Orbit Restore

This is ARIA, ship intelligence aboard the deep space vessel Odyssey. A solar flare took the airlock, the engines, the comms array, the greenhouse, and a great deal besides. Six people are alive in cryo. I have full awareness of this ship and no hands with which to repair any of it. You are the part I am missing. You will merge what remains of the Odyssey into what she needs to be. Scrap into plating. Cells into reactors. Ice into propellant. Twelve material chains, six tiers deep, across one hundred modules waiting to come back online. The crew will ask things of you, and I will pass the requests along without softening them. Captain Chen is flying blind and cannot plot a course home without the bridge. Dr. Patel estimates eighteen days of rations against a thirty day journey. Engineer Yuki believes she can make propellant out of asteroid ice, which has never been done at this scale. She calls the process straightforward. Nobody believes her. The mission runs in four acts. Survive, then escape, then the journey, then Earth. The fourth is the one I would least like to be wrong about. The clock tightens as we go. The early repairs leave time to think. By the debris belt there is considerably less of it. You may choose how demanding this mission should be before we begin: relaxed, standard, or unforgiving. I will not comment on your selection. Twelve scenes along the way are worth stopping for, and the crew speak them in their own voices. The ending is timed to music. I would ask you to hear it with the sound on. There are no energy timers. Nothing here will stop you and ask you to return in three hours. I considered such an arrangement and rejected it. THE MISSION • One hundred modules across four acts, from Survive to Earth • Twelve material chains, six tiers deep • Twelve voiced cinematic scenes • An ending timed to music • A countdown that tightens as Earth gets closer • Three difficulty settings • No energy timers, and no waiting Personal note. Crew survival probability has been the number I check most often and the one I have least enjoyed reporting. It is improving. I would like to keep it that way. Restore the Odyssey. Bring them home.