[b]The Tunguska![/b]

The walls have ghosts. 

Every surface is a screen, projector light swirling with the dust of aeons. Colours so crisp they shine through the degradation. Smiling faces and beautiful people. Beautiful places, beaches, green grass, white teeth. Now and then they'll stop to drink drinks black as sin. Every so often words or hieroglyphics will cover the screen. Every so often there is sound.

Ghosts of metal and gold, robed in red with domino masks of white:
"Do you remember when Pluto was a planet? We do - and so do the Gods. We at PG&B take your money seriously, which is why we resonance mined Pluto for the materials to make our newest mobile branch office, the [i]Tunguska[/i]. Enjoy the wealth of the Underworld!"

Silver eye-contact, triangles of ear and of fang, a streak of black amidst the white:
"Love is war, so don't leave the home front undefended. With Crown&Slate's newest monofilament knives, originally designed for battlefield surgery on the wars of Neptune, you can get the cleanest cuts you've ever seen! Just like Aphrodite married Ares, you can get to [i]your [/i]man's heart through his stomach with the meals prepared with the Tactical Knife Set, now available for just -"

Ghosts of squares and power, the solidity of commercial warlords, interrogating a bird-necked victim on soft couches:
"Let's call it what it is, Steven - a golden age. Ever since the Apostasy the Pacific Alliance has gone from strength to strength. And now you're saying that's all going to end?"
"That's right, Tim."
*Laughing* "So you're out there with your," *laughing* "doomsday sign, saying the end is nigh like those monks I see on my drive to work?"
"Oh, I recognize the reality of the Gods, that much is not in question -"
*Laughing* "That's good, we've got enough flat earthers -"
"- the problem is we're not worshiping them properly."
*Laughing, but taking this seriously* "Oh, they talk to you?"
"They don't talk to [i]us [/i]- not all of them. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Some of them love us - you can't drive down Hillside Boulevard without seeing the construction teams converting someone else's garage into a temple to Zeus. But who's building shrines to Apollo?"
*Laughing* "Apollo? He's just a myth, isn't he?"
"So was Zeus!"
*Laughing* "No, obviously you're right. When you eggheads figure out how to talk to him and find out what he's got to offer us, then we'll build shrines to him, same as the rest -"

A soldier, dressed in primitive camouflage fatigues designed to blend in with a lurid alien landscape. In the background his fellows throw enormous crab legs onto a bonfire. He wears shades and smokes a cigarette.
"Mm-mmm! I love the smell of seafood!" 
Chemically propelled arrows streak overhead. Explosions in the background. A disembodied voice.
"Fight them in the air! Join the Neptune Legion Air Force!"
More soldiers, cast as heroic despite their scrawny bodies. They are pulling on breathing masks, the kind you might use for vacuum, before jumping into the water. One of them addresses the camera.
"Surf's up everyone!"
A submersible metal ship emerges, cannons extending to fire a roaring volley into the distance. The voice:
"Fight them in the sea! Join the Neptune Legion Navy!"
A strange, cramped, clean white room where people cluster around archaic computers and their holographic displays. A man in a white suit bedecked with medals walks in, and everyone stands at attention and salutes.
"I'm Lance Uppercutt, CEO of the Neptune Legion," he said. If he was genetically engineered for this role it was a crude, brutal thing, designed to appeal only to the lowest common denominators. "And this is my flagship, the Dark American. I understand you're busy, maybe you've got better things to do than take the fight to the squids. But let me show you what your war bonds can buy."
An exterior shot. A spindly spaceship fires a pathetic direct energy weapon into an out of focus target. 
"Fight them in the void! Buy Neptune Legion stock today!"
Lance: "Now that's what I call return on investment."

*

[b]Alexa![/b]

This is the Tunguska. 

Black stone floors. Walls of ghosts. Recordings and appeals and visions of a past as far removed from the present as the samurai. Sure, the past was terrible in its own way, but seeing it from this distance... it's like walking through a cathedral. Everything that seemed so new to them is so many centuries in the past, so many mistakes played out in full. A ship like this could be built today, but nobody ever would do it. It wouldn't be cost effective, it wouldn't be militarily practical, taste and fashion has moved on so very far since the Tunguska. How do you find it, this relic stuck in time?

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Adventures are dangerous things," said Hestia. "You don't ever really know when you'll get home. You don't know if you'll get home. That, there? That's the door. It'll take you away from everything you've known and loved, everything that makes you feel safe and warm. Out there, you'll discover bigger things to worry about than birthdays. Even if you make your way back you won't ever be the same."

She looks out at the neon pink void of the Tunguska's lights, and the neon pink Rift behind it.

"You don't have to."