The data you carry is vital to the remaining Federation fleet. You'll need supplies for the journey, so make sure to explore each sector before moving on to the next. But get to the exit before the pursuing Rebel fleet can catch up!
"Hey, this isn't KSP!"
Felix looked at the holographic message in confusion. This message was projected by some futuristic wristband into the air in front of him. One moment, he was starting up Kerbal Space Program on his PC from the comfort of his home. Next thing he knew, he was in this strange control room. A screen that glowed blue with a control board at the bottom dominated the left half of the room. A comfortable-looking command chair was in front of the screen. The entire room was a stark white.
He walked up to the bright screen to get a better look. It seemed to be an overhead view of a small white ship with orange stripes. The top of the ship was cut off to provide a view of each room. At the head of ship, he saw someone who looked very familiar. Felix stuck out his right arm and waved it about. So did the figure on the screen. He realized that it was himself.
He also saw two other people on the ship. The woman was in a room with missiles, and the man was in a room with what seemed to be the engine.
"Hey!"
His voice was automatically magnified as it blasted through the intercom of the ship. The other two grasped their ears in pain.
"Not so loud!" the woman named Meredith replied equally as loudly through the intercom.
This time Felix flinched in pain.
"Sorry. Didn't know that would happen," he said. "Do either of you know what this is?"
"Looks like some type of spaceship," the man named Chase spoke up.
"Let's meet up in one of the rooms and talk this out. This is crazy," Meredith said.
As each of them approached the orange doors to the other rooms, they opened up automatically to let them pass and closed after they went through. Felix passed by another control room and what seemed to be a medical room before he met the other two in a common room. They were all clothed in some sort of spaceship crew uniform.
"Hey guys, my name is Felix."
"I'm Meredith."
"And I'm Chase."
"Nice to meet you all. Does anybody know what's going on?"
"No idea. Are we in space?" Chase asked.
The dull hum of the engine was all they could hear. There didn't seem to be any windows on the ship, but they had all looked at their control panels and saw the view of the ship.
"I think so… which would be pretty cool if we had some idea of how we got here," Meredith said.
"Did you guys get this message?"
Felix pulled up the holographic message again from his wristband.
"Yeah. I'd like to know what this 'pursuing Rebel fleet' is. Are we in danger?" Chase asked, a hint of fear showing on his face.
"I don't know, man… this is all so freakin' weird!"
Meredith suddenly gasped.
"What's up?"
She scrambled out of the room and back into her room with the missiles. Her eyes rapidly scanned the details on the screen.
Hull status display. Missile count. Artemis. Burst Laser II. Weapons. Top-down view of the entire ship.
Meredith's stomach dropped. She went back to Chase and Felix.
"This is FTL!" she shouted.
"What? FTL? You mean that Steam game?" Chase asked.
"Yeah, I'm like, 99.9% sure. The visual they have on the screen is almost exactly like the one…"
"Wait, isn't that game supposed to be super hard?" Felix interjected.
"It is… I've only beaten it once, and it was on Easy difficulty."
"Hah, I've beaten Mass Effect on Insanity difficulty without dying. It can't be nearly as hard," Chase said.
"It's hard. It's a roguelike."
"Meaning?"
"Basically, you die a lot. No save points, no nothing."
"Okay, so like a no-death run-through of Mass Effect."
"Yeah, but this might not be a game! What if this is some freaky thing where if you die in the game, you die in real life?"
"Then don't die."
"I don't see how you can be some calm about this!"
"Well, there's really no point in panicking. If we want to do well, we have to stay calm. So what's the objective of the game? How do we win?"
Meredith took a deep breath and began her explanation.
"We have to pilot this ship through eight different sectors, with a final boss in the eighth. There'll be a lot of combat and dangerous situations on the way. I hate to say it, but it's pretty likely that some or all of us will die."
"Why don't we just stay here then?" Felix asked.
"The Rebel fleet is chasing us. Although, in the game they don't pursue you if you just idle at one of the beacons… mmm, but we can't win the game by staying here. We'll die of starvation or something."
"Good point. Is there any food or water on this ship?"
Meredith shrugged.
"That should be our first order of business."
The three of the scattered about the ship, looking for food and water. They turned up empty-handed.
"Okay, so it looks like we have no choice but to win the game," Meredith declared.
"The only winning move is not to play," Felix muttered under his breath.
"Why don't you tell us everything you know about the game, Meredith? We don't know crap about it," Chase said.
Meredith explained to them the basic mechanics of the game. The explanation was spotty and her facts were given somewhat randomly.
"Look, I'll explain things more as they come up," she said, exasperated.
"That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence," Chase replied.
"Hmmm… maybe…"
Meredith put her finger on a long horizontal button on her wristband. Suddenly, everything seemed to be frozen in place.
"I didn't expect that to work! This is great!" she thought.
"What's great? Why can't I move?" said Chase's voice in her head
"In real life, pressing spacebar pauses the game. Gives you more time to strategize. I guess this button on our wristbands does the same thing."
It appeared that they could communicate mentally would paused.
"Okay, sounds great, but how can we unpause if we can't move?" Felix asked.
On the word "unpause," things started to move again.
"That answers that question…"
"Next, we should assign stations. The major three are piloting, engines, and weapons," Meredith explained.
"I think I can handle piloting. I've played a lot of Kerbal Space Program," Felix mentioned.
"Maybe there was a reason why we started in the rooms we did."
"Wait, that means I'm the engines guy? That doesn't sound like fun," Chase complained.
"Managing the weapons can get complicated, and since I have the most FTL experience, I'll control them."
"Fine. You're the boss."
Each of them went to their assigned stations. Felix looked again at his control board. There was no joystick or steering wheel or anything like that. He wondered if he was supposed to fly this ship with only a few random buttons. On the screen was a full display of the ship, hull, shields, supplies, crew health bars, etc. Nothing about steering though.
The only buttons that were lit up on his control board were JUMP, SHIP, and GENERATE. The other ones were grey and already pressed in. As he saw Chase fiddling with the engine room control panel, the engines roared to life, shaking the whole ship a little. Felix could now see small flames spitting from the thrusters of the ship.
"I figured it out, guys. I'm good on this end," Chase said over the intercom.
Out of sheer curiosity, Felix hit the GENERATE button. Two little ten-sided dice appeared on the bottom right side of the screen. The EVADE text on the screen glowed green with the number "15%" next to it.
Next, he pressed the SHIP. A menu popped up on the screen with three tabs: UPGRADES, CREW, and EQUIPMENT. He quickly went through all three.
On the UPGRADES tab, it appeared that the ship already had some upgrade to each of its systems and its reactor. The CREW tab showed the three of them and their names. The EQUIPMENT tab displayed an Artemis missile launcher and a Burst Laser II gun, but no drones, cargo, or augmentations.
Meredith had told them to spend some time to memorize the placement of each of the rooms. Special rooms included the O2, engines, weapons, shields, medbay, doors, sensors, and piloting rooms. For a few minutes, Felix repeated the names of the rooms and looked at the overview of the ship. There were little symbols for each room that helped signify the function of the room.
Last but not least was the JUMP button.
"I'm hitting the JUMP button now. Brace for impact!"
Felix pressed the button down and expected to hurtle through space faster than light. However, all that happened was that a map popped up on the screen titled "Beacon Map."
Sector 1: Civilian Sector
"Meredith, what is this?"
A few moments passed before Meredith joined Felix in the piloting room.
"This is the beacon map. These little yellow diamonds on the map represent FTL beacons that we can jump to. FTL means faster-than-light, if you didn't know already."
"Oh, I knew. It would be helpful for Kerbal missions. Flying to Pluto takes forever."
Meredith chuckled.
"So, if I remember correctly, the best strategy was to hit as many beacons as you could before you got to the exit beacon right there. The exit beacon is the only way to jump to the next sector."
She pointed at small yellow diamond on the other side of the map. A little green box labeled "EXIT" pointed at the diamond.
"The more encounters we face, the more supplies and scrap we'll get."
"Scrap… is for upgrading our ship and buying stuff?" Felix said, unsure.
"Yeah, good job."
Meredith spent some more time looking over Felix's screen.
"Wow, your display has everything on it. Mine only has things relevant to the weapons system," she said.
"Do you want to switch? Maybe you'd be better at the helm."
"Believe it or not, weapons are equally as important."
Felix looked again at his screen. Everything was foreign to him.
"I hope I can figure all of this out and not get killed."
"Me too."
"Me three!" Chase's voice said over the intercom.
"Oh, I forgot that what we say is automatically broadcasted through the entire ship. lol." she said without hesitation.
"...Did you just say 'lol'?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Oh, nothing. It's just cute."
Meredith laughed.
"Okay, Chase, get over here. Let's talk strategy."
They looked at all the possible paths through sector one to get to the exit beacon and settled on the one that they thought was the best. After deciding, the three of them returned to their respective stations.
"All right, lady and gentleman, ready for liftoff?"
"I'm pretty sure that's not the word for it, dude."
"Hey, I'm the pilot here, I can call it whatever."
"Doesn't make it right."
"Just do the damn jump already," Meredith butted in.
"Okay, here we go! T-minus five, four, three, two, one…!"
He selected the next beacon and the ship disappeared into the blackness of space.