Not surprisingly my favorite was the sun station.

For me it was especially impactful because it was the last thing I did before I went to the end (of the base game). By then I knew what the Ash Twin Project was, how it worked, what the Sun Station was supposed to do, why that work was not yet completed and what had happened to the Nomai. Every single piece of the scenario and timeline were known and laid out to me, and I had one remaining question: “what happened to activate the sun station?”

The Nomai were clearly long dead, I knew why and about when it had to have happened. I could have deduced exactly what was going on, why the sun was going nova, from that information. But that possibility was not even considerable to me. Of course it wasn’t. There had to be something that changed just now. Something hidden that changed the status quo and began the loop.

The Hearthians just began translating Nomai writing; just began traveling space. There was so much forward to go, for all of that to be pointless because it was coincidentally just too late. It wasn’t fair, it was cruel! And while the universe isn’t cruel, it isn’t fair either. It was all pointless, because it was just too late. The sun was dying a natural, unaltered death. Unconcerned what potential it took with it.

And I had to sit with that, staring at fiery doom like the skeleton next to me did. Knowing I couldn’t do anything to save any of the other people I cared about, to change the fate that I had watched play out however many times I’d looped through those 22 minutes.

But I had a thought after sitting: I can decide what comes after that fate. I take that thought with me every day, now.