Chapter 6

Asphyxiation

Anchor 1

OUR SERVICES

"...The emergency backup room looked like it hadn’t been touched in years, the stray wires nearly tripping Cyril up the moment he entered, Batiste close behind. Squatting in the back was a behemoth of a tank-shaped machine, the valves and old glass dials dotting its surface dating it as ancient. But the more concerning problem was that it was eerily silent.

The backups were off."

Author's Comment

So problems are happening one after another, although in the Pioneer trio's case, the problems are being exchanged for slightly worse ones. Chapter 6 is like chapter 4, where there's a lot of action but not a lot of space for reaction, although 6 was both longer and harder to write. Having split parties also meant having to choose which groups to follow without disrupting the fast pace, as well as looking at the map to see if people's locations actually made sense.

Some fun notes:

The original idea for this chapter was to have both the oxygen and the power to start malfunctioning as a way to separate the groups, but two power failures in a row would've been a bit much for both the chapter and Bella's sanity.
Buffer Overflows are a real thing, one of many different security vulnerabilities that hackers use, although whether or not they'd actually remain vulnerabilities a futuristic setting is debatable.

Change Notes

Orianna's motivations went through many iterations before explicit mention of what they were was just removed entirely. Probably a bad choice, but leaves it open to interpretation.
Aftermath of the Oxygen crisis was moved to Chapter 7, splitting 6 and 7 into action and reaction chapters.
Lots of cursing was removed, and that's all I'm going to say about that.