Zeo Genesis Travelogues
Greetings, star-nomads! You can call me Trev. (You can also call me Trevallion Franklin-Ridgeway III, but I’d rather you didn’t). I’ve left behind my shallow executive existence to explore the Hundred Suns, to re-connect with insignificant voiders just like you. These are my travels. You’re welcome.
“CosmoCorp factory used to make Colossus-class rad-farming zeos, ‘starvesters’, but in the wake of the Little Aether Disaster, it’s an emergency shelter for us survivors—there’s a thousand of us sleeping here after the ship hit this space station.”
“Oh hello, are you my new lower bunkmate? Poor Nornum did pass away over a day ago, I suppose.”
Chagland: “That’s a shame, though somewhat of an irony. I’m the sub-district funeral director, Chagland Ebaesi. Please don’t take that as a bad omen.”
Trev: “Not at all! Pleasure to meet you, I’m Trev. How’s life, if you’ll pardon the pun?”
Chagland: “Funnily enough, I thought I’d be involved in the rescue and reconstruction efforts, but I’m just doing my normal job on a massive scale. My staff is working ‘round the clock.”
Trev: “Must be brutal.”
Chagland: “You’ve no idea! You know we launch our deceased towards the Limit, here? ‘The Great Exploration’, it’s known as. We were starting to think we’d need to build mass-body pods to cope with the volume. Very distressing! Then fighting broke out at the preparation yards…”
Trev: “What?!”
Chagland: “Skirmishes, Pact and GuardCorps, fully zeo’d-out, scrapping in a sacrosanct place!”
Trev: “That must’ve been intolerable!”
Chagland: “Intolerable? I was livid! Trying to give such a massive amount of souls, some I knew, respectful send-offs and they barrelled in, treating the place like some deserted moon of Tollabast!”
Trev: “How long did it take to blow over?”
Chagland: “About the time it took me to stand in the middle of them and give them a piece of my mind. I was incandescent!”
Trev: “You have a zeo?”
Chagland: “Stronger! A profound respect for the dead! I screamed at them about their total lack of it. Some of their own, both sides, would undoubtedly be in my care, and the state some are in, it would be impossible to tell them apart.”
Trev: “And you’re here to tell the tale?”
Chagland: “They were shocked into seeing sense! Mercifully, they realized the last thing anyone needs is more destruction. Soon we had a fleet of GuardCorps and Pact zeos all helping to build and launch pods for the fallen in a respectful, honorable manner. Whenever, however, we die, we are all the same, be it from these two factions or otherwise.”
"Stay zippy, star-nomads…"
Notes from Dr. Petulian Franklin-Ridgeway’s field journal on modern funeral rites of the Nyx orbital system:
- LA deceased loaded into “funeral pods” & launched towards Limit—primitive anti-grav motors
- Tradition honors LA residents’ explorer ancestors
- Call death/afterlife “Great Exploration”
- Stems from first founders of LA mysterious disappearance—taken on semi-religious status (~ Dr. S. Forrest (check spelling) Consciousness)
- Disappeared said (believed? not really?) by LA residents to be still exploring galaxy - quasi-mythical – beyond Limit
- F Pod AG motors insufficient – stall in “hard space” region – crossref the stellar Coffin Cloud p.44/45(?ish?)
These journals were recorded via Tymphony Aural Augmetics… TAA: Listen Up!
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