Home and the People You Bring Back
A proposed design. The people, their projects and the story they remember are examples of the shape and remain revisable; who you reach first is not yet decided.
Yeva
On an earlier trip you passed a window you could not reach: a ward with its pressure light still green and someone knocking. When you finally get there, the woman inside is already working. Yeva has spent months measuring which fittings in that ward still hold, and the record is on the wall in grease pencil. She will come with you, but she hates leaving it — she half believes that record is the only proof she was worth saving.
So the rescue starts with an argument. You can spend precious exposed minutes photographing her wall while the crowd gathers, or tell her there is no time. She comes either way, and a wall you leave is still there if you ever return for it. She checks the air you pass through the equipment sleeve herself, opens her own door and walks. You hold the one exposed junction between her ward and your ship. That is the whole crossing: short, loud and shared.
The airlock closes. For a while she just sits on the floor and breathes ship air.
Three trips later you come home with a photograph of a lit corridor and a pressure panel nobody has seen in years. Because you photographed her wall, Yeva can lay the two pictures side by side, and she finds that fitting in her own handwriting: it was holding on the day the core team came back changed, which nobody in the hospital would say out loud. Without the wall she would only have been fairly sure. She wants to know whether it holds now. So do you, and tomorrow's trip has a destination it did not have this morning.
That is what people are for in this game.
Why the people matter
They are company in a place with none. Everyone aboard lived through the hospital's collapse from a different room, and none of them saw all of it. Yeva watched the core team come back changed. Dorn heard a transfer cycle he still cannot explain, and then sealed the section. Aster, who kept the supply ledger, is convinced that arrivals disturb the station — including you. They remember partly, fear specific things, and disagree with each other. None of them knows what actually happened. The story they carry is a draft of the truth, not the truth, and the player is the only one moving between their versions.
They change what you go looking for. People can make your next trip stronger, and they can also give it a purpose. Yeva's recognition sends you back to a particular panel. Aster's ledger says a shipment reached a ward that, on your photograph, has a different door. Dorn's receiver picks up one pressure panel behind the section he sealed, and an unexpected reading there is reason enough to go and look. The best conversations end with the astronaut wanting something new.
How either could go wrong. If people only dispense upgrades, they are vending machines with faces, and players will speak to them exactly as often as a menu requires. If people only offer memories with no bearing on the next trip, a player fresh from a spectacular run will walk straight past them to the airlock. Each person needs both: a voice worth hearing and something in what they say that pulls you back out.
Coming home
Relief. The airlock closes and the noise stops. However the trip went, the ship is warm, the lights work and the air is free: refilling your tank and canisters costs nothing but a moment.
Warmth, and friction. Someone notices you. Someone is arguing — Aster wants the corridor you came through locked; Dorn thinks that is superstition. You did not cause the disagreement, but what you bring home can change who is right.
Curiosity. You empty your pack onto the table: salvage, a strange part, photographs. Sharing a record with someone is a choice, and so is keeping it. People respond only to what you actually show them and what they themselves lived through; nobody silently learns what you know.
Departure. Then you pack again. Air, equipment and room for what you hope to find all come out of the same limited carrying space, so every departure is a small bet about what the next trip needs.
Every conversation and project can wait. If you come home hungry to go straight back out, you can: nobody sulks, nothing decays and nobody forgets what they wanted to show you.
Lending a part
Lending equipment to people aboard is a current proposal that the owner has tentatively kept. Some people need the one thing you fight with. Dorn has built a receiver that can listen to a single pressure panel deep in the station, but it needs a splitter — the same kind of part sitting in your weapon rig. Yeva has rebuilt a packing bench that can pack canisters with more usable air than an ordinary refill, and it needs the same part.
Lending it is a real trade. Seat the splitter in Dorn's receiver and you get one pressure reading from the panel behind his seal. It drifts and then settles back, which is not what he expected — and he says at once that a failing sensor would look exactly the same from here. The reading proves nothing about the section or whether it is safe. It is a very good reason to go and inspect that panel yourself. Move the splitter to the bench and the canisters you pack there carry more usable air out with you. Take it back before you leave and you keep both results — the reading you heard and the canisters you packed — with your rig whole again. Leave it seated and the bench keeps working, but that part is not in your rig on this trip.
The cost is time aboard and, if you choose, a part you do not carry. The payoff is a concrete change: better air in the canister you are about to rely on, or a reason to go and look at one specific panel.
Dying, living and going back out
Whatever you were carrying comes home with you, whether you walk back or wake up aboard after dying. Temporary combat upgrades you earned during the trip end either way — each expedition starts a fresh climb toward spectacular power with the equipment and knowledge you already own.
Walking home alive leaves the station as you left it: the ground you cleared stays clear and the route you learned still runs. Dying rearranges the unconnected parts of the station, so the next trip starts with a place that has partly changed — which renews the mystery as much as it costs you a route. People already aboard stay aboard either way. What happens to someone who is partway through their crossing when you die is not yet designed, and the example above shows only a completed arrival.
Why you leave again
Because someone asked you a question you want answered. Because a canister you packed with Yeva lets you reach a room you could not reach before. Because Aster is sure the door on your photograph is wrong, and you want to prove it either way. Home is where the next expedition gets decided.
Project reference
The people's projects are proposals. Each one needs that person to set it up, and afterwards supports a limited amount of solo use; later new testimony or changes still need them. No project is required for basic equipment or refill, and parts such as the Salvage Cycler and Stride Switch can be found and used without these people.
| Project | Setting it up needs | Once set up, you can do alone | What remains after you take a lent part back |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Collar receiver — Dorn wants to know whether the section he sealed behaved as expected | Dorn installs the tap, fixes which one panel it listens to and tells you what he expects | Lend the splitter, take one reading of that panel, record it, take the part back | The recorded reading and Dorn's statement. It is one dated reading, not proof the section is safe |
| 2. Packing bench — Yeva wants her compressor routing to make expeditions better | Yeva installs and routes it, Dorn services the compressor, and both see one cycle through | Lend the splitter and pack canisters | Canisters already packed keep their improved fill |
| 3. Ledger table — Aster wants to test her memory against what you actually recorded | Aster brings her ledger and registers a dated entry | Line up your committed records against registered entries and record the overlay | The overlay. New recollections still need Aster |
| 4. Material tray — Mara wants to stop calling different scrap "the same rubbish" | Mara installs shields, the cradle and a visible refusal for protected items | Lend a Salvage Cycler, choose an unprotected sample, commit or cancel, record the response | The recorded response. A committed sample is consumed; no recipe or new part appears |
| 5. Gait rail — Ivo wants to tell deliberate movement from being carried | Ivo repairs the carrier, marks the span and commissions the lamps | Lend a Stride Switch and perform both passes yourself, then record them | A trace of only the passes you actually performed |
Exact fixture controls, readiness and oxygen quantities for the receiver and bench are in Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities. The Yeva and Dorn homecoming scene is Coming Home; its working details are in Home Projects. Each person's rescue and home scenes are in Cast And Short Rescue Map. How carried objects are stored across return and death is in Save And Content State. The expedition this page follows is in The Game.
Still open
Who is rescued first and the final cast; what happens to a person when the astronaut dies partway through their crossing; whether rescued people can later be endangered; how much colony management exists beyond these projects; and the final story every survivor is half-remembering.