Alasdair
Ananda
Em
Serek
CDP: 165
Total: 6890
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
Serek
CDP: 150
Total: 6725
Alasdair
None
Ananda
Em
Serek
CDP: 165
Total: 6575
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
Serek
165 CDP
Total: 6410
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
170 CDP
Total: 6245
Kassil: ‘kay. Ananda, care to recap?
Ananda: Sure.
Ananda: Last session, we moved north (assuming the map lines up) towards MR-068. Along the way the Site instantiated some choice chemicals for us, and Em & Ananda started having what appear to be personalized hallucinations. MR-068, as fitting for a red zone, seems to be mostly harmless. We’ve inspected the glass(?) cubicles, but decided not to open any of them.
Em: The dauntless party still sombre from its run in with “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream” decides to experiment with being daunted for a while.
Em: I was suggesting we go hunt down the server for the possible shadow network, over in SN67
Ananda: We know where it is, on this level. Let’s finish off the current branch (two more rooms) first.
Kassil: So, then…?
Em: See what else is in this branch and see if anything provokes us back into dauntless mode >_>
Alasdair: ( SM-88-F, I believe is next on the list. )
Ananda starts along the hallway towards SM-88-F (yellow).
Kassil: Ananda moves past the cubicles which contain the pevuliar fog-smoke-like material, and the metallic webbing on her way to the door. Aside from wincing when the smoke crackles with electricity along one side, nothing happens to molest her.
Ananda: (Have we stopped seeing blast doors in the hallways?)
Kassil: Nope. They’re still there, just so ubiquitous that you’re getting used to them.
Alasdair follows at a reasonable distance.
Em follows in her familiar, paranoid wont, paying particular attention to ceilings in case Dark Garfield is real and just selectively droping his ninja stuff.
Kassil: All right, then. You all move along, letting Ananda be the potential bait for any ambush.
Em: (She’d be mad if we deprived her of her adrenaline?)
Ananda: (Yes, yes she would.)
Em: (Unlike Dante, she’s doing this from high self esteem at least :) )
Kassil: The hallway, once you get into it, would look rather worrying if you hadn’t already seen far stranger things in the Site. Both walls and the floor have regular series of deep grooves torn into them, as if something with large claws and a great deal of weight had dragged itself along the passage toward the room you just left.
Kassil: Even the holding frames for the blast doors have been mangled, although none of them seem to have been triggered.
Ananda pauses to give the damage a cursory inspection for traces of anything biological.
Ananda passes on without collecting a sample.
Kassil: The passage itself is nice, straight, and well-illuminated by the roof-mounted lighting strips; it continues a few hundred meter before terminating at another vault-like doorway, this one having apparently been torn off its hinges and then very neatly set to one side. Beyond the entryway, you can all see a modest-sized laboratory, with one wall dominated by what appear to be plexiglass containers.
Em does her best to measure claw marks and any irregularities (or lack of) in them to try and figure out any incongruous details about this massive physical impact.
Kassil: Some are still clearly intact, but others appear to have been smashed into ruins.
Ananda stops at the doorway and looks at the containers. Any pattern to the smashed ones?
Alasdair looks for a smashed container likely large enough to hold the claw-mark-making creature.
Em looks for any signs of oil leaks, incongruous bolts/artifical bits
Kassil: The containers are smashed in a fashion that suggests something large slammed into them. Most of the containers are only large enough to hold, at best, a cubic foot or two.
Alasdair checks the ceiling for anything “unusual”.
Kassil: Alasdair does find something “promising” in the form of a conspicuous gap in the middle of the testing machinery to one side of the room, however, where something seems to have wrenched free.
Alasdair trots over to inspect the suspicious lack of something.
Em smiles slightly and follows Alasdair, wondering if he’s thinking what she’s thinking
Ananda sidles into the room, clearing the doorway in a manner that’s pure habit by now, and gives the lab a more general inspection.
Alasdair looks over his shoulder at Ananda. “I think this was an x-ray spectroscopy machine.”
Ananda looks up from one of the intact containers. “Was, hn? Any sign of the missing chunk?”
Alasdair: “Not that I can see, but who’s to say it didn’t just claw its way out of the room?”
Ananda: “Kf.”
Ananda shrugs and takes inventory of the plexiglass containers, while she’s here.
Em goes back and checks the gouge marks for signs of radioactivity
Kassil: Ananda assembles a list of about fifty peculiar-looking materials, ranging from a translucent green liquid that keeps quivering slightly, through a container almost entirely full of what appears to be white sand, to a container roughly half a cubic meter in volume that apprently got filled with tapioca, if the look of it is any indication.
Kassil: Additionally, the room has a fair bit of fairly mundane lab equipment, and a desk with an installed computer terminal.
Ananda gives the computer a try. Not worth taking samples unless we know what the previous owners thought was unusual about them.
Kassil: Ananda finds that the computer’s owner was, apparently, playing a game of Solitaire.
Kassil: He or she was also apparently /horrible/ at it.
Em: …pcomms "Guys, there’s elevated radioactivity in the path from the machine to the door and along the wall. The decay curve fits nicely with a time range of 120-150 years ago, too. Something either abducted the machine, or it did literally turn into something that can walk away.
Ananda checks her P-Comm when it chirps.
Ananda texts back, [Interesting. Can you check out the lab computer when you’re done out there?]
Alasdair replies, “Let’s hope they didn’t drag it off to a quiet corner to have their way with it.”
Em shakes her head at reality, and goes to investigate the terminal and see if its hooked up to what networks if any (after being very cautious of security of course)
Em: (….Mechaman needed loving in a bad way… >_> )
Kassil: Em manages to get the Solitaire game out of the way and discovers that the computer’s database on the room has been corrupted, aside from a few sequences. It’s fairly similar to the corruption in the last room, matching up with a system repeatedly crashing due to serious errors in the system clock until there’s most gibberish left. She does unearth that the quivering green liquid is apparently ‘self-regenerating soap’, the sand is apparently ‘retrieved from an area of black loam, matched with sand from the shore of Hawaii’, and the tapioca is tapioca.
Em blinks and is relieved the tapioca aren’t the eggs of whatever mated with the spectroscopy machine
Kassil: There’s also a fragment suggesting that one of the containers does or did contain a ‘stable non-radioactive uranium isotope’.
Em blinks at that last “Ah, Ananda, that’s not possible is it?” she signs after pointing it out to her
Ananda is tinkering with her P-Comm, with a faint, wry smile. She looks up, “Huh?”
Em: (well, if I can build a nuclear reactor, I might need to know a lot about the transuranium elements….)
Em points out the data fragments on the contents of the containers starting with the absent non radioactive uranium
Kassil: You’re not sure if it’s absent or not. The alphanumeric sequence for the container it was in is missing.
Ananda scratches her head, “Huh.”
Alasdair rubs at his nose and frowns.
Em checks for signs of a second conspicuous absence/something being dragged (or suddenly wrenched off the floor)
Kassil: Em: You mean aside from the various smashed containers?
Kassil: Ananda, you’re pretty sure you’ve never heard of uranium that wasn’t radioactive.
Em: Yes, in case one should be/could be there but isn’t
Em: (We’re going to find the proof for doing the Travelling Salesman problem in linear processing time in here, I can smell it…)
Em: (san cost 1d100)
Kassil: Some of them have been smashed and ground into the wall with enough force you can’t even tell if it was one container or multiple containers that got crunched together.
Ananda: “Uhm. To the best of my knowledge, nobody’s ever found a stable uranium isotope.”
Ananda shrugs one shoulder, “I think it’d be news if someone did find one.”
Alasdair sniffs around, looking for something.
Ananda notices Alasdair and sniffs the air.
Ananda: “Anyone else smell mustard?”
Alasdair: “Yup.”
Kassil: Em, you do, also, once it’s mentioned.
Alasdair uses his foot to dig a lunchbox out from behind a machine.
Ananda: “Smells awfully strong for a hundred-fifty year old lunch.”
Em nods
Alasdair: “Probably used too much Eternal Mustard on his Endless Hotdog.”
Ananda: “Kf.”
Kassil: Anyone going to open it?
Em will open it with telekinesis and respirator on….
Alasdair kick-slides it toward Em.
Ananda pokes around in the shattered containers for any sign of uranium-containing minerals.
Em sets it down in the corridor and gathers her energies
Alasdair: “Perhaps there’s more stable trans-uric stuff?”
Kassil: The range is however far you want, up to about 400 meters if you open it in the room with the plexiglass cubicles.
Kassil: No, just an amount of weight for the force you’re exerting.
Ananda replies absently, “I think I’ve heard that theory.. ‘islands of stability’ or whatever the phrase was. Can’t say I’ve kept track of news about it.”
Kassil: Ananda, after about twenty minutes, finds a small container perhaps half a cubic foot in volume that has a cylindrical piece of metal sitting in it that looks somewhat like what she recalls chemically pure uranium is supposed to look like.
Kassil: It’s about the size of her fist.
Ananda: (Material of the container?)
Alasdair: ( Brick. Clear brick. )
Alasdair: ( The Emperor’s new brick, in fact. It’s beautiful. )
Ananda: (Hah.)
Kassil: The container appears to be made of the same plexiglass-like material as the other cases.
Em gives it a go then.
Kassil: Em more-or-less rips the lid of the lunchbox off, forever ruining a sticker of a rather cool-looking robot, to expose a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. At a distance, it’s hard to tell what exactly it is, but the smell of mustard quickly gets even stronger.
Ananda wrinkles her nose. Takes her pack off to rest her shoulders and digs around for her SMM.
Kassil: Not hard to find.
Em feels no remorse. She Did What She had To Do.
Kassil: Going to go check it out, Em?
Ananda checks out the box of probable-uranium with her X-ray spec.
Em waits for Ananda to finish reacting before hazarding getting much closer
Kassil: Ananda gets absolutely no response from her portable spectrometer.
Kassil: She might as well be pointing it into empty space.
Ananda taps the device on the tabletop and tries again.
Kassil: The device still fails to report on the presence of a block of material. The container, on the other hand, is apparently 80% silicon and a roughyl equal mix of carbon and aluminum for the rest, with trace elements.
Ananda checks for radiation.
Kassil: Less than you’d expect, really.
Kassil: Em?
Alasdair: ( It’s anti-radioactive. )
Em uses the scope on her rifle to try and look inside, perching on a table or somethign to get Line of sight, levitating herself if she can’t
Kassil: Em sees what appears to be a ham and swiss on rye with an absolutely ridiculous amount of yellow mustard slathered on both slices of bread. Also a withered pickle slice and a can of cola that hasn’t been made for a century and a half.
Alasdair checks his P-Comm.
Ananda shrugs and packs everything away again. Someone else can figure this one out.
Em: …tries picking it up telekinetically, to see if it explodes or something
Kassil: The sandwich, contained in the wax paper, is picked up. It fails to respond in any way to the indignity.
Alasdair puts his P-Comm away and wipes his hands on his pants.
Em: Approaches and transfers it to a sample container
Kassil: Aside from a positively nauseating level of mustard aroma, nothing untoward happens to Em as she bags and tags the sandwich.
Em: (gives thanks for her respirator)
Ananda fills a sample container with the ‘self-regenerating soap’, while she’s collecting things. She’s careful not to touch it directly.
Kassil: The soap quickly refills the original container and the sample container to a depth of 3/4 of an inch.
Kassil: the sample container has a very slight vibration going through it, once the sample has ‘filled in’.
Em: (wonders if the sample we took has the same property)
Ananda frowns at the vial thoughtfully, but packs it away. She readjusts her shoulder-straps and looks over to the others, “Done here?”
Em: nods, calming down after the near brush with death from the ancient lunch >_>
Kassil: It just wanted to be eaten.
Em: (It wanted my soul, I’m sure >_>)
Ananda: (‘Take a single crumb of bread. Satisfying, but it will incur a terrible debt.’)
Kassil: All right, what now?
Ananda heads back to MR-068.
Alasdair follows.
Em follows as well, trying to dispell visions of mutated machinery
Kassil: As you enter MR-068, you’re greeted by a row of human-looking skulls, neatly lined up to face the door you’re entering through.
Alasdair jumps behind Em.
Ananda pauses, head tilted to one side.
Em blinks but takes a posture to provide maximum cover for Alasdair
Em: (what the mage wants, the mage gets >_>)
Ananda: (Are they across the doorway s.t. we’ll have to step over them?)
Kassil: No, you can walk into the room and turn to avoid them.
Kassil: You count a dozen of them.
Ananda does so.
Em has a sinking feeling
Em: Alasdair, could you compare my memory of these skulls to the skulls I’ve seen in a couple other instances since coming to the site?
Kassil: The skulls fail to react as Ananda walks around them.
Alasdair gives the skulls a wide berth as he quickly follows Ananda. “I’m… sure it’s nothing.”
Ananda leans against the wall and does not say uncomfortable things about the mutability of wetware memory. “Take a photo and we’ll talk later. I took one of you and them, last time.”
Kassil: The skulls also fail to react to Alasdair as he scurries around them.
Em settles for that and procedes to get beyond the skulls
Ananda continues on when Em is finished.
Ananda moves towards EAR-992 (green), watchful and quiet as ever.
Ananda gives the cloud-cubicle as much space as possible, along the way.
Kassil: The skulls swivel to follow Em as she goes around them.
Alasdair freaks out and smashes the skulls into the ceiling with excessive force.
Em: (Player laughs, thank you for amusing her so robustly, even though it is sad, how tormented Alasdair is. her thoughts “think you can push me around, you stinking calcium with attitude? try 10000 lbs of irritation on for size”!)
Kassil: The skull smash into splinters and powder against the roof.
Em: (Em of course is severely worried but says nothing and is better off ignorant of the Wheel of Time series description of male magic users going mad)
Ananda pauses and looks over her shoulder at the absence of footsteps, and winces at the sound of crushing bone.
Alasdair looks around and quietly clears his throat before shuffling toward the next room.
Ananda raises an eyebrow at Alasdair.
Alasdair gives Ananda a brief, cheerful grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.
Ananda inclines her head with an ‘I don’t buy that’ expression, but lets it pass.
Kassil: There’s the soft cracking and clattering of bits of smashed skull and ceramacrete falling to the ground, but otherwise nothing untoward results from Alasdair’s freakout.
Ananda: (Moving along, letting previous rolls stand.)
Kassil: The path to the next and final room of this branch is much like the last, although without any massive gouges in the walls and floor.
Kassil: The lighting has a few spots where the bulbs are flickering intermittently, but otherwise the illumination is nice and steady. The blast doors are retracted, and the vault door opens onto a slab of ceramacrete about three centimeters in from the door.
Em blinks
Em: (the map ends HERE)
Ananda presses her face against the slab and has a look into the gap.
Em: (An obstacle. time to blast our way through >_>)
Kassil: The gap ends as the room’s entryway merges with what was apparently the wall.
Em: (my daunts are going away again)
Kassil: (Really, by now the /other/ AO group would have declared this place a lost cause and gone looking for a proper nuclear weapon to collapse the entryway with. :D )
Ananda: (It takes a special kind of person to be a scientist in AO.)
Kassil: So…?
Em: (it takes an even more special one to be a borderline paranoid and come tromping around here. emotional lability, ho!)
Ananda knocks on the slab, “This isn’t the first we’ve encountered that’s only accessible to those who can become etherial.”
Kassil: (What, still only borderline? I’ll have to try harder.)
Ananda: (As I said, special.)
Em: Shall we try that then…?
Alasdair Etherializes everyone.
Ananda nods thanks and walks through the slab.
Alasdair follows quickly.
Kassil: Ananda feels like she’s walking in glue, as does Alasdair as he follows.
Kassil: The ceramacrete, on further consideration, seems to be less a slab and more a room-filling mass.
Em follows behind and blinks at this fact
Kassil: Em also finds it kind of like wading in glue.
Ananda: (Can we distinguish any kind of a seam at the edge of the room?)
Kassil: After a fashion. The material feels less like glue.
Em backs out to the hallway and checks how the substance responds to wielding
Kassil: Em finds it quite a relief to be out of the ceramacrete room-filler.
Alasdair cautiously inches toward the center of the room, feeling for a difference in density or stickiness.
Ananda takes a moment to arrange for us to not suffocate inside the ceramicrete block.
Kassil: Improved range! It does more or less what you want.
Kassil: Em, there’s a faint scent of burnt rock in the air.
Ananda tries to remember that unintentional trick for next time.
Em breathes deeply and focuses a plasma arc upon just a few cubic inches of the substance to see if she can vaporize it at all or not. She lays her fingers on the substance by the door with trepidation and has at it.
Em: ack
Kassil: Ooh. Duration up.
Kassil: …How much endurance do you have, Em?
Em: ruh oh
Kassil: I’m pretty sure that, during her botched Wielding, em blacks out from lack of endurance.
Kassil: So!
Kassil: Fortunately, this will interrupt the effect. Roll your damage so we can see what results from your material-blasting.
Kassil: You black out when you run out of Endurance, and in the meantime you’re locked up.
Kassil: (And this is why DoT damage often is a bad Idea.)
Kassil: All right, Em manages to bore out roughly a half-meter hemisphere of ceramacrete with a bubble of plasma before her reserves run out, her eyes roll up in her head, and she falls over.
Kassil: Meanwhile, the two of you are rather heavily insulated from the situation by a combination of ethereal nature and sheer mass of intervening material.
Em: (note to self: up endurance stat, learn the endurance replenishment trick)
Alasdair texts Ananda, “Found a desk. Dead computer, book, bottle. No effect origin.”
Ananda pokes her head into the hallway to check her P-Comm.
Kassil: Alasdair pokes his own head out just as Ananda pokes hers out.
Alasdair checks to see if Em’s still alive.
Kassil: Alasdair is the first to notice that Em has fallen over, passed out, and hurries to examine her. He quickly determines that she’s still breathing and has a pulse.
Ananda looks at Em in puzzlement.
Em: X_X
Alasdair checks Em and her surroundings for signs of violence or trauma.
Kassil: Em has a bit of a bruise on her head where she fell, but she seems otherwise fine. There’s a nice big hole burned into the ceramacrete plug at shoulder height to her, though.
Ananda leaves that in Alasdair’s hands and looks at the wall, still half-inside it.
Kassil: The hole is a bit warm, but not dangerously so.
Kassil: She’s passed out from exhaustion, apparently.
Alasdair revives Em and boosts everyone else’s Endurance while he’s at it.
Alasdair: 99 Endurance restored.
Kassil: Em, you come to feeling refreshed.
Kassil: First thing you see is Alasdair glowing blue.
Ananda looks over her shoulder. Nods once.
Ananda handwaves, going for a bit more range than vision.
Alasdair: ( Everybody must get stoned! )
Kassil helpfully doses Alasdair with Trixie.
Kassil: And Ananda is trying to scry… What, exactly?
Ananda: The contours of everything in a 50m radius that isn’t rock.
Em: Thank you very much Alasdair. I was overconfident, alas
Alasdair: “We all overreach at times.”
Ananda: (And differentiation between kinds of stone, if I have that much sensitivity.)
Kassil: You find that the room inside was another room full of desks and computer equipment, all sealed in a kind of ceramacrete that apparently came foaming out of sealed containment tanks.
Ananda: (Any remains?)
Kassil: nope.
Alasdair: ( That’s a serious fire suppression system. )
Kassil: And anything that wasn’t functionally sealed is filled with the ‘foamed rock’.
Kassil: Any computers are likely trashed beyond recognition, among other things, and a few desks have been partially crushed.
Ananda: “Office-looking kind of place, sealed in – well, not amber. But preserved close enough.”
Ananda shrugs, “I didn’t see anything worth retrieving.”
Alasdair: “Not much left, most likely.”
Em: This faculty’s designers spared little expense to leave the impression no expense was spared on covering all contingencies
Kassil: (Given what you’ve seen trying to escape, do you blame them?)
Em: (I admit for this level of o_o , go big or go home o_o)
Ananda: “Where to next?”
Em: SN67 perhaps?
Alasdair: “SOS-334-Orange is on the way.”
Ananda: “Let’s go, then.”
Kassil: On your way back through MR-068, the damage Alasdair did to the roof is absent, although the pulverized skulls remain littering the floor.
Ananda makes note.
Em waves to the poltergeist
Kassil: Nothing else of note occurs until you reach the elevator shaft, where you find a nice ring of skulls – some human-looking, some reptilian – sitting around the open shaft, all facing out.
Ananda inspects the reptile skulls, but finally deems them uninteresting.
Alasdair pointedly ignores the skulls.
Em follows quietly
Ananda suppresses the impulse to mimic bird-calls and see if anything responds.
Kassil: Walking past them?
Ananda heads to the south hallway and waits for the others.
Em walks past, if cautiously
Alasdair walks past them, not looking in their direction.
Kassil: As Alasdair goes by at his closest approach, the skulls individually tip backwards into the shaft, starting with the reptile skull closest to him and continuing like a ring of falling dominos into the depths.
Ananda watches this with interest.
Alasdair willfully refuses to notice.
Em smirks, shakes her head and continues, muttering “though I left five year old pranks behind when I left the Family”
Ananda smiles and whispers, “If nothing else, there’s a set of old bones walking around here with its own sense of humor.”
Kassil: Beyond that, your entry to the next branch is unimpeded.
Ananda approaches SOS-334 (orange) with the caution that’s becoming second nature.
Kassil: The entry into SOS-334 is another vault door, this time closed.
Em: Any sign of a keypad or other thingie?
Kassil: There’s a security booth.
Em investigates, is the booth locked?
Ananda , still being etherial, simply walks through.
Kassil: It is not. Em’s pretty sure she can get it to power up if she wants; Ananda’s simply passing through the door, though.
From Kassil: It itches like mad.
Alasdair follows Ananda through the door.
To Kassil: Ananda grits her teeth and hurries through.
Em lets them have a look in case something bad is on the other side
Kassil: The room on the other side is arranged like a modestly-sized warehouse, with large rows of shelves and crates stacked on them. The crates are mainly made of metal, and most of them are chained down to the shelving.
Ananda looks about for labels, shipping manifests, or suchlike.
Kassil: Each one has a small keypad and display attached.
Kassil: The majority seem to be in some kind of power-saving mode, since they’re dark.
Ananda finds the nearest lit one and telekinetically manipulates the keypad to see what’s inside.
Alasdair lightly taps a couple crates to see if they’re ethereally solid.
Kassil: Ananda manages to avoid accidentally unlocking the crate, instead calling up a display. ‘Anomalous Item #6099 – Gladius made from a single flawless diamond – exhibits tensile properties well out of bounds for diamond – seems to inspire a need to fight all living creatures in vicinity’
Kassil: Em, they haven’t come back yet.
Kassil: Some of the crates are resistant to alasdair’s touch, but the majority permit his hands through.
Ananda sends a text message to Em: [Find anything interesting?]
Em: pcomms back “was waiting for reports if there was anything bad locked behidn there before trying to get the door open. I think I can do it”
Em: pcomms “I can’t hack as effectively while ethereal, is it safe to open the door?”
Ananda responds, [Just a warehouse in here.]
Ananda: (Rough guesstimate of the number of crates in here?)
Em: okay. what do I check to power the booth on safely?
Em: being cautious as always
Kassil: You push the power button, with some effort needed to get it to click in your ghostly state.
Kassil: Ananda, you guesstimate at least 1500 crates.
Ananda wanders around, looking for any crates that are particularly large or well-secured.
Ananda: (Or otherwise noteworthy.)
Kassil: They’re all particularly well-secured, being held down by heavy chains and padlocks sturdy enough to hold back an angry bull charger.
Kassil: They’re also all roughly the same size. Only about one in twenty are lit.
Em: (do I need to use wielding to operate the controls or can I make them work while ethereal? am I correct in remembering that it’s very hard to do computer tech stuff while ethereal?)
Ananda: (Is any kind of filing system evident?)
Alasdair glances over a few lit ones for anything more shocking than usual.
Kassil: Generally, yes, but what springs up is a fairly simple touch screen interface; you find that you have enough material to interact with it even in your ghostly state.
Em: (nods) so is this the “inside” side of the security door basically?
Em: or do I need to defeat some security measures to get it open?
Kassil: Ananda – the room seems to run from Item #6000 to item #7500, arranged in rows on each shelf, sequentially.
Kassil: Em – A security check would let you figure out how to coax it into cooperating, yes.
Ananda: How very useful.
Alasdair waves to get Ananda’s attention and points at the crate he’s standing in front of.
Ananda heads over to take a look.
Alasdair: “This looks ominous. ‘Item #6666 – Anomalous Item – Antimatter Mass – Warning: Do not permit to lose power – Contains approximately one kilogram of anti-iron – Warning: radiation hazard’”
Ananda: “Hn.”
Alasdair: “If we wanted to obliterate the Site…”
Kassil: (Well, it might be a start.)
Ananda: “In a place with this many self-destruct systems already rigged, why hasn’t it been built into one?”
Ananda looks around for the power source, to make sure it’s in good shape.
Kassil: There’s a cable tethered into a port on the crate’s back side.
Em: Fiddles with security hopefully but carefully trying not to let her ethereal state rush her Defeat Security
Ananda: “Good enough, if it’s kept this long.”
Ananda selects a few more powered-on crates at random and has a look at the contents.
Alasdair makes a note of the location of Doomsday Item #27. Just in case.
Ananda: (Order of 1500 crates, 1 in 20 powered on, = 75 to choose from. Not going to stick around to catalogue them all.)
Ananda looks at a crate in bemusement, muttering “Nine-faced regular polyhedron…”
Ananda shakes her head and moves on.
Alasdair: “At least it’s not -1-faced. I’d expect a crate full of a couple hundred in here somewhere.”
Kassil: (Correction: Nine-sided polygons, forming a regular-AKA-supposedly-Platonic solid.)
Ananda: (Ah.)
Kassil: (Either way, it’s a “This thing giggles psychotically at the laws of geometry and urinates on the grave of Pythagoras.”)
Ananda: (Yes, very much so.)
Ananda: “Find anything else worthwhile?”
Alasdair: “Er, no. Not worthwhile, exactly. Hideously illuminating, though.”
Ananda: “How so?”
Alasdair just gestures at the “special” crate.
Ananda tags the crate she’s been looking into with a bit of orange tape and goes to look.
Kassil: It’s labeled “Agent Johnson’s DVD Collection.”
Ananda looks puzzled and steps inside to scan the titles.
Kassil: It’s apparently a rather sizable collection of live-action tentacle porn.
Ananda walks out the other side, more perplexed than when she went in. “Okay then.”
Kassil: So, satisfied your cravings of exploration, or…?
Ananda heads back to the tagged crate and finds out whether she can open it.
Kassil: You manage to get into a very attractively designed and completely useless help menu.
Alasdair: “Why, uh, what…”
Alasdair peeks over Ananda’s shoulder.
Ananda: “This one claims to be a set of I Ching coins that have a nasty habit of being accurate about catastrophes.”
Kassil: The ID is “Catastrophe I-Ching.”
Ananda steps back from the controls, “Care to give it a try?”
Alasdair: “I’m not sure we want to let that loose into the world. It’s probably so accurate becaues it CAUSES the catastrophes.”
Ananda barks a laugh. There’s wicked amusement in her expression when she replies, “Its current read is awfully interesting, if that’s the case.”
Alasdair: “I’ve never been good at those things. What’s it claiming?”
Ananda: “Ambiguously, either or both of ‘the birth of a deity’ and ‘the end of time’.”
Alasdair: “Well, we’ve seen or nearly seen the end of time, in a way. The ORACLE mishap/overload that shunted us here.”
Ananda taps her insubstantial fingers against the crate. “They were scattered when I went in. If nobody threw them, I don’t know what the scope is supposed to be.”
Alasdair: “Perhaps it was forecasting it’s own imprisonment?”
Ananda: “Or the end of the Foundation, since Em’s found all those clock-related errors from around then.”
Alasdair: “Excellent point. I opt to believe it’s that.”
Alasdair nods sagely.
Kassil: (Mainly because he doesn’t want to think about what it might mean otherwise?)
Ananda chuckles. “I’m not convinced it’s worth actual concern.”
Kassil: All right then. 170 CDP.
Karelzarath: Yay!
Ananda: W00t.
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
170 CDP
Total: 6075
Kassil: So, does anyone need a recap?
Ananda: The meatfloor was… vivid.
Em: the meatfloor was to remind us It Can Always Get Worse
Ananda: I don’t think I needed to be reminded of that, but I suppose it’s a good marker.
Ananda: (Let’s not trigger another instance of whatever went wrong with the Site’s “engine”, while we investigate it.)
Kassil: Heh.
Kassil: Okay, then. You had just Void-sterilized the room, and Em had collected the Slime of Alien Color in a sampling kit.
Kassil: You were headed to a different room from there, I believe?
Ananda is moving north (we think) to MR-068.
Em: Then time to move out I guess?
Alasdair is already around the corner and a little ways up the hall.
Kassil: All right then.
Kassil: You move back along the hall, retracing your steps to the central corridor of the eastern branch of this floor. Ananda is in the lead, as usual, with Alasdair tagging close behind. Serek aimlessly wanders behind, while Em brings up the rear as per her usual position.
Kassil: Auditory Detection checks, please.
Em does ninja tailguard again.
Ananda holds up a hand for the group to pause.
Em: Halts
Kassil: You all hear a faint ‘shuff’ sound from somewhere ahead, before you reach the main corridor.
Kassil: (Somewhat like a bare foot on carpet, or the like.)
Alasdair: (After or before ALS-099-A?)
Kassil: Just after passing through that particular lifeform storage room.
Ananda: (Did any place on this level have carpet? I don’t recall it.)
Alasdair: ( It brought the carpet with it. )
Kassil: The room with the desk seemed to, after you entered it, but otherwise no.
Ananda signs, ‘Bide,’ over her shoulder, then moves ahead, alert and silent as possible.
Kassil: Ananda, despite the relatively good lighting in the hall, does a fair job of blending against the wall as she creeps forward toward the intersection.
Alasdair waits, alert for an attack.
Ananda pauses just before the intersection, in the partial cover of the doorframe.
Em waits till Ananda or Alasdair looks back to signal for a pause, if that happens, if not, its not that urgent
Alasdair is watching Ananda and the room beyond her intently.
Em watches too
Ananda scans the part of the room she can see from here, then eases around the corner to look at the rest. She motions the others forward, then signs, ‘Smells of formaldehyde. No creatures.’
Alasdair signs back, “Smelled it too.”
Em gets her respirator on and follows
Ananda nods acknowledgement, keeping a wary eye on the room ahead.
Alasdair catches up to Ananda cautiously.
Kassil: There’s a faint and regular hiss as Em’s respirator kicks on.
Em: sighs and takes it off. failed common sense roll
Ananda winces a bit at the noise.
Kassil: Alasdair’s footsteps are, admittedly, only slightly quieter than Em’s respirator before she pulls it back off and leaves him the elephant in the hall.
Kassil: None of you hear anything other than yourselves as you reconvene at the hallway entrance.
Em: (the plan is the bad things jump Alasdair and Em and Ananda rescues us >_>)
Alasdair shrugs at Ananda and nods up the hallway.
Ananda shrugs back to Alasdair, but breaks off mid-gesture with a look of surprise. She grabs for something in her pocket.
Em: ( can we complain to our ISP that we don’t like these grief callers?)
Alasdair raises an eyebrow at Ananda.
Kassil: Ananda pulls out a glass tube, capped at one end with a bright red plastic plug. Inside, a dozen small square pills are visible, each one with a large L pressed into the side.
Ananda holds the tube up to the light, eyebrows raised.
Alasdair takes a half step backwards, eye widening slightly.
Ananda tilts her head at Alasdair’s reaction. She looks a question at him.
Alasdair twice shakes his head “no.”
Ananda signs, ‘Bad experience?’ with a touch of humor.
Alasdair tersely signs, “unimportant,” before heading up the hall.
Ananda shrugs and puts the tube in a backpack-pocket, with the practice of someone who no longer needs to take it off to know where everything is.
Ananda sidles into ALS-33, alert and quiet.
Ananda: (..Or not so quiet.)
Em: (waits to see if the Grue gets Ananda)
Kassil: Ananda fails to trip over herself, or kick anything.
Kassil: Alasdair, meanwhile, is crossing the room a bit briskly, while Em and Serek trail along behind.
Kassil: Nothing seems to be interested in leaping out to attack Alasdair.
Em resigns herself to being tasty and follows
Alasdair stops at the hallway leading to MR-068.
Kassil: The others catch up with Alasdair shortly; the hallway toward MR-068 doesn’t particularly seem to have changed since the last time you all inspected it.
Ananda: (Is this the one with the claw-marks?)
Kassil: Yep.
Ananda pauses to listen down the hall, before moving on.
Ananda signs, ‘Movement ahead.’
Ananda moves in, keeping Zix ready to hand.
Alasdair frowns and follows.
From Kassil: You hear the scratching again, as you move ahead. There’s nothing in the hall, but it sounds like there might be something digging inside the ceramacrete wall.
Em moves up enough to gesture to Alasdair to stop “Danger” then waits to see if Ananda keeps moving
Ananda gets about 20m into the hallway, then pauses, holding up a hand for a halt. She moves to the left wall and presses her ear against it. She also keeps the ZX angled towards the wall, not quite in a ready-to-fire grip.
Alasdair gestures dismissively at Em and watches Ananda.
Ananda waves the others forwards, signing, ‘Hear that?’
Em nods “left, yes? scratching?”
Alasdair shakes his head.
Ananda nods to Em, ‘Same.’
Em signs “it stopped.”
Ananda frowns at the wall.
Alasdair maneuvers to the exact center of the hallway and looks over his shoulder.
Ananda signs, ‘I still hear it.’
Em looks nervous and keeps checking behind us periodically, pessimistic she’ll catch anything coming if its this quiet
Ananda is looking at the wall when she quirks a smile and shakes her head. She says nothing.
Alasdair very slowly turns around.
Alasdair glances at the floor and ceiling.
Alasdair shivers and takes a step closer to Em.
Ananda glances over at Alasdair, ‘Find anything?’
Ananda looks pointedly at the wall.
Em signs back “silent orange cat ran by”
Em points where it happened
Alasdair signs, “No. We should not linger.”
Ananda nods, once. ’Sound’s moving ahead of us.’ She moves along in pace with it, to keep a constant distance.
Alasdair tries to remain equidistant from Ananda and Em.
Em follows and makes a point of not crowding him
Ananda pauses, having tracked a point at a consistent height for perhaps 30m. She signs, ‘Stopped again.’
Ananda slowly takes a step back. Then another.
Alasdair stops moving and looks in the direction Ananda’s retreating from.
Em: backs up in sync and trepidation
Ananda still appears confident and curious, all attention to the front.
Em: (double checks behind us regularly, and for any path that damned cat might be lurking …)
Alasdair rubs the backs of his hands.
Alasdair prods at one of his pockets.
Ananda looks over her shoulder to sign, ‘Cover me.’ She lets Zix hang by her side and makes a few terse gestures to send a shockwave into the left-hand wall, right over the scratching sound.
Alasdair covers his ears.
Kassil: There’s a sharp CRACK sound as Ananda channel a burst of kinetic force against the wall where she says the scratching noise stopped.
Ananda watches for a second, then grimaces and covers her ears.
Kassil: Neither Em nor Alasdair hear anything beyond the echo of the kinetic pulse from somewhere up ahead.
Ananda gingerly uncovers her ears, after half a minute or so. Shakes her head to clear it.
Alasdair hesitantly fishes something out of his pocket and holds it up.
Kassil: Alasdair is holding what is either the vial that Em handed him to evaporate, or a perfect replica of it, down to the pills inside it.
Ananda quirks an eyebrow. Looks at Em.
Em has a go at trying to get rid of it herself then, taking it from his hand, puts it on the ground, kneels, touches it, and tries to slag it to plasma.
Kassil: And Em snatches the vial from Alasdair, thunks it on the ground, and…
Kassil: 33 damage.
Kassil: There’s a sharp sizzling as a hemisphere of plasma materializes to engulf the vial, and a tiny pop as the air rushes in to fill the scorched void.
Kassil: The vial has been torn apart, along with the pills that were rattling inside it.
Em ‘s face relaxes a bit from the tense grimace as she gives a silent thanks to Tesla
Kassil: There’s also a shallow, blackened crater seared into the ceramacrete where the vial was.
Alasdair gives Em a “not bad” nod.
Em looks satisfied to put her ! on the “just say no” response she just made to the Poltergeist
Em is relieved nothing killed us while she attended to that
Ananda signs, ’All’s quiet now. Shall we go?’
Em nods and follows
Alasdair nods.
Kassil: You head down the hall, dogged now by the dusty stink of scorches ceramacrete, and come to the vault-like door into MR-068. Surprisingly, it seems to be completely intact and wide open.
Ananda pauses at the door to listen.
Alasdair pauses behind Ananda and pretends to listen.
Ananda: (Not bad for pretending.)
Alasdair can fake it well.
Ananda glances at the others and signs, ‘Chimes. Distant scratching.’
Em hopes its not operating a computer
Alasdair nods and signs, “Agreed.”
Ananda moves on into the room, ignoring the lingering headache.
Kassil: Ananda can just barely hear herself.
Alasdair gives Ananda a 5m head start and follows.
Em follow about that far behind
Kassil: For some reason, Alasdair seems to be feeling a little jumpy.
Kassil: The room denoted as MR-068 is modest, as far as the roof goes. It’s only about five meters up, with waist-high solid divisions marking the 50mx50m room into 10mx10m lots, with corridors between each lot. Transparent material rises from the dividers to lock into metal grips on the roof.
Kassil: From the entry, you can all see that half a dozen of the lots seems to have had something going on when whatever happened to the Site went off. One is almost entirely swatched in web-like sheets of a glistening metallic material, another has a pillar of smooth black stone rising almost to the roof, a third has some kind of holographic-looking design slowly spinning in the middle of it. The other three are somewhat obscured by those.
Kassil: The chiming sound is, apparently, an actual set of windchimes, tinkling gently in front of an air vent that’s apparently pulling air in.
Ananda indicates the chime with a tilt of her head, signs, ‘I think we’ve seen this before.’
Ananda investigates the webbed enclosure.
Kassil: Ananda pads down the corridor to the closed door of the lot where the metallic sheets are. Peering through the ‘web’-fogged glass, she can see a humanoid skeleton at the computer console inside, apparently held together and upright by the spread of metallic webbing.
Em follows, curious if the terminal inside this one is as undamaged as the rest…"
Ananda: (Is there any kind of nameplate or monitors on these things?)
Kassil: There are monitors at the computer stations inside. None of the systems are currently online.
Em wonders if there’s anyway to check out if there’s a spider or anything odd accounting for the webbing here….
Ananda paces through the room, giving a cursory look at each of the remaining isolation chambers, or whatever they are.
Kassil: Sure! Pry open the door and poke around inside.
Ananda: (Pick up Being & Insight and listen for minds. What’s the worst that could happen?)
Em: We don’t have a spider-sensor…?
Kassil: The remaining three apparently-were-active chambers seem to contain something that looks a lot like kelp, which has filled the floor of the chamber, with airbag-laden stalks swaying ever-so-gently inside; a cloud of something very fine and smoke-like, which occasionally brushes an area that’s apparently some kind of containment with bright crackles of electricity; and a quivering ball of green gel that hovers in the air in the middle of the test chamber.
Ananda takes one close look at the smoke chamber then moves away, rubbing her temples.
Em follows thinking whatever set up show in here looks worrisome. She goes to check for a cubicle that looks free of extra dimenionsla/exotic issues and see if the computer will power on
Ananda paces, looking about for sample-taking apparatus.
Kassil: Em, Computer Tech?
Kassil: You’re still boosted to deific levels.
Em: oh wow.
Kassil: Ananda’s pacing search comes to no useful end; each of the ‘active’ lots has what appears to be a containment crate, although the ‘webbed’ room is hard to see into.
Em: Naturally I’m cautious about authentication protocols like at the place that slagged computers for bad passwords
Ananda: (What are the exits from this room?)
Kassil: One opposite the entry, and one to the right from the entry. Both appear to be inward-locking vault doors.
Ananda: (Open? Closed? Locked?)
Em: Computer Tech: may Gibson smile on us
Kassil: Open.
Kassil: Em, you find it almost trivial to boot the computer in one of the empty lots to life and tease open the security locks. Before long, you find yourself welcomed in as ‘superuser A-7’ on the Materials Research 068 Sub-Network.
Em: What were they doing when the Doom arrived? and are their data logs too bulky for use to store?
Em: (ie checking the dept admin’s log if there’s one…)
Kassil: Unfortunately, the specific computer Em is on only has a list of prior experiments, although some of those would be eye-popping in any other context. She is, however, able to wrangle a connection to the Administrator Network Level 2.
Em: What does that let me peek at?
Kassil: The Network itself seems abnormally barren, as if something’s mostly purged it, but there are a few files – communication transcripts, by the looks of them.
Em: Hrm. I check if whoever purged forgot about data recovery measures…
Kassil: Comp Tech check?
Kassil: As Em looks closer, she’s able to determine that what, at first, looks like a deliberate wipe of data is something closer to some pretty impressive system errors – internal clocks going utterly insane and returning values that made the systems crash and reboot over and over until not much was left beyond a basic I/O system that was too simple and too robust to care about the bizarre time-and-date.
Kassil: The files she can dredge up seem to have somehow escaped the digital apocalypse by sheer luck.
Kassil: If she were to find a physical server and successfully extract the hard drive, she might be able to reconstruct the contents.
Alasdair: ( I sense a Project in the making. ;) )
Em: …why am I thinking the server is in the goo?
Kassil: You could dig in and find out.
Ananda ambles over to Alasdair while Em is busy and signs, ‘If you’re ever interested in learning to move more quietly, I’d be happy to teach.’
Em: Can I get a clue where the server might be from diagnostics I can run from here, or are there physical cables to trace …?
Kassil: You’re pretty sure, based on the data you can retrieve, that you know exactly where the servers for the crashed network are.
Kassil: SN-67.
Alasdair signs, “That’s a hopeless project.”
Ananda shrugs, ‘If you say so.’
Ananda eyes the floor speculatively, signs, ‘Do you hear the scratching down there?’
Ananda: (SN-67 is down the main southwards hallway. We went east.)
Alasdair shakes his head and signs, “I think that’s just for you.”
Kassil: If you check that huge lovely list of data Alasdair got from Oracle for you, SN apparently means ‘Systems Network’.
Ananda nods. ‘What was with the cat back there? I didn’t see or hear it.’
Em: I share this with the others, that the system had a cataclysmic event but the hard drive seems intake and might be salvageable for data…over at SN 67
Alasdair shakes his head and signs, “Nor did I. That must be Em’s.”
Ananda shrugs, nods. ‘Anything for you?’
Em: Well, it’s also for Science. there’s some neat experimental data to review as is
Alasdair: “Nothing. Yet.”
Em: But I’m curious if there’s records what was going on at the time of the disaster, which is obscure.
Ananda: (That last was signed to Alasdair.)
Kassil: So, going to dig around this room further, or…?
Em: I’m a bit worried about dealing with the wierdness here after finding out what similar wierdness did to the crew in the last area, myself…
Em: Unless anyone has some bold ideas for safely discerning stuff here…
Ananda nods acknowledgement to Alasdair, then turns to Em and whispers aloud, “The bit with Circe didn’t put you off already?”
Em acks and checks her pcomm for the message from earlier
Em: (Harrow-gram for you…)
Ananda waits for Em to finish tinkering with her P-Comm.
Ananda ‘s eyes flick to the ceiling.
Kassil: Alasdair and Ananda see Em put a hand to her headpiece.
Alasdair raises an eyebrow at Em.
Em hrms. "Listen. Email from nowhere and no one again. Mean anything?
Em passes her pcomm to Alasdair (motions to give it to Ananda and Serek when he’s done)
Kassil: Does Alasdair listen?
Em: "It’s just a song.
Em: "curious if anyone knows more about it
Ananda will give a listen, when it comes around to her.
Alasdair will also listen.
Kassil: The file she’s got loaded plays some exceptionally beautiful, almost ethereal music. It’s a bit eerie, though.
Em: (It’s Circe’s muzak for her voice mail in Hell o_o)
Em: (also shares the “looks like a wielding equation” too, see if it makes sense to anyone)
Kassil: Em also shares a picture that contains a staggeringly complicatd mathematical formula.
Ananda listens a couple of times over, and sends herself a copy. She whispers, “I don’t know what it is, but I like it. Might be something encoded in that crackle at the edge of hearing; it doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the music.”
Alasdair sends himself a copy, as well.
Ananda copies off the image, with only the comment “Complicated.”
Ananda looks to Alasdair for his opinion on the image.
Alasdair squints at the equation. “I can only understand pieces, not the whole. I don’t know what it’s for.”
Ananda whispers, “Same here.”
Ananda shrugs and gives Em’s P-Comm back.
Alasdair: “Maybe when we get back, we can compare notes.”
Ananda: “Sure. In the mean time, I think we’re done here. SM-88-F next?”
Alasdair nods.
Kassil: (Aww, you’re learning to not play with the random exhibits of screaming madness.)
Ananda: (I want a sample of the air-kelp, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get one.)
Kassil: Well, if you have a sampling kit/container…
Alasdair: ( No, we’re following the “don’t breach containment” mantra. ;) )
Kassil: :D
Kassil: Surely they’re all totally harmless and inert. ;)
Ananda: (If there was a glove-box setup, then I’d give it a try.)
Kassil: Well, then. Let’s see if we get the last two parts of the east wing out of the way next week.
Kassil: 170 CDP, for now.
Ananda: Yay, CDP.
Kassil: Ananda has plans for her CDP.
Alasdair: As do I
Kassil: Excellent.
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
Serek
175 CDP
Total: 5905
Kassil: Okay then.
Kassil: Everyone but Tierce is here, and she’s asleep after doing part of the move to her new temporary digs.
Kassil: Last session ended with everyone commenting about peculiar physical sensations they experienced while in ICS-667, a room that no longer seems to have any function worth mentioning.
Em: (still laments we can’t sleep there For Science :) )
Em: (but you can’t report data if you’re not alive alas)
Ananda: (You can sleep there if you want. I’ll stand watch.)
Kassil: I believe you were intending to move on toward DSS-447-K as your next goal?
Em nods
Ananda: The blue-coded room at the end of this corridor, yes.
Kassil: Okay.
Kassil: So, any questions? (Answers neither promised not certified.)
Ananda: (What’s your guesstimate for when the last of us completely loses touch with reality? ;) )
Kassil: Define reality, first.
Ananda: (Consensus reality.)
Kassil: In that case, you’re already hosed.
Ananda: (Oops. Somehow I missed that mile-marker.)
Kassil: (Or did you?)
Ananda: (Well, the NPCs still seem to agree that Weird Things Happen, here. And we’re still somewhat consistent with one another.)
Kassil: All right then. If everyone’s done growing as people and evolving as mutants, you’re leaving the melted room of weird sensations.
Alasdair walks a little faster than is strictly necessary to get out of the strangely melted section.
Ananda is, yes. As quietly and observantly as possible, given the evidence of security breach just outside.
Em: Follows in her typical wont as rearguard ninja wannabe
Kassil: The hallway is exactly as you passed it on the way into the room, reaching the main passage with no trouble.
Ananda will continue south, if there are no further indications of fighting to study.
Alasdair follows a couple steps behind Ananda
Em follows as well
Kassil: The southerly stretch extended for roughly two hundred meters; Em and Ananda both note that the blast doors appear to be getting heavier after the halfway mark, and there’s a glaze of some kind of the ceramacrete. The air also picks up a faint smell of organic decay.
Ananda sniffs.
Alasdair stops to use a sample kit to examine, record, and capture some of the strange glaze.
Ananda: (Is the door at the end of the hall heavy-duty, or just a door?)
Kassil: The door at the end of the hall is actually around a small corner. You can’t see it just yet.
Kassil: Alasdair, you manage to chip loose some flakes of the glaze. It’s glittery in the available light, with a subtle rainbow effect.
Ananda ghosts onwards, at earliest opportunity. She doesn’t quite wait for Alasdair to do so.
Alasdair: ( :P )
Em follows, wondering again at the scale of the incursion that overwhelmed the base
Ananda: (Curiousity has her by the throat. ;) )
Alasdair raises an eyebrow as he scrambles to catch up to Ananda.
Kassil: As Ananda approaches, the edge of the side-passage to the door comes into view; it appears melted at first, until enough comes into view that the faintly pink color of it becomes clear, with a fine layer of dark-hued fuzz on it. Whatever the stuff is, it grew through the door, engulfing the massive bank-lock vault door, and appears to cover surfaces of the room beyond.
Em: Am I familiar with any natural process of oxidation/chemical spills with construction materials that leavea a pink residue?
Kassil: You’re familiar with plenty, and you’re pretty sure this isn’t just a stain or smear.
Ananda pauses and looks at the fuzz, nonplussed.
Alasdair squints and frowns at the fuzz.
Em: So this isn’t some arcane crystalization from acid or other corrosion or something?
Kassil: You’re quite sure it’s something else, Em.
Alasdair: ( The door’s open, then? )
Kassil: Yes.
Kassil: The door’s probably wedged pretty firmly, at that; the substance the fuzz is growing from has filled the area around the hinges with half-melted loops and sheets.
Em blinks “this looks like hair. Any way of telling if it’s attached to some sort of creature or something still alive ?”
Em gets out her respirator given her wretchedly weak lungs from her inbred cultist forbears
Alasdair half turns toward Ananda. “Want a sample?”
Ananda is already digging for a sample container. “Was just going for one, yeah.”
Ananda: “Have a better method than just cutting some off?”
Alasdair raises a hand and separates a roughly palm-size chunk from the wall and floats it over to Ananda.
Kassil: The segment comes loose with a soft sucking and tearing sound, both the detached piece and the hole dribbling a thick crimson liquid that looks like half-congealed blood.
Ananda holds the sample container open until the material is tidily packed inside.
Alasdair: “Juicy.”
Ananda: “Smells like something in here’s been dead a while. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was this.”
Em: …so this fuzz grew through the door?
Kassil: you all notice that the hole on the wall slowly stops oozing after about half a minute, with a thin white film forming over the damage.
Kassil: Through the open door.
Ananda eyes the ‘healing’ wound. “Huh.”
Alasdair: ( Oh. Through the doorWAY. I was a lot more horrified than was warranted. )
Em: (hopefully my earlier questions make more sense now )
Em: (They were attacked by….feral muppets.. o_o)
Kassil: There’s no indication as to whether or not the door was closed when the material originally pushed through the doorway.
Alasdair taps his chin and hmms at the scabbing wound.
Alasdair: “I wonder…”
Kassil: (For one, the surfaces of both the doorway and the door are all enclosed in the fleshy mass.)
Kassil: (Plenty of room to walk though if you want, though.)
Em: Hold it. the way its reacting. is it still alive ….?
Ananda uses the tip of her dagger to prick the surface of the runaway skin(?), watching carefully for any sign of response. Kassil: A droplet of red liquid wells up where Ananda pricks the material, but there doesn’t seem to be an direct reaction. The goo dries into a scab-like crust with surprising speed.
Ananda next uses her blade to try and lift some of it away from the wall. See if it’s the same on both sides.
Alasdair points a finger at another nearby patch of the stuff and tries to freeze solid a fist-sized chunk.
Alasdair: 62 damage
Kassil: Ananda, you manage to pry the edge up, but it appears to have grown into the wall – you can see thin, root-like structures stretching as you try to pry the mass loose.
Ananda takes pictures.
Kassil: There’s a shimmer of thermal energy around Alasdair’s hand as he flash-freezes a fist-sized portion of the fleshy material. Frost rimes over it, and the material peels back from the frozen part, dribbling more crimson liquid.
Em: Would you like me to pull the whole bit off the wall and hold it in the air for you to study, Ananda?
Ananda: “Not at the moment, thanks.”
Ananda paces a bit.
Alasdair: “I wouldn’t suggest handling it directly. Whatever it is, it’s alive.”
Ananda: “What it puts me in mind of is a cancer of some sort.”
Kassil: There’s a clunk as the frozen piece falls away from the wall. The hole is already partly sealed with whitish new growth.
Alasdair: “Well, it wouldn’t be that hard to clean the hallway, at least.”
Em: maybe Alasdair and I should just yank the whole thing free and we haul it back to the site for study. it’s kind of beyond our field analysis abilities I think?
Ananda: "Not yet. Let’s have a look inside, before we disturb it too much.
Kassil coughs.
Kassil: Em?
Em: (but it’s PINK. And evil )
Kassil: It isn’t just out here.
Ananda: (It covers the entire floor inside, yes?)
Alasdair: “I, uh, don’t really want to walk on it.”
Em: (It couldn’t be more than an elephant or few worth? Alasdair and I are up to that I figured?)
Em: (maybe with rest breaks…?)
Kassil: It more-or-less, as you peer through the doorway, engulfs the floor, walls, and dangles in ropy strands from the roof. Oddly, there appear to be intact computer workstations at a few points around the room.
Ananda grins. “Make us etherial, then we’ll float. And quite possibly walk out through it, if it gets uppity.”
Kassil: The most impressive part, however, is how the fleshy strands wrap around yellow-white bars that form a cage around a sizzling white point of light in the middle of the room.
Alasdair shudders. “What if something in there did this to an employee?”
Em: (Spell: Transmute Flesh to Pink o_o)
Kassil: As you all watch, there’s a discharge that resembles lightning from the point of light to the bars; the ropy strands wrapped around the specific bar twitch and contract in what looks like a muscle spasm.
Ananda: “If you see anything in there that says ‘Eat Me’ or ‘Drink Me’, don’t.”
Kassil: Visual Detection checks from anyone looking into the room?
Ananda is currently appraising the room for things worth investigating.
Em: Is trying to figure out if there’s any sign the computers are powered on, and then, what the heck that point of light looks like, does it resemble the thing that flew off from the locker room?
Kassil: The area at the base of the ‘cage’ and the fleshy section of the floor directly under the point of light appears to be stained with a goo that you can’t quite name a color for.
Kassil: The computers appear to be powered up, and the point of light looks nothing like the flying purple crystal.
Kassil: Ananda, particularly, notices that she can’t manage to focus directly on the point of light; it’s as if she’s trying to look into her own blind spot.
Ananda frowns and turns her head back and forth trying to get a good look at the light source.
Em: If this thing doesn’t have a network connection, going ethereal will make analysis hard. (So the cage with the lightning generator in the middle of the room fits in as sort of the centerpiece the computers are arranged around?)
Kassil: Em: Yes.
Kassil: So far, the only reaction you’ve seen from the fleshy stuff is when the discharge hit the bar.
Em: Alasdair, could you make some sort of fake-human decoy to see how the pink stuff reacts to being tread on? (or for that matter if the thing in the cage will shoot lightning at anything moving near it)
Ananda: “It’s not lightning. Smells wrong.”
Alasdair: “Sadly, my nigh-godlike powers don’t yet allow me to create lving beings. I consider it a personal failing.”
Ananda looks wry, but says nothing.
Em: What about something the size and weight of a person , kind of like a golem?
Em: maybe do it up with mannikin like covering for extra realism
Kassil: The first hole, which Alasdair made ripping the substance loose, seems to have filled in with pale, uneven scar tissue.
Alasdair: “I could manage some inert stone or water.”
Em: I’m thinkin the pink stuff is hopefully not very intelligent. the light-entity I’m less sure about, I presume if it has a mind, it’s not letting you speak to it ?
Ananda: “Hn. So why don’t we just pull this stuff off the wall and floors, and fold it up to give ourselves space to walk?”
Alasdair: “I’m not mentally poking a living carpet. I don’t need to know how lax the maid service has been these last 150 years.”
Em: (The volume it’s covering is quite extensive ?like at least an elephant’s worth?)
Ananda: (And the room is about 30×30 meters.)
Em: Understandable, Alasdair, but what about the thing throwing energy bolts at the pink thing?
Kassil: (Mainly because those were fine, hair-like ‘roots’ at the edge, but the only structural material you see are the yellow-white shafts in the middle the fleshy substance is looped around. It’s supporting its own probably-fairly-impressive weight on the walls and floors.)
Em: Knowing if its a genie in a bottle or just a mad rat with energy abilities could be handy especially if it shoots through the bars at us…
Alasdair: “Okay, but stand behind me for a bit.”
Em does so with relief and does her best to imitate a boulder
Ananda moves back to observe.
Alasdair summons a cascade of harmless high-voltage low-amperage bolts to wash over the pink stuff in the hall.
Kassil: The material twitches and jiggles as the electrical energy washes over it, giving the impression of a massive blob of pink gelatin having muscle spasms.
Ananda watches, faintly disgusted.
Alasdair: “Well, that puts me off Jello for at least a year.”
Kassil: (Or, alternately, a uge mass of quivering Spam in a mild earthquake.)
Ananda: “Yes.”
Ananda: (With hair.)
Ananda: “Moving like that, I’d guess that it has no rigid internal structures at all.”
Alasdair: “But some manner of muscle action.”
Kassil: There’s some residual twitching for about five minutes after Alasdair finishes Wielding.
Ananda: “Yes. Think you can paralyze it?”
Alasdair: “Maybe this is someone’s answer to an animal-friendly steak?”
Ananda barks a laugh. “Could be.”
Kassil: There’s a crackling sound, and a very high-pitched whistling, before some goo splatters to the floor under the point of light.
Kassil: It’s a color of some kind, but you can’t fit a name to it.
Alasdair hmms. “I could try. Not sure it’s a singular organism, exactly.”
Ananda: “Hmm.” She paces some more.
Em: (returns and tries to scan with her pcomm in case the thing in the cage is unjammed and happens to send/receive on any frequency she can with her tools and pcomm)
Kassil: Your Pcomm is surprisingly quiet. You can pick up a thin signal of some kind, but the data is either gibberish or heavily encrypted.
Kassil: It doesn’t seem to be coming from the point source, when you try triangulating.
Ananda notices Em fiddling with her P-Comm and has an idea. Gets her own and sets it to record video…
Em tries to decrypt the “hypothetical signal”
Kassil: Em matches the signal up with the network signal from the residential rooms on the top floor, just attenuated and somewhat garbled.
Alasdair tries to paralyze the quivering mass with fear.
Em: Any way of assessing what’s causing the inteference?
Em: (Images of the Great Maw flood its soul)
Kassil: A section of the mass out to roughly nine meters from Alasdair quivers and stiffens.
Kassil: The ‘paralyzed’ surface develops a distinctly pebbled texture.
Kassil: Em, not really. You could record the signal for a while and see what you can come up with on later analysis.
Alasdair pauses to recharge his Endurance while the scientists ponder.
Em does so
Kassil: (Soon, Em is going to have to start buying implanted memory.)
Em: (I want all the data. is there I could boost the signal, possibly with wielding assistance (MORE POWER!) to reach back to my workstation at St. Mary’s?)
Kassil: (Nope. Saint Mary is well out of range. You could always connect to it if you leave it running, though, when you’re sure you’re connecting to it and not being futzed with by a huge mass of rock overhead.)
Kassil: So…
Kassil: Ananda?
Ananda makes a terse gesture with her right hand, and floats her P-Comm above it.
Kassil: And Ananda successfully levitates her P-comm with a faintly visible ripple of kinetic force.
Ananda: “Em, can I patch the video from this into your P-Comm?”
Em: Certainly
Alasdair is curious to see where this is going.
Ananda does so.
Ananda then flits her P-Comm around the room in a full circuit.
Ananda manipulates it by equal parts what she can see, and the video feed on Em’s screen.
Kassil: (For a group full of danger-oblivious types, you’re acting /almost/ as paranoid as the Wastelanders.)
Ananda: (Animate cancer is squicky.)
Kassil: (Tsk. Declaring it cancer without any proper biopsies.)
Alasdair: ( Living carpet is apparently where Alasdair draws the line. )
Kassil: (Alasdair is on his way to becoming as paranoid as Nik.)
Em: (I think its justified given we have a mysterious possible wielder somehow imprisoner by strange eldritch looking monster.)
Kassil: (Only Nik has never seen the bizarre shit Alasdair has.)
Kassil: Em: This assessment fascinates me.
Em: (plus its pink for extra spooky factor. This feels extra unnatural which just ramps up my paranoia…)
Kassil: It’s only faintly pink. _
Kassil: And scar-tissue-white in the places where you’ve damaged it.
Ananda: (Does anything interesting come up on the video feed that we can’t see from the door?)
Kassil: Depends. Where are you aiming it?
Ananda: Making a circuit of the room at head-height, as though I was walking it.
Kassil: Ananda, you can make out that the computer terminals all appear to be logged in.
Kassil: Also, whenever you aim your P-comm at the point-source, the display gets staticky.
Ananda: “Huh. Someone forgot to log out.”
Ananda has a look at whatever’s on the screens.
Em: Oh that’s what you’re doing! Clever. it does let us get some assessment if going in there has any particularly good data shinies worth the risk
Kassil: They appear to be open to measurement screens. Most of them are displaying complex wave patterns or scrolling lists of numbers you’re not able to identify at a glance, but a few have text files open behind some of the foreground windows.
Ananda: (Can I manipulate the keyboards with my current Effect, or just the P-Comm?)
Em: "May I try to operate the keyboards and inputs from here with my telekinesis? I’d like to see if this is linked to the rest of the network, there was that mysterious “secondary network” I was searching for earlier, this may be it…
Kassil: Ananda: Your control isn’t fine enough to manipulate things with that level of dexterity.
Ananda: “Go for it. Just tell me what screen I should point the camera at.”
Kassil: Em might be able to pull it off if she tries hard enough.
Kassil: Or she might break the keyboard.
Em: If I do, and we get closer, I can probably fix it
Em: Since I have electronics too. or is that a reasonable assessment?
Kassil: You might be able to fix it, yes.
Ananda: (Or just swap a keyboard from another workstation.)
Alasdair: “Or we just peel the carpet back enough to get at it directly.”
Em: Okay, I’ll try.
Em: I’m leery about going near the thing in the cage without knowing more about its nature
Em: Energy/Control: here goes everything
Kassil: And she coasts just over the finish line.
Em: I check the open text file first, just to see what it says
Kassil: Em flexes her fingers, wrapped in a faint, shimmering field of silvery energy, as a matching bubble of energy flickers into existence around the keyboard in question.
Ananda focuses the camera as appropriate.
Kassil: The open log file is a plain-English translation of what’s going on here; it seems that whoever was last using this workstation was a researcher of dimensional anomalies and apertures, working with their team to find ways to stabilize and exploit a small fracture in the multiversal structure. Experiment logs indicate that what they’re doing is mostly harmless – opening a tiny window onto highly divergent realities where the laws of physics are completely different. They’ve only managed to stabilize it for about five seconds at a time, according to the logs, and every now and then the alternates have some kind of native life that tries to get through the opening.
Em: “mostly harmless” isn’t o_o
Ananda: (“Mostly harmless.” Where have I heard that before…)
Kassil: Without fail, the logs indicate, the lifeforms prove unable to survive in this universe and disintegrate.
Kassil: When unstable, things still try to get through, but apparently the unstable anomaly acts like trying to crawl through a monofilament fractal cheese grater.
Ananda: (Squishy.)
Kassil: The final log cuts off partway through in a mush of random letters.
Ananda finishes reading. “Uh…huh.”
Em: Here’s the most recent video log on system….
Kassil: The file opens up to a steady view of the room, sans any living carpeting and plus several people at the bottom of the view. The image is a bit staticky, and there’s notably nothing caging the anomaly.
Kassil: There is, however, a complex-looking metal device above and below it.
Em watches in trepidation and sympathy for poor dead researchers
Alasdair wonders if he could sell the upcoming events as a horror Vid.
Kassil: The video continues on for a few minutes, with a ‘test run’ being declared by a tall man with a crew cut at one of the other terminals; the static goes away during that interval, and you can hear them rattling off information on the universe on the other side, which is apparently under the influence of an incredibly high level of gravity.
Kassil: After the anomaly destabilizes again, the crew go about logging and translating the data they’ve collected when you hear an incredibly low thrumming sound being picked up by the recording system. No one seems to notice it.
Ananda: (Below the range of hearing of normal people?)
Kassil: Ananda estimates it to be fairly well into the infrasonic.
Kassil: About twenty seconds later, the humming has started to make the picture vibrate very slightly; a dazling pulse of black-and-white energy bursts up from the floor, covered by a writhing mass of rainbow lightning as it sweeps from floor to roof in about a second.
Alasdair: ( Passing through the anomaly? )
Kassil: It takes about two seconds for screaming to break out, as you see the research team all begin to soften and slump toward the ground, out of sight. A researcher you haven’t seen – a woman with black hair and pale skin – lurches around in front of the camera, already looking half-melted before she collides with the camera and the recording ends.
Kassil: (Yes, but to no clear visible effect on the anomaly.)
Alasdair: “Well.”
Kassil: (The only voice before the screaming starts is the same male who called the test, who gets out a “What the f-”.)
Ananda eyes the pink carpet, speculatively. “Alasdair, could you check whether anything in there has a mind left to make inquiries of? Don’t interface with them, just listen.”
Alasdair grimaces. “Em, what’s the last date on the logs? If they’ve been like… this for decades, I’m not eager to see what’s left.”
Kassil: The video log is dated 150 years ago.
Em: However, if things come through her periodically
Em: I’d tend to think we’d find traces of a few (or dozens?) of these things or similar under this one
Alasdair: “Oh no. No no no. Not going to happen. That’s a mystery I’m not unwrapping.”
Alasdair: “I’ll put them all to rest, but that’s as far as it goes.”
Em pokes around trying to find out what routines control that cage around the hole, and what the cage does
Kassil: Em: The cage didn’t exist in the footage.
Alasdair: ( Or where it even came from. )
Ananda: “Hnnnn… That’s the same date as the video from the place with the pillar and the Geists. Geisten? Whatever.”
Em: yes, but it looks in the footage like there’s somethign around the hole that might have been the undeployed cage?
Em: if so, I want to look for the controls for it in the system
Kassil: Anyone who looks, though, can see that the fleshy mass thickens near the anomaly, about where the weird-looking mechanical thing was in the video.
Kassil: It looked more like two polished metal disces held in place by a lot of struts and cables, rather than an undeployed cage.
Alasdair: ( Is there an obvious structure holding the cage in place or is it just floating there? )
Em: Ah. Well, still the cage came from somewhere, I’m going to check if there’s some sign in the computer system if it controls some cryptic hardware, and if there’s any helpfiles or documentation on whatever it is?
Kassil: Poking around, Em can find what appears to be a control system for the ‘Dimensional Anomaly Stabilization System’.
Ananda retrieves and tinkers with her P-Comm. “The footage of the original Geist happened about two hours after this. Maybe we have the source of that massive Omega spike that kicked off events there?”
Kassil: (The cage appears to be anchored in place by the looping strands of flesh at the top and bottom.)
Em: (waits for the return of the spy eye unless we’re done investigating this …)
Kassil: (More than one person has Being and Insight, if Ananda is REALLY curious… ;) )
Ananda: (Yeah, I’m thinking about that…)
Ananda returns her camera to its former position.
Kassil: There’s another crackling-whistling sound, and more goo of nameless color splatters under the anomaly.
Em: Should we back up and see what happens if we briefly release the containment field? maybe we could help the thing go home?
Alasdair shoves an open palm toward the cage and sanitizes it, evaporating the flesh above and below it.
Kassil: Damage?
Ananda: “I doubt there’s anything that has a home to go to.”
Alasdair: 61 Void damage
Kassil: A column of smoky dark energy links the floor and roof around the anomaly for a moment, a soft hissing the only sound as the cage and the flesh holding it crumble into dust, exposing the gleaming metal structures from the video.
Kassil: The anomaly is completely unperturbed, while the goo that keeps dribbling out boils wildly at the touch of the void energy without seeming to crumble away.
Alasdair: “Huh. They were bones. Interesting.”
Ananda raises eyebrows. "Innteresting.
Kassil: After the Void effect ceases, the goo subsides again, smeared across the lower metal disc.
Kassil: The edges of the flesh are leaking crimson, although already pale scar tissue is forming across the sharply-cut surface.
Ananda sends her P-Comm around that, to record the devices above and below. (Since Em doesn’t seem to be using it at the moment.)
Alasdair: “Should we clean out the room and do some proper investigation?”
Kassil: (Or does Ananda intend to mindscan the meat?)
Ananda: “What’s left to investigate except the ..stuff that’s probably not people any more?”
Alasdair: “The logs of dimensional instabilities might yield some important discoveries in the nature of our universe.”
Ananda: “I’m sure Em can pull those into a data stick without our actually needing to go in there.”
Ananda glances at Em for confirmation.
Em: Well, I’d like to work at the system a bit more, see if can find out if this is the secondary network. But yes, if we just want to take the directly relevant data and leave that should be feasible. (how much storage do I have left? given I would have emptied earlier trips’ finds onto the mainframe at home?)
Kassil: Em would need to spend some time coaxing the data into something she could copy – these systems aren’t anything close to store-bought hardware. Still, an hour or so and she could probably retrieve all data from the systems, or even completely copy the entire system into a backup.
Em: Could we do it with this telekinetic operation setup?
Ananda: (Not a particularly high cost, except for the fact that this area smells like something rotting.)
Kassil: If you wanted to extended the duration of your effect, Em, you probably could.
Kassil: (As well as Ananda’s wielding to keep her camera floating.)
Em: I admit, knowing what’s behidn the bars, I endorse that solution
Kassil: The bars that no longer exist? :D
Ananda: Exactly.
Em: Ooops. I thought the bars had been scoured, not disintegrated o_o
Em: yes.
Em: let’s do this in this manner. do I need to make another check?
Kassil: The bars were made of bone. They went with the flesh.
Kassil: And the only time you don’t need to make a Wielding check is if you absolutely cannot fail it.
Em: okay, well, I’ll keep this one going for another, what 30 minutes left, Ananda will need to pass her check when her duration runs out
Em: My check, presuming Ananda doesn’t injure herself …
Em: ouch
Kassil: Missed by two.
Em: how bad do I mess things up
Ananda: (You do not short-circuit.)
Kassil: Hmm… Looks like you lucked out.
Kassil: You didn’t do anything troublesome, but the range dropped to Self.
Kassil: You can give yourself an awesome backrub, but that’s about it.
Kassil: You can try it again, if you’d like.
Ananda: Hah.
Ananda refreshes her telekinetic effect, when the time comes.
Em breathes deeply and tries again, certain she just needs to reach a bit more
Kassil: Well done.
Em has to resist the urge to make some lewd pelvic thrusts in the direction of the dangerously situated machinery against the potential backrub effect >_>
Em: so computer tech roll now?
Alasdair: ( but it’s the pelvic thrusts that really drive em insaaaaane. )
Em: or it just gets done?
Em: (fistbump)
Ananda: (If a CompTech roll is needed, we could add buffs in the spirit of making you more efficient.)
Kassil: You pulled it off the second time. You can make a Computer Tech check, now, to connect Ananda’s P-comm to the system and download the data. (So if Alasdair wants to do the buffing…)
Alasdair: ( Oh, yeah. Such buffs will I giiive. )
Em stands by to receive her Awesome by Proxy
Ananda parks her P-Comm in front of whichever terminal Em is working on, and leaves it there.
Alasdair makes everyone even more awesome.
Alasdair cranks Em’s Thought State into Deific.
Kassil hammers out a drumroll.
Alasdair cranks Em’s Emotion State into Zen Master.
Em: So…what’s the bottom line?
Kassil: I believe he’s still augmenting you.
Alasdair cranks Em’s CompTech into 1337.
Alasdair cranks Em’s CompTech further into 1337.
Em: I will ferret like there’s a room filled with nothing but pvcpipe and mice loose in them.
Ananda waits for Em to thoroughly enter data-ferret mode, watching the former-persons but not really seeing them.
Alasdair leans against a wall, recharges, and plays a game on his P-Comm while Em does her thing.
Em thinks the longer we explore the site, the more we learn about the extent of “Worst Case Scenario”
Kassil: Em, in her superhumanly augmented state, finds it easy to discern how the operating system is a wildly modified and evolved version of FreeBSD, and extracts the entire system’s relatively small data footprint, safely sealing it into a virtual machine on Ananda’s P-comm.
Ananda sighs and turns to Alasdair. “If whatever’s left of these people,” she flicks a hand at the mass of flesh, “is suffering, then we should put them out of their misery. But we don’t know that.”
Alasdair nods. “But, if it happened to you, wouldn’t you want someone to make sure anyway?”
Ananda quirks an eyebrow, “I’d expect my remains to be used as a specimen, until every bit of information had been squeezed out of them.”
Ananda: “If there aren’t minds left in there, we have a room full of specimens.”
Ananda: “It would be wasteful to destroy them needlessly.”
Kassil: (Alasdair just has the heebie-jeebies.)
Alasdair: “Yes, and if an experiment fails, it should be euthanized quickly and humanely.”
Em: Good news guys. There’s a cryptic little network file in here that may be the key to that “secondary network” I’ve been looking for. Bad news is I would need my mainframeat St. Mary’s to confirm/refute that hope.
Ananda: “Just because it didn’t turn out the way you hoped doesn’t mean it’s failed. That still depends on whether it’s suffering.”
Em: Well, it’s hard to say that its a failure for sure. There may be unpredictable psychological/neurological effects from this sort of transmogrification
Ananda spares a glance and a nod for Em.
Alasdair smirks at Em. “Which Saint Mary’s?”
Em: I mean, when you start splicing another reality into ours and changing the operating parameters it becomes very fraught to take anything for granted…
Em: of course, these might be extremely dangerous to work with too
Em looks wry "Whichever version still has my Stuff. An extra Me running around, if she’s not much crazier than I am would be an asset…
Alasdair: "I would suggest cramming as much of this “meat” into a sample container as we can and putting the rest to, er, rest. We still don’t know if the presumed Omega effect had some lasting contagious element to it."
Em: (Do we all know Serek’s an Omega initiate?)
Kassil: One would hope, since she animated a rat corpse.
Alasdair: ( Party trick, nothing more. ;) )
Em: (I do love your sense of humour :) )
Em: Serek, you’re famliar with Omega, do you have any idea if we should be worried about contagion?
Kassil: Serek is unfamiliar with the idea of Omega energy being infectuous.
Alasdair: “Does that black-and-whte flashy rainbow thing on the video jive with an Omega release?”
Em: Well you know…we could try hooking up some sort of Mind Machine Interface gear to one of these, back at base.
Em: Then we could communicate safely without having to risk murder or brain burn
Em: so I would say take one back to base now since it is a somewhat urgent and dangerous matter, and then come back for the others (or their euthanization/disposal) immediately after?
Kassil: As far as Serek can tell, the energy in the video doesn’t really seem to have any kind of Source alignment, but she’s never seen a release of Wielding energy on that kind of scale.
Em: That’s my suggestion anyway
Kassil: Em: One of what?
Alasdair: “I’m not sure I follow your categorization of ‘one of these.’ It seems like a giant, comingled entity at this point.”
Kassil: The entire room is an integral mass.
Em: Oh.
Kassil: There’s some differentiation in the hue of individual areas of skin tone and hair color, but they’re broad areas.
Em: So I guess we need to bring the MMI gear here then….
Em: unless I can cobble something together with my kit?
Kassil: And you’d need to find something to hook it into.
Ananda: “…What would you attach it to?”
Em: Experiment. Try various regions of tissue, this isn’t a perfectly homogenous mass is it?
Em: it might well fail, but it might work
Alasdair: “I’m not sure what more there is to learn that a full sample container wouldn’t tell us back at the lab. It’ll show female human DNA with some likely cancer mutation and protein synthesis issues.”
Em: Though I’d ask for some support people for computer tech because it might be challenging to decode the results…
Kassil: (Alasdair, desperately trying to avoid any kind of mental contact.)
Em: (with good reason! )
Ananda gives a brief headshake, “Takes too long. We could either hover over it, or pass the buck.”
Ananda: “If anyone else was willing to come down here and assist in the first place.”
Ananda pushes off of the wall she’s been leaning on, and cracks her knuckles.
Alasdair shrugs, “They’d be murdered and eaten by the thing stalking us from the shadows.”
Ananda: “That, too.”
Em: Ah, is there some new threat after us, Alasdair ?
Ananda: “It won’t feel right to do this without having checked. Whatever assistance you can give, Alasdair?”
Alasdair: “No, just the thing that’s been watching us since we got back down here.”
Alasdair shields Ananda’s mind as best he can (+5 bonus on Will Resist checks).
Ananda gives Alasdair an Asian-styled bow. She starts to use the dojo version of it, but corrects herself.
Ananda: “Alright then…”
Em “May your skills suffice” she says quietly but earnestly
Ananda braces herself and holds a mental finger to the wind.
Em: (Dead average, could have been worse >_> )
Ananda: (I made this an easy check so that I wouldn’t get +duration as a failure state. >_> )
Ananda blinks. “Echoes. Some lot of them were thinking ‘The Engine’.”
Ananda nods to Alasdair, “The sample we’ve got will suffice. Go ahead and clean this up.”
Alasdair: “Okay, but you two should stand around the corner. Just in case.”
Kassil: (Area up 4 steps, sterilize this entire level of the Site.)
Ananda shrugs and goes. She doesn’t want to see this.
Em puts a hand on Ananda’s shoulder for a moment “that was brave. Sometimes, tragedy is.” and follows.
Ananda shrugs to Em, “Someone had to.”
Alasdair: ( What’s the distance to and dimensions of the room? )
Kassil: From outside, you have about 4 meters of Flesh. The room itself is 30×30 and about 15m high.
Alasdair sets of a Void bomb in the room, obliterating all life out into the hallway.
Alasdair: 59 Void damage
Kassil: There’s a soft hissing sound as the thing that used to be a team of people disintegrates, crumbling into a fine grey silt. The main bulk of it is destroyed, with a few scraps in the corners that quickly lose whatever blood-equivalent was in them, wilting where they sit. Countless holes and pits scar the walls, roof, and floor of the room in their wake.
Kassil: The ooze under the anomaly boils and churns wildly for several seconds before settling down, this time.
Ananda listens. Nods to herself, once.
Kassil: Okay, then.
Alasdair lets out a heavy sigh and turns back to the group. “Done or do you want to see what the flesh was engulfing?”
Ananda: “I’ll pass. Em?”
Em takes a look and murmurs quietly to Alasdair “is that ooze still extradimensional material?”
Alasdair: “Seems so. Might be worth taking back with us.”
Em: Indeed but…is it alive itself…?
Kassil: If nothing else, there’s the fact that it clearly has a color, but attempting to determine what the color is even like is impossible.
Alasdair: “It’s not alive. If it was, it would be been obliterated by now.”
Em: (If we’ve freed the Colour out of Space I am going to go flee to the pocket dimension with the ‘angel’ and serve it o_o)
Alasdair offers Em a sample kit.
Ananda: (Ha!)
Kassil: (Oh, come on, you think there’s anything that harmless in here? :D )
Alasdair: ( It’s all a matter of degrees. )
Ananda: (We already carted out the meatsack, before we knew what it was.)
Ananda: (That’s a class 5 biohazard incident waiting to happen.)
Alasdair: ( At least. )
Alasdair waggles the sample kit at Em.
Em has a go at collecting some, not being too famliar with the technique. She DOES however, try using telekinesis (same check as before )
Alasdair slides up to Ananda as soon as Em’s around the corner. “So, if you’d like to talk about it, just let me know. I’ve got some experience in the area and I’ve been known to make a not-unpalatable cup of tea.”
Kassil: Em finds the goo weirdly difficult to handle.
Em: It is not amicable to telekinesis ? o_O
Ananda nods, “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.” She’s unusually subdued.
Kassil: It keeps sliding through her telekinetic grasp, but she finally manages to get some of it into a container. It’s almost like she’s trying to use her hands to carry warm, churned-up jello.
Kassil: A little perturbingly, once she caps the container, the goo gathers into a sphere in the middle, not touching any of the sides, and doesn’t move from that central spot even if she shakes it violently.
Alasdair gives Ananda’s shoulder a companionable squeeze before peeking around the corner at Em’s antics.
Ananda moves a few steps off and sits on the floor to meditate.
Em struggles with it patiently and secures the cap on the sample container with TK after she’s done. she puts the case down with it nearby.
Em: Can I use void to scour the container off of anything icky/residue?
Alasdair checks his P-Comm.
Kassil: Oh, you didn’t get any on the outside.
Kassil: It was tricky, but all the goo you hefted went in.
Em puts her pack down and puts it in the middle of the back of it with the TK before letting the effect go
Alasdair closes his eyes and sighs before finally putting his P-Comm away.
Em rejoins the others
Ananda gets back to her feet and indicates the hall with a tilt of her head. “Shall we?”
Kassil: So, what now?
Alasdair checks his map. “Off to MR-068?”
Em: Pray the therapist is more useful for this than my other concerns. And off to MR-068.
Ananda: “Yes.”
Ananda leads on.
Alasdair follows on next to Ananda.
Kassil: Okay, then. We shall pick up next time with your approach to that room.
Meatfloor awards 175 blood-stained CDP for all.
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
165 CDP
Total: 5730
Kassil: Last session, there were weird dreams, more than anything else, and Alasdair got rather drunk and freaked out.
Kassil: So.
Kassil: Em is training, this session.
Kassil: Who is doing what, otherwise?
Ananda picks Alasdair’s brain for more Wielding theory, and gets an additional tattoo.
Alasdair is also training. 21.6 hours.
Em: mine’s 21 hours :)
Ananda: 43.5h.
Kassil: Looks like most of another week is taken up with training, then.
Em: That’s fine, I need to do some extensive net searches if we even have any theories that match the hardwware I was working on last week
Em: yeesh. I am depressed over my colleague being in Hell o_o
Em: that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it
Kassil: Em, you don’t find anything relevant in the journals and archives you poke through.
Alasdair: It’s just Robohell, and you don’t know who’s in that brain.
Em: I have an eerie feeling this is her. And if we can heal her, we’ll get some badly needed answers.
Alasdair: ( The site is like Jeopardy: all the answers are questions. )
Em: (It’s the Village o_o Patrick McGoohan’s ghost runs it)
Kassil: No one who overhears the conversations chooses to comment on them, but over the course of the week Em develops a small bubble of personal space.
Ananda spends a little spare time working on the winged humanoid skeleton. Can she tell how close to baseline human it is? Kassil: As far an Ananda can tell, the skeleton’s genome is perfectly human.
Ananda: “Hmm.”
Em: (how do you mean, people are avoiding Em?)
Ananda tries to estimate its age from skeletal features.
Kassil: It’s subtle, but her obsession with ‘this thing is my former boss now trapped in digital hell’ seems to be making people uneasy around her.
Em: (They called me mad, mad! the FOOLS!)
Em: (darn other people making detection checks >_>)
Kassil: Ananda determines the skeleton belong to a child, probably. Or an adult with very childlike features.
Alasdair spends most of his time avoiding people and thinking dark thoughts.
Ananda: Really? What are the state of its growth plates? (Those are the cartillage zones in immature humans’ bones where skeletal growth happens; they calcify as you get older and pretty much vanish after someone reaches final adult size.)
Kassil: Not being a biologist, cthulhu fhtagn.
Ananda: Fair enough.
Em tries to figure out whom among the people around her is most likely to be empathic and open minded, if she challenges their skepticism.
Alasdair: ( Not it! )
Ananda doesn’t seem to think anything odd of Em’s sudden dedication.
Kassil: Em unfortunately only has a vague idea. She might be able to babble to one of the local cryptopsychiatrists if she really wanted.
Kassil: So, barring any more polymath psychosis…
Kassil: …What next?
Em ponders, she has a bit of spare time. She decides to book time with one, just to double check she’s not getting pathological without noticing
Ananda: Back to the Site, of course.
Alasdair: ( What are our options for retreiving or utilizing the likely-insane consciousness in the AI brain? )
Em: (we need me to get another week or two of experience points to have a good chance, if we want to do something now, I need an ueber suite of buffs for computer use and electronics probably too)
Em: (it doesn’t look LIKELY I’ll succeed, but if I have all that going, I might get lucky)
Ananda gives up on the skeleton for now, and turns it over for the bounty.
Kassil: You can try getting some of the local nerds to work on the problem. The offer to let them take at least part of the glory for discovery would likely get someone to swear themselves to secrecy. Or Em could dedicate herself to the problem for a while. Or you could carry it with you and hope to find something hidden in the Site that might be compatible.
Em: (another week or two, I’ll have more ranks and some general skill levels in teh field too)
Kassil: The skeleton causes a bit of a stir in the biology department, and Ananda is given a 10000T bounty for it.
Alasdair: ( We could try megaboosting Em again. )
Ananda distributes 2,500T to each of us.
Ananda: (Including Serek.)
Ananda: (Yeah, lets do that.)
Alasdair: Raising Fear State by 4 steps.
Ananda: I presume that our next lab stipend comes in as normal?
Kassil: Yes.
Alasdair: Raising Thought State by 4 steps.
Alasdair: +5 to Electronics Checks
Alasdair: +5 DPS to Electronics Checks
Em: (Stipend ? we get paid aside from whatever we drag in from the site?)
Ananda: (Lab stipend is for research expenses.)
Ananda: (Though every so often when it accumulates, I take a chunk and divvy it up among the lot of us for training.)
Kassil: So, Em’s total present bonuses are…?
Alasdair: +8 DPS on everything, +16 DPS on mental skills, +21 DPS and +5 on Electronics
Ananda dissects the rat that the whatever-it-was gave back to us, too. Has anything about it changed from standard, aside from decomposition and falling from the ceiling?
Kassil: The rat is about like you’d expect from a dead rat left laying in a cool area for a while.
Em: Would it help my computer work if I improved my interface with the brain first, do I think?
Em: and if so, is it possible for me to do so?
Kassil: There are traces of ceramacrete clinging to some of the rat’s fur.
Ananda: (Saaayy. Was there any sign of ceramecrete on the winged skeleton?)
Kassil: Em – you’re trying to kludge a connection to a not-really-known electronic technology, well enough to be able to coherently access it via your own hardware, without destroying it or your own equipment.
Kassil: Ananda: Nope.
Ananda: ‘kay.
Em: (nods) I’m wondering if it would be helpful to work on refining my kludge before working on the brain content side
Kassil: At this point, Em, you’re basically trying to pretend you’re in an action movie and hoping like hell that Alasdair’s boosts work out for you.
Em: Ah okay
Kassil: Which is what your Electronics roll, boosted 21 DPS and with a +5 bonus, is for.
Em: I also talk a bit beforehand with Alasdair, asking if he knows any way to heal someone of despair or emotional pain?
Kassil: Refine the kludge, do the access, and hope you’re elevated to the point needed. :D
Em: (nods) so should I roll electronics first, and then if that’s enough, I get to mak the computer tech check?
Kassil: Electronics is how you’re even accessing the system and retrieving the data.
Alasdair: ( You’re cobbling together an interface module. If that works, you get to do the fun stuff. )
Em: (ah okay. thanks for clarifying)
Em: Alright.
Em: gah
Em: hope I didn’t fry it
Jssra: (Great stuff, both of those.)
Kassil: After tinkering for an hour and a half, Em rigs up her kludged-together interface module to the access ports she identified previously; her adjustments seem to have made some small difference, as the flood of digital ‘screaming’ resolves into a semi-coherent flow of data that, if Em wants, can be saved in discrete chunks of analysis.
Em: Are the storage requirements exhorbitant?
Em: ie, is the faculty head going to be banging on the door if I log this?
Kassil: You can probably store half a dozen chunks without having to worry about data storage.
Alasdair: ( It’ll be the equivalent of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” ;) )
Kassil: You could boost Em’s Computer Tech check and see if she can determine what it is. ;)
Em: (it already had the boost, I presumed, if it didn’t, that was a 67 not a 72)
Alasdair: +5 to Computer Tech Checks.
Alasdair: +5 DPS to Computer Tech Checks.
Em: Okay. So. Now I try and analyze what’s going on inside the brain, taking a fairly cautious tack as is my wont.
Kassil: Over the course of the next several hours, Em works on one of the data chunks, eventually working out that the data is a binary ‘dumbing-down’ of a quaternary form of data. From what she pieces together, the data will, if assembled into a form that can be run, be a simulation of some kind.
Em: So…more work needed but this is the vague glimmers of the emerging picture so far?
Kassil: This one particular data chunk is a simulation program, if you can build something that can run a four-switch ‘fuzzy logic’ program.
Em: Hrm. I take it I’m going to need to do a fair bit of R&D to make such a tool. How would I go about it, and what (conservatively) is the time required likely to be, even doing six hours a day with Alasdair’s strap on brilliance in me?
Alasdair: ( So… not this year. )
Kassil: What Alasdair said.
Em: well darned.
Kassil: Again, you could take it with you and hope for something that can read it down in the Site, or you can talk the local geeks into working on it full-time.
Ananda: It sounds like an entire labs’ worth of careers to do, really.
Kassil: …Having the data to show them, and the analysis, will probably have /someone/ salivating to chew on it full-time.
Em: Yah. hrm.
Em: Morally I think we have to hang on to it for a bit and try to find something in the Site
Alasdair: ( Works for me. )
Ananda: (Sounds good.)
Em: if we can’t find it, the increase in time to solution will likely be small
Em: if we just subcontract it, we guarantee a LONG wait
Kassil: Mmkay.
Em: which is intolerable if someone is stuck in there.
Alasdair: ( It’s probably just the processor for one of the screen worlds. )
Kassil: So, packing the brain up. Are you going to just store the data clumps, or try to get someone to work on decoding it/trying to engineer a device to run it?
Ananda: No harm in letting someone else try.
Kassil: Then… Who’s going to talk to the geeks to try and get them to help?
Em: Probably not the one they think is crazy
Em: I nominate the friendly voice of sanity for the party :)
Kassil: …
Kassil: You have one?
Ananda looks around. Who, now?
Em: (yes, the Necrosi fits that bill. for our party. it’s that sort of party)
Alasdair has no idea who Em’s talking about.
Ananda will do it, but would appreciate a buff first. Might need to fake “sane” and “charasmatic”.
Kassil tries not to fall out of his chair laughing.
Kassil: Okay, so.
Alasdair kicks Ananda into high gear. +4 Fear State.
Kassil: Alasdair, presumably, is going to be waving his hands to channel his own fascination and obsession about Ananda such that others agree with him.
Alasdair: ( Largely, yes. )
Alasdair also amps Ananda’s Thought State by 4 steps.
Ananda: (Do I need to find people first, or do I know where the techgeeks hang out?)
Kassil: You’ll be doing a Gather Info to find a suitably underemployed group of geeks and nerds.
Em: (truly is going to think hard about whatever the St. Mary’s psych says to her about her “obsession”)
Ananda asks around about that, then.
Kassil: You find a few.
Ananda keeps looking. She knows there’s got to be more about than that.
Kassil: Or not.
Kassil: You find a few geeks who apparently were of ‘picked for the team absolutely last’ caliber who mostly spend their time coming up with amusing P-comm apps and playing virtual reality MMOGs while pretending to do research.
Kassil: There are roughly half a dozen of them, none of the highest caliber in the world.
Kassil: (In truth, none of them rate above mediocre.)
Kassil: So, then! The pitch!
Em: (Darned. we were supposed to have discovered something so important we got promoted by now so we could use Authority to get what we want and forget about this pansy coercion skill stuff :) )
Kassil: (Sorry, no Inquisitorial Rosettes available here.)
Ananda tries to pitch their data to the people she’s found as ’We’re pretty sure this is simulation output; if you can figure out how to run it, you can use the engine & setting for a game.’
Kassil: So… Make a Manipulation check.
Em: (One Game To Rule Them All!)
Ananda: (Speak to your audience’s interests.)
Kassil: They pick over your offered data dubiously for a bit, and after some conferring via texting they offer to fiddle with it as they get time, because it looks like it’ll take totally new hardware and they just don’t have the resources or time to devote fully to something like that.
Ananda: Eh, was worth a shot.
Ananda: (And next time Alasdair can try to charm people.)
Alasdair: ( Try, being the operative word. )
Em: (giggles, I’ll try to keep my insanity to myself for a bit and I’ll make the pitch next time, unless Alasdair’s eager to be sombre at them :) )
Em: (and ominous)
Ananda: (All the lot of us can do is try. ;) )
Kassil: Well. Ananda’s made the pitch. Does she take them up on it?
Ananda will give them a copy of all six data chunks, yes.
Kassil: Okay, then.
Ananda: (Do we have anything else to do before going back to the Site?)
Alasdair: ( Not that I’m aware of. )
Em: (if training’s finished and we’ve had no more spooky dreams, all I’m curious about is what the base psych thought of my concerns)
Kassil: The base psych is a very harried-looking bio-engineered who, after listening to Em, prescribes some rather strong sedatives and suggests taking them before bed each night.
Em: (ignores that of course treasuring her harrowed look)
Em: (well, rather, she sees she didn’t really get a very expert opinion, so she disregards it)
Kassil: I suspect she’s also a bit worried about the fact that she’s being told to take drugs.
Kassil: Okay! So.
Kassil: Onward?
Ananda: Onward! There are new worlds to explore.
Alasdair: Inward!
Em: (Yah, not happy about that either, but I’m not such a purist as to reject them out of hand if there were a truly pressing medical need beyond “shut up and stop taking time on my schedule please” )
Ananda: (That would be almost too Mormon of her. ;) )
Em: ( grins sardonically)
Kassil: All right, then. Do you leave in the morning?
Ananda: Yes.
Em: Yes.
Alasdair: Affermativo.
Ananda does that cheerful-morning-person thing, and is waiting for the others to meet her.
Em: (gets some more miscellaneous networking and computer/electronic tech parts just so she’s not short if we have to do anything esoteric. how much Trust will that cost?)
Kassil: Call it 300T.
Ananda: (As much as you’re willing to spend. >_> )
Kassil: The trip is mostly uneventful, taking a bit longer than usual due to the river having been diverted by an over-enthusiastic researcher who thought she saw gold in the streambed, without any damage control being down afterward. You make it to the camp just after dusk. And… Detection checks, visual please.
Ananda sighs at the disturbed river and shakes her head.
Kassil: Alasdair observes the new electric fence at the camp in the most direct method possible.
Alasdair: ( When ya gotta go, ya gotta go. )
Kassil: Ananda, meanwhile, avoids the fence, and spots the rising moon, which appears to have a very small companion.
Kassil: (You’re quite sure you didn’t see any secondary lunar objects while at St. Mary.)
Ananda digs out her binoculars and looks at something in the sky, in the direction of the moon.
Kassil: Em also notices the second lunar object. It’s rather small – just big enough to be visible as a disc.
Alasdair checks the immediate area for a gate or some means of ingress.
Kassil: Alasdair finds where Ananda and Em went through, and finds them looking at something on the eastern horizon.
Em wishes she knew anything about astronomy. Can she try and wiki if anything like this should be in the sky? >_>
Kassil: Em, you know quite well that there’s nothing like that in the sky.
Alasdair is oblivious to the OMGWTF event happening in front of him.
Em: Ah, Alasdair…
Em: You seem to have had a lot of deep thoughts on your mind lately
Ananda: Having close encounters with an electric fence will do that.
Em: Would any of them explain a strange foreign object being up in the vicinity of the moon?
Em: I really hope that’s not the lens of someone’s telescope peering through a rip in space at us, or something like that
Ananda acquires the object in her binoculars and zooms in maximally. (I think 200x is as far as these will go, but I’d have to check the book.)
Kassil: (Somewhere, a god adjusts the focus on his lenses. “I /know/ that runaway disciple is around there someplace.”)
Kassil: Ananda, you can make out a rough, uneven surface, similar to that of the moon, pockmarked with craters and a few rather jagged mountains and rifts.
Ananda walks back out the gate to see if the whatever-it-is is still there.
Kassil: It is.
Ananda shakes her head. Shrugs. “Looks like a natural object from here, Em.”
Em: Well, thank goodness for small favours. Can I take a look?
Ananda: “Sure.”
Kassil: Em will see much the same thing as Ananda.
Em: Does it look like an exact copy of the moon, just in smaller size?
Kassil: No. It looks like a distinct object.
Alasdair: “Hmm. This wasn’t here two weeks ago.”
Ananda: “It wasn’t there last night.”
Kassil: For one thing, it has a few rifts in the surface, large and deep enough to see from where you are.
Em: Does it resemble any of the rocky planets or moons in the solar system? I take it the rifts thing means “no” ?
Passing Worker says, “It’s been coming up for about a week now.”
Alasdair: “Not likely they could have put up this much fence overnight.”
Kassil: The worker will also tell Alasdair that they decided to put the fence up about ten days ago, after a pack of boars made a mess of the camp area and treed them until one of the guards managed to get his gun and kill a few to chase the rest off.
Ananda: “Look up.” She gestures to the sky, “That wasn’t in view from Saint Mary yesterday.”
Alasdair slowly and reluctantly looks up at the new moonlet.
Alasdair: “What the hell did we do?”
Ananda: “It would be nice to know, yeah.”
Em: …I thought Serek destroyed something at the end of the dream, not created it?
Ananda: “About five days too early to be directly connected.”
Ananda: “Shall we sleep and head into the Site in the morning, or make a brief run tonight and risk coming out someplace new?”
Em: I think I want to be fresh and well rested before I have my universe shaken and stirred again.
Alasdair: “I think a fresh start in the morning would be good.”
Ananda: “Works for me.”
Kassil: There’s a barracks building where you can bed down, if you want.
Ananda goes to the least-well-lit place she can find inside the perimeter and watches the sky for a bit first.
Alasdair heads straight for the barracks.
Em decides to sleep after tinkering with her pcomm security a bit trying to see if she can enhance it’s traceroute function
Em: (doesn’t spend too long at it, maybe an hour)
Kassil: Okay, then.
Kassil: Next morning.
Em looks a shade more harrowed at breakfast
Alasdair looks solid and well-rested.
Ananda is alert and ready.
Ananda: (And, I expect, completely ignored during morning Rites. People here have bigger problems.)
Kassil: Serek, for her part, looks about like normal as she tags along.
Kassil: So, heading in?
Alasdair: Yup
Ananda: Yep.
Em: amateur ninja-tailguard on duty yes
Kassil: Entering the Site requires passing a fairly new high-caliber plasma weapon emplacement aimed right down the entry corridor. The Lesser Grigori attending it seems to be perfectly fine with watching the entryway, giving the group a cursory look as you enter. It’s the same as you remember, until you get to the motor pool level, where the floor has been covered with a layer of wind-rippled sand.
Kassil: There’s even a few small barrel cacti growing between some of the defunct trucks.
Alasdair examines the sand and mutters, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Ananda gathers some of the sand into a sample container. Might as well.
Em: (“The plasma cannons trained on you are purely a courtesy measure”…)
Kassil: It seems to be sand about like what you’d expect in the Mojave desert’s drier reaches.
Ananda makes note to pick up a cactus on her way out.
Kassil: The sand has spilled down the steps from the motor pool, making them a little trickier to navigate, but you have no real trouble as you go down to the elevator shaft and into the Site proper to the main shaft.
Kassil: So – heading back down to level 2? Or doing something else?
Alasdair whispers, “I think the Site’s active again.”
Ananda signs, ‘Was it ever inactive?’
Alasdair shrugs and signs back, “Seems markedly less dormant now.”
Kassil: As Alasdair signs his response, a gentle breeze blows up out of the central shaft, slightly warmer than the cool air on the top floor and ruffling your clothes slightly.
Kassil: It persists for only a few seconds.
Em takes cover
Em: (is high strung yes)
Alasdair pauses and cocks his head before signing, “You don’t think someone left the door to the other realm open?”
Kassil: …There’s a crash as Em dives over the nearest wall and her armor clatters against the ceramacrete barricade.
Ananda looks towards the source.
From Kassil: No discernable change in odor from the ambient air. Perhaps slightly damper.
Em signs “afraid of explosion”
Ananda shrugs, indicates the elevator shaft with her eyebrows, ‘Stopped now. Shall we?’ she signs.
Alasdair nods.
Em looks a shade sheepish, and follows
Kassil: So – where to?
Ananda: Back to L2.
Kassil: The lift entry for L2 is as you remember it.
Kassil: You have all the unexplored areas, and then the area you’ve already poked around.
Ananda: Did we go down the branch with ALS-099-A? I can’t recall.
Kassil: _
Em: (the number sounds familiar but I don’t think the placement is)
Ananda: "Hey Alasdair? Are you seeing the same heat shimmer in here that you did last time?
Alasdair shakes his head No.
Ananda nods.
Alasdair shakes his head No again.
Ananda gives thumbs-up in response.
Ananda looks to Em & Alasdair, and makes a ‘shall we’ kind of gesture towards the hall where they met the void Wielder last time.
Ananda signs, ‘We didn’t finish all branches.’
Em nods and reviews her supression effect
Em puts the shotgun away suspecting it won’t help much though
Kassil: So – where to?
Em: (perhaps straight south?)
Alasdair: ( ALS-009-A? Haven’t been that way yet. )
Em: (Ah we haven’t? then yah, that sounds good. let’s see what red code is like)
Ananda moves one room east, and then south to ALS-099-A. A red zone should be a sedate start, right?
Ananda: (All we hear is Alasdair.)
Kassil: ALS-33 is largely unchanged, still containing large white tanks that purport to contain Creatures. If anyone checks, the one that seems to be similar to the Meganeko is still there, still intact.
Kassil: Alasdair trips over himself passing through ALS-33 when he gets near the Meganeko tank.
Em: (Represses the urge to free it, reminding herself she isn’t even a life sciences specialist)
Kassil: ALS-099-A is rather similar in design to CSF-093, in that it is a two-level room, somewhat smaller than the other, with roughly human-sized cryotanks.
Kassil: Each one has a control console, and a small viewing window.
Ananda looks into a few windows.
Em: Electronics: what are the notes and status on the first one I come to?
Alasdair looks in a few different windows.
Kassil: The first one Em checks claims to contain ‘Human-plant positive-energy hybrid’, in ‘nominal condition’. It’s the one Ananda peers into first.
Em: (it’s a Sunflower power child!@)
Em: (any hint what “nominal” means?)
Kassil: Nominal, in this case, seems to mean, “Alive and in stasis.”
Ananda looks at the second cryotank from this angle and that. Huh. What’s the console have to say about its occupant?
Kassil: “Refractive Index Test Subject. Status Nominal.”
Em: How many tanks are there?
Ananda runs a hand through her hair and goes on to the next.
Kassil: Forty, twenty per level.
Alasdair checks the readout on the first tank.
Kassil: If you really intend to individually examine each and every tank to try to coax all the data out. If you’re just reading the console and aren’t likely to roll around a 50… You could skip it.
Kassil: Alasdair reads, “Human/Entropic Fusion Test. Status: Nominal-Minus.”
Em: (Can I tell there’s a level of information I’m not accessing so far?)
Em: (or in the dark about that?)
Alasdair: “Some kind of Wielding-infused genetic manipulation?”
Kassil: Em – you think there might be a connecting system you’re not getting access to, but you’re not sure how to get access to it.
Em: I think this stuff is linked into another system but I’m not sure what or how. Shall I have a go at finding out what it is for a bit?
Ananda: “Go for it.”
Alasdair: “Might lead us to a more thorough map of the area.”
Ananda checks this one’s console, also.
Em starts working her way down the tanks in groups of four, hoping she doesn’t derp and fry anything.
Kassil: Em finds herself frustrated by her inability to crack whatever underlying system there is.
Em: Ah well
Em: Sorry guys, been studying wielding too much lately
Em: Neglecting my regular scholarship
Kassil: Ananda’s most recent tank reveals the readout, “Psychotropic Fusion Test Subject. Cognitohazard. Status Nominal.”
Ananda shrugs to Em. “Huh, this one’s kinda strange. Says ’Psychotropic Fusion Test Subject.”
Em: That sounds very ominous even for here.
Em: Someone did a hybrid between a person and a hallucination or cartoon?
Ananda: “Don’t know. Look in and tell me what you see?”
Em examines it carefully.
Alasdair looks as well.
Em blinks “I see an androgynous person with very fine silver scales instead of skin. What’s worrisome is the twinge of arousal just looking closely gives me…especially given I have no idea what this sentient is like”
Em observes rather dryly “My previous career rather turned me off regarding the idea of anonymous intimacy”
Em shifts awkwardly and shakes her head
Ananda: “I imagine that’s why its status also says ‘cognitohazard’.”
Alasdair: “Makes sense.”
Em: Something that can “fuck your brains out” ? Like that wasn’t already a serious design issue with sentients to start with….
Alasdair: “Though the amount of force that would require…”
Ananda: “Kf. Seems to work alright for bonobos. And they haven’t nearly wiped out their own species, either.”
Ananda shakes her head and wanders around, to see if anything catches her eye.
Em smirks slightly “only if it helped prevent them from inventing the means of wiping themselves out. give them time….”
Ananda grins over her shoulder to Em.
Kassil: Ananda determines, after some examination, that every single tube contains a humanoid of some kind, all of them marked as ‘Test Subject’, and all with a Status of Nominal or Nominal-Minus.
Ananda: What’s ‘nominal-minus’?
Kassil: The most intriguing are the young woman with the dark and oily skin, and the young man who appears to have an internal glow of some kind. The former is the one Alasdair wondered about being a Wielding-infused genetic manipulation. The latter is a Genesis/Human Infusion Test subject, also Nominal-Minus.
Ananda: “We can be certain that whatever this Foundation was, it didn’t have an institutional review board. I can’t see half of these experiments getting a pass at a respectable university.”
Alasdair: “Traditionally, ‘N-’ is a designation indicating either slow degredation of the subject’s vitals or a problem with the containment unit. In this case, it might also be the inability of these units to fully contain the subject in question.”
Ananda: “Hnn?”
Em: ….which would explain silver’s lust inducing ability yes…
Kassil: So.
Kassil: What now?
Alasdair: “Well, you asked.”
Ananda: “Ah.”
Ananda is ready to move on, if the other two are.
Em: Well since we’re not freeing any of them and I’m having no luck figuring out how this system connects to whatever, I guess we go on and be very thankful no one has made test subjects of us
Ananda quirks a smile, “How can you be sure?”
Em shudders a bit “because nothing extreme or exciting has happened to us lately…yes I know that’s not conclusive let me cling to hope”
Kassil: The other way out of the room is typical, but someone attempted to shut the second blast door down the hall; it’s jammed about a eight feet above the floor, with scorch marks on either side suggesting it forced down this far against some considerable resistance. Just beyond it, the hallway branches to the left, while also continuing straight.
Kassil: Visual Detection checks, please.
Alasdair nods at the left branch.
Ananda takes a closer look at one of the scorch marks. “Huh..”
Ananda tries to scrape some of the residue into a sample container.
Kassil: There’s a soft crunching sounds as the residue flakes away from the wall into Ananda’s container.
Em: What’s odd there?
Ananda: “Some burnt-looking organics on the wall.”
Kassil: So, Ananda has her sample of charred stuff. And now…?
Em: Left toward the red room ?
Ananda moves on down the left hallway.
Ananda: (Green room. ICS-667.)
Em: (oops that was the red room right sorry. got confused)
Alasdair follows Ananda cautiously.
Kassil: The hallway is normal at first, but about halfway down the ceramacrete starts to look like it was half-melted, resembling something more like flowstone in a cave. Some of the lights seem to have been swallowed by the shift, leaving intermittent patches of darkness, while the lights that remain are twisted to weird angles.
Em: (is suitably disquieted and tries to make sure nothing’s hiding in the dark bits
Em: …anyone else feeling anomalous tactile sensations?
Ananda pauses and touches the wall.
From Kassil: The oily sensation clings to your fingertips.
Alasdair pauses and reaches down toward his feet.
Ananda whispers, “Yes.”
Em sees if there’s any patch that looks more melted than others and goes toward it for contrast
Ananda rubs her fingers together and checks for residue.
Em touches some of the melted stone in that area with both hands
Alasdair signs, “Try to keep Serek from destroying worlds while we’re in here.”
Ananda grins, signs, ‘Probably won’t be necessry. Probably.’
Alasdair stumbles slowly toward the room.
Ananda ghosts on into the green zone.
Em follows, slowly
Kassil: The green room, whatever it once was, is now something of a flowstone cavern, with long fingers drooping from the roof toward the floor and the equipment dismantled and half-sunken into the ground. You primarily see the wreckage of what appear to be computer systems, with a few crumpled things that might have been heavy-duty storage lockers.
Em checks out the storage lockers if any of them are intact enough they might have undestroyed contents…
Ananda tries to locate where the source of the heat has to have been.
Kassil: Em finds the lockers destroyed completely; most look like they were crushed by some immense force.
Kassil: Ananda finds no indication of a heat source.
Alasdair: Does it look charred as well as melted or was everything in the room just inexplicably rendered into a thick liquid form?
Kassil: Nothing in the room looks charred.
Ananda: Ah, hmm.
Kassil: Some of the machinery and lockers looks like they were crushed by something, but that’s the only sign of violence.
Alasdair: Is it possible to establish an origin point or directionality for the crushing?
Kassil: You could give me an Arcane check, modified by half of any ranks of Energy and Control that you have.
Ananda faces away from the others and calls a dime-sized ball of plasma into being, floating over her hand. Just to be sure that it works.
Kassil: Alasdair walks slowly around the room, examining everything from various angles, before pinpointing an area against the wall opposite the door, roughly about the level of his head, from which an intense kinetic force must have manifested at some point during the period when the room was ‘fluid’.
Kassil: Ananda finds herself with a tiny bubble of plasma radiating light and heat above her hand.
Ananda allows it to dissipate.
Ananda moves back to the door and waits. “Nothing left to see, here?”
Alasdair shrugs and signs, “Room was scuttled?”
Ananda nods, ‘Looks like.’
Em: I’m thinking it’s more of a breach of their defenses, myself…
Ananda: Looks that way so far.
Em: Back out and down to DSS-447-K ?
Ananda: (Though this room might have been rigged to self-destruct, and triggered when something from down the hall breached.)
Ananda pauses. Signs, ‘Anyone else feel like we’re being watched?’
Alasdair signs, “No.”
Ananda leans against the wall, eyes flicking over the corners of the room while she thinks.
Em signs “no but something’s clinging to me”
Alasdair watches Ananda speculatively.
Em signs “something’s here. not watching though”
Ananda nods to Em. Well then.
Alasdair slides over to stand next to Ananda.
Em signs “probably the same thing touching me all over?”
Ananda seeks the watcher, with minimal imposition.
Kassil: What exactly are you sensing for?
Ananda: Whatever mind(s) appears to be watching me.
Ananda holds still with her eyes closed for a bit after the Wielding settles around her, then whispers, “Odd, that.”
Ananda paces slowly across the room, eyes half shut.
Em: (we’re in the stomach of magical beast, occupying the room trapper/lurker like)
Em signs “experiment, hold still?”
Ananda does so.
Em walks right up into Ananda’s space, just short of touching but facing her, long enough to see if anything happens
Alasdair watches with obvious curiosity.
Ananda: (Alasdair is no doubt wondering if we’ve finally lost it.)
Em: slowly backs away from Ananda, looking a bit distracted
Ananda waits for Em’s conclusion.
Em signs “my clinger squeezes tighter when you’re near”
Alasdair signs, “Reminds me of an ex.”
Em pauses about four arms lengths from her “it’s relaxed again”
Ananda signs, ‘The touch anomaly on my hands got colder when either of you neared me, but not when I moved near you. Also, strange ambient awareness in here. Not localized.’
Kassil: So. what now? :D
Ananda signs, ‘Shall we move on?’
Em: (Go get a ghost trap?)
Alasdair walks over to Em and puts a hand on her shoulder.
Em blinks but presumes this is more testing
Alasdair removes his hand and shrugs noncommittally at Em.
Em: “no change here” she signs
Em: "we’re one ‘charge’, Ananda is another? "
Alasdair rubs his chin. “All signs point to Ananda.”
Ananda tries walking over towards Alasdair, stopping maybe half-arm’s-length away. She signs, ‘Notice anything?’
Alasdair signs, “Nothing yet.”
Ananda signs, ‘Momentary blip, for me.’
Ananda rests a hand on Alasdair’s shoulder (a few inches above her eye level), to see if there’s any difference.
Alasdair looks at Ananda’s hand and puts his hand over hers.
Alasdair frowns contemplatively.
Ananda raises her eyebrows and signs with her off hand, ‘If you snuck itching powder out, good job – I missed it entirely.’
Alasdair replies, “I’m getting the same sensation from you.”
Ananda: “Kf. Argues in favor of the charge hypothesis.”
Alasdair rubs the index finger of his free hand along Ananda’s jawline as if he was wiping something off.
Kassil: Both of you experience an itching sensation at the contact.
Ananda reflexively twitches away at the itchiness, looks a question at Alasdair.
Alasdair takes a half step back and furiously rubs the itching away before replying, “You feel strangely oily.”
Kassil: The itching sensation rapidly fades when the two of you lose contact.
Ananda: “Yeah, I’d noticed. I’d kill for a shower, even though it’s not real.”
Ananda: “Felt like you had a cold-burn kind of thing going on,” she adds.
Alasdair: “You may have picked up an echo o-”
Alasdair blinks.
Alasdair: “Interesting.”
Ananda: “What were you saying?”
Alasdair: “What was your part of our shared dream?”
Ananda tilts her head to one side, remembering. “I was walking down stairs that had been carved into a glacier. It was damp and a bit clinging, but not uncomfortably cold.”
Ananda rubs her fingers together, “Similar, yes.”
Alasdair: “I was saying that you may have picked up an echo of who or whatever that grease spot once was. You can’t locate the presence because it’s covering you.”
Ananda: “Hnn..”
Ananda offers a hand to Em to test.
Em takes the hand with only a little trepidation, certain that her lack of wielding power relative to Alasdair will make the reaction less bad…
Kassil: There’s an instant sense of itching when Ananda and Em come into contact.
Ananda holds. It’s nowhere near as bad as stinging nettles.
Ananda: “Heat. Interesting.”
Em raises an eyebrow “he’s right. you’re oily”
Ananda: “At least it’s consistent.”
Kassil: Once the two of you part contact, the sensations quickly fade away.
Em: so. now to see if this only happens here or if it lingers
Ananda shrugs, “Let’s move to the next room and try again, then.”
Em nods
Kassil: Moving on, then?
Ananda , if nobody objects, will move on.
Alasdair: Moving on
Kassil: All right. We’ll pick up next time with your entry to DSS-447-K.
Ananda: Okay.
Kassil: 165 CDP to everyone.
Kassil: And I suppose I should collect the last few sessions worth of checks and such.
Kassil: Soon.
Ananda: Would be appreciated.
Kassil: Something about being distracted by the holidays and visits.
Kassil: Anyhow!
Kassil: Some more things for you all to chew on and mull over. ;)
Em: thank you for gm’ing :)
Ananda: Understandable. And this was fun.
Em: yes. how to give up sovereignity over our souls piecemeal >_>
Kassil: Snerk.
Ananda does not have a soul to give.
Kassil: Maybe that’s your problem. :D
Em: no soul….she’s an elf!
Ananda refuses to concede the existence of any such phenomenon.
Kassil: Heh.
Kassil: All right, then.
Ananda: (Technically speaking, Ananda’s an atheist as well.)
Kassil: Heh. Well. See you all next time. ;)
Ananda: Hasta!
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
Serek
165 CDP
Total: 5565
Em: btw, did we get paid for anything we brought back this time?
Kassil: You haven’t told me what you’re turning in, yet.
Ananda: We brought back the corpse of that thing that wielded Void at us, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, a child-size winged skeleton, ORACLE, an AI brain, and Zix.
Ananda: For the moment, turning in the corpse and the grenade.
Em: (grins)
Ananda: (IIRC, we wanted to poke at the skeleton & AI brain before deciding what to do with them.)
Kassil: The corpse and the grenade net you a 10000 Trust reward.
Em: Zix might try to shoot the holy hand grenade in jealousy
Ananda: Zix turned itself into a grenade launcher in proximity. And the grenade has some sort of awareness.
Ananda distributes 2,500T to everyone.
Kassil: You’ll likely want to reiterate that to Alasdair when he arrives.
Kassil: Maybe also fill Serek in. ;)
Serek: >.> <.><
Ananda: So, uh, what were we doing when Serek was last here?
Kassil: Good question!
Kassil: It’s been a while.
Kassil: You were just about to fight the Wielding critter.
Ananda: We took out the Wielding critter with no particular ceremony. (Serek botched a roll and accidentally fried herself a little, but that’s what we have a healer for.)
Serek: (Once in a while, she has to check whether the fire actually does anything. It’s all in good fun, right? Right?)
Serek: (For the purpose of SCIENCE.)
Ananda: (I’m not going to disagree with that.)
Ananda: (Either of them. ;) )
Em: (applauds your dedication to your source and hopes to eventually be that hardcore!)
Ananda: After that, we headed into a room full of evidence lockers. In no particular order, we found a crystal that zipped off into the distance when we opened its case, the skeleton of a winged child-size humanoid (behind/underneath a set of lockers, oddly enough), a smartphone that calls itself ORACLE and answers the damndest questions..
Ananda: ..A grenade resting on its own little cushion, a weapon that changes shape to suit some whim of its own (“Zix”), an AI core that we haven’t messed with at all yet, and one evidence locker containing something that whispered to Alasdair but which nobody else could hear. He spent some time welding that one closed. (Aside from the skeleton, everything in that list has some sort of awareness.)
Serek: I notice a suspicious lack of Alasdair’s input on that locker. .
Alasdair: You should notice a suspicious lack of Alasdair’s input on many things that happened during this latest foray.
Kassil: Ananda sent 2500T to Alasdair, BTW.
Ananda: After that, we made a brief foray into another universe, which unsettled Em and Ananda something fierce by containing creatures that called themselves angels. The next room in the Site was full of vehicles locked in cages, and we started getting e-mail from Beyond.
Em: (They called themselves angels and while the data didn’t entirely back them up, it took some prodding to get plausible ambiguity on the point.)
Em: (Also, we’re playing three card monte with when Alasdair has the insight that drives him insane.)
Alasdair: I’m amused at the future tense of that statement.
Em: Well, I mean NPC level insane as opposed to friendly lunatic insane :)
Alasdair: Again… ;)
Kassil: What makes you think I’ll let your characters retire when they go stark raving mad? :D
Alasdair: Utter madness is the end of Chapter 1. It only gets weirder from there.
Kassil: Speak of the knowledgable.
Ananda: After an interlude of drifting about in Nowhen, Alasdair braked the time anomaly (which produced a smell like burning plastic; whut?) and we found that we could contact Circe – possibly multiple of her, at least one of whom is alive and working at the Mauna Kea observatory.
Serek: Wait—Circe?
Alasdair: Yes
Ananda: Yep.
Alasdair: You… missed a lot.
Ananda: Some creature made of bones dropped the rat I’d taped to the floor (lo, these many sessions ago) on us, and I think that was it for that room. Moving on, we found a bunch of Wielders in cold storage, probably all Spiritual Wielders. Trying to apply Being/Insight to one was an entertaining experience. After that, we visited Mephistopheles, bought nothing of importance, and went home.
Ananda: We’re back in Saint Mary now, and have taken at least five days to train.
Kassil: Now then.
Kassil: First day/night. You all turn in the wielding-beast’s corpse and the mysterious grenade, Ananda distributes the resulting Trust. What else?
Ananda: Day 1 includes either picking Alasdair’s brain for what he got out of ORACLE that had him so jumpy, or having ORACLE replay its recent queries and results so that I could see firsthand.
Em: I study hard and try to correspond with my computer science mentor if he knows anyone who’s had to deal with networking across dimensional boundaries whom I could talk to
Ananda: (Trying those in order.)
Kassil: Em, you get a “…Are you perhaps on some kind of hallucenogen?” response.
Ananda: (We are supposed to not scare the non-locals too much…)
Alasdair: ( Don’t frighten the Normals, Em. ;) )
Serek: (Just a little bit…?)
Kassil: Alasdair, in the midst of whatever he had planned, has Ananda showing up to talk at him.
Em tries to search down rumors in the netsphere of people who’ve done odd technomagic projects. She spares a couple hours to it. What does she need to roll if it’s possible?
Alasdair is in the cantina, drinking away some hard-earned Trust.
Ananda: Oh, also. Check whether Circe is officially on staff at Mauna Kea.
Kassil: Em, you don’t find anything; there are a handful of rumors of projects attempting to bind Wielding and technology together, but to no real avail.
Kassil: Ananda, you easily find Circe’s transfer papers.
Ananda finds Alasdair and invites herself to his table, along with a large plate of breaded & fried calamari.
Alasdair manages a bleary “Hey” as Ananda sits down.
Kassil: Serek is apparently just training.
Serek: Yes.
Ananda smiles in greeting, “Hey.” She fiddles with the corner of a folio of live-paper, not seeming to notice that Alasdair is out of sorts.
Alasdair squints at the live-paper. “Chupta?”
Ananda: “Checking for disparities between where we started and where we are.” She slides a page with Circe’s transfer paperwork across the table and chews on an anonymous curl of crunchy fried animal. “Circe was missing, in the history I remember.”
Alasdair blinks a few times, sniffs, and squints at the paper. “Yeah, we’re no’ home. Nev’r gunbe. Em went in w’ Kappa only here.”
Alasdair: “Wha’ happtudder guy. Dat squestion.”
Ananda: “When did you pick that up?”
Kassil: (Drunk Alasdair is drunk.)
Alasdair taps the table for emphasis.
Alasdair: “D’ORACLE show tme.”
Em: wanders in to the meal “We’re not home?”
Ananda: “Hnnn. What else did you get out of it?”
Alasdair makes a comical arm dangly motion. “S’fing’s powfil. S’ev’wh’r. Com’n f’me. Know it!”
Alasdair widens his eyes and stares at Ananda.
Ananda: Ananda quirks an eyebrow, “How do you know that?”
Alasdair whirl-lolls at Em and siezes her with a strength only the drunk or desperate possess.
Alasdair: “Em safe. Spshul. Gotta stay w’her.”
Ananda: “Um. Okay?”
Em blinks and is rather unhappy but blinks at what he says again “Ah. What makes me special?”
Alasdair: “Sh’ p’tct us.”
Em raises an eyebrow. “I do try to take care of my team mates. but what am I doing to make you feel very safe?”
Alasdair steadies himself and looks into Em’s eyes with entirely too much fervor. “You. Survived.”
Alasdair nods at Ananda and taps the table for emphasis.
Ananda: “Ah.. What did she survive, exactly?”
Em: …You mean the way I survived my first excursion to the Site?
Em: What happened that day, do you know, Alasdair?
Em does her best to mask her nervousness, maybe just enough so a very drunk mage can’t tell.
Alasdair: “Sh’ wuz k’pt b’ fing. K’PT!”
Alasdair fumbles for his water glass, spilling some across the table before clutching it like a talisman as he drinks from the straw.
Ananda: “Which thing?”
Ananda offers Em the plate of fried calamari, during the pause.
Em munches and gives a faint nod of gratitude.
Em feels reassured something (the squid) has had a worse time than she has lately.
Alasdair stares deeply into the table, apparently not having heard Ananda.
Ananda reclaims the live-paper and soaks the water off of it with her napkin.
Alasdair shudders involuntarily and hisses something in Mandarin.
Ananda: “Sorry, what was that?”
Alasdair blinks and looks at Ananda as if seeing her for the first time.
Alasdair says something in Mandarin in an awestruck tone before laying his head on the table and passing out.
Kassil: (Snrrrrrrrrxxxxxzzzzz)
Em looks at Ananda “Any idea what ’b’fing’ was?”
Em eats some more calamari, a bit stunned.
Ananda: “I think he was saying ‘the thing’.. We’ve seen a lot of things, though.”
Em: ….Well, given how powerful he is, I’m just as glad he sees me as special and helpful.
Em shakes her head, “I just hope nothing ORACLE tells him convinces him I’m a problem.”
Ananda gnaws abstractedly on a bit of calamari, “He doesn’t have final say.”
Em: Well, yes, this is true. But…if he has an irrational interval, he might well do something rash. I’m a little concerned given his reaction to that last interval after the angels.
Kassil: So now we have passed-out drunk Alasdair starting to form a puddle of drool to sleep in, while Ananda and Em nonchalantly talk. Unless one of you moves to stop them, after a few minutes what passes for local security drops in and carries Alasdair off to his room.
Ananda lets them carry him off, and kibitzes until she runs out of food.
Kassil: The cafeteria stays somewhat busy, but the conversations are fairly mundane. A few people keep looking in your direction after Alasdair is removed, but no one says anything to you or moves to join your table.
Ananda: Do I recognize any of the people who keep looking at us?
Kassil: Not as such. Just people who happen to be resident in Saint Mary.
Ananda: ‘kay.
Em: So none of them are from that team we brushed shoulders with theother time?
Alasdair: ( What, ranting drunk guys draw attention? ;) )
Kassil: The Nephilim team? Nope.
Kassil: (Maybe!)
Ananda invites Em along to see if her computer skills can help with translating that last thing Alasdair said.
Em gives it a try.
Ananda does her best to reproduce what he said in the first place.
Kassil: Em doesn’t get anything useful out of Ananda’s recollection of Alasdair’s drunkenly slurred Mandarin.
Ananda sighs. “Ah well. Possibly I should’ve recorded that discussion.”
Ananda: (Unless something interesting happens, my next stop is the firing range.)
Kassil: All right. The rest of the day passes largely uneventfully.
Em returns to studying Energy.
[Individual dream sequences.]
Kassil: Alasdair and Em find the masoleum melting away around them, exposing a vast starscape full of twinkling, rainbow-colored stars seemingly made of flame. Ananda, in the middle of lifting her hand to greet Serek, finds herself regarding all three of her companions; Serek and Ananda wearing rainbow auroras as robes, Em pale and shivering slightly, and Alasdair with a silver-blue fire chasing itself in a circle at his side.
Kassil: Despite the limitless void, none of you feel inconvenienced by the lack of air.
Ananda: “Kf. Hello there.”
Alasdair gawks open mouthed at Ananda.
Serek: (But I was playing with stars augh why do I have to deal with people now.)
Ananda returns Alasdair’s look with a mildly puzzled one of her own.
Em: Did you folks have dreams with skulls too or…? I was in a mausoleum, had the presence of mind to try and influence the dream tonight when it recurred.
Ananda: “I think the skulls are all yours.”
Em: I tried to question a skull, it pointed for me to go deeper into the mausoleum and after some ominous passages I ran into Alasdair.
Em chuckles “Et in Arcadia, Arcadia ego.”
Em: (mispronounced her Latin probably, since she only knows how to read it)
Kassil: Serek, notably, is playing with a star of rainbow flames.
Ananda: “Um, translate that?”
Alasdair seems to catch himself before he says something.
Em: “And in Paradise, in Paradise there I am” where the speaker is Death.
Em: Just chuckling, I carry my morbidity with me a bit reflexively apparently.
Alasdair: “Because I could not stop for Death, she kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but ourselves and Eternity.”
Tierce: (Some people have safety blankets. Safety stars are much better. Well, maybe not as much ‘safe’ as ‘nuclear’, but.)
Ananda smiles.
Em: (grins)(they’re definitely warmer than blankets)
Kassil: Alasdair, your companion fire has settled down and is sitting like a dog that’s heeled, just behind and to your left. Flakes of ice are slowly pinwheeling out from it.
Ananda takes her rainbow cloak off, shakes it out, and folds it over her arm.
Em: So. We are all initiates in the magical arts, is there some working we should try in this place perhaps?
Em is focusing on her comrades to avoid vertigo.
Ananda: “Haven’t the foggiest.”
Alasdair draws a deep breath and rubs his face, finally drawing his gaze from Ananda.
Alasdair looks down at his “dog” contemplatively.
Ananda watches Serek for a little while, then snaps her fingers to call a tennis-ball-sized sphere of plasma into existence.
Kassil: Ananda, you find yourself with a singularity hovering over your hand – an intensely blinding light that quickly wraps itself in impenetrable darkness as it hovers over your hand.
Ananda tries to look like she meant to do that.
Alasdair slowly and hesitantly reaches town to touch the flame at his side.
Em looks curious and tries to form a light curtain of sparks around her swirling but near but not touching her, pale ghostly blue.
Kassil: Em’s curtain forms, composed of pale white dust that glimmers a ghostly blue in the light of the strange stars.
Alasdair lavishes attention on the pet flame, scritching it and playing with it.
Ananda pulls a scrap of paper out of her pocket and tries feeding it to the singularity.
Kassil: Alasdair’s pet flame behaves like a cross between a joyous dog and a cat acknowledging due attention, the silver-blue flames leaving elaborate patterns of frost across his hands and arms.
Em: Okay. that didn’t feel like wielding.
Em: …Are we in that space you were in staring at that mini universe, Ananda? does it seem familiar?
Kassil: The paper scrap is drawn past the oily darkness of the event horizon once Ananda releases it, disppearing with a faint trickle of stray energy.
Ananda absently replies, “No. That one was colored very much like the standard model.”
Serek looks up from her pet star to ask, without looking directly at Ananda, “what’s with the darkness?”
Kassil: And… non-sensory Detection checks, please.
Serek: Look at my pretty flames.
Ananda spares a glance for Serek and her star, “I don’t know. Under normal circumstances, a black hole this small would’ve evaporated within a minute or two, if I’m remembering physics class right. …It’s been a long time since undergrad, admittedly.”
Kassil: Ananda and Em, you each sense something, incredibly far below you.
Ananda looks down.
Kassil: There is nothing visible, besides the void and the glimmering rainbow stars.
Em lays down on her stomach before looking so her body doesn’t distract her.
Ananda: “Huh. I wonder if you can see the Great Attractor from here…”
Kassil: What are you laying on, Em?
Kassil: Alasdair, you can see Em and Ananda peering at the void below their feet.
Em: Whatever we’re standing on. I just keep firmly in my mind whatever my feet were supported by is supporting my body.
Em: (hopes that works)
Kassil: Heh. You’re functionally in zero-gravity. :D
Kassil: You’re being kept oriented by the belief you should be.
Ananda absent-mindedly closes her hand around the fragment of darkness.
Em tries to focus on whatever it was that caught her attention below.
Alasdair summons an appropriately sized ball and bounces it across where the mausoleum floor used to be.
Ananda blinks a couple of times and looks at her hand, as though it had changed while she wasn’t paying attention.
Serek looks visibly annoyed.
Kassil: The ball simply keeps going, but after a few seconds of hesitation the silver-blue flame explodes after it, giving rise to a momentary image of the ball being a comet before the errant sphere is captured and returned to Alasdair.
Kassil: Serek, meanwhile, has crushed a nearby nebula to the point that flickers of fusion fire are beginning to spark inside it.
Kassil: And…
Alasdair cracks the ice off the ball before hurling it at the center of whatever galactic configuration surrounds the group.
Kassil: …The first stars in the nebula ignite explosively, and you all jolt awake in your beds, Alasdair with a dull throbbing headache and the sense of something cool draped over his head.
Serek was about to drop a star. Balls.
Kassil: Your second day back in Saint Mary awaits.
Em blinks and pcomms Ananda “you were in the dream too?”
Ananda: (Time?)
Kassil: Morning.
Alasdair grrblrggltfffs and wipes at the cool thing on his head before turning over to look at the door.
Ananda: (Is it light outside?)
Kassil: Alasdair, you find yourself brushing a layer of frost out of your hair, and half-melted shards of ice from your forehead.
Kassil: It’s just past dawn.
Alasdair takes a long hot shower before heading down for breakfast.
Ananda makes disgruntled noises about having overslept and toggles her PComm to stop chirping. She doesn’t bother looking at it. Everything short of explosions and gunfire can wait until after her first cup of tea.
Kassil: …Serek is apparently occupied watching something on her P-comm.
Serek causes galactic nuclear explosions in her sleep. She’s pretty sure the universe can wait for her.
Kassil: So.
Kassil: Alasdair and Ananda end up at the cafeteria at more-or-less the same time.
Kassil: Em’s feeling out-of-sorts and staring at her P-comm while she waits for a reply.
Kassil: Serek’s stomach is growling loudly as she stares at her P-comm.
Serek: Fiiiine. I guess needs must and I can stare lovingly at it later. Food, then.
Kassil: Serek comes wandering into the cafeteria a short time after Ananda and Alasdair enter.
Ananda has already acquired tea by then, and is breathing the steam while it steeps.
Alasdair shuffles about listlessly collecting coffee, two random pieces of fruit and whatever oatmeal-like substance is available.
Serek checks her P-comm more often than a lovesick teenager.
Serek: Food seems something of an afterthought.
Em wanders in, “Any plans for tonight?” she says circumspectly.
Kassil: Alasdair finds himself with a peach, a banana, and a bowl of oatmeal full of raisins.
Alasdair mutters something that isn’t exactly any one particular language as he sits down hard.
Kassil: Serek is munching on nearly-burnt toast and nearly-charcoaled bacon.
Ananda is communing with her mug and doesn’t even open her eyes. It’s not clear whether she heard anything.
Kassil: (The group gives the general impression of college students post-party.)
Alasdair: ( Pretty much. )
Serek: (THAT was Serek’s definition of a party. If you’re not messing with astronomers everywhere, you’re not having fun.)
Em is otherwise subdued but methodically fuels her body and merely comments, “Bit interuptus there, yes?” though with a hint of worry.
Ananda: (Ananda usually gets her morning tea ritual done before there’s anyone around to even try talking to her.)
Alasdair slowly and haphazardly consumes the food in front of him.
Kassil: Food is consumed.
Kassil: Tea is drank.
Ananda shrugs one shoulder at Em, but doesn’t reply.
Kassil: Serek keeps mooning over her P-comm.
Serek: P-comm is lovingly stared at.
Serek: Yes.
Ananda eventually gets around to breakfast. Scrambled eggs with whatever vegetables are available mixed in.
Ananda then answers her PComm.
Kassil: And gets Em’s text.
Alasdair gets another coffee and stares into it as if contemplating the ethics involved in drinking it.
Kassil: The coffee fails to offer Alasdair any moral advice.
Ananda flips her P-Comm closed and slaps it down onto the table. Then it chirps.
Ananda finishes her breakfast. Then it can stop being Too Early For This Garbage.
Kassil: So…
Kassil: What now?
Ananda: Having been duly reminded that hell is other people before breakfast, next up is seeing what Em can learn about the odd text that I recieved.
Ananda will leave her P-Comm with Em, do her tai-chi routine, and attend morning Rites. That’ll bring her into “normal people’s” hours.
Alasdair winces and white-knuckles his coffee mug as his P-Comm chirps.
Em spends the first part of her day analyzing Ananda’s pcomm and the message she was told to analyze.
Kassil: (A few hours later, Serek continues to gaze upon her P-comm.)
Kassil: Training, presumably, is done.
Kassil: Anything else?
Alasdair spends the day somewhere quiet and out of the way.
Em: (tries to analyze the AI brain with the tools of the facility, with the couple of hours she has after training.)?
Kassil: If you want to try analyzing the AI core itself, that’s an Electronics check.
Ananda sends Alasdair a text asking him to join her at the shooting range after lunch.
Kassil: Trying to extract data is a Computer Tech check, but that comes after you figure out the hardware.
Em: Tries to puzzle out the hardware.
Serek may not be staring at her p-comm all day, but it’s definitely getting a shrine-like position as she trains.
Serek: (It’s her Happy Place.)
Kassil: “Crazily advanced and will likely take dedicated technicians quite a while to crack.” is what Em gets from her efforts on the core.
Alasdair finally checks his P-Comm around 2 and goes to find Ananda.
Em: (hrms and will try again tomorrow with some ueber buffing from Alasdair)
Ananda is easily found brushing up on her rifle skills.
Kassil: Ananda is in her usual firing range, which is occupied by half a dozen others practicing their aim.
Kassil: One particularly bulky AI is more-or-less showing off, spraying bolts of plasma fire down the firing alley.
Ananda looks up at the sound of familiar footsteps and waves Alasdair over.
Ananda: (Notably, she’s not wearing hearing protectors.)
Alasdair approaches, cautiously watching the other shooters.
Ananda signs, “Zix stopped changing shape after I fired it. Give it a try and see if it’ll be that energy weapon we saw before.”
Kassil: The AI has set the target at the end of the gallery on fire by the time Alasdair approaches.
Ananda picks the ZX in SMG-shape off the floor and offers it.
Alasdair takes the gun with the same reluctance one might express when being offered a fistful of spiders.
Kassil: The gun shivers in Alasdair’s hands, rippling and flowing into a sleek black shape that mimics a very high-quality laser rifle, although with a more organic rounding to it.
Ananda raises her eyebrows.
Alasdair approaches the firing booth and mutters to the gun in Mandarin, “Okay, creature. Let’s just get along.”
Alasdair aims at the target and tries not to miss as he fires a single round.
Kassil: A bolt of utter darkness fires from the ZX when Alasdair pulls the trigger, accompanied by a soft hiss; it hits the target dead-on, and leaves a hole bored into it.
Ananda nods approval.
Alasdair gives the AI a sidelong glance before returning the gun to Ananda.
Kassil: The gun quietly flows back into the shape of an SMG.
Ananda: “Reasonable to think that it adjusts to the user’s skill, then.”
Alasdair rubs the palms of his hands, trying to get rid of the itch.
Ananda: “How did it try to interact?”
Alasdair: “It didn’t, really.”
Ananda: “Oh?”
Alasdair: “It merely expressed a preference.”
Ananda: “Hn.” She scrawls something in her field notebook.
Ananda clips the little book back in its place. “Confirms my hypothesis. Thanks.”
Alasdair flexes his hands and ponders Ananda’s target.
Kassil: There’s a neat hole bored through it, along with the holes made otherwise.
Kassil: So, anything else going on?
Ananda stashes Zix back at her feet and returns to some attempt at sharpshooting. She’ll be there pretty much all afternoon.
Kassil: All right, then.
Alasdair returns to his quiet place once Ananda is done with him.
Kassil: The rest of the week passes fairly uneventuflly, aside from any training or research you care to conduct.
Ananda will, at some point, ask ORACLE what a ‘K factor’ is, and why hers is elevated.
Em: (would like to try some more AI brain analysis on the last day)
Kassil: ORACLE politely informs Ananda that she isn’t cleared for access to information about the K Factor.
Ananda: (Even with my expanded access level?)
Kassil: Indeed.
Ananda: Hmm’kay.
Ananda fishes for details about genome strain Gamma-Keter-7, as well.
Kassil: No fish bite, at the moment.
Ananda frowns thoughtfully.
Kassil: So – anything else?
Em: Okay.
Serek: Not from here. Using the time for training—eventually. >.>
Em: Alasdair, can I get some arcane assistance with my research into the AI brain?
Ananda tinkers with ORACLE some more.
Em: It is insanely advanced.
Em: This makes me REALLY want to find out what’s in it
Alasdair spends his time trying to track down the fourth of Em’s group.
Kassil: Alasdair can make a Gather Information check.
Kassil: No one really knows what happened to him. He never came ack the last time the group set out.
Alasdair will try again after boosting both himself and Em.
Kassil: Okay, then.
Alasdair keeps talking to the same janitor.
Kassil: (Damn you Johnson!)
Kassil: So.
Kassil: Em?
Em: Tries to puzzle out this devious thing, over the full six hours of the buff…
Alasdair makes Em an ElectroGod.
Em: (grins and channels the spirit of Tesla)
Ananda eyes ORACLE with marked skepticism, then puts it away. For now, at least.
Kassil: Em’s initial attempt to connect results in a screen flowing with what appears to be gibberish; some analysis, once she disconnects again and processes the data stream, suggests that what she got was the equivalent of an unending scream.
Em: Oh, that’s reassuring. o_o
Em: Alasdair, can you smarten me up for my talents regarding computers too?
Em: Sorry to ask so much, I actually made a connection to this thing!
Ananda wanders over to watch Em at work.
Em: This is alarming.
Em: I think this AI brain may be trapped in endless torment.
Kassil: I think that digging deeper into the brain will need to wait for next session.
Kassil: So!
Kassil: 165 CDP for everyone.
Kassil: You may or may not have all lost some Sanity in the process. :D
Ananda: It was fun, and even briefly !!Fun!!. What could go wrong?
Kassil: You should ask Serek. XD
Ananda: (Also, I think we might’ve found the instance of Circe that was asking for people to stop bothering her.)
Em: (Maybe we can heal her. o_o)
Ananda: (With godlike buffs, maybe you can.)
Em: (I certainly don’t want to give the brain up till I’ve pushed my electronics/computer ranks a bit farther.)
Alasdair
Ananda
Em
165 CDP
Total: 5400
Kassil: So, last session had you chatting with ORACLE, discovering unpleasant and/or confusing things such as Circe being at the Mauna Kea observatory, and a time distortion bubble that Alasdair popped by using himself as a temporal brake.
Ananda: IIRC, we were talking about finishing up our documentation in here and seeing how the surface looks.
Kassil: You were discussing finishing ‘this branch’.
Kassil: Exactly how you define that is still unclear. :D
Kassil: So.
Alasdair: We’re still in SOS-636-V, yes?
Kassil: As far as you know, yes.
Ananda: (Shall we have a look into CSF-093 and ALS-77-Z before we head out?)
Alasdair: Seems like the thing to do.
Ananda: The door in here was welded shut when we came in, ethereally.
Alasdair: Yes
Ananda fiddles with her P-comm.
Kassil: The door is still shut, on this side. You don’t see signs of welding, but the doors /are/ rather solidly built. They might even stand up to Nik and Astarte.
Alasdair: “Ready to move on?”
Ananda shrugs, “Ready enough.”
Alasdair looks at Em.
Ananda resettles her backpack.
Em looks up, a bit pale but nods, “Yes, sorry.”
Em shakes her head.
Em: …So is everyone else here being haunted by unsettling minor hallucinations of past events?
Ananda: “How do you mean?”
Em: Since we got back from the place with the self proclaimed agents of a higher power, I’ve been getting a steady trickle of small hallucinations about some of my days as a prostitute.
Em: Alasdair seemed a bit unsettled there. I’m wondering if that was because of something similar?
Alasdair: “I have had zero prostitute hallucinations, myself.”
Em looks wry, “I would have expected so. I mean, of whatever is dark and disturbing from your own history.”
Em: “No need to share details, but it is a matter of significance if more than one of us are having experiences in the same vein.”
Em: Ananda, how about you?
Ananda looks between Em and Alasdair, curiously. “No. I’ve been exchanging e-mails with someone claiming to be a dead man.”
Alasdair: “This place is all about digging a knife into the cracks of your psyche. Occasionally, it’s going to hit home.”
Ananda shrugs one shoulder, “Who knows, it may even be, from a different timeline.”
Em: I presume you’ve had dark times in your life too, though, Ananda?
Ananda quirks an eyebrow, “Take that as given. You don’t work in the wilds very long without seeing things you wish you hadn’t.”
Em: Well, you seem to have incredible luck at times, so I had to double check if this might have been lifelong …
Kassil: Visual Detection checks, please.
Em: Just wondering if we should leave quickly before the efforts escalate to the point of perhaps dragging us into a version of the past.
Ananda smiles faintly. “The luck is that I haven’t died from any of them.”
Alasdair: “Well, when you’ve tested yourself and fully know your limits, you gain a certain resilience and confidence.”
Kassil: A dead rat falls in between the three of you, falling from the roof.
Ananda pauses a moment, seems about to reply to Alasdair, but looks up sharply instead.
Em: Is it the rat Ananda left at the entrance?
Alasdair slowly looks up, gritting his teeth.
Kassil: It looks quite similar.
Ananda pulls on a pair of gloves and examines the rat. Does it have an ear-tag?
Kassil: It appears to be the exact same rat you left on the top floor.
Alasdair checks the ground around the group, pacing in a tight circle around Em and Ananda.
Kassil: Worse for the wear from being dropped from the roof, but otherwise seemingly unchanged.
Ananda: “Hnn. Same number as the one I left out.”
Em: So. If we have no way of insulating ourselves from these “knife thrusts”, maybe we should leave until we can get superior magical coverage to protect ourselves more?
Alasdair: “I don’t believe that’s possible.”
Ananda looks up at the ceiling, “Thanks, I think.” She then bags the rodent corpse and stores it in her pack.
Em: That would be unfortunate. What leads you to think that, Alasdair?
Alasdair: “The only protection to be had from this place is leaving for somewhere far far away.”
Ananda: “Did anyone else notice a hand withdrawing into the ceiling, after the rat fell on us?”
Em: Not I.
Alasdair grimaces.
Ananda: “Looked a bit like the one Alasdair pulled out of the floor on our first trip in. Ceiling moved around it like water.”
Alasdair: “Yeah.”
Ananda makes note.
Alasdair closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before pulling out his P-Comm and fiddling with it.
Ananda: (Is he hiding it from our view?)
Alasdair: ( He is. )
Alasdair frowns briefly at his P-Comm before putting it away.
Alasdair: “To the next room?”
Ananda: “Sure. Let’s see if the messages from beyond follow us.”
Em nods and follows.
Kassil: To Ethereal mode!
Kassil: Or you can try getting the door open, from the inside.
Ananda: (I think we want to be ethereal, to make it easier in the other rooms.)
Kassil: For certain comical values of ‘easier’.
Ananda: (I fully expect the white room to be sealed at least as well as this one.)
Alasdair turns everyone Ethereal again.
Kassil: Whoompf.
Kassil: Passing through the door makes you itch fiercely in whatever parts of your body are in contact with it as you pass through.
Ananda grimaces. Can’t scratch through armor.
Alasdair bolts through the door as fast as possible.
Kassil: Nothing seems to have changed much on the other side, although the room with the rustic-looking door has a fairly thick scent of woodsmoke filling it.
Alasdair heads toward the remaining passageway, saying at least a foot from any surface.
Kassil: (Why so paranoid? :D)
Ananda resumes her cautious, alert pace towards the next room.
Alasdair: ( Oh… no reason. >.> )
Kassil: The remaining passage seems fairly bland, in terms of what you’ve seen so far. It’s a fairly large ceramacrete tunnel, marked with a few blast doors that are all retracted. It ends at a vault door, which sits partly open. Surprisingly, the door appears to have been left this way, rather than forced open.
Ananda eyes the door with some skepticism.
Ananda: (Is it open wide enough that I can get through without passing through the door-material?)
Kassil: Yes.
Ananda sidles through, then.
Alasdair follows Ananda, trying not to touch anything.
Em looks around pointedly and takes her time…and absently is tracing the first gesture of her “focus magic”…
Em: Follows sneakily afterward.
Kassil: The room is actually somewhat familiar, as you saw it briefly on your ethereal jaunt to find the source of the viewscreens. While that glimpse was momentary, you can now see a complex tangle of padded-looking pipes surrounding numerous human-sized white tanks that cover the floor and hang from the roof amid a level of catwalks.
Kassil: The air is noticably cooler inside.
Ananda: (Interior layout?)
Kassil: The floor space is fairly open, with one tank roughly every five meters. The piping runs underneath the catwalks, high enough that if you were on foot you’d have to have a pretty impressive jumping ability to get to them.
Kassil: The upper tier of tanks mirror the floor level, and all the pipes join together at the southern wall, where they disappear into the material.
Kassil: Each tank has a small window at a level for an average person to look through them.
Ananda: (Are there labels on anything?)
Kassil: There are small consoles on each tank, just under the windows.
Em starts checking out the nearest console for data, making suer there’s no anti-tamper/security measures first.
Alasdair shudders and floats up to the upper catwalk to check the containers up there.
Kassil: Em finds nothing explosive, corrosive, or otherwise fatality-inducing about the console.
Em yays, paranoia unjustified again.
Ananda leaves those to Em for now, and quietly paces the room, alert for anything moving or creature-like. She’s carrying the ZX a bit more at the ready than usual.
Ananda does the same inspection of the upper level.
Kassil: Ananda, you find ladders on what you believe are the east and west walls.
Kassil: It’s not too hard to get onto the upper level via one.
Alasdair moves to the next tank over and looks inside.
Em ‘s metaphorical whiskers twitch as she data ferrets.
Kassil: Ananda, you can see Alasdair peering into one of the tanks.
Ananda ends her circuit of the catwalk behind Alasdair. “Find anything interesting?”
Alasdair: “People in cryostorage.”
Alasdair moves to the next tank over and looks inside.
Ananda settles her firearm against her side rather than in her hands and looks into the tank on the opposite side of the walkway.
Em nods, “People in storage with very terse explanations of who or why. but they apparently are still alive and could be revived. If we were feeling like having more targets might diffuse the magical attention the place gives us….” (she makes it clear by expression this is a pretty weak reason to revive them)
Ananda tinkers with the console on the cryotank.
Alasdair pulls back from the tank sharply, choking/coughing slightly.
Ananda looks up. “Something wrong?”
Alasdair: "He’s awake."
Em: While in cryogenic suspension??
Em looks alarmed.
Alasdair looks back at the other tanks before muttering, “And I think they’re all Wielders.”
Ananda briskly moves to the awake one and looks in. “Is that the only commonality?”
Em: I’d say they’re all very unlucky, as a secondary trait, to end up interred in this place
Em: I’d almost suggest asking ORACLE who these folks are but somehow I expect the answers won’t be very useful
Alasdair checks the panels on the awake guy and the two he’s already looked in on.
Alasdair: “We should absolutely not use ORACLE in here. The… fallout would be catastrophic. And these are my favorite pants.”
Ananda watches the aware person for a moment. “We can assume he’s been in there for at least a century and a half. It sounds maddeningly boring.”
Em: …is he still sane??
Ananda hesitates. “Still, we should probably leave him in there a while longer. I don’t think any of us knows how to handle people who’ve been in that kind of sensory deprivation.”
Ananda: “I don’t know, and I’m not psychologist enough to find out.”
Alasdair: “I expect he’s very angry and would cause the release of who knows what else is here. Not to mention kill us.”
Kassil: You could always try reading his mind. _
Ananda: “Kf. With that long to stew, it’d be entirely understandable.”
Alasdair: “Em, how did you find out why the people down there are, uh, incarcerated?”
Ananda bares her teeth at the awake one in what’s distinctly not a smile and makes herself turn away. Instead, she goes ‘round and checks the other person-sicles for signs of awareness.
Alasdair raises an eyebrow at Ananda. “Is he messing with you?”
Ananda: “No, but I get the impression that he would if he could.”
Alasdair: "Well, they didn’t get here by winning Employee of the Month."
Kassil: As Ananda moves to pace, she nearly trips as a cord from her pack has managed to wind itself around her ankle such that it’s nearly like stepping on her own shoelaces.
Kassil: She catches herself before she goes sprawling out across the catwalk.
Ananda recovers with what she hopes is a measure of gracefulness, or at least not too much flailing.
Alasdair: “You okay?”
Ananda: “Yeah, just a little run-in with Murphy’s Law.”
Ananda continues on to check the other cryotanks.
Alasdair: “Hope it’s not one of the denizens.”
Ananda: (Notably, after attaching the loose cord back where it belongs.)
Ananda: “Kf, Murphy lives everywhere.”
Ananda marks certain of the tanks with a bit of orange tape.
Alasdair sidles over to the tank on the other side of the awake guy and peer in. “Find other awake ones?”
Ananda: “None so far, but a few that look like they’ve got involuntary Wielding stuff going on.”
Alasdair: “The tanks seem to be dispersing or grounding the energy.”
Ananda nods absently, watching electrical-looking sparks that flicker off one of the.. prisoners? inside a tank.
Alasdair: ( Em sure seems busy down there. ;) )
Ananda: (She’s probably in full data-ferret mode and doesn’t even hear us.)
Alasdair falls partly through the catwalk before catching himself and sucking a sharp breath through his teeth.
Ananda looks up at the sudden movement. “What was that about?”
Alasdair rights himself and unclenches his fists. “Sorry, tripped.”
Em murmurs absently as she finishes drawing zero for info about the subject she’s examining “is there a poltergeist tripping us up here?”
Alasdair checks the display for the tank.
Kassil: Which tank?
Alasdair: The one I was just looking in.
Kassil: It doesn’t seem to have changed. Still reporting the same name, age, and ethnicity.
Kassil: So, Em. What are you doing?
Em: Can I set it up so I get a relay of the data from the tanks, so I know if anyone else tries to revive these folks while we’re not here?
Em: and any way to set up command circuits to override such attempts?
Kassil: They don’t seem to be set up for wireless beyond immeadiate interaction.
Ananda watches the sparking sleeper for a moment longer, then gestures briefly. (Being/Insight to sense what this one is.)
Kassil rolls dice…
Alasdair: “Em, come see what you can tell us about the people up here, please.”
Em nods and gives it a try.
Alasdair watches Ananda closely once he figures out what she’s up to.
Em: Alasdair, not much data here. I have names, ages, ethnicity and not much else aside from biometrics. A few have some ominous notes: “datavore” “genesis” “mutant”
Em: What are you looking to find out?
Alasdair never takes his eyes off Ananda while replying, “What they are and why they’re here. Are they all human? No evolutionaries?”
Em: No data at all on why. “What” is extremely limited. The biometrics are not particularly helpful that way, unless there’s a particular one you know deviates out of normal human range…
Ananda looks stunned and leans against the nearest upright object. She drags the back of her arm across her forehead – sweating, in spite of the coolness here.
Em: I have no information leading me to think any of these are nonhuman.
Ananda ‘s voice is hoarse when she adds to Em’s information, “I suspect that these are spiritual Wielders.”
Alasdair puts a concerned hand on Ananda’s shoulder. “You okay?”
Em: Alpha or Omega or a mix?
Ananda nods to Alasdair, “Will be. Probably both. Looking into this one,” she jerks a thumb at the sparking sleeper, “Hooked me into something that would tear the universe apart.”
Alasdair glances briefly at the tank. “I… I know the feeling.”
Em: Obviously, I have missed out so much by not learning telepathy….
Alasdair: “The most terrifying things cannot be unlearned, Em. Don’t be quick to open that door.”
Em nods slowly, “I was starting to wonder if my earlier eagerness to include this in my curriculum of further studies might have been a bit rash”….
Ananda meets Alasdair’s eyes for a moment, in shared understanding.
Alasdair starts to say something before realizing he still has a hand on Ananda’s shoulder. He quickly removes it and clears his throat, glancing around at the tanks.
Ananda: “Kf. Walking in here was rash. Doing anything now that we’re here isn’t even on the same scale.”
Ananda is clearly making light of it. She pulls out her cold thermos for a drink.
Em: I think unthawing the datavore would still qualify. >_>
Kassil: Possibly!
Kassil: Only one way to find out!
Ananda: “Let’s assume that we leave anything that’s clearly a person frozen, shall we? There are many reasons I prefer to work with animals, and quite a few of them look like they apply here.”
Alasdair: “The power of the people contained here is staggering. Whoever or whatever locked them here…”
Alasdair shudders.
Em: And we still don’t know what made them abandon their work.
Alasdair: “I have only unconfirmed suspicions.”
Em: We could unthaw one of the Alpha wielders….surely they wouldn’t kill us out of hand…
Em: Though I’d recommend dragging their unit out of the facility to do this.
Em: Maybe into the place we met the agents of the higher power…
Ananda: “Some of the crew here was straight-up murdered, don’t forget. This ‘Foundation’ might not have been abandoned so much as destroyed.”
Alasdair: “That’s my impression. Perhaps not by a singular entity, but destroyed nonetheless.”
Kassil: Dragging the units out of place is likely to kill the occupant, Em. They’re hard-wired to the Site’s power supply.
Em: we could splice in a replacement power supply and levitate the whole rig out maybe…?
Alasdair: “And no, we don’t awaken those here. Enough things got loose already that I’m loathe to court even greater disaster.”
Ananda gives Em a look. “No people. I don’t want to explain to someone that it’s been more than a century and everyone they knew is dead.”
Em nods, more swayed by Alasdair’s argument…when the man who would cheerily risk burning out his brain to understand the universe says “I think that’s too dangerous”, it’s worth heeding…
Alasdair chuckles thinly. “I’d also prefer to only make mistakes we have a chance at correcting.”
Em: So I take it you don’t think all of NWSEC has the resources to incarcerate any of these, unthawed, if they got antisocial?
Em: (tries to figure out exactly how they’re doing this freezing thing anyway, is it different, superior, or inferior tech to what we’d use, if we can do the same thing now….)
Kassil: Well, the electronic components seem simple enough, if rather robust. You can actually see where the main loop and a backup have fried over the last 150 years, in the unit you’re examining – but there are still seven more backups in a functional state to keep the unit online.
Ananda pushes herself up from the pole she’s leaning against and paces a bit.
Kassil: (Don’t forget you still have ALS-77-Z waiting. :D Or a flight back to the safety of the surface.)
Alasdair looks for the other door out of here.
Em: (so it seems this is just really durably built versions of what we already use…just 150 years ahead of their time when made?)
Ananda selects a place where the catwalk rests on a cross-beam, dusts off her hands, and lets herself ‘fall’ through. She catches the beam for a moment and hangs there, miming the influence of gravity, then lets herself drop the rest of the way, landing weightlessly on her toes.
Ananda tags the tanks of involuntary Wielders on this level, as well.
Kassil: The other way out of the room is a human-size door in the south wall, made of some golden metal.
Alasdair flits down silently and inspects the door.
Kassil: All in all, by the time Ananda is done tagging, nearly thirty tanks out of 250 have been tagged.
Kassil: The door appears to be a perfectly normal office door, of the kind you’d find in a business inside an arcology, except that the whole thing is some strange golden-colored metal, and the glass appears to be interlaced with some extremely fine threads of material.
Alasdair peers hesitantly through the glass.
Ananda ambles over to the office-door when she’s done.
Kassil: Ananda can also see the unusual-looking office door and the odd-looking reinforced glass.
Em finishes her investigations and follows
Kassil: …As can Em.
Alasdair whispers, “So…”
Kassil: Ananda and Em can see the sides of an empty white room from their vantages to the side of Alasdair.
Alasdair steps back two steps.
Ananda rests her left hand against the door, pushing just a bit to see if it’s resistant to ethereal creatures.
Kassil: At the back of the room, if Ananda or Em look, is a very, very nice-looking desk with a rather plush office chair behind it. There’s no sign of any computer equipment, but there are papers fanned across the desk and a fountain pen in an inkwell on one corner.
Kassil: The door does not seem to be resistant to ethereal forms.
Alasdair: “Anomalous Lifeform Storage, and no sign of a lifeform. Troubling.”
Ananda looks through the window, head tilted slightly to one side. “Odd, that.”
Ananda shrugs, steps through.
Kassil: Ananda passes into the room with no apparent ill effects.
Alasdair grimaces but follows quickly.
Kassil: Alasdair likewise enters to no apparent ill effects.
Kassil: The air in the room has a hint of lavender to it, and it’s slightly on the warm side.
Alasdair tries to leave.
Kassil: The door yields easily to Alasdair.
Ananda: “Maybe it’s the desk that’s alive?”
Em watches worriedly looking if there’s a sign of anything that might conceal a computer
Ananda raps her knuckles on it.
Alasdair joins Ananda and glances at the papers.
Kassil: And… There’s a tall figure in a rather nice business suit sitting in the office chair, as Ananda knocks on the desk. “Ah! Hello!” Notably, despite being humanoid, it has a flat, noseless face, and two rather pronounced horns.
Ananda: (Are you still on the far side of the door, Em, or did you come in with us?)
Em: (watching through the window, ready to wield if something untoward happens, just a couple minutes longer)
Alasdair starts.
Em: (is extra o_o of anomolies)
Em: (in this place)
Kassil: You all get the impression that the figure has been there, and you just didn’t see it until now, despite the absurdity of this thought.
Ananda jerks back and automatically brings the ZX to bear on the figure.
Kassil: The figure tsks at Ananda. “Well, that’s hardly a polite response to a greeting.”
Em checks if the door conspicuously changes in any respect.
Kassil: The door is still perfectly permeable.
Ananda looks at the figure for a moment, then stands down. She quirks an eyebrow and smiles, “It’s also impolite to sneak up on people like that, so I rather think we’re even.”
Alasdair: “You’ll have to excuse Shelly. We’re all a bit jumpy, but I imagine you understand why. I’m William. And you are…?”
Kassil: “Hmph. I can hardly be blamed for dozing off when no one bothers to drop by.” The creature waves a hand, and three rather nicely appointed chairs are suddenly /there/ on your side of the desk. It chuckles at Alasdair. “Well, if you’re going to be like /that/, you can call me Bob.”
Em watches, apprehensively reviewing her wielding lessons in her head.
Kassil: “I suppose your friend behind the door is named ‘Marcy’?”
Ananda leans on the back of the chair, watching ‘Bob’ closely.
Ananda: “If she wants to be, today.”
Em checks if there’s any monitors or warning lights suddenly obvious on or around the door.
Alasdair: “So, how do you come to find yourself here?”
Kassil: “The Foundation discovered my current locus moldering in an old office building and brought me here. Of course, if you checked those files you liberated from CSC-077-X on the third level, you’d know that.” The creature seems rather amused. “Since you technically know it, I won’t ask that we bargain for that information.”
Kassil: Em finds no alerts, warnings, blinking lights, or other hazard signs.
Alasdair: “You’ll have to forgive me, it’s difficult, at times, to converse with beings who have a linearity that differs from our own.”
Kassil: The creature waves a scaled hand airily. “Think nothing of it. Please, have a seat.”
Ananda: “You trade in information, then?”
Kassil: “In part, certainly.” It smiles widely, revealing needle-like teeth. “I am a deal-broker. I am quite capable of granting incredible things, if you can match the price.”
Ananda gives ‘Bob’ a more than faintly skeptical look, “The definition of ‘incredible’ is such that I’m not inclined to take your word for it.”
Alasdair nods to Ananda. “Certainly has a Faustian air about it.”
Kassil: “Perfectly understandable. I’m sure you’ve seen some rather astounding and horrific things, what with the Foundation being defunct.” It picks up a pitcher that wasn’t there a moment ago and pours a glass of what looks like water. “Still, the word is an accurate description of my abilities.”
Kassil: The entity doesn’t actually drink from the glass it just poured, setting it down and fidgeting with it. “If you’d like, you can simply perform some tests – ask for something minor and simple. Unless you agree to my price, I won’t produce it, and it won’t cost you anything.”
Ananda considers for a moment. “How about a perpetual motion device?”
Alasdair: “Since this is, to us, our first visit, perhaps an illustrative example would be helpful? What was the boon and cost of the latest request prior to our arrival?”
Kassil: Ananda’s request gets a snort. “I’m not the Site’s engine, madam. Violating the laws of this universe is hardly a cheap or easy prize, and I’m afraid you can’t afford it.”
Ananda grins, “Just checking.”
Em: (how far do you think a single soul GOES anyway, esp with 150 years inflation??)
Ananda: (Come in and ask. :D )
Alasdair: ( Not as far as it used to. It’s a buyer’s market. )
Kassil: Alasdair, on the other hand, gets a nod. “I can do that, certainly. Agent Marshall Duclane came by on the day the Site ceased to be occupied by the Foundation. He was desperate for a weapon to turn the tide, so he requested a powerful weapon. He had me deliver it to his partner, since the cost was his life.”
Kassil: Alasdair, Ananda, auditory Detection checks.
Kassil: Em, the conversation seems to be rather polite, and the thing at the desk is fidgeting with a cup of water.
Em watches carefully, not liking life forms that materialize out of thin air. o_o
Ananda: “So you deliver material goods. What assurance do we have that information we get from you is complete and accurate?”
Kassil: “Given your suspicion, probably none. You could always go try to find the weapon I sent Agent Jannis, but it’s somewhere down on level ten, last I knew of it.”
Ananda shrugs, “Maybe eventually. How would we know what to look for?”
Kassil: “It’s fairly clear – there aren’t many technological devices on that level, really. It’s a gun the size of his arm, probably still laying in the skeleton of Agent Jannis.”
Ananda nods amiably and files the information away for future reference.
Ananda: “What’s the range of beings that you will or can deal with?”
Alasdair cracks his knuckles and stretches his fingers.
Kassil: “That information will come at a cost. Perhaps, let’s say, your old firearm, since you seem so enamored of the one that likes to shapeshift.”
Ananda: “No thanks.”
Kassil: The creature smiles politely. “As you see fit.”
Ananda is struck by a thought. “Zix does have likes and wants. Do you consider it a suitable entity to negotiate with?”
Kassil: The smile goes away. “Please don’t try to weasel around the price of a request, madam.”
Alasdair raises a hand, “Perhaps something a bit more conversational. Since the laws of this universe are difficult to violate, is there a universe you find a bit more… recreational? I imagine you like to stretch your legs, so to speak, from time to time.”
Ananda: “Hn? Oh. No offense intended.”
Kassil: Alasdair’s response gets a soft chuckle. “I’ll answer that for one of your field rations, sir.”
Alasdair shrugs and places it on the desk.
Kassil: The creature picks it up with a smile. “Certainly there are realms of existence – universes, as it were – where things are more congenial to my nature than this one. Most of them would be ill-suited for your form of life, for various reasons.”
Ananda looks over the furniture idly. “Is all this,” she waves a hand at the desk and chairs, “a matter of your taste, or something chosen to meet expectations of the people who come to talk with you?”
Em watches vigilantly, striving to maintain focus and alertness.
Kassil: “This is my current locus.” The creature smiles again, displaying the needle-like teeth anew.
Alasdair looks over at Ananda. “We really should be getting back. It was lovely to meet you and I look forward to returning in the future.”
Ananda: “We should, yes.” She nods politely to ‘Bob’, “I shall keep you in mind, if I need something extrordinary.”
Kassil: The creatures inclines its head politely. “I am quite sure I will still be here for the foreseeable future.”
Alasdair chuckles at the joke and follows Ananda to the door.
Ananda shows herself out.
Kassil: The two of you pass through with no trouble; Em, watching sees the creature simply stop existing.
Em blinks.
Em: “Nice trick, that,” she mutters.
Alasdair lets out the breath he’d been holding the last few feet.
Alasdair: “Ah. Uh. So. Huh.”
Kassil: After the relative warmth of the room, the chill of the cryostorage chamber is fairly sharp.
Em: (Alasdair likes playing Russian Roulette?)
Alasdair: ( Alasdair likes tossing rocks onto the pond before checking the ice with his body. )
Ananda stretches her arms over her head, rising up on her toes when she does. She settles out of the stretch with a long breath.
Kassil: So, what now?
Em: So…that looked ominous to me. Was it?
Ananda looks sidelong at Alasdair, “Did you happen to notice that echo to its voice?”
Em: I presume as far as you knew, there was nothing in there before you entered, and nothing in there after you left?
Alasdair: “So, non-linear lifeform dealing in Faustian bargains.”
Alasdair nods at Ananda. “Yes. I expect that existing in our reality is not easy for it. Nor is that remotely it’s true form.”
Em: Pity Dante’s not here, we could convince him that taking one for the team could be extended to “how much data that will protect them from harm does my soul buy”…
Em: Okay, no.
Em: That wouldn’t be a place to go.
Em: But I have to admit I am starting to get a bit overwhelmed by the level of danger in this place.
Ananda barks a laugh.
Em: You gave it food. I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt you, Alasdair
Alasdair: “No, it would not. In sales, there’s a very relevant term: loss leader. Sell something for a loss knowing that the customer will also buy something very expensive. We haven’t seen the full extent of its initial offering, but I felt very much like the fly in a spider’s parlor.”
Alasdair shrugs, “The information cost it nothing and gained me nothing, so I’m not worried.”
Ananda: “I would be very surprised if it eats remotely what we do, if at all.”
Em nods slowly and hopes it’s just a sales tactic, yes.
Em: What next then?
Ananda: “Back to Saint Mary. See if it’s the same one we left, within tolerances.”
Alasdair: “Agreed. We need to by hypervigilant for changes. I regret not paying more atten-” He pats his P-Comm. “Uh, attention to the base before.”
Em nods and relaxes just a hair but keeps a wary eye for anything somehow getting out of That Room.
Em: Well, hopefully we won’t do anything awkward like find out we’re in a world where some of us were murdered earlier. o_o
Kassil: 165 CDP, then. The return to Saint Mary is fairly uneventful, really, although the base camp crew are shocked to see you after the time you were gone. We’ll pick up in Saint Mary next time, with some things happening there.
Em: We’ll see.
Em smiles winningly.
Ananda: Current date?
Alasdair: Yeah, that’s not ominous. At all. :D
Kassil: August 12, 2260.
Ananda: ’kay.
Karelzarath: So we lost 6 days, give or take?
Kassil: Roughly.
