Emergency! Emergency! Emergency! Emergency! Emergency! klaxons some sort of built-in alarm system, though whether it is part of the crystal or part of herself, is hard to say! Envoy is also starting to feel rather warm and light-headed. Also, everything seems like it's starting to glow. No, wait, that's her eyes; they're glowing.
"Stop.." she thinks, or tries to. Then she realizes she has to think in Aelfin.. and use the codes she was given. "Reduce output to 0%" she tries once she manages to focus her thoughts.
"Reducing output, it cheerily announces ... and the alarms stop. Everything seems like it will be okay ... then she starts feeling cold; and the room seems dimmer, as if everything is closing in around her vision. "Total system shutdown in ten seconds," it announces in the same cheery voice, "Neural function collapse in five seconds."
"Switch to on-demand function!" Envoy tries in desperation. She didn't expect to lose energy like that.
"On-demand function enabled," the device chips ... and the darkness encroaching upon Envoy's vision starts to recede. Aren't literal machines fun?
Envoy just focuses on breathing for the moment, and getting a feeling for her physical state. She actually has no idea what form of energy the lattice provides or how compatible it is with her biology. She also wonders if she's steaming or not. She decides she just needs to open her eyes and see if everything still works.
Other than feeling like she had a panic attack, Envoy feels just fine. When her eye creaks open, she finds she isn't steaming, either. everything looks too normal for comfort, really.
So of course Envoy looks at her left forearm where the lattice is installed into her crystal 'scales' to see if it's glowing or doing anything else odd.
Nothing unusual; it looks like it blends in, really. If she didn't know to look for it, she might not even see it.
"Clearly the lattice needs to be locked into a specific mode before integration," she mutters to Morpheus. "Did you sense anything strange?" she asks her partner.
That's odd, Morpheus isn't here anymore. It's also really quiet. As in she doesn't even hear any of the creaks and squeaks that normally permeate this place.
"Hmmm," Envoy muses and looks around to see if anything else is out of place with how she remembers things.
Nope, everything looks normal! Still, cold, quiet, dead, and silent.
Deciding to try an experiment, Envoy picks up a piece of rubble and holds it out at arm's length before dropping it.
The rock drops. It also makes a thud on the floor, bounce, then land on Envoy's foot.
Envoy blinks, and moves her foot to dislodge the debris. It doesn't seem that time is broken, at least. "Hello!" she calls out. "Morpheus, where are you?"
Now Envoy notices something. There's no echo in this huge decaying chamber. Also, no dust motes in the air. It's more like she's walking in a painting; a recreation of a place but with the finer details missing.
"Am I in a simulation?" she calls out, wondering if the Tribunal is trying to trap her again. But.. they haven't been subtle about that before. She sings out a simple cantrip to make the concrete glow, to see if anything happens.
Nothing happens. It remains dead as concrete.
Frowning now, Envoy holds a finger to her throat to make sure she still has a pulse. If everything else feels dead, she'd better check that she isn't also.
Envoy finds a pulse. But it's an odd one. Two beats, a long pause, then two beats again. It repeats, over and over, and she does feel fine, so ... she may be alive?
Next she tries to sense magic in the area - since she should be able to feel the battery if it's still working.
Envoy feels ... nothing.
"So I'm either in limbo or.." she starts to say, then pauses. Everything seems to be frozen, but the dropped bit of concrete fell and made a noise. She turns towards the ramp leading upwards, deciding to see if there's still a world outside of the base.
Well, first Envoy has to get out of the test chamber. This is easy enough. Then it's a walk through the base. It's eerily quiet as she walks. Sure, she can hear her footsteps, but that's really all. There's no breeze, no hum of ventilation, nothing. The phrase silence is deafening comes to mind, really. But slowly and surely she makes her way through the base. The exit doors should just be a few more corridors away.
Envoy always supposed that the Sifran system had to maintain a simulation of reality in order to manipulate it, and so she has to wonder if that's what she's experiencing now - and she really hasn't moved at all. Going to 0% shouldn't have shut her down.. where'd all that energy that was saturating her go? The crystal implants must be far more integrated than she realized. She heads for the main hangar, where the outer door is.
Envoy reaches the main hanger, and discovers a problem. The doors are shut. Really shut. Both the main and blast doors are closed, and across those are numerous chains and complex locks. At least five of them have twenty spin-dial numbers each, then the others either have geometric shapes, or some sort of odd three-dimensional lever-locks.
This is not something she expected. An altered state of consciousness - even being trapped in her own memory - wouldn't have locks! Somebody doesn't want her to leave, she concludes. "Status," she tries to request of her crystals.
"Defensive measures have been initialized; mental system segregation at 100%," Envoy's body seems to report. "Nothing can access, nothing can leave."
Envoy sucks in her breath. "What are defensive measures in response to?" she asks next.
"Processing. Defensive systems engaged to drive out alternate personality program identified by character sequence I N A L A," her body reports. "Ansible in lockdown."
"You have to be kidding me," Envoy mutters. How could she still be lurking around inside of her? Was it the sense of pleasure that activated her? "What is the invasive personality attempting to do?" she asks, as she tries to think of what Inala would actually want. The only thing that comes to her is if her body really could metabolize the energy and enter a malleable state.
"Invasive personality took control of construct physical housing back on planet designated 'Sinai'. Defensive protocols were engaged by sub-consciousness to disrupt construct control," The answer states oddly. "Defensive measures remain active, maintaining system separation."
"Can communications be established with invasive personality?" Envoy asks. She needs to know what's actually going on - her previous 'defensive measures' caused considerable brain damage after all!
"Negative. Nothing in or out," it reports, "Until disabled by ansible aspect."
"But I can't access the Probe aspect," Envoy growls. That's also the one that Inala had the most control over. "What is the status of the ansible aspect?" she asks, trying to keep from demanding.
"Probe aspect contained with a vault of multiple locking layers, from which nothing can come in, or out," the system states flatly.
Envoy looks to locks blocking the doors to the base. "Do the locks I'm seeing correspond to the vault locks?" she asks.
"The constraints you observe are reasonable visual approximations of the lock down protocols," it says.
"Five 20-digit numbers," Envoy sighs, and then turns her attention to the puzzle locks. She also checks the chains. After all, if she can find a weak link then she shouldn't have to worry about the locks themselves.
Zahnrad says, "roll"
After extensive examination of the chains, Envoy can find no weak links, no flaws, nothing. Each link seems to be perfectly formed and solid. That's also about when it strikes her ... how could it have been locked to begin with? Who locked it on this side? It's not like there is any other exit from her 'base' after all; a base rather built like a vault.
Envoy blinks. Thinking symbolically isn't in line with how Probe operates. It's literal. That's why she failed against Von Bronson's tic-tac-toe test: she thought symbolically, of the game, instead of literally as Probe would. "I'm on the inside already," she concludes. So where is the most defended location within the base? She turns away from the doors, and heads towards the formerly sealed lab, with the deathtraps. The spot she most needed the Probe.
It's an interesting thought. Unfortunately it's also where the base seems to diverge from what she remembers. As she makes her way through corridors, things start seeming more and more, well, off. Then it hits her; great, now she is in a maze.
There's a simple trick to a maze though.. assuming it doesn't change. Just as with the one hiding Dragon, she just keeps a wall on her right side as she goes, while trying to decipher a pattern. Probe isn't good with randomness, it always looks for patterns. However, it can also think in very twisty, higher-dimensional geometries that Envoy would struggle with on her own.
Twisty is right About thirty minutes into walking, Envoy could swear she was walking on what used to be the wall on her right. It's like the maze is looping over itself somehow, acting like one long infinite corridor.
The wall-following tactic isn't going to work, clearly, so Envoy tries to think of a better way. And she feels rushed. Probe needs input, after all. Being locked in isn't going to be healthy, and she has no idea what effect it will have if it goes on too long. "Walls and floors are arbitrary," she says to focus her thoughts. "So.. try not to use them," she concludes. She hops up from the floor and tries to pull her knees up to her chest to see if she breaks away from local gravity altogether.
Envoy's butt finds gravity is a hash mistress when she lands on it hard, on the floor. Er, wall. Whatever?
Rubbing her posterior, Envoy tries to think of something else. She can't beat Probe at a maze, any more than she could beat Cipher at code-breaking. The maze is to keep things away from Probe.. so why should it lead to her at all? So Envoy returns her sense of urgency: Probe needs input. So she sits down and starts singing. It's mostly nonsense, but in this limbo vault it should catch Probe's interest. There must be a pattern in it after all. So Envoy sings, and hopes that Probe will either come to her, or bring her to the center of the vault.
For ten minutes, nothing happens. The place seems as dark and empty as ever. It's rather disheartening, really, then things seem to twitch. No, not twitch, slide. Without walking, Envoy starts to slowly move through the maze ... sliding on her butt ... and picking up speed too. Friction too is a harsh mistress; her butt is getting hot.
Why does THAT have to be the most real element, Envoy thinks as she keeps singing her gibberish. It's harder than it seems to not repeat herself. Maybe Probe will be sitting in a pool or something else cool though.
Many minutes, and a very hot-butt later, Envoy slides into the remains of the old lab. There is paper everywhere. Piles and piles and piles of it, all neatly stacked up and organized. From what she can see, it looks both alphabetized as well as organized be concept and subject. In the middle of it all, sits a twitchy-looking semi-version of herself busily copying ... a very large set of encyclopedias. The volume she is currently on is 'Things Envoy doesn't understand, starting with the letter N'. "Newts," probe? mutters.
Standing up to let her rear cool, Envoy watches the.. well, Probe was always a bit of a homunculus, with too large eyes and ears like an Eeee. "Newts aren't that hard," she claims. "It's just that they don't talk. Or don't respond anyway. And they're very hard to catch."
And of course that gets written down. Then Probe frowns and cross-checks the book. "That isn't in here," she complains. "Data refresh is not maintaining coherency of thought-routines. Estimated complete failure in ... one-point-seven orbital passes of Sinai around the star designated Primus."
"We can fix that," Envoy says, and holds out her hand to Probe. "We can resynchronize. There are new senses we can have, and feelings and.. well, just everything. We can think together once more, using everything we feel and experience."
"Chance of hallucinations at current degradation estimate is fifty-percent," Probe claims as it looks at Envoy, wide-eyed and quivery-eared. "Query: Provide proof of negation of the possibility of hallucination."
"Pizza," Envoy says, sitting down next to Probe. "That's the closest we've come to being together again, I think. Do you remember it? I'm sorry about what happened with Inala. We shouldn't have been broken apart like that. But pizza couldn't be a hallucination, right? I don't think we have that vivid an imagination."
"Define pizza," Probe requests. "At a molecular level."
Envoy opens her mouth and.. falters. "I can't," she admits. "Only you can do that. For the past two years I've been experiencing things through a filter. Our brain can't process it all, you know. Only you can access the raw data and make use of it. So.. if I were an hallucination of yours, I should be able to define pizza at a molecular level. But I can't."
Probe blinks, then smiles. "Answer accepted," she intones, "Disengaging locks." In the distance, Envoy somehow hears the throwing bolts of a lot of locks, as well as the clattering of chains. Then comes the neck hug. In this place, she has quite the grip! "Don't leave me again," it mutters into her neck as things start to grow dark.
I'm never letting us be broken up again, Envoy thinks to herself.
Everything goes dark. Then there is a pinprick of light breaking into the darkness. No, she's opening her eyes ... and finds herself on her back, with Morpheus kneeling over her, looking worried. "Are you okay?" he asks quickly, "You went stiff and fell over..."
"Is Inala here?" Envoy asks Morpheus, really soaking in the details of his face and expression now.
"No. It's just ... us? What are you talking about?" Morpheus asks. "You fell over about two seconds ago..."
"Inala was forcing me into a defensive mode so I could reconnect with Probe," Envoy explains, and tries to sit up. "I'm.. well, my definition of 'whole' has expanded a lot but I'm not missing any parts of my mind now. I've got my processing power back, so I hope it can compensate for not having a control node."
"Are you sure it was Inala and not just some reaction to putting that stamp on your arm as if you were mailing yourself to some far off land?" Morpheus has to ask. "I do not think the postage was quite enough to get you anywhere, but..."
Envoy grins, and rolls her eyes at Morpheus. "I.. well, I don't know," she admits. "It felt like the lattice was at full power when it connected instead of being off, but.. what did you see happen?" she asks.
"You looked like you walked into a Titanian porn show and passed out after getting hit by a thrown hammer," Morpheus concludes rather colorfully.
The Aeolun blinks. "Titanians dream about things like that?" she asks, wide eyed. "Do they use the hammers to knock off pieces of armor from each other or.. ah, probably not important. Did you feel any power surges or anything?"
"There was a considerable power surge, yes. I think it must have overloaded your systems and bridged formerly severed interlinks," Morpheus says, explaining things a bit more rationally.
Looking at her left arm, Envoy tries to listen for any crystal chatter. She doesn't know if her own network is as chatty as Icarus's, but she may not have been able to really hear it consciously before.
It's considerably quieter than Icarus' own. Or at least it seems to be, but then his wasn't built with quite as complete a plan and goal.
"Time to see if the lattice actually makes things easier," Envoy says, and holds out her left hand, palm upward. She tries something simple: a sphere of force a few inches in diameter, just to see if the crystals draw on the lattice for power now instead of her own cells. At least the formula comes to her quicker now.
Envoy barely feels a twinge as the sphere pops into existence and sort of floats there.
"Report power usage," she asks of the lattice.
"Negligible," it reports.
Remembering the rush from before, Envoy cautiously requests, "Maintain power level at.. 0.25%" That shouldn't overwhelm her, but should be enough to get an idea of how her body responds.
Maybe because she had been thinking about it recently, Envoy feels like she just ate a really good pizza. Comfortably fully and content.
Envoy smiles. Even with Probe, she doesn't have any kind of in-depth awareness of her physical processes beyond the obvious mechanical and sensory ones. So she doesn't know if she's able to use this energy or is just feeling it. She'll just have to test it via hunger or getting injured. So long as it doesn't become distracting, anyway. "I can feel the energy," she tells Morpheus. "I don't know if that means anything metabolically though."
Morpheus pokes at Envoy's tummy. "Well, you don't seem any fatter," he claims, deadpan. He then feels her chest, to be sure.
Envoy goes up on her toes. "Well, if morphic properties begin to change then I'll know for sure that my cells like this energy!" she comments. "Although I may need to borrow the elements from Inala or something.."
Morpheus makes a face. "I've seen enough of her elements," he mutters. "She used to come and sit in front of my head, legs spread." The somewhat-God shakes his head, then asks, "Is it safe for Icarus?"
"I'll need to lock the third lattice into 'on demand draw' mode first, but then it should be safe," Envoy says. "It's presence should be enough for the other repairs to be made to his control systems, so that he won't be drawing on his own strength anymore. His network can probably make better use of it than my basic one, certainly."
"Or you'll have built the perfect doomsday weapon," Morpheus says, then adds, "Don't look at me like that. Anyway, we should get back to them, then, before his adopted family drives him crazy."
"Disabling the Sifran doomsday weapon is high on my list of priorities, don't worry," Envoy says, and pats Morpheus on the shoulder. "But before I attach it to him I'll step into the Silent-One's scanner to make sure nothing weird is going on inside of me now, just in case."