Session 28

Date: November 20, 2011

Game date: October 22, EY217

Location: Ingraham, the desert planet of the Providence system

Previous events: Aliens and lots of worms possessing lots of teeth

Lying in a pile at the bottom of the cargo bay door Jillian takes a moment to catch her breath and hits the switch to open the door all the way. Six striders carrying various assortments of passengers ride in over the sand; it's a tight fit with the spare parts, dangerously tomato-laden boxes, and researcher living quarters, but there's enough room for everyone and everything. Jillian closes the door and cycles the atmosphere.

Everyone's barely removed their helmets and respirators before Seo is again going on about wanting to collect some alien technology. Or blood. Or photos. The Steel Hummingbird's crew finally relents on this last part and Seo takes a photo of her team to convince the aliens that the camera is harmless before taking photos of the aliens. She's soon taking lots of photos, including group photos of all thirteen humanoids!

The Hummingbird's team briefly huddles and decides that they really want to show the aliens the photos of the "squid ship" that they saw in Vishnu a few months back. With six aliens wandering around the ship and four crew riding herd the Aiscapo University researchers should be distracted enough that someone can grab the photos from the hidden cargo compartment in the cargo hold without the technicians noticing.

Jillian's first order of business, though, is to expose the aliens to her art. There isn't any of it in the cargo hold but once they leave that and enter the rest of the ship it's pretty unavoidable. She's nervous, not knowing if the aliens with their astounding natural artistic abilities will find it childish or not. To everyone's astonishment the aliens are amazed by it, almost rapturous. Jillian feels joy wash over her: confirmation at last! She leads three of the aliens to her room, Shaila in tow, to show them her latest work in progress and perhaps work on it in front of them.

Ghost is in Jillian's room and although she doesn't seem frightened by the aliens she doesn't appreciate the sudden crowd and hides behind the bed. When the aliens show curiosity about her Jillian scoops her up and lets the aliens pet her; they're a bit clumsy at first but quickly get the hang of it and Ghost is soon appreciative of all the attention lavished upon her. Jillian gets out her paints and starts to work on the canvas for the aliens' benefit. She doesn't really care about what she's doing; she's going to get rid of all of her old artwork and start over now that she's seen the light about what art should look like.

While the researchers are following the aliens Volkova gets the photos from the secret compartment and heads to Jillian's cabin. The aliens are raptly watching art being created right in front of them and Shaila is watching, equal parts bored by the lack of activity and fascinated by the aliens, shaking her head at the painting the whole time. Volkova quietly asks Shaila if she wants to grab a smoke in engineering. Not having had a cigarette since leaving the ship many hours earlier Shaila eagerly agrees and once she's out the door Volkova slips the photos to Jillian before heading off to engineering herself to sacrifice her lungs for the greater good.

Bishop -- having overheard Jillian's intention of getting rid of her art -- has jumped on the opportunity and been laboriously working through a deal with Vob, offering Jillian's art for enough green sheets to cover the Steel Humminbird. It's a testament to his negotiating skills that he actually manages to get a deal!

Jillian painfully tears herself away from painting in front of an appreciative audience for the first time in her life and closes the door to her cabin. She then pulls out the photos and shows them to the aliens. Their reaction is immediate and quite negative. They jabber at each other and seem quite concerned about it, communicating to the others over their comms. Unfortunately, she can't work out why they are so negative about this and so Jillian pulls out some of her heavily-annotated star charts and shows them where they saw the squid ship in the Vishnu system as well as where the Gurg was attacked. The aliens seem to work out what she was talking about and get across that they'd like to record the charts. They pull out what Jillian guesses is a camera and take photos of all of her charts. Another dizzy spell indicates to Jillian that she's overextended herself and she sprawls on her bed. The aliens get the hint and wander off.

Unable to work up any excitement about having actual aliens on his ship Malcolm holes up on the bridge and sips some tea while watching twilight begin out the window and despairing. He rouses himself slightly when an alien comes up and starts to look at the controls, but the most he can bring himself to do is offer it some tea. It sniffs the proffered cup and takes a sip, then begins to vomit uncontrollably! Malcolm briefly laughs at the absurdity of it and then calls for Bishop on the open comms. Bishop rushes up to the bridge, followed by two aliens. Two more soon show up and Jillian also staggers into the increasingly crowded space. Vob pushes its way to the front and after a quick examination pulls some plant material that Bishop doesn't recognize from a pouch and feeds it to the dry-heaving alien, who almost immediately stops its retching. The alien and Vob talk briefly and after chewing out its ill crewmember Vob gets one of the other aliens to help the vomiter to the cargo hold. Jillian follows them and with the excitement over the other aliens continue to wander about the ship and gaze lovingly at the artwork.

Jagadeep and Seo manage to cram their way onto the bridge and once they find out what happened Seo orders Jagadeep to collect the vomit. He shudders, but produces a plastic bag and reluctantly gets to work. Malcolm orders Bishop -- as ship's janitor -- to clean up the mess that's left. Bishop and Jagadeep give each other a sympathetic look and bend to their tasks.

Down in the cargo hold the sick alien is helped onto a strider and Jillian opens the door and watches them head off to the Iof.

One of the aliens enters engineering, where Volkova has retrieved the mummified hand and placed it on a console for no particular reason. Volkova shows the alien around, babbling about technical details but knowing full well that there is no way that she can actually communicate anything useful to it. The alien's most interested in the space drive and spends a fair amount of time literally clambering around inside it, something the massive Volkova can't hope to follow.

Malcolm leaves the fouled bridge. He dons a respirator and warm clothing and carries his folding chair and large umbrella up onto the ship's hull, installing his usual relaxation setup. Sipping tea through a drink straw he watches the planet again. The sun, feeble as it is, is almost below the horizon when something glints in the distant mountains. He puts his binoculars to his eyes and barely manages to see a structure of some sort. It's too far away to make out any details.

Clambering back into the ship and into the gun turret, Malcolm calls Jillian on the intercom and asks her to join him there. When she shows up he shows her the structures. At first he tries to use the gun sights but they're anemic enough that the binoculars are better. Jillian takes a look and they agree that although it might be the remains of one of the previous attempts to colonize the planet they can't be sure. Jillian also takes advantage of their privacy to relate the aliens' reaction to the photos of the squid ship but Malcolm doesn't seem to really take it in and walks off.

Having cleaned the bridge Bishop shows Chig the medical bay, or rather the setup that he's got growing in that space. Chig seems impressed by the plants and animals and completely ignores the actual medical equipment. Wanting to see if the Dreaming can help him communicate with Chig Bishop sits in his meditation pose and Chig follows suit. Seeing the Dreamscape lines again Bishop follows them in his mind. There are lines from uBuntu to different planets throughout the galaxy and a different sort of line; one connects Bishop to uBuntu and the other planets have their own, similar, lines that run to various points, none of them in this system. Focusing, Bishop can see Chig's line and follows it back only to find that it fades away into nothingness; he gets a feeling of sadness from the alien about this.

Jillian calls Seo on the comm and asks her to bring an alien with her to the turret. She shows them the structure, trying to ignore Malcolm back on top of the hull. He's lying on his back flopping around, apparently literally wallowing in existential angst. The alien doesn't respond to the view through the binoculars but Seo thinks that it's one of the old colonization attempts; she vaguely remembers it from maps that she's looked at before the trip here.

As the aliens continue to poke around the ship Bishop gets a moment alone with Jillian. She tells him about the distant structure and he tells her the content of his Dream down in the med bay. He also brings up the possibility of temporarily trading a human and alien as a sort of cultural exchange. Jillian thinks it's a good idea but isn't sure who in the crew would be the best person and would want to talk to them about it before consigning someone to the Iof. Bishop thinks that Seo would be the best person to trade rather than anyone from the Hummingbird. He doesn't like her and it's also pretty much part of her job. She's also the only one of the university group who seems to have half a brain. Jillian agrees -- thinking about it this makes the most sense -- and Bishop is so happy he tells her that he's sorry that he slept with a chick once in her bed. He collapses under her withering gaze and admits that it was more than one chick... and more than once. Yes, Emily was one of them. Jillian glares at him and coldly tells him that he'll now have to clean the entire engineering section. Bishop doesn't understand why he's being punished for telling the truth, the way that everyone keeps telling him he should, but Jillian's too frustrated with him to care to explain.

The two of them corner Seo and bring up the idea with her. It's a lot to think about and she ponders it for a long while before agreeing. She's always wanted to make a real contribution to the xenosciences and this would make her famous to boot. She quickly tells them that Shaila and Jagadeep shouldn't know about the alien: they'll definitely blab about it and the Homeworld Office for the Acquisition of Xenotechnology will certainly question everyone once knowledge about the first contact comes out. It's best to hide the alien, assuming that they agree, and if Bishop could get some sort of technology from the aliens that would help mollify the agency. Jillian can't help but ask how Jagadeep got to come on this mission in the first place; he doesn't seem terribly competent. It turns out that he's related to a VP at Aiscapo University. The three of them start to work out the details of how they're going to pull this off.

The rest of the Hummingbird's crew is let in on the plan and the aliens, after some lengthy attempts to get the idea across, agree as well. The plan is for Vob and Seo to trade places for a month with Bishop and Chig contacting each other regarding location using their devices. Jagadeep and Shaila get the edited version of the plan. They try to stop their colleague from doing this but Seo keeps firm despite her internal worries. Seo starts getting lots of gear together to keep records of her stay on the Iof and food as well; after the alien's experiences with Malcolm's tea she'd rather not have the same sort of thing happen to her. At least they have water that's safe over there. She's also grateful for Volkova's donation of alcohol. She should have enough food and drink to get by for the month before they meet again.

Over the next two days Malcolm doesn't help out much at all; he spends as much time as possible up on the hull, knocking cricket balls off into the desert and trying to shoot them with his assault rifle. Everyone's worried about this but Jillian is the one who actually asks for help. The dizziness isn't abating at all and she has Bishop try to work out what's wrong with her. All he can do is to give her some subtle-tasting roots to chew and tell her to hope for the best. His estimate for recovery time is three months. Jillian resolves not to let on that she's suffering during that time and to lean on things as much as possible. Volkova offers to make a gyroscopic hat for Jillian to keep her properly angled and claims that it would weigh no more than eight kilograms. She can start right away. Surprisingly, Jillian turns down her offer.

To keep the inevitable investigation from the Homeworld Office for the Acquisition of Xenotechnology as cursory as possible the crew keep to themselves as much as they can and let the researchers poke around the runs and the Iof to their hearts' content. They do move all of Jillian's artwork into the Iof, leaving the Hummingbird a more roomy but less personal ship. At least the walls and bulkheads are still painted. In trade they ask Seo to get the aliens to leave the plates that they'll cut off of the ruins in the deserted colony that they spotted earlier.

Vob manages to sneak its own gear and food into the Hummingbird, stashing it in Jillian's cabin. Jagadeep and Shaila almost catch Vob in the act a few times but in the end they are oblivious to that part of the trade.

At last it's time to take off if the Hummingbird's life support is going to last back to Hannity with a reasonable margin of error. Seo, white as a sheet, gives Jillian a letter to send to her family and says goodbye to everyone. She's less sorry to leave her team than the Hummingbird's crew, it seems!

And so, on October 24th, EY217, on the cold desert planet of Ingraham, humanity had its first exchange with an alien species. The importance of this seems lost on Malcolm, who lifts off in an abjectly apathetic manner, leaving Seo more alone than she's ever been on the Iof, an alien spacecraft crammed full with all the artwork she hates most in the universe.

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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 12)

Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 1)