The Triton Production

A VAPOVRDAIMON TALE

"Hermes 7 to Dawson Outpost, do you read?"

"Kzzt-" Static. It's been like this for 18 hours now.

We had left the outpost on an expedition to find a geographic anomaly that one of the satellites had picked up about 2 nights ago. Figured it was just some sort of "tectonic activity" - a new ice fissure or something like that, but it's protocol to go out and check regardless. Have to maintain live updates of the regional maps for any traffic in the area.

3 of us went out in the Hermes 7 Trawler, a vaguely boat-shaped cruiser which was its own small self-contained mobile base. Thankfully, years ago they figured out how to convert Nitrogen Ice into fuel (and a large percentage of the manufactured atmosphere within all of the bases and pressurized vehicles).

Funnily enough, they designed the intake on the cruisers in such a way that you just need to shovel the snow and ice from the surface into a compartment near the back of the cruiser and it gets taken directly into the converter. No different from the old days of shoveling coal directly into a locomotive's furnace. Found it to be quite the amusing chore at first. Not so much now.

The issue started only 2 hours after we left the base. Comms and navigation cut out about a third of the way to the supposed anomaly. Of course we immediately did a 180 and went back to base - driving back over our own tracks to stay on course.

2 hours back, only to find the tracks lead to nothing. Just an impassable, jagged ice wall. We discussed the idea of climbing it and leaving someone with the Trawler but when we tried putting anything into the wall, it would just crumble into chunks of dry ice. We drove up and down the wall, about an hour in each direction with no luck, the structure was too fragile to safely climb.

Around hour 10, we decided to double back and try to go towards the anomaly again, testing comms rather frequently to no avail. Stopping just as often to shovel more dry ice into the converter. Tensions were a bit high but no major arguments broke out. We had plenty of rations, water wasn't an issue thanks to the occasional water ice "iceberg" sticking out of the terrain (noticeably more blue than the harsh white of the nitrogen ice surface), and a proper emergency SOS beacon that would call an automated escape shuttle to our location - except you literally cannot access it until 24 hours after you leave base. Horrible safety design. Not like there's any point in arguing with Corporate though lest they dock your pay for insubordination. On top of that, it takes between 6-8 hours for the shuttle to actually get to Triton, since the launch station is about halfway closer to Neptune.

All of this means we have at least 12 hours left to kill.

Such is life out beyond the belt.

"According to the map I had to draw from memory, should b about 15 more klicks to the anomaly." Grumbled Kazuhiro, our navigator.

"See anything yet?" He asked again after he received no response.

"Nope! Just more endless ice flats." Replied O'Connor, annoyed. Ironically - the chief Glaciologist on the entire moon at the moment. Even amongst the other agencies and Corps up here.

"I think we have other issues." I say as I lower the speed of the trawler. Rubbing my eyes under my snow goggles.

They both stared at me, then looked outside in unison.

"No, no. I've been driving for a few hours, you'd have to have been paying attention to the horizon for a long while to notice it. Neptune hasn't moved." I wave away their weird expressions.

"What do you mean?" Kazuhiro furrowed his brow.

"I said what I mean. We've been driving towards it for what, 8 hours? Don't think I've dropped this thing's speed under 130 since we left, aside from the stops. So make it 6 and a half hours, 840 klicks or so." I replied tiredly.

"And?" He said flatly.

"You're the navigator man, we've covered about 10% of the surface distance since we left! Neptune should be higher in the sky and spun on its axis eastward a decent bit. It's been completely static." I jabbed a finger towards the front window of the deck.

He grimaced slightly, stood up, went up to one of the smaller corner windows and drew on it with a marker, then took a seat on a small stool he unfolded. He then put on his own snow goggles and quietly stared out said window, unmoving.

"Uh, mind explaining what you're doing at least?" I said, glancing at him.

"Testing your observation, drew a labelled circle around my view of Neptune from here, if anything changes in the next hour or so, then I'll believe what your saying." He did not turn his head from where he was looking.

I vaguely shrug, looking at O'Connor. Who also shrugs and leans further back in his seat.

Not even 20 minutes pass in relative silence before Kazuhiro jumps up and shouts.

"HIT THE BRAKES!" Startling the hell out of O'Connor who had dozed off and especially myself who jolted into action and slammed on the brakes.

The entire trawler groaned and creaked as it slid towards a stop, it would take a couple hundred meters to do so on account of the more slippery icefield in front of us, and the fact I was going almost 180 kph. We were very roughly brought to a halt when the Bow slammed into something, causing the whole trawler to shudder and Kazuhiro to slam into the window in front of him. O'Connor and I were still wearing our seatbelts out of habit, but it definitely left some bruising from how hard we hit.

After partially regaining our senses, despite the blaring [CRITICAL ALERT] Alarm - we staggered out of our seats over to Kazuhiro. He laid there, curled on the floor next to his toppled stool. He was groaning and holding his bleeding forehead.

"Ah, good, least he's not unconscious." O'Connor remarked, grabbing an AidKit from a compartment on the wall.

"Yeah but he could still be concussed. Probably is." I said as I helped Kazuhiro move to a seated position after checking his neck and shoulders for any worse injuries.

"I'm fine!" Kazuhrio tried brushing my hands away and attempted to stand up to look out of the window but stumbled.

"Yeah, sure. Says the guy with blood pissing from his forehead." O'Connor mocks as he takes over, helping to treat the wound.

"Let's see what the damage is, can't see shit outside from all the snow we kicked up." I go back to the console to run a diagnostic test and shut off the obnoxious alarm.

[HULL INTEGRITY NOMINAL - ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL] The computer states.

Hm. I didn't think the Trawler was that strong. Whatever we hit must've really absorbed all of that momentum, along with our poor meatsuits. I crack my neck and try to stretch a bit. Wonder if it was bad enough to wreck the sensors? I pause briefly, before attempting to reverse the ship.

No response from the engines.

I try again.

Nothing.

I repeat the diagnostic test.

[ENGINE INTEGRITY NOMINAL - ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL]

"Fuck."

"Guys I think we'll have to go out and check the damage ourselves, the computer is even more damaged than before. Going to have it do a full cycle reboot since the diagnostic tests apparently thinks nothing happened." I tell the other two who seem to have finished with getting the wound sealed and bandaged up.

"Still no comms or nav either." I add.

We still have power though, no?" Kazuhrio gestures towards the lights and monitors around the room.

"Apparently so." I reply throwing my hands in the air.

"You good Kaz? Going to assume that regardless, no sleep for you for a while in case you did hurt something." I ask him.

"Lights don't hurt my eyes, pupils react fine, I can walk now, head hurts though - obviously." He replies, wincing at the thought of being awake for 24 hours.

"I'd say he is indeed lightly concussed, minor whiplash. He'll live though." O'Connor mentions as he packs away the AidKit.

We spent about 3 hours combing over the inside of the Trawler looking for any structural damage as well as trying to troubleshoot various systems. No luck with the engines, comms, or navigation still. We wanted to be absolutely sure in case some critical failure occurred in the airlock or life support system before we finally suited up and ventured outside.

Naturally we tried overriding the SOS system but no luck, KDC made sure it was tamper-proof. They put more effort into saving money than worrying about 3 measly human lives. A tale as old as time.

Oddly, the snow kicked up outside of the windows had not dissipated.

9 hours

We suited up in our bulky yellow and charcoal ExEVO-K suits. They would probably weigh close to 150 pounds under Earth's Gravity. Though using that metric doesn't make much sense out here, since none of us have been much closer to Earth than Ceres in at least 7 years. Thankfully, the low gravity and all of the gyros and magnetic balancers in the exoskeleton make the suits feel like they're only about 15 pounds while wearing them.

After our safety checks, the three of us shuffled out through the airlock and onto the icy surface, bringing along a small hover-wagon of tools and instruments to do our exterior checks of the Trawler. Seems the local comms were still working within the suits.

To our incredible disbelief, there was absolutely nothing in front of the trawler, all we could see was an unnatural cloud of dry ice snow clinging to the ship.

"What in the bloody hell?" O'Connor was the first to speak, swatting at a portion of the snow cloud near airlock causing it to only barely whisp around but not disperse.

"Who cares about that, we didn't even hit anything!" I pointed to the bow where all we could see was more flat, icy plains. I shuffled further towards the front of the Trawler.

"Kaz, what did you even see before we hit? You clearly saw something I didn't." I glanced back at him while still walking forward.

"An anomaly." Was all he said.

"An anomaly? Care to elaborate at all?" I kept moving.

He gave an exaggerated shrug which looked mildly comical in the bulky suit.

"Thought I saw a reflection or something." He added after a pause. As I neared the bow of the Trawler.

"A reflection? Man what are you talking ab-"

SLAM

I ran into something and was flung onto my back a few feet in the opposite direction.

The suit stabilizers assisted in standing me back up to see what I had actually ran into. Kaz and I both approached more carefully. Our visors could not detect any anomalies, even switching through various thermal and X-ray optics settings.

He slowly reached out into what looked like empty space in front of us until his hand met resistance.

"What the hell?" He then started pushing with both hands as if trying to move a large object, clearly putting all of his weight into it.

"Didn't know you were a professional mime Kaz!" O'Connor chimed in over the comms, a bit garbled.

I turned to see him still near the airlock. He had his back to us.

"Your comms are messed up. Get away from that stuff, think it's interfering." I tell him.

Kazuhrio was still pushing and pounding on the invisible wall.

Silence.

Kazuhrio grabbed an ice pick from his tool belt and began hammering it against the barrier.

"I might be wrong but this looks like a screen. When you put enough pressure on it it warps in rainbow-ish colour like an OLED-type surface." He follows up with.

I didn't take my eyes off of O'Connor.

"Kaz, I think something's up with him." I took a few steps towards O'Connor, who whipped around suddenly - unnaturally, as if the ExEVO-K suit was going haywire.

I hadn't noticed, but the fog around the airlock had dissipated, but from the looks of it it was now inside of O'Connor's suit, the visor was completely clouded over.

"Fucking hell." Kaz had turned around now as well.

[YOU ARE TRESSPASSING ON Y-LO CORPORATION TERRITORY]
[CEASE VANDALISM AT ONCE]

An incredibly loud but garbled voice blared over the comms coming from O'Connor's suit. Mixed in with it I could also faintly hear O'Connor's voice as well.

[SHOW OF FORCE AUTHORIZED]

A garbled scream.

All of the exo-joints and gyros cracked at once, before his suit completely exploded in front of us in a puff of fog and red snow.

[SURFACE CRAFT CONFISCATION AUTHORIZED]
[REPURPOSING]

We just stood there, watching, completely stunned as the emergency buggy was released from its compartment, followed by the fog wrapping around the bow of the Trawler and pulling it into the barrier, atomizing it like a belt sander grinding down plastic - centimeter by centimeter. All of this in under a minute.

The shrapnel remains of the suit and its contents was also dragged along with it.

1 hour left.

We had hopped onto the buggy and just started driving in a random direction for multiple hours, neither of us had said more than a few words since we left. The emergency buggies essentially auto-transferred the SOS countdown and beacon in the event they were all that was available. Don't know if it'll do us much good now.

We didn't make it very far in that time, the buggy only goes about 50 kph maximum, and we kept taking short rotating shifts driving, as well as a lack of proper navigation tech on the buggies made us more cautious. Internal comms died right after the interaction with the Screen.

Kazuhiro was driving, about 2 hours into his second round of it, when he suddenly slumped over in the drivers seat, causing the buggy to increase speed and veer to the right.

I shouted in my helmet to no avail and tried to shake him to get him to react, but he just stayed motionless, the gyros trying to force him upright in his seat. As if to make things worse, we ram into the empty space in front of us.

'The Screen went all the way out this way in a curved pattern.' Is what went through my mind as I flew off the buggy, which got atomized just like the Trawler, this time with Kaz's body strapped in.

[WARNING NOT HEEDED]
[BIOLOGICAL REPURPOSING AUTHORIZED]

One of the last things I see as the strange crystalline fog grabs me and drags me into the Screen, the Veil lifts, a Cyclopean structure reaching from Triton's surface to the remains of Neptune, all being consumed and reconstituted into the machine.

Darkness.

[Experiment Concluded]
[Biomass Added]
[Miscellaneous Resources Added]
[Begin Again]

"Hermes 8 to Dawson Outpost, do you read?"