We'll get through some of the drier material later in this session.'Īs she clapped her hands, the lights dimmed and a SpaceChem logo appeared on the wall. 'We're going to get started with some of the basics about SpaceChem: its founding and mission. 'Welcome to your first day of training,' she said.

She wore a grey jumpsuit with a name tag that read 'Angela.' A middle-aged woman stood at the front of the room, smiling. I sat in a folding chair behind a table in a brightly lit room with fifteen other trainees. There was only a trace atmosphere on the surface, leaving the horizon empty except for the central star and the sister planet, Sernimir IV. The training facility on Sernimir II was a campus of rectangular metal buildings connected by corrugated tunnels with a landing zone located west of the reactor field. I thought I could hear my mother crying, but it was just the pilot laughing. My hand gripped the armrest as we hit the jump to Sernimir II. 'Then you've never been through one of these jumps either. 'You've never been up here before?' the pilot called back to me.

I gazed out the window and watched the stars shimmer in the distance. In a few hours, I would be setting foot on another planet for the first time. The shuttle was en route to the training facility on Sernimir II, billions of kilometers away from Sangfroid. I could hear her voice rising with each word. Look at these reports,' she said in the message. Needless to say, my career choice was wholly opposed. The survivors were not available for comment. Half of the crew had been ejected through the airlock due to a strange malfunction. She attached a news article about a recent incident involving a SpaceChem station in a secluded region of the galaxy. We were sitting in the local diner, stacks of pancakes swimming in syrup and butter on our plates, with every face watching my mother's tears roll down her cheeks as I continued eating. When I told her that I wanted to explore the stars, she cried. She had never set foot on a ship, let alone off the colony of Sangfroid. That was the first sentence in the latest letter from my mother. SpaceChem SpaceChem By Hillary Barth © Zachtronics Industries Of Pancakes and Spaceships

It takes three spacechem