The bridge of the Ozymandias is warmly lit by the fiery dawn/dusk light of the skies outside, and by myriad "holographic" (magical) display windows floating in space, clustered around the scrying orb. The faint red glow seeping from the pipes running along the edges of the ceiling and floor is hardly noticeable.
A few floating display windows are dedicated to the status of a robotic squirrel: It's shown in one window as a slowly-rotating wire-frame display, while another shows it in cross-section, with color-coded segments representing its components, their status, and current activities (or lack thereof).
Presently, the tiny servos are all still - status black - as back in the Real World, this robot squirrel is perched on a cluttered shelf in a corporate office, sharing space with an assortment of Avatars toys. Unlike the typical Avatars toy, however, it happens to sport nightvision. So does the security guard who just entered the office: He sweeps the interior with the "spotlight" of his nightvision goggles (invisible to normal eyes, but providing illumination in a band that can be picked up by his sensors). Unfortunately for the spying robo-squirrel, its "nightvision" employs a similar tactic - and thus its "spotlight" is presumably visible to the guard.
It could be switched off, of course, but judging by the guard's reaction, it's too late for that....
Randall says quietly, "Holly, if I were you, I'd get on the line to my supervisor to get the guard calmed down."
"Uh," Holly says, and opens a fresh terminal window. "Let me see if Hel can do it for me." She starts typing a note to the security AI, listing the squirrel as surveillance equipment for monitoring Blake's suspected hacker activity.
Randall looks perplexed. "Can Hel signal the guard to stand down, it's okay, you're authorized to track down the hacker?"
"I'm trying," Holly tells Randall. "Guards are part of a different security setup, so it could take a moment."
Randall nods. "Jason, does the squirrel have voice capability? Maybe we can talk our way out of this."
A window pops up, showing Hel's logo. "Authorization. Security Guard XHT-8311 ... position confirmed. Composing directive."
"Okay, hold tight, the Security AI is trying to clear things with the Guards," Holly notes.
"Yes, but I'm not sure it will gain us anything," Jason notes as he keeps the controls still for now.
The guard in the viewscreen holds up his hand to the side of his helmet, looking off to one side, and nods. He chuckles at whatever he hears or sees. "All right." He looks back toward the viewer. "Keep up the good work, little squirrel-bot."
"It can talk, Randall," Holly finally tells the policeman. "But.. uh.. it'll make you sound like you've been huffing helium."
Randall nods. "Throw the guard a salute," he suggests.
Jason just shakes his head, then makes the bot salute.
The guard shakes his head in disbelief, and just returns to the doorway. He disappears back out into the corridor, the door sliding shut behind him.
The police officer heaves a breath. "Okay, then. I'm guessing Hel just confirmed that we're authorized to investigate Blake's office as the suspected hacker, Holly? Then let's do that. You'd just popped the lock, right, Jason?"
"Yes, the lock is released on the desk," Jason agrees as he resumes navigating the strange toy. A few hops and a moment to chase its tail, and the squirrel is back in the chair and fiddling with the first drawer.
"Okay, but try not to make it look like you've been rummaging around, okay?" Holly says.
Randall grins. "Relax, Jason's a professional." He goes to investigate the screen displaying a wormhole program. "But don't take too long, we'd better get ready to hit this before they decide to cancel our ticket."
"I don't recall seeing 'thief' on his resume though," Holly comments.
The drawer slides open with a sharp hiss. It's crammed with cables, adaptors, jump links, data cards, various broken bits that probably belong in the trash (a sure sign of a pack-rat), tools, and sundry.
Jason snorts. His first interest is to check the data cards. Specifically who the data cards actually belong to. After all, a pack-rat might keep souvenirs from his other victims.
"On second thought," Holly notes, after seeing the jumbled chaos, "I don't think Blake would notice after all.."
Randall jokes, "I didn't say what kind of professional he was. Actually, being a good thief is really good experience for being good at security, you have to know how your enemy thinks." Having verified that the program's still there, he comes back to see the drawer being opened. "Try the bottom drawer, in the bottom. If Blake wasn't smart about this, he'll have hidden whatever there."
Jason sets the data drives aside for now and closes that drawer. The little squirrel then hops down tot eh floor and opens the lowest drawer, then prepares for a junk dive...
"He may have depended solely on the desk's security," Holly admits. "So far.. well, the man strikes me as being a little sloppy about some things, which seems at odds with his engineering of various peoples' disappearances."
"Seems to me like Blake's more an opportunist than an engineer," Randall muses.
The lowest drawer has a mound of junk. Upon closer inspection, it looks like there is a complete Avatars neural interface in here - some sort of prototype model, using some basic frame pieces, but with several add-ons that are obviously hacked on and not intended for final market. Several unused sockets and cut-away points in the plastic framework hint at various mods that have been done over time, and since removed. There are also more tools (some of them duplicates of those found in the first drawer). Incongruously crammed into the back of the large drawer is a cache of junk foods - all shelf-stable, and several of them (judging by the dates) having been in here for probably as long as Blake has had this office.
"But if he's on the Urd project, he wouldn't be able to carry any data modules in or out, due to the security on it," Holly notes. "We may get lucky here. I wonder if he used that thing on Akiko?"
"Oh look, we found the king's crown," Jason mutters, "Or at least the prototype one." He sends the small bot on a search of the unit, looking for stray hairs (and as a chance to get a closer look at the modifications).
Randall ponders the helmet. "A smart person would have hidden their data in plain sight, like those data cards we saw in the first place, but there's no checking without some kind of reader." He looks up to see if Inari or Akiko are about, intending to ask her if she sees anything familiar.
Inari is curled up (in full fox form) at one end of the bridge, not particularly attentive to the goings-on around the crystal orb.
"That headset," Holly mutters. "He might have used that to encode data right into his head. Can't get more secure than that."
Randall calls Inari over. "See anything familiar about this room or desk?" he asks.
Inari's head raises and ears perk. She stretches and then trots over ... and lets out a low growl as she watches the screen.
"Relax, Blake isn't there," Randall reassures the fox. "We're trying to find any data files he might have kept."
"I take it you recognize something?" Holly asks the fox. "Was that helmet part of the tests Blake had Akiko working on?"
As the squirrel-bot continues to ransack drawers, other items pop up, of varying interest: a library-tab (AKA "databook tablet") devoted to assorted manuals and protocols relating to Avatars, programming, physics, and such; a small mini-holographic projector; some spare men's clothes and basic toiletries; some more cached munchies; an assortment of Avatars toys; a resin-cast model of a flaming lion that looks exactly like Regis.
Inari nods. "That is one of the prototypes. A pieces are swapped around, but that would be one of his neural inductor sets. There are many innovations available at the laboratory that are not cleared for use by the general public."
"That looks familiar," Randall comments of the flaming lion. Big streak of egotism. How far would he go?...
"Blake sure has a thing about looking big and impressive. Funny that male lions are actually extremely lazy," Jason remarks at the statue. He also can't resist having the squirrel give it a raspberry. "Think he would notice if I drew a mustache on his toy?" he asks the others.
"I wonder if he was using that rig to practice his memory-control technique," Holly mutters. "If so, we can really nail him for ethics violations."
"Only the married ones are, Jason," Holly comments on the lion remark.
Randall reminds Jason, "Mind on the job. We need to know more about his experiments on people."
Jason briefly contemplates at least putting the statue in a compromising position, but in the end doesn't. His exploration goes back to the inductor set. Specifically, he starts trying to take it apart a bit and get an idea on what sort of mods have been made.
The fox scans the viewscreen. "The data cards ... they should be color-coded. He hardly ever wrote labels on them. He used the red one a lot for his private playground experiments. I can't make out colors clearly, however." Although nightvision technology has progressed over the years, leading to a remarkably sharp image, this squirrel's version of it nonetheless presents a view of the world in monochrome, except for those few sources of colored light in the room - which the combined sensor display shows in their true colors.
"Then we'll need to smuggle some out for a spot check," Randall says. "Holly, can you get a lab set up and some technicians to process the data from the cards?"
Inari looks amazed as she watches the squirrel-paws go to work on the headset. "Fascinating. You make it look ... easy."
"Do you think they'd contain recordings of the helmet sessions?" Holly asks Inari. Turning to Randall, she notes, "It's after hours. However, if those cards aren't encrypted we could dupe them with a reader from the tech lab."
"Let's do that," Randall says. "We don't have much time, we have to move in case they don't like Chaz's answers and decide to shut down his access."
There's a spark and a small puff of smoke, but the squirrel deftly twiddles its paws and does something to make it stop so quickly that anyone watching would have missed if he or she'd blinked at that moment.
"It's not easy at all. I'm just used to having to manipulate things in close quarters with odd tools. Try re-rigging a system with a toilet snake some day," Jason comments in a rather distracted tone. "And this is very interesting. This thing has a failsafe. Burnout on tamper. Pity he used a flawed design for that. Simple connection points don't really work that well, you can foil them with a gum wrapper. And look, there it goes."
"Okay, stuff those cards into the squirrel's cheeks and we can take them back to the lab," Holly says. She checks her terminal and notes, "The office door should recognize the squirrel now, since it's registered to Blake."
"Give me a moment, I want to figure out his inductor changes before we go," Jason comments.
Inari reaches up with a paw and points at the screen. "That portion right there - there's a buffer in the chip there. The welded-on jack ... Blake was proud of the time he managed to recover lost data from a session from the inductor's onboard buffer, by linking in. He added the jack to make it easier to do that next time, in case it was necessary."
Randall looks impressed with Jason's impromptu hacking. "Which you just happened to have handy from the junk food stash, and here I was wondering why your squirrel had developed a sudden appetite for gum."
"What lost data did he recover?" Jason asks.
"Holly, can Hel run the squirrel? Like if we're going to be very busy soon, and want it to carry out basic tasks like running some chips down to a tech lab to be read in?" asks Randall.
"Biometrics," Inari answers Jason. "He was working on dealing with problems with the neural inductor's limitations in properly mapping and translating greatly varied body forms for the in-game representation of the player."
"Well, since it's now registered as a security camera, Hel should have access to it," Holly reasons, and starts typing. "What functions do want it to maintain, beyond surveillance?"
"Interesting. How to make an avatar better controlled. More realistic. Does Akiko also have a neural jack?" Jason asks.
"Shapeshifting," Holly comments. "He was making the modifications to allow for shapeshifting, it sounds like."
Randall suggests, "Once Jason's done with the helmet, have it run as many of the chips as we can get to the tech lab, duplicate and upload to a holding area for Chaz's attention, then bring them back here to the same place where they were and then sit back up in the toys and keep a watch. That's stuff we shouldn't need to be here for."
Inari says, "Akiko had a neural jack, yes, but her human form no longer has it."
"Her form in here, you mean?" Jason asks as he continues to poke and prod at the neural device.
"'In here,' correct," Inari confirms.
After looking up some of the built-in functions for the robot (and there are plenty of them, including default behaviors), Holly says, "I can have Hel issue a 'return to nest' command that will get the bot back to the lab. Once there, it can carry the chips to an IO pad and dump them to one of Hel's data caches. The AI can break the encryption for us, if there is any."
"Jason - any way you can download the data off that helmet for analysis?" inquires Randall.
Holly frowns a bit at hearing that the in-game version of Akiko lacks the data jack.
"So, he was pursuing how to make a person and their avatar the same thing, instead of separate. If he was so big on that, why didn't he fuse with his Regis?" Jason comments. The squirrels fingers tap on the interface for a moment in mimic of Jason thinking. "Not in here. We need a neural reader for this. We would have to take the helmet to the lab."
Inari makes a "shrug" of sorts. "Perhaps Blake was waiting for the 'dramatically appropriate moment.'"
"It seems to be a little bigger than one squirrel could handle," Randall muses.
"I don't know what I would do if I was fused with RIU. Other than be disturbingly cute ... and get hugged by girls a lot. Hmmm ... that doesn't seem to be so bad," Jason muses, grinning.
"The helmet? Nah, squirrel goes under hat, then there's the evil phantom hat scurrying around the floors for a bit. It's not that heavy," Jason notes. "Or ... maybe I could just pull the buffer module and jack and take that."
"We can commandeer extra robots," Holly suggests.
Randall points out, "He may have wanted - sorry, Inari - a test case so he'd know if it was safe or not. That helmet may contain Akiko's data from before her fusion." He rubs his chin. "Let's get the buffer and data secured, and get under way, folks."
"Well, want me to move the whole helmet, or just the jack and buffer module?" Jason asks.
"Can you put it back together if you remove the module?" Holly asks.
Randall shrugs. "I've never had a squirrel smuggle data for me before, pick whichever you think will work best?"
"Who do you think you're talking to?" Jason asks and puffs up a bit.
"Right, try not to singe the squirrel's fur," Holly notes. "I can have a sweeper come to the door to help carry things."
Randall grins. "That'd work. Let's get this closed down, folks."
"Everyone's a critic," Jason grumbles as the little squirrel goes to work on disconnecting the data module and buffer. "For a real headcase, Blake sure knows jack..." he jokes as the module pops free. "Lets boogie."
After chatting with the AI a bit, Holly has it divert a floor sweeper (basically a little disc-shaped robot who's design hasn't changed much in the past 50 years) to meet the squirrel at the door. "Okay, got something to help carry the module, so the bot's hands can be free for scurrying."
It takes a few moments of maneuvering to get the booty loaded onto the sweeper, but it proves to be sturdy enough for the exercise.
Randall goes to the intercom system. "All hands, secure for acceleration," he orders. "We will be entering a wormhole shortly. Brace yourself for a bumpy ride, folks, and make sure anything breakable near you is strapped down!"
A few more cleaner-bots putter into the room and assist in the clean-up effort. (It takes some precaution, however, to make sure they don't make the office look TOO CLEAN. Security is such on this door that the cleaners apparently aren't let in regularly.) After some effort, the office looks, at least at a glance, as if it hasn't been ransacked by a robot squirrel.
Inari volunteers, "I'll make sure Tracer doesn't bounce about her cabin. I'm sure the general and Sasha can fend for themselves." And with that, she bounds out of the bridge.
"Er, uh, bye, Inari," Jason calls out lamely after the retreating fox.
"Thanks, Inari!" says Randall.
Holly hurriedly issues more instructions for Hel. "Okay, the AI will take care of copying the data, and will try to open a connection back to us when it's ready to reinstall that module," she reports, before strapping herself down.
Randall thinks to Mara, Make sure you're secure, m'lady.
Jason returns to his chair at the ships engineering and straps himself down. He also calls RIU to his side as he announces into the comm tubes, "Wormhole in five minutes. Be ready." And in the intervening time, he goes about shutting down as many moving parts of the ship as he can to lessen the stress on the ship. "Just hold together," he tells the ship, then pats the console.
"Status check, everyone. Report in if you're secured," Randall says.
"Ready," Holly reports from the magic circle.
The general's voice calls over the tube, "Secure." Sasha's voice comes across as well. "All set!" Then, Inari's voice, "I and Tracer of House Trudeau are secured."
"Inari is so formal," Jason mutters.
Jason checks on RIU; namely that he's securely entwined on his shoulders, before declaring, "Ready."
"Punch it, Jason," Randall says, securing himself at the Captain's position, ready at the wheel.
"Hah, leave it to me to obliterate the ship, then. Typical captain; avoiding responsibility!" Jason teases, then presses the activation button on the screen before him.
"Who says 'punch it' anymore?" Holly mutters...
The virtual screen offers no resistance, but gives a visual ripple by way of confirmation. A not-dissimilar ripple can be seen in the sky further ahead ... as clouds gather and begin to swirl.
"We who are about to die, salute you," Jason says gravely, then salutes the screen.
Randall grins, tilting his hat rakishly. "I'm an old school sort of captain." He lets his senses reorient themselves, feeling the ship's engines humming through the deck.
Lightning flashes, and clouds quickly gather and darken, reflecting the pervasive fiery orange of the dusky sky, and turning it here and there into deeper patches of blood red.
"So, whose idea was this, again?" Jason has to ask as he watches the shifting cloudscape before them.
Randall points out, "It beats going to quarter-rations while we trek across the map!"
"If anything goes wrong, it's Randall's fault," Holly notes, tensing as the sky opens up.
In the distance, a few blinking lights can be seen against the darkening clouds - it appears that there were a few more skyships out this way that weren't quite so clearly visible in the dusky sky, but with the contrast provided by the dark cloud, their shimmering sails and glowing levistones can be picked out ... and the pilots appear to have the good sense to try to steer well clear away from the vortex if they can.
"Agreed." Jason says.
Randall grins wider. "Blame accepted. Engines ahead, 20% speed."
Jason just shakes his head and taps the ship's controls a few time, creating several short bursts of thrust from the engines. "I'm getting us moving and allowing momentum to carry us in," he explains. "I want engines offline through the ride. I'm not sure they could handle the stress otherwise."
The vortex continues to swirl and spread out, in line with the Aether Plane. Its center isn't visible from this angle - as the ship (riding the Aether Plane) is viewing the vortex from the side. What can be seen is that, in the center of the vortex, a cone of cloud that twists and descends, outlining the shape of a "whirlpool" dropping down from the Plane and further into the dusky sky below.
"Very well, Chief Engineer - well, only engineer, but even if we had a gaggle of engineers, you'd be chief among them," Randall jokes. "But what I'm worried about is making sure that we stay on course, dead center through the vortex." He confers with Jason to make sure they're on the same page about getting through in one piece.
"This will not be a quick transit," Holly predicts as she eyes the vortex.
There's a flash of light from the back of one of the fleeing skyships. It looks as if a glowing dragon has materialized on the back of one ship and is breathing glittering "flame" toward the vortex. This has the useful effect of propelling the ship faster in the other direction - so fast that its sails go limp and then fill in the opposite direction.
"We'll use the maneuvering plates instead of trying to just power through," Jason explains to Randall. "Think of it sort of like surfing or hang gliding. We'll ride the current instead of forcing through it."
The ride begins to get bumpy, as the Ozymandias crosses unseen ripples in the Aether Plane, radiating out from the vortex.
Randall nods thoughtfully. "Can you fix it up to show the aether currents? Whoa-" he braces feeling the turbulence rock the decks.
As Jason holds his power glove in the console and lets his will be known to the ship, Randall instinctively throws a lever, kicking in the turbines on the port side for a moment, to shift the heading of the Ozymandias; he can't see the ripples, but he can feel them increasing exponentially in strength, and right about here, they should hit a whopper of one ... but just in time, the Ozymandias averts course. No one else may be able to fully appreciate what they just missed, but the Ozymandias jogs up and then back down again more gently than it would likely have otherwise. As the dreadnaught continues to ride in on the gigantic whirlpool, its courses become more visible as this far in they are traversed by swirling clouds.
The Ozymandias is already picking up speed considerably, according to the navigational console. (The ship's mechanical gauges are of little use, since they only show speed relative to the passing aether or air.) Perhaps it won't take so long to reach the center of the vortex after all.
"Is it exerting some kind of suction?" Randall asks of Jason, as they work together to keep the ship aligned. He looks to the side and looks surprised and then saddened. "Over there - looks like that ship got smashed up -- oh frotz! They had Links on board, but the Links just flew off on their Avatars." Biting his lip. "Can we steer by close enough they could maybe grab onto our gravitational field?"
Alas, in all the turmoil, it's unclear whether this wreckage is just a figment of Randall's imagination, or whether he's just incredibly good at picking things out on the periscope even while sailing through vortices. Visibility is bad, and is getting worse.
"Are you crazy!? We can't go off on heroics in this chaos!" Jason points out where he struggles with the steering planes. "We'll get trashed too!"
Holly turns her attention to the magic detector, to see if the Links are actually having trouble escaping the vortex.
"Occupational hazard... And what Inari told us about Tracer, that worries me. Would we be abandoning mannikins, or intelligent, thinking people?" Randall grits his teeth. "Holly?"
The vortex creates interference, but the Ozymandias is still far out enough that individual ships can still be picked out from the background noise - and Links are even brighter concentrations of light. The Links appear to be escaping the vortex without trouble - since, being fliers, they are able to escape above the Aether Plane, and aren't affected by the currents. (Closer in, though, they'd likely be affected by the stronger winds.)
"They'll make it out," Holly decides from the display.
Randall asks, "The crew of that ship?"
"Focus on the job at hand, Randall!" Jason admonishes.
"Can't tell through the interference," Holly reports. "They don't show up on the scope."
Randall frowns in intent calculation. "Let's do this, Jason. White, if you're out there... Help us please."
Swirling clouds obscure vision. Soon, the Ozymandias will be flying blind, if this progresses. There's a momentary flash of lightning that just as momentarily outlines the splintering remains of a shattering sloop.
"What are we about to do here?" Holly asks, suddenly looking between Randall and Jason.
"You're insane, Randall. Completely insane," Jason complains loudly at the captain's declaration. "We need some way to see through this mess. Can you make us any sort of radar system?"
"Hold on!" Holly says, activating the magic circle.
Randall begins shifting course. "There - a sloop got caught by an aether tide. Their Links abandoned them on Avatars. You can't see them but I can feel the way they're rocking the ship." He grins crookedly, "Besides, isn't karma actually operative in this universe?"
"Bringing engines back online to improve maneuvering," Jason growls. "If we die, my ghost is so going to haunt your ghost."
"Your ghost and mine, they'll be like best friends! Holly, get the aether sensors on if you can, we'll need 'em." Randall jokes as he takes advantage of the utrbines coming back online. He times it for just after a tidal wave has passed, then levers the ship to the side to interpose its massive bulk just beneath the shipwreck and the 'downward' draw of the vortex, to let the wreckage impinge (as gently as he can) on the top of the ship. A burst of manuevering thrusters, venting gas, and then he lets the ship drop forward again, nose toward the vortex.
"How big is the target ship?" Jason calls out as he fights to keep the engines stable. "Could it fit in our hold if we flew in front of it then stopped and let its remains slide in?"
"Okay!" Holly reports, and chants, "By Doppler and Green Screen and Snazzy Graphics, let us see through this murk!"
Suddenly, splinters of wood and bits of metal rain on the double-paned front viewports, as the previously-unseen sloop snaps out of the swirling clouds, smacking into the dreadnaught's starboard side.
"Your ghost and mine, they'll be like best friends! Holly, get the aether sensors on if you can, we'll need 'em." Randall jokes as he takes advantage of the utrbines coming back online. He times it for just after a tidal wave has passed, then spins both wheels in opposite directions to lever the ship to the side to interpose its massive bulk just beneath the shipwreck and the 'downward' draw of the vortex. Then with sails spread wide, he lets the wreckage impinge (as gently as he can) on the top of the ship, before wheeling it forward again, nose toward the vortex.
^^ Updated for paddlewheel/flaps
Meanwhile, the ship's magical sensors filter out the bulk of the "noise" generated by the vortex, fine-tuning it into stylized ghostly bands of overlaid color, leaving ship's levistones and Links portrayed in stark contrast.
"Yah!" cries out Sasha loudly enough to be heard over the communications tubes. "What was that?"
"And that's all the help we can realistically give, I'm not sending anyone out in this mess to pick them up," Randall says, catching his breath. He says nonchalantly over the tube, "Turbulence."
"Randall is having delusions of grandeur and trying to save another ship!" Jason complains into the tubes, "Nevermind he's wrecking ours in the process!"
"Did we push them free then?" Holly asks, monitoring the magic circle for any damage feedback it might give her.
"Relax, we've got it under control," Randall insists. He perks up at the aether sensors coming online.
The view out of the front of the ship is partially obscured now by a silvery collapsed sail and some tangled rigging plastered against the nose and snared (and impaled) by the ramming spine.
"How are they going to get in?" Jason has to ask. "Is someone going to open a door for them?"
Randall shakes his head. "No, they'll have to hang on, but it's a better chance than floating free would have been." He activates the outside communication tube and waits a tick for the light to come on. "This is the Ozymandias to our guests. Secure yourself to any of the spines please, it's going to get bumpy."
There's a howl and a blast of inward air through the external communication tube. It's pretty rough out there!
"The vortez might rip them apart!" Jason points out, "How is this any better?!"
"Oh.. guys?" Holly calls. "We've got an abandoned hulk coming up! No lifeboats and its levistone is gone as well. We're gonna hit if we don't do something!"
"I feel like a chorus of the doom song!" Jason says, "Randall, either change course or I will!"
Randall clicks the outer conn tube shut again. "Wreck? Oh zork-- got it. Jason, take the conn, I'm going to see if I can get a few of them secured inside."
"I can just send RIU!" Jason offers before Randall leaves the controls.
Randall calls back, "This might take a little muscle!"
"Let's not leave one person to maintain ship functions and piloting, okay?" Holly begs. "I'll try to add some protection to the smaller ship, since it's in contact with us."
"He can grow! Are you calling him wimpy?" Jason counters. "Bah, I'll just send him with you."
RIU flares his bluish wings, and puffs up his chest.
"Save the magic, Holly - we may need them for something important shortly. Give Jason a hand with the ship," Randall calls back.
"Right, fine, yell if you're about to die," Holly says. "Want me to pilot for now, Jason?"
The ship is rocked by a sudden cross-blast, and the wheel spins wildly without anyone there to hold it.
"Go keep an eye on him. He's in one of his moods//," Jason tells RIU, then returns his focus to the matter at hand. "Ack!" he complains, then uses the gauntlet to try to regain ship stability.
RIU shoots after Randall, his blue "flames" flaring brightly.
As the little dragon shoots past Randall in the corridor ... the little dragon ... gets bigger.
"Or.. want me to try and shield against this turbulence?" Holly asks.
"Trim flaps to thirty percent extension, redirect flow across paddle two," Jason calls out, "Right, roll stabilized, now shift thrust to balanced between both wheels, adjust drift flaps to ten percent and angle into the gusts." When the ship stabilizes some, he agrees, "Anything you can do to help buffet the gusts would be appreciated!"
A RIU's-eye-view of the corridor appears on one of the window panels floating around the gazing orb. As seen in the window, Randall makes it to one of the external hatches spins the wheel, and then wrestles to push it open against whatever's holding it. A much-larger RIU then muscles into it and there's a sound of splintering wood - the hatch was partially blocked by bits of debris from the sloop. The sound-pickup is full of the fury of the storm - though thankfully muted a bit so as not to contribute to the noise on the bridge overly much.
"We've got three so far," Randall calls up through the intercom tubes. He interrogates a crew member to see if they saw anyone else out there still hanging on.
The crewmember's voice is lost in the noise, but he can be seen to hold up two fingers, gesturing back out into the storm.
Holly activates the circle again, for a ship-wide spell. "Elements of the air, let us.. break the wind around the ship! M-A-G-I-C spells Relief!" she chants.
Outside, all over the hull of the Ozymandias, a forest of translucent plastic pinwheels sprouts to convert the buffeting bursts of wind into harmless spinning (accompanied by a whizzing sound).
Over the intercom: "Bridge, why is the Ozymandias now covered in pinwheels?" Randall's voice.
In the RIU's-eye-view of the outside, mega-RIU bats at one of the pinwheels, leans in to sniff at it, and then tries to eat it.
"Holly," is all Jason seems think he needs to say.
"Do not eat the pinwheels," Jason instructs RIU.
"You can thank me later!" the sorceress grumbles. "This should smooth out our ride a bit."
RIU suddenly backs away from the (somewhat-chewed-on) pinwheel. Outside, several bits of debris settle down. It looks as if there's hardly a storm going on at all.
Randall hurries with the rescue while the respite lasts. "Come over here if you hear my voice, we've got to get you in before we hit the wormhole!"
Some more bits of debris rain down on the ship, accompanied by some panicked cries over the RIU-scope. It would seem that the buffer effect of Holly's spell has allowed the Ozymandias to scoop up some more debris. (This might not necessarily be a good thing if it encounters that derelict up ahead.) In short order, however, RIU is free to fly all about the ship, and to pinpoint survivors, while Randall hauls them in.
"Hurry up, folks," Jason calls into the comm-tubes. "We need to get back on track and away from the other wrecks before we join them!"
"We've got 'em, thanks for the relief from the turbulence, Holly!" answers Randall over the intercom. "Closing up now."
The RIU's-eye-view shoots back into the ship, passing several bedraggled-looking sky-sailors, on his way back to the bridge.
"Is everything holding up your you and Tracer?" Jason calls into the tubes once he's not worried about the others getting blown off into the void. "Holly, how close are other ships and can you tell me their exact locations?"
Lightning backlights another battered ship - the derelict that Holly has been tracking on the magic sensor. It's ahead, and getting closer.
"Tracer of House Trudeau is proving to be a diligent poet, drawing upon our situation for inspiration, as she elaborates upon the tempest of her soul," Inari calls back at length over the call-tubes.
"You're going to get revenge on us for having to listen to it, aren't you?" Jason jokes into the comm.
"We've got another boat," Holly reports. "Looks like a longboat. Not sure.. if.. it might have just bounced off of us? Oh, yeah, don't forget about that big ship ahead either."
"Right, altering course then to avoid it," Jason says. "Left front trim flap extend to full, alter course ten degrees," he tells the ship.
With magical assistance from Holly's (strange) spell, the interface of the gauntlet, and advance warning, Jason manages to almost casually glide by the slowly spinning derelict. It's a much smaller ship, and unlikely to have posed much danger to the Ozymandias even from a head-on collision ... had the forward shields been dropped in time, that is. In any case, there's no longer any need to find out which ship would win in a crash: the abandoned derelict drifts by, sails atatter, and is quickly swallowed up again by the churning clouds.
"We're coming around for our second orbit," Holly reports. "Nothing left out there to pose a threat, that I can see."
Randall steps out into the bridge in time to see the ship going by. "Great work, everyone," he says. "All that's left is to thread the needle's eye then?"
"And not die in the process, yes," Jason comments, "and I have to ask, do you wake up each day wondering about the most spectacular way to die, or are you just winging that bit?" He grins.
Randall says wryly, "It just seems to come naturally."
"And now we must fly into the abyss. What awaits us, well, perhaps we will find our souls torn into a thousand pieces, only to be fed upon by the great worms of the universe," Jason comments as he steers the ship into the final approach, "Or maybe we'll find paradise! But, knowing our luck, well ... it'll somehow involve jello or pudding."
"If you've been good," Randall opines as he moves in to assist Jason, keeping tabs on the aether currents.
"Jason, this universe listens, so try not to give it ideas," Holly rebukes.
Lightning flashes all around the ship, as if the fury of the storm - denied the right to batter the ship directly, due to Holly's spell - is trying to get through by striking it with electricity instead. The sail on the front of the ship catches fire, and several bits of sloop debris are blasted into the aether. Still, the dreadnaught presses through, the turbulence magically dampened.
"We've got this, Jason. I'll keep an eye on the aether plot. Just feel the ship moving with the tides, there's more to it than just instruments," Randall says encouragingly, but stands ready to step in if there's an issue.
"Right, the last bit is all about feel anyway," Jason explains, "After having fixed this poor ship so many times, well ... you learn what each shudder means and how a vibration can be good, or bad. I'm sure I can manage through; the ship ... she likes me."
"Who doesn't?" Randall jokes.
"Inari and Tracer," Jason answers.
Randall chuckles, "I don't know, the line between dislike and like can be awfully-- whoa, over a little, big surge on the left."
Holly focuses on the display, watching for any last-minute debris that might have been sucked in by the vortex.
The ship jolts violently, as crossing forces manage to thrash the Ozymandias even through the buffering effects of the spell. If not for Holly's magical effect, the dreadnaught would truly be taking a battering. As it is, the remains of the sky sloop are shorn from the hull, and the sail finally tears free from the ramming spine. On the positive side, at least this means that the bridge has a very clear view of ... swirling clouds and darkness. Then, there is a brief moment of clarity - could it be the light at the end of the tunnel?
"Glad we brought them in, Jason," Randall says soberly, as the debris gets scrubbed from the hull.
The Ozymandias bursts out of the swirl of clouds, only to balance precariously on the edge: the vortex can now be plainly seen for what it is, and though "up" stays aligned in the right place for everyone on the bridge, the dreadnaught is clearly teetering off of the Aether Plane now. The vortex dominates the view, up and to port, and stretching out as far as can be seen.
Light pours out of the center of the vortex. Wherever it's leading to, it's a sunnier place ... but it looks like it's going to be an even rougher ride on the way through!
"Come on, you can hold together. You're strong," Jason tells the ship as he manages its controls throughout the rough ride. The only reply Randall gets from him is a short nod, his attention on the matter at hand. "No turning back now. Into the abyss, for good or bad."
"Holy.." Holly notes as she sees what's coming up.. or down. She rechecks her safety harness.
"Left, no, right, no-- it's all choppy," Randall shouts as the aetheric currents ripple into chaos, light and dark warring across the display. "Hang on, everyone!"
Time seems to freeze for just a moment, and then ... the Ozymandias plunges into the abyss. As it skips across swirls of the vortex, the Aether Plane itself loses form - and an apparent consequence of this is that everyone on board gets to experience the lightening sensation of weightlessness, and the feeling that their stomachs have been left several meters above them and behind.
Into the funnel it goes, the walls of cloud and lightning and glowing gases tightening inward, swallowing the dreadnaught and all the debris traveling in its wake. A battered figurehead hurtles by, and some splinters left over from the doomed sloop. All around the ship turns to even deeper darkness, as the distant light seems impossibly to retreat. The ship topples and spins, and it's all Jason can do, to shout out commands to the ship, to shut off valves as pipes burst, to close bulkheads, and keep the damage under control.
Somewhere along the way, the pinwheels are ripped away from the hull, and then the ship is really tossed about. But then, the darkness sweeps away, and the bridge is bathed in the warm glow of a noonday sun. The clouds race outward, and the Ozymandias shoots upward. It skips like a stone flung across a pond, and comes to a rattling stop. The ship's gravity thankfully takes control again, to buffer its crew against the worse excesses of the sudden change in perspective.
The tendrils of storming clouds retreat, leaving only faint, puffy wisps in their wake. Now that it has deposited its intended "passenger," the vortex has lost its raison d'etre: it folds in on itself and vanishes, leaving only a few bobbing and rolling splinters and tatters in its wake.
"Nnnnng," Jason says weakly from where he's slumped over the controls, looking almost green from all the tossing about and uncontrolled shifts in the horizon, "I think my feet are in my throat." It takes him a few seconds to push himself back upright and force down the lunch that threatens to escape, before adding,"Remind me to never do that again. Is everyone intact?" He even mentally pings RIU to check on him.
RIU pounce-tackle-hugs Jason! Fortunately, RIU has returned to his normal size, so this doesn't result in any bruises or broken bones.
"We'd better have made good progress from that," Holly complains from her circle, and undoes the safety harness.
Randall says calmly into the intercom, "We have sunlight, repeat, we have sunlight. Stand down from action stations, everyone, it's over except for the cleaning up."
The navigation table is full of noise, busily uncluttering itself as whatever magicks that power it struggle to reorient themselves after the sudden shift. After some drifting around, the ship's marker settles itself upon a zone that is suspended directly between the gigantic shard known as Tara Tassa, and a smaller one to its "left" called Caer Cavarel. The Ozymandias has only one whole "unit" of space on the map buffering it from either one of them - and judging from the dreadnaught's demonstrated speed, once all the burst pipes are fixed, it should be able to reach either point sometime in the next eight hours.
Cheers go up from the quarters where the Ozymandias's newest passengers have been stowed away. The call tube leading to Sasha's quarters emits several raucous woots and whistles. The general's sedate "Good work" is lost in the hubbub.
Jason seems content to just pet along RIU's neck as he fights off the nausea for that ride. "Sounds like everyone is intact," he murmurs, "I think. Did anyone hear from Inari?"
Somehow Randall has escaped entire dishevelling, or maybe his outfit's glamour is protecting him from looking outright unkempt, as he straightens himself up and surveys the instruments. "We're on target," he says wearily. "Less than a day's flight from Tara Tassa. What day is it again? How long do we have before the upgrade?" He inspects his PDA minutely.
Tracer comes dashing up to the bridge. "I can't believe it! Good grief ... you did it!" She is followed closely by Inari, who looks similarly impressed at the new view, though quietly.
"Maybe we should rest a bit," Holly says, looking worn out. "We probably need to do a full damage check. Is that.. uh.. really you, Tracy?" she has to ask the VPC, just to make sure.
"Barely made it," Jason corrects, his eyes half closed. "I feel like I've been run over and I still have work to do. Ugh."
The time on everyone's PDAs (that is, those who have such things) indicates that it's now 10:06 pm, EST - still Wednesday, October 8th, 2059 AD.
"I logged back in, in the middle of all this bumping around," Tracer exclaims. "Fox-thing here wouldn't let me out of the room."
"Her name is Inari," Jason comments as he tries to blink away the exhaustion and fails. "Has anything happened out in the real world?"
"That's Inari," Holly corrects her daughter. "And why would you even think of coming out during all of that shaking? And who knows how bad it would have been without the pinwheels.."
"Inari," Inari chimes in, in unison with everyone else, not to be left out.
"Right. Upgrade happens Saturday, so... I'm declaring it rest time. I'm running diplomatic signals - white lights - so hopefully any patrols will want to talk first before opening fire," Randall says, flipping comm light switches.
"Ask her about Vampire Queen Sasha," Jason prompts Holly.
Tracer waves off all the corrections. "It's a game, Mom! I'm an adventurer here - a huntress. I can handle a few rocking ships."
"Hmm, yeah, but I don't want to have see the bruises you get," Holly remarks, standing up and stretching her back. "And have you been composing poetry? When you aren't playing, I mean?"
"You don't get much respect, do you, Inari?" Jason has to ask the poor fox-thing.
"I could always eat somebody," Inari says. "That might work."
"We would prefer if you didn't," Jason notes.
"Besides, you're a creature of light now," Jason adds, grinning, "Devouring is right out."
"Poetry?" Tracer asks. "Oh! No, no, that's just part of my auto-specs. I found this plug-in called 'Goth-o-Matic' for my AFK protocols. It's awesome. Sometimes it's so on the spot!"
Randall looks over at Inari and Jason with a raised eyebrow, then shakes his head. "All right, then. I'm going to recruit some of the crew we picked up to keep an eye out for us. They're experienced enough to be able to answer a basic hail and they'll come wake us up if there's trouble."
Holly sighs. "Okay, that's good to know," she says. "It's a little disturbing to see you do things when.. you aren't here.."
Tracer waves it off. "The defaults are so dull. I mean, like, just stand around and shuffle around and don't get in anybody's way. It's something you've just got to customize if you've got any style at all. What if someone finds your VPC when you're away and just orders you around?"
"The Army of the AFK?" quips Randall as he heads for the door.
"I'm just glad I have a nice soft bed in my quarters," Holly comments.
Randall thinks groggily, "Must remember to talk to General about not getting us killed when we start dealing with Tasavaltan forces... And what are we going to do in Tasavalta?"
Jason pats Inari's neck on his way out without even realizing it. "C'mon, RIU, could patches to make,, then sleep. I haven't wanted a bed this bad in a long time," he says, yawning. "See everyone in a few hours."
With captain's longcoat and fancy outfit doffed in favor of a plain sleeping outfit however, Randall's thoughts fade quickly into oblivion as his head hits the pillow in his cabin.
Amazingly enough, the night goes by without any ambushes, without any interception by the "authorities," and without anything else to interrupt a well-deserved rest. Jason is the last to get to sleep of the lot of them, as he stays up to repair pipes and check for further leaks, despite the weight of fatigue - and a good thing, too, or else the ship would have bled off a considerable amount of fuel overnight.
Tracer gets some sleep as well - since, in her time zone, it's technically past her bedtime, and even if she's attending school virtually while at the cabin, there's still a set hour. (After all, punctuality is an important virtue to instill in youth - in the Real World, there are still schedules to be met.) Come morning, the heroes go through their usual breakfast routine, with a few more faces crowding the galley. (They're content to use ordinary ship's stores, and seem entirely unaware of the presence of an aircar in the hangar anyway.)
Once everyone has gotten the yawns and stretches out of their system, gotten properly fixed up, and done a thorough inventory check, the ship's main crew convenes back on the bridge to consider actually moving the Ozymandias in the direction of its intended destination.
A skyship sailor - Topman Benson - salutes and cries out, "Captain on the bridge!" as Randall returns. He then stands stiffly at attention, along with the other night-duty crewmen.
"At ease, crewman, you can stand down now," Randall says. To Jason he grouses, "We're out of bacon-and-egg bars," as he gnaws on what purports to be a 'chicken and rice' dinner bar - easy to eat, but the fact that the rice has been freeze-dried and the chicken is really flavored tofu substitute, hardened into one moderately thick bar of nutrition, rather detracts from the supposedly enjoyable experience.
"And we're down to the dregs of coffee. Abysmal stuff. Anyway, we're here. Now what?" Jason asks as he trundles onto the bridge with a cup of really strong smelling coffee in his hand.
Holly immediately goes to the Orb, and tries to bring up the data link that Chaz had set up, to see if it's still available.
Topman Benson reports, "We've had some curiosity-seekers, sir, asking about the vortex, looking for salvage. No trouble to speak of, though."
Randall swallows a mouthful of 'dinner bar' before answering. "We need to get to Tasavalta, obviously. I think our best bet is going to be to brazen it out. There's no hiding this is an Imperial dreadnought, but we can either claim the General's our prisoner for questioning or we can try to fake that we're an Imperial embassy."
Outside the viewports, the glorious view is easier to appreciate now that the rattling experience of the vortex is well behind them. The Ozymandias is pointed generally sunward; the gentle blue hue of the sky is reminiscent of noon day, though the sun sits at one horizon. All along the plane can be seen a smattering of crystal shard-worlds, many of them clustered closer to the sun. Those closer to the sun shine with heavenly brilliance. Those closer by are green and turquoise with foliage and bodies of water. They are truly shard-worlds - jagged or gem-like shapes, rather than round - but it appears that they still possess their own gravity despite what their size might suggest.
"Good work, Benson," Randall says to the crewman. "As long as they aren't prising bits off of the Ozymandias for 'salvage', that's fine by me."
Without even really thinking about it, Jason heads to one of the viewports and sets RIU in its sill so he can enjoy the sunlight. "Were there any issues with the engines or control over night?" Jason asks as he heads to check on general ship status.
The crystal orb slowly warms up, humming to life. A translucent set of bands orbits the orb, flagging the "out of character" content from VNPC eyes. Several windows pop up within the cordoned-off area, showing status of the squirrel-bot (parked in the lab), and reports from examination of the data cards.
"We're online," Holly reports, and first checks the squirrel-cam to see if Blake is at his desk yet.
The ship status report conjured up for Jason reveals a few attention points on the ship that aren't caught by its mechanical gauges and warning flags (that is, literal flags that pop up on bridge when something breaks). Fortunately, they're all minor systems, and, judging by previous experience, most of them will just consist of tightening and/or replacing a few bolts, and putting a few loose bits back into place.
*** Note to GW: Squirrel-cam is parked in Blake's office, not the lab.
Randall goes to admire the view. "Where did all these shards come from, anyway?" he wonders, between worrying at the hardened rice and chicken. (fortified with essential vitamins and minerals!) "Was there some original world that blew up?"
As seen by the squirrel-cam, there is an unkempt man with an unnaturally shaped body. He looks built like a tank, and has skin with an almost plastic sheen to it, and hair that has that "too perfect" look. By a glance, it's evident that, minus technology, he would probably be an obese slob. But thanks to modern technology, anyone with enough money can be thin and fit. You just need even more money (and the inclination to invest the time required) to not look half-robotic as part of the bargain.
"Nothing too bad. An hour or so and those can be cleared up," Jason mutters to himself as he pokes the display.
It's hard to recognize him clearly, even when he looks in the right direction, but after a few passes, it's clear that the man in Blake's office must bear some relation to the "Blake" from the virtual worlds.
Topman Benson says, "The sages speak of the age before the destruction, when time and space were complete, and all the shards were one world - even the shards of the Shadow Realms. But ... ah ... I don't know much more than that, sir."
"No wonder he was working on body image manipulation," Holly mutters as she watches the feed. In a fresh window, she brings up the results of the data extraction.
Randall nods to Benson. "It must have been quite a world," he says. "All right, we can take over from here. Let your fellow crew know that we should be in port in about eight to ten hours, give or take. And ah, tell the General to come up to the bridge please."
Topman Benson salutes again. "Yes sir!" And then the bridge is quickly vacated of extraneous VNPCs as he heads back to find the general.
"Find something, Holly? Gah, is that a poster of a troll?" Jason can't help but ask when he spots the rather ugly visage and wanders over to get a closer look.
"This is a guy who would kidnap and brainwash a woman into a virtual reality alright," Holly mutters. "Which reminds me, Jason; can you do a data scan of Akiko's 'local object' to see if it has other physical templates besides her current one and Inari? I want to know why her neural interface isn't showing up."
"Okay, a heads up before the General gets here," Randall says, returning his attention from the shards outside to his friends inside. "I think we're going to have the easiest time of it if we play that we're adventurers who managed to salvage an Imperial dreadnought and took the General prisoner. I've already told him that we're going to have to play undercover roles, this deep into Tasavaltan space, and that he might not like it, but it's important to the mission that we earn their confidence so we can move freely."
"If she were on the bridge, I could. She also needs to be in Akiko form," Jason comments. So, he grabs one of the speaking tubes and summons her to the bridge when she can make it.
"Well, aside from the adventurers part, isn't that pretty much what we did do, Randall?" Holly asks.
According to the display on the squirrel-cam (and verified on PDAs), the time is 6:59 am, EST. It looks like Blake is one of those really dedicated workers who checks in early.
Randall grins. "What we don't want them to do is to lock up the General, which is the most likely course. Can you think of an angle that might help with that?"
"That should make it easy to keep as our cover story, of course," Jason comments. "Can you see what Blake is working on? Zoom in on his screen."
"Well, could we claim the General is helping us out in trade for his freedom?" Jason suggests.
"The General is a defector, here to talk about the golem project," Holly suggests.
The police officer shudders at the sight of Blake. "Madre de Dios, that's the face of a man who can do terrible things," he mutters. "Defector sounds promising, can we spin it a little more? The General's not likely to react well to anything that sounds betraying-the-Empire-ish."
"He's doing it to save the Empire," Holly says. "From the run-amok golems."
On the squirrel-cam: Blake looks rather sedate, locked into a default smile as he stares at his screen. A metal collar rests on the back of his neck, and cables stream down to a computer box at his desk. The screen seems to show nothing other than a screensaver sporting the Avatars company logo, with images of nebulous clouds and shards drifting in the background.
"I so want to rip that cable out," Jason grumbles and reaches for the squirrel controls...
"No!" Holly says. "We can't give him cause to file assault charges!"
"Against a robotic squirrel?" Jason has to ask. "They would laugh him out of the courtroom!"
To distract Jason, Holly brings up the window with the salvaged data from last night's raid. "Here, look this over instead."
"That may play well enough, depends on how intelligent the NPCs we get will run," Randall muses. "So, he's seeking asylum and aid to liberate the Empire from zombies infiltrating them. And he wants to talk to the Light's highest ups to get their help, but this should of course in no wise be considered a surrender or defection, merely an agreement that there are principles which transcent national boundaries." This last spoken in a voice as close to an oily diplomat as he can manage.
"Works for me," Jason comments distractedly as he starts looking over the data.
On the squirrel-cam: Blake's screen blanks momentarily, and his eyelids flutter. He looks around as if awakening from a daze, but his ever-present smile is still glued in place. In sequence, a row of cylinders eject from the back of his collar, and he removes it, setting it down on the desk, as the exposed jacks quickly vanish under synth-skin seals. He reaches over to a drawer - the one that had all the data cards.
Randall says, "Did you program the squirrel to put the cards back?" urgently.
"Yes," Holly notes.
"Good morning," the general says, as he steps onto the bridge. He's wearing a different officer's uniform, borrowed from the reworked stocks acquired when the Ozymandias underwent its change in look and name - all as part of his "don't get us killed" directives from Randall.
"The squirrel was programmed to return them, yes," Jason echos.
"Then we're about to see how good a job it did," Randall says. He welcomes the General, directing him to a free chair.
Jason winces and covers his eyes. "I hope he doesn't notice that," he mutters to himself after watching Blake for a few minutes.
On the squirrel-cam: Blake, still smiling so pleasantly, pauses a moment to wipe at a small amount of spittle at the edge of his mouth, as it seems his natural swallow reflex is a little on the deficient side. He then places a blue card on a slight indentation on the desk, and taps the his viewscreen, bringing up a new interface. (It must be one of those really nice touch viewscreens that avoids oil collection, since it shows no signs of fingerprints.)
"And people called me a disgusting nerd," Jason has to comment at drool-boy.
The general takes a moment to survey the view outside the viewports, then makes his way to the chair, and then seems to notice the floating displays only belatedly. He brings a hand up to his temple, then replaces it, and watches more intently. "What are we seeing here, Captain?"
Akiko finally steps onto the bridge, her entry punctuated by a sharp hissing intake of breath as she catches sight of Blake at his desk. "Oh, is that ... is that him?" She looks one part ill, one part angry.
Randall eyes the cards worriedly - there's something a little off about them, maybe the way they're ever so orderly - but there's nothing to be done about it now, so he briefs the General. "This is a view into the 'outside world', General. This is the man who has either created or exploited the congruences between the Diadem and the outside world. Through complex magic we've got a watcher on site, and we're trying to gather information. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about though..."
"That's your old boss," Holly confirms. "Blue. What did he use the blue data chips for, do you recall?"
"The blue card is for current projects," Akiko says. "His standard work. None of the secret stuff."
The general nods to Randall, only briefly prying his eyes away from what must be a very strange view for him, through the eyes of the robotic squirrel.
Checking the data report, Holly is relieved to see that the lab indexed it by the color of the chips. "Okay, I see that here. Some of his micro-simulation and body-mapping stuff. Hmm, Red is locked. Data index is stored elsewhere so no way to access it without the proper pass key."
The young hispanic "pirate captain" goes over the basics - ten hours out from Tasavalta, important that the undercover mission be free to move around, playing adventurers who salvaged a dreadnought and rescued the General. "This is where it gets good - we need you to pose with just the right degree of diplomatic verve that they'll treat you with respect and not throw you in the dungeon, General. You're not betraying the Empire, but zombies taking over the Empire could affect both sides, and there are principles of honor that go above national boundaries. You need to play it with just the right air, honorable military man who needs a little help, is willing to give a little. In two days, maybe less, there'll be an event that completely changes the way the real world and the Diadem interact. We need to be there and ready for it."
"Red is for private work," Akiko adds. "Black is ... I think he has some even more personal stuff on there. The yellow card is just his low-security data dump - preferences when using a remote terminal, that sort of thing."
Jason steps back and then behind Akiko. "Hold still for a moment," he tells her, then lifts up her hair and feels along the back of her neck for a bit. "I also want to get a full scan of you, if you don't object?" he asks. "And don't blame me, blame Holly."
"While you're at it, Jason, can you compare this neural-mapping data to whatever is attached to Akiko to let her become Inari?" Holly asks.
"You presume I can even find whatever is mapped to her to let her do that," Jason points out.
Akiko suddenly goes stiff, eyes widening. "Just what are you planning to scan me with?" she asks. From Jason's quick check, it looks like she doesn't have any signs of a neural link - not even a subdermal one.
"Yes, I do," Holly admits, and looks for the data from the interface module.
"A little toolbox we were left with that lets us inspect game modules. I've used it before, when I adjusted Inari to be a creature of Light," Jason explains as he steps back and pulls up his mini-screen and brings RIU over. "You shouldn't feel anything, really," he claims as he starts typing away.
At Holly's key-tapped request (on a holographic interface, of course), a new window shows up, and she deftly sorts through folder names that are a jumble of jargon and proprietary codes, gathering together related packets (Blake's organization skills are atrocious!) into one bundle.
"If you say so," Akiko says, with a resigned tone of voice, as she stands up straight and holds her arms out to the sides.
"Can you give me any sort of hint about this event?" the general asks Captain Randall. "Please don't fear losing me in magical jargon - I can occasionally grasp at least the gist of things, given a chance."
"Relax, we're trying to help," Jason insists, and then he sends RIU into a whirl around the woman, using his interface to him to feed the input back into the toolbox so it can decipher it back into game-speak. "In theory, there has to be some sort of shifter key on you. If we find it, do you want me to try to disable it, or ... are you okay for now with shape shifting like you do?"
"We really need to know how corrupted her body's become, Jason," Holly notes while pouring over her screen. "You'll need to scan both me and Tracer next to get baselines, and see where between us Akiko falls, if possible."
Akiko twists her mouth in consideration. "Shapeshifting has its drawbacks, but right now Inari is what makes me the most capable of contributing in a fight."
"You make a pretty fox, if that helps?" Jason offers as he continues to collect information.
"As best as we can tell, when it hits, there will be a massive cross-over between the real world and this," Randall says. "We don't know Blake's ultimate aim in making this happen yet. That's one of the things we're trying to find out."
Randall theorizes, looking out toward the shards, "One possibility is that both worlds may fuse. Think of two soap bubbles, touching each other. Push them together hard enough, they become a big bubble. Or one or both may pop. Now imagine that they're the universes we live in."
RIU continues to whirl around Akiko. She stifles a snicker when RIU's whiskers brush against her cheek.
The general frowns. "I suppose anyone in either bubble would much rather be somewhere else while all this is happening, and only step back in once all the destruction has finished. It wouldn't be pleasant to be there while it's still in process."
"Okay, I think I have the tags that make her Inari," Jason comments as he continues to work. "There is also a lot of garbage data in here, where the system doesn't know what to put. He presses a bit more, trying to see if there is any way he can guess how much of Akiko is really left and how much is virtual. "And yes, you're right, I'll need a cross-referencing sample. Hm. Can Akiko access the system and get us her medical records? Would Avatars have a complete genetic profile on her?"
"Blake may not have anything to do with the crossover events that are occurring on their own," Holly points out. "But he has access to an artificially created portal."
"Not in the detail we'd need," Holly notes. "That 'garbage' may represent the physical matter still in her. Scan me to see if I turn up as almost all garbage data."
Akiko volunteers, "Gene data is on file, in case of accidents ... you know, for identifying remains and such." She looks a bit glum. "Of course, it also comes in handy for criminal investigations, I'm sure."
"Well, stand up? Akiko can get that while I scan you. Or, wait, are you already standing? Its pretty hard to tell with you, Holly," Jason jokes.
Akiko adds, "But Holly's right. They're not going to have a complete map of my body. Of course ... Blake might, for his work, for all I know."
"Careful, engineer," the general dryly remarks. "Sorceresses are not to be mocked lightly."
"I'm willing to bet you that the key to Blake's secret projects card is 'Akiko'," Jason offers as he calls RIU off Akiko.
"That's very well for spectators," Randall points out to the General. "We however are men of action, and Blake's past actions suggest that the outcome he has in mind would not be welcomed by any of us. He's kidnapped innocents, attempted murder, he's a traitor to his employers. Clearly not a man of character. No, we need to be there and we need to make sure the outcome is one that doesn't result in cataclysmic destruction."
RIU starts spinning around Holly, scanning her.
Once Holly is standing and Akiko seated in her former chair, Jason now sends RIU out to scan the diminutive sorceress.
"Watch those whiskers," Holly warns.
"Like the rest of us, the system is unsure what to do with you," Jason explains as he works, "It has more states for Akiko, though, which makes sense if it is partially controlled by corruption levels. I wonder if I should scan myself."
"Who unsure?" Holly asks. "The more unsure, the better, I suspect. It means the system isn't simulating those parts."
RIU switches to other sensors in his scans - that is, relying upon the sensors installed in his "real world" form, inherited by this little dragon creature in this world. He provides infrared vision, and makes some squeaking noises as he does a sonic probe. From this data, Holly looks convincingly human from any perspective. Ditto for Akiko: she doesn't seem to be one of those inhabitants of the world who just has goo for a proto-brain, but rather she has a complete skeletal structure, and mass in all the expected places.
"Well, everything looks normal, really, for both you and Akiko," Jason says, "So, that's good. RIU, can you also make a pass over me?"
Randall briefs the general as this transpires, trying to keep him focused on the problem of how to talk suspicious Tasavaltan patrols into not ordering an attack on sight. "When we get close enough, they're going to really sit up and pay attention," he points out. "We're going to need to get to a major landmark - those are the most likely places where any cross-over will happen."
The general nods solemnly. "I take it we are headed to the heart of Tasavalta. The most recognizable of structures in the sunward realms would be found on their capitol in Tara Tassa."
RIU scans over Jason, whisker-tickling as he goes (surely just an accident!) and whirling around in spirals.
"I still don't like the disappearance of Akiko's implant," Holly notes. "If we do reenter our world in a mass transfer, it could mean a bigger risk for Akiko than for us. Blakes tampered with her.. and maybe you'd better scan Inari too, to see if she has 'real' matter and form as well, and it's not just vanishing when Akiko changes."
"Ack, hey, you're making it hard to concentrate!" Jason complains as the little dragon seems determined to tickle him.
With her own scanning completed, Holly goes back to sorting through the mass of data pilfered from Blake's memory chips.
Randall nods thoughtfully. "Maybe you can work it into some kind of speech about 'getting to know one another may avoid war', 'common ideals of law and order'. that sort of thing."
"Hey, I'm normal," Jason claims after reading the numbers RIU returns. "Are we sure this is working?" he adds as a joke. "Okay, who next, Inari? Or the General?"
"Ask Randall if we can borrow the General," Holly says. "Not sure how Inari will react to being probed by RIU. That dragon is entirely too playful."
Randall looks over to Jason. "Let's get under way before you play around with RIU some more - we've got places to be."
Akiko's mouth twitches a bit, but she makes for the exit from the bridge. "I'll go change. I might as well be a sport about it."
"Be sure to send RIU to scan Tracer too, before it's time for her school day to end," Holly notes. "I really don't want her 'waking up' to find a dragon spinning around her."
Jason pauses, hand partially raised. "Something isn't right," he suddenly says. "RIU, rescan my head, please." He offers Holly the control panel too, and asks her, "Watch this closely for anything odd about me."
RIU whirls around Jason's head a few times, wiggling his whiskers, and his eyes taking on a brilliant blue glow as he focuses intently....
Randall considers this. "Well, then. We're going to continue our investigation here, General, but you'll find it dry work, I'm afraid. There's some repair work that needs to be done however," he suggests. "And our engineer is busy with a project of our Lady Sorceress's, so perhaps you and I could take care of them while they're at it?"
As Holly flips through various views - infrared, sonic, some sort of 'latent weak dragon magic-sense,' data tags, etc. - she finds a curious overlay discrepancy. As she fiddles with the settings and filters out the data, it seems to be coming into focus....
The general nods seriously. "I realize the gravity of the situation. I am not above taking on other roles as need be."
"Jason, it sure looks like you have some very high-end biochips in your head," Holly says in a measured tone. "Maybe military-grade. So either you had it coming in, or it's a manifestation of your Link. It's hooked into your sensory centers, either to receive from outside or transmit from inside. We need to check Randall for this too, because of Mara."
Inari strides back onto the bridge. "I am here. I shall remind the little dragon to avoid gratuitous 'accidental whisker tickling.' I cannot be held accountable for any reflexive actions made on my part to unexpected stimuli."
Randall checks the list of repair work to be done. "When I get back," he promises. "Until then, you may want to work on sifting through the data and find out what Blake's up to. There must be some reason for this upgrade."
"Sure Randall," Holly notes. "But if this is game matter, it's in Jason's brain and probably yours too," she points out. "And it will self-destruct when we return to the physical world.."
"Whoa, wait, what?" Jason sputters, looking very dumbfounded and suddenly grabbing at his own head and frantically feeling for any surgery scars. "I've never had any implants done! I don't remember any implants ever being done. This isn't right! This can't be right. No one messes with my brain! ... do they?"