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Sylvan Webb

[WIP] I see a darkness in my fate - I'll drive my car without the brakes

0 · 560 views · located in Alliance territories

a character in “Lullaby over Pax”, as played by wednesdaysun

Description

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S Y L V A N. W E B B .
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DIALOGUE COLOUR: #692d37
THOUGHT COLOUR: #40191f

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-------NICKNAME/S
------Syl

-------HOMETOWN
------Omicron-2512 Outpost (†), Pax

-------BIRTHDATE
------August 5th

-------AGE
------30

-------GENDER
------Cis male (he/him)

-------SEXUALITY
------Grey-A

-------SPECIES
------Human

-------OCCUPATION
------Environmental and Life Support
------Officer (Engineering Division)

··········

-------FACE CLAIM
------Iwan Rheon

-------TIME ZONE
------GMT +8:00
















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D E S C R I P T I O N —
HAIR COLOUR/STYLE
Dark brown, close-cropped
and shaved at the sides

EYE COLOUR
Blue

HEIGHT
5'10"

WEIGHT
172 lbs
BUILD
Overall build suggests a life of hard work.
A labourer's body, partially weakened by
illness. Longer torso than legs.

STYLE
Prefers the practical homogeneity of
uniforms.
Ship engineer's overalls, toolbelt fastened
around the waist. He keeps a wearable
breathing support device on his person
at all times.
During rare casual settings, he will wear
a beat-up jacket his older brother Tau once
owned.

DISTINGUISHING
FEATURES
Pasty complexion; brilliant but almost
unnaturally blue eyes


SURVIVALIST,CAUTIOUS, HARDY,
RESOURCEFUL, VENTURESOME
PERSONALITY —

Out of pure necessity and a deep desire to get treated for and survive his illness, Syl is nothing but dedicated to his work on the ISS 348.



HISTORY —
Sylvan — a name from a long-forgotten Terran people and bygone Terran era meaning ‘of the forest’. Ironic, considering he was born and grew up in a shack at the base of a rocky Paxian mountain with barely a forest for miles.

The Omicron-2512 Outpost stood a short distance from one of Pax's many mining sites. Life there only ever revolved around struyntine: finding it, mining it, assessing its quality, and doing all other pertinent logistical processes to get it to market. The only respite any of the outpost denizens had from the exhausting grind were important supply runs to Gamma Chi-12, a much larger farming and trade outpost nearly half a day's travel away by all-terrain tracked vehicle. Designated parties of denizens chosen at random would monthly make the trip on the largest vehicle of their fleet not dedicated to Struyntine transport. It was the only way a remote settlement like theirs could gain access to relatively fresh food and, sometimes, little luxuries better-funded outposts had access to.

Many families worked the mines for several generations, the mines the only viable trade they could take up. However, by the time he was old enough to follow suit, Omicron-2512 and the nearby quarry were shells of their former self. The mines were a deadly master: it had picked many off over the years and wiped out entire families, including Syl's. Two of his older brothers, Tau and Scout, were crushed in cave-ins, while the rest died slow, painful deaths, suffocated by the scarring in their lungs from silicosis. No new blood came in to replace the lost workers since not many were willing to take up an assignment so remote, either. Getting to the struyntine deposits became even more laborious — the miners who remained had to go even further down now to retrieve the precious ore.

At 24, Syl's own silicosis worsened. Unwilling to remain in a place that felt more like a graveyard to him than home, he took the meager nest egg his parents had set aside, stowed away off-world and paid for life-saving nanobot treatment to enable his lungs to heal from years of exposure. It didn't take long for the medical expenses to drain the money dry, leaving his lungs only half-healed and with only a few nanobots remaining in his system repairing more damage than they could handle. Faced with half-administered treatment he couldn't yet afford to complete, he decided to put his skills to good use and enlist with the Earth Alliance's military force as a sapper. Since then, he has been biding his time between treatments saving anything he gets from the job to pay his way back to health.



MISCELLANEOUS —
    A DANGEROUS BUILDUP
    Extreme physical exertion will temporarily put him out of commission or leave him in fits of uncontrollable coughing. He often has to assess his fitness for any taxing work. He does so in short bursts when he can. Though he has had some nanobot treatment to repair some of the lung damage from his time in the mines, it isn't enough to restore full respiratory function.
    BOY SCOUT
    Having lived out on near-desolate terrain, he knows a thing or two or about survival tactics (at least, on Pax). Wary of automation, full or otherwise, he tends to accumulate and keep a cache of basic supplies in an access tunnel in Engineering's EaLS department.

So begins...

Sylvan Webb's Story

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Sylvan Webb Character Portrait: Nikos "Greenhorn" Morgan Character Portrait: Danielle Kroh Character Portrait: Miles Caal Character Portrait: Ruben Hunter Character Portrait: 'Wrench' Sari
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MILES CAAL
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vibes | #505a5b
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2342-12-31, Pax’s exosphere


The Lullaby was floating along in the upper regions of the atmosphere, where it almost always was. In years past, there were other ships nearby, or on standby, but decades of nothing happening makes people get complacent. So the crew sat, going through basic daily duties that, by this point, likely felt like nothing more than busy-work. It was like they were chipping through an ice block, but every piece they chipped off was frozen right back onto the thing. It never ended, never became a satisfying job. They just floated right beneath open space and pretended they were doing something important. They hadn’t had any word from their superiors in a while, but that wasn’t unusual really. They never received new orders, and unless their logs contained anything troublesome the brass usually just left them alone outside of routine inspections.

So they took orders from an AI. Captain was a brilliantly programmed one, though. She was programmed to be fair (but firm), and not to watch the crew in the bathroom or their quarters. Human crewmates take their privacy very seriously, after all.

Miles Caal was one of those aforementioned human crewmates, though he didn’t mind Captain so much as some of the others did. Truthfully, he was rather fond of her, and liked tinkering into her coding whenever he got the chance. No ill intentions, promise, he just liked to see what made her tick. She was one finely programmed artificial intelligence, and he couldn’t think of much he wouldn’t do to get his hands on just a piece of that source code… Got his heart racing just thinking about it.

Of course, he was too busy looking busy and not getting in more trouble with the Alliance to actually try to do anything more than just poke in and take a look or two.

It was early afternoon, and Miles was taking inventory on their food stores, just like Captain had asked him to do.

”Hey, Captain, when was the last time we had a ration shipment?” Miles spoke aloud, kind of just out into the air. Generally speaking, she would hear you no matter where in the ship you were. Miles waited a moment for a reply, and then he heard.

”Approximately 61 Earth rotations.”

Miles frowned, that was too long. ”Do you know if there’s one scheduled soon?”

”I’m sorry, I haven’t received any word about ration shipments. I will make an inquiry.”

”Thanks, Captain.” His voice was warm and familiar, as if he was speaking to an old friend, and not an AI. He grinned at no-one and nothing in particular and added, ”I don’t know what we’d do without you.” But the moment he turned back to his notes, his face soured again. The rest of the crew probably already knew they were quickly running out of food, but he figured they needed to be told that there wasn’t any word on getting more. So he set out to find the others. It wasn’t a big ship, so it shouldn’t take too long.

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Sylvan Webb Character Portrait: Miles Caal
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S. Webb
Environmental and Life Support

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Hex code #692d37
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ISS 348. Environmental and Life Support Department.

It had taken Sylvan several months, when he first arrived here, to get used to the relative silence — and, if one were naive enough to describe it as such, serenity — of the “Lullaby”. Working on the very least technology-wise the Alliance could offer felt like a luxury.

But then everything else seemed luxurious compared to the desolation of the mining area and surrounding settlements he was born and raised in. It was a place where, matter how far one was from the mine, one could never really escape the sound of the drills boring into Paxian rock, the feeling of near-constant, deep, ever-present thrumming tremors underfoot that grew in intensity the nearer one drew to the mines, or the sensation of varying levels of dust filling lungs with every inhale.

Strange, how ingrained it was in the communities he grew up in to want or expect so little. How it had subconsciously leached into him.

It was sickening.

He traded it all in for hushed beeps and clicks, the ambient hum of machinery, and all the stability the artifical gravity systems could muster to keep both his feet firmly on solid ground. The air on this craft was cleaner, thanks to the numerous complex filtration systems he was in charge of in the (apparently, very rare) event “Captain” failed, but it was also thinner. Drier. Stale, if he fixated on the fact that they were all breathing the same damn air for months on end. Still, three years here was better than the two decades of active deterioration he had back home.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

With the AI in charge of nigh on everything on the ship, people like him were only around to plug holes that the hyperintelligent, intuitive automaton couldn’t handle. “The human touch,” they called it. Bullshit. These days, people were less pilots and engineers and more sitting ducks, waiting on what seemed like eons for anything to go wrong and too used to its intuitiveness to know what to do when anything actually fails.

A series of hollow, rasping coughs broke through the white noise. “Fuck off,” he grumbled at no one in particular, and continued his rounds through the lower decks.

There were three blips in the system today that could have very easily been signs of an aging system, or something that “Captain” had skipped over. Sylvan tried to troubleshoot when he found them but, miraculously, they resolved almost immediately. A blip was a blip, and he needed another set of eyes and ears to figure out if this was worth any amount of concern.

“Captain,”, he called out. “Location on Caal?”
“Food storage.”

He put on his breathing apparatus, took as deep a breath as he could before briskly walking through the hallways to where the storage was.

Miles was in the middle of taking stock of the food supply. If supply was what you could call a dwindling ration.

Sylvan cleared his throat. “Caal. A word,” he started. “Picked up something strange on my rounds today. Three blips.”

He produced a folding tablet from his tool belt and opened it up to a set of diagnostics. He quickly highlighted three spots on the map.

“"Captain" detected leakages in Tunnels 31-A, 32-B and 16-F, but before I could get to any of them, the issues disappeared.” He pursed his lips. “System's sensitive at times but... I don't know. Something's up.”

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Sylvan Webb Character Portrait: Nikos "Greenhorn" Morgan Character Portrait: 'Wrench' Sari
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WRENCH SARI
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| vibes | #5C4033 |outfit |
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Working, and living, on the Lullaby wouldn’t be Wrench’s first choice, but when given the choice of working upon an Alliance ship actually doing what she liked, or being shipped off to some prison that rotates around a planet, the choice was easy. But when first learned about the ship captain being an AI, she had more than a few words to say, and was even still skeptical about any diagnostics from it.

While Sylvan took care of the environmental and life support systems, Wrench kept her eyes and hands on just about everything else, really only going to him when their problems would overlap or she needed ‘clearance’ to do some work that involved something in his area. But today, she was just trying to trace a temperature increase in one of the bays, which involved pulling up some floor panels. The Captain tried to reassure Wrench that while it was off, it wouldn’t cause any issues for at least some length of light years. Wrench didn’t like that answer and wanted to work on it now, plus there wasn’t anything better to do.

Wrench had only her legs showing from the panel, though her upper half could be seen through the rows of wiring and pipes. “Ugh. ‘Miss Sari, the temperature differential is not significant enough to warrant troubleshooting and repair.’ Blah blah. AI doesn’t know what it’s talking about.” Wrench mumbled out loud, not caring that the Captain could very well hear her, as well as any passerbys. “Well you know those bots only know what they are given.” Wrench said in a deeper voice, “You know, you’re right Dirtlee” Wrench spoke back, having a conversation with the wrench that hung on her tool belt by holorope. Dirtlee was what she called her wrench, and it wasn’t abnormal for her to talk to her tools while working, or even when just by herself. Some people call her crazy for this, but she was good at her job and it doesn’t harm anyone, so most people ignore her and her ramblings. Though some people do whisper calling her crazy and other such names.

As she was finally tracing down the problem, a voice came from above Wrench, startling her and making her hit her head. “Ow, fuck!” She said as peaked over shoulder and saw the pilot, Greenhorn. His name was Nick, or Nickie, or something, but Wrench mostly called him Greenhorn or Green. The two of them only interacted a few times before Wrench had an impression of him, and the two argued about “my ship” and such, before the Captain would interrupt. Greenhorn quickly asked if he could stay by. “Eh, sure. Don’t think Dirtlee would mind.” Wrench replied before getting to work.

Greenhorn then asked what she was doing, which caused a small smirk to come over her face, curious if he would understand. “Well, we’ve been having temperatures fluctuating. Captain says it’s fine, blah blah. But Dirtlee helped me trace it from the APU and have found that the secondary air coming off of Engines 2 and 3 aren’t flowing to full capacity, tripping a MFL 15. MFL 15 is Anti-Icing issues. Which isn’t too bad since the Anti-Ice system fails in open mode and still functions. I found a couple connections used with second-rate parts, and soldered a few wires.” What Wrench said wasn’t too complicated, but a normal joe would have trouble understanding it.

“Anyways, if you’re gonna be here, make yourself useful. I need the nine millimeter angle head open end wrench so I can close this connection. Not sure why they used a nine millimeter b-nut on this nipple, when a six millimeter one would save them space and money. But I’m just a dirty mechanic, isn’t that right Dirt.” Wrench asked Greenhorn for a tool, as she spoke to herself, continuing to mumble a bit as she held her hand out between some pipes for the tool. But when he placed it in her hand, she immediately knew it was the wrong tool. “Ugh. Green. Open end, not box end. You see the one that has the opening and like three quarters of a square. That one. Not this one that's closed off, that looks like a box.” She complained, as Nikos quickly got her the right one.

Wrench didn’t take long to finish up and crawl out from the panels, wiping her hand across her forehead, smearing a bit of grease. “It’s fine. I don’t expect a fancy ole pilot to know how us grease monkeys work, you know, the people who actually get their hands dirty on this ship.” Wrench said, organizing her tools before one of the automated robots on the ship came by and took it back to the mechanic bay. “Hey! Careful with that, you bucket of bolts! Ugh.” Wrench yelled after the bot, then turning back to Greenhorn. “So, why you down here, don’t you have a ship to fly, or someone else to bother?”

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Sylvan Webb Character Portrait: Nikos "Greenhorn" Morgan Character Portrait: Danielle Kroh Character Portrait: Miles Caal Character Portrait: Ruben Hunter Character Portrait: 'Wrench' Sari
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MILES CAAL
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“Caal. A word,”

Miles smiled as Sylvan entered the room, but quickly wiped the smile from his face when he realized he was being presented with an actual problem. He walked to Syl’s side, wrapping an arm around his shoulder as he leaned in to get a better look. Brow furrowed, Miles bit the corner of his lip as he thought. ”Yeah that… Doesn’t seem right.” He held out his hand, a silent request to take a closer look at the map. ”If it was just one I’d call it a bug, three seems…” He didn’t finish the thought, and instead just handed the tablet back to Slyvan. ”How about I check out the one of consoles in Engineering and see if you’ve got any computer issues?” Captain connected to all the computers and consoles throughout the ships, so a small glitch may have caused her to ping issues that weren’t there.

Miles let Syl lead the way, and as they walked he said, ”You saw it, right? We’re almost out of food.” He sighed, ”Captain says there’s nothing in the logs about a new shipment. I think something’s wrong.” Miles and Sylban had been working together on the Lullaby for a while. They had different responsibilities on board, but Miles tended to be the person to call to see if something was a computer issue or an actual problem (because he never left the ship), which meant that the two of them saw plenty of each other. ”I’m itching to get into the computers and see if there’s an issue with Captain’s code.”

As the pair neared one of the problem areas, Miles paused to log into a console so he could get a look into the systems. ”Hey, Webb, when was the last time we docked for full maintenance? Do you remember?” He was starting to think that the ship might be behind on some of the routine maintenance it needed. He pressed his lips together as he scanned over the seemingly-endless stream of information on the console screen, ”I don’t see anything out of the ordinary here…” He frowned, ”Ah, yeah. I’d check on those tunnels. Looks like there’s-” He frowned as he was abruptly logged out of the system, and attempted to log back in, only to see ACCESS DENIED plastered across the screen.

Little did he knew, everyone across the ship was abruptly logged out of the system.

”What’s…”

Suddenly the lights dimmed considerably as Captain spoke an alert, ”Shields compromised.” And then a siren began to play throughout the ship.

Miles whipped his head to look at Sylvan, the wild fear in his eyes conveying more than words could in that moment. The nanobots in his body sensed his distress and performed an emergency diagnostic- flashes of bright blue light could be seen running along his vein, made only more pronounced by the low lighting. After a moment they flashed green: Miles was in good working order, just mentally distressed. What good news!

”We should…” He paused… What should they do. ”We should probably get away from anything that’s going to blow up if we take a hit, right?”

The next blast didn’t have any shields to absorb it, and the force of it knocked Miles off his feet.

”Hull compromised.” Captain’s voice said through the droning of the alert siren. How did this happen? This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Miles got to his feet and offered a hand to help Syl up, “I think we need to get moving.” He wasn’t sure where they were supposed to go, but…

Daniel Hayes ran by, shouting, ”Get to the bridge!” At them, and, well, who was Miles to argue?

“Come on,” He said, putting a hand on Syl’s back to make sure the other man started heading that direction immediately. Another blast rocked the ship, and Captain’s voice broke through the wailing of the sirens to say a simple, ominous, ”Losing altitude.” Just before they were pitched forward.

Losing altitude seemed to be slightly understating things: they were crashing. Miles could feel them plummeting towards the planet below.

“Come on!” Miles repeated, grabbing Sylvan’s wrist to keep them from being separated. The last thing he wanted was for the closest thing he had to a friend to go missing on him.