"This is an emergency.  I'm not Lucy.  Lucy and her husband went out to fix the leak over four hours ago.  I don't think they made it.  My name is Misty.  The kid and I are in serious danger.  I'm just visiting.  How I got here is a long story I don't have the air to tell you."

He doesn't sound convinced over the comm. "Are you going by Misty now? Lucy, that's against protocol for dupes. What are you talking about a kid? This isn't normal dupes as young as you... I'll report this to my superiors to see what we can do to get you some additional supplies or a team to repair the station. For now, we'll send a probe and contact you in your window tomorrow with the plan. Sit tight with Charlie."

Before he clicks off, you hear him say to someone, "You won't believe what the Lucy at J4 just said..."

   I attempt to reestablish communications.  "We do not have twenty-four hours worth of breathable air remaining.  By the time you get here tomorrow, the station equipment will be so corroded by the invasive atmosphere, you might as well write Jupiter Four off as salvage.  Also, all that precious Helium-3 you've been mining will probably have vented back into the atmosphere.  What is it going to be... rescue mission or salvage mission?"

You send your communication out, and see a confirmation of connection to the Gemini frequency; however, you receive no transmission back to the base you're at.

Soon after, you hear a knocking on the door behind you and to the right; it's the same door you used to enter the control room. Through the window, you see the very top of a little boy's head poking up, his eyes barely high enough to see through it.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:36, Wed 01 Oct 2014.

   I looked at the door and realized that the kid was out there.  I had mostly forgotten about him while trying to get the air system working.  The kid must be in terrible shape by now.  I opened the door to the control room and began to remove the suit, in order to give it to the kid.

He's smiling sleepily when you open the door, and you see that his lips are a little rosey and his skin extremely pale.

"Sorry, I know you told me to stay in bed, but I missed you. And I think I might be sick." He coughs weakly.

Then, when you start taking the suit off, his eyes go wide, and he backs up. "Y-you're not mom. Who are you? Where are they?" He tries to look past you into the empty control room.

   "Kid, your Mom and Dad aren't here.  I'm,... uhhh... the babysitter.  There's something wrong with the air.  Put this suit on and I'll get you a fresh tank of oxygen.  You won't be able to move around, but you should be able to breathe until a repair crew can get here."  I went to get the full tank of oxygen to hook it into the suit.  The air was worse to breathe than I remembered and my memory is really good.

He coughs again. "Baby...sitter..." He looks at you skeptically, and very cautiously enters the control room that you're in. But at the promise for fresh air, he comes in tentatively and gets in the suit.

The air does indeed hurt to breathe. Even after the kid is in the suit, he doesn't show any changes. He's pale, and you see that he still seems to be short of breath.

   I'll try the orbital station again.  "This 'kof' is an emergency 'gasp'.  We need 'hack' immediate 'kof' evacuation.  Air quality is 'choke' unbreathable.  'kof-kof'  Dammit!  We're 'hack' dying here."

While your chronic cough continues, you begin to feel some fatigue and vertigo, but you can still manage to function.

The boy, on the other hand, still looks awful despite having clean oxygen to breathe now. He continues to look horrible, which holds what little attention you can spare.

Then, your attention snaps readily again when you hear a crackle over the comm, and a soft male voice comes over. It's a different person from before, and he says, "Listen, Lucy..." Then someone else talks, and he says, "I mean Misty, we are coming to help. From the data we've been able to download from your station, it looks like the residential sector of the station has a lower concentration of sulfur in the air than the remainder of the station. Move there and try to stay calm; the bosses are sending a John and a Henry down to help you. You can trust them."

   I shrugged back into my pack.  The familiar weight settled on my shoulders.  Next, I helped the kid to his feet and then pick him up to carry him.  "Come on. 'kof'  Let's get 'hack' below."  The kid in the suit was heavy.  Maybe it wasn't him, it just could be me breathing in this unhealthy air.

   As I headed down below, I wondered about the workforce.  I wasn't Lucy, I was a Lucy.  They aren't sending down John and Henry, they are sending down a John and a Henry.  This sounds like they are using commercially constructed clones.  They probably think I'm a Lucy that has gone off the rails.  I can see why.  How else could I have gotten here?

The child is heavy. Heavier than he was when you picked him up earlier to help him suit up. When you put him down again on one of the beds in the living quarters, you notice he is a lot heavier than before. And that's when you realize that between the control room and here, the boy has lost consciousness. He breathes shallowly but consistently.

   At least the kid still has clean air for breathing.  That's more than I can say I have at this moment.  It's good that the kid is resting.  Maybe some of the toxins will flush out of his body.  It's bad that he's sleeping, because I can't ask him any questions.  One big question on my mind is did two synthetic humans stuck together on a mining station create a real human offspring.

The air is still awful in this area, and you can't tell the difference from taste, smell, or pain from the other. But you aren't quite as dizzy, at least.

You wound up in the room the kid initially had. He has home-made toys from cloth tied up to look like people and animals. There's one metalworked scrap that looks like a lion, as well. It has springs for whiskers, bolts for eyes, and small blunted screwtips for claws.

His clothes also look like home-made scraps of other material. You notice that the arms and legs, while cut to the proper height, are too wide to be made for a child, let alone one of his age.

   From what I see, the kid isn't supposed to be here either.  His toys were made by recycling other things.  His clothing is cut down adult clothing.  I can only speculate how the kid got here.  If he wakes, I can ask him.  If he doesn't, well... he doesn't.  Either way, I'm not planning on going anywhere soon.

The kid does not regain consciousness, and soon you lose consciousness as well, while holding him. You wake up and your lungs feel heavy with a dull throbbing pain. You see two men with small oxygen canisters and masks over you.

One pushes it against your face, while the other goes to help the kid in bed. "What the...Henry! Henry, there's a...****, he's in bad shape." The man takes his own head piece of his suit off and slaps his ear on the kid's chest. He picks up the boy. "We have to get him to Gemini NOW. Grab whoever that woman is and get her to the ship too. None of this is making any sense."

He curses under his breath and he speeds out of the room. The man, Henry, who's over you reaches down to fireman-carry you.

   I breath as deeply of the canned air as I can as I make every attempt to get my backpack, no matter how feeble the try.

The oxygen gives you a very slight high, but then you might just be getting a little closer to normal with the clean air in your lungs. It gives you enough strength to grab your bag and grip it in your arms.

Henry has to carry you like a baby instead, but he doesn't seem to have too much trouble hauling you and your luggage. He hands you the small tank to breathe with while he takes you out.

Soon, he walks you through the complex, the control room, and out into the hanger, where a very small and very rusted ship awaits. He takes you inside of it, to a cargo area with a row of seats that has the space of a medium-sized bathroom. There, you find the other man who saved you and the boy coughing violently while looking over the boy. He has attached an oxygen mask to him for now. Henry places you down gently on the hard, metal floor of their small ship.

"John, are you..."

The other man gains his composure, and looks up at you and Henry. "There are cuffs in the cockpit; grab them for me." John stands straight and approaches you. "That isn't Lucy."

   The clean air felt won-der-ful.  I sucked it down like a strawberry shake on a hot summer day.  Hearing someone calling for cuffs got my attention.  "You don't need the cuffs.  I've been telling you all along that my name is Misty.  Check with your Boss.  I was the one who radioed that there was a problem on the station, saving my life and your company a bazillion dollars or credits or whatever you use for money here."

"Listen, you say I don't need cuffs, then prove it. Drop your bag and your weapons and slide them to my side of the room, slowly. And then you need to explain exactly how you got here and what happened to Lucy and Charlie at this station. Did you kill them? Where are they?"

Henry comes back, handing John the cuffs. "Your call, Misty. And understand this: I may be a dupe, but I know enough about medicine to know your son needs the attention of a proper medical staff and soon or he will die. And we aren't leaving without Lucy and Charlie."

   I dropped the bag, but made no move to lose my weapons.  "First off, the kid isn't my son.  I don't know who he is because he passed out from the bad air before I could talk to him."

   They seemed to be listening, so I continued.  "Second, I think your Lucy and Charlie went out to fix the leak, but never got there.  I didn't see them on the station and the docking bay where a surface utility vehicle would be docked was empty.  The kid said something like 'I missed you guys' when I accidentally woke him.  It doesn't look like your co-workers are still around."

   And now for the hard one.  "Third, my weapons might be the only thing keeping me from being stuffed out an airlock, so I think I'll keep them for the time being.  I mean you no harm, but I don't quite know that you mean me no harm."

"They weren't just our co-workers!" Henry flares up, but John raises a hand and silences him.

John replies, "You have us at a disadvantage, Misty. They don't let dupes carry weapons on the Gemini." He looks with concern at the boy, and you see that the boy strongly resembles the picture on the tablet you saw earlier-of the woman. He has her chin and hair color. He takes a long moment to consider, and says, "Henry, get the ship going and get us back to the Gemini. Misty and I have more to discuss."

Once Henry is gone, he says, "I've known and worked with three Henrys before. He's not an idiot, but he can get rash and miss things." You feel the ship hum gently as it starts up. "The young boy must have crashed too, and it's a miracle that he reached this station when he did and found shelter. Luckier for him, you wound up here too, whether you crashed or decided Jupiter was the place to go into hiding, you saved his life by happening upon the station and calling the Gemini."

Then, you feel the ship lift off, and start to move. "We'll find a place for him, and you'll be the hero. We need to make sure that the boy remembers this all too, for when they ask on the Gemini."

   "Dupes?"  I smiled inwardly.  That explained a few things.  "I'll trade you an answer for an answer.  Since I answered the one about Charley and Lucy, it's my turn to ask a question."

   As long as we were talking peacefully, I didn't have to shoot anyone.  Besides, I didn't know how to drive this bus.  "First I must apologize in advance for my choice of words.  I'm soooo not from around here and I don't know if certain words will cause offense.  By dupe, do you mean duplicate as in replicant, clone, and/or synthetic humanoid?"

   In two of my other stops, I learned about the myself on that world.  I even met myself once.  That was... different.  I couldn't help but wonder if there was a genetic copy of me stored somewhere in somebody's biological xerox machine at this stop.  What if I was named Mavis or Brunhilda or Prudence?  No, it wouldn't be Prudence.  I've never been known to have shown much prudence in my life.

   On the other hand, I learned that Dupes weren't allowed to carry weapons.  That meant somebody was allowed to carry weapons.  I wondered what they used around here.  I also wondered what it would take to get my sticky little mitts on some of them.

To your question, he shrugs. "Of course. Maybe we're called other things on other planets, but it's dupes at Gemini."

Then, he looks at the boy again, putting his hand on his head. "I want to cash in an answer with you too, but differently. I don't care where you're from, but what I told you is what happened, okay? You found the boy and saw his ship crash down to the surface. His parents probably died on impact. He's probably still suffering confusion from his exposure to the planet's gasses, which is why he may not remember things like that." He seems to put emphasis on these points, asserting them as true instead of actually asking you.

   This guy seemed relatively calm about the fact that I was on their mining station.  I like calm.  "All right, that explains the kid.  What story are you going to use to explain me?  I'm not a dupe.  My name is Ms. Teri Reynolds.  I go by Misty.  I was born on Earth in the latter half of twentieth century.  Back home, I was a private investigator.  I have ID to prove all of this.  How I got on your mining station is a little more complicated and harder to prove."