Progress is progress

You’re 1.2 km away from the waypoint.

Your hike has lead you up into the jungle, away from the beach. You’ve tried to see if your watch has any information about where it’s leading you. It’s nothing more than a transponder signal. Without more complicated equipment, you won’t get anything other than guidance. Thankfully, all you have to do is walk at the waypoint.

The jungle is lush, but not thick. There are game trails that run throughout it, no doubt created by the native wildlife. The weird thing is, you haven’t seen any of it. Keeping your eyes and ears alert, you trudge a path, with Everleigh behind you, keeping an eye out.

You’re 0.8 km away from the waypoint.

Everleigh speaks up.

“I haven’t seen any other wreckage this way. You’d think that there’s be pieces everywhere.”

“Only large chunks of the spaceship are dense enough to not burn up in the atmosphere. You’re a lot more likely to have a few huge chunks of ship make it to the surface.” You say. Hopefully, most of the planet will remain inhabitable, so long as wreckage doesn’t crater it.

You are 0.4 km away from the waypoint.

“Any guesses as to where we’re headed?” Your sister asks from behind you.

“Hopefully, it’ll be all the survivors from the crash.” You say.

“Yeah, hopefully.” She says, eager to keep going.

You look ahead of you. The waypoint continues forwards, up a steep cliff face. You see a path up, but it looks like it passes under a waterfall. Heading upwards, it gets pretty narrow. Once or twice, you’re envious of your sister. While you struggle to keep a footing on a narrow path, her tiny size makes it easy to maneuver.

Under the waterfall, you see the path continue around a corner. You keep along the edge, getting almost blinded by the mist kicking up in the air, and finally round the corner.

The path opens up to a beautiful spectacle.

In front of you is a lake. You’re on the side of a mountain, so you can see out above the jungle canopy. The lake is fed from a waterfall coming down the side of the mountain, and itself feeds a river below, fed by the waterfall you passed under.

On the left, nestled between the lake and the mountain, is a clearing. In that clearing, you see a large, white structure.

“Holy shit Scott, that’s a forward deploy base!” Everleigh blurts out as she stumbles past you, having just made it up the waterfall path.

You think back to your orientation. You were told about forward deploy bases. Each one was manufactured and sent ahead of the expedition, designed to fulfill a specific purpose, they had the supplies and materials necessary to assemble a variety of colonies.

You watch your sister run over to the base, as you follow suit. Her smaller frame and toned legs make her faster than you, but your size means your much longer stride keeps you not far behind.

As you near the large white cube, you see a terminal on the front. Walking up, you and Everleigh stand in front of the terminal and press the <<ACTIVATE>> button on the front.

A hologram flickers to life in front of you. First, starting out as a huge blob of blue pixels, the image shifts and focuses until it becomes an avatar of a woman. She’s blonde, with an hourglass figure and fills out her virtual blue uniform nicely.

Aphrodite Program, Forward Outpost 141, Please present Identification.

You hold your watch up to the hologram, and you could swear you saw a tiny blue fizzle around your watch for a split second.

“Scott Velentis. ID 88850634. Ship, Avalanys.” The AI speaks your identification, and then looks you in the eye. “You are not of the correct program or rank to activate this station. Please, redirect your Aphrodite Program representative here for activation.”

You look at the AI, unsure of what it is talking about. “Hey, uh, we just crashed on this planet and we’re hoping to set up this shelter so we can survive. Any chance you can override your activation?” You ask. It’s a long shot if this system is basic, but some of these programs had real AI, so you had to give it a shot.

The hologram looks at you and blankly says “Crisis detected, activating personality matrix and situational analysis subroutines.” The image fizzles out.

And then fizzles back in.

The AI is different. She looks directly at you, and her expression turns to horror.

“Oh my god. What’s happened?”

She looks to you, and then to Everleigh.

“I’m here to help, please tell me what’s going on.” She says. She has true emotion, she is a true AI.

Everleigh steps forward.

“About three hours ago, Scott and I crash landed on this planet. Our entire ship is destroyed. We don’t know how many people have survived.

The AI looks at you, and then shift her focus somewhere else. “Scanning for transponders.” She says. A moment passes, and she becomes very still.

She looks at Everleigh, and then back at you.

“2 Human Life Forms detected.” She says.

Everleigh falls to her knees. Tears streaming down her face.

You look down at your hands. You don’t know what to feel. Hundreds of thousands of people, and you two were the only survivors. Your piece of the ship that contained both your cryo-pods must have been the only one to land safely.

You think of your parents. They were on the expedition with you. Your friends. Multiple you grew up with, or had gone to school with you.

All of them. Gone.

But there was still one person worth fighting for.

You walk over to your sister, and pick her up. You hold her against your chest as she sobs, mourning the lives of everyone you had been so excited to begin a new life on a new world with.

The AI wait patiently for you two to calm, and as you set Everleigh down, she calls to you.

“Scott? Would you mind helping me set up this base?” She asks. “It’s got everything you need to survive, and I think you guys could use some rest.”

You walk up to her. She looks at you. “Okay. So, in order to operate this station, you need permissions. Scott, you’ve been promoted to acting captain of the Avalanys. Outpost 141 is from the same launch group as the Avalanys, so this outpost belongs to you. Upon activation, the outpost will split into its modules, and place the modules according to the plans that were created using scans of the planet. This location was deemed ideal for this outposts purpose.”

She turns around.

“Please, hit this activation switch and the operation will begin.”

You walk forward and a section of the wall opens, showing a manual lever with a “deploy base” label on it. You grab it, and pull it all the way up.

The base splits into a couple massive white containers, and each is lifted into its spot by a crane built into the superstructure. Once everything’s done, there’s about 10 huge white containers spread around the clearing, each ready to be set up into a base component.

The AI leads you to one near the lake labeled “Dormitory”. “This is the living quarters, I’d recommend deploying this first, so that you may rest.

Everleigh follows you up to the front of the container, where a small button says <<ACTIVATE>>, it appears to be the same one that activated the AI. You gesture towards the button, inviting your sister to do the honors.

She lets out a light smile, and steps forward, pushing the button and jumping back. The container splits and unfolds itself a hundred times, making it very difficult to follow as it self-assembles. When it’s done, it ends up looking like a set of apartments. Really, really nice ones. With modern architecture, like cantilevered balconies facing the water on the lake, and tall floor-to-ceiling windows than can open, giving you that all-too-desirable indoor-outdoor living. There seems to be about 10 apartments in total, but you and Everleigh just settle on the rightmost one, #1.

You step inside, and the AI flickers on to a holographic display built into the kitchen table. You’re standing in a Well-furnished kitchen, with shiny appliances and tons of counter space. Ahead of you on the first floor is a large living room, with a couch and bean bags set up around a large TV. Behind it is a balcony, with a glass railing. Past the balcony, you can see the sun starting to set over the jungle as it reflects off the glittering mountainside lake. Above you, there’s a loft, containing one California king sized bed.

The AI looks at you and speaks. “Please, feel free to use everything here. The module is solar powered, and panels are located on the roof. Water from the lake has been connected to a filtration system, and the sewer incinerator is online to turn your waste into compost. Please, rest. I’ll come by tomorrow to talk about setting up more of the base. We have a limited number of rations that are designed to sustain the population until farming can be established. With just you two here, we have no worries about supplies. You can find dinner in the fridge, have a good night.”

You catch her before she fades away. “Wait, what should we call you?” You ask, curious as to why she hasn’t given you her name.

“I’m Aphrodite.” She says with a knowing smile.