Your one spot stop for the Forum Mafia Among Us Collective Universe. Draws a bit of canon from Henry Stickmin, but vastly original story using Among Us as a basis. please ask me questions i will happily go feral answering.
Commander Olo wants YOU to help fight aliens!
Join the Government today to prevent the Imposter invasion!
Everybody say hello to Commander Olo, the famed war hero and discoverer of the Imposters! This man has been at it for far too long.
The cause for his whip and nae nae? A story far too long to tell but here he is in all of his glory. A fitting start to the lore that will be trickling onto here in the days to follow
Dear Private Kyle,
I hope this letter finds you well. I am currently in the midst of a spot of academic research in the field of robotics, and couldn't help but notice that your name has appeared multiple times across the peer-reviewed articles that I'm referencing. While the information in the papers is quite valuable, I'm writing to you on this day in the hopes of receiving a more succinct answer to my query.
I'm seeking an answer to the ages-old question of "Are robots capable of love?". Not in the sense of a trained algorithm selecting a predictive response to an input from a pre-curated pool of stock answers, but something more... natural. Organic. Unprompted. A sense of belonging or companionship, whether it's among humans or other machines. I would like to reiterate that this is of course purely for academic purposes, and I'd be more than happy to cite you as a source in the finished publication. Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerest regards,
J.P.
One Commander Olo would like to offer apologies on behalf of Private Kyle for the lack of a timely response.
It would seem that upon reading this letter, Kyle curled around his longtime robotic companion, crying inconsolably, apologizing in words that cannot be replicated by any other human tongue on the base. (We are currently investigating this, though we believe it to be caused by his grief at the fact he has not considered that other people might not believe robots to be capable of love, and is utterly inconsolable at the thought of how people may be treating their companions).
I again apologize at the extreme tardiness of this response, Kyle has promised to begin publishing a series of papers on his findings of robotic emotions. I hope this answers your question, please have an excellent day.
A short story set in the Mafia Amongst Us world as written for my Creative Writing: Fiction class this previous semester...enjoy :3
Mira wasn’t a punishment. Olo had to keep reminding himself of that fact, especially as he waited for the dogs to finish their business so he could take them back to their pens.
Mira wasn’t a punishment; Olo was just doing what he could around the base in order to fill the time. Sure, that ended up being a lot of chores and taking care of the dogs that served as the scientist’s test subjects, but he had plenty of other, actually important, duties as well!
He just…didn’t need to do them, very often. Or at all, really.
After all, what’s the point in a security detail when the only people on the planet are a bunch of nerds and their science experiments? Twenty-three scientists, thirty-nine interns, twenty service staff keeping the place run, and Olo. The only one among them who had no real jobs outside of making sure that nobody left the base without a proper suit and radioing Earth once every two months to make sure that none of the scientists had suddenly become wanted criminals.
One of the dogs yelped, its tail trapped in a tangle of bushes, and Olo sighed, stepping over quickly to help the canine free itself.
Olo was an officer for the United Space Force, and he rather thought that the whole branch of the government was rather pointless. Sure, it might have been an important job and an honor fifty years ago when space travel first launched, but now that the bases on all the nearest planets had been built, anything short of being sent to explore deeper space rendered most of the specialized training as…useless.
But the scientists demanded their “safety”, never mind the fact that their only real threat was themselves, and so here Olo was. Standing in a greenhouse on an underbudget station waiting on dogs. A glorified mall cop for a bunch of people with too many doctorates and their experiments. It wasn’t a punishment; Olo was just on the bottom of the USF totem pole and he’d be lucky to be promoted off base before he turned fifty.
Olo resisted the urge to sigh again and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He’d been onbase for several months, but Galactic time took some getting used to. Olo smiled as he rubbed the head of one of the younger dogs, which barked at him, tail wagging. Reclipping the dog’s leash, Olo began to round up the canines. Pointless assignment or not, at least the dogs were cute.
Olo was pretty certain that if it weren’t for him, the dogs would live full time in their kennels in the testing bay. He wasn’t all that good with the scientific phrases thrown around base, so he didn’t know what they were even using the dogs for, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with trying to get animals and eventually humans to be able to survive in some of the harsher climate planets that had been discovered. Mira itself was a series of high-climbing mountains and canyons so deep they easily outclassed the Grand Canyon of Earth. However, Olo knew that some of the planets that the USF was talking about colonizing (or, at least planting military bases on) were full of extreme winters, brutalizing heat, or, in the case of one particular planet, an entirely aquatic surface.
“You all here?” Olo muttered, giving the dogs a headcount as he clipped the final leash. Nodding to himself as the dogs looked up at him with lolling tongues and wagging tails, Olo rose and led the canines toward the greenhouse’s exit.
Olo pressed a hand on the bioscanner, watching as the doors hissed open to reveal the long corridor that would lead to the rest of the base. Whoever had designed the base had to not have known about the mountains of Mira when they were planning it. The base had been built on one of the relatively flatter areas on the planet, and it crossed over a ravine several times over. In order to safely and quickly travel between the two sides of the base, a series of skybridges had been built in order to connect everything, glass floors and all.
Thankfully, Olo did not have a fear of heights. Less thankfully, it had taken him almost two full weeks to coax the dogs into walking over it without losing control of their bladders the second they saw the descent into nothingness beneath their paws.
But that had been months ago, and now Olo led the dogs through the skybridge and towards the lab with their kennels with ease.
It was nearing sunrise; most scientists had already left the cafeteria and entered their labs. Olo and his small pack of dogs passed a few of the white-coated workers, but otherwise the walk was silent, just like every other morning for the past five months.
Until one of the leashes tugged sharply as the dog on the other end turned and ran into a side hall, its leash slipping from Olo’s loose grasp. Olo hissed a quick curse, tightening his hold on the rest of the leashes as the other dogs began to try and follow the runner, thanking his luck that the new hallway was empty.
He caught up to the runaway easily, the dog barking and growling at the door to a closet. “Calm down,” Olo muttered, picking up the dog’s leash, “come on, you know what time it—” and then the smell hit him.
Olo dropped the leashes, his hand slamming upward to cover his nose and mouth as the smell of rotting meat wafted through the air. The rest of the dogs had started snarling as well, hackles raising as they stared at the door, teeth bared.
Slowly, Olo’s arm reached for the handle, his other hand still pinching his nose as his eyes watered from the smell. He hadn’t gone down this tunnel in…had he ever? He couldn’t even say where this led to, but the door should have led to a chemical closet, they hadn’t gone far enough for this to lead to any sort of laboratory. Olo’s fingers closed on the handle and with a harsh twist he opened the door—
Something loomed—
Olo stepped back, hand releasing his mouth as he reached for his pistol—
The shadow fell forward, Olo successfully took hold of his gun, pulling it from its holster as—
The body fell with a thump.
“Oh God—”
Olo stared down at the corpse—it had to be a corpse; no living human could survive looking like that—his brain refusing to process just what he was seeing. The face was the worst of it; blood leaking from the mouth and nose, discolored skin, bloated flesh and half rotted eyes.
But worst of all, he knew that face—how could he not? Having been on Mira as long as he had he could recognize almost everyone here by sight, but this—this was Dr. Taio.
The dogs were barking but Olo couldn’t hear them, they were brushing against his side, but he could barely feel their touch.
Olo had spoken to Dr. Taio at breakfast earlier that day. It had been before he’d gone to fetch the dogs, Rion had sat next to him; they’d reminisced about the food back home. Taio’d been a bit off, sure, but Olo had chalked that up to being tired, not—
No.
No, this was just…
Well, it smelled too bad to be a hallucination or a dream, so that was out of the picture, but Olo didn’t know what Taio was studying. This was likely just an…unfortunate accident as a result of his studies. Something terrible but not entirely unexpected in his line of work, surely. Everyone out here was working on some science that flew miles over Olo’s head; who’s to say one of them wasn’t dealing with…exotic…space…diseases…that caused extremely accelerated decomposition…
Olo took several long steps back, glancing quickly at the dogs. He’d need to make sure their handlers had them cleaned. He wouldn’t mention why just yet, this…this wasn’t something they needed to worry about.
There was an explanation for this. It was a terrible, horrible, awful accident.
A small voice at the back of Olo’s mind urged him to question why Taio had been shoved into a closet. What the suspicious muddled brown stain on his shirt was.
Instead, Olo slowly reached for his communicator. He rarely used it—not too many scientists were actually fond of him, despite their having near-demanded his presence.
The dogs were still barking.
The smell had reached so far into his nose Olo wondered mutely if he’d ever be free of it.
“Officer Olo to Dr. Rion, what is your current location?”
The communicator buzzed with static for several long seconds. Olo tried a second time, but the static continued. Switching it off, Olo knelt down and began to gather up the leashes, ignoring the snarls and barks of the dogs as he began to pull them away from the door.
Dr. Rion would have the answers. Everything would be fine. This was a terrible accident, surely. Something that would someday become a warning for new lab assistants. Olo just had to go put the dogs away and get Rion to confirm it.
It was just an accident. Rion would be able to confirm that. There would be a memorial service, probably, and Taio’s body would be shipped back home to be grieved. And life would move on.
Because it was an accident, and Taio had died tragically while working on his experiments. He had probably gone into the closet to look for sanitizer or some other chemical. Everything was fine. There was no need to start a panic, Rion would confirm it, he would call a meeting afterwards, and they would have a quiet memorial for the man before moving on with life.
It was an accidental death.
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“You’re sure it was rotting?”
“Doctor I’ve not seen many dead bodies in my time, but I’d like to think I know what happens when one stinks like that.”
“Right, right. It’s just, well…that’s quite impossible, you understand.”
Olo let out a haggard laugh. “Trust me Doctor, I’m well aware of how impossible this situation is.”
Dr. Rion was a forensics specialist studying how DNA reacted to various environments in space, as well as the closest thing the facility had to a medical examiner. He’d been on the other end of the base when Olo had radioed but had met him halfway while Olo had finally gotten the dogs away from the body, sectioning off the hallway so that nobody would disturb the body, before returning them to their kennels. They’d resisted, barking and snarling at the body, straining on their leashes to try and get back to the closet, but Olo had gotten them firmly put away.
He'd then had to go and retrieve Rion from his lab, a quarter-miles worth of skybridges away. He’d thought about putting up an alert, but something in the back of Olo’s mind had nagged at him until he’d decided to wait until Rion had seen the body. If there was a rapid-onset rot disease of some kind on the base, Olo would rather not deal with any sort of panic until he had at least some answers.
Now, nearly an hour and a half later, Olo and Rion were on their way back to that hallway, Olo having explained the situation to the doctor.
“Is there any chance any of Taio’s experiments could have done this? Some sort of virus he was working with?” Olo asked, footsteps echoing slightly as the two walked.
“Virus?” Rion asked, turning his head sharply to look at Olo. “Officer, no scientist on this base is working with disease, we don’t have the funding to maintain that sort of work. Taio’s an etymologist; he was doing a private study to observe how scientists of different countries would develop language to better communicate with one another. None of us know why he had to do it out here, but we’ve all got our theories. ”
Olo stilled, grabbing hold of Rion’s arm and pulling the doctor to a halt as the man’s words processed.
“Sir?” Rion started to ask, glancing at Olo, who had a grim expression set onto his face.
“You’re telling me,” Olo said slowly, locking eyes with Rion, “that nobody on this entire damned station is working with disease?”
Rion shook his head. “We aren’t equipped for it up here—sure, we’ve got basic decontamination, but that’s used almost exclusively for incoming and outgoing transfers. You remember when you first arrived?”
Olo did remember. It had been more of a carwash than what he’d expected, having to walk through a hallway straight out of science fiction while it blasted him with assorted chemicals to remove any contaminants. He was fairly certain it was connected to at least one laboratory, but that was likely more out of the necessity of keeping the labs and any sort of technology on stable ground.
“Then what the hell did that to the body of a man that was walking and breathing less than four hours ago?”
Rion was silent, his face going through several emotions. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but once I examine the body I should have a better idea. You said it was down S-37?”
Olo released Rion’s arm, allowing the two to continue walking. “Yeah. I don’t go down that way often—I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for the dogs. They knew it was there, which I figure is more argument for a virus; say that body had been sitting there for weeks, then why would they only react now?”
Rion hummed, shrugging slightly. “It takes a bit before a body starts to smell, and it only gets stronger with time. It was probably out of their range until today.”
“Still doesn’t explain how Taio sat two feet from me and ate pancakes this morning.”
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The smell was…
Well, it wasn’t worse thankfully, but it wasn’t exactly easier than the first time it had hit Olo. One hand clasped firmly over his nose and mouth; he lifted the other to raise the security tape for Rion to duck under.
The corpse was still where Olo had left it, laying on its side half in the closet. Rion grimaced, kneeling next to the body as he took a pair of gloves from his pocket, pulling them on. “Well, I can certainly see why you thought he was working with disease. Especially given he was…not like this earlier. But even if he had the plague, I don’t see what could have caused this level of deterioration.”
“You said he was a linguist?” Olo asked, checking the hallway beyond them. It was empty, the lights in the distance flickering slightly. Not horribly, but the sort of flickering that would cause a headache if looked at for too long. “No reason for him to go outside and get bit by anything?”
“Even if he was,” Rion grumbled, rolling the corpse onto its back, “there’s nothing out there to bite him. We haven’t found any signs of life on Mira, just a bunch of rocks and ditches; it’s part of why this place was one of the first outposts to be built. Well, us and the one back on Earth’s moon.”
“Did he have any allergies?”
Rion fixed Olo with a blank stare. “I don’t know what sort of allergies you’ve seen, but there’s nothin’ out there to be allergic to that’ll do this level of damage in this short of a timeframe.”
Olo grimaced. “Poison?”
Rion sighed, turning back to the body. “That’s…a possibility. I won’t lie and say Taio was well liked, but I can’t think of anyone that hated him enough to do…this. Let alone anyone that would also have the know-how and access to the right chemical combinations. That’s assuming he even was poisoned.” Rion frowned; his gaze fixed on the dark brown spot on Taio’s coat. He reached for it, shifting the clothing aside. As the doctor did so, the clunking noise of footsteps rang through the skybridge. Olo scowled, turning back towards the flickering lights. He hadn’t wanted the rest of the base to learn about the death just yet, which was why he’d blocked off the hallway on both ends before returning the dogs.
Taking a few steps forward, one hand still protecting his nose and the other now resting on his pistol, Olo drew upon his months in training and shouted, “Whoever’s there, turn around and find a new route. This bridge is closed.”
The footsteps stopped for a few beats before resuming. Olo listened for a moment, but they seemed to be drawing closer. His scowl deepened as he called, “This is Officer Olo. This skybridge is closed on my authority. Turn around now.”
A longer pause, this one stretching on. No footsteps moving forward at least, but none that seemed to be leaving either. Olo sighed and turned his head to look at Rion. “Can you handle this on your own? I need to see what’s going on back there.”
Rion didn’t respond. Olo couldn’t see what the doctor was doing from this angle, just that Taio’s coat had been moved aside, revealing his undershirt to be stained that same dark brown color. “Doctor?” Olo prodded, taking a glance down the still-silent hallway before turning fully to the doctor and the corpse.
“Officer, you need to see this.” Rion said quietly, shifting to allow Olo a clear line of sight to—
Oh God…
In the center of Taio’s chest—or rather, in the center of where Taio’s chest should have been—was a large, circular hole.
“What the hell…” Olo stared at the fatal (it had to have been, there was no way ANYONE could have survived whatever had caused that) injury.
“Officer…” Rion’s voice was quiet, his gaze fixed on the wound as he leaned back. “Officer, this…whatever caused this could not have also caused this rot. I’ll obviously need to still perform an autopsy, but I think it’s safe to say that Dr. Taio died of impalement. And that…he’s been dead for several days.”
“That’s physically impossible,” Olo ran a hand through his hair, “I saw him this morning, I watched him eat. Are you telling me ghosts are real and can eat now?”
“I don’t know about that, but I do know this, sir: his body was shoved in a closet. He was killed by…falling onto something maybe, or he was stabbed. In either case there is nothing in that closet that could have caused this.”
Olo let out a quiet curse, staring down at the body. The implications of Rion’s words were plain as a foggy day. Someone on the base had murdered Taio, and then…what exactly? Summoned his ghost from the world beyond and it had just acted like everything was fine? Had someone built a robotic clone? Hologram, maybe? He’d have to put out an alert, though with the communications down getting word to everyone on base would be a nightmare.
“How long is that autopsy going to take you?”
Instead of a response, there was a brief choked off noise. Olo turned and—
Rion was still kneeling next to him. Still staring down at the body, eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar, but there was—
Olo didn’t think he could even begin to describe it. It was blacker than the chasms underneath the skybridges, needle-sharp and about as wide around as a water bottle.
And it was sticking out of Rion’s throat.
Was his heart pounding or had it slowed?
Olo’s head turned—slowly, too damn slowly…
It was behind him. Ten feet? Maybe fifteen.
It was that same void-darkness, except—
—the teeth, too many teeth, too sharp and too many—
—eyes glowing without pupils—
—covered in dark scales and red fur and teeth—
Its mouth—one of its mouths—was open. And that thing, that thin, sharp thing protruded from it, ending in the point that had slid through Rion’s neck. And as Olo watched, the needle-sharp tongue—what else could it be—retreated, pulling out of Rion as he slumped forward onto Taio’s body, fresh blood mixing with old. The tongue pulled back, dripping blood as it retreated into the thing’s mouth.
Olo took two steps backward, his hand reaching for his pistol. The creature’s head snapped to look at him, and its mouth widened, baring teeth as it—it rippled.
And in the time it took for Olo to draw his pistol, hands trembling, the creature’s form melted, shifting and rippling until it was no longer a creature of darkness and blood—its tail melted into its back, its claws withdrew, its fur retreated until it was…
The thing rippled its form until it was a perfect copy of Dr. Rion standing in front of him, grinning and licking blood off of its chin.
“Hello Officer,” the thing said in Rion’s voice, head tilted just too far to be humanly possible.
Its mouth opened, but before it could continue Olo began to fire, three bullets blasting through the air and slamming into the thing’s body. It dropped to the ground, crumpling like a puppet in ways the human body was not designed to bend.
Olo started to reach for his communicator, before the reminder of quiet static hit him. He began to walk backwards, not wanting to let his eye off the corpse.
He’d reached the caution tape, about to duck under it and start running for the radio room, when the thing twitched. Olo froze once more, eyes watching in horror as the thing heaved itself into a quasi-sitting position. “So, you want to play?” the thing-that-was-not-Rion asked, grinning with teeth that were at once human and not. “Alright. Run then, little Officer. And don’t let me catch you.” It licked its lips, tongue black as ink. “Death tastes so much sweeter when it’s won.”
Olo jerked backwards, tearing the caution tape from the wall. His hands shook, but he lifted his pistol once more and fired again, two more shots. The thing flinched, but its eyes stayed firm on Olo.
Olo took a step back, then another, and then he turned and began to run. The creature’s laughs echoed behind him.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The cafeteria was one of the centermost parts of the station. The builders had wanted it to be relatively easy to access, since it would serve as a sort of hub. People would go to eat, leave for work, and so forth.
The cafeteria also had a large walk-in storage closet with a little of nearly everything in it, in case something needed to be replaced in a hurry, and it was faster to get to the cafeteria instead of the near mile and a half trek out to the larger storage containers.
Which is to say, when Olo remembered that he had rather limited ammunition…he ran to the cafeteria first. He’d need to change skybridges anyways in order to get to the communications center and to the escape pods, and it would be the best starting point to warn people to get out of the base as quickly as they could.
That was assuming, of course, that he had beaten the thing to the cafeteria.
There had only been a few workers lingering in the cafeteria when he had charged into the room, and whether from his words, tone of voice, or the sheer panic visible on his face, Olo had convinced them that working hours were over, it was time to get off the damn base right now, and they’d ran towards the escape pods. This left Olo tearing through the storage closet, pulling out ammunition and filling his pockets with multiple magazines as quickly as he could.
Had that thing been what had wiped out the Orion VI? There were a handful of documented cases where entire spaceship crews had gone missing, was Mira about to be the first station that turned Roanoke?
There was a shuffling noise from the cafeteria, and Olo’s head snapped toward the door. Heart pounding, he held his pistol in front of him, picking his way back to the door of the closet.
Standing in front of the door, Olo allowed himself a few more seconds to take a deep breath while something shuffled in the cafeteria, before he kicked the door open, leading with his gun and screaming “WHO’S THERE?”
“DON’T SHOOT!” a man shrieked, throwing his hands in the air and dropping his food onto the ground, the paper plate landing with a soft thwack.
Olo stared at him, hands shaking slightly. He recognized the man, an intern in the animal lab. Olo had passed him earlier when he’d been putting the dogs away.
“Who are you?” Olo demanded. “What’s your name?”
“I’m—I’m Elyot, I work for Dr. Tann, with the—with the dogs, I’m the one that signs them back in after you bring them back!” the man stammered, sweat beading at his forehead as he stared at the pistol in Olo’s hands. “I swear, whatever you think I did, I didn’t do it! I was just getting lunch; I know it’s early but it’s my day to feed the dogs and it takes so long and if I wait until after then all the good stuff will be—”
“Enough.” Olo sighed, lowering his gun marginally. Elyot’s mouth snapped shut and he nodded, hands still raised.
If he knew about the dogs, then there was a good chance he wasn’t the thing. He hadn’t told ‘Taio’ about his daily excursions with the animals, and he didn’t think the thing had ever seen him with them, the greenhouses being far from Taio’s usual walk.
But that thing had also taken Taio’s form for days if not weeks, and it had taken on Rion’s with ease.
Olo glared at Elyot and stepped forward, pushing his gun closer to the man as he asked, “Three days ago, one of the dogs bit another. Which dog was injured?”
“Doodle!” Elyot nearly sobbed, leaning away from the pistol. “Doodle was bitten by Bob!”
Olo lowered his gun. Taio hadn’t been anywhere near the dogs when he’d brought them back that day. Either the thing had learned that information elsewhere, or this man was who he claimed. There was a part of Olo that screamed he couldn’t fully trust Elyot, that there was a chance this was all some sort of twisted trick. But if this truly was a scared man, then Olo knew he had a duty to help get him off of Mira and to safety. “Alright, listen up Elyot,” Olo spoke, clapping a hand to Elyot’s shoulder. The man flinched, hesitantly lowering his hands. “There’s a monster on this base and it’s going to kill us all. Which means we need to get the hell out of here without letting it follow us. You know how to shoot?”
Elyot’s eyes grew wider as Olo continued, and he shook his head rapidly. “N-no, I can’t.”
“Just what I needed,” Olo muttered, releasing Elyot’s shoulder. “Alright, here’s the deal. This thing can shapeshift, meaning that you stay with me at all times. If you leave me, I leave you, understood?”
“Yessir,” Elyot nodded, running a hand through his hair. “If it…that is…Sir, earlier we, that is the lab I work in, one of the workers from the radio room came by and told us that the communications were down for maintenance. We can’t, we can’t warn the rest of the base, can we?”
Olo shook his head. “No. And with communications down, then that means we can’t send an alert offworld. Which is why you and I are going to the escape pods, right now. We see anyone on our way, we test them first, do you understand?” He began to walk toward the door, not waiting for Elyot’s response.
“And—what if, what if they can’t—”
“I shot that thing five times and it didn’t bleed,” Olo said quietly. “And if someone is lying, I don’t intend to get close enough to try them with a papercut. My priority is getting off base and informing the USF so that they can send in the heavy guns. Anyone that we’re able to rescue at that point, I will personally beg them to forgive me for leaving them here. But our first priority needs to be to get off base. We don’t have time to waste fixing the communicators. Now come on, we’ve got to move.”
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Olo didn’t trust the main hallway. He’d led Elyot through the side halls, stopping to listen at every maintenance tunnel and closet. Although he knew that the thing could walk silently when it wanted to, he’d rather not walk right into its teeth.
They’d encountered two people so far, a geologist and her intern. Both had been reasonably able to confirm their identities, and although it only increased his worry, Olo had allowed them to follow him and Elyot.
It was one thing to blindly leave the inhabitants of the base; it was another to refuse them to their faces.
Olo glanced back to look at his three companions. The geologist was Ari, she carried herself with a grim expression, hands gripping a plunger she had paused to retrieve from the last supply closet they’d passed; her intern was named Perx- while clearly riddled with nerves, he held his pocketknife with surprisingly steady hands. Olo didn’t have the heart to tell them that the weapons were likely useless; if his bullets hadn’t done anything, he doubted blunt force trauma or stabbing would. But if it made them feel better to hold it, he’d rather have his companions somewhat confident rather than complete messes.
Hearing a rustling noise ahead, Olo’s head snapped forward again, and he raised his gun. “Who’s there?” he demanded, hearing his companions draw closer behind him.
Silence—Olo was about to shout again, when a young woman emerged from a maintenance tunnel. Her eyes widened when she saw the group, and she yelped, “Don’t shoot!” raising her hands quickly.
“Name and rank!” Olo barked, keeping his gun pointed at her.
“Etta! I work in the chemistry lab!”
“Any of you know her?” Olo asked, not taking his eyes off the woman.
“I do,” Perx called.
“Prove you’re really Etta,” Olo demanded, eyes narrow. “He’ll verify it. Something he would know that happened before yesterday.”
“I fell asleep at breakfast two days ago, those two were both there,” Etta said, pointing towards Ari and Perx. “I had to spend three hours getting tested before Medical agreed I wasn’t sick.”
It wasn’t the most solid alibi, but with a quick glance at Perx, who was nodding, Olo lowered his gun. “Come on, we need to get to the escape pods. Now.”
“Why?” Etta asked. “For all I know you’re taking them hostage, I won’t go along with that!”
“Etta please, it’s an emergency,” Perx pleaded. “If you don’t come with us he’ll leave you here.”
“And what’s so bad about being left away from a lunatic with a gun?”
With every second of delay, Olo could feel their time running out. He didn’t know where that thing was, but he refused to let it catch him arguing with some science nerd. Olo raised his gun and took a few steps forward. “We’re leaving, Etta, getting off this station before that damn thing kills us all. Either you come with us, or I leave you here. What’s it gonna be?”
Etta stared at Olo; her eyes widened as the moment stretched for several heartbeats. Olo opened his mouth again, ready to wish her luck and keep moving, when her gaze shifted towards Perx, a smile forming on her lips. “How cute of you to think you can save them.”
In an instant, Etta leapt towards Perx, Ari, and Elyot, hands stretching and stretching, darkening into razor sharp claws, and sinking into Perx’s chest.
Someone screamed—Ari or Elyot, Olo couldn’t tell. He shot, then again, and again, and again. From this close it was easy to hit the thing, and he watched it fall. Two rounds in its head, one in its arm, and the third—
“Oh God,” Elyot whimpered from behind Olo, staring at the blood pooling from Ari’s chest. She had been too close to Perx—
—she had been behind Perx, too close to get away—
—her body slumped over the monster’s, blood mingling with the hissing, writhing form as it pushed the bullets back out of its body.
“We—we have to move, Elyot. It won’t stay down for long,” Olo said, turning away from the blood and the thing.
“You think you can escape from me?” the beast taunted. “Keep running little humans, but you can’t run forever!”
Olo’s jaw clenched, and he took hold of Elyot’s arm, pulling him along as he ran. Elyot followed, and Olo released his arm so that he could run faster, gripping his pistol tightly as the two of them turned down corridor after corridor, drawing closer to the escape pods but still not. Close. Enough.
“What do we do now?” Elyot asked, his pitch climbing as they ran.
“We keep running, and we get to those pods, and we get the hell out of here!” Olo snapped. “No more stops, no more checking people. We leave and let the people with better weapons deal with it.”
A left, then another. A right, another left, and then—
“There!”
The door was marked with bright red lettering:
EMERGENCY USE ONLY
Olo ran to the door, slamming his hand against the panel beside it.
The scanner was warm against his hand, even through his gloves. It pulsed up and down several times, agonizingly slowly. Finally, the doors began to hiss open, and Olo jammed his arm between the panels, forcing them apart.
Two of the pods were already missing. One was likely from the cafeteria workers he’d sent away earlier. The other, Olo couldn’t be sure. But with what had happened only a few minutes ago, he knew it couldn’t have been the monster.
Five pods remained, each equipped with enough fuel to take it from the surface to beyond the atmosphere in a matter of minutes, once it was booted up.
The world seemed to slow.
He could leave the other four pods; there was a chance, slim though it was, that more people on the base would realize what was happening and would leave. It might be a bit cramped, but each pod could carry ten people comfortably. If the occupants rationed, they could fit up to fifteen per without worrying about running out of food or water before they made it back to Earth.
But there was an equal chance that the monster would figure out how to work the pods. It had posed as Taio easily; it had clearly learned how several of the systems on the base worked. If it could manage to work the pods? The pods with a course pre-charted for Earth?
“Elyot, pick a pod and get it started.” Olo’s voice was low but firm. It would take Elyot ten minutes to get the pod started solo. The two of them didn’t have enough time to start each pod. But Olo knew that he could do a lot of damage in that time.
“What abou—”
“I’ll be right behind you. But I—I can’t let that thing follow us.”
Elyot stared at him for a moment, eyes wide. He looked up at the pod, then down at his hands. His right arm was red with blood—Ari’s or Perx’s, Olo didn’t know. “Y-yessir,” he said softly, before he ran towards one of the remaining pods and began opening its door.
Olo closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, before he walked to a different pod. He pried open a panel on the side and began tearing at the wires, sparks crackling as he tore through the connectors. By the time he’d repeated the process for the other three pods, the one Elyot had chosen had begun to thrum with life.
“Sir, it’s ready to go!” Elyot called, gripping the pod’s hatch and watching the hallway with a nervous grimace.
Olo nodded, running up the small ramp and joining the intern in the pod. The hatch began to close, but Olo kept his gaze fixed on the hallway.
If this was a movie, maybe the monster would have appeared as the hatch hissed shut; he would have seen it through the small window as he and Elyot were launched into the air. But no monster appeared, and as the floor of the pod rumbled, Olo let himself be pulled by Elyot into a seat, his pistol tumbling to the ground. Elyot strapped the two of them in, and Olo kept his gaze focused on the door.
For the last twenty minutes, he’d been so focused on just getting to the pods, that now that he’d made it—now that the two of them were on their way back to Earth, news of the monster ready to be delivered—now that all that was left to do was wait during the three-week-long journey it would take to get back to Earth—now, Olo was left to face the fact that he had just completely abandoned a base of seventy-eight humans to a monster that stole their faces and murdered them happily. To a monster that would tear them apart, when he could have—
He could have—
Could have…
Could have what? Tried to save more of them? He’d tried to bring Ari and Perx with him, but the monster had struck faster than he could shoot. He could have left the pods intact, but then he may as well have signed a gilded invitation for the beast to terrorize Earth.
Olo had done all that he could, he’d done the best with the time that he’d had, he’d done his best.
So then why were his eyes stinging, and a pit deeper than the ravines of Mira beginning to open in his stomach?
He and Elyot would deliver the news, the Space Force would send in troops with better weapons, with armor, with gas, with something that could kill the monster and avenge all of the lives that he’d just condemned.
He had done what he could, and now the world would know about the monster, and no one would ever have to be left wondering what had happened to the Mira outpost. They would not be the Orion VI spacecraft all over again.
Had those souls been lost to a monster like that too?
Was that thing native or Mira or was it just one of a much larger problem?
Olo didn’t know.
He hated that he didn’t know, despite the fact that rationally, there was no way for him to know.
Olo couldn’t even take the credit for the discovery, that had all been-
Oh god the dogs. The scientists taking care of the dogs were still blissfully unaware, would they let the dogs out before anything happened, or would the poor creatures be forced to watch from inside their kennels as the monster slaughtered their keepers? While it slaughtered them?
The pod rumbled, shaking slightly as it began to slow. They’d officially left Mira’s atmosphere, and now, all that was left was the three-week journey back home. They’d be bored likely, once the fear settled and all that was left to do was wait for their pod to touch base back on Earth. The pod had been designed for emergency travel only, but they wouldn’t need to worry about food or water at the least.
Elyot unclipped his straps, floating in the zero gravity towards the pod’s minimalist bathroom. He’d peeled off his coat at some point, Olo wasn’t sure when, and was scratching at the blood on his arm as he moved.
He’d saved someone, at least. Elyot would be able to back him up, they wouldn’t dismiss Olo as having lost himself to some form of space-madness. And Elyot would be able to return to his family, he would be safe, Olo had saved him, that had to count for something, right?
It wouldn’t outweigh the fact that he had killed Ari. It wouldn’t outweigh the fact that Olo had abandoned the rest of the base to that thing.
Olo had done what he could.
He just prayed it would be enough.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Back on Mira, a monster grinned as it took Olo’s form, watching the retreating flame of the escape pod before turning to find its next victim and assure them that, of course everything was fine. Several scientists had just decided to abandon the station. The USF would handle everything, including sending replacement pods for the ones that had been sabotaged on the scientist’s way out.
Space was perfectly safe, just as it always had been.
Rouvan, my dude, I'm gonna level with you and say that I find your snobbish superiority complex to be hilariously iconic. Like, your records say you grew up in less than optimal financial circumstances, and I feel like every time the story of someone who started out poor and made a name for themselves is showcased in the public eye it's almost always followed up with "...but they always remember their roots and stay humble.", but I don't believe I've seen or heard even a lick of that from you.
And we love that for you, honestly! You've worked long and hard to get to where you are now and deserve to enjoy the finer things in life, but do you ever think back to your past at all? Is there anyone back home that you've supported or helped to raise up with the perks and paycheck afforded to your rank? Or is it a survivorship bias sort of thing, a "You can't help someone who won't help themselves." sort of deal, a "I worked hard and pulled myself up by the bootstraps with no handouts, so why can't you do the same?" scenario?
Any spare words of wisdom for someone who's starting out from a similar spot right now and looking up to you as a role model?
Rouvan: -snorts- Humility is a concept used to try and make superiors feel shameful about being proud of their knowledge. I have spent decades studying, and I believe my doctorates display that quite well. I have no use wasting time on humility to do what? Ensure I am "better liked" by my peers? Make it so that any who speak against me are shamed for having such thoughts against such an...'undeserving figure'?
Please.
My advice to you is to not worry about how your peers perceive you. Hard work and diligent study will be their own reward. You do not need to be liked to be respected. Respect is a driving force in this world. It is better to be well respected and publicly disliked, than liked by many and not know who your true enemies are.
As for people back home well, any that are left alive to support are undeserving of it. I do not reward those that do not uplift people that are working hard to learn how to make a difference. My friends, small as that circle is, have made their own way in the world and I would rather die than look down on their attempts by trying to pay their way back to ease, should they be struggling.
As for my family, well, like I said. Any that supported my studies, difficult to obtain though they were, have long since passed. The rest were determined for me to see my own way through so I'll allow them the same...courtesy.
To all of the soldiers here who served on the front lines in the imposter war:
I don't know how often you all get to hear this but thank you for your sacrifice and everything you do/have done to keep the rest of us back home safe.
That's really it. No probing questions for Olo, no jabs at Rouvan, just honest humble thanks.
So what do kinlings look like on an internal scale? Are their organs and their arrangement at all analogous to humans, or something different? Anything wild like multiple hearts or stomachs or no bones or a specialized shapeshifting-juice-producing organ? On that last point, is it even known what biological mechanism allows them to shift?
friend i am but a lowly art student biology is not nor has it ever been my strong suit ;w;
Some random things id like to think they have
that thing cats have or rather dont have that lets them "if the head fits the rest can fit too" (disconnected shoulder blades i think?)
twisting their heads almost all the way around like owls
instead of being more to the left, their heart is more centered in their chests, allowing them to more easily move it around as they shift.
not quite hollow bones, but definitely less dense, again, for malleability
massive joint hypermobility, they can naturally bend their limbs pretty much any way without causing pain
✨ mood ring fur, because i am a sucker for characters with mood ring anything ✨ but beetlejuice gave me a particular weakness for hair so
I really haven't thought about their biological mechanisms like, at all. it just works ;w;
Hey Alwhin, how's prison life going? Is the food any good? Do you get much sleep at night? Do they let you exercise or socialize at all?
Also you're never getting out of there, but allegedly, hypothetically, in a video game, if you did, what would be the first thing you'd go and (theoretically) do on the outside?
Alwhin: Well it's no ocean cruise that's for sure. You'd think they'd at least let me swimming sometimes but apparently it s a "hazard" to allow prisoners access to a pool.
Not that we could really have one out here it's...a lot of snow. I'm not a fan. Water should be fluid not frozen.
The food is good, if you're a fan of porridge and soup. I am not.
Sleeping is one of the few things I can do without guards scrutiny, or rather without being aware of the guards eyes on me, so I do it quite a bit. Exercise and Socialization go hand in hand when we do our work. Some people mine, others clean or do laundry, some of us, myself included, work at the docks!
It's..nice to see the ocean at least once a day, even if I'm too busy loading cargo to appreciate it properly.
In that extremely hypothetical realm, one that, of COURSE would never come to be, well I suppose I'd get ahold of a ship as quickly as I could and take back to the seas. Maybe see if I can hunt down my old crew, those that are still alive of course.
Occupation: Soldier
Game & Role: Invasion on Polus, Crewmate 2
Gender: Nonbinary (He/it)
Affiliation: The Government
Designation: Yellow
Cause. of Death: Slain by an Imposter during the night
Personality:
Neve is pretty relaxed. Almost concerningly so, given the state of the world. But Neve doesn't let all that get to it. It knows that things will work out eventually, so Neve is fine to let things be chill. Even if that means putting things off a day or two, surely it'll be fine, what's the worst that could happen?
Story:
Neve doesn't really have some great claim to fame as a backstory. He was born in a rather large city, blended in with the crowd while he attended school and even through his first job (a bagging clerk at the local grocers)
Then the war started. Neve's family pushed it to enlist, claiming it would be just what he needed. It didn't really mind, and so, Neve went through with it. Joined the army, went through basic, then found itself being shipped off to Polus.
Honestly, the most exciting bit of it was getting the free space travel. Neve didn't feel stressed about the journey, or what laid ahead of him, the whole...aliens thing and all.
After meeting Olo and the crew, Neve let himself relax a bit, figuring he could get started on his tasks in the morning.
However, that very evening, Neve found itself on the end of an Imposter's knife-like tongue. It died there, his first night on Polus.
Occupation: Prisoner
Game & Role: Invasion on Polus, Crewmate 1
Gender: Male (He/Him)
Affiliation: The Government (Formerly)
Designation: White
Status: Imprisoned
Personality:
Makko is, above all else, a coward. Say what you will about him, nothing can hide the fact that he joined the military to avoid having to pay back some loan sharks, then proceeded to run away his first night on duty. Makko is a coward. However, he is an alive one. So, let that say what it will.
Story:
When telling his story, Makko will often claim that all his woes are the fault of his cousin. She's the one that dragged them into trouble with the loan sharks, and she's the one that got captured and imprisoned at The Wall
Really, he had no choice but to promise them the money. No choice but to turn himself in at the nearest recruiting agency and promise to spill his guts so long as they got him offworld.
Basic Training was brutal. But you don't survive on the streets without picking up a few tricks, and sooner than later Makko found himself being deployed to Polus.
Whether the intention had actually been to send him to the front lines to make the cleanup easier, well...Makko may never know. But that was the worry that wormed its way into his ear, and even as Commander Olo introduced himself and his crew, giving them a tour of the base and their duties well...
Makko had always been good at picking locks. And really, the ones keeping the Emergency Escape Pods weren't all that fancy.
And hey, as it would turn out, he wasn't even the only one running away that night!
He was however, the only one to get caught.
He's spent the last several years in prison, watching as the world learned that the war was for nothing anyways. There's rumor he might be let out on good behavior soon. There's also rumor that Kesia still remembers just how much money he owes her...
Makko doesn't know what he's going to do when he gets out, but he does know that he's gonna have to start running, and quick.
Captain Alwhin, formerly of the Submarine Art-ica, is a man of many faces.
…
Alright scratch that he’s a man of two faces.
The first face is the one that led him to the Toppats in the first place. He’s a skilled conman, and an excellent gambler. He used to work at the Henry Stickmin Resort and Casino, however, he found that working at the card tables just…wasn’t enough of a thrill for him.
Which leads to the second face, the face of a man who holds little regard for the safety of others, and is, above all else, an adrenaline junkie.
Story:
Captain Alwhin was born on the Henry Stickmin Resort and Casino. He often joked that he was born with a deck of cards in hand, and even though he spent much of his time earthbound, he would travel to the casino as often as he could afford it.
Which…wasn’t very often since he often lost all of his funds gambling at the casino, but as his skills grew, so did his visits. He began to stay for longer and longer, until he was finally approached by Casino staff and asked if he wanted a job.
Alwhin accepted, however, the thrill of gambling over cards quickly lost its appeal after it became his job. He became restless, wanting to regain that thrill.
And so when he was approached by a gentleman in a top hat well…
Alwhin joined the Toppats, left his job at the Casino, and began his work back on earth.
Eventually, Alwhin was assigned to the Submarine Art-ica, a newer branch of the Toppats that would work on sea missions.
And it was thrilling.
However, eventually, the excitement of being a literal pirate began to die out. Alwhin grew restless, and a touch paranoid, wondering if the Toppats had sent him to sea to rot.
It was this paranoia that led to him working with some of the other anxious grunts onboard to plot to break free from the Toppats, and make their own claim to fame in the world.
The mutiny was a success! For a few days, then he discovered that the Toppats had known about his plan all along. And so, he began to root them out, to find out who onboard was still loyal, and…deal with them.
He got away with it too, for a while. Despite the ship falling to pieces around them, Alwhin discovered the ringleader of the Toppat infiltration, and killed him.
Victorious, Alwhin led the Pirates back to shore, repairing the ship, and allowing those that felt sea life was no longer for them to leave. He even turned in the rest of the Toppat loyalists to the Government! Wasn’t he just so helpful?
But then, his show of good faith was betrayed, and the Government boarded the ship several weeks later, arresting the Pirates and placing them behind the sturdy bars of The Wall.
And although he has been rotting in jail ever since, Alwhin still feels the call to the sea, waiting for his chance to break free. After all, Henry Stickmin did it once, how hard could it be?
Max is loyal, a trait greatly valued by the Toppats. He is also incredibly stubborn, and has about the same moral code as a child being asked if they want to hit the truck ahead of them while they’re helping their dad drive. (The answer of course being YES YES YES). He’s willing to get his hands dirty to fulfill the mission, and he’ll do what it takes to get his teammates home safe.
Story:
Max was born into a family of construction workers. The family business was rather well known in the local area, being the company behind the construction of most of the town after a wildfire had decimated the area.
Growing up, it was expected that Max would follow in his brothers footsteps and join the construction company. However, he knew that he was destined for something bigger. It wasn’t until he fell in with the wrong crowd in high school and discovered that he had a certain knack for sleight of hand that the Toppat Clan fell into his radar.
Once he graduated high school, Max went to college using his family’s dime. He got a degree in business, but once he received his degree, Max ran away and joined the ever-growing ranks of the Toppat Clan.
Induction into the Toppat clan is a several-phase initiation. The first phase has them committing several acts of breaking and entering, as well as other ‘low level’ crimes. The second phase includes armed robbery, and the final phase is kidnapping and interrogation of a target. Including disposal if need be.
Max made it through initiation and was named a Grunt, given access to the Toppat Archives in order to read over past missions and learn more about how the Toppats worked before being sent on his first mission.
However, Max’s first official mission would also turn out to be his last. Max was assigned to go undercover on the Submarine Art-ica, in order to infiltrate and deal with the upcoming mutiny that the Toppats had caught wind of. He successfully hid for several days during the witch hunt for the loyalists, however, in the end he was discovered.
Instead of being kept in the brig however, the madman of a captain decided that the best way to punish the Toppats for trying to overturn their mutiny would be to sacrifice the ringleader of the operation. And unfortunately for Max, that role fell on his shoulders. He was placed in the airlock, with the other door opened to the sea. However, instead of drowning, thanks to some fish bait one of his teammates had given him earlier, his body was eaten by a beast with far…far too many teeth.
The people have spoken (it's me I'm the people). They want a musical adaptation of this storyline. What is everyone's vocal range classification and what are they singing about in their main song?
WOOO ALRIGHT SO!!!
Vocal Range Classifications:
Olo: Baritone
Rouvan: Bass
Rynn: Mezzo Soprano
Joris: Alto
Odil: Alto
Jitil: Tenor
Kyle: Tenor
Main Song Topic:
Olo: honor and duty, something like Seize the Day from Newsies but instead of whimsical newsboys its government agents
Rouvan: probably has the mentor song, smth like History has its Eyes on You (Hamilton) or Or he just has his own song about life in the medical wing dealing with idiots.
Rynn: the dreamer song maybe, about like, what she'd do if she didnt have to deal with the Wall gunning for her. Along the lines of like, Santa Fe (Prologue) from Newsies or something like that
Joris: The fact that she's secretly an imposter, and dealing with the fact that she's hiding from everyone but wanting to connect with them because being a solo Kinling is utterly BRUTAL. Maybe like Waving Through a Window from Dear, Evan Hansen or Dead Mom from Beetlejuice.
Odil and Jitil definitely have like a shared song, and its probably like, the motivational song of the musical. Them hyping everyone else up. Maybe along the lines of The World Will Know or Once and For All from Newsies.
Kyle absolutely has the introductory song where he tells you a little bit about everyone else. Think Alexander Hamilton (from hamilton) or like, Ex-Wives from Six
How is progress coming along with the Olia colony? What does day to day life look like up there? What are the current and long-term goals for the project?
Commander Joris:
Progress is going rather smoothly, we've finished construction of housing for all our current occupants, as well as ten empty single-family houses and two eight-roomed apartments, allowing us to a maximum of twenty-six family units, even taking into account the average Kinling family size of thirteen individuals.
Our day-to-day serves much as the eighteen-hundreds supposedly did, with family units working together to farm, tend to animals, or work in construction as we develop our colony. While we of course have better scientific advances than this period, our community is similar to that of a rural town from this era.
Our current short-term goals are to finish construction of another farm and two animal ranches, one for chickens and one for "Rammys" and regular sheep. Rammys are a goat-like animal however they are highly territorial, and yet have a strong pack mentality, and they are more than willing to consider humans and Kinlings as parts of their "packs" They will serve as an extra line of defense for our animals, should any wild beasts try to go after our sheep. The chickens will similarly be defended by geese.
As for long term, we are hoping to expand the city limits, however we will need to first construct a plant to assemble the technology that keeps the snows out, in order to reduce costs of transport. We will also need to further establish our mines and other resource gathering teams. We are also hoping to develop a direct line with Earth instead of having to travel back to the military base in order to travel.
Kyle is like that one friend everyone has in college. You need something done? Kyle’s got your back. Have a friend who needs a last minute ride to the airport? Kyle’s showing up at 3 am with snacks and caffeine. Nobody really knows how they first met Kyle, but everybody knows Kyle. He’s very relaxed, friendly, and honestly, where he born in a different era Kyle would have made an excellent surfer dude.
Story:
Kyle joined the military in order to study as an engineer. He specialized in robotics, and ended up designing a line of aide robots. His first successful prototype still follows him around most of the time. He’s called it Clank; Clank is his child. Should anything happen to Clank, he would kill everyone else in the room and then himself.
Once he finished with his Masters program, Kyle was shipped out to Polus in order to help fight against the Imposters. His specific assignment was to design a line of robots to fight so that humans wouldn’t be put at risk, however, it was quickly discovered that the Imposters could easily shift into a robot, and infiltrate the robotics lab and cause many problems. (Thankfully, Clank’s charging station was in Kyle’s room…the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the robots.)
Since the robots would no longer be an option, Kyle mostly patrolled around the base, helping Rynn to keep the machinery running. He did develop some robots to make processes go smoother, but since identity verification required at least one human personnel to oversee it, most of his robots were used to water plants or sweep the halls, never given the chance to leave the base. During this time, Kyle became close friends with officers Odil and Jitil, the two being far closer in age to him than any of the other “permanent” staff onbase. By proxy, he also grew close to Commander Olo, who acted as the group's father figure.
As the war ended, Kyle was shipped across the galaxy in order to update various location’s robotics before being moved to the next base.
When word reached Kyle about the declaration of death for Commander Olo and Officers Odil and Jitil, he withdrew from the military, being Honorably Discharged. Thankfully, he had made enough money through patents, as well as time in the military, that he began to simply travel. He explored Earth, visiting Rouvan often, and helping out wherever he could. He claims he’s trying to find himself, but he’s mostly trying to keep himself busy so he doesn’t have to remember that he’ll never see his familyfriends again. He does scattered hobbies such as basket-weaving, stained glass making, and sculpting, selling what he makes in order to keep his funds steady.
Bro has access to how many different peer-reviewed scientific articles in the military database and yet they throw a word genius article with no citations at me??? 🤡🤣 So glad to see our tax dollars going to good use as usual.
Also sorry but I can't take anything a grade-A tumblr sexyman says seriously.
Chief Rouvan: Ah, I see my decision to include something within your reading level is being received poorly. Very well, does this meet your satisfactions? I do hope you will be able to understand it, I'm afraid there are some rather long words. If you can't understand any of them, do let me know. I sometimes grow hopeful that the education system has actually become competent these days.
With the present paper, we sought to use research findings to illustrate the following thesis: the evolution of language follows the princip
What does the sleeping situation up on the Polus base look like? Does everybody have their own room? Is it dorm-style where you share rooms? Or is it just one whole communal barracks? If it's one of the latter two, who rooms/bunks with who? Does anyone have a habit of falling asleep (intentionally or accidentally) outside of their quarters?
So!!
The barracks are definitely more dormitory style, rooms range from hosting 1-4 people, since there's no other bases on planet, its pretty easy to just have a much bigger housing space, and give people some space for privacy. Usually, if there's people in a multi-person room, they're the extra paranoid...or they're related / married and want to stay close to each other.
Or sometimes a single person will have a larger room, if their rank permits it. Olo has a "solo" room, but it's about the size of a 3-person, for example.
Nobody falls asleep outside of their quarters. If they do, they are sacrificed to the lava pretty quickly after that. The rooms have protections against Imposters (usually - biometric scans can do a lot, but some Kinlings are more willing than others to expend the energy needed to shrink into a tiny enough creature to fit through the vents) but outside? Even with all of the security measures, the cameras don't cover everything and its too much of a risk.
There are room inspections once a week, to make sure that the room is clean and..y'know, there's no bodies stashed inside.
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