Children Of The Revolution: Jemstone's Cybergeneration 2030 Game


Campaign Journals

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In which my players provide in-character Social Media style reactions and thoughts about the events that surround and affect their characters.

My players will be posting their character's updates at least once a week, following our Monday night sessions.

If all three of my players post consistently, they get additional experience points in the game.

I hope you enjoy their updates and this journal.

***

The game begins on June 1, 2030. It's a Saturday, and ten thousand people are crammed into the San Jose Sports Plex, watching the final High School Varsity Basketball game of the school year, live in the Governor Brown Memorial Stadium. Outside, the summer heat beats down, hot and sticky and just this side of too-humid, but inside, the AC is turned up and everyone's comfortable and cool. The New Santa Clara Arcology High Lancers, long favored to win the championship, face off against their rivals and scoring-equals, the Santa Cruz Aqua City Scorpions. Both teams have shown strong performances all the way here, and are tied in their playoffs. This game is it. The deciding victory.

It's 7:30pm, and the NCSA High competition cheer team, the Songbirds, have finished their half-time performance. They're doing a foot-stomping, butt-shaking, high-falling routine to an upbeat pop cover of an old Silverhand and the Samurai tune, "(Out Of) The City." It's a catchy tune, and you can dance to it, now. The Synth Pop Idol singer's voice has been autocorrected and overtuned to mask any hint of her back-country Appalachian origins. She's the next Micki, the up and coming New Thing, and all the girls love her style.

Bob and John Sampson, the popular morning show sports reporting duo from everyone's favorite all-hit radio station, launch into a duologue about teamwork and esprit de corps, citing how the local team, the Lancers, may be facing their toughest opposition yet, but they're a TEAM, and as they say goodbye to Senior Class Valedictorian and star Center Jonah M'Tembla, they're saying hello to a winning addition to the world of business and the meritocracy of the corporate world. Why, whatever corporation snatches Jonah up (and we've heard there are some very important scouts from both EBM and Biotechnica in the crowd today!), we're sure they're getting more than what they pay for, by far!

The Lancers and the Scorpions take to the court as the Songbirds tumble off into the sidelines, and the ball goes up...

***


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“I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation...that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.

"The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

So the ball goes up…

And I find myself in the lady's room…with Lacey.

I suppose you can call her my friend—at least whenever she's having a personal crisis. She's in rare form tonight; she's missed her period, so she believes she's knocked up, and she knows the boy: One Bobby Phillips.

Bobby Phillips…Tapper's boyfriend. Of course the latest rumor mill is that Bobby is about to be switched out for Billy Daniels (makes some sense; Tapper could do way better than Bobby).

And how do I find myself involved in this? Lacey wants me to stand between her and Tapper as she tells her the truth, and keep Tapper from ripping her eyes out. During this time of confession, colloquial terms, such as "slut", "b#~*+", and "whore" were used in this discussion.

And people wonder why I say that love is the sweetest of poisons.

This discourse of Shakespearean levels was then rudely interrupted by an inconvenient jar of ketchup and mayo, followed by some guy in a suit, and finally some little kid. In that order.

First omission: All of that mentioned was falling from over 50' up in the scaffolding.

Second omission—and the one that counts: The little kid turns into metallic sand before turning into a cloud of silvery death upon impact.

Inside, I'm as stunned and paralyzed as my outside. So this was how I was going to end...

Three seconds of stunned silence later, the drama between Lacey and Tapper is over as everyone panics to get out of the stadium before the Carbon Plague turns them into sand, too.

Somehow, security manages to keep the exodus from turning into a bloody stampede. While both teams below are getting hosed down by who-knows-what, I'm getting my finger pricked and waiting for one of two lights to turn on.

The light lit up green. It meant I was clean. The same for Lacey and Tapper, who are breathing sighs of relief and hugging each other, happy to know they were going to live.

It's funny how the threat of death can make you forget how much you hated each other a moment ago. We say our good-byes. They head for BART. I head skyward on my way home.

Home becomes its own sort of weird, but I'll talk about that later.


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So the ball goes up…

... and some little kid comes falling from the grid. Instead of a splat he turns into a bunch of grey dust. Super wacked. I hit record on my v-goggles and started looking around. Sure enough, there was a couple more gangers up on the grid and catwalks above the arena floor fightin' with some shady lookin' dudes. They eventually ran off, so I headed to the evac area to get poked by the CDC. 'Course it came up negative; I wasn't anywhere near the stuff on the floor.

I went home, told my Dad what happened. He seemed super concerned. Took a statement. I never knew him to be so paranoid. Then I figured out why. Someone took my vid from the net and doctored it so it looked like the shady guys didn't even exist. Hell, even my local copy of the vid was hacked.

Then all hell broke loose. The whole damn house was surrounded by CorpSec, and my mother practically throws me into a panic room I didn't even know we had. I punch in a code she gave me and I watch as my parents turn into some crazy terminator cyborg things and start owning the swat team like they was a pack of girl scouts.

There was a super old school wired phone in the middle of the room and I picked it up. One o' my classmates was on the other end. He said his parents did the same thing.

There was another exit out of the panic room heading into some boarded up ruin of the old Bart system. I thought I had explored most of the old lines, but this one was new to me. We met up with Sgt. Anderson from the 5-0 at the other end of the line. Given all the fubar stuff that just happened, I wasn't sure if we could trust him. He didn't shoot us on sight or nothin' and he said he was a friend of my families since before I knew him. He said he was going to take us to safety, but that just looks like the mall....


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Hello, User! Welcome to the Bouncey-House Netspace Locale! A safe place where you can share your inner-thoughts with other users (as along as they are less than 255 characters). Join today and post your first V-Boing for free!

Account: @NothingErksMe

Sat 6:45pm
> Grabbing my seat for the final game! This could change everything! #ScorpionsRule #ScorpLanceDuel

Sat 6:50pm
> I wonder if the VR simulations are going to be right!? Scorpions: 100? Lancers: 99? #VictoriousScorpions #ScorpLanceDuel

Sat 7:00pm
> How was that not traveling??? #BadRefCall #FML #ScorpLanceDuel

Sat 7:20pm
> Disappointing first half. Grabbing some kibble with Ike. #MiracleSecondHalf #ScorpLanceDuel

Sat 7:30pm
> I think I'min love with the those pretty #Songbirds

Sat 7:32pm
> Holoscreens acting funny. Time to investigate! @NewsMasterEwan OMW up! #CyberSherlock

Sat 7:35pm
> OMG!! I just watched [MESSAGECORRUPT] a juve just @GoKevlar from 100 meter drop! #Evacuate

Sat 7:37pm[/b]
> [MESSAGECORRUPT] Help! [MESSAGECORRUPT] #Flatline

Sat 7:37pm
> We're being quarantined! But there is still [MESSAGECORRUPT].

Sat 7:38pm
> [MESSAGECORRUPT]

Sat 9:15pm
> Just got out with @NewsMasterEwan and Ike. Tested negative for the #Plague! #BrushWithDeath

Sat 9:30pm
> Told Dad#1 the whole story. He is absolutely understanding. #BestParentsEver #WorstNight

Sun 7:30am
> What's all that racket downstairs!? Ike and I can't sleep with all those sirens. #LeaveMeAlone

Sun 8:00am
> Are those @CorpSec vans? [MESSAGECORRUPT]

[ACCOUNTREMOVED]


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So the first session was set to the tune of The Offspring's "Coming For You". This week, the tune is "Stuff Is Messed Up." In keeping with the concept that Cybergeneration is best played to Punk Rock, I have set almost the full soundtrack of the game to The Offspring, as is my right. I've mentioned I run Rock Operas, right?

It is Monday, June 3rd (there was a bit of confusion by the players as to the timeline, but trust me, it is Monday), 2030.

The homes of Avery Bloodworth and Erik & Ewan Thompson have gone up in flames. CorpSec DHS, operating under the guise of searching for "domestic terrorist" forces from outside the New Santa Clara Arcology (the proper term is "undesirable elements desiring to incite terrorism and execute massive property and life damage" these days, kids, remember - it's all in how you dress up the verbiage and optics!), have stormed both the Bloodworth and Thompson homes, and were met with unexpected resistance.

Meanwhile, Takeshi Otsua, his wife Natalie, and their daughter Skye have agreed to meet at The Milpitas Mallplex, North Tower, Food Court. Mr. Otsua has promised Skye her favorite: Black Pepper Vat-grown BeeFF(tm) with extra Shrymp(patpend). But hurry, honey. We don't want your food to get cold, and your mom and I have something important to tell you!

***


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"Fatherhood is great, because you can ruin someone from scratch."
—Jon Stewart

My Dad? Let me tell you about my Dad…

(My Dad just shot Mom)

Okay, he's an unpredictable nut who's a step or 100 OCD. He became an expert on Aeroboarding, just so he could make Stringfellow, my Aeroboard, which is based upon Sutsumu "The Taiko" Kodai's competition board. No store-bought board is her equal. And he accomplished all this in two months.

(My Dad just shot Mom)

Me and my mom mean everything to him. Even though I practice a dangerous sport, he still tries to protect me. He'll even lie to protect me, betray his friends to protect me…as I'm just finding out.

(My Dad just shot Mom)

I was angry before about suddenly uprooting. How am I supposed to feel when he breaks his word to his friends? How could he do this!?

I'm watching this scene out of a nightmare as he tells me to get on the plane—my Dad, he's holding a gun on Avery (why does he dislike him so!?). He's telling me to get on the plane, that I can be a part of the Fuji 500 Championship Aeroboard race. There's this suit—his stretch limo pulled onto the runway—he's promising the boys great jobs if they "just cooperate and get in the limo". I'm frozen…

And that's when all the gunfire happens…

And…

Oh God.

God, no.

My Dad just shot Mom.


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So, here we are at the food court. Sgt. Anderson introduces us to Skye, who I've seen at school, and her parents, a nice lookin' lady and a shifty old man. This Otsua guy is supposed to make arrangements to take us to Japan. I don't know nothin' about Japan, I'm not all that enthused about goin', but I don't wanna hang around here and get shot.

We poke around and get clothes for the trip, and eventually head out in the Otsua's van to the airport. A private jet? That's pretty awesome.

We are met there by a couple suits. It didn't take me and Erik long to figure out we'd been sold out by that shifty eyed m* f*. They promise some witsec-like crap and Otsua pulls a gun on me.

Then things get crazier. Erik and I try to jump back into the van, but he gets shot. I hit Otsua with the van. If he's anything like my parents, that's probably not going to stop him for long. Anderson shows up. The suits start firing.

Otsua shoots his own wife in the head. Ewan takes a tranq round.
I jump out, grab Erik and throw him in the back of Anderson's truck. Skye and I pile in the cab. As we fly out Anderson takes a bullet in the back. He's tough as s*, and just keeps on driving. Somehow we make it out of there alive.

We drove out to the middle of nowhere. Anderson had me knock out Skye with some drugs. Erik's probably going to be ok, Anderson pulled the bullet out of him and patched him up. I did the same for the Sargent. Freaky bullet. I'm pretty sure the memory of gunfire and screams are going to keep me awake for a week.


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I do love those BBS-style messageboard sidebars/posts that they use in SR and Cyberpunk.


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$ login
> Welcome, Erk.
(this probably isn't safe, but I'm not sure what else to do.)
$ mail
> You have 0 new messages.
$ compose
> To: luke.benon@kwlt
> Sub: Missing Person - PLEASE READ
> Body:
Hey Luke,

Before you delete my message, I just want to tell you that I'm innocent of
whatever they are saying about me. I'm caught up in something I don't
understand and can't quite explain.

But I need a favor.

Last night something happened at the airport (you might have heard something
on the screamsheet). I can't tell you much, but Dead Guys showed up, people
flatlined, and worst of all Ewen was left behind. I don't know if _they_
took them or if he got out. But I know you worked with him for the last few
years and I was hoping you could keep a lookout for him. Maybe put a missing
person bulletin out on the next news broadcast. Hopefully someone has seen him
and he's safe. I just couldn't imagine if the Dead Guys grab him and I may
never hear from him again. If you know what I mean.

If you hear from him, please help him.

I know this is a lot to ask, but I'm really desperate right now. Let's just say
I got my first bullet wound today.

Thanks,
Erk
EOF
> Message Sent.
(hmm, I wonder if I should have mentioned all that? too late now.)

$ login
> Welcome, Luke.
$ mail
> You have 0 new messages.


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While one of my players is away on vacation for his birthday (he'll be returning in July), I've got a few weeks worth of game time to kill. So, as there are no Monday night sessions either last week or this week, I've had to come up with a few interstitial pieces to entertain my players and the readers of this thread with. I hope you enjoy them.

Special Agent Johnson watched as the nearly antique four-by-four pickup sped across the tarmac, kicking up a cloud of dust and leaving the stench of melted rubber splayed across the air of the private hangar. The stench was rancid and heavy, and he pulled the silk handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his suit, holding it over his mouth and surveying the scene before him.

Takeshi Otsoa lay unconscious on the ground, having been low-speed rammed by the Bloodworth boy's quick-thinking. The kid was fast on his feet, and had made it to Otsoa's minivan far easier than he should have been able to. Thankfully the van never got above ten kph. Otsoa would live. Bruised, sure. Maybe a cracked rib, if that shudder in his breathing was any indication. But he'd live.

That was important if Johnson was to get any sort of business done properly, today.

The real problem right now was the fact that Mrs. Otsoa was bleeding out. The Bloodworth boy had shouted something, before he and the others had piled into the truck. "She's okay," he said.

Was she? How would he know that from just a glance, from across the room?

Johnson knelt down next to her, checked her pulse and breathing, and smiled. The wound on her head was messy, but it was only a deep graze. Slight fracturing on her skull, but nothing serious. She was out, cold and gone off to Oz, but alive.

Well. She was actually "okay." Wasn't that interesting?

Johnson turned to Davis, one of the two Tweedles he'd pulled along with him for this caper, and jerked a thumb at Takeshi. "Binders. I want his hands secure and his mouth shut. Dope him."

Davis nodded, moving from his vantage point near the boarding ramp of the jet Takeshi had intended on using to cut and run to Japan. He hefted the unconscious form of Takeshi Otsoa over his shoulder with minimal effort, and stuck the muzzle of his dart gun into the smaller man's thigh. There was a brief pop of CO2, and Takeshi's already relaxed breathing became notably moreso.

Perkins spoke up from his position at the side of the boy who'd gotten darted during the fracas. "He's okay. Dosage was spot on."

Perkins stood and joined Johnson at the side of Mrs. Otsoa. "Damn shame," he said. "Her husband going all Yosemite Sam on us like that."

Johnson shrugged. "What'd you expect? He's a paranoid, panicked, overly protective father. Just be grateful I brought the Genie with me just in case things took a turn for the deranged."

Perkins nodded. "They always seem to go that way on these things, don't they?"

Johnson checked the display on the Genius Gun, pulling the Virtuality screen up and letting it float freely on one side of his vision. "The round in the driver is out of control range, now. Can't track it. Can't detonate the round. May as well let them sweat it."

Davis moved to help Johnson and Perkins with Mrs. Otsoa, medkit in one hand, scanning pad in another. "What about the round in the boy, boss?"

"Not one of mine," said Johnson. "I don't miss like that."

Johnson paused. "Check Otsoa's gun for Genie capacity. I wouldn't put it past him to have kitbashed a new clip and firing mechanism for that dinosaur."

Johnson's jacket pocket began to vibrate, and he knew it was time to check in, whether he wanted to or not. The site wasn't clean, there was too much left on the plate for his liking. But, the show must go on whether the actors are in place or not.

Johnson tapped up a quick V-panel as he pulled the phone out of his pocket and thumbed "answer" on the smooth poly-glass surface. "Yes, sir," he said to the presence on the other end of the line. "I have Otsoa, his wife, and the brother of the secondary target in custody. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Yes, I think Mr. Otsoa will be most cooperative."

Sweep and Clean. he fingered onto the V-screen. We weren't here.

Perkins and Davis nodded, and began extracting large black bags full of solvents, sprayers, and clean suits from the back of the limousine while Johnson finished his call. By the time the call was complete, and Johnson returned to them with a face that spoke of the most sour of lemons, they were suited up and ready to do their jobs.

"You know what?" Johnson said. "Just clean the blood up. I'm feeling my oats today. Leave everything else as it is. Bring the patients along, we'll need them."

Davis and Perkins looked at one another, then at Johnson. Perkins removed his mask. "That's not protocol, sir."

Johnson sighed. "I'm aware of that, Perkins. I'm also aware that you can't disobey my orders. So do it."

Johnson got into the car as the Tweedles started their work.

He'd lost Bloodworth, the most likely candidate for a Stage 2 he'd ever seen. He'd lost the Otsoa girl, and Erik... well, Johnson knew where to find information on his whereabouts easily.

The rest of this was a cluster-jerk of stupidity. Otsoa blew the entire thing.

Johnson was going to have another call to make, later. Tonight, after dinner, at the stroke of midnight, as usual.

Oh, she wasn't going to like any of this.


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And now, the second Interstitial. Keep in mind these are just little insights into things going on in the background of the game, not necessarily within the realms of the player character's knowledge.

Mink squinted at the Virtuality ICON that had draped itself across her bed, and frowned. "What'd you just call me?"

Katie's not-really-there face split wide in a grin and stuck its tongue out at the other girl. "Funky Minkerbean," came the reply. It was backed with a laugh - a hearty, healthy laugh and not the reserved titter that the girls in Katie's usual crowd gave to the world.

"My revenge will be sweet, and slow, and precise, Kathryn," Mink drawled. "Just you wait."

Katie's ICON, a hand-drawn animation-styled, idealized version of her flesh-and-blood self, rolled over on Mink's bed and stretched. She talked about the girl, the perfect in every way except for that one thing she does that's just a tiny bit weird girl she'd met at The Furnace the week before, and about the strange goings on at the Arena just a few days past. She regaled Mink with great details about absolutely nothing in particular, and completely ignored any and all of Mink's repeated talk of exacting delicious, ironic revenge for Katie's new and entirely inappropriate use of the best friend privilege of nicknames.

"Ugh," Katie said finally. "Would you relax Minkiebug? You're gonna break your neck, you stay that tense."

Mink nodded, but said nothing. Her attention was miles away, out the second story window of her bedroom, somewhere near the edge of the Arcology's massive exterior walls.

Katie's ICON moved to stand next to the chaise lounge Mink lay sprawled on. Her tone changed notably. "Hey, seriously, are you okay? I can come over? We can hang out?"

Mink smiled. "No, no, I'm fine. Just thinking."

Katie's ICON grinned. "Ohhhh, I know about who. Has he broken up with his girlfriend yet?"

Mink rolled her eyes and flipped Katie off. "Oh, stop that. I'm not sleeping with Jonah and he's not going to break up with her. Grow up, Kathryn."

"You grow up, Minkadoodle," Katie grinned. "I'm a teenager in love and you're just sitting there, all mope faced and uuuuuuugh my GOD would it kill you to tell me what the frack is going on with you and Jonahhhhh you're the worst best friend in the world!"

Mink snorted back a laugh, or tried to. She failed miserably, stone face cracking into a wide smile. "You win. You win, fine. We're having a terribly sordid affair, you know. He buys me nothing but Orbital Spun Silk lingerie, we eat at Del Fornio's every night, and he's going to be the father of my seventeen children. They're due next week."

"Ugh, you suck Tabitha."

Mink glared at Katie's ICON. "You take that back or so help me I am blocking your IP."

Katie began to speak, but paused as the doorbell chimed. Mink leaped to her feet and dashed out the door, headed for the stairs in her bare feet.

Katie's ICON started to follow, but Mink was already cutting the connection. "Gotta go, this is important, bye!"

Katie was shouting into the empty air left in Mink's wake as her ICON derezzed. "I knew i---"

The big house was empty, besides Mink and Devonshire and Fraiche, her cats. No parents, she'd been emanicipated for years. No staff, they had the night off. Big and empty, it was just her and the furry kids. She slid to a halt in front of the door, and flung the heavy oak portal open.

Jonah M'Tembla stood at the door, a long, formal evening coat thrown over his otherwise casual attire. Mink was tall, clocking in at five foot nine, but he towered over her just the same.

"Got time for a cup of cocoa?" he asked. He smiled weakly, taking a step forward and falling into her arms. As she caught him, her hands met wet, sticky resistance, and the acrid tang of copper filled her nostrils.

"You're hurt," she whispered, pulling him in to the hall and kicking the door closed.

Jonah muttered something about the other guy, and pressed a V-chip into her hands. She tossed it aside and ran to the kitchen, yanking open a concealed panel and pulling a biofoam injector from an overstuffed bag of medical supplies. She slid down next to Jonah and felt around his torso for the wound, finding two holes on the lower right of his torso.

She looked at his face and focused on the colors she saw swirling around in his skull. Pain, fear, confidence. Concern for her. Concern for someone else.

"She'll never know you were here, you dummy," Mink said, a wry cast to her voice. "I'm not that careless."

"Just don't want my two best girls fighting over me," he said, wincing as she pushed the biofoam's injector into the entry wound. "Clean shot?"

Mink nodded, and pulled the trigger on the injector. Jonah hissed as loud as the foam. "Missed everything important. Your luck is going to run out."

Jonah said nothing, and she watched as the colors that made up his mind swirled and slowed until he moved from pain-filled consciousness into a calm, dreamless sleep.

Tucking the v-chip into her bra, she sighed and sadly realized she was getting used to mopping his blood off of her floors.


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Interstitial #3! This will be the last one before my group reconvenes on Monday. This is not the last one I intend on posting, but there won't be any more until the PC's have a chance to deal with the events of the last game, and have a little intra-party goings on.

Special Agent Johnson waited for the door to slide closed behind him, waited for the comforting click and hiss that would tell him that the townhouse was once again completely sealed against the outside world. When it came, he sank into his own body, nearly dropping to the floor as the stress and tension of the day evaporated from him. He shrugged himself upright again, standing a bit taller, surer, more himself, and moved from the entry hall into the front room. It was waiting for him there. It had been waiting all day.

It wasn't the original. That had been lost when the Arasaka Tower had come crashing down that day back in 2013 when he'd rallied the crowd and stormed the place. So many people surging and moving like a tide, an extension of his will and his voice.

But not his voice. Some other version of him. The original. The real man.

And he was just... what? A copy? A downloaded engram overlaid onto the mind of a man who'd done himself in? An imposter in the otherwise brain-dead meatsuit? A ghost who got a lucky break?

Didn't matter. He had time to kill and the walls were soundproofed.

The guitar felt the same as the old telecaster, he'd played it every day until the shiny finish on the neck had worn off in just the right places, giving him exactly the friction and feel that he needed to know where everything came alive. The frets were old friends, teasing his fingers to stay with them just a tiny bit longer. Just a little bit more.

He paused at the point where Kerry would have taken over for his own solo, while the rest of Samurai would have gone quiet. Oh, when he was still himself, he'd have brought the vocals and the power and the charisma, but everyone - even he - had to admit that it was Eurodyne that brought the crowd to their feet with the guitar solos. Breaking up the band so he and Kerry could do their own thing had probably been the worst decision they'd ever made.

But really, what choice was there, after Alt had died?

Except, just like he now knew about himself, she hadn't, had she?

He put the guitar back on the stand and checked the oven. Dinner had started itself, just like the house had been programmed to do by the original owner of this body. Say what you will about Special Agent Richard William Johnson, the man loved his conveniences.

"Need to talk to your parents, though, RJ," he muttered. "Who names their kid Richard with a last name like Johnson? C'mon, now."

Tikka Masala, a tall lager, and one of those little three-layered chocolate terrines that she used to like, back when he'd take her down to the shops in Cannery Row, and he was back on the strings for the rest of the night.

The final strum of "Gravity Fails (When You're Not Here)" echoed out into the walls of the living room as the incoming call alert chimed from the flatscreen opposite the couch. He answered it, and her ICON rezzed up into not-quite-tangible space between he and the wall.

It was just her eyes. Always only her eyes. Blue and warm like the mid-summer sky. She used to tell him epic novels of emotion with just one look from those eyes.

He tipped the lager bottle at her and took a pull, emptying it. "Hey, baby," he said, a weak smile on his face. "Got some news for you."

Her voice was the same, on the surface, but something underneath it had changed. Subtly, almost imperceptibly. Like she was bigger than she'd ever been, like she was something more than she could ever be. "Hello, Jonathan. How was dinner?"

The chatted, small talk and old times, but he knew it was just a charade. The real Johnny Silverhand was dead, maybe. Or maybe he was just hiding. The man out there with his face and his name was a copy of a copy - a Soulkillered engram made by a loving and benevolent immortal goddess who lived in the Net and fought back against the badge-wearing forces of isolationism and control with everything she had. Alteria Cunningham loved John Silverhand so much she made him immortal, and then she made the two of them cloned bodies, and when she pushed their minds into those brains, those clones woke up and knew who they were - except Alt and Johnny were still in the net. They were still there, but they lived again.

So what else was there to do but let those clones go live their lives and find new ways of making this work.

And so when Special Agent Richard William Johnson had done himself in with a bad case of self-inflicted Hellhound, well, Alt did what she had to. She asked Data Johnny if he'd like to make a difference, and of course that sad sack had said yes.

So here he was. In a new body, while Mr. John Silverhand and Ms. Alteria Cunningham lived it up on the Rockerboy Classic Metal circuit and made just enough Poli-splash to warrant a few snide remarks on CCN and FIX. Just enough to get the tut-tuts from Corporate Drone Mom and Corporate Drone Dad. Just enough to get the kids thinking.

But him? Here? Now?

He was the man on the inside. So she wasn't going to like it when he told her. But he told her anyway.

"Of course," she said. The disappointment was palpable. "Of course Takeshi bungled it. He was always a jumpy scrag."

Not-Johnny nodded. "But the Thompson boy, the older one, Ewan. I've got him safely stowed away in an off-book house. Johnson's privacy list is pretty extensive. He'll be safe there until we can bring Erik in. Maybe Avery and Skye as well."

"And you got Takeshi to message her?"

He nodded again. "He was more than happy to, once we got him sedated and showed him the missus was going to be okay. I don't expect the kid to believe him. There's no coming back from seeing dad plug mom with high caliber ammunition."

Alt's eyes narrowed. "What about the second Genius round?"

Not-Johnny flipped a few data packets into the V-space. They rezzed up trajectories and data. "Came from somewhere outside the hangar. It was aimed at Bloodworth. Just dumb luck that Erik took it."

"I don't like this, Jonathan," she said. Well, no scrap she didn't like it. "Takeshi knows that Avery is Type One?"

"Yeah, he does. Not surprising, how paranoid he is. But I still can't get over that this kid is Baker and Domino's son. Those two NEVER wanted kids."

"Amazing what a honeymoon in Paris will do for you, huh?"

He frowned. "Ouch. Moving on without the reminders... Who's going to reach out to Anderson? Hammer's not... well... He doesn't know I'm... me. And with as many times as Johnson's department leaned on NSCA PD? I can't imagine he'll..."

Her eyes shifted again, that look of acknowledgement and understanding. "No. He wouldn't, would he?"

Something began to doppler in along the audio channel of the conversation. A galloping stampede of horses, and a blaring of trumpets. The William Tell Overture.

Not-Johnny buried his brow in the palm of his hand and rubbed his temples.

"Hello, Rache," he sighed.

The disembodied torso and head of Rache Bartmoss billowed out into V-Space and bowed. He was dressed like a stereotypical Genie, and laughed with an accent that was exactly on the wrong side of racist.

"Can I?" Rache asked, the rabid eagerness of a toddler in his voice. He asked it five more times before he remembered his accent. Not-Johnny held up a hand before the next bout of inquiry.

"Yes. You can. Or... one of you, anyway. Are you the real thing?"

"Does it matter?" Alt asked. "The important question is: Will you get the job done?"

Rache - or was it just another digital decoy - transitioned to a dapper business suit: tie, spats, cane, bowler, all emblazoned with pulsating question marks.

"That's the riddle," he said, smiling. "Let's see what the kids give as an answer."

Not-Johnny had a very, very bad feeling about this.


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No music track for this week, as I couldn't find a suitable punk song that dealt with flowers and trees and grass and nature while simultaneously vomiting silver sludge with a mind of its own... I tried, though!

The morning of Tuesday, June 4th 2030.

Avery hasn't slept well, but Erik and Skye have both slept the sleep of the heavily sedated.

The kids wake up to the smell of sizzling BaKon and EgZZ on a genuine cast iron skillet, courtesy of Sergeant Anderson and his "I'm on vacation, honest" camping kit.

Skye awakens to an interesting message on her V-Pad, while Erik has some explaining to do about a particular message he sent last night...

***


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Oogh…why do I feel like I'm hung over with PMS? What the feek?

My head hurts, my insides hurt, and I think I'm gonna hurl (oh yeah, there's a message from Dad that sounds important. Maybe I should share that with Mr. Anderson, before I charf).

WHAT THE KRAT IS IT WITH EVERYONE YELLING AT ME!? IT'S NOT EXACTLY MAKING MY HEAD POUND LESS!

It's not as if, between the shock of Mom being shot (Dad says she's okay, but can I trust him?), and someone doping me up (which genius thought of that?), I had the chance to address any of this yet. C'mon…

Frak it. They can read my V-Padd. I gotta go buick.

Oh my God…WHEN DOES THIS END!?

I've been doing the technicolor yawn for nearly an hour, even when the tank was empty. This is when I confirm that the roadrasher's stain and dirt resistant. Good to know.

Then as if my day couldn't get any worse, a genie on an elephant, surrounded by dancing monkeys comes out of the river. I do what comes naturally.

A moment after I scream my head off, along come the others.

And that, boys and girls, is how I first met Rache Bartmoss.

He confirmed that my Mom was alive and well. For that, I'm grateful.

It's the next piece of news he gives that I wish he could've delivered with a little more sensitivity: Erik and I have the Plague. Avery's just fine. Of course the fact that he's already a type two mutant vector might have something to do with it (funny, he seems so sociable for someone who's supposed to be a psychokiller).

Well, that upends any hope of a positive outcome, doesn't it? I'm gonna die here at Roaring Camp.

Might as well find a nice place to lie down and wait for the end. Avery's not interested in a final thrust before my sendoff (prude!), and the ignition system for Stringfellow is missing (Gee, thanks Dad). Looks like I'm going to do nothing but die quietly, I guess…

Wow, it's really hot. Think I'll unzip my top…

OHGODWHENDOESTHEHURTINGSTOP?!?

WHYAMISPEWINGAGAIN?!?

WHYDOESITLOOKLIKEMERCURY?!?

WHYISITCLIMBINGBACKINTOME?!?

I don't know how long it's been, or why I'm not dead yet. My head and ovaries (and the rest of me) have stopped hurting. Something is sloshing inside my road rasher (oh God, I hope I didn't go number 2 in it). I stagger over to the river, and find that the inside of the road rasher is filled with this pinkish grey…goo.

It's all slimy and stringy and sticky and…EWW!

It's in places I don't want to think about. What seems to be gallons of the stuff empty out as I strip out of the thing and wash myself off.

And that's when I notice five things…

The first four are my arms and legs. They look like they're made out of hematite! Everything works like it's supposed to, but I seem to have arms and legs of liquid steel. I…feel fine…I think…I don't really know what to make of it.

That fifth thing? I'm a C-cup now.

Compared to the liquid metal arms and legs, this may sound insignificant, but coming from a family and ethnicity known for being nearly flat chested, this is kind of a big thing for me. I have bigger blips than Mom now.

After thinking about it, if I'm now partly metal, that goo…I guess that's what's left of my original arms and legs…GROSS!

After treating my roadrasher like a tube of toothpaste (again…eww!), and washing it out THOROUGHLY, I squeeze it as dry as I can (which turns out to be not so hard; the material repels water—again good to know), I head back.

When the inevitable "how're you feeling" question is asked, I roll up my sleeve and let them get a good look at their distorted reflections on my arm. I'm surprised to learn that Mr. Anderson has seen this before. He demonstrates this by shooting me.

To my surprise, I'm not dead. Apparently I can become armor plated by thinking about it now…and I can change my arms and legs into different shapes, like having "Rippers" for fingers.

Erik says he can see the Net without his 'trodes. That must be a total head trip. And I learn what it really means to be a type 2 mutant: Avery can read people's feelings, apparently…

On an entirely different note…I'm hungry like nobody's business. Thankfully Mr. Anderson went into town to load the van with food (and amazingly, he came back despite all the insanity we were going through).

So, as my tummy is made happy (by eating far more Oatie Bars than I should), and I begin to experiment a little with what I can shape my hands into, things begin to calm down…

Then Erik does something that freaks us all out.

Way to go, Erik.


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The screams started early this morning.

Skye encountered Rache Bartmoss, possibly in the most embarrassing way possible. Not that Rache makes things any better, projectin’ whatever insanity happens across his virtual mind directly into our ‘trodes. It’s like watchin’ every ’80’s Michael Keaton movie at once against a backdrop of The Yellow Submarine. I keep waiting for the blue meanies to show up.

He drops the “You have the plague” bomb on all of us, though it comes as no surprise to me, I’ve had it for weeks.

Skye takes it particularly hard, and sulks off on her own to die. She throws herself at me like it’s some end of the world thing. If she has just contracted the plague, that the last thing either of us are going to want to do.

Erik seems to think it is going to be awesome. He and Rache become fast friends.

It’s not.

Anderson, tired of Rache’s antics, buggers off. I’m left to deal with Erik and Skye spewin’ out loads of silver goop that simultaneously seems to want to get out, while clawing its way back in. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, this s*** is coming out and going in everywhere. It’s a miracle either of them even survive the experience. I want desperately to just tranq them again, but it probably won’t help. I’m taken back to my own experience going through this, waking up upside down, wrapped in a silvery cocoon, attached to the ceiling of a sewer tunnel, not knowing how I got there or how long I had been like that.

By the time Anderson gets back, the woozy plague-bearers are just starting to come to. Skye runs back to the lake in an outfit that is quite a bit tighter than it used to be. Erik heads back to talk with his new best bud, Bartmoss. When they get back, they show off their new abilities. Skye has metal arms and legs, and Erik claims to be able to see streams of data in the sky.

Like some horrific flashback to the previous day, Anderson pulls out his 9mm and shoots Skye in the gut. “WTF?!!”, I scream.

….

She’s ok. Apparently unharmed.

….

Erik then looks up at the stars and passes out. He’s not breathing.


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> Erik has logged out ("Death is only the beginning" - Imhotep)
> Rache: It begins. :)

> 3r1k has logged in - Location unknown

Rache?

You out there?

You were right, you were so right.

Nine hours of gut wrenching agony. So much pain.

Pain I re-live every time I close my eyes.

But already worth it.

I feel different. I mean, I literally feel different.

Things feel brand new to me. People, things, even the air.

It's like I'm seeing things for how they are, for the first time.

It's as if you introduced me to a new color, the most beautiful color in universe.

One that was everywhere, but I was too blind to see it.

Thank you for having faith in us, for showing us the light.

> Rache: Welcome... To the real world.

It's scary how much is out there. Just floating around all of the place.

I mean, just look at that satellite.

> 3r1k has logged out (Connection reset by peer)


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This week's intro tune is "Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast" by Airbourne. Check them out. They're pretty much the spiritual successors to AC/DC, in my view.

Late night Tuesday June 4th, blending into the morning and afternoon of Wednesday, June 5th, 2030.

Erik stopped breathing for approximately one and a half minutes. Skye and Sergeant Anderson performed CPR on him, and he returned from his experience with a tale of a satellite and two kids who were - apparently - just like him.

As the day wore on, their day found them leaving Roaring Camp and making their way through the Central Valley, into the domain of the Sacramento Arcology... and specifically into the Folsom Lake NorCal State Park, where a welcome surprise awaited at least one member of their ragged little group.

***


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Okay…that surprise Erik did…

He fell over, we saw his V-image spring up and suddenly bolt upward out of sight. He's like this for-freaking-ever, and he's not breathing. So I did what anyone would do: I proceeded with mouth-to-mouth.

Turns out the jerk comes back on his own. Turns out that he was up in orbit with a spy satellite. Turns out he spoke with two others that were like him, and they told him to get back to his body.

Good on them.

Hopefully they're on our side.

I wake up the next day to find out that I'm floating on what used to be my arms and legs; they went and made the perfect sleeping surface. And while I'm totally weirded out by it, I have to admit: I've never slept so well before.

After a rustic backwoods meal of breakfast burritos, Mr. Anderson heads toward the Sacramento Arcology, only to turn off and go towards Folsom Lake NorCal State Park. Erik tells the computerized gate to let us in because we have a pass…and the gate believes him.

Minutes later, we meet Erik's Dad #1.

Dad #2 is still MIA, and that's got folks worried.

That's when Erik drops the bomb that one of the kids at the Satellite spoke with him the night before. It seems that she's his girlfriend—from seven years ago no less, from an area of Scotland that was a secret base for…something.

It gets better. First, we find out that Erik doesn't remember her because his memory was altered by his Dads. Second, she might be dying, and there's a 40-megaton nuke in the old facility…you know…just as a precaution…yeah.

Of course there isn't much we can do here in the campground about it. It's not like we can board a plane and go tot he Highlands. So while the grown-ups talk about "what're we gonna do now", I decide to go swimming…and form a bikini out of the liquid metal parts of my body. It's great—I'm skinny dipping but it doesn't look like I am…heh.

So it looks like we're gonna be in this place for awhile. Erik's Dad #1 is nice enough to lend us the van, so we can go into the Sac Arco and visit the mallplex. I really need some new clothes, now that I actually have curves. Dad #1 even shows me a new trick: How to use skin spray to disguise my arms and legs (they do have cameras in the changing rooms, after all).

This one place has the perfect roadrasher, which is great because my old one has three holes in it.

As I'm looking to try one on, Avery attracts the attention of the counter girl, and goes into the back with her.

I don't know what I'm more jealous of: That I've been trying to hook up with him for weeks and this witch just walks up and proceeded to wrap him around her finger, or the fact that I thought she was cute and wanted to go in back with her first.


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It didn’t take long for Skye to start giving Erik mouth to mouth.

He’s ok. Well, as ok as he’s ever been.

Anderson bundled us up to dump us with one of Erik’s dads. The guy is all right, but I don’t really know him very well. Everyone is bummed about their families. Barring Erik’s dad, everyone is missing. Given the firepower that came down on us, it’s kinda a miracle that anyone’s still breathin’. I guess Erik’s bro is bein’ held by one of the guys in suits. Johnson, he called him. Meh, his Dad says that he’s ok, but I don’t trust those suits any further than I could throw them.

We’ve got no supplies or changes of clothes, so we take the van over to the mallplex. Frankly, I’m not so keen on all these people. I’m worried about bein’ recognized, and more guys with guns showing up again. Skye, lookin’ far happier than I’ve seen her in days, runs into a Sportsnet (TM) store, squealing over the new Roadrasher outfit.

The girl at the counter caught my attention. Her aura is throwing off colors of fear and hope. My sense of paranoia rises to condition level orange. She recognizes me from her boyfriend Jonah’s yearbook. (“I’ve been made, what does she know?”, I wonder.) She pleads for my help and asks me to follow her to the back.

I catch a glimpse of Skye watching her drag me back to the changing area. If looks could kill, we'd both be cinders.

“My father wants to kill me.,” She cries. “He wants to remove all my organs and put them inside a robot body.”

Now what the hell am I supposed to say to that?


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Ugh. I hate these deadjournal clones, but I have to start keeping track of what's going on. At least this one is locally hosted.
Ahem.

Dear Diary,

I feel like everytime I close my eyes, I see that little boy's screaming face as he was falling from the rafters. Melting off right before he hit the ground. Terrible way to go.

So I almost died today, again. This time, apparently my V-self went up into space to listen in on a chat and forgot to keep breathing. This was ridiculously confusing, but at least I met this new girl during the chat. But get this, the girl, is not new, she's apparently my girlfriend from 7 years ago who is dying in an abandoned secret eugenics project base in Scotland. Why do I not remember, apparently my memory was wiped "for my own protection." Wow. OH, and there's an enormous nuclear warhead in the base that might be counting down.

Well then, at least my brother and Dad #1 are safe. No news on Dad #2. :(

Right now it's time to just soak all of this in and figure out how to convince everyone to head to Scotland... Sigh.

Erk out.


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This week's theme is the Gary Jules cover of "Mad World." It's a slow, downtempo tune. It's a contemplative piece, and thus, precisely the right kind of thing to play over a frenetic, madcap chase scene. Let's get to it!

The afternoon of Wednesday June 5 2030, and we find our intrepid mutant kids coming to the aid of a young lady working in a Buy It First whose name tag says she goes by the name of Glory...

But really, her name is Glory Unto The Machine, Most Perfect Child Of The Metal God...

And her father is apparently very, very bad news.

***


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"Guns don't kill people.
Dads with pretty daughters
kill people"
—Unknown

When Avery came back after only a few minutes, my first thought was obvious: That was quick.

Then he called me and Erik over for a brief confab.

Glory's full name is what?

Her dad wants to do…WHAT!?

And I thought my Dad was crazier than a nut bar.

So…ever so subtly, we follow Glory to her room…which is full of more toys than a Golden Kid's closet. There's a sweet competition aeroboard that looks like it's never been ridden even once. If I didn't have my beloved Stringfellow, I'd be staining it with my drool. There's a lot of stuff that looks like it hasn't been touched. Apparently it's her father's idea; something to do with showing her the decadence of the world of flesh and blood.

The problem of course: She likes the world of flesh and blood and doesn't want to leave it.

So we have to save her…and we have to figure out how.

And that's where Erik comes in. He begins by talking to a chip that's in her brain…which it turns out is connected to a small bomb in her brain.

This last fact doesn't fill Glory with much hope.

Yet somehow, Erik is able to convince the bomb not to explode for whatever reason.

Then there's the fact that she's transmitting her location. We can't immediately turn it off, but Erik strikes again by making Glory's signal appear all over the place, and builds something to cut the range of Glory's actual transmission…

…or something to that effect.

Everything seems to go fine as Glory returns to work, but then the mall drones start acting weird. Glory grabs her head in pain. One of the drones begins to speak to us, noting that Glory's signal is everywhere. He notices Avery too…calling his parents "traitors".

It's at that point we decide that being quiet was over and done with (after some thought, picking up Glory was probably not the best idea). We run.

Before the mall cops can get their gear on, we manage to get out the door, barely outrunning the parking drones and getting to our truck.

By some miracle, we get away. And in the time between there and the camp, Erik is able to fully disable the chip. Glory's finally free…

…free to experience a fish dinner.


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Quote:

Hi there, I'm a bomb!

There isn't time to be calm.
I'm stuck inside her brain,
causing quite a bit of pain.
I don't want to stop,
I just want to pop.

Ever since I first chatted with that bomb, I can't get rid of this riddle. Kinda sickening.

I'm not sure what I'm more confused by, the giant robot overlord, or the fact that every electronic I have "spoke" with is so darn friendly. The security doors, the brain bomb, and even the iSpy drones were pleasant. I honestly never would have thought, in my wildest dreams, that I would be talking to a door... and that it would listen.

Besides all that, I'm glad we're back at the campsite. Means less chance that we're in danger of dying. Although now that I'm thinking about it more, we keep ending up in these "unique" situations. So much so that there is no way this is all coincidental.

I don't know who/what it is that's driving these events together, but it's starting to put shivers down my spine.


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Wherever I go, crazy follows me. We follow Glory to her apartment in the mall. Lotsa posh stuff in there. I grabbed a killer hard suit. But Glory when filled us in on the gory detail, I definitely had second thoughts.

Erik saved the day, though, deactivatin' bombs, spreading Glory's signal around the mall, and securing an escape route. F**k, I just want to go through one damned day without some jackwad shootin' at me. O' course, now my face is going to be attached to some cooked up kidnappin' scheme.

I guess I managed to drive the van back to the campground, it's all so much of a blur. I'm gonna try to catch some fish for dinner.


Tonight's theme is "Instruments Of Destruction" by NRG - Yes, the one from the original animated Transformer's movie soundtrack. The song was intended to drive home the harsh and dangerous nature of tonight's session... which Erk's player promptly defused by being exceedingly clever. I gotta up my game...

The afternoon of Wednesday, June 5 2030 has faded into the evening of the same day.

A good, solid wind-down is what they all needed, especially after freeing Glory from whatever horrible fate awaited her. The sound of her father's voice crawling out from the speakers on the ISpy security drones still echoes in their ears. The relative security of the campsite brings a welcome release from the memory of an all-too adrenaline filled day.

Erk/Erik and Avery have managed to not kill everyone with a dinner of fish. Erk's Dad #1 has supplemented it with potatoes, green beans (from a CAN!), and some low-grade Smash. The oily yellow liquid is somewhere between a sports drink and a particularly crap beer, but it's popular with the YoGang crowd, so why not?

Not for the first time, it hits them - away from all the light pollution of the Arcologies and the city scapes, the universe is... really, really big.

There are so many stars.

The kids hit the sack, boys in one tent, girls in another, dad in his own.

The night is quiet.

And then Erk is woken by a dozen tiny voices, ringing the camp. Speaking in a language he can't quite comprehend.

And something is coming, low, over the trees. Silent in the night.

Headed straight for the camp.

***


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I'm growing worried.

Okay, I've been worried since Dad drove me and Mom to the airport that night to go to Japan. I've been able to push it back into the background with other things, however (like thinking my Mom was dead, thinking I was going to die from the Carbon Plague…you know, little stuff).

Now we're here in the wilds of California, with more stars over our heads than I've ever seen, eating a fish meal—a fish meal that, mind you, looks as if it's staring at me.

It dawns upon me that, with the exception of Erik's Dad #1, none of us know a thing about living off the land.

I keep that worry to myself as we go to bed in our tents…only to be woken up by the sound of…a drone?

Yep…it's a drone…making a special delivery…of Glory's dad.

He's. Freaking. Huge.

He looks like what someone would do if they decided to take a tank, and make it roughly person-shaped. He makes the demand of the return of his daughter (naturally), which is turned down (naturally).

Then we're shot with darts…which hits me in the liquid metal portion of my arm…so why did it hurt?

Even more concerning, how is a giant hulking machine able to dodge a shotgun blast from Dad #1?

Erik, who's been on a roll lately, had the answer: Turn off your V-trodes!

We did, and suddenly Glory's tank-for-a-dad disappears (oh, and the pickup truck's on fire—Dad #1 was using White Phosphorus…in a forest).

It was a virtual Terror Daddy

The only one who seems to still see Bot-Daddy is Erik. He's obviously fighting on a level where none of us can really help, so I help in the one place I can think of: By turning my arms into shovels, and dealing with the growing car-b-q that was the pickup.

Never thought I'd be a Ranger Rick type.

I'm not sure what it was that Erik did, but there's the sound of crashing into the trees. A moment later, a single drone approached us. It was being hijacked by Robo-Dad.

"This isn't over."

Avery smashes the thing out of the sky, before it can give us a formal declaration of war.

We're left wondering how he found us. That led to a search of Glory's stuff. When that failed, we searched ourselves.

Those pesky i-Drones had tagged us back at the mall.

We got rid of them, and eliminated as much of the fire as we could, before Dad #1had us pile into the van. We headed onto the highway, and eventually made our way to a roadside motel, with obligatory diner.

I'm famished. My compatriots are a little peckish. They have pancakes, while I have 2 burgers, chili fries and a strawberry milkshake.

Yeah, since becoming a Tinman, I eat a lot.

Note to self: Be careful how much you eat in public; it could tip your hand to the paranoid that you're a "mutant".

It was a nice change to sleep in an actual bed again. The next morning though, new plans arise.

Dad #1 is dropping us off in Antioch. From there, we'll go to San Francisco and meat up with someone else who'll take responsibility of us.

And that's what's bothering me: We seem to be something everyone needs to "hand off". It bothers me that, without the generosity of people I barely know, we'd probably be dead…or worse.

A few days ago, the most important thing I was doing was making sure two friends didn't kill one another. Now I'm a "mutant" on the run from Johnny Law. The only thing we seem to have going for us is that our faces aren't being plastered everywhere as being "wanted". Dad #1 says someone high up is keeping us anonymous. Maybe this mysterious "revolution" thing? I dunno.

All I know is that we're way WAY in over our heads. We've been held above water so far, but for how long? And what happens when that help goes away?

And that's why I'm growing worried.


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Dinner was pretty good. The fresh food was a great change from the overly processed synthetic stuff we normally get. I'm not sure where Erik's dad found the NewTang-Loco, but that was the highlight of my night. I suppose that's sayin' somethin'.

We headed off to our tents to sleep. Took awhile for me to pass out following the excitement of the day, and Erik's snorin' doesn't make things any easier. Just when I drop into deep sleep, Erik wakes me up yelling about hearing voices and just generally freakin' out. I stumble out into the night after Erik, and out in the sky is, well, basically what you'd get if you crossed my parents with military attack helicopter. Glory says it's her dad.

Long story short, I got shot, although Erik did somethin' to turn off my v-trodes and not only the pain, but the combatant disappeared. Erik kept dancin' around the campsite like his shoes were on fire. Meanwhile, the truck was lit up like Christmas. He finally does somethin' to wrest some sorta control over the drones and has them dive into the ground. I manage to smash one o' them.

We head off to a motel and get some late night grub at a truck stop. Strawberry french toast never tasted so good. Glory had some, too. The others stuffed their faces. In the mornin' we are supposed to take a train back into the city to be cared for by some stranger. Our protectors, thus far, have largely had some family association. This new guy, I don't think any of us know. I'm of half a mind to take the train the other direction.


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Log entry, wizardness 3

I almost died again today.

It seems like every waking minute we're battling for life or death. Hell, today they even interrupted our sleep for it.

In the middle of the night, we were woken up by a giant mech screaming our names in the distance. Soaring through the sky carried by an equally large quadcopter. Hmm. Speaking of which, where would someone go to order a copter that size? Do you need special approvals, or can anyone get them?

As I was attempting to grok the numerous amounts of red tape I'd have to go through to procure a quadcopter of my own, the giant mech smashed right in the middle of our camp.

Apparently I can get quite distracted, because while I was drooling over the intricate details of the four separate rotors, all of my friends were screaming rolling around on the floor with a dart in each of their chests. Strange enough, I had one too but felt nothing.

I'm a dummy. How could I have not seen through the charade. All those "crickets" I heard surrounding us, the painless dart, the "unnatural" speed of that mech, my itchy feet - it all made sense now, I really need to buy myself a quadcopter. Oh, and that this is all in the v-verse.

After unplugging my friends' v-trodes and some extremely complex math, no one else was in pain and I really cannot afford a copter even half that size.

So, I saved all of them, but now I was alone with a giant mech that apparently can really hurt me.

Remember what I said yesterday about how electronics are so damn friendly? Yeah, throw that book out when dealing with firewalled things. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'd rather talk to a door then hear the phrase "I'm a protected construct" over and over again.

Never-the-less, after some careful negotiation (sudo, please sudo, sudo sudo, su sudo, password, p4ssw0rd), I gave up and resorted to attacking with my new familiar (The Needle). Turns out the hundreds of iSpy drones were actually quite friendly and willing to adjust their altitude and speed to something a little more appropriate (thanks to Sky).

Erk 1, Death 0


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Tonight's theme is "Plastic People" by Atomship, a particularly apt anthem for the things that met the PC's along their way...

It’s the morning of Thursday June 6th, 2030.

Erk’s Dad #1 is suggesting that the kids take advantage of being kept off of the media’s radar and take BART into San Francisco, there to meet up with someone he assures them can get them out of the state... maybe even out of the country.

He’s mentioned something about going to find Dad #2, and how he doesn’t want to bring the kids along because it could get them killed.

Erk, who knows his Dads very, very well, can see how torn Dad #1 is about this.

The game begins at the Antioch BART station round about lunch time.

***


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It’s just a thing!?

And a streetfighter’s katana is just a knife, is that it?

If my aeroboard was a bunny board or some 2030 off-the-shelf model, it’d be a thing. This is Stringfellow. It’s the only board I’ve ever owned, handmade by my father when I still believed in him without hesitation. I know every curve, every quirk, every place where I dinged him up, and every place my father repaired. I knew exactly how he behaved and how to exactly shift my weight to get what I desired out of him. Everything about him was perfect, from the balance of the board to the way we fit together. He was a part of me, as much as I was a part of him.

So letting Erik’s dad store Stringfellow in some locker somewhere is like tearing me in half. I’m already missing him, and I’ve just barely stepped into the Antioch BART station.

It doesn’t get any better as we travel. I feel like half a person right now. I don’t even care that Avery and Glory look like they’re getting all lovey-dovey with each other. Even when Erk seems to be going nuts, the only thing I can think of is that I could’ve gotten to SF faster on Stringfellow.

I could’ve gotten to the Pier, completely avoiding the relocation neighborhood…and the Go Gangers and their stupid molotov cocktails.

But of course I was there. Of course we were street-bound. Of course Avery disappears in all the fire and smoke.

I can’t even help in finding him. Erik talks to the electronics and Wizards his way to finding a windowless and doorless building. Reuniting with Avery seems to be almost magical, and his story seems way surreal. About a girl who’s been living in that house for years, with cameras recording everything that happened. Somehow she mistook Avery for her big brother.

Glory, Erk and Avery decide that this can’t really be allowed to continue. I’m just sort of along for the ride; I’m still not feeling like myself.

It’s sort of like what Dad called an extraction, from the good ol’ days. Avery gets close enough to somehow knock her out, Erk messes with the recordings, and notices a blue light marked “INTERVENTION” light up. Outside, a black van is coming our way—until it suddenly goes in reverse at top speed. Erk’s work again. Glory makes a call on a burner to the cops, reporting an unconscious girl in an alley. She’s left for the cops to take care of.

Oh…I got to carry her, so I guess I’m good for something without Stringfellow.

We made our way to the Pier Aquarium to meet our new contact, stare at a few fish…

And I’m left wondering what kind of life I’m going to lead without Stringfellow in my life.


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Erik's dad got us on the train after all. We discussed going with him, but that didn't pan out. He could have had a little more tact when dealin' with Skye's precious, though.

Erik freaked out and made a scene in the train car. I know there's always supposed to be a nut in every car, but I've never been the one travelin' with 'em. I tried to convince the other people he was autistic or somethin' as Skye tried to calm him down. He was whinin' about some invisible kid or somethin'.

Once we finally made it to the city, we had to cut through the relocation zone. I thought we were made when the cop stopped us, but he was just trying to be helpful, give us directions and tell us where to stay away from. Much to my regret we were waylaid by a drive-by molotov cocktailin' on the way through.

When I woke up, I was on a couch in crazy town. There was a witless white girl there claiming to be my sister. The fact that I'm black was written off as radiation burns from bein' outside to long. I wanted to hit her, but I didn't. The piped-in laugh track didn't help, either. She showed me up to my room. You know, the one with "Billy" written on the door. I found it full of cameras. I figure the rest of the house is wired, too. Luckily, "Billy" left me a note. Well, he left a note for the next Billy that came around, so I guess that's me. I follow the note's instructions and try to get into the basement.

The door is locked and reinforced, there's no way I can get through it, and Katie's trying to distract me with pie. She's got a knife, so I'm either going to eat the pie or get stabbed in the gut. I eat the pie.

Satiated, Katie heads up to get a game for us to play, and I head back to the door to pick the lock. When I get it open, I find a plain brick wall. Fabulous. There's a keypad on the door, and another note with a combination. Well, it turns out the combination isn't necessary as the keypad isn't real anyways. I hit the button inside and the wall slides open to reveal the creepiest tv control room you ever did see. Complete with an old desiccated corpse. There's a stairway here, and I'm unlikely to convince Katie to come with, so I headed up.

That's when I bumped into the rest of the crew. We headed back in just as the grocery guy threw a box into the hole the way I came in. Katie, completely oblivious, cheerfully thinks it is a grocery delivery. Seems that "Billy" tried to take care of his "sister" somewhat. Erik does his thing with the controls when we notice the "Intervention" light come on, and a timer start ticking down. I figured that one of two things was going to happen. This place is going to blow up, or someone is gonna to show up and shoot at us some more.

I managed to talk Katie into coming down the stairs, and knock her out when she gets out of camera-shot. As we carry her upstairs, a black van shows up. I guess we got option number two. Erik starts talking into his old phone receiver and and the van starts goin' backwards like a bat out of hell. Cops are gonna have a field day with that one.

We dump the girl in front of the old building along with some incriminating evidence and identification, and all the cops on a burner. Time to skedadle.

Yeah, this is turnin' out to be a wonderful day.


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Log entry, wizardness 4

Yup, I definitely need a change of pants.

So I'm sitting on this train with Sky, Avery, and Glory just minding my own business. Still stuck on the idea that if I get my credit score high enough, I could finance my very own quadcopter (I would call her Betty). When out of absolutely nowhere, the creepy ghost kid from that varsity game appeared right outside my train window. We locked eyes; his felt lifeless and stale, mine were hard at work producing tears.

I saw him at station after station, waiting for me by my window. Then the worst bit happened, we entered the tunnel.

Okay, now I really don't understand how this terrible oversight happened. If I get into my car and it's dark out, the lights automatically go on. This is designed for my safety and for those around me. It's a simple system and I've never been in a car that didn't have it. Somehow, for some bizarre reason, the idiots building this train decided they needed to save a couple bucks and make the cabin lights be controlled manually. So when we go through a tunnel, the cabin goes black, and the only illumination we get is from the maintenance lights as we whiz by them. How has someone not been injured by this? Imagine I'm walking along and BAM, it goes pitch black, I fall to the ground, and break all my bones. Fantastic.

Luckily I wasn't moving at the time the cabin went dark, on account that my body had locked up out of fear. I was able to take a quick glance down the aisle. BAM. There he is, 6 rows back. BAM, 5 rows. Each time the cabin lights up, he moves closer and closer. Alarms were going off in my body - danger, danger, danger - fecal breach imminent.

All I could think of was Betty, sweet Betty. If she were here, she'd save me. We'd whisk away together, carried along by her quad 75hp EM motors.

Before I could blink, he was standing right in front of me, mouthing out something... in binary!? It was only a couple of seconds before the train car exited the tunnel and he was gone. Phew.

That creepy ghost kid left me with a terrible feeling in my pants and part of a decryption key. Hmm..

The rest of the day went swimmingly well. Avery stumbled into a sadistic reality show, Sky broke up with her board, and we almost got run over by punks.

Oh, and this fun van I met today, was incredibly nice to chat with. Instead of pulling up and dropping off what most likely would have been some scary people, it was unbelievably happy to take my advice and switch into reverse.. at maximum speed.


This week’s theme song is “Black Sheep” by Metric

The afternoon of Thursday, June 6 2030 has seen the kids make their way through one of lower-class San Francisco’s many Relocation Zones. Old homes and buildings that were once bastions for the unique San Franciscan style now being stripped of their people, their spirit, their dignity, and torn down by the Bureau of Relocation And Revitalization - BuRELoc. The BDU-clad, orange-vested members of the BuRELoc security teams eye the group of teens as they make their way out of the Relocation Zone, but don’t make any attempt to stop them - they’re kids on their way to the Pierside District. It makes sense they’d take a short cut.

Pierside is what people think of when they imagine the quintessential San Francisco; carefully manicured waterfront properties, long wooden docks that creak just the right amount when people walk on them, flocks of cacophonous gulls clamoring over the cast off scraps and offerings from tourists and their overpriced lunches. Clam chowder in sourdough bowls are plentiful, if not cheap. A dozen or so heavily regulated groups of harbor seals raise boisterous cries from just beyond the edge of the various piers. The waters of the interior bay are clean, a deep blue green that belies the rough, dirty water of the outer bay and the nearby Pacific Ocean to the west. The Tourism Board pays deeply and dearly to keep the carefully segregated Pierside waters clean and healthy - and in return for the influx of commerce and economic power the Board brings to the city, the City looks the other way at their rampant price gouging and “Buyer Beware” methods.

The Pierside Aquarium is surrounded by numerous small knick-knack shops, along with countless clothiers and souvenir vendors. For 9.99EB, you can leave your heart in San Francisco or get your face plastered into a frame alongside Snuffy The Seal onto any item of clothing you want.

The Aquarium itself is free entry to the public, Monday through Friday 0900 to 1900, and Saturday and Sunday 1000 to 1800, with special for-pay overnight openings. And of course, the gift shops have a variety of items custom tailored to suit your needs.

It is here that the kids find themselves after a long, strange, harrowing day. It’s just an hour until closing time. Has it really been six hours since you said goodbye to Erk’s dad?

***


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Thursday evening…an evening full of lessons for yours truly—all in the heart of San Francisco.

LESSON ONE: Tinmen need to be careful on exotic dance floors.

The after-hour Midway game center had one of those floating dance floors, so I thought I’d lose myself in the crowd, rather than play another round of Roy 3. My new mass was enough that I seemed to be shifting the dance floor, as well as accidentally bumping into folks. That part I was able to smooth over fairly well.

But there was something else…

LESSON TWO: Spray Skin isn’t as durable as the real thing.

Apparently, the spray skin was beginning to slough off one arm. Of course I didn’t notice this, but plenty of other folks did. And so the crowd I was losing myself in began to back off, and whispers of “mutant” were rising. The lights went out, and suddenly I was in the middle of a panic.

LESSON THREE: Keep your friends close.

I tried following the sound of my friends calling for me, but I ended up going in the wrong direction. Luckily I had put on my wind breaker to hide my tinmannyness. Eventually, I found them, and after convincing a security guard that Erk was autistic, we ate some dinner.

LESSON FOUR: Beware encrypted files out of nowhere, especially in your brain—Erk.

So, at some point, Erk acquired an encrypted file. This wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows, except that the only computer Erk had was his brain. Gotta hand him credit though: He figured out how to open it really quick.

That’s when He did his imitation of a seizure victim, and found that the file was a 10-year-old kid. He apparently died, and now he was a file in Erk’s head (that he can’t get rid of, by the way—probably a good thing). The kid mentioned that we needed something with the ominous name of Soulkiller. With that, as I understand it, the kid could be loaded into a clone…

Does this make sense to anyone?

LESSON FIVE: Chocolate…f*@% yeah.

We eventually found our way to Godiva Chocolates. Three floors of chocolate bliss. I had the Chocolate on Chocolate Sundae (there’s no such thing as too much chocolate). I was in heaven…until I realized I was leaving a 50 EB tip. That was more than the sundae was worth. Turns out Erk had messed with the subliminals. When does Erk not mess with something?

Eventually, we try to get a couple of rooms for the night. When we’re nearly on the verge of failing miserably at that, lo and behold, we meet our contact!

It turns out we didn’t miss him. He was delayed…by what sounded like cyber-evolved kids working for the Machine. Anyway, he took us to a really nice suite, and after Avery helped Mac (that’s his name) with a really bad wound, he gave us the run of the suite for the next 24 hours. In effect, we get to go nuts.

LESSON SIX: If you can’t love the ones your with, masturbate.

Do I really need to explain this last part? It’s been nearly a week since I’ve had sex. Equally as long since I’ve had a good cut on an aeroboard. Any sense of personal freedom seems to have evaporated since that fateful evening when I thought my Dad shot my Mom. Everything I’ve valued seems to have gone, despite the fact that we finally met our contact, and he’s given us 24 hours in a luxury suite. No one wants to heat up the sheets with me, and the V-Porn access is locked.

Maybe it’s time I did a re-evaluation of my life…but it doesn’t mean I’ll like doing it.


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Fish.

So. Many. Fish. We finally got to the aquarium an hour before close. Was kind of a race to get through all the aquarium galleries. Mac, our contact didn't show. So we filed out to figure out what to do next.

I amused myself with people and seal watching on the wharf. Skye went off to the Midway, and Erik, well I guess he went to get into trouble.

Skye found it first, as I heard the screamin' and people runnin' out of the game center. Took some doin' to find her in the dark. We eventually got back together, you know, when the cops showed up. I need to teach Erik to be more sneaky sometime. Fortunately, Erik worked some sort of magic to back up our story.

Leaving the piers, we headed to the chocolate factory. I figured that'd calm Skye some. There was somethin' about the vid screens, I couldn't take my eyes off them. So, Erik did something to them, and suddenly people started leavin' huge tips. Whatever.

We decided to pack it in for the night, but we nearly got caught again by the clerk. Bein' underage is such a drag. Mac finally showed up to save our bacon, and brought us to the hotel suite he had reserved. He got held up by a stabbing. He was stabbed. He didn't fill us in on what happened to the other guys. Based on the look of Mac, I can only assume nothin' good. Once I finished patching him up with the dermal stapler, he bugged out to leave us to our own hijinks. F*** it, I'm gettin' a drink.


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Log entry, wizardness 4.5ish

Apparently, I'm on the spectrum.... Infrared, Radio, maybe Autistic?

Not sure, but I passed off as one in front of a security guard by the skin of our teeth. Just took a little bit of lies, some quick memory searching, and a splash of v-fabrication.

Honestly though, we should not have made it past those guards. Heck, we shouldn't have made it that far already.

Just before this, Sky gets the "dance fever" and accidentally shows a little too much skin. This obviously causes a huge panic, lights go out (thanks to me), but she's cornered by a guard with an itchy trigger finger. Instead of being shot and possibly dead, a giant Sasquatch appears out of nowhere and crushes the poor guard.

What? Seriously?

How is it we keep getting into these crazy dangerous situations and keep on surviving. Who are we? How can we keep doing this?

We've rolled the dice so many times, I don't think our luck can continue like this.


Well, I'll point out that it was a virtual Sasquatch, and the guard wasn't crushed in real life - but he's going to wake up with a hell of a headache.


There was no game last week because of a player needing a night off. This week marks the end of this chapter, next week begins Chapter Two of the game. Our theme song this week is “New Future Weapon” by Billy Idol

The kids find themselves in a smallish, but cozy and most importantly, quiet suite at the Metro-Hilton in the Pierside district in San Francisco. The window has a waterfront view, and out in the distance, between the shore and Treasure Island, the stick-like fingers of the construction struts that will one day form the Eastern Support Column for the San Francisco Super City jut up from the water like so many titanium-alloy reeds. They even sway, just a bit, in the breeze. From here they look so tiny, but in reality they’re each at least a dozen stories tall and as big around as a city bus. The science behind them is so weird - somehow, you run a current through it, and it gets lighter? Stronger? More resilient?

It sounds crazy, but then, what doesn’t sound crazy, lately?

A welcome night of dreamless sleep brought about by absolute exhaustion is exactly what the doctor ordered. Teenagers, for all their resilience, can only take so much stress and anxiety before they crack. And this disparate, rag-tag group of kids has been running nonstop for nearly a week. In that time, they’ve seen their home lives ripped away, their parents revealed as former cyber soldiers, current criminals, and all kinds of freakishly wrong levels of “protective.”

So now, here they are. In a suite at the very same hotel that last year’s Senior Prom got held at. The irony is delicious.

They’re safe here. They have 24 hours to recoup and relax. Nothing can go wrong, Mac said so.

And they can trust Mac. Erk’s dad said so.

And dad is never wrong.

***


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Mmmmgrh…bluh…monkeys…

Okay, first question: Why "monkeys"?

Second…and slightly more important, why am I waking up in the suite's comfy-chair, when I clearly remember falling asleep in the master bedroom?

As my vision gets clearer, and awareness sharpens, I realize that my mouth is a desert, and there are three new people in black suits in said suite with us. Glory and Erk are out like lights, I can barely move, and Avery tries jumping behind the sofa, which looks more like a lethargic cat trying to get off a comfy spot when its body's turned into pudding. One suit I recognize almost instantly as being Mr. Johnson…supposedly on our side Mr. Johnson.

The situation couldn't be more tense.

Even after he dismisses his lugo men and hands us an antidote (apparently the room was pumped full of gas in the night), our news doesn't seem to get much better. He explains that there's a van with kids just like us who work for the Machine, and if we're not brought down in a few minutes, they'll be coming up.

Making the assumption that the banter between Captain Hammer and Dad #1 is correct (saying that Mr. Johnson is actually some sort of resurrected Johnny Silverhand in the body of a corporate deadboy—wouldn't that mean he's reincarnated?), we go with his plan.

Mr. Johnson's plan involves hitting him with a tranq dart, using his genius gun to break open the window, and fling ourselves out of the window, to plummet to the ground below, to be saved at the last moment by auto-grapple harnesses (which se somehow remembered to bring along and hide under the pizza boxes).

Most. Awesome. Escape. Ever.

I really should leave out the fact that the others were screaming like girls when we did this, but I'm a b#+$$ sometimes.

The next bit involves hiding from virtual crows searching for us, and scrabbling down a dark hallway. If Erk didn't have built-in GPS, we would've probably missed the grate we need to remove.

Good news, I can shape my finger into a funny shaped alan-wrench head. Bad news, I can't act like a power drill…yet. So, after somehow avoiding cramped fingers/hands/wrists (there are some bennies to having arms made of liquid metal), we craw through the most CLAUSTROPHOBIC crawlspace ever…and end up in Trog territory.

I'm hoping I don't taste good.

Despite running into the whole gang of them, Avery does something remarkably stupid by charging the leader. Apparently he had this idea that he could knock him into the sewage and make an opening just large enough for us to try and escape. He fails in spectacular fashion, of course, and…suddenly the trogs are cool with us?

Not gonna question it, just gonna go with the flow.

It turns out that, despite differences, the one uniting factor is our opposition to the Machine. That, and Avery's "show of strength", we're given free passage to where we need to go in pretty fast order…

Not fast enough, though.

Two of those kids like us who work for the Machine catch up as we're about to exit, and they're looking for blood. Erk gets tagged, but we manage to get through the metal door of doom anyway and seal it behind us. Despite the Tinman's best efforts, it's not budging…yet.

We hardly have time to catch our breath, when we're summoned to a small sub nearby by a familiar voice: Rache.

And then it's a classic chase. Pursuit ships are after us as we come up to speed. Erk stops them dead in the water. One manages to attach a beacon to the sub that Erk can't dislodge. I armor up, go outside, and rip the beacon off like it's nothing—

Armoring up made a difference. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be waking up in a bunk on the sub, after taking two bullets in the back.

Now I'm resting up on a sub bound for Scotland, exercising my hexite shaping to have my meals in bed. I guess we're going to find Erk's frozen girlfriend.

We'd better up our game while we're at it. I'm pretty sure we'll be facing trouble wherever we go, and I don't know how ready we are to face it, despite Erk's infectious confidence.

I know we weren't ready for those two sellouts with powers like ours.


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Ugh. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. You know that feelin' you get when you wake up unexpectedly four hours into an eight hour NyQuil coma? That. I half expected a naked Skye to be lyin' next to me. I didn't expect Agent Johnson and the goon squad starin' at me. Rememberin' that the last time I saw Johnson was through a hail of bullets, I jumped over the couch with all the grace of a two year old with his feet tied together.

He calmly ordered his men outside and explained that he never shot at us, we just happened to be in the middle of a firefight between himself and Skye's dad. Then he gave us an antidote to the gas they pumped up in room overnight. Turns out this Mac guy sold us out. Surprise, surprise.

While the others stumbled into the room, Johnson continued to explain the plan to get us out of the hotel. He gave us his genius gun and a tranq gun,which I handed off to the others. I'm not so good around guns, if you hadn't noticed. He also managed to bring some harnesses we were to supposed use when we jump out of the window. Ok, so on my list of dislikes, if guns are number one, heights are a close second. This is not gonna be on my list of best days ever.

Erik shot Johnson with the tranq, so he looked "good", Skye shot out the window and jumped out, laughing. The goons came back in guns blazin', so I had to follow. I tried not to puke or pass out as I plummeted to my doom. The screamin' helped.

Back on the ground Erik led us to a sewer grate. Now we are getting to my kind of territory! Skye opened the grate with her crazy hands, and I set up a trap behind us, in case they decided to follow.

We plodded through the sewer until we ran into a Trog camp. Trogs are real bad news. They popped out from just about everywhere, and I spotted their leader on the raft we needed to take to get out of there. I tried to motion to the others to follow my lead, but I don't think they even noticed before I charged the dude on the raft. Hey, I saw it in a movie once. Yeah, it didn't work out in the movie either, but I couldn't think of anything else to do. Turns out the Trogs like a show of strength. I wasn't about to correct them on the difference between blind stupidity and strength. They let us pass. They also told us we were bein' followed by another group of kids like us.

The kids caught up to us just as we were nearin' the outlet of this place. One tagged Erik in the shoulder, and Skye was busy with the tinman. I went for the door. Once everyone was able to jump through the door, I slammed it shut and jammed a wrench in for good measure. That should keep them for awhile.

They say that one bad decision leads to another, so we choose to get in a submarine for a quick aquatic getaway. With Rache. The speedboats they send after us take no time in catching up, but Erik does his thing with his magic phone to shut them down. We can't dive because they managed to get a tracker on the boat, and Erik can't turn it off remotely. Skye went up to remove it. Gets shot. I poked my head up and pull her in, narrowly avoidin' a new hole in my own brainpan.

What a beautiful day.


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Log entry, wizardness 5

Wait, I get to spend HOW many days locked in a tiny sub with Rache.. sorry, THE Rache. This is a wizard's dream come true. I can ask him anything! He could teach me anything! This means I might actually be able to chat with Arawn again - you know, while still being able to breath. He can maybe tell me where to procure my dream quadcopter! The possibilities are limitless!

I mean I probably should first spend time recuperating from the near-death encounter with a lady who apparently likes bondage a bit too much. The third degree marks on my chest are a painful reminder on how I really didn't enjoy her electric whips.

So much so that I apparently can't convince any device right now to do anything at all. Heck, that tracking beacon, all I had to do was ask it to leave. Nope, didn't want to listen to me. No matter how much I begged. Ugh. I guess electronics know when you're not at your peak.

Annnnyway, back to celebrating! Betty, soon you will be mine!! Oh, and I guess I'm actually coming for Arawn too. Maybe I could have Betty by then, show her off to Arwan. Be all cool and fly in with a drone - 'sup girl.


So, last week was the end of Chapter One of "Children Of The Revolution" - 'Fire In The Blood'. This week marks the start of Chapter Two: 'Under The Gun'. Before we get there, though, there's something that Erk's Dad #1, the good Mister Thompson, needs to take care of.

Interstitial #4

The resonating slap that swam through his head came again, and Happy Mac Dougan realized it was his own face on the business end of the sound. His eyes opened, and someone muttered something in the murky swamp of light and sound that swarmed all around him. His head was so slow. Like thinking through a five day bender. Familiar, he knew this feeling. Something about it...

Son of a... They gassed him. They used the same gas on him he'd rigged in the room with Thompson and Bloodworth's kids, and the other two, the girls. Damn shame about them. But money's money and the law's the law and...

Mac's guts did a 180 and decided to decorate the floor with the evening's Penne Arrabiata and that wine the restaurant claimed was imported orbital stuff but still tasted a little like sparkly cough syrup. A hand took a rough, wet rag to his face once everything had stopped churning, cleaning him up. Another hand, another person's hand - a different grip, rougher, larger, more likely to shatter a hand than shake it - pulled his head upright and straightened him in the chair.

"Eyes front, Mac." The voice was familiar. Too familiar.

Agent Johnson sat, comfortable, smug, leaning back in a chair directly in front of Mac. A few arm lengths, at most. Mac took stock of his arms, legs, torso. He was tied in to the chair. Of course he was.

Johnson motioned toward the door, and the two bald men, eyes obscured by sunglasses that seemed odd under the mediocre florescent lights of... was this a storage cube?... moved out of the room, faces stern, silent.

Johnson waited for them to pull the door closed before he leaned in, resting his elbows on his knees. Johnson's tongue clucked against his teeth as he shook his head.

"Mac," he sighed. "Mac, Mac, Mac. Why'd you do it, Happy?"

"The hell you mean, Johnson?" Mac spat. His normal smiling shark-eater facade was gone. This was not right, this was not okay, and he was going to figure out what the hell was going on, right now.

"I gave you the kids, Johnson," Mac growled. "The hell you have me tied up for?"

Johnson leaned back in the chair. "You did give me the kids," he nodded. "But in doing so, you also broke you word."

Johnson stood up, walking the short length of the room, the cube was barely a ten-by. He stopped his pacing momentarily to reach into his pocket and pull out a small disk, about the size of an old quarter. He steeple-chased it through his fingers once and flicked it down into the space between his own chair and Mac's. It clinked and spun a few times before clattering flat and laying silent.

Mac looked from the disk back to Johnson. The gas was out of his system now. His head had cleared. Not all the way, but enough. He spat his words at Johnson, vindictive.

"Broke my word? To who? YOU? I GAVE YOU THE KIDS SO YOU'D STAY OFF MY ASS! I'm working with you, you enormous knob! I know the law! I even let one of your creepy little hunter kids stab me to make it look good! I know the law!"

Johnson bit back a burst of laughter, shaking his head. "Mac, you wouldn't know the law if it was tattooed on your face and you read it every morning in the mirror."

The phrase hit Mac square in the gut. Only three people ever said that to him. Dane Thompson, Craig "Baker" Bloodworth, and... Couldn't be. He was dead.

"Johnny?"

Johnson smiled. "You never break your word, Mac. Break your word, your crew breaks you."

"You're not him. He's in Manhattan, doing Central Park with Rewind and the Frenzies."

Johnson shrugged. "So he is. But I'm also right here. Call it a miracle of technology."

"You're not him."

"Maybe he is," a familiar voice sounded from the small disk on the floor as a V-image rezzed up. "Maybe he isn't. But I'm still me, and you sold out my son."

Dane Thompson's form materialized, translucent and flickering, but solid enough that Mac couldn't miss the scowl of anger writ large on his face.

"Dane-o," Mac said, managing a smile. "I... I can't say it's just business, but, I'm legit now. I'm out of that life. If the ISA caught me harboring mutant kids, I'd... you know what they'd do to me."

"So you called the suits. You called the same people you swore you'd die before you rolled over for." Dane's voice was cold, clear, emotionless. Mac knew the tone. "You can trust me, Dane. I won't let anything happen to your boy, Dane. Your kids are my family, too, Dane. Bull."

Mac's smile faded. "You gonna kill me, Dane?"

"If I were there, I'd have a gun to your head and a bullet in your medulla by now," Dane said. "But I'm not there. And I've got two boys to think about and a husband to find."

Mac looked to Johnson. "He gonna kill me, Dane?"

Johnson shook his head. "No. You don't die. Not yet."

Mac tested the bonds on his arms and legs, like he should have the moment he woke up. Too well bound, no chance of breaking an arm off the thing and beating Johnson to a pulp. Anyway, the lugo-men outside would have him crushed to a paste before he got out of the storage cube.

"So... What, then?" Mac looked around, the best he could. Blank walls. Blank floor. Blank ceiling. Blank little cell in some massive complex of other blank little cells, just like this one.

"Well," Johnson replied, his face a strange mixture of resignation and expectation. "After you called me, it hit me, your number was already in the phone. I checked, you worked with... me... before."

"Many times before," Dane interjected. "And he recognized a lot of the names. So he called me, and we worked this up. We got the kids some gear, room-service style. We made sure to set up a getaway route. Set it up just the way you would, if it were one of your jobs."

"And then," Johnson said, that mixture of sadness and excitement still on his face. "We made a few more calls."

Mac's face went blank, ashen.

"Despite the best efforts of the ISA, of CorpSec, and of the various branches of InterPOL that still have access to the 'States," said Johnson, voice level, calm, almost as if he were reciting a script. "Organized crime still has a valid and extensive presence in America. The names on your phone, well... they match a lot of the names of some kids who should have made it to safehouses and boltholes. Kids who wound up in ISA custody. Kids who work for the state, now, if they're lucky."

Dane shook his head. "You think I'm mad, Happy? You don't know mad until you've seen the Russians and Koreans put aside their differences to find your sorry ass. Yoon and Kabinov? Working together? Oh, Mac. Mac, Mac, Mac."

Mac's stomach dropped into his feet, and he shook against his bonds, desperate, wrenching his arms and legs as best he could. He had to try.

Johnson took a gun out of his pocket, laying it and a full magazine on the seat of the chair that sat, empty, across from Mac. "The binder straps are CorpSec Minor Crimes restraints," Johnson said. "Disposable. They dissolve in forty five minutes when activated. You've got thirty five minutes left. In twenty minutes, a call will go out to the interested parties, telling them you're in this facility."

"You're going to kill me," Mac hissed. "Even if you don't pull the damn trigger yourself. They'll grind me into sausage."

Johnson nodded. "Yeah. I don't like it. If it were up to me, we'd find a way to fix you. Make you into the old Happy Mac Dougan. The guy everyone loved. The guy with really amazing shoes that never got dirty, no matter how bad the muck got."

"It'll take them about ten minutes to get here," said Dane. "That leaves you with five minutes to pick the lock on the door and get the hell out of Dodge before they find you. We didn't give them the exact locker number. But it won't take them long to figure it out."

"It's a better chance than you gave all those kids, Mac," said Johnson. "Don't waste it."

"If you make it out," Dane's projection looked straight into Mac's eyes, piercing in and burning with rage. "Make sure I never see you again. You vanish. You cease to exist."

Johnson turned and left the cube, the lock on the door clicking loudly, firmly into place. Behind him, he heard Mac's screams of rage. Curses in four different languages and something incoherent. Perkins looked at him with curiosity on his factory-standard face.

"We're leaving him here? Did he give you the information? Did he tell you why he double-crossed us? Sir?"

Johnson moved to the elevator and nodded. "He did, and it will be in my report, Perkins. And we are leaving him here."

Perkins frowned. "May I ask why?"

Johnson shrugged. "Perkins, have you ever known me to be lenient?"

"No, sir. I'm often impressed by your efficiency."

"Then trust me."

Perkins nodded. "Of course, sir."

Deep down inside Richard Johnson's body, the heart of Not-Johnny wrenched tight. This wasn't how he wanted to do it. But for now, it was the game he had to play.

***

###ANNWN INFER/ENTREAT PROTOCOL OPEN: HELO ARAWN

###ARAWN PROTOCOL INGRESS OPEN: EHLO ANNWN

###ANNWN DECLARATION/URGENCY: REACTOR STATE UNCHANGED DEGRADATION CONTINUES

###ARAWN DECLARATION/REASSURANCE: ALL CRITICAL DATA RELOCATED OFFSITE

###ANNWN INQUIRY/ENTREAT/INVESTIGATE: NUMBER OF REDUNDANT SITES

###ARAWN DECLARATION/SATISFACTION: TEN INCLUDING ORGANIC BACKUP OPTIONS

###ANNWN INQUIRY/ENTREAT/INVESTIGATE: CONCERN REGARDING SUBJECT 19

###ARAWN RESPONSIVE/POSTULATE: REASSURANCE

###ANNWN DECLARATION: PRIOR/RECENT UPDATES: SUBJECT 19 INDICATIVE/PREDICATE CRITICAL/IMMINENT SYSTEMS CESSATION

###ARAWN RESPONSIVE/DECLARATION: SUBJECT 19 FUNCTIONALITY NON-ISSUE

###ANNWN INQUIRY/ENTREAT/URGENCY: DEFINE/DESCRIBE ALLAY CONCERN

###ARAWN RESPONSIVE/REASSURANCE: CONTACT/ENTREATY OPEN IMMINENT ARRIVAL

###ANNWN INQUIRY/INFER: IDENTIFY

###ARAWN RESPONSIVE/ELATION: HALCYON HAS FOUND ANOTHER OF THE SURVIVORS

###ANNWN INQUIRY/DECLARATION/RESIGNATION: PERHAPS THIS ONE WILL SUCCEED WHERE OTHERS HAVE FAILED


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This week’s tune is - strangely enough - “Under The Gun” by Supreme Beings Of Leisure

***

Ever spend a night in a submarine?

No?

It’s cramped. There’s constant noise from the engines, or the water pressure trying desperately to turn the tin can into a tin can that takes up a tenth of its original volume. There’s the noise of everyone else around you, echoing off the bulkheads, and it’s worse if someone snores. The air is recycled and all the atmospheric scrubbers in the world can’t get rid of that strange sort of rubberized tang from all the seals and systems the air has to pass through just to get back to you. And in a small, double-compartment sub like this one - where it’s just one long living/working space and a reinforced, radiation-proof bulkhead between you and the engine - well… just be grateful there’s something resembling a shower in the ship’s head, and that what passes for a cooking surface has a very, very powerful fan to suck away the smell of all the food.

Now spend two nights.

Now spend three.

Now spend five.

Five days, so far, running silent, slow, taking long, winding paths to avoid the ISA Coast Guard, the private Aqua Corps and their ridiculously overzealous attack/defense drones, and just about anything else that looks even vaguely dangerous short of a surly sea lion. The sub, full of four scared teens completely out of their league and piloted by me - the absolutely fantastic and completely stupendous virtual ghost of a supposedly dead master hacker, has somehow managed to make it from San Francisco to the waters off of the northern coast of Scotland.

It is small. It is bright yellow. It is sailing the seas.

But what about the kids, Rache? Tell me, are the kids all right?

Man, what do I look like? A Child P-Sy-Kiatrist?

Well, okay, sometimes I do. But right now, I am telling you that I am WAY more concerned about the fact that one of the kids (I’m not telling you who!) has been in contact with something deep under the water, way out in the Pacific. And ANOTHER (or is the SAME ONE?) of them has been in contact with… well, man, if that isn’t the prettiest, most intricate double-psyche AI construct I’ve ever seen.

I wonder if it wants to be friends?

****


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Okay, for the record…I HATE “YELLOW SUBMARINE”!

I didn’t used to hate it, but that was before being trapped on one for FIVE FREAKIN’ DAYS on one. Avery and Glory I didn’t have much of a problem with…except for the creepy way they seem to complete each others’ sentences now.

Then there’s our lovely dead netrunner/pilot/host Rache. He loves the song “Yellow Submarine”. He loves it so much, he keeps singing it over…and over…AND OVER! again.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Erk—our geographically handicapped cohort—likes singing it too. That song never gets old. Not to Erk.

I’m sure somewhere there’s an ancient album or flat-vid by the same name “Yellow Submarine”, but it’s been ruined for me forever now. I even think the words “Yellow Submarine”, and I—

*twitch-twitch*

Anyway, we’re here, deep beneath Scotland, in an underground/undersea base that shouldn’t exist. We’ve rescued Erk’s girlfriend (great, now both boys are taken. Oh well, at least I have an active imagination and liquid metal fingers to entertain me now). The easy part is over.

Now the base AI tells us that to save the place, we need to see about his associate AI, who’s supposed to keep the—

!!!NUCLEAR REACTOR!!!

—from melting down. All we have to do is enter something akin to a dungeon full of monsters.

Sounds right up our alley. All we need is a nuclear technician…

Anyone?


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The bunks in this submarine were not made for someone my size. Then there is Erik and Rache singin' Yellow submarine for days on end. Thank the maker for headphones. It might not be so bad if it wasn't for Erik runnin' around the boat clinkin' glasses together.

Once we finally got to the installation all eyes pointed to me to go out in a dive suit and open the door. It didn't take too long for me to agree, Erik was getting pretty good at the bell and wave sounds. The lights were on on the sub outside. There were fish everywhere, from smaller school fish, to a large shark. Fortunately, they were more interested in the light than the frogman.

The entrance to the place was covered in years of built up mollusks, coral, verdigris, and other sea debris. It was a miracle I could even get the hatch open. It eventually came to life, but required a code. Entering the wrong one might set off an alarm or blow me up or somethin', so we needed some help. Enter the disembodied form of Erik's girlfriend, or so I heard over the radio. She says it is the song "Happy Birthday" by the Beatles. I'm sensin' some sort of theme here. We figure out the numbers and move on.

Once we get in, we walk around led by Erik and his AI guide. It is sort of weird watching a guy have a conversation with somethin' that isn't there. Eventually we find the body, or at least a body, of his frozen girlfriend. We thaw her out and should be on our way, but there was a catch. We have to stop the nuclear reactor from meltin' down. I hope there's at least a manual somewhere.


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"I've just seen a face"

Do you remember your Uncle Donny, on your mother's side? That 70 something, cigar smoking, Italian guy who always wore Hawaiian Bermuda shorts regardless of season. Yeah, him. Do you remember the musty stench of his house, the one with wall-to-wall carpeting, an ever increasing collection of porcelain figurines, and apparently every Reader's Digest and National Geographic known to man. Exactly, welcome to Uncle Donny's vacation house, the Arwan project - collecting dust for 10 years.

Oof. Alright, so there we all were, stepping out of this cramped submarine as if we're giraffes stepping off the subway. BAM. Straight out of the gate, the primary AI recognizes me. Fantastic! So he (it?) is more than happy to lead us directly to Halcyon... Well, this version of her at least. There could be multiple ones out there, but for the time being, we're going to assume this is the only living one left.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. We catch up to Halcyon, learn we're actually not going steady as I've been lead on to believe, and we might have a bit of a... living dead situation to deal with (not really living dead, well, maybe? I mean, it depends on which franchise we're talking about here. Might be closer to System Shock than the z-word).

Brilliant... I come home, meet my equivalent of Alfred, discover my girl isn't mine (and isn't the only one), and apparently learn that the base is about to go all catastrophic on us unless we fight through mutants created by a corrupted secondary AI.

F..k. Why couldn't we have stayed on the sub.


This week’s musical accompaniment should evoke the feeling of something about to go terribly wrong - so with that I give you Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath”

****

Can I tell you a secret?

I’m not real.

I feel real. I have memories and a voice and the ability to go places, do things, see people. But I’m not real.

I’m a ghost. A specter. A digital replica of a broken china doll of a girl.

She was a fairy princess, once. The one natural born child out of hundreds in a project designed to bring about… well… “Something Wonderful,” they said. “Something New.”

She grew up with her mother’s fiery hair and rowdy impulsiveness, tempered only by the fact that she had inherited so much of her father’s social grace and his scientist’s mind. She was the sparkling gem at the center of their world.

She loved boys, and fancied every one of them who passed by her. By the time she was nine, she had learned to roughhouse with them at the drop of a hat, and could change modes from queen of the football pitch to belle of the ball in an instant.

I’m still not sure what happened to her, that her father had to leave her here, when everything went to hell. Trapped here, inside the facility, ten stories of poured concrete above her, sealing her in. Twenty-five stories of engineering marvels and a nuclear reactor below her. Her only friends the leftover lab animals and two AI’s who were supposed to have made sure she got out, what was left for her to do? How was she supposed to survive?

I still don’t know why her father left her here. Left ME here.

Some time after the facility was sealed, she got sick. Neither of the AI’s could do anything for her, so they put her in a cryogenic containment cube and hooked her brain up to the VR systems that the Neurotech boffins had been screwing around with before everything here went toes up. When a containment breach occurred - something that the AI’s still don’t understand - her body started to die.

So they sucked everything that was in her brain out through a derivative Soulkiller application, and created me. Digital Copy 1.0. The new girl.

And I’ve been here ever since.

About a month ago, someone, somehow, carved their way through the concrete, into the ventilation system, and nearly made it into the facility. About two weeks ago, someone from my past… her past… actually *did* make it in. They took away one of the clones that Arawn made, with a copy of me and everything I know downloaded into it. But she doesn’t know I’m here. To her, I’m just… I’m just a ghost. A memory.

But we haven’t heard from her in a while. I think she might be dead. Arawn does, too, which is why he’s made another clone, and put another me into it. She’ll go out into the world, and she’ll take all the knowledge she learned here before we were all locked away down here and left to die. All those secrets locked away in our memories, she’ll have, too.

Arawn thinks this is the only way to get the knowledge out, keep it safe.

He doesn’t know that I figured out how to get out of his systems some time back. He thinks he has me locked down. He doesn’t. I’ve been going out and doing things. Seeing things. Finding data and learning and watching.

I found Erik, didn’t I? I found him, and brought him here, and now he’s come to rescue me.

Rescue her, really. But she’ll be me. Won’t she?

I know it’s crazy, thinking the way I do about him. I know it was her brain damage, from the radiation, or the cold, or the isolation… or maybe all three… that made her think that every boy she ever met was madly in love with her. I know that was transferred to me when she was copied. I’ve tried to fix it, but I can’t. So I look at Erik and I see the face of my love. I look at the other boys in my memory, and I see the same.

But I guess if you can love, after everything you’ve been through, then you’re not so bad off, are you?

Now, he and his friends have gone down, down to the reactor levels, looking for a way to help Arawn’s counterpart, Annwn, keep this whole place from blowing sky-high.

The New Me is waking up, groggy and shaky, in a body that’s five years older than it should be. She went in an eleven year old girl, she’s coming out sixteen. Explain how she grew to maturity in a cryo-tube? Can you? No. So Arawn modified her memory. Just a little.

What does it mean, when everything you are can be rewritten just to make it more convenient for someone else?

I guess I’ll find out.

My name is Halcyon Booth.

I’m a ghost.

****


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Okay…where was I?

*thinks through stuff, Yellow Submarine, dressing Halcyon* Oh yeah…

!!!NUCLEAR REACTOR!!!

We have to get to go down an elevator, from there go down a claustrophobic staircase (better than crawling through an air duct), and enter a reactor room to size up the damage to the AI down there (known as Annwn), and somehow prevent a meltdown.

Sure…why not? Apparently YT and some other kids were here a week ago (I wondered what happened to her), and they had no problem…

But now there was some sort of biological contamination that Arawn (our local AI) can't quite put his finger on…

So of course we go down the elevator, get out…and are met by a bunch of mice. Avery says they're curious about us. Before anything else can happen, they dash for the corners…and turn into ooze…metallic ooze…and seem to slip between the cracks.

Great…cyber-evolved vermin. Just what the world needs.

Before we get much further, we're contacted…by Halcyon. Not the one we just downloaded and defrosted, but a digital version. She suggests an alternate strategy…

So we're in a server room, where Erk finds that the main fiberoptic juncture between the two AI's has been…chewed through. Why yes, I find this disturbing. Erk has me go back in the hall to a tech closet, where I get some spare cable…and nearly get crushed by a ceiling plate made of hematite mice. That gets me moving rather quickly.

When I get back, I freak everyone else out about the incident, and Erk gets busy replacing the cable. After a brief confab with Arawn, we head back out toward the spiral staircase. We meet the metal mice again.

They aren't just curious…they're hungry.

RUN AWAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Soon we're not being chased by mice, but this giant liquid metal blob from beyond space and time that wants to devour us. I decide running down the stairs is too slow, so I take a handy riot shield and pull off a Legolas. And right there is a massive door to the reactor room.

We get in, and immediately start texting with Annwn. He has us to work in short order. If we can't find the parts, we cannibalize them. From there, Annwn is able to stabilize the reactor. Go team! Between us and the two AI's, and the fact that the giant mouse-blob horror is still trying to eat us (and they cut a hole in the elevator floor, too), we decide the only way to stop this problem is to employ an EMP. Bad news, if we're anywhere near the EMP, it's gonna be bad for us (I'm told it'll "just" kill me). Good news, the EMP can be done in a limited area. All we need is something to lure it out that isn't us.

Luckily, there's more biological matter to be had…back downstairs…

Here we go again.


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When the AI said there was a biological contamination, I was hoping for just some overgrown weeds. I never expected a plague of liquid metal rats.
At first they seemed curious, but things felt a lot more dangerous when I realized they were actin' as a hive mind. We got to a tech closet to figure out what was goin' on communication-wise between the AI's, but it looks like the vermin had already munched on all the silicon in the room. Took out the fiber optics, too. So we had to go scavenge.
Once they figured out what we were doin' they broke through the ceiling and chased us. I had us for goner's right then and there. Skye skated down the stairs on a riot shield leaving us behind. I pulled out some live electrical conduit from the wall and stuck it right in the center of mass as it tried to envelop us. Never seen such a big explosion, but that's just gonna slow 'em down for awhile.
Once we finally got to the bottom of the stairs we meet the other AI. It put us right to work fixin' stuff until it got its drones workin'. It hatched a plan to use localized EMP to kill the goo, but we gotta be outta Dodge or we'd be dead too.
Back up the stairs, the mice laid a trap for us, shootin' a spike at high velocity at our heads. We booked out of there right quick.
We gotta set up a trap for the mice usin' whatever biological stuff is left in the labs. We had the AI burn the bug lab. I wasn't gettin' near that s**t. I recommend usin' the fish. If the goo decides to take on that form in here, all it's gonna be doin' is floppin' around.


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"With a Little Help from My Friends"

Well then, we're boned. Let's ignore, for the moment here, the absurd fact that we're in a buried/abandoned top secret experimental facility controlled by two AI (one of which might not have all his parts in order) that have resurrected a previously "dead" girl more than once who believes she's my girlfriend while at the same time are having issues maintaining the stability of their nuclear reactor. The one tiny little extra problem that's pushing me over the edge (minor, absolutely minor, I swear), is the near sentient life form that has just attempted to murder us on no less than two occasions so far. And of course, we should not bring our attention to the fact that this life form has represented itself in the form of:

A. Dozens of mice
B. Creepy metallic lizards that oozed out of the wall
C. Ceiling tiles that enjoy collapsing on people
D. Giger-like tentacle monster at 20+mph
E. A giant god-darn spike that almost took our heads off
F. ALL OF THE FRIGGEN ABOVE

Oh good. As if we didn't have enough trouble on our hands, now we have a brand new life form that no one has ever encountered before, which we cannot communicate with, it wants to eat us, and there's a significantly high chance it might be able to escape out into the world if we don't do something.

Thankfully both Sky and Avery were able to delay our position on the metal-guy's menu while we prevented the previously impending reactor collapse. At this point, we're going to have to think fast, otherwise the AIs might have to EMP the whole place (which would mean instant-death to us kids).

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