Antigrav Writings
The following are pieces I wrote when attempting to contribute to the lore of an antigravity racing game, which I will not mention here. I have preserved them so you may see them and enjoy.
Reveal
This was written as the game's version of Pierre Belmondo's speech from the wipEout lore. It is much longer than that piece, as I wanted it to be something more special.
Stenographer's Note: We have been cordoned into a small room with not much standing space, but with a large glass window, taking up the entire wall, looking out on the Nevada desert. The sun is setting. Patrik Kuoppala, founder of Kuoppala Aerodynamics, takes stage.
Look out into the distance. You will see a speck, nearly invisible against our setting sun.
Stenographer's Note: It is hard to see, but there is indeed something there.
A “speck” is all our universe began as. Before time, before laws, before limits; that's all, just a speck.
Then, an explosion of immense energy, creating a vastness we will never comprehend.
Look again. It's not a speck anymore – we can make out shapes. Wings, a nose, a cockpit.
Stenographer's Note: The “speck” appears to be moving towards us.
We can recall man's first question: “Can we fly?” For centuries, we were bound to the ground, an arbitrary law holding us prisoner against our limitless imagination.
Then, on a lonely hill on a lonely sandy stretch on an even lonelier land, two lonely souls broke free. Our first limit was passed.
We now see the speck, revealed to us finally, as the light on our own lone sandy stretch dims. It is clear, it seems, what it is; what it seems it is, however, is what it is not.
It's not our lonely little aeroplane, destined to travel the skies, carrying the populace on its back. It is far more abstract; a construct, or an idea.
No, what you see is not, in fact, an idea; what you see is an iteration of an idea, an idea that will see many more iterations in the eons to come.
Cities will be built upon cities, countries upon countries, other planets upon countless other planets. Buildings need no longer collapse, cars need no longer slip, and roads need no longer be built.
Limits need no longer control us; our final limit has been broken.
That speck in the distance is infinity. Very soon, it will arrive.
~ Excerpt: Official Stenographer's Records: Reveal of the First Antigravity Vehicle
Luna Base
This excerpt was intended to pitch the concept of codex entries to the developers of the game. Unfortunately, this never came to fruition.
Luna Colonial (Decommissioned)
CONSTRUCTION: ANT.Manufacture
STATUS: Decommissioned
OPENED: October 1st, 2147
REGULATORY BODY: The Workers of China-Russia Unions, Alec Luna
As the first AG racing track located outside of Earth's already burdened infrastructure, the winding undulations of Luna Colonial was a natural fit for our own moon's microgravity, and it rejuvenated interest in the waning colony of Neoterra for both tourists and new immigrants.
It served the AGRC, and, more lucratively, track sponsor Strategosphere, for an impressive seven years from 2147 to 2154, bringing in more revenue than all other extraterrestrial attractions combined. Throughout its operation, Neoterra was the number one honeymoon location for Southeast Asian couples and was the host city for many high profile public programs, such as UtterFlyout (a microgravity spin on a long-running game show) and Soviet Tenshin Everynight (A night-time political round table).
However, on February 15th, 2154, the drastic and unthinkable occurred. Despite multiple concerned studies and decries from colony engineers, no alterations or improvements had been made to the already overburdened oxygen supply and generation systems during the construction of the track. ANT.Manufacture, an outsourced engineering team responsible for all site logistics, cited budget constraints, no knowledge of colony infrastructure, and an acceptable recorded variance for the project.
For all seven years, the consumption from the anti-gravity engines of eight concurrent crafts had been only barely under the acceptable threshold. This wouldn't be the case forever.
At 10:00PM GMT, during the final night of Chinese New Year, with the AntigravComm's first foray into sixteen craft events and a boastful claim of back to back races all night, the worst was set in motion. All televised broadcasts were shut off, and the colony sequestered itself for its festivities. It is during this period that the threshold was surpassed, and the levy broken.
Signs of trouble were first noticed two minutes into the third race, when a young 15 year old passed out while watching the event with his family. Approximately seven more people lost consciousness over the course of the next 20 minutes before the celebrations were called off. All denizens were placed under lock-down and restricted indoors. (The early victims were later linked to a common genetic respiratory defect.)
An entire hour passed as all crew and personnel attempted to locate the source of the problem. Managerial restrictions were incredibly and suspiciously tight, only hindering the investigation. By the time the issue was narrowed down to a destroyed primary redistribution node and multiple hydraulic leaks, 40 colonists were dead, with 300 more unconscious, showing little hope of recovery.
The decision was made to broadcast an SOS message to all terrestrial emergency dispatchers and transport corporations in visual range, as well as immediately redirect all power to the remaining but rapidly failing oxygen generators. All hoped for a rescue vessel to save any lives which were left.
These events are pieced together from recovered accounts over the three hours of the disaster. By the time the scheduled recreational transport arrived the next morning, the oxygen supply had exhausted itself, and the disaster had run its course. There are no recorded survivors.
Later sources (ex-Ondom employees assigned the graveyard shift that fateful evening) claimed they never received any message. A smaller subset claims to have heard a very faint, static-filled plead they could only make out as “Air is... a necessity...”
Popular opinion wrote this off as post-traumatic hallucination or hearsay.
Years later, in response to outrage at the decision to reinvent the old Luna track as an installation for the NISS (New International Space Station), the exterior of a core lift ring was inscribed with the names of every victim claimed in the tragedy. It serves both as a monument to their memory and a reminder of our ever present folly.