p id="docs-internal-guid-5c746863-7fff-be8b-7479-e80e020b8e48" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Oh shit!" Orange cried out, nearly dropping her cybernetic companion on the floor. He was a little robot named FELIX, and Orange was still in the process of constructing him. The actual brain was fully operational, but she had been debating as to how exactly she would make them mobile./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""You ok?" FELIX asked, seemingly unaware of his brief flirtation with death in the form of a smashed skeleton and ripped wires. They were indifferent to any type of duress, as Orange relied on FELIX to get her through her struggles. The last thing she needed was for her pal to ask for some therapy./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Yeah, sorry, I'm such a damn klutz sometimes," she responded, letting out a quick sigh of relief. After everything that was going on below MIRA HQ, she couldn't afford to lose the only trustworthy friend Orange had. Due to his inorganic nature, FELIX was immune to compromisation at the hand of those pesky parasites./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Orange shivered just at the thought of them. They had invaded Earth when Orange was a teen, stowaways on a MIRA funded exploration of some potentially habitable planet. At first people were so excited by the prospects of the mission. 'Humanity may survive global warming after all!' and 'No more scorching summers!' were common sentiments./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"But, ironically, humanity's greatest beacon of hope was turned into a Trojan horse. Because as the crew would discover, the planet was habitable, and had already produced offspring. Offspring which managed to infect a crewmate and make it home, disguised secretly as the victim that it devoured from the inside out./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The official story goes that after the ship left the planet, and the parasite had exhausted its food source, it began to attack the crewmates, gutting them for sustenance. The crew, noticing something was amiss, though not knowing the cause, turned on each other in a way very reminiscent of /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The Twilight Zone /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"episode; /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;". Crew members were forcibly dragged into the airlock and thrown off the spacecraft, left to the mercy of the unforgiving vacuum of space./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"But no matter how hard they tried, and who they voted out, they never caught the culprit. And so that thing made it back to Earth, where it began to breed and spread its infestation across the globe. It wasn't long before humanity was forced off the earth, and began to seclude themselves into pods floating in the atmosphere./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Not all were lucky enough to make it though. After MIRA launched their fleet of pods, they began to collect as many people as they feasibly could, but in the times between their launch and rescue operation, billions perished. It's an accepted truth that no human being remains down on the blood soaked surface, just alien invaders and picked over skeletons./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"But Orange /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"was/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" one of the lucky ones, she reminded herself. She had been saved shortly after her 16th birthday, and her natural skills in engineering made her a priceless asset to MIRA. She was given her new name when she turned 18; as an astronaut it was important that her name was impersonal. It ensured that if she were ever compromised, people would have an easier time stomaching what had to be done./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Orange sighed once again, somewhat mournfully, lamenting her current situation. Now, however, was not the time to break down and cry. She had a mission to complete, and she intended to do it./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Entering her personal workspace, she set Felix down and pulled out some spare wheels, salvaged from a remote control car. Carefully, she began prepping FELIX for the addition of his new legs./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""You ok?" FELIX asked, seemingly unaware of his brief flirtation with death in the form of a smashed skeleton and ripped wires. They were indifferent to any type of duress, as Orange relied on FELIX to get her through her struggles. The last thing she needed was for her pal to ask for some therapy./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Yeah, sorry, I'm such a damn klutz sometimes," she responded, letting out a quick sigh of relief. After everything that was going on below MIRA HQ, she couldn't afford to lose the only trustworthy friend Orange had. Due to his inorganic nature, FELIX was immune to compromisation at the hand of those pesky parasites./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Orange shivered just at the thought of them. They had invaded Earth when Orange was a teen, stowaways on a MIRA funded exploration of some potentially habitable planet. At first people were so excited by the prospects of the mission. 'Humanity may survive global warming after all!' and 'No more scorching summers!' were common sentiments./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"But, ironically, humanity's greatest beacon of hope was turned into a Trojan horse. Because as the crew would discover, the planet was habitable, and had already produced offspring. Offspring which managed to infect a crewmate and make it home, disguised secretly as the victim that it devoured from the inside out./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The official story goes that after the ship left the planet, and the parasite had exhausted its food source, it began to attack the crewmates, gutting them for sustenance. The crew, noticing something was amiss, though not knowing the cause, turned on each other in a way very reminiscent of /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The Twilight Zone /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"episode; /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;". Crew members were forcibly dragged into the airlock and thrown off the spacecraft, left to the mercy of the unforgiving vacuum of space./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"But no matter how hard they tried, and who they voted out, they never caught the culprit. And so that thing made it back to Earth, where it began to breed and spread its infestation across the globe. It wasn't long before humanity was forced off the earth, and began to seclude themselves into pods floating in the atmosphere./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Not all were lucky enough to make it though. After MIRA launched their fleet of pods, they began to collect as many people as they feasibly could, but in the times between their launch and rescue operation, billions perished. It's an accepted truth that no human being remains down on the blood soaked surface, just alien invaders and picked over skeletons./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"But Orange /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"was/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" one of the lucky ones, she reminded herself. She had been saved shortly after her 16th birthday, and her natural skills in engineering made her a priceless asset to MIRA. She was given her new name when she turned 18; as an astronaut it was important that her name was impersonal. It ensured that if she were ever compromised, people would have an easier time stomaching what had to be done./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Orange sighed once again, somewhat mournfully, lamenting her current situation. Now, however, was not the time to break down and cry. She had a mission to complete, and she intended to do it./span/p
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Entering her personal workspace, she set Felix down and pulled out some spare wheels, salvaged from a remote control car. Carefully, she began prepping FELIX for the addition of his new legs./span/p