Some days, you get a bunch of new crewmates.

Some days, you lose a bunch of new crewmates.

At least, this time, everyone seems happy about it.

Walking past engineering earlier when Birmingham excitedly poked his head out and pulled me in. Not unusual–he loves showing off his latest "Wayback" finds.

What was unusual was the horrible shrieking. An awful metallic scraping sound, like the entire engine was in catastrophic failure.

Which, okay, it's the Ghost. That wouldn't even be that weird.

But he was SO excited. Alarming, but normal for him.

So I went in.

The entire engineering rotation was on a makeshift stage. Covered in black and white facepaint, wearing studded boots. One kept shouting "I wanna roll rocks at night!" The stage was on fire.

Birmingham gave me a second to take it in, then said, very earnestly, "Isn't this exciting?"

I couldn't disagree. I didn't feel good, but my fight-or-flight was on high alert. I think that's 'excited'.

I found an old copy of the software that powered the Encyclopedia Solarica, before the Solar Guard decided that access to that kind of knowledge was likely to stir up trouble.

I’m still trying to decrypt and import all the historical articles from the last good export I found, but it’s going to take a while.

In the meantime, y’all remember how the Solarica worked. Make some articles, tell your own stories.

There aren't any more archivists, there's just Me, so I'll appreciate any help you can give me.

https://intergalactic.computer/social/solarica/encyclopedia-solarica-home/