Don't touch anything without my supervision. That was Lincoln's rule. But at a quarter to eight, he was currently thinking he should've changed the rule to "don't be stupid." Though that may not have made much of a difference. Most experienced engineers knew better than to touch an exposed circuit, and most had the knowledge and training. Junior enginers, however? Apparently not.

The story was a fantastically stupid one. Shortly after their panel, a junior engineer by the name of Christopher Jackson had wandered off to go help a cute software engineer with their malfunctioning display technology. Christopher, a recent graduate from Virginia Tech who had no prior work experience and who had only been working at Helius Meditech for a little less than a year, had decided he was going to try to be impressive and work on a system he lacked proper qualification in.

What happened next was exactly what Lincoln had expected.

A horror story.

The poor sob had electrocuted himself and was now crippled on the floor, struggling to breathe and practically choking. But lucky for him, quite a few medical professionals were on board and the response had been swift. Though that didn't stop the chaos that had unfolded after.

Crowds of people huddled around the scene, some of them taking pictures while others watched with interest. It was pretty clear Christopher's accident had become more of a public spectacle than anything else, and if it were up to Lincoln, he would've evacuated the room entirely. Not that it mattered much. What was done was done.

So he stayed quiet. And when the guy next to him started filming, he tried not to get too annoyed by it. But as the crowd only seemed to get bigger and the whole situation seemed to worsen, he sighed to himself. This is going to be one hell of an incident report.

~

Welcome to the second task of Sunlit Seas! I hope you guys are ready to get to the fun stuff. Which, depending on how much you guys like having more structured tasks, this will either be a ton of fun or really not-fun. That said, let's get into it.

THE TASK:

If it wasn't already obvious from the introduction above, a junior engineer on Lincoln's development team has managed to electrocute himself and needs immediate medical attention. Things on the ship have gotten a little chaotic and seeing as Lincoln is a point of authority, he now has to take on extra responsibility in part of this crisis. The problem is he's needed to be in multiple places at once and his colleagues are missing in action for the time being. This is where your character comes in. For whatever reason—for many of you it will be because he already knows you a little bit and that was better than nothing—he will recognize/think he recognizes your character and he will ask you to do a simple task: take a case down to the storage room as it's becoming inconvenient to have out. He will give you his key card that will grant you access to a private elevator that goes to the lower decks and the storage room. That's it, nothing more, nothing less.

However, for one reason or another, whether it be that your character is curious about theories they've heard regarding the lower decks or perhaps they pushed the wrong button or a number of other things, you will find yourself on the lowest possible deck on the ship. On this deck, the corridor will be dark and may find yourself a bit lost as you explore. As you walk down the corridor, you will hear a voice and as you follow it, you'll come across transparent polycarbonate enclosures with Dr. Han's most recent participants of his "clinical trials." They will appear very ill and a few of them will look like they've come straight out of horror films with strange mutations, missing limbs, and some may even be missing critical organs or body parts yet are somehow being kept alive on machines.

Human experimentation is objectively bad. This is common knowledge. But seeing as they appear very ill, you will be given a choice: release them or leave them as they are. This decision must be made clear by the end of the task and seeing as this is a moral compass, it will affect a future task. Not task three, but a future one.

So just to recap:

- Lincoln gives you his keycard to bring a case to a storage room but you find yourself on the lowest deck.

- On the lowest deck, you find human experimentation.

- You must decide whether to help the victims and release them or leave them as they are because they appear to be ill.

You don't have to write a direct interaction with Lincoln but he is the one that gives you the keycard for when you have to write the context in which this is happening. So at a minimum, a reference is highly suggested in making these events make sense.

*Note as this detail may be relevant to some but not to others: the case Lincoln gives you contains a prototype of a nuclear waste diamond battery and a pacemaker as his team has engineered a pacemaker where the battery never depletes and thus consistent surgical procedures would be no longer necessary. It is a prototype, however, not the real deal. You can steal it but it won't be valuable.*

I know this is a lot of information and if you hate it, I promise future tasks won't be this heavy—this is more of a necessity to get things going.

~

Sponsorships (rotating): Melina Lee has chosen to sponsor Lana Lopatin for her drive and ambition that reminds her of herself when she was younger, and Dr. Han has chosen to sponsor Libertine for his intelligence and creativity that he loves to see in the young ones. Lana Lopatin and Libertine need to PM me for further details. Their sponsorship benefits will be revealed to everyone else after the task.

Word Limit: None

Ballots: Four. Remember that if you included the password in your form, you get two ballots targeted against you nullified.

Deadline: Monday, May 4th, at 6 PM PDT.

Take note of the deadline and extension policy.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.