HELION DISPATCHES 04

INTERLUDE: PILGRIM'S LABORS

|…

[SIGNAL LOCK]

|

[BROADCAST WIDE CHANNEL]

[ORIGIN: PILGRIM SEED]

[VECTOR: STARWARD]

|

[TRANSCRIPTION ACTIVE]

How’s it going, Helion?

Cyrene Sabir here, broadcasting direct from the Pilgrim Seed on any frequency that’ll have me.

Our journey to the Starward Belt continues, as does the system’s shift into chaos. It’s getting ugly out there, listener, and we are here to help you prepare for the worst of it. 

Many of you will have heard our last broadcast, on the situation out in Ember’s orbit, where Cinza is reporting the Three Sisters have fallen under Senetstat occupation. This marks a shift in the system, of that we can have no doubt.

Senetstat are here to claim the remains of Solheim’s infrastructure, its remaining assets… but the thing is that this infrastructure is the foundation of our habitats. These assets are our homes. We were abandoned with them when Solheim went under, and there’s no way we are going to give them back after keeping them running for this long. The Helion system belongs to its occupants by right, and anyone who says anything different is a turncoat.

[NOISE]

Look it up, Kimbal. It’s a word.

[NOISE]

As always, we are open to your reports, your warnings, your missives to this system we call our home. So, on this cycle's broadcast, in the spirit of hospitality, Kimbal has once again been trawling the corridors of the Pilgrim Seed, our ship for this starward voyage, to capture something of the texture of our lives here. 

Voices are important to us, Kimbal and I, they are what we seek to elevate and amplify. To broadcast resistance, solidarity and testimony, until we can’t any longer.

And those voices shouldn’t always be listing the crimes committed against us, shouldn’t always have the names of our oppressors on the tips of our tongues.

We deserve to speak about each other, about our lives and their rhythms. About ourselves. To ourselves. For our own purposes.

So here are the voices of the Pilgrim’s Seed. 

[DISCONNECTED]

|…

[SIGNAL SWITCHING…]

|

[LOADING REPORT: PILGRIM’S LABORS]

|

[BROADCASTING…]

|

[AUDIO FEED: ELLIOT KIMBAL / VARIOUS]

[TRANSCRIPTION BEGINS]

|

[AUDIO FEED: IONIE BROWN] 

|

What do I do out here? Well, I’m one of the few who actually knows how to keep a kelp stack working, so that’s a lot of it. This place had half a dozen of the things, some from the Eye and some from elsewhere, loaded onto it when I got on board. But… they were barely keeping them working. 

[NOISE]

That’s the thing, most people think stacks run themselves. Just give them power, water, nutrients, and they cycle them through their system and produce a solid yield. But these things have been working since the collapse, with no new parts, no replacements. Ones that run dead can be reseeded from those still living, but that doesn’t mean the filters and mechanisms are fixed, and they probably killed the kelp in the first place.

[NOISE]

Stacks need care. Need monitoring, paying attention too. Once they hit a toxic cascade, when the nitrogen cycle is way off, then it’s too late. So that’s me, watching those golden fronds for signs of rot, checking the tank flow for dead-spots, and shouting at idiots who think they know better.

|

[AUDIO FEED: EREN DEMIR]

|

I’ve joined a work crew.

[NOISE]

Yes, I was surprised too. It’s been a lot of cycles out here and I was losing my sense of time. Now they come wake me up for a little food and conversation, and we go out and get an assignment from the list. Usually they post it up by the bridge elevator, but sometimes one of us has heard about something needing doing off the books, so to speak, and we go take a look at that.

[NOISE]

I’m no engineer, you understand. I am slow to learn, but the rest of the crew appreciates my eye, my considered pace. I don’t like to rush jobs, I sit and think them through. Some of the younger ones want to weld up whatever break or gap they see, before they even get a look inside. Before they get to the source of the problem. I tell them to slow down, to think a few steps ahead. Like they were playing tavla. Consider the outcomes.

[NOISE]

I don’t think I know anything they don’t. But sometimes it’s not about knowing, it's about approach, you know? Either way it keeps me busy, and I get to hear all the newest jokes from those on the crew that are half my age. So I’d say I enjoy it. 

|

[AUDIO FEED: EMMET FENIX]

|

Me? I’m a singer, friend. This place is in desperate need of levity, and I provide.

[NOISE]

I’ve never been to a place where a singer isn’t welcomed. It makes the work quicker, the nights longer, the food sweeter.

[NOISE]

There’s a few of us now, we found each other in all this mess and we’ve been teaching each other. Songs and stories. Keeping things going that ought not to be left behind.

|

[AUDIO FEED: OREN TELLER]

|

You‘re asking what I do? What is there to do? Wait for rations. Eat rations. Wait for water. Drink water. Wait for sleep. Sleep. Is there something else, am I missing something?

[NOISE]

I see the work crews, I see the assignments go out, but there’s no way I am volunteering myself for that. Make this journey more miserable with the addition of hard labor? No thanks.

|

[AUDIO FEED: MARIA MICU]

|

The shifts are staggered, because preparation can be pretty time consuming. We are working mostly with raw, stack grown produce, so there are a lot of stages to go through to make anything like food. Kelp needs soaking. Algae drying. Washing. Peeling. Then there’s the rations we have, which we have to stretch out. Mostly everything needs to be prepared cycles in advance, processing not cooking, so to speak. We don’t have the set up for that anyway.

[NOISE]

I’m proud of what we do. I know not everyone is happy, but there’s too many people to be happy. Too many preparation teams working at the limit of what we have. Everything is too little or too much, but we make it work.

[NOISE] 

There’s a limit though. And we see that more than anyone else. We see exactly, EXACTLY, down to the last cycle, how long this journey can go on for. That’s hard. Some people left because of that, found other work. They didn’t want to be reminded.

[NOISE]

I keep my mind on what my hands are doing. That’s what I do. And maybe on the hands nearby, how they might need help. That’s all. Anything else is a bad idea.

|

[AUDIO FEED: EMMET FENIX]

|

You know who I met the other day? Someone from Ember’s Song! I thought they all up-and-left us, but it seems like a whole bunch joined us at the Eye. 

[NOISE]

They have good stories, those folks. I could listen to them all cycle. And they are LONG, all filled with detail and life. I like those kind of stories, the ones that notice things. That make YOU notice things yourself. They tune the eye, the ear, into some other frequency.  

[NOISE]

I suppose some of the others think of me as a layabout. A dreamer maybe. But I’m working on something, I am. Songs and stories, and little jokes to tell them when they look pale and drained. Things to feed em. 

|

[AUDIO FEED: IONIE BROWN] 

|

The worst are those idiots that think they need to work harder. To push the stacks, increase the yield. Hammer away them, churn up the kelp, dose the algae. That’s what’ll get us. A few too many people like that one day those stacks will just stop producing. And they’ll have a whole ship of hungry, angry people.

[NOISE]

I tell those people to find another job. Work on the bulkheads. Work the kitchens, with all those hot heads. Fire up a torch and build someone a new berth. One cycle workers. They work for today and that’s all. 

[NOISE]

The stacks need slow minds. Careful tending. There’s life in those things, in the tanks. And life needs a shepherd. Those golden waving kelp, in their hermetically sealed stacks, how different are they to us? Out in the black with this tin can full of air around us. All of us need a steady hand now and then. 

[NOISE]

That’s me. I’m steady. My stacks run steady. My people work steady. 

[NOISE]

Here, come see. Smell the sea in those stacks. It’ll slow you down nicely. Bring you down to kelp speed. That’s what we all need.

[TRANSCRIPTION ENDS]

|…

[SIGNAL LOST]

|

[CHANNEL CLOSED]

|…

|

---

💫 Turn your Eyes Starward

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is in development. Wishlist it here!

---

💬 Join the Citizen Sleeper community!

Looking for a community to discuss the Helion Dispatches with? Feel like speculating on the future of Citizen Sleeper? Have a burning question to ask me? We’ve recently expanded the Fellow Traveller Discord to include a whole new Citizen Sleeper section for fans to hang out in.

Click here to join!