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super-astronaut ruby accidentally lands in the Outer Wilds
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This mission's been a long one, by the measure of her career so far. The most she's stretched herself - of course, new technology helps. Jack's a surly coworker, especially stripped of his supervillain grandeur, but the man knows his way around the technological marvels of the new age.

Like pain rays. Which, given Zenith's power source, and that the vacuum of space can only ramp her up so far, has proven astonishingly useful - enough she's been bopping around a slice of the theoretical inner Oort cloud, dropping off space probes and taking a prodigious number of readings. She doesn't need any kind of provisions to keep running, so she's basically just continuing until she gets bored or until the 'please come back by this time' clock runs down.

Given she's got a library with thousands of books loaded to pull up on her HUD, boredom's probably not the problem so much as loneliness, and... Zenith's been getting used to the dark, out here. It's cozy.

Still, she's never done out of contact missions for longer than a week total before - never needed to - and it took her two to get this far in the first place. She'd... Like to see another human, she thinks, stowing the last of her sensors. Another face sounds nice.

She ramps up Jack's newest gizmo and begins the long trek back, one astonishingly far range teleport at a time. Zenith has no idea how she's managing it mentally, really - even with aim being only a fuzzy concept, astronomical units are huge.

She actually needs to start thinking about aim some as she passes the outer planets. Getting into Earth's atmosphere normally takes an exhausting number of increasingly short range teleports to refine where she's going, until she has a good sight of the ground. (She's teleported into the ground more than once; luckily, the same side power that lets her teleport around the vacuum of space in her pajamas (not on official missions, of course, but, well, when she's off the clock...) makes it technically impossible for her to telefrag in a way that hurts her.)

She thumbs the button to dial down Jack's gizmo's output once she gets close enough Earth's bigger than a dust mote. For all it's sometimes disorienting, ramping her power down helps her aim without an error margin measured in millions of kilometers -

Zenith proceeds to learn a very, very valuable lesson about trusting mad scientists' gizmos. Of course, it'll take her a while to get back to cuss him out -

Given she vanishes from the void as she reorients toward Earth...

And doesn't reappear in her own solar system.

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The System at a glance

In fact it looks very very unlike her solar system. There's what might be a gas giant which is normal, a binary pair of planets one sandy, the other red, a blue planet with a brightly glowing moon, some weird irregularly shaped thing that almost looks like a giant plant and finally a blue green world with what looks like an atmosphere. The scale is all wrong though, the planets are far too large and far too close to the sun. Something isn't right here.

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...What the hell.

Step one: figure out where in the universe she is. (Though the laws of physics should be consistent everywhere within a universe, and they don't look like they're running on familiar principles here - could she be in a simulation? A very obvious one, though... But some supervillains are bombastic idiots, and while Zenith stays out of the hero-villain games she's massively high profile for a super.)

Step two: ???

Step three: strangle Jack.

Now that she has her priorities settled, she starts working her way toward the blue green world, thumbing down the output on her gizmo even farther. It behaves, this time.

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Timber Hearth from orbit

The weirdness continues. This planet is maybe a half a kilometer in diameter but still has an atmosphere. There seems to be at least one settlement in a crater just below her. 

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Wow. Tiny baby planet. Her power's going to be basically nonexistent if she wants error margins small enough she won't keep teleporting past the planet...

Ugh. She hates ramping down that far.

She sets up some sensors, first, saving the data about this solar system onto a separate drive. Turns most of them off, then fixes a few to her suit to monitor her own approach to the planet. Like whether she accelerates towards it at a rate normal for Earth's gravity once in orbit.

She then ramps down anyways, aims for the outskirts of the settlement -

Arrives in solid rock.

Sighs, and teleports straight 'up' in a short hop. Her 'stubbed toe' range is larger than this planet... She ends up well outside of it again, trying to work herself down a teeny tiny bit at a time. She can take pretty bad falls, but not all of her instruments definitely can - so she's slow, and cautious, and tries very, very hard to get herself just above the planet's surface on her final jump.

It actually works, wonder of wonders.

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By the side of a river

She finds herself beside a small stream.

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Usually the stars are a lot less clear than this from inside an atmosphere. (Or, well, from inside Earth's atmosphere. Definitely from inside Venus's atmosphere.)

She stares, for a moment, soaking the strange world in. It doesn't feel like any simulation she's been in.

She takes readings, then, methodically. Gravity's Earth norm, despite the tiny size... Collects some samples of the grass, dirt, stones, and water - she luckily hadn't filled all her sample containers with asteroid innards. Mostly because asteroids are even more obnoxious than planets to land on. And then she stows all that, and she orients herself to face the settlement, and she starts walking.

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It's actually just a little ways down the river. There's a path beside the river after a little ways and then it becomes a wooden bridge to parallel a small waterfall and then she's just inside the settlement. Still on a ledge in the crater wall.

Settlement Entrance

 

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She examines the settlement from her perch, listening. Is there an obviously 'important' building? (By human standards, of course. She doesn't know which ones aliens or simulated people might use.)

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The largest building by quite a margin is to her left. There's also a platform with what looks to be a small spaceship on the other side of the crater otherwise all the buildings look to be about the same size.

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She heads over to the large building, idly snapping a picture as she walks and then stowing everything she's carrying.

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Museum Entrance

There's an obvious entrance, to either side of the entrance are pictures on the walls and straight ahead there are two blue skinned aliens looking at a statue of some kind.

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Deep breath. This is either a terrifyingly immersive and comprehensive simulation or a genuine first contact scenario. Absolutely no sweat! 

Whichever's true - she needs to find out information about this world, and it really is unlikely to hurt to behave like this is, actually, humanity's first alien contact.

She steps into the hall, clearing her throat.

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Both aliens turn around. The taller one on the right says something in a language she doesn't recognize.

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She belatedly flicks on her audio recorder. The pickup's not the best - it's meant for her to record voice logs - but hopefully it'll get some of the language.

If she was on a movie or something she'd say something cool and impressive and quote worthy.

Unfortunately, she's a dork.

"Hello. I'm very lost."

"...But I come in peace!"

That's probably important to tack on.

...Possibly she should've flicked on the audio recorder a few seconds later. That's going in the official record, isn't it.

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The shorter one thinks for a moment and then says something to the taller one and they both walk through a door to the left with what appears to be a gesture to follow.

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She follows.

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The alien leads her to what appears to be a broken piece of wall with a spiral and a star shaped symbol on it. They point to the spiral.

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"I don't know what that is," she says, probably uselessly. She - looks away? Maybe hopefully demonstratively. And shrugs, hands open.

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The alien imitates the gesture. They point at the placard near the wall and then at Zenith.

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She hums, then pulls up an image of the Earth on her visor, taking it off and turning it around to show both aliens. She points to the planet, then herself, then zooms out from the planet, points to empty space beside it, switches to an image she took of their planet, and points to the empty space beside it.

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The alien nods and smiles. They lead the way up a circular ramp built around an enormous tree trunk to a room with a large telescope, a ball and stick model of the solar system that's moving on tracks and two large computer consoles.

Spiral ramp in the museumModel of Solar System and Computer Console

The alien walks over to the console and starts bringing up pictures and labels in the weird script they seem to use that's composed of lines of varying lengths.

The first three pictures seem to be of stars of varying types and the label seems to be the same for all three.

The alien fetches a paper and a pen of some sort and tries to give them to Zenith.

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She takes them, looking with interest at everything (and recording, of course).

She pulls up images of stars of other types on her visor, next to an image of one of their labeled stars.

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The alien mimes writing on the paper.

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She writes (and says) the word 'star'.

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The alien dashes to the other side of the room briefly and gets what looks like a tape recorder. Then they say a word and gesture at Zenith.

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