Shipwreaked Redux IC

[Enigma]

SCENE: Freighter Bridge, abandoned. Alarms blaring, red lights flashing as a planet fills the screen

Cut to a cargo hold, racks holding tall silver cylinders, every one a stasis chamber holding a single sentient life form, frozen in a single moment.

SCENE: Exterior shot of the ship roaring past the viewer, falling towards the planet below. The dramatic music begins to play faintly, slowly building.

Announcer: "Ts'Goda IV, a once vibrant planet whose people destroyed themselves in a violent war two centuries before. An empty, desolate world - and a hundred slaves taken from a distant planet, suspended in stasis are about to be marooned there!"

"Welcome to Shipwreaked!"

Horns blare out as the cameras zoom in on an alien city that looks like melted mounds and a plume of black smoke, then zooming in closer on a swath of destruction, ending with the twisted wreckage of the interstellar freighter lying in a burning grassy sward before zooming up into the sky to a glittering space station, lying in orbit. A window comes into focus and the cameras zoom in on a small studio audience and a small stage with a smirking Frengua male neatly attired in pressed khakis, brown boots and belt with a large curved knife sitting on his hip.

"Gentlebeings, let me present to you to Scara!"

INSERT CANNED LOUD APPLAUSE AND WILD WHOOP TRACKS OVER AUDIENCE'S POLITE CLAPPING.

Scara grins, his thick eyestalks like a snails peaking through his dark hair looking into the camera.

"That's right, gentlebeings! I, Scara, have rescued one hundred primitive beings from the slave markets to compete with each other for a chance to return back to their world!"

"Hidden cameras observing their every move, while their Omnis," he paused, showing off his own brown wrist Omni , "listen to every word, every whisper! Before this season is through, you will get to know these primitive people like they were your own family!"

"Of course," the Frengua smirks, cocking his head while one eyestalk winks at the TV Audience, "We're not going to let them all go at once!"

"Let's go back down to the cargo hold to watch as the first few stasis bubbles pop!"

SCENE: Cargo hold. Half of the stasis cylinders remain in their racks while others lie strewn all over the floor of the hold. Viewers can see dents in the wall where cylinders had slammed into them - yet totally unharmed.

One of the cylinders suddenly shimmers like a wand of sparkles and vanishes. The human suspended unharmed inside falls a few inches to the floor. Then another bursts into silvery sparkles....

[TheBaron]

Nathaniel hit the ground with a thump and lay there trying to get my bearings. He was tired and so as those he hadn't moved for a while. He slowly stretched his limbs one at a time until he felt a little more sore but a little less cramped. He pushed himself up onto his hands and managed to get up not his knees. He felt dizzy and nauseous as he managed it. He bent his head towards the ground as the nauseousness beats on him likes wings and he manages retain himself. After some time he tries to stand and almost immediately falls back against a long tall tube that looked to be made of glass he is relieved that it didn't break and sat there for a couple of minutes more. His mind is a mess and he sort of realizes that he is not alone but it does not register. He is tired for some reason which is strange because he feels like he just woke up from a long sleep. He felt his eyes begin to close. "I will just sleep for five minutes," he mumbled to himself.

Nathaniel woke up with a start feeling much more in to it at before when he had first fallen to the floor. But why had he fallen to the floor in the first place. There wasn't any reason for it. He then truly looked around and did not recognize his surroundings. This confused him and he tried to remember the last thing he could. He could remember nothing. This confused him more. He couldn't remember his past at all. Only his name It was Nathaniel. He went by Nathan he remembered that. He looked around lost as what to do. "Best wait for someone to show up I guess," he said out loud to himself.

[AJR SSC BSC]

Fergus awakened from a nightmare in which he had lost two fiscal years’ worth of DE-17s to find himself sitting on a metal floor in a room that looked like Hollywood’s idea of a chemical factory. Scratching his cheek, he found about two-days’ growth, which shouldn’t be: this was Thursday.

Shaking his head and instantly regretting it as his vision swam, he grabbed the floor until things steadied. When his vision cleared he tried hard to remember how he got here, and slowly pieced together a check on Billy’s Trucker Haven on IH 90, checking a stand of second-growth pines…a white light…now here.

He was hungry, thirsty, unshaven, and needed to take a piss in the worst possible way; figure at least a day had passed. Looking around at the big shiny tubes, the pipes, the red lights, he guessed he was a long ways from IH 90.

Some sort of prank? Unlikely-too elaborate. Secret government project? Stupid idea-they wouldn’t grab someone at random. TV program? No way, liability too high.

UFO? White light in the boonies…that seemed too weird to consider seriously under normal circumstances, but these were not normal circumstances.

He noticed the device clipped to his wrist and examined it closely: no logos, no insignia, and far too thin; he had never seen anything like it, and he kept a close eye on Crutchfield and Sharper Image-there wasn’t an electronic gadget that looked anything like this thing. It certainly wasn’t hand-crafted.

"Best wait for someone to show up I guess." The voice made Fergus jump, and he looked around for the source.

[Enigma]

At the far corner of the cargo hold where there's a small airlock, the door creaks open with a protesting moan and a figure wearing a makeshift hooded cloak appears, leaning on a staff. It pauses for a long moment to slowly survey the gloomy hold.

Satisfied, it limps along the back wall towards the center, where another door yawns open. But it doesn't go inside. Instead, it waves its right arm over a panel on the wall. The panel slides open and it reaches in to sweep something out into its arms. It then slides over to the door and slips into the gloom.

[AJR SSC BSC]

Fergus waited until the hooded figure departs, then investigated the area the hooded figure was at. He found a panel, and after some experimentation he established that by waving the asrm gadget over it, it would slide open, revealing a vitamin-enriched gruel paste in a film-covered small bowl, a plastic spork and a pouch of water with a capped straw in one corner.
Finished eating, he pocketed the spork, bowl, and empty plastic pouch, and set off to find the source of the voice.

[Enigma]

Meanwhile, in the orbiting control room high above Ts'Goda IV....

"Who the (censored) was that?" Scara demanded as he stormed in. The hooded figure was on the main screen, frozen in the act of getting food from the wall dispenser.

"We're checking now!"
"One of the stasis tubes must have popped prematurely," a voice said.
"We've been weeks planning this, and you're telling me one of them has been running around unsupervised for (censored) how long?"
"Got it! Our count changed eight days ago. We should be ok!"
"Don't tell me we should be ok! Which one of them was it?"