ANALYZING… FILE TYPE: Application Recording PERIOD: Pre-Expedition SPEAKERS: Cole, V. [ID: VCOL] TOPIC: UESC Marathon Mission SUMMARY: An excerpt from materials submitted by Dr. Valentin Cole, as part of an application to join the UESC Marathon mission. Records indicate this candidate was accepted. =================================================================== [VCOL]: Dr. Val Cole. I'm applying for cryo class on the UESC Marathon, as a lead experimental physicist. My last project was the new Mars settlement. [VCOL]: So, question one… Why do I want to join the expedition? Honestly, I can't believe anybody doesn't. Exoplanet colonization is a mind-blowing step forward, and it's going to challenge what we think we know about the universe. Sure, sure, some things are familiar. Water, plants, animals, Earth-like gravity, oxygen-rich atmosphere… [VCOL]: That's why we chose this place. But the probes can only tell us so much. Most of it'll be new. Totally, completely, unfathomably new. We're going to understand entirely new truths about the places beyond our solar system, and it's gonna change us. Irreversibly. [VCOL]: God, I love that. Uh, sorry, uh, next question… What concerns do you have about the expedition? Concerns that would stop me? None. My wife keeps listing out all the ways we might die… Asphyxiation in cryo, navigational error, debris collision, acclimation shock, aggressive native species, unknown diseases… [VCOL]: Listen, if I die because an alien bacterial infection boils my blood, I'd be thrilled. Put me in the history books as Valentin Cole, first genius to die by invasive extraterrestrial plasma bake. We're gonna die anyway, yeah? I could die on Mars, this place we know to the point of tedium, or I could die somewhere completely new. =================================================================== TYPE: TEXT [X]; AUDIO [X]