While service is active, each cause covers damage and oxygen deaths throughout playable station space. Death caches carried equipment and unbanked salvage. Journal evidence, locations, deliberate infrastructure and people already **Sent** persist; an unsent survivor remains in their authored state. No mechanism copies the pack, banks salvage, gains a hidden counter or fails because an ordinary power puzzle changed.
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While service is active, each cause covers damage and oxygen deaths throughout playable station space. The astronaut returns aboard with every item still carried at death, including newly found equipment and loot. Resources already consumed remain spent, while equipment deliberately dropped or installed in the station stays where the player left it. Journal evidence, locations, deliberate infrastructure and people already **Sent** persist; an unsent survivor remains in their authored state. No mechanism copies carried property, creates a recovery trip, adds a replacement tax, gains a hidden counter or fails because an ordinary power puzzle changed.
The apparent resolution is repair plus informed escape clearance: a real way out while still docked, so revival continues into the deeper path. Final departure ends service and completes the story. Continue/load returns before that choice with achievements and world changes intact. A mortal post-credits phase is a separate owner exception, not part of any mystery by default.
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## 1. The Registry — connected alien institution
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**Return and resources.** Docking fixes this vessel as the return address; a protected casualty channel stabilises and retrieves the astronaut’s current body at death. Berth service repairs that same body, leaves unregistered objects at the death site, and returns the person to the fixed address. Current memory stays with the body; ship telemetry preserves records. Ordinary route-power changes cannot disable this channel.
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**Return and resources.** Docking fixes this vessel as the return address; a protected casualty channel stabilises and retrieves the astronaut’s current body and carried possessions at death. Berth service repairs that same body and returns both person and carried property to the fixed address. Resources already consumed remain spent, while objects deliberately dropped or installed outside the carried set stay where they were left. Current memory stays with the body; ship telemetry preserves records. Ordinary route-power changes cannot disable this channel.
Old complements retain active registration after vanished or improperly departed vessels. The comparison's selected story completion gives some of them a quarantine warrant and a fitted containment device: recovery restores both the body and coercive defensive control. Unwarranted stranded complements can remain coherent; human and alien crews explain different forms. The astronaut's registration has no warrant. This imposes no death-count deterioration or hidden future transformation. Cancelling registration stops future recovery but neither erases living creatures nor safely removes control. A prior biological contamination was considered as an alternative; this comparison uses quarantine so its moral and evidence costs are explicit.
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## 2. The Appropriated Unit — human project, alien mechanism
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**Return and resources.** Refuge workers secretly installed an appropriated alien recovery unit on this ship. A protected wreck-side anchor retrieves the astronaut’s actual current body from their individual casualty tag; the serial-addressed unit repairs and revives them aboard. Neither half works alone, and equipment remains as the cache. This explains return aboard **this** ship and why the station contains the answer.
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**Return and resources.** Refuge workers secretly installed an appropriated alien recovery unit on this ship. A protected wreck-side anchor retrieves the astronaut’s actual current body and carried possessions from their individual casualty tag; the serial-addressed unit repairs and revives them aboard. Neither half works alone. Resources already consumed remain spent, while equipment deliberately dropped or installed outside the recovery envelope stays where it was left. This explains return aboard **this** ship and why the station contains the answer.
For the strongest complete version, an outside sponsor selected the test craft and engineered its failure and route back. This replaces coincidence with employer conspiracy and makes the opening less accidental; choosing coincidence instead would weaken causality but reduce predestination. The separate containment disaster retains human responsibility. Protected anchor transfer avoids a finite biomass counter.
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## 3. The Clinic — actual-body triage
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**Return and resources.** Protected triage arrests damage, retrieves the actual body through service routes, resuscitates it and delivers it to the manifest vessel. Nothing stores or recreates a person. Loose possessions form the cache; suit telemetry preserves records.
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**Return and resources.** Protected triage arrests damage, retrieves the actual body through service routes, resuscitates it and delivers it to the manifest vessel. Triage bags and returns the astronaut's carried possessions with the patient. Resources already consumed remain spent, while objects deliberately dropped or installed in the station stay where they were left. Nothing stores or recreates a person; suit telemetry preserves records.
Every playable death site therefore needs a protected service route or bounded patient-transfer reach. Supported gameplay hazards leave recoverable physiology because triage intervenes at the lethal threshold; total bodily destruction cannot be an ordinary death presentation inside coverage. A blocked visible route or local power change cannot silently prevent return. These are content and worldbuilding constraints, not evidence of feasibility.
