Starfield:NASA Research Computer

A series of three terminals found in the NASA Launch Tower during the mission Unearthed. After terminal 1, there is a data slate named Judith - Personal Recording found on the ledge of a counter, just after the history museum section.

Terminal 1
Found on the far side of the room you come into after using the lift.

Delivery from Mars
Station log. Doctor Judith Tatienne. The recent delivery from Mars is... unsettling. I was expecting rock samples or maybe fossils of microbial life.

Instead, Doctor Victor Aiza comes with two members of the military. Everything they have brought back is under wraps.

What could a theoretical physicist need with a sample from Mars?

Doctor Victor Aiza
Station log. Doctor Judith Tatienne. I've been trying to cozy up to Doctor Aiza... Victor... to see what is going on.

His team has completely commandeered one of the labs with those two military handlers checking who comes in and out.

I joked that maybe he found a little gray man and was doing an autopsy, and he grew very pale.

Two days later, he sends me a request asking for more information on my background in materials science - metallurgical engineering. We have a meeting tomorrow.

I... I think I'm being invited into the lab...

Meeting Today
Station log. Doctor Judith Tatienne. I have never been so nervous since I defended my dissertation.

Four hours talking to Victor and his team about theoretical metals, atomic bonding, even a half hour divergence into magnetism that I'm pretty sure was just to thow me off the trail of what we were talking about.

Then I got to see the lab. I... I don't know how much I should say, but the periodic table just got thrown out the window.

Terminal 2
Found just after the long ramp descending further into the ground

April 14, 2138
Project Log. Doctor Victor Aiza. We turned on the prototype today.

The gravitational field around it began to "fold" as we long suspected. Complete reversal of the gravitational pull was observed on dozens of loose objects around the lab.

I'm setting up a meeting with the directors to propose a larger test. The prototype proves we don't need the original anymore, but further work is going to have to take place in space.

Somewhere with abundant Helium-3, and with a civilian partner. Someone with access to large scale manufacturing resources and computational equipment.

Engineering gravitational folds, "pulling" the far side of the solar system closer to us? It's all going to be possible

December 8, 2141
Project Log. Doctor Judith Tatienne. I watched the Grav Drive test from the Moon today. It was the first time we were able to talk to the team at Nova Galactic directly.

So many things were under wraps before, but now everyone wants all the publicity they can get.

I'm already seeing proposals for manufacturing hundreds of drives. Expeditions to Alphas Centauri and beyond.

It's all so overwhelming... and worrying. It could take years, decades, before we know what all the side effects of operating a Grav Drive can be. But no one wants to hear that right now.

Like a bunch of pioneers, racing towards the edges of the frontier without knowing about the grizzly bears in the mountains...

Terminal 3
Found in the room next to the artifact, next to the corpse of Dr. Victor Aiza

February 12, 2149
Lan Hsu: I never actually got to visit your labs back when we were working on the Grav Drive projects.

Victor Aiza: ''Seems like ancient history now. Only thing we're doing these days is launching weather satellites.''

Lan Hsu: ''Guess this is as good a retirement as any. Now Project Demeter. You want our help manufacturing scanners to better track these new meteorological patterns we're seeing?''

Judith Tatienne: Our guess is that the poles might be naturally shifting, causing some gravitational fluctuations that are throwing off our old models.

Lan Hsu: ''Why do you need the scanning tolerances to be so small? What are you trying to find?''

Victor Aiza: I... just want to be sure. It's not like we're doing much these days, anyway. The glory days are over. Why not give ourselves a challenge before they write us off in the history books?

August 21, 2149
To: Judith Tatienne, Victor Aiza, Lan Hsu

As requested, the Astrophysics Research Team has done a full analysis of the data you provided us. The measurements of the Earth's magnetosphere show clear signs of fluctuation, often in correlation to the periods of frequent and large gravity wave spikes emanating from the Moon.

These gravity waves seem to be affecting the magnetic shield provided by the Earth's inner core and may be affecting the core itself give the proximity to the source. The data indicates the change rate is increasing exponentially.

As our magnetosphere falters, its ability to protect us from the Sun's solar wind falters. Beyond the devastating effects of solar radiation, this will lead to something more dire - the sputtering, or stripping away, of our atmosphere. This has happened before, to Mars, a planet studied since the earliest days of space, to see into Earth's possible future. We are afraid this future may be closer than we ever thought imaginable.

Some ma view this data as normal. There have been historical fluctuations and polarity changes of Earth's core, but this is orders of magnitude greater. We see echos of previous generation's debates over global warming, and we want the science here to be clear. Like waves in the ocean, these gravity waves rise and eventually crash into shore, the Earth, with devastating consequences.

Dr. Luke Andews

ART Chief Scientist

August 22, 2149
Judith Tatienne: ''I know what I'm seeing, Victor. The data coming back from the satellites is very clear. It's the Grav Drives.''

Lan Hsu: ''All those jumps from the Moon. At this rate, Earth's atmosphere is going to start sputtering out into space.''

Victor Aiza: Can the drives be fixed?

Lan Hsu: ''I'm working on some designs that should... discretel solve the problem under the guise of an emergency update to the fueling pumps.''

Judith Tatienne: We're talking about the end of Earth and you're trying to be subtle about it?

Victor Aiza: ''Judith. The last thing we need is people losing faith in Grav Drive technology. That might be our only option.''

Judith Tatienne: ''To what? Are you seriously saying we should abandon Earth?''

Lan Hsu: ''The timeline is under 50 years. A blink of an eye for a planet, but more than enough time for a human exodus.''

Judith Tatienne: And what do we tell people?

Victor Aiza: ''We say it's an act of God. One that science has found a solution for. Time for humanity to take its place in the stars.''

Judith Tatienne: ''...You knew? Didn't you? You lied to me!''

Victor Aiza: I...

Judith Tatienne: ''All this time! I dedicated my LIFE to this discovery, Victor! And you KNEW we were going to kill off our planet!''

Victor Aiza: ''You haven't seen the future I've seen! There's an infinite expanse of promise out there. A meteor could've hit Earth. A plague. Another world war. Colonizing other galazies secures humanity's future for all coming generations across all time!''

Judith Tatienne: At the expense of our home!

Lan Hsu: ''Stop it! Both of you! All that matters is building enough ships to get everyone off this planet. And we need to start now.''

Victor Aiza: ''I'll... draft up a statement. We'll need to address the entire international community. I'm sorry, Judith...''

Judith Tatienne: ''There isn't a planet in this universe that will be far enough away from you, Victor. We are never speaking again after this is over.''

September 8, 2160
My name is Doctor Victor Aiza, and if you're listening to this, then you probably already know the truth. I was young when I first headed the retrieval team of an odd gravitational anomaly on Mars, but I kept what really happened that day hidden from everyone except... one other person. Even she didn't believe me at first, but I have no reason to lie to anyone now, so I hope you'll accept this... confession, whoever you are.

When I touched the anomaly, I experienced 12 days of lost time. I met... myself. He told me everything that has since come true. The Grav Drive equations. The tests on the Moon. Earth's atmosphere sputtering away because of what we had done. But he also told me about a city, thriving on a planet orbiting a distant star. Human culture, art, music, lifestyles evolving and shining brightly across all of space.

What price would I be willing to pay for that future?

Maybe you don't believe me. Maybe Judith was right, and I'm just a coward who wants to believe his mistakes were justified. But everyone has forgotten about the real origins of the Grav Drive. This... Artifact, from Mars.

I hope you make better use of it than I did.