”I have a lot of work to do in the days to come, and I can't give up hope.
I have a duty to all of my fallen friends to survive, and to get back home.
Whatever I have to do, wherever I have to go, and however deep I have to descend,
I will see the twin stars of Alterra Prime again.”
I have a duty to all of my fallen friends to survive, and to get back home.
Whatever I have to do, wherever I have to go, and however deep I have to descend,
I will see the twin stars of Alterra Prime again.”
— Ryley Robinson, Waterworld Chapter 11
Waterworld
is a ongoing Pseudocanonical Subnautica Log Fic by author Crazy Minh. Retelling the story of Subnautica through the log entries of game protagonist Ryley Robinson, the story intends to expand on the lore and worldbuilding of Subnautica, while also trying to make the events of the game mildly more realistic.
Not to be confused with the Kevin Reynolds movie by the same title.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Ryley’s PDA is constantly monitoring and logging his activities, which include crimes such as illicit blueprint modification, and- like in the game- simply accruing debt by using resources that are the legal property of Alterra. Fortunately, the version of Ryley in this fic is The Smart Guy and Crazy-Prepared who paid to have large amounts of knowledge downloaded into his head. As such, he has plans to resolve this.
- Almighty Janitor: Ryley fits this trope to a ‘T’. After his mother and father’s death in a midair shuttle collision some time before the start of the story, Ryley used his inheritance to undergo extensive “digitraining”, which makes him a Jack of All Trades. However, his training didn’t match the extent of knowledge to which Alterran starship crews were meant to possess, and as such he was only sble to land a job as the ship’s non-essential maintenance chief, essentially making him the janitor. When the Aurora crashed, he became the sole surviving member of the crew, finally giving him a chance to use his hard-earned skills.
- Apocalyptic Log: The Framing Device for the story. At the start, Ryley has just survived a crash landing on 4546B, and records his first entry with the intent of providing s record of his survival attempts should he die before he reaches home. As the story goes on, things get marginally better for Ryley, and he establishes a firm foothold. This results in his log entries becoming more of a coping method for his isolation, as evidenced by his use of the log to document his mental state as well as the events of each day. Reaches a tipping point at the start of chapter eleven when Ryley finds his best friend’s corpse and suffers a emotional meltdown while drinking heavily.
- Artificial Brilliance: In-Universe. Number Five, the sole remaining janitorial robot from Ryley’s team of similar units. It managed to stay alive in the wreckage of the aurora for nearly two months before Ryley found it and brought it to his seabase to help maintain his underwater abode. It is described as being unusually intelligent post-crash, and is implied to have developed a degree of sentience during its period of isolation
- Artistic License – Chemistry: The vodka Ryley produces would certainly be unrefined, which would make it unsafe for human consumption. However, Ryley goes through six or seven bottles of it in one sitting during one chapter, and only suffers a hangover and some minor dehydration the next day.
- Artistic License – Engineering:
- The Aurora is described as having two forms of transit between decks: a single staircase in the bow section, and a cargo elevator further sternwards. Not only would such a design be extremely impractical for everyday use (crew would either have to ride a slow and heavy elevator up and down the ship or climb a ridiculous number of stairs), but it would be a hinderance to crew in the event of an emergency (for example, if an critically injured crewmember needed to be transferred to the ship’s medical facilities from another deck in a expedient fashion; or, say, if the crew were required to abandon ship due to an imminent crash landing). As in the game, the Aurora is described as being 500 meters tall, not counting the conning tower on the top of the main hull, making the staircase a rather unusual design element. .
- Ryley is able to create a functional water condenser from the remains of his Lifepod’s “Water Reclaimer” (something that doesn’t exist in the actual game). His strategy is to connect a coil of copper wire directly to the craft’s power supply, and use it to boil the salt water to create drinking water via condensation. Not only is this plan dubious (the copper wire would have to be a good enough resistor to convert the electrical energy into heat energy), but it would also run the risk of shorting, and potentially damaging the lifepod. Admittedly, Riley does Lampshade this, although he seems to be purely worrying about shocking himself or shorting out the electronics; seemingly convinced this will work as intended.
- Artistic License – History: In chapter four or five, a PDA log reveals the day of the Sunbeam’s destruction is October 14th 2195, around 174 years from the present day. Ryley talks in the first chapter about having grown up watching science fiction television programs of the 20th and 21st centuries, including several shows that have aired in the last ten years, or are still airing today. In Chapter 11, he describes his taste in media as being centred around “centuries old” sci-fi television. Of the shows he lists, only one franchise initially aired before 1995, that being Star Trek. Depending on which version of Battlestar Galactica Ryley was referring to, BSG could be considered the only other show that would be “centuries” old by 2195. The others all aired after September 1995, 200 years before the start of the fic in mid-to-late September.
- Artistic License – Medicine: At one point Ryley gets bitten by a Stalker that punctures a hole in his leg.. Ryley’s response is to perform first aid on himself to stop the bleeding, but his immediate action after removing the object is to use his hand to apply pressure while simultaneously slipping a high-tech bandage under his leg. To begin with, while the location of the wound is not mentioned, it is unlikely a hole the diameter of the Stalker teeth seen in-game would cause enough blood loss to warrant concern over “bleeding out”. Secondly, while Ryley did put pressure on the wound before applying the bandage- which is an appropriate step in treating a open wound- he never sterilised it, which could be a problem considering that he is on an alien world with potentially harmful bacteria that could easily cause his wound to become septic, futuristic bandage or not. Also, he carried out the procedure without checking the wound for any fragments of the foreign object (which in-universe are brittle, and could have easily splintered inside the would, increasing the chance of infection)
- Burial at Sea: Phillipa, Ryley’s bunkmate, is given this treatment
- Cool Starship: The Aurora. Even after she crashes on an alien planet, has her entire bow blown to smithereens, and begins leaking radiation into the environment, she still serves as a source of supplies for Ryley. In addition, the fic expands on her design from the game, and introduces new areas of the ship such as a shopping arcade, a computer core, and a swimming pool.
- Darker and Edgier: In Subnautica, injuries are quickly healed with nothing more than packs of bandages, your zippy submersible and powered exoskeleton can have critical damage fixed in the blink of an eye, and there are no traces of your dead crewmates other than their Apocalyptic Log entries, some abandoned PDAs, and their wrecked lifepods. In Waterworld, Riley regularly spends multiple days recovering from serious injuries, his Seamoth requires constant maintenance to remain functional, and Ryley is unfortunate enough to discover the decomposed (but recognisable) corpse of his bunkmate and best friend.
- Deadpan Snarker: Ryley, whose reaction to most disasters is to crack a joke, or make a snarky comment. Much of this is due to his status as an adaptational Expy.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Happens twice as of chapter eleven. The first time is in Chapter Nine, and results in Ryley getting homesick. The second time is more serious, and happens due to Ryley discovering his best friend’s rotting corpse
- Eldritch Abomination: The Reaper Leviathan appears as in the game. In the fic, Ryley’s first encounter with it is very nearly a fatal one, and it also serves as one of the first examples of the fanfic being Darker and Edgier than the game, as Ryler’s sub suffers damage that renders it immobile shortly after his escape, forcing him to delay his expedition to the Aurora to effect repairs.
- Expy: Ryley is one for Mark Watney at the author’s own admission. Both are sarcastic Robinson Crusoe types stranded on extraterrestrial worlds with only their wits and whatever they have in-situ to survive.
- Framing Device: The fic is presented as the log entries of Non-Essential Systems Maintenance Chief Ryley Robinson, the player character of Subnautica. All of his entries are him narrating the events of a day on 4546B to a recording device, usually his PDA. Occasionally, the audio logs are interspersed with data logs generated by his PDA, usually to provide additional context to a situation, or to spice up the fic.
- I Call It "Vera": Ryley names his PRAWN unit “Bob”, due to the vehicle bobbing slightly on the surface of the waves after construction before sinking. That, and he’d terrible with naming things.
- Lighter and Softer: In Subnautica, your player character has no access to their personal files on their PDA thanks to a software lockout. They also have no access to any recreational materials, be it drinking alcohol or other forms of entertainment. While you can find decorations for your seabase, these are limited in number, and don’t contain many luxury items. There’s also no toilet. In Waterworld, Ryley gains access to his personal files relatively early on, he creates potato vodka in large amounts with surplus food, by chapter 11, he has retrieved pretty much every luxury item he’s ever want to have, and he even has a functional toilet as well as two-ply toilet paper.
- Mini-Mecha: As in the game, the Pressurised Re-Active Watertight Nanosuit (PRAWN) makes an appearance. For those unfamiliar, these humanoid vehicles are modular exoskeletons with inbuilt thrusters designed for manoeuvring in zero gravity environments, or in deep seas where buoyancy can mimic low-gravity environments enough for the thrusters to lift the suit. They’re so powerful that most of the training given to PRAWN jockeys is to ensure they don’t get careless with their enhanced strength.
