a storm approaches.This log is for everyone who signed up for The Storm investigation. Feel free to use the here to plot further on how you plan on approaching The Storm, and the issue. The mod questions thread is also open, if you have anything you would like to run by us.
the investigation.It takes a day of preparation, and a day of discussion, before you are led further down into the tunnels. It's pitch black, but one of the BGs who you have become familiar enough with turns on a low light and continues further. You walk for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and then turn a corner into a large, open cavern. The BG explains that at one time, this had been an underground transportation system - old and unused for centuries, now, but still in working order.
They file each of you onto a single car - it seems to be large enough to fit nearly a hundred, possibly more, bodies - so everyone has a space. The BG explains that they have already input the coordinates into the system, and that once they close the door, you will be transported to the last known location. The car will be programmed to wait for 72 hours, and then will return to this location. There is food and water supplied, and already packed, in the car. If you are not back in the car by that time, it will leave you behind. They then give their farewells, thank you for your help and readiness, and step away from the door - letting it close behind them. The car travels down a pitch black tunnel, and while the inside is dimly lit enough for the Circle Members to see each other and move around without hinderance, you can see nothing through the windows. It continues for a few hours at this rate - nothing to see, no idea where you are going. That is, until it seems to break through the surface, the track running through buildings and another, unknown area of the city.
The streets and buildings are abandoned, the tech old and outdated, windows broken out and dust filling the street. The sky, like back in the city you knew before, is cloudy and grey. But these clouds are different - these clouds are dark in a way you haven't seen before. You travel for another half hour above ground before the cart comes to a stop, and during this time it happens twice. A low rumble, seeming to come from everywhere at once, and then a few heartbeats after, a disasterous flash of lighting - miles away, yes, but threatening and gigantic, brighter and more violent than you've ever seen lightning before. The crash shakes the ground under you, and the damage is immense.
But the buildings are abandoned, the streets empty save for crates, old mechanical bits, dusty remnants of a society long forgotten by the Struxta you came from just a couple of days prior.
This is The Storm you've been warned about. the storm.You have been asked to find out information that will help the BG's, and Struxta, to stop The Storm.
From what you can gather, it does seem to be a naturally occurring weather phenomenon, as far as weather systems seem to work on this planet. However, rather than scattered thunder and lightning strikes, it seems to almost recharge and strike with epic proportions. It can damage, or destroy, buildings. It shorts out any and all items (and people) who depend on electricity in any form to function (Sorry Daylight and Conner, sorry to anyone who brought along technology) within a three mile radius.
The 'darkness' the BGs were talking about does follow this storm, but they seem to have been referring to this electrical shortage that comes from the storm and it's strikes. If this storm does reach any of the still-occupied areas of the city, it will shut down the entire grid, as well as any of the robots, androids, or electrically based figures that exist there - essentially ending the life of every Struxta citizen that is effected.
Plot, plan, theorize, and see if you can find a way to stop The Storm. If not, be back on the train car in 72 hours time, to return to the BGs and report what you have found.PROMPT IDEAS
1.) Discussions on the train - do you have any ideas for what to prepare? Any discussions you may want to have? You and your fellow Circle Members are caught here together for a few hours, driving into a situation you know very little about. What do you want to make sure you're prepared to handle?
2.) Scouting missions - the heart of The Storm is very much in the distance, and it is not moving quickly, giving Circle Members plenty of time to set out and check out the surrounding city. What you will find won't be much - this is a robotic ghost town in every turn of the phrase. Buildings have been abandoned for hundreds of years, covered in dust and left entirely undisturbed, except for the breeze that now seems to flit through this entire area. There are stores, warehouses, apartments, and buildings you can't even tell what they were used for, cleared out. Whenever, or whoever, lived in this part of Struxta had evacuated, quickly but efficiently.
3.) The Storm - The Storm is still a distance away from where the cart has dropped you off, enough that when your 72 hours are up, the heart of the storm and the lightning strikes shouldn't reach the car, or the track. This does mean that to do any closer investigation, you will need to go to The Storm itself. But be careful - the electrical output from these lightning strikes are dangerous, and can have all sorts of effects on both natural and mechanical beings. The wind, the closer you get to The Storm, will also pick up - making any kind of flying or air travel impossible.
4.) Planning - the car leaves everyone off at an old train station, which a large room attached. This room can be used as a kind of home base, as well as a meeting location. What do you plan on doing? Simply taking down information, or trying to take the storm head on? How do you plan on doing that? Will your abilities help? This room attached onto the train station is a safe location - no effects of The Storm will make it inside. Use as you would like! |
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acatalepsy_logs2018-07-29 11:52 pm
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Oh.
He has to think about the answer. Time moves strangely when you’re no longer able to count off days by sleeping consistently. ]
Half a year, I guess.
[ a pause, before he adds: ] She’s a good person.
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She says, quietly.]
That's impossible.
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That’s the thing that gets you about all this? That I know 2B?
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She doesn't want to answer his question, she realizes. But she does anyway.]
She's dead.
[Her gaze tilts downward briefly, in shame, perhaps. But her voice still has a dull lack of inflection.]
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[ That can’t be true, but Simon feels his heart stop anyway. Even his conviction that it doesn’t make sense is more a mental rebuttal, facts hastily stacked together, than the confidence that it wants to be. That it would have been, had he heard something like this at a point in his existence when the idea of talking to people and then finding out they’re dead actually was inherently ridiculous. Now it’s just another way he has to cross-reference his own memories.
It would be unsettling anyway, just because A2 is so serious about it, and he’s staring at her averted face again, trying to read it. ]
No, she’s not. [ it’s said adamantly, but then he falters slightly, uneasy, ] Not the 2B I’m thinking of.
[ He knows there are others, physical clones, built off the same personality template, but there’s really never a time it’s pleasant to be reminded of that fact, and he doesn’t super like having to use it. Still one of the freakiest things Simon’s heard. ]
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[She says this flatly, by rote, like it's something she's said before and has carefully cut all feeling out of it. It's almost cold, were it not for the way her shoulders dip in the process of speaking.] She was infected by a logic virus during a machine invasion.
[Just like the others. Just like her squadron. Her hands flex against her knees, relax with effort.] I killed her before it reached terminal status. [Before she got to 9S.
A2 does not like saying this, admitting to it. Every time she does she can see herself standing over 2B, can hear 9S screaming at her. She can see the blank horror on Anemone's face when she told her too. She only thinks that it's necessary.
It's easier, when someone knows what she is from the beginning.]
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And he’s too familiar with the concept of ‘robot viruses’ too many times to disbelieve her. ]
When? Why? There must have been another way- couldn’t you have just...
[ ...saved her, somehow, as if he of all people has never heard of incurable head problems before, but.
It can’t be the 2B Simon knows, but the idea of any version of her being put down like a rabid animal is pretty unbearable to dwell on. And somehow, the 2B partnered with YoRHa Unit 9S makes it even worse. He hadn’t considered that there was only (supposed to be) one of them, the both of them. ]
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[A couple of weeks, she thinks. The longer she was alive the more time began to meld and flow together, go strange and syrupy. 2B's memories give her a date, an approximate time, and she uses that as a reference.
Perhaps it's compassion, or pity, or some mixture of both that makes her look up at last. She shakes her head.]
...There was no other way.
[Even knowing this, that this was the way things were — even carrying the weight of killing her own kind on her shoulders — A2 feels the inexplicable need to apologize. To say sorry to someone, anyone. 9S would not believe her, even if she tried. Perhaps Simon would, but she doubts it, and so shies away from the possibility even within the safety of her own thoughts.
...Number 21 had tried to give them another way. She'd quelled the virus only to be cut down later, when it had returned. All of her comrades, gone. A2 couldn't apologize to them, either.
Pod fills the space with words in the wake of her silence.]
Per her final request, YoRHa Unit 2B directed this Pod to accompany YoRHa Unit A2.
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If something had happened to 2B, if she’d left the ship before they ended up here, 9S would have known about it. They can sense each other’s black boxes. So it doesn’t make any sense for her to have disappeared under their noses somehow. Right? Right. ]
It’s not her. I just saw her- [ There are too many variables here for Simon’s liking, still. They were on Hathaway’s ship one second and then here the next- except the last time he thought that, the ‘second’ turned out to be 90 years. And you can’t ever really say you just saw 2B, either. She isn’t exactly the kind of person you run into every day.
But he doubles down, insistent. ] She wouldn’t have gone back to Earth.
[ elbows on his knees, he drops his face into his hands, in the sort of way where the heels of his palms would be against his eyebrows, if he still had those. A sudden death is better than knowing what’s coming - anything is better than that, in Simon’s deeply biased opinion - but he can’t start to question whether what A2 claims she did was really necessary, whether there could really have been no other way, without feeling a queasy pang of guilt, hearing Catherine’s reassurance like she was tiptoeing across ice. I get attached to them too... but, in this case... it had to be done.
He doesn’t turn his head, but he glances over at A2 again for just a moment when he speaks, almost weakly, as if his compulsion to ask has outlived his ability to steel himself for the answers. ]
You were friends?
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I don't know how they met you. But I'm telling you the truth. [Whatever he wanted to believe afterward was his decision.
His question gives her pause. She almost laughs at it, the absurdity of it. YoRHa had taken her face and memories to repurpose to make 2B, this improved and more loyal version of her, and then sent this doppelganger to kill her for knowing too much, for having the audacity to live beyond her usefulness. And now she was being asked if they had been friends.
She breathes out sharply.]
No.
[It's short, blunt. No room for argument there.] But she wanted to die as herself. [And it had hurt too, to see herself reflected in 2B's face, this mirror staring up at her, her normally serene face etched in pain.
No one deserved to die like that, ravaged from the inside out by a machine virus, their mind hijacked and destroyed. It was a mercy she could grant, and so she had.]
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He turns his head toward her, just slightly, without moving his hands. Pointed, skeptical— well, in a subdued sort of way. He can’t even identify what he feels seeing a face identical to 2B’s, an entire face, while he hears all this. It would almost be easier with her eyes covered. ] She trusted you with her Pod.
[ She wanted to die as herself. Simon can’t entirely relate, having used his last chance to die as himself clawing at a vanishingly remote chance to not die at all, until it would never again be an option. But it still hits too close to home, entirely believable and achingly human. ]
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She can tell he's skeptical, that he likely doesn't believe her. Perhaps it was easier for everyone to believe that she killed 2B in cold blood. Her expression shifts again, almost imperceptibly. It's hesitance, a debate with herself on whether or not she should say the next thing.
But he is listening to her, where 9S would not, and that had to mean something.]
You should stay away from me. [Said matter-of-factly, with customary seriousness. But then:] 9S...
[A glance downward. She studies her hands, the endoskeleton peeking through her skin.] He's your friend. [He had been 2B's friend too, even as she hunted through 2B's archived memory banks for detail on him, to no avail. He wouldn't be reacting this way if he hadn't cared about her.]
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Yeah, you mentioned that. The part about staying away from you. [ That’s just a very... dry joke... but he draws his hands down to clasp them at chin height, and when he continues it’s more soberly. ] Look, it’s— that’s awful, but you didn’t do it for kicks.
[ then he hesitates, eyes flicking away. ] There was a “virus” kind of like that on my Earth too. It didn’t let you die as yourself, either.
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It seems as if he's trying to tell her that he understands. Her shoulders slump, as if she's a puppet with her strings suddenly cut, and now she only looks exhausted. Not angry at all, or frightening, or defensive. Just tired and sad.
He had the right to be upset at her, but he wasn't. This world seemed full of people like this, who by all rights should avoid her — she certainly did everything in her power to encourage it — and yet they didn't. Why?]
No. [...] I didn't. [Whatever her feelings on 2B, their bloody history, her anger at YoRHa, who lied to all of them, that much was the truth.
His mention of another virus, another Earth, is depressing but unsurprising. She wonders if a virus might be lingering here as well, in this bizarre machine prison masquerading as a paradise, and her sanity teeters at the thought before righting itself.]
Was the virus stopped?
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He doesn’t know what to do to reassure her, though, not when they barely know each other and he doesn’t really know the details of this death of the other-2B-that-is-not-the-one-he-knows. A2 didn’t even want this conversation to begin with, even if she seems less annoyed by his presence now. So he just kinda... looks off into the middle distance... next to her... ]
There’s nobody left to stop it. It only started after the comet hit Earth and wiped out the surface.
[ Not exactly an antidote of a conversational topic, but Simon has described this so many times that it barely feels real, not that it ever truly did. So, yeah, it actually does feel like a better thing to talk about than this other thing. ]
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She wishes he'd still leave her alone, though this is less because she wants it necessarily, and moreso because 9S and his reactions to her have been antagonistic, at best. She doesn't know what will happen if he sees her with one of his friends. To her, the depth of his hatred is an impossible thing to avoid. She was well-acquainted with rage and grief, in equal terms. Those emotions didn't go away. All they did was intensify and fester, until the person you were before them was lost.
For now, though, 9S isn't here, and so she loosens the chokehold of distance around herself for now. For a little while.
Simon's response on his Earth's virus is not unexpected but still disappointing. There was no one left to stop the one on her Earth, either. Something he says makes her frown though, curious.]
Wiped out the surface? [Where did he live, then?]
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Everybody who survived it was living in a research complex at the bottom of the ocean. A bunch of scientists and their helper robots.
[ ...again, he notices something that could be taken the wrong way, knowing he at least looks closer to the “machines” of the androids’ world than... well, them. ] I wasn’t one of them, I was uploaded into this body by an AI. The “virus”. It hijacked everything in the stations. People, robots... even the wildlife.
[ Whatever tone most people would expect a person to take when discussing a disaster that destroyed their whole planet and, by extension, everyone on it is absent in his voice, but neither of them are exactly having Open Emotional Responses right now while they contemplate mercy-killings and the apocalypse. Maybe A2, a little, because her slumped gestures of sadness have come off as unusually honest for her, even if he’s only run into her a few times.
Still, the apocalypse he wasn’t around to witness, sequestered at the bottom of the sea surrounded by absolutely nothing familiar — it feels almost like a ghoulish, dangerous exhibit he had to walk through, not the remains of his home. ]
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[It sounds similar to how YoRHa had been designed, artificial constructs carrying memories of humans long-dead. She had those little snippets of a life, the fuzzy dreams of a calm and peaceful existence before her activation date. It was fake, but it had been comforting, once upon a time.
His lack of open sorrow, or really, of any strong emotion, as he delivers this news to her, is a distinct contrast from his clear grief at the news she'd given him. Perhaps he's learned to separate himself from it. This is something she can understand. She's had to do it so many times that she couldn't connect properly to her own emotions if she tried, at this point.]
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What gave it away?
[ 9S had been pretty aghast to hear about his situation, barely able to wrap his head around the idea of an A.I. putting a human mind into a machine body. It didn’t sound like something that would have ever occurred to him had Simon not brought it up. 2B was surprised, he thinks, but she was... 2B about it. A2, though...
That, and knowing that the androids are programmed to revere humans, Simon’s almost looking for any change in her behavior. Not that he wants it, but it seems ubiquitous, and their reactions when they hear it — it almost looks like an answer, to see what they decide he is when he doesn’t know himself. Just not an answer that will stick. ]
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And a machine did this to you.
[Of course they would, the thought comes, cruel and sharp. They had violated Earth and torn it apart, so why wouldn't they do it to humans, if they had the chance?
But A2 differs from 2B and 9S, in that she resents humanity too, in the deepest part of her. Humanity who sent them to fight their battles, to die their deaths. And she detests YoRHa, who made her and her squadron guinea pigs, to be slaughtered and recreated.]
Why aren't you angry?
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There’s nothing left to be angry at. The WAU didn’t know what it was doing. It’s just a busted program trying to restore humanity.
[ Sure, he could be mad at the driver of the SUV, but he went through all that already, and now she’s long gone too. ]
And it’s the reason I’m here. Alive, or... something close to it.
[ The ambivalence in Simon’s voice is only more obvious, at saying something that approaches crediting the WAU with giving him a life worth living. But if he really thought it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have fought tooth and nail to continue existing, even when existence takes a form like this. ]
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And besides. What was left of anyone, when they had nothing left to be angry at?
(A2 doesn't have the answer. She's afraid to think about it.)]
...
[She stands back up, having deemed herself well enough to start moving again. So she returns to her work, silent for a few moments that stretch on too long.]
Sometimes it's better to rest.
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In other words, sometimes you’d be better off dead, which isn’t entirely out of left field given what happened to her 2B. But to him it’s pretty unthinkable, even if it’s true — or would be true, if he’d stayed that way. ]
People say that, but not existing doesn’t sound like rest to me. Aren’t androids afraid of dying?
[ ... but he remembers how blasé 9S was in telling him that what happened to Simon once is a standard-issue part of the YoRHa experience. ] Or... when you die and get transferred into new bodies over and over, does it lose its meaning?
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Quietly, she says:]
...I wouldn't know.
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You don’t want to?
[ confused, but empathetic, if anything. Obviously Simon’s not into it, but is this how messed up they usually get before they get new bodies? Is it long past that point? ]
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