Zeo Genesis Travelogues
Greetings, star-nomads! You can call me Trev. (You can also call me Trevallion Franklin-Ridgeway III, but I’d rather you didn’t). I’ve left behind my shallow executive existence to explore the Hundred Suns, to re-connect with insignificant voiders just like you. These are my travels. You’re welcome.
“Well, my vicarious voyagers, I’m wellied. By now it’s technically tomorrow, which means it’s… not. And today is… yester—... anyway, we’re still in Pelker’s Pub after Olive stopped an attempt to mug me. Least I could do was accompany her here and pay for her mug. We’re joined by this construction worker’s ‘bestie,’ Dr. Heseltine, professor of advanced zengeninin… neering. I admit, Hegemonic values really do seem to bring people together.”
“I’ll recount Olive’s tale while Heseltine fiddles with the buggered ‘z-link’ I won from her. I’d have recorded her but, well, it was slurred rambling and she’s having a nap now. Shame she never had aunt Glunny teaching her to hold her liquor from childhood.”
“Olive claims she was hired for zeo labour on an expedition into the Overgrowth, a helio directly GPE of us. There’s no heliosphere cross-stream from here, everyone knows that; it’s sealed due to a Schwarzschild binary.”
“Overgrowth is a ‘whole hidden helio,’ victim to a seed ship catastrophe. Its malfunctioning terraforming systems spawned a plague of plants spreading across the sphere.”
“What she described defies belief. Violently green planets, so vivid as to pain the eye. Infested comets carrying new seeds from impacts with free-floating space weeds.”
“Going deeper, colossal networks of vines and creepers stretch between planets, stations and more. Moons have become tethered to their planets. Slowed, now stationary, they wreaked havoc on their worlds, hampering evacuations before plants choked whole societies to death.“
“Thanks to her impressive skill but anonymous disposability, Olive was to spacewalk a massive Jagannatha-class zeo and harvest fauna samples. This state-of-the-art z-link provided unimagined levels of finesse with her mega-mech, along with holorecording and more. They’d barely penetrated the first sector, however, before discovering overgrowth had knitted behind and around them, blocking their exit.”
“Olive courageously spacewalked the Jagannatha into the green mass to chop an escape route. Hardly into her hacking, however, she was rocked by a rearward explosion. Without warning the zeo froze her into cryostasis and guided her back to Hawley with its thrusters.”
“The Jagannatha was mostly destroyed on re-entry, with the only memento being that device which…yes... the professor has just reactivated!”
“Oh hello Olive, back with us? Well, it was a very entertaining tale, but it seems as plausible as lizard-people replacing royalty. What? Put it on and see for my—”
“Oh my dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyssss…”
- Jugganatha-class zeoform
- Weight: 2040 metric tonnes
- Deployment: exclusively space and high orbit, unable to support own weight in standard gravity
- Purpose: deep space, long-range, extended-period missions. Jugganatha contains extensive reconfigurable equipment allowing for completion of almost any conceivable scientific activity.
- Power/Fuel: Ladypig Intelligence Fusion Reactor Model HPLPDS Independent “Original Baby”
- Pilot support systems: (all systems rated for 18 weeks independent) separate sleeping cabin and personal waste/hygiene system accessible from cockpit. Pressurised combined nutrient and hydration paste. Water reclamation and recycling system. Holovid and music library containing 52,000 hours of content. Long-range comms system. Auto monitoring and responding emergency therapist system. Emergency cryostasis and homing system. Heated chair with massage function (9 presets).
These journals were recorded via Tymphony Aural Augmetics… TAA: Listen Up!
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