Re: Orientation attachment (origin strip)
From: Records · Offboarding continuity
To: Anyone who still reads attachments
Note: Art is canonical to this file only. Gameplay is Signal & Salvage.
Attached is the orientation strip we use when someone asks how we got here.
It skips the polite version. It still cannot fit every footnote. Treat it as a file you are not supposed to forward.
2026. The AI does your job better. HR books your exit interview.
Strip note The model already drafts the decks, files the tickets, and writes the standup. The all-hands lasts six minutes. By lunch the badge printers go quiet. By Friday your laptop bricks itself on cue.
Severance comes with a brochure. Sleep through the bad years. Wake up rich.
Strip note Cryo is listed right next to COBRA on the benefits sheet. The brochure smiles. Sleep through the scarcity years. Wake up when the world is gentle and the markets are kind. Initial here. Initial here. Initial here.
The rich freeze first. Cryo becomes a tourist attraction.
Strip note Glass towers, full of frost and money. Living heirs pose next to sleeping ancestors and post both for proof of lineage. Tours run on the hour. The cold smells expensive on purpose.
Then a bank bundles your nap into a bond. Your sleep is somebody's return.
Strip note The utopia date keeps moving. A suite upgrade becomes a bond. The bond gets a rating. The rating gets bundled, tranched, and sold to grandkids who never asked to inherit a bill for somebody else's nap.
A shelf holds a person the way it holds a crate. Pods stack like SKUs.
Strip note Pods stack where overflow stock used to sit. Labels list people the way they list parts. The shift supervisor treats the cold like logistics, because that is what the spreadsheet calls it.
Storage fees accrue while you dream. You sleep through your own foreclosure.
Strip note Mold in a gasket. A coolant loop nobody funded. Fees for power. Fees for air. Fees for staying asleep. The asset keeps breathing. The balance climbs anyway. The interest does not care that you are dreaming.
A broker prints a lot. Warm bodies included. Salvage Co. wins. No jurisdiction. No appeal.
Strip note A logo nobody recognizes. A jurisdiction nobody can find on a map. The signatures happen in orbit, where the law is mostly custom and handshake. The stamp lands. The debt has a new owner. The people attached to it get a manifest number and a berth.
Thaw alarms go off in batches. Millions wake to the same UI, the same total, the same due date.
Strip note Orientation is a locker combination. Training is a shrug. The suit seals. The airlock clock starts. Somebody already logged you onto a salvage roster while you were still vomiting thaw gel.
A shuttle drops you at the junk tide line. You burn fuel to earn scrap. The hull starts talking back.
Strip note You burn fuel before you earn scrap. Every choice costs something measurable. A few crews figure out the math early. Most learn it when the tank needle twitches and the hull starts talking back.
The derelict's mouth opens. You go through. Standing still also costs money.
Strip note You go through because the company channel keeps counting down. Standing still also costs money. The first room looks empty the way a stage looks empty before the lights come up. Then your suit readouts twitch. Metal settles somewhere you did not touch.
The map lies until you pay it in actions. Some doors pay out. Some bill you in blood.
Strip note Some doors pay out. Some doors bill you in blood pressure and hull dents. The loot sits exactly where something else already learned the layout. You go anyway. The clock does not stop.
End attachment.