Venautico Labs / VENAUTICO

When I was younger, before my military days, I would cruise mechyards with some old buddies of mine, just looking for old suits to fix up and load out for a brawl. You know what I’m talking about — Forkmechs, Haulers, and the like. We would find us a decent mech, strip the safeties and rewrite the programming, then fight them remotely. In the summer of ’33, it’s all I could think of. I was obsessed with becoming some sort of mech designer or programmer, just like I was obsessed with being a professional Sataball player when I was young. Well, fate is a funny mistress, and she toyed with my mind that summer.

One day while my pals and I were wandering through the mechyard, we stumbled upon a maroon-colored jelly-like substance seeminly oozing from one of the repulsor shafts towards the east fence, where we seldom journeyed due to the small amount of useable material around there. As all teenagers assuredly are, we were curious boys who couldn’t leave it be. As it turns out, it was a new fungus that had survived and adapted from consuming a bi-product of a discontinued type of oil that had been decaying for decades in the mechyard. The fungus was also poisonous, killing my friend Mickey Trusting with a release of toxic nerve agents. This one event changed my life forever. I spiraled into a depression which was overcome by joining the military. The UEE instilled in me the greatest of virtues — discipline, patience, and integrity.

Years later, I would find that the fungus that killed my friend would be used to treat a bacterial neural disease plaguing colonists on a distant moon. Furthermore, it seems that the bi-product of the oil is being used in a handful of commercialized products and is even being tested for even more commercial application. It took a while, but I realize that Mickey’s death doesn’t have to be in vain. Now, more than 10 years later, I am beginning a journey that will hopefully lead to discoveries such as the one that took my friend.

This ambition is a memorial for and dedicated to my friend, Mickey Trusting.