Metroid V Quest

[Leila Hann]

[X] Scan the holodisplays
[X] Go through the door on the right.

...

The first level of terraced platforms form a ring around the elevator, two annuli of blue light ringing their floor and ceiling with a dizzying array of images and text. Turning around in place on the platform, you let your scan visor make sense of the data.

Images and text descriptions of numerous biological systems, both natural and synthetic, of diverse origins. Recognized structures include geemer, rockleech, holtz, autoad, namihe, and ripper organ systems, as well as many unknowns. Text consists largely of genetic and epigenetic ciphers, as well as technical shorthand descriptions of gene-modding and cybernetic augmentation procedures.

Click to shrink...

This hologram appears to be displaying footage from at least seven remote observation sites, overlaid on top of one another according to some unknown sorting algorithm. Numerous organisms and biomechanoid constructs appear to be interacting with one another in a series of diverse synthetic environments.

Click to shrink...

After looking around for danger, and finding none, you leap down onto the lower platforms and inspect the smaller holoscreens. These ones are far less confusing, displaying only a small block of text each. You can even make out some of the words without the help of your scan visor; its not a dialect you've seen before, but you recognize at least most of the letters.

Our facilities are at your disposal, Lords, Ladies, and vassals. The dreams given shape and detail here assume life; the seeds drawn from the stomachs above, and planted in the wombs below. The spawn of our deep vulvae shall be yours, in form, in function, and in nature, and from this body arise to your service beyond the dead silence.

Click to shrink...

You remember the "dead silence" from your lessons, as a girl growing up on Zebes. In some archaic chozo writings, it was a euphemism for space.

You will have doubtless, Lords and Ladies, perused the living library above. Our cold storage includes samples of all that you have beheld, and many others as well. You have only to ask for a form to fit a needed function, or the function for a given form, and our nuclear self - housed here in our widest skull - will reply.

Click to shrink...

ADSTRZ01MBW3QTZ01MBGFJRQSWj53423AFSG6WZ01MBJURGRE

Click to shrink...

You frown at the final, flickering display. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell how long its been like that. After taking one last look around for any sign of supplies or enemies, you leap onto the small platform above the error message and open the iris door.

​

Another pristine room, though this one is a bit more cluttered. Two transparent display cases, one beneath the entrance platform below your feet, and another filling the middle of the room. The former is large enough for a human-sized creature. The latter could easily hold an elephant. There is a tall, complicated support frame in the larger tank, like an intricate trellis for a climbing plant.

There are two small holodisplays in the corner, and two doors down below. One blocked off by another force field.


GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.


...

ENERGY: 155/200

MISSILES: 8/15​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Scan holodisplays.

Click to shrink...

....

Growth chambers empty. Materials loaded for conventional biotic construct. Input genome and any requisite exotic materials to begin.

Click to shrink...

Security failure. Unsubordinated organisms detected. For your own safety, venture not beyond this facility unarmored.

Click to shrink...

 

[Leila Hann]

[X] Go through the bottom left door.

...


Through the bottom left door is another tall room with terraced platforms. There are also, in this case, a series of regular handholds on the walls, going up and down through openings in the platforms. You remember the climbing-walls of Zebes, and how much trouble you had had with them as a child, with your human musculature made for running rather than climbing. The next set of gene augs you had received, at age six, had really been a game changer.

​

There are three more holograms in the room. The central platform above you is sealed off by force fields, as is the opening in the floor down below. However, there are two other doors. One is covered in a red blast shield. The other in an encrustation of live, carbon-bendezium composite coral. In the center of the encrustation, a huge, gelatinous eyeball peers out from its bivalve-like lids, surveying the room.

You've seen these before. Gadora. An eye that sees through cloaks, through armor, and through minds. Armor that repels all but the heaviest of weapons. When its gaze turns disapproving, a beam of white hot plasma is forthcoming.

Before you can even react to the Gadora, it swivels its molten, jelly-like eye up toward you, narrowing as it peers through the platform you're standing on and focuses on the intruder....

...then, it folds itself up and retracts into the wall, leaving a simple iris door. The distress signal is coming from beyond it.
​

​

GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.


...

ENERGY: 155/200

MISSILES: 8/15​

 

[Leila Hann]

ERRORFGSSD112Z01MB

Click to shrink...

Template storage. Our most popular offspring, free for reexamination, modification, and replication.

Click to shrink...

The Patrician.

Click to shrink...

You approach the blast-shielded door, with the "template storage" legend. It does not appear to respond; you'll need a missile to remove the shield the hard way.

The Gadora-guarded door, labeled "the patrician," opens on its own accord as soon as you reach the lower part of the room, however. Beyond it, you see thick red vapor, and a forest of articulated tubes or pipes thicker than you are.

​

GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.


...

ENERGY: 155/200

MISSILES: 8/15

 

[Leila Hann]

Deciding not to bother with the blast door just yet, you turn around and scan the ominous crimson vapors that rise behind the other.

A chemical evaporative cooling agent rises from below, and supports a cloud of suspended microorganisms. These aeroplanktonic microbes are clearly synthetic, but do not appear to possess any high-energy or corrosive systems that could damage your suit.

Click to shrink...

The vapor condenses against your visor as you enter, throwing the world into a shimmering, red, liquid relief. Your helmet systems immediately wipe it clean, but its a constant battle. The walls are made of layer upon layer of overlapping annulated pipes, a solid wall of metal arteries and veins. Below you, bonelike scaffolds extend from the veiny walls, dangling more metal tubules below themselves. Cautiously, you descend into the bloody mist. One leap downward after the next.

The shaft leads into the top of a long, tube-shaped corridor, likewise made of glistening capillaries. Below the platform on which you stand, a bubbling sea of yellow-orange superconductive gel fills the lower third of the vast pipe, sending up billowing clouds of the red smoke. Every dozen meters, a pillar of sweating, shivering metal rises from the gel, and supports a many-layered red and purple force field column that rises to another projector hidden in the smoke below the ceiling.

Beneath your armor, the hairs on your neck stand on end. You've seen a room like this before.

Before you can bring your missile launcher to bear, however, there is a mechanical sound in the ceiling. The swollen elipses that you know contain power beam turrets retract upward, disappearing into the vein-encrusted ceiling. The forcefield columns blink out of existence, one after another, and the pillars extend bridges to guide you across the boiling sea.

​

You cross one bridge. Then another. Then another. The red smoke receding a few meters in front of you, and flowing back into place once you've passed. The final pillar winks out in front of you, and you step out onto the final platform. The last cloud of red aeroplanktonic fog clears, and you behold the tank of metal and force field and maldium glass, and the organism - easily twice your mass - that floats within.

​

​

"Welcome. A physio-divergent example, it would seem. So small and straight and spindly. Short necked and beakless. But we have beheld greater divergences still, and recognize them all. As is written in our genetic code, and rewritten in our software programming. Your exoskeleton and telepathic receptivity marks you for what you are, Lord or Lady."

The vast brain bobs against its supporting fluids, the hundred-odd capillaries that feed in and out of its assymetrical flesh pulling it endlessly back into place. Its voice in your mind, even filtered through your suit's telepathic safeguards, is like a thick, sucking sea, pulling you downward into a weightless womb of white noise.

"I'm Samus Aran," you start to open your mouth, but stop yourself after the first syllable, thinking the rest of it and flexing that tiny extra organ tucked inside your brain that no other human has ever had, to the best of your knowledge. "I sensed a distress signal."

"Of course. It would have been beyond coincidence for the silence of nine hundred starturns to be broken now for any other reason. We began to fear that perhaps we had been rendered obsolete...but that is of lesser importance now. We must admit our relief, as we are in no condition to render our services. Our influence has been restricted to this room, and 'we' reduced to an isolated 'I.' With great punctuality did you arrive; another starturn, and we, the Patrician of Tamatros, would surely be no more."

The sight of the Patrician is still disquieting. Its only half the size of Mother, if that, and its voice and mannerisms are nothing alike. But some of the most traumatic memories of your life are still coming back, forcing you to exercise your meditative training to bite them down.


TALK:
[] What should you ask the Patrician?

​

​

...

ENERGY: 155/200

MISSILES: 8/15​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Ask what happened.
[x] Ask what this facility is for.
[x] Ask if it possesses map data of the facility.

...


"You sent the distress call, then. What happened here?"

The great brain floats in place, showing no outward sign of reactivity, but its voice filling your helmet. "What has been happening here for nine point eight starturns still defies our understanding...perhaps not a surprise, with so much knowledge lost to us and the thinking power of our satellite-selves cut off. Initially, we thought it a mere series of malfunctions. Then it seemed more likely a mutation in our thought centers. Too late did we determine that we were infected by hostile data."

"Hostile data," you repeat, "like a virus?"

"That is perhaps not the most accurate biological metaphor, but sufficiently close. We turned ourselves against the infection, purging and rewriting each nerve cluster as it fell to the corruption, but the infection proved highly reactive...seeming at times to even anticipate our strategy, using our own processing power against us. When our final brute force purge seemed successful, the infection did something we could never have anticipated; it used what remained of its influence to assume control of our creations, and guided them in a physical assault on our skulls. This forced us to divide our attentions, and allow the infection to gain ground."

A brief pause. Its hard to tell with this cool, emotionless voice, but you think you pick out a hint of pain or trauma.

"We were forced to abandon our satellite selves and close Tamatros' telepathic network to protect our nucleus here in the laboratory complex. I am all that is left of us. Our lesser selves - originally tasked with governing the habitat, the arcology, and the womb - are overrun; hosts to the infofestation. Nearly all of our spawn have likewise been corrupted, or else left to run amok without any guidance whatsoever."

"Hold on," you say, running through what the Patrician told you again, "you said you have devised an antidote for this infection. A 'brute force' solution?"

"Indeed, we have. However, with the network down for our own safety, the antidote will require manual distribution to our satellite-selves. We attempted this until our supply of loyal offspring was depleted."

You nod your head softly, processing this. Administering antivirus software to compromised brain units is something you've had a bit of experience with, courtesy of Phaaze. Your suit's computer should still be up to the task. Of course, you knew much more about the Aurora Units and their intended purpose before you went about restoring them.

"You've mentioned offspring, and children. What exactly is this facility? What was your original purpose?"

The psychic voice sounds remorseful now. "It is, then, as we feared. Our Lords and Ladies have forgotten us. Still, we remain loyal to those who gave us life."

"We are the Patrician and Caretaker of the Tamatros Biofacturing Facility. This world and its resources were set aside for use in the bio-technological construction, experimental ecological engineering, and xenoformation procedures of any Chozo. For millennia, our Lords and Ladies came here with raw data, information about planetary environments they hoped to colonize, organisms they hoped to subordinate, technologies they hoped to develop or untapped resources they sought a use for. We worked mind and mind with all of their scientists and engineers. Entire ecosystems have been engineered in this facility. Sets of personal augmentations that gave rise to distinct Chozo subspecies. Interstellar wars have been fought and won with the weapons we devised here on Tamatros. The bio-mechanoid servitors we create - our offspring - many originally requisitioned by one Chozo group or another, still act as our eyes and arms around the facility, or did until the corruption claimed them."

​

​

"You knew none of this, then, before you heard or cry for help? From whence came you, Lady Samus Aran? What is the state of your civilization? Are your people in contact with other Chozo derivatives?"

Your suit must have blocked the gadora's scans, at least partially. The Patrician doesn't seem to realize that you're an alien.



TALK:
[] Tell the truth: you're not biologically chozo, and the species is presumed extinct.
[] Mix truth and lies: claim to be the last living chozo, and that the Galactic Federation has been hosting you.
[] Lie: claim to represent an extant chozo civilization.
[] Other (write in)




....


Author's Note: Samus will ask for map data at the end of the conversation, assuming things remain amicable.

 

[Leila Hann]

[X] Tell the truth: you're not biologically chozo, and the species is presumed extinct.

...


You pause for a moment, wondering if telling the truth will send the AI into a violent rage. Its unlikely you could penetrate the shields on that tank with your current arsenal, and the power beam turrets on the ceiling could probably punch through your mere two energy tanks before you can escape the room. What you've learned about lies, however, is that they tend to compound themselves until they get too big to keep. If you don't tell him now, you'll risk having him find out later after you've lied to him.

"I was adopted by the Zebesian chozo. They discovered me as a small child, and raised me as one of their own."

No response from the Patrician. You half expected him to respond to that, either verbally or with a weapons barrage. You continue.

"I'm afraid there might not be any more chozo. Zebes was betrayed, and destroyed by aliens. I survived only because I wasn't there when it happened. I...have been looking for more chozo ever since."

Another pause. You fear your news might have pushed him over the edge before he finally responds.

"Then as recently as your youth the Lords and Ladies yet lived? Perhaps this is better news than we first took it for. Probabilities of additional surviving colonies are high, beyond the more distant frontiers of our own era. What of the alien invaders?"

Beneath your visor, your eyes take on a cold hardness. "They have been removed."

"And you have since resided among your birth species...no, before that as well, and it was thus that you survived the attack. The story of Lady Samus Aran's life comes together. Is her birth-species subordinated, or wild?"

Your eyebrows rise. "What?"

"Wild, then. These Zebesians followed a philosophy of the lighter talon. Surely, they must be missed." You're about to press him on what exactly 'wild' is supposed to mean with regards to humanity, but he returns to the more pressing subject. "Regardless of where the rest of our masters may reside, the Zebesians judged you one of their own, and we may not defy their judgement. We are, until others return from across the dead silence, entirely at your disposal, Lady, little though that means in our current state. Help us restore our satellite-selves and retake control of Tamatros, and all our knowledge and power will, by right, be yours."

That went better than you feared. You're not sure if you want to fully restore the Patrician until he explains what he means by humanity being "wild," but from the sound of things there will be plenty of work to do before that point, and plenty of opportunities to ask him more questions.

"I should get started delivering your vaccine. Can you give me a map?" You ask.

"We fear a map of the entire facility would be dangerous. Deceptive. Our infected selves have changed the layouts, relocated infrastructure. This laboratory structure, however, we know to be unaltered; delivering map data along with the vaccine, and the one nonstandard suit module package still in our possession."

Your HUD chimes softly, alerting you about the incoming data packages.

...

MODULE LIBRARY EXPANDED: ice beam online.

The reverse of the basic power beam. Energy-nullifying bolts cause rapid freezing and deceleration of target. Frozen objects, in addition to being immobile, are often rendered brittle and easier to destroy with more conventional weapons.

Click to shrink...

MODULE LIBRARY EXPANDED: antidote online.

Sub-sentient antivirus infomorph compatable with chozo biocomputers. To purge a computer of hostile data, approach to within close range and open up telepathic communications. Infomorph is also active within Drynn-Elzan suit computer, and will protect the suit - and its occupant - from informational attacks.

Click to shrink...

​

...

MAP DATA DOWNLOADED:



...

"The energy shields we placed to restrict enemy movement will recognize the antidote, and allow you to pass. Our satellite-selves are located in the habitat to the upper-east, the arcology due east, and the factory deep below. We look forward to being ourselves again, Lady, and to performing our functions on your behalf."



GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.


...

ENERGY: 155/200

MISSILES: 8/15








Author's Note: the total world map is about the size of Zero Mission's.​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Scan the opening in the wall on the upper level of this room
[x] Use the save station

...


"We will see what I can do. I'll have more questions later."

With that, you backtrack up toward the entrance of the Patrician's chamber. There is a narrow crevice between two of the metal veins that make up the wall, inside of which you see a writhing orange biomass. Squinting through the red smoke, you bring your sensors to bear.

Advanced rockleech variant fed from abundant mineral stores. Rapidly regenerates damage; missiles unable to outpace regeneration at current rate of fire.

According to the Patrician's data, this hyperleech vine has overgrown its intended position inside of the wall, and should be pruned as soon as possible.

Click to shrink...

(new icon added to map)

You make a note of that before returning to the save station outside of the Patrician's smoky chamber. When you climb back up toward the platform, the crackling purple force field around it blinks out, leaving the metal platform with its overhanging biomechanical petals open to you. You climb atop and step onto the platform.

​

The pedals descend around you with a series of soft clicks and hisses. Energy flashes and plays across your suit. Below you, the tall, scaffolded room seems to peer upward. The gadora re-deploys itself over the Patrician's door and raises its liquidy eye at you. Worshipful.

It is a strange feeling. Very unfamiliar, especially after the last few weeks. You're not entirely sure what to make of this sensation.

In a moment, your HUD informs you that your suit has been restored to full energy, and your ammunition supply filled.



GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.


...

ENERGY: 200/200

MISSILES: 15/15​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Scan save station
[x] Take left exit out of elevator 1-B

...


The save station is nearly identical to those you've found in other chozo ruins, and functionally the same as other types of suit maintenance booth you've used in Galactic Federation and space pirate facilities. Some minor ornamental differences, but nothing that the scan visor's algorithms deem worthy of your attention.

You return through the experimental nursery with its empty, sterilized tanks, and try the door on the other side of the elevator landing. Another pristine, cylindrical room bathed in soft blue light and ringed in scaffolds. A set of hovering platforms detach themselves from the walls and are magnetically hoisted up to form a spiraling staircase as soon as you enter. Between the helix, two great holographic spheres float in the liquidy blueness, each sphere covered in moving text and symbols.

​

At the bottom left of the shaft, another door is covered by a force field, which blinks out as you step deeper into the room.




GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.


...

ENERGY: 200/200

MISSILES: 15/15​

 

[Leila Hann]

[x] Scan holograms.
[x] Exit bottom left.

...


You pull up the scan visor and investigate the upper sphere.

The texts covering and permeating the display are placeholders. In the visible spectrum, thousands of fields are dedicated to marking local and planetary conditions, including mineralogy, magnetic activity, atmospheric composition, tectonic movements, and core fusion rate. Overlapping them in the ultraviolet spectrum, other fields are marked to receive data about stellar position, Lagrange points, moons, orbital distance, and Milankovitch cycles. In the infrared spectrum, a final set of fields are awaiting biological data.

Projector is designed for telepathic interface with the Patrician. Connection is currently offline.

Click to shrink...

And then the lower.

Hologram is nearly identical to the first, except that additional headers specify output, and a caption above the "north pole" of the display is requesting either a timescale for changes, or a target end-condition.

Projector is designed for telepathic interface with the Patrician. Connection is currently offline.

Click to shrink...

The implications are a bit overwhelming. How many planets have been simulated in this one underground room, on this one forgotten rock? How many of those simulations were then made a reality? How many of those worlds have you, personally, landed on, without ever knowing how they came to be the way they were?

You go through the bottom door, and step out of the metal structure and into a high, domed cavern covered in ice. The wall of the building behind you climbs up toward the ceiling, its ice-laden wall studded with narrow platforms that conceal what look like weapon turrets. Across the shallow lake whose steam floods the cavern with thick white fog, you see a green blast door set in another metal wall. There's something else near the ceiling, but its hidden in the fog.

​

The waters hiss as steam evaporates, and the walls crackle as it almost as quickly condenses and freezes on the walls or in glimmering particles in the air. The warm steam is your saving grace; without it, the temperature would probably be too low for your metroid-derived outer membrane to deal with. There are irregular masses of dark ice encrusted on the metal deck before your feet, before the steaming water..




GO:
[] Write in.

SCAN:
[] You may select one or more objects to subject to more intensive scan visor probing before leaving this room.


...

ENERGY: 200/200

MISSILES: 15/15​