StoryQuests

Move Zig

2013-05-19T20:51:01-07:00

Lights flutter on and off around the warehouse-like expanse.

“Shit,” Lydia says, squirming quickly onto her feet. You both glance back in the direction of Vireen and Doctor Rovvak.

“We should keep going,” you say. “Yeah,” she says. You both break into a run, following the weaving footprints in the thick film of dust on the floor. It must have been undisturbed for a very long time before the lot of you showed up.

Slightly ahead of you, Lydia skids to a stop in the intersection. Mandrid’s footprints stop abruptly, but there’s no sign of Mandrid.

(Read Suggestions...)

Go after Mandrid.

2013-05-12T23:00:57-07:00

“You and Rovvak had time to talk and get your Eye before I remember waking up,” you begin. “What happened while I was out? Was I – did I –”

“I’m not sure,” Lydia says, gingerly adjusting her jaw. “It could have been some facet of Milo’s personality asserting itself. You were still suffering effects from transit, and you weren’t making a lot of sense.”

“Is the local loop still open?” you ask.

“No,” she says. “You’d notice the effects.” She quickly checks the back of her glove. “We’re still within radio range. I can restablish the link from here if we need to.”

“Good,” you say. “Do you know where we are relative to where they’re keeping Yavor’s Eye?”

“I don’t know where that is. Even Doctor Rovvak doesn’t know much about the layout of the vaults. Normally, only Chxta would ever come down here. We’re fortunate the ceilings are so high.”

“Did Chxta dig the chambers we were in above?” you ask. As you look up at the vaulted ceilings, your latent art history senses begin to tingle. Occasionally that degree comes in handy. “They like confined spaces, don’t they?” This place looks like someone mashed up an alien cathedral with the warehouse from the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

“As far as I know they did, yes,” Lydia says. “And, I guess if I had to describe the stuff they tend to build, yeah, they’re not comfortable with big expanses or heights. The tunnels above are pretty representative. Just watch a Chxta on the surface of a planet, sometime. Not all of them freak out, but it’s very obvious that none of them like it. Why are you asking me about architecture?”

“It just stuck out, is all,” you say. “The scale is so different.”

“Maybe it’s functional. Better use of space if they stack the shelving.”

“Maybe,” you say. The shelving stops well short of the ceiling, though, and it doesn’t really match the feeling of the room. “So what about Yavor’s Eye?”

“We recover or destroy it before the mellivores get to it,” Lydia says. “If we can get there first.”

“Do you think Mandrid knows where it is?” you ask.

Lydia snorts. “I doubt he knows that kind of thing,” she says. “He’s a lab assistant. A functionary.”

“Yeah,” you say. “So look, if we run into him, hang back and let me talk to him. He’s terrified of you.”

“He should be,” Lydia says.

“Yeah, so… take it easy.” You look at Vireen and Doctor Rovvak. “Vireen, are you okay staying here with Doctor Rovvak?”

She nods.

“Well, then –” you begin. You’re cut off by a tremendous unseen explosion that rocks the floor.

(Read Suggestions...)

Give chase.

2013-04-29T20:59:02-07:00

“After me!” you shout, and leap into the void. A savage blackness envelops you.

Consciousness returns to you in a fit of dry heaving. You fight back the wave of nausea, push yourself up, and force yourself to open your eyes and look around. You’re in some kind of dimly-lit warehouse, with towering rows of shelving as far as you can see in every direction. Doctor Rovvak is sprawled on her back next to you, pressing her hands to her eyes, breathing heavily. Vireen is sitting up next to her, with one hand cautiously on Rovvak’s elbow.

“Hey,” Lydia says shakily, from behind you. You turn and look up at her. She’s leaning unsteadily against the shelving, half-supporting herself with the rifle. She hastily wipes her mouth with her wrist.

You’re relived to see that she’s wearing her glove again. “Mandrid didn’t take your Eye,” you say.

“No, he left it behind,” Lydia says, looking at you intensely.

You haul yourself to your feet. Lydia lunges and grabs your shoulder. “Take it easy,” she says.

“I’m fine,” you say, shrugging her off. “What happened? How’s Doctor Rovvak?” you ask, turning to Vireen.

“I don’t know,” Vireen says, wide-eyed. She looks a bit ill.

“Typical for local loop transit,” Doctor Rovvak mutters. “This form was not made to endure a hard landing in high gravity, however. I should have anticipated this,” she says, clearly a bit anguished.

“How bad is it?” you ask.

“Some internal damage,” Doctor Rovvak says, starting to sit up. “I will be fine.”

“No, you won’t,” Vireen insists, forcing her back down. “You shouldn’t try to sit up or you’ll just make the tearing worse.”

“Impractical,” Doctor Rovvak says, but doesn’t fight her.

“Doctor Rovvak says this is one of the lower levels of the vault, below where they would have sent your Eye up from” Lydia says. “I don’t think anyone besides us and Mandrid has been here for a while. Look at the dust.”

“What happened to Mandrid?” you ask.

“He must have recovered before we did. There are footprints,” Lydia says, gesturing down the aisles, “in the dust.”

(Read Suggestions...)

Go last; leave ours here.

2013-04-22T09:20:36-07:00

“Are you all right?” Lydia asks you.

You blink and shake the cobwebs out of your head. Your mind wandered for a second there. “I’m fine. I think we should use mine on this end and leave it here for now. That way we have a place to retreat to if we have to. We can come back for it on the way back up.”

“The mellivores who blocked the door might come back,” Lydia says. “I’d rather we didn’t leave an Eye behind for them to find.”

“If they came back, we probably couldn’t stop them from taking both our Eyes anyway.”

“I could wipe mine,” Lydia says. “We couldn’t wipe yours without the glove hardware easily. I’m also hoping Doctor Rovvak will have an opportunity to try re-integrating you sooner rather than later.”

“To re-integrate, all I have to do is pick it up bare-handed, right?”

“Perhaps; it would be better if I could properly monitor you at the time,” Doctor Rovvak says.

“It’d definitely be better,” Vireen says.

“Do you think we’re going to have time to set up properly in a lab, with power, anytime soon?” you ask.

“Unlikely,” Rovvak says.

“Well, let’s deal with it when we get back. We’ve got a galaxy to worry about right now. Mandrid, you’re coming with us.”

“Wonderful,” he says.

“The radio is ready,” Doctor Rovvak says. “Give me the pouch with the Eye.”

You hand her the pouch. She takes a piece of cloth, or maybe paper, and carefully pulls out the Eye. Then she snaps it gingerly into the device she’d been assembling. It’s hard to make it out in the dark, but it’s roughly trapezoidal and looks very neatly put together.

“So what’s a ‘local loop’, actually?” Mandrid asks.

“A point-to-point connection without traversing the Network,” Lydia says.

“But that’s not poss—” he protests.

“You’ve never worked with Doctor Rovvak before, have you?” Lydia asks, a hint of a smile in her voice. “Now shut up.”

“Agent Lydia, check your radio,” Doctor Rovvak says. “Emergency band Zed-2.”

Lydia passes her comm device to Vireen and shoulders the rifle to fiddle with her glove, then holds the glove up to her ear.

Doctor Rovvak holds the device up to her mouth. “Check, check, check,” she says.

Lydia nods. Doctor Rovvak moves the device closer to her ear. Lydia speaks into her glove. “Testing, check, check, check.” Rovvak nods and lowers the device.

“Take off your Eye,” Rovvak says. “We should establish the loop with it here.”

Lydia, with obvious reluctance, slowly unpeels the nano-adhesive straps at her wrist and pulls off her glove. She blinks slowly, several times, before refocusing. She holds up the glove. “Ready,” she says. “Brace yourselves,” she adds, “this may be mildly disorienting.”

Doctor Rovvak tightens her hands around the periphery of the device, and both Eyes flare in response. You hear a squelch of audio feedback, then the bright green glow fades to a deep amber.

“Get up and put your hands behind your head,” Lydia says to Mandrid, unshouldering the rifle, trailing her glove in her free hand. “I want you to move in front of us where I can see you.” Even though she’s practically right next to you, her voice sounds weirdly distant.

“The tube to the vault is this way,” Doctor Rovvak says, sounding like she’s on the far end of a concrete tunnel. She carries her homebrew device gingerly. Lydia follows, herding Mandrid ahead of them both. The bobbing amber lights, though dim, cast weird shadows which seem to swallow up the muted light from the display of Lydia’s comm device. The room feels like it’s tilting slowly, and you instinctively find yourself trying to adjust your balance to compensate for that, only to find that you’re leaning over too far. The right angles of the walls and equipment benches seem to be slowly and perpetually contracting into acute angles.

You wonder if it’s just you, but a glance over at Vireen reveals she’s similarly disoriented. Mandrid seems to be veering and overcorrectly slightly too. Only Lydia and Doctor Rovvak seem to be on balance, standing monsterously straight as they walk onward through the warping geometry.

Lydia reaches the tube and puts her glove inside, rifle still trained on Mandrid. “Medic,” she says, from somewhere a million miles away, “close the tube and send it down.”

“Let us hope there is still pressure in the system,” Doctor Rovvak says, from a distant star.

Vireen, supporting herself against the wall, staggers over to the tube and rotates the cylindrical door closed, then pulls a lever next to it. There’s a satisfying and almost too ordinary “SHUNK” as the cylinder shoots downwards. The geometry of the room twitches and elongates, and finally stabilizes.

Doctor Rovvak sets the device on the floor, activates something on it, and steps back. The amber light reddens, and, in a small radius around it, space itself peels away.

“I’ll go first,” Lydia says, swaying a little as she turns to face the rest of the group. “Who’s ne—”

Mandrid rushes and shoulder-checks her, flinging her onto her side, then leaps into the void.

(Read Suggestions...)

Tell him.

2013-04-10T21:57:03-07:00

“The guy who did this,” you say. “He took over the Network, and we think he sent the mellivores here.”

Mandrid looks aghast. “Why? How?”

“He is, or was, a Phoneman,” Lydia says preemptively, “and he got access to information about the Network’s original construction. You aren’t entitled to the details.”

Doctor Rovvak returns with an armful of junk. “I have a transmitter assembly. I can set up a local loop.”

“So,” says Lydia, “one of the two of us with an Eye is going to have to go first. I don’t think either of us want to be separated from them for long.”

“You go first,” you say, “and take the rifle, just in case. Then Doctor Rovvak, then Mandrid in the middle, then Vireen, and then I’ll come last.”

“Well, there’s the other problem,” she says. “Unless there’s a way to call the cannister down remotely from the other end, one of us is going to have to stay behind with their Eye, or else someone stays behind to send the Eye on this end down.”

(Read Suggestions...)

Ask about refitting.

2013-04-08T21:50:43-07:00

“Have any of us been fitted for a form small enough to fit down the tube?”

“What do you mean?” Lydia asks, puzzled.

“Is there any way we can swap forms to get down the tube?” you ask, just to be sure.

“Hm. Without the Operator, we still wouldn’t have a way to switch,” Lydia says. “Doctor,” she says, “have you ever been fitted for a form that small?”

Doctor Rovvak pauses her rummaging. “How small?”

“Small enough to fit in the container for the pneumatic tube.”

“I do not have any others which are adapted to this gravity. I am feeling strain as it is.” She perks up suddenly. “You were able to contact the Operator?”

“No,” Lydia says, “Isabel wanted to know.”

“I just have this one, and my regular general form,” interjects Vireen, sheepishly, as though she’s embarassed to only have two. “And my real form,” she adds.

“Thank you, Medic,” Lydia says.

“Are— are things really that bad?” Vireen asks, breaking the brief lull.

“As bad as what?” Lydia asks.

“As bad as Mandrid said. Are people really going to starve?”

Mandrid starts to sit up, but stops abruptly in response to a small gesture Lydia makes with the barrel of the rifle.

“Yes,” Lydia says sadly, after a pregnant pause. “Some, probably.”

“Why would the Operator let this happen?” Vireen asks plaintively.

“It isn’t really a—” Lydia stops herself short. “She isn’t omnipotent,” she finishes flatly. “Shunting us here, where Yavor’s Eye was, might have been all she could do under the circumstances. Hopefully we can find a way to stop him.”

Mandrid raises a tentative hand.

“Yes?” Lydia asks, her voice a raised eyebrow.

“Could I ask a question?” he asks.

“Go on.”

“Who’s Yavor?” he asks. “You’ve mentioned him twice now.”

(Read Suggestions...)

Check the Network.

2013-04-04T00:11:54-07:00

“Lydia,” you ask, “can you check to see if the Network’s still down? If it is, can we do the local loop thing down to the Vault at least?”

“I can try,” she says, “but I expect Yavor’s going to keep it down as long as his goons are here.” In the glare from her comm device, you can’t see her eyes roll back, but she’s extra still for a moment as she tries to access her implanted uplink. “Still nothing,” she says.

“Why are you even bothering? We should try to find a ship,” Mandrid says. “We should get as far away as we can from this place. There’s at least one other habitable world in this system.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Lydia says, and brandishes the rifle threateningly.

“Don’t you get it yet?” he continues. “It’s all over. Done. Aleph doesn’t mean anything anymore. Your stupid rules don’t mean anything anymore. Even if we get the network back, the Company’s never going to recover.”

“That’s not true!” Vireen shouts.

“With the main trade lines down, we’re looking at mass starvation in days,” Mandrid continues.

“Shut up,” Lydia says.

“Our whole damn infrastructure’s depended on it for a thousand generations and now it’s all gone!” Mandrid continues.

“SHUT. UP.” Lydia repeats. “First of all, you defeatist weasel, we’re here, now, and we’re going to make damn sure things never get that far. Second, after what you did, don’t forget that I’m still authorized to execute you on the spot.”

That seemed to do the trick.

“Doctor Rovvak,” Lydia asks, her voice cracking slightly, “what are our options for running a local noetic loop down to the Vault?”

“I will have to see what parts are available in this lab,” Rovvak says, getting up slowly. She shuffles over to one of the lab benches and begins rummaging through the materials sitting on it.

“I hope you remember,” Lydia says to you in English, “that neither Eye can be worn while the local loop is open, and there’s no way to bring the origin Eye along when the last person transits? I’m also not prepared to leave either of our Eyes unattended with Mandrid at any point. We’re going to need to work out some logistics around this.”

(Read Suggestions...)

Pick it up with something.

2013-04-02T20:23:38-07:00

You look around for something to pick up the Eye with. You’re not letting that thing out of sight ever again. You notice that someone left a thigh-pouch lying on one of the nearby lab benches within the circle of illumination from Lydia’s comm device. You shake out the pouch’s contents (mostly small metal instruments, similar to dental picks), then use it to scoop up the Eye from the floor.

“So Doc,” you begin what might pass for scandalously casual Tech-3, “what do we do now?”

“If we had a spare glove, we could remount your Eye,” Doctor Rovvak says. “It would be also preferable to be in a functioning lab where your condition can be carefully monitored when you put it back on.”

“That might not happen anytime soon,” you point out.

“Yes,” she says. “And I am painfully curious to see what delectable things happen.”

“Thanks,” you respond, unsure of how exactly to take that.

There are now several major courses of action you could pursue:

Try to deal with the crates stacked up against the door and escape that way.
Talk to Doctor Rovvak about using your Eye and/or Lydia’s to escape or communicate with the outside.
Take your chances and try re-integrating with your Eye.
Interrogate Mandrid.

(Read Suggestions...)

What about who you used to be?

2013-03-23T02:11:54-07:00

“If you aren’t the real Isabel, you still have to think about the person you used to be,” you say. “If it’s kind of like dying, you planning on basically killing them to stay the way you are now?”

Otherbel lowers her head between her knees.

You keep going. “Besides, what kind of person is Isabel? What would Isabel do?” you continue. “If that’s her Eye, you should know.”

Otherbel lets out a faint wail. Crap, she’s crying, or as near as the physiology of a general form will allow. “I don’t want — I don’t want to die,” she says. “But I’m pretty sure you’re right… she wouldn’t want…” she trails off.

“Nobody wants to die,” you acknowledge.

“Yeah,” Otherbel says softly. “Oh well.”

You feel strangely numb as she relaxes her grip on the Eye and slides it across the floor towards your feet. Her eyes unfocus and she tips over sideways until the corner between the bench and wall catches her.

Lydia abruptly steps forward and jabs the rifle barrel into (what had been) Otherbel’s chest. Instants later, her eyes open and refocus hungrily on the Eye, then open in wide-eyed panic as she notices the gun barrel and visually follows it up to Lydia.

“Deputy Agent Lydia, Aleph,” Lydia says. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

Formerbel’s face takes on a look of abject terror. “Please don’t,” she (or he) says weakly. “There’s no point anymore. Aleph, The Company, everything, it’s all over with.”

“The Operator wouldn’t let that happen!” Vireen protests angrily.

Lydia looks sadly at Vireen, then back at Formerbel.

“What’s your name?” Lydia asks, sharply.

“You’re not going to execute me?” Formerbel asks.

“We’ll see,” Lydia says. “What’s your name?”

“Mandrid,” Formerbel says, trembling slightly. “I was a technician here.”

“Why did you take the Eye?” Lydia demands, angrily.

“I thought — I thought maybe I could use it to escape somehow,” Mandrid says. “Escape the planet, I mean. Find somewhere quiet and lay low. Before things got too much worse and fell apart completely.”

(Read Suggestions...)

Ask Doctor Rovvak.

2013-03-17T23:20:44-07:00

“Doctor Rovvak,” you begin in Tech-3, “how much will this person remember after putting down the Eye, and how long would they retain those memories?”

“Ideally, they would remember nothing. If she’s held it long enough for implantation to begin, any residual memories are likely to be permanent,” she responds.

You translate, loosely, into English. “Doctor Rovvak says that if you do it quickly, you’ll be back to your old self. Otherwise, if you wait long enough, the effects of the Eye might start to become permanent.”

Otherbel takes the Eye out of her mouth and turns it over in her hand, looking at it somberly. She looks back up at you. “I feel like you’re telling me the truth about the Eye. What I meant is, right now, I only remember ever being Isabel. If I put this Eye down, you’re saying I’ll probably become someone totally different. That seems kind of like dying.” She closes her fist around the Eye again. “You claim you’re somehow both Milo and the real Isabel, and let’s assume I believe you that you think you are, but what if you’re just someone else who had this Eye for too long? Seems like then I have as much right to be me as you do.”

(Read Suggestions...)