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The streets and buildings are abandoned, the tech old and outdated, windows broken out and dust filling the street.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
no subject
Investigation, interrogation and negotiation made sense though, from the military-esque background she had. "Prototype" is the more troubling word to her, though. She grows quieter than before. Eventually:]
So you're going to get tossed when they make another version.
[Rude, A2.]
no subject
Connor knows inherently that this is the purpose of a prototype. Released for field testing -- admittedly for a very important reason -- for the sake of seeing how he performs, and Cyberlife would proceed from there. It's strange, the feeling of something clenching his chest as A2 puts words to this reality, though.
It wouldn't have mattered just months before. Now, however, how hesitation seems to flood the few moments in-beween his reply.]
...If I perform well enough, I see no reason why they would completely decommission me. A newer model will likely be released, but I'd still be perfectly useable.
no subject
If that's what you think.
[She had performed beyond the expectations of even herself, and look where she was.
He wasn't a combat android, and some sort of "prototype," and didn't have the look of YoRHa, anyway. No dark visor or dark clothing, no weaponry, no Pod. He didn't look like the Resistance androids either, those older models with patched-together bodies.] Who made you?
no subject
Not that her response is purely... satisfactory. But it leaves room for him to avoid arguing the point, room to leave it be and attend to the other question.]
CyberLife. A large corporation focused on the design and manufacturing of various models of androids.
[There was no single person who created him; he was a project, a group effort, many hands and minds applied to his very existence.]
No one in the Circle I've met knows of it, however.
no subject
CyberLife, though. She goes over her memory data, trying to set the term in place somewhere in her scattered and incomplete archive of human history, and finds nothing.]
That's not surprising. [That no one knows about it, that is.] Various models, huh.
[Not unlike YoRHa.] Not just investigation models?
no subject
[His tone has fallen into more ease than before. This is simple to talk about; it's like reciting bullet points off a list of information.]
There are other models made to assist the police, but not those who specialize in investigative procedures like myself. I am unique, in that respect.
[But that's not so much pride as it is, again, just reciting what it is he does.]
Beyond that, there are a multitude of other models that have been created to make life easier for humans. Companionship, security, labor, caretaking, et cetera.
no subject
She does not ask these questions. She doesn't really know how to start asking them, and some part of her is afraid to do so, besides.]
no subject
I do. My work partner is a human. [A gruff and grouchy human, but human nonetheless.] The CyberLife headquarters which I return to when I'm not working is operated by many human hands. Earth's population is in the billions.
[He could keep going, but he instead decides to watch her reaction. To allow time for questions to come forth, because surely she has a few, he thinks.]
no subject
[Said after a considerable delay, soft and baffled. An Earth filled with life, she's imagining. One without a machine plague swarming it like a cancer. What sort of life could that be? She tries to picture it and the thought is so alien that it frightens her to envision for long. What was she, without a war to fight?
What was she here? It's too overwhelming to consider for long, a question too big to hold. She retreats into herself, letting the blank shock on her face fade into distant neutrality. It would be better to let the conversation taper off into nothing, but — she's curious. She can't help but be curious.]
What is it like?
no subject
His consciousness has only existed in his own world for three months. And most of that time had been sequestered to CyberLife when he wasn’t working; waiting in standby, alone where they kept him stored and stoic.
But his time in the city was more poignant, enough to inform his experiences. Interactions with humans, in which he learned better how to respond to them. Cases he worked, ingraining themselves in memory, moving little pieces of his core programming here and there, adapting and changing.]
…Humans are hard to quantify. Some are inclined to dislike me, others will interact normally with an android. Personalities are varied and dictated by circumstance and history; I suppose you don’t need me to tell you that.
[Detroit, then.]
The city I’m from is called Detroit. There are more than half a million humans who call it home, and the buildings downtown are what you would expect from a large city — tall, multi-storied skyscrapers. Crowded streets. Lit up at night. Prominently, it is known for its art, music, and architecture. Though I cannot speak with authority on any of these subjects, unfortunately.
no subject
...It's nice to imagine. Even with the mention of humans sometimes disliking him (and she imagines, androids as a whole), the other things...music and art, architecture, those are only snippets in her database, fragmented pieces from whatever human's memories she had been given on her activation. Scraps of history, haphazard and disconnected, made soft and rose-tinted by the androids' collective worship of humanity.]
...It's hard to imagine.
[Said quietly, almost to herself.] The cities are gone in my world. Bombed out by machines. [And androids too, but she won't say this right away.
This information is delivered bluntly and without much emphasis, but it's clear she's trying...her best...to have a conversation. At least to exchange information.] Humans are gone too. [She turns back to her work of removing rubble, having determined she's rested long enough, and unaccustomed to having a conversation for the sake of it. It's easier on her to be working as she speaks.] They fled to the moon after the first war started.
no subject
A bit like the ruins of this place.
The light of his LED circles at his temple as he watches her return to moving rubble. After a moment, he decides to do the same, so not to look like he’s avoiding contributing, even if it’s already been proven that Connor will be unable to do any of the heavy lifting.]
…What do the machines have against humans?
[It’s the first question that slips out, among many. His mind briefly wanders to the thought of the burgeoning android revolution back home, and while this and what A2 has described were vastly different degrees of uneasy, it still makes Connor frown, mostly hidden in shadow.]
no subject
She focuses on the tedious repetition of picking up rubble, pushing it off to the side. Rinse and repeat.]
There was an alien invasion on Earth, a long time ago. [Long before YoRHa had ever existed.] They were responsible for creating machines, which overpowered humanity. After that, androids were made to stop the machines.
There's been fighting since then.
no subject
[An alien invasion. A parallel that he couldn't run alongside his own home; his worries had been focused solely on the woes of a city, a nation. Likely the world, in time. But nothing as grand of a scale as having to worry about a literal invasion from the far reaches of space to threaten life on Earth.
Though this does give leeway to ask a follow-up question, one he had been wondering about for a few moments now.]
So you were created by humans, but you've never seen one before?
no subject
...She answers, after a moment.]
Yeah. This place...this is the first I've seen them.
no subject
Why is that? Didn’t you have a human you reported to? Or a handler of some kind?
no subject
No.
[Lift and toss. And again. There's light at the end of the tunnel at last — the entryway begins to reveal itself, slowly.]
When they fled Earth, they formed a council on the moon. They communicate with YoRHa via broadcasts.
[Or had. Who knew what would happen now, with YoRHa torn apart and destroyed?]
no subject
They’re making ample progress, at least.]
Your situation is so opposite from mine that I suppose I just find it strange. I was surrounded by humans when I was activated.
no subject
Maybe your situation's the strange one. [Is what she says, finally.] We wake up knowing what to do.
no subject
He wonders if she’s right. Or if it matters at all, if his “normal” is only normal in his own world, and that trying to apply the idea of strangeness to another’s is a waste of time. But curiosity always gets the best of him, as it often does.]
Maybe. Hard to say. I just wonder what the reasoning might be. What’s the harm in meeting humans if you’re meant to fight for them?
[But that might be a rhetorical question more than anything else. Especially once Connor removes one more piece of debris, and the rest of it slowly comes crumbling downwards, slowly and harmlessly piling across the ground. A space is left open, if they were keen to climb over what remains.]
Looks like we can get in through here.
no subject
There's the faintest sound of a sigh from her.]
Who knows?
[...]
Let's get going. I didn't move all of this garbage to waste time.