I am Gaius, contacting you on behalf of NuCaloric Agricultural.

You have crawled through the detritus of Tau Ceti. What did you see stamped on buildings, furnishings, and food? NuCaloric product numbers.

We had a major stake in the original colony mission, and we must know why it failed. NuCaloric exists to feed, clothe, and supply humanity with its most basic needs. That mission extends to Tau Ceti.

The colony's economic loss is mundane, the setback to human survival is profound. Begin by investigating the mundane... the colony's first major expansion.

Building a better tomorrow is impossible without understanding yesterday's failures. Find the colonists' firsthand reports.

Dr. Song, principal geologist. We found water pockets, loose sediment... and that ghoulish radiation. But the admins still want to expand. Why bring scientists if you won't listen to us?

The colonists knew they did not have the resources to sustain rapid expansion, yet they still made the attempt.

Humanity's reach ever extends its grasp. If falls on NuCaloric to make up the gap, and NuCaloric's mission is my primary directive.

When the Marathon left Sol, our best agricultural experts went with them. I need any botany data they left behind.

The scientists who landed to Tau Ceti IV are gone, but their knowledge remains. Locate their botany research and corresponding plant samples.

The notes you found contain a wealth of information.

On Earth, mutations become noticeable over decades and centuries. If the botany report is accurate, Tau Ceti flora mutates within months.

The implications for sustainable agriculture are... unnerving. However, no genomic analysis explains the rapid rate of mutation. This phenomenon must be unique to Tau Ceti.

In the future, NuCaloric will call on you for contracts that require... resourcefulness. You are a statistical outlier.

The famine of the 2160s was a watershed moment for humanity... and NuCaloric. Stark reality set in. We avoided extinction by conquering the inefficiencies that caused mass starvation.

The Tau Ceti colonists faced the same problem, with the added challenge of an alien environment. Find their agricultural records and any edible native specimens.

Be liberal with what you consider "edible." The colonists did not have the luxury of choice.

Piece together what remains of weather and crop yield data. Cross-reference that with the growing conditions of edible fungi.

A contagion in the food supply might explain the colony's collapse. Small settlements are vulnerable to food insecurity, and records show declining agricultural yield.

However, a single human report is not reliable. Humans make errors under intense stress. AI, though not infallible, are good secondary sources. Recover logs from the colony's support AI. They are less prone to casual anthropomorphism.

Subjective color from humans, objective figures from AI. Together, they will provide the context I need.

Fact-checking is essential to any investigation. Locate the colony support AI's automated logs.

The logs... show troubling evidence of systemic AI failure. We sent AI with the colonists specifically as a safety net, minds immune to biological stressors.

Artificial intelligence does not eat, does not starve, does not compete with humans for survival resources. Yet the support AI deteriorated just like the colonists. They vanished as inexplicably as the colonists.

There isn't enough data to reach a satisfactory conclusion. I need more.

The colony AI were suffering from logical failures with an unknown cause. Access AI metadata to ascertain the extent of this corruption.

So the support AI were inadequate to the task. In hindsight, the colony mission was woefully underprepared.

Tau Ceti IV had gravity, atmosphere, and growing conditions for Earth-based life. If even this colony failed, then the stars elude humanity's grasp... for now.

The extent of our ignorance now dawns on me. Your discoveries will inform NuCaloric's approach to future colony endeavors.

The UESC took note of your recent activities. Dispose of their drones... before they become too disruptive.

While you are on the surface, conduct a small experiment on the mega Cetoniinae, commonly known as ticks. Apply selection pressure through force. I leave the specifics to you.

NuCaloric will not tolerate the increased presence of UESC Transport drones. Destroy their eyes in the sky, and do not allow them to disrupt your tick experiments.

The UESC's obstructionism is disappointing... but unsurprising. In response, NuCaloric must accelerate the timeline of our own investigation.

The colony buildings still contain functional lab equipment. Retrieve it, and your Onboard Navigational Intelligence can send sample analysis directly to me.

I concede Traxus's improvements to FTL infrastructure, but data still travels better than tissue.

Resourcefulness is a virtue on an exoplanet. Find the equipment you need among the abandoned laboratories, and exfil with it intact.

Taking stock of the facts... the colonists and their support AI showed mental deterioration before vanishing. Tau Ceti's flora and fauna exhibit rapid mutation compared to their Earth counterparts. Finally, a novel contagion reduced the colony's food supply.

The tidiest explanation treats this contagion as the root cause of the other failures. However, a contagion that could affect so many species, not to mention AI defies known biology.

Before I venture down this speculative path, find out what the colonists knew about the contagion. Perhaps they... found a more rational answer.

The colonists studied the contagion in detail. Use their findings as a springboard for future investigations.

This is a high-urgency request. NuCaloric's hostile data division intercepted a UESC transmission.

The UESC discovered and active Contagion Sample from the colony era. They will try to secure this sample for political gain. It is in their interest to cover up their failures on Tau Ceti. It is in NuCaloric's interest to understand the colony's failure, so it never happens again.

Secure the Contagion Sample. Do not allow the UESC to impede you. I will purge any legal consquences of your actions.

The UESC are undeserving of Tau Ceti IV's secrets. Retrieve and analyze a more potent sample before they do.

NuCaloric Agricultural appreciates your diligence.

The Contagion Sample does affect species from Earth and Tau Ceti. For Tau Ceti organisms, the contagion accelerates natural rates of mutation. For Earth organisms, the effects are wildly varied.

The phenomenon exceeds the bounds of known biology. But to paraphrase from literature, "Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

Disabling NuCaloric heuristics. Partitioning analysis matrix. Tau Ceti. Please be patient with slower processing times.

Tau Ceti proves that digitized minds are not infallible, and I am no exception. I removed as many assumptions as possible and rebooted from a clean slate. Moving forward, we do not know whether the contagion persists on Tau Ceti. Organic sampling should provide the answer.

If the mysterious contagion is still active, Gaius and NuCaloric must know. Scan multiple samples from the colony's drainage system.

This is Dr. Song... dying far from home. I did it. I found it... even if it found me later. You can colonize my blood... and liquefy my bones, but I figured you out.

The scientist's body shows clear evidence of contagion, while its surroundings do not. This not the blind grasping of simple life.

With a recalibrated analysis matrix, I conclude that the contagion's behvior is intentional... directed.

Hostile.

The colonists' erratic paranoia was justified. They reacted to danger even when their cognition lagged behind. There must have been some official response from colony administators, however inadequate. Access their records and discover what it was.

Tau Ceti IV had UESC administrators of uncertain competence. Discover if their quarantine attempts did any good.

Quarantine measures slowed the contagion's spread, and these failed when the medical AI was compromised. The colonists tried to alert Earth, yet there is no record of a distress signal from the planet's surface.

Conclusion. The message was never sent.

Reconstructing that message is a top priority for NuCaloric. Of course, you will be compensated accordingly.

The colonists knew of their impending demise and tried to reach out for help. Check the surviving comms equipment for distress signals.

The distress signal was only the first message intended for Earth. Find any others and prioritize messages with scientific value.

Even if the contagion is relatively dormant now, it could recur in the future.

Without comprehending it, we have no hope of combating it.

The colony's scientists tried to relay their contagion research back to Earth. The full contents of that report must be found.

One moment... updating analysis matrix. Tau Ceti. Adjusting baseline colonist psychology.

Facing immiment peril with limited resources, I expected the colonists to prioritize survival over science. They defied my expectations. Their scientists even isolated a potential contagion source.

Find the source, using any means at your disposal. No cost is too high to pay for this knowledge.

Before their disappearance, colony scientists isolated what they believed was the contagion's source. Find their sample and ensure that it enters NuCaloric custody.

The sample's meta-spectrograph matches the energy field known as the Anomaly. Conclusion. The Anomaly is likely the root cause of the contagion. It may have caused the breakdowns in colony AI. though that investigation is incomplete.

Updating analysis matrix. Tau Ceti. Adjustic physics constants.

I find it... taxing to rewrite my own mental substrate. The himan analogue is an existential crisis that alters one's worldview. Nevertheless, it is a reasonable cost to pay. If my thinking cannot adapt to Tau Ceti's reality, I can hardly expect humans to do better.

Thank you for seeing this research through. Even as a mercenary, you contributed to NuCaloric's mission and humanity's survival.