you manage the The Bright's array of scavenger apparatuses and the massive scrap container you tow behind you. Behind you is the sleeping quarters... err... sleeping wall that backs up against your single sleeper bed, toilet, and shower. You contemplate taking a closer look at the...] [[... look at the HoloHud.|LookHoloHud]] [[... Pizza Burner.|LookKitchen]] [[... elaborate doo dads of the ScavBay controls.|LookScavBay]] [[... creature comforts of your sleeping wall.|LookSleeper]] (if: (history:) contains "FloorMess")[] (else:)[[[... mess below that you need to clean up. |FloorMess]]] (if: (history:) contains "Cleanliness")[] (else:)[[[... the marinara sauce still dripping off your hand.|Cleanliness]]]

You begrudgingly reach down to sweep the crumbs off into a dark corner of the cockpit. As you do, the AquiSure Corp TinyScav^^TM^^ darts toward you out of nowhere and starts sucking up the crumbs. "Gah!" you blurt out surprised, recoiling your hand to safety. You always forget about that damned thing. On top of the small disc shaped cleaning bot is a cracked, non-functional holo display. The display normally shows its infamous cheerful, bald cleaning avatar. Ugh. Even simple AI's like this one creep you out. You recall accidentally dropping your shoe on bot's screen... with your foot inside. "A clean ship is a profitable ship!" the little bot chirps, right before it finishes its job and zips off to parts unseen. You make a mental note next time to break the onboard speakers as you ease yourself back into your [[chair.|ShipFirstLook]]

"Waste not, want not!" you say to yourself as you lick the sauce off your hands. A hint of garlic in there! You slide your pizza tray into the QikClean unit in the Pizza Burner area and shut the door. It hums as the dish starts to be bombarded with UV rays and jets of recycled water. You focus your attention [[back|ShipFirstLook]] on the room as you inhale the last marinara drops.

(set: $commlight to "FirstMessage") (if: (history:) contains "LookHoloHud")[ You settle in the command chair and get comfty next to the controls. (if: $commlight is "FirstMessage")[Your comm terminal's new message light blinks patiently at you.] You... (if: $commlight is "FirstMessage")[[[... reach out and toggle "play all messages" on your comm terminal.|InitialMessages]]] (if: (history:) contains "LookHoloHud")[[[... double check all the readouts and screens, taking in the area .|LookHoloHud2ndLook]]] [[... are all caught up in this area.|ShipFirstLook]] ] (else:)[If the Scav Bay controls are where you make a living, then the navigation controls are where you come alive. Using manual controls to push the Bright through its zero-g acrobatics makes you feel as whole as you've ever felt. As close to driving a burner as you figure you'll ever be. Through your own custom modifications, your able to push the Bright far beyond the normal Scav Tug speeds on a schematic sheet. This has the added benifit of giving you the edge at your job, as the 2nd scav to a arrive at a Junkspot is the first loser. This section of the ship has several floating UI holoscreens. The screens contain star charts, fuel, engine status, and hull integrity. Other screens display camera feeds and act as virtual windows to the world outside. Also in this area is the official AquiSure communications terminal and base of the AIvatar projector. The comm terminal is pretty standard fare, keyboard/trackpad/monitor for checking out scav boards, official corp communications, and public InfoNet broadcasts. On top of the AIvatar Projector one would normally find a detailed holographic head of some sort created by the ships AI. This head would be your interface with the onboard AI to help you operate the tug. You werne't having any of that annoying AI shit, so you manually reduced AI input down to text prompts on the comm terminal. After all, compeltely disabling the AI carries a hefty corporate fine with the possibility of hard labor on a mining colony. The other thing that's always baffled you about AI routines is that depite AI's being relatively advanced for the past several hundred years, they still have a interface slot to back them up on slow, magnetic media known as floppies. Nobody really knows why, but rumor has it that it's some long standing, nerdy corp engineer inside joke that has somehow become a stadard. (if: $commlight is "FirstMessage")[Your comm terminal's new message light blinks patiently at you.] You... (if: $commlight is "FirstMessage")[[[... reach out and toggle "play all messages" on your comm terminal.|InitialMessages]]](if: (history:) contains "LookHoloHud")[[[... take another look at the entire area.|LookHoloHud2ndLook]]] [[... have seen what you need to see here for the moment.|ShipFirstLook]]]

(if: (history:) contains "LookKitchen")[ You pose yourself thoughtfully in front of the Pizza Burner's gadgets. You... (if: (history:) contains "LookKitchen")[[[... take another look at the entire area.|LookKitchen2ndLook]]] (else:)[] [[... have seen what you need to see here for the moment.|ShipFirstLook]] ] (else:)[Most sane long haul spacers with working taste buds would have this area of their ship stacked with the creature comforts of a colony nutrient pod. Or if they are rich enough to come from a terraformed world, what they had in the home's kitchen area. You, on the other hand, are much, much more efficient and practical than those whimsical, free-spirted souls. And what can you say? Your taste buds know what they (link-reveal: "like.")[(show: ?line2)] |line2)[In place of a stove, fridge, oven, and mini-pantry you spent the spoils of your first few scav runs installing food synthisizer and shelving unit for VitaCaps. The food sythisizer is top of the line: You feed it a synth spool of ingredients, load in your recipie macro, and then 10-15 minutes later you have cooked, ready to eat food! Sure, the NeoPure fanatics will tell you it tastes like cardboard compared the organic stuff, but let's see them try and cram an entire garden into the cab of a scav tug. Granted, even more unorthodox is the fact 90% of your synth spools are pizza ingredients, but that's where your trusty VitaCaps come in. One a day gives you the vitamins to keep malnutrition away! "Damn, that was kinda catchy!" You niavely think to yourself. Maybe you could have eventually gone corp in a marketing arm. The food synthisizer rack shares this space with the recycling unit and the QikClean trays. Liquid waste gets processed into clean H^^2^^0 in the recycling unit and the QikClean makes short work of sanitizing your eating utensils, along with anything else that can fit through it's door. As you take in the sparse, no-frills area that passes for a kitchen in your ship, a smirk spreeads across your face. Maybe you have more of your father in you than you care to admit. You... (if: (history:) contains "LookScavBay")[[[... take another look at the entire area.|LookKitchen2ndLook]]] (else:)[] [[... have seen what you need to see here for the moment.|ShipFirstLook]]]]

(if: (history:) contains "LookScavBay")[ You park yourself in front of the Scav Bay controls. You... (if: (history:) contains "LookScavBay")[[[... take another look at the entire area.|LookScavBay2ndLook]]] (else:)[] [[... have seen what you need to see here for the moment.|ShipFirstLook]] ] (else:)[The Scav Bay controls take up most of the wall on this side of the ship, sharing it only with an airlock and a space suit stored near the corner. This section of the ship is where you truly earn your keep, examining and piling up space junk into the TPort box that you pull behind the Bright. This junk can come from anywhere: Derelict corporate capital ships, junked freighters, depreciated space probes, you name it. The controls on the main console lets you maneuver the ScavDrones that slice and dice the haul of the day, nudging them into the Tport. It also houses the add-on boards that power the material analysis functionality, so you can get a read on whats worth (link-reveal: "keeping")[(show: ?line2)] and what's not. |line2)[You've gotten pretty good at the art of Scav Tetris over years, knowing how to pack a lot of haul in a small amount of Tport space. Most Scav jockeys like to haul much larger Tport boxes, but no way your sacrificing that much handling and speed. The airlock is the only way in and out of the ship's liveable area. The space suit lies in storage in the event of an external emergency repair from mini meteors or junk bits getting jammed going into the Tport. You... (if: (history:) contains "LookScavBay")[[[... take another look at the entire area.|LookScavBay2ndLook]]] (else:)[] [[... have seen what you need to see here for the moment.|ShipFirstLook]]]]

Your single sleeper bed and SpineTech ConfPillow^^TM^^ is wedged against one corner of the room. On a shelf near the bed resides a MoiTablet^^TM^^, a RetroGram^^TM^^ photograph, and a toy burner. On the walls near the bed are several pinup style prints of various elite burner configs with all kind sexy schematic overlays. Adjacent to the bed is the toilet, and next to that is your beloved shower. To the front and above you is a pull-up bar and pulley cables for exercising. You... [[... look at the bed.|LookBed]] [[... look at the Toilet.|LookToilet]] [[... look at the shower.|LookShower]] [[... examine the MoiTablet^^TM^^.|LookMoiTablet]] [[... examine the toy burner.|LookToyBurner]] [[... gaze at the photo.|LookPhoto]] [[... stare at the exercise bar.|LookExerciseBar]] [[... revert your gaze back to the big picture.|ShipFirstLook]]

The sheets on this bed haven't properly covered the entire surface in... well... your sure you made the bed at some point in the past four to twelve corp quarters. You realize it doesn't matter anyway since you've apparently taken a liking to self-induced pizza comas in the command chair. While the bed itself is nothing special, the SpineTech ConfPillow^^TM^^ is one of the few luxury things your splurged your precious credits on. The NanoFoam cradles your neck and head like baby. According to the InfoNet ad it's virtually indestructible as well. You were impressed when the ad's talking head crammed one into a industrial blender and it came out intact. Your gaze reverts back to the [[ room.|LookSleeper]]

Hundreds of years ago, a principle called Moore's Law plotted humanity's technological achievements. The gist of it is as follows: 1.) The speed and capability of our computers would increase every couple of years. 2.) We would pay less for them. This principle hit it's theoretical limit, and it was replaced by Yu's Law. Yu's law in turn was eventually replaced by Jimmy's law, which no one ever took seriously due to it's unfortunate name. But they all more or less postulated the same idea that mankind's technological advances were exponential. Except for (link-reveal: "toilets.")[(show: ?line2)] |line2)[Toilets have more or less remain unchanged for nearly a millennia, which is odd given we spend considerable amounts of time with our most sensitive bits pressed up against them. The toilet of the Bright was proof of this. You fly through the stars on a ship with sophisticated quantum computing cores, powered by a highly efficient cold fusion drive, all surrounding a primitive faux porcelain tube for disposing of poo and pee. Also noteworthy is that thanks to byzantine vendor agreements and bureaucratic supply chains, the retail cost of the toilet is more than the ships mainframe and fusion drive combined. The icing on the cake is that corp engineers thought it would be best located next to where you lay your head. Let us talk [[no more|LookSleeper]] about toilets. ]

Ahhhhh yes. Short of eating a pizza, sometimes this is the best part of your day. It's not as relaxing as the tub you once shared with three roommates colony side, but works in a pinch. The solitary profession you've chosen affords you the glorious absence of complaints that you hog all the hot water. You step [[ back|LookSleeper]] from the shower.

Your trusty MoiTablet^^TM^^ is your primary source of entertainment since AquiSure Corp forbids allocating ship CPU cycles for personal use. The majority of the tablet's onboard storage is taken up by the entire collection of Burner Illustrated digi-mags, the leading magazine for GravShot enthusiasts. You've spent countless hours scrutinizing interviews of burner jockeys on their racing philosophies, as well as studying the schematics of the various corp sponsored burner rigs. The tablet's remaining storage is mostly occupied by all five seasons of "Smoldering Passion: Lusty Tales of Cosmic Buccaneers", which you SWEAR you purchased by accident and was unfortunately non-refundable. (Hey, you don't make the MoiStore^^TM^^ rules!) You put the MoiTablet^^TM^^ [[ back.|LookSleeper]]

You can't help but smile as you take the toy burner off the shelf. Dad bitched endlessly when mom splurged to get you the insanely popular (and expensive) GravShot Academy for your 10th birthday. You spent hours slinging the mini burner at the toy set's grav wells, seeing how fast you could clear each nav point. Eleanor always encouraged you, believed you'd be a pro one day. Small wonder given how much you miss her and those simpler days they would both pop up in your dreams. Even after all these years. Okay, end of [[ nostalgia|LookSleeper]] trip.

You've never been big on photos and holo-vids. The endless stream of InstaCelebs on the InfoNet reeks of maximum shallow and you marvel at how much they ruin the moment by trying so hard InstaFrame the moment. Mom was a lot more into it, always trying to get everyone posed for pictures. Dad hated them, like he hated anything that was beyond the bare necessity of being alive. Eleanor always seized the opportunity to argue with him and take mom's side. But as you run your fingers over your only physical photo of the four of you, you sure as hell wish you hadn't been so indifferent about it. This photo was taken about a year before Mom passed. Before... before everything went maximum shitshow. No point in wallowing, we [[play|LookSleeper]] with the grav wells we're given.

Everyone assumes burner racers must be in horrible shape since we mostly see them with their butts in a command chair. But have you ever actually seen an out of shape burner jockey? Name one, I'll wait. Hard G's require you to clench every muscle in your body, especially your gut, to keep the blood from rushing where it shouldn't. Even pushing a Scav mule like the Bright at full burn will rattle your skull. Hence, the exercise equipment that keeps your pizza addicted body fit enough to handle it. "We can put a woman on the surface of Nexus Prime, but they can't make a NutriPaste^^TM^^ that gives you abs," you scoff to the corp researchers light years away, toiling in their sad little labs. But you [[ digress.|LookSleeper]]

The Scav Bay controls take up most of the wall on this side of the ship, sharing it only with an airlock and a space suit stored near the corner. This section of the ship is where you truly earn your keep, examining and piling up space junk into the TPort box that you pull behind the Bright. This junk can come from anywhere: Derelict corporate capital ships, junked freighters, depreciated space probes, you name it. The controls on the main console lets you maneuver the ScavDrones that slice and dice the haul of the day, nudging them into the Tport. It also houses the add-on boards that power the material analysis functionality, so you can get a read on whats worth (link-reveal: "keeping")[(show: ?line2)] and what's not. |line2)[You've gotten pretty good at the art of Scav Tetris over years, knowing how to pack a lot of haul in a small amount of Tport space. Most Scav jockeys like to haul much larger Tport boxes, but no way your sacrificing that much handling and speed. The airlock is the only way in and out of the ship's liveable area. The space suit lies in storage in the event of an external emergency repair from mini meteors or junk bits getting jammed going into the Tport. You... [[... have seen what you need to see here for the moment.|LookScavBay]]]

Most sane long haul spacers with working taste buds would have this area of their ship stacked with the creature comforts of a colony nutrient pod. Or if they are rich enough to come from a terraformed world, what they had in the home's kitchen area. You, on the other hand, are much, much more efficient and practical than those whimsical, free-spirted souls. And what can you say? Your taste buds know what they (link-reveal: "like.")[(show: ?line2)] |line2)[In place of a stove, fridge, oven, and mini-pantry you spent the spoils of your first few scav runs installing food synthisizer and shelving unit for VitaCaps. The food sythisizer is top of the line: You feed it a synth spool of ingredients, load in your recipie macro, and then 10-15 minutes later you have cooked, ready to eat food! Sure, the NeoPure fanatics will tell you it tastes like cardboard compared the organic stuff, but let's see them try and cram an entire garden into the cab of a scav tug. Granted, even more unorthodox is the fact 90% of your synth spools are pizza ingredients, but that's where your trusty VitaCaps come in. One a day gives you the vitamins to keep malnutrition away! "Damn, that was kinda catchy!" You think to yourself. Maybe you could have eventually gone corp in a marketing arm. The food synthisizer rack shares this space with the recycling unit and the QikClean trays. Liquid waste gets processed into clean H^^2^^0 in the recycling unit and the QikClean makes short work of sanitizing your eating utensils, along with anything else that can fit through it's door. As you take in the sparse, no-frills area that passes for a kitchen in your ship, a smirk spreeads across your face. Maybe you have more of your father in you than you care to admit. You feel confident everything is exactly where you [[left|LookKitchen]] it.]

The comm terminal screen flickers and goes into full screen mode. "Two new messages!" it blurts out on the screen. "Playing first new (link-reveal: "message")[(show: ?line2)]." |line2)[ The screen flickers again and a spastic, angular man with a pencil thin mustache leaps onscreen holding two bulky looking scav drones. "Still carving up salvage with these bulky old Mark 2 slicers?? Jettison that junk away and get the new Mark 3 upgrade!" he hawks eagerly, smashing the two bulky drones together and sending pieces everywhere. As he does, a new sleeker looking drone floats down into the frame. "This bad boy here will reduce...." "Ugh, no," you mutter as you (link-reveal: "swipe")[(show: ?line3)] the screen with your fingers, regretting you ever hit the "fancy" button on that InfoNet post. "Playing next message," your terminals blurts on the screen.] |line3)["KOWALSKI!" blurts the voice from the comm. The enraged face of Mamma McGlatts fills the screen, spittle flying. "Do you enjoy giving me ulcers or did a hard burn give you brain damage??? How many times I have to tell you to turn on the damn comm when I call! Ping me back NOW before I remote eject your sorry ass into the black!" ***END OF CURRENT ALPHA BUILD*** [[RESTART GAME|Intro]]]

If the Scav Bay controls are where you make a living, then the navigation controls are where you come alive. Using manual controls to push the Bright through its zero-g acrobatics makes you feel as whole as you've ever felt. As close to driving a burner as you figure you'll ever be. Through your own custom modifications, your able to push the Bright far beyond the normal Scav Tug speeds on a schematic sheet. This has the added benifit of giving you the edge at your job, as the 2nd scav to a arrive at a Junkspot is the first loser. This section of the ship has several floating UI holoscreens. The screens contain star charts, fuel, engine status, and hull integrity. Other screens display camera feeds and act as virtual windows to the world outside. Also in this area is the official AquiSure communications terminal and base of the AIvatar projector. The comm terminal is pretty standard fare, keyboard/trackpad/monitor for checking out scav boards, official corp communications, and public InfoNet broadcasts. On top of the AIvatar Projector one would normally find a detailed holographic head of some sort created by the ships AI. This head would be your interface with the onboard AI to help you operate the tug. You werne't having any of that annoying AI shit, so you manually reduced AI input down to text prompts on the comm terminal. After all, compeltely disabling the AI carries a hefty corporate fine with the possibility of hard labor on a mining colony. The other thing that's always baffled you about AI routines is that depite AI's being relatively advanced for the past several hundred years, they still have a interface slot to back them up on slow, magnetic media known as floppies. Nobody really knows why, but rumor has it that it's some long standing, nerdy corp engineer inside joke that has somehow become a stadard. [[Everything seems exactly where it was before.|LookHoloHud]]