Alternating sweeps of red and blue light cut through the overcast, hazy afternoon gloom of what was once upon a time an outdoor outlet mall on the outskirts of North Bend, New Jersey. No longer home to bargain prices for the latest fashion or last year's toys, instead the crumbling storefronts house shanties. There are few signs of life at present, though, and small wonder: Next to a refuse-choked central fountain is a pile of bone, gristle and torn cloth that used to be a man. Technically, the sun's nowhere to be seen right now, but that doesn't obscure the fact that the latest North Bend murder has happened essentially in broad daylight.
And, as a consequence of that, there were witnesses - from the air. A 2-seater aircar is parked nearby, on a level spot that once upon a time would have been part of the covered food court. A police "spinner" bike touches down nearby, bearing the first authority to reach the scene. If there were any witnesses among the local "residents," however, they're making themselves scarce.
A cold autumn wind wafts between the buildings, blowing some plas-sheet brochures. For a fleeting moment, something stirs the circuitry of the faux paper, and a smiling cartoon teddy-bear mascot waves, trying to draw attention to a long-forgotten store chain, but it freezes up again.
"Oh boy," says Randall as he surveys the scene and the vicinity of the body, the police spinner's engine whirring down to an almost silent idle under him. Nothing has prepared him for actually seeing the dead body. He flips open his PDA and reports in, aiming its camera pickup at the body and fountain for documentation. "Officer on scene, looks quiet. Victim quite thoroughly dead. I'm going to put up the caution tape and see if I can get a statement."
Network chatter crackles over the audio. "Confirmed: Officer Randall on scene - Visual verification of reported Code 30...." comes the monotone voice, along with a stream of additional jargon.
Inside the civilian aircar, the pilot - a petite woman with almond eyes and lightly bronzed skin - starts the landing procedure. "I'm setting down behind the flying pig," she comments, using the usual slang term for a police spinner.
*** Note for GM: Only one two-seater air car on scene. Adjust intro text to reflect that Trudeau is in process of landing. ;)
Randall gets off the spinner bike and pops the back, from which he extracts a roll of caution tape which reads "POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS". He spares a glance for the arriving aircar, then goes to start blocking off the entrances to the food court, making sure he doesn't step on any footprints or the like.
The mascot on a blood-spattered TeddyTime brochure smiles up at Officer Cranston. In flickering motion, it waves a pair of cartoon scissors back and forth in a looping animation, before stopping once more. Nearby, there's a puddle of black tar-like goo that steams and bubbles lightly.
"You know, I didn't sign up for being a witness to a murder," Jason Edwards quips jokingly to his current employer. "So, this does count as still being on the clock, even if we are not actively pursuing the security breach."
Randall takes more photographs as he goes, using the adhesive side of the tape to attach it to sides of storefronts. "Recommend a hazmat team be sent with the CSI team," he comments as he uploads the photo of the puddle.
"Yes, it does," Holly informs her partner. "As long as your signal-tracker gizmo is still working. We don't know that this isn't related to our target. Criminals prey on one another all the time."
"Hackers usually don't go around stabbing each other and using their entrails for tinsel," Jason points out, "They tend to be ... less physical." And with that, he taps for a bit on his mini-compuler/PDA, checking the status of his network scans.
A soft squish sounds under Jason's shoe. He catches a whiff of burning plastic.
"Aw ... nasty," Jason complains as he lifts up his foot to see just what sort of nastiness he steps in.
"Scarlet, do not go near that puddle," Holly tells the apparent squirrel (albeit one with an Avatars LLC logo on its head) perched on her shoulder, and points to whatever Jason just stepped in.
Although he's not anywhere near the crime scene that he can tell, it seems that he's nonetheless stepped on something disagreeable. Fortunately, it doesn't appear to be a missing part of the gore-splashed scene across the way: it's a small piece of plastic - vinyl? - with some sort of black goo clinging to it. The goo bubbles and burns, and lets off a foul-smelling odor.
*** Note to GM: "he" being Jason in above line.
Officer Cranston waves to the two as they exit the aircar. "Hey Jason! Miss Trudeau! I'll have to ask you to stay back please, for your own safety. I'll get back to you when I've finished decking the halls, all right?"
Jason is busily scraping his foot on the pavement in an effort to get the goo off. "No problem. I have enough nasty on my shoe, I don't need to get someone's thumb or worse stuck on it too," he remarks a bit absently.
The woman waves to the policeman, and takes out a handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth. "Be careful, Jason: that might be giving off toxic fumes."
"You're not stepping in vital evidence over there, are you?" jokes Randall.
The goo comes off surprisingly easily, shrinking away in a way not entirely like cotton candy exposed to water, but then dissolving into vapors entirely. Meanwhile, one of Jason's sensors begins chirping: a display reads, "Transmission detected."
"Yes, I am sure someone's mold-infested gum is vital," Jason mutters.
"Hey, there we go, transmission! Your 'friend' appears to be on the move," Jason remarks to Holly as his attention rapidly returns to his mini-com. He starts tapping on it rapidly, trying to see if he can get a source location.
Beyond Jason and Ms. Trudeau, unseen by either of them, Officer Cranston sees a figure lurking in the shadows, near the entrance to "Arcadia" - the first brave soul he's noticed among the local populace that he expected would be here. He could have, for a moment, just marked it off as just a gawker - and potential witness to interview - but the long bony-like protrusions from the ragged sleeves, and the excessive blood-spatter suggest that this might be more than a mere witness at the scene.
Officer Cranston barks, "Get in the car! Shut the doors!" He drops the tape and draws his gun, running toward them - and the figure.
The mini-com's indicator spins uncertainly - there seems to be a surprising amount of local interference - but then points back behind Jason and Ms. Trudeau, past the fountain ... about in the direction that Officer Cranston points his gun right now.
The hunched-over man opens his mouth wide - too wide - and coughs up black spittle, followed by an inhuman-sounding hiss and gurgle. Then, with an agility that seems inappropriate for his hunched and lurching stature, he spins about and disappears into the darkness of the arcade.
Holly Trudeau doesn't ask questions; she's in the car and ready to close the canopy as soon as Jason is inside.
"Waah!" goes Jason as he fumbles around with his tools as he's trying to half-dive/half duck back into the car. "Dang it, he's going to scare off the hacker!" he complains.
Randall thumbs the lock on the grip. It flashes briefly scanning his print, then goes green: safety off, ready to fire. "Police! Freeze where you are," he yells.
The officer moves up to the arcade door, scanning to see if the suspect has halted or not.
A bellowing voice booms from the arcade. "Final ... CONFLICT!" A faint glow emanates from the store's interior; amazingly, it seems that despite the state of the place, someone must have left at least a few of the machines in place. They hum to life, their holo-screens and archaic flat-panels and even retro faux-CRTS lighting up. The ching-ching of a pinball machine can be heard from a distant corner. With a crackle, the sign - ARCADIA - flares to life, and the room is filled with an ambient blue glow.
Pausing before closing the canopy, Holly drops her squirrel outside. Once the car is sealed, she unfolds her mobile and starts issuing commands to the little robot. "I'll try to follow Randall with Scarlet," she tells Jason. After making the bot run in circles for a moment, she gets it going in the right direction.
"Botheration," intones Randall. He contacts the precinct on his PDA again. "Suspect matching description sighted, fled into the arcade. How long 'til I've got backup on the scene?"
Outside, one after another of the lamp poles flickers to life, though some immediately pop or more violently explode into darkness again. Some of the shop signs flicker, pondering whether or not to join in on the fun, but most of them quickly give up the fight. The siren sounds on Randall's spinner-bike, as it unsteadily lifts off its skids, loses its motion lock, and begins to glide forward, uncontrolled.
The control panel of the two-passenger air car lights up - every warning signal popping up, holovid feed, weather reports, flicker-messages - everything layered over the other, and competing for space, turning into garbage as memory is overrun.
"Hey! Are you messing with my bike, Jason?" The police officer runs to catch up to his bike.
Officer Cranston has not far to run. His bike, it would seem, is coming to him. The air car seems to be toying with the idea of jumping off of the ground of its own volition as well, though the spinners sputter too irregularly to do any more than to make for a rough time inside.
"What the heck is this, a carnival?" Jason says as he instinctively ducks from the sound of the exploding light. "Someone must be accessing everything. That's ..." In an effort to not feel useless, he flicks up his mini-system again and starts looking for evidience of some massive hacking going on ... and if so, well ... no one out hacks him on a job.
Fortunately, Jason's equipment is still operating - far better shielded than the average air car (or police spinner-bike, it would seem). Nonetheless, the readings are just as erratic as the show going on around him.
Randall hops on the bike, trying to shut it down.
"This shouldn't be possible," Jason grumbles and continues tapping away ... becoming more oblivious to the chaos around him and instead focused on the chaos in the network.
"I'm shutting down the flight computer," Holly says, throwing a few switches on the dashboard. Since the flyer is grounded, it shouldn't matter. "Is it digital or a solar flare or something?" she asks, trying to focus on the small video display from the squirrel, which itself is full of odd colors and icons. "Bloody beta code," she mutters.
"Controls are scrambled!" yelps Randall. "Manual shutdown... Where's the..." He recalls the under-the-dashboard pull-bar. He flips it sideways and pulls sharply, killing the engine.
At once, for two entirely different reasons, the aircar and spinner-bike abruptly drop to the ground - emergency power-off. But the mayhem in the rest of the outdoors mall still continues.
"Officer Cranston to headquarters, anyone there?" Randall brings up his wrist-PDA, staring uncertainly at the display and signal reception bar. It looks like something major's affecting all electronic and computer systems.
Nothing but static responds to Cranston. But even more alarming, he sees several sparks emit from the corpse over by the fountain. Several sharp flashes emit from the skull's eye socket. It would seem that the victim had some old-school cyberware.
"Right, arcade it is," Jason comments to himself as much anyone else. Looking determined, Jason opens the door to the car and slides out, pulling his pack in tow. "There is a massive hack, or something like one, going on in that arcade!" he yells towards Cranston as he fumbles with the zipper on his backpack. "Time to sic R.I.U. on this jerk and how him how system manipulation is really done."
"Stuff is exploding and there's a killer on the loose," Holly warns the man.
The young Hispanic officer gets up from the police spinner, rubbing his short beard - it comes paired with a neat little mustache. "Is this the part where I deputise you and Miss Trudeau here and issue you snazzy semi-automatic weapons and we charge in wearing shiny black armor?"
Cold, icy drizzle drops from the sky, joined by the occasional rain of sparks from overloading circuits. The TeddyTime brochure bursts into flame and soon is reduced to a crispy, semi-molten pile of synth-paper. Several more lamp lights pop, and some off-kilter music emanates faintly from one of the clothing stores.
"No!" Holly snaps at the young policeman. Then she redirects 5C4RL37 to follow after Jason, since the bot already knows how to identify him. Scarlet can at least watch his back.
"Your car might explode if this continues!" Jason points out to Holly through the open door, "I'd rather not have that happen." He remains outside the car, crouched down. From his pack he pulls a rather odd looking robot? from it. Hand-build, certainly, with small rubber treads for moving over uneven ground. tucked up against its sides are little spindly .. legs? Perhaps it can go ambulatory or perhaps they're just manipulators. He lifts the 'head' up, atop which is a small camera. Setting that aside, he pulls out a glove with piles of dangly bits and knobs on it, which he pulls on. His mini-com is set to the side and after a few clicks, he can see, though fuzzily, what the little camera does.
Success! Despite all the electronics antics, RIU proves to have a sufficiently shielded system. The feed comes through, and Jason gets a RIU's eye view of the world. Similarly, 5C4RL37 reports its visual confirmation of Jason's whereabouts, a few feet away.
With the car completely shut down (although Holly has to wonder if Jason knows something about the volatility of fuel cells that she doesn't) Holly looks around nervously at all of the activity, and then digs through Scarlet's interface in search of the motion tracking sensitivity settings. "Mechanical squirrel should have a setting for mechanical paranoia. Will talk to R&D if it doesn't," she mutters.
"Ah, this is the part where I remind you that I'm a police officer and you should stay back where it's safe," Randall says with a grin. He extracts a flashlight from the skimmer - it's little more than a high-intensity light projector mounted to a shoulder clip. "I'm going to check it out. One of you, can you keep trying to get a line out to HQ, have 'em send an EWF team out?" EWF being Electronic Warfare.
"Sure thing, Randall," Holly comments. "Just point us to where it's safe in all this!"
Officer Cranston quips as he heads for the arcade entrance gun in hand, "Well, there's a killer with talons in the arcade and a hacker who just set off what looks like an EMP, probably related, so... Not in there!"
"And you would risk your head over some little bot? A bot can get a new head and while you might look better with a new head ... that can't be fixed!" Jason points out to Cranston.
"RIU doesn't have the shiny badge that says 'Serve, Protect, Run Away'," jokes Randall.
Officer Cranston's communicator despondently repeats its "Connection Failed" message once more. With the general mood, it almost seems inappropriate that it's merely drizzling, and not flashing lightning and booming thunder outside. Inside the video arcade - its doors wide open at the moment to the world - rows of games chirrup and hum. Some eccentric must have taken some effort to keep this place in something approximating working order, though there are still telltale bits of trash cluttered on the floor ... and a few dark smears on the floor that steam and bubble.
"That.. thing.. was limping when we saw leave the victim," Holly tells Cranston. "So if it can't run it may try to ambush instead."
"He has no need for your badge bling; his ego is secure!" Jason quips back. He settles down with his back against the car and with a roll of his wrist, the little bot whirrs forward, right on Cranston's heels.
The two little remotes glide and scurry after Officer Cranston, and send back visual and audio feeds and other data back to their owners.
The young dark-haired man nods seriously. "I understand. Miss Trudeau. I'll be careful. Jason, can you have RIU lead the way to where you located the intrusion? I'll follow it in."
"You noticed a signal before all of this blew up on us," Holly notes to Jason. "Did it look like a telepresence link or anything?"
"No problem!" Jason answers. Snapping his wrist to the side slightly, the bot darts sideways, then zips on ahead, its little treats kicking up pebbles in its wake.
Officer Cranston follows cautiously, detaching the light from his shoulder so he can hold it, panning the beam over the dark corners of the room.
"There was a violation of the Avatar's network just before the chaos broke out," Jason comments as he's steering the odd little bot around. "Which begs the question ... does Avatar's LLC have connections into systems it shouldn't?"
Even as RIU and 5C4RL37 patrol the room with a critter's eye view of things, Officer Cranston manages to pick through the cacophony the sound of ragged, rasping breathing, with a faint gurgling undertone. Just around the corner. Just past a holo machine. The sign's a bit dusty. Spracht Zara....
"I.. don't know," Holly admits, looking around for movement in the shadows. "You think an AI could be behind this? The military might have one. This could be a test run for it and we just stumbled in."
Outside, the wind picks up, cold and intense, and sending the drizzle to a diagonal downward path. Lightweight trash turns somersaults, skipping its way across the courtyard.
The police officer's eyes narrow. It's up ahead. He shifts his light back to his shoulder and thumbs his gun active. He moves around to where he'll have a clear line of sight on it... And then turns to face it, spotlighting the spot where he thinks it is. "Police! Freeze! You're under arrest."
"Eh .... maybe. It seems a little suspicious though that the target was Avatars. Does the military have reason to suspect your company? You aren't offering private meets for militants or anarchists are you?" Jason inquires next as he continues to control his bot, rotating and scanning with its little camera as he searches.
As he turns the corner, Officer Cranston brings his gun about to train it on a hunched-over figure, adorned in something resembling melting trash bags. But ... no, that's something ... no, that's his skin, it seems. Maybe some sort of back-alley subdermal armor job gone wrong? The tattered remnants of a T-shirt cling to the wretched figure's torso - a once neon-blue color, with "ARCADIA" splashed across the back. More rasping, heaving breaths ... and then, through matted hair ... or are those tentacles? ... a milky white eye peers up at the officer.
"Everyone wants our GESTALT AI system," Holly points out. "It keeps my job interesting."
Outside, things aren't nearly so tense. No movement, save for the somersaulting trash. Not even with all these fireworks and all the electronic strangeness, has anyone come bolting out of any of the stores. Either the locals are very calm about it, or they've already left the premises.
Officer Cranston flips the thumb-switch to non-lethal. His breath catches as he takes in the sight. Maybe he should shoot first -- but SOP mandates giving the perp a chance to surrender first. Tasers and pacemakers...
The RIU and 5C4RL3T come about, giving their respective owners a low-to-the-floor view of the unfolding scene in the arcade. Meanwhile, the figure slowly rises. As it does, bits of it slough off, hitting the floor, leaving sizzling, smoking puddles. The smell of burnt plastic - or something like it - is inescapable. Bony protrusions slip from under the hanging folds - something like fingers, but far too long, with protruding bone, blackened in patches, and made red with fresh blood. There are also patches of blood about what seems to be what passes for the stranger's mouth.
"Holy.." Holly gasps. "Jason, what is RIU seeing? Scarlet's showing me a monster. I think she's mapping a game creature over her inputs."
"Stay where you are!" barks Randall. "I mean it! Put your hands in the air, no funny moves."
"Some bag of black snot. I've seen worse in my dirty laundry," Jason comments, completely unphased by it all.
Sparks emit from underneath the creature's hanging tresses. Its other "eye" is briefly illuminated: a cybernetic implant, another old-school design, and by the looks of it, not giving its "wearer" the least bit of effectiveness. Suddenly, it hits Officer Cranston: The cybernetic eye is only roughly shoved into the socket. It very probably is the missing pair to that cybernetic eye still in the skull of the victim back outside. For a moment, there's a gurgling noise from within the strange ... man's? ... throat. "Tokens," it gurgles ... but then, its jaw elongates, dangles for a bit, and then breaks free and smacks against the floor. Its gurgle turns into a hiss and an inhuman scream, as it whips up its bloodied talons and slashes at Officer Cranston!
The officer jumps back before the assault, taking cover behind a fallen arcade machine. He squeezes off a shot with the taser round, trying to knock it out.
"Game monster, game monster," Jason muses as he peers at the odd creature. He flips to the signal displayed earlier and peers at it, trying to see if there's some way he could jam it or otherwise mess with it at close proximity. "Now, where is the source ... surely it can't be the monster."
RIU gives Jason a view of the dark spot on the ceiling tile where Officer Cranston's stun-shot hit ... as it definitely failed to get its mark. Meanwhile, the signal flutters a bit, but it's still mostly pointing toward the arcade.
"It's attacking!" Holly yelps, and quickly pokes a finger onto the creature's 'eye' on the display, setting a target point. Then she hits Scarlet's 'jump to here' command in hopes of distracting the thing.
"Hey, keep it busy. I think it's a robot of some sort ... I'm going to try and find the source in here," Jason calls out through a tinny voice on the odd bot. He switches display to RIU's own scanners, to see if they can better pinpoint the signal source.
"Zork! Missed," curses Cranston as he tries to shelter from its likely next attack. "Draw its attention, I can't get a clear shot!"
The mechanical squirrel emits a cheery chirp, entirely at odds with the gravity of the situation, as it leaps up toward a point that corresponds with the attacker's visible eye. With a gurgling hiss, the taloned attacker tries to swipe the mechanical squirrel away, knocking over a token dispenser in the process.
Meanwhile, Jason's display reports RIU's findings. The signal fluctuates throughout the interior of the arcade, but seems to spend most of its time back behind a door ... leading to the back area, where the office and loading zone might be found.
Taking advantage of the creature's distraction, Randall stands up and aims carefully. Kapang!
It's a direct hit. The pistol's underslung taser-bolt launcher fires its second shot, and this one finds its mark. With a quick switch, Officer Cranston sends a stunning jolt into the perp's chest.
However ... the taser-dart sloughs out, with a bit of black goo. Whatever it was that fell off, the perp doesn't seem to have needed it much - and he didn't give so much as one of those satisfying jerks or jolts to show that he even felt a thing. He seems more preoccupied with the mechanical squirrel on his face.
Unable to really make sense of the jostling video, Trudeau just assumes Scarlet reached her target. Now she has to resort to voice commands and hope the bot's AI can handle things. "Scarlet," she instructs, speaking into the pickup on her mobile. "Explore mode. Find a way inside current target."
With a blissfully cheery chirrup and a mechanical nose-wiggle, the squirrel makes like it's digging up acorns. Look! It found one! Plop. Sizzle. "GLEEEEEEAAAAAARGH!" the now-eyeless enemy howls.
"Go go fleet ... treads! No, that doesn't sound right," Jason mutters as he fiddles with his bot. The little treads spin and it zips off, making its erratic way towards the door. "Gotta shut down this signal..."
Officer Cranston looks worried as the taser-bolt fails. He thumbs the ammo selector back to bullets, watching what it does with a squirrel running amok. "Ow. That had to hurt."
RIU finds his way to the door. It's closed. It's one of those quaint, retro designs, with a mechanical doorknob up about where a normal-sized person could easily reach it. Fortunately, this isn't your average rolling toy. It shimmies its way up the door with its mechanical limbs, twists itself around the knob, and, shifting its weight, turns the knob, rewarded by a satisfying "click." It wasn't locked. The door creaks open, revealing the back area - evenly lit, with a couple of out-of-order video consoles, a paper-strewn desk, and a roll-up door to the back loading area.
With a gurgling hiss, the taloned vagrant swipes at the mechanical squirrel, making noises that seem more a matter of frustration than pain. However, its coordination seems none improved by the loss of its only functioning eye, and it only succeeds in banging around the consoles, and leaving more pieces of itself sloughing to the floor in its wake. The little blackened puddles continue to sizzle, slowly dissolving into foul-smelling vapors.
Jason takes a moment to orient himself in the room. "Signal, signal," he mutters as he resumes the search. "There has to be a transmitter or terminal..."
The lumbering thing manages to swipe its talons at its face again, and this time it manages to connect. Although it rips off a large, smouldering section of its face in the process, making itself look even less human, it also sends the mechanical squirrel slamming into a replica Kong console. Although eyeless, it turns its oozing face back in the general direction of Officer Cranston, its elongated upper teeth - now fully exposed, since there's no more upper lip - looking rather fang-like.
"I've lost Scarlet's signal," Holly says in alarm. "That thing will go after Randall now!" The small woman runs towards the arcade, picking up anything that looks like it would make a good missile. "Where's the signal coming from, Jason?" she calls back.
Guessing that the creature is tracking him by sound now, the young officer resists the urge to spray bullets wildly into the air - though the monstrous appearance it now bears is a strong incentive in that direction. He instead squeezes off one shot for its face before moving away from that spot, toward the back door.
"You're crazy!" Jason shouts at Holly. "The signal is in the back room ... usually. I've trying to find and disable it with RIU!"
"It's blind, I'm just going to try to keep it confused," the woman explains, stopping at the door to the arcade to see what's going on.
In her hands Holly has a round knickknack that feels cold and smooth to the touch - and wet with drizzle. It's a glassware orb, from some curio shop, chipped and with some faux-gold wire-work that's mostly pried off - but it has a good heft to it.
The creature's head explodes in a burst of black spray, painting the wall behind it. Something bubbles out of the top of its head, as it staggers, shuffling one step, then another forward.
*** Note to GW: Adjust order of lines above, since Officer Cranston's bullet did that, and it didn't take that long for the bullet to reach its mark. Sorry!
*** Note to GW: Another edit: bubbles out of the top of its NECK, not its head. Its head is not there.
"C'mon, find the signal source. Where are you, you little bastard?" Jason growls at his screen as RIU zips around in the back room.
The images flicker, as if RIU's feedback is being periodically interrupted by another signal feed ... but if so, by one only slightly different. Some of the objects in the office seem to flicker between being there - or not. RIU zeroes in on the rear loading door. It seems to be a perfectly ordinary metal roll-up door, rather worse for wear, but still in decent condition. It would seem that somehow, the transmissions are coming from the door itself, or its framework. If it's being used as some sort of antenna, it's an odd choice to say the very least; the rig must be on the other side.
"Aha, massive antenna. Right!" Jason says triumphantly. "Now ... I need to ground that sucker to kill it from emitting." So, he zips the bot towards it and looks for a nearby electrical plug. The third prong, after all, is a ground.
Sure enough, there's an outlet. All these years, and the standards still haven't changed.
Knowing the risks to RIU ... Jason extends one of the manipulators and tries to stick its tip into the ground hole. Now, if he can manage that, then connect the other manipulator to the metal door ... the little bot might work as a ground path.
The robot obediently forms a bridge between first the outlet ground, and then the door....
The viewscreen flashes completely white, and all the indicator lights come on at once.
"I hope this doesn't fry ..." Jason pleads with his screen ... and when it goes berserk, well ... be starts smacking his foreheard with it.
Time seems to slow down for just a split second as Jason smacks his forehead with the controller. The brilliant white of the screen expands outward, and he can't escape it, even though his eyes are closed. For a split moment, he SEES the interior of the back office, and a glowing serpentine form crackling with energy ... and then reflex takes over as he dives backward, and energy washes out and across the courtyard. Ms. Trudeau and Officer Cranston see the flash as well, and need no urging to duck and cover. The lumbering, headless creature, however, catches it full force, and the clotted blackened remains of its melting body soon vanish away in the all-pervasive light.
Frotz, what was that? thinks Randall. He saw the flash in the back door just as he was about to rush in there; now he's quite glad that he decided to drop behind the fallen token dispenser instead.
Huddling down, Holly thinks back on breakfast. The eggs were too runny; perhaps it was an omen of how the day would turn out.
"Waah!" goes Jason for the second time. Only this time he drops his control screen and scrabbles backwards, scooting on his butt. Stopping a few feet away he frantically pats at his head, making sure it isn't on fire!
Jason's head is still there, fortunately. It's not on fire. It takes a moment for his eyes to readjust, and a moment more to realize that the sky has cleared; the overcast gloom is gone, as is the drizzle. It's afternoon-going-on-evening, with a blue sky hedging toward sunset colors at the western fringe. Likewise, Officer Cranston and Ms. Trudeau find that they're still intact.
"What the..." is Holly's first comment upon seeing the change to the weather (and daylight) and she immediately checks her watch.
Despite the flash and dazzle, there's no smoke, no broken glass, no debris to hint at the explosion that should have happened. The interior of Arcadia is still its usual subdued blue glow, and the games chatter and continue to sell their best points to the passing customer.
"When the heck did beating my head on a screen fix the weather? Man, I wish I would haveknown that on the last beach trip," Jason jokes nervously as he now tries to stand up so he can go get his dropped control screen.
"17:10," the watch reads, sporting the latest in satellite update technology. Late afternoon, getting on toward sundown what with this time of year and all. Same day, no evidence of a prolonged blackout. Weather forecast calls for mostly sunny, slight chance of scattered showers.
Looking up, Randall notes the lack of physical trauma. Some kind of flash bomb? An EMP weapon overloading? He stands cautiously and detaches his shoulder-mounted lamp to pan it around the room, checking for the monster. "Jason? Miss Trudeau? Are you all right?" he calls, hoping for their robot remotes to respond.
"I.. I'm fine," Holly says, finally standing up. "Is that thing still in there with you, Randall?"
Behind the counter, a pink-haired, freckle-faced girl in a neon-blue Arcadia T-shirt grins at Officer Randall. "Need tokens?" she asks cheerily. Outside, an automaton in the semblance of Teddy (of TeddyTime) trundles along, handing out brochures. A few shoppers linger near the storefronts, though a few seem to be hustling their way back toward the parking lots, as evening presses in.
There's no black goo. There's no blood-spattered gore near the fountain. No trash littering the place. No exploded lamps.
"The heck? Where did these people come from?" Jason says and scratches his head ... then proceeds to smack the side of it! "RIU!" he yells, remembering the poor fried robot. So ..., Jason runs flat out towards the arcade to check on the thing.
"No signs of it," Officer Cranston says to Miss Trudeau, noticing that her voice is not coming from the squirrel remote but just outside the door. Was the thing destroyed by the EMP somehow? Wait, something's different here. He holsters his gun and flashes his badge to the girl. "Police," he says. "What's your name? Can I see your identification?"
Jason manages to catch himself, as he almost steps on a small, toy-like squirrel-bot lying motionless near the Kong console. The door to the back office is still ajar, just as he last saw it. The girl looks up, startled, at Jason's hasty entrance, but then quickly turns her attention to Officer Cranston. Nervously, she says, "Uh ... I ... I ... my purse ... it's in back...."
"It's all right," Officer Cranston soothes. "You're not under arrest or anytihng, I'm just here to investigate a crime and I was hoping you'd have noticed something that might help us catch the perpetrator. I just need your name for the witness statement."
Jason suddenly feels a warm feeling, as if something were wrapping around his shoulders lightly, responding to his call - a presence felt in his mind, rather than by touch.
"Woah, woah, squirrel kill," Jason complains as he almost stomps the poor thing ... somehow managing to step over it instead. Of course the next weirdness doesn't exactly help him keep his balance ... so he falls on his face. splort. "Medic," he says weakly and holds up his right hand.
"Penny," she says. "Penny Arcadia. I work here. I mean, my dad owns this place, so I work here. I'm just watching while he's out and ... did something happen? What's wrong? What's going on? Is he okay? Oh no!"
Holly enters the arcade in search of 5C4RL37. "This looks nothing like what I saw from Scarlet's video feed," she mutters, recovering the robot. "They probably used too much game AI in her."
Randall quietly switches his PDA to record, then lays a gentle hand on Penny's shoulder. "I don't have all the facts yet, miss, but I'm sure he's fine. Did you notice anything unusual earlier? Have you seen any strangers you don't recognize today?"
"Uhm," Penny says, drawing it out a bit as she pauses for thought. "It's ... it's an outlet mall, sir. There are lots of strangers.... There's a first aid station ... should I call someone?"
Ignoring the strangeness (or strange normalness) of the transformed mall, Holly unfolds her mobile and connects it to 5C4RL37 by flipping up the Avatars logo on the robot's head.
Randall shakes his head. "It's all right, miss. You didn't notice any... Loud noises, or explosions just a little while ago then?"
Jason feels a slight weight on his shoulders. Everyone else notices a small oriental dragon resting on his shoulders that seems to be of about the same proportions as his little mechanical remote. It has a large pearl-like orb set in the middle of its forehead that glows faintly. Meanwhile, at Holly's ministrations, 5C4RL3T twitches a hindleg, then wiggles its little mechanical nose. After a moment, a barely audible whine emits from its interior, and its beady little eyes open up again. It chirps up to Holly, awaiting instructions.
"Maybe if I don't move whatever is sitting on me will go away. Feels like a snake. I hope it doesn't bite me," Jason ponders, face still firmly pressed to the floor.
"Hey, she's still kicking," Holly says, and looks up towards Jason with a smile. "Did you get that at the gift shop?" she asks, noticing the dragon.
The little dragon makes a slight purr that sounds slightly like an antique-style hard drive.
"Whath are youth talkinght abouth?" Jason mutters, still face down and apparently not so willing to get up quite yet. He's brave enough to at least reach back quickly and poke at it.
Meanwhile, Officer Cranston continues to question Penny. He has an easy-going demeanor, and seems to be doing a fine job of calming her down from her earlier concerns. She seems a bit awkward, frequently blushing at her lack of knowledge, but the general gist is that there have been no explosions, nor any other strangeness of note, aside from that man who came rushing in and collapsing melodramatically on the floor before being pounced on by his toy dragon.
"That dragon on your shoulders," Holly comments, unplugging Scarlet and placing the squirrel onto her own shoulder. "There's some weird stuff going on. I wonder if that evaporating plastic was some sort of hallucinogen, but.. anyway, the signal is coming from the back room, right?"
The little dragon playfully bats and nips at Jason's poking finger, making it seem as if oriental dragons might be distant relatives of cats.
Randall thanks the nice young lady for her help and goes over to help Jason up. "If you don't mind, miss, we'd like to take a look in the back. Is that all right with you?"
"Oh, of course, officer," Penny says. "Here, I'll get the door - oh, I left it open!" She blushes again, and opens it the rest of the way. "Mind your step. There are lots of wires."
Going to the other side of Jason, Holly whispers to Randall, "Can you see if your weapon was actually fired?"
Randall nods to Holly. "Not right now," he whispers. "I don't want to scare Penny. Let's get in the back room first."
Jason jerks his hand back and finally tries sitting up with Crantson's help "Dragon?" Jason asks as he tilts his head, trying to get a look. "Er, hello," he tells it a bit lamely. "Where did you come from?" To the others, he comments, "the signal was from the back metal door. I used R.I.U. to ground it out hoping to kill that signal. I think he was fried. So, yeah, lets go see exactly what happened."
"A loading dock door," Holly says with a sigh. "Our guy could be using a truck or something."
The officer spins Penny a story that they're investigating a cybercriminal, who may have planted a repeater box there. "It shouldn't be dangerous, miss, but just in case, I suggest for your own safety, you stay back behind the counter. Thank you, you've been a great help! I'll let you know when it's all clear."
The little dragon leaps off of Jason's shoulder, and with a flicker of light, little bluish "flames" appear to be leaping from its fore- and aft-legs, forming something that looks remotely like wings. However, rather than flapping them (or, as one would more rationally expect, rather than it falling to the floor), it swims through the air in a way that toy dragons of that size have yet to achieve - certainly not with the amount of weight involved. It weaves its way toward the back door, and into the back office area. In Jason's mind's eye, it's as if he can intuitively picture what it looks like back there, right now: a bit cluttered, several games needing some work....
"Uhhh," Jason says a bit unsteadily as he heads after the strange creature. "Is there a hospital nearby. I might have a concussion. I think I'm hallucinating."
Penny nods, and looks noticeably relieved as she returns to her station, and furthermore sees that the strange melodramatic man has returned to his feet. "Just let me know if you need anything!" She glances askance, and seems momentarily intrigued at the sight of the hovering toy dragon, but says nothing of it.
"That.." Holly says as she sees the dragon move, then stops and looks around for obvious projectors in the walls or ceiling.
Randall leans over to Jason. "That's the best toy ever," he whispers. "Did you make it or is it another of Miss Trudeau's toys?"
"It's not mine!" Jason whispers back, "I don't know what it is. To make matters worse .. I think I'm hallucinating. It's like I'm, well, seeing through its eyes or something."
Projectors there are in this place, and in abundance. Holo displays flicker here and there - though they're limited by the usual technological concerns. (That is, the energy fields required to suspend micro-particles, which are in turn illuminated by induction processes, and which break apart and are virtually insubstantial to the touch.)
Randall looks concerned. "Well, bear with it for now, and let's see if we can find anything in back, all right? We'll get you a checkup after we're done here."
"You could feel that thing when you touched it, right Jason?" Holly asks in a very calm voice.
"Well, yes, I could feel it. Imagine a sock of sand laying across your shoulders," Jason explains to Holly.
The little dragon bobs and weaves like a dragon kite, and meanders over to the door. Now that Jason makes his way back to the office, the "double vision" effect fades away. The roll-up door is closed, and looks pretty much as it looked through the video feed. The outlet is also there as well, but there is no sign of RIU, nor of any smoke or other disturbance to suggest an electrical mishap.
"You're not feeling dizzy or anything, are you?" asks Randall. As they enter the back room, he checks his weapon and lets Holly know that yes, shots were fired, then tries to reach HQ on his PDA.
Quietly, Holly unfolds her mobile again to access Scarlet's video feed to see if the robot is seeing the same thing.
Jason waves towards the door. "That's where it was coming from and where I shorted it ... but where is my bot?" he says a little worriedly. After making his way to the door, he crouches down and looks for even the faintest scortch marks.
"Signal reestablished," Randall's communicator reports in a female monotone voice. (He must not have bothered fiddling with the interface settings yet.) It seems to be back in working order. Whatever interference there was must have passed.
The little dragon alights to the ground, and its glowing ethereal "wings" flicker out. It scurries over toward Jason, then perches up on its hind-legs, ferret-like, smiling and straightening out its long carp-like whiskers as if ... standing at attention?
And, on Holly's mobile, she's getting a clear signal as well. An indicator suggests that a 5C4RL3T's stabilizer is slightly out, and that she should have the unit serviced sometime soon, but otherwise it would seem that the squirrelbot is in working order - and showing her the same visuals as she is seeing with her own eyes.
"Uhm, hi," Jason says to it and actually waves. "Where did you come from?"
"Officer on the scene," Randall reports, keeping his voice down. "Chased the perp into an abandoned arcade. Tried to arrest it, it attacked me. Taser was no good, had to kill it. Mr. Edwards was tracking a cyber-criminal down to the same location, there may have been some kind of EMP weapon set off. We're suffering from some kind of mass hallucinative effect. Can you send an ambulance down with the CSI team?"
"Something can't be right here," Trudeau mutters, and looks to the nearest broken game machine. Standing up on her tip toes, she tries to run a finger along the top of it to check for dust.
"Please stand by," the AI operator says, over the police communicator. "Human intervention required." No doubt, Randall has just described something a little too complicated for a limited computer AI to parse into meaningful terms. As for the game machine, there is indeed a fine layer of dust on top, but not, say, 10 years' or so's worth. As for Jason, he finds himself momentarily daydreaming about working on RIU ... except that he imagines seeing himself from the view-ocular of RIU. It reminds him of one of his first test-runs with RIU; it's probably still on RIU's internal storage somewhere, if he hasn't cleaned it out yet.
Holly hmms at the dust, and with a look of mild disgust pops the finger into her mouth to see if she can taste the dust.
Randall leafs through the video captures he managed to make, saving out key pimages. There's the murder scene, there's the arcade before he went in, did he manage to get any good views of the monster?
"Wait, wait, wait," Jason says as he shakes his head. He leans down until he's nose to nose with the little critter before asking, "RIU? But, but, you were just a robot I built. You weren't a little, well, you weren't alive. Are you really ... RIU?"
The dust tastes ... dust-like. Unfortunately, as Holly isn't likely to be the sort to be a connossier of such things, she can't quite gauge whether it's the right sort of dust. And as Randall investigates on another approach, the video feeds are all still there. The lighting quality isn't the very best, but video technology has come along considerably. That monster wasn't Randall's imagination, it would seem; he's got recorded evidence of it.
Randall looks at Jason oddly. "You okay, buddy? That doesn't look like your RIU."
And the little dragon makes a cartoonishly-cute smile, one that manages to crinkle its eyes. It's then that, as Jason studies the dragon more intently, he sees that although it looks organic in some respects, it also looks mechanical in others - particularly the metallic sheen of its underscales and the horn/antennae on its head. The "pearl" in its forehead looks rather camera-like, if one looks closely.
"It well, it claims to be my robot. Kind of. Not in words .. but more images in my head," Jason tries to explain, "Or I'm going crazy ... which might be more likely." He offers his hand to it in case it, well, wants to climb back onto his shoulders.
"We should get out of the arcade," Holly says, wiping her finger off along the hem of her business tunic. "Our hacker could using the holo systems in here to feed us a subliminal light pulse. VR goggles do the same thing; it's based on hypnosis or something. Proprietary stuff."
The dragon seems to be very well-trained, for it promptly scurry-hops right back onto Jason's shoulders. He can feel a rumbling purr through its metallic belly.
Randall nods. "I'll defer to your technical expertise then, Miss Trudeau. Kind of hard to look for something if we're being hypnotized." He grins at Jason, "You've always claimed that hacking was a case of mind-over-machine, aren't you just proving it now?"
Unsure of what else to do Jason pats the creature as he gets back to his feet. "It bothers me there are no scorch marks on the door or outlet. That flash was huge ... so the current surge had to be significant. Where did the marks go? Where did the corpse go?" he rambles. A blink, then a smirk back to Cranston as he remarks, "It's more mind over puzzle, but something like that. This just doesn't make any sense. What happened to ... I should go back and check my other scanner to see if there are any fading signals."
"Officer Cranston?" comes a female voice over the police com - but this one sounding a lot more like a real human. "I got your message - Sorry for the delay. They're keeping us busy in North Bend. Can you verify your location? I'm having trouble getting a lock on your unit."
"Let's get this door open first," Holly suggests. "If this is a broadcast, it must be from a relatively close source."
By a quick glance at the situation, it looks like the door can be opened from the inside by the wall-mounted console, or by pulling the release lever on the door itself, to take it off the tractor-chain, and manually hauling it up and overhead.
"They would need direct physical contact with the door to use it as a broadcast. Unless they were trying to do induction broadcasting ... but that would have been noticeable in so many ways. Like .. cooking us in its path," Jason comments. He then things of something and says ... "Let me try something."
Randall says to the PDA, "Good to hear you, Marge! It's the Arcadia arcade. Owned by a Mr. Arcadia. His daughter, Penny, is handling business, or at least that's what I'm hallucinating. Here, let me upload some photos for the Pink Elephant case." He includes the original murder scene photos, the arcade 'before' he went in, candid shots of the monster, and the arcade after, including the backroom where they are now.
"We're right next to the murder spot," adds Randall. "Some kind of EMP effect did a number on all the electronics around though."
Holly frowns as Cranston uploads photos. But she just isn't certain that a police officer can be made to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
Jason steps back from the door and crinkles his brow in thought. And what he thinks is: 'RIU, pull that door lever, please."
Marge calls back, "Officer Randall, is this some sort of joke? I'm old enough to have been to out that way, and the Arcadia hasn't been open since I was in high school. Junior high, even. Hallucination, my --" That last bit is lost in a brief burst of static.
"Can I try to make a call?" Holly asks Randall, holding up her own mobile.
"Come again, Marge?" Randall frowns at his PDA, then tries extending the antenna on it. "Yeah, if you can get a signal, be my guest, Miss Trudeau."
The little dragon leaps from Jason's shoulders, and its glowing flame-wings burst to life. It then swims over to the release lever, grabs the handle in its mouth, and with a furious shake, pulls itself backwards. With a pop, the door is off the traction-chain, though the dragon doesn't seem to have enough force to haul the door open manually on its own.
Trudeau enters the code for the R&D lab. She's got it on speed-dial ever since being handed one of the beta-squirrels.
Jason looks surprised it actually worked. So ... he pats his shoulder by way of asking the strange creature to return, and waits to see if he does before going to heft the door himself.
"Ms. Trudeau?" comes the voice on the other side. "How is your evening, and how may I help you?"
"I need to speak to Gary Watson, Mechanical Simulation, Extension 546 please," she tells the operator.
Reflexively, the officer goes to cover the door, drawing his sidearm. "Stay out of line of fire," he advises Jason. "If we got one baddy out front, might be another inside."
The dragon returns, and intently watches as Jason pulls on the handle, on its short cord. The roll-door is well counter-balanced, and the wheels all greased. It slides open easily enough that the mechanical opening almost seems overkill. On the other side of the door, however, things don't look quite so inviting. There's a swirling black mist that comes to an abrupt - and very artificial - stop at the frame of the door.
Holly steps out into the main arcade, and just watches through the doorway at the warning.
"He'll be right with you," the operator says. "I think he was expecting you, anyway."
"Don't worry, I can scream and run like a girl with the best of them," Jason agrees ... and he practically does when the strange mist decides to make its appearance!
"I don't know what stunts you're pulling," Marge continues, on the police com, "but meddling with the security systems on your phone - while impressive - is serious business. Good grief, what is it with rookies these days?"
"Hello!" comes the next voice over Holly's communicator, a cheery enough voice. "Watson here. Some trouble with your squirrelbot? I was just looking over the diagnostics. I lost the feed for a bit there; looks like you must have banged it up a bit, I'll bet."
Randall switches the PDA to live-transmit and pans the camera around the back room, including at the mist. "Sorry, Marge - I'm just reporting what I'm seeing. There's definitely something odd going on here. What are you getting over the link?"
"I'll bring Scarlet in later," Holly whispers into her phone. "Can you get a visual feed from here? I'm tracking a potential cracker and there's stuff going on that.. Listen, are you guys developing some sort of Dream Park style public VR? Because if this guy stole it, we're in trouble."
"You wouldn't happen to know what that mist is, would you?" Jason asks the diminutive dragon sitting on his shoulder from where he's peeking out at the mist from behind a broken arcade game.
"What I'm getting," Marge says, "is what looks like some sort of second-rate VR simulation of - what - a back room of an old-style arcade? Looks like whoever made this sim just made a model for the building and didn't bother with the outside. And what's -- Oh! Now that's cute! I like that little dragon model! Very lifelike."
Randall looks thoughtful. "Hey Jason, Marge likes your dragon," he adds as an aside. "Marge, what's the ETA on the CSI team?"
Jason is barraged by a mental sense of a great number of packets of data that don't seem to translate well into whatever sort of strange "mind" link they have going on right now. It's as if there's some sort of insistent, ever-so-quiet-but-still-inescapable buzzing in his ears.
"Converging on your last reported position," Marge says. "I don't get it. I hear you loud and clear, and your spinner is talking to the main computer, but we're not confirming a sat-lock on your position. Should be there in about two minutes. If you could, set up a flasher for us, would you?"
"Ow ow ow ow," Jason complains and holds his ears, "Okay, you do, but I don't understand what you're telling me. So ... uh, you can stop trying to explain for the moment. Can you tell me if it is safe to ... touch?"
The feeling Jason gets from the dragon, while not articulate, seems most assuredly negative.
"I've got a connection now," Watson reports. "Huh. Wait. This is a visual feed, Ms. Trudeau?"
"Right, so no walking through the mist," Jason comments as he finally comes out from behind his cover. "So, uh, Miss Trudeau, Randall, don't touch that black stuff." With a thumb towards the creature on his shoulder, he adds, "He says it's bad juju."
"Got it, thanks, Marge," says Randall. "Backup'll be here in two minutes, Miss Trudeau. I'm gonna wave 'em in." To Miss Arcadia as he passes by, he says, "It doesn't look like there's any immediate danger, Miss, but I'm going to have to ask for your patience for a little longer, all right? Just wait here."
"Uhm," Penny says. "Actually, my shift's about to end, as soon as my dad gets back. Do I have to stay here, then?" Outside, it's still clear out, but no sign of the airvan just yet.
"Yes, as much as Scarlet can produce anyway," Holly explains. "I can't give out too much, since this is a police matter too. But right now I'm in a GESTALT class simulation of a game arcade overlayed on the real thing, and there are interactions going on that suggest an active Avatar has attached itself to someone. We're the only ones that can produce this level of detail, right? But this is using old holo projectors at best."
"Hmm, no, just tell him not to go in the back room if you see him, all right, Penny?" The officer gives her a pat on the shoulder. "I'll leave a note when we've cleared the area."
Outside, it doesn't take Officer Cranston long at all to set the flashers - a higher-tech, reusable version of ordinary traffic flares. "We are at your coordinates," Marge says over the PDA. "Where are the flashers? Weather's getting bad out there."
Randall pans the camera around. "You're looking at them, Marge." Then at the sky. "Looks like clear weather too. Listen, if you've got the CSI team on the link, tell 'em to check our trail. I followed the perp into the abandoned arcade right behind the car and skimmer. Think Jason's robot got into the back room. There may have been some kind of booby trap there."
Meanwhile, in the back room, Watson says, "Holo? You mean you're showing holo projections? Now, that's an impressive setup. I'll check around and see if I can find anything on it, but ... that doesn't even sound like a bootleg of anything we've got in the works."
"There are human sims running too, Gary," Holly notes with a bit of urgency. "Call Systems, and find out if there are any rogue sims running in the matrix."
"No sign of you, no sign of your spinner ... wait! We've got something," Marge says. A pause, and then, "They've found the body. I'm getting a feed now ... oh ... good God! Cranston, you're out there? There's the tape. They're setting down now."
"I'm out here, right next to the spinner," Randall says puzzledly. He looks around at the restored mall. Pretty impressive hypnotic effect.
"I'm going to quadruple my bill if this mess is somehow Avatar's doing," Jason calls out towards Holly. "I did not sign up to be mentally messed with and close to lobotomized!"
"Right on--" Watson says. "Your call has been disconnected," a friendly and slightly apologetic voice says over Holly's communicator. "We're sorry."
"I'm putting through the video feed to you, Cranston," Marge says. "I honestly don't know what to make of this...."
Randall leans against the spinner and watches his PDA.
Closing her mobile, Holly frowns. When she overhears Jason's complaint, she says, "This could be the biggest security breach ever, Jason. If you can find this guy, I'll see that you get your own Q-processor to play with, and a year's supply of liquid nitrogen."
"If this is a hack, it's more than one person, and someone with some serious computational power," Jason remarks as he now makes his wayback towards the front to collect the tools he dropped near the car. "This goes beyond hacking to steal private data. This is ... well, when I come up with an appropriate really bad description, I'll tell you then."
Randall's police PDA changes format, and shows a feed from the airvan, giving a view of the deserted, ruined outdoor mall. There is the fountain. There is the ruined body of the victim - pieces here and there. Trash is scattered about here and there, and the puddles have grown deeper from the rain - which is no longer a mere drizzle. The taped-off area is still marked, but there's no sign of the spinner bike, and on sign of the air car - though the vid zooms in on where they're supposed to be, and there are visible impressions in the muck of where they set down and dragged and scraped about when they were going out of control.
"There, that building over there," Randall says, tapping the screen. "That's the one the perp went into, where I followed him in. Miss Trudeau and Mr. Edwards were over by the car, the bigger set of tracks. They should have been outside when the device went off."
"They'd have had to co-opt the Avatars main AI to pull this off," Holly mutters. At the sight of the mist, she sets Scarlet down on the ground and points at the dark doorway. "Go through that door and wait just outside," she tells it, while switching over to monitoring mode so she can see what the bot does.
Penny anxiously looks away from where she's talking with an older man, also in a neon-blue T-shirt - by the looks of it, her father - as Jason passes by. Outside, he finds his tools lying on the ground near the aircar. A few people look confused at the aircar, parked as it is on the court, rather than a proper space.
"Blood trail leading to the arcade," one of the officers on the scene reports. "All right, we're going to need backup."
The arcade is still there, in the video feed - but with no visible lights - just a ruined hulk of the place it once was.
"Doesn't any of this seem weird to you? Or ... do you always remember being ... alive and on my shoulder?" Jason asks the dragon as he starts putting all his tools back into his backpack. When he gets to his control unit for RIU, he checks it to see if it's still all lit and with a white screen.
The dragon just purrs, nuzzling the tools around until they're in their proper places. On the control unit, Jason can see a moving camera view ... just like the video feed from RIU, though RIU seems a little more animated, so to speak. Or, rather, he's seeing a view that would correspond to the "pearl" on the little dragon's forehead as it nuzzles tools into place.
Randall advises them, "If the perp's still there, it's immune to tasers. I blew its head off, but it was still on its feet when the device went off."
Meanwhile, as 5C4RL3T scampers toward the sliding door, Penny pops into the back room. "Oh! Hello," she says, smiling, as she reaches over to get her purse. She's changed out of her neon-blue T-shirt, and in an autumn fashion that reminds Holly of the sort of thing that was popular when Tracy was still in diapers; Penny must have taken a detour to the lady's room to change out. "I'm just going to exit out the back," she says.
"Out the.. What do you see through that doorway, Penny?" Holly asks, pointing at the dark mist.
"This is just weird," Jason mutters as he puts the device back into his pack. "And scary that you can just show me without even using that," he says as he taps the side of his head, "In here, anyway." Before the bag is zipped, though, he pokes the comm unit, trying to see if it still registers a hacking signal.
On Randall's communicator, one of the officers calls back, "What are we talking about here? Heavily 'borged unit? Full conversion? Brain box in the chest?"
On Jason's unit, the hacking signal indicator only flashes error messages.
And in the back room, Penny looks to the back door. "Oh, it's open already. I can just let myself out there. I was going to use the other door." She points to the door immediately beside the sliding door. "Yeah, I know, the trash is really spilling over. I mean, after that pizza party and all - and they haven't picked up in a couple of days now."
5C4RL3T scampers up to the edge of the black mist and its remarkably defined border. A couple of blue sparks jump between it and the frame.
"Oh, yeah.. so watch your step," Holly tells the girl.
Randall uploads the photo of the creature. "Didn't seem robot-like. More like some kind of gray goo experiment gone horribly wrong. Of course, this is coming from an officer who's reporting from a sunny courtyard where his spinner is still sittin' nice and pretty, and you aren't seeing any of this. I'm not sure what to make of it. I do know the afterlife isn't supposed to have a net feed to the living."
"Oh yay, no signals. Probably fried," Jason mutters as he zips the bag shut and tosses it back into the car. "I guess you'll have to do, eh?" he quips to his shoulder-passenger. So now Jason heads towards Cranston and comments, "So, Mr. Police Man, you're supposed to be the expert in all things criminal and weird. What is going on and where are we, exactly?"
At the sight of the sparks, Holly checks the display again to see if the bot is still working properly.
"Oh no," the officer says. "Man, I knew this sort of thing was going to happen. It's all that nanobot tech! All right, I'm calling back to headquarters. Cranston get yourself out of there!"
Penny smiles, and steps on through, disappearing into the wall of black mist. 5C4RL3T's video feed erupts into static, with a momentary image of what looks like a back alleyway in a ruined outdoor mall - and then a loud SLAM jolts Holly from her observation, as the roll-up door is SHUT. Like that.
"That's not a good sign," Holly mutters as the door slams closed. "Jason! Randall!" she calls as she hurries back through the arcade.
Over the police com, Randall can hear a distant female scream.
"Understood, officer," Randall says. "Not a clue, Jason. What's wrong?"
There's chaos over the police com, as the officers on the scene burst into action. It's hard to pick out a single line of conversation in the confusion.
The female scream draws Randall's attention. He studies the PDA intently.
"What the heck?" Jason blurts when the scream comes from the comm. He looks from Randall, to the arcade, back to Randall. "Are we under attack again?!
"The back door is the way out," Holly calls as she jogs toward the others. "Penny just left through it, and Scarlet saw a glimpse of reality before I lost the feed."
"Shh, I'm getting a video feed," Randall says. He shows them the PDA. "CSI's arrived on the scene, they can't find our car or skimmer, and sky's overcast. I just heard a scream-- zork, did you say Penny went out the back door?"
Holly bursts outside, where it's still sunny. Jason and Randall are near the aircar and the spinner-bike. A few of the shoppers look in alarm at the shouts, but quickly return to their own business. Over the video feed, which switches to a helmet camera, it looks like another police vehicle has touched down, and another is spotlighting the arcade from above. Several officers, some in heavier armor, surround it. A girl is in the alleyway, but there's something ... wrong about her. It's Penny, but her features are distorted.
"Are you trying to saw we're not in reality?" Jason nearly barks at Holly. "Just what is your company up to? This was supposed to be a simple hack-track. This is ... " He stops mid-sentence upon seeing the picture.
"That must be Penny," Holly says as she reaches the men and peeks at the scene on the PDA. "We need to see the loading dock door!"
"Officer! The back door! We need to get a look at it, it may be where the device was planted!" Randall exclaims. "And did you get an ambulance? Penny looks like she's in trouble!"
The loading dock door is visible, marked with graffiti and pepper-scorches from outlaw chem-guns. It definitely doesn't look like it belongs to the pristine Arcadia that seems to be readily at hand. As they watch, the metal of the door buckles noticeably. There are no cables or other obvious devices.
Sensors on one of Jason's hack-devices blip to life.
Randall bites his lip. None of the police are visible to him out in this... After-image of reality. "All I know for sure is that going through that door looks like it did something to Penny. Oh God, I should have locked the door. I'm so sorry, Penny."
"It slammed shut as soon as she and Scarlet went through," Holly notes. "By itself! I don't see how she can be out there at all. The place was empty when we entered."
"And she didn't see the mist, either," the woman adds.
As the scene unfolds, a medivac unit hovers in. Curses and exclamations can be heard, as some of the officers report that something's happening to the door - it visibly twists and buckles, but based on the report of the team inside, there's nothing on the other side. Finally, the rolling metal door wrenches off of its hinges and collapses. Switching to another view, a medical team has Penny on a stretcher. She's howling incoherently, and her skin seems to be erupting in blackened sores, letting off a faint steam. Her already long fingernails grow longer, and her irises are turning pale. "Stasis pod!" someone shouts out. "Quarantine this area. Possible nanotech or biohazard event! Full lockdown!"
"Going through the door did this - would going back through it fix the... Whatever happened to her?" asks Randall, looking hopeful at Holly as the gruesome scene unfolds before their eyes.
There's another vid shot - of a mechanical squirrelbot scampering along the pavement of the back lot, its fake fur slightly blackened and burnt at the edges. It twitches a bit, and pauses frequently ... then stops moving.
"What door?" Holly says, after seeing the metal door collapse in on itself. "Wait! Scarlet made it! Can you show us the courtyard?"
"It's empty, my skimmer, your aircar, they aren't there," says Randall disbelievingly.
"Then the ones with us here are the real ones," Holly says. "We can try to fly out of here. The effect can't extend forever. We.. just have to shut off the computers and do it all on manual."
There are several video feeds - including several in the courtyard. Several lumpy forms can be seen moving about - teams in biohazard suits, sweeping the area. As Randall reports, neither vehicle is there. "Aw good grief, now I'm going to spend a week in quarantine," someone can be overheard complaining.
Randall makes the sign of the cross. "I'm sorry, Penny," he whispers, commending her soul to whatever God she worshipped.
"This isn't VR," Holly says, and gets into the pilot seat of the aircar to see if it will power up again.
Jason is pacing back and forth as he runs his hands through his long hair. "This can't be happening," he mutters. "How can this be happening? Would that have happened to any of us if we walked through?"
"We didn't turn into monsters when we entered this.. world," Holly points out. "That's our world out there. We should be fine."
The aircar goes through its standard diagnostic after its emergency shutdown. A few safety lights are out, due to blown fuses, but fortunately Holly knows her way around so she can shut off the annoying reminders-every-five-minutes the system defaults to. It seems to be in working order, for the most part.
"Let's go, unless you want to try and wait it out?" Holly asks the two men. "I expect things to short out when we cross the.. interface.. or whatever, so we have to skim the ground."
"Marge, this is Randall. We're going to try to make it back home by air. What happened back there... Oh God. I asked her not to go out that door. She was perfectly fine before... Before... Nevermind. I'll give you an update when I can, but we're definitely not in the same place as the CSI team." Randall gets onto his skimmer and restarts the engine.
Jason looks dazed by it all ... not to mention confused. Without a word, he climbs back into the sky car and pulls on his seat belt.
"Have you got something insulated to wrap RIU in?" Holly asks Jason. "Scarlet threw off some sparks."
With the time elapsed during the playing-out of the drama over Randall's vid-feed, the sun is low to the horizon. Already, stars are beginning to blink in. Although it looks like the Vista Outlets are well-lit at night, the thinning out of shoppers suggests that most folks don't stay around after sundown. The spinner-bike's systems all check okay, once Randall initiates a reset.
"Any direction you want to go, Miss Trudeau?" calls the rookie officer to the aircar.
"Let's head around to the loading areas. There must be an access road we can follow," Holly suggests, as she starts powering up the fans. "Man.. when Mark bought this thing I yelled at him for an hour about wasting money on a sports model that could be flown manually. Glad I got to keep it in the settlement now."
"Not really, unless I pull my coat off," Jason mumbles as he starts working his coat off. "Sorry about this. It's just ... honestly, I have no idea what it is anymore," he admits. "You won't be mad if I wrap you in my coat, right?"
The dragon blinks innocently up at Jason. It certainly doesn't appear to be offended.
Randall syncs coms with Holly so they can talk in case they get out of audio range, then leads the way, being alert for... Black Mists of Doom. What Marge said to him, about them not having bothered to extend the simulation out the back of the building, still nags at him. Are we in some kind of simulation? How far does it go?
After some squirming, Jason manages to work his coat off and into his lap. "Sorry," he tells the dragon again as he lifts it off his shoulder and places it the jacket, then bundles it up should he throw sparks on a crossover.
Flying on manual, Holly follows the police bike and chews on her lower lip nervously. "I really hope this is all just bad eggs," she mutters.
As the two airborne vehicles lift up, they can see that the parking lot is already mostly vacated. Really, it's quite the throwback to an earlier era - when so many people would actually have their own transportation (most of it ground-based). Highways connect the way to the heart of North Bend - which is barely recognizable as such, since it's missing quite a few of its fortifications.
"I've got a decent system setup at home if we want to go there," Jason suggests, "Or to a police station. Somewhere, just ... erg."
The nav systems seem to be reliable enough, but all the same, a highway provides a clear line of travel to the heart of North Bend - and the local precinct station. It's all so ... ten years ago ... mostly. Over there is a holo-billboard showing the latest animated segment advertising Avatars. Over yonder, a political message. More advertisements for things fairly recent. And, for some reason, there are a few advertisements that look like they're more appropriate for 20 years ago, or even more. Traffic is increasingly sparse, and then just nonexistent by the time they make it to where - as memory serves - should be the boundary of the present-day fortifications of North Bend.
Holly suddenly slows the aircar to a near hover. "Randall, pull back! Something's not right. That landscape ahead of us is low res," she says into the com.
"This is crazy. It's like some sort of strange ... and low budget ... game. The distances all look fake. Bad texture fill," Jason comments as he stares wide-eyes out the window. Clutched in his arms is his bundled-up dragon ... only its head peeking out curiously. "And ... uh, those things flying at us don't look like planes. Those look big. They're also probably dangerous. They'll probably want to eat us. Now seems like a really good time to scream..."
The young Hispanic man, lulled by the seeming ordinariness of the setting, takes a second to snap to, but when he does, he notices the pixelation of the landscape. He flips the skimmer over and hits the power brakes, the tiny jet engines of his bike gouting fire against the pavement. "I see 'em," he calls back. "That way! Go that way!"