One week later those experts who decided to go forward - Charlie, Dash, Jack, and Riley - found themselves undergoing an intense whirlwind of training at Vandenberg Space Force Base, maybe fifty miles up the coast from Santa Barbara, twice that from Los Angeles. It was a beautiful place - coastal - but the quartet had little time for sight-seeing.

Instead they were taught the basics of space flight - not piloting a shuttle, but how to adapt to zero gravity, how to function in a space suit, what to expect in terms of G-force, how to open an airlock. The bare basics, crammed into a single month.

Of the other half-dozen "winners" who had been offered the job, there was no sign. Only the four of them had taken the government up on their offer.

ooc: The brief training you've been given covers a number of skills:

Free Fall - the skill of orienting yourself in microgravity
Vacc Suit - how to get by while wearing a space suit
Spacer - the general skill of "living on a shuttle" covering a lot of little details

None of these are taught to the degree that you get a full point in a skill, but enough that you can try to do them by default.

If you want to say your character has discovered an unexpected talent in these directions, you will have learned the basics fast enough to justify a free learned point in Free Fall and Spacer.

The two options for this are the Born Spacer talent - giving you a bonus to eventually picking up Aerobatics, Free Fall, Navigation (Space), Piloting for spacecrafts, Spacer, and Vacc Suit skills, or Superior Equilibrioception, which benefits Acrobatics, Body Sense, Climbing, Free Fall, and Parachuting skills.

None of the above skills are what I'd consider core to the game, but a clever player can find use for anything.

Talent in either of the above is five points per level. Let me know in your personal development thread if you want to go that route; it is, again, hardly necessary to have a hidden talent here.

After that came the trip itself - a three week soujurn aboard the Endeavor Dragon class spacecraft licensed from Space X. It was a small craft, with no expectation or provisions for privacy, just the four to-be expert guides and two pilots.

Three weeks is a long time in such close quarters.

ooc: Respond to this with a general post about your reaction to training and the space flight itself. Let the other PCs know what they learn about you. Each of you can bring a small personal item with you into space; feel free to indicate what that is.

Riley does generally decently with the acrobatic portions, and she eventually gets the hang of free fall.

Her habit of playing racing games makes her really want to learn to pilot the capsule, but obviously that's not going to be allowed.

During training she finds some time to talk with Charlie about his question about whether our physical laws apply there.  Her theory is that the game's physics are what apply.  After all, all the games they played have different ways of handling the laws of physics, even if the older games are more rudimentary in their implementations.

Riley brings a small bag with her, mostly clothes, toiletries, her phone.  The most important item in there is her GBA.  Considering the nature of the trip, she wouldn't leave without it.

The training for zero G didn't really convey the reality of it well for Jack.

However, the struggle was being so close to people all of the time. The objective became to be as small and still as possible most of the time. Jack gave up trying to not eavesdrop in the conversations when the fact that there was really zero privacy.

Audio books and backlogs of podcasts loaded up on his phone were the daily routine. A direct input with his hard wire headphones (afraid wireless might interfere with some sort of space system). The noise cancellation were only so affective.

At some point in the 2nd half of the trip he let go of a portion of that civility and politeness when the human bodily needs and necessities are an unavoidable reality for all. He felt like he was allowing himself to fall into that roommate level intimacy with this team.

But this was far more strange.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:53, Thu 20 July 2023.

Dash took well to space. Had his frame been different, he might have been well suited to the space program, in fact. Years of science fiction novels allowed him to orient himself quickly.

It was the physical demands that took a bit of a toll on him, though. He knew he needed to keep his mind focused on the training, but he considered the possibilities of what he was really going into to be worth more. The very perception of reality might have been shifted, and as a result, what was possible and considered impossible had to be reconsidered.

Depending on the "universe" they were going to - if that was truly what this was - he would have some experiments he'd want to see run. He was able to ignore Jack's lack of clothing. Dash figured Jack forgot or something, focused on a task as well. On his end, he would have encouraged Riley to at least ask about capsule training. After all, they might need a backup pilot, or she might even qualify for it.

OOC: I think I'll go for that Born Spacer and Superior Equilibrioception, if I have room for that and the sciency/philosophical stuff.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:22, Fri 21 July 2023.

Like Riley, Charlie takes the acrobatic portions, and he smiles at the girl as they both get the hang of free fall to the point where it's ok, even fun, rather than frightening. Literally and metaphorically he gravitates towards the girl, not for any untoward reason, just that he finds it nice to talk to her. She 'presses the buttons' that enable him to talk: the theories about laws and mutability of the universe(s) when overlaid with the actual presence of one, or possibly more, fictional game worlds.

Charlie suggests that solving the maths of black holes allegedly requires seven or eight vairables, each of which might be interpeted at an axis or algebraic dimension. No reason more might not exist unperceived and that this is behind the occurance they are to explore. He offers, "Maybe different sets of values of the unperceived, unidentified variables result in the universal laws within a given universe. So the laws define the universe rather than vice versa. Where we're going, someone or something 'just' changed a value. That means anything might be possible if one can figure out how to make it so. We just perceive it as a different place."

He doesn't object to Jack or Dash, just hasn't had the need to talk to them. Like most techs his age, Charlie considers his phone, which doubles as a datastore and recorder, an integral part of his being. He brings that, a toothbrush and a sharp steak knife.

Charlie is allowed to bring his phone. Apparently toothbrushes and steak knives will be available on-site, and they do indeed have toothbrushes for use during the voyage. NASA toothbrushes.

Eventually the transport reached its destination - visible in the distance was the Anomaly - fifty by twenty kilometers long, though it looked bigger in person. Visible for days before they reached it, growing from a speck to a massive cylinder, some sort of what at first looked like scaffolding seemed bolted to its side.

"That's the AEP habitat," their pilot, Lt Cmd Thompson said. She'd been quiet for most of the trip, busy with the complex task of keeping the transport running, and generally not interested in talking with her passengers. Reserved, not unfriendly, she spoke only when necessary. "We know the Russians and Chinese have similar facilities, and there's speculation that India might be building one. With the scope of the object and orbital positioning, they're easy to miss unless your trajectory is dead on."

After docking, the hatch was opened, and the passengers were able to enter the habitat - almost immediately falling as gravity reasserted itself.

"We don't know how it works," the tall man in the Space Force uniform said as he approached to help the group stand. "But the Anomaly's artificial gravity extends to whatever we've built on it."

"Chief Master Sergeant David Morales, operations officer here at the Anomaly Exploration Project." He's a rugged man in his forties, with close cropped salt and pepper hair, and an intensity to his gaze. "Sorry about that... Thompson should have warned you."

"Sorry, forgot," Thompson said, finishing up her post-flight checks.
This message was last updated by the player at 01:51, Sat 22 July 2023.

"Has everyone returned that went in there?" Charlie asks.

"In the anomaly?" the Chief asks. "Have we lost any teams? No."

"Orany member of a team?"

"There have been a few casualties," the Chief said. "No deaths. Nobody's been left behind."