Forgotten Dreams (8/86, Ch2)

[Ultimate Steve]

The End.

An ominous phrase if you ask most. Some, though will say different - an end is something to strive for. We always begin things with the hope to finish them someday. That song, that album, that painting, those KSP saves, those books, those classes, that homework. Yet, most of the time, we tell ourselves tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow, until we forget.

Unfortunately, we exist in a medium called time. And usually, it is in very short supply. This leads to abandoned projects all around - no end in sight for them. They have become forgotten dreams.

So, all I ask of you is that you join me in my quest to find endings for some of mine.

 

Ultimate Steve presents - Forgotten Dreams

 

Chapter One (1/71)

Spoiler

S woke up into the game with quite a shock.

The familiar menu greeted him with a seemingly evil grin. The only difference was, this time S was, to a certain extent, the menu. Still surprised it had actually worked, S blindly fumbled towards the first of seventy-one items - the 0.90 sandbox save. He entered with the greatest sense of anticipation and dread - and wonder - one could possibly have. This was it. There was no going back now.

Except S had no being in this world - so he quickly created one as fast as he could - and a ship to go with him. For now he would be S Kerman, and his ship would be called "The End." For laziness sake, S used TweakScale for the lifter, but all else was stock.

And he could imagine those Kerbals' surprises at the extremely huge ship they found taking off from their pad all of a sudden.

Eventually S reached orbit. He had timed it so that he would immediately be placed next to a station called "Space Lab One."

He had completely forgotten about the existence of this station until then - but he could almost remember.

S found Bob and Bill onboard, but bugged - they were unconscious black figures, which wasn't at all unexpected - this save was from 0.90, after all.

After S stole some fuel, he left the duo a short note and went on his way to another station, this one titled Debris Salvage Space Station.

And then he saw the ring of debris and remembered Panther.

Panther had been an effort to create an SSTO cargo ship which would end up building a station - hence DSSS. Unfortunately, as proven by the ring, none of the prototypes had worked all the way. The most successful flight had barely made orbit to deliver the DSSS core - and the project had been dropped.

Sure enough, Steve found the station core dead, 400m away from a small satellite.

Undeterred, S burnt for the Mun where he knew he would find the first flag - the true goal of his voyage into the depths of the code.

S was very relieved when he found that time warp would work from his perspective. He would not need to actually wait years. A moment later, he was at the Mun.

 

S had daydreamed of this moment ever since he had been in elementary school - descending towards an alien world in a spaceship. As much as he wanted to believe, he told himself to wait for the real life. This was only just a game.

He approached a craft called "cheepmun" which he vaguely remembered as an attempt to get to the Mun and back on the lowest possible budget. He also saw a flag marked "Mun Arch" and Jebediah Kerman.

He got closer, and after a while, managed to land The End within a kilometer of his target. The rest, he jetpacked.

Upon closer inspection, he found the lander nearly entirely out of fuel, with only a hundred and fifty-ish meters per second remaining in the tanks. Jebediah had been stranded here - for who knows how long. He jetpacked up to the top of the arch to speak with Jeb himself.

"Jebediah," said S.

"Oh, hey, Bill," replied Jeb.

"What? No, I'm sorry, you're mistaken. I am not Bill."

"Oh, really? You sound and look like him. Anyway, I couldn't help not noticing that super futuristic spacecraft you landed over there - we don't have those kind of parts! They're bigger than even a Jumbo 64! Who are you, anyway?"

"You can call me S for now. I'll soon be gone." In his mind, S metaphorically facepalmed for forgetting that he was bringing 1.3 parts into 0.90. Oh, well. Too late now. "I'm the rescue mission, I guess. How long have you been here?"

"Twelve Kerbin days. You got here fast."

"Twelve! Phew. I was worried I - " S began to read the inscription on the plaque and jumped back in horror.

Two and a half years. Two and a half years he had left Jeb stranded on the Mun. Two and a half years ago, and his biggest problem was missing a school day. So much had changed since then.

"Oh my goodness, Jebediah! I'm so sorry!"

"What for? Twelve days is rather fast for a rescue around these parts. Also, can you translate the plaque for me? Nobody knows where that writing comes from - it's in some alien language."

"I'm sorry, Jeb. I cannot tell you any more. But I will get you home. Can you, uh, pilot your ship onto the Klaw with the fuel you have remaining?"

"Sure deal, I'm Jeb!" S mourned silently for the dreams that had been forgotten by him. He wanted to tell his past self so badly - that everything would be okay. He would recover from the sickness.

In the time he had spent mourning, he found that Jeb had already begun to refuel. "Wow, this thing is HUGE! Where did you get these parts?" He asked.

And before he could reply, Jeb was off.

He called after him, after he remembered that Jeb's ship wouldn't have heat shields - they were not added until 1.0. But he was too late. Thankfully, with his extra fuel, Jeb fared fine. He survived.

 

S began mining and time warped. He saw Space Lab One being de-orbited.

It landed safely in the ocean.

And then, his work in this world done, he proceeded to venture into the next. The End had two cargo bays - one contained a small exploration vessel. The other was the device that allowed S to transfer himself between save files.

And this was untested, unfortunately. S took a deep breath, powered the device on, and increased throttle to maximum.

S heard a slight pop, and that was all.

He immediately found himself and the ship intact in the next save - the 1.0 career, although floating in the sky in a location nowhere near his last one.

And he said to himself, "One down, Seventy to go."

 

Thanks for reading, it means a lot to me.

 

Anyways, welcome! Not all of the chapters will be as dramatically narrated as that one, unfortunately. Many will probably a list with screenshots. I don't have much of a storyline for this one, but the narration just "felt right" at this point in time.

So, I may never finish this. I have seventy-one saves to get through, dating all the way back to 0.90. Unfortunately, I deleted my KSP installs before that point. 0.19, 0.20. 21, 22, 23, and 23.5's saves are lost to history.

My primary target will be flags. However, if I can reach ships as well, I will, but I will not leave a save without finding all of the flags. I'm not going to visit every piece of debris.

I will post a picture of each and every plaque here - just be forewarned, I might have to black out some names and stuff. It had never crossed my mind at that point that anyone besides me would see them, and I may have wrote a few of them with that in mind, but I'll try to show you as much as I can.

So, if this is your thing, stay tuned. Enjoy the history. Enjoy the story. Enjoy the endings.

 

 

 

Also, the saves total about 6.5gb. A bit of a big number if you ask me.

 

-S

Edited April 16, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[DAL59]

First!  71 saves...I thought I had a lot.  

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

First!  71 saves...I thought I had a lot.  

Well, to be fair, this isn't the number of saves I've had in one install, this is most of them overall, excluding saves older than 0.90 and modded saves. Modded saves will come later, if ever.

And I'm finding out there are a lot of them with nothing in them - I just skipped three or four which all had no significant activity.

[Geschosskopf]

Egad.  Somehow this reminds me of Master Reboot  

My old saves live on only in screenshots.  

[MinimalMinmus]

That's quite beautiful, really.

[Pretorian28715]

Oh, now this is interesting.

Moar please.

[Ultimate Steve]

"This thread is quite old, please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one"

Wow, how ironic.

Also, I found more saves, we have 86 to get through now... Complete one, add 15... At this rate I'll never get done! I'll try to bring this back, though.

Chapter 2 (8/86)

Spoiler

S fired up the engines as he emerged into the 1.0 career. It had been too long, unfortunately.

He was aiming for Munbase Python, which he vaguely remembered. He managed to land safely near it a few minutes later, before EVA-ing over.

Four modules, he remembered. The two right here were the core and the science module. The base was supposed to be bigger, but it never happened. The other two, out of sight, were an escape ship and a rover. S called out to the crew.

Melmy, Munbart, Lemsy, Olivia, Gilrod. The crew of Munbase Python, they responded. After a brief conversation (S knew the emergency evacuation codes) they agreed to immediately abandon the base.

Steve took a deep breath and prepared to read the plaque.

However, his past self had forgotten to write anything. What a waste.

After everyone was safely out, the core module as well as the science module were launched upwards, to crash down and be destroyed.

The rover was also crashed. It had never been a good rover, not enough acceleration to get anywhere.

S also jumped into the return craft and had a brief conversation with Val. Then, the six Kerbals left the base and S behind, bound for Kerbin.

A second hop on the Mun led S to a probe called "Duna Probe," which is an odd name for a Mun lander.

The next hop led to a flag with words, finally.

S remembered that lander. The landing leg update had come out, which flipped the leg model. Everyone made that mistake that week. He then flew to Minmus.

It was there where he revealed the ship's cargo - a minilander designed to explore without using huge amounts of fuel.

The next target was a biggie - an unnamed ship designed to be the first ever Gilly lander.

The core stage had made orbit. And he remembered this ship - he had made it all the way to Gilly, but due to what he thought was a glitch, the trim prevented him from landing. He quickloaded back to orbit. Sad, really. That could have been his first ever interplanetary crewed landing - but it wasn't.

Onboard he found Jebediah and Bob. S did not say anything more than the mission abort codes before undocking. He did not want any emotional struggles to come up after the last Jeb. How many Jebs would S meet, he wondered?

His work in this save done, S entered the Kerbin atmosphere.

Seconds before impact, he opened a portal to the next save - and ventured through.

 

1.0 sandbox. A Z-map satellite and some Jool Impactor Debris. No flags.

1.0.3, how hard can it be? 0 flights in progress. Year 1, day 1, 0h, 0m. Nothing ever happened there.

1.1!!!!!!! 0 flights in progress.

1.1.3! Two Aeris 3A planes, one on Tylo, one orbiting Ike... Undoubtedly a cheat world.

Just as he began to doubt that any other interesting saves exist, S found "A New Career" which was on Year 2, day 177, and had over a thousand science points and a million funds.

Due to the delay, the portal placed him in Kerbin's upper atmosphere - perfect. S went back into a Kerbin orbit.

He quickly stopped at an abandoned space station core:

Then he went to the moon and found another blank flag:

S resolved never to plant a blank flag again. It was heartbreaking to see all of these blank flags after the high expectations.

And another one!

The final target of interest in this save was a flag on Minmus.

S jetpacked over to the flag, aptly named "Minmus," and read the flag.

It was a reminder of how dated the save was - it was the first Crush flag.

An exclamation of success, as this was one of S's first manned Minmus landings. He had decided to claim the moon in the name of his crush - then G. I say G because real names and public reports don't usually mix well - G would undoubtedly make more appearances in future flags.

Wondering what the next save would bring, S launched off Minmus once more, and then opened another portal.

The next save was titled "A Very Kerbal Vacation." It was supposed to be the start of an epic YouTube movie focusing on the adventures of several Kerbals who won a vacation to Laythe - but then something went wrong.

He never got far, though. All the save contained was two pieces of debris.

And on that note, S ventured into the next save - Actual Sandbox. 8 down, 72 to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[roboslacker]

 Neat. I only have 4 saves.

[MinimalMinmus]

I always end up deleting my saves due to corruption...

[DAL59]

chirp

[Kerbalstar]

Yeah, @Ultimate Steve, will you finish this? I get it if you don’t have the time though.

[Ultimate Steve]

13 hours ago, Kerbalstar said:

Yeah, @Ultimate Steve, will you finish this? I get it if you don’t have the time though.

Hopefully someday. At least this week and the week before it is/was tech weeks.