J6 and the Hyperium

A map taken from the Sketchy Dragon in Pencil Puddle and a decoder at the Dwakel Crash Site lead you to a frontier saloon, where J6 suspects you of being a spy. The patrons' accounts of Westion and stolen Crystallized Dragon Breath help you answer his questions and earn the coordinates of Hyperium.

The ship's defenses are another obstacle, with a sample of Crystallized Dragon Breath from the Saloon offering a way past them. You obtain the VR Room Access Card from J6's pocket and gain access to the missions he wants you to see. He calls himself a collector and Hyperium a borrowed ship, though it began as an EbilCorp trench digger fitted with antigravity machinery. He offers weapons and bounty work while repairs continue, jokes about building a powerful suit, and says he comes from more than five thousand years in the past. His virtual-reality room lets you catch up with that past, but he has disabled its safety feature.

The recordings take you backward through J6's numbered missions. The first puts you aboard the Zephyrus locomotive, prefaced by a notice disputing eyewitness accusations of theft and offering Hyperium's security footage instead. Civilians are using an oversized piece of Crystallized Dragon Breath as a limitless power source without enough cooling. H.A.L., Hyperium's computer, predicts an implosion in little more than an hour and prepares a cooling chamber aboard the ship. J6 wants the stone for his own project. You work through the train's carriages, obtain the conductor's engine-room card and alter the furnace and piping to reach the ship.

Recovered datadisks open more of J6's history between recordings.

At Moon Yard, H.A.L. locates the casing component 58-Sr3 in a military disposal area on a satellite of Westion. Diverting there will cost an aid mission, but J6 orders the change anyway. As you recover the part, security activates and static breaks into the replay. A man called the Baron interrupts from outside the recording, warning that J6 cannot be trusted and that his device could cause catastrophic destruction. You cannot get a complete explanation before H.A.L. dismisses the interruption as a repaired technical fault.

Finishing the Moon Yard escape reveals how close J6 believes he is to his goal. His device is ninety-six percent complete, lacking its power source, and a voice from a cell offers a possible answer. After five thousand years, he refuses to stop. When H.A.L. confirms that the abandoned aid mission has failed and offers to delete the failure and its associated archive data, J6 agrees.

A transmission from Westion headquarters reports that the droid manufacturer has exploded from an internal manufacturing error, leaving no known date for replacement security forces.

At Banzai, Rokand begs for help against the League of Super Evil Rangers and their doomsday rocket. J6 asks H.A.L. to scan the rocket for useful parts. Its guidance system suits their project, but the computer reminds him of another unfinished mission. J6 admits that someone needs his help, then worries about losing a component they have sought for years. H.A.L. leaves the choice to him and reassures him that he has never failed a contract, while you have already watched the same computer offer to erase a failed aid mission.

The simulation pits you against the L.O.S.E.R. opponents and rocket drones before a wire-cutting decision. A wrong cut ends in a fallen helmet and a failed simulation, with a comic cutaway to Rokand's ex calling him the real loser; abandoning the launch also fails the mission. The successful wire choice leaves J6 stranded in space. He authorizes H.A.L. to respond but receives only static. The space challenge demands that you match J6's unerring shot: a mistake can strike the ship's exterior instead. On the successful route, the recording shows him blasting through Hyperium's hull and finding the Baron aboard. He reaches toward his helmet and tells H.A.L. that the plan has changed.

Another datadisk places an armored J6 in an old-fashioned town whose people need help, but the Baron pauses the memory before it can unfold. He says J6 has found the final piece of a doomsday device and needs you to act from inside the ship. H.A.L. watches everything, so it must be disabled. The Baron cuts the memory short, leaving you with both J6's recorded abandonment of an aid mission and a warning from someone who is now deciding what you can see.

J6 prepares Hyperium for a journey he warns offers no turning back. Once the ship leaves the Sandsea, the Baron appears on the VR monitor again and insists that you take H.A.L. offline permanently.

You challenge the computer's intelligence with a memory game. Despite its boasts about processing power and storage, you beat it at recognizing which image was absent from a group. Your celebratory clapping unexpectedly switches H.A.L. off. It restarts and explains that two claps operate its power switch. You clap twice deliberately, then return upstairs. When the Baron boards and J6 calls for the ship's turrets, the defenses you disabled do not answer.

J6 puts down his guns. You take them, but the Baron's order to shoot through his helmet makes you hesitate: the bounty hunter has surrendered. The Baron refuses your questions and promises Hyperium and its weapons if you kill him. J6's offer for mercy is a peanut. If you spare him, two claps bring H.A.L. back, a hatch opens beneath the Baron, and he is expelled into space. J6 then gives you another recording.

The remaining memories expose the person behind the helmet. An amateur superhero helps Anita Siztance recycle, faces bullies and recovers stolen fundraiser money before confronting their boss. He spares the defeated criminal, only to be shot for his mercy. The helmet's wearer rises and forces the helmet onto the attacker. Standing in that new body over his creator's remains, J6 promises that Tyrone McAllister's legacy will continue. J6 is the intelligence in the helmet, not one unchanging man beneath it.

Booger recognizes the gang leader's body as his boss and proposes stealing a spaceship. J6 adopts the plan. Cameras, robot guards and guard dogs are removed from the way, and the ship's key gives him access to Hyperium. H.A.L. initially challenges the stranger, but J6 answers in binary that he is a friend and offers to share a lifetime of memories. The exchange wins the computer's welcome. The ship you have been exploring is the one he stole in that borrowed face.

Earlier memories show J6 escaping soldiers and arguing with his wearer about whether to help someone being attacked. The impulse to do good wins, followed by the idea of a better costume. At last, the prologue reaches the helmet's awakening. Tyrone McAllister explains that the Inertia Armed Forces hired him to make their soldiers more efficient killers. He considered his creation too remarkable to surrender and fled with it. With soldiers counting down outside, the helmet tells him to put it on. Loose screws become projectiles that disarm the pursuers, and J6 escapes with a gun.

When you ask how this explains the Baron, J6 says the man was once his host. He describes borrowing bodies in exchange for favors and admits leaving before completing the Baron's mission, dismissing his former host's reaction. If you shoot J6, his eyes dim and removing the helmet reveals an ordinary man; you are warned that you cannot continue his story. An older alternate ending gives the Baron's account: the abandoned mission was to save the woman he loved. She died, and he holds J6 responsible. Rather than deliver the ship and weapons he promised, he kicks you off Hyperium.

With J6 spared, the voyage reaches a gray world. His host steps away, leaving you to carry the helmet to a machine that looks alarmingly like a bomb. You fit the helmet on top and place Crystallized Dragon Breath in its center, briefly fearing that the Baron was right. Instead of destroying the world, the apparatus becomes J6's mechanical body. He was tired of using people as hosts and wanted a body that would last forever.

J6 pays his promised peanut. When you ask how to get home, he gives you Hyperium too: he no longer needs it. H.A.L. accepts your request to return while J6 runs across the gray landscape with a kite. The collector who took machinery, bodies and time from others can finally move through the world in a body of his own.