The studio logos display over a subtle, tense, daunting ambient soundtrack. The Ender delivers a monologue as the narrator during this.

ENDER (VO): “Let me tell you a story. I’m sorry to say it’s not a happy story. You’ll really find the ending quite sad. But it’s an important story, you must let me see it through to the finish. I promise it will be lots of fun along the way. I mean, it’s a big story, I’m sure you’ll find something inside it that makes it all worthwhile. In any case, I have to tell it. It all starts with a little old spaceship somewhere very, very far away.”

Soundtrack becomes less tense and daunting, becomes a more subtle ambience. Open on a starscape somewhere very, very far away. The camera is moving forward through space, at a slight angle. A beeping alert sound is heard after a moment of silence, and a cylindrical spaceship enters the frame, spinning rapidly and hurtling through space. The alert repeats after a few seconds. Virgil Hark is heard yawning and grumbling under his breath. The camera cuts to show him awakening from a nap and checking a holographic monitor inside of the ship. The monitor displays an alert that an unidentified vessel has entered the area. Hark presses a few keys, double-checking the reading.

HARK: “ANA, wake up Klein and give him these readings. Urgent.”

ANA: “Yes, sir.”

Cut to Francis Klein sleeping in his quarters. An annoying beeping sound wakes him up.

ANA: “Sorry to wake you, captain. Urgent message from Lieutenant Hark. Proximal scanners have detected a hollow metallic object with man-made materials at just over 0.7 parsecs. Readings are on your monitor.”

KLEIN: *gets out of bed and sits down at his holographic monitor, turning it on* “So what are we looking at? Don’t tell me Virgil woke me up for a system malfunction.”

ANA: “Unclear. UHSA protocol advises you to get a closer look.”

HARK (VO, intercom): “Bridge to captain, do you have those readings?”

KLEIN: “Affirmative, you’re thinking this is real?”

HARK: “Uncertain. Object does not respond to ping or WHOIS and is not transmitting on any frequency, but everything else I can think of gives me affirmative readings.”

KLEIN: “OK, so, random junk then. Pretty big piece of junk...”

HARK: “Have a glance at that materials list, Captain.”

Klein skims through the list. Items like silicon, gold, butane, graphene, and carbon fiber are seen.

KLEIN: “So it’s a pretty big piece of a pretty old human spaceship.”

HARK: “It shouldn’t be anywhere within a few hundred thousand parsecs of here.”

KLEIN: “Well, either it found a way, or we got the faultiest research vessel in the history of mankind. I’m gonna go ahead and hope that it’s the former.”

HARK: “Understood. Well, you know the protocol.”

KLEIN: “Aye. Take us in, Lieutenant, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Klein stretches out and stands up, walking towards his wardrobe to get ready for the day. Cut to Hark, it is now a few minutes later and he is parking the ship. Klein emerges from a hallway in full uniform and sits in the captain’s chair.

HARK: “Alright captain, ready for absolute visual?”

KLEIN: “Absolute visual.”

A tense industrial-orchestral cue plays as Hark flips a switch and a section of wall opens up, revealing a window. Outside is a traditional spaceship, looking more like a big space shuttle than a cylinder.

KLEIN: “Holy shit, is that a first-generation Artinerant?”

HARK: “It appears to be.”

Klein looks down at his monitor and checks a few things amidst another orchestral cue, finding that there are no signs of life, no radio transmissions, and no electrical activity on board the craft. A tense, high-paced dregscore soundtrack plays, escalating as the scene unfolds.

KLEIN: “ANA, wake up the crew and report this incident to GAIA with continued updates, code purple.”

ANA: “Right away, captain. Current GAIA communication delay is approximately 21 hours each way.”

KLEIN: “Hark, run every analysis you can. Any quantum anomalies, spacetime conflictions, subspace fol-”

HARK: “Negative, something has just disabled our research equipment.”

KLEIN: “Well then... this thing has me very very confused. I like it. Virgil, you’re in charge of the ship while I’m gone.”

HARK: “Stop being dramatic, who’s on your away team?” (the soundtrack calms down, but continues building back up at a steady pace)

KLEIN: “I don’t know yet. ANA, send the first three crew members to get out here up to prep, I’ll be waiting for them.”

ANA: “Yes, sir.”

Klein leaves his seat, walks down the hallway and opens a door. He then climbs up a steep staircase/ladder into a fairly cramped, gravity-free room with spacesuits and other equipment. He puts on his spacesuit, takes a PDA and an ion ray pistol. By the time he’s done, the other three are arriving: engineer Emma Hughes, research assistant Al Peterson, researcher Adam Wyatt. The soundtrack calms down again for the dialogue between them, building up afterwards.

HUGHES: “We’re on the away team, captain?”

KLEIN: “Since you got yourselves awake and ready quickly. We have to go investigate that ship out there.”

HUGHES: “Are we going inside?”

KLEIN: “We’re going to try. Grab a plasma cutter.”

HUGHES: “Wow. I never thought I’d be on board a first-gen Artinerant.”

WYATT: “I just hope this doesn’t ruin our mission. However it got out here, it’d better not have used its engines.”

KLEIN: “No signs of any life or former life on board, no electrical activity, I doubt it used its engines. Someone put it here somehow. The question is who… and more importantly, how.”

WYATT: “Indeed.”

KLEIN: “Well, everyone ready? Tethered up?”

Everyone nods. Klein nods back and opens a hatch in the back of the room, climbing into a small tunnel with a ladder inside. He uses the ladder to push himself up to the front of the tunnel, then closes his helmet.

KLEIN: “Seal the rear hatch.”

Peterson, in the back of the line, seals the rear hatch.

KLEIN: “Prepare for decompression in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1...”

Klein opens the hatch, causing an explosive decompression as the oxygen inside the tunnel escapes.

KLEIN: “Begin spacewalk.”

The away team pushes themselves from the tunnel one-by-one, tethered together about 8 meters apart, then all use the built-in ion thrusters on their suits to move towards the mysterious spacecraft. Finding points to hold onto, they move to the door of the craft. Klein and Wyatt get out of the way to allow Hughes to use her plasma cutter to get the door open, also prompting an explosive decompression. They then enter one-by-one, the soundtrack becoming less intense and more inquisitive and determined.

KLEIN: “Cleared to de-tether. Please tie your tethers to something secure inside of the craft.”

Everyone removes their tethers and ties them up to various things around them.

KLEIN: “Well, you all know about as much as me at this point. I say we split up and search different parts of the ship individually, but you’re free to team up amongst yourselves if you want. I’m gonna go… this way.”

Klein chooses a random direction and heads towards it, ending up in the crew quarters. Searching rooms one-by-one, he finds nothing out of the ordinary, just a completely empty, dead spaceship. Upon reaching the captain’s quarters, he finds one strange thing during some climactic orchestral cues which will soon seamlessly play into the theme song: a pocket watch, engraved “FIK,” which happens to be his initials. Confused and intrigued, he opens the pocket watch, prompting a loud and bright explosion that causes the screen to flash white and then immediately go black. Klein is heard falling to the ground.

Title fades in slowly in white text over the black screen while the theme song begins:

THE LEGEND OF FIK