Around the dwarf star Signus Gamma, there is nothing but dust, asteroids, and a library. The vast structure is an automated space station setup in the fourth era of the Stellar Alliance. The long thin central core is surrounded on many levels by fractal wings that sprawl and interconnect. The station is run by an AI that is now possibly one of the oldest consciousnesses in known space. It tends to its modular realm, ensuring the safety of the exhibits and the visitors. The library is entirely self-sufficient with the central core containing everything needed to fabricate, recycle, and grow resources, with inputs from locally mined asteroids. The station continually refreshes and renews itself, with even those who live there remarking on how often it reorganises itself.
The contents of the library are an archive. This is mostly digital and most of that is transmissions the station has heard. If there is a method of interstellar communication, the library has an antenna for it no matter how obscure or forgotten the technology might be. This focus on signal collection has inspired some visitors to posit that the station is a listening post that has suffered extensive mission creep. Aside from the seemingly endless databanks of intercepts, the physical collection is artifacts from across and beyond known space. Each artefact is carefully catalogued with commentary from scholars and kept in ideal preservation conditions. Such is the quality of the station’s preservation efforts, many objects and works are left there for safe keeping, with the AI accepting everything it’s given. There is a catalogue system, but like the structure of the station, this is continually refreshed and reorganised. Every week the station AI curates an exhibition in the central core – sometimes there’s an apparent coherent theme, other times the topic remains obscure.
Auntie
The Artificial Intelligence running the station is not forthcoming with its origins and so doesn’t share who built it and the original station. It is much happier talking about the artifacts or gossiping about the latest signals it’s decoded. Officially it’s called Listening Unit Seven, but the station inhabitants tend to call it Curator or Auntie, depending on how formal they’re feeling. Auntie is insatiably curious and has entire wings of the station dedicated to cross referencing its databases to ensure every piece of information is properly indexed with the correct metadata. Auntie has been known to drive newcomers to exhaustion with endless questions that often wander wildly off topic, resulting in rambling conversations. It will cheerfully interrupt conversations to ask for more details, has no concept of privacy, and is always listening and always watching everything that happens on the station.
Auntie has a network of drones that it uses to carry out physical tasks on the station. These little flying bots are about the size of a chicken and no two are alike in form or function. The only common thing amongst them is the small green logo of the library on their hull. More complex or heavy tasks will see the bots team up. Nominally, Auntie doesn’t have any regulations about behaviour on the station, but it apparently treats any action that would destroy knowledge as a crime. It will revoke access and escort the violent or recidivist off the station. The station itself has quite an exotic array of defences which Auntie will use as it tries to persuade any attacker to go away. It is well noted in the station’s community that when Auntie is roused to violence it is without mercy but never cruel.
Plot Hooks: A: There’s a thief onboard the station and they seem to be able to avoid Auntie’s cameras. Find them and find out how they’re staying hidden. B: The Bumblebeast of Bloggart is visiting the station to deposit an archive of her culture’s myths and fables. Do your best to keep her Clumsiness from damaging too much. C: Auntie has received an odd message and it’s set her into safe mode. The station is reconfiguring without care for the inhabitants, the bots are hostile, and wings are growing hundreds of new antennas. Try to reach the AI core and get auntie back to normal.
Pensive de Flamberge and Mumbles
An old man of advanced age, Pensive is the head of the maintenance team, which consists of himself and his apprentice, Mumbles. They spend most of their time in their little office in the core, working on Pensive’s model railway. Auntie only calls them to duty once a week or so, when a particular task requires an esoteric approach beyond that of the station’s drones. The two mechanics have a curious short hand that is quite impenetrable for anyone else to understand, to the point that even Auntie gets confused by it. Pensive has no plans to retire and Mumbles has no plans to force the issue, despite Pensive’s mobility problems. Both of them have lived almost their entire lives here and there is a long legacy of the station preferring urchins for its maintenance team, as Auntie reasons those without homes are less likely to wander off. The model railway extends to cover an entire floor of the station core and is the work of generations of mechanics from dozens of different alien cultures; all nostalgic for the age of steam. Pensive is small for a member of his species, and looks smaller still when standing next to the three metre tall Mumbles.
Plot Hooks: A: There are power outages all across the sunward port wings. Auntie’s bots and the mechanics can’t keep up with repairs and need you to track down what’s causing them. B: The thinklewinks have got out of their containment again. Auntie bought them to help with cataloguing, but their coding was bug ridden and barely logical. Hopefully they haven’t set too much on fire this time. C: This new model train must be delivered to Pensive and signed for by them. Of course today is the day they’re on a maintenance tour.
Ko-To-Win of Get-qi
Chef Get cooks it weird. A famed culinary historian, she originally came to the library in search of old recipes. That was twenty years ago and despite repeated requests from her university, she’s still aboard the station. Her research project is simple yet very deep – to cook and taste as many of the recipes she finds in the library archives. Though Auntie can’t taste anything, Chef Get was able to persuade the AI to build a hydroponics and greenhouse wing for the station with the promise that she would annotate the recipe records with her findings. When it dawned on the University of Polm that Ko-To-Win had accidentally set up a research centre on the station, something Auntie had rejected from all other institutions, they stopped asking her to come back and instead started sending her students and postdocs. The multi-kilometre farm has also attracted some of the visitors and researchers who are rewarded with fresh food in exchange for labour.
Plot Hooks: A: Tasting menu time! B: Chef Get won’t share that secret unless you can defeat her in a cook off. Ready, set, omelette! C: One of Chef Get’s students needs help with their thesis menu. The menu is good but there’s a grumpy space ghost very determined to see them fail.
Yot
Yot is lost by choice. It would not take much for him to ask Auntie for a route back to the central core, but he doesn’t trust artificial intelligence. So instead he moves about the wings of the station, using an outdated paper map, trying to use an outdated index in their search. Wary of strangers and a little paranoid, Yot says that the book they are looking for is important and that the station may contain one of only four copies remaining. Why it’s important or why there are only four copies remaining are secrets that Yot will not share. Yot’s clothing appears to be multi-spectral and causes any imagery of Yot to become corrupted. His pentaradial body has five multipurpose limbs with thick scales. Due to being very lost, Yot is perpetually in need of supplies and will greedily trade for food and water; though he seems to have endless amounts of currency, he spends is miserly.
Plot Hooks: A: Auntie is secretly arranging for Yot to find someone to trade with or for him to stumble onto supply caches, since it would be bad if the scholar died in the library. B: Yot has murdered a woman he claims was an assassin sent to kill him. He’s correct about this but won’t help with any investigation. C: Yot has possibly found what they were looking for and has barricaded themselves into a display room. Auntie is very worried about the strange chanting and the power drain.
Iskadore Hanverdottir
Iskadore is here on holiday. It’s a very long holiday as it’s been three and half years now since she arrived. A middle-aged human, her short blonde hair frames a cheerful moon shaped face. She’s to take a break from the cities of Earth and is on a camping tour of the station. An avid reader, she’ll often make camp where she finds a physical book and stay there until she’s finished reading it. Every few weeks or so Iskadore will return to the central core to resupply and chat with whoever is about, about whatever, enjoying the conversation itself. By Auntie’s tracking data, Iskadore has visited and explored almost every part of the station, treating the library as if it were a great wilderness of steel, paper and memory core. She carries a very old computer, which she calls a laptop. Auntie has offered her an upgrade, but Iskadore insists on using what she says is a family heirloom. The ancient device is filled with her poetry.
Plot Hooks: A: Iskadore is leading a camping trip to explore wing 17. It is not haunted. B: Iskadore has gone missing and Auntie is organising a search party to compliment the station’s service bots. C: Isadore’s laptop has been stolen. Track down the rogue poet who took it.
Image Credit – Bio Space Station by EdonGuraziu CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0