"Welcome to the crew, $PName!" Beans says.
Wow. You look up at the graphic graffiti covering the battered hull of Beans and Boozle’s ship. A pirate ship. Of course they were pirates.
“We are glad you came!” Beans says.
“That makes one of us.” grumbles Boozle.
Beans ignores him and opens the door of the ship with something that looks like a crushed Wii remote with a zig-zaggy antennae coming off of it. The air in the ship looks even muggier than the atmosphere outside. Great. You check your suit’s oxygen level, and you have enough to last you for a while. Thank the stars.
[[Board the ship.]]
[[This is getting too gross for me, I’m leaving.|Ugh. They’re contaminated now. Let’s just go home.]]Beans takes on the valiant quest of fixing the engines despite not having fixed anything in his life (including his broken marraige). Now that you're watching him tinkering with the machinery, you feel like he's making it worse. Before you can step in with some unsolicited advice, the engines explode.
You die, your guts floating peacefully through space forevermore.
What a surprise.
[[Try again|The Beginning]]Well.
You’re here now.
In the cockpit flying this ship.
The pirates have offloaded their responsibilities onto you while they’re living it up in the common area. You stare off into the abyss of space and stardust contemplating if a couple of tacos are worth babysitting two aliens. You slump into the captain’s chair. At least you’re getting paid. Just then the ship’s alarm goes off. Shit. The engines are wonky…
You run down to the common area and find the two aliens. From what you remember of the brief introductions; Bean is a pilot and Boozle is…drunk. Hopelessly drunk. Boozle stumbles around with a buzz ball as Bean stares at a navigation screen. You remember that Boozle is also the crew’s engineer. Oh boy.
Who do you want to ask to fix the engines?
[[Beans]]
[[Boozle]]Miraculously, the repairs were a success! Boozle somehow works fine even when completely wasted. Boy are you glad you didn’t choose Beans. You learned from Boozle’s ramblings that Beans had a tendency to blow things up, but somehow still thought he was competent at engineering. All's well that ends well, you suppose.
“Thar she blows!” Beans exclaims over the intercoms.
You and Boozle share an annoyed look. What a nerd. Boozle shoves a multitool into your arms, suddenly very sober as he warns you about the whale’s psychic powers. “Don’t look at its eyes.” That should be pretty easy considering that the whale was HUGE. The ship is dwarfed by its sheer massiveness. You are sent out of the airlock and into the vastness of space with nothing but a small lead securing you to the ship. Your suit has jets that fire up and push you towards the whale.
The multitool in your hands beeps, prompting you to choose a weapon: fire or harpoon. It also warns you that it’s not made for space use. Barnacles. The harpoon feels too Moby Dick, and fire might make some cool whale flambe. Man, maybe you were just petty and hungry. Petgry.
What do you choose?
[[Kill it with fire!]]
[[Kill it harpoon style!]]
[[Wait…It’s kind of cute?]]You hop behind the tacos as they float away, cursing the low gravity. You really needed these tacos, you were just TOO hungry! Who cares if they have a kick of hazardous gas, your stomach would have sustenance! One more hop away…
Reach for the tacos. (click-replace: "Reach for the tacos.")[The tacos are within your grasp! So close! CHOMP. You blink. What. WHAT. THE HELL. Two identical little alien shlomps just chowed down your tacos in one bite. How dare they!
“What the hell man! Those were my tacos!”] (click:"What the hell man! Those were my tacos!")[“I told you the tacos belonged to someone, Boozle!” One of the aliens scolded the other. The other—Boozle—shurgs and burps. “Whatever, Beans. They looked pretty abandoned to me.”
Beans sighs. “Sorry about him. We don’t have much right now, but…” He hands you a flyer. There’s a space whale on it with a bounty listed below. “If you join us, you can have a piece for yourself. You narrow your eyes. Really? Working for thieves when THEY owed YOU? Ugh.
[["Fineee. I'll join you."|Pirate Introduce Yourself]]
[["Forget it. I’m going home."|Ugh. They’re contaminated now. Let’s just go home.]]]You learned many things on your quest!
Like the power of doing the right thing!
Or was it...the power of friendship?
Who knows, you get the idea.
Just remember:(click-replace: "Just remember:")[Just remember:
The whales.]
(click-replace: "The whales.")[The whales.
Are always.]
(click-replace: "Are always.")[Are always.
Watching.]
(click-replace: "Watching.")[Watching.
[[Replay|The Beginning]]
]
You absolutely spear that whale! Good call with the harpoon, even if it is pretty cliche. You earn cool points with the crew, and a good chunk of the bounty. Great! You can refuel your ship now! Also buy a bunch of whale tacos and a barrel of booze!
[[Is this the end...?]]Okay so you're not the brightest candle on the stick, or however that saying goes. The point is that you forgot space doesn't have //air//, so your flamethrower is more of a small handheld lighter. While u fidget with your tool, you make eye contact with the whale.
Awkwardddd.
The whale's eyes are really swirly too. Like those vanilla chocolate icecream swirls. Why does it feel so warm all of a sudden? You realize too late that the cosmic whale has mind controlled you into burning a hole into your helmet with your flaming multitool.
It sucks you can't breathe (because remember there's no //air// in space) so you die.
Brush up on your space facts for next time, bud.
[[Try again|The Beginning]]It’s dark today. You kick a rock and it bounces higher than it would have the last planet you were on. Your stomach grumbles as you hop away from the market. You wish the gravity was higher here and that this planet had a better atmosphere. At least then it wouldn’t totally obliterate your lungs if you didn't wear your helmet. You squeeze the bag of whale meat space tacos and hear a rip. Oh no.
The tacos float out of the ripped brown bag and you watch them float out and away. No no no. Your stomach growls in agreement.
[[Why meeeee.]]You give up and start hopping home less joyfully than when you had the previously-not-poisoned tacos in your hand. Your stomach protests but you ignore it and hope that you missed a pack of instant noodles in your very empty storage on your ship. Eventually, you get to your ship, but there’s a small crowd gathered around its entrance. You feel a bit annoyed that you can’t get to your ship, but your curiosity wins out.
Crane your neck to see what’s going on.(click-replace: "Crane your neck to see what’s going on.")[There’s a dog-sized mouse alien squeaking loudly and printing papers from a mechanical device around its neck. You squeeze past a gelatinous blob—carefully because you didn’t want to accidentally get digested, and pick up a paper. It’s a flyer about protecting the space whales with some weirdly hypnotic iconography. Huh.
Approach the mouse.] (click-replace:"Approach the mouse.")[You approach the mouse. It prints a piece of paper asking if you would like to join their efforts. There seems to be a meeting to discuss protecting cosmic whales from whaling. And there’s free food. Your stomach growls.
[[Agree to go to the meeting. For the food of course.]]
[[Push past the mouse and go home.|Home Bad]]
]
The tacos bob away as you watch. You would have eaten them immediately if not for this stinking air and your helmet. Stars, you’re really hungry, but the tacos could have been poisoned by the weird air already. What do you do?
[[Chase after them.]]
[[Ugh. They’re contaminated now. Let’s just go home.]]"Who even is this guy?" Boozle grumbles.
"What's your name?" Beans asks.
(input-box:2bind $PName,"=XX=","Enter your name.")
[["Fineee. Where’s your ship?"]]
The whale kind of has pretty eyes. You vaguely remember someone telling you something about their eyes, but you can't really remember it now. You sigh, the multitool slipping from your grasp. What a beautiful creature. It didn't deserve to die.
In fact, it deserved life more than you did.
It was ethereal.
Godly.
[[You wanted to protect it.]]
The mouse squeaks happily and scampers in a circle around you a few times. When it stops, a paper prints from the device around its neck. You grab it.
“Thank you, friend! I am Cheese. What is your name?”
(input-box:2bind $AName,"=XX=","Enter your name.")
[[Go to the activist meeting with Cheese.]]
You find no packs of instant noodles in your storage. So unfortunate. You're so so hungry. And extremely broke.
You can't really do anything except starve. A slow and painful death, but alas, you had the choice to do something about it and you didn't. So so unfortunate.
[[Try Again|The Beginning]] "Hello hello, $AName! New friend yay yay yay!" Cheese's new paper exclaims.
You tell Cheese that your ship doesn’t currently have fuel and she squeaks in understanding. She scampers off, and you follow her to a ship shaped like a cheese wheel. A tringle wedge of the ship is clear, and you can see the cockpit inside.
“Your ship is so…you.” You say, for lack of a better description.
Cheese puffs up with pride and waves her tail over a scanner. The airlock door opens. The inside of Cheese's ship has so much whale merch. Wow Cheese really liked whales. It was a little…obsessive. Shrine-like.
[[Aw, she has a hyperfixation! So relatable.]]
[[This is weirdddd. Maybe I just go home.|Home Bad]]
You look through all the cosmic whale merch while Cheese flies the ship to a local whaling port. The meeting is brief, and mostly just activists grouping up before dispersing with more flyers. You scarf down a few blocks of cheese from the refreshments table and sneak a few for Cheese as well.
After the meeting you and Cheese go to a big building at the end of the port. Apparently they are in charge of regulating the activity of the fishing boats, or something like that. Cheese could only fit so much onto one sheet of paper. She wants you to knock some sense into these billionaire bobbleheads who argue that whaling is a lucrative business.
How do you convince them to stop the ships from whaling?
[[Come on guys, whales are living creatures that need to be protected. Have some compassion!]]
[[You guys know that there’s more money in crypto, right?]]
You tell the money munchers that they should invest in bitcoin instead of wasting time hunting stupid whales. It's a lot less work, and they wouldn't have to pay any workers to regulate it!
They all say, "Omg facts, what are we doing?" They thank both you and Cheese and ask for some good crypto bro recommendations. You help them set up their accounts on a totally legit website.
Since they don't need their space station anymore (or at least that's what you tell them) you convince them to sell it to you so that they can buy some more sweet sweet digital currency. They agree with shit eating grins that think they have the better end of the deal.
You hold in the same grin until you and Cheese are back in the ship with the deed to the space station. Who knew Cheese was loaded? Cheese prints a paper that details a faulty cheese delivery that got mixed up with a bunch of gold nuggets. Maybe you should start ordering cheese too.
You open your fake crypto profile that you wired all of the executive pigs' money to and transfer it to your own account. Cheese informs you that the next stop is to the whale preserve so you can make a donation.
[[Use the money to buy cheese. Hey, you could potentially score gold, and if not, you get a delicious snack.]]
[[Give them all of the money!]]
[[Give them some of the money.]]
You try to appeal to these bigots' sense of empathy. Wow. Really?
The capitalistic freaks scoff at your "emotional mumbo jumbo" and laugh at you. How embarassing. You and Cheese are kicked out of the place. Cheese is heartbroken and ditches you. You can't really blame her, you kind of ruined this for her.
You're stranded now, and without any money, you sleep on the streets.
Oops.
Someone ran you over.
You died.
You're not supposed to sleep in the //middle// of the street, silly.
[[Try Again|The Beginning]] Wow.
You’re so selfish.
I guess you’re rich now.
Eat the rich, as the whales always say.
[[The whales?]]What a sweet and generous gesture!
...Maybe a bit too generous? Cheese is elated, but now you are broke. Again.
Never fear! Cheese offers to give you some of her gold stash to repay you for all your help! You exchange emails and promise to be pen pals. How endearing!
This goodbye is a little emotional. Cheese even gifts you one of her most prized whale items. It's a little plush! You admit it's a nice present, but you can't help but feel the plush's eyes are watching you. Whatever. You're probaby just being paranoid.
You feel a newfound love for cosmic whales, so you ask Cheese to send you the link of the website that she ordered this merch from.
[[Is this the end...?]]You feel good! You earn some points with Cheese for being a charitable person—good for you!
And on top of that, you have enough left over to refuel your ship and get some tasty snacks for the road!
You feel a bit guilty though. Technically, that money is Cheese's, and you didn't really tell them that you didn't donate all of it...
The guilt eats at you, and you can't help but tell Cheese. They are angry, and they make you go back to donate the rest of the money. She doesn't talk to you on the way back to your ship or when she drops you off. Very sad. You lost your friend. Lies are bad bad bad.
You try to get a job to afford food and fuel, but the economy is trash and you don't have 10+ years of work experience. You eventually starve to death thinking of your friend. Pain.
[[Try Again.|The Beginning]] Yes, the whales.
They see the greed in your heart. They are disappointed. You were a promising vessel. They were watching you.
They still are.
They watch you pretend to donate.
As Cheese brings you back to your ship.
As you refuel and take off into the stars.
You reek of money. They watch you panic as they approach. Watch you until they can't see you anymore. Until your ship is engulfed in their maw. Until you are eaten.
You die.
Try not to be greedy next time.
[[Try Again|The Beginning]] You feel a sudden pang of hatred. It doesn't feel like yours. You realize it's the whale's. It urges you, commands you, to be its vessel. Your arms move on their own. The multitool is back in your hands.
You aim it towards the ship. You feel the whale's consiousness in your mind. You welcome it, anything for a creature so wonderful. You take aim and shoot. There's a silent explosion when the harpoon hits the ship and your mind fills with bliss. The whale's bidding is done.
Your usefulness has run its course. Happily, you let the whale move your arms to take your helmet off. It's only when you're freezing and asphyxiating in the vaccuum of space do you regain control of your own mind.
By then, it's too late.
You died.
Boozle did try to warn you. Poor Beans and Boozle, they died too.
[[Try Again|The Beginning]]