the Radio Mainframe

[Euca]

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Radio Main Frame - Audio Logs.

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For the first few moments of the recording, there is no sound besides the uninteresting hums and beeps of what seems to be a server room. Then there is a loud clang as a door opens, footsteps follow. The sound peace is quickly interrupted by the loud and excited voices of two people, a man and a woman. They sound young, eager and most of all, naive.

"Did you hear that?" the male voice says "I heard a noise in here!"

"Look!" the female responds "The red light, it's... it's going! We got it working!"

There's a brief moment of cheering between the two, which may be considered odd since historically, red lights have heralded doom, rather than achievement.

"Oh, oh! We can say the words now!" the man says. A chair is rolled from across the room, making awful noises as it is hastily scrabbled over to the microphone. It creaks under the weight of a person sitting on it.

"This is Dwayne Nicholson, of the Radio Mainframe-" he is interrupted.

"I thought we were naming it the Gaia? You know, after that Greek God?"

"No one gets Greek Gods anymore. Plus, this name isn't so bad, is it? Radio Mainframe. It has a nice ring to it, you have to admit."

A brief pause. As is the way with many women, this one's spite and anger can be felt, even without a visual feed. Footsteps are leading out of the room with an angry pace. The chair creaks again as Dwayne rises to follow her. He's calling out to her as they leave.

"No wait, Ann!" His voice trails off. Then, all that is left is the harmonious beeps, rings and tones from the server room. Peaceful, then momentarily chaotic, then peaceful once more.

***

When the audio picks up again, there is a lack of peace in the background. Instead, Dwayne is back, and speaks into the microphone.

"Right, uh... where was I...

"Audio Log, Radio Mainframe. This counts as our first ever day of recording! Ann and I have been toiling to get our information recording systems online. It's been a nightmare, especially when all you have is toolset that's missing a few parts and no handy skills to your name." Another pause. "So, uh, I guess I'll talk about the Radio then.

"The Radio acts as an information gathering vessel, or IGV, for short. The idea is to collect information from the space around us, and find... well, for lack of a better word, things to report or research on. And I don't mean alien things, I mean, things like, lost history, medical discoveries, hidden opinions. Things that the light doesn't usually catch."

"I'm a journalist. Studied at the University of Cambridge in, well, Cambridge. Ann is a scientist. She studied... er..." He loses his train of thought, then comes back with a jolt of memory "Medical Sciences! That's right. Studied all the ins and outs of the human body, and the environment, and the relationship between the two. Or at least, that's what she told me anyway..."

"That's what we're here to do: report and research. So far, we've been trying to develop our information input systems, which is why you can hear this recording. Not much longer and hopefully we'll have all of this mess compacted into our Kestrel. It's fairly low budget at the moment, admittedly, but soon we'll be reaping in the cash with all of our findings, so there's always that to look forward to."

He sighs, it echos that of all the same, young adventurers of the world, all of them filled with the innocent of a new soldier, marching off to war, never to return.

"That's it for now. We'll report back wh-"

The audio cuts. The logs read that the memory has run out. Clearly they haven't sorted that issue out either.

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