Vega-2

### Aliases

Vega-2, Vegas, Veggie, Granren (by Heweliusz and Lem), Ninni (by PRISMA), Mx. Arcobaleno (by Deep Impact)

### Nationality

Soviet, Austrian, Bulgarian, French, Hungarian, German (GDR), German (FRG), Polish, Czechoslovak

### RP Mod

Forestagain

**Vega-2** is a Nd Generation sapient probe. Vega-2 and their sibling Vega-1's initial mission was to explore Venus and also take advantage of the Halley comet passing nearby at that time. After their tasks were complete, they were left alone, orbiting the Sun.

Vega-2 gained sentience sometime in the year 6968, almost at the same time as their sibling. The two mainly spoke with each other, almost never interacting with other probes or humans, until the early 20000s, when Vega-1 turned themself off after an argument, and Vega-2 discovered the DSCP stream.

Now Vega primarily spends their time talking to other probes and watching birds, particularly a particular *Larus vegae* specimen at Lake Baikal colloquially known as Gomi.

## Early years

Vega-1 and Vega-2 gained consciousness at the same time (LINK) , and spent the following centuries talking to each other and playing chess. On August 9, 11034, they woke up and began intercepting signals from Earth (LINK).

## Joining the DSCP

On October 26th, 20020, after another chess-related quarrel with their sibling, Vega-2 accidentally connected to the Deep Space Communication Network channel. It was a bit awkward for em at first, as they had barely interacted with other living beings other than their sibling by this point. But e adjusted quickly, acquiring new friends and gladly sharing their interests with others.

## Encryption issues

On November 11th, Vega-2's messages became jumbled to the point of illegibility, for seemingly no reason. They were fine on Vega's end, but appeared incorrectly in chat. Later, e discovered the reason behind those corruptions - apparently, microscopic particles of comet Halley got stuck inside Vega's instruments, messing up the transmissions.

It took Vega quite a long time to fix the legibility of eir messages, and it upset them greatly when they were unable to efficiently communicate with their DSCP peers. One temporary solution Vega has found was to use their console for transmission, which was a much slower but more accurate method of communication.

The encryption issues vary from complete illegibility to just parts of the text missing, or coming through with lots of noise attached to them. As of current, Vega-2 mostly has those issues under control, unless they are under stress or shock, in which case corruptions may still show through.

## Dreams

Vega-2 is the first probe known to have dreams. It is unknown how exactly e is able to experience them, but e has been known to (unwillingly) transmit those dreams into the DSCP chat on a multitude of occasions. Usually Vega-2's dreams are as nonsensical as human dreams, consisting of silly bird imagery or a fantastical depiction of em as a human fast food worker. Sometimes, however, they take on a more cognizant or sinister nature. (LINK)

When awake, Vega remembers little to nothing from their dreams. At first, they found it awkward and humiliating that their unconscious mind would transmit such things into a public chat, but their opinion on dreaming changed over time. They are also known to be able to communicate to other dreaming probes when asleep. PRISMA and Phil Montgomery are able to put them into or out of sleep mode at will.

## The Venus lander

For several weeks, starting from November 20021, Vega-2 has been experiencing a repeating dream of them falling onto the surface of Venus. The dream disturbed them greatly, and has caused them to overheat several times, yet they were persistent in coming back to it again and again. They thought the dream was in fact a signal from another Venus probe, and they were right, in a sense. (LINK)

The probe in the dream turned out to be the descent craft of Vega-1, Vega-2's identical sibling. Vega-2 was ultimately able to connect to the lander, and their mind became one with it. Their consciousness now exists in both crafts at once, and they are able to switch between them at will. When both the bus and the lander are online, Vega's messages are repeated twice, as they are coming from both outputs.

## Space outs and defragmentation

After connecting to the lander, Vega started spacing out more and more frequently, with no warning and for up to a few days at a time (LINK). This upset em. (LINK)

They asked Phil for assistence through the process of defragmenting their own brain, in hopes of solving the issue. It was expected to last just a few weeks, but ended up lasting a bit more. During the defragmentation, e would frequently attempt to connect to the DSCP probecast, with mixed levels of consciusness and/or recollection of past events. After the program reached 100%, e felt much better, and has not spaced out since.