[Hi,
Another day, another transcript. I segmented off some of the stuff that didn’t matter, to keep the file size small. You were right to have your suspicions: it seems some very weird shit went down here. I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you’re staying safe. We are doing our best here, though every day I think Requisitions is going to storm our place and throw us out. I hope that doing this is worth it. I hope that Eos can really be a home.
Love,
S.S.]
VIDEO LOG #8—Ship Designation CS Wyvern 7079
Day 2: 9:42 UTO
Daley: And you’re sure it’s okay for us to go out there.
Taban: That’s what the HARE said. Look: rad levels are okay. Average temperature is -125 Celsius during sun-facing hours. That’s about the temperatures of the poles back on Mars.
Daley: What is that in Fahrenheit?
Taban: Are you serious?
Daley: I know. My old partner tried to get me to do everything in metric, too. Some things are just hardwired.
Taban: You really are old. Minus 125 Celsius is, uh, about negative 200 Fahrenheit.
Daley: (grunt)
Taban: It’s doable. Our suits will work, anyway. Air doesn’t seem breathable, but when is it ever? We’ll need to bring auxiliary tanks. But the HARE was out there for over twelve hours and it was fine.
Daley: It’s just. It got dark so fast.
Taban: The suns here are weaker than even Tau Ceti—that’s why it’s so cold. ‘Daylight’ won’t last long. We’ve gotta move fast if we want to get this thing fixed.
Daley: Right.
Taban: And hey, will you grow some balls? You were going to send me out there to fix the engine, no problem.
Daley: All right, all right. You’re right. Don’t know what’s going on with me. Let’s go.
[The HARE watches as Daley and Taban step into their cybernetic exo-armor suits, which are scuffed and battered from presumably years of outer-ship repairs and mining. Old-model suits, they look to be of Chinese or Martian make. Daley is breathing heavily. Taban finishes suiting up first and waits for him. They give each other the sign for all-clear and open the airlock of the ship. The vacuum of the Wyvern’s air being sucked into the wind outside is so loud that the recording goes completely silent.]
[Daley and Taban leave the ship. The HARE follows, marking the landing site’s coordinates as an arbitrary Prime Meridian, with coordinates of 53°45′N 0°0′E. The two men shield their eyes and scan the horizon. Except for their heights, it’s hard to tell the difference between them: their suits and golden faceplates look exactly the same.]
Daley: Hey, this isn’t so bad.
Taban: I guess. Careful; don’t fall and break your hip.
Daley: Let’s look around.
Taban: What? I thought you wanted me to repair the FTL engine.
Daley: You can do it in a minute. Come on, you don’t want to look around? This is an undiscovered planet. Where’s your sense of adventure?
Taban: Just a second ago you were scared shitless of even going outside. Now you’re calling it an adventure?
Daley: The fresh air is inspiring.
Taban: Should I get the railgun?
Daley: What for? There aren’t any humans on this planet, the thing said so.
HARE: Correction: there are no humans within the parameters of the area I scanned.
Daley: No one asked you.
Taban (sighing): Okay, fine. Just a quick look around.
Daley: That’s what I’m talking about.
[The camera lens frosts over slightly. There is no sign of the fractal structures on the horizon, the ones that had been in sight during the Wyvern’s descent. The ground around the HARE is icy and flat, but it looks like it has a strange consistency: not like snow, more like frozen cobwebs. Daley and Taban seem to have trouble walking through it. Their boots sink several centimeters into the ground with each step, in squeaking crunches. Daley curses for a few moments, his breathing labored. Taban remains silent.]
Daley: Look at all this. Think about it. We’re the first and only humans to set foot on this planet. If I hadn’t taken that shortcut around Luxue, we never would have found this place.
Taban: Uh-huh.
Daley: Look at that shit. What is that? Snow? Ice? Who knows? It’s all new. Right?
Taban: Yeah.
Daley: Isn’t this great?
Taban: I mean, sure. But it’s not like we can tell anyone about it, afterwards. Otherwise ISF will be on our asses faster than a rocket of snakes on a jackrabbit.
Daley: What?
Taban: Nothing. Never mind. Also, isn’t Sunfarer going to be pissed that we’re so late with their payload?
Daley: Fuck Sunfarer.
Taban: All right.
Daley: . . .
Taban: . . .
Daley: We could sell the coordinates, you know. On the sly.
Taban: Huh?
Daley: You know. Anonymously. I bet we could make a lot of money that way. It’s like—space tourism. You know? Like a secret club. I bet people would pay a lot of money to have access to a planet no one else knows about.
Taban: I don’t think anything stays anonymous with ISF.
Daley: Trust me, it does. And why do they get first claim on new planets, anyway? Whatever happened to the spirit of entrepreneurship? Anyone who finds something first should get the rights to it, right?
Taban: There must be a reason for them to do it this way.
Daley (snorting): I bet.
Taban: . . .
Daley: . . .
HARE: . . .
Daley: Daleytaban. Hapfin?
Taban: What?
Daley: What we could call it. Some combination of our names. That’s fair, right? I like Hapfin.
Taban: . . .
Daley (breathing heavily): What do you think?
[Taban and Daley are working their way across the sticky half-ice in a circle, keeping the ship at their right shoulders at all times. The HARE focuses its lens on seemingly random patches of frozen ground.]
Taban: You hear that sound, HARE? The sound of Daley wheezing away?
HARE: Affirmative.
Taban: That’s the sound of a lifetime of spongeburgers and milkshake cubes.
HARE (processors whirring): These are the things that nourish USER Daley?
Taban: That’s right.
Daley (breathing heavily): Fuck off—with your—alpha wave diet. That shit’s for Martian hippies.
Taban: What are hippies?
Daley: Group of people—back on Earth. In the old times.
Taban: Oh. Did they also support eco-friendly, waste-free eating habits?
Daley: Something like that.
Taban (checking his wrist console): Okay, I think it’s time to head back.
Daley: What? Why? It’s only been twenty minutes.
Taban: Yeah, but I need to look at that engine if I want to make the most of the daylight and this oxygen tank. And you’re fat. So you need to go back and rest.
Daley: I’m fine.
Taban: No doubt. But we really need to get back. This has been fun and all, but it’s not what we’re here for.
Daley: It could be.
Taban: Let’s go back.
VIDEO LOG #10—Ship Designation CS Wyvern 7079
Day 2: 19:02 UTO
[Back inside the ship. The HARE sits in the corner of the cockpit while Taban lies on his back, tinkering with something under the dashboard. Daley enters the room, sweating.]
Taban (speaking from under the dashboard): Where have you been?
Daley (taking off gloves): Out.
Taban (rolling out from under the dashboard): Out? You were out there again?
Daley: Yeah. Just going for a walk.
Taban: You really shouldn’t go out there alone, Daley. What if you slipped and fell on the ice? Or your oxygen tank sprung a leak? Or you got lost? We wouldn’t know.
Daley: Who’s ‘we’?
Taban: Me and the HARE.
Daley: Oh. Well, come out with me next time.
Taban: I’ve been fixing this damn engine.
Daley: How’s it looking?
Taban: I’ll need at least another half-day or so to get it running. It’s a two-person job. The HARE helps, but—
Daley: Uh-huh. So, listen—
Taban: —unfortunately neither of you have any engineering experience. What?
Daley: Let’s claim this place.
Taban: I thought we already did. What’d you call it? Hapfin?
Daley: It’s better than Harpa, or whatever you said for its designation. But I mean officially claim it.
Taban: And how do we do that? You wanna leave a flag with our names here after we leave?
Daley: No. I say we go to ISF and tell them we found it.
Taban: Oh. So . . . No.
Daley: Hear me out.
Taban: Huh.
Daley: We go to ISF, right? We tell them that we found this amazing, virgin planet. But we don’t give them the coordinates to it unless we get credit for finding it. And a cut of the profits.
Taban: Profits? Have you seen this place? It’s a frozen ball of ice in space. What kind of profits do you think we’re going to get?
Daley: It’s a brand spanking new planet, Fin! There’s gotta be something here. Some resource, some chemical element we don’t have back on Earth! Something! They’re at least going to pay to have researchers come out here. We don’t have the resources to mine anything other than ice, but if something’s here, and the ISF can get at it—
Taban: And what makes you think they’d honor any agreements they made with us? They’d say, “Oh, sure, you can have the money, you can name the planet,” we give them the coordinates, and then it’s fuck off Fin and Hap, no one’s ever going to believe you.
Daley: We’d come up with a backup plan. We could—we could threaten to release the HARE tapes to the public. Yes! We could do that. Their reputation’s already hurting bad, with the rebels and the privacy shit—they’d be scared shitless, they’d have to listen—
Taban: Daley . . .
Daley: Listen. This could be big. I know this is your first job, but you’re thinking too small—clients, deliveries, Sunfarer, all of that other shit. But trust the guy who’s been doing this for twenty years: it’s not worth it. I don’t think you’ve really grasped how huge it is that we’ve found this place. I think we’ve gotta take advantage of it. I think we’ve gotta make our mark. It was—
Taban: Don’t say it was fate that led us to this place. Please don’t say that.
Daley: Okay. I won’t say that. But I’m serious. I have this feeling that something valuable could be here. We just have to spend a few days looking around. If we find something, we can take a sample, show it to ISF. We say, “There’s a lot more where this came from!” But we don’t tell you where it is until we get paid. And recognized. You know?
Taban: Daley. I just want to go home.
Daley: So do I. But I want to go home rich. The king of a new planet.
Taban (rubbing his face): . . .
Taban: So, what, you want us to stay a few more days and . . . look around?
Daley: That’s exactly what I want.
Taban: . . . Okay. I mean, it’s going to take me at least another day just to repair the FTL, anyway. I guess we can explore more while I do that.
Daley: Yes! That’s what I’m talking about, Fin!
Taban: But no going out without each other. Or without the HARE. I’m serious, Daley. No going out by yourself.
Daley: Sure, sure. We’re all in this together. No making it alone.