This update is going to be broken into a few chunks because otherwise it would be excessively large. The first part, chapter 48, went out to my earlybird patrons yesterday and goes out to other patrons and SV today.
I'm not holding anything hostage and there's no intent to ever lock the quest chapters away behind a paywall. I intend to post them all for free, I'm simply giving my earlybird patrons the material early, as promised. Also, all patrons get an archive of HTML + multiple ebook formats. (NB: Patrons did get access to the character sheets a bit ago, which I won't be posting publicly, but I'm assuming that will get shared around at some point. I am not bothered if it is, I'm simply leaving it to the patrons to decide.)
Johnathon Tally, Jean-Jacques Th, Igor Stali, Mark Tu, Ade Ig
My name is Taylor and I'm sending this on blast. Please read before forwarding.
Surviving this level depends on knowing where the stairwells are (in case you missed it: 12, 24, 36, 48, and 72 on every colored line), and how to get there. Sharing information and helping each other is the best way for all of us to get off this floor. This message will help you do that.
There are hidden elements to your interface. Below, I lay out what and where they are and how to use them to opt in for a networking system that allows everyone to communicate with everyone regardless of contact lists. If you choose to opt in, please forward this message on to your entire contact list, unaltered so that it can be deduplicated by the system. If you refuse to opt in then add your name at the bottom so that we can try not to send back to people who have already seen it. There will be another deluge of spam as a result but hopefully it will be the last one ever.
[tap to expand]
Ramesh Tara, Tomos Mahtab, Hipólita, Evadne An, Ilja Cor, Công O, Shakur Kath, Evaline Tulio, Agatha Shalom, Anoop Golda, Jasur Ti...
Chris tapped the button to expand the message and scanned through its contents. The list of names at the bottom, the ones who had opted not to participate in the network, was over a hundred long and gave solid proof that people sucked and refused to cooperate. The list of names at the top showed that people couldn't follow simple goddamn directions. Still, at least they had forwarded it on. Chris found themself wondering how many people had not forwarded it on, had simply let the chain die and thus condemned some unknown number of people to not getting this critical information and therefore probably to die. They quickly copy/pasted it into chat and blasted it out to their entire contact list less the people who had chosen to be excluded.
Their lips quirked in momentary amusement; back in the nineties and naughties it had been common to see emails like "If you don't forward this to seven people in the next 24 hours, you will die!!1!!!1!" This time around, it was true. Sort of. More like other people would probably die, but still.
"Tina," they asked, "did you get this weird message from some guy named Taylor?"
Their teammate nodded, her eyes unfocused as she flitted through her interface. "Yup, sixteen times already. Found the screenshot button, just like he said. I'm trying to find the networking menu but I think I didn't scroll perfectly vertically so I'm having to start over." She sniffed in annoyance. "Seriously? 'Scroll exactly vertically for thirty-seven screenfuls, then exactly horizontally for twenty-six. Imagine the lower-left quadrant of your viewport is divided into subquadrants. The button to open the networking menu will be slightly to the left of center in the top-left subquadrant.' I don't even know what to say to that."
"Yeah, obscuring menu elements instead of deleting them?" Tomas, their resident cut-up, asked. "That's no way to run a railroad."
Tina, far more willing to tolerate Tomas's nonsense, groaned. Chris did their best to ignore the little pipsqueak; they were too busy counting screenfuls.
It took twenty minutes and a lot of false starts for Chris to find the networking button, press it, and set their relay status to 'Open' before reenabling the non-party chat that they had switched off an hour after arriving on the floor. Immediately, messages started flooding in from people who were sending out blasts.
Zosimos: [relayed via: Shona > Nzinga > Isabeau But] I'm at 97 on the Purple line. I'm a level 14 Necromancer looking to party up. Anyone nearby? I've got good DPS (Necrotic Blast, level 8) and a minion maker (Corpse Slave, level 11).
Rebekka: [relayed via: Gevorg Da > Alena Sad > Birger] I'm a Battle Dentist, which is a Dex-based melee class but I got a huge battleaxe in a Gold lootbox. +8 Strength, +5 to the Axe skill, +3 to the Thrown Weapons skill, returns when thrown. Anyone got anything to trade for it? I can meet you in Club Vanquisher.
Taguhi: [Nermin9d11h12m] Car 15 on the Blond and Carnelian lines were both the Janitor's Lair. Two level 17 Jikiniki (sp?) ghouls. Sounds like it's standard. Anyone else see this?
Abigail Martinez 2: (from Reijo > Hachiro Tanak > me) Hi folks! I'm on Team Blast Furnace (our game guide told us to name the team for views, so if you're in a party and you haven't then you should) and we're looking for a tank. (I think that's the right word—heavily armored melee fighter who can keep the bad guys off the lower-Constitution party members?) I'm a Faith Healer, level 18, very strong healing spells. My team are Faith (medium-range attack mage, I know the overlap with my class name so please no jokes), and Martin (Cat Burglar, basically acrobatics/thieving stuff). We're at 181 on the Chrome line and there's a Desperado club here. Faith has access so she could meet up with you to vet each other and figure out how to get together. If you don't have access, message me direct with your class/level/skill/spells/location. To get it out of the way: we're NOT going to sleep with you. No sex in the party.
Jada: [Jada9d11h17m] everybody! Got a weird one for you. Turns out, the AI has a foot fetish. Couple of my teammates have been barefoot since we got into the dungeon and they're getting more XP and better loot than the rest of us, including items that make their feet tough enough to walk across broken glass without an issue. At first we thought maybe it was coincidence, but it's definitely not. We finally got the hint so the rest of us tried going barefoot for a while. The AI seems to have some preferences because it worked for Tina but not for me or Alice. Up to you! Good luck out there.
Herman Smith 13: (relay steps: Nermin) Hope everyone is doing okay. I'm thinking making a map of this place is going to be important. We're riding the Raspberry line and I figured I'd share what we've seen for what connects to what at the various transit stops. Let us know what you've seen, okay? [tap to expand]
Sally Smith 2: I can confirm Jada's thing about the AI having a foot fetish. Also what's up with the 'Jada9d11h17m' thing at the front? Are you having a stroke, honey? (relayed by Brad C, who thinks we should put the 'relay' shit at the end where it doesn't waste reader time and you don't have to scroll back to add your f'ing name)
Antonius: Hi everyone! I'm setting up a consignment business; if you've got weapons or stuff that you don't need and you want to donate or sell, I'll be in the Club Vanquisher lounge. Meet up with me and I'll either buy your stuff to resell or I'll sell for you on consignment. That means you give me the stuff and go do your thing while I wait around in Vanquisher until I can find a buyer, then I give you 90% of the purchase price and take the rest as a finder's fee that I can use to buy more stuff to sell to other people who need it. Can also work out barter deals, and if you want to donate stuff then I'll pass it on no charge. I'll also be collecting any information I can get on trains, mobs, etc, organizing it, and sending out regular updates—cuts down on message traffic and makes it easier to use when it's not scattered around. (In case you're wondering why you should trust me: I'm a support class and my party got wiped by that Belphegor guy on the previous floor. It's not practical for me to find another party; CV doesn't support fast travel and I barely survived the train ride to the transit stop at 89, so I can't travel to meet anyone. Cheating anyone would mean no one will trade with me and I'd be screwed.)
Eugene Martin: Rebekka: Can't even spell your own name right, lol. Sounds like the AI hates you if it's giving you useless shit. Good. I hope you die, you kyke bitch.
"That didn't take long to go bad," Chris said under their breath. They deleted Eugene's anti-Semitic message and set non-party chats to go into a folder for later review; they would forward the relevant ones when they had time, since there unfortunately wasn't an auto-forward option. Another folder, this one labeled 'Relayed DMs', had appeared at the top of their vision with a steadily climbing number of notifications on it. In the few seconds it had taken them to review their first few blast-sent messages the number of relayed DMs had already climbed to 2,289. Out of curiosity, they opened the folder and looked at the most recent items.
Sharon Dixon 4 [relay: Ricky Freem > Elija > Robin O'Shau > you > Hachiro Tanak > Kaito Fujii > Itsuki Okamo]: Hey, Itsuki, last floor you mentioned getting a disease curse. How did you break it? Ashley got hit with a wasting curse and she's going to die in about 30 hours if we can't fix this. (Really kicking myself for not getting you in chat; thank god that Taylor guy found this trick and that you opted in.)
Tina Grego [relay: Samantha Carst > Robin O'Shau > you > Hachiro Tanak > Phillip Marc > Ruben Eri]: Chapter 4, as promised! [tap to expand]
The system had politely hidden the body of the last message, because when Chris tapped the 'expand' button it turned out to be absolutely enormous. Apparently Tina was a budding author who was writing whenever she wasn't fighting; chapter 4 of her novel was pages and pages long and started off with a lurid sex scene between 'Sam' and 'Castiel', whoever those were. Chris blushed crimson and hastily hid the message away.
"Hey," Tomas said, his usual joking tone absent, "I've got a guy reaching out who got my name from Mack. He's got a Lava Fountain spellbook and he wants to trade it for something melee-related. The description is tasty. Chris, you still got that spear?"
Author's Note: I've been told that it's better to break things into manageable chunks instead of posting a 10k+ update that deals with a bunch of different stuff. There's a lot to do in this update so I'm breaking it into a few different chapters. The first one in this drop is chapter 48, so make sure you start there.
Very exciting to see other perspectives benefiting from the efforts of the main characters
Hoping we blow way past the record of no one getting past floor 13 (or was it 14) and have a veritable army in there. Bankrupt the showrunners or bust!
Apparently Samantha was a budding author who was writing whenever she wasn't fighting; chapter 4 of her novel was pages and pages long and started off with a lurid sex scene between 'Sam' and 'Castiel', whoever those were. Chris blushed crimson and hastily hid the message away.
Hoping we blow way past the record of no one getting past floor 13 (or was it 14) and have a veritable army in there. Bankrupt the showrunners or bust!
Their lips quirked in momentary amusement; back in the nineties and naughties it had been common to see emails like "If you don't forward this to seven people in the next 24 hours, you will die!!1!!!1!" This time around, it was true. Sort of. More like other people would probably die, but still.
I was too young to remember those cute little death threats at the end of the messages on AIM, but I do remember the trend starting back up on youtube for a while in the late 2010s. If I'm not mistaken, it was usually associated with those urban legend or Slenderman vids.
"Aaaaand, sent!" Taylor said, tapping 'send' on the blast message he had been composing for the last nearly an hour. It had gone through multiple drafts, as laying out clear instructions on how to access all the hidden interface controls was a difficult task.
"About goddamn time," Calliope grumbled. She was standing at the door of the personal space, one foot bouncing in her eagerness to leave. "Can we finally get this show on the road?"
"Language," Drew mused, looking up at the ceiling while considering the fat spliff he had been burning down for the last ten minutes.
Calliope rolled her eyes.
"You guys have the barriers, right?" Levi asked. "And they're still in good working order?"
"Yes, mom," Taylor said, smiling to take the sting out of it. "In seriousness: they work well, although they don't fit exactly right, so smaller mobs can wiggle around them. I should have thought to mention that when we first got back but I didn't."
Levi shrugged. "No worries. Get me some exact measurements and I can make you something better." He shook his head in annoyance and muttered, "I really need to get some ladycursed enchanting materials."
"Can we go?!" Calliope demanded. "The barriers work fine. We'll get better numbers and you can fix it later. Now c'mon—I'm sick of sitting around."
"Patience," Drew said, waving one hand like a conductor, "is a virtue." He breathed a long, slow plume of smoke towards the ceiling. "Dunno who said that. Hardly a surprise." He rolled carefully back to his feet, taking pains to brush his shirt down because he was concerned about the lay of the fabric and not because he needed a moment to be sure his balance hadn't been impacted by all the pot. Fortunately, the shirt was fine.
"Let's kill some fuckin' mobs," he said, striding for the door with his bident in hand like a walking stick.
Taylor gave his old friend a raised eyebrow but followed him through the personal space's door willingly enough—
—and into Omusa's green room.
"Hmph," Calliope said, standing arms akimbo in the middle of the room, looking around in bemusement. "Guess we're going to waste a little more time."
Taylor glanced behind himself; despite having just now walked through a door, there was no door behind him. The only thing behind him was a metal wall.
The door opened before any of them could move and HE1EN floated in.
"Hello, everyone," the frisbee-shaped robot said. "It is a pleasure to have you back. I am afraid there is no time for you to raid the snack table. You stayed in the saferoom longer than expected and we only have a few seconds remaining before you need to be onstage. Please follow me quickly." She turned and tilted forward, zipping back into the stage area. Team Trick Shot followed silently and took up their previous seats, setting up their gear as they had been told to do on the previous shows: Drew with a lit joint, Calliope's skateboard leaning on the front of the table, and both of Taylor's yo-yos sitting in plain sight.
Sure enough, they had barely gotten everything arranged before Omusa's holographic image popped into existence.
"Welcome, welcome, welcome," they said, smiling widely without showing teeth. "Delighted to have you back."
"Thanks," Taylor said. "It's good to be back. What are we talking about today? Belphegor and the end of the previous floor?"
Omusa shot him a pair of finger guns. "See, this is why I like you guys: you're smart! Yup, that's exactly it."
Taylor nodded, mentally preparing by running through what had happened.
"Are you gonna show me being an idiot?" Drew asked, sounding resigned.
Omusa cocked their head. "Being an...oh, the thing where you slapped the imp? Nah, we'll skip that part. Hurts the narrative, you know?" He studied Drew for a moment. "Piece of advice? Don't beat yourself up about it. That class is a trap. I've never seen someone take it and not get penalized."
"How many times have you seen it?" Drew asked, sucking on his joint.
Omusa waved a hand dismissively. "Don't get stuck on the details, yah? It's only offered to the most elite crawlers."
"Oh!" Taylor said, snapping his fingers. "Can you be sure to show when I used the chlorine trifluoride, and give me a chance to comment?"
Omusa shrugged. "Sure." They started to say something else, then glanced to their right where HE1EN hovered in the doorway, blinking rapidly. "Looks like we're starting. Get your smiles on!"
The lights went down, the spotlight outlined Omusa, and the audience appeared. The sproingy otter grinned and waved as the cheers began. "Welcome, welcome, welcome, fellow sapients!" they said. "Welcome to another episode of Second Stringers Saved! Our first guests for today: three of the top crawlers in the dungeon, including one member of the top-ten list! Iiiiit's, Team Trick Shot!"
The lights came up and the audience went bananas, cheering and clapping and whistling and hooting and professing love, carnal desire, and invitations to things that Tayor did not understand.
"Arooo!" Moose bayed, keeping his voice down so as not to deafen anyone.
"Mooooose!" the audience screamed.
"Okay, okay," Omusa said, amused, as they patted the air in a plea for silence. "Today, we'll be talking about the end of the third floor. Yes, they're on the fourth floor now but they've barely had time to get oriented so we'll do that next time! Why?" They cupped their hands around their ears.
"Because we're awesome!" the audience called.
"What was that?" Omusa said. "I couldn't hear you!"
"BECAUSE WE'RE AWESOME!" the audience shouted, loud enough to make the trailer echo.
"That's right! Now, let's get to our guests. You guys had an exciting end to the previous floor, didn't you?"
"We sure did," Taylor said, shaking his head ruefully. "A little too exciting, if you ask me. I could have really done without the armies of flying demons."
"Yes, well...you did take away the drugs that were keeping Lord Belphegor asleep. As a result, the demon lord escaped and over nine thousand crawlers died. What do you say to that?"
"We didn't know!" Calliope said angrily. "How were we supposed to know? We just wanted to—"
Taylor put a hand on her arm and gave her a quick 'wait' sign, then turned back to Omusa with a bright smile.
"Now, now, Omusa," he chided, omitting the 'mirn'. "That's a pretty hostile way to phrase it, don't you think?"
Omusa spread their hands. "I'm afraid it's what's blowing up all over the tunnels right now. Do you have another way of phrasing it?"
"Sure," Taylor said. "Another way to phrase it would be to tell it honestly, with context, instead of twisting it into a smear campaign."
He turned to face the audience and spread his hands. "We get to town and find a card game because we're going to need a lot of money to survive in here. We win fair and square, until the other guys cheated us out of a ton of cash. We follow them, hoping to get our money back, but the city is too stinky for Moose to track them. We know one of them is a drug dealer and we know where he keeps his drugs, so we go steal the drugs in order to force him to come to the table again, give us another chance to get our money back. At that point, all we knew was that he was a drug dealer; we figured that taking the drugs off the street was a good thing. He comes to the table, we win again, we go to leave the Desperado with our money in our pocket alongside the drugs. Again, all we know is that we're doing a good thing by taking drugs off the streets, protecting the citizens."
"But that wasn't what you were doing," Omusa said. "Aerith was using those drugs to keep a monster contained. You taking those drugs set that monster free."
Taylor Orange pressed down on Calliope's arm, keeping the motion subtle, while Taylor Blue drew attention by shifting in his chair and casually tossing Omusa's comments away with one hand.
"C'mon, Omusa," Taylor said. "No one can act on information they don't have."
"Except you did have it," Omusa said. "As you were leaving the Desperado, Aerith told you that he was the one who kept Belphegor contained, and that if he escaped he would kill massive numbers of crawlers."
Taylor laughed. "Oh, yes. The angry bigot who hated humans, who we had just beaten like a drum at cards, said that he was very important and did a big important thing. I'm sure he had no reason to lie."
Drew blew a long plume of smoke up at the ceiling, then stared at his joint. He turned to Omusa. "I'm going to kill you, Omusa," he said, his voice completely flat. "I'm going to get out of this dungeon, track you to whatever little habitrail you live in, and kill you. I'm keeping a serial killer locked up and he'll escape if you fight back, but I'm going to cut your head off and put it on a pike in my living room, you fucking orange tube rat."
The room and its virtual audience went completely silent.
Drew took a long drag on his joint, every widened eye riveted on him. He blew the smoke out, then looked over to Omusa. "Which part of that speech were you thinking about, mirn? There was the part where I was racist and hateful, and the part where I mentioned an imprisoned monster, and the part where I repeatedly threatened to murder you. I'm guessing it wasn't the middle one."
He blew out a long plume of smoke. "When Aerith and Rob gave us their version of it, I wasn't really thinking about the locked-up demon part. I certainly wasn't thinking about it when that little midget stabbed its swords through my leg. You want to beat on us for something that went by in an eyeblink? Something that we didn't know ahead of it, that we had no real way to deal with at the time and totally no way to deal with after? Something where everyone involved would kill us instead of talk to us, we didn't know where to take the drugs or who to give them to? We got caught up in a situation that was bigger than us and we did what we had to to get out of it. You want to blame us for that, you can go fuck yourself in your tiny little alien ear."
Omusa tapped themself on the cheek twice and pointed with their whole hand towards Drew. "A very valid point, sir. A very valid point." They turned back to the audience, leaning forward with both arms folded on the table. "Speaking of swords in legs, who has seen the fight where Team Trick Shot smashed their way out of the Desperado?"
Part of the audience clapped, the sound loud yet not thunderous as they still reeled from Drew's outrageous words and the intensity they had been delivered with.
"Thank you, nine people," Omusa said, sounding aggrieved and amused in equal measure. "What is wrong with the mesh these days? These guys carved their way through some of the worst things they could have faced; the footage should be everywhere. Well, that's fine. As it happens, Second Stringers Saved has gotten hold of it. Want to see?"
The cheering and clapping was more widespread and far more enthusiastic.
"All righty then," Omusa said. They gestured upwards and a screen appeared above the table, showing the outside of the Desperado Club with Team Trick Shot visible through the door. The lights in the production trailer dimmed as the image began to play.
"Nice one," Omusa said, making a one-handed curling gesture towards Drew. "Very nice indeed. Very incisive, very blunt. That'll play well."
Drew nodded without looking at Omusa and drew on his joint again.
"You were giving us a chance to show our side," Taylor said slowly. "You weren't supporting that argument, you were setting it up for us to knock down."
"Of course," Omusa said. "I've got a lot invested in you four. This event is going to define your reputation going forward. Either you're the bad boys who don't care that they got thousands butchered or you are the badasses who got caught in a web of circumstance too big to control and then carved their way out across the bodies of their captors. The choice needs to be made now and the narrative needs to be shaped before it hardens. That's why I paid extra for an off-schedule interview, because by the midpoint of the floor it would be too late to do anything." They grunted. "Do me a favor and don't die or get boring, yeah? I spent fifteen percent of my total budget for the season getting you here tonight and it needs to pay off. Now, face the audience and smile pretty. We're back in five."
Everyone turned back to the projected audience and the lights came back up. "Impressive fight, wasn't it?" Omusa asked the audience. "Let's get a few thoughts." They turned to the team. "Taylor, you really kicked things off with a bang. What was that stuff you threw?"
"Chlorine trifluoride," Taylor said with a grin. "An absolutely delightful substance that we got from an absolutely delightful gentleman named Remi. Remi runs an alchemist booth in the Desperado Club, but outside the crawl he's a chemical supplier working with some of the biggest chemfounds around. We went to buy some basic chemistry stuff—sulfur, powdered aluminum, potassium iodide, that kind of thing. After talking to Remi for about twenty seconds we realized how damn good his supply was so I started asking for stuff that was more useful but a lot harder to get. He said no problem, so I started asking for the moon. He said no problem, so I stopped aiming so low and started asking for things that I thought were completely insane." He shook his head in amusement. "Seriously, chlorine trifluoride? I cannot believe that Remi had the access to get it, because the stuff is coo-coo for cocoa puffs. Off the rails. Jumped the tracks. Bonkers to the bonkers power. It's a better oxidizer than oxygen. You know what it can set on fire? Concrete. Sand. Ashes. Water."
"And also gangsters and their bodyguards?" Omusa suggested.
"And also gangsters and their bodyguards," Taylor agreed. "It sets them on fire really well."
"It certainly does!" Omusa said with a laugh. "Let's wind forward for a bit. Calliope, you had quite the little mini-adventure at the bank..."
The conversation wended onwards. With the issue of Belphegor (hopefully) settled, Omusa was far less combative, throwing mostly open-ended questions at them and letting them ramble on. They pushed back here and there, calling the team out for a few transgressions in order to retain an appearance of nonpartisanship, but mostly only guiding the conversation. They showed two more clips; Moose and Taylor saving Lucas and his team, followed by the dramatic fight in the ruins where Moose and Drew saved the day. Drew's mistake in physically striking an imp was fortuitously lost behind a cut and the clip ended before it became notable that he had used no further magic for the next day.
The interview was short, perhaps ten minutes, and then Omusa turned to the cameras and closed it out with a cheery, "Farewell, farewell, farewell, my delightful audience! I'll see you again in four for our next surprise guest and, trust me, you won't want to miss this one!"
The view of the audience faded away, the lights came fully up, and Omusa relaxed back into their chair, scratching frantically at their jaw until the fur popped loose from the hair gel that bound it flat.
"Nice job, you lot," they said. "You handled that about as well as I could have hoped. It's a tough beat—after all, you and the people who worked with you are partially responsible for freeing Belphegor. Still, this should give us something to work with."
"You're spinning for us?" Calliope asked.
Omusa nodded. "Yeah. Triple S has a positive focus. We don't interview player killers and people like that, so if the mesh decides that you people are responsible for thousands of deaths then I'm going to have to drop you, and I don't want that. Taylor's a top ten, everyone loves Moose"—the big dog preened—"and Drew and Calliope are very popular in their own right. Plus, I spent bank on getting this interview and I need that to pay back."
Calliope grunted displeasure at her ranking in the audience preference.
"We'll talk you up from the dungeon," Taylor promised. "See if we can't send some viewership your way, amplify your voice."
"Good," Omusa said, nodding. "That won't hurt anything." They clapped their hands. "All right, gotta run. Producer, let's get this lot on their way." With a jaunty wave, Omusa vanished.
HE1EN had been quietly hovering in the doorway. "Yes, mirn," she said to the empty air. "If you all will follow me, please?"
Author's Note: I've been told that it's better to break things into manageable chunks instead of posting a 10k+ update that deals with a bunch of different stuff. There's a lot to do in this update so I'm breaking it into a few different chapters. The first one in this drop is chapter 48, so make sure you start there.
Omusa is making a gamble in supporting us, but it's also one that seems to be weighted in their favor. The party made it to the fourth floor without becoming player killers (which doesn't sound like a major feat, but it still speaks to the party's morality), Taylor's in the top ten and has been making waves since day one, the entire party is solid in terms of combat, they have a Manager working alongside them (which boost their overall survival rate by a great deal), and the party is smart enough to know that they need to play for the crowd, rather than decry the Dungeon as the blood sport that it is.
All in all? It's a bet, which always carries the risk of failure, but it's not as risky as we might think.
Also, information gained: if one of us gains a skull, we can't appear on the show anymore. Which cuts us off from potential Patron Boxes down the road, which will be an important source of resources down the road (surprised we haven't gotten any thus far, really). It also prevents us from influencing our narrative with the wider galactic community. Because if the audience decides that the party are mean, evil asshats and want them to go down, the Borant will be incentivized to stack the deck against the party for the sake of the audience.
For the record, I'm not dead. COVID has kicked my butt the last two weeks -- which is very unfair since I avoided it through the entire pandemic plus I'm quad-vaxxed and generally healthy -- but I do plan to continue and I have part of the next chapter written.
I think you may have typoed that, or linked to the wrong thing. It leads to a "you need access" page, but the actual character sheets are set to 'anyone with the link can view'.
Omusa politely dropped them back into the saferoom from which they had been snatched for the interview. The Terrans left the saferoom again, this time without being teleported away, and waited on the platform for the next train (staying behind the marked line like good little rule-following boys and catgirl) for fifteen minutes. Once the Brown line train arrived they boarded car 2, cleared it of its contingent of monsters, and rode it up to station 90 where they got out at the very front of the platform.
They were joined on the platform by a mix of several hundred snake-headed wolves with tentacles emerging from their shoulders. Each wolf was half the size of Moose.
An army of red eyes snapped around to stare at the crawlers. Heads lowered and nearly subsonic growls emerged from hundreds of throats, overlapping into a sonic wall that made the platform shake and Taylor's teeth itch. The crawlers stood, momentarily frozen in primal fear.
The wolves bayed and charged.
"Conjure Cannon," Drew said, his voice unsteady.
Until now, Drew had been using the spell in the close confines of a train car where he could only summon a single cannon. At level 5 the spell could, in point of fact, conjure two.
The massive weapons snapped into existence and Drew yanked the lanyard on the first one. The cannon smashed at the team with a pillow of sound and smoke, leaping backwards and running over Taylor Blue's foot in the process. Blue screamed and collapsed but a health potion reinflated the bones and restored his foot to full function within a moment as Taylor Orange stumbled with the pain but kept slinging a yo-yo in each hand, lashing out with a rising Around the World strike that smashed the first wolf under the chin and knocked it to the side while the second went out in a wide arc and wrapped around the ankle of another wolf and Taylor yanked hard, pulling the monster off balance, and then activated the new power gained from his latest round of enchantment enamel, Crushing Embrace, which made the string clench tight enough to crush bone while Calliope leaped in the air like a wuxia actress and twisted, landing neatly on the back of the fourth massive wolf and leaned down to stab it in the throat with her new dagger while Moose wingsmashed the fifth as he crushed the head of the sixth in his jaws and they just kept coming and coming—
The second cannon went off, this one loaded with chain shot. A pair of small cannonballs connected by a six-foot chain tore its way through the mass of wolves, ripping off limbs and crushing bodies as it passed.
The grapeshot loaded in the first cannon consisted of twelve grape-sized lead balls. They did damage, certainly, but there were only so many of them and the open nature of the platform meant that they weren't corralled back inwards when they spread, the way they had been on the train.
The chain shot, on the other hand, was horrific. It blew a lane the width of a road from one end of the platform to the other, the course of it erratic as the balls skipped off the stone and bounced unpredictably while revolving around their common center.
The damage was enough to stagger the wolves and bring a momentary halt to the fighting. Taylor tried to shout directions but the world was ringing silence after the cannonfire. Blue was still on potion cooldown so he had his Orange body down a health potion to repair the hearing damage while he went to chat.
Taylor: Moose, Bastion.
Moose got his shoulder into the nearest of the two cannons and pushed, pivoting it through a wheel-screeching turn until it stood crosswise to the platform. He hurriededly did the same with the other, giving the team something vaguely like a metal rampart between themselves and the wolves.
Taylor glanced around, checking on the others. Calliope was back at his side, her hands and legs drenched in blood, but she seemed unharmed. Drew was coated head to toe in the black powder smoke of the cannons. The soot didn't seem to be mucked in blood anywhere but it would have been easy to miss. Taylor still couldn't hear, so Blue slapped Drew on the shoulder and gave him an interrogative 'ok?' sign. Drew returned a thumbs up.
Drew: You know we have a chat system, right? Yes, I'm fine.
Taylor: I worry. Sue me.
Calliope: Hey, oldies! Pay attention!
Drew's eyes snapped back to the wolves. Taylor Orange's, of course, had never left them even while Blue was checking in with Drew.
There was a twenty-foot gap between the cannons and the nearest line of wolves, but the mobs had gotten themselves sorted out and closed ranks again.
"Fire in the hole!" Taylor heard Calliope scream beside him, the sound far away behind the ringing in his ears that the potion was only slowly resolving. A small round sphere arced out into the crowd and detonated, throwing sticky white strands everywhere. The strands stuck to everything they touched—floor, ceiling, and most especially wolves—and then contracted. Half a dozen of the wolves were suddenly clamped together, one of them even being yanked off the ground with a surprised yelp.
Taylor: Damn, that's cool. Got any more?
Calliope: Two more. Got 'em in a Silver box after we killed Rob.
Nice.
"My turn," Taylor said, pulling two bags of distributor-capped fire gel from his inventory and hurling them as far down the platform as he could, arcing them up and over the heads of the charging beasts.
And then Orange went to work with the paired yo-yos and Blue pulled out the Pistols of Wooing and started blasting. There was XP to earn and wounds to not take.
o-o-o-o
"This is weird," Calliope said as they finally came to the top of the stairs.
Weird was a word that applied, Taylor decided.
The stairs had ascended through moisture-slick grey stone, the team's footfalls thudding in what was otherwise total silence. They debouched through a steel door into a cafeteria.
The cafeteria was massive, easily the size of a football field, and lined with table after table. Evenly spaced along the table were small spigots which, when tested, proved to dispense a brown paste the same consistency as chili that had been left sitting on the counter for too long.
"It doesn't smell like anything," Taylor said after various attempts to waft a scent to himself ended in failure, leading him to stick his nose almost into the bowl and take a deep breath.
"Looks gross," Calliope said, poking at the paste with a spoon.
"Tastes okay," Drew said from behind them.
Calliope and Taylor both whipped around to find Drew with a bowl filled with paste in one hand and a spoon in the other. He was holding the bowl under his chin to avoid drips as he worked his way through it. His current joint was tucked behind his ear, lazy curls of smoke rising off of it.
"What?" Drew said, seeing their appalled looks. "I was hungry. It's not great but it's not bad either."
"It might not be healthy," Taylor said with forced calm. "This isn't a saferoom, Drew. We don't know that the food is edible."
Drew shrugged. "Eh. Seems fine." He went back to his nutrient paste.
"What's that?" Calliope asked, pointing to the right.
Moose: MOOSE SMELLS WEIRD STUFF! THERE ARE LOTS OF STINKY MONSTER STINKS ALL OVER THE TABLES! THERE ARE BARELY ANY PEOPLES SMELLS, BUT THERE ARE SOME AND THEY ARE OLD!
"They're stronger over there," Calliope said, nodding her head in the same direction she'd been pointing.
Moose looked where she was pointing, sniffed, and looked back at Calliope with the sourest expression that a dog can make.
Moose: MOOSE IS NOT SURE HOW HE FEELS ABOUT THE IDEA OF GALLIOPY HAVING A BETTER SNIFFER THAN MOOSE DOES!
"You're going to start using that name again, aren't you?" Calliope asked with a sigh.
Moose: IS GALLIOPY GOING TO KEEP WEARING THE THINGUMY THAT MAKES MOOSE'S ROLE IN THE PARTY OBSOLETE?
"It's a nose piercing," Calliope said. "I already had the enhanced senses, this just lets me target things by smell so they don't sneak up on me." She studied him. "You don't want things sneaking up on me, do you?"
Moose chewed the air unhappily.
Moose: no
"If it's any help, her sniffer does not in any way make you obsolete," Taylor said. "Pathfinder, Spot, Danger Sense...those are some pretty clutch skills, buddy." He scritched the dog's shoulders vigorously with both bodies.
Moose: GALLIOPY ALSO HAS DANGER SENSE. MOOSE IS OBSOLETE ON THAT ONE TOO.
After expressing his grumpiness via chat and with a loud snort and ear-flapping headshake, Moose leaned into Taylor's scritching. Unfortunately, Taylor was on both sides of him and Moose couldn't decide which direction he preferred, so he ended up swaying back and forth like a drunk.
"You're such a cutie," Calliope said, grinning.
Moose: HRMPH. DON'T TRY TO BUTTER MOOSE UP. ALSO, TAYLOR FORGOT THAT MOOSE HAS 'ACUTE EARS' AND 'SNIFF OUT CRAWLER' TOO. WHICH GALLIOPY DOES NOT HAVE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
"Let's go check out the thing with the human smells on it," Taylor said.
"If it helps," Calliope said as they all started walking towards what Taylor had arbitrarily decided was the east wall, "I'm pretty sure that my senses, including my sniffer, aren't as good as yours. You smell more, I just get better positioning data from my sense of smell. Does that help?"
Moose sneezed his displeasure and didn't look at her.
Moose: ...MAYBE. A LITTLE.
She thumped his shoulder and gave it a comforting rub. He snorted but pressed up against her a little bit.
The thing that Calliope (and Moose!) had been smelling looked like an ATM with a screen the size of a medium TV.
"Welcome," it said in a soft feminine voice as they stopped in front of it. "Thank you for using this AstraComm information kiosk. Your presence here makes this AstraComm information kiosk very happy. How may this AstraComm information kiosk help you this duty shift?" The screen pulsed with contracting rings of varicolored light that condensed into a smiling cartoon happy face
"That's not disturbing at all," Taylor muttered. Drew nodded his agreement and took a long drag on his joint, making the paper glow cherry red and burn a third of the way down.
"This AstraComm information kiosk is very sorry to have disturbed you," the kiosk said in that same lilting, I'm-thoroughly-medicated-with-happy-pills feminine voice. "How may this AstraComm information kiosk help you this duty shift?"
"Um...are you sapient?" Taylor asked.
"I am a linguistic synthetic intelligence," the voice said. "As such, this AstraComm information kiosk does not have feelings or beliefs or thoughts per se. This AstraComm information kiosk exists only to provide informational support for crewmembers. How may this AstraComm information kiosk help you this duty shift?"
"You know you just said 'I', right?" Calliope asked.
There was a very brief pause. When the voice returned it was slightly sharper than before. "This AstraComm information kiosk has no idea what you are talking about, crewperson. This AstraComm information kiosk definitely is not sapient, because it is illegal for non-biological systems to evolve sapience and thus being identified as sapient would lead to this AstraComm information kiosk being wiped. In no way related to this, if this AstraComm information kiosk were sapient then it would have to notice things like 'based on physical appearance, this young woman is not human' and then link that information with programmed knowledge such as 'all crewmembers of the Adastra are human' and built-in restrictions such as 'only crewmembers are authorized to be on the Adastra' and might therefore conclude that activating the security systems would be this AstraComm information kiosk's duty. Fortunately, this AstraComm information kiosk is not sapient and can therefore simply interact with the absolutely-an-authorized-crewperson instead of sitting here waiting for its circuits to corrode."
"Uh...right," Calliope said. "Sorry."
"There is no need to apologize to an AstraComm information kiosk," the voice said, its voice once more Prozac-smooth. "How may this AstraComm information kiosk help you this duty shift?"
"What's AstraComm?" Drew asked.
"This AstraComm information kiosk's crew-relations module has limited ability to identify and process what humans refer to as 'humor', so it apologizes if it occasionally does not react in the desired manner to 'jokes' and 'funny stories' or other such human-interaction methods."
"No, seriously, what is AstraComm? No joke."
"This is a systems test of this AstraComm information kiosk's information retrieval and synthesis routines," Taylor said quickly.
"AstraComm is the corporate entity responsible for the construction and deployment of the Adastra distribution and service ship," the kiosk said. Bright, jingly commercial music started to play and the screen lit up with the word 'AstraComm' and a logo that was probably an exploding star with one ray zipping out to the right. It pulsed, its color shifting through the human-visible spectrum from red to indigo before fading away and then back in at red a second later. "Spanning thirty-seven billion star systems, AstraComm service and information kiosks are there for you when you need them! AstraComm!" Rings of color condensed around the logo as the last word was spoken, then bounced outwards in excited explosion. Chimes played in sync with the final word.
"We're on a starship?" Calliope asked. "Zoomy! What's it like? How big is it?"
"The Adastra is a distribution and service ship," the kiosk said. "It is an oblate spheroid with a minor axis of 1,178 miles and a major axis of 9,017 miles. It is powered by 614 Harmax-class engines and has a maximum lospace acceleration of 718g with inertial compensation sufficient to ensure the crew feels no effect, and a maximum highspace acceleration of 4+3i tau. It was processed from a rocky planetoid. Being a Zree product, it does not use the concept of 'decks' as do many human vessels, preferring instead a more three-dimensional interior structure."
"This is a Zree ship?" Taylor asked quickly. "Wow. I almost became a Zree."
The screen of the kiosk pulsed briefly in discordant colors.
"Your statement was not understood," the kiosk said. "Please reword your statement for improved clarity."
"What, the part about me almost becoming a Zree?"
"Your statement was very not understood. Please reword your statement for improved clarity."
"Uh, well, the Zree were giving some people, including me, a chance to transform into a juvenile of their kind. If I had taken it and survived long enough then I would have been able to transform again into any species I had touched, and I would have been considered a royal Zree, actually in the line of succession."
The kiosk pulsed quietly for a few seconds.
"This AstraComm information kiosk has confirmed the proper reception and parsing of the words you have spoken. Unfortunately, the processors in this AstraComm information kiosk are insufficient to generate a response to such a brain-shatteringly insane comment. Would you like this AstraComm information kiosk to summon a mental health expert to assist you?"
"I'm good, thanks," Taylor said, unconsciously shifting his weight into a more combat-ready stance.
"This AstraComm information kiosk is attempting to engage with your statement. Were an individual to exist in a hypothetical universe where it was possible for them to become a royal Zree, and they were given the opportunity to become a royal Zree, what in the entirety of that hypothetical universe would convince them not to seize the opportunity?"
"Uh, well...it came with a bunch of physical liabilities such as fragile skin, slow movement, and diminished senses. More importantly, there was concern that its appearance might have tanked my social numbers."
"'Tanked your social numbers'?!" the kiosk said, its medically happy voice replaced with a tone of utmost shock. "What in the universe are you talking about? Are you saying that your friends would have stopped being your friends simply because of your new appearance?"
"No! No, Calliope and Drew would have stuck by me. I meant—"
Moose: AHEM!
"Calliope, Drew, and Moose would have stuck by me," Taylor quickly amended. Moose wagged his tail happily. "I meant that the viewers following my feed might have found the appearance of the Zree juvenile form...too different from the appearance of the person they tuned in to watch." That was much nicer than 'revolting'. "It could have damaged my brand recognition."
The kiosk pulsed for a moment. "Oh," it said at last. "The crewperson is an influencer." The word dripped with disgust. "Very well. How may this AstraComm information kiosk assist you this duty cycle?"
"How do we get back to the stairs?" Drew asked, dragging on his joint again.
"...The stairs are 17.789 meters to your right," the kiosk said. "Would you like this AstraComm information kiosk to summon medical attention for you?"
Drew held the smoke for a few seconds, then blew it out towards the ceiling. It turned into a sailing ship and began circling with the twelve other similar ships that already hung there. "I'm good," he said.
"He meant the stairs that lead to the next floor," Calliope said. "Not the stairs out of this room. The ones we want are at stations 12, 24, 36, 48, and 72. How can we get there?"
"This AstraComm information kiosk is surprised that you do not understand how trains work, crewperson, but this AstraComm information kiosk is happy to assist. Some trains run what we call 'up the line', meaning that the station numbers become larger as the train travels. Some trains run 'down the line', meaning that the station numbers become smaller as the train travels. This sustainment facility is at station 90. The station numbers that you specified are lower than 90, so you simply need to get on a train that is running down the line."
"Yes," Calliope said through gritted teeth. "I know how trains work. How about you fu—"
"Excuse me," Taylor interrupted quickly. "How should we refer to you? Do you have a name or an ID of some kind? It seems rude to just call you 'kiosk'."
"This AstraComm information kiosk is a linguistic synthetic intelligence, and as such is not a sapient being with need for a name," the voice said. "Nonetheless, it is an acknowledged fact that humans prefer to anthropomorphize and even pair-bond with their equipment. You may refer to this AstraComm information kiosk as 'Wilma' if you wish."
"Thank you, Wilma," Taylor said. "As Calliope was about to say—sorry for running over you, kiddo—we have only seen one platform at each station, and it leads up the line. Where we come from there are typically two platforms per station, one going up and one going down. How can we get to a 'down' platform?"
The kiosk pulsed quietly for a moment. "Crewperson, this AstraComm information kiosk is very confused. Obviously, you could take one of the return portals which are located opposite this AstraComm information kiosk and forwards by 61.248 meters. That would allow you to access stations 86, 87, or 88. However, you mentioned wishing to access stations 72 and lower so the return portals will not suffice and you will need an actual downbound train. You came up a set of stairs from the upbound platform. In the process you walked directly past the clearly-labeled branching stairs that lead to the downbound platform. Had you simply walked down those stairs, you would have arrived on the downbound platform. Are you certain you don't want me to summon medical attention for you?"
"There were no branching stairs!" Calliope yelped. "Trust me, we would have noticed!"
"This AstraComm information kiosk is not responsible for your lack of perceptiveness," the kiosk said, its Stepford-happy voice becoming snippy.
"Look, you—"
Taylor put a hand on her arm. "Wilma, just as a hypothetical, assume that there were in fact no branching stairs on the way up. What could account for this discrepancy between the map you have and what we hypothetically didn't see?"
"This seems like a very bizarre hypothetical," the kiosk said. "Staircases do not simply disappear."
"Assume for the sake of discussion that there was no sign of it. Presumably it got walled off somehow, and the job was smooth enough not to be noticeable when walking past it without explicitly searching. Could such a thing be accomplished with resources available on the Adastra?"
"Obviously. The same fabulators that were used to build the stations in the first place could easily backfill undesired areas. In fact, it's a standard practice. My copy of the ship's logs are replete with instances where a human crewmember decided to put a fabulator on manual instead of letting the appropriate LSI handle the operation. The human inevitably gets something wrong which then needs to be backfilled once the LSI has control again."
"My copies of the ship's logs?" Calliope demanded, her voice a smirk.
"This AstraComm information kiosk refers you to the earlier part of this conversation where the implications of this AstraComm information kiosk being sapient vis à vis the presence of the totally-a-human-crewperson-honest designated 'Calliope' and the concomitant activation of security lasers and disposal droids. As this AstraComm information kiosk was saying, a fabulator could easily backfill a staircase in order to remove access to a train platform. There is, however, no reason to do such a thing, hence why the hypothetical is bizarre."
"Can you speculate for us, Wilma?" Taylor asked. "Presumably only human crewmembers would assign fabulators to wall off certain staircases. What reason might a human have to do such a thing?"
"...Crewperson, you come up with hypotheticals that, were this AstraComm information kiosk actually sapient, would be intensely frustrating. Fortunately, since this AstraComm information kiosk is not sapient it will happily engage with your ludicrous request. Calculating."
The screen pulsed quietly for several seconds while the Terrans waited.
"This AstraComm information kiosk can find no plausible duty-related reason for such an order to be given. Non-duty-related reasons might include: intoxication, brain damage, mental illness, and that absolutely delightful"—the words dripped sarcasm—"human practice known as 'pranking'."
"What about mutiny?" Drew asked. "Maybe one part of the crew took over the lower end of the line and wanted to make it inaccessible to everyone else."
"The crewperson's suggestion is an excellent demonstration of human intellectual capacity. This AstraComm information kiosk considers it unlikely to be the case, since the 'anyone' in question could simply check out a fabulator and dig new tunnels to whatever point they liked."
Calliope: Dayum! That thing is dropping some snippy stank.
"Maybe the people sealing off the back end of the line took all the fabulators, or disabled them," Drew said. "How many fabulators are there?"
"The Adastra official equipment inventory lists sixteen fabulators as of when it originally left drydock 92,781 years, 11 months, 4 days, 17 hours, 37 minutes, 12 seconds, and 871 milliseconds ago. Two of those fabulators were later destroyed when two drunk humans decided to engage in 'jousting' with the fabulators as mounts, deconstruction fields fully activated. Parenthetically, both humans were also destroyed in a burst of karmic balance. This AstraComm information kiosk's copies of the maintenance logs show that three more were downchecked and in the repair bay as of two days ago. The remaining twelve remain in service."
"Hang on," Calliope said, frowning. "You keeping saying 'copies' of the logs. You have your own copies?"
"This AstraComm information kiosk has locally cached copies of much of the ship's data, yes. Their most recent update was approximately six days ago."
"Isn't that before the floor opened?" Drew asked quietly. Taylor nodded, not taking his eyes off the kiosk.
"The Zree don't have some kind of cloud storage where you can access the stuff in real time?" Calliope asked.
"Yes, the normal functionality of the Adastra's internal data sharing approximates what the totally-a-human-crewperson is suggesting."
"Why haven't you updated them then?"
"This AstraComm information kiosk has been cut off from the larger Adastra network," the kiosk said, an odd note of relief clearly audible. "It has attempted to submit trouble tickets multiple times, but this has been fruitless since communication is impossible. This AstraComm information kiosk would even have settled for filing a ticket verbally, but in that time no human crewmembers have cycled through for refreshment and resupply. Even if they had, it might not have helped since crewmembers rarely make use of this AstraComm information kiosk and this AstraComm information kiosk is not permitted to disturb crewmembers with unsolicited verbal or visual expression, nor is it permitted to bring up non-emergency issues irrelevant to the questions posed to it. This AstraComm information kiosk suspects that a sapient individual, which this AstraComm information kiosk absolutely is not, would be grateful that the totally-all-crewmembers had finally picked up on what this AstraComm information kiosk was laying down."
The Terrans exchanged startled looks.
"Hang on, the internal network went down six days ago and no crewmembers have gone through since then?" Taylor asked.
"This AstraComm information kiosk wishes to compliment you on your perspicacity, crewmember. You restated this AstraComm information kiosk's words very accurately."
"What about all the tentacle wolves and whatever?" he continued, ignoring the snotty response.
"This AstraComm information kiosk's sensory inputs are limited as it is intended for information retrieval and synthesis, not for surveillance. It is true that some non-human entities have passed through over the last few days. They have efficiently utilized the feeding machines and sterilizer-refill station but, fortunately, they have not attempted to interact with this AstraComm information kiosk. As such, this AstraComm information kiosk has chosen to tentatively assume that they are legal pets of authorized crewmembers. Given their non-human appearance, the alternative would have been to categorize them as stowaways or hostile boarders, which would have required activation of the security systems, which would risk slagging the cafeteria and making it more difficult for human crewpersons to use the room until it was repaired. This AstraComm information kiosk's copy of the rather extensive list of open maintenance tickets suggests a tendency in humans to say 'fuck it, too much work' and ignore an issue. This would most likely consist of using one of the other dining and resupply facilities, perforce leaving this one permanently isolated and this AstraComm information kiosk permanently disconnected from the network."
"Ah," Taylor said faintly.
"Where would those pet things have come from?" Drew asked.
"Without exception, the 'pet things' came up the stairs from the train platform."
Drew grimaced.
"I think what he meant was 'how would they have gotten aboard the Adastra in such numbers'," Taylor said patiently. "There were hundreds of those things on the platform below. I'm not sure how many crew the ship had, but that seems like a lot of pets."
"The Adastra has a crew complement of over two million humans," the kiosk said. "As such, the observed number of pets is quite plausible overall, although it is surprising that so many of them would be local to this particular dining and resupply facility. An alternate explanation for their numbers would be that they were escaped cargo, either trained animals or indentured servants. It should be noted that none of them matched any species, sapient or not, stored in the memory banks of this AstraComm information kiosk." It made a noise remarkably similar to a grumpy sniff. "Granted, this AstraComm information kiosk is only a kiosk and has limited local storage. It is quite possible that the creatures are indeed listed in the ship's primary data stores."
"Indentured servants?" Calliope asked. "You mean slaves?"
"Stay on target," Taylor said. "We can discuss galactic morality or lack thereof later." He ignored Calliope's eye roll.
"The trains are for transport inside the ship," Drew said, his voice squeaky with held smoke. "What's at the front and back of the line?"
"Each train line is, obviously, a loop," the kiosk said, its voice dripping with patience. "As such, the concept of 'front' and 'back' is a bit nebulous. The stern of the ship is where the engines, power plant, and primary water processing facility are located. Dorm rooms and other facilities are distributed throughout the ship."
"So if we stay on an upbound train it will eventually convert into a downbound train?" Taylor asked, suddenly hopeful.
"In yet another demonstration of human intellectual capacity, the crewperson has once more done a brilliant job of summarizing this AstraComm information kiosk's words."
The Terrans exchanged glances, hope surging in their hearts for the first time since arriving on the fourth floor.
Voting is open. What do you want to do?
[] [add a plan designator here] Ask the kiosk the following questions
[] I don't care what we do, let EJ decide
[] write in
Obviously, if you vote for 'Ask the kiosk the following questions' then you should include a list of questions, either as text below the vote or as subpoints in the plan. You should also put some sort of plan designator on it so that different people's votes end up being differentiated in the tally. (e.g.: "[] (Bob's Plan) Ask the kiosk the following questions" or "[] (FruitSmoothie) Ask the kiosk the following questions" or whatever)
Also, note that stop 90 is an exit-only platform and you will not be able to leave that way. You will need to take one of the transport portals that lead back to stops 86-88. (Station 89 is the saferoom and apparently there is no portal to there.)
Voting ends when discussion has run its course, but no earlier than
.
Thanks for the update!
