Log 3:

Okay. I think I got it now. Kakuii turns on as soon as I say its name and then we're good to go.

So, more big news. We've made it. We are at the edge of the solar system of Leviathan 623. We've made visual contact with the planet, though it is still very far away for our weak little human eyes to see, the instruments are able to give us a full view of it. And I have to say… It's beautiful.

The water isn't like anything on Earth, it is practically glowing. It's a turquoise or teal, I don't know, I've never been the best with my colors. The land mass isn't visible because it is currently below that cloud.

The living cloud that I mentioned last time? We were right, it clearly is alive. We're still way too far out from it to understand what it is, even with our fancy sensors, but Rayne's best guess is that it is a cloud of extremely small creatures forming a cloud, like plankton or something. A large mass of life in a cloud that is orbiting the planet.

If anybody who isn't a scientist is watching this, you're probably like "well what are you waiting for? Get in there!" And for the record, I agree with you, but there's all this garbage in our way. Stuff like "following procedures" and "listen to orders from your superiors" and "due process," boring stuff like that. The long and short of it is that now that we're in the system we've gotta do our due diligence before we approach the planet.

Basically what's going to be happening for the next few days is some recon of the surrounding planets. It would be nice to just jump right up to the newly discovered life, the greatest discovery in human history btdubbs, and just introduce ourselves or gather samples, whatever the life facilitates, but because our instruments on Earth only gave us so much info we have to scope out the rest ourselves. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

So I realized that when I first was using Kakuii while we were partying that I didn't give a very good description of Leviathan 623 asides from the water world part, might as well fill in the gaps a little.

It's a bit of an odd planet, like ours, at least that's what the more specialized scientists tell me. It's larger than Earth, not by much so it's not too much more massive, but enough that we would be able to feel it, it'll take some getting used to when we touch down.

And where are we going to do that, you ask? Well, before we were aware of the cloud of living biomass above the planet, we were able to spy out a single, massive piece of dirt that covered about a seventh of the planet's surface. It is kind of like what we on Earth know as "Pangea," the landmass that the continents formed into before we were out and about as a species.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

As far as atmosphere is concerned, it's almost just like ours. Mostly Nitrogen, but quite a bit more oxygen than our own. The planet appears to float upwards of forty percent, almost double Earth's. Now, you may not know this, cause I fucking didn't, but apparently too much oxygen is a bad thing? We can get sick off of it? Nobody ever tells you about this stuff until your a few days off landing on a planet with a lot of O2. The doctors on the ground say that we should be fine for a while, but it might get a little sketchy if we stay on the surface without any protection for too long. They've actually made some devices for us to reduce our oxygen intake, I actually got one right here, check it out.

A little filter that fits over the mouth pretty snug and kinda just splits it up for us. It's shaped kinda like a boomerang, except it's got a mouth bit where the two edges meet. They made them all black, which is a bummer and probably also a bit poorly thought out. If we do end up needing these, they are only about the size of two fingers. They'll be easy to lose. Shoulda made them hot pink.

But right, back on track.

So what about the water, you ask? I'm glad you did!

[Kakuii Note: Like question]

To be frank, there's way too much water on the planet to bother thoroughly exploring. Our first priority is to assess the land mass and then the waters are secondary, though there was something in particular that piqued the interest of everybody on this mission, myself included. The oceans of earth are salt water, everybody knows this, but the oceans of Leviathan 623 are fresh. Kinda.

It seems like a significant amount of the water on the surface of the planet is fresh despite being an ocean, which to my rudimentary knowledge, is a bit odd. Junko, our geologist, and Lyka, our meteorologist, are in agreement that it is rather odd. They say that due to their understanding of earth's rock and weather systems that it should be at least less than fresh, but that's where it gets really weird.

There is some saltwater on the planet, in fact it is in the ocean, but from observations the saltiest water is away from the landmass. The closer to the landmass, the more fresh the water seems to be. Junko was especially interested in this, as according to her the ocean back on Earth gets a large amount of salt from the landmasses it surrounds, so at the very least there shouldn't be a difference, or maybe even more salt near the land, but for some reason it's the opposite.

This was all brought up by our oceanographer, Jazz, who noticed the discrepancy in the first place. She says there are factors that could cause the change, the ocean on Earth isn't always the same salinity, but right now we can only guess as to the reasons. We'll get a better understanding as we get closer.

For now, though, the nerds out here are taking readings and notes for the nerds back home, sending back all the data that we deem relevant. So far, we've observed six planets, dozens of moons, way too many asteroids, etcetera, and we're just mapping out the place. It sucks, cause we're so close I can almost taste it, but we'll be floating here for a few days until we're ready to make a move.

We have permission to move autonomously since it takes so long to communicate back, but this is a big deal, so we'll play it slow.

That's it for now, Kakuii, end recording.