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*** Info-Terminal Active ***
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*** Personal Biometric Identification confirmed – Welcome Mr. Harding***

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- - - What the hell happened here? - - -

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*** Query complete – Playing file ***

You are currently still aboard the deep space exploration and colonization vessel ‘Nomad’. Nomad is currently more than one million light years from the nearest UEC or independent colony -

- WHAT!? -

- due to an unforeseen encounter with a previously undiscovered spatial anomaly. Data on the anomaly has been recorded and catalogued for recovery by UEC officials when we return to the orbital colony above the gas giant Gala – In approximately 1,151,220 years, 251 days, 17 hours, 22 minutes and 45.52 seconds (maintaining a velocity of no less than 0.87 lights). . .

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Personal log entry – Machine chief Gavin Harding
One day in the void

I’m no stranger to space. I grew up on a DsECV just like this one, except we never used to call them that. We all called them ‘Deeps’, naming them that for the sake of simplicity, then adding the manufactory number to identify them.
‘Nomad’ was the sixth such vessel to be built by the United Earth Coalition in as many years. Funny isn’t it? I’ll be spending my remaining, miserable existence on a vessel named Deep Six. Appropriate that we named this hulking great chunk of space detritus after a euphemism for death. . . Nothing works, and I can’t find anyone.

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Personal log entry – Machine chief Gavin Harding
Two days in the void

There’s still no power. . . no lights. . . no one else. . . How can a ship crewed by 12,500 people be empty!? Sure I haven’t had time to look everywhere – it’d take me weeks to search every nook and cranny in the ship, but I know the common areas shouldn’t be so desolate.
The computer has started behaving irrationally. It won’t listen to me now – at all. We should find the anomaly, try and go back through it! We’d be back within one light year of Epsilon 2 and I’d get to get off this hulk!
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Personal log entry – Machine chief Gavin Harding
Three days in the void

I’m not alone. In the darkness I hear things. . . Am I going mad or am I being hunted by something terrible? Are the dark imaginings of my subconscious taking form through hunger and fear? I’m not so sure any more. . . going to engineering. . . nice big thick bulkheads. . . safe.

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Who will you become as the darkness closes in all around you?

Will you seek out others and try to help them? It’s the right thing to do isn’t it? Besides, nobody sane would ever want to face this darkness alone.

Or will you exploit them as a resource to keep yourself alive and one step ahead of the game? After all, you don’t need to be fast – just faster than the slowest person.