Best Of

They already have a female player model ready, which you can see here: https://sketchfab.com/models/cccc8b4f8f354076b8d125601ca38354

They've said that it will likely be added sometime soon after v1.0.

Seriously. Both females, and people of African descent, are very marginalized and underrepresented in popular media, video games included. As a woman of African descent myself, thank you so much, for creating Robin - a strong and beautiful black female protagonist. I can't speak for anyone else - but to me, it means a lot. Thank you.

Borealis has become an incandescent arrow, running straight and true. As expected, Captain Halvorsen has rotated his vessel to lay parallel to our flight path in to provide his crew with a grandstand view of our departure. I think it's safe to say that they won't be disappointed.

"Mister Savini, prepare to do honours as the Sagan comes to bear. Release on my mark."

"Ready aye ready, Sir."

If I've timed Enzo's reflex arc correctly, five seconds from now should do nicely. Three. Two...

"Execute."

"Flare away." Enzo confirmed.

Five kilograms of pure boron flashed into plasma at the focal point of Borealis' drive flames. An immense sphere of dazzling green light bloomed briefly, expanding in the ship's wake; our final heartfelt gesture of farewell to all those aboard TCS Carl Sagan. I have no doubt that Halvorsen knows the traditional significance of the green flash marking our departure.

A mariner's most treasured omen of good fortune, rarely bestowed by the sun at day's end. Fair winds and following seas to ye all.

And we are gone.

Stars streak past the viewports , their spectral signatures drawn out to elongated rainbows by our velocity. For the next few weeks at least, we have little else to do but go about our everyday lives. I consider this pause a welcome respite, a breathing space that we've all won fairly. The remaining phase gates may seem an eternity apart, although they'll pass as surely as milestones along the way. The journey home always seems longest to a weary traveller.

Home.

The word has a strange taste about it. I've been so long accustomed to calling Manannán home, I can't comfortably grasp living on a planet so poorly used as Terra has been. As I conjure it, we're taking a major step down in the quality of our accommodations by leaving Manannán. To be fair, my homeworld isn't exactly an aesthetic masterpiece, either. To the casual eye, Mars offers little else save raw desolation, although it's a landscape that a body eventually grows used to. I hear that Mars is still largely unspoiled, save for a few more sprawling arcologies dotted about on its surface. I expected no less, given the length of time I've been away. Change is inevitable. Thanks to the Tharsis Accords of 2032, all mining operations have been restricted entirely to sub-surface activity now. Mine it out, fill in the holes, make it good and then move on. It's a token gesture at best, although I'm tickled pink to hear that full compliance still poses a major pain for all parties involved. At least it keeps those Corp bastards semi-honest. Terra is an entirely different story. That planet may be a wreck, although I still feel it's a wreck worth raising.

So, we'll be moving in with the same starry-eyed optimism as newlyweds entering a decrepit pre-21st. Century dwelling. It's a bit of a fixer-upper, but the price is good. There's plenty of potential, but only if we're prepared to put in some honest effort. We can live with that. Less than two weeks from now, our daughter will be born. My fondest hope is that Isabeau Ariane Maida will walk upon Terra's surface and delight in all that it has to offer. However, there is still a great deal of serious remedial work to be done.

As I've mentioned before, we'll begin with Terra's oceans. Just a few small-scale pilot programs at first, but increasing in scope and impact as we build, discover, refine our processes and start making a measurable difference. Our first priority is to cleanse the world's waters. This won't be an easy job, neutralizing the vile hell-brew of toxins that has accumulated over centuries of indifference and outright neglect. To this end, I have set Dr. Zelenka to working out how to re-engineer Precursor power generation systems and distribution technology into more compact and efficient configurations. Once she has cracked these problems, our new reactors will be used to power a global network of seawater purification stations. Of course, I'm fully aware that she'd rather be cracking asteroids open, although this aspect of the project is sufficiently knotty enough to keep her busy for a while... I hope.

The purifiers were the easy bit to figure out. Did it entirely by myself, actually. Precursor fluidic shield density can be manipulated to create an osmotic membrane of sorts, allowing the free passage of pure water molecules and the normal chemical constituents of seawater, but tuned to prevent any Terran life forms larger than a small virus from passing through the figurative mincers. These filters are capable of selectively trapping contaminants such as heavy metals, hydrocarbons and other toxins, allowing them to be collected and reprocessed in separate facilities. This 'molecular sieve' approach employs multiple barrier fields to collect and sort out the naturally occurring elements and organic material in seawater, then the material that's meant to be there can be safely returned to the ocean. The purifiers use the same basic operating principles as membrane filters used in swimming pools and municipal water supplies, but each one will be roughly the size of a 21st. Century super-tanker, give or take a few hundred metres. Delightfully ironic, don't you think?
As you might imagine, this scheme will require a daunting amount of clean energy.

Geothermal power would be quite effective in powering a project of this scale, although harnessing a large number of deepwater vents may have unpredictable long-term consequences for folks on the surface. We'll have to tread extremely carefully along this line of research. If we get a bit too enthusiastic, large-scale tapping of planetary heat sources could disrupt the natural processes of magma convection. This would be an extremely bad thing. Not even Selkirk's jolly band of rogues can stop an earthquake. It's probably best for all concerned if we didn't get around to starting them.

In good time, we'll introduce Manannán's sea life to Terra's revitalized oceans. Once our groundwork is complete, humanity will have to accept stewardship of the remaining burden. A few willing hands can't reclaim an entire planet alone, although we can and will provide the right tools to finish the job properly. Even so, some folk might be concerned that we're planning to repopulate the oceans with alien creatures, and I've done a lot of soul-searching as to the wisdom of this course of action.

And I mean a lot of soul-searching.