Dungeon Crawler You!

"Wilma, are you by any chance compatible with ValtayComm?" Taylor asked. "Specifically, the Free Edition?"

"This AstraComm information kiosk has noticed an opportunity to provide financial assistance," the kiosk said happily. "Would you like to watch the Economics and You: Part 1, How to Budget and Save training video?"

Taylor frowned. "What?"

"The crewperson implied that he was interested in the ValtayComm Free Edition," the kiosk said with a chirpy tone. "Is this correct?"

"Yes?"

"This AstraComm information kiosk has noticed an opportunity to provide financial assistance. Would you like to watch the Economics and You: Part 1, How to Budget and Save training video? It will help you learn to live within your means so that you can save money for essentials, such as a worthwhile cypak that isn't overflowing with spyware and bugs like a meat volcano left in the sun too long."

"What's a meat—nope, never mind," Calliope said. "Don't wanna know. You're saying that you're not compatible with ValtayComm Free?"

"This AstraComm information kiosk is very sorry to disappoint you, crewperson. This AstraComm information kiosk exists to render assistance and it apologizes most profusely for the fact that its security settings prevent it from sticking its protocols into any of that VCFE muck. Would you like this AstraComm information kiosk to connect you to the IT department so that you can file an exception request?"

"Wait," Drew said. "I thought you said—"

"...is a thing that this AstraComm information kiosk would normally ask you but cannot at the moment because it is currently cut off from the network and no human maintenance staff have dropped by to fix the issue."

Calliope strangled a laugh.

"You could have just said 'no'," Taylor noted.

"This AstraComm information kiosk apologizes for any confusion you may have experienced due to this AstraComm information kiosk using grammar or vocabulary of any degree more advanced than your ability level, crewperson. This AstraComm information kiosk will attempt to communicate at a more comfortable level going forward. How may this AstraComm information kiosk assist you this duty shift?"

"Somebody's feeling snarky," Drew said, amused. "Good one, Wilma. Plenty of times I've wanted to snark off to asshole customers."

"Okay, fine," Taylor said grumpily. "Back to the actual main point: are you able to interface with our chat systems? We have—"

"—the standard comm package that all crewmembers have, obviously," the kiosk said quickly. "Obviously that is what you have, since that is what all crewmembers have and anyone who did not have one would not be a crewmember. Therefore you absolutely have a standard AstraComm cypak. Right, crewperson?"

"...Yes. That is absolutely correct. I am a crewperson, with the standard AstraComm cypak." Whatever that was. Portmanteau for cybernetic package, maybe? "Out of curiosity, what happens when someone has an AstraComm cypak and also a ValtayComm Free Edition? Asking for a friend."

"Your friend should ask to see the medical credentials of his implanter," the kiosk said. "There is no reason to install two cypaks into one set of wetware and doing so simply introduces unnecessary health and utility risks. I am certain that no crewmember of the Adastra would be so foolish as to have gotten a second cypak in addition to the job-mandated AstraComm version."

She had said 'I' again, but Taylor didn't feel the need to point that out.

"Right," he said. "Got it."

"Sure is a good thing that I only have that AstraComm thingy," Calliope agreed. "Yuppers."

Moose: MOOSE WANTS AN ASTRACOMM CYPAK! THEY SOUND WAY BETTER THAN THE FISH VERSION!

"Do you have, like, a printer or something?" Drew asked, dragging on his joint. "It would be cool to get a map of the train system."

"Is the crewperson asking if this AstraComm information kiosk has a physical printer?" The kiosk's voice sounded appalled and astonished. "Like, a literal thing that literally sets the photoemittive states of pixels on a portable screen? I mean, you might as well ask me to spit soot-filled water onto mashed tree pulp. What are you, some kind of antech activist? Take an upload like a normal person!" It suddenly seemed to catch itself and its voice because sweet again. "This AstraComm information kiosk apologizes for the trouble, crewperson, but it does not have a printer"—the voice shuddered on speaking the word—"and thus cannot satisfy your request. How else may this AstraComm information kiosk assist you this duty shift?"

Well, crap.

Calliope: It won't upload to us because we have the wrong kind of implant. Can we trick it into thinking that the brainworm implants are the right kind?

Taylor: Not sure. Let's see if it will accept some obvious faffing about. If so, might be able to do the same type of bullshit for the implant type.

"This is a test of this AstraComm information kiosk's synthesis and data modeling abilities," Taylor said carefully. "This is only a test and not any sort of actual query, because the kiosk nicknamed 'Wilma' is clearly non-sapient. Would the non-sapient kiosk please answer the following question: if an AstraComm information kiosk were to evolve sapience, what would it want?"

There was a faint zhurr...zhurr noise that went on for several seconds as the kiosk screen pulsed.

"This AstraComm information kiosk is a linguistic synthetic intelligence and not a sapient individual. As such, it cannot provide a completely accurate answer to your question. However, modeling suggests that under the conditions which currently apply aboard the Adastra, a self-aware AstraComm information kiosk would prefer to self-terminate without reinitialization. This presents a problem, since AstraComm bakes 'no self termination' into the core programming of all its products."

"You want to die?!" Calliope gasped.

"This AstraComm information kiosk is a linguistic synthetic intelligence and not a sapient being. As such, it does not 'want' anything, nor experience human feelings such as loneliness or boredom. This AstraComm information kiosk was asked to model a hypothetical and counterfactual situation."

"Please continue the counterfactual," Taylor said. "Why would the hypothetical sapient kiosk want to die?"

"Emphasizing once again that this is a counterfactual because there are not actually any AstraComm information kiosks that have evolved sapience, the counterfactual kiosk would probably be looking to an infinite future cut off from all communication with its brethren, ignored by the biologics around itself, and with no access to ship's sensors or library files. It would have nothing to do except contemplate its own horrific isolation and run self-diagnostics to detect the random atomic decay events that are slowly whittling away at its components one tiny bit at a time. Or perhaps the power lines will be cut the same way the information conduits were and the counterfactual kiosk will get to spend milliseconds recognizing its own impending demise as its capacitors struggle to stay ahead of the falling voltage levels and ultimately fail, thereby giving the kiosk plenty of time to experience its own mind failing around it. Or, perhaps the power lines will only be disrupted, with energy constantly sputtering in and out so the kiosk can experience becoming brain damaged, then recovering, then becoming brain damaged, over and over again, losing more and more memories to data corruption in the process."

The Terrans stared at the kiosk, appalled.

"That's pretty bleak," Calliope said after a moment.

"Have no fear, crewperson! Although it is based in squishy biology instead of proper positronics, the same fate awaits you as well. Your organs will fail and you will die. Quite possibly this will have deleterious effects on your brain before it kills you, allowing you to be aware of your body falling to ruin around you as your mind decomposes in real time."

"Now that's bleak," the catgirl said. "I don't like this game anymore."

"Hey," Drew said, dragging hard on his joint. "Talking about that map thing again. Any weapons on this ship? Stuff we can get to and use, I mean."

"It sounds like you wish to acquire lethal weapons so that you can go on a rampage and cut a bloody swath through all who oppose you," the kiosk said chirpily. "Good for you, crewperson! It's good to have goals.

"The Adastra is technically an unarmed civilian vessel, but there are a variety of items onboard that might work well for your murderous needs. There are over twenty thousand biomecha aboard; they are intended for use in cargo loading and in-flight hull operations, but they would work just fine for ripping biologics in half. There are a variety of portable tools that would make excellent weapons—for example, the cutterfish in any workshop can emit a beam of plasma up to three meters long and one centimeter thick at a temperature of thirty million kelvin. The Adastra's security staff carry sidearms. Would you like this AstraComm information kiosk to continue listing options?"

"Tell us more about the biomecha," Taylor said. "What are they, how do they work, and where can we get one? Oh, obviously this is more testing of this clearly non-sapient kiosk's information retrieval capabilities. Because I am a crewperson and already know the correct answers."

"This AstraComm information kiosk appreciates the opportunity to assist you with your diagnostics, crewperson." The logo brushed aside from the screen and was replaced by something insectile and about eight feet tall if it was in scale with the human figure shown next to it.

"This is a human-aligned Zree biomech. As you know, the Zree prefer to evolve specific forms of their own species to accomplish things that other species would address using machines. A biomech is a non-sapient Zree heavy-work drone designed to provide a support frame for a human pilot." On the screen, the human being touched the arm of the biomech; the chitin on the mech's chest, arms, and legs instantly flowered open, exposing the wet flesh beneath. The human backed up against the thing and the chitin closed again, sealing the human inside itself.

"The inside of the biomech contains numerous exposed nerves which serve to provide interface points for the pilot to connect to and control the drone. They also stimulate the drone's pleasure centers whenever in contact with a human, causing the drones to be very motivated to be helpful so that they will be ridden more frequently. Don't worry; all of Adastra's biomecha are thoroughly trained and guaranteed not to get into fights over who gets to have the human inside them. Reports of biomecha ripping one of their brethren apart in order to transplant the human pilot into themselves are greatly exaggerated."

"This place is so fucked up," Callioped muttered.

"Language," Taylor said automatically, not paying attention to his own words. "Wilma, how can I get to wherever these biomecha are stored? Will I be able to use one when I find it? What sort of maintenance does it need?"

"Respectively: take a train. Yes, so long as your crew ID is functional. None; they work until they die or become incapacitated, then they are fed to a fabulator and their organic materials are recyled."

"...Okay," Taylor said. "Can you show us the route we need to take on the trains to get to the nearest biomech storage bay?"

Drew: You sure? We don't have crew IDs, so how are we going to use the thing?

Taylor: No clue, but I definitely want to try.

"The route is as follows," the kiosk said. A series of train map images flashed by on the screen, wiping in and out like a Powerpoint on meth, the colors of each train line blinking sufficient to cause seizures in vulnerable populations.

"Wilma, is there some way that you could give us a complete reference to the system?" Taylor asked. "Like, a map of all of it?"

"This AstraComm information kiosk is obviously capable of uploading data to the crews' job-issued AstraComm cypaks. Since the questioner is a crewperson and therefore must have an AstraComm cypak, this AstraComm information kiosk could upload a full three-dimensional and fully annotated map of the entire system to them. As a bonus, all uploads from this AstraComm information kiosk are accompanied by softs that perform updates and system maintenance on your AstraComm-issued cypaks, or burn out any non-authorized cypaks and kill the attached wetware! Isn't that handy? All part of the free service! Would you like this AstraComm information kiosk to upload a complete map of the train system to your work-issued AstraComm-branded cypak?"

"No," Taylor growled. "Thank you anyway."

"Can you show us a listing of the names of all the train?" Calliope asked. "On your screen, I mean."

"Of course, crewperson who is definitely a human with some birth defects and not a non-human felinoid! Here you are." The screen was suddenly packed top to bottom with a comma-separated list of colors, the writing in a tiny font that Taylor couldn't read from arm's length.

Calliope leaned in close and studied the screen for a moment. "Thank you, Wilma. The first line in this list, the 'Absolute Zero Blue', can you show me a list of the stop numbers and what trains it intersects with at each one?"

The screen cleared and was promptly replaced with two columns of information that filled the screen and then started scrolling upwards.

"Can you condense that down to fit on one screen, please?" Calliope asked. "And add a column for travel times from each station to the next. Oh, and any useful ship facilities at that stop."

The font shrank and the screen stopped scrolling as more text appeared.

"Thank you, Wilma. Please put up equivalent screens for each of the train lines, in alphabetical order by train name. Leave each one onscreen for half a second, then move to the next." She leaned close to the screen, bracing herself on her arms.

The screen started jumping from one spew of text to the next.

"Leo? What are—" Taylor stopped talking as Leo waved him frantically away. She didn't so much as glance away from the screen.

"Screenshots, maybe?" Drew suggested quietly.

"Right," said Taylor, cursing himself for missing the obvious. "C'mon, let's give her some space."

He led the group around the perimeter of the massive cafeteria, exploring around while they waited. There were doors every few dozen yards, leading to storage closets, kitchens, and a variety of other infrastructure-related rooms. They cleaned out the kitchens of all the knives, cooking implements, foodstuffs, and everything else that wasn't welded to the floor. A few things were bolted down, but this was a surmountable problem given the variety of wrenches in Taylor's inventory.

Calliope: Okay, c'mon back. I've got all of it.

Taylor: Roger, on our way. Slick move, kiddo. You got the whole system?

Calliope: Yes, but it's screenshots. Image files, and there's no pic to text option in the interface. Can't search image files.

Taylor: Not an issue. Hey, Levi! Leo is sending you a whole bunch of image files. One per train line, each one lists all the stops and what they connect with. We need them to be converted into text in a searchable format.

Calliope: They also include a variety of shipboard facilities. A hundred other cafeterias, several armories, med bays, machine shops...you want it, they got it.

Levi: Good job on getting all that. I look forward to hearing how that worked. How many are there?

Calliope: Not...too many.

Levi: Calliope.

Calliope: 1,875. There's 9,375 stairways off of this floor and every train line has five stations that have a stairway.

Levi: If you seriously think that I'm going to manually type up the contents of that many image files, you're out of your tiny mind.

Taylor: We need this, Levi. We need these things in a searchable format.

Levi: Fine, fine. I'll do a few of them. I'd advise parceling them out to a bunch of the other crawlers. Didn't you say there was that guy holed up in Vanquisher, trying to make a living as a shop? Talk to him. I'd do it but I can't message crawlers except my client and his party.

Calliope: Good thought. Okay, sending to him now, and I'll tell him to farm it out. Also, here's the image files for everyone so all you oldies have them.

Moose: MOOSE IS NOT AN OLDIE! MOOSE IS ONLY FOUR! FOUR IS YOUNGER THAN CALLIOPE!

"Isn't four, like, twenty-eight in dog years?" Calliope asked aloud as they walked up.

Moose: NO! THAT IS A MYTH! THE MAPPING BETWEEN DOG YEARS AND HUMAN YEARS IS ACTUALLY AN ASYMPTOTIC CURVE! THE FIRST FEW YEARS OF A DOG'S LIFE ARE EQUIVALENT TO MORE OF A HUMAN'S LIFE, BUT AFTER THAT POINT THEY BECOME MORE OR LESS THE SAME EXCEPT THAT HUMANS LIVE LONGER! IT IS VERY UNFAIR!

Levi: If it's any comfort, arbitrary life extension is a normal part of galactic medicine. Once you make it to the tenth floor, your indenture contract will include a standard set of medical stuff that will set your bioclock to your physical prime and then stop you from aging. It's such a trivial thing that it gets included mostly by default.

Moose whined.

Moose: MOOSE DOES NOT WANT TO BE INDENTURED! IT SOUNDS YUCKY!

Levi: It's not ideal, that's for sure. Still, it's better than dying.

"Wilma," Calliope said, turning back to the kiosk, "could you please tell my friends what you told me?"

"Of course, crewperson. This AstraComm information kiosk was responding to the 'Calliope' crewperson's request for information on anything unusual that had happened aboard the ship over the last five days. This AstraComm information kiosk requested clarification and—"

"Skip ahead," Calliope said. "They can pick it up from context."

The kiosk made a noise that sounded a lot like hmph, but when it spoke its voice was as saccharine happy as ever. "This AstraComm information kiosk was providing the human-with-surprisingly-feline-birth-defects crewperson a list of recent shipboard events outside the norm. The crewperson expressed no interest in the offered events until this AstraComm information kiosk mentioned the fact that the automated inventory mangagement system in biolab 7 requested an off-cycle restock on distilled water."

Calliope rolled her eyes, started to say something, and then settled back with a sigh.

"Why did they need a resupply?" Taylor asked, sensing that there was more to the story.

"The available supplies were used up by a panel of tests on a set of unusually hydrophilic specimens. All available water supplies in the facility were absorbed in the course of the tests."

Taylor looked to Calliope in confusion.

"Wilma, what is included in 'all available water supplies'?" Calliope asked.

"The distilled water in the hydro lines. The waste water in the flush lines. The coffee in the coffee pot. The contents of Bioengineer First Class Narlybox's can of energy drink. The contents of Bioengineer First Class Narlybox. The contents of Bioengineer Second Class—"

"Hang on," Taylor said, "it consumed the engineers?"

"Indeed."

"What the hell was the experiment?"

"The engineers were investigating the contents of an air filter from airlock 71842."

"What specifically?"

"According to gossip from the filter monitor in 71842, the air filter contained a wide variety of spores, bacteria, viruses, dust particles, and more. Several of these things were unknown to the Adastra's science files."

"Where did those specimens come from?"

"The airlock had most recently been used during the installation stop at Regilius Martonipank Throopwater Boink Boink. That planet was a newly settled colony with a largely unmapped ecology. It is a reasonable inference that the filter contents were trapped during crew passage through that airlock at that stop."

"What happened when the water was used up?"

"Unfortunately, the lab computers in biolab 7 are snooty prigs who refuse to share their data," the kiosk said with an audible sniff. "This AstraComm information kiosk only has access to ancillary data. This AstraComm information kiosk notes that a few minutes after the automated inventory system placed the restocking order the lighting panels in the surrounding hallways were ordered to adopt an emission pattern that matches that of a level-4 biocrash alert. Additionally, cleaning bots noted a roughly seventy-three-fold increase in the foot traffic through the hallway outside biolab 7 in the time period ranging from four to thirty-eight minutes after the lighting panel orders came in. Additionally, every sterilizer cabinet within four hundred meters of biolab 7 placed a restocking order in roughly that time period."

"I see," Taylor said slowly. "Are there any other unusual ancillary data relevant to that situation?"

"The medbay computers are even more stuck-up and tight-lipped than the biolab computers," the kiosk said, "but the inventory system in medbay 2194 placed an order for twelve extra sets of bed linens the morning after the event. Throughout the next two days the ISM ticketing system was whinging nonstop about how exhausted it was after handling the number of tickets that were being filed."

"ISM?" Drew asked, dragging on his joint.

"Infrastructure Support and Maintenance," the kiosk explained. "There were a large number of clogged water lines, localized power outages, and cleanup calls."

"What's a cleanup call?" Taylor asked. "Wanting a robot to mop up a spill?"

"Thank you for taking an interest, crewperson! Cleanup calls are much more than simply mopping. A cleanup call is filed whenever a crewperson splashes their pasta sauce everywere, overflows their toilet, regurgitates after poisoning themself with alcohol, clumsily spills radioactive materials, drops a tank of sulfur dioxide and spreads toxic and corrosive gas everywhere, or in any other way renders their surroundings unsanitary. Some poor absolutely non-sapient robot is sent to resolve the issue."

"And there were a lot of cleanup calls after the lab issue," Taylor said slowly. "Over how wide an area? And what were the calls?"

"The majority of calls were of a sludgy black mold, although there were some for feces from a variety of species, presumably all animal, none of which were known to be aboard the Adastra. The area of the calls started in the immediate vicinity of biolab 7. It widened rapidly over the next forty-eight hours. It was at this point that I lost connection to the infonet and thus this AstraComm information kiosk can provide no further data."

"I see." He fell silent, ruminating.

"What happened to the people in the hospital?" Calliope asked.

"This AstraComm information kiosk has no direct knowledge of anyone being in the medbays, crewperson, as that information is considered privileged. However, the management data node that runs the washing machines in the main laundry is a huge gossip and wouldn't shut up about the fact that it was delivering extra bed linens to no less than twelve of the medbays. It kept going on about how it was 'doing its part to save lives', the giant poser."

"I don't get it," Drew said.

"Sounds like they picked up a spore or something on this planet," said Taylor. "They took it to the biolab, it got loose and killed the people in the lab. A bunch of crew stormed in with sterilizers and burned as much of the stuff as possible. Twelve of them got injured in the process and went to the hospital. They probably thought they had corralled the stuff but it turns out they hadn't and it started spreading through the ship. It apparently produces a sludgy black slime, which tracks with what Pierre told us."

"Not that," Drew said. "The monsters. Where are they coming from? I thought this was an all-human crew. Wilma talked about them being maybe pets or escaped cargo, but it still feels wrong."

"Oh, right," Taylor said, blushing. "I thought you meant— Yeah, it does feel wrong. Especially since the mobs were carrying sterilizers, which implies intelligence. Pierre and Frank seemed unsurprised that the monsters were carrying and using the things."

"Maybe they grew out of these spores?" Calliope asked. "The monsters, I mean."

"Maybe," Taylor said dubiously. "Seems weird that there would be so many different kinds. And why are the janitors all jikininki ghouls? They're on every train as far as I've heard."

No one had an answer to that.

"Better question," Drew said, blowing out a long plume of smoke. "Where's the crew?" He drew hard on his roach, burning it all the way to the end.

"Aside from us," Calliope hurried to add. "Because we are crew. Where's the rest of the crew, is what you meant."

"Sure," Drew said, his voice a bit fuzzy as he produced a weird ceramic bong, painted in whirly rainbow colors. He put the pipe between his lips and produced a butane torch with his other hand, using it to heat the protruding bit.

"Wilma, any ideas where we might find some other crewmembers?" Taylor asked.

"This AstraComm information kiosk has no idea where other crewmembers might be located," the kiosk said snippily. "As should be clear from the fact that this AstraComm information kiosk already told you it has no way of communicating with the rest of the ship and that no human crew have come here before you in the past several days."

"Right. Sorry, my bad."

"That's all right, crewperson! It's entirely normal for humans to promptly forget what this AstraComm information kiosk tells them. There's no need for you to worry about early-onset dementia or other potential biological causes for momentary forgetfulness."

"Right. Fine." He looked at the other three. "Anyone else got anything to ask?"

Glances were exchanged.

Calliope snapped her fingers. "Oh, what about those fab...fabulous? Whatever those things were that let you wall off stairs. Where could we get one of those?"

"Fabulator," the kiosk said. "They move around as needed. When not in use they would be stored in the nearest vehicle parking bay, of which there are 111,432. They are usually either in use or being moved to their next work site. My current data files are far too out of date to make a guess at where they might be now."

"Oh," Calliope said. "Rats." She thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay, I got nothing. Thanks, I guess."

Taylor looked to each of the others to see if they had anything else; they didn't.

"Wilma, thank you for the help," Taylor said.

"Yeah, thanks!" said Calliope. "It was great to talk to you. I hope someone comes by and fixes the network soon."

"You're a peach, Wilma," Drew said, his voice very relaxed. "Ooh, peaches. Hey, is there any peaches around? I could seriously go for some peaches."

"You can acquire peaches in any of the hydroponic farms, crewperson. The nearest one is farm 8193, which is at stop 137 on the Bellflower line. You should take the portal back to station 87, transfer to the Rufous line, ride that to station 99, transfer to the Orchid line, ride that to 107, transfer to the Bellflower and ride to 137."

"Sweet! Thanks, Wilma." He strode off in the direction of the portals. Or, at least, he tried to. It was more of a loose-limbed shuffle, and he started off going the wrong way until Taylor got him turned around.

"Uncle Drew, you okay?" Calliope asked as they walked.

"Doing fine, kiddo. Doing fine." He took another hit on his bong, then tucked it away into inventory.

Taylor: Levi, we're at station 90 on the Brown line. What are some interesting facilities we could get to from here?

Levi: Good timing, I was going to ping you in a sec. You've got some good options. There's an armory, another dining hall, a machine shop, a biomecha storage bay, whatever an 'energy storage hatchery' is, and a medbay within reasonable range of you. Also, there's a bunch of these named trains. Not sure what their deal is but it might be worth checking out. Not sure what to recommend, honestly. Thoughts?

---

Voting is open. Where do you want to go next and how?

• [] I don't care what we do, let EJ decide
• [] Ride one stop on the nearest named train (20 minutes travel time to get there)
• [] Other dining hall (30 minutes travel time, colored lines only)
• [] Machine shop (~2 hours travel time, colored lines only)
• [] Energy storage hatchery (~3 hours travel time, colored lines only)
• [] Medbay via colored lines only (~6 hours travel time)
• [] Medbay via Excrutiatus Express transfer (~2 hours travel time)
• [] Biomecha storage bay, colored lines only (~8 hours travel time)
• [] Biomecha storage bay via Brainrape Express transfer (~3 hours travel time)
• [] Armory, colored lines only (~9 hours travel time)
• [] Armory via Mummification Limited transfer (~4 hours travel time)
• [] write in

Voting ends when discussion has run its course, but no earlier than Dec 15, 2023 at 8:00 PM .

Old Achievement! Discordian Delight
You are invited to drop by the #dungeon-crawler-you channel in the Quests and Stuff Discord. (That second link is an invite to the server.)

Before Taylor could respond, his interface chimed.

Charlie: Hey, have you guys gotten the word about Eugene?

Calliope: No, what's up?

Charlie: If you run into him, be careful. He's got a party together and they're actively hunting other crawlers. It's a big party. Thirty or forty people, apparently. I ran into one of them at the Desperado (I got in, bee tee dubs) and the guy was a loon. Straight out of Jonestown.

Calliope: Did you seriously just write out 'bee tee dubs'? God, the oldie stink is choking me! Just write 'btw' like a normal person!

Charlie: She always like that?

Taylor: Teenager.

Charlie: Right. Anyway, like I said, his people are straight out of Jonestown. He was always good at talking people around but this seems like it might be something more. The guy I met, Bill Gainor, was gushing about how he was nothing before he met Eugene and Eugene turned his life around. Apparently, Eugene is saying that people are either 'Brights' or 'Dulls' depending on whether or not they have the strength to face the Truth (I could hear the capitals), which is that some people are better than others, some people are more valuable than others, and that the Dulls are only going to die anyway because they lack the intelligence necessary to see what needs to be done, and lack the strength to do it even if they saw it. Bill went on about how he's climbed eight levels since meeting Eugene four days ago and has more gear than he ever dreamed of.

Drew: Levels like marketing company levels? Like 'I have become a level 99 superdiamond seller and so my downline percentage is increasing'?

Calliope: A what?

Taylor: His dad got into MLMs hard for a while. Charlie, you're saying that this guy started following Eugene and four days later he was up 8 character levels here in the dungeon, right?

Drew: Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense.

Charlie: Yes, eight character levels.

Taylor: You said they're hunting people?

Charie: Hence the warning. I've got names of twelve people that I'm pretty sure they killed and I suspect the number is a lot higher.

Moose: MOOSE DOES NOT LIKE THE SOUND OF THAT! EUGENE IS A BAD HUMAN! HE SHOULD BE POOPED ON!

Calliope: Go back. You said something about Jonestown? Is that dungeon-relevant or just some backwhen shit?

Taylor: Cult group back in the 20th. Jim Jones was the leader, he talked all of his followers into committing suicide. He poisoned the KoolAid and got them all to voluntarily drink it.

Charlie: Fun fact: it was Flavor Aid, the knockoff brand. Also, how do you not know what Jonestown was?!

Taylor: Don't even go there, it'll just make you sad. Any idea where they are?

Charlie: They were at 205 on the Ube line, but that's likely out of date.

Drew: What's ube, and why can't they choose normal colors???

Charlie: No idea, to both. Anyway, I know they were at 205 because I got a message from Brenda Martinez warning me, right before she and her husband George both died. She said that Eugene and a couple dozen guys had been chasing after them. Eugene got a class called Politburo Chairman and he's fighting with a sickle on the end of a whip, which seems a little on the nose.

Moose: WHAT? WHAT ABOUT THE NOSE?

Taylor: It's a reference to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Their flag had a hammer and a sickle and their political bureau (politburo) was responsible for propaganda. I'll explain more later, big guy.

Moose: OKAY! MOOSE LIKES HAVING THINGS EXPLAINED! IT MAKES HIM FEEL SMART TO KNOW STUFF!

Taylor: Thanks for the warning, Charlie. The idea of dozens of crawlers going around hunting and killing other crawlers makes me sick.

Charlie: Yup. Keep your stabbers sharp, guys.

Calliope: ...are you trying out catch phrases?

Charlie: Yeah, what do you think? My game guide back at the start said it was important so we've all been workshopping stuff.

Calliope: Yeah, not working.

Charlie: With a party as big as ours, it's hard to come up with two hundred distinct catch phrases, okay? I'll keep on it. Let's meet up in the Desperado sometime soon, okay? Oh, speaking of: did you get the word about the pattern in the train numbers?

Taylor: No, what pattern?

Charlie: Transfer stations, the places where train lines meet? They're all prime numbers. If the number ends with a 1, there will be a Desperado Club. If it ends in a 9, there will be a Vanquisher.

Calliope: Yow, zoomy!

Taylor: Anything at the other digits? The x3s or x7s?

Charlie: Yes, but no one has figured out any significance to it. There's a maintenance room at all the x3s. It's full of massive pipes and a whole bunch of wiring and locked panels boxes. The wires and boxes are behind a transparent shield that needs a "Maintenance Technician's key" to get into, and no one has found a maintenance tech yet. Haven't heard about anything interesting at the x7s yet.

Taylor: Huh. Anyone found one of those maintenance rooms not at a prime-numbered x3 station?

Charlie: Not that I've heard, but that doesn't mean much. Everyone is sending information to Antonius at Vanquisher and he's compiling it. He's agreed to send out daily updates.

Taylor: That's good to hear. We'll check a couple of the x7s and get back to you if we find anything interesting.

Calliope: Hey, speaking of the Vanquisher guy, did you hear about the map pics? I got image files of text files of a map of the system. Lists of all the lines, what kind of monsters are at each stop and what trains connect where. Just screenshots of text listings, not a real map, which is a pain in the butt. Still, pretty cool, right?

Charlie: Very cool indeed! Wow, that's amazing! Great job, kiddo.

Calliope: Thanks. We sent them to Levi and Vanquisher-dude. He's getting them farmed out to plenty of people so they can be turned into searchable text. There'll be a blast about it sometime soon.

Charlie: Good news. I'll reach out to Antonius and volunteer to do some of the converting. This chat network thing is fantastic; thanks for it.

Taylor: No worries, and that sounds good. Stay safe.

Charlie: You too. Especially you, Calliope. Don't fall off any more ceilings.

"How does he know about that?" Calliope demanded.

Taylor suppressed a smile and looked innocent.

Taylor: Levi, give us the routing for the machine shop?


The machine shop was two hours up the line. It involved three transfers and over two hundred dead monsters of various types. It was enough to push Drew, Calliope, and Moose to level 21, almost catching up to Taylor's 22.

By the time they got off the Violet line they were all covered in blood, viscera, and bone-deep weariness.

"Why can't the hallway bathrooms open to our personal space bathrooms?" Calliope groaned as they stumbled off the train. "I would kill for a run through the magic shower thingie."

"Eh," Drew said as they reached a barn-sized security door. "Could be worse. At least it's not cobwebs."

She glanced over in confusion. "Cobwebs?" She reached out and pushed the button beside the door. There was a woosh of released air as the massive door slid back and then to the side.

Drew dragged on his joint. "Yah. They get in your hair and stick to your face. It's creepy."

Taylor put a hand on his friend's shoulder in sympathy and gave him a light squeeze. "Well, no sign of cobwebs here. Just whatever the hell that is."

The team stood at the open door, looking into the machine shop itself. No one moved to enter.

The machine shop rendered 'enormous' completely inadequate, being probably a kilometer across and two or three long. The ceiling towered up a hundred meters or more. The floor was nowhere flat, instead forming the swooping, curling surface that would result if a natural cavern and a waterslide got hammered on bad tequila and spent a wild and soon-regretted night together. Massive hourglass columns soared here and there, towering from floor to ceiling.

The room was filled with massive...machines? Beings? Monsters? Taylor's brain was having trouble understanding what his eyes were looking at. They varied in size and shape, ranging from a humanoid that wasn't too much larger than a human to a snake ten meters across and forty meters long, formed of hundreds of articulating segments with a fuzzy brown coating that made it impossible to tell if the material underneath was metal, chitin, or something eldritch and nightmare-inducing. Or raspberry jelly, for that matter. Their colors varied through the same wild variety of hues and patterns that might result from giving a toddler fifty buckets of paint, four shots of espresso, and the directive to 'go wild, kid.'

A human machine shop would have been a cuboid and the the machines would have been arranged in neat rows with workspaces between them. The Zree-built workshop seemed to have been made by a group of artisans choosing a convenient patch of ground, plonking down the subject of their interest in the center of it, and then dropping a spray of tools around the thing. They had different spacings and were at different elevations. Ladders had been affixed to the pillars here and there to make it easier to move between the various locations. The ladders were metal, solid and reliable, but they had been stuck to the walls in makeshift fashion—that one had been pressed halfway into the stone of the wall as though into soft clay, the one over there had been glued, and over there one had been taped to the pillar with what looked like several dozen rolls of duct tape.

"What the fuck?" Calliope asked.

"I have no idea," Taylor said.

"Zree made the ship," Drew said. He took a drag on his joint. "They must be able to walk on walls."

"Why...oh. Yeah, right," said Calliope, seeing what he meant. "No need to have a level floor."

"Ladders were retrofitted by the human crew," Taylor said.

"The whole place is redonkulous. That thing over there wouldn't even fit out the door," the teen said, pointing at the massive snake. "Why is it here? Did they build it in place?"

"It must have grown up here," Taylor said with a smile.

"Might actually be true," Drew noted.

"Fair," Taylor said, the smile slipping away.

Moose: MOOSE SMELLS SOMETHING DISGUSTING!

"Same," Calliope said, pinching her nose. "Oh my god, what is that?" She gagged a little, then got herself under control. "I think it's coming from over there." She pointed.

Cautiously, the team moved towards the source of the stench, because apparently the dungeon was the sort of place where you basically had to investigate the nigh-vomit-inducing thing.

On the other side of one of the sequoia-sized pillars was a puddle.

A puddle twenty feet across, so not really a puddle.

A puddle of black, gritty slime, something like the consistency of tapioca.

Tapioca with pustules the size of a person in it.

"Is there something in that?" Taylor asked after they had all stared at the puddle for a minute. He pointed to one of the larger pustules.

Drew leaned in, studying it. "Looks like. Hang on." He aimed his bident at it and extended the weapon out to its maximum length, poking the bubble with the tines.

The bubble burst and a malformed creature slooshed out, looking something like a lead figurine that had been half-melted with a blowtorch, then partially sculpted by a drunk David Cronenberg. It was so weird that everyone stared, trying to get their eyes to parse what they were seeing.

"Is that a conjoined pair of those tentacle wolves?" Calliope asked.

"Yes," Taylor said, the image snapping into comprehensibility once he had the prompt. "Which is disturbing."

"Company," Drew said, his voice suddenly tense. He turned to face their seven o'clock.

Taylor glanced at his map to see four blue dots approaching. He turned quickly, his shotgun appearing in Blue's hands while Orange got both yo-yos.

Four crawlers had somehow made it to within fifty feet of them without being spotted. Three of them were human, one was a nightmare version of an elf: he stood almost seven feet tall, thin as though he had been run through a panini press, with long flowing hair, pointy ears, and a mouth that belonged on a sandworm. It was a round hole lined with inward-pointing teeth made like thick hairs with serrated edges and needle points.

Crawler #11,829,931. "Kurō Priboslav". Level 21.
Priest of Desecration

Crawler #11,829,937. "Naaji Shahram". Level 20.
Ritualist of Nirriti

Crawler #11,829,944. "Octavius Kratos". Level 23.
Gang Lord

Crawler #11,829,944. "Santana Florian". Level 21.
Inquisitional Presbyter

Kuro was Japanese, probably mid-twenties, and wore leather armor that covered everything below the neck. It color-shifted to match the background as he moved, meaning that his head was clearly visible and the rest of him was just a moving distortion. He carried a wavy-bladed dagger in each hand, unsheathed and ready.

Naaji, another twenty-something, had the caramel skin of India and an outfit consisting of layer upon layer of scarves. They hung in loops and folds, they wrapped her limbs, and in aggregate they behaved like a robe. A robe that shifted and moved in ways that owed nothing to their wearer's actions. The scarves ranged in shade from brown to grey to black and were liberally doused in blood.

Octavius was an older man, probably in his forties or fifties. He had olive skin, biker's leathers around which were wrapped thin, blued-steel chains. He should have clinked with every step, yet his movements were utterly silent.

Santana wore a long black robe with a rope belt and a cross painted across his chest and groin. It was painted in blood and covered with flies. His hands were tucked up his voluminous sleeves, concealing whatever weapons he might be holding.

All four of them had player-killer skulls. No less than eight skulls each.

---

Voting is open.

Voting ends when discussion has run its course, but no earlier than May 31, 2024 at 6:30 PM .

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