Sophie woke up the next day, in her bed, and in the dark. She felt around for her alarm clock and looked. In was half past six. She had another hour before her alarm went off but she felt awake. With a little groan, she got into a sitting position, slowly moving her hand across her eyes to get the little crusts away that had formed in the corners of her eyes, and then yawned loudly, opening her mouth as far as it went. Well not completely awake, but good enough. Last night after she had gotten out of the POD, she had asked for some dinner from Frank and he had brought her a delicious meal of sweet mashed potatoes, some gravy, string beans and a grilled sausage. She had needed it at that point in time as she had spent around 7 hours in the POD. He had also brought her some study materials which first really didn''t catch her interest after the whole shooting a person at point blank and starving situation. But when she looked at the topics she had devoured them with equal enthusiasm as she had showed the plate of food.
The first was lured from the game describing the origins and main points of the war between The Division and The Federation. As in any war it was about power, money and revenge, but some interesting differences caught her eye. It had all started a little over a century ago when a new planet was discovered by the Federation. The planet, only described as PL3341, was inhabited by a species that was new to the Federation and after a year of observing them they were coined the Divided. The planet they were on was extremely rich in resources, and thus a potential hostile takeover by the Federation was discussed. Early reports stated that the Divided were, as their name stated, divided to the core, nothing was shared everything was taken. It was a culture so different from what the Federation was used to that it was decided to observe and experiment with this newfound species. In the years following, the Federation took thousands of Divided from their home towns to stick them in situations that where new and dangerous for them, or they just took them apart. The Divided were a sub species of the classic human anatomy, with one big difference and that was that they seemed to be able to assimilate machinery into their bodies. Not much, and the amount seemed to vary across individuals but it had the strange consequence that they had become something more than just humans. The Federation was puzzled by what to do with them, on one side were those who called for a purge, the Divided were too dangerous, their potential to outgrow the military strength of the federation was too large, and the planet too rich in resources to be left to barbarians. But many did not want to hear this opinion, they would ask questions like, how are they going to conquer if they haven''t even left the planet? When they are not even working together? They are called the Divided are they not? Grumbling about others stupidity the purge fanatics became less and less until there were only two sides left. On one side, there were those that argued to keep observing, and then if there was enough and significant data, decide if they could be used or be destroyed. The Federation had destroyed many a civilization that proved more of a hassle then an asset, especially when resources where up for grabs.
The winning side was not so patient, seeing the potential of their anatomy and the way they refused to work together they decided that they would be ideal to form a military asset, either they would find out how to assimilate machinery or they would be used as fodder at the front lines. The plan was simple in theory but many a scientist today would have thought them mad. The plan was to build a network, a computer network inside the minds of a legion of Divided. Why not right, the Divided were not a group that could work together in natural ways, but what if they could communicate as one, work as one, suffer as one, be as one. And not surprisingly for military experimentation, suffer they did. The first batch of five thousand died within the week. When the scientists of the Federation downloaded a large file into the minds of the Divided, they fell over as blood ran from their ears and nose all their brains had been boiled by the power unit overheating. The second attempt was less of a disaster, but one by one the Divided cracked under the mental pressure of having 5000 other Divided in their brain. Only one remained in the end, The First, and he would teach subsequent generations of legionnaires how to communicate, how to divide their collective attention, how to operate as a group, as a unit, as their own Division.
Thus, the Division was born, and under the leading hand of the First they were getting attention from the higher ups in the Federation. They would be sent to war mongered planets to assist the favored side, to break rebellions or just to observe as a very efficient information network. Some Divided didn''t make it, killed in action or forced out by their own, there was a constant push to survive, to only let the strong into their ranks. Ten years passed and the legion, or as the called themselves, the Division, was now the elite force within the Federation. Thousands of Divided had to die and there were still only five thousand. Attempts to make more legions of interconnected Divided all failed, and many saw that as the recognition that the First deserved, he held the Division together; he was the mind that subdued all. As they made their way to a colony planet not so far from their home world, the First decided on a whim that it would be a good to see their home planet once again after ten years. Many say it was destiny, some say he knew, but everyone agrees that the decision was the start of the war. Home had been turned into one giant slave pit, were all divided were working in the mines, mining resources for the federation. It is said that the moment The Division laid eyes upon their home; they went mad and slaughtered everyone within the personnel carrier that was transporting them. It was the last time the First made contact with the Federation, stating that as of now the Division was in a state of war with the Federation. Any and all that were affiliated with the Federation and came in contact with a Division member would be killed on site. They left their home planet before the Federation could send their armed forces. It is not clear how they got everybody off exactly but later they found traces of a teleportation device of Federation making.
After that it has been a guerrilla war, the Division has no main headquarters, the First has not been seen ever since, and the Division seems to be endless. The Divided have joined forces, killing many Federation lives in the process. Like the one Sophie had witnessed in the space station she was still in. There was so much more she could read about the war between the two arch enemies, and like many before them the Federation had created their own worst enemy. Based on only this information she had to admit she was kind of rooting for the Division, even if she was almost killed by one of their traps. As she read, the seeping and growing hatred towards the Federation was only growing, this whale of an existence just did what it felt like. She was definitely going to try to throw some sand in their perfectly oiled machines. The other two topics were just as interesting, and better yet, a little less on the reading huge slabs of contend. The first was the way that the credit system was put into place in the game. She had looked through all the information that Frank had pulled of the forums and had concluded that Credits were actually pretty close to XP. Mostly, credits could be used like any other game or real life currency. To buy stuff. But that was actually just a side project for credits in Ethereal Space. The main purpose of credits was to upgrade your Aptitudes. Now why would you want to do that when it takes forever to grind your way up? Well some people had painfully found out what it meant to have an aptitude of 1.5 in any aptitude. It meant you couldn''t go higher than GEN1. which meant you couldn''t be stronger for example then your normal self. So, to improve upon your natural self, you could farm your way towards credits, so you could spend those credits to upgrade yourself. I had mistaken the aptitudes for something rigid, while, in reality you could become extremely high in intelligence even if you were the dumbest hill billy on the planet. You just had to spent enormous amounts of credits. Just like in real life I suppose. But from there on, it was easy to see how credits were just another system for XP. In classic RPG games, you gathered XP to level up and increase your attributes, a rather rigid system compared to the way they had solved it in ES (Ethereal Space, or at least how the lazy people of the internet had started calling it after about three weeks). If you wanted to spend all your credits on a massive space ship or some sort of Mech and let those be a compensation of your failing self, then you could. If you wanted to spend all your credits on your linguistic aptitude and study the languages of the universe (thousands upon thousands, by the account of the developers) then you could. The only thing that was missing was a level, but even in that, it could be argued, ES provided. Someone, who by all means and accounts risked his live for this info, had managed to get all of his Genesis stats up to Generation 2, then, as that happened he glowed and an exponent 2 appeared next to his name. It didn''t really do anything and only functioned as a meter for your strength, but that was the same as a level ever did.
The last topic was a little obscure and hard to find a lot of information about on the forums. The relative unknown feature, could be of massive importance if used correctly. In the game, there were stock markets. Real and functioning stock markets in which you could invest your hard-earned credits and which responded to real events within the game. At the moment, she could not check it out for herself, as she had to visit a trading center of the Federation to receive a trading permit, but all the big companies in the federation were presented, and even a couple of companies that were owned directly by the Federation. Now why was this important? First players had influence on the stock market, by performing quest and actions that are either in favor or against certain companies or factions. If you know that a certain quest will finish soon, and this will affect the market in a certain way, you can short the market by loaning the stocks you are interested in from third parties and selling them back to the loaner cheaper than you got them, and thus earning the difference in credits. But wait, what? That doesn''t seem to make sense. Well imagine it like this, you ask for a loan of let’s say 4 stocks worth 100 credits in total. You will get the credits but not the stocks. Now here comes the magic, once the stock starts lowering in price you buy 4 stocks for let''s say 80 credits and then you pay off the loan with those 4 stocks, in the end earning you 20 credits. Simple, right? Yeah. So, if you know a certain stock will grow due to your actions you can just buy the stocks yourself. It is the extra risk that is supposed to make the quest more exciting and if done right, could be extremely profitable as this kind of inside information was illegal in real life. After she read the information, she asked Frank to set up a data mining program on the forum, the big social media sites and some other game fora and stream sites to dig up all information there was about the various corporations and their active quest and goals. It would not be of use to her immediately but knowledge was power, and it seemed that in ES it was not different.
She got out of bed and did her usual routine; breakfast and the newspaper were already on the table as she came down stairs so she ate the egg with ham and cheese in silence while she looked through the newspaper. Nothing much happened today, except for some vague article about a guy committing suicide on page 20. His name wasn''t even mentioned or why he had done it. Just that it had happened after his two kids had died in an accident, and nothing about what had actually happened in the accident. This was a perfect example of what current media had come to it seemed, complete apathy of the facts, just writing filler pieces to make the paper look bigger, it would have been a perfect click bait article. Sad really, it could have been a good story, if the person writing it had cared a little more. She turned over the last page, the weather, and closed the newspaper, stood up from her seat and went to do some exercises. As she worked the bike, treadmill and wooden dummy in a thoughtless flow she looked out of the massive window and into the green scenery. The sun was shining and the raindrops that laid around lazily on the surface of the window, the table and the little blades of grass reflected the rays with as much intensity as they could before disappearing into a fog of water molecules. As she was finished, the water molecules had gathered and were now teaming up to save the rest of their kin from the blazing enemy in the sky by forming a fog that deluded the rays of sunshine. It either rained, or it was foggy, those were the choices in the morning. She liked to watch the rain struggle to keep its foothold on the ground. Desperately struggling to stay in its solid form. Glad that the sun always won, even if it only brought more rain in an endless struggle between a distant ball of fire and the earthly water molecules, she took of her shoes and went barefoot in the direction of the pool. Getting everything off next to the pool she took a dive. After 10 minutes of just floating a little, relaxing and looking at the beautifully painted ceiling of the swimming pool she got out and saw Frank waiting for her with a bathrobe and a towel. She gently smiled and walked up to him before greeting him "Morning Frank, any news I should know of? How is the data mining coming along?".
Frank noticed that she was done and now walking towards him and did a short nod with his head before responding to her "a good morning indeed Miss, no news, Data mining program has been written and is currently running, I will have a report of the most concrete findings for you tonight. Shall I also print some information on how to profit from stock markets?" Sophie grabbed the towel and started drying herself off while she said "That would be wonderful, thanks." Done and dry she gave the towel back and without wasting time with putting on the bathrobe that she would have to take off again ten seconds later she walked towards the POD and pressed it open. She glanced at Frank who had followed her to the entertainment room and smiled "I will be off again then, if I forget to get lunch then please sent me a message from the terminal." She stepped upon the ladder and into the fluid filled coffin, the Nano-tech embracing her like a long-lost friend, and said "Close lid" before everything went black.
She woke up, on the ground, staring at the white tiled ceiling. She had seemingly fallen back down when she had logged out, but it didn''t really matter. She got back up, a lot easier than the first time she had done the same movement, and stood. She looked around, thinking how she was to get out of this place. She walked towards the door and looked to where there was supposed to be a door handle only to find nothing. There was nothing more on this side of the door then the window and steel. She could try to break it open but she really didn''t think that that was an option. She walked back and stared at the mess that had been a ventilation shaft. This was going to be a pain. The tube that she had fallen out of was still intact, but had a steep upwards gradient. She sighed and looked around one more time, making sure there was nothing worth taking in the room. There wasn''t. She got onto her hands and knees and started crawling back into the square steel tube. The second time seemed to be even worse than the first trip, not only was the gradient of the first few meters a hindrance it proved to be very challenging to climb something that technically had no handles for your feet or hands. As Sophie puffed and cursed underneath her breath, she was reminded of the time she tried to climb the slide in an amusement park. It was the same experience, the difference being she had grown bigger, but the slide hadn''t, and this time she was pretty sure no one would almost break her nose by sliding her legs from under her.
An hour later and two screams of frustration and deviance later and she let herself fall out of the shaft on the other side. Softly on the bed that was obviously still there. She was extremely glad babies didn''t remember being born. She could totally imagine that being one of the first things to evolve out of the population as all that had experienced it must have been heavily traumatized. Breathing in and out in long and deep breaths she tried to grab herself together again before she climbed off the construction and finally placed her boots on the beautiful white floor tiles. "Ahh freedom, suddenly you don''t smell so damp and stale anymore." she huffed while taking in deep breaths of damp and stale air, closing her eyes and moving her hands above her head stretching a little. One deep breath outward and her eyes snapped open, and she started walking towards the door, through it and into the tunnel that would lead to the vacuum of outer space. She didn''t like going back to the feeling of being almost weightless and being dependent on the oxygen on her back, but she had nothing left to do here. It was time to search the rest of the moon and find a way to get off.
She stood before rusted steel doors that would take her back up, shining her flashlight one more time into the darkness that was now behind her. "Rest in peace old man" she whispered and went through the first rusted door, the airlock sucking all oxygen away and her visor slamming shut, the O2 meter going from infinite to one hour and forty minutes. The weight she had gotten used to was relieved, and she felt a little light headed by the sudden change in gravity. The second door opened, and she made a jump forward, but due to the change she used way too much power and slammed against the ceiling. "Dammit, gravity you tricky bastard!" she cursed into her visor, making it foggy. Ahh it’s good to be back she thought. She shook her head a little to get rid of the dizzy feeling and took another jump, this time much more controlled. It took her a couple of jumps to get back into the rhythm, but after that it went much more smoothly. She took the opportunity to look at her Genesis.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Genesis:</td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sophie</td>
<td style="text-align: center">AP</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN</td>
<td style="text-align: center">PROG</td>
<td></td>
<td style="text-align: center">AP</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN</td>
<td style="text-align: center">PROG</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Physical:</td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td>Practical:</td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Speed</td>
<td style="text-align: center">3.7</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">20%</td>
<td style="text-align: left">Pilot</td>
<td style="text-align: center">2.1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">0%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Strength</td>
<td style="text-align: center">2.9</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">25%</td>
<td style="text-align: left">Engineer</td>
<td style="text-align: center">3.7</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">36%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Agility</td>
<td style="text-align: center">3.9</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">5%</td>
<td style="text-align: left">Spatial awareness</td>
<td style="text-align: center">2.2</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">10%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Mental:</td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td>Intellectual:</td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Mental Fortitude</td>
<td style="text-align: center">4.9</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN2</td>
<td style="text-align: center">0%</td>
<td>Intelligence</td>
<td style="text-align: center">3.1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">6%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Persistence</td>
<td style="text-align: center">3.9</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">30%</td>
<td>Numeric</td>
<td style="text-align: center">3.7</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">5%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Empathy</td>
<td style="text-align: center">4.2</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">50%</td>
<td>Linguistic</td>
<td style="text-align: center">3.4</td>
<td style="text-align: center">GEN1</td>
<td style="text-align: center">0%</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
She frowned a little but wasn''t too surprised, her Persistence and Empathy had gone up after the conversation and subsequent training, and shooting the old man had given her a 2% increase in Spatial awareness and crawling through the hell hole gave her progress in Strength. She felt a little guilty that she had gained so much from their encounter but on the other hand she had worked for it too. The only reason she felt bad was because the old man had died for it. She kept making progress towards the surface, and finally she could see the exit. The journey towards the unknown always took longer than the journey back, it was something she had always found fascinating. "Perception is a shrewd ugly seductress plastered with makeup in a dark night club seducing horny man with a couple of beers to many. Nothing is what it seems and you will lose your wallet if you don''t pay attention to the details." she mumbled, it was one of her favorite quotes from the webinar psychology she once followed, it didn''t make a lot of sense to her but she liked how it flowed and seemed to catch the attention.
She went through the gap in the table still thinking about the wonders of perception and was back where it all started, in the square room with an assortment of things floating around. She turned towards the door that would lead outside and before she could make her next jump she stood still, staring at the two space suits who had likewise ceased all movement, at the other side of the table. She looked at the two, not sure what to do, were they friendly? Should she open up communications or should she grab her plasma gun first? They might prove helpful to have around and get of this oversized rock. They looked just like her, the suit was the same and their visors prevented her from looking in and seeing their faces. She decided to look how far peaceful actions would take her and she lifted up her arm to wave at them while saying "Hi" into her helmet. The movement brought the two back to reality as they took a step back, lack of gravity making the step a bit too much movement to keep standing and they both stumbled to get their footing back. Seeing the scene in front of her, she slowly brought her other arm up to and kept them in the air, as to signal that she meant no harm. When the both of them saw her gesture, they looked at each other and one nodded to the other. A second later she received a message.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Maya has sent you a comm request.
Do you accept? Yes/No.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
She looked at the message and wondered how they had done that, but decided that it was a lot easier than using the limited sign language she knew. She had planned to take them through the tunnels so they could talk without the visors but had worried they wouldn''t have followed her into a dark and quite frankly not really inviting looking corridor in a downwards slope. She accepted the comm request by saying "Yes" and a girl in a space helmet appeared in the corner of her vision. The girl had black hair, a doll face and icy blue eyes, the kind you only see when people adjust them for beauty or intimidation. She smirked at Sophie and a dimple appeared in her left cheek, her eyes radiating an amusement that was not yet apparent to Sophie, the girl twisted her straight nose and tried to hide the smirk without much success before greeting Sophie "Hey there, I’m Maya, and the suit standing next to me is occupied by my brother Bee. We just arrived here and were wondering if there is anything left to take. And of course, if you would mind." the voice of the girl named Maya was very gentle and suiting, and Sophie felt some of the tension she had unknowingly built up being released. She thought for a moment, and the girl patiently waited for a response, before Sophie said "Hey, sorry I wasn''t really counting on company but take whatever you need, There are plasma guns in that room" She pointed at the barracks, before continuing and bringing her other hand down next to her body "and there are more than enough oxygen bottles lying around in that room" she moved her finger toward the room with the broken down life support "I''m Sophie by the way, nice to meet you." she smiled at Maya who smiled back and said "Thank you, we are kind of short on O2, like one minute left short." Maya''s smile and amusement faded a little and Sophie could finally see the hidden insecurity underneath the mask. "Believe me I know what a hassle O2 is in this game. Go ahead and grab it we can talk after." when she said that the two suits jumped towards the life support room and grabbed an oxygen cylinder. She saw that they didn''t know what to do next, so she told them and ones they were hooked up she thought she heard a little sigh of relieve. "Thanks for sharing all that information so easily" Maya said and this time Sophie saw the real smile of the girl. "No problem, I almost died when I was in the same situation, and you would have figured it out sooner or later which would make me an asshole for not sharing while you guys suffocated." She gave Maya a smile of her own before asking, "How do you send a comm request if you don''t mind me asking?"
Maya looked a little distracted, like she was talking to somebody else but Sophie couldn''t hear anything or see her lips moving. Then her eyes grew more lively, and she responded "Sorry had to ask my brother something, but you can look at the person you want to open a comm with and then just say ''Open comm'' or you can go to your friend list and do it there. I read somewhere that you can have five open Comm conversations, or have a group chat, like a conference call. Wait, I will invite my brother into the comm if that''s okay with you? It gets a little tiring telling him what you are saying. Hehe, he is going to stare is eyes out, this is going to be so fun to watch." Sophie blushed a little when she said that last part before frowning, she had never been shy about herself or had any insecurities about her looks. But the way Maya stated it, the brother would be a drooling idiot. She didn''t like those. In previous games, she played, she would either ignore them or teach them a lesson if they got to handsy. As she waited, she thought about that one time she had camped the spawn point of a boy who tried to find out how she looked without cloths, by casting a stun spell continuously. She had killed him over and over again until he had bowed down and begged for mercy. That didn''t happen for a week but she had stubbornly prevented him from playing for that week. She shuddered a little at the thought while another video feed popped into existence above the one from Maya. Bee had a round face, short black hair and brown eyes, his nose was straight like his sister’s and his cheeks were also slightly round instead of the edginess you saw in most guys. But the most peculiar thing about the guy were his ears, they weren''t very big, a bit under the average probably but instead of being streamlined along his temples they stood in an almost ninety-degree angle. It gave the poor guy an overall "Awww" factor that is best avoided by any man with dreams of sex appeal. She looked at him for a bit, waiting for him to introduce himself but, he looked more like a deer that was about to be crashed into then somebody who was going to give his name sooner rather than later. So, she went ahead instead "Hey Bee, it’s nice to meet you, I''m Sophie." She smiled, and that seemed to push him over the edge as he looked confused to his right where Maya was and pleaded to her "Is this for real? How am I supposed to make verbal sense like this?" She smiled at him and laughed "You know she can hear you, right? We are in a group chat right now." He paled a little and then stammered "Ah fuck," before turning towards me and scraping his throat and scratching the back of his head he said "Sorry about that, still getting used to the game. I''m normally a little better mannered. But here I thought I could let my self-control float off a little. Glad to meet you Sophie." Sophie was confused but didn''t want to make the situation awkward, or rather more awkward than it already was so she let it be.
"No problem, I will just take it as a compliment." she smiled and turned her attention to Maya. "So how did you guys get here? Escape pod?" Sophie asked while Bee shook his head mumbling something about being an idiot, Maya laughed at her brother and then nodded her head saying "Yeah, that was a rough ride. We didn''t survive the crash and had to wait another twelve hours before we were allowed back in. I was not very happy I can tell you that much. But hey, we did choose the high-risk path so you know, blisters and stuff. After that we spawned in the open and had to search for Oxygen. Luckily we saw this place and the guy who was in charge of coded locks was an idiot. How did you get here? " Maya smirked again, showing the left dimple on her cheek. She was right though that guy had been an idiot. "Kind of the same, but with some luck I survived the crash. Had a quest in here that is probably done now so I was on my way out." she hesitated. She left a lot of the story out, but most was either boring or need to know. But Maya seemed to catch up on the hesitation and asked "So nothing of interest?" not anymore Sophie thought, before saying it out loud "Shame" Maya pouted "Oh well, we will just look for ourselves and take some stuff." Sophie knew Maya didn''t trust her completely, but that was fine with her. She would just wait around a little and see if she could still work with them on getting off the moon. She nodded and said "That is fine, I wouldn''t take the word of stranger either. I will just fill my Inventory with Oxygen cylinders and wait over here until you have roamed the place to your satisfaction. Want to leave the comm open?" She tried to leave her face as open as possible so they wouldn''t think she left something out. But she wasn''t suggesting anything weird, so they agreed and went to work. Doing everything she had done before. Sometimes communicating with each other, or with her through the comm.
When they went down the tunnel and Bee got through the steel doors first she saw his surprise before she saw his face plant into something that was probably the floor, giving him a bloody nose. "Dammit" he grumbled, "Couldn''t you have warned me about that one Sophie?" he sounded angry but she couldn''t help but snicker a little before saying apologetically "Sorry, I struggled there to but I kind of forgot. If you follow that tunnel you will see two rooms, one is open, because I broke into it and the other needs voice recognition. I climbed through a ventilator shaft to get to the other side where there are only corpses and a guy that was crazy so I had to shoot him. It''s not worth the trouble anymore but if you want to check it out anyway, then I will log out for some early lunch as that will take a while." They nodded as Maya went through the doors, a lot more graceful than Bee as she had been warned. They made their way down. She felt a little bad about calling the kind old man crazy, but the headless body would bring up too many questions if not dealt with early. After a while they came to the rooms and looked into the closed one. Then went to the other and saw my construction. "Clever" Maya complimented me over the comm, but still climbed up to look into the shaft. Sophie sighed a little, paranoia was normal in a game environment especially when PVP was allowed everywhere and resources were scarce. She was about to say she would log off for a while when Maya climbed off and said she trusted my opinion that there was not much left. Sophie was glad, even though she didn''t mind playing alone, she enjoyed the company of some companions too. They made the journey back up and they stood in the room again.
"So what now? Any plans?" Sophie asked, and the other two looked at her before looking at each other through their visors. Maya was the one to break the silence by stating "Yeah I think we should work together? If you would like that? We feel like you are a good person and capable so we would like to ask If you would like to group up with us and get of this rock?" she seemed a little insecure about asking, but Sophie wasn''t sure if it was because she was asking, lowering herself, or that it was because she still didn''t trust her, the gleam in her eyes not really fitting the rest. Either way she was glad she had asked, it saved her the trouble. She nodded her head and said "That would be good, do you already have a party?" as she asked she got another message.
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Maya has send you an invitation to join her party "TheHive".
Would you like to accept? Yes/No
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She pressed Yes and underneath the Comm feeds appeared two red lines, probably their health. She couldn''t help but chuckle a little about all their bee references and asked "So what''s up with you two and our flower fertilizing friends?". Bee blushed a little at that and coughed, while Maya smile from ear to ear and explained "That was my idea, I''m streaming everything I do and I read somewhere that if you have like a theme that the views are better." Ah that made sense, kind of, probably the fact that she is gorgeous doesn''t hurt either for viewers. Now Sophie also knew why Maya was so amused at first, another eye candy for her viewers and a stumbling brother for the laughs. Oh, well, she said "Ah that explains a lot, so want to go out and explore? I''m kind of done seeing the body parts of space marines float around me..." they both nodded and we went to the door. Walking out they went out in front of me as they opened the door and stepped into the open. As Sophie came out, they jumped towards a space ship that was almost the same as the one that she had flown in the aptitude test. she focused and Identified the object.
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Space cruiser LM231X
Common Edition
This ship is great for exploring a solar system, or just flying from planet to planet. If you want to travel to different systems though you will need some serious upgrades. Good starting ship. - reviews by Bo3ing.
Owned by Bee.
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Maya smirked as she saw Sophie''s reaction on the Comm and even Bee had a little smile on his lips. Sophie gaped at the space cruiser and Maya bragged "Ow did I say we also have a spaceship? Yeah practically spawned on top of it, I was quite pleased with ourselves until we found out it didn''t have any Oxygen or life support capabilities... That was quite the bummer... So, shall we get of this lifeless rock?". Lucky bastards, "If you must insist, then lets," Sophie smirked and went ahead towards the cruisers, let''s just hope they fly better than she did.