My new friend Gabriel turns out to have been a prospector in his previous life, during a time that was later called the Gold Rush.
He's been exhausting me with questions about mineral distribution on the rings, and he got really excited when I brought up the mining capabilities of our stryders.
I'm starting to appreciate the unlikelihood of the two of us winding up here at this moment in time.
It's like the beginning of a bad joke: "A miner and a soil scientist meet on a spaceship, at the end of history..."
Gabriel wants to rustle up some stryders to ride into the contaminated ring like some kind of cavalry, and it almost feels like we're living in one of my simulations.
Now if only I can convince myself that I've got what it takes to play the hero in real life...