| Generated by Google Gemini Pro and Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
August 24, 2526. The passengers are wildly impressed with how easy it is to
walk over the land. The Integrated Multipurpose Suits aren’t just fancy,
thin vacuum suits. They are made of multiple layers, one of which is
specifically designed for muscular support. It’s composed of extremely
strong threads, woven together to mimic the arrangement of natural muscles.
You can feel yourself taking it step by step, and it’s not like it doesn’t
burn any calories at all, but it definitely feels like your arms and legs
are tied to an invisible friends who is doing the majority of the work for
you. So, it’s great. Despite the fact that the world is ending, everyone
mostly feels like they’re going to make it. There is just one other little
problem.
What the guy in the other rover was feeling was claustrophobia, but being
outside like this has not diminished that. They’re all experiencing a very
common psychological phenomenon called encapsulation anxiety. In order to be
able to move around freely while being protected by the IMS, the user must
inherently sacrifice their freedom within the suit. That’s actually why it
became more common for people to just wear them all the time. Even if you
don’t use your helmet and gloves unless you need them, experts recommend
growing comfortable with your suit; even sometimes emotionally attached to
it. The passengers here do not have that luxury. This is their first time,
and it’s freaking them out. Luckily, there are safeguards in place, which
stop them from being able to start removing components on their own in such
a hostile environment, but a few of them have tried, driven purely by their
panic and instinct.
These two aspects of the journey are at odds with each other. The muscular
support layer, and other lifesaving features, are allowing them to keep
walking for an extended period of time. The cleithrophobia, however, is
making it hard to do that psychologically. They have had to take multiple
breaks just to let people move around less encumbered. There were two vacuum
tents in the rover. One of them fell out of its case, and was damaged in the
wreck, so they only have one, but it’s better than nothing. They can all
technically fit in it at the same time, they just have to take turns
stretching and sprawling. They need to sleep anyway, though, so Breanna has
decided to take these frequent stops as an opportunity to encourage a
segmented sleep schedule. None of them has done that before—except for Cash,
who worked many split shifts on the Sentinel—but everyone has napped, and
they understand the stakes, so they’re figuring it out. They have no choice.
They would still rather find transportation.
“I see something up there.” They’ve been walking in a sort of random
formation. Just like the caravan, Breanna and Cash aren’t always in the
front.
“What is it?” Breanna asks.
The passenger is up on a ridge while everyone else is still behind it.
“Uhh...the magnification on this head up thing says two kilometers. I don’t
know what that means, and I can’t actually tell what it is. The little man
in here says it’s artificial because of ninety degrees?”
“Yeah, nature doesn’t really make ninety-degree angles,” Breanna explains.
“It’s probably a manmade structure of some kind. It could be a permanent
outpost, or it could be debris that got thrown around, just like we did. Is
it in the same direction that we’re headed?”
“It’s a little out of our way,” the passenger replies. “You’ll have to
decide whether we go for it, or keep trying to find those connecting spine
things that the domes have.”
Breanna makes it over the ridge, and looks out at what he’s seeing. She
squints her eyes, but it’s obviously not going to help. If the sensors can’t
identify, she’s certainly not going to be able to. “This is one of those
voting times we talked about yesterday. Everyone needs to get up here and
take a look. Then we’ll raise our hands for who wants to go check it out.
“We don’t just need a majority, but a supermajority. That means eight out of
the ten of us need to agree.”
She waits for everyone to get a good look at the difference between the main
quest and the side quest, and then they take a vote. It’s unanimous because
it’s not too far out of their way, and it could lead to their salvation. The
answer turns out to be rather complicated. Once they reach the object, they
find that it’s a partially sunken, dusted over rover. A quick link-up shows
that it was one of the ones from the caravan. There are no bodies inside,
alive or dead. The assumption is they got stuck, and had to get out. The
question is whether the other rovers let them distribute amongst them, or if
there forced to go on foot, just like Breanna’s ragtag team. Optimism says
the former, of course. That’s one reason why they deliberately grouped
Breckenridgers and Levins together. They wanted everyone to have some kind
of connection to every other vehicle, so if some crap like this happened, no
one would get screwed.
The other feeling of optimism is that the caravan managed to get out at all.
It might have just been this one vehicle, and maybe another, but one can
hope that all of them survived the thermal cyclone, and are continuing
northwards where it’s safe. That is what Breanna and Cash are choosing to
believe right now. They’ve been growing close over the last couple of days.
As harrowing as their adventure has been, the walking portion has been
rather uneventful. You have to spend your time doing something. Some people
are just watching TV on their HUDs, but the two leaders have been talking,
and wishing they were friends prior to this. Maybe something more? Breanna
knows that it’s not the time to push for anything like that right now.
Survival is paramount.
“Can it be fixed?” one of the passengers asks.
“You know this stuff better than we do,” another adds. “Maybe they abandoned
it because they didn’t know what they were doing.”
“We’re not mechanics either,” Breanna admits. “So we’re not the ones to ask.
There’s one among us who would know best.” She chuckles when they look at
Aeterna, the weird immortal. “Not her. Thistle, damage report.”
“The vehicle could be repaired, but it would have to be dislodged from the
mud first. There is no equipment available to perform such a maneuver.
Recommendation: salvage anything left inside, and return to the trek.”
“Thank you, Thistle,” Breanna says. “I’m overriding that recommendation,”
she says to the people. “Our friends who were in this car weren’t stupid.
They would have taken anything valuable, and I can’t vouch for the stability
of this thing. So we leave it alone, and leave. I’m not taking votes on it
this time. It is not worth the risk.”
“We might need to vote on this, though” the guy they rescued from the other
rover says, looking out on the horizon.
“What is it?”
“More ninety degrees...and far out of our way.”
