Discovery Gaming Community

Someone mentioned there was a lack of story or explanation for the Monkeys on Primus.
Well, I'm here to try to fix that problem, for better or worse.
I have a brilliant plot up my sleeve, and quite the clear direction for where I'm headed.
Some might like it, some might hate it; but I hope it will do the job that I'm setting out to do - make the Monkeys a logical part of RP on this server.

All I can do is ask you to enjoy the ride.

Enjoy the ride.
(Eh, probably not Nerdrage.)


[Feedback via PM is nice.]
[Until I have finished at least Part One, then I'll make a feedback thread.]




[font=Lucida Blackletter]
Relevant links for your perusal:
Primus Infocard
Gammu Infocard

Only a little is known about the system known as Omicron Kappa.

Strange, monstrous asteroids fill the green nebula tunnel in which the system lays, with a bright light at one end and a dark void at the other. A dim red star illuminates the briar-fields, as they are called by some explorers, with its sickly crimson glow. Two planets orbit this sun - the closer Primus, a land of sparse fields, rocks, and terrible but beautiful wildlife; and Gammu, a forbidding frozen world with no life.

The first was home to a large city, a rambling citadel set upon a rocky hill. The second was host to a small colony consisting of a mining complex and two grand smelters, which churned out robots to mine the riches of the planet below.




PLAY: Neural Net Info Files...

PLAYING

A privately financed deep space recon mission discovered this system in 490 A.S. The planet Primus was the first explored. The first explorers were amazed by the weird wildlife inhabiting the planet, as well as the fact that there were no large plants. The air was fine for breathing, and soon thousands of colonists settled the planet. Six years later, the icy world of Gammu was also colonized, as a mining colony run mainly by robots.

Thirty-two years later, more than a quarter of the planets population had died mysteriously. Experts tried to find the cause for this, but it took the breakout of the same sickness on Primus, years later, for them to find the cause - strong radiation sources inside the planets that were harmful to human beings.

Transports were dispatched to rescue the colonists, but a massive fleet of unknown beings, or possibly ships, appeared, and utterly destroyed the transports in one fell swoop.

After that, the jumphole to Omicron Theta collapsed, cutting these planets off from Sirius.

It is said that the colonists on Gammu simply died out, leaving their robots in charge of the colony, which persisted for centuries.

What is puzzling is what happened to the colonists of Primus. No one ever knew what happened to them.

PART ONE

[font=Agency FB]489 A.S.

With a white flash, crack of lightning, and ripple of greenish energy, the jump hole spit out a ship - a Pilgrim class starship, to be exact, a top of the line long-distance exploration ship, capable of carrying hundreds of people and tons of equipment into the dark reaches of space, beyond the sight of man.

And that was exactly where it was.

The entire ship seemed to pause to take in the system, even its captain couldn’t have been prepared for what lay all around it - they were in the middle of a vast blue-green nebular tunnel, perhaps the heart of the Edge itself. The tunnel continued straight on for what seemed infinity, ending in a point of bright green light, some massive star lightyears and lightyears away. The other end of the tunnel, a black void - filled with dirty but sparkling clouds of every colour, mixing to create a brownish haze - that seemed to threaten to engulf their very existence, seemed to loom somehow closer to this system. And what a system it was.

All around them, long spindly asteroids (perhaps not even asteroids) with spikes protruding from them like hermit crab’s shells pointed in the same direction - towards the dark void. No, that wasn’t right. The captain had the distinct feeling that they pointed away from the dark void.

A red sun, a dull and almost sickly thing, illuminated this system in its maroon blaze, casting its light over the two planets in the system - one, a brown planet that was closer to the sun; and the other, a snowy white planet that lay further from the sun. Both were oddly beautiful, tinted by the star’s staining glow.


Perhaps the fact that they were beautiful was more influenced by the fact that they were both obviously habitable - the ship’s automatic scanners immediately told her that. Habitable planets? And not just one? All the way out here, in the most forbidding part of space, the Omicrons? The nearest habitable planets were supposedly those of the “Space Pirates,” a feared race of mysterious and savage humans who were rumored to belong to no house. Aliens, some said they were. Other said that they were simply humans living out near the Edge - but who could possibly live out here?

Nonetheless, a find of not one but two planets suitable for habitation out here was astounding… it meant colonies, it meant cities, it meant spaceports, it meant trade, it meant further exploration…

It mean a much bigger paycheck for this certain captain.
Her employers were bound to give her millions for this find.




The captain finally unfroze and tore her eyes from this view, turning around and lowering her hand from her eyes.“Drop the polarizing view screens.” The sun’s glare was immediately diminished as secondary, darker screens slid across the ship’s windows. “All scanners, sweep the system, I want a full scan. Then focus on any energy signatures we get, and then and only then probe the planets further.”

She paced over to the computer of her sensor OIC, Raymond Estevez, glancing down at his results. Many energy readings came up - odd but barely noticeable ones from the asteroids, strange ones jump hole behind them - it didn’t seem all that stable - and frightening ones from the planets below.

Captain Scylla narrowed her eyes as Estevez started scanning the planets more thoroughly. He shook his head as he rifled through the results.

“Captain… I…”

Scylla‘s smile dropped as she leaned. “I thought they were habitable.” she said in a slightly ghostly tone, seeing the millions she would have made slip through her fingers…

“If this radiation is deadly... no, they're not habitable, not with these radiation levels.” Estevez muttered, a hand running through his hair.

“How deadly would they be, exactly?” Scylla queried in a whisper.

“Way too deadly for a legal settlement, definitely, if they are dangerous in the least bit.” he muttered. “I‘ve never seen anything like them before,” Estevez admitted, as he looked through more results of their scans. “But if the computers are projecting things right-”

“Dammit.” she swore quietly, interrupting him. She sighed, glancing around. “Keep it quiet. Lock the planet scan results from the others’ systems. And double check, triple check them. Make sure the radiation’s not deadly. If it is, try to find a way around it, a safe spot on the surface, anything. Those planets have to be habitable.” She leaned on the computer, suddenly tired.

“They have to be.”

Estevez looked through more scans, shaking his head,“The brown planet has lower levels, but…”

“Look into it.” she said earnestly. "Get the radiologist on it. Now."

“Yes, captain, I will.” Estevez muttered, somewhat defeated. It wasn’t like he was going to get as large a cut of the paycheck as she was if they discovered a habitable planet.

This radiation was really very strange, like nothing he’d ever seen.

He leaned back and sighed, grinning ironically and running a hand through his hair again. He knew he’d have a ton of work ahead of him.

But that was what he got, flying with Scylla.
It was all about the profit.

“Captain.”

Scylla shot her glance upward at the voice of Estevez, who had just walked through the door into her cabin. She was busy at her desk, pouring over notes and readouts from the sensors and analysts on board this ship.

She lowered the paper that was in her hand.“Yes? It must be -very- important for you to come tell me in person.” Despite her calm tones, her hand was shaking, her heart skipped a beat. This could be it, this was it, this was the moment of truth. The deciding point of the last few months of travel - the radiologist's report. It had to be it, Estavez wouldn't bother her otherwise... and what would the radiologist say... that it was deadly radiation, or harmless?

“The radiologist’s report finally came back.”

Scylla swallowed and smiled, laying her hand on her desk. She tried to smile a bit, looking sick.“And?” she queried cautiously, voice modulating precariously. Oh, the adrenaline that was rushing through her veins...

“And,” Estevez smiled, “he concludes the radiation is in fact a form of energy which has no detrimental effects on the human body.”

Scylla smiled, belying the wild storm that was in her heart at the moment. “All right, thanks. That’s good news.” she said calmly. “I think you know what to do now.”

“I should get Rawlings to get the transport prepped for a survey?” Estevez ventured cautiously.

“For a landing, Simon. There's nothing to be afraid of, and we're going to have ourselves a nice little hike... that is, if you ever get the shuttle ready...”

“Yes, ma’am.” Estevez moved quickly out of the room, closing the door quietly.


Scylla smiled a bit, and looked at the papers on the desk, picking them up with her hand.
Well, that was that. And things couldn't be better. Not one bit.




The now needless papers were in the air.
Her feet were on her desk.

A broad smile was on her face as she glanced at the video of Curacao on the bulkhead.

Scylla’s ship - the Spyglass - swept through the orange and green glimmers of this system, motes of dust that shone in the suns. They streamed past in brief glimmers of mysterious light, past all the windows and portholes in the ship. For the first few hours in the system, Captain Scylla had jerked her head up whenever a particularly bright particle flashed by, but by now she was used to them, and her head was as still as it always was - as if she'd been having a staring contest with a Gorgon.

At this point in time, they Spyglass and its crew were in orbit around the brown and mysterious planet, tentatively designated “Prime” as it was the first and most habitable planet of the system. Everything was set. The crew selected, the shuttle loaded, the trajectory of both ships calculated, the local time of landing, the instruments - everything. The golden wisp that was Scylla's greed could almost be felt, twisting around other crewmembers and inspiring them on to great deeds and greater excitement.

And they swung around the planet, a silent mass of metal, with many hearts beating inside...





The bay door at the lower rear end of the ship cracked open, and the slid smoothly wide, to reveal a shuttlecraft perched precariously on the edge of the metal, cockpit facing the immense dark vacuum of space, the planet below, the setting sun above, and the tunnel of space in front.

The mysterious brown planet rushed along beneath their hull as they orbited, as did the specks and flecks of whatever floating dust permeated this system. The red sun of the system could be seen behind them, slowly setting behind the planet.

They circled silently, with the powerful rush of gravity pulling them around and around and down... towards the surface ever so gently.

From the bridge, Captain Scylla could see the faraway white orb of the second planet rising up, tinted pink by the blazing sun behind the Pilgrim-Class starship.

“Everything is green on this end, Peterson. Proceed with the drop whenever you’re ready.” she spoke, rather forcefully, with great purpose, into the communicator.

“Roger captain,” Peterson’s voice broke through, slightly touched with static - background interference in this system was unavoidable - “the shuttle is a-okay and so is the crew and cargo. Dropping in twenty-three.”

Scylla sat back in her chair, hands moving from her lap to her chin to across her chest, to finally moving onto the arms of the chair - as the countdown was ever ticking lower and lower.

Finally, after moments of pointless counting and needless wait, it seemed - there was the last five counts… she waited, breathless, watching the computers and rear cameras…


Five. The docking clamps popped off the bottom of the shuttle with hisses.

Four. The shuttle’s lights flashed on, shooting a beacon of light out of the hangar bay and through the dim, dusty space on the dark side of the planet…

Three. The antigravity came online, a whoosh of a white energy cushion underneath the shuttle, lifting it up a few inches.

Two. The shields at the rear of the hangar shut off with a blue flick. Trace amounts of white gas rushed out.

One. The engines warmed up, bathing the rear of the hangar in a dull orange glow, like those of long-burning coals…

"Shuttle departing from the Spyglass."

Zero.

The engines coughed, or pulsed, and the shuttle slipped from the back of the Spyglass slowly, gracefully, without much ado. The larger, grey ship continued its silent course around the planet, moving into the distance, and the shuttle fell toward the brown planet, silent in the dark. The engines flared up, like a candle in a dark forest, and its falling turned into a more smooth descent with that orange flash, and the shuttle flew down towards the planet, the furthest known planet from civilization…

And the potentially most habitable non-capitol ever discovered.

Peterson was behind the controls of this shuttle, an ensign to his left.

Everything was fine, situation green. The dials and instruments of the shuttle displayed what they should, the radiation alerts were already flashing yellow, as he told they would - but it was purely harmless, a fluke in the systems, the radiologist had said, and the captain backed him up. That was enough for Peterson, but he still couldn’t turn the amber flashing lights off.

The men in the back sat a bit tensely - what could be expected, this was a brand new planet! They were the first to set foot on it. And yet, for all this, there was no conversation. There was simply the low insectoid whine of the air systems, the quiet whoosh of the misty air as it blew from the vents, as oxygen was injected into it. They all looked at each other - all excited, some frightened, and others blank, looking through procedures manuals, religious texts, or months old cooking magazines.

They were all waiting to land, that was all that really mattered. Not talking - how could you talk, on the eve of something so monumental as this?

All they could do is wait - wait for that *thump* which would mean that they, the hand-picked exploration crew of the starship Spyglass had just landed on the planet which could be the future of humanity.




Peterson had steered the shuttle to a very flat area near the yellow foothills, a perfect place to land the shuttle.

As they came lower and slower, he kept glancing out of the side windows down at the ground, like something was wrong with it, like there were carnivorous antelope chasing their shadow, bounding across the fields of low mossy yellow grass that dominated the planet. He kept a steady and well practiced hand on the yoke - he could do this while sleeping - as he silently brought the shuttle in for a landing.

As they were five minutes from the landing site, traveling quarter-sonic, Peterson finally spoke.

“That’s odd.” he mumbled. “It’s all odd.”

The ensign asked him what was so odd - he, of course, being a boy who had gone to school and then the academy, was far from stupid. That’s why he’d got this job of sitting in the co pilot’s seat, doing absolutely nothing. He knew what was going on, there was something out the window that his commander was looking out the window.

“The planet. Out the window.” he looked out the window again.

The ensign, too, looked out the window for the countless-th time, at the dirt and mossy grasses. It was nothing out of the ordinary, from what he could tell. Just the same turf that there had been underneath them the entire time. He asked Peterson what he meant.

“That yellow moss stuff.” his commander responded with a grumble.

The ensign thought a moment, but couldn’t come up with anything intelligent to say.

“And? Haven’t you noticed?“

The ensign couldn’t say that he had.

“It’s the entire planet, dammit.” Peterson growled, “The entire planet is covered in it. Didn’t you notice? There has been nothing else but this plant on this planet, the entire time we’ve flown over it. No forests, no swamps, no grasslands. Just…. Mosslands.”

The ensign wondered if it was bad.

“No,” Peterson said, yanking the vertical thrust control stick, bringing the ship to a slow halt in midair, “that’s not bad. Just odd.”

The amber lights were still flashing as the ship slowed down.
The air was still hissing.

The whine of the engines changed pitch, and there was a rumbling on the floor as the antigravity gyros started working overtime. The air's wheezing had cut out, and everyone was either tensely waiting for the landing, for that defining moment, or busy buckling some gear on or placing something into a pocket.

The rumbling suddenly stopped.

They'd landed on the planet Prime.
There hadn't been a *thump.*

The men were standing outside the ship, in the middle of the fields of odd, leathery moss-grass, as they referred to it. Somehow this landing wasn't as dramatic as they had expected. The shuttle had landed without a thud, the doors had dropped without a hiss, and they'd stepped onto the ground without a footfall or footprint.

They didn't even need their air helmets, or even their pressure suits.
They'd all either opened their helmets or tossed them on the soft soil near the shuttle's door. They almost resembled a party going on a picnic on a planet that was one huge park, or some other less than formal group - rather than the explorers on the edge of the universe that their chests were so puffed out with being.


Miles, Michaels, Monroe, Moriarty! Peterson called for the four technicians.

He paused, realizing that they all had names that started with M. That was weird.
Actually, very weird. That Captain's choice of crew was always a weird one.

But it didnt matter to Peterson. Whether their names were Miles, Michaels, Monroe, and Moriarty, or Flunkles, Fibbleston, Finkelstein, and Funkleschwartz.

"Get the survey equipment out here - the Probe especially. ... I'll get it. The Probe. You bring out the other equipment, get the transmitter set up and working, Moriarty. The rest of you, get some scanners out and online." Peterson barked, moving to the rear of the shuttle, where he opened a hatch into a smaller cargo compartment, which contained items which might be airdropped. They hadn't dropped the probe simply because they knew the shuttle was in no danger - but now that they were landed, they were going to use it to scan, and not scout for danger.

He was in the process of unlocking the Probe's case out of the dropbay (a full two seconds into the four second job, if you were fast) when the ship communicator started squealing like something that made very loud and annoying squealing noises."Ensign," he called inside the ship, still carrying the case, "Who's that transmission for?"

The Ensign called out from the shuttle - it was for Peterson, from the captain.

Peterson scowled and relocked the supports the clamps that held the box in place.

Once that was done, he left the door open and moved back inside the shuttle, to the radio.

She was wondering how they were doing, what they had found, if there were immediately apparent profits on the planets surface and if there were alien ruins like had been said of far off planets and if there was anything dangerous on the planet other than the Ensign and whether or not they wanted dinner when they got back to the ship.

"No, ma'am, there's nothing down here to report, just grass. No, ma'am, no alien ruins. No, ma'am, no gigantic aliens. No, ma'am, nothing dangerous. Yes ma'am, that's good. Yes, ma'am, I'm glad you'll get your one million credit bonus. Of course ma'am. What's that, ma'am? Yes, ma'am, I think we'll be wanting some dinner once we get back."

The transmissions were soon covered in that sort of a fashion - luckily, there wasn't anything to report about this planet. They hadn't gotten the equipment set up yet. If they had been gathering data, the transmission might take ten minutes. But, luckily, it didn't, and neither party seemed to mind much.

"How is it down there?" The captain asked eagerly, perhaps somewhat too eagerly, "What's it like?"

"Well... it's hilly and flat ma'am. Highlands and plains, you know. Lots of grass everywhere."

"Grass?" she queried.

"More like moss... leathery moss. Soft, though. The entire planet seems to only be vegitated by this plant. No other specimen of flora found yet, save larger clumps of the grass that have died... and if we do find any plants other than this, I'll wager they'll be even smaller."

"Any fauna, yet?"

"No, ma'am. We haven't found any other signs of life, but the technicians are getting the scanners set up. They should be online any time." Peterson glanced over his shoulder, trying to see out of the shuttle.

"If you find anything of interest, Peterson, let me know." Scylla smiled a bit. "I'm somewhat bored up here, all we're doing is analyzing weather patterns up here."

"Any results?" Peterson was genuinely interested.

"Actually, we've had some rather tantalizing..."
"Sir!" the technician Michaels interrupted from outside. "Sir, you'd better look at these scans."

Peterson tore himself from the communicator apologetically. "I have to go, it sounds important. More on weather later, ma'am."

"What, what is it?" Peterson asked, moving out of the shuttle. "It had better be rather important..." he muttered, knowing full well that it was probably more important than he wanted it to be.

Somehow, he was exactly right.
Michaels pointed him to a scanner that had just been set up. It was set to check for life... human life. Peterson glanced at the readout, which was a flatly orange screen, and then looked up at Michaels, an expression of surprise on his face.

"Very strange, yes, sir?" Michaels asked somewhat rhetorically.

"Yes..." Peterson muttered, somewhat lost for words. "I don't suppose that it's just a hardware malfunction you pulled me out here for." Michaels said nothing. "What do you make of it?"

Michaels glanced at his handheld computer. The scanning screen was likewise filled with a dull orange on, all around, on the scan for human life. The plants read as a low density human life signal, a dull orange. The scanners interpreted their existence as that of a human life form, somehow. Not a full one, that would show up as white on the scanners. Usually old corpses and mostly-decayed meat showed up as this particular shade on this scan.

"They're showing as human signs on the scanners. Which is quite obviously wrong... as far as explanations go, what I make of it is that I think that with the random evolution of organisms, we can only assume that at some point in time at some place, something would evolve that had a trace similarity to the human race, maybe some similar amino acid or protein or molecule arrangement."

Peterson shook his head. "Explain that to me, I'm not a scientist, I'm a pilot."

Michaels thought for a moment. "It's sort of like my dog, sir.... I told you about Farlow?"

Peterson shrugged. "I remember hearing something about a lawsuit against the Manhattan Ranger Service."

Michaels nodded."Yes... he was killed back on Manhattan... by a ranger-probe that thought he was infected with the Silverside Rabies. He'd been vaccinated for a virus just days before, and apparently whatever the droid scanned for was in both the Silverside Rabies and the vaccine he'd just got. I don't want to draw a morbid comparison, but that's what it's like. Just a little thing in common."

"The plants might have something in common with us, then?"

"Yes, sir, although it's probably a pigment, judging by their colour."


"So," Peterson mulled this over, "...with the random factors of evolution in nature, we're sure to eventually run into something that is similar to a human in some weird way?"

Michaels smiled. "If you believe evolution, sir, yeah. And you said you weren't a scientist."

Peterson looked somewhat disappointed, and shrugged. "Hmm, fascinating, I'm going to go talk to the Captain about weather. Carry on searching for life other than these plants..."



Ferguson walked up next to the somewhat disheartened Michaels. He was grinning. "I love this planet. It's so... different. Everything is new and strange. We know nothing, and we have a chance to explore the world all over again. We get to try to understand things that have never been dreamt of, comprehend a planet so... so... alien..."

Michaels raised an eyebrow. "Ah, yeah. I think alien sums it all up nicely."

PART TWO