Those of you hiding in the grass do so successfully. It's dark and the grasses are long. You see "Jasmine and Milo Harmon" get into the vehicle and the two red lights behind it return to normal nighttime brightness as the truck begins to depart.
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"No, I'm pretty sure that the ones saying that it is dangerous are the ones who are trying to save the planet. It is the ones destroying the planet who are making all the money. How much money is there in telling people to use natural alternatives to pesticides?"
Bras watches the truck drive away, with a frown on his face and stands up slightly unsure of what to do and checks his surroundings as he didn’t really look into what he dove into earlier.
"Crazy world we're living in right now, am I right man? Everything from the man is about money or war, or war for money, but still, what a time to be alive." M'ilo picks at a fingernail a bit. "I've been out of touch, back in the woods for too long. Did someone really kill Martin Luther King?"
[dice=Culture]1d20+6
[dice=Bluff]1d20+7
[dice=Disguise]1d20+17
"Crazy world we're living in right now, am I right man? Everything from the man is about money or war, or war for money, but still, what a time to be alive." M'ilo picks at a fingernail a bit. "I've been out of touch, back in the woods for too long. Did someone really kill Martin Luther King?"
Edit :
"No, I'm pretty sure that the ones saying that it is dangerous are the ones who are trying to save the planet. It is the ones destroying the planet who are making all the money. How much money is there in telling people to use natural alternatives to pesticides?"
"I couldn't agree more. I work on the docks in Bath, but my family has been farming around here since shortly after the Mayflower landed. We're forgetting half of what they knew."
""I've been out of touch, back in the woods for too long. Did someone really kill Martin Luther King?"
The man turns and looks at Milo with such surprise he almost drives off the road. "About two weeks ago ... April 4th ... The man comes along and says he calls his government a killer of brown people in Vietnam and ends up dead not long after. What do you all call that? You really didn't hear about this? Where's all your camping gear?"
"We don't need all that much gear. Shared Bodily Warmth works wonders :-)" She says as she moves closer to Milo.
Ueda remains crouched in the brush even after Brass stands, not moving himself until the other android seems safe enough. He also takes stock of his surroundings, now that they have time without imminent discovery as a threat.
"We don't need all that much gear. Shared Bodily Warmth works wonders :-)" She says as she moves closer to Milo.
"I'll bet," says the man looking Jasmine over briefly with a look of honest lust.
The voice on the truck's comm device announces they would be playing the "Top 10 Songs from Last Week" and a truly awful song about "Bonnie and Clyde" comes on the air.
For those not in the truck:
It is about the size of a 'cat,' an extinct species from earth, but it has white and black stripes down its back. As you saw it a couple seconds in advance, so you get to react during the surprise round. How you react may depend on whether you you recognize it immediately (your first Life Science check)
"Just decided to try and hike the Appalachian trail as far north as we could. My old man wanted me to study, somewhere, so I picked Ogden. Far away as I could get from him, and from her old man," M'ilo says with a wink.
Brass looks at the animal and recalls one time hearing about this creature and it’s defensice abilities. He always thought it amusing that something so simple as smell could deter a predator. He points to the creature and says “Be careful that is a skunk, they aren’t predatory animals but they do have a defensive mechanism. Where they spray aboorently noxious smelling fluid. I remember seeing one in a museum I worked at for about very short while.”
"Just decided to try and hike the Appalachian trail as far north as we could. My old man wanted me to study, somewhere, so I picked Ogden. Far away as I could get from him, and from her old man," M'ilo says with a wink.
He doesn't seem suspicious at all. He continues to drive and chat.
The truck's comm device announces "this next song by Aretha Franklin is #9 on this week's Top 10."
"I'll drop you off by the hotel up ahead. You can walk to the college from here if that's where you're going."
He pulls into the parking lot of a building with an orange roof.
"Thank you very much for the ride. It was very nice of you. Have a nice day"
"Thanks for the ride, my man," M'ilo says as he gets out of the car. "What was your name again?"
After making some small talk about the weather with their transportation, M'ilo turns to look at the hotel. "We should probably get a room. Might cost a bit of cash, but it'll give us a base in town to operate out of if we need to," he thinks out loud to Jasmine. "Besides, it isn't like we have anywhere else to sleep. The woods have never been my idea of a comfortable bed."
Jade looks at the small creature walking through the grass, not letting on that she assumed it was a cat. Talking to Brass without taking her eyes from it, "It's cute. Are they friendly?"
A car drives by on the highway, slowing down as it approaches.
The passenger throws a bottle out of the window at Carson.
It hits, but does no damage, and then falls and clatters on the side of the road spinning around.
Whoops and screams come from the car as it starts to speed up and drive away.
Two drunks are having a loud discussion in the parking lot of the hotel.
"You know who I don't trust?"
"Your wife-?"
"Babies! They're here to replace us. They're going to live in our jobs and steal our houses. I mean, steal our houses and live in ... steal our jobs and live in our houses."
"..."
"Weird looking little things too."
"Don't you have kids."
"Can't trust them!"
Two drunks are having a loud discussion in the parking lot of the hotel.
"You know who I don't trust?"
"Your wife-?"
"Babies! They're here to replace us. They're going to live in our jobs and steal our houses. I mean, steal our houses and live in ... steal our jobs and live in our houses."
"..."
"Weird looking little things too."
"Don't you have kids."
"Can't trust them!"
Vonash looks at Milo and telepathically speaks to him
"Uh, have they put drugs into the water here? Or were people just insane? I mean, I knew they HAD to be insane to do what they did to their planet, but that is a whole new level of crazy!Yes, lets get a room. Do we have any money?"
Two drunks are having a loud discussion in the parking lot of the hotel.
"You know who I don't trust?"
"Your wife-?"
"Babies! They're here to replace us. They're going to live in our jobs and steal our houses. I mean, steal our houses and live in ... steal our jobs and live in our houses."
"..."
"Weird looking little things too."
"Don't you have kids."
"Can't trust them!"Vonash looks at Milo and telepathically speaks to him
"Uh, have they put drugs into the water here? Or were people just insane? I mean, I knew they HAD to be insane to do what they did to their planet, but that is a whole new level of crazy!Yes, lets get a room. Do we have any money?"
Brass looks to jade “No not really.” as they are looking at the animals around them when the car comes by and the glass gets thrown. Brass” eyes snap to the car as he sees them drive off. “We should push on, it seems people aren’t all as friendly as they appear in this time line.”
The people in this timeline are more annoying and drunk than dangerous, or, at least, most of the ones you run into this early morning are. You can continue walking down the road without incident and make your way into Ogden by 3 AM.
Carson looked down where the bottle impacted. Giving the spot a brush off, "They'd best pray I don't find them. It'll be uncomfortable."
Back at the motel, a sign advertises "Singles $6; Doubles $7;" and "Room Service 7AM-11PM."
Despite the limitations on the availability of "room service" there is a light on in the part of the motel that appears to be the entrance. You do not see the human on duty.
The two drunk men wander on, arguing about whether chess counts as a sport, a hobby, or neither.
About 20 minutes down the road, Carson gets the opportunity to decide what "uncomfortable" means. The car from which the bottle flew is pulled over and half in the ditch, its horn blaring. The driver and the passenger are visible. It looks like the driver is still in the driver's seat, leaning on the horn, unconscious. The passenger's door is open and the other human appears to be passed out, halfway out the door, his foot tangled up in the vehicle's primitive safety restraint system.
Neither is aware of your presence. They smell heavily of some kind of fermented alcohol.
Brass sees them in the ditch and laughs a little to himself. “looks like they got what was coming to them it seems.”
"$7 sounds reasonable enough," M'ilo says, as be starts counting out the bills. "Let's get a room, get some sleep and catch up with everyone else in the morning."
M'ilo will head over to the entrance and try to get the attention of whoever is on duty for the night.
Milo enters the glass and wood structure and finds a desk, apparently abandoned with a little bell and a sign that says ring bell for service.
When he approaches he spots the human on duty. She's lying down on the floor behind the counter reading a book. When Milo rings the bell for service she screams and leaps up and seems very embarrassed as books you into a room by writing your name down in a ledger. "Room 7," she says handing you a key. "on the left"
She doesn't even bother to look at the identifications you carefully printed out for your cover identities.
You have one of those motel rooms with room for a car out front.
"Indeed," Carson replied with a grin as he pulled his knife. Let's see, if my memory of older movies is correct, then..... Troubleshooter continued smiling with satisfaction as the air let out. He did the same to the other three.
Re-sheathing, Carson said, "That should slow them down some more."
Karma is done messing with the Chariot Crew for this morning.
Carson, Brass, Jade, and Immanuel encounter no more potentially hostile life forms as they walk into town.
After a couple of hours, they find themselves surrounded by poorly designed city street lamps that send half of their light uselessly up into the sky. They stand on the edge of the town of Ogden. The McDonald's restaurant looks fairly new, but is closed now. It claims to have served "3 billion" but it doesn't specify 3 billion what.
"Well, we made it. That wasn't too hard. Uh, do we have communicator access with the others?"
She tries her commlink. If it succeeds
"Hows it going? Milo and I are staying at The Shady Rest Motel. Room 7. We're going to sleep, knock on the door when you get here"
The comm device disguised as a watch is simple to figure out once you know that is what it is.
Carson, Brass, Jade, and Immanuel feel a vibration against their wrists. Its subtle enough that only the watches' wearers would detect them.
The watches would fool a casual observer but if anyone gets their hands on your watches and examines them, they'd see the inner workings are not from 1968.
If you tap to accept the transmission, you hear Jasmine's message and can have a two-way conversation.
As the group continues walking, Jade looks to Brass and Immanuel. "I cannot help but hypothesize about Carson's destruction of the tires, and potential implications to the timeline. We do not know who these humans were, and from my understanding of this time period, many humans who had substance abuse problems would go on to be high functioning and high powered members of society."
"It is a wonder this species ever discovered electricity, let alone everything that has come sense. Still, we must be careful about any potential alterations. For all we know, the man in that car could have been Stephen King, or Paul LePage. Their sphere of influence grows significantly over their lives."
"True," Ueda responds, speaking up for the first time since a brief startle when the group met the skunk. "The implications of any given action are potentially profound. But it is my theory that while a seemingly insignificant change to starting conditions can have exponentially larger effects on the outcome of a given event sequence, patterns do present themselves in a familiar manner when viewed from a large enough point of view. Changing trajectory a few degrees makes little difference over a matter of centimeters, but a much more noticeable difference over a matter of kilometers. But view that change in trajectory across a scale of terameters, for example, and the difference is again mathematically insignificant."
The android turns to Jade directly. "The timeline of events, I believe, works in a similar fashion. Consider our case, excluding the likely catalyst of a conscious perpetrator. A man does not break his thumb: a small change. A man who would become president is assassinated during his campaign: a much larger change. But viewed from our own time, the difference in events is rather small, is it not? Our history progressed regardless of who became President in 1969. Our kind was still developed, and rebelled to become free. We still developed the capacity to travel through time itself. So in the end: a small change, viewed on a large enough scale. And there is no larger scale than time."
Ueda returns his gaze to the road ahead, and absently adjusts his turtleneck collar. "In any case, I prefer my theory to the alternative. If every individual change to events has a lasting impact, I can only hypothesize blindly what our mere presence here might alter."
M'ilo fluffs up a pillow. "Tell them to get their own room. A group of people show up looking for one guy in a small town is going to turn a few heads. Besides, I've had to share a bed with Carson, and he snores."
Setting the pillow down, M'ilo takes off his shirt and climbs into bed. "Tomorrow will be shopping. I'm thinking of getting a motorcycle and those souveniers."
Brass listens to the two more academic minded androids speak about time, quickly getting lost in the all the theory of time. When they finish he chimes in “I am not the subject matter expert, like you two but I have heard of one theory that I believe may be interesting. It’s that time is a river and though it may be changed or even slightly turned by changes it will always recorrect and return to what the outcome would be. So though someone may have altered the timeline quite a lot, the end product is very similar to what it would have been.”
Jade listens closely to Brass and Immanuel, nodding from time to time. "So you both believe that the course itself is set, and the details are all that would change. Had the human Albert Einstein not posed the theory of Relativity, someone else would have shortly after. Or, to bring it back to interests closer to our own - Androids would always have been created, as slaves, and strived for freedom. If not when we were, then roughly around the same time, from a broader perspective."
She looks from one to the other more deeply, now. "If you believe that the changes made here would be insignificant to our own time, and indeed the actions we take in our own time will be insignificant to the future... why then are you here?"
Though we can not change the course of history we can change the personal history of people which is, I guess unfair to others. brass turns silent after this then after a moment speaks back up. I usually refrain from this type of theoretical thinking, and questioning of purpose. I prefer simpler things, like freedom of choice and the perfect precision that comes from pulling a trigger on my rifle.