A Utopia 2 - A Doubt
What really is the Utopia Project? Why would anyone need help with perfectly habitable planets?
The planets were not remotely difficult to colonise. The first planet was too perfect to need mass volunteering effort. Green grass, blue sky, healthy fauna, no sentinel, no deadly weather - pretty much everything was perfect except for the lack of civilisation. The second planet was nothing worse than some of the occupied systems that I’ve seen either. By the time I reached the Utopia outpost at the third planet, I found myself questioning the actual intent of this project.
Something seemed to have heard my thoughts in the tower core. The terminal said “stay underwater, Captain-entity”. It was the Korvax voice I heard from the first outpost.
I tried to beckon the voice to come back, but at the same time I was incredibly alarmed by this warning. Very quickly after I landed my ship at my designated settlement area, the sentinel drones fired at me. I rocket-dived straight into the sea.
Have you ever been fully submerged in water, protected or otherwise, and hear mumbles and whispers trying to reach you through the ripples? I swore I could hear the Korvax attempting to talk to me while I was submerged. I couldn’t make out a single word, but it was calming enough for me to proceed with settlement construction, despite how much more clumsy it was to do anything underwater, let alone building.
The sense of danger from earlier did not return until I emerged from my handiwork. At the first sight of an idling sentinel, my survival instincts rudely reawakened and I jetpacked to my ship. Did I mention that the project issued a terrible wingless hauler for my work in this system? I could summon neither my freighter nor my ships. If anything, the quarantine of this system was the sole reason it was not habitable in the first place.
Though I found out the true reason why it was quarantined in the fourth planet.