CrunchTrek - Week 1 - Flash Challenge

“The End Is The Beginning Is The End”

Your team spent the last couple of hours on the Bridge of your Ship getting to know each other and exploring your surroundings. You’ve made some progress gathering supplies but not as much progress as you’d like. You need to be prepared for what’s next and how to get home.

Exploring the futuristic Bridge, the control interfaces adapt to you and your intentions, as if you and the Ship were connected. Helm, Tactical, Science, Engineering, Medical and the Conn, all familiar, yet strange. At this point you’ve seen enough sci-if shows to know you’re in the far future. You can see the stars outside through the main viewscreen and that you’re orbiting Earth. You recognize the continents but the lights from the night side of the blue orb were much denser and brighter. There was also a large space station and a couple of other ships off in the distance.

Around the Bridge, the Red Alert lights and warnings have been flashing this whole time in the background as you’ve largely ignored it. Nothing has happened thus far. Maybe it’ll go away by itself. There’s still the same sequence of numbers flashing on multiple monitors and periodically on the viewscreen but you’ve been too busy to pay any attention to it.

Then, a familiar blinding white light illuminates the entire Bridge. He’s back. This time, with a Mariachi Band.

“So, you think I forgot about my favorite bi-pedal humanoids? I’m here now,” he gloated. He sauntered around the Bridge, from console to console, until your Captain shouted, “What do you want, Q? You kidnapped us and brought us here, to the future. You’re going to send us back NOW!” The Mariachi music stops suddenly.

“Oh contraire, Mon Capitane, you and your little crew did this to yourself. You’re all so obsessed with the acquisition of material goods and exact time keeping. Endless debates of which watch brand is best, is an Apple Watch a Watch, my watch is off trash cause it’s off by a few ticks, and Rolex this or that have brought you to this exact place and time. And speaking of time, tick tock tick tock…”, Q taps his left wrist where a watch would be, then raises his right hand and snaps. Just like that he’s gone again. Thank goodness. Oh no…

“Self-destruct sequence initiated. T-24 hours to warp core breach!”, the Computer announces over the ship intercom. You look around at each other and asking if anyone touched anything. No one did. Did Q set this up? Doesn’t matter now anyways. You tap the nearest console but they have been locked out by the computer. “Computer, cancel self-destruct”, you command desperately. “Enter Command Access Code” the Computer responded. It was probably a fail-safe measure once Self-Destruct was initiated. You don’t have any access codes so your first thought is to get off the ship. Everyone starts moving towards the starboard aft turbolift. Locked. You try the other lifts and they’re all locked too. Then you feel a large jolt to the ship.

One of the other ships in orbit explodes in a huge fireball and the shockwave knocks you off your feet. The power to the Bridge shuts off and it takes the emergency pathway lights flicker on slowly after a second. Your adrenaline is pumping and you gather the last of your strength and head towards the one working monitor left with three sets of flashing numbers, and a 24 hour countdown timer. It must be the key to escape and survival. At this point, you’re wondering what else could go wrong?

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Week 1 - Flash Challenge

Decipher the numbers on the monitor. Once you have deciphered the clues, you will post it as a comment below, tagging me on your response. The last team who responds with may be the eliminated from the game.

This challenge ends on Friday 4/26 5pm PST (UTC 0:00 4/27).

You must complete both Week 1 Mission “These Are The Voyages” and Week 1 Flash Challenge “Self-Destruct”, to continue onto Week 2.

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Updates

Prizes - the WatchCrunch Team will be creating a badge for the Winning Crew at the end of the Five Week game. I will also be adding in something on my end, to be revealed at a later time.

Teams and Game Modifications - there have also been a few changes to each Team due to crew members unable to continue. Moving forward, if you have less than 6 crew, you can have 1 team member perform up to 2 tasks. For example, the pilot can perform his assigned task and the security task. This will be done on an honor system as there isn’t a way to police this. It’s like wearing a fake watch, only you will really know. Captains, I’m relying on you to police yourselves as all final pictures will go through you or your designated First Officer. All other rules remain in effect.

Live Long and Prosper.