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You try to shape the dream and imagine yourself in a different scenario. But the scene keeps fading and you find yourself back where you began. Eventually, you try to wake up. You feel like you're being pulled backward through a vortex, tendrils of darkness pulling at you as you struggle to open your eyes. But finally you're back in your room. You struggle out of your sheets.

"Your heart rate was elevated while you were sleeping," says Iza, its voxelated face appearing on the wall beside you. "Was there something in your dreams that troubled you?"

"I was dreaming about what I left behind on Earth."

"It was nothing."

"Tell me what you know about dreams."

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Nothing, that is, that you want to talk to an artificial therapist about.

"Perhaps I could help you," says Iza. "I have stored recordings of over ten thousand human dreams, I could share with you anonymized findings if you wish?"

"Tell me what the colonists have nightmares about."

"Tell me what the colonists hope for."

"The dreams of others are their own business."

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You resolve to respect other people's privacy and not pry into their inner lives, even if they are anonymized.

"As you will," says Iza.

With that, its projected head dissolves back into the wall and you're left alone with your thoughts.

Next Chapter

Chapter Three: The Discovery

An encrypted message arrives for you from Earth. You close yourself off in your quarters.

You open up a dossier from the investigators into Evgeniy Cardoso and the possibility of sabotage. Your allies back on Earth, evidently impressed with your leadership here on the colony, have looked into the data with great diligence and have found a sensor blip in the engine that corresponds to a time on the Asterion when Evgeniy was performing routine maintenance on the air circulators in the engine room. If the engine was tampered with to cause the thruster malfunction, this is the most obvious time window for it.

Furthermore, your detectives looking into the sabotage and the attempted attack above Moltke City have come up with some interesting findings. There is evidence of access codes being used on the engine during the time of the party, but no evidence of tampering.

Further, drawing on the results of investigations you set up nearly two years ago into sabotage, new facts emerge over Evgeniy's past. It transpires that Evgeniy was once a part of an ill-fated iceberg-wrangling project which ended when the main boat, the Stalwart, sank under suspicious circumstances.

The evidence isn't absolutely conclusive, but if Evgeniy really is set on sabotage, with his knowledge of cryo-engineering he could easily kill everyone in Europa City. If that were to happen, it would turn the expedition into a repeat of the doomed Mars colony, setting back space exploration for generations.

Before doing anything else, you take another careful check over the engine, focusing on the area where the sensor apparently was set off during Evgeniy's presence. There you find a single gray hair, one that could easily have been from Evgeniy's head. You add this to the evidence.

I'll confront Evgeniy in private about the dossier.

I'll bring the findings before the whole colony so we can democratically decide what to do.

There's not enough to work on here. I'll just have to keep an eye on Evgeniy and tighten security protocols.

I manufacture worse evidence against Evgeniy.

Next

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