auroraexpress | EVENT: Upgrades x2!

Who: everyone
When: Day 39, morning
Where: the train!

[Morning dawns on the Aurora with a bang -- literally. A huge crack in the air, like nearby lightning, rattling the train. Look outside in the direction of the still-corrupted island, and you'll see a towering ray of black, malevolent light shooting out into the stars. It continues for a few seconds, flickers, and dies out, leaving no trace of its brief presence.

In its wake is a silence that makes your ears ring, interrupted shortly by the sound of an alert on your Chain. There's an administrator message for you:

★: Hi everyone and good morning!

★: Thanks to all your hard work, we've been able to add two new communal cars to the train. Enjoy your new gym and library! We weren't sure what books you'd like, so we grabbed whatever came to mind. Hope they suit you!

★: Oh, and we noticed a spike of malicious energy just now. No idea what it was, but I'd keep your eyes peeled extra until we've figured it out. It might have something to do with how close we've gotten to purifying this Star.

★: Anyway, thanks as always. And remember, keep positive!

True to the prince's word, you'll find your two new cars attached to the back of the train. Pass through the garden car to find the new gym. It consists of several rooms: a weight room, a room of various machines, a studio for yoga or dance, and a training hall fully equipped with practice weapons according to the tastes of everyone already on the train. Each room is entered from a small lobby containing a few couches and a vending machine that pops out custom smoothies and cold water bottles -- which somehow only works after you've had a workout.

Behind the gym is the library. Near the entrance from the hall you'll find a terminal with a list of all available books. Searching a title will give you the location of the book on the shelves. If a title isn't currently in the library, you may request a copy be added, and it will show up within a few minutes. The library currently has two floors of shelves, containing books that characters who are or have been on the train would find familiar. If the book is common in your character's world or they have a close knowledge of it, they can probably find it here. There are, however, a disproportionate number of romances...

There's also a central reading area, with tables and comfortable chairs for studying or lounging. And a good thing, because if you attempt to remove a book from the library it'll disappear right from your hands to return to the shelves. No late returns for you, ~~Crow~~ lazybones!

For now there's no further activity on the corrupted island, so you may as well enjoy the fruits of your labour!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Drawing distant weather to you or manipulating humidity and temperature are the usual methods. A lot of areas actually skip the weather entirely and draw up the watertable instead.

Does that work for plants and animals?

Plants only need the watertable high enough that their roots can reach it, so they're fine. Animals will notice if you make a watering hole. But this isn't really done as a major longterm thing, usually it's just enough to refill wells or stop a growing season from being lost.

[Nods.] Fair, really.

If I'm remembering right, it stars with stuff like rain. Where they can use a bunch of water they purified and then converted into clouds. Helped counter possibilities of acid rain too.

They convert water into clouds!? Do they import all of that water??

Well, yeah? Find water to treat, purify it, release it in drought areas and eventually help dilute polluted areas.

Is this something that has to be done a lot? It must be so expensive!

After a certain point, yeah. There was a pretty serious pollution problem and environmental issues and after a certain point it was do it or risk people dying by the millions.

And you started this in the 21st century? What happened?

Capitalism.

Note to self, shop at the thrift shops more??

And support environmental laws.

I mean, capitalism is still shit, but at least the laws no longer allow corporations to make planets hot boxes.

That sounds like maybe your past Earth is worse off than my Earth...? I'm pretty sure that's already a thing nobody is allowed to do?

There's a reason we learned how to do terraforming.

Are your new planets doing better?

Probably.

We were threatened by extinction for a while, I would hope they are.

I've been in the mountains, a jungle, in a few deserts, and one really nice valley so like. Biodiversity.