How it started...
Chapter 1 - The Verdict
The judge eagle's gavel came down and the words echoed in my head as walked down the long corrider. "Banishment". I've been banished for high treason. At this point, I'm just glad they let me live. However, Space Vandals have been quite serious about keeping their secrets safe with them. Just a banishment from the country won't do. No, I'm finally acheiving my dream of going to space. Forever.
Space Vandals, the company I work for, had finalized a long term mission proposal to the kuiper belt. This mission had been deemed too dangerous for anyone to even attempt. The mission starts with terraforming a planet, and then starting a starting a cafe business for other space faring travelers. I'll be provided with the starting tools and if I do well enough, they'll provide the next upgrade of tools.
I've been given a final night to say goodbye to my friends and family. I won't be able to make it to the Flower Kingdom to say goodbye to Princess Fluer, the young kitten in charge of her kingdom. I only hope that Seth the Scaled, her dragon duke, passes on the message to her.
I arrived to the end of the long hallway to see my wife, Velvet, a large pink bunny, and my spouse, Yodel, a smaller pastel colored sentient puppy plushie, waiting for me with hopeful eyes. I looked away from them dejectedly and shook my head.
"Velvet, Yodel..." I started, looking at my spouses again "This will be the last night we'll be together. They're letting me acheive my dream."
"But that means..." Yodel muttered
"Yeah. They're using my plan against me. I can't say i'm not surprised. I wanted to see it come to fruition too much and got overzealous of who to show it to. Velvet. Yodel. I love you both. Please, take care of our kids."
They came in close and gave me a warm hug. I could feel Yodel slip something into my wrist pouch between my cream paw fur and dark main coat. I couldn't risk looking at it now at risk of Space Vandals confiscating any personal effects I have. Velvet gave me one last big squeeze, popping my back in the processes. I'm going to miss her much larger stature over me and how easily she could move my supple body around.
I could feel Yodel attempt to use their magic for something, however the enviroment we are is was preventing them from using their magic at their fullest potential. Despite this, I could feel my collar around my neck get lighter and melt into my fur. Yodel had hidden our wedding collar for me to be able to sneak it past the guards. I learned how to walk with my collar so my bell wouldn't make a sound, however with Space Vandals stripping everything I own away from me, any physical memories of my home planet will be left behind. Only Space Vandal brand belongings will be able to be taken with me.
I took a large swallow and looked towards the door where i'm supposed to meet for my final fate. I gave my spouses another hug and kiss goodbye. Velvet had moved her tongue into my mouth for a bit before giving me a light kiss on my forehead causing my face to appear beet red afterwards.
"I'm going to miss you, kitten" Velvet said while looking deeply into my eyes. My emotions had started to well up, making me unable to speak, so i just nodded and leaned into Velvet for the final goodbye. After as long as I needed to give a goodbye to her I pulled away and did the same for Yodel.
Yodel's freshly washed plush fur was a calming feeling against my own fur and I could hear them use their telepathy in my mind.
"Alec" I heard their voice whisper in my head "I love you. We'll do our best to take care of the kids but... It won't be the same without you. Good luck out there."
I nuzzled into Yodel's neck as much as I could, rubbing the back of their neck and down to the top of their overalls with my paw. I'm not sure how long this continued for, yet when I was I finally pulled away
"I love you, too, puppy." I said out loud, disregarding that they used telepathy to commnicate, "I'm going to miss you as well"
I turned away from my spouses and looked at the large metal door to my new destiny. The door quickly slid open as I walked towards it. Once I walked in, there will be no going back. I took one last survey of my surroundings.
The dark gray interior was all encompassing, only interrupted by short flashes of red lights from security cameras and dimly light by faded out florescent lights that haven't been replaced since their installations ever since the building had been erected. I watched as Velvet and Yodel walked through, each camera turning their focus on them as they passed by until eventually they dissapeared behind the door we came from.
I entered my door and looked towards the masked and uniformed guards in the room I took a step in the room, ready for the next step of the process. Two of them grabbed my arms and pulled the shirt I was wearing, followed by the rest of my clothing before being roughly thrown into a decontamination shower. Once the guards had dried me off throroughly I was handed a cocktail of pills, each one designed to supplement the defiencies I will face at the start of my space voyage. It took me a couple tries to swallow all the pills. Once I had completed downing my pills I was handed a black jumpsuit, the same color as my fur. However, the jumpsuit was branded with the Space Vandal logo on the back, with three lines through it. I'm still part of Space Vandals, but i've been been stricken from ever having my name on anything Space Vandal related, this logo on my jumpsuit reflected that. Even if I did redeem myself and be able to end my exile, I'll never be able to have my name on my own works.
I donned my new uniform and started towards a long and narrow staircase. Each step up making my legs feeling heavier and heavier with each one. I felt the anti-anxiety pill kick in. It only helped my heart rate slow down, my mind still a mess about what's about to happen. So many variables and unknowns I hadn't considered that are now clouding my mind. I tried to push these thoughts away as I continued upward, even if I wanted to go back, the guards right behind me made it impossible to do so.
I undid a hatch at the stop of the stairway and entered into my capsule. This rocket is only a transition from our home planet to a more spacious spaceship that's already orbiting around the asteroid belt. With how far this initial trip will be my command module was more than spacious, well stocked, and depressingly barren of any other life. As I finalized my inventory I heard over the module's speakers
"Private Alec. Banishment to space for high treason under military articles 104 and 94, Civillian: 18 S.C. Code Section 2381. Do you understand these charge held agaisnt you?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Dismissed and godspeed"
I gave a salute and buckled myself into my seat. I was facing towards the sky now. The bright blue sky was a stark contrast to the dark tunnels down below. I heard the distant countdown start. It was too far for me to hear exactly where the count was, I could only hope that I'll be prepared for the cacophany of noise that I'm about to hear. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable shaking of the rocketship to signal the taking off of the ground.
Chapter 2 -Space, the final frontier
As I felt the final signal I did a check over my instruments. This is supposed to be a fully automated mission, only manned by a small janitorial crew to make sure that the machines don't malfunction. I should have expected that I would have been on the crew anyways. I just didn't expect to be the sole traveller on this expedition. The turbulence had been much greater than anything I had experienced before, despite such a large and slow object. I felt the ship start to stabilize and my body being a second thought to it, left me hanging upside down. Thankfully this didn't last very long before 'down' was no longer a concept. I slowly felt the gravity of the planet lose its grip on me and the reflection of light from the atmosphere dissapate.
I was now in the cold endless confines of space. Safe from the harmful near nothingness while in my tin can. I unbuckled myself from my seat and expected to fall, but was met with weightlessness. It felt like a nosedive in a plane that never ended. I use this time to orient myself to the new surroundings and look over what effects the Space Vandals had left me.
I was almost pleasently surprised when I saw that they had left me a laptop with hard drives that were filled with usable programs and games for me to play. Musical instruments that I had learned throughout my journeys, and stuffed animals that were in the images of the ones left behind. I grabbed the stuffed effigy of Yodel and pulled it close to me. I held them in my arms, their head draped over my shoulder, and I hoped and wished for their voice to suddenly appear in my mind again or for the plush pile in my arms to become recharged with my love. It wasn't until I bumped my head on the ceiling and hearing my bell on my collar that's appeared again by me floating that I realized that this version of Yodel won't suddenly become sentient.
Looking at how the ship had been packed, there's probably more that i'm yet to discover underneath these initial findings. However, I had to make a daily plan for myself so I wouldn't lose strengh along this journey. I decided that after the stress of what had came before, that now would be a good time to think about end of day activaties.
Grooming was the first thing on my nightly list, thankfully my feline biology provides me with an easy way of showering and getting dirt and grime out of my fur. Next i moved onto checking a terriarium that grows a single potato every 24 hours. If the potato is detected that it's been growing for over 24 hours then an automated process collects it and provides it either towards excess fuel materials or to a long term food storage. If it detects that a potato had been removed before the cycle completes, the computer restarts only the planting and harvesting cycle.
After that, I start powering down anything and everything I don't need while I was in a sleeping chamber, hanging up my collar next to me and strapping myself onto a wall. In an almost cruel twist of fate the Space Vandals knew I would grind me teeth in my sleep, but they didn't provide me with mouthguards. They gave me an assortment of pacifiers. That along with how bathrooms work in space, they've infantalized me, as a sort of final laugh by them.
Once I felt ready to wake up out of my chambers, I start my day with some of the monk's exersices I had learned from Master Yoshi, the dinosaur from the mountains, and Paw-Lee, the armless blue dog and master of self-discipline. These exersices involved me using my own body's strength against itself by pushing and pulling each group of muscles towards and against each other. After the exercises had been completed I next moved onto my first meal which usually consisted of a type of flavored paste from a squeezable tube. I had all the flavors you'd expect from baby food. I did occasionally replace a meal with a raw potato if I felt the need to chew on something.
Leisure time was next before the cycle repeated, which consisted of my trying to figure out how to keep my sanity while on these long journeys. Playing videos sometimes wasn't enough for me and I felt I could hear someone behind me tapping around. I devised a plan to figure out which parts of my ship's systems were absolutely required and decided to try and make robot friends out of what I could. These robots helped me keep me entertained by making fun of the bad games that the Space Vandals had provided me. Despite the hard drive all being full of video games, none of them had been highly rated, or had been the orginal version of the game... Or at least, I don't think they were. My mind may have already started to slip by this point.
With me being aware of the oncoming madness I attempted my best to ground myself between these daily activities by trying to hijack a network connection and connecting to the long range comms network. After a couple cycles I was able to fully connect to the internet back home. I knew contacting my family directly would break my exile. I didn't dare risk it. Until I'm free of my initial exile, until the first planet is terraformed, I can only sit by and watch others.
I'm not sure how many cycles it had to take before I reached the next step of my journey. I wasn't sure what I expected to happen, or how everything worked out. The automated systems took control of everything while I was in the asteroid belt transitioning to the next step. What I can describe what this process resulted in was that my intial ship was only a part of the next step of the process. What had been a floor to me for the past while, was no longer a floor, but a hallway into a much larger ship. Once the processes had been completed I could only notice that the ship had started moving again by my bouncing lightly off a wall. As fun as zero-g had been, getting startled by bouncing of surfaces was getting a little old.
I started to get used to my newest enviroment and noticed that there was a cryochamber for my use if I felt that the trip has started to get too long. Knowing how untested it had been previously I couldn't trust anything related to putting myself into it, however I noticed that I could redirect the carbon dioxide that it would use to create a type of soda for myself using some of the food paste mixtures I had found that would give a type of flat soda taste.
Knowing I was finally on the last part of my journey, I decided to finally look at what Yodel had slipped into my wrist pouch. I slipped my fingers into a pouch under where my black coat and cream paw meet and pulled out a photo. After so many cycles and not seeing them the entire time, and not even a stuffed animal version of them. I finally saw them again. My children. All three of them in a photo together. On the left was Tigg the Tiger, the eldest of my three children and the second adopted child. Tigg may not have liked how I parented him, but despite him being def, loved feeling the vibrations of music and I loved played music for him just for that. On the right was Little the Lion, the mute lion, the middle of the children and technically my first child. And finally, in the middle was a magenta bunny. Adrianna, Velvet and I's biological child, unfortunely blinded in her younger years by her curiosity and older brother's experiments.
I tried to not think of the logistics of how I can survive for so long while in space, if I thought about it for too long I start to panic, so I try to remind myself to just relax and know that everything will be okay. I was able to complete my robot friends and install an artificial intellegence into my ship. I named my AI after my NetNavi, BlockMesh, that had helped me on some of my espionage missions by hacking into systems and slicing through security system code networks. Unfortunely, BlockMesh was limited in xir abilities now, and could only provide snarky remarks on my gameplay.
As I continued through my journey, I was able to recieve notfications from the Space Vandals, despite me trying to block the comms network from them picking me up. It doesn't help that Space Vandals are the ones that put the satellites I'm using for connections around the system. I was allowed almost any personal freedoms, as long as anything and everything I do reflects well back on Space Vandals. I could have no personal or closed communications betwen family, and anything I would create would have to be made publicly availble and credited to Space Vandals.
Many more cycles had passed before I noticed I had finally arrived above the planet I was supposed to terraform. An ice and snow planet. I was hoping for a desolate rocky and barrren planet. Snow is the type of weather I dislike the most. The Space Vandals laughed at my in their next comm link about this. I don't think they expected me to had made it this long judging by how they kept saying "If you've made it this far". Despite everything, I was still alive.
The command module I had arrived to my mothership was able to double as a short range starcraft for me. As of now, due to my exile, I was only allowed to go to and from the ice planet below me. I decided that now was a good of time as any to start to work towards my end.
As I had terraformed the planet I was given time to think the new rules Space Vandals had presented me with each step. I decided that after I had finished terraforming the planet that I would be able to open up the cafe and call it what I want. Eventually, I decided on the name "Catnip Cafe" as the terraforming process would provide with many types of flora, a few I saw in abundance was catnip and cocoa. I used the automated systems to plan for chocolate and coffee products to be made from the cocoa. I put safeguards into the system to prevent the cocoa from being made to something else, even if it got hacked. I prevented myself from getting into this part of the safeguard system by setting this part of the code's password to random keypresses, this would still allow me to modify their pathing and other types of code.
Eventually, after probably months of work, I had completed the terraforming process. The planet of ice and snow had slowly transformed into a tropical paradise. The laboritories I had setup throughout the islands were now to be abandoned and left behind for anyone else scavenging for supplies on their interplanetary adventures. In each of the labs I had left notes on where I was on the terraforming process and the successes and failures I had encountered along the way. Some were unfortunely flooded as I misjudged where the water levels would end up at.
Finally, after a stable atmosphere and ecosystem was established, I could focus on creating drones to help supplement finding and collecting the raw materials and sending them to the Catnip Cafe that had been built by even mroe autmatated systems in the kuiper belt while I had been terraforming. This would supply the cafe with a stable source of breathable air for me and any patrons while in the cafe, and supply the artfical gravity as well. I still was not sure how the logistics of how all this worked, I just rolled with how everything worked out.
At this point, I was able to start to plan for my own future, as even the Space Vandals had admitted that they didn't expect me to live this long and fully let loose the reigns of my exile. I still couldn't contact my former friends or family or head back to the planet that I had once known as home. I could however, start any new journeys. Space Vandals had continued their project research and allowed me to test the most experimental. They rewarded me by giving me an account that would always have enough for the purchase I would need. Unless the purchase was deemed unnecessary or trivial, which was unfortunely most purchases that wasn't Space Vandal brand, so I happened to be in debt to more people more often than I had liked to be.
I was able to make a nook in the office of the Catnip Cafe that I felt I could start streaming my journeys from. Due to where the exoplanet I had terraformed and where the Catnip Cafe was I would have to wait either 1 year for one of the nearby gas giants to come around, or 10 years for the other to come back around again to go back to that planet. With how settled I had become and with how much trust, and sheer raw numbers, I had implemented into my automated machine, I didn't have many worries that I would be unsupplied. I got one final message from Space Vandals. Same rules as before, like they wouldn't let me forget, but I was free. Anything I wanted to do, I could do again. They admitted that their plan failed. They wanted me gone, but they couldn't pull the trigger themselves. They had hoped some of the untested variables would work against me. They had hoped that my own will to survive would be lost in the cold lonely confines of space.
They were wrong. Despite everything, I'm still here.
