Love, Actually: Stories of the 'Verse 2956 Contest

I discovered Star Citizen as a teenager in the mid-2010’s from a YouTube video about upcoming open world games. Like many others, I was intrigued by the possibilities, but assumed the game was unreleased. I would scroll through the ship matrix every few months, fantasizing about what I’d do when I could finally play. I dreamt of building a fleet of Avenger variants to track and capture criminals with my friends, and of running a space station on a Kraken. That was until CitizenCon 2019, when I finally pledged for a game package. Shortly after, I convinced my close friend @CameronHestman to pledge as well.

He came over one night after class, and I installed the game on an old gaming laptop so we could play together in the same room. During this session I ran out of hydrogen fuel outside of Port Tressler, leaving my Pisces to slowly spin away toward microTech. No problem, I can just EVA to an exterior landing pad, right? Well, not this time. I fell victim to the classic blunder of forgetting to equip a spacesuit. A few minutes later my friend showed up in a Retaliator, his only ship with an interior, and laid out a plan to rescue me. It sounded impossible, but at the same time, it was the best option I had. So, I did what any sane person would do, and I started playing the Interstellar docking theme from my phone.

Over the next few minutes he decoupled, matched my spin and velocity, got his airlock lined up with my opened ramp, then gave me the signal to jump. As the music peaked, I took a deep breath and sprinted through the cabin of the Pisces, and made a hail mary leap into the void. Suddenly I was choking in the vacuum of space with no way to control my trajectory. Luckily it looked like my jump would be enough to get me to the safety of his airlock, which was now only a few meters in front of me. However, fate had other plans.

I fell short and my chest slammed into the edge of the airlock, sending me spiraling sideways and away from both of our ships. That was it. There was nothing left for either of us to do. I sighed and leaned back in my chair, taking in the view with my character’s last seconds of life. MicroTech was below me, the sun hanging just above the horizon, turning the planet’s snowy surface to a shimmering yellow-gold. Despite failing the jump, I felt a strange sense of fulfillment as my screen faded to black. Suddenly everything clicked.

As I woke up at Port Olisar, I realized that I didn’t need a Kraken or a fleet of Avengers to immerse myself in the vision of Star Citizen.

All it took was a friend and a simple mistake that all of us have made at one point or another: forgetting to wear a spacesuit.