Many habitats fell silent during the fall. Some were the victim of TITAN war machines and smart viruses, but others simply died off from a lack of food or some other mundane space-faring catastrophe.
This particular habitat was thought to be the latter. It orbits through space on a steep orbit which keeps it outside of the standard orbital plane most of the time. Right now, it’s making a transit through the main belt. An automated sensor drone captured grainy images that appear to show a humanoid tending plants of some kind, safely behind a transparent dome. Finding out that a dead hab is very much alive would be magnificent, but Firewall demands caution. As such, Agent Alpha (in his guise as the proxy Nathan) and his sentinels in United Division are tasked with investigating this potentially occupied habitat.
A month later, we each restored from from backups to find that we had very publicly retired. Obviously suspicious, we investigated again. The last place we visited was Vega-2, so off we went once more. This time, the trip took much longer, as the suspicious hab’s orbit had taken it deep into the void.
We quickly got to know our other selves and found out that the entire habitat – all 200+ occupants – were asyncs. Obviously this raised some big questions, and our hosts were gracious enough to give answers.
We docked, and sure enough it was just as empty as Solarchive records showed. Automated systems had managed to keep the hydroponics working, but only barely. Far more interesting were the logs in its main computer. It recorded signals sent from an asteroid in the main belt on its last transit, signals which strongly resembled known TITAN command and control codes.
Following in our previous iterations’ footsteps, we gathered everything we could from Vega-2’s computer and prepped to return to the belt. This time, we resolved to destroy the asteroid instead of investigate it, since apparently that caused us to go mad the first time.
Jill would use her experience with mental sleights to implant a false memory in Heidi, who would transmit it as an XP to Abi and Roland. It would serve as the false record of what we found at Vega-2. Abi, then, would perform psychosurgery on Roland and on a fork of herself. The surgeon fork, it was assumed, would self-terminate.
Only Roland and Abi escaped the detonation, so our own records are missing a number of important points of view. What we do know is that Jill had been completely suborned, likely by the TITAN creation running the asteroid. Our own copy of Nenette fought against her copy’s mind, while Nathan and Heidi set up and detonated an improvised bomb. Abi and Roland remained close enough to observe the destruction and confirmed that nothing remained, and that no signals were being transmitted.
Firewall reinsantiated Nathan, Heidi restored herself, and Jill never officially left Clean Sweep. We had egonapped her to avoid further antagonizing her employer. With the TITAN threat eradicated, we went back to un-retiring ourselves.