Sometimes the greatest horrors start with the smallest complaints. Only one thing was missing from Lonnie’s life and his wife never let him forget it. They had a lovely house, money enough to feel secure and have new things, food to eat, and friends to socialize with. But Sarah and Lonnie did not have a child. After trying for years, even going through rounds of IVF treatments, they still had no child.
Had this been a choice they made, perhaps Lonnie and Sarah could have come to terms. But Sarah never made the choice not to have a child. It was all she wanted. And honestly, Lonnie wanted it too. They’d even selected their house on the basis of the lovely positioning of the nursery within.
The day that nursery was converted into a home gym, caused a huge shift in their life.
For a while, Sarah fell into a depression and then she adopted a cat. It was old and had lived a hard life. Sarah seemed to like the idea of caring for it. Lonnie thought that was the end of the baby problem.
Then, one day as they sat on their porch staring out at the sunset, Sarah stopped petting the cat in her lap and turned a darkly serious expression toward Lonnie. “I’m going to get pregnant, darling.”
The odd spark in her eye kept Lonnie awake late that night. He kept picturing her speaking. What new plan had she hatched and how could he get her to talk to him? Over the next weeks, Sarah began making similar unsettling remarks.
“Darling,” she would say, her voice tinged with a disturbed tone. “It will be soon. I’m going to be pregnant. You’ll see.”
Lonnie feared that his beloved wife was losing her grip on reality. Still, life went on and he went to work in the mornings and came home in the evening. As a physicist, he didn’t make what he considered tons of money, but it was enough to support their little household. And that meant, to him, plenty of time for Sarah to find something that gave her life purpose. He imagined painting or gardening. With so much time spent apart, he could almost convince himself that Sarah was normal when she wasn’t making her proclamations.
One evening, after a long day at work, Lonnie arrived home to an eerie sight. A cable-like object extended from the ground and snaked its way into the house. He took a closer look and the material appeared to be organic. Though part of him wanted to inspect the place this cable emerged further, the bigger part of Lonnie instantly thought about Sarah inside the house with this thing, and of her odd statements of late.
The cable reminded him in a way he didn’t like of a giant umbilical cord.
Lonnie hurried inside to find the cable snaked through the house toward the back where the stair up to the upstairs bedroom were. He followed it. At the base of the stairs, Lonnie discovered their cat perfectly still, with the cable attached to its belly. Before Lonnie could react and reach out for the creature, the cable twitched and a pulse of energy rolled out on the air.
The cat began to shrink. With each pulse of energy, time seemed to roll backward for the feline. First all the gray left its whiskers. Then instead of a chubby middle-aged housecat, it instead looked like a lean feral creature, and then it was a kitten, then a smaller kitten, eyes shut as if they’d never opened. Lonnie stared as the last change took place and he was staring at a fetal feline lying at the foot of the stairs.
“Holy…” Lonnie said.
Then, in a jerky movement, something pulled both the cord and the fetus up the stairs.
This was only the beginning.
***
Lonnie’s life now had almost nothing he would want. The world had almost nothing he would want. Including the awful stench that lay heavy on the air.
And as he strapped his diving helmet on, the stench retreated enough for him to think. He reasoned that the complete lack of anything to live for was all the more reason he needed to do something. He’d found the old model diving suit he wore at a local thrift store and left money on the counter for it—though no one was there to take the payment, Lonnie had a delusion of his own now.
“This can be undone. Someone can be saved.”
Sometimes he even managed to believe.
Lonnie hopped onto a road bike and made sure his prize possessions were secured: a chainsaw and an underwater scooter. With these things in place, Lonnie took off toward what he considered the center of this new monstrous world. A huge swell rose from the ground just outside town; this thing looked like nothing more than an overgrown pregnant belly, right down the red stretch marks and veins that peered out through its “skin”. From the apex of this belly grew a towering corpse flower, larger than any naturally grown flower and with a stink grown to match its size.
If only this mound had been ornamental and the stench had been the worse crime. But that was not true. The monstrous belly, with a towering corpse flower atop it, claimed all forms of life. In a few short months, it had reduced the world to a barren wasteland devoid of plants, animals, and people. Men, women, children, animals, plants… anything with life had been drawn into this horror.
Lonnie was seemingly the only survivor, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that his presence was spared because of his connection to Sarah.
He blazed on his bike across the landscape and glanced behind him at the back of the bike where the last item of vital value rested: a handheld container marked with the word “Atonement.”
It might be too late already to rebuild or repair, but atonement was always possible. Or so, Lonnie hoped as the rotting sweet smell of the corpse flower drew nearer. He could smell it even through the partially sealed suit—he hoped once fully sealed and using canned oxygen, the suit would be able to lock that out.
As he rode toward the bloated mass, pregnant with all the life it had been able to steal, he took strength in a memory. It was not a pleasant recollection, perhaps even just a creation of his own mind, though Lonnie didn’t think so. He recalled a dream.
In this dream that had come to him only once, the night before, Sarah appeared before him, her voice echoing through his mind. “The birth of the Second Desecration is near, darling.”
This cryptic message left Lonnie both bewildered and filled with dread. Determined to confront the abomination that had consumed the world, he steadied his path along the deserted highway.
Not that this had been a deserted highway a year before. He’d driven on it with Sarah plenty of times, usually stuck in traffic jams with only her soft, cool, voice keeping him from raging. Now that same voice drove him on in a very different way.
Now Sarah was part of the monster. But even if could save nothing else, maybe he could save her. The fact he was alive implied she was still in there and still cared. That had to mean something.
Driven by love and a glimmer of hope, Lonnie approached the monstrosity on the horizon. The giant pregnant belly, rooted in the ground, appeared ominous and foreboding. The sickly-sweet stench of decay filled his lungs and stung his eyes. As he drew nearer, he could see the giant boulders that had been tossed aside like pebbles as the belly emerged. Now they lay around the base like bubbles in the worst bubble bath ever. Lonnie contemplated his options and the weight of the responsibility he bore. His wife’s essence resided within this abomination, and he alone could determine its fate.
Summoning his courage, Lonnie hooked up the air to his suit. It cut out the awful scent, at least for a moment. Lonnie almost wished it hadn’t since with that oppressive rot gone from his lungs, he had to face his next task. He had to get inside this monstrosity.
He carefully set a hand on the “Atonement” sticker and then pulled his equipment down from the road bike. The chainsaw came first.
He turned it on and listened for a moment to the sound of its blade, half expecting the horror in front of him to respond. It did not. The rest of the world was still—no, still was too light a word. The rest of the world was dead. He walked on the bones of a corpse, begging for vengeance.
Lonnie swung the chainsaw against the mottled flesh of the belly. It squished and oozed, slicing easily. Red fluid leaked out along with a slimy yellowish substance. Some splashed against Lonnie’s helmet, giving the world a blotchy red sheen. He didn’t stop. There was no turning back, and nothing to turn back toward. In short order, Lonnie had opened a gap in the monstrous belly using his chainsaw.
For a long moment, he stood, chainsaw in hand, and stared into this pathway into the unknown. He had predictions for what lay inside, but this was uncharted territory. To know anything, he’d have to go in. Lonnie turned the chainsaw off and set it on his road bike. He doubted he’d see either tool again, but if his was the last living hand to affect the face of the earth, he’d leave as neat a mark as he could.
His hand tightened around the handhold of the “Atonement” container. All his hope was there.
https://preview.redd.it/mglpnseuyt2b1.jpg?width=2409&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=64393445c7963c4df2928472baa2be3e5274ac9a
"Inside the Unholy Womb" music track
Then hoisting the water scooter, Lonnie took in a deep breath of canned air and ventured inside the demonic swell. Darkness covered him. Encased in this tomb, Lonnie moved slowly at first, with only his headlamp to guide him. As his eyes adjusted to the eerie reddish light that filtered in through the skin and muscle of the belly, he saw more of his new surroundings. The interior revealed a cavernous expanse of flesh arching above and in meaty walls around him. He traveled with an eye to get to the center. He had an idea of what was there.
After all, Sarah had promised him a pregnancy, and a pregnancy implied a fetus.
Here inside the cloying heat of the belly, Lonnie could not even pretend that anything he did could bring the world back. There was nothing to restore. He’d always known that. For the first time, he truly accepted it. This was all there was, and he was headed toward the center of that evil.
Sure enough, he came to a central lake filled with amniotic fluid. It was too dark to see anything within the vast waters, yet small waves lapped out, implying some sort of movement within. Without hesitation, Lonnie plunged into the fluid, utilizing the underwater scooter to navigate swiftly through the watery depths.
He kept a firm hold of his “Atonement.”
The air inside his helmet tasted stale. Lonnie was sure he had time left before he ran out of air, but not endless time. And he was certain that breathing the air in this place would be death. He couldn’t afford fear or indecision.
The fluid clung around him, hot and thick. Much thicker than water, more like swimming through blood, though it was clear as water. Clear enough to see the bones that floated mixed in the fluid and the vines.
At the lake’s bottom, he encountered the abomination—the twisted fusion of human, animal, and plant—known as the Second Desecration. Sarah had uttered those words to him. He only believed them. Yet somehow, he’d expected it to be horrid, a creature from the deep recesses of depravity. Perhaps it was, but in its way, the Second Desecration was also a baby, though nearly four times as large as Lonnie already. Its facial features were almost human: large eyes, a human nose, and a mouth. Extra appendages grew from its back and sides. But its limbs still had the frail look of a fetus. This monstrosity was not yet fit to live outside its womb.
Now was the only moment.
Drawn closer by a mixture of curiosity, desperation, and love, Lonnie clutched the container tightly. Within it lay something dreadful and oddly wonderful. Something that had only been possible through his work in physics—a devastating mass destruction device—the first anti-matter bomb. It was a weapon he had never desired to see made real. Yet now he saw its potential as a means to reshape the impending reality.
He’d come to destroy this thing as it had destroyed his world and his life.
Amidst the grotesque scene, a thought penetrated Lonnie’s mind. If his wife had transformed into the vessel for the Second Desecration’s birth, could this creature, in some unfathomable way, be the son she had always longed for? That Lonnie himself had always wanted. Images of the world as it once was flooded his thoughts, a world already lost irretrievably.
Ending the Second Desecration now would not bring that world back.
But to do nothing would have consequences. He imagined the horror that would unfold if he allowed the Second Desecration to come into existence—a nightmarish realm akin to hell on Earth.
In the midst of his contemplation, Lonnie understood the precipice before him. The only thing that remained was to decide: should he release the destructive force within the container, returning everything to the void? Or should he permit his “son” to live, thereby allowing the birth of a distorted and contorted new world?
Either act was an end for Lonnie, an end for the world. In the end, Lonnie didn’t have anything except for a choice.

Sometimes the greatest horrors start with the smallest complaints. Only one thing was missing from Lonnie’s life and his wife never let him forget it. They had a lovely house, money enough to feel secure and have new things, food to eat, and friends to socialize with. But Sarah and Lonnie did not have a child. After trying for years, even going through rounds of IVF treatments, they still had no child.
Had this been a choice they made, perhaps Lonnie and Sarah could have come to terms. But Sarah never made the choice not to have a child. It was all she wanted. And honestly, Lonnie wanted it too. They’d even selected their house on the basis of the lovely positioning of the nursery within.
The day that nursery was converted into a home gym, caused a huge shift in their life.
For a while, Sarah fell into a depression and then she adopted a cat. It was old and had lived a hard life. Sarah seemed to like the idea of caring for it. Lonnie thought that was the end of the baby problem.
Then, one day as they sat on their porch staring out at the sunset, Sarah stopped petting the cat in her lap and turned a darkly serious expression toward Lonnie. “I’m going to get pregnant, darling.”
The odd spark in her eye kept Lonnie awake late that night. He kept picturing her speaking. What new plan had she hatched and how could he get her to talk to him? Over the next weeks, Sarah began making similar unsettling remarks.
“Darling,” she would say, her voice tinged with a disturbed tone. “It will be soon. I’m going to be pregnant. You’ll see.”
Lonnie feared that his beloved wife was losing her grip on reality. Still, life went on and he went to work in the mornings and came home in the evening. As a physicist, he didn’t make what he considered tons of money, but it was enough to support their little household. And that meant, to him, plenty of time for Sarah to find something that gave her life purpose. He imagined painting or gardening. With so much time spent apart, he could almost convince himself that Sarah was normal when she wasn’t making her proclamations.
One evening, after a long day at work, Lonnie arrived home to an eerie sight. A cable-like object extended from the ground and snaked its way into the house. He took a closer look and the material appeared to be organic. Though part of him wanted to inspect the place this cable emerged further, the bigger part of Lonnie instantly thought about Sarah inside the house with this thing, and of her odd statements of late.
The cable reminded him in a way he didn’t like of a giant umbilical cord.
Lonnie hurried inside to find the cable snaked through the house toward the back where the stair up to the upstairs bedroom were. He followed it. At the base of the stairs, Lonnie discovered their cat perfectly still, with the cable attached to its belly. Before Lonnie could react and reach out for the creature, the cable twitched and a pulse of energy rolled out on the air.
The cat began to shrink. With each pulse of energy, time seemed to roll backward for the feline. First all the gray left its whiskers. Then instead of a chubby middle-aged housecat, it instead looked like a lean feral creature, and then it was a kitten, then a smaller kitten, eyes shut as if they’d never opened. Lonnie stared as the last change took place and he was staring at a fetal feline lying at the foot of the stairs.
“Holy…” Lonnie said.
Then, in a jerky movement, something pulled both the cord and the fetus up the stairs.
This was only the beginning.
***
Lonnie’s life now had almost nothing he would want. The world had almost nothing he would want. Including the awful stench that lay heavy on the air.
And as he strapped his diving helmet on, the stench retreated enough for him to think. He reasoned that the complete lack of anything to live for was all the more reason he needed to do something. He’d found the old model diving suit he wore at a local thrift store and left money on the counter for it—though no one was there to take the payment, Lonnie had a delusion of his own now.
“This can be undone. Someone can be saved.”
Sometimes he even managed to believe.
Lonnie hopped onto a road bike and made sure his prize possessions were secured: a chainsaw and an underwater scooter. With these things in place, Lonnie took off toward what he considered the center of this new monstrous world. A huge swell rose from the ground just outside town; this thing looked like nothing more than an overgrown pregnant belly, right down the red stretch marks and veins that peered out through its “skin”. From the apex of this belly grew a towering corpse flower, larger than any naturally grown flower and with a stink grown to match its size.
If only this mound had been ornamental and the stench had been the worse crime. But that was not true. The monstrous belly, with a towering corpse flower atop it, claimed all forms of life. In a few short months, it had reduced the world to a barren wasteland devoid of plants, animals, and people. Men, women, children, animals, plants… anything with life had been drawn into this horror.
Lonnie was seemingly the only survivor, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that his presence was spared because of his connection to Sarah.
He blazed on his bike across the landscape and glanced behind him at the back of the bike where the last item of vital value rested: a handheld container marked with the word “Atonement.”
It might be too late already to rebuild or repair, but atonement was always possible. Or so, Lonnie hoped as the rotting sweet smell of the corpse flower drew nearer. He could smell it even through the partially sealed suit—he hoped once fully sealed and using canned oxygen, the suit would be able to lock that out.
As he rode toward the bloated mass, pregnant with all the life it had been able to steal, he took strength in a memory. It was not a pleasant recollection, perhaps even just a creation of his own mind, though Lonnie didn’t think so. He recalled a dream.
In this dream that had come to him only once, the night before, Sarah appeared before him, her voice echoing through his mind. “The birth of the Second Desecration is near, darling.”
This cryptic message left Lonnie both bewildered and filled with dread. Determined to confront the abomination that had consumed the world, he steadied his path along the deserted highway.
Not that this had been a deserted highway a year before. He’d driven on it with Sarah plenty of times, usually stuck in traffic jams with only her soft, cool, voice keeping him from raging. Now that same voice drove him on in a very different way.
Now Sarah was part of the monster. But even if could save nothing else, maybe he could save her. The fact he was alive implied she was still in there and still cared. That had to mean something.
Driven by love and a glimmer of hope, Lonnie approached the monstrosity on the horizon. The giant pregnant belly, rooted in the ground, appeared ominous and foreboding. The sickly-sweet stench of decay filled his lungs and stung his eyes. As he drew nearer, he could see the giant boulders that had been tossed aside like pebbles as the belly emerged. Now they lay around the base like bubbles in the worst bubble bath ever. Lonnie contemplated his options and the weight of the responsibility he bore. His wife’s essence resided within this abomination, and he alone could determine its fate.
Summoning his courage, Lonnie hooked up the air to his suit. It cut out the awful scent, at least for a moment. Lonnie almost wished it hadn’t since with that oppressive rot gone from his lungs, he had to face his next task. He had to get inside this monstrosity.
He carefully set a hand on the “Atonement” sticker and then pulled his equipment down from the road bike. The chainsaw came first.
He turned it on and listened for a moment to the sound of its blade, half expecting the horror in front of him to respond. It did not. The rest of the world was still—no, still was too light a word. The rest of the world was dead. He walked on the bones of a corpse, begging for vengeance.
Lonnie swung the chainsaw against the mottled flesh of the belly. It squished and oozed, slicing easily. Red fluid leaked out along with a slimy yellowish substance. Some splashed against Lonnie’s helmet, giving the world a blotchy red sheen. He didn’t stop. There was no turning back, and nothing to turn back toward. In short order, Lonnie had opened a gap in the monstrous belly using his chainsaw.
For a long moment, he stood, chainsaw in hand, and stared into this pathway into the unknown. He had predictions for what lay inside, but this was uncharted territory. To know anything, he’d have to go in. Lonnie turned the chainsaw off and set it on his road bike. He doubted he’d see either tool again, but if his was the last living hand to affect the face of the earth, he’d leave as neat a mark as he could.
His hand tightened around the handhold of the “Atonement” container. All his hope was there.
https://preview.redd.it/04z16hxgyt2b1.jpg?width=2409&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dacf0c8557e07f582ce673a33cf86175de1bc96f
"Inside the Unholy Womb" music track
Then hoisting the water scooter, Lonnie took in a deep breath of canned air and ventured inside the demonic swell. Darkness covered him. Encased in this tomb, Lonnie moved slowly at first, with only his headlamp to guide him. As his eyes adjusted to the eerie reddish light that filtered in through the skin and muscle of the belly, he saw more of his new surroundings. The interior revealed a cavernous expanse of flesh arching above and in meaty walls around him. He traveled with an eye to get to the center. He had an idea of what was there.
After all, Sarah had promised him a pregnancy, and a pregnancy implied a fetus.
Here inside the cloying heat of the belly, Lonnie could not even pretend that anything he did could bring the world back. There was nothing to restore. He’d always known that. For the first time, he truly accepted it. This was all there was, and he was headed toward the center of that evil.
Sure enough, he came to a central lake filled with amniotic fluid. It was too dark to see anything within the vast waters, yet small waves lapped out, implying some sort of movement within. Without hesitation, Lonnie plunged into the fluid, utilizing the underwater scooter to navigate swiftly through the watery depths.
He kept a firm hold of his “Atonement.”
The air inside his helmet tasted stale. Lonnie was sure he had time left before he ran out of air, but not endless time. And he was certain that breathing the air in this place would be death. He couldn’t afford fear or indecision.
The fluid clung around him, hot and thick. Much thicker than water, more like swimming through blood, though it was clear as water. Clear enough to see the bones that floated mixed in the fluid and the vines.
At the lake’s bottom, he encountered the abomination—the twisted fusion of human, animal, and plant—known as the Second Desecration. Sarah had uttered those words to him. He only believed them. Yet somehow, he’d expected it to be horrid, a creature from the deep recesses of depravity. Perhaps it was, but in its way, the Second Desecration was also a baby, though nearly four times as large as Lonnie already. Its facial features were almost human: large eyes, a human nose, and a mouth. Extra appendages grew from its back and sides. But its limbs still had the frail look of a fetus. This monstrosity was not yet fit to live outside its womb.
Now was the only moment.
Drawn closer by a mixture of curiosity, desperation, and love, Lonnie clutched the container tightly. Within it lay something dreadful and oddly wonderful. Something that had only been possible through his work in physics—a devastating mass destruction device—the first anti-matter bomb. It was a weapon he had never desired to see made real. Yet now he saw its potential as a means to reshape the impending reality.
He’d come to destroy this thing as it had destroyed his world and his life.
Amidst the grotesque scene, a thought penetrated Lonnie’s mind. If his wife had transformed into the vessel for the Second Desecration’s birth, could this creature, in some unfathomable way, be the son she had always longed for? That Lonnie himself had always wanted. Images of the world as it once was flooded his thoughts, a world already lost irretrievably.
Ending the Second Desecration now would not bring that world back.
But to do nothing would have consequences. He imagined the horror that would unfold if he allowed the Second Desecration to come into existence—a nightmarish realm akin to hell on Earth.
In the midst of his contemplation, Lonnie understood the precipice before him. The only thing that remained was to decide: should he release the destructive force within the container, returning everything to the void? Or should he permit his “son” to live, thereby allowing the birth of a distorted and contorted new world?
Either act was an end for Lonnie, an end for the world. In the end, Lonnie didn’t have anything except for a choice.

Updated May 2023
I recently changed Reddit accounts and it's been about a year, so it seemed prudent to repost this for visibility. :)

Link to the Below Zero guide

https://subnauticamap.io/ - This is an interactive map of the crater. However, be warned that it will show the general location of things you need to find. This can be toggled but if you have zero point of reference for the places mentioned in this guide, this map should provide one.

General tips are at the bottom, however, they rely on you having played at least part of the way through the game so I don't recommend checking them until at least part 3, AKA "Going Traveling"

Subnautica is a game primarily about exploring your environment while overcoming the trepidation that the game sets up in you over doing so. Although there isn't a perfect guide to being able to clear the game, there also isn't an unambiguous path of progression for the player, either.
Consequently new players often find themselves at an impasse in terms of progression and where to go. The following is a no-nonsense, straight to the point guide on how to progress, but it's not a bible. You can do most of this just by exploring and wandering around.
A blind playthrough is critical to the first time player experience. This is often true of every game but for Subnautica it makes or breaks the whole story - you need to have no idea what the hell is going on the first time you clear the game. If you spoil it for yourself you will regret it, please believe me in this. This guide is meant to give you a nudge when you find you don't know where to go next, it's not really meant as a walkthrough, even though it can be used as one. Do yourself a favor friends, don't go wandering /subnautica or the wiki too much and this guide will not lead you astray. It is written specifically for brand new players.

The Beginning

When you first arrive on 4546b, you find yourself with basically nothing. You're hungry, thirsty, your lifepod is broken and your cookies are gone. The Aurora is burning (and you nearly did too) but despite all that, you're alive and this planet is about to get some Ryley in it.
The environment around you has most of what you need to get started. The metal scrap strewn around the shallows provides an easy source of Titanium while you can break limestone and sandstone to get the minerals you need for your starting tools. You'll want the quartz you find for glass.
Although you have a number of options for making equipment, at this stage I don't recommend using resources for the air pump or pipes. Truth is they don't really have much use; they create a breathing line from the surface for when you're diving, but they're expensive and there's better alternatives in your near future.
Once you have a scanner and knife, take the time to scan everything you can. All the local wildlife can be scanned and most of the flora.
Your objective at this point is to build a repair gun, knife, seaglide, flashlight and scanner.

Branching Out

Now that you've got your basic tools and you can get around a little, it's time to begin exploring. At this point you've seen the deeper waters on the edges of the kelp forest.
It's time to go take a look.
The red grassy plains have what you need to progress to deeper waters. You'll want to explore the wrecks there. There are four grassy plains surrounding the shallows at compass points and cave systems exist in three of them which will become relevant later, but are largely out of your reach for now. It is out here that you will find fragments necessary for an important task you must complete soon. Raiding the aurora will require the laser cutter you learn to make here. You'll also want a propulsion cannon, which you can find the fragments to near the side of the Aurora. DO NOT GO AROUND THE BACK OF THE AURORA. SERIOUSLY. You are not prepared for that level of giggling insanity yet.
By now you've fixed the radio and may have triggered the sunbeam event, in which case you will want to go follow that. Give yourself the full span of time to go to the island and explore unless you'd prefer to explore after the event, but don't let yourself get distracted by what you find there and miss the ship arriving. The signals you've been getting are important prompts and need to be checked out when possible, so make sure you take the time to do that. Also, when you go to either island DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACH. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACH. There is a real risk of it phasing through the ground and becoming inaccessible and then you'll end up on this subreddit asking how to get it back like the other 5 guys a week. Seriously.
Also note that bringing an ion cube to the top of the mountains caves will let you do something interesting up there, but I won't be specific. A scanner room at this spot is ideal not just to track the reaper leviathan on the eastern side of the island but there is quite a lot of shale and lithium here as well, which is probably something you're gonna want.

Going traveling

At this point you should have a seamoth, your basic tools, a laser cutter, propulsion cannon and lead suit. You are prepared. It's time to go to the Aurora... but only if you've gotten the communication from Alterra with the captains door code. Otherwise, you must wait for that radio event. You can go explore the ship anyways of course, but not having the code means you can't get into the captains room, requiring you to go back and get it later. So it's up to you. You can open the door anyways if you get the code off the internet or something but since the game gives it to you anyways, you can always wait for the prompt. If not, the door code is 2679
If you have a cyclops I don't recommend taking it, since reapers hang out at the front and back ends of the ship. However, a seamoth is small enough to fit through the broken superstructure of the ship at the front and thus avoid this danger. There are two ways to access the ship and although it seems impossible, you CAN in fact climb up to access the open one. Otherwise, you can use the prop cannon to move the debris out of the way of the door near water level. Be sure to take the time to explore inside and use the carry-all bags to leave stuff you want to keep from the ship out the front so you can come back and pick it all up later. There's lots of useful stuff in there.
As a side note here, the leech-like things that annoy you in the reactor room are called Bleeders. I hate Bleeders personally, but I noted that if you grab one with the propulsion cannon and fling it into the wall out of sheer spite then other bleeders will be attracted to the body, which makes grabbing and doing the same to them quite easy. Clearing the entire room of those little #*([email protected]'s only takes a couple minutes.
You can get the codes for various rooms inside from the PDA's you find. Also note that some doors can only be opened once you repair them. Sometimes the Aurora glitches and these repair sections don't work but because the ship has two entrances, you can always go around the back to clear the whole thing, which is... annoying. If you don't mind being patient, leaving the Aurora and doing other things for awhile will reset the wreck, allowing you to come back later and potentially be able to repair the doors then.
The codes for the ship are:
Cabin No. 1: 1869
Captain's Quarters: 2679
Cargo Bay: 1454
Lab Access: 6483

Time to go down

With the Aurora repaired you have the ability to wear things other than the lead suit, so it's time to chuck that in the trash 'cuz you won't need it again. It's time to get the outer wrecks in the zones beyond the shallows and hoo boy ain't that gonna be an experience.
The cyclops is your friend here. But what's this, you don't have a cyclops? Well, that's okay. You may have found one of the engine fragments on the aurora in the cargo bay but if you missed it, it's not really a big deal. Your next objective to build one is to go explore mushroom forest and the underwater floating islands for the fragments you'll need. If you've been following your radio signals you've probably been to the aurora rendezvous point by now, but if not, take the time to go thoroughly explore that island. One of the PDAs you need to find the next place is not at the degasi base, but on one of the paths of the island near an arch of rock. You'll need to explore the island thoroughly to find it. Make sure to scan everything and bring back plant samples if you have a seabase. You can use plant pots to keep food trees on your cyclops for easy access to food without worrying about curing everything all the time.
Once you have the cyclops, you need to take the time to upgrade your seamoth to depth so you can explore the various wrecks, supplement your PDA database and establish yourself properly for long-term operations. At this point in the game you should be aiming for or already have:
A seabase, even a basic one. A couple corridors with lockers are invaluable for storage and operations and the scanner room is MISSION CRITICAL. If you haven't built one yet, get on that!
A seamoth, either at or being upgraded to 500m depth
Knife, flashlight, repair gun, seaglide, scanner, laser cutter, propulsion or repulsion cannon, rebreather
Be sure to check everything, then check it again! It's easy to miss things on the island. Be sure to check the buildings on the tops of the hills there too. Although it would be nice to be able to plant land beacons (hint hint, Unknown Worlds), it's not feasible for marking out the precursor gate on the floating island so unfortunately, it's not of much use unless you have your base on one island or the other. I don't recommend the floating island for this for reasons which will become apparent later in the game.

Looking into the abyss

If you've explored most of or all of the wrecks and no longer have missing technology, it's time to go deeper. If you've been following your PDA signals you need to check out the degasi bases and follow their story, as they lead you to a large, deep cave which is the path to deeper places you need to explore.
There are several inlets to the place you need to reach. Northern Bulb Zone where it meets Mountains has a large entrance. Blood Kelp Zone and Trench both have entrances. The last one is in deep grand reef, where the final Degasi base is. I personally recommend either Deep Grand Reef or Bulb Zone but the latter has the most accessibility.
Raiding the final Degasi Base before exploring this cave system will get you the orange precursor key which you'll need to access something hidden at the southern end of the caves near blood kelp trench's entrance. While working down here I strongly recommend making liberal use of beacons as navigational guides if you're new to this place. It is VERY confusing and looks very same-y if you haven't spend a lot of time here.
Deep inside the caves you'll come upon a chamber with a massive skull sitting on a chunk of land in the middle and access to a slightly lower part of the cave system which is not green. This is the Cove Tree Cave and the brine there will not hurt you the way the green brine does. This leaves you able to free dive there to gather materials without needing to rely on your prawn.
This chamber with the skull is, in fact, the central chamber of Lost River. It is an excellent place for building a scanner station and the entire area is ludicrously rich in resources. It's a perfect place to stock up and catch up any upgrades, tools or devices you may be lacking so far. You'll want the resource stocks for later and honestly, it's just a really cool place to have a base in general.
The Disease Research Facility is in the north-eastern arm of Lost River, accessible through the Bulb Zone entrance. A juvenile ghost leviathan guards the path but as with most leviathans, operating in silent running and staying above or below it while sticking to the cave walls will get you by without any issue. If they do notice you, just pop a decoy, go full speed for about 5-8 seconds and then drop the engine to low and stay in silent running until you get far enough for the big ugly to stop bothering you.
The southern part of Lost River holds a large chamber with a ghost leviathan juvenile and houses another rather large skeleton. This area in particular is rich in large ore deposits and crystallized sulfur that you'll be needing for some big upgrades.
By the way, remember the cyclops shield? By now you're probably noticing that using the auxiliary functions on the cyclops eats a lot of power. Redundant power cells are your friend and if you feel you're worried about power costs while exploring, you lose nothing by having a buttload of spare power cells. It can pay off, being able to spam the shield for awhile and run away.
You'll want that shield for what's coming next.

Once More Unto The Deep

By now you've probably explored Lost River a bit and you're wondering where to go from here. If you've built a scanner room in the central chamber, you'll have noticed that the scanner, when at full range, shows a chamber below Lost River.
This is the inactive lava zone and it is here your answers lay.
You have two access points to reach this chamber. The North-east arm past the disease research facility and the cove tree caves. Both entrances are equally difficult to get through but the first one feels more open, if you don't mind the ghost leviathan circling around above the opening.
This chamber is rich with even more valuable resources, if you somehow haven't got enough already. The cove tree cave entrance leads to the western part of the ILZ chamber. The North-east entrance leads to the north edge of the chamber. The chamber itself is rather oval-shaped, with the western edge of it relatively empty and the eastern part containing a massive lava bubble.
If you wander around down here long enough the PDA will prompt you to take a look at that bubble a bit more closely. You will need two purple precursor keys to access the facility inside. Now that you're down here you'll notice there's a fair number of warpers, crimson rays (who are harmless) and leech-like things which will attach to the hull of your ship and drain power. That sounds like a problem, doesn't it?
Don't worry though, we got you covered. Once you're down here, go grab some kyanite and you can build the cyclops thermal reactor which pretty much eliminates the whole running out of power problem. The shield is a great way to get the leeches off your hull at the same time.
As for the leviathan, the sea dragon isn't actually a whole lot of threat. It might spit fire at you and is capable of picking up and biting the prawn but will mostly ignore you if you don't go hanging out in front of it.
With that said, treat it like any other leviathan while in the cyclops. Drive slow, keep an eye on it and if it gets curious, drop a decoy and move away ASAP. Cutting your engines once you've gotten a little distance will almost always make them lose interest.

But Wait, There's More!

If you've explored the inner depths of the lava bubble, then you have the blue key, ion battery plans and have opened the portal to the QEP. Great! Now coming down here in the prawn isn't a big deal and you don't have to drive the cyclops all the way down here to go grab resources. A small scanner base down here would be great for quickly finding what you need.
As you can probably guess, there's an even deeper chamber than this, which is the active lava zone. You can find the entrance by following the lava flows around the ILZ and keeping an eye on the floor. You'll find a large space big enough for the cyclops to lower down into.
Down here you'll find 2 sea dragons to avoid, so don't you get conservative with your power. By now you'll probably have built ion power cells and those can run your shield and sonar together for a full 5 minutes with silent running going so don't be shy about using them!
Getting into the alien base down here will require two blue keys, one for accessing the facility, the other for accessing the inner facility. It is here you will find the ion cube fabricator which requires the prawn. You can use this to open the warp gates in the facility. Six ion cubes in total are required for this. Four for the warp gates on the upper floor and two in the Sea Emperors tank. One of these leads back to the upper floor, if you find you're struggling to get back out. This gate in particular is about halfway up the tank at the back and sits on a large ledge. An ion cube is provided to activate it, giving you a way to walk out of the tank if you find you're struggling to get out.
And... that's pretty much it, really. After that encounter you'll know where to go and what to do. The paths laid out for you in the final facility lead you to the places you need to go to find the things you require.

Tips and tricks

• Keep floaters in your cyclops. When you're operating above 500m, running out of power, floaters will allow you to passively bring your ship to the surface without power expense so that you can resupply it. This is pretty much a last ditch move but it never hurts to be prepared.
  
• You can fit up to 8 basic plant pots in an observatory, which will grant you twice the amount of growing space as an indoor grow bed for the same amount of floor space while also making the crops more easily accessible.
  
• The engine comparment of the cyclops has a lower deck behind the vehicle bay which everybody ignores, but it's a great spot for plant shelves and marble melons for food security.
  
• Load your vehicles. Dedicate storage in them to supplies. Water, food, medkits, beacons, flares (bonesharks and crabsquids react to them) and spare power supplies for the vehicles. Keep this kit supplied and you will never be caught unprepared for an 'oh crap' situation.
  
• Okay, so you don't want to give up inventory space for your vehicles. The next best thing is then to fill a watertight locker or two with food, water, medpacks and maybe a couple spare batteries and power cells, then drop them someplace with a beacon next to them. Do this a dozen times in random spots around the map as you travel and now you have emergency caches you can access if you get into trouble.
  
• When you reach the point where materials gathering is easy, consider creating vehicle-creation drop points. 2-3 spots on the map with a mobile vehicle bay, a couple lockers with everything you need for a new seamoth and some basic supplies. If you lose your vehicle, it's a lot easier to make a replacement and get the mats than to get the mats to make a replacement.
  
• The propulsion gun is your friend. Use it to grab items to pick up, use it to grab cave crawlers and yeet them into low orbit, use it to pick up rocks and fling them at things you particularly don't like. Use it to collect gas pods from gasopods without getting hit by the cloud. Use it to move debris in wrecks. Bring a spare battery specifically for it because flinging things around uses a lot of power but the sheer utility of the tool makes it worth the cost.
  
• You'll be tempted to deck your seamoth out with all the toys but the truth is once you have the prawn, it's obsolete. Don't fall into the temptation of continuing to build tons of upgrades for it unless you plan to use it for a fast-fetch vehicle for things you need from far away. However, with that said, the seamoth is really the superior vehicle for wreck-diving.
  
• Keeping a second air tank in your inventory and swapping them mid-dive is a perfectly viable option. However, the tanks only refill when wearing them, so make sure to switch again once you're back in breathing space. This can and will save you when wreck diving and two ultra high quality tanks equals 450 seconds of air in total, or 7m30s of air.
  
• Speaking of air, you can use the air bladders alternate use key (F on PC - the same button for self-scanning) to get a few seconds of air out of it into your tank. It's not much - 20 seconds or so - but sometimes, that little bit extra can save your life if you're just out of reach of your vehicle.
  
• You can collect flora and fauna samples as you progress through the game and have a garden base specifically for growing plant samples from around the crater. Obviously this looks really nice (creepvine in an alien tank under the floor provides the room in your base with a nice golden glow) but is also useful later.
  
• SCANNER ROOMS. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. If you're struggling to find the magnetite, go to Jellyshroom. If you're struggling to find Jellyshroom, always remember that lifepod 17 is directly next to one of its exit points. The range upgrades are incredibly important and the HUD chip makes the whole thing work.
  
• Farm supplies! You don't need to work or power anything to grow crops. Consider dropping a foundation with some growbeds, a beacon and your farmables (gel sack, creepvine seeds, creepvine samples, acid mushroom, blood oil and deepshrooms). Now you can stock up on things like batteries, rubber, lubricant, benzene, polyaniline. Keep a few of these crops in your cyclops for planting in new spots and never run out of the stuff you need while keeping your home base nice and lag free.
  
• Creature decoys can be deployed both by hand and by prawn propulsion arm, which lets you pull items out of your inventory to 'throw'. You can also do this with the propulsion cannon by using the F key (the alternate tool use button, the same one you use to self-scan, for all you console folks).
  
• Turning off your engines greatly reduces the chance of a leviathan damaging the cyclops, even if it's right on top of you. Moving is what gets their attention. If one is swimming near the sub, cut all engines and just wait patiently for it to get a little distance, then silent running and max speed for a few seconds. Pop a decoy for good measure if you want to make absolutely sure.
  
• You can access the right side of the Aurora relatively safely by going south to Crag Zone and then banking east into the deeper parts of crash zone. Most of the reapers are up by the ship, sticking to the bottom will keep you relatively safe and net you as much titanium as you will ever need.
  
• Blood kelp zone, the sea treader wreck and the meteor crater in Dunes all have secrets that you may find interesting.
  
• Remember the Bleeders in the reactor room of the Aurora? Bring a grav trap along - they're cheap, it's disposable - and enter through the top door by climbing along the wreckage up there. Pop the grav trap in the reactor room and kill one of them with the propulsion cannon - the others will come for the body and be stuck in the trap, making picking them off much, much easier than it would be trying to find them all individually. You can just leave the trap behind. If you have the stasis gun, you can wait for them to stack up in the grav trap, stun them, then drop gas pods amidst the several bleeders and watch them get bodied.
  
• Gas pods 'o doom also work against leviathans. They work against EVERYTHING. You just need a lot of them, but getting a lot of them is really easy with the propulsion cannon (which can fire them too, by the way).
  
• Reefback barnacles are a good source of copper and silver, but beware the tiger plants on their backs. If you have a reinforced dive suit, tiger plants can't hurt you, but without one they're a pain. You can yeet them with the propulsion cannon. That trick works for drooping stingers too.
  
• Beacons everywhere. No seriously, everywhere. You'd be amazed how few people use them as much as they ought to be used.
  
• Eastern red grass plains has deep caves with a type of plant which can only be found in a few select spots on the map. Bulb Zone's lifepod has caves with some nearby and the Dunes also has some, but a Reaper is guarding them. If you do manage to find the spot though, it's GREAT for rubies!
  
• Scanner room cameras are a good way to keep track of nearby leviathans. They also force the terrain to load, which is required for the scanner room to actually pick things up. Stalkers will snag the cameras and move them around, but they're pretty useful for quickly getting the scanner room working right. The wildlife ignores the cameras too, so if you want a really nice picture of some creature you really hate getting close to, they're a great way to get it.
  
• Breed some stalkers, release them outside your base next to a pile of metal scrap and never worry about finding teeth for glass again. Barring that? Drop a random beacon in the kelp forest and wait for a stalker to collect it, follow it back to their stash and drop a grav trap.
  
• Light sticks can be good for wreck diving, as are flares. Flares provide much better lighting in large open spaces than the flashlight or seaglide. It makes them a good alternative to the flashlight in the early game.
  

• DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES.

• The following is a list of zones where one can find particular ores. It isn't a complete list, but will allow you to find everything you need in a timely fashion:
  

Lithium - Jellyshroom, Bulb Zone, Mushroom Forest, Lost River
Loose Lithium - Mushroom Forest, Mountains, Grand Reef, Shale, lost river
Magnetite - Jellyshroom is the only biome with large nodes
Loose Magnetite - Jellyshroom, mountains, cove tree cave, blood kelp zone, lost river
Rubies - Dunes, Spare Reef Caves, Lost River, Grand Reef, Underwater Islands
Diamonds - Lost River, Shale, Inactive Lava Zone, Sea Treader Path, sometimes caves
Table Coral - Shallows, Lost River
Copper - Mushroom forest, blood kelp zone, bulb zone, lost river, limestone, Inactive Lava Zone
Silver - Crag Zone, Mountains, Lost River, sandstone, Inactive Lava Zone
Gold - Jellyshroom, Blood Kelp Zone, Lost River, sandstone, shale
Lead - Sandstone, mountains, crash zone, lost river, Inactive Lava Zone
Titanium - Crash Zone, Dunes, Limestone, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone
Metal Salvage - Crash Zone, Crag Zone, Kelp Forest
Kyanite - Inactive Lava Zone
Crystalline Sulfur - Lost River
Nickel - Lost River
Uraninite - Blood Kelp Zone, Blood Kelp Trench, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone, Grand Reef
Quartz - Dunes, Crag Zone, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone, Red Grassy Plains
If you're reading this guide and have any suggestions for additional information, feel free to share them for the next iteration.

Good luck, survivor!

I recently had a law firm client who hired my company to redo their operations and sales process, in doing so I met a young man who worked there, he passed the bar in a South East state but was denied a license, he has been denied due to serious financial issues stemming from nearly a decade ago. His denial through the Bar is based on Character and Fitness.
He asked me to consult him and hopefully guide him, I told him I'd like to think about it before committing to anything.
He wants to know what he can do as a career?
He is denied for a period of years (the default in this state), he hates the law now since he has clerked at a few firms since graduating in 2018, he failed the bar a few times but finally passed, he was denied after he passed. He scored really high, but sadly no bueno.
He wants to go into education but due to the denial on his record he is worried he will be declined employment before he even gets properly reviewed. He can't be a public school teacher or administrator because he is worried about auto denial as his state specifically asks about denied licenses in the application process.
If he applies to work in the public school system and if denied, he has to notify the Bar in his state, which will delay his reapplication process even more.
Most government jobs (including the IRS) decline employment due to a professional license denial, most healthcare administration jobs are the same.
That leaves technology and banking, but both those industries are not hiring right now.
I feel bad for him because based on his reputation at the firm, he is on the straight and narrow path, volunteers a bunch and does a lot of "good for others," types of activities and has been for at least half a decade. In the last five years he has had no financial issues or concerns or criminal issues, not even a parking ticket.
He has spoken to numerous C&F attorneys who have advised him to apply again once the denial period ends but he wants to go do something meaningful until that time (remember its years from now).
I'm not sure what advice I can give him so I'm asking the hivemind for pointers.

Elvis isn’t dead, he just went home.
Exploratory scout DSX862-QQ1 was cruising along at approximately 80% of lightspeed on an outer spiral arm of the galaxy it was native to. Its mission, issued by the Greater Council Exploratory Committee, was to seek out new life, new civilizations, points of scientific interest, and potential future colonies.
80% of the speed of light was a tremendous pace, even for a craft built by a galactic community as ancient as the Greater Council, but its particle shield was more than up to the task, and it allowed the scout to scoop interstellar dust and hydrogen to refuel itself, slowly charging its drives for the next pinch-jump. Each jump would catapult the little craft a hundred light years forwards, followed by another sub-light cruise to analyse, recharge and listen. It wasn’t expected to find much out here. Life had evolved in the warm, bright galactic core, entire civilizations meeting within decades of reaching orbit of their respective home worlds. Resources were plentiful, many of them had been talking for centuries before meeting face to face, with only years of communications lag, instead of the decades or centuries between the species evolving further out, in the colder reaches.
Out here, on the arm, everything was cold. Even the search for possible colony sites and resources was more a formality, record keeping for the sake of the endless bureaucracy that infested the Council.
So, it had come as a tremendous surprise to the scouts simple intelligence when it picked up the ghostly whisper of a deliberate radio signal.
Pulses, blips, zaps, hisses, all were the normal background noise of the cosmos, but this was a firm BUZZ. Soon followed by strings and knots of beeps. The scout rotates, following its radio antenna ‘nose’ to lock in a direction towards the noise. It spooled up its pinch-drive, and jumps, a few lightyears, not enough to drain its energies, but just enough to allow it to triangulate. Then jump again, to get a third point. A fourth, a fifth.
A yellow star, a few billion years old, spectral and gravitational indications speaking of gas giants, rocky and icy bodies, and a potential habitable zone with a world skimming just along the outer edge of the habitable zone. The source of the signals.
The scout spooled its pinch-drive once more, preparing to make the thirty something lightyear jump to close with the noisy world.
It also began the process of waking up its Commander.
++++++++
Kevin Karl and the Karlsons wound down their last song of the evening, sweating under the stage lights and bathed in the adoration of the crowd. This was IT, the high they had all dreamed of, had chased through bars, opening acts, and finally, after just a few years, headline act of a whole show!
They’d bopped along to the other acts on that night, friends all, they’d been on tour together for weeks across the entire USA and would be playing two more shows before wrapping up for the year.
Off-stage, past the cheering, singing, breathless fans of rock and roll, brought together by the joy of the new genre that seemed to defy boundaries and break the locks of society. When they played, no-one saw the colour of their skin, Joeys scars, Mikes club foot. The band couldn’t make out individuals in the crowd. They saw humanity, united and beautiful, wrapped in the music they played.
One of the opening acts were gathered back stage, still bouncing, and their singer passed over a reefer cigarette. Kevin took a drag, feeling the smoke sooth his nerves as he passed it on, then he choked and laughed. “That was some show, could you feel them?”
The other singer, Jack ‘Wabbit’ let out a howl, “Hell yeah baby, felt like lightning, smooth lightning all through… wait, that gives me an idea for a song!”
He was off, crouching awkwardly as he pulled a pencil and notebook from somewhere and started scribbling.
Kevin chuckled, took a beer from Joey, and started walking towards the car. While far from brand new, it was big enough to take the band in relative comfort, while the instruments and gear followed in trucks. He climbed in back, sprawling across the bench, and closed his eyes. It was a thousand miles to the next venue, they were already running late to start getting organised, but he needed just a moment.
He was woken by a nudge. “Hey, Kev, you want a ride down to Jacksonville? Wabbit says his cousin has a plane, can take you both to Florida, rest of us will come down with the trucks, faster then the Catalina can get us there.”
Kevin blinked, groggy, but hanging on to getting to the next stop in comfort.
“Damn, yeah, I’m in! No way I’m passing up a planeride in comfort!”
++++++
The commander of DSX862-QQ1 listened to the sounds of the boisterous world her small ship had discovered. To say it was barely habitable was an understatement. Plenty worlds had higher gravity, but not the weather extremes this one had. Others had far worse weather but lacked the deadly pathogens that were detectable in the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Others still had some version or variation of every horrific threat this single world had, but never so many of them wrapped into one pristine appearing blue and green ball of life that seemed determined to survive by any means necessary.
She was impressed that life had evolved to multicellular levels at all, never mind to the point where it had achieved radio broadcast, powered flight and, if the latest scans were accurate, atomic power, weaponry, and the rudiments of space flight under development.
This world was only a few centuries from needing a first contact delegation, she could sense it.
If they survived. She’d seen plenty of far more peaceful civilisations wipe themselves out before achieving their full potential after all, and the light-delayed data her ship had gathered on the way in indicated that the primary species of this world **really** liked to fight one another.
Well, it wasn’t as if the Greater Council was perfect. A few hundred worlds, usually half at odds with the other half, or outright warring with the non-aligned groups surrounding them. Over what, she could hardly imagine, resources weren’t scarce, habitable worlds almost common, matters of religion seemed pointless to her.
Rather than be caught up in the endless squabbling, she’d worked to be assigned a scout ship, and only went ‘home’ when the databanks were full or the hull degraded.
She flipped idly through the signals her ship was pulling in. Mostly simple vocal signals, some barely encrypted, likely military, the rest completely in the clear. For a while there had been a simple video signal modulated as well, the computers now busy going through it to compile a useable language interface.
Her digit stopped, as one transmission caught her attention. There was a voice there, the words as yet unintelligible, but it was laced through, interwoven with, strung around a **sound**.
It wasn’t the first she’d heard of music from this world, nor even the first she’d heard following this particular set of musical rules, but there was something about **this** voice… It reached inside her, and she felt her soul reach out to embrace it.
It was memetic, the warning symbol now flashing on her display confirming what she already knew, but memetics were weapons, hazards, dangers to be filtered and avoided, while this?
It spoke of pain, it sang of loss, and heartbreak and joy and unity and togetherness. It sent her thoughts on strange tangents where her actions saved worlds, brought together warning species, enabled peace…
She shook off the effects as the music faded out and a smooth voice mumbled something, before the next song started. That too, touched her, yet lacked the sheer power of the first, and she was able to shut off the recording with a shaky digit.
She fumbled the ships controls, aligning with the source of the original transmission. A rickety looking steel tower with several high-powered emitters inside a small building next to it. Clearly not the source of the music itself, merely a civilian broadcast station, the music an entertainment medium.
She turned her attention then, to discovering what, or who, had created such a wonder.
++++++
Kevin stared at the airplane. It looked fresh, but old.
“War surplus, picked her up for a song when she was gonna be dumped out in a desert!” Wabbits cousin was a skinny boy, barely out of his teens, but with the quick and sure motions of an expert when he touched his beloved machine. “I heard you guys playing last night, gotta say, it changed my mind about black folks. Always thought to myself, to each their own right? And the laws are that way too, it made sense, but man, the way you sang, how the band played, I wanted to meet you, to say, you got me to see more. Like how the world looks from way up high, we’re all just one piece of something, right? And I think the world might be less ugly that way. So, I said to my cousin, man, I want to help out, my folks left me a pile of cash, I have my baby here, and if you want, I’ll take you where you gotta go.”
He stopped, looking at the ground, and although Kevin was tempted to accept the offer on the spot, but the kid was offering to sideline everything to ferry around his ass?
“Well, damn, listen man, thanks, and I’m grateful you’re giving us a ride to Jacksonville, but lets take it easy right? See how you feel after the flight and if you want to come to the show, sure, I’ll get you in. I can’t pay for regular flights though, I’m already paying for my car! Besides, as much as I need to get down there and make sure everythings golden, I can’t go leaving my band behind every time!”
“Oh, right, no it’s cool, if they want a ride too its all good. I want to make a change, and helping you out helps me do that, right? If you want to talk money, heck, I could bankroll a few shows, take a percentage in return, but its not about the money. Man you changed me, in a good way. I think you could do the same for people like me! You, uh. I stopped hating, you know? Feels good.”
Kevin started to wonder if he shouldn’t have just curled back up on his car bench and stayed asleep. “Okay, I’m on board, if you want to take the rest of my guys too, that’s great, we all get to our next stop on time, you get a show, and if you still want to help us out, we can look at more shows after the tour. Sound fair?”
They shook hands. Pete, as he turned out to be named, started fussing with his airplane again, and removing what he termed ‘junk’ from the hold and other parts of the craft, which to Kevins untrained eye all looked vaguely important, but were ‘heavy’.
He boarded with his band, and Wabbit, who had his own guitar with him, and as the airplane started taxying, amidst the reefer smoke, and snippets of song Wabbit was working on, they settled down for the flight.
++++++
DSX862-QQ1’s commander was hampered in her efforts to locate the origin of the music she had heard by the lack of any real information link between radio and physical locations. There was undoubtably ground-based cable she couldn’t tap, but there was no evidence of a wide area data network, and given the technology of the ‘Humans’ she wasn’t surprised.
Just frustrated.
Nonetheless, she was able to identify the singer, and his ‘band’ who played the instruments that had so perfectly twinned with his voice. She wondered how a purely non-verbal species would have received his music. Would they have felt what she felt just through the radio signal? Something she would learn, in time. Her plan was simple, she’d locate her subject, and deploy a drone to follow him. Wherever he played, her drone would invisibly follow, recording his music in perfect fidelity.
She’d return home, and share his music. Something no-one had heard before, had never experienced, and perhaps, it would make them see, and feel, what she had when hearing it.
The ship pinged, it had located a small heavier than air craft that had a high probability of carrying her quarry. It was moving at less than a third of the local speed of sound, but was being strangely buffeted. The computer flashed warning symbols on sections of the craft. Simple, but not primitive, the craft was perfectly designed for the task it was meant to perform, very good engineering had gone into creating it.
Yet it was failing, structurally, air pressures flowing over it far in excess for which it had been designed, one of this worlds unique weather phenomenon threatening to rip it apart.
Amidst the horror of realizing she was about to witness the death of those individuals who had touched her very soul, she recognized the craft was operating in excess of two hundred percent its designed stress ratings.
It was a toughness that bought a few seconds of thought. Of decision, and rash, perhaps illegal, action.
Digits brushed controls, summoning a hum from the depths of her ship. The fuel capture system was not meant for rescue, in fact, using for anything other than non-living mass was considered a breach of several laws. First and foremost, it was a very focusable disintegration array, making it a terrifying weapon. Secondly, it could collect the energy released by the disintegration and funnel it into storage cells to fuel the engines.
Thirdly, and this was the illegal part, her scoutships sensors could record exactly how the disintegrated matter had been arranged, down to the subatomic level, and the array could be reprogrammed to then reverse the process to convert the captured energy back into the original thing.
Used on an interesting rock, this was fine. On a living being it was murder at best and non-consensual cloning at worst.
Her digit pressed down firmly on the energize symbol that appeared below her hacked override code.
++++++
The aircraft finally surrendered to the windsheer pulling at it, fragmenting in a shimmering cloud of metallic fragments that erupt in a fireball as unspent aviation fuel is ignited.
Of the passengers and pilot, no trace was ever found, their deaths mourned by millions, in part for the loss of young people who had given the world such wonderful music, but also the sense of loss at the music they would now never be able to play. A pilot who had changed his beliefs and committed himself to promoting the ones who changed him for the better, a brilliant young singer and songwriter, and a band who could touch souls, lost forever.
The great changes they had been about to unleash would not take place. Or at least, not take place as quickly. The seeds had been planted, as other young people took up their instruments, raised their voices in song, and set out to change hearts and minds their own way.
Over the course of the centuries before Humanity could reach the stars as a single family, a steady stream of visitors dropped by the musical ball of rock. To observe, to listen, to rescue, when the opportunity arose.