Story Guide: Gravitas Facility, Printing Pod & Neutronium

The Story in Oxygen Not Included sets the narrative backdrop for a colony stranded underground on an asteroid, explains many of the game’s recurring characters and documents found in the world, and provides optional Story Traits—self-contained lore-driven objectives that also give gameplay rewards. Understanding the Story helps interpret Research Portal logs, keepsakes, and the various story-driven points of interest you encounter while playing.

Premise and setting

Your colony exists on an asteroid that is not the intended destination. The colony’s leader (the player via the Printing Pod/console) wakes in an underground pod and must establish a new settlement and attempt to return to the surface.
The asteroid and nearby damaged planet contain anomalous materials—Abyssalite and Neutronium—that hint at severe temporal phenomena and the shattering of the colony’s original home.
Much of the game’s lore is delivered through logs, research portal cutscenes, emails, and archaeological finds scattered across the asteroid.

Gravitas Facility and key personnel

Gravitas Facility is the corporate research organization responsible for the Printing Pod, matter-manipulation tools, many critters and plants, and advanced experimental devices such as the Temporal Bow.
Director Jacquelyn “Jackie” Stern: Director of Gravitas, driven and obsessed with the Temporal Bow project. Her ambition and willingness to take risks are implied to be central to the events that fractured the planet.
Dr. Olivia Broussard (security code B111): Head of Bioengineering. She is ethically cautious, discovered problematic experiments (teleportation/cloning implications), and eventually quit the colony project. A brainmap of Olivia is later used as the basis for the colony AI.
Other named researchers (Dr. Holland, Dr. Ansari, Dr. Bubare, Dr. Ali, Dr. Ross, etc.) appear in communications, research notes, and personal logs, portraying a full research staff with varied personalities and specialties (engineering, robotics, bioengineering, information/statistics).

Major technologies and anomalies

Printing Pod and Genetic Ooze: The Pod prints living Duplicants and critters from a synthesized bio-organic "Ooze." Printing is central to colony survival—Duplicants can be printed from available blueprints, and new unique blueprints are finite.
Temporal Bow (Time-manipulation research): Gravitas researchers developed a prototype called the Temporal Bow intended to manipulate time to produce energy. Experiments compressed/expanded tiny time slices, produced unexpected effects, and generated a mysterious substance the team called "Neutronium."
Neutronium and temporal contamination: Neutronium is described as a metallic-like product of time-manipulation experiments and is associated with an autoimmune-like response of the universe to prevent temporal contamination. Its presence on the asteroid and in readings (including a "Temporal Tear") ties the colony’s plight to broken time/space events.
Teleportation experiments and cloning ethics: Logs imply some teleportation devices actually produced a copy while destroying the original. The moral implications troubled researchers like Dr. Broussard.

Narrative through the Research Portal and logs

Interacting with the Research Portal reveals story cutscenes and unlocks certain researches and objects, while also providing fragments of the pre-disaster narrative: lab notes, evacuation notices, ethical objections, and machine logs that gradually reveal what went wrong.
Research logs include lab experiment notes (e.g., cloning/memory experiments like Experiment 7D and studies into embedding memories/brainmaps), internal memos, and news articles promoting Gravitas successes, which juxtapose public optimism with internal ethical concerns.
Recurring themes: hubris of large-scale research, ethical conflicts (printing and memory implantation), the drive for limitless energy versus unforeseen consequences.

Story Traits and Keepsakes

Story Traits are optional world-generation points of interest that introduce a contained narrative and provide tangible rewards or unique interactions when activated. They can be enabled or disabled during world creation.
Completing a Story Trait typically requires a duplicant to initiate the associated building or object, then fulfill its specific objectives to receive a Keepsake and sometimes unlock additional functionality (examples detailed below).
Keepsakes are one-off items made of Genetic Ooze rewarded for completing Story Traits. They cannot be stored in containers but can be displayed on Pedestals; each keepsake has an associated decor value and flavor text (e.g., Ceramic Morb, Model Plane, Rusty Toolbox, Critter Collar).

Examples:

Somnium Synthesizer / Dream journals: Delivering Dream Journals and Oxygen completes the storyline and yields the Model Plane keepsake while unlocking Maximum Aptitude Mode for the Somnium Synthesizer.
Fossil Quarry / Ancient Specimen: Excavating the fossil POIs completes the Ancient Specimen trait and awards the Critter Collar keepsake.
Biobot Builder / P.E.G.G.Y.: Building the first P.E.G.G.Y. and interacting with the trait completes it and awards the Toy Bot keepsake.

The Printing Pod’s role and Duplicants

The Pod acts as narrator/guide from the player's perspective and maintains a sentimental role to Duplicants, who treat it with reverence.
Duplicants are printed from blueprints stored in the Pod; unique blueprints are limited — when depleted, further Duplicants are copies of existing blueprints.
Keepsakes and story completion often reference printed duplicants, their memories, and the ethical questions around embedding memories or brainmaps into clones.

Surface, rockets, and the Temporal Tear

Exploration eventually reveals the surface and a damaged planet similar to the colony’s origin, reinforcing the connection between Gravitas’s time research and planetary catastrophe.
A "Temporal Tear" visible from the surface is tied to Neutronium readings and is suggested as a gateway to other timelines/universes; rockets can be used to send Duplicants through such points in high-end progression content.
Rocket logs convey the player’s hope to find a new home or to undo past events by exploring other timelines; they also chronicle the colony’s long-term survival milestones (e.g., Cycle 1000, 1500).

Flavor, tone, and ephemera

The story is delivered in a mixture of official corporate releases (press statements, promotional materials), personal emails and journals, research logs with encryption levels indicating sensitivity, and environmental finds.
Bite-sized pieces (office memos, staff chatter about pets, or party invitations) humanize the staff and contrast with the darker consequences of the experiments.
Epitaphs and memorial texts provide somber flavor for fallen Duplicants and emphasize the cyclical nature of printing and loss.

How the Story affects gameplay

Story elements offer optional goals and rewards (keepsakes, building unlocks, special modes) that can shift player strategy.
Research Portal interactions unlock technologies and reveal hazards or POIs; activating or ignoring them changes what narrative content and unlocks appear.
Knowing the lore can recontextualize late-game elements (Neutronium, Temporal devices, rocket destination choices) and informs player interpretations of anomalous world features.

Summary

The Story weaves corporate ambition, experimental hubris, and human-scale drama into the survival gameplay loop. It is revealed piecemeal through Research Portal cutscenes, logs, and Story Traits; engaging with it yields unique rewards and deeper context for the weird materials and phenomena you encounter on the asteroid.