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Old 11-08-2020, 07:08 PM   #1
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default 8 Flora Mystery

8 Flora is the closest of the large asteroids and, with a mass of over 6 quadrillion metric tons, it is a very large piece of real estate. While it likely lacks much in the way of volatiles, its orbital position would make it the gateway to the Main Belt, so there should be a really good reason for it to be ignored in Transhuman Space. Let us explore the mystery of 8 Flora then.

In 2043, the PRC attempted to colonize 8 Flora because of its beneficial location. While the colony grew quickly, to a population of 10,000 biosapients by 2053, it was quarantined in 2054 because of a pandemic that reportedly caused its inhabitants to eventually enter into a coma because it transformed their soft tissue into bone tissue over the course of a month. After the colony went dark, the PRC sent an expedition in 2055 to see what went wrong, but that expedition reported being attacked by horrifically ossified organisms before the captain activated the self-destruct and destroyed the spacecraft while it was in the colony hanger. A video feed from the expedition that was leaked a year later showed something armored in bone attacking the team as they attempted to reach their spacecraft.

Remote observation shows that something is happening on 8 Flora, though no one seems to know exactly what. While the PRC nuked their own colony soon after the failed expedition, something seemed to have survived, as something resembling a new colony arose in a different location in 2066, 2075, 2084, and 2097. In each case, the PRC nuked it into oblivion and, when other powers asked for details, they have only been met with silence.

While no one outside the highest levels of the PRC know what is going on, there are plenty of theories. The most likely scenario involves a rogue AI that burrowed into the core of 8 Flora before the original colony was nuked. Of course, no one knows what the only video evidence of the events is actually showing, though one theory is that the rogue AI transformed the victims of the pandemic into bioshells that it operated in an attempt to secure a spacecraft to escape 8 Flora.

Currently, the PRC maintains eight automated orbital platforms armed with nuclear missiles and lasers in orbit around 8 Flora. It only says that it is maintaining a quarantine around the asteroid and has destroyed any probes that attempted to land on the surface of the asteroid. Other nations have protested the quarantine, but the PRC has ignored their protests.
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