The Terrans are Coming

It's hard to say where I first overheard it, but soon enough I knew what everyone else did. The tower is crowded. Things tend to buzz from person to person like insects in a hive, and along the way we all pick it up. Today, the hive was electric. The latest rumor was something odd on the scans, and word was it was a ship inbound, heading right for Da Vinci. We've been out here for more than a thousand years - not all of us, but the ship touched down long, long ago - and Earth is finally coming to remake contact. It hopped around the tower, an electric rumor, each iteration bringing us more details. It was another colony ship. It was a new kind of ship, a kind none of us had ever seen before. It was a routine patrol coming to check on us, to see how we were doing and drop off supplies.

It changed the mood of the colony entirely. As of late, there's been a real malaise hanging around, not so much outright depression as unhappiness. Something as exciting - and, frankly, terrifying - as new contact with Earth set everyone on edge. Shouting matches and power struggles broke out in the labs as all the colonists raced to try and finish their projects. The truth is, we've accomplished a lot... but most of what we've accomplished is survival. We've done very little to advance ourselves, though we could hardly be blamed for battling to stay alive. Everything's gone horribly wrong, at least according to the mission statement and plans we have telling us what we're supposed to do.